July 30, 2005

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL: CASEY STENGEL

"There's somebody ready to employ you if you're on the ball."
--Casey Stengel

        Horsefeathers thought we would pause from the challenging task of dispelling cant, to gratefully record the 115th birthday on July 30, of a quintessentially American genius, Casey Stengel. We intended to discuss his daring platoon system that revolutionized baseball strategy, his willingness to ignore the resentment of his star players and his skill at handling athletic prima donnas(“the secret of managing is to keep the 12 guys who hate you away from the 13 who are undecided”.)Then we re-read Casey’s famous testimony before a Senate Committee investigating the need for government intervention in the game. We realized how much we miss him for his deft handling of the politicians who sought to cash in on baseball's popularity by their very public posturing and fake concern for its problems. How similar to today's camera hogging blowhards: the insufferable Sen. Schumer, the bloviating Sen. Byrd, the pair of phony Massachusetts moralists, Kennedy and Kerry, the blow dried camera hogs like Biden and Mc’Cain. They may be worse, but they are cut from the same Senatorial cloth as the men who quizzed Stengel. And guess who wound up looking like a fool? It wasn’t the man in the witness chair.

        Here’s a portion (the full transcripot is here)of his testimony wherein Casey deals with the unquenchable thirst of government officials to intervene in an industry they know nothing about. The hapless Senator Carroll is trying hard to get Casey to say that baseball needs the tender ministrations of lawmakers like himself, to set it right.

Senator Carroll: Do you feel, you have had experience through the years—
Mr. Stengel: That is true.
Senator Carroll: With the draft system, and the reserve clause in the contracts. Do you think you could still exist under existing law without changing the law?
Mr. Stengel: I think it is run better than it has ever been run in baseball, for every department.
Senator Carroll: Then, I come back to the principal question. This is the real question before this body.
Mr. Stengel: All right.
Senator Carroll: Then what is the need for legislation, if they are getting along all right?
Mr. Stengel: I didn't ask for the legislation. (Laughter).
Senator Carroll: Your answer is a very good one, and that is the question Senator Kefauver put to you.
Mr. Stengel: That is right.
Senator Carroll: That is the question Senator O'Mahoney put.
Mr. Stengel: Right.
Senator Carroll: Are you ready to say there is no need for legislation in this field, then, insofar as baseball is concerned?
Mr. Stengel: As far as I'm concerned, from drawing a salary and from my ups and downs and being discharged, I always found out that there was somebody ready to employ you, if you were on the ball
Senator Carroll: Thank you very much, Mr. Stengel.

        And then there’s the insufferable Sen. Langer, so terribly concerned about the potential ‘monopoly’ status of baseball, requiring, naturally, legislation he could craft. He tried unsuccessfully to pin Casey down, and finally gave it one last shot. Casey proves more than his match as a defender of free enterprise and competition in the market place.

Senator Langer: Mr. Chairman, my final question. This is the Antimonopoly Committee that is sitting here.
Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.
Senator Langer: I want to know whether you intend to keep on monopolizing the world's championship in New York City.
Mr. Stengel: Well, I will tell you, I got a little concerned yesterday in the first three innings when I saw the three players I had gotten rid of and I said when I lost nine what am I going to do and when I had a couple of my players I thought so great of that did not do so good up to the sixth inning I was more confused but I finally had to go and call on a young man in Baltimore that we don't own and the Yankees don't own him, and he is going pretty good, and I would actually have to tell you that I think we are more the Greta Garbo type now from success. We are being hated I mean, from the ownership and all, we are being hated. Every sport that gets too great or one individual, but if we made 27¢ and it pays to have a winner at home why would you not have a good winner in your own park if you were an owner. That is the result of baseball. An owner gets most of the money at home and it is up to him and his staff to do better or they ought to be discharged.
Senator Langer: That is all, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Indeed, thank you Casey, and Horsefeathers happily admits you into the folly, ignorance and cant clearing Hall of Fame.

