Simi Valley Sophist

The Simi Valley Sophist ruminates on all manner of topics from the micro to the macro. SVS travels whatever path strikes his fancy. Encyclopedia Britannica: Sophist "Any of certain Greek lecturers, writers, and teachers in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, most of whom travelled about the Greek-speaking world giving instruction in a wide range of subjects in return ..."

Name:
Location: California, United States

Retired: 30years law enforcement-last 20 years Criminal Intelligence Detective.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Moderate Muslims Are Turning To Terrorism

A great debate is where moderate Muslims fall in the terrorism scheme of things. There is no doubt that the leadership of major Islamic organizations is generally silent when it comes to the topic of Islamic terrorism. When they do speak out on the topic of terrorism, it is often in the vein of an opposition to terrorism in general, as opposed to a specific condemnation of Islamic terrorism. We also don’t know whether the leadership of these organizations is representative of the Islamic communities at large.

Now Hammasa Kohistani, a Muslim woman and the English Miss World contestant, states that:

Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It will take a long time for communities to start mixing in more.
Tony Blair addressed Muslims in particular, telling them that they need to sort out the problem within. That was a huge stereotype of the Islamic community. Even the more moderate Muslims have been stereotyped egatively and feel they have to take actions to prove themselves.


Well, who knows whether or not Kohistani accurately portrays the “moderate” Muslim position on Islamic terrorism? She’s only 19 years old. But, the Muslim leadership is not saying much. If she is correct, you can drop the term moderate and consider Muslims, in general, to be the enemy. At least in England.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

The Unforgivable

“We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”

Golda Meir to Anwar Saddat just before the peace talks.Israeli (Russian-born) politician (1898 - 1978)

Islamic Beauty

Everyone knows that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But, Islamics don’t think that anyone should behold the beauty of a Muslim girl. Read about Ayten Ahmet, who wants to become Miss Teen Australia:

A MELBOURNE Muslim girl condemned by Islamic leaders for entering a beauty pageant has defied protests to be shortlisted for the Victorian final.

Ayten Ahmet, 16, advanced to the top 26 of Miss Teen Australia yesterday despite an outcry from some of Victoria's senior Muslims.
You can guess which picture is Ayten.

Perhaps if Ayten were to dress as the ladies in the other picture, she might be acceptable to the religious police. A friend of mine likes the one on the right because he says that she has “pretty legs.” I like the one in the middle because she has a pretty face. Come to think of it, maybe Ayten is in the latter photo and we just don’t know it. For that matter, how do we know they are actually females under those garbs?

HT: Dumb Ox News

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Do You Feel As If We’re At War?

LTC Joseph C. Myers, the Senior Army Advisor to the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, makes valid points in his piece, America’s Strategic Fix and Our New Decision Points:

America is at war?—no we are not. Don’t kid yourself.
The U.S. Army is at war, the Marines are at war and other elements of our armed forces are at war. But are you at war? Do you feel like you are in a war? Is this war having any tangible effect on your day to day life?

You are not going to see this must read information in the mainstream media. Read it here.

LTC Myers concludes with:

...It’s only business as usual and that’s not a winning strategy.

Hezbollah Coming Soon To A Town Near You

Wake up America. The truth is before us. Look here and see the truth.

UPDATE: If the video does not load, couple click on the middle of the screen and it will take you to another site and start the video. Or, here's the address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HlaVpqUXF0&eurl=

Monday, August 28, 2006

Frances Ann Cilente

Fran, you are in my thoughts, and I’m hoping to hear from family and friends.

Regards,
Paul
SVS
simivalleysophist@sbcglobal.net

Cuban Socialism Might Not Be So Bad After All

All those nasty things that Americans have been saying about Fidel Castro’s Cuba could be overblown. True, Che Guevara was Fidel’s butcher. But hay, that was a long time ago. Modern day Cuba is moving forward, and they are environmentally conscious and concerned about old appliances, which are not electrically efficient.

Where else but a socialist country would the government provide a new more energy efficient refrigerator to every household? No questions asked. Everyone gets one. Throw the old refrigerator out and receive a brand new Chinese refrigerator. In fact you are required to do so even if, I suppose, you already have a perfectly good, but maybe not so efficient, refrigerator.

