THOMAS JEFFERSON'S CERTAINTY

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA did not have bases in Saudi Arabia when the "Algerine" pirates sailed into the Atlantic to capture our sailors and torture them in the late 1700s to 1830 (one of the obtuse reasons Osama bin Laden and his Western apologists give for the September 11 attacks). As a matter of fact, then as now, the Islamists were very straightforward as to why they were attacking us for the thirty years of the Barbary war(s).

The following paragraph summarizes the dutiful and unvarnished research of Thomas Jefferson:

"It was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged the Muslim’s authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and make slaves of all the could take as prisoners, and that every mussulman who be slain in the battle was sure to go to paradise."

—Abd-al-Rahman, March 1785 London, England, during a meeting to discuss the fate of American captives in Barbary to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

The idea that current Islamic charm has been perverted or hijacked into some radical NEW version of Islam is FALSE. In fact, ITS ALWAYS BEEN BARBARIC IN NATURE, but no one in the West seems to know enough about history to accept this fact. Jefferson accepted the word from the mouth of the enemy, and grew bold enough to defeat them. Today, our politicians wink, shuffle their feet, and pick words from a hat handed them by the enemy, asking only how high to jump, or rather, how low to kneel, beg, and borrow.

CONGRESS ON FOREIGN INTERNET OPPRESSION

CONGRESS YESTERDAY CONSIDERED HOW to resolve the dilemma of U.S. Internet companies that try to serve their customers but end up serving repressive foreign governments. Witnesses at a congressional hearing talked about dissidents in China, Syria and Russia who were imprisoned after posting their political thoughts on the Internet.

Routers, e-mail and other Internet services of U.S. companies helped the foreign governments track down the dissidents in some cases, the witnesses told members of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on human rights and the law.

"Cisco´s routers are supercomputers," said Shiyu Zhou, deputy director of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, a group that advocates against political censorship of the Internet. "They can be used as a toys, but they can also be made into an A-bomb."

He was referring to the Chinese government's Golden Shield Project, sometimes referred to as the Great Firewall of China. It is a censorship and surveillance program run by China's Ministry of Public Security that began operating in November 2003.

The Global Internet Freedom Consortium says Cisco Systems Inc.'s contract with the Chinese government to help build the Golden Shield program enabled Chinese police to find and arrest dissidents by tracking their Internet postings back to the source.

"They can make it into an A-bomb to make it do whatever the Golden Shield needs," Mr. Zhou said about Cisco's computer systems.

Well, our wonderfully sluggish US Congress finally awakens from their slumber on this issue that has caught the attention of concerned industry pundits for at least a decade. Damned American greed once again strikes at the hearts of the innocents, just to gain a foothold in market share (and the misplaced hope that these governments will either loosen up or the people will somehow rise up against their oppressors by luck of Western technologies. Read the entire Washington Times article.

MEMORIAL DAY 2008

A moment of silence, as we salute those who have fallen in the name of freedom, in the name of liberty, in the name of America the beautiful and the star-spangled banner. Please, a moment of silence...

BUSH THE MARXIST

The following somewhat apt characterization of our current "decider" is from the keyboard of the inimitable Hugh Fitzgerald, a major contributor to the Jihad Watch website.

George Walker Bush is a hallucinator. He talks, he likes the sound his words make, he thinks they must conform to some higher reality, and he has convinced himself they must be true. He's messianic, and also a Marxist, because he believes that economic well-being, or lack of it, explains the behavior of people, and that by improving the lot of Muslims, or "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East [and apparently Mexico, insertion mine], we will do away with the "root causes" of all the distempers, and all the craziness, and all the hatred directed at Infidels.

He's still unclear about Islam, about the simplest things about Islam. He asked the Arab students whom he saw in Israel if they attended dances with Jews. The American ambassador, Jones (himself someone with deplorable views on Israel, and also exhibiting a failure to grasp the Islamic roots of the war against Israel—because if he grasped those roots, he could not possibly be such a promoter of further surrenders of territory or territorial control by Israel), explained to Bush that such mixed dances were not exactly possible, and indeed, the very idea of such dances, among Arab boys and girls, also impossible. That Bush did not know this, that he has no real idea of what Islamic societies are like, shines from his every innocent word.

We don't want innocents running us. We want people who may not be nice, may not have such touching faith in "democracy" or any other ideal, for that matter, except the ideal of keeping us, the Infidels, from succumbing to the many-pronged assault of Islam. We can't afford the naive and sentimental lovers of something they think is swell, something they—a bit too enthusiastically and too unthinkingly and too inaccurately—call "democracy."

As I have pointed out many times before, this whole affair of stealthily moving towards the New World Order, a project thrusting us toward a one world government via North American Free Trade Agreement on this side of the Atlantic and the EU with its Eurabian Pact on the other, is Marxist in tone, although the card-carrying Marxists now hate it because, as one of my disgruntled Marxist acquaintances put it blithely in an email to me just yesterday, "it's all a scam set up to keep white people fully able to exploit brown and black people." Actually she was referring to the US Congress. But I think you know from whence I speak.

I am old enough to remember that the push for world domination was not only okay, but a solemn duty of all citizens of the world to recreate the Duma, when the Soviets were pushing for it, or the Red Chinese. But in American hands, empire is ruthlessly evil, oppressive to its core, exploitative, and murderous, every inch a monster, in the mind and mouths of these same apologists for Old Uncle Joe and crotchety Chairman Mao, all the while complaining that we Americans don't do enough to help the Third World.

Oh yes, I even recall those days of yore when tampering with primitive societies was considered off-limits. But in time, the World Bank intercedes, tries to set up real systems that work only to have them fail mainly because of corrupt local policies. Enormous defaulted loans then are forgiven, time after time in location after location, but once again, the Left is soon crawling the streets screaming bloody murder.

What a difficult inheritance we Americans are preparing for our split personality-riddled children! Blind chaos is now the soup of champions guaranteed to cede submission to the murderous hordes that have already declared their intentions that will make cumulative American policy sins melt away faster than a single snowflake dropped suddenly into the cauldron of hell.

STALKING THE CENSOR V1.0

Originally published in two parts of a proposed five part essay on the Internet by Gabriel Thy, writing for the Scenewash Project in 1997, but is now undergoing a rewrite. Please bear with me.

AFTER FORTY YEARS OF STUMBLING around like a drunken beggar among the same strategies and tactics this American desert of cultural chaos has subjected its entire population to more or less under the guise of truth and consequences, I pause for breath. From a minority perspective (that is to say, of one man, one vote, and theoretically, one voice) I am compelled by conscience to admit in writing that while I comprehend this often ruthless subjection of the populations to old stratagems of censorship which seem more suggestive of an insane carte blanche rape of both the individual genius and the collective cause by some well-entrenched intellectual forces that work merely to gain and protect turf, I also must acknowledge that no idea can set men free when holstered by anti-individualistic political forces acting against populations differing in collective character and individual resolve than the straw men they create. A "one size fits all" binder is rarely a competent plea for morality or ethics, but it is a game played ineptly by both the Left and the Right in the battle between individual liberty and social control.

Understanding that a few paragraphs here will never contain the full length, breadth, and volume of this issue, I nevertheless am persuaded to attempt a working hypothesis in dealing with that peculiar language which WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, call the Freedom of Speech clause of the First Amendment to our Constitution, a document penned by the founding fathers which was immediately declared good and necessary in the struggle against the long grievous dynamic of official oppression previous ages had witnessed, and its sharpening effect upon the human spirit, peculiar language now under serious assault by diabolical forces emanating from various fronts pushing political correctness schemes in the name of freedom to match those who unabashedly tout totalitarian mechanisms to squash any and all human expression that does not regard the party line as sacrosanct.

I am neither trained in law or literature, religion or government, and have no special accommodations in any field save my blue collar, thank God. I am a working man working, working without bail, prestige, or grandiose financial compensation, working with my own feeble hands, working from my own knotted gut, and have little choice as a willing slave to the only mind I can bring to this argument rolling on past the damp eyes of disenchanted generations lost in the fraud, treachery, and deception of free speech as we have learned to practice it, than to argue from that simple perspective only the powerless can argue.

The strong in this country place great faith in their own ability to interpret the past, the present, and the future in terms of what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it. Despite all pretensions to the contrary the United States Supreme Court seems to operate as the highbrow puppetshow of these antagonistic political bands of strong movers and shakers, legitimizing or muddying each line drawn in the sand of an issue, a court consisting of mere flesh and blood, millions of musty words ratioed by changing tides of popular opinion impetuously tempered with an almost predictable jurisprudence as evidenced by the political cat and mouse games played with the court's occasional vacancies in the way of highly controversial party-line presidential appointments.

The First Amendment is the intimate friend of far left wingers and far right wingers alike. But of course they each find it within their own stormy projected biases the urgency to define both their own and their opponent's objectives, each accusing the other of evil, usually one of perpetuating evil via filth, the other of perpetuating evil via oppression.

