Quote of the Day: On multiculturalism

“The reason multiculturalism exists is to pretend that inferior cultures aren’t inferior and that superior cultures aren’t superior. It’s a way to tell nice lies about rotten cultures and rotten lies about great cultures.”

~ Bosch Fawstin

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“Islamist extremism: the menace many dare not speak by name”

Murder in Paris and San Bernadino and revelations of so-called “jihadi brides” has made many finally realise Islam’s war on the west is not going away.

A very good opinion piece by Chris Kenny in The Australian on Islam’s continuing war with the modern world and our lacklustre response to it:

Late at night (in this country) on September 11, 2001, we were shocked by the horror unfolding in New York and sensed our civilisation was under attack.
    It was, and still is.
For all the terror attacks that have followed — and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Africa — Western democracies have persistently tried to wish away the problem of Islamist extremism.
    The populist line has been the one that downplays the threat — Merry Christmas war is over. Tragically this has been an illusion.
    Unlike invading armies of the past from Germany and Japan, the war being waged against the western world by Islamist terrorists is insidious, inconsistent and often invisible. Then a plane flies out of the clear blue sky, a bomb explodes in a bar or a gunman takes to the streets.
    The threat is difficult to grasp and because it is related to cultural divisions in our own immigrant societies it can be deeply uncomfortable to confront. So there is a temptation to avert our eyes and forestall action.
    The trouble is that this threat also has a long and deep cultural foundation and its adherents are patient; so unless we tackle and disable its ideological wellspring, Islamist terrorism can hibernate and cultivate anywhere, including in our midst. And there can be no bargaining or negotiation — the Islamist aims cannot be satisfied except by subjugation, or death.
    The idea is to impose the Muslim faith, Sharia law and the rule of a caliphate over all of us — no ifs, no buts. This extremism opposes choice, democracy, plurality and liberty.
    We can always postpone facing this dilemma because it will not overwhelm us today or tomorrow.
    When attacks don’t come, we often revert to complacency or denial. Julia Gillard said the 9/11 decade was over and various so-called progressives mocked the Coalition’s early talk of a resurgent security threat.
    But Islamism’s historical roots (eloquently explained by Clive Kessler [in the post below]) should leave us in no doubt about the existential nature of the struggle.
    This column has warned about the dangers of jihad denialism since long before the upsurge of Western terrorist attacks inspired by Islamic State’s success in Iraq and Syria.
    Yet we need to grasp the evil genius of Islamic State — that simply by establishing a self-declared caliphate and sustaining it they have inspired Islamist extremists worldwide. This is why containment is no solution.
    Yet in this country and more broadly across the Western world we remain reluctant to discuss the issue and confront the challenge . . .
Read the whole op-ed:
Islamist extremism: the menace many dare not speak by name – Chris Kenny, THE AUSTRALIAN

Cartoonist and “recovered muslim” Bosch Fawstin reckons “If all those who discussed Islam actually studied Islam, there would be far less confusion about what to do about its true believers who are waging Jihad on us.” Professor at the University of New South Wales Clive Kessler has been studying political Islam, in South-East Asia and globally, since the early 1960s. Speaking about Islam’s historical roots in Quadrant he argues: “As a faith, and a civilisation built upon that faith, Islam over the centuries has displayed many faces, some peaceful and others not. Against the threat of violent Islam in our time, bland and disingenuous assertions of Islam’s essentially peaceful character are inadequate.”

…The suggestion that mainstream Islam is anything other than a religion of peace is arrant nonsense,” [many insist].
    How convincing is this claim? Can we, in the face of threatened Islamist violence, find reassurance in that assertion? … Is it an adequate basis upon which to oppose the ISIS militants and to dissuade disaffected young Muslims, in Australia and elsewhere, from rallying to its call and banner? If Islam is a “religion of peace”, then what kind of peace does it imagine, aspire to and offer—to its adherents, to non-Muslims and to the world at large? …
    The conventional Islamic imagination is also “governmentalist”: Islam is both din and daulah, a faith and faith-based way of life and also a political order. It imagines and assumes a world organised upon Islamic principles, one that operates upon the basis of, and maintains, the Islamic social template.
    Conventional Islam has always assumed that it can and must “live in the world” on its own terms; that it is entitled to do so; that, in order to realise itself and thrive, it must do so; and that it may insist upon and even, when possible, impose upon others the terms of its own thriving according to its own ultimately sacred, since divinely ordained, sociopolitical template.
    Islam is—meaning that conventional Islam imagines and provides—a set of binding arrangements under which Muslims submit totally to Allah, to the transcendental overlordship of God, and where non-Muslims then submit, or accommodate themselves compliantly, to the worldly overlordship of Muslims, to Muslim rule.
    When one sets aside its divine dimension, Islam is in mundane terms a religion not of peace but of domination and submission: the submission of all Muslims to Allah, and of other Muslims to those Muslims who claim to exercise the authority of Allah; and of non-Muslims to Muslims, under arrangements that are said to embody the sovereignty of Allah. That is the basis upon which Islam claims to offer social peace and, in the words of its political apologists, to be a “religion of peace.”
    Of course, the champions of this vision would prefer to achieve peaceably—without resistance, by genuine or, if need be, dragooned consent—what in the end can only ever be established against serious, if not always overt, resistance. And the militants know it. Unlike the disingenuous and confused and even well-meaning apologists, they know what the achievement of that objective, a humanly “sacralised” objective of what they see as a divine imperative, entails.
    Many self-declared moderates are happy to dream or hope otherwise. But they are reluctant to criticise, and openly oppose, those who take the more strenuous view of what actualising this religion of peace may involve. And, to that extent, they too are prepared to go along with the militants, their ideas and agenda. No matter how reluctantly or uncomfortably, they stand “on side” with the champions of militant Islam…
    How is the “unpeaceful” side of Islam to be rejected? Sacred texts cannot be changed. It is a question of how modern people choose to live with, and understand, their sacred texts. And of how they choose to live with doctrinaire scripturalist authoritarianism. Of their readiness to stand up against narrow scripturalist literalism, the monopoly upon truth that the traditional custodians of that literalism claim, and against the political zealotry that is grounded upon the assertion of that narrow, literalist monopoly.
    How can this be done? The process begins not with loud accusatory cries of “Islamophobia!” but with the quiet and honest admission that, yes, there are things in the Islamic tradition that are, or should be, a source of concern to all Muslims of good faith—and if to them then also, and perhaps even more, to their non-Muslim fellow citizens. . .
Read the whole piece:
The Islamic State and ‘Religion of Peace – Clive Kessler, QUADRANT ONLINE

