I didn’t bother to read the entirety of an endless article about a bad thing happening in Mexico.  No, I’m not talking about drug cartels or about Mexican citizens being slaughtered by guns sent over courtesy of a Democrat Department of Justice attempting to prove that guns hurt people.  I’m talking about plants that process old batteries, releasing dangerous toxins into the surrounding country side.  Bad thing, right?  But the big irony is that this bad thing happened because of environmental zealots here in the US:

The rising flow of batteries is a result of strict new Environmental Protection Agency standards on lead pollution, which make domestic recycling more difficult and expensive, but do not prohibit companies from exporting the work and the danger to countries where standards are low and enforcement is lax.

Even when we’re trying to be good, we’re evil.

Americans may be evil, but Nicholas Kristof wants us to know that the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t deserve its bad press, because, over dinner, a really nice 22-year-old girl assured him that it’s a peace-loving organization.  More than that, when he asked her about Israel, amongst other issues, she didn’t answer!  That proves that the Muslim Brotherhood is a force for good:

I asked skeptically about alcohol, peace with Israel, and the veil. Sondos, who wears a hijab, insisted that the Brotherhood wasn’t considering any changes in these areas and that its priority is simply jobs.

“Egyptians are now concerned about economic conditions,” she said. “They want to reform their economic system and to have jobs. They want to eliminate corruption.” Noting that alcohol supports the tourism industry, she added: “I don’t think any upcoming government will focus on banning anything.”

Apparently the charming young Sondos is a more reliable authority than the MB itself.  After all, who can forget the MB greatest hits, a list that includes this:

A senior cleric in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has declared that ordinary Egyptians are obligated to kill ‘Zionists’ whom they encounter.

This:

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which expects to win at least a plurality in Monday’s legislative elections, held a “kill the Jews” rally in Cairo Friday.

Thousands of supporters attended the pre-election rally at a mosque on the Muslim Sabbath, promising to “one day kill all the Jews” and wage war against Jerusalem’s “Judaization.”

And this, from a Muslim Brotherhood handbook:

“The Islamic Ummah [nation]… [is] the most exalted nation among men;…you are the masters of the world, even if your enemies desire your degradation…”

“Jihad and preparation towards Jihad are not only for the purpose of fending off assaults and attacks of Allah’s enemies against Muslims, but are also for the purpose of realizing the great task of establishing an Islamic state and strengthening the religion and spreading it around the world…

“…Jihad for Allah is not limited to the specific region of the Islamic countries, …and it shall continue to be raised, with the help of Allah, until every inch of the land of Islam will be liberated, the State of Islam will be established…

“Then comes the power of arms and weapons,… and this is the role of Jihad…, a religious public duty… incumbent upon the Islamic nation, and is a personal duty to fend off the infidels’ attack on the nation… (…)

The competition at the New York Times is always stiff, but I think that, today at least, Nicholas Kristof walks away with The Walter Duranty Award for most dishonest reporting to advance a political agenda antithetical to America, her values, and her allies.

American Thinker is a site I check regularly, at least twice a day.  It’s not just that the editors are kind enough to publish my work occasionally.  It’s because the articles that appear there routinely range from really good to out-of-the-park stupendous.

Today, there are two that fall in the latter category.  These are the kinds of articles that shouldn’t just be read, but that should be emailed to everyone you know.  Indeed, the one regarding socialism should be required reading in every American classroom.  So, without further ado, please, please, please read and discuss and forward:

What’s Wrong with Socialism, by Joe Herring

and

It Isn’t Political Correctness, It’s Shariah, by Pamela Geller

UPDATE:  Add military analyst Steve Schippert’s All the King’s Horses (about Afghanistan) to the list of things that will widen your horizons today.

Didn’t Obama bow to the king?

A Saudi court on Saturday convicted a female journalist for her involvement in a TV show, in which a Saudi man publicly talked about sex, and sentenced her to 60 lashes.

