All Over Again

History repeats.  It's happening all over again.

The White House says that we need a political solution.  The world is on fire.  The same brutal barbarians that have swarmed it repeatedly since the 7th century are slaughtering their way across the Middle East and Africa, and infiltrating the rest of the world, leaving a blood trail in Europe and America.  A trail that's only going to get bloodier. And we have no Roland, no Richard Lionheart, no Jan Sobieski, no Charles Martel.

Where jihad goes, it slaughters.  Right now what they are showing us are only the images of adults.  Horrific, but adults.

But where jihadists go, they torture, crucify, rape, and murder.  Men, women, children. 

The Yazidi of Iraq cry out: first their men are executed, then the women and children are sold into slavery.  Slavery, Jesse Jackson.  Slavery, Al Sharpton.  Slavery, Barack Obama.  First, though, the girl children are raped.  Eight years old, nine years old.  Eight. Years. Old.  In keeping with islam's founder's tradition, I guess.

For those who have trouble relating, as many must since they are happy to let little brown people take care of problems like drilling for oil rather than take responsibility for it on our own land, this is what an eight year old looks like:

Giver her brown eyes and dark hair.  Make her one of the little brown people.  That's who they are raping.

Now, I realize that things are a little different for women in the U.S. It's clear that the women of the U.S. believe that women are so emotion-driven, so unable to keep their legs from flopping open at the drop of a pair of pants, that they have to demand to be provided with free contraception.  And that that is The Most Important Thing In The World. If they didn't believe that they wouldn't be using the ACA to bludgeon businesses like Hobby Lobby or religious organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor.  But other cultures are different.  Maybe the women and children taken by the jihadis believe that their bodies are not something to be thrown away.  And maybe American women should think about that as they slavishly support a guy who is watching a repeat of the 30s and says that it can be handled with a political solution.  Between rounds of golf. And selfies.

And oh, by the way, Chris Cuomo, you are a moron.  As is anybody who agrees with you.  Because if our rights come from the government then the Holocaust was justified.  The Reich was the government.  In your world, the Reich was the source of rights for its people. 

So. What's YOUR Plan?

Most of us are scattered hither and yon.  Families no longer live together.  And communities aren't what they once were.  So you and I have to take care of ourselves.  BUT, should something happen and we DO have families, no matter how far flung, what's the plan?

I'm not horribly worried about Russia or China from a military stand-point.  Yes, they can and will do harm to us economically but they aren't horribly inclined to dump large megaton bombs on us.  At lease not right now.  Our warfare with them is different.  But Iran, on the other hand...

The leaders of Iran are of a type of muslim that believes that they need to speed up the Apocalypse.  I can never remember the details, but in their view it requires the world being in conflagration before the Mahdi will come.  Or some such thing.  The critical thing is that they believe that seeding death and destruction in order to hasten that day is OK- dokey.  And what better way to do so than a well-placed nuke?  A lot of Americans don't understand - they don't hate us because we are America, they don't hate us because of our music, or our clothes, or because of our wealth. They hate us just because we are not them.  And they are perfectly happy with lighting up anybody who is not them.  Do a search on "Jordan" and "pilot" and "fire" if you don't think that's true.  It's the same sort of craziness, the same sort of islam that rules Iran.

So.  We have a muslim president.  I don't care what he says.  He's muslim.  He has slipped twice and said so.  This last time George StepOnAllOfUs wasn't there to correct him when he referred to his muslim faith.  And even if he hadn't said so his behavior declares it clearly.  I really wouldn't care, except he's made clear that he hates the Constitution and America.  I'd vote for the current king of Jordan if I thought he really meant the whole "uphold the Constitution" part in the oath of office.  But Obama has made clear that the Constitution is no more than toilet paper to him.   And his actions clearly say that he is a sympathizer with the most extreme of muslims.  He will not stop his fellow muslims in Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.  If pushed, he will surrender the whole damned country to them rather than oppose his fellow islamic whack jobs.

Which means that sometime in the next few years, if there isn't a radical change in policy, an ICBM with Arabic writing and a nuclear warhead on it is going to land on at least one major east coast city.  Boston, New York, Baltimore, D.C. 

The first thing to go down will be communications.  Our cell phones and computers.  Betcha.  So what's the plan?  Do you have an "if this, then that" plan with your far-flung family?  If this we'll hunker down but if that we'll bug out to x?  If communications aren't up in a week I'll meet you here or there?