Of course, even in a socialist country nothing is free. Each household is required to buy the new refrigerator for what is equivalent to $289. If you’ve recently priced refrigerators you will see that the Cuban deal is a steal. Of course, that depends upon who is doing the stealing. It seems that most Cuban couples earn about $25 a month and they are having to take out 10 year mortgages at 10% interest to pay for the new refrigerator. Oh, and that mortgage is from the State. And, the State is not buying up the old refrigerators. They’ll just take them and turn them into scrap revenue for the State. So, with such low wages that refrigerator doesn’t look like such a good deal after all.

Don’t believe me? Read about it here.

Degraded State of Patriotic Feeling

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much more. The person who has nothing he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

It is not hard to find better men. The question is, why are there so many lesser men? Now that so many people go to college, could it partially be because the majority of the professors of liberal arts and humanities are "miserable creatures" themsleves?

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Throw the U.N. Bums Out

The on-line version of The Weekly Standard published an article detailing how the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon published Israeli troop movements and armament for Hezbollah to see, but failed to reciprocate on Hezbollah movements. The article, What did you do in the war, UNIFIL? states:

DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.
UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

When will the American public wake-up and rid itself of this corrupt and deleterious organization? The original concept was good but good has gone down the drain because the organization has been hijacked by thug nations. Since the U.S. is the only remaining superpower, we are consistently required to carry the heavy load to the benefit of the remainder of the world. Enough is enough. We are paying the price, we should start making the rules.

Throw the U.N. out of our country, and start a new organization in the same facilities comprising cooperative countries with values consistent with those of our own. The remainder of the world should be welcome to come and plead their cases, but they should not be allowed to be voting members.

The whole U.N. procedure is ignorant. It’s like inviting the mafia and local street gangs to be members on your city counsel. Then you go and make the leader of one of the gangs your mayor. How stupid is that?

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Note To Al Gore On Global Warming

Dear Mr. Gore,

You once ran for the presidency. Some are still saying that the election was stolen from you because some Florida judges fell under the sway of the Svengali-like George W. Bush and his mad quest to impose his right-wing religious agenda on this great nation. Chief among the Bush agenda is the deliberate destruction of the environment in an attempt to hasten the Apocalypse. You recently rose to the challenge of exposing this diabolical plan as it pertains to the advancing world-wide disaster of environmental collapse occasioned by global warming. Good on you Sir!

You make a passionate appeal to the public to wake-up before it is too late. But Sir, you may need to reassess your message. There is now evidence that we won’t be cooked to death by global warming. Instead, global warming might actually be responsible for freezing us to death. A recent report had this to say:

Researchers at Newcastle University looked at temperature trends in the western Himalaya over the past century.
They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size.
It seems that the science on this whole thing about global warming is unsettled. Perhaps you should develop a sequel to your movie detailing how global warming is going to simultaneously fry and freeze us to death.

Any way that you slice it, it appears that the evil Pres. George W. Bush is the proximate cause for all of this unpleasantness. He is truly a remarkable man, don’t you think? Imagine, orchestrating a World War and causing environmental chaos all at the same time. Oh I forgot, he is also raping and pillaging the entitlements of our disadvantaged citizens. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones who don’t bother to get an education or job and live on the public dole. My god, does the man ever sleep?

Al, our country needs you now more than ever. Perhaps you can make a political come-back and capture your rightful place as President. You do deserve it after all, being that you are brighter than most of the rest of us. That’s why you latched onto the global warming issue, isn’t it? Nothing like a little political opportunism to fire things up. Or, is it to freeze things up?

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Berkeley Where Else?

Michelle Malkin ran a photo of a stop sign that had been vandalized with graffiti to read “Stop Bush,”and she asked her readers to guess where the photo was taken. Gee, what a surprise. It came from Berkeley, CA. It could just as well have come from San Francisco or Santa Cruz. There are some real deep thinkers in some of those coffee & head shops by the bay. Too much reefer smoke, perhaps.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Head Shaker of the Day-8/23/06

You have got to be kidding me.

The Department of Homeland Security took a Muslim group with known past ties to terror organizations on a VIP tour of security operations at the nation's busiest airport at the same time British authorities were working to break up a plot to blow up U.S. airlines.