And finally from “recovered Muslim” Bosch Fawstin comes this commentary on “those moderate Muslims.”  He reminds us, “The only reason we’re talking about Islam is because it doesn’t mean peace. Islam wasn’t hijacked by a “small minority of extremists” on 9/11, it was hijacked by a very small minority of moderates whose embarrassment in being associated with such an immoderate religion leads them to engage in moderate truth telling about it, proving their irrelevance as allies.”:

-A̶l̶l̶ ̶M̶u̶s̶l̶i̶m̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶
-A̶l̶l̶ ̶M̶u̶s̶l̶i̶m̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶e̶v̶i̶l̶
All Muslims who take Islam seriously are at war with us.

My name is Bosch and I'm a recovered Muslim. That is, if Muslims don’t kill me for leaving Islam, which it requires them to do. That’s just one of the reasons I’ve been writing and drawing against Islam and its Jihad for a number of years now. But fortunately for us, Islam hasn’t been able to make every Muslim its slave, just as Nazism wasn’t able to turn every German into a Nazi. So there is Islam and there are Muslims. Muslims who take Islam seriously are at war with us and Muslims who don’t aren’t.
    But that doesn’t mean we should consider these reluctant Muslims allies against Jihad. I’ve been around Muslims my entire life and most of them truly don’t care about Islam. The problem I have with many of these essentially non-Muslim Muslims, especially in the middle of this war being waged on us by their more consistent co-religionists, is that they give the enemy cover. They force us to play a game of Muslim Roulette since we can’t tell which Muslim is going to blow himself up until he does. And their indifference about the evil being committed in the name of their religion is a big reason why their reputation is where it is. In the toilet. 
    So while I understand that most Muslims are not at war with us, they’ve proven in their silence and inaction against jihad that they’re not on our side either, and there’s nothing we can say or do to change that. We just have to finally accept it and stop expecting them to come around, while doing our best to kill those who are trying to kill us.
Another problem with Muslims who aren’t very Muslim is that they lead some among us to conclude that they must be practicing a more enlightened form of Islam. They’re not. They’re “practicing” life in non-Muslim countries, where they are free to live as they choose. But their “Islam” is not the Islam. There’s no separate ideology apart from Islam that’s being practiced by these Muslims in name only, there’s no such thing as “Western Islam”.
    Non-observant Muslims are not our problem, but neither are they the solution to our problem. Our problem is Islam and its most consistent practitioners. There is nothing in Islam that stays the hand of Muslims who want to kill non-Muslims. If an individual Muslim is personally peaceful, it’s not because of Islam, it’s because of his individual choice, which is why I often say that your average Muslim is morally superior to Mohammad, to their own religion. The very rare Muslim who helps us against Jihad is acting against his religion, but that doesn’t stop some among us from thinking that his existence somehow means that he represents more than himself.
Read the whole post:
My Name is Bosch and I'm a Recovered Muslim – BOSCH FAWSTIN: ILLUSTWRITER

[Hat tip Leighton Smith]

Bonus Quote of the Day: On deporting all Muslims

“I've earned decades of animosity towards Muslims, having been raised by them, threatened by them, and nearly murdered by them, yet I would Never call to ‘deport them all!’ and to ‘kill them all!,’ as some are actually openly saying on the internet. (Where would Muslims born in the West be deported to?)
    “I focus on the enemy's ideology, Islam, and its most consistent practitioners who wage Jihad. And I came to this position after I studied Islam and Jihad as if my life depended on it after 9/11. I can understand Americans and Europeans being suspicious of Muslims and choosing not to associate with them, especially during this war that Islam's true believers are waging on us, but if you're part of the "Kill 'em all!" crowd, then you would have been calling for the death of me, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Ibn Warraq, Walid Phares, etc.
    “We got out and spoke out, and if we all focus on the true threat and finally end up burying Jihad, many more will.”
~ Cartoonist and “recovered Muslim” Bosch Fawstin

The "no graven image” virus

Venus, by Michael Newberry,
2008, oil on linen, 48 x 48 inches

Guest post by Michael Newberry

Big in the news this week is the draw Mohammad Contest, and I couldn't be more proud of Bosch Fawstin aka Pig Man. He is a hero for risking his life to fight for free speech. The hoopla surrounding the issue is rooted in the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish commandment that "... thou shall not make graven images..." I know everyone has heard about that concept, but I doubt people understand how it is a virus designed to destroy your love, unique individuality, freedom, and the highest calling of art.

One of my goals in reaching for the sublime in art is to show a radical alternative to the repressive controlling doctrine of "no graven images." One of the birth concepts of my Venus was to answer this sacrilegious tripe, not with a painting about how stupid they are but with the positive direction of where humanity should be going.
Religions want to have power over you but it is impossible to have power over anyone that trusts their own passion, uniqueness, and right to be free. So they have systematically undercut you as a youth by getting you to reserve your most serious, highest, most noble and deepest feelings for religious ideals. Making your other personal passions seem insignificant by comparison.

Serious figurative art is the technology of the soul. Religious are afraid of that, because once people profoundly embrace and substitute high art as the sublime, religions have zero hold. Catholicism made a huge and hypocritical mistake when they tried to integrate secular humanism with Christianity in the Renaissance - humanism almost completely toppled it.

Bill O'Reilly and other "but'ers" will never defend freedom as its root because they are stuck in their belief that freedom is of secondary importance. They are compromised by the "no graven image virus."

No enemy is going to kill me because of making Venus, but that is because they don't have the wits to understand that the god-like nude in high art is the ultimate symbol of freedom, individuality, and passion - and disdain for hypocrites and mob mentalities.

