The Prophets of the Bible (Jeremiah, Isaiah et al) rebuked Israel, saying we suffer for our sins.  It was Israel’s misbehavior (rather than Nebuchadnezzer’s), that caused the destruction of the holy Temple in Jerusalem, the icon of God’s presence in the world.  Our sins were so egregious that even King Josiah’s repentance (about 2,500 years ago) was not enough to avert the decree.  It would be sacrilegious to say otherwise.

On September 11^th we remember the destruction of an iconic building of our time, the World Trade Center.  And like the prophets of the past, many blame this on our sins: Western colonialism, expansionism, interference in the Middle East, racism, militarism…  In this view 9/11 was deserved payback.

Same with San Bernardino, Chattanooga, Paris, Brussels,  Madrid, etc.  The attacks were revenge for Western oppression.  The terrorism committed by European-born North-African Muslims is a direct consequence of our sins of European oppression of North Africa.

But wait!

North African oppression of Europeans preceded European colonialism.  Barbary coast (North African) slavers attacked the European coasts as far north as Ireland from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, taking as many as one and a quarter million white European captives, according to some estimates.  Unlike black Africans shipped to the Americas, these slaves did not live long enough to reproduce, have families, and eventually find freedom.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

 

It would be sacrilegious for any progressive to dare declare that Islam is the problem with Islamic terrorism.  They will jump through any hoop to blame terror on its victims.  Disposing of Saddam Hussein, the savage despot of Iraq, supporting Israel, failure to accommodate Shariah law… Every historical grudge fantasy is dredged up to illustrate our sins.

But just as King Josiah’s ancient repentance was insufficient, only complete submission to Islam’s prophet can atone for past resistance to his bloody demands.  We’re moving fast down the road to compliance, to surrender.  And like Josiah’s repentance, it won’t help.

 

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.” 
? Winston S. Churchill, The River War

The post We Suffer for Our Sins; 9-11 as punishment appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

Sympathy for the Devil Victims

After the Islamic terror attack in Nice, politicians around the world expressed their sympathy with the people of France, sending warm thoughts and prayers.  Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada said “Our sympathy is with the victims.” Leung Chun-ying of Hong Kong expressed his “deepest sympathies” with the French people.  Hillary Clinton’s “thoughts and prayers” were with the families of the killed and injured.  Julie Bishop, the Foreign Minister of Australia’s “thoughts and sympathies” were with the victims and their families.”

In the meantime, security services were investigating the massacre, trying to figure out the motive and connections of a killer yelling “allah achbar.”  Same thing in Orlando, in Paris, and at many terror attacks.  Why did they do it, asked the investigators.  Were the terrorists acting alone?  Does this mean war?   Can’t be!

Let me save the investigators some time and money.  In each case the killer(s) did it for the cause of Allah.  They weren’t acting alone.  They were part of a network of 1.6 billion Muslims, whose religion demands that they subdue and dominate the world.  Even though the Orlando shooter and the Nice truck driver may have planned and carried out their killing by themselves, they were motivated by the entity known as “Islam.”

It’s a fragmented outfit, with members killing each other more than they attack outsiders.  Some of its adherents are the most vile, violent people on earth, but there are also sects such as the Sufi and Ahmadiyya who oppose any aggressive activities. Nonetheless, there have been close to thirteen hundred Islamic attacks so far in 2016, leaving twelve thousand dead, and fourteen thousand injured (with most of the victims being members of opposing Muslim sects).

This Means War

Islam’s record of violence is not a modern phenomenon, nor is the barbarity of ISIS.  Historians estimate that eighty million people died in the Islamic conquest of the Indian sub-continent.  Over a hundred and ten million black Africans were killed as a consequence of the Muslim slave trade.  Islam was not spread throughout the world by peaceful missionaries, convincing disbelievers of the beauty of their faith.  This means war.

There used to be resistance.  Much of India was under the thumb of Islam for over eight hundred years, but the population held on to its own beliefs, often under great duress.  When Islam conquered much of the Middle East, destroying Christian holy places, the Church, the European monarchs decided this means war, and the Crusades were organized to take them back.  They failed.  Islam moved on to conquer large swaths of Europe.  At the siege of Vienna in 1683, it appeared ready to over-run the continent.

“…throughout the camp that every man who has infidel prisoners was to put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death. 100,000 infidels, impious idolaters, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasir-ud-din Umar, a counselor and a man of learning, who, in all his life had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives“.

That war hasn’t ended.  Only the resistance has wound down.  Large swaths of territory in France, Belgium, Sweden, and Germany, are “no-go” zones, no longer under control of their respective governments.  In other areas with significant Muslim populations, crime rates are soaring, as new-comers feel no obligation to respect the laws of the land.  Women and Jews are especially vulnerable targets.  The uber-wealthy pushing to increase immigration have walls around their compounds to protect themselves.  For the rest, the sense of security enjoyed by Europe, and even America, has dissipated.

An Invasion of Values

It’s not an invasion by an army.  It’s rather a set of values that has marched through the Gates of Vienna, this time unopposed by any armies, uncontested by a society that feels values are relative, there is no truth, and that the bad guy is the civilization that has brought untold progress and prosperity to much of the world.  Post modernism, moral relativism, keeps them from understanding what is happening, from realizing that this means war.

