FEAR AND SELF-LOATHING IN HOLLYWOOD

As someone with an interest in WW2, I immediately recognised the similarities between the Imperial Japanese and Islam, not just the obvious Kamikaze attacks and suicide bombers, but the overall mindset of the Japanese. Until the mid 19th century, Japan was in a state of medieval isolation and only became industrialized after been opened up by the West. Determined to compete with the West, Japan went through a rapid industrial revolution and produced a modern army that was sent on the rampage in China and south east Asia, but modernity was only a veneer around a still, medieval core.

The rampages by the Japanese army were purely medieval in their hysteria, fanaticism and sadistic use of samurai swords and bayonet and the ''Rape of Nanking'' was something out of the European Hundred Years War. The Japanese were irrational, hysterical and emotionally immature and very similar to the Muslims—it took General Curtis LeMay and the A bombs to put an end to their rape and pillage spree and give them an attitude ajustment that they'll never forget—they've been convinced democrats ever since and it will probably take something similar to make Muslims into lovers of democracy.
—Tarleton

"We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed."

THAT WAS THE ARROGANT DECLARATION of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim mayhem around the world protesting such infidel abominations as the Danish Muhammad cartoons and Geert Wilders' short film Fitna.

"Red lines" indeed—a phrase chillingly reminiscent of Samuel Huntington's famous observation that "Islam has bloody borders." Except that the red lines the OIC is referring to aren't geographical—they are the ever-tightening limits that Muslim fundamentalists are imposing to choke off our freedoms.

The influential OIC is the world's largest Muslim assembly, consisting of 57 member states (you know, the same number of U.S. states candidate Obama campaigned in). Its primary aim is "conducting a large-scale worldwide effort to confront Islamophobia." (As I've written here before, Islamophobia is a mythical beast that the OIC and collusive groups like CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, use to intimidate us into craven appeasement.)

Their goal is to abridge our free speech by making criticism of Islam an international crime; their strategy works because the West has been so emasculated by multiculturalism that we'd rather embrace cultural suicide than offend the tender sensibilities of such violent barbarians as the Danish cartoon rioters.

Everyone is aware by now that Comedy Central's South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were targeted by a not-so-subtle threat from Zachary "Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee" Chesser, the leader of a small New York-based group of fanatics at RevolutionMuslim.com. Chesser found the fearless South Park satirists guilty of an insulting depiction of Islam's prophet Muhammad as someone who—wait for it—cannot be depicted without incurring death threats.

To drive his point home, Chesser posted a picture of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh lying on an Amsterdam sidewalk, shot several times in broad daylight by an unrepentant Islamic fundamentalist, his throat cut, a machete stuck in his chest and a note calling for holy war pinned to him with a second knife. The message was clear—van Gogh had been executed for insulting Islam with his short film Submission, and now Parker and Stone can expect the same fate.

The site RevolutionMuslim.com is now down, but at the related RevolutionMuslim.blogspot.com is an exhaustingly wide-ranging, unapologetic declaration with the catchy title, "Clarifying the South Park Response and Calling on Others to Join in the Defense of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him)."

Far from backing off from the implied threat, the declaration's poster—presumably Chesser—launches into an anti-American rant and a scholarly justification for Islam's position that the punishment for blasphemy is death. He stresses that it is absolutely incumbent upon all Muslims to abide by sharia law, so any Muslim who "condones" South Park's behavior does not possess "even the weakest of faith."

So much for moderate Islam. But what about freedom of speech?

"As Muslims we do not define speech which has no place in a moral society as 'free speech.'" Indeed, free speech "is not a value that the Muslims share with America as a whole." The declaration closes with an ominous quote from Chesser's idol Osama bin Laden: "If there is no check in the freedom of your words, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions." Well there it is, then. We can either curb our speech, or cross that red line and deal with the consequences from Muslims who are commanded, by Islamic law, to execute us.

In reporting on this controversy, the media have, as usual, resorted to their fallback narrative of describing Islamic fundamentalists as "loners" and "crazy people" who have hijacked what would otherwise be the Religion of Peace. The danger in these dismissive labels is that we mistakenly view the terrorists as isolated nut jobs, when in fact they are united by a common goal—the capitulation of the West and the establishment of sharia worldwide—and they are perfectly capable of articulating and ideologically justifying it. Whether the dozen or so members of Revolution Muslim and the 57-member states of the OIC are officially linked or not, they are working toward the same end.

CAIR's ubiquitous spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper calls Revolution Muslim "an extreme fringe group" that is smearing Islam with its "outrageous, irresponsible" statements. But CAIR hasn't issued a formal statement about the affair, ostensibly because it doesn't want to give South Park any more attention. Too bad, because amid all this uproar, CAIR is throwing away a golden opportunity to explain exactly how these "crazies" have "hijacked" the religion. This would be the perfect time to discredit their "outrageous, irresponsible" distortions, wouldn't it? And to stand with the South Park creators in defense of free speech?