Having recently sought insight in a 700-page hardcover called "Girls Lean Back Everywhere, The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius" beautifully researched and compiled by Edward de Grazia, an attorney practicing communications and First Amendment law here in Washington, DC, I am still nevertheless profanely distressed by the situation on both sides of this political equation. Mr. de Grazia comes with many prestigious credentials, was victoriously integral in the landmark Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs literary publishing cases, as well as the "I am Curious—Yellow" Swedish film breakthrough.

The title of his book is drawn from a quote a small magazine editor named Jane Heap made at the James Joyce/Ulysses judicial hearing concerning some text in question. Her publication, "The Little Review" was the first to publish excerpts from what she sensed was the first 20th century literary novel masterpiece, and as such immediately felt the strong arm of the public decency law bearers reach out in fierce rebuttal in an attempt to smack down her own artistic sensibilities.

The book thoroughly covers all of the major court battles from Zola in 1868 England to all the 20th century debates including Joyce, Lawrence, Nabakov, Miller, Burroughs, Karen Finley, 2 Live Crew, Playboy, Penthouse, and the Seven-Eleven Wars, and right on up through Mapplethorpe and Serrano in an exquisite commentary bulked up by full first hand accounts of the noted judiciary principals, and their hodge-podge of so-called principles. And yet I am still unsure how to approach this position paper.

While I believe in an artist's rights to exploit the tools of language and all media according to her own peculiar vision, I am also dead set against the public funding of this area of life. Zilch. Rock music and stand-up comedy get along without public grants. So can photographers, writers, and painters. If not prepared to give it all, or convince a private source for sustenance, then sorry charlie, tastes good, less filling. A paradigm shift of the ways in which we view both art and its marketplace may be required, but public funding is a sham and a scandal to both artlover and artloather. And while I believe that the artist should be as free to draw from real life as he sees fit, I am also certain that the media, specifically films, TV, and music have detrimentally contributed to the chaos of the past several generations with the sickening decline of the individual consciousness in regards to morals as they pertain to the rights and responsibilities of each human taking part in the great plan America once proclaimed to be, despite all the tax dollars thrown at so-called studies which deliver nothing but party line after party line of inconclusive evidence. Idealistic art is no better.

Jealousy and envy are perpetuated on a very large scale now due to the proliferation of a media which shows how others however mythically portrayed are living better off than they perceive themselves to be living. I would suggest that this everpresent barrage of images, advertisements, storylines, handsome bodies, has made us a very unhappy population, malcontented, bored, and yearning for something more, when in fact even the poorest among us live far better than most throughout the long rattling chains of history.

Understanding that I am adamantly against the right wing pontifications and falsifications with their feeble interpretations of Man, and God, and Law, the issue is not easily thumbnailed. Every thought I render butchers another one a few minutes later. For all the threading of the needle that the Supreme Court has managed through such definitive principles (protections on speech vs. what is not speech, universally obscene and utterly without redeeming social value vs. the community standards or the greatest good test, the unabridged rights of an adult vs.the protection of children), it has proven nothing but its own profound confusion and yet the fear of government reprisal remains as an omnipresent suffocating blanket on artists who have given up on the phoney Walt Disney approach to improving intellectual and political conditions eons ago. Cliches only soothe the uninspired. Every mythshattering inspiration is punished by the authorities of the hour. Wasn't Jesus the Nazarene a mythbreaker, poking fun at the puffed up morality of the religious establishment of his day? And look how he was paid for his efforts.

No, Jesus did not advocate unbridled degeneracy. Quite the contrary. But he held hypocrisy to tough standards. And he knew how to prick a stuffed shirt, and he did so with great strides and quiet enthusiasm. American novelist Norman Mailer is quoted by de Grazia:

Every gain of freedom carries its price. There's a wonderful moment when you go from oppression to freedom, there in the middle, when one's still oppressed but one's achieved the first freedoms. There's an extraordinary period that goes from there until the freedoms begin to outweigh the oppression. By the time you get over to complete freedom, you begin to look back almost nostalgically on the days of oppression, because in those days you were ready to become a martyr, you had a sense of importance, you could take yourself seriously, and you were fighting the good fight. Now, you get to the point where people don't even know what these freedoms are worth, are using them and abusing them. You've gotten older. You've gotten more conservative. You're not using your freedoms. And there's a comedy in that, in the long swing of the pendulum...

And a second excerpt I found fascinating, enigmatically similar while certainly not wholly congruent with my own beliefs on this topic came from none other than President Richard M. Nixon who had this to say after reading the controversial Lockhart National Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which he had commisioned:

The Commission contends that the proliferation of filthy books and plays has no lasting effect on a man's character. If that were true, it must be also true that great books, great paintings, and great plays have no ennobling effect on a man's conduct . . . The commission calls for the repeal of laws controlling smut for adults—while recommending continued restrictions on smut for children. In an open society this proposal is untenable. If the level of filth rises in the adult community, the young . . . cannot help but also be inundated. The warped and brutal portrayals of sex . . . could poison the wellsprings of American and Western culture and civilization...the pollution of our civilization with smut and filth is as serious a situation as the pollution of our once pure air and water . . . if an attitude of permissiveness were to be adopted regarding pornography, this would contribute to an atmosphere condoning anarchy in every other field.

Where does this inexplicable conundrum leave this discussion? As a law and order advocate how can I distinguish between what is allowable in a free society and what should be strictly and swiftly squashed or punished to the full extent a civil society has availed itself? I think for most civil libertarians, and I count myself intellectually among this group with a few notable reservations while refraining from membership or advocacy of any political party, public or private organization or sect, perhaps these distinctions are easier to make than for those who abide within religious and political cages vying for prestige and jobs, laboring for some ill-conceived hand-me-down god, or worse, such a restrictive a code of ethics hoisted in the name of freedom as to leave the modern psyche atrophied and floating off unattentive in a thoroughly pathetic and bewitched masquerade of what is known in this country as liberty and justice for all. We wish merely to embrace the unquestionable truth of reality and the unanswerable reality of truth. Freedom of expression is not about simple solutions. It is about the struggle to ask the most expressive questions.

Another angle of aproaching this nation's sticky and intricate questions of freedom and censorship might be useful. Let's consider recent moves to introduce into the American jurisprudence the concept of hate crimes. While the printed word on the heels of the William S. Burroughs/Naked Lunch decision has been effectively freed from judicial interference, a new spin by the liberal lobby with their eagerness to please legislators has cast another dark shadow upon the common sense and equal protection of the law wings of the American populations.

In an opposition article published in a small press magazine called "Gauntlet" (no.6), Barbara Beebe, a self-professed "bald-headed, butch, leather jacket-bearing dyke" takes to task this recent wave of anti-crime legislation. Ms. Beebe is also black, and has been a victim of gay-bashing, and so is no stranger to the unfathomable wiles of law enforcement. Noting that everything from cross-burning to verbal bigotry uttered during the commission of a real crime can be and already has entered into various court histories, she nevertheless recognizes a faulty premise when she is confronted by one.

While several higher courts have struck down some of these laws in certain jurisdictions as ordinances "violating free speech because it sought to ban certain viewpoints", the perspective Beebe, a freelance writer with a B.S. in Criminal Justice, brings to this issue is both clarifying and in this author's humble opinion, quite on target. By dubbing this recent wave of hate crime legislation a typical, liberal cover-up, she suspects misplaced motives and simply poor judgement by those who seek to assuage their own consciences or real ability to change the social and economic fabric of the oppressed, but by attempting to placate the masses with more laws in an already over-litigated society, the waters of true freedom only become murkier. She writes:

"Proponents of hate crime legislation assume that one can actually attest and lay claim to hatred or bias by words expressed during the commission of a crime. The fact of the matter is, all crimes are motivated (whether expressed or not) by a form of bias, prejudice or hatred. Dr. Patricia J. Williams is correct when she states that the "attempt to split bias from violence has been society's most enduring and fatal rationalization." What else could motivate crime? What is greed, but the bias toward those who have what you want? There is the well-known modus operandi of robbing the old. They are perceived (as a group) as being physically weak and not well-sighted. If some young punk robs an old lady, in the process calling her an old decrpit hag, is he guilty of a hate crime?

Is something wrong with simply charging him with robbery and calling him the creep he is? Rapists generally rape women they perceive as weak...we're already aware of the possible lurid profanities expressed during a rape. Does what rapists say matter as much as what they've done? Hate crime legislation attempts to punish the motivations and not the crime. The St. Paul, Minnesota case in point: a white kid burns a cross in the yard of the only black people in the neighborhood. What is he charged with? Not trespassing, vandalism, or destruction of property. The poor fool is charged with a hate crime. Fortunately the Supreme Court ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. However, to now charge that same fool with vandalism or trespassing reeks of double jeopardy."