Is the fight over?  Is Western civilization about to crumble, to be overtaken by a misogynist, murderous intolerant ideology? Yes, if Western civilization refuses to recognize that it’s at war, a very old war.  Yes, if Western civilization refuses to resist the attackers.

One can only hope that as Islam presses its attacks, in places such as Paris, Cologne, Sweden, San Bernadino, Fort Hood, Orlando, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, it will be impossible to deny that we are under attack.  Sure, many officials deny that the terrorism has anything to do with an Islamic war on the West. It’s isolated incidents, criminals, mentally disturbed loners.  If there’s no army, no organization or terror network the officials can point to, there is nothing they are able to see.  Hopefully, these officials will be voted out of office by people who don’t have walls, don’t have armed security to protect the lives of their loved ones.  People who see the repeated attacks on their way of life, and understand that this means war.

Is Islam so different from the other two Abrahamic religions?  Judea was once a warlike, marauding state, fighting in God’s name.  That was well over two thousand years ago.  Christianity has a bloody history, especially in its record with South American natives.  Though intertwined, the monarch and the Christian faith were distinct entities. And the bloody violence ended hundreds of years ago.  Of the Abrahamic religions, only Islam is in a state of perpetual war.  Maybe they’ll evolve out of it, as did the others.  But can we afford to wait?

Here’s a suggested strategy for Western civilization:

• Identify the enemy: when a terrorist shouts “allah achbar,” believe that he’s doing it for the cause of Allah.
• Identify immediately  all acts of terrorism, rather than conceal or minimize them, whether in the US, Europe, and especially Israel (which has been the canary in the mine-shaft).
• Close all schools and mosques in the West which are funded by Saudi Arabia. The current wave of Islamic aggression has its roots in Saudi Arabia’s ultra-conservative Wahabi movement
• Demand that the Saudi government, and especially Saudi clerics clearly and vehemently denounce and issue fatwas forbidding acts of terror against non-Muslims.
• Expropriate, or if necessary confiscate all critical infrastructure or entities owned by radical Islamic nations or individuals.
• Shut down Islamic propaganda organizations in the West, such as Al Jazeera, and CAIR, and the Nation of Islam.
• Deport any non-citizen who endorses terror against the West.
• Establish that support of terror is treason, with all the consequences that incurs.
• Governments must pacify their no-go zones, establishing government authority and control.
• Enact strict controls over all immigrants, including refugees entering the country. In wartime, it is not discrimination to keep out potential enemy forces.
• Teach the real history of Islam in schools and universities; its death count over the centuries, its role in creating the African slave trade, its taking of European slaves.  Teach that America’s first war was against marauding North African Arabs.  Explain the role of women, the fate of homosexuals, the intolerance towards non-believers.
• Fight an all-out war against terror organizations on their home turf, whether Iraq, Afghanistan or Qatar.
• Above all, have the will to defeat a ruthless enemy that has been coming for you for fifteen hundred years.

I look forward to the day when the imams, the muftis, sheikhs, princes and presidents loudly denounce all terrorism, when they encourage their followers to live peacefully with other peoples.  When they say to the infidels “our way is not your way, but you are free to live as you wish.”  Many, many Muslims already feel this way, but are being drowned out by the Jihadists. Unless they speak louder, this means war.

The post Of Course You Realize This Means War! appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

• Q: Was it morally wrong for the United States and Canada to imprison their citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II, and confiscate their

  

  property?

• A: It was a horrible illegal act, discriminating against people solely because they looked different.  Italians and Germans, whose ancestral homelands were also the enemy, were not locked up.

Let’s break that question into three:

• Q1: Would it be morally wrong for a country to lock up a population, many of whom were supportive of an enemy?
• A1: No.
• Q2: Was a significant portion of the Japanese population of Canada and the United States supportive of a Japanese victory during World War II?
• A2: No.
• Q3: If the Americans and Canadians of Japanese ancestry had been supportive of the enemy during the war, would it have been proper to put them in internment camps?
• A3: Yes.

By asking the right question we can see that it’s not internment in principle that was a mistake.  It was mis-characterizing Japanese Canadians and Americans as enemy sympathizers.

Let’s try another one

• Q: Was it morally wrong for the United States and Canada to keep out Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis?
• A: Yes

Let’s also break that question into three:

• Q1: Is it wrong for a country to keep out a class of people, a great many of whom want to take over that country?
• A1: No.
• Q2: Did the Jews of Europe want to violently (if at all) take over Europe, the United States, or Canada?
• A2: No.
• Q3: If the Jews had wanted to violently take over Europe, the United States, or Canada, would it have been wrong to keep them out?
• A3: No.

  

This shows that we haven’t been asking the right question. We shudder at the idea of treating a particular group of people differently than anyone else.  Given the horrible consequences of turning away refugees during the Holocaust, we want to welcome everyone today.  But the mistake of the past wasn’t turning the enemy away from our shores.  It’s not wrong to guard against enemies working from the inside.  The mistake was considering the Jews and Japanese as the enemy, looking to take over or destroy the nations they wanted to be part of.

