The Future

The Federal and state governments will likely go broke, and people who depended on government benefits will feel a lot of hurt. Social Security will be long gone. Big liberal states like California will be hardest hit. Infrastructures will suffer and things like serviceable roads, law enforcement, and emergency services will deteriorate.

Depending on how successful Obama is in his effort to wreck our economy in general and our medical system in particular, doctors and hospitals will likely be few and far between.

Over the past couple of generations, a lot of worthless paper has changed hands because (1) loans were given to people who didn't have the means to repay them; and (2) politicians made promises that they didn't have the means to pay for.

The government and its agencies will grow hungry and mean - like any other predatory animal - and will increasingly focus their dwindling resources on functions that generate revenue. This means finding ever more creative ways to expropriate citizens of their money and belongings. So we can expect to see increases in everything from petty robberies such as parking tickets to major hauls like seizures of cars, homes, and businesses on the pretext that they were used for "drug trafficking".

End result is that survival strategies are going to go back to being what they've always been. Be honest, courteous, hardworking, competent, and educated, and associate with other people who are. Take care of those close to you and be ready to defend them - and yourself.

Syrian Jihadis Behead Catholic Priest

Jihadists in Syria kidnapped a Catholic priest in the Idlib area and beheaded him as scores of onlookers, including children, cheered and recorded the event on their cell phones. The Vatican reported last week that the priest was captured by fighters "linked" to the Al Nusrah Front for the People in the Levant, al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria.

The Vatican confirmed that Father François Murad was killed on June 23 after jihadists affiliated with the Al Nusrah Front overran his monastery in Gassanieh, a town in the countryside in the northern province of Idlib.

"According to local sources, the monastery where Fr. Murad was staying was attacked by militants linked to the jihadi group Jabhat al Nusrah [the Al Nusrah Front]," said the Fides News Agency, the Vatican's official media outlet. ...

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Lee Smith to Syrian Oppo: Why Americans Aren't In A Hurry to Help You

Lee Smith at Now:

It’s true that, on the other hand, there is some bipartisan backing for your cause, but the reality is that arming your sons, husbands, and brothers is not popular with the American public, neither with the right, nor the left. Americans are tired of the Middle East, frustrated by it – also, frankly, we’re angry.

Over the last decade, the United States has brought down or helped to bring down four Arab dictators, and with little to show for it. For spending trillions of dollars to topple Saddam, you’d think that instead of conspiracy theories imputing the worst motives to us, we might have earned some gratitude in the region. Gratitude at least for the sacrifices made by our family and friends in uniform, the thousands dead, the tens of thousands wounded, so that Iraqis can vote in free and fair elections and live without fear of being dragged off by Saddam’s security forces to be tortured, raped, and murdered.

We also helped bring down Qaddafi, which didn’t stop Libyan Islamists from killing our ambassador there and three other Americans. ...

Read the rest at the link.

The World Today

Before Google Reader vanishes from cyberspace, here are a few recent items from the feeds:

Massive protests in Egypt against Morsi. 'Huge protests calling for the resignation of Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi and early presidential elections are taking place in the capital, Cairo, and other cities' on the anniversary of Morsi's rise to power. 'The protesters' goal again is to unseat a president, this time their first freely elected leader, the Islamist ....' PowerLine sees a religious/secular struggle. More at Arutz Sheva.

The US Park Police are missing a lot of guns. Maybe the Canadian Mounties can find 'em?

Life in post-tinfoil-hat reality.

Caroline Glick on Obama's foreign policy. Jonathan Spyer on Qatar.

Chicago Tribune calls for special prosecutor in the IRS scandal. And here in San Francisco, BART looks ready to go on strike.

Priorities

Boston Police Exercise Featuring Right-Wing Terrorists With Backpack Bombs Disrupted By Real Muslim Terrorists With Backpack Bombs:

The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits.

Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be a metal skull wearing an Uncle Sam hat and a furious expression, according to a copy of the plans obtained by the Boston Globe. ...

Flashback: "Police Go Undercover to Thwart Protesters Against Globalization"

Cheerios

I'm sharing this just because it's Friday.
Oh wait, it's Thursday? Then I'm sharing it just because.

習近平去死

Harry's Place on Edward Snowden's Hong Kong hypocrisy:

... [Snowden] said that he chose Hong Kong because the city has “a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent”.

Really? Really? When Hong Kong is overseen by China??

Global Voices reported just over seven weeks ago:

Hong Kong netizens are outraged by the abuse of police force in the arrest of a 46-year-old man for writing “Go to Hell, Xi Jinping” (習近平去死) on the stairwell of a residential building in Hong Kong’s Ma On Shan district. Xi Jinping is the President of China. ...

We, the People

There was a time in America when "the People" were a force to be reckoned with.

Now, the connotation is rather different:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/2448255679001/people-staff-forgets-obamas-speech/#

"People!" Spoken twice, in a peremptory tone. Now the term refers to staffers, underlings, vassals. Those who must literally trip over themselves to do the bidding of The One.

Secular Jew Ira Glass: Christians Portrayed as Crazies by Media

Beautiful. Link here.

How to tell when a Republican strategy is successful.

1. The Democrat media fret that it "could backfire". (Just trying to help!)
2. The Democrat media scold that it's not nice. (New civility, folks.)
3. The Democrat media dig up "at least one Republican" to condemn the tactic. (And usually at most one. Or one and a half if you count John McCain.)

At least one Republican doesn't like Rick Perry's "job raids".

Hey Eric Holder

Homelands

The enemy's will is strong because his identity is strong. And we must match his strength of purpose with strong identities of our own.
- Natan Sharansky, 'Defending Identity'

The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.
- Mohammed Akram, 'An Explanatory Memorandum'

I.
Who are you?
What is your name?
What's the place you call home? And if you were taken from your home by force, how would you stay true to who you are?