On June 21, a senior DHS official from Washington personally guided Muslim officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations a behind-the-scenes tour of Customs screening operations at O'Hare International Airport in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being unfairly delayed as they entered the U.S. from abroad.

CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association for Palestine, identified by two former FBI counterterrorism chiefs as a "front group" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Several CAIR leaders have been convicted on terror-related charges.

Political correctness and pure blind stupidity on the part of DHS. Read the whole story here.

My Job Is To Tell You The Truth-Not Make You Feel Good

The job of an intelligence officer is to collect data from disparate sources, collate the data, and using analytical tools put together a jigsaw puzzle, if you will, to depict the big picture. The analytical process gives meaning to the collective data by creating the intelligence product. Hence, the individual piece of data is not “intelligence.” For example, suppose that a citizen reports that Ahmed is building a bomb. The tip is not intelligence, but it is simply the first of many pieces of data that must be collected and analyzed to verify or refute the assertion.

A completed intelligence product is of no value unless it is forwarded to appropriate individuals responsible for determining whether or not the product is essential for the development of policy or an action plan. Whether or not the intelligence product is ever used may well be a function of politics.

The role of the intelligence officer is to tell the truth instead of seeking to make the intelligence consumer feel good. To that I add that it is the responsibility of the consumer to use the product appropriately without exaggerating or diminishing the conclusions of the product. Anything short of these prescriptions is dishonest.

Pres. George W. Bush’s Administration justified the war on Iraq based upon the alleged intelligence products that concluded that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Well, so what? We know that he had them previously because he used them on the Iranians, on the Kurds and his own Iraqis. Saddam Hussein was acting as if he had the WMD’s, and the logical conclusion could easily be that he was looking to or could realistically be assumed to be considering the transfer of WMD’s or the technical expertise to Islamo-fascists intent upon using it against the U.S.

The fact that recently produced WMD’s were not located means nothing when evaluating the validity of the intelligence product. There was ample time to transfer and/or dispose of WMD’s prior to the invasion. Secondly, Saddam Hussein could have been running a large bluff that backfired on him. No matter how you cut it, you can’t honestly accuse Bush of lying unless you prove that he fudged the intelligence product conclusions.

The art of intelligence is the art of the best guess.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Doomed As History Repeats Itself

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

From Wikipedia:

George Santayana (16 December 1863 in Madrid, Spain – 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, he was raised and educated in the United States, invariably wrote in English and is considered an American man of letters. He is perhaps best known for his oft-quoted "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" from Reason in Common Sense, the first volume of his The Life of Reason.

A poem from Russ Vaughn originally published in The American Thinker:


The Words of Santayana (a poem)

Words of Santayana will be with us sure mañana,
When we face a fascist menace once again.
What we term a win today, we will learn to our dismay,
Is perceived as lack of will by evil men.

A lord of Britain led us, to a place where Nazis bled us,
Believing he’d found peace within his time.
At cost of untold billions and deaths of unknown millions,
We paid high price for this lord’s crumbling crime.

New fascist fires are burning, anti-Semitism churning,
Low priests of paparazzi pile the pyres;
With photos of destruction doctored with their foul corruption,
Our world’s again at mercy of bold liars.

Freedom’s slowly burning as new Fascists now are learning
Santayana knew his history, knew of men.
Events we face today have through history been in play,
Ignoring them we face chaos again.

The crime of man’s existence is his unexplained resistance
To take to heart hard lessons fathers learned;
To play again the fool, turn his back upon the cruel,
Till everything he loves lies dead and burned.

Wake up you fools and hear, Santayana’s voice is near,
For your children’s sake please take his words as truth.
Desire to just appease is a deadly vile disease,
Which will seal a deadly fate for your own youth.

Don’t listen but to me, just look back at history,
Never once has weakness ever been prevailing;
The only way to meet these new fascists is with heat,
The heat of war that dooms their dreams to failing.