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Michael Newberry  is an internationally-recognised artist whose work combines the colour of the Impressionists and the clarity of Rembrandt with the heroism embodied in romantic music.
Visit him regularly at MichaelNewberry.Com.

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PS: For a related read, and possibly the best summary of the issues around and arising from the armed attack on the Texas Draw Mohammed event,

• Mark Steyn: ‘"Stay Quiet and You'll Be Okay." 

Sample quote: Have you noticed how “all the arty types who say we need "artists" with the "courage" to "explore" "transgressive" "ideas" fold like a cheap Bedouin tent when it comes to Islam …”

"He had been going down a bad path and then he found Islam" [update 2]

Cartoonists are still in the front line in the War Begun By Islam.

As you’ve probably heard, two Muslim shooters trying to murder people at a Draw Mohammed competition in Garland, Texas, were shot dead by a police officer before they began.

If only it had happened that way at the Charlie Hebdo offices.

The difference between Paris and Texas? Guns. “People are alive today because Garland not only allows guns, but was prepared.”   The would-be murders had assault rifles. The officer used his duty pistol. He was wounded, but okay.

They were not.

Apparently the shooting has begun another “debate” about free speech – a debate among the only people in the US who apparently don’t understand free speech. Academics. Media. Government. Muslims.

As one person said on Twitter:

What made them violently bonkers? Contemplate this quote from one shooter’s lawyer: “He had been going down a bad path and then he found Islam.” Let that sink in.

So if you’re wondering what drawing won the competition – a drawing good enough to kill for, it was this, by cartoonist  Bosch Fawstin—which will now get way, way, way more circulation than it ever would have before.

Cartoon by Bosch Fawstin.

Here he is receiving his cheque:

[Hat tips and credits CounterMoonbat, David Burge, CBSDFW, Laura A Lorenzo, Jackie, A Libertarian Rebel, Ali A. Rizvi, J.T., Ross McLean, Will Cain, Mehdi Hasan]

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RELATED READING:

• “Freedom of speech; separation of church and state. These are principles to cherish, not to denigrate. The true ‘haters’ out there are the ones who shout the label of ‘hater’ at anyone who dares to take a moment to stand up for them.”
  Hatred of Mohammad … Or Love of Liberty? – Michael Hurd,  CAPITALISM MAGAZINE

UPDATE 2:  “"

'Once Free Speech Goes, It's Over': 'Draw Muhammad' Contest Winner Sounds Off
Bosch Fawstin said that the contest was important to him because it's about freedom of speech, which he asserted is "under siege."
    "I understand the threat that we face and that's why I do what I do," Fawstin said. "I do it because we're being threatened. This has to be fought head-on."
    "As artists, as writers, as thinkers, as Americans, as people who love freedom, and the entire West, we need to hit back. Not with violence, with the truth, with our art, with our writing," Fawstin said. "Once free speech goes, it's over."
    Watch the interview below...

“One of the best arguments against people who claim Islam as a religion of war”?

A friend posted this entertaining contribution to a recent Oxford University debate: Huffpost UK political editor Mehdi Hasan arguing that Islam is a peaceful religion.  You should watch it to see how an entertaining secular Shi’a Muslim counters the claims.

“One of the best arguments against people who claim Islam as a religion of war,” said the post.

And, you know, we all wish it were true that Islam really were a religion of peace, that we could all live together and just get along, that everyone has just got Islam wrong and if they would only stop then peace would soon break out.

But this is to ignore too much.

“One of the best arguments against people who claim Islam as a religion of war” is made in spite of Islam’s beginnings in having been initiated and spread specifically as a doctrine justifying war and conquest.

This in spite of Islam’s followers being responsible (taking the count only in recent weeks) for firebombing a newspaper in Hamburg; for murdering journalists and shoppers in Paris, cafe-goers in Sydney, and a whole town of 2000 people in Nigeria  -- not to mention assorted beheadings and atrocities in Syria and Iraq, and the Boko Haram savages who strapped a bomb to a 10-year old girl to show how peaceful Islam is.

This in spite of passages such as this in the Quran and Hadith inveighing upon good Muslims to advance their religion by violence:

Today, I am a leftist #JeSuisCharlie

Yes, today I am a leftist. 

This is no joke:

Unidentified terrorists killed 12 people and injured seven in an assault on the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo earlier today. Gunmen armed with assault rifles shouted "'we have avenged the prophet" and "Allahu akbar," or God is greatest, as they stormed the headquarters of the magazine that has in the past published irreverent cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed and the emir of the Islamic State.
    Just before noon, two gunmen with Kalashnikovs exited a black car and forced an employee of the magazine to let them into the building in central Paris. Once inside, witnesses say that the assailants deliberately targeted journalists, killing the publication's editor and killing or wounding a number of cartoonists.
    Two policemen were also killed in the attack, with video posted online showing the assailants wounding one officer and then executing him in the street as he raised his hands in submission. The attackers then entered a black getaway car and fled the scene before moving to a stolen car. The jihadists are still at large [but reportedly now identified].

What is Charlie Hebdo? The left-wing French magazine has a long history of causing controversy with its satirical material. (More here.)

Known as “Charb,” the slain chief editor Stephane Charbonie (above) “has long been a fierce defender of the magazine's right to publish material that some people might find offensive,” responding to death threats in 2012 after printing nude cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed:

Responses have been worldwide, some resolute.

Here's The @Independent cartoonist's response to the #CharlieHebdo attack:

Here are 22 more heartbreaking cartoons from around the globe.

And here, by contrast, was the Associated Press this morning:

Arguing for Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s principle of “spreading the risk,” The Spectator argued “All news outlets should publish cartoons of Mohammed simultaneously. But of course they won't.”

And today, as journalists around the world "bravely" voice support for #CharlieHebdo, academic Will Antonin suggests folk ask them for their piece calling on their own universities and media to publish the Muhammad cartoons.

Yes, with rare exceptions …

Unfortunately, yes, it’s already about the appeasement of evil.

Yes, as cartoonist Bosch Fawstin might say, “What’s wrong? Islam got your tongue?”