The Israeli television series 'Hatufim' - adapted for American TV as 'Homeland' - tells the story of two Israeli POWs who return home after 17 years in captivity at the hands of a terrorist group. Throughout the series, Nimrod and Uri struggle with questions of loyalty and identity; over and over, both of them tell the women in their lives "I'm not the same man I was before."

The first episodes show Nimrod and Uri being taken to a "facility" for debriefing, where they're questioned intensively by the relentless Major Haim Cohen. Cohen wants to learn all he can about the enemy, of course, but he also wants to know whether the two men have given up information to their captors.

As the show progresses, we begin to wonder how much - and on what levels - they have been altered by their time with the enemy. Early in the second season, a psychologist is shown giving a lecture (for our benefit) on "Stockholm syndrome". Later, another soldier returns home from a deep-cover mission, having ostensibly converted to Islam and taken the name Yusuf to work with the Children of Jihad - but hearing the muezzin's call for the first time since returning to Israel, and standing in his own childhood home, he begins reciting the Muslim prayers. And late at night, he is still haunted by the guard's repeated question, "What is your name?"

One real-life prisoner who stayed loyal to his cause was Natan Sharansky. His valuable book Defending Identity recounts his experiences in prison, and the lessons he drew from those times. Despite being held by the Communists for nine years in a Soviet prison, Sharansky (then known by his Russian name, Anatoly Shcharansky) did not back down from advocating human rights and Jewish solidarity.

But are not these two things - universal rights and ethnic solidarity - in conflict with one another? Sharansky insists that they are not, and in fact believes that this truth is the secret of his strength. From his own experience, and from observing others in the gulag, he concludes that "those with the strongest identities were the least likely to succumb to tyranny" (p. 61). And very often, this identity is found in religion. Sharansky does not claim it can be found only there, but it's clear that he sees faith as a source of strength with few rivals.

Religion - Jewish religion, that is - is notably absent from 'Hatufim'. The Jews of 'Hatufim' are secular Israelis who go to the synagogue only for bar mitzvahs. It's unlikely that they are fastidious about observing the Sabbath or the kosher laws (although it's hard to tell on this latter point, as all the characters are vegetarian). The Bible is quoted only once - in a reference to the Mossad's motto, Proverbs 24:6.

Contrast this with the devotion to purpose the Children of Jihad (the fictional terrorist group), whose members pray regularly, listen to Koranic sermons, and are often found at the mosque. In a battle of wills - if we accept Sharansky's premise - which side is better armed?


II.
Jihad is closer than we like to think.

On July 29, 1983, a guy named Stephen Paul Paster tried to blow up what was then the Hotel Rajneesh on SW 11th Avenue and Main Street in Portland, Oregon. The bomb exploded prematurely, damaging the building and injuring him; he escaped and the law caught up with him two years later. He was sentenced to 20 years, of which he served four, getting released early for good behavior. He immediately took off for Pakistan, where he's believed to be living to this day.

Paster was a member of Jamaat al-Fuqra, a jihadi organization founded by Sheikh Gilani and believed to be a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The incident was soon forgotten, and the Rajneeshees, for their part, staged a bioterror attack of their own the following year and eventually dropped off the radar.

Jamaat al-Fuqra dropped off the radar, too, but they haven't gone away. Back in 1993, after the first World Trade Center bombing, the Anti-Defamation League published (pdf) a report on Al-Fuqra listing known and suspected incidents involving al-Fuqra through that date. The India-based South Asia Terrorism Portal has an article on Jamaat al-Fuqra also:

One of the persons convicted in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was Clement Rodney Hampton-el, a Fuqra member. JF was linked in a Congressional testimony to the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Gilani is now in Pakistani custody for the abduction of US journalist Daniel Pearl. Official sources in Pakistan have indicated that Daniel Pearl was attempting to meet Gilani in the days before he disappeared in Karachi. Pakistani police arrested Gilani in Rawalpindi on January 30, 2002 and shifted him to Karachi for questioning. Although he denied any link to the abduction, police also detained several of his colleagues. Consequent to his arrest, he reportedly told his interrogators that he had links with the Pakistani intelligence agencies.

A media report has indicated that the JF is also being probed for links with Richard Reid, a Briton, accused of trying to use explosives in his shoes to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner on December 22, 2001. ...

Three suspected US-based JF members have been arrested on weapons charges in the year 2001, including two following the September 11 multiple terrorist attacks. Vicente Rafael Pierre, a 44-year-old native of Brooklyn and his wife Traci Upshur, both JF cadres, were arrested on gun charges and convicted on November 30, 2001. Pierre's Virginia compound, near the Red House Commune, is reported to have served as a JF base.

Islamberg, New York was founded by Gilani in the 1980s. Martin Mawyer's Christian Action Network alleges that Islamberg is part of a network of settlements built for the purpose of training jihadi fighters. Mawyer details these allegations in his book Twilight in America, which has brought him a lawsuit from Gilani; Mawyer says bring it on.

Jamaat al-Fuqra think long-term, like their parent organization the Muslim Brotherhood. That's one of the hallmarks of the MB - they're disciplined, dedicated, and very patient. Their goals are set forth in a document, authored by Mohammed Akram and dated 1991, which became public during the Holy Land Foundation trials. If you haven't read the Explanatory Memorandum (pdf) yet, go take a look (English translation starts on page 16). You can also order a printed edition of the translation.

Akram, a member of the Brotherhood's board of directors and a senior member of Hamas, describes the process of Islamic "settlement" in North America as a "civilization-jihadist process". This process is projected to happen in five phases: settlement, establishment, stability, enablement, and rooting. It's not just a plan to address the needs of Muslims living in North America, or to improve Islamic education. Here's what it's really all about:

The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes ...