This St. Paul, MN example of the complete absence of social insight in the courts is further exposed to ridicule by the ruling that people who commit "hate crimes" motivated by bigotry may be sentenced to extra punishment without violating their free-speech rights, rendering a foul logic that you can say what you want, but not while committing a crime! Ms. Beebe:

"As ethnic minorities, women, and gay groups scramble to support such legislation, they assumed that they were above reproach due to their status as the oppressed. However, hate crime legislation is being applied to Afrro-Americans, artists, and the poor with a fervor that is frightening. Nineteen-year-old Todd Mitchell, who is black, received a double sentence for inciting the beating of a 14-year-old white youth. The ordinance he was convicted under permits longer prison terms for crimes motivated by racial or other bias. So, what has our fellow learned? The next time you beat whitey, just beat him—don't say a damn thing to him! This is not a viable solution to racial antagonisms."

Thus, Beebe sums up her analysis of these bogus laws by declaring her desire for a judicial system that does not pander to some "high-faluting, legal mumbo-jumbo that requires people to call me a nigger dyke while they kick my ass before I can get some justice." Too often the police merely look the other way when minorities or any disfavored class of crime victim has been assaulted or had a well-legislated crime perpetrated against them. This undoubtedly needs to stop, bringing sense to the laws we already have, and removing the clutter from our system which only confuses the issue, which always remains, liberty and justice for all.

Can we use these arguments against hate crime legislation in the discussion against artistic censorship? I believe we can. Just as any man may be thinking to himself while standing on a crowded streetcorner, in an elevator, or strolling down a beach, that "Man what wouldn't I give to fuck the brains out of that good-looking woman over there?", he has committed nothing more than what is at worst a lamentable lust in his heart, and other than an unwelcomed, or depending on the very real physical and psychological features of both parties, the welcomed leer, nothing has transpired. His reaction to that beautiful woman may however work in such a fashion that he is prompted to meet and later marry this wonderful specimen of feminine grace. A verbal rendering of those same thoughts while to a greater degree opens both parties to any number of physical or psychological repercussions, one cannot expect to live in a vacuum created in our own likeness.

Invariably we encounter disagreeable notions perpetrated by the natures of things and the natures of people. The sheer variety of these notions precludes anything but a generalized mechanism for maintaining civic and personal freedoms and responsibilities. Mere legislation, particularly ill conceived legislation does not automatically create serendipity in a hostile environment preserved alone by magistrates and billy clubs without the consent of the governed. Into today's rapidly changing cultural environment, fragmented and aggregate powerful new subcultures are emerging, and it is inevitable that clashes of faith where new sensibilities show themselves laden with conflict should inflict themselves upon the whole.

But aside from the recent pendulum swing of the hate crime movement, and one glaring exception which I shall discuss later, the First Amendment ultilities of free artistic, political, and personal freedom of expression, go unchallenged and its debate has almost been completely removed from the whittling and hairsplitting of censorship judges and lawyers. Almost, as witnessed by the piercing of the envelope on cable television and the recent spate of ideology skirmishes concerning risk-free transmission of information over the Internet, but not so fast!

The Conservatives refuse to rollover and accept the erosion and ultimate loss of what they consider their eminent domain, that is to say, the constitutional power of the government to take private property for government use. In this case I refer to things of the mind. National defense is a ruthless job. Somebody's got to do it. The conservatives are not only willing, but demand to step up to the plate in this matter. As any schoolchild will tell you, war is hell. Bad things happen in war. Even the good guys do bad things. And yet very little is made by these conservatives concerning atrosities, real or imagined, great or small, by these same exact well-positioned conservatives right down to their name, rank, and serial number, of mind, body, and spirit perpetrated in the unimpeachable war for capitalism, or the frigging' holy war in the name of strategic land, mining rights, and oil reserves.

Only when that free man, that soldier and those he has fought to protect is living on home soil enjoying his so-called freedoms of mind, body, and spirit, do the conservatives step in to control the vulgar tongues and impulses, purported unnatural and lascivious inner urges, rapacious and murderous options a soldier is trained, daypassed, and for survival ordered to swiftly accomplish, all with highest skill and toughest discipline on the planet marking him for distinction and honor. Is there any wonder we are a confused and nearly hapless society when it comes to knowing ourselves and our special birthrights as free citizens of a free nation?

The fact that the Conservatives act in one direction calls the liberals to the front lines to act in an opposite and equal reaction. The First Amendment suffers when one side seeks nothing but to uphold a basketful of Pollyanna fairy tale criteria as the watermark of what art is supposed to be, and the other side thrives merely by mocking all restraint and traditional standards armed only with flimsy transparent concoctions nearly always presented as art theory while stroking themselves as great liberators of the soul. Am I advocating a watered-down compromise of artistic integrity? No I am not. Integrity must exist before it can be compromised. Two paramount questions come to mind which I must answer with a full dose of integrity in order to resolve this issue within the framework of my own artistic yearnings. By what criteria do I suggest art be judged, and how would I define obscenity as the measure by which a work of art should be rejected?

CHALABI'S TAQIYYA FLUMMOXES STATE

SOURCES IN BAGHDAD TELL NBC NEWS that as of this week American military and civilian officials have cut off all contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, the former favorite of Washington's once powerful neoconservatives.

The reason, the sources say, is "unauthorized" contacts with Iran's government, an allegation Chalabi denies. Iran has been accused of arming and training rebel Shiite forces in Iraq. Chalabi had been making a remarkable comeback in Iraq, but that may now be in question, American officials tell NBC News on condition of anonymity.

Chalabi had gained notoriety after his group provided false information to journalists and intelligence organizations about Saddam Hussein before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A former banker who was convicted of embezzlement in absentia in Jordan in 1992, Chalabi nevertheless was a key organizer of the Iraqi opposition and received substantial funding from the U.S. government in the 1990s and up till 2003, after the invasion. He had remarkable influence in Washington until several years ago.

After the U.S. invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Chalabi drifted in and out of favor with U.S. officials in Baghdad. In the 2005 Iraqi elections, he lost decisively, scoring less than 1 percent of the vote. Since the invasion, reports of Chalabi's ties to Iran and his contacts with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have at times been sore spots. The FBI once sought to interview him, sources say, about allegations that secret U.S. codes had been passed to Iran.

Read it all.

Well, of course neither NBC News nor the US Government will admit that the diabolical Islamic doctrine of taqiyya actually exists, let alone is in constant play with regards to informers and "official" spokesmen from the Camp of Islam in dealing with the kafir. From the looks of the well-tracked Chalabi arc, it seems that he, as a Shiite Muslim, was acting as an informal espionage agent of Iran from the beginning, in his hopes of breaking the Sunni-dominated secular grip on Iraq held by Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist party, knowing the Bush administration would prove gullible.

So here's an example of what we mean. President George W. Bush opens up a can of worms today in a speech given to the Israeli parliament, rebuffing those who would negotiate with terrorists, suggesting that those who would are suffering a "foolish delusion." We believe that the Bush administration has some gall. We believe that the Bush administration has allied itself with terrorists and their accomplices in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISNA, ICNA, and numerous other Muslim groups who speak, shall we say it, in forked tongues, that is to say, under the Islamic spell of taqiyya.

When will the US wake up, and recognize the threat posed by Islamic infiltrators into State, the Pentagon, and elsewhere, as indicated by continued arrests and prosecutions making headlines in a way that never happened during World War II?

Soon, very soon, we hope.

OBAMA'S NEW WORLD ORDER

THE UNITED STATES SENATE MAY vote any day on the stealth imposition of what could amount to an $845 BILLION United Nations style global tax on American citizens? It's called the Global Poverty Act (S.2433), and it is being sponsored by none other than Senator Barack Obama. According to some conservative sources, this disastrous legislation could eventually force U.S. taxpayers to fork over as much as 0.7 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product—or $845,000,000,000.00—on welfare to third-world countries.

Here's what Phyllis Schlafly, conservative activist and founder of Eagle Forum, recently wrote: "Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts..."

Time is of the essence because Senator Joe Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just issued a report on the Global Poverty Act and it was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on Thursday, April 24. That means that time is of the essence as this potentially massive surrender of your hard-earned tax dollars to the third world may be close to a vote. That's why we must act today. BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!

The Senate Shell Game...
Advocates of the Global Poverty Act are claiming that it does not really commit the United States to anything—that it won't really cost anything—that it simply requires the President—in conjunction with the Secretary of State—to "develop" strategies to alleviate world poverty.

In fact, Biden's report incredulously states, "implementing S. 2433 would cost less than $1 million per year." Technically he's correct—after all, it doesn't really cost that much to develop and formulate strategies.But such a cleverly worded contention begs the question:  Why formulate or develop a strategy if there is no intention to follow through on that specific strategy? And what would it cost to actually follow through on a strategy to alleviate world poverty? The Global Poverty Act intentionally gives no specific figures but it does contain clues, and those clues are stated repeatedly in the legislation's reliance on the United Nations Millennium Development Goal. WorldNetDaily.com quotes Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media as saying: "The bill defines the term 'Millennium Development Goals' as the goals set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration. In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning 'small arms and light weapons' and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child."

