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Born this day in 1874.

November 30
Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England to Lord Randolph and Lady Churchill (Jennie Jerome).
December 3
"On the 30th Nov., at Blenheim Palace, the Lady Randolph Churchill, prematurely, of a son." (The Times)


Link to the Churchill Center.

Churchill entry at the Nobel Literature site (he won in 1953).

Link to Blenheim Palace site, Churchill's birthplace.

Link to the Churchill exhibit at the Library of Congress.

Link to the Churchill Society, London, which has audio of Churchill.

Link to the Churchill Museum.

Link to picture of Churchill's grave at Bladon.

Tribute at GayPatriot.

Churchill was the epitome of English bulldog courage and tenacity, an indispensible man for Freedom in the 20th century. Let's remember that Courage (or Fortitude) is a necessary republican virtue for the preservation of liberty. Three cheers for Sir Winston.
Gateway Pundit is still on AP like a pitbull. Here. The Mainstream Media failure to provide clear and accurate news from Iraq is a scandal.

28/11: Irony in Oslo

This year's Nobel Peace Prize entertainment has been set. One of the performers is the singer formerly know as Cat Stevens. Now, following his conversion to Islam, he supports censorship and the death penalty for "blasphemy." Among other things. Here. Only a well-educated elite could miss the irony. Hattip DhimmiWatch.
Arab Christians continue to flee the Palestinian controlled Holy Land, raising the possibility that Christianity will have no presence in parts of the region of its birth. From AP via The Tulsa World. Article here.

There have been Christians on the West Bank since the days of the apostles. Until the Arab conquests it was a Christian region. Now, after centuries of dhimmitude*, the increased violence against them is driving more and more Christians abroad.

*The prescribed condition of Christians within Muslim controlled lands: second-class citizenship, restrictions, special taxes.

26/11: Chavez

Chavez of Venezuela may be a popular big-mouth abroad, but he may not be overwhelming popular at home. (And there are serious questions about the honesty of the last election there.) Gateway Pundit has pictures of a massive anti-Chavez demonstration in Caracas.
Check out this website. Its title is ATLAS DES ZONES URBAINES SENSIBLES. It is a French Government site listing urban areas (with links to maps) into which it is not safe to go. (Officially these are sort of Economic Development Zones, not forbidden zones.) Last count there were 751 such neighborhoods. Hat tip DhimmiWatch.

The major riots by "Immigrant Youths" (aka young male Muslims) of the recent past were triggered by French efforts to reestablish the rule of French law. These efforts have not come to much. On an average night in France about 100 cars are set ablaze, mostly in these neighborhoods. And some of our politicians look to Europe for answers to our problems?

In case you encounter some loon this week who asserts that all Islamic terrorism would stop if Israel or the US would do this or that, more news from Thailand.

7 Killed in Muslim South Despite Thai Peace Bid here

Islamic Jihadists in Southern Thailand Burn Teacher Alive here

Jihad Against Education: 300 Thai Schools to Close Amid Attacks here.

Hat tip Jihadwatch. Islam has almost always had bloody borders.
Several days ago I posted some material on US foreign policy from Tocqueville and A Waco Farmer here. Then I asked this question: "Question for discussion: In 2006/2007, should the United States follow the policy of George Washington as expressed by John Quincy Adams?"

Washington had called for the US not to get involved in the political/national struggles in Europe. JQA, writing in the context of the breaking-up of the Spanish Empire in Latin America wrote:

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Since I posed the question: I suppose I should offer a few thoughts. (below)

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How much do the cheap "Made in China" items really cost? Gateway Pundit on recent repression in China here.
Traditionally America followed a policy of Political Isolationism. We were active in the global economy with American ships sailing the oceans to trade, but refrained from political involvement abroad. Recently one of our frequent commentators, Tocqueville, gave us an important historic statement of this policy in the context of current political discussion.

Wilsonianism has run amuck in the GOP, which is a far cry from Bush's 2000 campaign for an end to peace-keeping and nation-building. The most thorough and persuasive critique of the Wilsonian strain in American history is Walter McDougall's "Promised Land, Crusader State." McDougall's guiding spirit is John Quincy Adams, who, by way of refuting the heretical doctrine of a crusader America, formulated once and for all the orthodox dogma of American Exceptionalism in his July Fourth address of 1821:

"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."


A Waco Farmer then added some context:

JQA speaks as James Monroe's secretary of state (according to Samuel Flagg Bemis, and others, the very best to ever hold that position). The context is the unraveling Spanish Empire in Latin America. The other component is Henry Clay, who, outside the administration, is calling upon the government of the USA to lend military assistance to the fledgling republics. Henry Clay, in fact, takes a Wilsonian position nearly 100 years prior to Wilson. And JQA is promoting a rock-ribbed realism that he inherited from his political hero, George Washington.