It’s a strange war indeed when cartoonists and satirists are in the front line.

A good time then to be reminded by Salman Rushdie that …

“Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism,
satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.”
- Salman Rushdie today

… that “the issues raised by #CharlieHebdo are possibly most important of our time.”

… and a very necessary time to raise the satirical flag high:

And the crowd went … mild

That awkward moment when you do a show and only one person bothers to clap.

[Hat tip Bosch Fawstin for both video and quip]

“Me, me, me” [updated]

“It’s all about me” every speaker at the Mandela memorial might have said, turning their tributes to the man supposed to be their hero into making it all about themselves.

Selfies with each other.

Self-actualisation revelations.

And then there’s Barack Obama.

If people were to have to take a drink every time Barack Obama used “I”, or “me”, “my” , or “mine” in a statement, entire nations would be passed out for years at a time.

Has the word “me” been spoken so many times in one memorial? “The sign language interpreter at … Nelson Mandela's memorial has been called ‘inept.’ Here's what he should have done,” says commentator and illustrator Bosch Fawstin. He calls it ‘Sign of the Times Language’:

Pic by Bosch Fawstin

Here’s George Harrison:

UPDATE: This, right on  cue, from Dr Michael Hurd:

“It’s all about him.” “It’s all about her.”
    You hear people say it. Maybe you’ve said it yourself, about someone you know.
    “She thinks she’s the Queen.” Or, “He acts like the little prince.”
    The analogy of arrogant royalty implies a person who doesn’t feel accountable to anyone, or anything. It’s as if he or she is special—above, or outside of, reality.
    The key to understanding such a person is lack of accountability…

READ: "It's All About Me"...Know the Type? – Dr Michael Hurd, DAILY DOSE OF REASON

Why the “peaceful majority” is irrelevant

"While it's true that jihadists don't represent most Muslims, they do represent Islam."
- Bosch Fawstin

History lessons are often incredibly simple. As an Op-Ed once more doing the rounds makes clear, when the “silent majority” ignore atrocities carried out in their name, they share all the guilt of the perpetrators.

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War II. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.
    “Very few people were true Nazis,” he said, “but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”
    We are told again and again by experts and talking heads that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this un-quantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
    The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or execute honour killings. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority,” and it is cowed and extraneous.

It was the “peaceful majority” in Nazi Germany, in Mao’s China, in Soviet Russia, in Castro’s Cuba, and in Hutu-ruled Rwanda who were silent, who spoke up too late, and who so often died themselves of what they were too cowed to name. 

It was the peaceful majority in Ireland however (that’s peaceful majority without the scare quotes) who finally ended the murders, the bombings and the assassinations perpetrated by the IRA—and who demonstrated how powerful a response it can be to rise up an say of such violence “not in my name!”  (Witness the effect that the sisters of Robert McCartney had in speaking out against Irish violence -- in saying "NO MORE!" theirs became the voices that brought an end to what had once seemed unending.)

The fact is, however, that until or unless that happens then the silence of the so-called peaceful makes them anything but. Because the fact is that

peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because, like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes a similar point plain in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal when she asks who really speaks for Islam? It’s not an idle question; it becomes more important by the day.

The question requiring an answer at this moment in history is clear: Which group of leaders really speaks for Islam? The officially approved spokesmen for the "Muslim community"? Or the manic street preachers of political Islam, who indoctrinate, encourage and train the killers—and then bless their bloodshed? […]
    Some refuse even to admit that this is the question on everyone's mind. Amazingly, given the litany of Islamist attacks—from the 9/11 nightmare in America and the London bombings of July 7, 2005, to the slayings at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, at the Boston Marathon last month and now Woolwich—some continue to deny any link between Islam and terrorism. This week, BBC political editor Nick Robinson had to apologize for saying on the air, as the news in Woolwich broke, that the men who murdered Lee Rigby were "of Muslim appearance."
    Memo to the BBC: The killers were shouting "Allahu akbar" as they struck. Yet when complaints rained down on the BBC about Mr. Robinson's word choice, he felt obliged to atone. One can only wonder at people who can be so exquisitely sensitive in protecting Islam's reputation yet so utterly desensitized to a hideous murder explicitly committed in the name of Islam.
    In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and the Woolwich murder, it was good to hear expressions of horror and sympathy from Islamic spokesmen, but something more is desperately required: genuine recognition of the problem with Islam.
    Muslim leaders should ask themselves what exactly their relationship is to a political movement that encourages young men to kill and maim on religious grounds…
    Of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. Equating all Muslims with terrorism is stupid and wrong. But acknowledging that there is a link between Islam and terror is appropriate and necessary…
    I don't blame Western leaders [for saying otherwise]. They are doing their best to keep the lid on what could become a meltdown of trust between majority populations and Muslim minority communities…
    But I do blame Muslim leaders. It is time they came up with more credible talking points. Their communities have a serious problem. Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen.
    I wonder what would happen if Muslim leaders like Julie Siddiqi started a public and persistent campaign to discredit these Islamist advocates of mayhem and murder. Not just uttering the usual laments after another horrifying attack, but making a constant, high-profile effort to show the world that the preachers of hate are illegitimate. After the next zealot has killed the next victim of political Islam, claims about the "religion of peace" would ring truer.

Like the McCartney sisters, the silent Muslim majority need to become the Muslim leaders.

Until then, the silent majority will have to endure all the consequences of the killing being done in their name.

[Hat tip Phil S.]

The Religion of Peace: Another London Edition

Yes folks, the Religion of Peace has struck again in broad daylight, in Woolwich, London.

News updating here: Terrorists scream Alluha Akhbar as they cut a British soldier's head off in broad daylight

UPDATE: A note from  Bosch Fawstin on the inevitable excuses to come:

Muslims have been killing Non-Muslims *because* they're Non-Muslims for over a Thousand years because Islam Exhorts them to. Every other reason is Pretext.