As for specific figures, WND reports:

"Those U.N. protocols would make U.S. law on issues ranging from the 2nd Amendment to energy usage and parental rights all subservient to United Nations whims."

"[T]he legislation, if approved, dedicates 0.7 percent of the U.S. gross national product to foreign aid, which over 13 years would amount to $845 billion 'over and above what the U.S. already spends.' The plan passed the House in 2007 'because most members didn't realize what was in it.' Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require."

And, how would the United States pay for this $845 BILLION commitment?  According to Kincaid, who published a report on the legislation; "A global tax will clearly be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money."

And that $845 BILLION global tax is in addition to our nation's current Foreign Aid programs, which, in 2006, cost American taxpayers about $300 BILLION! Senator Obama's Global Poverty Act has already passed the House (many Members unfortunately voted in favor of it without carefully noting exactly what was in it) and President Bush may very well sign it!

That's why it must be stopped, and it must be stopped NOW! It Gets Worse!

Here are some of the additional provisions of the Millennium Development Goal:

a "currency transfer tax," that is, a tax imposed on companies and individuals who must exchange dollars for foreign currency;

a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources"; 

a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy projection—oil, natural gas, coal";

"fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."

a "standing peace force," meaning a standing United Nations army that might, in time, be large enough to force us to bend to its will;

a "UN arms register of all small arms and light weapons," the beginning of the end of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution;

the "eradication of poverty" by the "redistribution [of] wealth and land"

How do you suppose the United Nations expects to "redistribute" the land and the wealth?  And what country do you think the third-world majority will go after first?

cancellation of "the debts of developing countries,"

"a fair distribution of the earth's resources."

"political control of the global economy."

In other words, it's a blueprint for a world government, owned and operated by the United Nations. One thing is clear: the Millennium Development Goal is a dagger aimed at the heart of America. While the Global Poverty Act, as presently championed by its Senate supporters, embraces certain aspects of the Millennium Development Goal, one should wonder if some of our legislators also support land and wealth "redistribution."

We must stop this bill dead in its tracks. We must stop this subversion NOW!  Don't let Senator Obama's Global Poverty Act sneak through the Senate. 

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax messages to President George W. Bush and each member of the Republican leadership of the United States Senate. Let them know in no uncertain terms that you are watching and you will not tolerate massive United Nations style giveaways that are passed in the dark of night—or in broad daylight for that matter. Tell them that putting us on the road to give billions to petty tyrants and dictators is NOT a solution to poverty. This bill can come up for a vote at any time. Demand that our conservative legislators do whatever it takes—a filibuster if necessary—to stop this bill dead in its tracks.

Click here to keep America free from global plundering.

THE ARC OF SUPERFICIAL PRAISE

Strange news off the wires today. A blogger known as Max Publius writes of his own amazement in learning that the esteemed "The Color Purple" author Alice Walker has publically endorsed the anti-Islamic book "Infidels" penned by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who in her writings and eloquent interviews and speeches is beseeching the West to tackle this global jihad phenomenon seriously all the while busy ducking death threats made against her from the self-appointed Islamic thugs in the Netherlands (where her colleague, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated) and elsewhere who are actively pursuing her for daring to speak out against this barbarous regime. Max explains his surprise:

THERE I WAS INNOCENTLY DRIVING in my car listening and cursing left-wing author Alice Walker as she was interviewed on CSPAN. Then she does the unimaginable. She endorses right-winger Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book "Infidel." As any good anti-jihadist knows, Ali is the Somalian immigrant to the Netherlands who is under death threats because of her outspoken antipathy toward Islam, which has left her scarred for life, both literally (female circumscion) and emotionally, from the stress of death threats based in Islamic Sharia "apostate" laws. Ali is also a true intellectual who writes knowledgeably of the giants of Western philosphy, as well as a former politician in the Netherlands before she moved for a time to the United States to work for a conservative think tank.

Walker's endorsement came after her usual left-wing drivel and subtle black supremacist statements. Oddly, considering the endorsement, there were pro forma condemnations of "religious intolerance" and specifically, anti-Muslim intolerance. It makes one wonder: Did Walker get past the cover of Ali's book? Is Walker aware that Ali was throwing down the gauntlet with Islam? The book is many things, including brilliant, but tolerance is not high on the list. I have no doubt that Walker was drawn to Ali's book because Ali is black.

I dare say Walker not only wouldn't endorse the same book if written by a Bosnian ("white") Muslim, she would actively spurn it. It leads one to ask: Do the same facts resonate differently to Walker when a black woman says them than if they were said by a white male speaking about Islam? Experience says yes. This seems to be a defining characteristic of leftists: Facts are judged politically correct or not depending on the person speaking them. With conservatives, a fact is a fact, regardless of who says it.

OBAMA'S PROBLEM WITH JEWISH VOTERS

Seems the Barack Obama campaign will be facing trouble in critical swing states if he prevails, as expected, over Hillary Clinton, and faces the Republican nominee, John McCain, in November. In a spot of good news, Obama's apparent coziness and unfortunate naivité with regard to the bellicose stances of Hamas and Iran have unsettled many Jewish voters who traditionally vote the Democratic ticket. The Washington Times explains Obama's dilemma in an editorial, excerpted here:

AS HE MOVES CLOSER TO WINNING the Democratic presidential nomination, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama has a huge problem winning the trust of Jewish voters, and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain knows it. On Friday, Mr. McCain criticized Mr. Obama for advocating unconditional talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who last week called Israel a "stinking corpse" which is doomed to disappear. In October, Mr. Obama attacked then-Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton for supporting a nonbinding Senate resolution declaring Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization—which it manifestly is. (The resolution passed the Senate 76-22 in September, winning the votes of almost half of Senate Democrats.)

On Friday, Robert Malley, an Obama advisor, resigned from the senator's campaign as reports surfaced that he had met with the terrorist group Hamas. Last month, Hamas political advisor Ahmad Yousef said on WABC Radio in New York that he hoped Mr. Obama would be elected president. Mr. McCain said Hamas would never want him to be president, "so if Mr. Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly."

Read it all.

DELUSION AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT

Syndicated columnist Diane West takes aim at the recent Orwellian rot handed down by the US State Department, apparently now on kool-aid, the whole bunch of them. West suggests something more than self-medication is at work at State:

A FEW YEARS AGO, A HARVARD psychiatric instructor named Kenneth Levin wrote "The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege." In this illuminating book, Mr. Levin examines the Israeli experience of concessionary negotiations with a "peace partner" openly dedicated to Israel's destruction. He also examines the historical Jewish diasporic experience in which Jewish populations typically identified with their tormentors and even echoed their anti-semitism. Such interactions are driven by a permanent condition of siege mentality, Mr. Levin explains, and clearly manifests two kinds of delusional thinking.

First, there is the fantasy about the intentions of the aggressor (Arab, Muslim or Christian); then, there is the fantasy about changing the aggressor's intentions. Such thinking, Mr. Levin says, is common to victims of chronic abuse, particularly children. They fool themselves into thinking that they, the victims, control the abuser by linking the abuse they suffer to their own behavior.

In other words, they believe they cause their own abuse. This mind game, Mr. Levin insists, actually gives victims a sense of control over situations beyond their control (an abusive parent, for instance). This allows the abused person to avoid feelings of helplessness and despair.

And so the besieged victim pretends: Daddy doesn't really want to hurt me; if I'm a better girl, he'll stop. Israel pretends: Muslims don't really want to destroy our state, and so we'll give them land for peace. Jews in pre-Nazi Europe pretended: The anti-Semites are really right; we deserve a pogrom. Intriguingly, Mr. Levin writes: "But the book's themes have a still broader relevance. Even ostensibly powerful and secure populations, under conditions that entail ongoing threat and vulnerability, can manifest similar trends."

I have a new one for the doctor: a delusion so enormous it begs for immediate hospitalization and a transfer of power of attorney. The problem here is, that the patient is the United States government, which now says: If we just stop talking about jihad, Muslims will neither become jihadis nor sympathize with them.

Such is the message of a crazy new government guide,"Words that Work and Words that Don't," which urges federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, to eliminate all references to Islam when discussing, well, Islamic terrorism. Not only does that mean no more talk of "Islam," but it also means no more talk of "jihad." ("Extremism" is the new "jihad.") And forget about the "caliphate." (Try "global totalitarian state.")

Read it all.

VIRGINIA DINERS PACKING HEAT

As the nine esteemed justices sitting on the United States Supreme Court wrestle with the legality of the DC Law banning all hand-guns, in a decision which will perhaps affect gun laws throughout the country, here is one working version of the Second Amendment from nearby Fairfax County in northern Virginia.

THE PATRONS AT CHAMPPS in Reston, an upscale restaurant and bar chain, were eating ribs and drinking beer on a recent Saturday when customer Bruce Jackson stood up and made an announcement: He was armed, and so were dozens of other patrons.