You might wonder if the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan il-Muslimun in Arabic) is banned in the US as a terrorist organization. It's hard to say; might be tricky, since Ikwhanul Muslimun in Hancock, New York is a registered tax-exempt charity. Martin Mawyer's book says (p. 137) that

if you type the words 'Ikhwanul Muslimun' into the IRS web site in search of charities, you will learn that Ikhwanul Muslimun, Inc. is a tax-exempt organization filing as a church, and located on a 70-acre terrorist training camp in Hancock, New York— the same camp owned by Muslims of the Americas. It was registered with the IRS in 1974, yet, when contacted, the IRS claims to have no supporting or founding documents for the group. They know nothing more about them other than to confirm that they pay no taxes.

III.
Michael Totten has traveled all over the world and he's spent a lot of time in the Middle East. He's published books about Iraq, Lebanon, and the former Communist world. But his first novel - a story about a kidnapping - is set in the United States, in the Pacific Northwest.

In 'Taken', Michael Totten (the author as character) is abducted from his home in Portland and held hostage by American jihadists. The premise is chilling and entirely plausible.

Ahmed, Michael's interlocutor for much of the story, presents an articulate and reasonable-seeming face. Calmly and confidently, he outlines what he sees as the inevitable victory of Islam. Ahmed claims that he does not want to convert America "at gunpoint" (p. 67), and insists that "there is no compulsion in religion."

"The Jews don't like converts," Ahmed asserts. (That hasn't been my experience.) Ahmed, himself from a secular Muslim family background, sees the advance of Islam as inevitable. For him it's a choice between dynamism and stagnation, between meaning and emptiness, between something and nothing.

One of the most disturbing passages in 'Taken' comes near the end, where Totten, as narrator, describes his feelings of attraction toward Islam after feigning an interest in conversion to please his captors.

Does the narrator begin to succumb to Stockholm syndrome? Despite explicitly denying it, despite giving a knowledgeable discussion of the subject, is Totten's narrator in fact slipping into Stockholm syndrome himself towards the end of the story? I'll let you read the book and decide for yourself.

In Hatufim (Season 2, episode 4), the professor explains the process of Stockholm syndrome, citing the importance of creating a total dependency within the prisoner. She enumerates three essential conditions for this dependency: the prisoner's certainty that his life or death rests within the captor's hands; absolute isolation and deprivation of knowledge about the outside world, except for what the captor tells him; and finally, arbitrary kindness, which renders the prisoner defenseless and makes his identification with the captor "complete and absolute".

Totten brings out another aspect of the process, though, which I think is especially interesting. "I realized I was changing," the narrator admits (p. 109). "I was building invisible chains for myself." He realizes that even without being physically chained, "my own mind would create invisible walls for myself."

If the jihadis succeed in creating an atmosphere of intimidation, they will prevail. The Muslim Brotherhood will not need to resort to spectacular, mass-casualty attacks like al-Qaeda's destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; instead, by incrementally circumscribing the actions of free people into an ever-tighter sphere, they will achieve their goals with scarcely any resistance at all. We will have built our own invisible walls, and tied ourselves in our own invisible chains.


IV.
If you walk up to Jaffa from Tel Aviv, you'll pass an old, gutted brick building - once a soap factory - with its arches covered, jail-like, by iron bars. If you stand still in the afternoon heat and listen, you can hear the rustling and squeaking. It's full of bats.

I'm thinking about that building this afternoon.

On a day like today I can look out at San Francisco and think it'll last forever. The sky is clear, and it's warm outside - 80 degrees, and it's not even September yet! From the air-conditioned office where I work, the buildings of the Financial District appear immaculate, geometric, impregnable. In a century or two, will there be bats in these buildings? Will they be fit to live in, or even still be standing?

I have lived a pretty sheltered life. I haven't seen death up close, except once or twice. One night in a desert far away from my home, four of my buddies lost their lives to one of our own missiles outside of Khafji. The blast had obliterated their vehicle and there wasn't anything left to bury; we just held a short memorial service in the cool, damp January air and moved on. I could easily have been one of them. That was the night before my 28th birthday.

A year and a half later, my sister - who had just turned twenty-eight - was lying on a stainless steel table in the coroner's office. She looked so much smaller than she had in life, and healthier - like a child. Her face looked peaceful; her body, wrapped in the sheet, made me think of a cocoon or a chrysalis. Perhaps her soul had broken free like a butterfly; if so it flew in a hidden dimension of space where I could not see it.

She was a poet, and what she left us was her memories and her words. Every one of us will have to leave some day, and we will all leave something behind. What we build, and what we leave for others, exists in that invisible space, in that untouchable dimension. And that's what we're fighting for.

I think of my teenage son and my little girl. What kind of world will they live in? What words will they have? Will they write poetry? Will they know Hebrew? Will they light Sabbath candles with their children?

"A man with no children has no home," says Yusuf's Muslim mother-in-law when she's begun to suspect that his loyalties still lie with the other side.

Our true homes have their foundations deep in the invisible inner space of our minds and souls, but they become part of the larger world in the children we leave behind.

More than the physical space of our cities, it's our mental and spiritual space that we're fighting for. Will we be as defenseless as the villagers in Totten's dream image? When we are asked 'What is your name?' will we know how to answer?

Holidays I'd Like to See

Free Market Day.
Build Something Useful Day.
Personal Responsibility Day.
Family Day. (Arizona and Nevada, you're way ahead of the rest of us here.)
Human Life Day.
Human Achievement Day.

Warsaw and Memory

'Today, April 19, marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. ...' Adam Garfinkle on Holocaust and heroism. Read it all.

Fuck you, he explained.

Sharyl Atkisson on Boston and Benghazi, with commentary.