Bringing it all into the present, the right question is:

• Q4: If ________ want to violently take over Europe, the United States, or Canada, would it be wrong to keep them out?
• A4: No.

To fill in the blank, let’s look at the core belief of a particular group, as described by one of their leading scholars:

“Islam is not a religion like the other religions of the world, and Muslim nations are not like other nations. Muslim nations are very special because they have a command from Allah to rule the entire world and to be over every nation in the world. Islam is a revolutionary, totalitarian ideology that comes to destroy any government made by man. The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the ideology of Islam. Any nation or power that gets in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy. In order to fulfill that goal, Islam can use every power available every way it can be used to bring worldwide revolution. This is Jihad.“

With the blank filled in, answer the following question: would it be wrong to keep them out?  Clearly not.

This may contradict the accepted liberal “…values of liberty, and openness, and the respect of all people.”  That’s not the right question.  The primary value of any country must be the security of its citizens, rather than the security of an ideology.

The post You Have to Ask the Right Question appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

…with thunderous applause”

I’m a sci-fi enthusiast. I love The Time Machine, the many volumes of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, Asimov’s Robot and Foundation series, and more. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen Star Trek (TV and film), and Star Wars.  When my kids were young, I ran Star Trek role-playing games at my synagogue. We had the toys, the costumes, the books, the video tapes, and then the DVDs. I gave religious talks based on sci-fi themes. I was a serious enthusiast. The scene in Star Wars- Revenge of the Sith, where Padme observes “this is how liberty dies…” is to my mind a critical political observation.

So I’m trying to understand why I’m not in a hurry to see The Force Awakens, the new Star Wars movie. It’s not because I’m getting old. It’s not because I’m afraid that Disney ruined the franchise, or that the Jedi have turned into Bambi. I trust the Director, J.J. Abrams. He makes good films. Nor am I concerned that The Force Awakens will only have a short run in theaters.

The reviews are great. My children and grandchildren loved it. The merchandising is ubiquitous. But I don’t care.

This is how liberty dies

In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian sci-fi novel Brave New World, the public is distracted from important issues by non-stop drugs and sex. In 1958, Huxley revisited Brave New World, examining contemporary western culture and finding that his dystopia had been realized. He concluded, to his dismay, that

what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant… non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature… are deliberately used as instruments of policy, for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation.

The Force Awakens is a distraction of the most fascinating nature. A new threat arises, thirty years after the fall of the evil Galactic Empire. We had a terrestrial equivalent to the Galactic Empire, and its end was sealed thirty years ago, with the appointment of the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR was a utopian nightmare, whose goal was to spread its own brand of socialism across the entire world. Gorbachev dismantled its brutal system of central control, freeing the economy and allowing the people, and ultimately its subject nations the freedom to make their own decisions. Socialist oppression is for most of the world a bitter memory, its tens of millions of victims long buried. The few holdout states such as Cuba, North Korea, China and Vietnam are more concerned with nationalist issues than global ideological conquest.

We don’t have a new threat. We have the resurgence of a very old one. But it is just as dangerous as the unrealized Communist hegemony, and oh so much more depraved. While the Communist leaders had the ability to start World War III, they knew enough to back off, when actually facing it. Destruction of the planet was not an acceptable outcome.

Islamic militants look forward to the apocalypse, the end of the world, to usher in an Islamic utopia. From Indonesia to England they have attacked tourists, schoolchildren, concert-goers, shoppers, transit users— anybody at the target location. There is no concern of avoiding collateral damage, when the intent is to wreak terror in a population you want to subdue.

Except in Israel, most western citizens will not be personally touched by terror. After all, there is a statistically higher chance of choking to death. Governments and media pundits respond to terror attacks by saying that terrorists don’t represent Muslims; I believe them. American political leaders claim that the Islamic State, ISIS, is not Islamic , and so there’s no need to worry about Islam’s growing reach, about increasing the Muslim population in the Europe and North America.

The leader of ISIS, its Caliph, has a PhD in Islamic Studies, and probably knows more than President Obama about what is and what isn’t “Islamic.” Nonetheless, many Americans, Canadians and Europeans will accept Obama’s assurances that ISIS is contained.  There’s nothing to worry about, even as the number and scale of terrorist attacks escalates. People can pay attention to their foes on the football field, or  the big screen. But this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause. The unreal, the irrelevant distracts people from the actual threats in their neighborhoods, in their cities, countries, on their planet. They pay attention to the menace in a galaxy far, far away.

So I don’t care about the new Star Wars movie, at least not enough to rush out to see it. There is more important, more gripping drama taking place in my own galaxy, on my own planet; it deserves my attention. And it’s not something where I am a passive viewer, unable to affect the outcome. I can write letters to the editor, I can express myself on Facebook. I can donate to organizations such as CYCI— The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq. I can support the politicians who recognize the seriousness of the threat, and have a strategy to deal with it. With Star Wars- The Force Awakens, all I can do is decide how much money to spend on tickets and merchandise.

This is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause and deafening ignorance.

The post “So this is how liberty dies…” appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

At about 11:00 a.m. on July 17^th 2015, a gunman attacked a storefront Naval Recruiting Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, firing aggressively into its window. No one shot back, because Bill Clinton had long ago disarmed U.S. soldiers on military bases. As any fool can know, as the only one armed, the gunman had the situation under control.