The armed customers stood up in unison, showing off holstered pistols. Mr. Jackson said a word or two about the rights of gun owners to carry firearms in Virginia, then thanked everyone for his or her attention and sat down. And the diners returned to their burgers and Budweisers.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) organized the dinner at Champps to prove a point: that the presence of armed customers in Northern Virginia restaurants would elicit little more than shrugs. The dinner—and several other restaurant visits throughout Northern Virginia last month—were a response to comments from the majority leader in the state Senate, Democrat Richard L. Saslaw, who said during a legislative debate that armed patrons would be unwelcome in Northern Virginia restaurants.

"In most urban areas, you walk into a restaurant with a gun on your hip, they're going to tell you to get out," Mr. Saslaw said.

In fact, with a few exceptions, the gun owners got their meals. The group went to eight different restaurants last month—at two of them, they were asked to leave. More often than not, though, their presence failed to generate a stir.

Read it all.

A SPEECH LIKE NONE OTHER

Here's a very funny piece by Wesley Prudon published by the Washington Times.

DAVY CROCKETT IS THE PATRON SAINT of every politician who ever left Washington with a bruised ego and a broken heart. When he was bounced out of Congress in 1830, Davy told the folks on the banks of the Nolichucky River in Tennessee: "I'm going to Texas, and the rest of you can go to hell."

Departing presidents have left town nursing similar sentiments but avoided saying them out loud. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, continuing their endless rassling match today in Indiana and North Carolina, could take Davy Crockett's benediction as a caution. George W. Bush surely feels like Crockett is kin, and there's the fantasy of a speech floating across the Internet that George W. could but never would deliver. But if he had only the self-discipline of his critics, this is what he might say:

"If the polls are right, more than half of you don't regard yourselves as 'my fellow Americans," so I'll cut right to the chase. I'm getting out of Dodge. Before anyone gets in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, let me assure you that no laws were broken, the Constitution is intact. I'm quitting because I'm fed up with you people. You have no interest in what's actually going on in the world. Most of you are too lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

"Let's start local. The politicians and pundits have persuaded you that the economy is in the tank. That's despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of minority homeowners. Minority business ownership is at record levels, too. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. The stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever own stocks. But all you can do is whine about gasoline prices, and most of you are too dumb to realize that the price of gasoline is high because the Chinese and the Indians are driving cars now, and because Al Gore and a handful of wacko greenheads are more worried about polar bears and their beachfront property than they are about you.

"I'm tired of this 'blood for oil" crap. If I were trading blood for oil, I would have seized Iraq's oil fields a long time ago. And don't give me this 'Bush lied, people died' crap, either. I could have planted chemical weapons planted all over Iraq to be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty. The rest of the world thought Saddam Hussein had the goods, too, same as me.

"Fools don't understand that we face a unique enemy. The 'soldiers' of our new enemy, unlike our old Soviet enemies, are actually eager to die. That's OK with me, and good riddance, as long as they aren't trying to take as many of you with them as they can. But they want to kill you in the name of what I generously called 'the religion of peace' (not that I ever believed it any more than you do). You all should be grateful that the Islamists haven't killed more of us here in the United States since September 11, but you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that.

"I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight, but most of you think 'a long and difficult fight' amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.' You won't look through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do.

"The facts are easy enough to find. They're all over the Internet, along with a lot of stuff that ain't true. You have to pay attention and sort it out, but most of you would rather watch 'American Idol'. I could say more about your idiotic belief that government, not your own wallet, is where money comes from. But it would sail right over your heads.

Read it all.

THE QUESTION OF MUSLIM EXPULSION

Treason seems to be a forgotten crime these days, a mere remnant leftover from bygone years of high espionage when enemies were declared by name, rather than coddled when masquerading as our allies. While pink teary-eyed leftists whine about Guantanamo Bay war camp protocols, resolutely dismissing the culture of death plotted against the US, Canada, Chetznya, SW China, Serbia, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and a host of soft European targets as mere residuals of our own ugly existence, others more robust in our outlook on reality search for more strident and historically compelling solutions to the problems the Camp of Islam is causing.

An eloquent solution just as punishing, but perhaps more apropos for our times than the one the current administration has advanced, leaving many of us chafing with regret, is the idea of an immigration freeze and annulment, an idea not at all new but historically grounded, an idea that actually seems fitting for the times as the creeping totalitarianism of democracy seems to some far worse than the blatant totalitarianism of the political bullies on the darling Left, in addition to the call from Muslims to incite terror and violence against us with the aim of abolishing our own constitutional form of government and replacing it with the theological totalitarianism of strict Islamic law, known as sharia.

Of course this solution is not without its pitfalls. At first glance, native tribes would be calling for the expulsion of whites, but that call simply distorts the nature of the current situation. What about those tribes? What about the crimes committed by those tribes against each other before the European arrived? And let's recall plainly that conquering Spain was a European power, not a native American tribe. and that its land grab was and is no more or less sanctified than the English, French, Portuguese or Dutch (and now Mexican or Islamic).

No, this issue must be addressed in terms of the current war, the current enemy, the current problem of an unidentified number of Muslims who refuse to integrate into the American way of life as an opportunity to escape the troubles in their own homelands, who refuse to become Americans, but only see themselves as slaves of Allah's massive war machine. An ungodly number of these immigrants are people who love death more than they love life, and are hell-bent on sharing that love with us. They are not fleeing jihad, they are exporting jihad. And our leadership simply imports it into our neighborhoods, believing that if we treat these immigrants nicely, they will respond in kind. Unfortunately, the anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly contradicts this delusion. Here is one:

I have had Somali co-workers and as fellow students at community college, and have been a fellow patient with them at the county hospital and they, save for a few individuals, do hate us, and they constantly threaten lawsuits (how is that for integration) and generally avoid being friendly with non-Muslims.

For some examples, I include the following—my brother went to a heavily Somalian high-school (Minneapolis Roosevelt) and the school decided to make two Somalians, homecoming king and queen, disqualifying the other people on the slate, even though two non-Somalis had won. At the homecoming dance, in broad public the homecoming king punched the queen in the face at the dance. At the same highschool the Somalis harrassed Ethiopians, called the American blacks pig-eaters, sons of slaves and infidels, and openly expressed virulent racist hatred towards whites, including teachers.

In a fight the night before September 11, several Somalians attacked African American members of the football team and ended up stabbing a football coach who attempted to break up the fight. At Washburn highschool here in Minneapolis in the last couple of years there has been serious violence between Somali and African American or black gangs. At one of my jobs, they are openly rude to non-Muslims and a Somali woman I worked with was being stalked by these guys, who would come to threaten her at work. She was scared, and she finally quit the job.

There, where two Bosnians also work, two cousins, and one was friendly, and his cousin yelled at him for making friends with the Americans, and would just coldly glare at people who were friendly with them. He would never shake hands. I could go on about my Egyptian Muslim friend in high school, who eventually turned on his American friends over Islam, and got religious after being a pot-smoking boozer. His friendship quickly turned to hatred.

At community college, MCTC, the Somalis' clearly took over parts of the school. And felt no need to behave, and in class, were rude to both students and faculty. And then there are those "domestic violence" episodes in which a Somali or Ethiopian Muslim kills a woman from their community. My point is Muslim and Somali immigrants are not nice people and the US imported a real bunch of winners. Muslim immigration is bad, bad news. And the authorities here, have a hear no evil, see no evil policy. It is going to get worse.

In response to the call for expelling thousands if not millions of unrepentant Muslims—First Amendment flaunting saboteurs and stealth jihadists all—from these United States of America, a concerned citizen named Susan has eloquently written:

Don't you think that "expelling" our sworn enemies would be preferable to locking them up in isolated compounds to prevent them from fully practicing their religion by engaging in violent jihad? Apparently you consider the idea of "expulsion" akin to "illegal" wiretapping and intercepting communications between domestic and overseas terrorists; abhorrent violations of the Constitutional rights of islamic terrorists who happen to be American citizens. And of course we all know that if the federal government is permitted to trample all over the constitutional rights of treasonous, terrorist muslims, martial law and tyranny are imminent. No problem; we don't mind getting blown to bits so muslims can perfidiously exploit the First Amendment, which guarantees rights that are anathematized by islam.

Nothing like islam has ever threatened America before; the closest comparison might be Japanese Americans during WWII. The threat posed by islam and muslims is unique, unprecedented, and grossly understated. But don't despair; we both know that the expulsion of jihadist Muslims is a very remote, albeit tantalizing, prospect. It is quite obvious that the mendacious, malevolent, perfidious imams and apologist, pseudo-scholars of Islam have our government's ear and the American people are being fed to the wolves so Muslims can feel good about themselves, not that they have ever had any low self-esteem issues. Problem is, they don't just want to feel good about themselves; instead they intend to dictate how non-Muslims will perceive islam and if that ploy fails, they will manipulate and exploit the same First Amendment that allows them to practice their vile religion to dictate what we can say about it. And you're worried about Big Brother taking away your rights?