Russ Vaughn 8 19 06

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Ad Proves Not All Of Hollywood Is Wacko

To say that I have been just a little hard on Hollywood elites and their leftist moonbat activities is an understatement. Now Nicole Kidman and a whole bunch of Hollywood’s notables, including Robert Murdoch, have taken out a full page advertisement in the LA Times denouncing terrorism. What a refreshing turn of events. See the story here.

Hat Tip: Diana West guesting for Michelle Malkin

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

U.S. Achilles Heel

There are three components comprising a significant defect in the American condition: the Vacuous; the Deceived; and the Peace Appeasers. Each component part contributes to the country’s vulnerability because they inhibit an all out marshaling of resources to counter the immediate threat of Islamo-fascism. They will also contribute to a potential failure to recognize and prepare for another dragon on the horizon, China.

A large amount of the U.S. citizenry is ignorant of and/or uninterested in politics and social/foreign policy. They are basically only interested in their micro personal lives to such an extent that they make little to no effort to become educated to the vital issues of the day. They are the Vacuous.

An even larger segment of the American society, the Deceived, is interested in the world condition and the part that we play in it. However, they are woefully under-educated and misinformed on the issues. If it were not for an exposure to sound-bite, agenda driven mainstream television media, both the Vacuous and the Deceived would be nearly unexposed. And, most of the exposure received via TV and newspapers is highly biased on the leftist/liberal side.

Compounding the problem of the under-educated is the phenomenon of American Peace Appeasers content to worship “peace” over all else. Sixty some years after World War II, a war the U.S. only entered after Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, there are a considerable number of Americans who act as if this very real global World War III does not exist. Talk about ostriches with their heads in the sand. Many of these people consider themselves to be “citizens of the world” refusing to acknowledge that there is something very special in the American experiment and that there are those intent upon destroying the experiment.

The under-educated and “peace above all else” crowd, for different reasons, are manipulatable fodder for deleterious elements wishing to engineer extreme leftist changes in the political landscape and the Democratic Party leaders attempting to regain control of the U.S. government.

The central participation of Communist organizations within U.S. anti-war groups, since at least prior to WWII, is well documented. Their presence in current day anti-war demonstrations is plain to see to anyone willing to look. It is ironic that anyone would give any credibility to those espousing political systems that are notorious for murdering millions of people. But what can you expect of an under-educated populace influenced by a mainstream media that provides little to no in-depth analysis about who it is that leads the anti-war charge? MSM is content to feature the likes of puppet Cindy Sheehan, but fails to reveal who manipulates her strings. MSM dutifully reports on anti-war demonstrations, but does not bother to zoom in on the event organizers and agitators.

Leftist and Communist philosophies do not represent a serious threat to America except for their cancerous influence on public opinion. For example, the inflaming of public opinion during the Vietnam War set in motion a shameful period in our American history. And, those same forces are still at work today, only now they are seeking to hinder the prosecution of the war against Islamo-fascist terrorism and the preparation to counter growing Chinese imperialism.

The Peace Appeasers, the Deceived and the Vacuous represent a weakness in the fabric of America. They will fiddle and impede until America is in flames and chains. Then they will whine.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Patriot-Traitor

In 1776, a 21 year old man paid the ultimate price when the British executed him for spying for his country, the fledgling United States of America. Nathan Hale’s famous words, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country" are a hallmark to his patriotic legacy.

Flash forward 230 years to today. A 21 year old man is held in a U.S. Navy brig for committing treason. He stole a Navy computer with classified information, and he peddled the information to the enemies of this country. If guilty, I hope that Petty Officer 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann receives the same fate as Nathan Hale.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Religious Fanatics Wish To Kill Babies

What manner of insanity is it for parents to kill their own children or facilitate or honor the deliberate death of their children because of the dictates of religious/political fanaticism?

Who can forget the mass murder/suicide of adults and children at Jonestown?

On November 18, 1978 two metal buckets of grape Flavor Aid laced with Valium and cyanide were brought into the assembly hall and the mixture was dispensed in small paper cups.] Babies and children were the first ones to ingest the mixture as it was squirted into their throats with a syringe. The elderly followed, and then the adults. Many blindly drank it even after watching their children die. The rest had the mixture poured down their throats after resisting drinking.

Or, how about the Branch Davidians in Mount Carmel, Texas?