He then drove to a Naval Reserve Center seven miles away, where he murdered four Marines, before being killed by authorities. By 1:30 p.m., Chattanooga police said “The active shooter situation is over.” A dangerous situation was now under control.

By 2:00 p.m. President Obama had been briefed by his national security team. Half an hour later the Tennessee Governor made an announcement that people serving their country had lost their lives, and by 3:10 the incident was described at a news conference as an “act of domestic terrorism” (a statement later retracted).

By 4:00 the shooter was identified as Kuwaiti-born. Few media outlets were willing to reveal though, that he was the son of a Palestinian. Although Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez had traveled to Jordan and perhaps Yemen recently, counter-terrorism “experts” wondered why he had attacked the military facilities in the U.S.  A CNN news analyst wondered if he was Muslim.

It was time to investigate. The FBI announced it had no idea of the suspect’s motivation. Vice-President Biden promised that the United States would get to the bottom of the shootings. President Obama was a little ahead of him, declaring that it was a ‘lone gunman,’ and vowing a full investigation. The President’s words assured the American people that the government had the earlier chaos under control.

The gunman’s home was raided. A bomb squad truck, a military truck carrying armed men rolled into the area of the shooting. Police closed off streets, turned away people wanting to reach their homes. It quickly became clear that Abdulazeez blogged about Islam, argued with his schoolmates about Islam, and showed signs of becoming increasingly devout.

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
? Albert Einstein

Any fool can know that Mohammed is a Muslim name, can understand why a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian would shoot up a U.S. military facility. Any fool can know that unarmed soldiers can’t defend themselves against someone with an assault weapon.  If you won’t see the pattern of the Fort Hood “workplace violence,” the shooting of an unarmed soldier at the Canadian Parliament, soldiers being run over in Quebec, and the Chattanooga rampage, then any investigation, no matter how thorough, will not prevent further attacks, further chaos. The point is to understand.

President Obama’s investigation is not aimed at avoiding future attacks against U.S. military installations, or even against civilians. We know how to do that:

• Arm American soldiers in the U.S.
• Stop the influx of refugees.
• Allow police and security forces to conduct ethnic profiling.

These measures won’t stop all assaults, but will certainly reduce their frequency and effectiveness. The fenced-off streets, the hundreds of federal agents, the massive resources being invested are a clear demonstration that the government has everything under control. This was an isolated incident, and they will soon get to the bottom of it. We will find out for example, if indeed Abdulazeez was a ‘lone wolf’ or part of an organized network.

ISIS has put out calls for Muslims in America to attack soldiers. Does it matter if such attackers are in direct communication with ISIS before following their instructions? According to such people, they aren’t even responding to a human call to violence, but rather the voice of God, as expressed by their prophet in their holy book. They respond with their prayers, with their guns and machetes. That, to the devout, is direct communication.

The massive Federal investigation that is getting under way is a sham, a pretense that the government has Muslim anti-American violence under control. It’s a way of avoiding action while pretending to take responsibility.

What Any Fool Can Know:

Most people knew what happened in Chattanooga shortly after the gunfire ended. The investigation, whether by Federal agents or fearful journalists is to ensure that people don’t have to face, don’t have to understand what any fool can know: the difficult decisions that must be made. The battle waged by ISIS in the mind of its soldiers, is the continuation of a war that began with the rise of Islam fourteen hundred years ago. If we want to secure the country, indeed the world against Jihad, we don’t really need to investigate. As distasteful as it might be, we have to understand: it’s time to fight back.

addendum:

The FBI has declared that there is no indication the Chattanooga shooter was inspired or directed by the Islamic State.

The post Any Fool Can Know appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

A Manifesto

Redefining the Battlefield

Our civilized world is in a different kind of war, aimed at dragging it back to the 8th century.  Our values are the enemy’s main weapon against us.  We must adapt if we are to survive.

Forget “religion.” Forget “nation” and “geography.” Don’t even think about “ideology” or “economy.” The enemy in this war includes our citizens, our co-religionists, people on the other side of the world, and our next-door neighbors. The civilized world, regardless of race, religion or region is in an apocalyptic conflict, aimed at dragging the world back to the Dark Ages, and the old categories are keeping us from fighting back.

Forget the meaning of war. Forget the Geneva Convention, the Hague Convention on the rules and regulations of war. Those are for armies, countries, civilized people. This is a different kind of war

Some combat takes place on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria. Other battles are on the streets of Ottawa, Paris, Boston and Montreal. Some involves the execution of soldiers; some, of shoppers. The aggressor in this war wants to browbeat his opponents into acquiescence; this doesn’t always entail killing. Sometimes the threat of violence is enough to cancel a lecture, silence a critic. The police are among the first to advise compliance in order to avoid trouble. They certainly don’t want to appear Islamophobic.

Cops are good for dealing with criminals. They are not equipped for war. Our legal system is not equipped for this different war. And so, we are losing.

We lost on 9/11.

We lost in the Madrid, the London bombings.