Not only would I applaud the expulsion of every muslim with questionable loyalty to America or with overt jihadist ambitions, nothing would thrill me more than to see bulldozers razing mosques across America as their sullen, evil Wahabbi imams were being escorted to airports with one-way tickets to the dysfunctional kingdom of sadistic savages, aka Saudi Arabia. This scenario is one of my favorite daydreams but I have no illusions that a rational and salutary approach to our deadly dilemma will ever occur, at least not until they succeed in annihilating millions of us. In the interim, the stealth jihad marches on and scores a new victory every day.

I loathe islam with all my heart and soul, and I could never trust a Muslim but I wish Muslims no harm; I just wish they would go away. They are not worth the anxiety, fear, and unrelenting threat they pose by virtue of their malevolent, insidious religion. Who needs it?

—Susan P

Postscript (from Max Publius): The Navajo Reservation in Arizona has about 200,000 residents and is half the size of England, which has 50 million. That's quite a disparate land distribution. Yet England, under a pact with dhimmi traitors like Blair and the Islamist-loving United Nations, accepts hundreds of thousands of Islamonazis each year. Other immigrants just invade illegally. Number of immigrants taken in by the Navajo? None, unless you show you have Navajo ancestry. Ditto for most non-Western countries.

Can you imagine a group invading the Navajo Reservation, demanding welfare, calling Navajo "kaffir" with a bullhorn, attacking Navajo religious figures and buildings, raping and stealing from Navajo, and calling themselves "Navajo" while disparaging everything about the Navajo, and on and on.

That is exactly what is happening in little England. Just replace the above with English.

And now Lebanon falls. The government has capitulated to Hezbollah. The tumbling of a house of cards has begun. Were the only victims in Lebanon other Muslims, one might not mind, as the Camp of Islam grows in ferocity, it doesn't matter whose bodies pile high from the carnage. But Lebanon has been somewhat of a haven for Christians in the Middle East as they are driven from their ancestral homes in surrounding dar al-Islam, and that makeshift haven is now threatened. And none of the ruling elites in the Western world has given a thought to providing a permanent place of refuge in the Middle East itself to the more than a million Christians who have left, or will have to leave, Iraq.

They could do this, for example, by relocating many of them to Lebanon, and forcing the Shi'a out, by popular demand, so that they go to Iraq, among other Shi'ite Arabs. Or they could move them to the "West Bank," and force out the Muslim Arabs who represent a permanent threat to Israel. They can't be allowed into Western countries, having been raised on a steady diet of hysteria and hate, but they could be given space in Iraq, replacing those lost Assyrians and Chaldeans.

Those Assyrians and Chaldeans, if they wish to remain in the Middle East, should find their natural homes in Lebanon, or the "West Bank" within permanent Israeli protection, or possibly in Syria. But Syria could only be a haven for them if one assumes that the Alawites will begin to see the light and stop doing Iranian bidding in order to prove that they are bona fide Shi'ite Muslims, and continue to keep their own local Muslims in check—which is the only protection the Syrian Christians now possess.

But who in the Western world now thinks of saving the Christians through such intelligent, and in another day, obvious population transfer?

It isn't done. We prefer to stay pure, by never mentioning such things. Thus, we allow millions of people to be booted out, with nowhere to go, because we simply can't begin to think in realistic terms about such transfers, which were the norm, not the exception, throughout human history—including the history of the last century.

HYPHENATED AMERICANS

"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation of all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." [Teddy Roosevelt in a speech before the Knights of Columbus]

WEST COAST PORTS SHUT DOWN FOR MAY DAY

How much of this story by the Socialist Worker is true, and how much is fudged? Did Iraqi workers really stop or did American workers in Iraq take an extra long break from the day's labor? Inquiring minds want to know. The LA Times doesn't mention any Iraqi worker stoppage. But please read on. This is real news.

SAN FRANCISCO—Tens of thousands of West Coast dockworkers protested the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by refusing to work on May Day.

Despite threats from the bosses of the Pacific Maritime Association and a decision by an arbitrator that the union couldn't officially schedule its monthly stop-work meeting (which allows the union to call a meeting during a normal shift), rank-and-file workers didn't show up to work, paralyzing billions of dollars worth of cargo up and down the coast.

"Longshore workers are not slaves," International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 executive board member Clarence Thomas told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! "They can't make us work."

Dockworkers organized actions in almost 30 ports along the coast, from Washington to San Diego, and their protest coincided with demonstrations by tens of thousands of people around the country who marched and rallied on May 1, International Workers' Day, to support immigrant rights.

The ILWU action had solidarity from around the world, including in Iraq itself—dockworkers shut down the crucial port of Basra for several hours in support of the West Coast work stoppage. On the other side of the U.S., in New Jersey, port truckers protested. In Britain, a member of parliament introduced a resolution of support for the ILWU.

"It's really important that the ILWU is showing solidarity with all the working people. Workers all over the world know about this," said Allen Bradley, who spoke at the march on behalf of himself and other members of the Freightliner Five, UAW members from Cleveland, N.C., who were unjustly fired from their jobs at their truck plant. "The ILWU stood up today, and I'm glad about it."

The ILWU action got support from local port truckers as well as antiwar activists. According to Robert Irminger, vice chair of the Inland Boatman's Union for the San Francisco Region, "This morning, about 50 of us went down to the docks with Direct Action to Stop the War and picketed the Union Pacific rail yard. We blocked two gates, and the rail workers held up work for about two hours."

Read it all.

MASTER OF CHANGE AND HIS DISCIPLES

The following excerpt of an essay by John Perazzo published at Front Page Mag is a splendid starting point for educating oneself concerning the unsavory tactics of revolutionaries, radicals, and enforcers rising up from both the Left and the Right. Read it all. The link to the full essay, which is rather long and comprehensive, is at the end of this excerpt.

AMERICANS ARE WELL-ACQUAINTED with presidential candidate Barack Obama’s legendary pledges to bring “change” to America’s political and social landscape. (For example, see here and here and here.) Indeed, “Change We Can Believe In” is the slogan that adorns the homepage of his campaign website and so many of the placards displayed by the supporters who attend his speaking engagements.

His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, is also well practiced at issuing calls for change. Her “Change and Experience” ad campaign was but an outgrowth of her 1993 declaration, as First Lady, that “remolding society is one of the great challenges facing all of us in the West.” Most Americans are unaware, however, that when Obama and Clinton speak of “change,” they mean change in the sense that a profoundly significant, though not widely known, individual—Saul Alinsky —outlined in his writings two generations ago.

Alinsky helped to establish the confrontational political tactics, which he termed “organizing,” that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States. Both Obama and Clinton are committed disciples of Alinsky’s very specific strategies for “social change.”

...

Alinsky stressed that organizers and their followers needed to take care, when first unveiling their particular crusade for “change,” not to alienate the middle class with any type of crude language, defiant demeanor, or menacing appearance that suggested radicalism or a disrespect for middle class mores and traditions. For this very reason, he disliked the hippies and counterculture activists of the 1960s. As Richard Poe puts it: “Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.”

While his ultimate goal was nothing less than the “radicalization of the middle class,” Alinsky stressed the importance of “learning to talk the language of those with whom one is trying to converse.”[63] “Tactics must begin with the experience of the middle class,” he said, “accepting their aversion to rudeness, vulgarity, and conflict. Start them easy, don’t scare them off.”[64]

To appeal to the middle class, Alinsky continued, “goals must be phrased in general terms like ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’; ‘Of the Common Welfare’; ‘Pursuit of happiness’; or ‘Bread and Peace.’”[65] He suggested, for instance, that an effective organizer “discovers what their [the middle class’] definition of the police is, and their language— [and] he discards the rhetoric that always says ‘pig’ [in reference to police]. Instead of hostile rejection he is seeking bridges of communication and unity over the gaps. He will view with strategic sensitivity the nature of middle-class behavior with its hang-ups over rudeness or aggressive, insulting, profane actions. All this and more must be grasped and used to radicalize parts of the middle class.”[66]

A related principle taught by Alinsky was that radical organizers must not only speak the language of the middle class, but that they also must dress their crusades in the vestments of morality. “Moral rationalization,” he said, “is indispensable to all kinds of action, whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.”[67] “All great leaders,” he added, “invoked ‘moral principles’ to cover naked self-interest in the clothing of ‘freedom,’ ‘equality of mankind,’ ‘a law higher than man-made law,’ and so on.” In short: “All effective actions require the passport of morality.”[68]

This tactic of framing one’s objectives in the rhetoric of morality precisely paralleled a communist device for deception known as “Aesopian language,” which J. Edgar Hoover described as follows:

“Nearly everyone is familiar with the fables of Aesop…. Often the point of the story is not directly stated but must be inferred by the reader. This is a ‘roundabout’ presentation. Lenin and his associates before 1917, while living in exile, made frequent use of ‘Aesopianism.’ Much of their propaganda was written in a ‘roundabout’ and elusive style to pass severe Czarist censorship. They desired revolution but could not say so. They had to resort to hints, theoretical discussions, even substituting words, which, through fooling the censor, were understood by the ‘initiated,’ that is, individuals trained in [Communist] Party terminology….

