In Other News You Probably Won't Hear
Topic: Iran
Kazemi was deliberately killed, says Iran's Ebadi

There was some mention awhile back of journalists losing their lives in the MidEast. Not much about the ones who get their heads cut off by Jihadists but quite a lot of carping about combat deaths of Journalists by American or Coalition Fire.

Myself I figure if you want to run around the countryside with Jihadists, you better keep in mind that:

A We shoot at them
and
B We can't tell who you are from a distance so we will shoot at you too.

All that aside if AMERICA or anyone of the Coalition had taken a Journalist into custody and BEATEN THEM TO DEATH.

Would there be any protests worldwide denouncing us?
Would there be headlines and speeches denouncing us?

YOU BET THERE WOULD

So somebody please explain the total silence from the Worldwide Community on this?

Kazemi was deliberately killed, says Iran's Ebadi

Reuters

TEHRAN - Lawyers representing the family of a Canadian photographer who died in custody in Iran said on Monday she was deliberately killed and demanded an impartial court retry the case.

Zahra Kazemi, a Montreal-based photojournalist, died in July 2003 after her skull was split after being arrested for taking photographs outside Tehran's Evin prison where many political dissidents are held.

"Forensic reports show her head was hit in two spots and based on Islamic penal code, this cannot be unintentional," 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, one of the four lawyers acting for Kazemi's family, told the court hearing.

But the judge said a preliminary court had already found the killing had been 'unintentional' and said Monday's hearing was not in a position to discuss the issue.

Ebadi said previous courts were biased and asked the Judiciary to send the case to an impartial court.

"If justice is not served in Iran, I will appeal to international courts and human rights organizations," Ebadi told Reuters.

The case severely damaged ties between Iran and Canada. Ottawa has twice withdrawn its ambassador and in May froze most ties with Tehran, accusing Iranian authorities of failing to investigate the death properly. Though Iranian-born, Kazemi had taken Canadian citizenship.

Foreign media were barred from Monday's court hearing.

"I do not consider this hearing as an open court hearing. Why were foreign media not allowed to attend at the hearing?" Ebadi asked.

Iran's conservative judiciary initially said Kazemi had died of a stroke but an investigation by the reformist government revealed she had received a heavy blow during questioning which caused a brain hemorrhage.

The judiciary last year acquitted an intelligence agent charged with the murder of Kazemi and argued she had died in an accident, hitting her head after fainting.

At the last hearing of the appeal in May, lawyers for Kazemi's family argued the original court did not have jurisdiction to rule in such the case

News You Won't Hear
Woman protestor killed by Iran?s security forces in Kurdish town
Topic: Iran
Jamileh Khezri

There has been a LOT of play on the Media recently about Aruba. Now first off let me say, that I feel deeply for the family, it is a terrible tragedy and no parent wants to out live a child, but that girl is not the only young girl who has died recently.


Jamileh Khezri is dead, gunned down in the street and VERY few outside of Iran will ever hear about her or her fate. You need to ask yourselves, your newspapers, your radio stations and your televisions stations.

WHY?

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jul. 28 - Iran’s security forces gunned down a woman protestor in the Kurdish town of Oshnavieh, northwest Iran, on Wednesday during clashes between residents and government forces.

The woman was identified as Jamileh Khezri and was among three protestors killed by state security forces in Oshnavieh during the unrest.

On Monday, two anti-government demonstrators were shot dead by police, according to local residents.

Monday’s demonstration in Oshnavieh, during which participants chanted anti-government slogans, was in solidarity with the more than 200 people arrested in the nearby towns of Mahabad, Piranshahr, and Marivan, according to local Kurdish websites.

The two killed were identified as Heydar Abdollahzadeh and Amr Amini.

Some Things Are Sacred
Topic: 9/11
Some things do NOT need to be changed or altered into something that they never were.