We lost in the Boston Marathon, at Parliament in Ottawa, in the relentless barbarism in Nigeria.

…and countless more.

We lose every time we go to the airport and  give up an hour or so to have our bags and bodies scanned.

We lose every time we use a phone, send an e-mail or look at a web page, because these are no longer private acts. They must be scanned by security, looking for plots by our enemies.

We lose whenever an organization fears to publish its address, when security guards or even soldiers have to protect religious institutions. When we can’t go into certain areas of our cities, because they are under control of the enemy.

We lose when dissenting opinions are shouted down or their speakers beaten up. When those opinions can’t be given voice, for fear of offending vengeful, violent people. Free speech is good and we are all Charlie Hebdo, but we don’t want to end up like Charlie Hebdo.

A Different Kind of War Strategy

It will get worse unless we prepare to fight back. We need different tactics, for this different war. Here are some suggestions:

• Ban immigration, ban temporary visas from regions where our defeats are celebrated, where our enemies are admired; places such as Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and North Africa.
  • Canada has a long tradition of favoring immigrants from particular countries. It’s time for Canada and the U.S. to discriminate on the basis of origin.
• Anyone who goes to fight on behalf of an enemy or terrorist entity shall be considered guilty of treason if he is a citizen or legal resident.
  • If he’s on temporary visa, the visa shall be immediately cancelled and the person deported.
  • The death penalty for treason must be restored, with a process that does not lead to interminable delays.
• Mosques must report to police the identity of new converts,so they can be monitored.
  • Some people find violence and savagery exciting. Tired of online game warfare, they want to go to the next level, and think that Islam will get them there. The Imam of the mosque of Martin Couture-Rouleau, the convert who ran over two soldiers in St. Jean, Quebec, understood the problem, and cooperated with the RCMP. Such cooperation must be mandatory.
  • This discriminatory practice needn’t apply to other religions; their converts are not killing in the name of their new beliefs.
• Jailed radical Muslims must be isolated from other prisoners, to prevent jailhouse radicalization or conversion.
• Prisons must develop and apply effective intervention programs to minimize radicalization of inmates.

A War to Protect Civil Rights and Liberties

“Civil rights” are the rights of individuals to receive equal treatment (and to be free from unfair treatment or “discrimination”) in a number of settings — including education, employment, housing, and more — and based on certain legally-protected characteristics.

• TheCivil Rights of the majority,and of peaceful minorities must be protected by civil and criminal law.  This includes (within the confines of law)
  • Ability to hold meetings
  • To publish and disseminate information
  • To dress according to their religion without fear of violence
  • To peacefully espouse their religious traditions and attend services.
  • To support the political and social causes of their choice.
    • All without fear of violence.

•  A person’s right to advocate for a cause shall not interfere with the right of others to work, or to carry on their business.

  

  • The right to practice a religion shall not oblige an employer to compromise his business in order to accommodate religious beliefs and practices.
  • If a person freely takes on an obligation, he cannot excuse himself from it because of religious issues
    • If a person takes a job as a bartender, he cannot refuse to serve alcohol. If he’s a taxi driver he cannot refuse service dogs because of his religion. If his faith forbids dogs, let him find a different job.
• Anyone on a visa who interferes with civil rights of others shall immediately have his visa cancelled.
• Anyone interfering with normal activities (civil rights) of Canadians shall be held financially responsible for the consequences.
• Anyone causing financial loss though demonstrations or related political activities shall be held financially responsible.
• Anyone sponsoring or organizing such interference, whether directly or indirectly shall be held financially or criminally responsible.
• The Tides Foundation of San Francisco funds environmental protests in Canada. Such protests include obstructing the operation or

  

  construction of national infrastructure. The anonymous donors who fund such activities through Tides must be held accountable for the damage they cause.

• Calling for the death of people because of their race, ethnicity or religion shall be deemed a criminal act.
• It shall be illegal to conceal one’s face when in public place, except as part of organized activity with permit from appropriate authorities.

International Economics and Propaganda in a Different Kind of War

The economic success of Western civilization is premised on capitalism, i.e. the free flow of capital between economic entities.   Any interference with the flow is bad, in principle. However when the entities have another purpose beside economic advancement or are trying to gain a surreptitious advantage, they must be controlled. When a CNOOC, a Chinese company bought a large stake in a Canadian energy company it gave the tyrannical Chinese Communist Party a direct hand in Canadian energy development. It didn’t take long for it to start reneging on the commitments it made to get regulatory approval.

Petronas, owned by the government of Malaysia also has significant stakes in Canadian energy companies, including infrastructure. Malaysia is sixty-one percent Muslim. This in itself need not be a problem, but the country is quickly sliding towards fundamentalism and violence. A past Prime Minister was a vicious anti-Semite, and the current one has praised the strength of ISIS fighters.

In Saudi Arabia and the gulf Emirates, the governments, the energy producers and the worldwide wealth they control are essentially the same entities. The Saudis are the second largest shareholder in Fox News. They have a growing influence in the American press and entertainment industry, and they are not shy about using it.   When environmentalists oppose North American energy development, when they create obstacles that delay projects and add costs, the Saudis gain a competitive cost advantage. Sometimes the environmentalists know who is funding their work, sometimes they are clueless. Either way, they are serving the regime that has funded the worldwide spread of radical Islam.

