He's Still Dead

A new bin Laden video has surfaced in the last day or so. There's no way to determine how recent the video is, but it seems to be rather dated....which once again plays into my theory that he's been dead for some time now. If Ayman al-Zawahiri can make a video every three months, and he's the "second" of al-Qaeda, how come the Big Kahuna can't? Short answer: Because he's dead.

Michael Ledeen agrees with me:

Seeing bin Laden [Michael Ledeen]
As mentioned, there's an Osama cameo floating around. It seems to be from a video shot in 2001 or 2002. If that is correct, then I would draw two conclusions: first, that it is additional confirmation that he is dead. (If he were alive, they could do a new one, right?) And second, that this is a sign of panic, a poorly manufactured pseudo-blockbuster appearance designed to rally the troops, who must be getting fairly discouraged these days. The war is not going well for them in Iraq or Afghanistan (where the big "spring offensive" didn't happen)or Lebanon or England or over here. The best thing they've got going for them at the moment is (are) the surrender monkeys.

Quote of the Day

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

- Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman

You Know That Environmentalism Has Hit A New Extreme....

....when the EU is concerned about cows blowing farts.

Two Things That Will Survive A Nuclear Holocaust: Cockroaches....And Keith Richards

Here's why:

"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father."

Read all about the keys to Keith's longevity here.

He's an inspiration to us all.

Rue Britannia

The end of Britain is upon us.

Why, you ask? For one thing, the very power with which Britain came to rule (at one point in history) 2/5ths of the world is being scrapped: its navy. My, how Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill must be turning over in their graves. Tony Blair, steadfast and courageous earlier in the decade in regards to his commitment to the war against the Islamo-fascist virus, is looking more and more "Carter-esque" by the day. Why he is so intent on pleasing the European Union folks in Brussels is beyond me. Secondly, he's looking more and more powerless in the face of the aggression Iran recently perpetrated against Great Britain in the form of the fifteen British sailors that were taken hostage by the Iranian Republican Guard whilst in international waters. Mark Steyn, sharp and accurate as always, writes about that here.Read it and weep. More here.

The Lives Of Others

Rarely do I see a movie that makes a profound impact on me, but the movie The Lives Of Others will be one to remember and reflect on for a long time to come.

Set in East Germany in 1985, Stasi (the name of the secret police of East Germany) Captain Weisler is assigned to monitor the conversations and actions of playright Georg Dreyman. Weisler is the prototypical communist apparatchik: dry, boring, and gray. Through his undetected surveillances of Dreyman's conversations, Weisler begins to grow progressively more sympathetic to the internal conflicts of Dreyman. Dreyman, you see, is a loyal East German, which is so infuriating to his writer buddies (all of whom are subversives) that he's alienating them. Only after a good friend and brilliant stage director, who is blacklisted by the powers-that-be, kills himself does Dreyman secretly turn on the government. Weisler, through his perpetual listening, does as well. I'll not spoil the movie for those of you who plan on seeing it. (Please note, it's all in subtitles.) But I will say that it is a positive affirmation that the joys of thinking and saying are deeply rooting in all of us, and when they're denied, it is soul destroying.

I certainly hope that this movie gets more viewership than the digusting hagiography of Che Guevara, "The Motorcycle Diaries". If one wants to know what living in communism is really about, go see this movie if you can.

Lay Down With Dogs....Get Up With Fleas

Bet Nancy Pelosi never thought this would happen........

A Post St. Patrick's Day Post

I came across this article a few years back in the New York Press (a free publication here in NYC) written by a fellow by the name of William Bryk. Bryk focuses specifically on New York history, and this one piece particularly interested me. Dagger John Hughes was a fightin' Irish priest who came to New York, amongst the famine Irish. He also was responsible, in no small way, for preserving the religious freedoms of the Irish Catholics to worship here in the States, as well as being perhaps the first to raise the famine Irish up from the squalor, crime, and decadence they had fallen into here in the States, specifically in places like New York and Boston. His story is here.

May the road rise up to meet you, and may the wind be at your back.

Greetings, Mein Froinds!

I've not been blogging much these days, due to myriad reasons, amongst them being that a.) haven't much to say, and b.) too damn tired after work to think, much less blog. Thirdly, I don't have an internet connection in my new apartment, as I'm in-between having an old Mac G4 that is still running OS9.2 and am waiting to get a fresh, new Mac....which I haven't purchased yet. So it goes. So in the interest of re-aquainting myself with this blogging phenomenon, I'll cover a few topics here and there for posterity's sake, add a few (hopefully) trenchant observations, and the world will unfold as it should. On with it.....

