So the Dutch politician Geert Wilders demonstrates some sac – and a little thing called free speech – by releasing a short-film titled Fitna, which means “division among peoples”. The film is a montage. It includes verses from the Qur’an (Koran, Currahn, Cor-anne, Quho’ron, Koh-ron’n???) that could be taken out of context to incite violence against non-Muslims. Interspersed with these verses are scenes from the media that you’d have to be a cave troll to have missed… cowardly acts of Islamist terrorism (September 11 attacks, Madrid train bombings, etc.)… Muslim children calling Jews “pigs”… Muslim clerics calling for death to Jews and Westerners… you get the idea – just the usual. [please don't confuse the clerics with Barack Obama's pastor... although they're close]

So I watched the film. The premise – that the Qur’an is being used (to some extent) in fueling hatred and violence in the name of Islam – seemed to be well demonstrated (proven?). Indeed, the point seems grossly obvious to anyone with a television. Sadly the point is in dispute. Violently in dispute. Violently in dispute?! Isn’t that a double-negative or a oxy-contradiction? Fortunately I didn’t need the film to see that Islam isn’t always very… umm… “peaceful”? And where would I get that idea?

Remember the cartoons? Remember the Pope’s remarks? This recent brouhaha over Fitna has firmly established a grave pattern… that the very right to free speech can be removed – under threat from an extremist mob – when you have pansies in leadership.

From a Reuters article:

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned as “offensively anti-Islamic” a Dutch lawmaker’s film that accuses the Koran of inciting violence.

Ban acknowledged efforts by the government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of the film, which was launched by Islam critic Geert Wilders over the Internet, and appealed for calm to those “understandably offended by it.”

“There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence,” Ban said in a statement. “The right of free expression is not at stake here.”

Did you read that? The UN Figurehead says that “The right of free expression is not at stake here”!? That there is no justification for this? How about no justification for answering an insult with violence? How about no justification for responding to a cartoon with killings? You see… the UN Figurehead knows that there are a small number of Muslims who are wild extremist animals – unfortunately a small percentage of a billion people is still A LOT OF PEOPLE! So instead of acknowledging the problem he jumps down the throat of the guy revealing the problem. Isn’t that just like today’s world leadership?

From a Breitbart article:

An Internet site said Saturday it had removed anti-Islam film “Fitna” by far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders after receiving threats to its staff amid protests by Muslim nations and the UN chief.

The Britain-based Liveleak.com said it pulled down the video, which can still be seen on other websites, including youtube.com. The film was posted to the Internet on Thursday.

“Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove ‘Fitna’ from our servers,” the site said in a statement.

“This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else,” the online statement said.

Wilders said it was “terrible that these threats deal a serious blow to freedom of expression,” but he told Dutch news agency ANP that he understood the decision to withdraw the short film.

So here’s the ploy… threaten the providers of the medium, and scare them into silence. Fortunately, in this case, LiveLeak.com ended up putting the video back up – I give them points for that. And really, this is what it takes. It takes standing up to the threats and the violence. It takes standing strong and saying that being offended is okay… you’ll survive.

I would be remiss here not to mention that although there are a small percentage of Muslims who are Satan incarnate, there are also a small percentage who are disgusted by the sickening and irrational animal displays of the former group. These are the Free Muslims, and you should read more about them.

And actually, another Muslim group that watches extremists – Islam Watch – recently uncovered some extremism that was just covered here in this FoxNews article:

A report posted on Islam Watch, a site run by Muslims who oppose intolerant teachings and hatred for unbelievers, exposes a prominent Islamic cleric and lawyer who support extreme punishment for non-Muslims — including killing and rape.

A question-and-answer session with Imam Abdul Makin in an East London mosque asks why Allah would tell Muslims to kill and rape innocent non-Muslims, including their wives and daughters, according to Islam Watch.

“Because non-Muslims are never innocent, they are guilty of denying Allah and his prophet,” the Imam says, according to the report. “If you don’t believe me, here is the legal authority, the top Muslim lawyer of Britain.”

The lawyer, Anjem Choudary, backs up the Imam’s position, saying that all Muslims are innocent.

Click here to watch the interview with Islamic lawyer Anjem Choudary.

“You are innocent if you are a Muslim,” Choudary tells the BBC. “Then you are innocent in the eyes of God. If you are not a Muslim, then you are guilty of not believing in God.”

Choudary said he would not condemn a Muslim for any action.

Anyways… without further prattle… here’s the Fitna short-film (courtesy of LiveLink courtesy of Google Video):

I am utterly tired of hearing about so-called man-made global warming. Why? Not because I’m in the middle of a snowstorm. Not because of any weather pattern I’ve seen in my own lifetime. More than anything… I am sick of hearing about it because I firmly believe it is exaggerated to the extreme… and when I research into the politics and money-trail of it the smell intensifies.