July 29, 2005

AT LAST, AN EXIT STRATEGY

Finally, 60+ years later, Bush-Rumsfeld lead the way out of Roosevelt and Eisenhower's European quagmire.

"The U.S. Army will pull out of 13 bases in southern Germany as part of a repositioning of American forces around the world, its European headquarters said Friday.

The 11 bases in and around the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg will be handed over to the German government by September 2007, a statement from the Army's European headquarters in Heidelberg said. Two more bases near Wuerzburg will be closed and handed over in subsequent years..."
See the rest here.

July 28, 2005

ART FOR ART'S SAKE

The herd of independent minds comprising the Western art world has a new ally in the President of Iran.

Ahmadi-Nejad on the Art of Martyrdom

The following are excerpts from a speech by Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, which aired July 25, 2005 on Iranian Channel 1. In it, he praises martyrdom operations and states that Islam will conquer the world. (To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=782 .)

Ahmadi-Nejad: "We want art that is on the offensive. Art on the offensive exalts and defends the noble principles, and attacks principles that are corrupt, vulgar, ungodly, and inhuman.

"Art reaches perfection when it portrays the best life and best death. After all, art tells you how to live. That is the essence of art. Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermine the foundations of our independence and national security. They undermine the foundation of our eternity.

"The message of the [Islamic] Revolution is global, and is not restricted to a specific place or time. It is a human message, and it will move forward.

"Have no doubt ...Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world."
See the rest here.

July 24, 2005

HORSEFEATHERS SUMMER READING

        Horsefeathers summer 2005 award for cant clearing creativity in fiction goes to Mark Haddon, author of an enjoyable novel titled, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. The narrator of the story is a 15 year old autistic boy with a talent for mathematics. The book is a flawed tour de force. It attempts to get inside an autistic's mind, to portray the world as experienced by such a person. However, in making the hero very appealing, Haddon risks romanticizing his condition. In the 1960's R.D. Laing, an English psychiatrist, argued that psychotic people have access to deeper truths that are unavailable to the 'sane'. Thus schizophrenics were trying to communicate important insights to the rest of us. We in turn were "normal", i.e. cogs in a repressive capitalist system, cut off from emotional authenticity. Similarly, Haddon's hero sees through the self-deception of the 'normal' world and holds fast to his own simple beliefs. However, what makes this character more than just a collection of politically correct shibboleths about the virtues of the handicapped is that he subjects the "normal" P.C. world itself to amusing critical scrutiny. Here is the 15 year old narrator discussing the utopian P.C. desire to spare everyone's feelings by censoring hurtful words: "..All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are. I'm meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs, like Father, who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters who wears a beige-colored hearing aid or Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs.
        But Siobhan said we have to use those words because people used to call children like the children at school spaz and crip and mong, which were nasty words. But that is stupid too because sometimes the children from the school down the road see us in the street when we're getting off the bus and they shout "Special Needs! Special Needs!..."

AND WE KNOW THE NEOCONS CONTROL MOSSAD

Claim: Mossad behind Sharm attacks

"Several Egyptian "security experts" and "political analysts" interviewed by Arab TV stations in the aftermath of the Sharm e-Sheikh bombings on Saturday claimed that Israel and Jews were behind the carnage..."
See the rest here.
        In the words of the vacationing James Taranto: What would we do without Egyptian "security experts"?