Instead, Hooper would rather move on because "people are pretty tired of this whole 'Let's insult the prophet Muhammad thing.'" They are? I wasn't aware that there even was a "whole 'Let's insult the prophet Muhammad thing.'" It's not like it was ever a wildly popular fad, since anyone deemed to have insulted Muhammad ordinarily ends up dead or living under 24-hour guard.

Actually Mr. Hooper, what people are pretty tired of is Islamic violence and open intimidation, attacks on our freedoms and rights, and false charges of racism and Islamophobia. What people are pretty tired of, in short, is the whole, "Let's behead those who insult Islam thing."

The Los Angeles Times claims that such threats present a dilemma for media companies, who are "struggling to balance free speech with safety concerns and religious sensitivities." This is giving them way too much credit. The media and the entertainment industry care absolutely nothing about religious sensitivities; if anything, they normally delight in mocking and sneering at faith, especially Christianity. But they treat Islam with kid gloves because, as Fox's Bill O'Reilly said, "these people are killers and they will kill you."

Nor do media companies care about free speech except when it suits them. They shut down politically inconvenient truths, such as Disney/ABC's shameful suppression of The Path to 9/11 miniseries, which I have written about here. And they fold (like a Bedouin tent, as Mark Steyn hilariously put it) at the first hint of Muslim disapproval. No amount of Christian offense would compel Comedy Central to rein in South Park's depiction of Jesus defecating on the American flag, but in the wake of the Revolution Muslim threat, Comedy Central decided to bleep over any subsequent reference to "Prophet Muhammad," and his visual portrayal was replaced with a black "Censored" bar. There's a reason Islam means "submission," and Comedy Central has exemplified it.

And as for media companies' "safety concerns": every time they cave in to Islamist threats of violence, the terrorists win, as the corny saying goes. It quite simply encourages our enemy to ramp up the threats, which then endangers even more innocents.

The OIC boasted about "red lines that should not be crossed" - well, the time has come for Hollywood to stop placating these murderous zealots in its usual way, with knee-jerk self-censorship, and to draw a line in the sand of our own, against religious totalitarianism. In the absence of any government acknowledgement that fundamentalist Islam is a serious threat to our way of life, the entertainment industry must rally behind Parker and Stone, and take the lead in a cultural counteroffensive against the jihadists.

Unless Americans stand shoulder-to-shoulder against such assaults on our hard-won Western values, Islamic fundamentalists will continue to be more effective at importing sharia law than we are at exporting democracy. We must stand for our principles and freedoms with an even greater degree of unwavering fervor and cultural pride than the jihadists possess. Or make no mistake, we will all be witness to the slow, humiliating death of Western civilization.

Authored by Mark Tapson

The West must come to an understanding and finally prepare into every strategy that theocratic Islam is itself the deadly culpit, the dark evil, the unabashed enemy that we must defeat in this fight for survival. Jamie Glasov has conducted a telling interview with Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist who worked for several years with young criminal Muslims in a Copenhagen prison. He is the author of Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist’s Experience from the Copenhagen Municipality. This interview is a good start for those who still don't get it...

VALLEY OF DECISION

"Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?"

These things are only to be expected in the life cycle of an empire. The forces striving to bring about World Government are responsible for this. Empires expand and seek to incorporate differing peoples, tribes, states and nations within their growing boundaries. Private religion is no problem in a world with no borders. All empires must have an official policy or mechanism to provide stability.

There is a rush towards the "end of history". Any thought that endangers peace and stability must be removed by the controlling interests of power or the ruling elite, if you will. The transformational period that we are witnessing and living in will continue in earnest for probably another 15 years.

This time will be fraught with increasing crisis, chaos, conflict, and creative destruction. It is the desire of powerfull men and kings of the earth to bring their order out of the chaos of the old order. The only thing to be done is to remain true to the first and greatest commandment and the second which is like unto it. Your enemy wants to divide and cause hatred so he can step in to control. Be angry and sin not.

—Woodpecker, CO

As my engineering teacher said, engineering is a quiet profession. He told us that the styrofoam containers McDonalds used to put their quarter pounders in did less damage than the new cardboardy ones. He also said there were more single car accidents involving little cars, than big ones (comfort problem?). If earth was that fragile, it would not have been able to support life. I would suggest to anyone with about an hour to tune into Michael Crichton's complexity theory lecture on his website. He does an excellent job of walking through the failure of us humans to understand and accept the complexity of our busy, active planet. If nothing else, look at the usgs website on earth quake stats. Here is just one that will surpise a lot of people:

Alaska is the most earthquake-prone state and one of the most seismically active regions in the world. Alaska experiences a magnitude 7 earthquake almost every year, and a magnitude 8 or greater earthquake on average every 14 years. The number of hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, lighting strikes, etc. that happen on our planet mean it is continually changing and very active. We only hear about the ones that are huge, or effect our own lives.

—Beckett, DE

Crichton's complexity theory is a valuable read for anyone still confused by FA Hayek's defense of capitalism against statism.