Question for discussion: In 2006/2007, should the United States follow the policy of George Washington as expressed by John Quincy Adams?
From the Telegraph, hat tip Jihadwatch. Full article.

Opening paragraphs:

Iran tried to obtain uranium from Somalia in return for supplying weapons to the anarchic country's Islamist movement, the United Nations said yesterday.

A report compiled for the Security Council found that Iran is one of seven countries breaking a UN arms embargo by providing weapons to the Islamic radicals who control most of southern Somalia, including the capital, Mogadishu.

This influx of weapons increases the chances of a new regional war in the Horn of Africa. It also underlines the close ties which Somalia's Islamists, who style themselves the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts, have forged with radical regimes across the Muslim world, notably Syria and Iran.

The report found that 720 Somali fighters were sent to Lebanon in the summer to aid Hizbollah during the war with Israel. In return, Hizbollah dispatched five advisers to Somalia to provide advanced military training.


I wonder what Iran wants with uranium? (sarcasm alert)
Some in high places are beginning to catch on that our problems are not just with bin Laden or Al Qaeda. We are threatened by a much deeper mindset within the Islamic world. The NYT has this article on the recent report of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. I suggest you read the whole thing, but a portion is below. Hat tip Jihadwatch.

As radical Islam spreads globally through online forums and chat rooms, a group of obscure Arab religious thinkers may come to exert more influence over the jihadist movement than Osama bin Laden and other well-known leaders of Al Qaeda, a research group at the United States Military Academy has concluded.

In a study billed as the “first systematic mapping” of an ideology sometimes called jihadism, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has found that Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, have had a relatively minor influence on the movement’s intellectual foundation. Among the network’s ideologists, they have come to be seen more as propagandists than strategic thinkers.

And while the two Qaeda leaders have released a flurry of video and audio messages to their followers over the past year, the study found that the scholarly work of a group of Saudi and Jordanian clerics — most notably Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian — seems more likely to influence the next generation of Islamic militants.
. . .
The report found that radical Islam, sometimes called Salafism, is so deeply embedded in the Arab world that Salafis now constitute a “majority or significant portion” of the Muslim population in the Middle East and North Africa.


Historically, we are in another hot period in the nearly 1400 year-long war by Islam against everyone else.
Every so often, just as I am about to think that all spunk and fortitude has died in the UK, someone speaks up. Recently the second-ranking Anglican, The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has spoken truth to power.

Here he accuses the BBC of anti-Christian bias.

Here he declares that multiculturalism has betrayed the English.

The Archbishop is black and became a refugee from Idi Amin's tyranny in Uganda.
It is not too hard to know what the Islamist agenda is if you pay attention. But, if you watch only the MSM you may be in the dark. Tonight on CNN Headline News Glenn Beck is doing a special that shows lots of clips from Arabic and Farsi television (translated) in which Islamists lay out their agenda in their own words. More here.

The Iranian president is calling for a Final Holocaust and pushing forward rapidly to gain nuclear weapons with which to accomplish his stated goal. And as the recent Iranian military exercises demonstrated, they have the delivery systems capable of reaching Israel. Basically the Islamists want to bury us also, or at least to incorporate us into their system as subservient peoples.

I happened to catch part of the Glenn Beck radio program this morning while in my van. He told of the steps the network required in order to ensure accuracy. (Would that Dan Rather had had such oversight.) He has been trying to get this special on since August, but has just now succeeded. On the segment I heard he did not speculate as to the timing, but I do not think it a coincidence that the network delayed broadcast until after the election.
Overlooked by me in the run-up to the election, this report on China and North Korea by Bill Gertz. Gertz, I think, has the best sources in defense of any reporter in Washington. A portion of the article

China helped North Korea develop nuclear weapons and in the past year increased its support to Pyongyang, rather than pressing the regime to halt nuclear arms and missile activities, according to a congressional report.
The final draft report of the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission also says that Chinese government-run companies are continuing to threaten U.S. national security by exporting arms to American enemies in Asia and the Middle East.
The report is based on public testimony and highly classified intelligence reports made available to its members and staff. It indirectly criticizes the Bush administration for failing to pressure Beijing into joining U.S.-led anti-proliferation programs and calls for Congress to take action to force the administration to do more


This report supports the contention made earlier on this blog in a guest post (below). It is a very dangerous world, and Dems in control of Congress does not reassure me. Although, in fairness, the Bushes have been too pro-China for my way of thinking.