Rozanna al-Yami is believed to be the first Saudi woman journalist to be given such a punishment. The charges against her included involvement in the preparation of the program and advertising the segment on the Internet.

Abdul-Rahman al-Hazza, the spokesman of the Ministry of Culture and Information, told The Associated Press he had no details of the sentencing and could not comment on it.

In the program, which aired in July on the Lebanese LBC satellite channel, Mazen Abdul-Jawad appears to describe an active sex life and shows sex toys that were blurred by the station. The same court sentenced Abdul-Jawad earlier this month to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes.

There is no bliss inherent in the ignorance displayed by one judge in England:

A judge lambasted a rapist for claiming his victim was a liar – then commended him for becoming a muslim.

Judge Anthony Goldstaub QC sentenced Stuart Wood for seven years for the attack, then told him: ‘You have turned to Islam and this promises well for your future, particularly as you are now an adherent of a religion which respects women and self-discipline.’

Apparently Goldstaub has never heard of honor killings, burkhas, systematic rapes of non-Muslim women, the whole Saudi/Taliban package (unveiled girls being forced to die in burning buildings, chronic house arrest, being beaten on the street for showing any flesh), etc.  To characterize Islam as a religion that respects women, when 90% of Islam’s energy is directed to the subjugation of women is such a travesty that it defies words.  It’s impossible to tell if the judge was motivated by ignorance or malice in making that kind of statement.

I’ll close this short post with a quote from my cousin, the prison chaplain, with his take on prison conversions to Islam:

It is not a contradiction to be a Muslim and a murderer, even a mass murderer. That is one reason why criminals “convert” to Islam in prison. They don’t convert at all; they similarly remain the angry judgmental vicious beings they always have been. They simply add “religious” diatribes to their personal invective. Islam does not inspire a crisis of conscience, just inspirations to outrage.

A few days ago, I wrote a post examining why I believe Islam is not a religion like other religions, so that pluralist societies should view it with a distrust they do not extend to other religions.  Daniel Pipes also tackles that issue.  I’ll give you the first and last paragraphs of his article.  You have to be sure to read the stuff in the middle:

Those of us who argue against Shari’a are sometimes asked why Islamic law poses a problem when modern Western societies long ago accommodated Halakha, or Jewish law.

The answer is easy: a fundamental difference separates the two. Islam is a missionizing religion, Judaism is not. Islamists aspire to apply Islamic law to everyone, while observant Jews seek only themselves to live by Jewish law.

[snip]

Returning to pork: both Islam and Judaism abominate the flesh of pigs, so this prohibition offers a direct and revealing comparison of the two religions. Simply put, Jews accept that non-Jews eat pork but Muslims take offense and try to impede pork consumption. That, in brief, explains why Western accommodations to Halakha have no relevance for dealing with Shari’a. And why the Shari’a as public policy must be opposed.

Movie review one:

The movie is a viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise, full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat, but it blows a hole in the condescending assumption that such effects are just empty spectacle or mindless noise.

[snip]

Ms. Bigelow, practicing a kind of hyperbolic realism, distills the psychological essence and moral complications of modern warfare into a series of brilliant, agonizing set pieces.

[snip]

It has intense, horrific violence and appropriately profane reactions to the prospect of same.

Let me sum that up: This is an incredibly violent movie, with really gross stuff, but we love it.

Movie review two:

[This movie] thoroughly blurs the line between high-minded outrage and lurid torture-porn.

[snip]

Not since “The Passion of the Christ” has a film depicted a public execution in such graphic detail. In the approximately 20 minutes during which the killing unfolds, the camera repeatedly returns to study the battered face and body of the title character (Mozhan Marno) as she is stoned to death.

[snip]

In one of the film’s sickeningly exploitative touches, Ali, wearing a triumphal grin, examines his wife’s crumpled, blood-drenched body to make sure she is dead and discovers signs of life in a rolled-up eye. The stoning is promptly resumed.