“The word ‘democracy’ is one of the communists’ favorite Aesopian terms. They say they favor democracy, that communism will bring the fullest democracy in the history of mankind. But, to the communists, democracy does not mean free speech, free elections, or the right of minorities to exist. Democracy means the domination of the communist state, the complete supremacy of the Party. The greater the communist control, the more ‘democracy.’ ‘Full democracy,’ to the communist, will come only when all noncommunist opposition is liquidated.

“Such expressions as ‘democracy,’ ‘equality,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘justice’ are merely the Party’s Aesopian devices to impress noncommunists. Communists clothe themselves with everything good, noble, and inspiring to exploit those ideals to their own advantage.”[69]

But Alinsky understood that there was a flip side to his strategy of speaking the palatable language of the middle class and the reassuring parlance of morality. Specifically, he said that organizers must be entirely unpredictable and unmistakably willing -—for the sake of the moral principles in whose name they claim to act—to watch society descend into utter chaos and anarchy. He stated that they must be prepared, if necessary, to “go into a state of complete confusion and draw [their] opponent into the vortex of the same confusion.”[70]

One way in which organizers and their disciples can broadcast their preparedness for this possibility is by staging loud, defiant, massive protest rallies expressing deep rage and discontent over one particular injustice or another. Such demonstrations can give onlookers the impression that a mass movement is preparing to shift into high gear, and that its present (already formidable) size is but a fraction of what it eventually will become. “A mass impression,” said Alinsky, “can be lasting and intimidating. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”[71]

“The threat,” he added, “is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”[72] “If your organization is small in numbers,” said Alinsky, “conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does.”[73]

“Wherever possible,” Alinsky counseled, “go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”[74] Marching mobs of chanting demonstrators accomplishes this objective. The average observer’s reaction to such a display is of a dual nature: First he is afraid. But he also recalls the organizer’s initial articulation of middle-class ideals and morals. Thus he convinces himself that the People’s Organization is surely composed of reasonable people who actually hold values similar to his own, and who seek resolutions that will be beneficial to both sides. This thought process causes him to proffer—in hopes of appeasing the angry mobs—concessions and admissions of guilt, which the organizer in turn exploits to gain still greater moral leverage and to extort further concessions.

In Alinsky’s view, action was more often the catalyst for revolutionary fervor than vice versa. He deemed it essential for the organizer to get people to act first (e.g., participate in a demonstration) and rationalize their actions later. “Get them to move in the right direction first,” said Alinsky. “They’ll explain to themselves later why they moved in that direction.”[75]

Among the most vital tenets of Alinsky’s method were the following:

“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.”[76]

“No organization, including organized religion, can live up to the letter of its own book. You can club them to death with their ‘book’ of rules and regulations.”[77]

“Practically all people live in a world of contradictions. They espouse a morality which they do not practice.… This dilemma can and should be fully utilized by the organizer in getting individuals and groups involved in a People’s Organization. It is a very definite Achilles’ heel even in the most materialistic person. Caught in the trap of his own contradictions, that person will find it difficult to show satisfactory cause to both the organizer and himself as to why he should not join and participate in the organization. He will be driven either to participation or else to a public and private admission of his own lack of faith in democracy and man.”[78]

We have seen this phenomenon played out many times in recent years. For instance, a case of police brutality against black New Yorker Abner Louima in 1997 was cited repeatedly by critics of the police as emblematic of a widespread pattern of abuse aimed at nonwhite minorities. Similarly, the misconduct of a handful of American soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 was portrayed as part of a much larger pattern that had been approved by the highest levels of the U.S. government.

And on the battlefields of the Middle East, any American military initiative that has inadvertently killed innocent civilians has been cited by opponents of the war as evidence that U.S. troops are maniacal, bloodthirsty killers. In each of the foregoing examples, the allegedly hypocritical American authorities were accused of having violated their own “book of rules” (rules that are supposed to govern the conduct of the police or the military).

Alinsky taught that in order to most effectively cast themselves as defenders of moral principals and human decency, organizers must react with “shock, horror, and moral outrage” whenever their targeted enemy in any way misspeaks or fails to live up to his “book of rules.”[79]

Moreover, said Alinsky, whenever possible the organizer must deride his enemy and dismiss him as someone unworthy of being taken seriously because he is either intellectually deficient or morally bankrupt. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength,” said Alinsky.[80] He advised organizers to “laugh at the enemy” in an effort to provoke “an irrational anger.”[81] “Ridicule,” said Alinsky, “is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”[82]

According to Alinsky, it was vital that organizers focus on multiple crusades and multiple approaches. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag,” he wrote. “Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time. New issues and crises are always developing.”[83] “Keep the pressure on,” he continued, “with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”[84]

Toward this end, Alinksy advised organizers to be sure that they always kept more than one “fight in the bank.” In other words, organizers should keep a stockpile of comparatively small crusades which they are already prepared to conduct, and to which they can instantly turn their attention after having won a major victory of some type. These “fights in the bank” serve the dual purpose of keeping the organization’s momentum going, while not allowing its major crusade to get “stale” from excessive public exposure.[85]

Read it all.

ORDINARY MEN, OR IDIOTS IN PAJAMAS

FOLLOWING ARE SEVERAL EXCERPTS from an interview with an Hamas MP which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on April 23, 2008. If these men weren't running a country, perhaps they would be fabulous comedians, but otherwise, this is simply the work of an idiot in pajamas. If idiot is too harsh a word, bigot will work just as well. And if the word bigot offends thee, let;s just call him an Israeliophobe. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Salem Salamah: "There are companies established by the colonialists and occupiers—large companies with branches all over the world, like Pepsi, Pepsi Cola. This is a well-known company. Pepsi is an acronym. P-E-P-S-I - Pay Every Pence to Save Israel. Pay every pence—pence is one hundredth of a dollar—to save Israel. Pay every pence to save Israel. Shouldn't the Muslims have a fund, a company, or a large project to save the Al-Aqsa Mosque?"

Then there's this to chew on. Boycotts work both ways. If only the US would just say NO to the Saudi oil shieks, we might once again begin to exert some real leverage against these adversaries. History is a description of conflict, no doubt, so read on for some tough but real history thanks to the folks at Snopes...

Claim: Coca-Cola was once considered anti-Semitic for refusing to do business in Israel.

Status: True.

Origins: The last thirty-odd years have seen allegations of anti-Semitism hurled at both Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and for both companies the charges stemmed from their one-time reluctance to do business with Israel.

Successfully doing business in the Middle East often depended upon not doing business in Israel. The Arab League was quick to boycott, and multinational concerns were forced to choose between the smaller market of Israel and the much larger market of the combined Arab states. For firms caught in the middle, it was a "no win" situation. Coca-Cola's turn in the harsh spotlight of public opinion came in 1966.

April 1 1966: At a press conference in Tel Aviv, businessman Moshe Bornstein accused Coca-Cola of refusing to do business in Israel out of fear of reprisals and loss of profits in the Arab soft drink market. A week later in New York, the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith released a statement backing up the charges, triggering headlines across the U.S.A. Coca-Cola was in hot water, and the American public was demanding answers. It was also rejecting the answers it was getting.

In 1949 Coca-Cola had attempted to open a bottling plant in Israel, but its efforts had been blocked by the Israeli government. As long as no one questioned the company too closely, the failure of this one stab at the Israeli market appeared to provide a satisfactory answer for Coca-Cola's conspicuous absence from the Israeli market. In the meanwhile, Coca-Cola was content to continue quietly serving the much larger Arab market, a market it was likely to lose if it began operating in Israel.

In 1961 an incident in Cairo involving civil servant Mohammad Abu Shadi momentarily shattered the quiet. Shadi had come into possession of a Coca-Cola bottle manufactured in Ethiopia, mistaken the Amharic lettering on its label for Hebrew, and publicly accused Coca-Cola of doing business with Israel.

The manager of Coca-Cola's Egyptian bottling operations wasted no time (and little thought) in assuring the press that Coca-Cola would never allow the Israelis a franchise. With their hands forced by their bottler's impolitic statement, company officials quickly invented the explanation that Israel was too small to support a franchise and gave their reasons for staying away as purely economic, not political. For the time being, this seemed to keep a lid on the brewing storm.

It wasn't until 1966 that people began to wonder openly why it was that nearby Cyprus had no difficulty supporting its Coca-Cola franchise despite their having only one-tenth the population of Israel. The comfortable aura of quiet was shattered by Bornstein's charges and the subsequent uproar they raised in the US.

When these issues came to light in 1966, they proved highly embarrassing to Coca-Cola. The administrators of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan announced they would stop serving Coke, and the owners of Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Emporium on Coney Island followed suit. Faced with the prospect of a Jewish boycott in America, the company attempted to right the tipped canoe by announcing it would open a bottling plant in Tel Aviv. (Such is the price of business: Israel with the fury of America behind it became a much more attractive market than it ever had been all on its own.) The Arab League struck back by placing Coca-Cola on its boycott list. The boycott began in August 1968 and lasted until May 1991 (or until 1979 in Egypt, where they made their own rules).