July 23, 2005

BRING BACK MODO

        We're begging Pinch for mercy. Maureen Dowd's replacement while she's on vacation, seems to be a 12 year old (maximum) mentally challenged girl whose nom de plume is 'Sara Vowell'(ha, ha!). In today's column telling us, naturally, all about her feelings, she practically jumps up and down waving her hand to grab teacher's attention as the best little ass kisser in class. After showing us how P.C. she is about America's history: we are--surprise--a violent nation since our founding and "...ever since, we have carried our violent nativity within us like a virus, a virus that lies dormant from time to time only to break out again and again..." Naturally, under the cruel sway of the Bush administration these outbursts of primitive violence are frequent and evidently worry her so much more than Islamic threats that the latter don't merit mention. Another clue that "Ms. Vowell" may be a young person's pseudonym is her imitation of the well worn MoDo style of reference to pop culture in lieu of rational argumentation. Horsefeathers defies any reader to make sense of the sudden swerve away from condemning the "virus" (isn't it usually the 'cancer'?) of American gun ownership, to a defense of violence in art. The...spirit of the old Minutemen -...their do-it-yourself defiance - can occasionally be ominous when inspiring latter-day gunmen, but glorious with regard to art.." The column then concludes with a tribute/review of an unwatchable film about an unlistenable musical group. Hunh?? And from this we're to draw a conception of America as perhaps rescuable by artists who possess the same retarded level of geo-political understanding as Ms. Vowell.
        Horsefeathers is pleading with Pinch Sulzberger: Prove that the NYTimes can re-float on the waves of Maureen Dowd's unsinkable, expanding self esteem. Bring MoDo back!

July 20, 2005

WITH 'FRIENDS' LIKE THE SAUDIS WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?

       Political correctness is a mode of thinking that substitutes wishful fantasy for reality. Republicans as well as Democrats are vulnerable to it, because we all want to be regarded as kind and caring people. To say, for example, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that Islam is a 'religion of peace' is a way of saying 'I'm an empathic, multiculturally sensitive person who believes in the innate goodness of my fellow human beings.' When Islamic 'scholars', sheiks, and followers hurl blood libels from mosques around the world, adding that Jews and Christian infidels must be destroyed, political correctness requires these threats be ignored or explained away. A therapeutic stance is part of political correctness so these statements are to be understood as symptoms of deep frustration caused by Western imperialist injustice. Sound familiar? The same kinds of arguments were made to 'explain' Hitler's clearly stated threats in Mein Kampf. After all, hadn't the victors in World War I imposed onerous burdens on his generation of Germans? No wonder he was angry; thus did Chamberlain insist that Hitler was underneath it all a reasonable man, and therefore amenable to appeasement, a policy that rested on acceptance of the legitimacy of his grievances. And so it was the mean spirited, belligerent Winston Churchill, the quintessentially un-PC man who argued for years that Hitler meant what he said. Churchill's warnings were as welcome as the sound of a car alarm in the middle of the night to a sleeping Upper West side Liberal. He was regarded as a war loving blusterer who lacked the proper diplomatic temperament.
         We may not have any contemporary Churchill employing Shakespearean rhetoric to warn us of enemies bent on our destruction, but there is the indispensable MEMRI telling us of "Last week's Friday sermon from Islam's most holy site, the Al-Haram Mosque in Mecca, by its imam, Sheik Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis... In the sermon he stated: "Oh Allah, liberate our Al-Aqsa Mosque from the defilement of the occupying and brutal Zionists ... Oh Allah, punish the occupying Zionists and their supporters from among the corrupt infidels. Oh Allah, scatter and disperse them, and make an example of them for those who take heed."
        Wake up, Mr. President. It's time to remove the weapons from the hands of our Saudi enemies.

July 18, 2005

ADVANCES IN ISLAMIC SCHOLARSHIP

RIYADH, 18 July 2005 — "A statement that has warned against the dangers of allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia was released on the Internet on Friday. More than 100 sheikhs, imams, judges, Islamic scholars, Islamic university teachers, several heads of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice centers in the Kingdom, as well as some teachers at the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah signed the statement.

The statement said that the enemies of Islam are seeking to destroy the great role women have been given in Islam by corrupting them and hence corrupting the Islamic world..."

See the rest here.
Horsefeathers awaits the cries of protests from Western feminist organizations. Oh wait, we forgot, that would mean shifting focus away from the real threat to women: George W. Bush.