[snip]

Mr. Negahban’s Ali, who resembles a younger, bearded Philip Roth, suggests an Islamic fundamentalist equivalent of a Nazi anti-Semitic caricature. With his malevolent smirk and eyes aflame with arrogance and hatred, he is as satanic as any horror-movie apparition.

[snip]

As “The Passion of the Christ” showed, the stimulation of blood lust in the guise of moral righteousness has its appeal.

Again, let me sum things up: This is an incredibly violent movie, with really gross stuff, and we were deeply offended.

As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, the second movie is The Stoning of Soraya M. It depicts true events in an Iranian village that is subject to the worst kind of sharia law, misogyny, and power run amok.  The movie does not shy away from showing what it looks like for someone to be stoned to death, nor the evil that motivates that kind of action.  And lest you think the violence is exaggerated, just think of the beheading tapes the jihadis like to release, in which they are in an ecstasy of bloodlust.  Bottom line:  showing the true horror of a religious, misogynistic act is really tacky, and it’s downright cruel to force New York Times reviewers to have to watch it.

The first movie may not be one you’ve heard of.  It’s called The Hurt Locker — and is a critic’s pick.  Set during 2004 in Iraq, it shows a squad dedicated to disarming (or blowing up) IEDs.  The only really problem, in the critic’s eyes, is that the film isn’t more antiwar.  Thus, he lauds the fact that “you will . . . be thinking” but complains that the film did not go further:

[You will . . . be thinking] Not necessarily about the causes and consequences of the Iraq war, mind you. The filmmakers’ insistence on zooming in on and staying close to the moment-to-moment experiences of soldiers in the field is admirable in its way but a little evasive as well.

It is in this context that the reviewer thinks all that bloody, graphic, horrifying violence is just about the most thrilling thing he’s seen in, God, who knows how long.  Bottom line:  showing American military people and Iraqi citizens being blown up in graphic detail is incredibly exciting, because it reminds us that Bush lied and people died.

As I said, all violence is equal, but some violence is definitely more exciting and rewarding than others.

Charles, at LGF, is concerned that the “extreme right white supremacist” (his phrase) BNP party in England is gaining political ground.  If you check out the party’s blog, though, racial purity a la the Nazis or the KKK is not part of the party’s platform.  As far as I can tell, it wants to close Britain’s open borders, back off from European union control, and clamp down on out-of-control multiculturalism.  All of these seem like reasonable positions.  After all, under current British policies, traditional Britain is truly vanishing.  The place is ground zero for antisemitism, its Muslim influx is unending, Britain is ceding all political control to the EU, and the nation is effectively committing “we hate ourselves” suicide.  Wanting to turn back that tide doesn’t strike me as being the same as being Neo-Nazis:  desiring a totalitarian state dedicated to world domination and the eradication and enslavement of all inferior races.

Charles’ fight with the European far right is totally valid insofar as he is fighting the true neo-Nazis.  The problem seems to me to be the Orwellian one, with the degradation of language pushing people into positions that do not match the facts on the ground.

You see, thanks to the Left, words no longer mean what they used to mean, but the change is often so gradual, we don’t realize it. (That happens without politics, too, with the very old Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane in London morphing into the word “bedlam.”)

Because the Left consciously controls language (“man caused disasters” anyone?), things can get confusing. The easiest example is the way in which Nazis are defined. As their full name establishes (“National SOCIALISTS”), the Nazis were a socialist (i.e., Leftist) political organization. Nowadays, however, they are routinely referred to on the Left as “rightist” so as to conflate them with the Left’s political enemies. In fact, like the Left, they were statists. Unlike the average Lefty, however, they added to their garden-variety belief in state control a poisonous measure of racial hatred.