I have several posts about the WTC Memorial whatever shape it eventual comes in, it does NOT need to be a comment on ANYTHING but the Honored Dead, the Victims AND the Heros of 9/11 Whether at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or Flight 93.

Some cannot accept such simplicity, they must turn everything into a Political Statement or Lesson.


They are tying to do it with the Memorial, just as they tried to do it with a spontaneous demonstration after the attack.


I am speaking of the Statue derived from the Famous Flag Raising Photo at the WTC.

You can read the story Here

I will post an edited synopsis of the key points but I encourage all to read its entirety.

Thomas E. Franklin's firefighters raising the flag photo


Franklin was traveling with James Nachtwey, a Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalist who told him he had just narrowly escaped death at Ground Zero.

Around 4 or 5 p.m., Franklin and Nachtwey were taking a break and drinking water and juice. A trio of firefighters caught his eye.

"I would I say was 150 yards away when I saw the firefighters raising the flag. They were standing on a structure about 20 feet above the ground. This was a long lens picture: there was about 100 yards between the foreground and background, and the long lens would capture the enormity of the rubble behind them," Franklin said.

The three firefighters, William Eisengrein, George Johnson and Daniel McWilliams, had discovered a US flag on the back of a yacht inside a boat slip at the World Financial Center. They took the banner and decided to raise it as a statement of loyalty and resilience.

Franklin recalled, "I made the picture standing underneath what may have been one of the elevated walkways, possibly the one that had connected the World Trade plaza and the World Financial Center. As soon as I shot it, I realized the similarity to the famous image of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima.

This was an important shot. It told more than just death and destruction. It said something to me about the strength of the American people and of thse firemen having to battle the unimaginable."

Two generations ago, when the US was in World War II, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped a picture of six Marines raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island in February 1945. The photo became a WWII icon and the basis for a Marine Corps memorial sculpture in Washington, D.C. The Battle of Iwo Jima also is recognized as the beginning of the end of the campaign against the Japanese in the Pacific.

The firefighters of Engine 255 and Ladder 157 of Brooklyn had been digging in the rubble and searching for survivors at WTC 7, when they were told to evacuate. The weakened structure was close to collapse.

During the evacuation, McWilliams, 35, of Long Island, saw the yacht, Star of America, owned by Shirley Dreifus of the Majestic Star company in New York. He took the flag and its pole from the stern and rolled it up so it would not touch the ground. He took it to the evacuation area. The Old Glory itself was American made, originating from Eder Flag Manufacturing of Oakcreek, Wisconsin.

McWilliams, of Ladder 157, passed a coworker, Johnson, 36, of Rockaway Beach, Queens. He slapped Johnson on the shoulder and said, "Give me a hand, will ya, George?"

Eisengrein, of Rescue 2 from Brooklyn, saw them and said, "You need a hand?" Eisengren also was a childhood friend of McWilliams on Staten Island and still resided there.

The firefighters found a flagpole within rubble about 20 feet off the ground on West Street. They used a improvised ramp to climb to the pole to raise the flag. As they performed their act, Franklin aimed his long lens in their direction.

McWilliams remembered that other fire personnel yelled, "Good job!" and "Way to go!"

"Ever pair of eyes that saw that flag got a little brighter," McWilliams said.

The three firemen decided to raise the flag on the spur of the moment. McWilliams said that "a big part of this is maintaining the unity of the whole team." The men were stressed from the WTC collapse and the lack of survivors among the debris.

"Everybody just needed a shot in the arm," McWilliams told the Associated Press.

In all, 343 firefighters died in the Trade Center disaster, along with 23 New York City and 37 Port Authority police officers and six medical rescue workers.

Franklin's photograph appeared in the 12 September 2001 Record. Reaction was swift and emotional. The flag raising firemen were hit with numerous calls from friends and family. Their first reaction -- surprise, as they didn't know Franklin took their picture.


DO you UNDERSTAND? They did not know they were being photographed, the scene was NOT posed!