• This hasn't exactly been front page news, but it hasn't exactly been relegated to the back pages either. However the story of Ali Reza Asghari's defection is a potentially seismic one. Mr. Asghari supposedly was high up in the Islamic Republic of Iran's government from the very beginning in '79, was the prime mover behind the creation and formation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and has an intimate knowledge of the inner workings and plans of the Ahmedinejad government. He knows of their intelligence workings, as well as their quest for atomic power. He is currently being held somewhere in northern Europe, but he might already be in the U.S. The amount of information Asghari could spill is really quite extraordinary. Keep an eye on this story and see how it plays out.

• If anyone hasn't seen the Chris Simon two-handed smash across Ryan Hollweg's chin, you can see it here. Nasty, nasty. Simon is probably looking at suspension for the rest of the season (including playoffs), and well into next season. I'm all for "old time hockey", but Simon's actions were plain ol' assault. Tsk, tsk.

• How uptight must Hillary Clinton be about Barack Obama's upsurge? She was thinking the nomination was hers for the the taking, and now this junior senator with all of two years of experience is kicking her ass and stealing her benefactors (like David Geffen)? The nerve! You know you're in trouble when even the writers of the National Review start complimenting your rival.

• I don't think, at this point, that Obama is going to get the nomination. Hillary has been slated for the nomination since 2000. However, I do think that Obama could take a piece out of her, and if Hillary reacts as nastily as I think she inevitably will, it could alienate many Democratic voters, not the least of which are the African-American voting bloc.

• Recently a movie was released called 300, based on the Battle of Thermopylae. For those unaware of what this event was, much less its significance, let me brief you: Thermopylae was a mountain pass in Greece that the Persians had to get past if they were to successfully conquer Greece. A few thousand Spartans, Thebans, and Thespians held off approximately 500,000 Persians, thus buying critical time for the Athenians to prepare their defenses, as well as to arm their navy for the eventual Battle of Salamis. Eventually, the Spartan king, Leonidas, sent everyone home, save 300 Spartans. For three days, the Persians were held off. All of the Spartans, including Leonidas, were eventually rubbed out. But Thermopylae is one of the great "last stand" historical events in history. More than that, its significance was and is huge, as it served to preserve a Greek democracy that inevitably would've been snuffed out by the totalitarian Persian king, Xerxes. This battle, which took place in 480 B.C., has tremendous significance, even 2500 years later. More than anything, it shows that free men would rather die on their feet than live on their knees. Time and again, whenever democratic societies, or even moderately free societies, have ever come into conflict with repressive ones, they win. One need only look at the Cold War, WWII, the Greco-Persian Wars, the Punic Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, etc. Free peoples don't sell off their freedom cheaply and thus preserve their freedoms, whereas the armies of totalitarian states gain nothing by winning; they merely preserve the right of imperial rule for their masters.

Pete

Cool stuff on Pete Townshend on YouTube. Check this one out.

"Ex-President for Sale"

By Alan Dershowitz

I have known Jimmy Carter for more than thirty years. I first met him in the spring of 1976 when, as a relatively unknown candidate for president, he sent me a handwritten letter asking for my help in his campaign on issues of crime and justice. I had just published an article in The New York Times Magazine on sentencing reform, and he expressed interest in my ideas and asked me to come up with additional ones for his campaign. Shortly thereafter, my former student Stuart Eisenstadt, brought Carter to Harvard to meet with some faculty members, me among them. I immediately liked Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity and principle. I signed on to his campaign and worked very hard for his election. When Newsweek magazine asked his campaign for the names of people on whom Carter relied for advice, my name was among those given out. I continued to work for Carter over the years, most recently I met him in Jerusalem a year ago, and we briefly discussed the Mid-East. Though I disagreed with some of his points, I continued to believe that he was making them out of a deep commitment to principle and to human rights.

Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source? And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School ­Rachael Lea Fish­ showed me the facts < http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=348172>. They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up­a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son­ hosted speakers < http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/zayed_center.asp> who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard's decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." Carter's personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot.

In reading Carter's statements, I was reminded of the bad old Harvard of the nineteen thirties, which continued to honor Nazi academics after the anti-Semitic policies of Hitler's government became clear. Harvard of the nineteen thirties was complicit in evil. I sadly concluded that Jimmy Carter of the twenty-first century has become complicit in evil.