Pepsi's entry into Israel in 1992 did not go smoothly—the evolution theme of its "Choice of a New Generation" ad campaign (in which man was portrayed as evolving from a monkey into a Pepsi drinker) angered the strictly observant haredi community. Though Pepsi pulled the campaign from Israel, it found itself in more hot water over a 1993 Michael Jackson tour. Jackson's unthinking flashbulb-popping arrival on a Sabbath was viewed by many observant Jews as a desecration. For a time Pepsi lost its kashrut (kosher) certificate because it was deemed to be promoting a culture that would corrupt the nation's youth through rock music concerts and advertisements featuring scantily-clad women.

Prior to 1992, Pepsi had backed the other horse, choosing to service the lucrative Coke-less Arab markets in the boycott days. For its decision to stay out of Israel (and thus itself avoid being placed on the Arab League's blacklist), Pepsi faced continued criticism in the United States. In certain circles it was considered politically incorrect to be seen drinking Pepsi.

The Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith investigated claims that Pepsi was participating in the boycott of Israel. U.S. law prohibited American companies from taking part in this boycott, but the law was vague, and outright violations were hard to pin down. Nothing ever came of the investigations, and Pepsi was never placed on the American government's list of violators.

Pepsi always denied it was the fear of losing their Arab markets that kept them out of Israel. Like Coca-Cola in 1961, Pepsi fell back upon the claim of Israel's being too small to support a franchise. At least this time the excuse was a bit more believable—Coca-Cola's already holding down the lion's share of the Israeli soft drink market gave this claim a bit more plausibility. Even so, Pepsi was doing business in many other small markets and much more often than not competing head-to-head against Coca-Cola. If these conditions were keeping them out of Israel, then why weren't they equally keeping them out of these other markets?

Many people in the United States believed Pepsi was going along with the boycott, whether it was proveable in the eyes of U.S. law or not. Those lucrative Arab markets did not come without a price, and Pepsi paid it in loss of goodwill in the US. A significant number of American cola drinkers grew up suspecting Pepsi of being anti-Israel and refrained from buying their product. By contrast, Coca-Cola appeared heroic.

This appearance failed to take into account Coca-Cola's fast stepping to shake off similar charges in the 1960s. Pepsi's mud-spattered skirts were but Coca-Cola's hand-me-downs—same skirt, just a bit older.

Today you can get either Coke or Pepsi in anywhere in the Middle East, and the days of the boycott have faded into memory. Even so, there are still those who observe the stricture of "Coke is for Jews; Pepsi is for Arabs." Old wounds are not necessarily healed wounds.

FITZGERALD: HOW DUMB, HOW LONG?

HUGH FITZGERALD OF JIHAD WATCH today asks, "How dumb do we have to be, and for how long?" The answer of course, is blowing in the wind. And you know what that means. Massive destruction. Bombs and explosions of every sort do indeed tend to present the olfactory sensitive with a peculiar odor of the day. But until then, let's just play with words, and send them money, yep that's what they need, more money, boast our misguided leaders.

SAN'A, Yemen - A bomb rigged to a motorcycle blew up amid a crowd of worshippers leaving Friday prayers at a mosque in a rebel stronghold of northern Yemen, killing at least 18 people and wounding about four dozen, officials said. –from this news article

Shi'a and Sunnis at it again. Yes, of course, the American government must do what it can to try to stop this kind of internecine warfare among Muslims, in Yemen as in Iraq. Otherwise there might be a "catastrophic" situation. Otherwise there might be "chaos" in the Middle East.

And somehow this "chaos" and this "catastrophe" that will ensue will, we are told, be bad for us, in ways always unspecified, as if we are simply to accept the conclusion of our betters—you know, the people in the government who pick up their news just as you and I do, but who lack the time, and the inclination (unlike you, unlike me) to spend the time to read about Islam, to read the texts of Islam, to learn what the Western students of Islam (not the espositos but the real thing) have said about the contents of Islam.

For they are just too occupied and preoccupied to sit in a room and read. They may be cosseted, chauffeured about, and so on, but their daily lives are full of meetings, and hectic busyness, and travelling hither and yon, and getting someone above to "sign off" on something, and coming up with "policies" that need to be formulated by consulting with everyone and his brother, and then written up in the stilted bloodless bureaucratic language which is now the favored medium—they know no other, they have never been exposed to any other—of those in the government, and who presume to instruct, and to protect us. They have to deal now with this crisis, now with that, and with every part of the world.

How can someone as mediocre as Bush, advised by someone as mediocre as Rice—people who have never had the inclination or leisure to read widely in history, or to exercise their imaginative faculty through literature—be expected to have read about Islam? Yet if you cannot imagine something, it is difficult to think about it. If you cannot imagine an islamized Western Europe, if it is simply beyond you, then you will not worry about what that would mean, and are not likely to come up with ways to avoid that completely plausible and deplorable, and entirely avoidable, future for the heart of the West.

One more thing. If leaving Iraq would, as some direly warn, cause great disruption, chaos, a "catastrophe" in the area, then why don't any of the Sunni Arab states, presumably those who would have the most to lose, bother to give any aid at all to the government of Iraq? Answer: why should they? They do not wish to shore up Shi'a who rule in Baghdad. They will, however, continue to urge the Americans to stay, in order to keep the Sunnis in Iraq supplied with guns and money and with a powerful protector that will pressure the Shi'a to make concessions, and concessions—and the Americans will, listening gravely to the advice of rulers of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other small sheikdoms, fall for it, not realizing how they are being suckered.

And if leaving Iraq would, as some direly warn, lead to terrible disruptions in the supply of oil (during the Iran-Iraq War, that lasted for eight years, there was little disruption and the price of oil went steadily down), then why aren't other oil-consuming nations concerned? Why hasn't China lifted a finger, or spent a penny, to help promote stability and prosperity in Iraq? Could it be that the Chinese are, like the Sunni Arabs, perfectly content to watch the continuing squandering of American money, material, men, morale, happy to see us bleed ourselves, in order to do something which will benefit China and other oil-consumers as much as, perhaps more than, it will benefit the United States?

How dumb do we have to be, and for how long?

Get our troops out of Iraq. Let he chips fall where they may. Inform the public what we are really up against, Begin preparations for all-out war. Seal the ALL borders. Stop all Muslim immigration. Issue national identity cards. Begin a national rationing program for pertinent goods, especially petroleum products. Modify trading levels with China until they bulk up their safety oversights and rectify the massive trade deficit the US has been complaining about for over a decade. Tell Americans that each of us need to gird our loins with the American spirit and start acting like we've got good sense. Maybe, just maybe, candidate Ron Paul had a good idea, or two, or several.

And here's some positive news (well, the ACLU is against it, as well as all the usual suspects who are probably not quite as "law-abiding" as they would have us believe) on the defense front. The LA Times has reported that the LAPD has instituted a new anti-terrorism program that should serve as a national model for detecting suspicious activity, reporting it peer to peer and upward to the federal levels.

THE DERVISH DANCE OF THE DOLLAR

Our conservative friend Tony Blankley of the Washington Times has written an opinion piece in which he puts several menacing questions to the candidates currently still in the race for the toughest job in the world—the US presidency. Now we realize that many of our friends perched on the Left want no part of an America that sustains ANY SORT of advantage, temporary or permanent, over anybody else, being all-gracious selfless players in the eternal game of life that they purport to be (at least in their own minds, intellectually that is, because the material requirements of just making it in the USA are just too overwhelming to bypass for far too many of them for us not to notice), but here is one question that does nor presume that the rest of the world automatically confirms to his idea of goodness because he wishes it so, but by hard work, and intelligent design (not to be confused with that theological mess formerly known as creationism):

"...are you for a strong dollar or will you continue Mr. Bush's policy of letting the dollar sink? Some presidents think that a weak dollar helps trade and we should do little to support the dollar. But today, for the first time in living memory there is a risk that the dollar, if it continues to slide, would be replaced by the Euro as the global store of value. The United States benefits from the dollar's unique role in the world. It has permitted us to have influence in many ways, such as disrupting financial flows to adversaries like Iran and North Korea. With international contracts denominated in dollars we gain unfair advantage over all other currencies. Are you prepared to protect the dollar and drive its value up (again, working closely with the Fed chairman) or not?

Fourth, and flowing from the previous question: As noted by Benn Steil (director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations) to protect the dollar's value, we cannot let the Federal Reserve, by itself, try to solve the financial crises by flooding the market with dollars. If we are to strengthen the dollar, then we need the president and Congress to directly fund "on the books," the hundreds of billions of dollars the Fed is creating to help at risk financial institutions.

Of course, if you protect the dollar and fight inflation you won't have money for new spending programs. Mr. and Mrs. presidential candidates, please tell us now—before we vote—what your priority will be in this painfully difficult decision."