One replica of the photo even generated controversy. In December 2001, the New York Fire Department unveiled a study of a memorial statue based on the picture, but with the firefighters as black, Latino and white. The three original men are all Caucasian. The sculpture was by StudioEis of Brooklyn.

"Given that those who died were of all races and all ethnicities and that the statue was to be symbolic of those sacrifices, ultimately a decision was made to honor no one in particular, but everyone who made the supreme sacrifice," said Frank Gribbon, an FDNY spokesman.

Many of the complaints about the statue came from New York firefighters themselves. They criticized their department for being politically correct and "rewriting history," as the father of fireman Thomas Casoria, a WTC victim, said.

Yes it IS true that "those who died were of all races and all ethnicities" and it would be RIGHT to include that in a memorial statue, but do NOT change what HAPPENED.


Some things are Sacred
They do not need to be altered to make a Political Point or Create a Political Lesson.

Some People can not understand this simple concept.

WTC Memorial
What's the Big Deal?
I have noticed I have been getting a fair amount of International hits on this site. Also for those Americans who may not have heard all the details, I think it best to post here WHY some of us are signing petitions in protest of some of the planss for the 9/11 WTC Memorial. There was a very good article on these issues in the Wall Street Journal.

The Great Ground Zero Heist

Will the 9/11 "memorial" have more about Abu Ghraib than New York's heroic firemen?

BY DEBRA BURLINGAME
Wednesday, June 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had been wounded in Iraq were joined by 300 other service members for a wreath-laying ceremony at the empty pit of Ground Zero. The broken pieces of the Twin Towers have long ago been cleared away. There are no faded flags or hand-painted signs of national unity, no simple tokens of remembrance. So why do they come? What do they hope to see?

The World Trade Center Memorial will break ground this year. When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They'll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.

Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.

The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom"--but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.


The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere--anywhere--else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.

The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.

The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hangar at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center's multi-million-dollar insult.

Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?

Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

More information Here

and The New York Times

Take Back The Memorial Petition
Topic: 9/11

From Michele Malkin

On a beautiful, blue September morning in 2001, 3,000 innocent men, women and children were brutally slaughtered in the worst attack on American soil in the history of the country. The story of that day is one of tragic loss, uncommon valor and the spirit of a people who rallied together, a triumph of hope over hatred

We owe it to the victims and to the heroes who sacrificed their lives for others to tell their story.

To Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation:

We, the undersigned, believe that the World Trade Center Memorial should stand as a solemn remembrance of those who died on September 11th, 2001, and not as a journey of history's "failures" or as a debate about domestic and foreign policy in the post-9/11 world. Political discussions have no place at the World Trade Center September 11th memorial, and the International Freedom Center honors no one by making excuses for the perpetrators of this heinous crime. The memorial should be about what happened that day, about the brave heroes who risked their lives so selflessly, and about the innocent lives that were lost... nothing more.


Sign the Petition


UPDATE: 1917 9/11 family members have signed the petition.

Coallition of the Willing
Topic: Islamic Jihad
History will some day record that when Civilization was attacked by an implacable and vicious foe, some mounted the barricades in its defense and some jeered and threw rocks at the backs of those defenders.

We hear enough of our Foes and their Apologists, Let us think for awhile of those who have mounted the barricades in the defense of Civilization.


Some may claim that the Enemy is Islam and that has some truth to it, but in the sense that if Christianity of a thousand years ago, were suddenly transported to the present, fanatic members of that creed would be our equal enemies.


The Truth is our Implacable Foe is a from of Islam from Medieval Times that has remained unchanged, equally true is that some of the strongest supporters of Civilization and Foes of Terrorism lie in those Muslim Sects which like Christianity have grown, evolved and changed from those early days.


When news of Genocide in Dafur, Sudan started to breach the surface of the Mainstream Media, my first reactions were. "its about TIME" and "What TOOK you so LONG?"