The Passing of Google Reader

is duly lamented here:

Faith

I support your right not to believe in G-d. I support every person's right to make their own decisions about religion: to believe in one God, or many, or none at all. To practice religion as a traditionalist, or as a liberal, or a reformer or a heretic or an apostate or an unbeliever. To embrace revelation or to reject it. To pray facing Jerusalem, or Calvary, or Mecca, or not to pray at all. To follow a single, absolute, fixed line of belief, or to change your mind a hundred times a day about what you believe and why you believe it (the latter is closer to my own faith). And I expect that you respect every other person's rights. A faith coerced is no faith at all; and a faith that justifies evil is an evil faith.

As a believer, I stand with the unbelievers.

Peretz on New New Republic: 'I Don't Recognize Magazine I Used to Own. We Were Liberal But Not Narrowly Partisan' | NewsBusters

Peretz on New New Republic: 'I Don't Recognize Magazine I Used to Own. We Were Liberal But Not Narrowly Partisan' | NewsBusters

One does not simply walk into Fordow.

Sabotage! Key Iranian nuclear facility hit?

The Drain

Eric Allen Bell: The Drain

... The drain says that a killer and a rapist was the final prophet of "god". But that which is Infinite needs no such final spokesman. That which is Infinite, it thinks you, it breathes you. It needs no special vows, chants or hymns, as all of creation sings its praises. It is nameless and all names. You can hear it in every word and in the silences between each word. You can hear it in the sound of the breeze. You can find it looking out through your eyes.

The dark drain in the dry desert sucks in only those who seek to avoid knowing who and what they truly are. But if we remove the drain, if we were to blast it from the sky - would we remove also the condition in man which caused it to be built? To see the drain is to be free of it.

GOP and Demographics

D. G. Myers at Commentary:

If the Republicans are going to be the party of married churchgoers, though, they need to change their tune on two key issues. They must drop their opposition to same-sex marriage, and they must quit obsessing over illegal immigrants. These two issues alone are almost entirely responsible for the Republicans’ image and reputation as the party of old white men.

What conservatives do not seem to grasp is that same-sex marriage is not an issue for gays only, but also for the young, who support it overwhelmingly, without question. And if the GOP really is the party of marriage, shouldn’t it be in favor of extending the goods of marriage to as many as possible? If marriage is everything we conservatives say it is, why should we want to deny its moral benefits to gays? The point is to stand for marriage, for an institution that promotes human freedom, and not to barricade ourselves behind the status quo ante. That’s how the party of freedom becomes the party of reaction.

I'm old enough to remember when Commentary, under Norman Podhoretz, published some viciously homophobic stuff. Commentary changed for the better, because it needed to change. The Republican Party needs to change too.

Saudi Arabia: Keeping Women In Their Place

Radical Islam: Tracking system monitors Saudi women.

A new tracking device monitors the movements of Saudi women. Any cross-border move prompts an SMS message sent to the cell phone of the women’s “guardian.” That means that any Saudi woman who tries to leave the country will be immediately found out by the man assigned to “monitor” her.

The “service” was intended to be elective for the guardian, but a recent incident showed that all men are being alerted through the new e-passport system, even if a man’s wife is travelling by his side.

The new system was publicized on Twitter by Manal al-Sharif, a well-known women's right campaigner and political activist, who received a message from a couple as they were leaving Saudi Arabia at the Riyadh international airport and the husband received a text message saying that his wife was leaving the country. ...

Sunday Morning Roundup

Israel: After Iron Dome, Magic Wand.

In the wake of the great success of the Iron Dome anti-missile system, which was able to intercept many of the rockets fired from Gaza at populated areas during Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel is now pushing ahead with the development of Magic Wand, which is supposed to be able to intercept short-range and medium-range rockets.

According to a report in the Boston Globe on Saturday, Israel will test the system in the Negev in the coming days. ...

Egyptian protesters torch Muslim Brotherhood offices.

As enraged demonstrators torched Muslim Brotherhood offices in several Egyptian cities, a defiant Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi defended his recent decree granting himself sweeping powers before a crowd of supporters outside the presidential palace in Cairo Friday.

"Political stability, social stability and economic stability are what I want and that is what I am working for," said Morsi. "I have always been, and still am, and will always be, God willing, with the pulse of the people, what the people want, with clear legitimacy" he said from a podium before thousands of supporters. ...

CSP: Andrew Bostom, Diana West and Stephen Coughlin discuss Islamic influence in US policy with Frank Gaffney. Video is 1h34m, at the link.

Bill Federer: Pilgrims faced Muslim terror too.

How to build a political social network. The key ideas:

User-generated opinions
Single units of opinion
User verification
Surfacing and sorting
Open, demographically indexed data

Read the article at the link.

Israeli Artists, Intellectuals Sign Petition Urging End to Nasty Stuff

'When I read a survey that claims that 84 percent of the Israeli public supports this violent and foolish campaign, I am happy that at least a few public figures are willing to stand up to this.'

84 percent of Israelis may support the campaign, but journalist Yuval Ben-Ami knows better. He, along with other brilliant military strategists such as celebrated playwright and author Yehoshua Sobol, award-winning writer and painter Yoram Kaniuk, internationally acclaimed author Amos Oz, filmmaker David Ofek, Batsheva Dance Company founder Ohad Naharin, have declared that

Our hearts are with you, residents of the South. It is the government’s duty to protect you, but its way is not our way.

Well, personally I'd go with the government's way, but that's just me. I'm not a writer, painter, choreographer, or filmmaker, so what do I know? Anyway, I salute these creative intellectuals for their enormous courage.

And by "enormous courage", I mean "unbearable arrogance".

For me, the really sad thing about something like this - and this is scarcely the first such instance - is that it devalues these artists' work for me. Amos Oz, what a writer - I'm reading "A Tale of Love and Darkness" now. No doubt these people imagine that their stature as artists lends greater weight to their political pronouncements. It doesn't. It only tells us that these people - who have built their reputations on their supposed understanding of life and human nature - aren't as wise as they imagine themselves to be.