July 14, 2005

THE NYTIMES CAN'T UNDERSTAND

        The New York Times is baffled. In one of their chin pulling, deeply empathic investigations into the backgrounds of the 4 savage London jihadis--oh,, excuse us, they were cricket loving, charming young men-it troubles them to report they found no explanation. No explanation, why? After all, one of them, Mr. Tanweer was "infinitely likable", and "...He was a good lad, so down-to-earth," said a friend who played cricket with him the day before the bombing..." This would be perfect for the NYTimes psychobabblers: a 'good lad' driven to desparation and suicide by deprivation and discrimination. Still, they came up empty in their search for evidence. They throw up their hands, baffled and unable to comprehend. For such highly intelligent wordsmiths this is remarkable. Yet maybe not so, for if your investigation admits of only one sort of explanation, one in keeping with a utopian liberal therapeutic view of human nature, then such savagery makes no sense. To her credit, Lizette Alvarez, (where does the Times find such journalists? Is there a farm system for useful idiots?)unlike so many of her colleagues, doesn't simply invent a liberal 'narrative'. Instead she seems deeply baffled: Lives of Three Men Offer Little to Explain Attacks. It's a real problem for a multi-cultural, Liberal utopian journalist, steeped in the notion that Islamists are reacting violently to oppression by Western imperialists and the Neo-con hegemonists. Their therapeutic view, the 'We're depraved on account of we're deprived' stance can't quite figure this one out. Ms. Alvarez makes a half hearted attempt to cite the usual cant about suicide bombers: "...They grew up in neighborhoods where no jobs, or bad jobs, are just as common as steady jobs. They lived on blocks where people from all over the world - from Pakistan to Kosovo, Jamaica to Uganda - do not so much live together as collide with one another or, at best, keep a separate peace.
Small-time drug dealing and drug use have increased in Beeston, residents say..." Yet she is forced to admit that these were not poverty stricken lads, driven to suicidal rage by their material deprivation. In fact, one of them, "... Mr. Tanweer lived in a large house and drove his father's red Mercedes on occasion. He wore brand-name clothes, worked out at a gym and took classes in the martial arts. He studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University, and when he could, he worked at his father's fish and chips shop for extra money..."
        To anyone who has not been steeped in the True Liberal therapeutic faith there's no problem understanding an enemy who wants to kill, maim and terroize. That's what they do. They tell you what they intend to do, and then they do it. No problem understanding, unless your deaf, dumb and blind. The hard, immutable fact is these savages were followers of Islamic preachers who regularly encourage Jihad against the sons of pigs, the Jews, and other infidels. However, this is an insufficient explanation for the subtle minds and complex moral sensibilities of the multi-culturally p.c. liberal wordsmiths. For the rest of us, it's more than enough explanation, thank you. The fact that at least 3 of the 4 killers were devoutly religious, followers of the Jihadi Islamic death cult has no explanatory value for the sleuths at the NYTimes. After all, Ms. Alvarez writes "...Hasib Hussain, 18, who lived nearby, was the impressionable one, a charming young man who had been drifting into a reckless teenage life until religion set him straight..."
        Thus, with a straight face, do the secular multiculturalists at the NYTimes, the same NYTimes which constantly warns of the dangers of Christian theocracy in America, inform us that Islam "set him straight." Straight on the path to mass murder of innocent civilians! Horsefeathers suggests to the metrosexually confused, multi-cultural wordsmith appeasers at the NYTimes: when someone tells you they are going to kill you in the name of Islam, when they then proceed to kill your friends and relatives, there's no need to search for deep explanations. Better to search for the nearest weapons and be prepared to use them. In the words of the great World WarII anthem, Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.