The truth was genocide in Southern Sudan had been ongoing for quite some time to on the order of 3 million deaths. That is a story for another time.


The Dafur atrocities are being committed upon a Muslim Sect called Sufi. By fanatics Islamic Jihadists. To the Jihadist, Sufi are Apostates, to be put down with all the fervor as they would put down an infidel, for the Sufi Sect of Islam is NOT the same as the bleak creed from a thousand years ago the Jihadist follow.


As a matter of fact one of the leading spokesmen for Sufi Islam in the US has been very outspoken about the dangers of Terrorism Abroad AND here in the Us.

His name is Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, of The Islamic Supreme Council of America.

Another is Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi Director the Cultural Institute of the Italian
Islamic Community Rome

Radical Islamists have perverted the traditions of Islam

By: Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi

Home

[Republished (October 10, 2001) from the "Middle East Quarterly"
on the web site of the association called "Islamic Supreme Council of AmericaIslamic Supreme Council of America",
lead by Sheikh Hisham Kabbani]



The danger is that radical groups could become the official representatives of Muslim immigrants in the West

WESTERN observers, both among the general public and the media, commonly make the mistake of thinking that Islamism is the same as traditional Islam. Even Western researchers describe Islamism as a resurgence of traditional Islam. In contrast, moderate Sunni Muslims are characterized as those whose faith is mitigated, influenced by syncretism, or diluted by a certain amount of secularisation and .

But this turns reality upside-down. In fact, Islamists depart in important ways from the Islamic tradition. Indeed, some outstanding traditional Muslim scholars see Islamism as a symptom of secularisation and as a reshaping of their religion into a modern, ideological totalitarianism. I share this view. The distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism can be seen in many specifics. Tradition attributes to the ruler the right to appoint competent scholars as interpreters of the Islamic law; Islamists do not any authority apart from the leaders of their own groups. Tradition makes the authority of a scholar dependent on the possession of written documents of appointment signed by his predecessor; Islamists regularly install people bereft of any theological or legal education into positions of Islamic authority.

Another point: Sunnis do not see Islam as an dependent on a leadership; Islamists, on the contrary, see their leading militants as the Islamic leadership, thereby cutting out the need to refer to traditional scholars for guidance. Perhaps most important of all is the Islamists' subordination of religion to politics. Khalid Duran notes the distinction between traditional Islam and its political counterfeit by underlining their different understandings of the relationships between religion and politics: "Whether Islamists like the term fundamentalists or not, their understanding of religion resembles the fundamentalists in other religions. This is not to say that Islamists are more religious or more genuinely Islamic than other Muslims . . . Islamism is a late 20th century totalitarianism. It follows fascism and communism, picking up from those and seeking to refine their methods of domination


Can anything be plainer spoken let me repeat that last part Islamism is a late 20th century totalitarianism. It follows fascism and communism, picking up from those and seeking to refine their methods of domination

You would expect to find those words on a Neo-Con website they fit in well here, but I TELL YOU.
Islamic Supreme Council of America IS along beside us on the barricades in defense of Civilization.


There are other stranger still fellow warriors you have not heard of. Oh yes you have heard and read much about Chechnya. BUT in any form shape or manner have you EVER heard the words of the Mufti of Chechnya?


One would think the Spiritual Leader of Islam in that region might be of interest to the News Media, his thoughts his views. But maybe its because he does not have the CORRECT views? Do I need to mention he is a Sufi Muslim and HIS thoughts are:




Because of lack of reliable information, some Muslims are supposing that the Chechen people are involved in "jihad" against Russia. The reality is quite different: all the area of Muslim former-Soviet Republics has become a central point in the project of Wahhabi expansion. Because of the inner weakness of most of those countries, some Wahhabi terrorists are trying to conquer them by force, and to install there a Khawarij, Taliban-like dictatorship. Those people are, as always, trying to extinguish Allah's light, and to export Wahhabism in countries where it never existed before.