Cartoons, courage and surviving Muslim rage

Cartoon by Bosch Fawstin

French publisher Charlie Hebdo has published nude cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, prompting the Muslim Brotherhood to call for further restrictions on freedom of speech. In response, French authorities are not arresting him (in contrast to the former land of the free, where the videographer whose short and flaccid film became the pretext for murders, burnings and attacks on western embassies right across the Middle East was “escorted to a police station for FBI questioning”); they’re not calling for an end to free speech (like one trial balloon in the LA Times writer has) ; instead they are “temporarily shutting down premises including embassies and schools in 20 countries on Friday, when protests sometimes break out after Muslim prayers.”

 

The cartoons themselves (a few above; all of them here) are not in the league of work by the likes of, say, Bosch Fawstin, whose cartoon appears at the head of the post. But they’re humorous, and intentionally offensive, like all the publisher’s work, and he should be perfectly free to publish them.

That’s free speech.  That’s his right.

But that’s a problem, you say?

No, it’s not.

The problem is not American speech—or French speech—or Dutch speech—the problem is Islamist acts of war.

That’s the problem right there, and it won’t go away by staying quiet.

How to survive Muslim rage?  Better still, how to end it? Ayaan Hirsi Ali has some thoughts—among the uppermost being NOT to bend over backward to avoid further offense. And certainly not to further empower “the Islamic ideology of jihad, the predominant ideology in the Muslim world today.”

Further appeasement of evil is not the answer.

A vile litany gains another entry in Libya [updated]

“If your religion is worth killing for, start with yourself.”
- Gerry Duggan

With yesterday’s vile atrocity in Benghazi, we can add another entry to a long list beginning more than half-a-century ago.

• Seizure and nationalisation of American and British oil fields in the Middle East -- oil fields developed and owned by British and American companies -- and the subsequent capitulation of Truman and Eisenhower to the seizures. (1940s and 50s)
• Seizure and nationalisation of Suez Canal, and the subsequent capitulation of Eisenhower (1956)
• Seizure of US Embassy and taking of hostages in Tehran, and the craven capitulation of Carter (1979)
• Shooting of police-woman Yvonne Fletcher from Libyan Embassy in London (1984)
• EgyptAir 648 hjacking (1985)
• Bombing of Beirut's marine barracks (1983)
• Bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie (1988)
• The fatwah on Salman Rushdie (1989 to present).
• EgyptAir 990 (1990)
• World Trade Center Bombing (1993)
• Embassy Bombings (1998)
• Indian Air 814 (1999)
• Project Megiddo (Dec 31, 1999)
• USS Cole (2001)

Each of these direct attacks on the west was met with appeasement, apology and capitulation. Each of them resulted in the (correct) assessment that the west was morally weak, that there would be no negative consequences for either perpetrators or supporter, and emboldened further escalation. By surrender, each of them invited escalation.

The invitation was enthusiastically taken up.

The attacks on September 11, 2001 and after saw the culmination of this attitude, and an outbreak of massive, violent and orchestrated attacks on civilians.

• Anthrax attacks (2001)
• Richard Reid (2001)
• Dirty Bomb Plot (2002)
• Charles Bishop (2002)
• French Tanker (2002)
• Bali bombing (2002)
• Morocco bombing (2002)
• Daniel Pearl (2002)
• Ricin threats (2003)|
• Riyadh Bombing (2003)
• Murder of Dick and Enid Eyeington (2003)
• 2003 Casablanca bombings
• Beheading of Paul Marshall Johnson beheading (2004)
• Murder of Theo Van Gogh (2004)
• Murder of Simon Cumbers (2004)
• 2004 Yanbu attack
• Murder of Fabrizio Quatrocchi (2004)
• Beheading of Nick Berg (2004)
• Beheading of Eugene Armstrong (2004)
• Beheading of Jack Hensley (2004)
• Beheading of Kim Sun-Il (2004)
• Beheading of Kenneth Bigley (2004)
• Beheading of Shosei Koda (2004)
• Madrid bombing (2004)
• Sharm-el Sheikh bomb (2004)
• Murder of Fabrizio Quattrocchi (2004)
• Murder of Margaret Hassan (2004)
• 2005 Delhi bombings
• London tube attacks (2005)
• 2005 Amman bombings
• Cairo bombing (2005)
• 2005 Bali bombings
• Ongoing Threats
• Plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners
• Ongoing Iranian plans for nuclear weapons, and two fingers to UN nuclear inspectors, Israel, US and entirety of western world
• Ongoing Iranian-supported Shi'ite bombings in Iraq
• Ongoing Iranian funding and supply of Hezbollah paramilitary organisation
• Seattle Jewish Federation shooting
• Fatwah on Danish cartoonists and all those who republish their work (2005)
• 2007 London car bombs
• 2007 Glasgow International Airport attack
• 2008 Damascus car bombing
• 22 May 2008 Exeter bombing
• 2008 Mumbai massacre
• 2008 American Embassy attack in Yemen
• 2008 Issers bombing
• March 6, 2008 Times Square bombing
• 2009 Bronx terrorism plot
• 2009 Khan el-Khalili bombing
• 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt
• 2010 Lakki Marwat murders
• 2011 Marrakech bombing
• 2011 Moscow Airport bombing
• 2012 Midi-Pyrénées shootings
• ….

These are just a few, a very few, of the murders of innocent people perpetrated by followers of Islam.

There have been several blood-soaked new entries in recent years in this litany of Islamist-driven death and destruction.

The latest is the murder in his country’s Libyan Embassy yesterday, in other words on American soil, of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues, by a mob wielding rocket-propelled grenades—an armed calling itself the ‘Islamic Law Supporters,’ who were said to have been directed towards the Embassy by Libyan police.

Killed over what?

A satiric movie about Mohammad and the poisonous fraud of Islam that few Americans even knew about? Or was it about the death by drone of a Libyan Al-Qada leader?
Who knows? Who cares? This is Islam at its best. This is Islam and Muslims shining through. Muslims don’t need an excuse. The Koran tells them so.
Trying to sift through the multifaceted motives for the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi is as pointless as sorting through the ruins of the World Trade Center on 9/11, 2001 searching for the identities of the plane hijackers. Once it was known who supported, funded, recruited, and triggered the attacks, why waste any time trying to identify the expendable "martyrs"?
It was the ideology that launched the attacks, in 2001 and in 2012. It was the ideology that has launched such attacks ever since the plane hijackings of the 1970's. It was behind the Munich massacre and every casualty-strewn bombing and murder spree committed in the name of Islam for the last five decades…
[T]he cause was immaterial. This was just Islam doing what it does best: killing and destroying.

