Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

An invisible issue

Posted: February 25, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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One of the amazing things that our friends who always cry Islamophobia if anyone critiques radical Islam or talks about creeping Sharia is their inability to notice things that are happening right in front of them.

However actually living in a changing environment have no choice but to notice, for example:

Last autumn, mysterious posters began to appear all over the East End of London announcing it is now a “Gay-Free Zone.” They warned: “And Fear Allah: Verily Allah is Severe in Punishment.” One of them was plastered outside the apartment block I lived in for nearly ten years, next to adverts for club nights and classes at the local library, as if it was natural and normal. I’d like to say I’m shocked – but anybody who lives in Tower Hamlets knows this has been a long time coming.

Well this is just talk after all why should anyone be afraid of posters and empty talk, oh I don’t know maybe stuff like this:

In September 2008, a young gay man called Oliver Hemsley, is walking home from the gay pub the George and Dragon when a gang of young Muslims stabs him eight times, in the back, in the lungs, and in his spinal column. In January 2010, when the thug who did it is convicted, a gang of thirty Muslims storms the George and Dragon in revenge and violently attacks everybody there. All through, it was normal to see young men handing out leaflets outside the Whitechapel Ideas Store saying gays are “evil.” Most people accept them politely.

These are not isolated incidents. East London has seen the highest increase in homophobic attacks anywhere in Britain. Everybody knows why, and nobody wants to say it. It is because East London has the highest Muslim population in Britain, and we have allowed a fanatically intolerant attitude towards gay people to incubate there, in the name of “tolerance”.

Mind you this is not a person of the right, this is a person who calls Mark Steyn a” ludicrous hysteric” and states that England “senselessly incinerates many Muslims abroad” he makes pains to portray Muslims in England as a repressed minority.

Yet he can’t ignore what everyone sees. Perhaps if people weren’t so busy condemning us who oppose Gay Marriage and support the defense of Marriage act as extremist bigots they might have more time to deal with these issues.

Meanwhile it’s not like stuff like this is slowly happening here, is it? Oh Wait:

The Thomas More Law Center announced today that the City of Dearborn, its Mayor, John B. O’Reilly, its Chief of Police, Ronald Haddad, 17 City police officers, and two executives of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce were named as defendants in a ninety-six page federal civil rights lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Detroit this morning.

The lawsuit, brought by TMLC and co-counsel and Sharia law expert, David Yerushalmi, stems from two separate police actions at the June 2010 Dearborn, Michigan Annual International Arab Festival.

Richard Thompson, TMLC President and Chief Counsel, commented, “Muslims dominate the political and law enforcement process in Dearborn. It seems that police were more interested in placating the Mayor and Muslims than obeying our Constitution. Sharia law makes it a crime to preach the Gospel to Muslims. This is a classic example of stealth Jihad being waged right here in America. And it should be a wake-up call for all patriotic Americans.”

Now critics point out that this doesn’t make Dearborn Saudi Arabia as Jeff Wattrick says:

This might just do no one any good, but Dearborn is not under the jackboot of Sharia Law.

I can even prove it. Go to Dearborn and have lunch at the Buffalo Wild Wings on Michigan Avenue. Order their pulled pork-based “Big Daddy Burger” (with bacon if you so choose…this is America, after all) and a pint of good Michigan draft beer. While enjoying your pork sandwich and malted beverage, take out a pen and draw Muhammad on a bar napkin.

Now try to do that same thing in Saudi Arabia. If BW3’s hasn’t yet expanded into Riyadh, another restaurant will work. Order your pork sandwich and beer and then draw Muhammad.

See, one of those places is governed by Sharia Law while the other isn’t.

Funny you should mention and link to Everybody Draw Muhammad Day. Tell me what happened to Molly Norris who first suggested it?

Do you recall the Fatwa against her? Do you the deafening silence in support of her. Do you recall her having to go into hiding?

You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity.

There isn’t Sharia Law in Seattle, but there also isn’t Molly Norris there either and denial and snark will not cut it anymore.

Now it comes down to this. These folks know that us believing Catholics are not going to be issuing fatwas or cutting throats so they are happy enough to go after us as a threat, but when it comes to Islam silence is golden.

If we pretend that this isn’t happening and retreat into snark, what is now happening in England will eventually be coming here.

This has to be nailed now. If it is nailed now then we will have years to snark and enjoy. If it’s not then in a few years we can expect to read columns like the one we lead with, only carrying US bylines.

Unreturned love, Islam or both?