Chechnya has become a battlefield since Wahhabis want to occupy it "spiritually", by corrupting the Islamic 'aqidah and impose heresy by force. Sunni Muslims are - as in many other cases - the main victims of this tragedy. May Allah Ta'ala help them to free themselves from this menace, and may He grant them relief after hardship.

Praise be to Allah and Allah knows best.

May Allah accept your fast and salawat and grant you a Ramadan mubarak.

Wa-s-salamu 'alaykum wa rahmat-Ullahi wa barakatuH.

By the way the above can be found on the website of

Italian Muslim Association

All know and it has been reported over and over again that for the most part the rabid beasts of 9/11 were Saudi. Are there OTHER types of Saudis? Yes there are here is one very brave Saudi. The Religious Policeman

A Saudi man's diary of life in the "Magic Kingdom", where the Religious Police ensure that everything remains as it was in the Middle Ages.

In Memory of the lives of 15 Makkah Schoolgirls, lost when their school burnt down on Monday, 11th March, 2002. The Religious Police would not allow them to leave the building, nor allow the Firemen to enter.

I said brave and I meant it. Certain thoughts spoken can have fatal consequences behind the Quran Curtain and The Policeman lives in the heat of Wahhabi Jihadism.

His last post was. Tuesday, August 10, 2004 where he wrote: Back, but inactive
Asalaam aleikum, everyone.

I'm back and rested after a fine vacation, and well.

However, for reasons I don't want to go into here, I won't be actively blogging for a while.


Let us hope he did not attract to much attention.
The last execution for Apostasy in Saudi Arabia was only In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible.


Let us be clear about this. These Gentlemen do not equivocate, do not excuse, they state plainly that in this world there is a Great Evil and some of them make these statements not from the Safety of the Western World at home, secure at their computer, but in the Heart of Darkness itself and at GREAT PERIL.


We ARE at War, if you should ever meet one of these men, say "Advance Friend, and be RECOGNIZED"

|

We Are Not Alone
Update.
Topic: Islamic Jihad
It is nice to find friends.
Our enemies may be Legion,
but our friends are as well.

You may not hear about them
on TV, or read about them in
the Newspapers, or Magazines.
But they ARE out there IF you
LOOK for them.

In an earlier post I mentioned
a website named

Unite Against Terror


After I signed the Petition I found
there I looked at the others who
had done so as well and found
Daisy Miller from Italy, and HER
website

Iloveamerica.splinder.com

We should stop by, visit and say
Hello, Thank You or Ciao La Ringrazia
since the site is totally in Italian.

But thanks to the miracle of Modern
technology and websites like

Freetranslations.com

or
Translate.ru


Of COURSE it is not the same as
being fluent. but we CAN understand
many things she has to say.

We can translate text and even the
entire webpage in one click.

Then we can read of her mother telling
her stories as a girl of the GIs
who gave HER and other children
chocolate when she was a girl and what
she thought we she hear of the children
in Iraq who were killed by terrorists
because once again American GIs were
handing candy out to children

You MAKE FIRE YOURSELF AND THEN it TREAT IT

My mommy that had 15 years when arrive the
Americans will have told me thirty times of
the chocolates that distributed from the jeep
when arrived at Modena: hearing about those
that demolished twenty children irakeni that
took the candies from a navies yesterday the
other annotated: "to take them and to kill
has been not them enough"


Yes it was nice to find this website. It is
nice to find kindred spirits and allies in
this world we find ourselves in.

But Dan some may say, she is ONLY one person.
Yes she is only one person but on her
website she has THREE Screen fields
of Pro-American Italian Blogs!

Wonderful. The Committees of Correspondence
have gone global they no longer are
confined to their Revolutionary limits
of only our shores.

I will post another time of others I have
chanced upon.

And if you who read these words are from another
part of the Globe, leave a message??

Let us know you were here?