We are at war.

Like it or not, we, the people of the west, are at war with people—people? with inhuman savages!—who wish to see us bleed, beheaded, destroyed.

It's a different war than we're used to, an asymmetric war -- a so-called fourth-generation war -- so some folk still don't recognise we're even in a state of war (or don't want to recognise it), but the fact remains we are under sustained attack and have been for some time.
That's not scare-mongering, that's just the way it is. Like it or not, we are at war. We didn't start this war, but a litany of appeasement by those under attack has fanned its flames, encouraged the attackers and emboldened the growth of violence.
It's not caused by the war in Iraq, by an expansionist US foreign policy, by a search for new oil fields or pipe lines, any more than it is caused by the drawing of cartoons, the making of movies, or the public burning of copies of The Koran. It was started by Islamo-totalitarians who by their own admission "worship death" as we in the west worship life; who want the prosperous, freedom-loving west dead, as dead as their own dark souls; and who see the cowardly west as easy prey.

On these last point at least, they're right. We are easy prey. And there is an essential difference between the essentially individualistic, prosperous, freedom-loving civilisation of the west and the stone-age culture that has declared war on it. Said Osama bin Laden on behalf of those who declared war:

“We love death. The [west] loves life. That is the difference between us two.”

On that, we agree.

Allahu Akbar my arse.

In the name of those who do love life and who treasure the life-loving civilisation of the west, on this anniversary week of the most visible attack on the west and all it stands for we should consider all that led to it: a series of snubs, trial balloons and atrocities by Islamists and Islamist sympathisers, the tepid and pathetic response to most of which emboldened those who love death to even greater atrocities, and the supporters of the death-worshippers to even greater support, both financial and logistical.

Just as it did in the thirties, turning the cheek to violence led not to peace but greater savagery—with the savages secure in the knowledge that cheek-turning was the best the west would do. Purveyors of violence can smell fear; they can smell weakness; they smell it and they prey upon it—just as they can in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the unacknowledged sources of so much Islamic savagery; just as they can in Afghanistan where the weak-kneed “nation building” is coming to an end without any end to the savagery the Afghan mission was supposed to have wiped out; just as they have now in Benghazi where, with the revelation that Ambassador Stevens was slaughtered by the very jihadists who  had gone there to aid, in an embassy lying entirely unprotected against barbarian incursion, the failure of US foreign policy almost seems complete.

So, like cockroaches, the disciples of brutality will feed off another example of western weakness—just as they have for over fifty years, where they've had an awful lot of food to sustain them and make them stronger.

What will stop the savages? Recognition, for a start, that we have an enemy. That this enemy has a name, a specific religion, and a specific blood-soaked anti-human ideology. That this enemy has incubated this hatred of the west for centuries. That his savagery cannot be successfully resisted with appeasement, hand-holding and clumsy attempts to censor or airbrush away those who point out the truth about Islam, but only by continued resistance to the savagery of it adherents, and understanding they are emboldened by weakness to think they might succeed. Obama pledged yesterday:

“We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice will be done. Make no mistake, justice will be done.”

If he means it, that would be something. But meaning it, really meaning, and going through with it,needs a 180-degree U-turn.”

We have to reverse years of Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan and Carter when it comes to the Middle East—and immediately.
    Until or unless that happens, the rising tide of Islam—a religion whose Koran actually calls for the literal genocide of non-Muslims worldwide—will continue to act as a moralistic and physical wrecking ball to civilization as we’ve known it. It's the Koran, stupid.

He, and all western leaders, must recognise that to 'respect' the religious beliefs of those who wish to kill us is suicidal nonsense.  Which is to say they will need to recognise Islam for what it is.

Which is Islam.

Which is not a religion of peace.

When it comes to the defeat of totalitarian Islam, there truly is no substitute for victory.

America successfully targeted, dismantled, and discredited a warring enemy's ideology once before. I fear however that the knowledge to do that again, to Islamism, is now long gone from the corridors of power.  But I fear too that there is no other way.

* * * *  *

Cartoon by Blunt

[Hat tips to Michael Caution, Edward Cline, Noodle Food, Bosch Fawstin, Harry Binswanger, TOS Blog, and the late John David Lewis. The opinions expressed here are, however, my own.]

UPDATE:  Hope?  Buzzfeed has 15 Photos Of Libyans Apologizing To Americans, (that’s one of them, on the right) about which Diana Hsieh says:

These signs make me just a tiny bit happy and hopeful. To anyone who thinks that Islam cannot fundamentally change because it's forever bound to its texts, you need to study the history of Judaism. The destruction of the second temple by Rome (after a hiccup or two) hugely transformed Judaism -- from an aggressive, fundamentalist, and political religion to a peaceful, and studious, and accommodating one. That was a win for civilization... and particularly for Jews. (Alas, the Christians were not as civilized as they could and should have been in response.)

I Ran [updated]

Q: What’s more important in world politics than the mis-named Ground Zero Mosque?

A: The fact that the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism has just gone nuclear—in rhetoric as well as reality.

Q: And how was this allowed to happen?

A: Thirty years of bipartisan appeasement:

 Consider the rise of Islamic Totalitarianism. In 1979, a new Iranian regime founded on Islamic [] principles held fifty-two Americans hostage for four hundred and forty-four days, while America helplessly begged for their return and Iranian leaders had a world stage to proclaim their superiority to the nation they call the ‘Great Satan.’ … [W]ith America on her knees, the burgeoning anti-American movement achieved a crucial victory.
    [Did this] warrant a military response? Did it rise to the level of a direct attack sufficient to place us at the point of ‘last resort’ with Iran and other nations that sponsor Islamic terrorism? Not according to Jimmy Carter. What about after two hundred and forty-three marines were killed in Lebanon in 1983? Not according to Ronald Reagan. Or after Khomeini’s fatwa offered terrorists a bounty to destroy writer Salman Rushdie and his American publisher for expressing an ‘un-Islamic’ viewpoint in 1989? Not according to George Bush, Sr. Or after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993? Not according to Bill Clinton. The pattern is telling.