…the complex was completely consumed by fire, killing seventy-six Davidians, among whom were twenty-seven children and Koresh himself.
Palestinian parents have been celebrating and facilitating the death of their children in suicide bombings for quite some time. Perhaps the Jonestown, Mount Carmel and Palestinian examples could be considered extreme and relatively infrequent if it were not for the Iranian parents who sent thousand of their children, Basiji, to die by literally walking or rolling through Iraqi mine fields to detonate land mines, or walking unarmed as a human wave into the blazing guns of the Iraqi army.

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them....

Now there is word that Islamic parents, more specifically Islamic mothers, are being investigated in Britain for intending on using their children as cover and then blowing them up in mass murder bombings.

“It may be beyond belief, but we are convinced that there are now women in Britain who are prepared to die with their babies for their twisted cause. They are ruthless, single-minded and totally committed.”
And, they are committed. Read about the Islamic females in the recent Toronto arrests at Burka Babes.

So, I’m sure that we Westerners consider the action of these people to be the acts of the insane. Do we not? Well, they are not insane. They know exactly what they are doing, and they are using precise and completely understandable logic in doing so. The hooker is this: religious fanatics from the Abraham line, as opposed to the non-fanatic religionists, have an extreme philosophy that death is preferable to life on earth, which propels them to accelerate death in order to attain a “higher and better” status. From their point of view, they are doing their children a favor. How can you argue with that kind of logic?

The question is this? What percentage of the Islamists falls into the fanatical sphere? From the looks of things, there are plenty.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Disneyland-Reality In Fantasyland

Yesterday, the weather was nearly perfect for a day with your 3½ year old granddaughter at Disneyland. That is, a day without parents and just granddaughter and grandparents. We promised her this day, and we were determined to make it her day without the influence of parents, who might well have had their own ideas about what they wanted to do in the kingdom of fantasy. I think that my daughter initially had her nose out-of-joint when I kyboshed her thought of joining us. But, she seemed to get over it and apparently understood that this was her daughter’s time without parents.

While waiting to ride on the roller-coaster in Toontown, my granddaughter spotted a magnificent insect as it landed on a stem of a plant. She immediately asked me to photograph the creature that you see depicted here. It goes to show that not everything in Disneyland is man-made and the product of fantasy. Some things are too good to improve upon.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Local Patrol Officers-Invaluable In The Fight Against Terrorism

It was an Oklahoma State Trooper who arrested Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist bomber of the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. It was a Murphy, N. Carolina police officer who arrested abortion clinic bombing terrorist Eric Rudolph. It was a U.S. Border Patrol officer who arrested the first World Trade Center bomber and would-be Millennium Bomber Ramsey Yousef. And, it was local Ohio police who just arrested two Islamo-fascists:

Twenty-year old's Ali Howssaiky and Osama Abulhassan are facing charges of money laundering to aid terrorism. This comes after a traffic stop Tuesday led police to thousands of dollars in cash, several disposable cell phones and instructions of how to obtain private flight information. Police also found a list of flight passengers in the car.

Federal security agencies have the primary jurisdiction for terrorism investigations, but it is often the work of local police officers which starts a major case. Unfortunately, local officers are not working up to their potential because they have not been included within an all encompassing effort to get all U.S. law enforcement involved in the battle of World War III. That’s because the American public and their local representatives do not understand the necessity. They will, someday!

Previous Postings:
Tools to Combat Terrorism
Domestically, How are We Doing on National Security?

Mike Wallace Fawns Over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mike Wallace was interviewed on Sean Hannity’s radio show today. According to Wallace, Ahmadinejad is quite a decent character. Wallace points out that Ahmadinejad does not hate Jews, but he only wants to remove the “Zionist element” from the Middle East.

Wallace went over the cliff long ago. He proved he is a dishonest journalist with the Pres. Bush National Guard issue, and now he is shown to be daffy. Wallace is irrelevant and has destroyed his journalistic legacy.

Watch for Wallace’s upcoming 60 Minute show on Wallace’s interview with Ahmadinejad.

Update: The green highlighted portion is a bozo mistake. It was DanRather who was involved with the National Guard allegation.