Of course I DO know some from distance places
have paused here. I see the record HERE

HUMPTY DUMPTY
Sat on a Wall
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
The Radio EqualizerIn my post Through the Looking Glass I mulled over the hype and reality of Air America the Flagship of Liberal Talk Radio and wondered how long it would stay afloat and how it had stayed afloat up to this time. It would appear there are reasons for Air America's solvency despite its low listener numbers.

From The Radio Equalizer via

Michelle Malkin



Air America's Dirty Dough

Media Cover-Up, Bronx Community Programs Nearly Shut


What happens when the mainstream media, after years of seething over conservative talk radio's success, discover its alternative got diverted public funds, earmarked instead for inner-city youth and seniors?

The answer, with one key exception: they pretend it didn't happen.

Yes, only because of a New York Daily News tidbit do we know that Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club nearly shut down major programs recently, because almost $500,000 in governmental grant money was instead diverted to Air America's liberal radio network.
**********************

You need to read the rest and then ask yourself some questions. Like why haven't you read about this in the Mainstream Media?

The World
Turned Upside Down
Topic: Islamic Jihad
According to Legend the Air Played at Yorktown when the troops of Cornwallis laid down their arms. Ironically
Cornwallis opposed nearly all of the British policies that led to the American Revolution.

Indeed the World was Turned Upside Down that Day. One of the Preeminent Military Powers of Europe defeated with the aid of the French by a ragtag collection of Colonials.

In the next few years that New Nation was to engage in its first military land action against of all things a Muslim Terrorist NGO known in those days as the Barbary Pirates. Europe of the Day was content to pay tribute, the answer to that demand by the United States was,
"Millions for Defense, not One Red Cent for Tribute!"

Shortly thereafter as History turns, our former enemy the British and we were at War, During that conflict out Capital was burned and sacked.

History runs in cycle and in 200 years The World has Turned Upside Down once more. Our Former enemy is now our closest ally, in a struggle once more against a Muslim Terrorist NGO this time known as Al-Qaeda.

One personal political front the World has also been
Turned Upside Down. Former Liberals are now called Neo=Cons, what was the Reactionary Conservative Party has become one which supports the advancement of Democracy and Egalitarian Liberty abroad. The Former Radical Liberal Left now supports or trys to support Fascist Dictators in a futile attempt to achieve stability in a chaotic world.

Myself I have found myself in what in the past would be strange company.

My Political Heros today include, Ronald Reagon, Daniel Patrick Moynahan, William F Buckley, George Herbert Walker Bush, George Walker Bush and by the Great Harry has the World Turned Upside Down?

Christopher Hitchens.

I will admit Mr Hitchens would be horrified to be grouped together with some of the above figures and I will admit if you were to go back in the Past and tell my younger self that one day I would avidly read with approval the works of one of the most potent spokesmen for the Left and a Trotskyite, I would have told you that would be insane,

But today we live in an INSANE world and all other differences aside there is one defining concept that Christorpher Hitchens and I agree on TOTALLY and that is the immanent danger of the Jihadists.

So when, reading some of his works, I stumbled upon the following, what he wrote struck a chord of truth to me and I joined him and other strange bedfellows and signed this Petition and I encourage others of like mind to do the same.

Communities United Against Terror

Now I did not need much persuasion, none actually, but had I need it I think these words would have downt ehe trick.

"Why I Signed Christopher Hitchens"

Association with this statement and with many of its fellow-signatories involves two commitments. The first is the elementary duty of solidarity with true and authentic resistance movements within the Muslim world, such as the Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, who were fighting against Ba'athism and Talibanism (and the latent alliance between the two) long before any American or British government had woken up to the threat. It should go without saying that, though the suffering of their peoples was intense, neither Jalal Talabani nor Ahmed Shah Masoud ever considered letting off explosive devices at random in foreign capitals. I have my political and ideological differences with both groups, but these differences are between me and them, and are not mediated through acts of nihilistic murder.