July 12, 2005

HITLER'S HEIRS: THE ISLAMO-NAZI TOTALITARIANS

        History we thought, taught us that Nazism died along with Hitler in his bunker in 1945. We were wrong; it simply mutated into Islamo-Nazism so that the genocidal project, the destruction of world Jewry could continue. This project still requires that the West acquiesce, and just as in the 1930's, appeasement has its advocates. Now it takes the form of a liberal therapeutic concern for the frustrations and grievances of our enemies, and a willingness to overlook their clearly stated intention to destroy us. It searches for "deeper" motives. There is a direct line from Hitler's Third Reich to our present day Islamo-Nazi foes. This Wall Street Journal investigation traces the deep, specific connection between Islam and Nazism during and after World War II. The scene is Munich, home to several of the 9-11 terrorists.:

How a Mosque for Ex-Nazis
Became Center of Radical Islam
Documents Reveal Triumph
By Muslim Brotherhood
In Postwar Munich

        One of the lunminaries responsible for the building, financing and development of the Munich mosque was Nurredin Nakibhodscha Namangani.

"...Mr. Namangani had come from a long line of imams in his native land, modern-day Uzbekistan. But his religious service had mostly been in an unholy organization: Hitler's infamous SS. According to an autobiographical sketch he gave German authorities, he had been arrested by Stalin's security forces in 1941 and soon after liberated by the invading German army. He served as imam in various capacities, ending as imam for an SS division. He won some of Germany's highest commendations, including the Iron Cross..."
Read the rest here.

July 09, 2005

TONY BLAIR, DHIMMI

Contemporary multi-cultural liberalism infects another victim: The case of Tony Blair.

Blair: Poverty, Extremism Cause Terrorism

"...Thursday's bomb attacks on London demonstrate the pressing need for world leaders to tackle problems like poverty, he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio..."

        One day after the cowardly London jihadis struck, Tony spewed psychobabble about "underlying causes" of our enemies' desire to kill us.
        "...I think this type of terrorism has very deep roots," Blair said.
         'Deep roots'? It's not necessary to search for such buried motivations. How about the above ground weeds, the consciously stated desire of totalitarian Islam to kill and convert infidel Jews and Christians, and to impose sharia law on all of us? If we ignore what is said openly from mosques around the world, as we ignored what Hitler said in Mein Kampf, then we can indulge in the childish pleasures that so appeal to the Liberal Mind. We can show our killers that we deeply empathize with the plight that drove them to such measures. We'll show everyone how good and loveable we are by holding rock concerts and guiltily donating billions to such groups as the Hamas led Palestinian terrorists. Of course we won't call them 'terrorists' because they're only killing Jews.We'll fight a p.c. war, minimizing enemy casualties while increasing the risk to our own soldiers, in order to show our enemies that we're really nice and tolerant, despite being infidels. We'll flatter ourselves about how, instead of utilizing anger to annihilate our enemies, as we did in World War II, we've risen above such base human emotions. It takes a special kind of self-loathing to not feel outraged when, immediately after the London bombings, Muslim spokespersons elbowed their way to victim status, warning, not their fellow Muslims who might be harboring jihadis, but the rest of us not to offend them! And, of course, the liberal self-flatterers in the MSM were full of cautionary words, as if their main purpose was to head off an imminent lynch mob prepared to string up Muslims in the streets of London.
        The "Gee Officer Krupke" ('We're depraved on account of we're deprived')therapeutic approach is congruent with our enemies' view of us as weak willed appeasers. Appeasement of totalitarian Islam will, in the not too distant future, cost far more than the billions of dollars Blair and friends are shoveling down the sinkhole of corruption in the Middle East and Africa. It may cost us our freedom. Say it ain't so, Tony.

July 07, 2005

WE'RE SHOCKED!

Palestinians need more cash

So does Horsefeathers. We'll take less than $50 million and promise not to blow ourselves up.