Tools to Combat Terrorism

Pres. Bush, in his short Greenbay, Wisconsin, speech today on the London terrorism bust of Islamists planning to bomb 10 airplanes, stated that security agencies have been given the tools to combat the terrorism threat. He touted the sharing of information between Britain and U.S. agencies. I don’t doubt that there was a significant sharing of information because Britain did not arrest 21 suspects without a considerable amount of investigation that must have occurred over an extended period of time.

Technically, Pres. Bush is correct about intelligence agencies having been given the necessary tools. One of those essential tools is the Patriot Act, which is far less effective than measures instituted in some European nations. Nevertheless, the Patriot Act is a good step in the right direction. Unfortunately, tools at your disposal must be used to be effective.

There are two major impediments to the successful discovering and dismantling of terrorist cells, be they Islamic or other. The first impediment is the failure of the U.S. national intelligence agencies to unify in some manner and work as one efficient organization. The second impediment is the failure of every state and local law enforcement agency to demand a seat at the table of terrorism detection. The terrorists are among us, and it is the local law enforcement agencies which have the greatest opportunity to discover them. But to be most successful, federal agencies, which have the primary jurisdictional responsibility on terrorism, must embrace the local law enforcement agencies.

British MI5 & MI6 probably have their internal conflicts like our intelligence agencies. But, my sense is that Britain might well be doing a better job than the U.S. on these matters.

Previous Posting: Domestically, How are We Doing on National Security?

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Hezbollah & Israel As Moral Equivalents?

George Sjostrom, a columnist in my local newspaper wrote a piece last Friday entitled, “Loss of freedom may be the price of peace.” George does not get to write the title of his piece, that’s standard procedure in newspapers. George’s piece says nothing about giving up freedom for peace. Instead, he wrote a lovely piece of moral equivalency of Hezbollah and Israel, from start to finish. George, are you by any chance an Arabic apologist, because you do not seem to have a grasp on historical reality?

The original Israeli settlers from the early 20th century did not steal Arabic land. They purchased it piece by piece. The League of Nations set-up what was to become the country of Israel and the world stood by as all of the surrounding Arabic nations attacked. The successor United Nations has been less than worthless as it constantly supports the Arabic provocateurs.

Israel is a democratic country that has not engaged in imperialism. They have only responded as necessary to avoid being eliminated from the face of the earth.

Israel took the U.S. foreign aid and turned their country into a modern showplace for both Jewish and Arabic Israeli citizens. The Palestinian authorities took the U.S. and world foreign aid and stole it. They left their people living in squalor.

Israel continues to survive at the cost of it’s own lives and with the financial support of U.S. aid. The U.S. has done so because historically the majority of the Americans are not confused about the issues. George, I don’t think you can be counted as one of the majority.

Previous Posting: National Security Is Not A Conservative VS Liberal Issue

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Do the Moonbats Influence Troop Morale?

I posed the above question to my good friend Jay, home on a 15 day furlough from Iraq. Jay, a U.S. Marine, spent the last 7 months in the field in the Al Anbar, west of Baghdad. Jay related that the troops in the big bases have access to all of the national news feeds, and they are exposed to the Iraq war naysayers. But, he said that his troops have virtually no exposure to the news, and that they are isolated and completely absorbed by their daily missions.

Based on numerous reports from military personnel as reported by various media, it appears that Moonbat diatribe is not effective in demoralizing the troops. It is extremely important for the rest of us to continuously voice our support directly to our troops.

Double Tap Hezbollah

Suppose that you have a neighbor wherein to describe him as a jerk would be considered an act of charity. You know the type, the guy who is hostile and engages in rudeness and acts which would be vandalism if you could show the intent. Suppose also that this neighbor is known to own firearms, and he has made utterances that he wants to kill you. One day he walks towards you with a firearm in his hands. As he begins to turn the weapon in your direction, you draw a firearm and double tap him, two rounds to the chest and one to the head. Case closed; self-defense.

Now change the scenario wherein the neighbor crosses into your yard, kills one of your children and kidnaps two of your children. What do you do to rescue your children and get justice for the killing of your child? Normally you would call the police and let the experts do the job because they have a far greater possibility of accomplishing the task.