I have a place in mind that I need to talk to a cousin about.  But I also need to make sure the family understands certain time frames, certain places, certain routes.  Because the whole world may get blacked out for us at some time and we need to know how we are going to reconnect in that blackness.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

I haven't been very active out here in the blogosphere for several reasons.  One is that the lead up to my retirement was very busy, and then life got even busier after.  The whole traveling thing - I was home a total of 7 days during December.  Then I came home with the flu and ended up back in bed for a while.  That was followed by a major cleaning effort - I'm not sure how it happened, since I was either gone or on the sofa, but my house was filthy.  I've only managed to get through the upstairs because I wanted to deal with the laundry room downstairs and that required that I drag everything out of the laundry room into the downstairs in order to work. I figured the project would take about a half a day.  That was before I actually dragged stuff away from one wall and found three major mouse areas.  Bleh.  Two full days, two trips to Home Depot, concrete sheet rock, steel wool, and a can of a type of pest-deterrent Great Stuff insulating spray later, I'm finally done.  I need to more fully deal with the other side of that wall, which is the garage side, but I'll give that a day or two before I get serious with it.  I've got stuff to do for church today and my sore-ish muscles need a rest.

But the main reason is that there's nothing new to write, news-wise.  People are still being profoundly stupid about Islam, thinking that if they make nice then the murder and destruction will stop.  No - this is just a continuation of the 7th century, the 8th century, the 9th century, and on and on and on through more than a millennium.  This is an invasion, just as it was throughout all the centuries that have gone.  Our "leaders" speak about "understanding" them, and show that they DON'T actually understand them.  Charles the Hammer understood them.  No matter what you think of his methods of dealing with the problem, Vlad the Impaler understood them.  Popes of the past understood them and the danger they pose perfectly - hence the Crusades. They don't hate us because they are poorer, or because of our music or movies, or because of the way we dress.  They hate us because we are not them, PERIOD.

And people are still being profoundly hypocritical about Islam.  Forget Duke University and its idiotic broadcasting of the daily Muslim call to prayer - it's a college and colleges are cesspits of liberal fairy dust.  But it came out yesterday courtesy of a Baltimore radio station that a MD high school has been allowing Muslim students to observe their regular daily prayer times in the auditorium, chaperoned by a teacher.  Yet a child can't read the Bible during their free time on school property, and I would bet the paycheck I once had that if a Catholic student requested to be excused in order to pray the Divine Office at its appointed times that same school would deny the request based on separation of church and state.

And a lot of the same media that thought this was fine...

Are running away from showing this...

But people think "radical Christianity" is a problem.  No, actually, the problem is that a vacuum has to be filled, and there isn't ENOUGH radical Christianity anymore to block evil from filling that vacuum.

And we still need more gun control.  Liam Neeson, who makes his living by on-screen gun mayhem, says so.  Because bad-guys obey gun laws.   From the January 13th edition of our local newspaper (name and address changed to protect the innocent):

A Convicted Felon, 35, of A Street Near PH's House, was arrested Saturday on one felony count of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and one misdemeanor count of possession of a controlled substance after police found several firearms and Suboxone in his residence.

Get that?  A convicted felon, who by law is not allowed to have guns, had a gun anyway.  Because criminals obey laws.

But being killed by a bad guy is OK.  Or at least better than defending yourself with a firearm. Mississippi Rebel has a blogpost about a delivery-woman who defended herself with a firearm when attacked and may lose her job for doing so. The police say she was quite correct in her actions, but it's against company policy for her to carry, so, too bad.  Just lay down and die, girly.

Maybe the environment really has been so contaminated that brain damage is now wide-spread.  Because it's the same stupid over and over and over again.    Wash, rinse, repeat.

Because Bad News Travels Faster And Further Than Good

I know that I don't have a ton of readers, but I thought I'd throw this out here just in case it can help a radio station I'm fond of.

I stream WCBM out of Baltimore while I'm working. I like the morning commentators and the staff.  Among other things, they are very pro-Israel and very hard on radical Islam.  This brings them to the attention of CAIR occasionally.  Recently, Nino posted a commentary on Islam at the WCBM website that resulted in one of CAIR's protest letters.  Unfortunately, it got out in the blogosphere that CAIR's pressure caused them to take the piece down.  This surprised me - they've not buckled to CAIR pressure before.  Turns out that, indeed, it's not true.  Here is the station's response to the accusation:

  Recently, Talk Radio WCBM reposted an article on our station website, www.wcbm.com by Audrey Russo. The article was entitled"Islam: The Only Religion That Tells Everyone On EARTH What To Do". Although WCBM was contacted by a local group and asked to remove the article, we did not comply with that request. Instead, all articles posted on wcbm.com expire after 48 hours and are not archived. WCBM believes in freedom of speech and as a talk radio station, we welcome dialogue and opinions from all perspectives.