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From the New York Sun, this story about a Bangladeshi journalist facing a death sentence, accused of writing articles "praising Jews and Christians." Portion of the article below. Hat tip Powerline.

Mr. Choudhury, a Bangladeshi journalist, is accused, he told us, of "praising Jews and Christians," "spying for Israel," and being "an agent of the Mossad" -- because he advocated relations between Israel and Bangladesh. He's also accused of being critical of Islamic radicals, which is considered blasphemy. He committed these crimes by writing articles favorable toward Jews and Christians.

He did so, he says, because while he was born and raised in a Muslim country (Bangladesh) where he was taught a "religion of hatred" and a "religion of Jihad," his father "told from an early age not to listen and to learn for himself." He did and became friends with Jews, realized the lies he had been taught, and wanted to end "the culture of hatred." He says that if "Muslim countries want peace they need relations with Israel."

Mr. Choudhury says he holds no hope of getting a fair trial. The judge, he says, is a radical Islamist who has already made clear his view that Mr. Choudhury is guilty. "In open court ... he made comments that by praising Christians and Jews I have hurt the sentiment of Muslims ... which is a crime," the journalist says. Other comments made by the Judge have made it clear, Mr. Choudhury tells me, that the judge's goal is a conviction and a death sentence. Mr. Choudhury describes his judge as a "one man judge and jury," and Mr. Choudhury cannot even present witnesses in his own defense.

The New York Times reveals today that IRAQ CLOSE TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS PRIOR TO INVASION that removed Saddam Hussein. Here.

Of course, that's not their headline, which reads: U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer (spinspinspinspin)

Here are some relevant paragraphs

But in recent weeks, the site [posting in English captured documents from Saddam's regime] has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

And, deep in the article

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

The Times, surprise, focuses the entire article on the release of the documents, which it describes as a major mistake that could help countries such as Iran build weapons themselves.

Big-time hat tip to Wizbang, and the sites linked to from there.

Kinda puts a crimp in the whole "Bush lied" thing.
btw, this morning I listened to world news while in my car twice from two different networks: not a peep about this article.
In the context of talking about something else, Jihadwatch has these paragraphs

In 1948, the Armenian-American journalist Arthur A. Derounian, who infiltrated Nazi groups in America and wrote about his adventures in the bestseller Under Cover (published under the pseudonym John Roy Carlson), traveled to the Middle East, where he used the Nazi connections he had made to get in with Arab groups preparing to destroy the nascent State of Israel. He met the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem (the one who met with Hitler and raised an SS squadron of Bosnian Muslims), Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Banna, and many other pivotal and fascinating figures -- all chronicled in his absorbing book From Cairo to Damascus.

And along the way he meets with German Nazi soldiers who have come to the Middle East to pursue their maniacal Jew-hatred. They expressed to him on several occasions their exasperation with the Muslim soldiers they were trying to aid: "These Arabs make big talk," one told Derounian, "but do not fight like an army. They are not trained. They do not know discipline." Derounian encountered Arab warriors who would fire their guns into the distance indiscriminately until their ammunition was all gone, and then retire from their positions; others who stormed a kibbutz and settled down to gorge themselves on the chickens there, only to be overwhelmed by a surprise counterattack. Read the book and you'll find many other such examples.


I had known about the Baath Party (Syria and formerly Iraq) origins among Arabs influenced in the 1930s by European fascism. (Syria sheltered one of the last Nazi war criminals on the lam). And, I knew a bit about the Jerusalem Mufti and Hitler. This is the first I've heard of Nazi soldiers winding up in the Mideast after the war.
The Washington Times carries this UPI story here. A portion:

A foiled British terror plot to blow up 10 passenger aircraft with liquid bombs was meant to occur over U.S. cities, a senior FBI official says.
Mark Mershon, head of the FBI's New York field office, made the observation at the Infosecurity 2006 conference in New York on Oct. 24. The conference was reported on this week by Government Security News.
"The plan was bring them down over U.S. cities, not over the ocean," Mershon said, adding the plotters' goal was to maximize damage and loss of life.


Ironic perhaps, frustrating certainly, that success has led to complacency by many regarding the threat we live under.
More Islamic tolerance on display in Iraq. The Mandaeans are experiencing severe persecution at the hands of Muslims. The Mandaeans are a small religion that claim descent from John the Baptist. Cardinal George Pell speaks here on behalf of more being admitted as refugees to Australia.
Free Republic has posted the text of Rick Santorum's new speech online here. I believe this speech is Churchillian in its open-eyed honesty. Once again the clouds are gathering.

Here are a few portions below:

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