The scenarios described above are exactly the situation that Israel finds itself. It is surrounded by Arabs intent on destroying her. The fly in the ointment is that Israel has no professional police force to come to its defense and assistance. The United Nations, which was designed to deal with such problems, is an impotent Arabic apologist organization, totally worthless.

Israel is virtually alone in the world, with the major exception of the United States. Accordingly, Israel learned very early that to survive required that Israel depend upon no one. Israel knows that to continue surviving, it must act when it feels necessary. To do otherwise is suicide.

My message to Israel is this: don’t stop until you double tap Hezbollah.

Friday, August 04, 2006

The Changing Character of Americans

Americans today are soft, pampered, self-indulgent and are either un-patriotic or simply lack patriotism when compared to the Americans who faced World War II. That is a generalization and self-evident. The minority exception includes the Americans in our voluntary military. The majority condition does not bode well as we enter upon World War III.

The eminent scholar Thomas Sowell had this to say:

Back in the days of World War II, the military were drafting young men who were, by and large, patriotic Americans, people who felt that they had a duty to protect this country from its enemies.

Today, a military draft would bring in large numbers of people who have been systematically "educated" to believe the worst about this country or, at best, to be non-judgmental about the differences between American society and its enemies.

…so many American institutions, from the Congress to the courts, have degenerated into irresponsible self-indulgence that the military is one of the very few institutions left with a sense of purpose for which it is prepared to make sacrifices.
Make a sacrifice? Who would want to do that? Fortunately there are some. But, you are not likely to find a great percentage in our universities and large cities. The formal education system is working hard to ensure that it won’t happen.

Free speech is fundamental and essential. But the public has not been vigilant, and we have let the wolves into the sheep pen. You know it is true when so many youth and young adults sport a shirt or hang a poster depicting the butcher Che Guevara. But, mostly there is a general ambivalence and lack of interest in political issues. That’s not surprising since there does not seem to be much in the way of critical thinking. We are breeding ever dumber sheep.

The Islamists must be rubbing their hands together in glee. It is going to be a glorious slaughter. Allah akbar!

National Security Is Not A Conservative VS Liberal Issue

The coming together of the American people after 9/11 is demonstrative of the fact that the citizens of this country, be they conservative or liberal, hold national security dear to their hearts. The mainstream members of both the Republican and Democrat parties are patriotic.

Two great world leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, conservative and liberal respectively, stand solidly together on the issue of national security and combating the war with Islamo-fascism. They aren’t likely to agree on much else, but they do understand the very real threat to each nation.

The problem in prosecuting WWIII from an American perspective is in part as a result of the general populace not fully understanding the threat. An LA Times poll on Israel and Hezbollah showed two interesting facts. Number one, there is a significantly greater number of Republicans supporting an alliance between Israel and the U.S. than there are Democrats. And number two, the poll numbers are shifting apparently as a result of day-to-day developments in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. I’m not sure which problem is worse, but I suspect that it is the latter.

The American public, and I suspect most of the Western world, has not yet tumbled to the fact that Islamo-fascism is absolutely dedicated to the destruction of non-Islamic societies and their replacement with societies of Sharia. The Islamists are patient and don’t expect to be successful in one lifetime. But, they are certain that they will eventually prevail as Islamists continue to spread around the world. They are akin to a cancer spreading uncontrollably.

The battle between Hezbollah and Israel is but one battle in the worldwide war. The fact that there is a significant lack of support among some Americans signifies that those individuals have incorrect priorities. How is it then that the party of liberals is less supportive than the party of conservatives?

I suspect the answer is that non-supporters are ignorant or deceived by the biased main stream media that opposes anything George W. Bush. And, by those leaders of the Democratic Party who are a mixture of power hungry opportunists and leftists.

A prominent liberal Democrat can be a strong supporter of national security. Joe Liberman is a good example. And because of his patriotism, he is being excoriated by the Democratic Party such that he is likely to lose the Democratic primary and be forced to run for election as a third party candidate.

The fact that the poll shows a shifting of opinion on a day-to-day basis is symptomatic, I suspect, of a percentage of the populous which is not grounded in a firm philosophy. That’s of no surprise if you are not educated to the facts of the situation. Not maintaining a level of education is a factor of both a personal lack of effort and a dearth of balanced information from the mainstream media.
So, both conservatives and liberals can be patriots and support a strong and proactive national security platform. But, both leftists and rightists do not fit within that category. They are dedicated to the destruction of our American culture. The rightists are so far right that they come full circle and shake hands with the leftists.