 

Myth and History

The Norway massacre was a convenient moment for anti-Christians.  They were able to supplement their endless repetition of "Look at Timothy McVeigh" with "Look at Anders Breivik".  Since most of the media feels no need to actually report information, this was a boon to the politically correct "Muslim all good, Christian all bad" ideologues.  And since there are a great many people whose approach to issues is to repeat a mantra that makes them feel good, anti-Christian acolytes took up the chant,  unwilling to recognize that Anders Breivik had rejected Christianity just as Timothy McVeigh had, both living their lives with the cultural trappings but rejecting the actual teachings of the religion.  Like the Unabomber, Breivik left a manifesto, one that shows an increasingly twisted and violent person who had planned attacks for more than a decade.

It's interesting that those who call Christianity a myth are themselves very quick to believe in myths and urban legends concerning Christianity. The myth of the Crusades is a particularly dangerous one, because it conveniently allows the dodging of a history that is very relevant to the world today.   We've been here before.  Only chronological myopia can turn that statement into anti-Muslim rhetoric. Rather, it's a recognition of the fact that many places in the world are already involved in the repeat of a dangerous history - a history as recent as 1699.

The myth of the Crusades as an unwarranted attack on innocent Muslims in the Holy Land is only about a hundred years old and is a product of the last gasps of an Ottoman Empire desperate to gain support.  The armies of Islam had roared out of Arabia and conquered Jerusalem in 638 AD, northern Africa by 700, Spain in 711.  Charles "The Hammer" Martel blocked the Islamic advance at Tours and Poitier in 732.  But part of Europe and much of the Middle East was now under Islamic rule, including Jerusalem.  By 1027, the Eastern emperor's negotiations with the Fatimid rulers of Jerusalem had brought relief to the Christians there, and pilgrimages had resumed.  But then came the Seljuk Turks, with conquest in the name of Allah, not co-existence, as their goal.  Christian communities were again threatened and besieged.  And Muslim armies were once again driving for Christian Constantinople, the center of the Eastern Empire.  Armenia was overrun; the Emperor's forces crushed at Manzikert. Only manipulation of Islamic disunity allowed the Emperor to fend off full collapse of the Eastern Empire and he appealed to the Pope for help.  In 1095 the Pope responded with a call for a Crusade to liberate Jerusalem and bring relief to the Christians there.

The Pope and the Eastern Emperor knew that if Constantinople fell to the Seljuks the victories of Charles Martel would be meaningless and Europe would be open to Islamic conquerors.  And so it proved once Constantinople fell in the fifteenth century.  By the time the Ottoman armies were stopped in 1699 they had conquered most of Eastern Europe.  To put that year in some historical perspective, by 1699 Jamestown, VA, had been in existence for 92 years, Plymouth, MA, for 70, and Benjamin Franklin would be born in less than 7 years.

For two years the Crusaders fought their way to Jerusalem.  The army was of its time - a time when resistance brought slaughter and sack.  The Papal Legate had restrained them for two years, but he died just before they reached Jerusalem.  Without him, Jerusalem fell brutally.  And brutality in war was tit for tat.

Saladin (c. 1138 - 1193) was known as "The Merciful" because he offered those he conquered the choice of conversion or slavery rather than the usual choice of conversion or death.  But he took the head of Raymond of Chatillon himself after the Battle of Hattin in 1187.

That evil was done in the name of Christianity during the Crusades is inarguable.  But the Crusades began as a response to Islamic invasion and to free Christians who were suffering under Muslim dominion.  It was not Christianity that rose up and invaded non-Christian lands, but rather an aggressive form of Islam that rose up and invaded non-Islamic lands.

The Crusader cry of "Deus volt!" may no longer be heard on a battlefield, but the cry of "Allahu akbar!" is once again reverberating around the world as Islam becomes an aggressive force in a nuclear age.  Ignoring that is perilous and an invitation to a repeat of history.

Why?

I'm in a "why?" mood today:

Why do I have to balance my personal budget but the entity that has fiducial responsibility for a goodly chunk of my money doesn't?

Why did it take longer for police than for the press to get to Utoeya Island ?

Why is it always my side that has to compromise?

Why do they keep neglecting to mention the Islamic connections of attackers but label a flaming nut case a conservative Christian right-winger?  Aren't labels supposed to be a a no-no?

Why is what I say divisive but what the politically correct say just an opinion?

Why are guns dangerous but not being able to protect oneself not?

Why do people keep invoking the Crusades as an example of aggressive Christianity when it was in reality an attempt to block the spread of a branch of Islam that was bent on conquering Europe -  and nearly did.

Why are women supposed to support other women but the instant a strong woman like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman stick their heads up it's open season on them?

Why is the national media not required to actually do any research? (see Murphy's Law post concerning Contessa Brewer, who is a perfect example)