Linguistically, things are very confusing in Europe, where even the “rightist” political parties (say, the Tories) are to the Left of the American middle. Add to that the fact that, in Europe, there are both genuine neo-Nazis, who want to replicate the Nazis vision of racial purity, AND are concerned moderates who don’t like the political control being ceded to multicultural pro-Islamists, and you’ve got word soup.

For that reason, it would be useful if people who use the phrase “far right” with regard to European politics would define that term.  Technically, “far right,” if we’re measuring it against “far left,” simply means less government, not more. After all, if Marxist-style Leftism is the party that seeks total government control, than its opposite — “Rightism” — must be veering into pure anarchy, without any government control at all. That’s clearly not what Charles means when he speaks of the Right, though.

I think that, by saying “far right,” Charles is stating that the BNP party is racist, a la the Nazis or the KKK (and with visions of lynchings and ovens dancing in its political brain).  The website, however, indicates that it is only “racist” as the Left would define it, meaning anyone who doesn’t like Obama or is concerned about sharia.

Given the abuse language undergoes daily, the way in which words are folded, spindled and mutilated in ways that take them in the opposite direction from their original meanings, it’s entire possible that a lot of the intellectual fights on the conservative side arise because people THINK they mean the same thing, but they actually don’t. As Dennis Prager says, “I prefer clarity to agreement,” and as I’ve noted listening to his show, clarity often brings agreement.

I loath the stench of truly racists politics (e.g., KKK and Adolf worship blended with a desire to have a strong government making these deadly dreams a reality). However, I do think there needs to be a political home for Europeans who are worried about the Islamification of their nations. And as long as governments in Europe hew Left (even those that are called right), I suspect that the governments and their media outlets are going to tar all anti-Sharia people with the same ugly “far Right” brush.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

UPDATE:  Two comments I want to bring up to the post itself:

1. Poosh

   Hi, I’m a British euroasian (halfbreed!!!!!!!!) and I just wanted to inform you of how badly wrong this post is in regard directly to the BNP. Firstly a racist party that actually wants seats in the UK is NOT going to blurt out its true motives on its public website ffs! The BNP are well known here to be VERY racist and Charles is perfectly right (for once) to be concerned about this. They are not against multi-culturalism, they are against non-whites. It is actually illegal for you to join the police force here in the UK if you are a member of the BNP (I don’t agree with this in principle but it is a disgusting thought that a member of the BNP could be in the police force all the same). There have been hidden-camera footage revealed as well displaying the party’s racism and so forth. It is WELL KNOWN in britan that this is a NAZI party.

   The are, like the Nazi Party however, NOT RIGHT WING. They are left wing – socialists. You need read their manifesto to see them as socialists. The BNP is made up of mostly working class chumps who are looking for a scape goat due to their lowly lott in life – and non-whites are there main scape-goat. I could not believe I was reading the above post, sorry. The BNP’s website is NOT somewhere to see their true colours – as if they’d broadcast their racist doctrines on it! lol. It would only take you mere minutes to see the BNP’s true colours. For example the BNP is a WHITES-ONLY party ffs.

2. Bookworm

   Thank you, Poosh. That’s precisely the type of information I’m seeking. That leaves a question open, though: Where the heck are moderate Europeans and British supposed to go to challenge unlimited immigration (as opposed to more controlled immigration); unbridled political correctness (as opposed to respect for others); the handing over of British sovereignty to the EU; and all the other stuff moderates are reasonable to oppose? The major political parties are joined together in a race to the bottom, and the moderates have nothing to hold onto. That had better change quickly, or the moderates will become radicalized and swell the ranks of the BNP and other racist parties.

UPDATE II: From Mike Devx, who actually did the research:

Well, I downloaded the BNP’s Constitution.  If you want to take a look it’s at the link below on their site.  It’s formatted to be assembled as a booklet, so you have to jump around from page to page on the web…

http://www.bnp.org.uk/Constitution%209th%20Ed%20Sep%202005.pdf

Section 2 – Membership – is clearly racial.  ’Nuff said, for me.  I’ve got no use for a political party that restricts its membership based on race solely to Caucasians of variously described “British descent”.