The hope for America lies in the center. We must work to neutralize the venom of both the far left and the far right. The far right does not have much impact. However, the far left is another matter since they are well entrenched in the education system, and they are brainwashing their students with biased and imbalanced political positions.

Goodbye & Good Luck

An Oxnard, CA, couple are deported to their native country of Mexico. They had been in the U.S. illegally for 20 years. In that time, they managed to buy a home and begat four children. The Nunez family are returning to Guadalajara; that is the parents are returning. The children were born in the U.S. and have never been to Mexico. It seems that the Nunez family ignored deportation orders and then la migra, immigration authorities, came knocking on the door.

It appears that the Nunez family is an examples of illegal immigrants who managed to make a better life for themselves for 20 years without breaking any more laws other than the initial immigration laws. They may be industrious immigrants who could be helpful to this country. Too bad they came illegally.

So, goodbye and good luck to the Nunez family. Their deportation is justice delayed, but justice nevertheless.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

9/11 Conspiracy-How Stupid Can You Be?

A new poll out states that a significant number of Americans believe that the Federal government engaged in a conspiracy to take down the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.

Then again, what can you expect from a people that glorify basketball players, actors, reality TV shows, rap music, gangsters and the like?

Shallow and gullible. Perfect fodder for political manipulation. What a good job by parents and the public education system.

Socialists Are Too Weak for Freedom

The peoples of free societies all yearn for peace. That’s why you do not have free societies making war on each other. So peace is a good thing, but what cost must be paid when non-free societies attack? That depends upon the perceptions of those under siege. Are they immediately and physically under attack on the home front or is the attack more distant?

When an enemy threatens, people pull together for the common good. That is especially true of the American people, despite differing political philosophies. It happened in World War I and II, and it happened after 9/11/01. That is not to say that the melding in common defense was unanimous by any means. There were and there are those elements within the U.S. that want to see the American dream, as we know it, destroyed. That’s in addition to Islamic fundamentalists. It is interesting that these people, excluding the Islamists, tend to have a common ideology of socialism and entitlement. While these people are a distinct minority, their collective influence has and does have severe negative consequences.

The negative consequences are well illustrated by the leftist agenda of the Democratic Party leaders. I don’t believe for a minute that the majority of Democratic Party members ascribe to the radicalism of their leaders, but there the members are voting for representatives whose main purpose is to restrict personal freedoms by enlarging government, and to build personal power and wealth. That translates into redistribution of wealth, the taking of more taxes from the common people to give to others. Socialism in all its glory. Entitlements!!

Entitlements are antithetical to personal responsibility. And, the lack of personal responsibility directly translates into a willingness to stand aside and let others pay the price of everything, including freedom. For the most part, you don’t see much in the way of personal sacrifice by socialist governments for the good of the world. There are good reasons why it is the U.S. that always steps forward and makes the personal sacrifices. Of course, if the leftist cut and run crowd gets its way, the U.S. will join the fast track to irrelevance.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

The Hells Angels’ is Not Your Local Elks Club

For those who think that outlaw motorcycle gangs, and the Hells Angels’ in particular, are not much more than an ugly wart on society, think again. They are a criminal cancer growing in and sucking the vitality out of society. A former San Diego Hells Angels’ member is convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison.


A former high-ranking member of the San Diego Hells Angels was sentenced Friday to 14 years in federal prison for his part in a conspiracy to murder rival motorcycle gang members and distribute drugs.
Mark Alan Toycen, the ex-Master-At-Arms for the Hells Angels in San Diego, pleaded guilty earlier to conspiracy to commit racketeering and conspiracy to commit to distribute methamphetamine.

U.S. Attorney Carol Lam said:

“The Hells Angels in San Diego are a gang that has brought violence and drugs to our streets for years,” … “Taking down their leadership is a public service.”

Some of these outlaw bikers can be quite personable. But, to hang around them is akin to sideling up to a rabid dog.