Tel Aviv, Before the Rockets

I visited Israel last month, following up on last year's trip. As things worked out, I missed the rocket attacks by a month. I stayed in Tel Aviv again, and got to see a little more of the southern part of the city, and was able to make two visits to Jerusalem.

Mark Levin: Only Tea Party Against Tyranny

Mark Levin at Breitbart:

Reagan administration official Mark Levin said conservatives need to first overthrow the Republican establishment to more successfully take on President Barack Obama and the institutional left.

“We cannot get through Obama and the left until we get through the Republican Establishment,” Levin said, railing against establishment consultants who attack the base and politicians who know nothing of “Burkean reform” because they have spent their whole careers “clawing their way to the top.”

In a talk at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday with his mentor, former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, for whom Levin served as Chief of Staff, Levin said the Republican Party is, “devouring the conservative movement,” and the old bulls need to step aside in favor of a new generation of conservatives who are fluent in conservatism.

“It’s time for the old bulls to get out of the way and for the fresh faces who believe in conservatism and liberty and originalist principles to step up,” Levin said, criticizing those like House Speaker John Boehner for “yielding territory” to the left in negotiations.

Levin said the Tea Party consists of constitutionalists, libertarians, Evangelicals, and those who are against the rigged establishment, beltway culture that for too long has not embraced conservatism and, as a consequence, lost national elections (George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney). ...

Israel Under Attack

Tablet has video of Iron Dome intercepting incoming rockets.

Confirmed hits near Jerusalem and Tel Aviv force reserve call-up.

Rocket intercepted over Ashdod, another strikes an open area in Gush Etzion.

IAF strikes home of Hamas commander Mohammed Abu Shamala.

Home Front Command says get ready for seven weeks of this stuff.

Post-Election Thoughts for the Right

B. Daniel Blatt at GayPatriot:

... we shouldn’t be hasty in deciding the way forward. That said, we’re already beginning the process of considering the way forward. Now is perhaps the time for consideration, to put ideas out there. Later will come the time for action, choosing which ideas to adopt and determining the best ways to put them into practice.

Instapundit agrees, and cautions conservatives against responding to the election by doing stupid shit.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Chabad Center, Old City

Old City

Jaffa Gate

Grapefruit Juice

My feet hurt, and my game left ankle is mighty sore, and a sweat rash is making my thighs sore. But I did get to Jerusalem, finally, and spent a fair amount of time wandering around the Old City.

And wandering it truly was. I had no map, no plan, and no clue. Oh, I did have the GPS on my Samsung, but the battery died (did I mention it was my Samsung?) and I was on my own. I spent the afternoon getting well and truly lost in the Old City. I never did find my way to the Kotel, and in fact I think I managed to visit every part of the Old City EXCEPT the Jewish Quarter. Let me tell you, wearing my "Srugim" T-shirt to Jerusalem didn't seem like such a clever idea after all.

But hey, it was an Experience, right?

Well, I'm closing in on 50 years old, and there are some "experiences" that I can do just fine without. Getting lost rarely adds anything worthwhile to my appreciation or understanding of a place.

But let me tell you about the grapefruit juice.

On my way in to the Old City, I stopped at a vegetarian restaurant on Jaffa Street and ordered their broccoli quiche. It was splendid, magnificent, delightful. About two-thirds of the way through my meal, a waitress walked by carrying a glass of what I took to be grapefruit juice, searching for the party who had ordered it. I cannot say with certainty that it was, in fact, grapefruit juice, but at that moment I was seized with an obsession with grapefruit juice. Foolishly, I left the vegetarian restaurant without ordering a glass, thinking the craving would pass. It did not.

I continued on to the Old City, and proceeded to get utterly lost. The whole time I was thinking: Where is the Kotel? Where is the Jewish Quarter? Where can I buy a map? And WHERE CAN I GET A GLASS OF GRAPEFRUIT JUICE?

I passed one stall that proffered various fresh juices, but grapefruit wasn't one of them. The vendor offered me bottled grapefruit juice, but I was having none of it. My heart was set on fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice.

At long last, after a tedious hour or more of blundering around the shops and stalls, I came upon an Arab selling fresh-squeezed juices. I soon learned that grapefruit juice was available on tap. My exultation was unbounded.

He was a friendly, balding guy in his fifties. He asked if I was from America; I said yes. He asked what state, I said California. He flashed a smile. Where in California? San Francisco, I said. Oh, the Bay Area! he said; it's beautiful there. It emerged that he had grown up in Riverside County in southern California. He missed the area and was hoping to go back soon.

For that brief moment, we were not a Jew and an Arab in the Middle East, but Americans talking about home.

He handed me the cup of the precious elixir and I asked him the price. Twenty shekels, he said. I produced the appropriate banknote from my wallet. "Ashroon," I said, "shukran." He smiled broadly. "Afwan," he replied.

That grapefruit juice tasted good. I continued my drunkard's walk around the Old City, drinking the pulpy, sour, delicious stuff until the straw made slurpy noises at the bottom of the cup.

Eventually, with the daylight fading, I somehow stumbled my way to one of the gates. I don't know which one it was, but it was on the eastern side, which for me is quite literally the Wrong Side Of Town. I found my way back to Jaffa Street, and followed the rails back to the Tachana Merkazit to catch the 405 back to Tel Aviv.

EAB Censored on CAIR

Pamela Geller on CNN: Erin Burnett cuts segment at Hamas-CAIR description, AUDIO secretly taped - Global Infidel TV

Tel Aviv and Hebrew Ham

After my last trip to Israel, I promised myself that I wouldn't let more than a year go by before doing it again. That was last November, this is October, and here I am.

I'm staying at a decent, budget hotel on Allenby Street in southern Tel Aviv, and I'm upstairs from a bar and two pizza shops. I get a kick out of this area because it's so much the opposite from the pictures of Israel that you see in tourist guides. Anyway, I'm not far from the bus station, and I expect I'll catch the 405 to Jerusalem in the next couple of days.