My second commitment is equally elementary. The foreign policy of a democracy should be determined only at election times or by votes in Congress or Parliament. It is one hundred per cent unacceptable even to imply, let alone to assert, that a suicide-murderer or his apologists can by these means acquire the right to any say in how matters are decided.

Both of these observations, and indeed this very statement, would be redundant if it were not for the widespread cultural presence of a pseudo-Left, and an isolationist Right, both of whom have degenerated to the point where they regard jihadism as some form of "liberation theology". The old slogans are often the best, and "Death to Fascism" is life-affirming in these conditions

For those who think harrasing Vets and their families is something new.
Topic: Iraq War
From qando.net


Iraq Casualty's family booed at Texas vigil

Posted by McQ



I keep saying it and everyone keeps telling me I'm wrong.

Maybe I am, but there continue to be events which demonstrate I'm not. Events such as the parade in Washington where a young Iraq vet was called a 'baby-killer" and now this in Texas, which again says "the anti-war crowd is not pro-troops" no matter how many times they claim to be. It keeps creeping out into the light ... the true feelings of some of the anti-war crowd, and it seems damn familiar to me:

A candlelight vigil took place Wednesday night to remember U.S. war dead in Iraq during the week of the 1,000th casualty. One North Texas family, whose relative -- Chad Drake -- was killed outside Baghdad Monday, was among the mourners at Dallas City Hall Plaza.
The vigil, though, turned abrasive toward the family members, according to a family friend. The friend sent an e-mail message to NBC 5 News that described the treatment some vigil attendees directed at the family.

Drake's mother was "harassed and yelled at, booed and hissed, told her son died for nothing," the message read.

Drake's mother reportedly left the event in tears.


To those who did this to this poor family you're insensitive pigs who don't deserve to live in the country for which young Chad Drake died. They aren't worthy of the blood the young man shed so they could act like the asses they certainly are.

Its because of better men, like Chad, that they can revel in their smug arrogance and believe their way is so superior that they mock the sacrifice of a fine young American and his family.

There just aren't words vile enough to describe how much contempt I feel for those that did this. I hope they all rot in hell.

Veteran gets rude welcome on Bainbridge

Think about the Seattle area -- Bainbridge Island to be exact -- and you think scenic views and liberal-minded tolerance.


FOLLOW-UP
Read the latest update: An apology and -- it is hoped -- healing on Bainbridge.

At least the killer views are still there.

The bucolic island's deep reputation for civility got a gut check this week during the annual Grand Old Fourth of July celebration.

That's when Jason Gilson,(who was disabled in battle near Nasiriyah) a 23-year-old military veteran who served in Iraq, marched in the local event. He wore his medals with pride and carried a sign that said "Veterans for Bush."


Walking the parade route with his mom, younger siblings and politically conservative friends, Jason heard words from the crowd that felt like a thousand daggers to the heart.

"Baby killer!"

"Murderer!"

"Boooo!"

To understand why the reaction of strangers hurt so much, you must read what the young man had written in a letter from Iraq before he was disabled in an ambush:

"I really miss being in the states. Some of the American public have no idea how much freedom costs and who the people are that pay that awful price. I think sometimes people just see us as nameless and faceless and not really as humans. ... A good portion of us are actually scared that when we come home, for those of us who make it back, that there will be protesters waiting for us and that is scary."

On the Fourth, Jason faced his worst fear

It was such a public humiliation -- home front insult after battlefield injury
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Jason's mother, Tamar, says a female parade announcer locked eyes on her son who was walking behind a pro-Republican group called Women in Red, White and Blue. The group supports President Bush and the troops in the fight against terrorism.

According to Tamar, the female announcer sarcastically asked Jason: "And what exactly are you a veteran of?"

The perceived mocking, the mother adds, set off some people in the crowd, loosing a flood of negative comments, "like a wave... a mob-style degrading."