The hoax of the doctrine of man-made global warming that is being foisted upon the world by decree, and the junk science that is manipulated to support it, represents a creeping fascism whose agenda to stifle open debate betrays the fact that climate change hysteria is a farce intended to crush freedoms and further centralize global power.
~ Paul Joseph Watson from a post at PropagandaMatrix.com

You see, there are mountains of evidence showing our climate to be driven by very, VERY large forces outside our control as a society. The sun’s complex cycles control our climate more than anything else combined times several orders of magnitude. The research exists… but it is boring, you see, because the reality of not having control of the climate renders politicians, militant environmentalists, and grant-hungry researchers powerless and cashless. Like anything else, simply follow the money.

There is something quite horrible about the complete failure of America’s journalists to even acknowledge there might be something terribly wrong about the theory of Global Warming. So far the published science that purports to support the theory has been severely challenged and even disproved to the point of having deliberately falsified data.
~ Alan Caruba from an article in the Canada Free Press

Now I know that climatologists can reasonably discern that over the short-term temperatures give indications of a slight increase in overall global temperatures… but they also know that temperatures follow many complex cycles that include “mini”-ice-ages and “mini”-meltdowns and such. We also know that the ice caps regulate some of this activity much the same way a buffer moderates a chemical solution. And while it is evident that people have an effect on the environment it is rather alarmist to assert that the current warming trend (which appears to be solar-related) is man-made.

Yet alarmism seems to rule the day, and hysteria drives big lies. The big problem with hysteria is that it is lucrative. Lobby groups and politicians use it to gain political capital. Environmentalist wackos use it to push a social agenda. Researchers use it to scare up big grants. The mainstream media uses it to drive big advertising revenue. Plainly… hysteria sells. In fact, it sells so well that anybody daring to disagree is immediately attacked by hysteria’s cunning benefactors. I’ve too often heard the term “denier” thrown about lately with regard to man-made global warming. I hold a viewpoint highly suspect whose supporters so venomously and irrationally attack the dissenting opinions.

All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true in itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
~ Adolf Hitler as written in Mein Kampf

A great rule of thumb to follow is to not immediately believe anything you read or hear from people who benefit from your belief in what they are printing or saying. Did you get that, because that was a biggie. Ok, I’ll repeat it louder. A great rule of thumb to follow is to not immediately believe anything you read or hear from people who benefit from your belief in what they are printing or saying. Do your homework and use extra common sense, especially when something is being touted as “potentially catastrophic”… after all, how many pieces of mail do you receive that say “extremely urgent – open immediately” only to find out that it’s junk mail? Man-made global warming… yeah, that’s probably junk mail, too.

Two New Books Confirm Global Warming is Natural; Not Caused By Human Activity
Tue Jan 30 2007 10:02:32 ET

Two powerful new books say today’s global warming is due not to human activity but primarily to a long, moderate solar-linked cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, by physicist Fred Singer and economist Dennis Avery was released just before Christmas. The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and former BBC science writer Nigel Calder (Icon Books), is due out in March.

Singer and Avery note that most of the earth’s recent warming occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. Moreover, physical evidence shows 600 moderate warmings in the earth’s last million years. The evidence ranges from ancient Nile flood records, Chinese court documents and Roman wine grapes to modern spectral analysis of polar ice cores, deep seabed sediments, and layered cave stalagmites.

Unstoppable Global Warming shows the earth’s temperatures following variations in solar intensity through centuries of sunspot records, and finds cycles of sun-linked isotopes in ice and tree rings. The book cites the work of Svensmark, who says cosmic rays vary the earth’s temperatures by creating more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that cool the earth. It notes that global climate models can’t accurately register cloud effects.

The Chilling Stars relates how Svensmark’s team mimicked the chemistry of earth’s atmosphere, by putting realistic mixtures of atmospheric gases into a large reaction chamber, with ultraviolet light as a stand-in for the sun. When they turned on the UV, microscopic droplets—cloud seeds—started floating through the chamber.

“We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons [generated by cosmic rays] do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei,” says Svensmark.

The Chilling Stars documents how cosmic rays amplify small changes in the sun’s irradiance fourfold, creating 1-2 degree C cycles in earth’s temperatures: Cosmic rays continually slam into the earth’s atmosphere from outer space, creating ion clusters that become seeds for small droplets of water and sulfuric acid. The droplets then form the low, wet clouds that reflect solar energy back into space. When the sun is more active, it shields the earth from some of the rays, clouds wane, and the planet warms.

Unstoppable Global Warming documents the reality of a moderate, natural, 1500-year climate cycle on the earth. The Chilling Stars explains the why and how.

~ Matt Drudge

There are several phenomena at work here… probably the chief of which is cowardice. People are cowards… which is primarily why they choose to flatter rather than be honest. Candor is seen as offensive… and blunt truth is the highest evil of all. We’re so freaked out about offending anyone that we’ll let utter filth freely defecate all over us and our laws right in front of us, rub our nose in it, and then call us bigots. It is a shameful group of pansies we have become.