I've been sleeping intermittently since about 6pm. They had some loud music downstairs around 1 or 2am, I think the cops made them turn it down.

Yesterday afternoon I came back from picking up some basic groceries at the AM:PM, and found the power in my room was out. The hot, muggy weather must have been making my air conditioner work overtime. I went down to the desk clerk and complained, "Ein li chashmal!" (Apparently I'm fated to suffer electrical problems in Israel.) She found the circuit breaker and got my lights back on. "Todah!" I called over my shoulder as I went inside.

I'm feeling a LOT more comfortable getting around in Hebrew, this time around. Ate breakfast at the nearby cafe, on the hotel's voucher, then went back there for dinner. The waitress handed me an all-Hebrew menu so I really felt like a native. It's not a kosher place and I'm pretty sure Heh-Aleph-Mem spells "ham" (which figured prominently on most of the items), so I ended up getting a green salad, and that was pretty good.

It's probably safe to say there's not much that goes on in this neighborhood that's kosher, but if I can find a place that's K, or vegetarian, it'll make my life easier. Burger Ranch isn't vegetarian but it is K, and I'm thinking of checking it out. I'm going into carnivore mode for this trip.

But, no ham. Even if the menu is in Hebrew.

The Second Conversation

There's the kind of conversation I prefer to have; and then there's the kind of conversation we sometimes have to have.

If you're like me, you prefer to exchange ideas with reasonable people who generally share a similar worldview, even if you don't always agree on the details. You enjoy working through the questions of premises, logic, and values that make up a civilized debate.

But there's another kind of conversation going on. It's the conversation that's imposed on us by people who don't believe in the free exchange of ideas. If you're used to being able to speak and argue freely, you might be caught off guard, because free speech is something we can easily come to take for granted.

This is a conversation that calls for less subtlety and more nerve. It's a conversation where you have to be willing to tell people exactly the thing they don't want to hear. In this kind of conversation, success is measured not by how much approval you win from other people, but by your willingness to speak even when others disapprove.

*

This week some startling new advertising posters appeared on the sides of buses in San Francisco, where I live. They read:

IN ANY WAR BETWEEN THE CIVILIZED MAN AND THE SAVAGE,

SUPPORT THE CIVILIZED MAN.

SUPPORT ISRAEL.

DEFEAT JIHAD.

That's it. This is not a slur against any religion or nationality, nor it is a call to violence. But it is a response to those who have called for holy war, and it is a defense of a nation whose enemies do indeed behave as savages.

The ads are from the American Freedom Defense Initiative. AFDI is led by Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs. Pamela's style is not mine, and I have not always agreed with her in the past. But she understands something very important here. She understands the second conversation.

'I can’t imagine anyone (especially anyone whose mind is not already made up) reading this ad and concluding anything other than “some parts of the pro-Israel lobby seem like a bunch of d*cks.”' This is the most accurate sentence in Adam Chandler's piece in Tablet in which Chandler explains that "Pamela Geller's new ad is actually anti-Israel".

But here, Chandler is exactly right; in fact, that is the whole point of the campaign. Chandler cannot imagine living in a world where parties to a dispute do not sit down - like "civilized men" - and thoughtfully work out their differences.

Some of us know better. Some of us understand that there are always going to be people who don't like you, and it's a waste of time to try to win their friendship. Some of us are not losing any sleep if our enemies think we are "a bunch of d*cks." And that's why AFDI's in-your-face, no-bull ad campaign is brilliant, and is exactly what's needed in a place like San Francisco. These words are not an attempt to persuade the undecided; they are a statement of defiance to those who would suppress dissent. The words do not belong to the first kind of conversation, but to the second.

*

Andrew McCarthy is the former Federal prosecutor who put away Omar Abdel-Rahman, "the Blind Sheikh", for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On August 8, McCarthy gave a breifing to the National Press Club, introduced by Frank Gaffney. The immediate topic of his address was the concern around the background of State Department official Huma Abedin, who has family and personal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. But more broadly, he touched on the relationship between violent jihad and apparently non-violent jihad.

Explaining the threat that jihad poses to our freedoms, McCarthy said: "The non-violent jihad is called dawa, the aggressive proselytism of Islam. Dawa is leveraged by the threat of violence. The atmosphere of intimidation is what makes non-violent jihad so effective. It is what allows Islamist organizations to exercise such outsize influence on our policymakers even though Muslims barely register one percent of our population."

The threat of violence to suppress offending speech has been used to further the cause of jihad around the world. Sometimes the violence is directed against the author of the offending speech, as with the 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh and the ongoing threats against his colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In other cases, the violence is directed against more convenient targets.

In the months following the Mohammed cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllends-Posten in 2005, Muslim riots across the Islamic world led to over 100 deaths. Is Flemming Rose, JP's editor, responsible for those deaths? Or Kurt Westergaard, who penned the iconic "bomb in turban" image of Mohammed? What about Terry Jones, the Florida preacher whose mere threat to burn Korans was followed by riots that claimed 20 lives?

Already at least one person has pre-emptively decided to blame the act of any violent fanatic on the San Francisco bus ads. In a comment to the San Francisco Examiner article, Steve P. declares, "'The insulting "ads", words, make San Francisco more dangerous. … Leaving those words on a MUNI bus, or any City & County property sanctions ANY LIFE LOST OVER THIS IN THIS CITY."

Like the abusive spouse who says "Look what you made me do!", such people shift the blame for violence away from those who commit it and advocate it.

*

Maybe you don't want to be associated with Pamela Geller because she's loud, and she's aggressive, and she's … well, Pamela Geller. But if you live in the Western world and you value free speech, you need to be ready to have that second conversation. And that's what the AFDI anti-jihad ads do.