It is a pattern that has allowed Iran’s Mullahs to pursue the Islamist Holy Grail combining nuclear enrichment with the sponsorship of world terrorism—from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan—while allowing themselves to think the pursuit will attract no response.

Since future decisions are so often made on the basis of past actions, it underscores again how a forceful response at the right time can quell a conflict before it starts; whereas the lack of one so frequently leads to dangerous escalation, and much more force being necessary much later.

[Cartoon and article by Bosch Fawstin]

UPDATE: Demonstrating they’ve learned nothing at all from history, today’s US Administration plays the “Don’t worry, be happy” card:

U.S. "reassures" Israel that Iran is "at least 12 months" from nuclear bomb despite starting reactor today…  There, there. You're not going to get obliterated today; it's just later on where things could get a little dicey…  Just try not to think of the idea that the "dying" Lockerbie bomber could, theoretically, outlive your country as you know it.

It’s the first New Year’s Ramble [updated]

Happy New Year everyone.  I trust you’ve been having an enjoyable summer, and a great start to the year.  Here’s your first ramble for the year, some of the best liberty links around during this silly season.

• UPDATE: John Stossel talks Ayn Rand on his Fox Business show last night with Yaron Brook, John Allison, Brad Thompson and some curly questions from the floor.  Top stuff all round. Here’s Part 1. You can get the remaining five parts from the same up-loader…

• Take a look at some of the best innovations of 2009, starting with (who would have thought) blast-proof wallpaper!
  Gallery: Looking Back at the 100 Best Innovations of 2009
• NIWA hides the decline, with their selective claim that the 2000s were NZ’s warmest decade
  More NIWA sophistry with selective claim that the 2000s were NZ’s warmest decade
• Sea Shepherd have always been sea thugs.
  Short video on the weopens of Sea Shepherd . . .
• Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson "made it clear [long before this protest] that he intends to place the Ady Gil in harm's way” and place the blame on the whalers.
  Earthrace Reborn: Sea Shepherd Unveils The Ady Gil
• More Sea Shepherd thuggery. This is what they mean by "harm's way" |
  Sea Shepherd Attacks Japanese Whaling fleet. Feb 12, 2007
• And just remember that the captain of the Ady Gil, Pete Bethune, is a an idiot with history. The smug moron literally pulled fat out of his arse to power the damn thing in its first ignominious expedition. True story:
  Eco-boat powered by human fat attempts round the world speed record
  And he's no stranger to crashing into people in his boat either. Fortunately no-one died this time, but they did in 2007:
  Earthrace crew allowed to leave Guatemala
  
                                                       [cartoon hat tip Keeping Stock]

Let’s be honest. Sea Shepherd activists are eco-terrorists, fakes and liars—and always have been.
"Eco-Terrorist" Sea Shepherd and Australian Media (English)
• 
  The Ady Gil "spent a great deal of time skipping around in front of the vessel that it eventually collided with." [hat tip Tim Blair]
   http://bit.ly/5dUbmk
  

• 
  The “stationary” Ady Gil was "rammed," say the Sea Shepherds. But it’s hard to be “stationary” when your boat has a wake. . .
   http://bit.ly/8yPJcy
  
• The ACT Coup has been FaceBooked. Hilarious
  http://bit.ly/92KFIn
  
• Joke of the Day, 67 Years Ago, Explains Why We're Losing the War Against Islamist Totalitarianism Today
  http://bit.ly/6qCaKo
  
• Ben Bernanke: Man of the Year, or 'A Deer in the Headlights'?
  'A Deer in the Headlights'
  
• The central problem, say George Reisman & Robert Klein in Barron’s, is the central bank. “The Federal Reserve's easy-money madness must end.”
  Central Problem: the Central Bank
  
• Harry Binswanger damns the two new AynRand biographies in a comment at the Volokh Conspiracy: I knew AynRand, he says, and she was nothing like the Ayn Rand in those two books. [hat tip Lindsay Perigo]
  http://bit.ly/4GAv2F
  
• Binswanger also said as much in a letter to the New York Times back in November:
  ”Adam Kirsch’s review [of Ann Heller’s Rand bio] repeats a story from Bennett Cerf’s 1977 autobiography At Random about Rand’s response when Cerf asked her to cut Galt’s speech: ‘Would you cut the Bible?’ she supposedly said. When Cerf’s book came out, I asked Rand about the story. With obvious indignation, she replied, ‘I never said that — the Bible needs cutting.’
      “In general, the portrait of Rand contained in the review [and the bio] clashes dramatically with the Rand whom I first met in 1964 and with whom I was good friends in her final years. The Rand I knew was a unique combination of disciplined rationality and emotional intensity. Well, not completely unique: there are also the fictional heroes she created.”
  
• "The Source and Nature of Rights (Part I)"
  http://bit.ly/6snybA
  
• Bosch Fawstin reviews Avatar: "A good looking piece of shit." http://www.solopassion.com/node/7265

• 
  Finally someone has a solution for that expensive eyesore Te Papa: "Blow it up and start again." It can’t happen too soon.
  http://bit.ly/6uTkbp
  
• 
  How come "It’s Always the End of the World as We Know It"? wonders Denis Dutton in the New York Times.
  http://bit.ly/8KANlg
  
• 
  Can you beat the market? Can an Austrian would-be investor resist becoming a permabear? Calandro says "Yes you can!"
  http://bit.ly/8uBj0c
  
• 
  No better off since 2000? Neither was the US economy. Take a look at the US economy's lost decade:
  http://blog.mises.org/archives/011378.asp
  
• 
  If the monetary base has exploded (and it has) then how can the Fed possibly avoid explosive price inflation?
  http://bit.ly/6QRMUb
  
• Meanwhile, in the Northern Hemisphere . . .
  [hat tip Inquiring Mind]
  
• “Karl Rove is a damned hypocrite.” [hat tip Ari Armstrong]
  cato-at-liberty.o...
  