By funding North American environmentalists, by engaging in an energy price war, the Saudis are trying to gain a surreptitious advantage. Petronas, the Saudis and CNOOC are not simply foreign capitalist entities. The former two are connected to those who have undertaken the different kind of war against us. The latter two are part of aggressive, anti-democratic regimes with no respect for the values of Western civilization. They must not be allowed to influence us in our battle.

• 

  All voting control of subsidiaries of state-owned entities must be firmly and clearly separated from the regimes that own them.

• Western governments shall be entitled to place auditors within the subsidiaries to ensure that decisions they make are for normal business purposes only.
• Subsidiaries of state-owned entities shall not be allowed to engage in public relations, political lobbying or community affairs, whether directly or through funding of other groups.
• Subsidiaries of state-owned entities shall not be allowed to invest in the press, entertainment media, or online social networks.

 A Different Kind of War Entails a Different Kind of Sacrifice

In previous world wars, populations related to the enemy were placed in internment camps, to make sure they weren’t working to destroy us from within. Loyal Canadians and Americans were rounded up, and treated horribly. We don’t want to do that again. It’s more than probable that the vast majority of Muslims are loyal citizens of the Western countries they now inhabit (there is no way to properly quantify this). But we can’t ignore the many radicals dedicated to our destruction.   We must make sacrifices, such as suspending some of  our values— the ones that are being used against us.  We must fight back. Pretending that a different kind of war is not really a war is the path of appeasement on the road to surrender.

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
                                                                                    – Ayn Rand

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The Dark Ages Have Arrived

It’s been peaceful here in North America.  There hasn’t been a war in the United States since the end of the Civil War a

hundred and fifty years ago.  There hasn’t been a war in Canada since we kicked America’s ass in the War of 1812.  We’re not used to; we can’t understand the concept of our streets and cities becoming battlefields.  Some demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri think that their police force is worse than ISIS.  It’s hard to wrap your head around mass slaughter, rape and beheadings.  It’s hard to understand what evil is.

The old North American wars were relatively mild.  The fighting took place on battlefields, and the victims were mostly soldiers.  Some cities were devastated, farms destroyed.  We burned the White House in 1812, an event that made it into the

American national anthem.

The wars we’ve fought since then have more or less followed the same format: soldier against soldier.  They’ve adhered more or less to the Hague Convention of 1899, the Geneva Convention, both designed to limit the barbarity of war, and the suffering on non-combatants.

The peaceful time is over

The peaceful time is over.  We’re under attack by an enemy that doesn’t care about civilian casualties.  It doesn’t even distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.  According to their code of war (the Koran), if you’re not one of them, then you’re an enemy who has to be destroyed, or at least subjugated.  In many instances, our foes don’t have armies, so there are no soldiers to identify and destroy.  A man driving an ordinary car through the streets of Jerusalem is their fighter, his vehicle his weapon as he drives into a crowd and kills a three-month-old baby.  A man driving an ordinary car in a shopping center parking lot in Saint-Jean, Quebec is their fighter, as he deliberately mows down two soldiers walking together.

So who do we fight against?  Ordinary Muslims, who just want to go about their lives as citizens?  How do we tell them from the Muslims who are participating in the glory of war against the infidels?  Do we expel all of them; lock them up behind barbed wire?  That’s inconceivable.  It doesn’t fit our enlightened civilization.

Maybe we can just ban them from driving.  But the terrorists have a habit of developing new strategies every time we learn to deal with the old ones.  If they don’t use cars, they’ll use bicycles.  If they don’t use knives, they’ll use box-cutters.  And again, such discrimination doesn’t fit our enlightened civilization.

We have to protect ourselves

But we have to protect ourselves.  The best way, to my mind, is to keep Canadians from wanting to be terrorists.  It’s not an original idea.  The RCMP worked with the family and Imam of the Saint-Jean terrorist, to steer him away from his radical agenda.  Their strategy failed; I have a better one.

The news media is full of stories of ISIS victories.  They brazenly behead people.  They machine gun victims lying in the dirt.  They boast about selling captive women as slaves.  They’ve taken control of huge swaths of Iraq, laying waste to years of blood and sacrifice by the mighty Americans.  The world speaks their name with fear.  Even Al Qaeda, which brought down the World Trade Center, seems passé.  People like winners, and ISIS seems to be winning.  Losers like Michael Zehaf Bibeau and Martin (Ahmad) Couture-Rouleau are enamored, and want to be on the winning side.

Let’s show ISIS as the losers they really are

Let’s show ISIS as the losers they really are.  Let’s carry the war back to their shores, and give them a real fight.  They may be strong raping women, murdering children and having sex with goats and donkeys.  How strong are ISIS terrorists when fighting real soldiers, intent on their defeat?  Will ISIS cower proudly as Western air power bombs it back to the Stone Age?  If we allow the development of North American oil and gas resources, we won’t have to give them enough money afterwards to climb back past the Bronze Age.

War isn’t peaceful, and we don’t like it.  But it’s here.  They attacked us, and they’re going to keep attacking until we either submit, or crush them. If we’re not choosing appeasement or surrender, then the choice is whether we crush them here or there.  I prefer there.