I support the anti-jihad ads. If it was up to me, they'd run on every bus in San Francisco for a year. You don't like them? That's your business. But my freedom of speech isn't your license to commit acts of violence.

There has been too much mealy-mouthed delicacy around the militant Muslim holy war. It is time to name jihad for what it is.

Originally published August 19 in Media Tapper.

Hack

Around midnight or early morning of September 24, Monday, my email account was hacked and a bunch of spam messages were sent out from my email address. I changed my email password immediately, of course, and at the time I did not think any other accounts had been compromised. But I've just now discovered that Dreams Into Lightning 1 and Dreams Into Lightning 2 were also hacked. So if you're one of the two or three people who read this blog regularly, and you happened to notice a weird-looking post with a link in it, that's what it was. It's gone now.

Shabbat shalom, and happy new year 5773.

All hell is breaking loose now, but let's take some time anyway to be thankful for life and for the Creation. I'll return to regular posting next week. See you in 5773.

Remember

The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/11)[nb 1] were a series of four suicide attacks that were committed in the United States on September 11, 2001, coordinated to strike the areas of New York City and Washington, D.C. On that Tuesday morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets. The hijackers intentionally piloted two of those planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City; both towers collapsed within two hours. The hijackers also intentionally crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and intended to pilot the fourth hijacked jet, United Airlines Flight 93, into the United States Capitol Building[2] in Washington, D.C.; however, the plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers attempted to take control of the jet from the hijackers. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, including the 246 civilians and 19 hijackers aboard the four planes.

Bill Warner on Islam.

On 9/11 as soon as the second plane hit the second tower, I knew it was an act of jihad. I stood up, turned off the TV and I haven’t watched it since. In that moment it came to me that the rest of my life would be spent explaining the meaning of Islamic texts.

I sat down and reread the Koran, read the Sira (Ishaq and Al Tabari), read the Hadith (Bukhari and Muslim). These are the absolute foundational texts of Islam, the source code, the DNA. I was following Sun Tzu’s advice; know your enemy and attack your enemy’s strategy.

My attack was to reveal the Koran, Sira and Hadith in a rational form that was easy to read. This became the Trilogy Project. I assembled a team of volunteers and paid writers and editors. From the beginning, I knew that it was the political aspect of Islam that offered the only chance of success. The religious aspect has too much misunderstood protection of the First Amendment. ...

Australian judge: "We call that gap 'freedom'"

THE idea sharia could operate as part of Australian law was ''misconceived'' and minority practices that offend moral standards should be abandoned, the former High Court judge Sir Gerard Brennan said last night. ...

''The democratic principle prescribes that the culture of the majority is determinative of the legal structure,'' he said. In Islamic law, he said - quoting the president of the Abu Dhabi Supreme Court - customs and legal reasoning had to agree with the Koran. But in Australian common law there was a gap between the requirement of the law and individual moral standards.
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''We call that gap 'freedom' and it allows Australian law to protect the cultural moral values of our minorities,'' he said....

Read the rest at the link, for Sir Gerard's understanding of the proper meaning of a multicultural society.

B*tch, please. It's the economy.

Gay voters mainly focused on economy, poll finds.

Much like the general populace, LGBT voters care about the economy, unemployment, and healthcare. However, the study also indicates that Americans in general consider a candidate’s position on gay rights as highly persuasive when it comes time to enter the voting booth. When asked whether they would be “more likely,” “less likely,” or “no difference,” 49 percent indicated they would be “more likely” to vote for a candidate who supports legislation to combat anti-gay bullying and 48 percent favored a candidate who supports including gays and lesbians as a protected class in the workplace.

According to the survey, both LGBT and general population voters as a whole currently favor Barack Obama, yet 1-in-5 would cast a ballot for Mitt Romney if he held the same views as Obama on gay rights. Moreover, 1-in-4 would consider voting for other Republican candidates if the GOP held the same positions on LGBT rights as the Democratic Party. Said Kenneth Sherrill, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Hunter College,“This survey documents a political transformation of epic proportions. LGBT rights are no longer a wedge issue in American politics.” ...

Go to the link for the full article, and numbers. GOProud has more:

(Tampa, FL) – Last week, Harris Interactive released a poll of 1,190 LGBT voters for conducted for Logo TV. “This poll confirms exactly what we have been saying for years now – gay voters aren’t simply concerned with marriage – just like the rest of America gay voters, by a wide margin, believe that jobs and the economy are the number one issue in the 2012 election,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director and Co-Founder of GOProud – a national organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights.

The Harris poll showed that 32% of LGBT respondents selected jobs or the economy as the most important issue in deciding 2012 Presidential election vote. Only 6% of LGBT respondents said that same-sex marriage was the most important issue.

“The gay left would have you believe that the only issue that matters to gay voters is the issue of marriage – this poll shows just how out-of-touch the self-appointed gay leaders on the left really are,” continued LaSalvia. “The only gay organization that has emphasized the need to focus on jobs and the economy for gay voters is GOProud, which is why we are the only gay group to have endorsed Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.”

The Harris poll also shows Mitt Romney at 23% of LGBT voters. ...

It would be the shortest war in the history of the human race.

Lubbock judge says UN might invade Texas.

The Second Conversation

There’s the kind of conversation I prefer to have; and then there’s the kind of conversation we sometimes have to have.

If you’re like me, you prefer to exchange ideas with reasonable people who generally share a similar worldview, even if you don’t always agree on the details. You enjoy working through the questions of premises, logic, and values that make up a civilized debate.

But there’s another kind of conversation going on. It’s the conversation that’s imposed on us by people who don’t believe in the free exchange of ideas. If you’re used to being able to speak and argue freely, you might be caught off guard, because free speech is something we can easily come to take for granted.