• Here’s some New Year’s Predictions you haven’t seen, but should have: the gathering economic storm clouds of 2010.
  New Year Predictions You Haven’t Seen
  
• The Home Office sends an Open Letter to John Minto.
  An Open Letter to John Minto
  
• “Reading Homer’s Odyssey … I came across a passage which I think is very indicative of the difference between the ancient Greeks’ attitudes and those of the (Plato-inspired) Christian ones which followed. The Classical Greeks thought of life as meaning life on this earth and were the first, and perhaps still the best, practitioners of a true mind-body integration. These fundamental attitudes are instrumental in explaining why the classical world was so culturally and materially successful, and why, when the Christians substituted the opposite approach, they ended up with a thousand years of stagnation and decline. . . ”
  Odysseus and Achilles
  
• Our Australian Objectivist friend Prodos has a whole slate of great films organised for 2010 for the PRODOS Film Society (Melbourne, Australia). Great idea. Here's the full list (2 MB PDF file).
  PRODOS Film Society 2010 program
  
• Here’s John Stossell on Ayn Rand’s relevance:
  
  
  Keep an eye out for Stossell’s Ayn Rand special, which should be appearing on the interweb soon.

• Two people you just have to read: Frederic Bastiat & Thomas Paine.
  Pens for Hire, Cheap
• The ‘Austrian Economists’ blog has changed it’s name. Why? “The term "Austrian economics" has become as much a hindrance to the advancement of thought as a convenient shorthand to signal certain methodological and analytical presumptions.” Crikey!
  Boettke Et Al. Engage in Product Differentiation
• Jeff Perren reckons today’s television tells us a lot about our cultural collapse.  He’s not watching anthing made after 1965 now!
  The Moral Inversion, Part II - TV, Then and Now
• If you haven’t read Dave Barry on the money, madness and misery of 2009, then you haven’t read Dave Barry on the money, madness and misery of 2009. Naturally.
  Lowlights of a Downer Year: Dave Barry on the money, madness and misery of 2009
• Another endorsement for Tomas Woods’s essential book, Meltdown: Yaron Brook calls it a must-read.
  Meltdown by Thomas Woods, Review
• Is this the year the Presidential bubble pops? [Cartoon by John Cox]
  
• Here’s the world's tallest building shown superimposed on Wellington's skyline. If only!
  http://bit.ly/8Kv422
• But the Burj creates a "crisis signal for the skyscraper index" says Mark Thornton
   http://bit.ly/8LdJ97
• Quick question for you: Which economics book was highly recommended by Ayn Rand, comes between 'Economics in 1 Lesson' & 'Human Action,' & sells for just $10? Answer here
  http://bit.ly/6wXf7W
• New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/ylmgkfr - SUMMER SIX-PACK: From altruism to break-up, with Irish demo and post-modern waffle in between
• Hilarious: Pop Song Lyrics & Cognitive Bias: the basic irrationalities contained in popular songs. [ht The Visible Hand]
  http://bit.ly/5vLi3t
• Reporter Michael Yon arrested by morons. Not in the third world, where he normally encounters problems, but in the US.
  ttp://bit.ly/4VQ8Lb
• New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yfut6va - Cameron Slater, aka Whale Oil, fights the good fight
• It's the end of the dumbest financial decade ever. Yaron Brook & the PJTV crew present the decade's 5 biggest blunders
  http://www.pjtv.com/v/2870
• Stephen Hicks’ talk next week at BGSU should be a beauty: ‘What Philosophers Need to Know about Economics.’ Should be several hundred thousand economists who need the insights too.
   http://shar.es/aUOQw
• Carl Menger Explains the Origins of Money. It’s not a government creation, it’s a spontaneous creation of the market.
  http://bit.ly/7dwzqn http://eCa.sh/pwkx
• News Update: #Climategate: Breaking News – emails were leaked by a whistleblower, not hacked
  http://bit.ly/4uqKbh
  [UPDATE: A commenter at Catallaxy notes substantial discussion of the quality of the above-linked analysis, here. Hat tip Eric Crampton]
• Learn more about Ayn Rand’s ideas on individual rights
  http://bit.ly/5Xgifg
• Objectivist bloggers choose their best or favourite posts from the past year
  http://bit.ly/5gWqdB
• The Ten Best Blogposts of 2009
  http://bit.ly/67cCkz Congrats to Eric Crampton for coming out on top!
• "Central Banks are the Last Vestige of Planned Economies"- we desperately need a “fall of the Berlin Wall" in the financial sector
  http://bit.ly/7cPOr0
• Icebergs around NZ are "unprecedented"? Well, apart from the last 20,000 yrs maybe.
  http://bit.ly/4U3b2U
• "Could 2010 be for Iran what 1989 was for the USSR?"
  http://blog.aynrandcenter.org/iranian-protestors-death-to-khamenei/
• New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yhrtcpb - Made your New Year's Resolutions yet?
• New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yjlet33 - Five of the best FROM THE ARCHIVES: Engineering & Political Correctness
• Until this basic moral premise: is repudiated--that need generates an entitlement--then socialised govt will continue to grow.
  http://bit.ly/7xoRF1
• New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yh7sebs - “So I love that summer song” - a few of the sounds of summer.
• New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yk6nbsh - Organon Architecture’s 2009 Top 10.
• Avatar makes film history: 1st movie about war between aliens and humans in which we’re meant to barrack for the aliens.
  http://bit.ly/4tJY4u
• New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/ycatm8o - Quotes of the day: ClimateGate in quotes . . .
  5:47 PM Dec 22nd,
• Cold weather kills. We NEED the earth to warm up!
  http://bit.ly/82s5Ld
• New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/ycw6qdg - The 2009 Christmas Price Index (CPI)
• Is this the best cartoon of the year, asks Julian D.?
  
  

And finally, this poetic thought for you from the editors of the New Zealand Week:

T'was the first week of new year
and all through the house
not a politician was stirring
not even a louse.

Enjoy your weekend!