Posted: February 24, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news
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And you thought Jody Foster had a crush problem:

“I am falling in love with her… She is goregeous that I cann’t forget her just right away”

Apparently our arrested terrorist had a crush on an American girl and Eric Dondero has been doing some digging and asks if rejection drove him finally over the terror edge? PJ Tattler found his facebook page and has continued to dig. Stacy McCain being the expert in digging notes that the narrative on his blog/facebook don’t seem to fit details of the story:

The government’s accusation that Aldawsari turn to terrorism contrasts sharply with his earlier blog entries. As Preston notes at PJM, Aldawsari wrote:

This is an opportunity to be in the US to achieve my dream that I am working very hard and I am doing my best to catch it, that dream is mainly and simply to be an employee in google which is not impossible to achieve even if it is hard…

So he went from wanting to work for Google to wanting to kill President Bush? Or was his blog (part in English, part in Arabic) part of an elaborate ruse to hide his actual intent?

All of this is very early, but I suspect that the media being the media they will be steering more toward the love unrequited bit vs the Radical Islam angle. After all we know Islam is a religion of peace.

Meanwhile in Ca-36

Posted: February 24, 2011 by datechguy in congress, opinion/news, politics
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I thought that politics in Massachusetts was Byzantine, then I read this piece by Ladd Ehlinger Jr. on the special election in the 36th. A sample:

They are professional politicos, and make their living off both sides of the aisle. Ordinarily they screw things up for local constituencies in California, but they’ve got their beady eyes turned to the 36th district, too.

As you may know, Ron Nehring was (supposedly) the California Republican Party fifth columnist Chairman last year. He helped lead the Republicans to utter defeat and shame in California in 2010, with help from the Willie-Brown run database PDI.

Databases are crucial to running campaigns. Voter outreach and communications are key. You want your information to be good, and you don’t want your opposition finding out who your volunteers are, or even what sort of queries you are running on the database. So naturally, you wouldn’t want your database to be run by Willie Brown political hacks, the very people who want you defeated. Unless, of course, you are Ron Nehring.

No, if you’re Ron, instead you work with Meg Whitman to force as many local, state and federal Republican candidates in November 2010 to use the opposition’s database, so you can be damned sure everyone gets lost in the fog of war and is defeated.

Thanks Ron! You’re a true chum to liberty.

Read the whole thing to try to untie the knot that is California.

This is called “lobbying”

Posted: February 24, 2011 by datechguy in Afghanistan war, media, opinion/news, war
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Morning Joe was breathless today reporting that the well-known bastion of journalistic mud-racking on government issues Rolling Stone magazine is reporting that our troops were using “psi-ops” against US senators.

Joe breathlessly reported this as a turning point, Norah O’Donnell subbing for Mika talked about it breathlessly and then when the panel started talking about it, the one person who had actually read the article, found very little there there:

So I figured I’d take a look at rolling stone, to see what that pillar of serious news had to say.

In between their world-class coverage of Justin Bieber Superboy and their big exclusive on The Return of Bevis and Butthead to MTV I found the military story and what a story it is.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war

WOAH! sounds nasty! No wonder they hate soldiers at Columbia. Did they bug their hotels looking for dirt, plant hot blonds to snooze them and take pictures? Maybe they waterboarded or drugged them? What nefarious methods did Rolling Stone uncover that the Evil US army used against senators:

According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their “hot-button issues.” In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best to “refine our messaging.” emphasis mine

…WOW that’s absolutely positively…ordinary, but I’m sure that it gets worse because in the very next paragraph it says:

According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a “deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds.” The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. “How do we get these guys to give us more people?” he demanded. “What do I have to plant inside their heads?”

Wow he wants to find pressure point, he want to plant stuff inside their heads, boy this sounds a lot like…..lobbying.

But it’s not like Holmes the source for this story had a grudge. After all any soldier could be the subject of an Ar 15-6 investigation. And I’m sure many Colonials and their female Majors under them get reprimands over an “inappropriate relationship”. After all Rolling Stone covers stuff like this all the time and married or no they understand that as Holmes wrote: “Gimmee a break a man has needs you know.”

So this is the breathless story that Morning Joe started the show with and Norah O’Donnell in their first hour. It flew like a lead balloon and made such an impact that they followed up with their 2nd hour to go long with the crank call to Gov Walker before trying once again to sell this story as the template for the anti-war left, this time without Jamie Rubin who had popped their bubble in the first hour as MSNBC runs with the story.

The real problem lately has been reports out of Afghanistan have been encouraging and the agenda of the left when it comes to Afghanistan is the opposite of Reagan’s “We win they lose”.

One of the people who I ran into CPAC was the young lady who last year worked for Joe Scarborough who had given me the high compliment of saying I was tough but fair on him. When she greeted me I mentioned that I was even harder on him lately, she approved and it was suggested that he was more concerned these days with being accepted by the cocktail set.

When I talk about Morning Joe these days I’m often teased that I follow it because so few people watch it. The more I see of it lately the more that critique seems justified.

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