So is it any surprise that we take opinion polls all the time? Oh yes… we have to take polls to see if waves are being made anywhere on any issue… because that’s obviously the truest measure of noble direction – lack of dissent. Surely if everyone is happy with what’s happening then we must be doing it right. And by extension we must also ensure everyone in the international community is pleased with us, too. Because… obviously… other countries have the United States’ needs and wants truly at the core of their belief system. Yeah right…

Here is the article mentioned above:

If you are ever morally confused about a major world issue, here is a rule that is almost never violated: Whenever you hear that “world opinion” holds a view, assume it is morally wrong.

And here is a related rule if your religious or national or ethnic group ever suffers horrific persecution: “World opinion” will never do a thing for you. Never.

“World opinion” has little or nothing to say about the world’s greatest evils and regularly condemns those who fight evil.

The history of “world opinion” regarding the greatest mass murders and cruelties on the planet is one of relentless apathy.

Ask the 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks;
or the 6 million Ukrainians slaughtered by Stalin;
or the tens of millions of other Soviet citizens killed by Stalin’s Soviet Union;
or the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their helpers throughout Europe;
or the 60 million Chinese butchered by Mao;
or the 2 million Cambodians murdered by Pol Pot;
or the millions killed and enslaved in Sudan;
or the Tutsis murdered in Rwanda’s genocide;
or the millions starved to death and enslaved in North Korea;
or the million Tibetans killed by the Chinese;
or the million-plus Afghans put to death by Brezhnev’s Soviet Union.

Ask any of these poor souls, or the hundreds of millions of others slaughtered, tortured, raped and enslaved in the last 100 years, if “world opinion” did anything for them.

On the other hand, we learn that “world opinion” is quite exercised over Israel’s unintentional killing of a few hundred Lebanese civilians behind whom hides Hezbollah — a terror group that intentionally sends missiles at Israeli cities and whose announced goals are the annihilation of Israel and the Islamicization of Lebanon. And, of course, “world opinion” was just livid at American abuses of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. In fact, “world opinion” is constantly upset with America and Israel, two of the most decent countries on earth, yet silent about the world’s cruelest countries.

Why is this?

Here are four reasons:

First, television news.

It is difficult to overstate the damage done to the world by television news. Even when not driven by political bias — an exceedingly rare occurrence globally — television news presents a thoroughly distorted picture of the world. Because it is almost entirely dependent upon pictures, TV news is only capable of showing human suffering in, or caused by, free countries. So even if the BBC or CNN were interested in showing the suffering of millions of Sudanese blacks or North Koreans — and they are not interested in so doing — they cannot do it because reporters cannot visit Sudan or North Korea and video freely. Likewise, China’s decimation and annexation of Tibet, one of the world’s oldest ongoing civilizations, never made it to television.

Second, “world opinion” is shaped by the same lack of courage that shapes most individual human beings’ behavior. This is another aspect of the problem of the distorted way news is presented. It takes courage to report the evil of evil regimes; it takes no courage to report on the flaws of decent societies. Reporters who went into Afghanistan without the Soviet Union’s permission were killed. Reporters would risk their lives to get critical stories out of Tibet, North Korea and other areas where vicious regimes rule. But to report on America’s bad deeds in Iraq (not to mention at home) or Israel’s is relatively effortless, and you surely won’t get killed. Indeed, you may well win a Pulitzer Prize.

Third, “world opinion” bends toward power. To cite the Israel example, “world opinion” far more fears alienating the largest producers of oil and 1 billion Muslims than it fears alienating tiny Israel and the world’s 13 million Jews. And not only because of oil and numbers. When you offend Muslims, you risk getting a fatwa, having your editorial offices burned down or receiving death threats. Jews don’t burn down their critics’ offices, issue fatwas or send death threats, let alone act on such threats.

Fourth, those who don’t fight evil condemn those who do. “World opinion” doesn’t confront real evils, but it has a particular animus toward those who do — most notably today America and Israel.

The moment one recognizes “world opinion” for what it is — a statement of moral cowardice, one is longer enthralled by the term. That “world opinion” at this moment allegedly loathes America and Israel is a badge of honor to be worn proudly by those countries. It is when “world opinion” and its news media start liking you that you should wonder if you’ve lost your way.

Being an Armenian helped me relate to this even more.

[Magazine] is taking legal action to stop websites publishing a leaked picture of [Mrs. Smith] and [Mr. Smith] with their newborn daughter [baby].

The photo “has been obtained totally illegally,” said the magazine’s features editor, [woman].

[Mrs. Smith] and [Mr. Smith] sold the photos through picture [Agency], with all proceeds going to charity.

Both [Magazine] and [Agency] say they will seek damages from any internet sites which reproduce the picture.

NOTE: The names in the above excerpt have been obfuscated to prevent my post from being googled by a nasty lawyer.

You have to have heard about this by now. The whole BBC story is linked here. About every other website I can find has taken this picture down… so I guess it’s up to me.

If my website is down tomorrow… you know why.