Both Prime Minister Harper and President Obama have starved their respective armed forces.  While the U.S. government is quickly running out of money, Prime Minister Harper’s advisors have been wondering what to do with the large anticipated federal budget surplus.  The attacks in Saint Jean and Ottawa have answered that question.

If Canadians and Americans see a military that is motivated to win, led by commanders who believe in the fight, then the good guys (us) will look like the winners.  People of all faiths will be motivated to participate.  If the Israel Defense Forces can have Muslims commanders, Canada and the U.S. can do better than having its Muslim citizens running over or shooting soldiers.

I quoted George Washington in a previous post:  “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”  Let’s drop our old assumptions, and preserve the peace.  All-out war against terrorists is the best way to chase away the darkness, to bring back the peaceful times before they fade into a distant memory.

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ISIS is a pathologically brutal organization trying to make the world a better place.  Who can disagree with making the world a better place?  You may not agree with their definition of “a better place,” but can you really say their hearts are evil?  A restored Caliphate is an ancient Muslim dream, and these hardworking, dedicated psychopaths stand a good chance of making their dream come true.

Achieving a Better Christian World

Other religions have their own dreams or goals.  Christianity, as a general principle, posits that one must accept Jesus in order to be saved, or go to heaven.  But how do Christians expect to achieve this better world when they say things like this:

This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.

This declaration might come as a surprise to victims of the Inquisition or Crusades, or to the many indigenous people converted at sword point to Christianity.  When Pope Benedict apologized for the cruelty, he nonetheless upheld the view that the conversions were beneficial to the converted.  Although he frowned on organized efforts to bring Jews to Catholicism, he still claimed “…that Jews “still stand within the faithful covenant of God,” and that “they will in the end be together with us in Christ.” If you believe something is vital and true, shouldn’t you have the cojones to stand up for it, rather than waiting for your god to make it to happen?

Conflicting Strategies

Judaism proclaims both the active and passive models:

One conception, a visionary anticipation of Divine upheaval, projects an abrupt apocalypse, bringing instant glory to Israel’s faithful and destruction upon her enemies.  The existing political;-military-religious order is radically transformed.  Extraordinary transmutations of nature accompany the termination and supersession of the historical process.

The other conception posits a compelling human drama, in which the national energies of the people are harnessed, on their own initiative, to a resourceful redemptive process, pursuing the restoration of Jewish sovereignty and a collective return to Jewish spirituality; a dynamic activation of historic forces toward an evolving realization of the national goal.

According to the first approach the messianic era, the better world, will arrive through a suspension of history.  It will take divine intervention, rather than human effort.  Man must therefore devote his energy towards appeasing the fickle, but just deity, convincing God that the piety of his co-religionists merit redemption. ISIS believes in individual piety, but it doesn’t like the idea of sitting around, waiting for god to make things happen.  They’re helping him out.

Get Off Your Rear Ends

So too, it’s time for Jews and Christians to get off their rear ends and make things happen.  First thing, keep ISIS, Hamas, and their ilk from murdering your co-religionists.  The IDF is doing a good job of this in Israel, but world efforts to protect endangered Christian communities in Africa, the Middle East and Fertile Crescent have been tepid, at best. Increased attention to God by Christians and Jews is good.  The ancient Rabbis ascribed the fall of the first Temple in Jerusalem to idol worship, which is not good. But it’s not as simple as it seems.  The medieval commentator Maimonides explained that the first Temple fell because the people relied on Canaanite astrology.  Since the course of events were determined by the stars, there was no need to be militarily prepared for the Babylonian onslaught. Fatalism based on astrology leads to passivity.  Fatalism based on religious piety also leads to passivity.

Isis is Right

That’s why ISIS is right: they’re pious (in their own perverted sense), but they’re actively pursuing their better world.  Judaism has to follow their example.  Maimonides asserted that the messianic era will emerge as the result of people pursuing justice and virtue.  Messianism shouldn’t be treated as a gift we’re awaiting, but rather as an opportunity to be pursued.

Not through coercion, but through the application of the principles of Torah study, such as kindness and justice.  The latter imply the reduction of human suffering, whether through advanced technology, social or individual altruism.  It would imply new dimensions of aesthetic creativity and human expression.

The Jewish messianic era is premised on Jewish sovereignty.  To deny the religious significance of the Modern State of Israel is outright heresy.  To explain Israel’s survival in the midst of hundreds of millions of foes without reference to God’s will is stupidity.  To deny the holiness of serving in the Israel Defense Forces is self-serving rationalization.  The many Muslims, Christians and secular Jews who pick up a gun to defend Israel have reached a higher state than those who refuse life outside their yeshivas.  The great sage Rabbi Akiva (1^st c. CE) declared Bar Kochba as the messiah, based not on his religiosity, but on his physical strength and military prowess.

Yes, Judaism must pursue its better world as doggedly as ISIS and Hamas pursue theirs.  Not through forced conversion, physical strength, beheadings, rape and mass murder, but through science and art, technology and innovation.  Through respect for the individual, consideration for the poor and disadvantaged.  Through an army that is at once powerful and sensitive.