Seeking to preserve culture is one thing.  You can recognize that your beloved culture is disappearing and resolve to fight to retain it.  That’s legitimate, especially when all of your current political leadership in power is doing nothing, at best, to preserve it.  But these guys have clearly defined a racial component within their own Constitution by allowing only native Caucasian British to be members of the party.

Their activities and statements ceased to be overtly racist at about 2001, it appears.  Having seen the Stealth Candidate Obama succeed at his own deception of an entire country – well, enough of a deception to fool 53% of the people – it’s entirely possible that the BNP remains as virulently racist as their relatively distant past would indicate.

I can’t say I agree with Poosh’s virulent hatred of the <b>current</b> BNP.  Speaking for myself, though, I’ve seen enough to indicate that I would never associate myself with them in any form whatsoever.

Hopefully the BNP is not the only organized party in Great Britain to actively promote and value their traditional culture and values.  If so… then where else are the British people to turn?  They certainly won’t be willing to simply surrender…

That’s good enough for me too.  But I’ll go back to my original point, which is that the mainstream political parties have closed the doors on moderate Brits who are opposed to the fundamental change in the nature of English, from a Christian country tied to traditional British values, to a multiculturalist society with a rapidly growing, and increasingly vocal and powerful, extreme Islamist population.  These people are going to flock to the BNP, despite its ugly racist ideology, because it’s the only game in town.

In an earlier post, I directed your attention to the incredibly disturbing footage of Pakistani village authorities brutally whipping a teenage girl before a throng of men, because she violated Sharia norms by being seen in public with her father in law.  The footage is disturbing on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that the whole spectacle has a pornographic smell to it, one that makes clear how much of Sharia law is driven by Muslims’ deep fear of female sexuality — but that’s a rumination for another day.

What I want to talk about is whether this could ever happen here.  Certainly Muslims want it to happen here.  Their oft stated goal is a Sharia-compliant world, with every nation having as its one and only law Sharia law.  Given this goal, and given the Islamists’ willingness to steal planes and acquire bombs and lust after anthrax, it’s more than just a hypothetical possibility.

But I don’t think we need to worry right now about Sharia appearing in the West courtesy of a mushroom shaped cloud or virulent bacteria.  The more immediate concern is the fact that, through political correctness, the Western world is already reading itself to deal with creeping sharia law.

Leading the way, as always, is England, which is allowing sharia courts, even though there is every indication that this will trap Muslim women in a British sharia hell; routinely banning pigs from public discourse (Oh Piglet, Piglet, wherefore art though Piglet?); slavishly redesigning innocuous packaging to avoid ruffling Muslim sensibilities (ice cream, anybody?); protecting men from being charged with dangerous traffic violations so they can speed from one wife to another; etc.  The list is endless.

In America, we periodically hear stories about accommodations for Muslims who don’t want to drive people carrying alcohol (as if it could leap out of the bottle spontaneously and attack the driver); about Muslims refusing to share public university prayer spaces; about Muslims demanding special foot baths at public universities (and weren’t those high tech “required” foot baths a popular item in the vast Saudi Arabian desert in the 7th Century); or about Muslim women insisting that their driver’s license show nothing more than their eyes, rather than conceding that, if they want to practice the extreme Islamic tradition of a hijab, maybe driving is not an option.

On the whole, we in America are a solicitous people and, with our pluralist religious history, we’re willing to make reasonable accommodations.  Generally, we like it that people are able to live religious lives — as long as they don’t impinge on our own lives.  What’s different about the Muslim demands is the impingement that goes with them — you may not drive in our publicly licensed taxis unless you change your behavior; you may not worship in this public space unless you worship our way; you must abandon the commonly accepted public safety feature of a photo ID card so our women can be anonymous; and so on and so forth.