This is a conversation that calls for less subtlety and more nerve. It’s a conversation where you have to be willing to tell people exactly the thing they don’t want to hear. In this kind of conversation, success is measured not by how much approval you win from other people, but by your willingness to speak even when others disapprove. ...

Read the rest at Media Tapper.

"This book is the source of all evil, and the real catastrophe."

Nonie Darwish at American Thinker:

Could this be the real Arab Spring? This is huge! The Muslim world does not have to blame Pastor Terry Jones anymore for burning the Quran or non-Muslims for desecrating it. They are now in shock over seeing a YouTube post of an Egyptian young man doing the unthinkable on camera: tearing up the Quran and putting it in the trash. ...

If your Arabic is rusty, go to the post for a translation of what he's saying. Hint: It isn't "Allahu akbar."

No Men Allowed at Daycare Center

Mail (UK):

A children's play centre has barred fathers from attending with their children and is now facing an investigation by equality watchdogs.

Kids Go Wild is believed to be the first such play centre in the country to introduce a ‘women only’ policy – which also bans boys over the age of nine.

Bosses at the centre, which opened less than a fortnight ago, claim the policy was instigated for ‘cultural reasons’ and was in the interests of the ‘predominantly Asian’ local community. ...

Quote of the Day

From Eric Allen Bell at Facebook:

Why are civilized countries in the West having to pour money into "helping" Islam to be less savage? Have we seen a return on this investment? Why do we set the bar so low for this group? Why is it our responsibility to foot the bill to help train "moderate Imams" when it would make more sense instead to enforce our laws, concerning treason and sedition?

Amen.

New Piece in Media Tapper

I've had the honor of being added to the list of contributors to Media Tapper. My first article is here:

Jihad, Counter-Jihad, and Why You Should Care

Hard Questions for the Obama Administration

What is the capital of Israel?

Journalist: "Could you just give us an answer?"

Will the Department of Justice permit free speech?

Rep. Trent Franks (AZ): "Here's my proposal. I'm asking you to answer a question."

Economist on Jews

The Economist's David Landau finds the world's Jews "alive and well":

JUDAISM IS FLOURISHING, both in Israel, where 43% of the world’s Jews now live, and throughout the Jewish diaspora. The Jews as a nation are flourishing too. Israelis, for all their problems, are the 14th-happiest people in the world, happier than the British or the French, according to a recent global happiness report commissioned by the UN. In the diaspora Jewish life has never been so free, so prosperous, so unthreatened.

Well, that's sure good to know. The writer duly treats of the Jewish experience in America and elsewhere; of Hitler's program of extermination that wiped out one-third of the world's Jews, and of Zionism, which after the experience of Nazi Germany "was vindicated, at least in its own eyes".

Then there is Landau's visit to "a non-Orthodox synagogue in suburban Connecticut", no doubt not far different from the one I attended as a young person. Landau surmises that its members

like most Israelis and diaspora Jews, would tell pollsters that they support peace and two states. The atmosphere there on a recent Sunday could hardly have been more civilised. Jews, Christians and Muslims munched hot dogs and coleslaw together before setting out to clean up the neighbourhood park. The rabbi spoke words of appropriate interfaith inspiration. In the library the synagogue staff had spread carpets on the floor for the Muslims to pray.

In the corridor outside this temporary mosque, two Muslim schoolboys read the Israeli declaration of independence: “We extend our hand of peace and unity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples.” It was displayed alongside a map of the region. “No Gaza,” one noted. “No West Bank either,” his brother added. A synagogue warden explained later that the map was “biblical, not political”.

Landau's account of the interfaith event (not much different, I expect, from the one I attended in Oregon a few years ago) is short on details. What was said by the speakers? How many of the Muslim attendees called for recognition of Israel by the Muslim world? What was the map, exactly, and what did the boys' comments mean?

Never mind, let's get back to the Jews.

The prevailing political sentiment in Jewry today is of aggressive defensiveness, a curious amalgam of victimhood and intolerance. Dissent about Israel is discouraged and often gagged outright. Among British Jewry, some 300,000 strong, “a positively McCarthyite atmosphere has been created,” says Jonathan Freedland, a political columnist. “People are frightened to say what they feel.” In America “honest discussion about Israel is largely shut down,” notes Arnold Eisen, a historian and chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a rabbinical school in New York. “Some rabbis will speak their minds…but people don’t want to fight and there is a disinclination to argue about Israel. The right says you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy if you say anything critical about any Israeli policy.” Given Israel’s power and diaspora Jewry’s strength and influence, that seems paradoxical.

Resurgent religious faith is deeply caught up in this. Nationalism, xenophobia and Judaism blur and merge. Jews find themselves out of step with most of world opinion, which heightens a widespread sense of apprehensiveness. Iran’s threats and nuclear pretensions provide a focus for these feelings. Diaspora Jewish leaders insist that Israel is misunderstood. They attribute criticism to anti-Semitism, which is rising again.

Well, I'm sure I can manage an intelligent comment on this, if only I can get past my aggressive defensiveness, victimhood and intolerance, nationalism and xenophobia.

But wait - did Landau say something about "anti-Semitism, which is rising again"? But I feel so free, prosperous, and unthreatened!

Maybe a look at the comments will help clear things up:

The real disgrace is the existence of "israel". "israel " is in fact the apex of colonisation , founded on a myth of a peopless land perpetuated in an ever increasing occupation. ... The similarities between "israel" and Nazi Germany are startling.

Judaism is enjoying an unexpected revival.Is this good news or bad one?In advanced scientific era people are returning to religion that mean some thing wrong with scientific advance.I have on objection Jews are embarrassing again to religion.My only request to Jews please abandoned your old psyche which teach you " An eye for eye and tooth for tooth'"this revengeful motto poured too much blood in the world. ...

Im not even gonna bother commenting on this "hebrew appreciation piece" since everything critically to orientals would be deleted.

Alive and well, indeed.