Jewish spirituality is properly expressed through its application in the material world.  And it’s in the material world that the “better world” of the messianic era must be pursued.  Both Jews and Christians must be more tenacious than ISIS in pursuing their values.

 Strategy for overcoming ISIS tenacity:

Your comments are always welcome.

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The recent Sabbath murder of a rabbi in Miami, the sucker-punching of Jews outside a kosher restaurant in Montreal, and many similar incidents around the world do not point to a rise in Jew hatred.  Rather, they show that anti-Semites (whether neo-Nazi or Muslim) feel more comfortable expressing their contempt, whether through insults, vandalism, or physical assault.  The Miami police immediately declared there was no evidence the rabbi’s murder

was a hate crime, even though the nearby synagogue had recently been defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti. In Montreal, the police tried to discourage the victim from filing a police report, and then drove off.  A member of Hatzoloh, the Jewish Emergency Volunteer Service, rushed to help the injured man in their stead.

In Calgary, as reported in a previous post, the police were out of sight when Jews were assaulted by Muslim demonstrators.  In Paris, pro-Palestinian demonstrators armed with rocks, glass, axes and knives advanced on a synagogue as police lost control.  Jewish youth became warriors, defending the synagogue.  Some were injured, mostly at the hands of gendarmes supposedly keeping the peace.  And there are many places in Europe where the police fear to tread.  The authorities, to put it simply, cannot be relied upon.

An ancient Jewish teaching (Sotah 49b) asks “On whom shall we rely?  On our Father in Heaven.”  This can be interpreted as a denial of nature, of cause and effect.  For example according to this interpretation, if someone swings a baseball bat at your head, ducking is not going to make a difference.  All that matters is whether or not God wants you to get hit.  Getting a good job will not be more financially rewarding than studying Torah or playing X-Box, if God doesn’t plan for you to do well.

This is not the traditional Jewish approach, but rather a twentieth century innovation.  The Bible teaches that when Jacob was about to meet his brother Esau, he was afraid that he and his family would be killed in revenge for Jacob’s

having stolen their father’s blessings many years earlier.  Jacob did three things to protect himself.  He sent Esau gifts to appease him, to make peace.  He prayed to his Father in Heaven.  And he prepared for war.

The historic slaughters of Jews are well-known: the Holocaust, the Chmielniki pogroms, the Crusades.  Many times, Jews went silently to their deaths.  Many times, such as in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, they fought to the death.

The Judean Revolt was Crushed by a Jewish Warrior

Once Jews were warriors, from their entry into Canaan under Joshua, through the  kings of Judea, the Hasmonean rebels and the Roman military.  The Emperor Vespasian appointed an Alexandrian Jew named Tiberius Julius Alexander to spearhead his effort to crush the Judean rebellion of 69 CE (a precedent for modern assimilated Jews attacking Israel).  Jews were valued members of the Roman military for centuries before and after.

Jews should definitely rely on the “Father in Heaven.”  But Jewish teachings also specify not to rely on miracles.  The Patriarch Jacob didn’t: he prepared for war.

In Israel, the IDF must always be prepared, or the country will be wiped out. On Yom Kippur, 1973, it wasn’t prepared.   Some attribute Israel’s survival to God’s intervention.  Others credited it (at least in part) to President Richard Nixon’s insistence that Israel must be saved, no matter what it took.

And in the diaspora?  Must individual, civilian Jews be prepared for war?  They can’t rely on the police.  Sometimes the police can’t intervene, sometimes they won’t bother to.  Will hiring a few security guards protect Jewish institutions from vandalism or assault?  When a Palestinian or neo-Nazi wants to terrorize Jewish children, is the proper response to cower or hide?  To wear a baseball cap instead of a skullcap?

In nineteen-sixty, John Howard Griffin wanted to understand the black experience in America, and undertook medical treatments to change his skin color.  He was shocked at the extent of prejudice, oppression and hardship he went through.

In two thousand fourteen, Ryan Bellerose, a Native American, wanted to understand the Jewish experience, and wore a kippa, a Jewish skullcap for a week.   He was shocked by the glares, by the ignorance, and outright bigotry.  He was shocked at being called “Genocider, Jew baby-killer.”  Bellerose, a physically intimidating man, considered that if he was treated this way, what happened to Jews who did not look like they could defend themselves?

Jews can’t all be a Steven Seagal or a Ryan Bellerose, but they must develop a reputation as civilized warriors,  slow to anger, but capable of defending themselves.  Cowardly attackers should not be able to assume that it’s safe to strike.  Anti-Semites should not feel it’s

safe to physically express their hatred. It’s time once again for Jews to be physically intimidating.

It’s time for Jews to once again pick up their warrior mantle, to learn to fight, to injure those who would hurt them.  It’s time for self-defence to become a compulsory subject at Jewish schools.  Jews can still rely on the “Father in Heaven,” but not just through prayer and supplication.  It’s not the kind of world we want to see, but it’s what’s the world’s becoming; not just for Jews, but for any non-Muslim living somewhere with a significant Muslim population.  The Jews are the prime target of Jihadis, but certainly not the only one.

As George Washington said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”  Let’s drop our old assumptions, and preserve the peace.

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