Each of these Islamic incursions on the public space has resulted in a hoo-ha (otherwise we wouldn’t know about them), and most, when they become known, have been reversed.  The fact remains, however, that there cumulative effect from these sharia attacks on our culture that is akin to water dripping on rock.  One drop has no effect.  Two drops, no effect.  A thousand drops, no effect.  But you get enough drops and the shape of the rock — in this case, the shape of the American body social and politic — begins to change and to conform to the water’s ceaseless demands.

I have an Irish friend who firmly believes that America’s deep rooted sense of liberty cannot be so easily drip-dropped away, whether the drops fall from the Sharia cadre or from the statists in the Obama administration.  He believes that a deep, long-lived history focused on individualism and independence will rebel.  I wonder.

I’d like to think that, if I were that teenage girl about to get flogged, I’d fight and fight and fight.  I’d be hurt anyway, but at least I wouldn’t just yield to barbarity.  But even if I fought, even if I waved the flag of independence, and humanism, and freedom, would it matter if everyone stood around me and stared, as those men in the crowd watching the beating stand and stare.  I’d be willing to bet that, in that crowd, many were true believers, and many were men whose stomachs churned at the horror, but who said nothing, because they were trained to accept. Whatever their reason, they stood and they stared.

In this regard, it’s worth noting that, when Hitler came to power in 1933, he did so with just barely more than 50% of the popular vote.  There was never a time when the majority of Germans were members of the Nazi party.  For most Germans, right through the end of the War, their crime wasn’t active complicity with Nazi atrocities, it was passive complicity.  From a mixture of fear and brain washing, they just went along.

As I said, my Irish friend thinks Americans won’t just go along.  But when I look at what passes for education in our public schools, I’m very worried that we’re raising a generation that will be so compliant and so lacking in a non-relativistic sense of right and wrong that, first, they’ll allow creeping sharia to become dominant sharia (so un-PC to object) and, second, once it’s dominant they, through a mixture of fear and braining washing, will just go along.  And they too will stand their silently and watch when one of their school mates is flogged bloody or hanged or decapitated for having violated sharia norms.

The 2010 election matters.  It matters not just because I don’t like Obama’s economic and social policies.  It also matters because it is the last election in which Americans will have a chance to renew their sense of individualism and liberalism.  You see, while Obama thinks he’s paving the way for a wonderful socialist state, I think he’s unwittingly grooming the population to be the passive recipients of law laid down by true believers who make Obama and his progressives look like impotent little children.

UPDATE:  I was spurred to write the above post because of the video I watched showing the girl getting beaten.  Turns out, though, that creeping sharia is on other people’s minds — not how we might respond to the more extreme demands, but how we are responding to the “reasonable” demands.

Reading this, it makes you think that if, God forbid, Iran truly gets the bomb (although I place faith in Israel to prevent that), those at the epicenter might be the lucky ones:

An Iranian-American journalist — held in Tehran in solitary confinement now for 47 days — has reportedly been broken by Iranian prison brutality. A blogger whose crime was to have “insulted” the Supreme Leader, is reported to have died in prison. Iran recently televised the government blinding of a man by means of sulfuric acid poured on the eyes. Hangings continue, making Iran a leader in the number of yearly executions carried out, including the gruesome sub-category of child executions.

If I had to give one single reason for drilling the hell out of whatever energy resources America has to offer, it would be to de-fund the medieval sharia system that thrives in Saudi Arabia.  Right now, Egypt is in an uproar because a 53-year old Egyptian physician convicted of malpractice against one of the innumerable members of the Saudi royal family has been sentenced to receive 1,500 lashes.  (That’s not a typo:  1,500.)

That Saudi Arabia is the worst kind of sadistic, misogynistic, anti-Christian, antisemitic, backwards sharia state is a tragedy for its citizens.  That we continue to fund it (to the tune of billions of dollars) by refusing to use our own energy resources is practically a criminal act on our part.