The extent of Carter's financial support from, and even dependence on, dirty money is still not fully known. What we do know is deeply troubling. Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family, and among whose principal investors is Carter's friend, Sheik Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the bank, gave Carter "$500,000 to help the former president establish his center...[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different projects." < http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20061220-092736-3365r.htm> Carter gladly accepted the money, though Abedi had called his bank­ ostensibly the source of his funding­ "the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists." BCCI isn't the only source: Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center­ "in 1993 alone...$7.6 million" <­as" href="http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=26045%3E%ADas" printable.asp?id="26045>­as have other members of the Saudi Royal Family. Carter also received a million dollar pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden family, as well as a personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheik Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates.
­as" href="http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=26045%3E%ADas" printable.asp?id="26045>­as
It's worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government's myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center's Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have apparently bought his silence for a steep price. The bought quality of the Center's activities becomes even more clear, however, when reviewing the Center's human rights activities in other countries: essentially no human rights activities in China or in North Korea, or in Iran, Iraq, the Sudan, or Syria, but activity regarding Israel and its alleged abuses, according to the Center's website < http://www.cartercenter.org/countries/israel_and_the_palestinian_territories.html >. The Carter Center's mission statement claims that "The Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities." How can that be, given that its coffers are full of Arab money, and that its focus is away from significant Arab abuses and on Israel's far less serious ones?

No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter. The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It is Carter­ not me­ who has made the point that if politicians receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."

By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption.

I have met cigarette lobbyists, who are supported by the cigarette industry, and who have come to believe honestly that cigarettes are merely a safe form of adult recreation, that cigarettes are not addicting and that the cigarette industry is really trying to persuade children not to smoke. These people are fooling themselves (or fooling us into believing that they are fooling themselves) just as Jimmy Carter is fooling himself (or persuading us to believe that he is fooling himself).

If money determines political and public views ­as Carter insists "Jewish money" does­ then Carter's views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter's off-key tunes have been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy Carter's sad legacy.

Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His most recent book is Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways

"Palestinians: We don't deserve a state"

I agree. A few choice excerpts:

"Everyone here is disgusted by what's happening in the Gaza Strip," said Shireen Atiyeh, a 30-year-old mother of three working in one of the Palestinian Authority ministries. "We are telling the world that we don't deserve a state because we are murdering each other and destroying our universities, colleges, mosques and hospitals. Today I'm ashamed to say that I'm a Palestinian."

No argument here! Here's some more:

"The world is watching how the Palestinians are destroying their institutions and achievements with their own hands. They see how we are mercilessly slaughtering innocent people. We are losing the sympathy of the world. I'm afraid the world will now view us differently."

You can read the whole article here. A glimmer of hope, one would think. Perhaps these people are ready to grow up. Here's to hoping, however small that hope is.

Golly Gee....These People Deserve A State!

Yes sir, the "Palestinians" are in the midst of what appears to be a bonafide civil war. A good thing? Only bad if both sides wind up blowing each other up and exhausting so much of their virulent hatred for everything and everybody that they actually learn how to co-exist with the rest of humanity. Until then....keep shootin', folks!

I certainly hope that going foward, that these people receive less and less attention. They deserve no sympathy for their violent idiocy, and there are plenty other ethnic groups out there that are sans homeland that deserve a real chance at self-determination. (Like the Kurds, for example.)

Stop paying attention to them.

Bluffing?

Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report.

"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives," the Iranian president was quoted as saying.

Jimmy Carter Legacy Takes Another (Perhaps Fatal) Hit

Read this article, and then say to yourself with a straight face that "Jimmy Carter is a good man, but a lousy president". Only one part of that widely-held sentiment is correct: The part about being a crappy president. Carter isn't a good man, and he clearly has a problem with Jews stretching far, far back. To give you a quickie on what the link is about: Jimmy Carter interceded in a deportation proceedings of a Waffen SS officer (that's a concentration camp guard, in case you were wondering) in 1987. Supposedly he did this for "humanitarian" reasons.

Wha?!?

Read it and weep. Or laugh. Or both. And then thank God that Ronald Reagan won in 1980.

Quote

"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."

--William F. Buckley

(This quote, I can assure you, is wholly accurate. Try living in Manhattan and taking a conservative position and you'll understand the depth of Buckley's observation.)

Darkness Descends on Venezuela

Venezuela won't recover for fifty years. Ugly.

Read here.

Quote

Since we're on the subject of crumbling reputations (Associated Press, Sandy Berger), I figured I'd share this quote from Ben Franklin:

Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended.

Jamil Hussein....

....is still missing. Read about it here.

Sandy Berger

Yes, the report on Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger is out....and it is a doozy. It's awfully hard for Clintonistas to spin this one. Think about it: Can you envision the insane rage of the liberal media if it was Condoleeza Rice, and not Sandy Berger, who stole and destroyed highly classified documents regarding al Qaeda leading up to 9/11? Rest assured, things wouldn't be as quiet as they are now in the press regarding Berger's scandalous theft of these extremely important documents. Additionally, one has to wonder who put him up to this course of action. Of that, we'll never know, because the press won't pursue it.

Jamil Hussein Is Still Missing

Update on the Jamil Hussein controversy here.

New Year's Wishes

Be at war with your vices,
Peace with your neighbors,
And let every New Year
Find you a better man [and woman].

--Benjamin Franklin