The Bosque Boys

According to this report, with links, the official web site of the nation of Iran is proclaiming that the return Mahdi is near, possibly by the spring equinox.

For those of you who have not kept up, in Shiite apocalyptic, this means the end of the present world order with lots of bloodshed in Armageddon style. Given that the Iranian government has spoken of itself as an agent of the Mahdi's return, this announcement makes me wonder if the Irananians expect to have usable nuclear weapons by spring equinox. Peace on earth postponed again. For previous posts see here.

I missed observing Stalin's birthday yesterday. What a colossus of evil. For an accounting of the deaths for which he is responsible see this post on Old War Dogs. Link from the Rott.

The 20th century showed the range of human potential. Poe was right--the human heart and mind hold terrors. What things someone will do with genetic engineering.

Gateway Pundit has the story on the recent executions in Iran, with links.

The Final Solution reached into Arab and Muslim lands. Some of this I knew, some I did not. From an op-ed by Max Boot in the LA Times here. Link from LGF. Portions of the essay:

POINTLESS though it may be to argue with a madman, it is worth noting that Muslims were not as blameless in the genocide of the Jews as Ahmadinejad and his ilk would have it. Arabs were, on a small scale, cheerleaders and enablers of the Final Solution. The most famous example was Haj Amin Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem (and uncle of Yasser Arafat), who took refuge in Berlin in World War II. A rabid Nazi, he personally lobbied Hitler to kill as many Jews as possible and even helped out by recruiting Bosnian Muslims to serve in the Waffen SS.

Robert Satloff, one of the world's smartest Arabists, reveals other links between the Arabs and the Holocaust in his groundbreaking new book, "Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach Into Arab Lands." He shows how the Nazis set up the machinery of death in North Africa. Although "only" 4,000 to 5,000 Jews died before the Allies liberated the area in 1943, many more were consigned to forced labor camps in hellish conditions.

"Arabs played a role at every level," Satloff wrote. "Some went door to door with the Germans, pointing out Jews for arrest. Others led Jewish workers on forced marches or served as overseers at labor camps."

. . .

Even worse, while Europe has disowned its terrible history, the Nazis continue to be glorified in the Middle East. ("Mein Kampf" is a perennial bestseller in the region.) Nowhere else in the world is Holocaust denial so prevalent. Ahmadinejad deserves thanks for calling the world's attention to this pervasive sickness

There are alternatives to the MSM for field reporting. Bill Roggio has been emedding with troops for a while and reporting back through the internet. He depends on donations to continue his work. I recommend his reporting. A recent post is here.

I like the phrase used by some for the new possibilities made possible by electronic communication: An Army of Davids.

Under-Reported News Story of the week so far: polls in Afghanistan show strong support for Karzai government and also for allied troops. Optimism that Taliban will not return to power. Story covered by Gateway Pundit.

Here is a link to LGF that will link you to a video expressing the anger toward jihadis that we need more of. Language warning.

To judge from CAIR press releases, one would think that Muslims were being hounded, harassed, and hung all over the US and in Europe. Not so. As I earlier pointed out, in the US it is much, much more dangerous to be a Jew.

But, is CAIR overstating the number of anti-Muslim hate-crimes in the US? Perhaps to aquire the coveted status of victim? That charge has been made in the blogosphere. Perhaps it is best to check an objective source. Here is a quote from the official FBI report on hate crimes in 2001. "A breakdown of the 2118 victims of hate crimes motivated by religious bias showed that the majority of victims were Jewish, 56.5 percent. Anti-Islamic bias accounted for 26.2 percent of victims of hate crimes motivated by religious bias, . . ." Report here . The statistics table shows 554 Muslim victims, compared with 1196 Jewish victims. For 2000 the FBI report indicates 36 Muslim victims, and 1269 Jewish. Report here. For 2002 the figures are 174 Muslim victims, and 1084 Jewish. Report here.

The same is true in Great Britain. This article from the Telegraph on persecution of Jews. A major culprit seems to be Muslims.

Jewish people are four times more likely to be attacked because of their religion than Muslims, according to figures compiled by the police. One in 400 Jews compared to one in 1,700 Muslims are likely to be victims of "faith hate" attacks every year. The figure is based on data collected over three months in police areas accounting for half the Muslim and Jewish populations of England and Wales. The crimes range from assault and verbal abuse to criminal damage at places of worship.

. . .

Rabbi Alex Chapper, 33, was the victim of a "faith-hate" crime in July last year. He was returning from a synagogue in Ilford, Essex, with three Jewish friends after conducting a service. All were wearing skull caps. Seven Asian teenagers followed them down the road shouting "Yehudi", which means Jew in Arabic. One of them shouted, "We are Pakistani, you are Jewish. We are going to kill you", before punching Rabbi Chapper in the face and hitting one of his friends over the head with a bottle.

"It was very frightening, we were all very shaken," said the rabbi. "I thought we were going to get seriously hurt but someone threatened to call the police and they ran off.

"We identified the youths and told the police but they were never prosecuted. They just did not seem interested. I feel very let down."

Today, Real Clear Politics features Charles Krauthammer's address to the Foreign Policy Research Institute from November 14, 2006 (full address here).

Some highlights:

"We are now in a period of confusion and disorientation, almost despair. I think it is worthwhile to look back historically to see how we got to where we are today."

"The Bush Doctrine held that besides attacking the immediate enemy who had perpetrated 9/11, it would have to engage in a larger enterprise of changing the underlying conditions which had given birth to this idea of Islamic radicalism, and to change the conditions that had allowed it to recruit and breed, particularly in the Arab world."

"Unless it [the Arab world] was somehow encouraged and brought along on that march [economic and political modernization], it would remain recalcitrant, alienated, oppressed, tyrannical, and the place from which the kind of atavistic attacks on America and the West that we have seen on 9/11 and since would continue.

"That's why the entire enterprise of changing the culture of the Arab world was undertaken. It was, as I and others had said at the time, a radical idea, an arrogant idea, a risky idea. But it was also the only idea of any coherence and consistency that anyone has advanced on how to change the underlying conditions that had led to 9/11 and ultimately to prevent the kind of conditions that would lead to a second 9/11."

"What we have seen [after three years of great successes], however, in the last almost two years now is what I think historians will write of as the setback.

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Understanding someone means attempting to discover what that person means by his or her speech. Not what you first think the utterance might mean. Take the word "innocent." Here is a link to a video of a BBC interview with a radical Muslim. In the interview he affirms that non-Muslims are by definition not innocent since they have rejected Islam.

So, therefore, please be aware that in the mind of a radical Islamist, no Western civilian is really an innocent life. What you mean by "innocent life," is not the same thing that a radical Muslim means by "innocent life."

In commenting on this video, Jihadwatch observes "Choudhury can and no doubt does easily support his view from the Qur'an, in which Jews and Christians are under Allah's curse (9:30) and unbelievers are the "vilest of creatures" (98:6)."