July 06, 2005

EPA WARNING: MORAL IDIOCY ON THE RISE

Not since Athens in the Fifth Century BC has there been such a display of philosophical thought as appears to be the case in modern Hollywood. There are the political philosophers Streisandus and Pennocles, and the metaphysician Tomcruisius who specializes in mind-body problems and causality. And now we hear that Spielbergides wishes to articulate his moral philosophy on war and justice.

O Aristophanes, where are you when we need you.

We have late word (click) that Steven Spielberg—who loves the child that lives in the heart of every American—is worried that his next movie, being filmed on location in Muslim dominated Malta, may be misunderstood by the world and the Jewish world in particular.

His new picture begins with the massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes by the terrorists who called themselves Black September at the 1972 Olympics held in Munich. But rather than focusing on the hideous crime of taking these innocent young men hostage and brutally murdering them, Spielberg wants to focus on the aftermath of the event in which a secret Mossad hit squad is ordered to assassinate the Palestinian terrorists to avenge the massacre of Israeli athletes.

According to the New York Times, because the movie “focuses on the Israeli retaliation: the assassinations, ordered by Prime Minister Golda Meir, of Palestinians identified by Israeli intelligence as terrorists, including some who were not directly implicated in the Olympic massacre. By highlighting such a morally vexing and endlessly debated chapter in Israeli history - one that introduced the still-controversial Israeli tactic now known as targeted killings - Mr. Spielberg could jeopardize his tremendous stature among Jews both in the United States and in Israel.”

Having joined with Hollywood’s other great thinkers, Spielberg wants to have his moral cake and eat it too. He wants to show that the Israeli retaliation is morally equivalent to the Palestinian massacre of the innocent athletes but wants to deny that that is his view at the same time, so that the Jews in Israel and America won’t be mad at him. So in addition to asking the advice of his rabbi and Bill Clinton, he has hired Dennis Ross, Middle East envoy for Clinton, to act as liaison agent and protector of his rear.

And in order to make his story deeper by depicting the Mossad agents as having doubts about their mission, and more humane by depicting the reasons for the actions of the terrorists, Spielberg has hired another wunderkind, Tony Kushner. Kushner—winner of the Pulitzer prize for moral confusion—for his play Angels in America—is a self-described socialist and pacifist and hopelessly mixed up about dealing with the political realities of violent enemies.

According to the Times, “Mr. Spielberg's interest in the question of a civilized nation's proper response to terrorism deepened, aides said, after the 9/11 attacks, as Americans were grappling for the first time with similar issues - for instance, in each new lethal strike on a suspected terrorist leader by a C.I.A. Predator drone aircraft. In Mr. Kushner's script, people who have read it say, the Israeli assassins find themselves struggling to understand how their targets were chosen, whether they belonged on the hit list and, eventually, what, if anything, their killing would accomplish.”

There are three issues that Spielberg must deal with in this non-trivial undertaking. The first is telling the whole truth about the event—the actions and motivations of the Palestinian Terrorists and their boss Yasser Arafat; the truth about the lives of the Israeli athletes so that they do not appear to the audience as faceless, impersonal, bodies in victim bags; the reasons for why Golda Meir ordered the assassinations of the terrorists; the truth about the despicable IOC and its attitude toward the massacre; the truth about the bungling of the German police and its refusal to allow the proffered help from the Israeli government; and finally the truth about the disgraceful aftermath and the pusillanimous regime of Willy Brandt.

The second issue has to do with whether the film is meant to be a work of fact or fiction and whether it is appropriate to invent complex motivation to “humanize the events.”

And finally, the issue of whether it is appropriate to moralize about killing in the context of war and the war on terror.

Horsefeathers plans to monitor these issues and the progress of Spielberg’s undertaking in the coming weeks and months until the movie’s opening in December and promises full coverage.

LAUGH LINE OF THE DAY

Jacques Chirac, supporting Paris's failed bid for the 2012 Olympics:

"..He emphasized his long relationship with many I.O.C. members and talked about the French people's desire to host the Games. "I shall vouch for this," he said in French. "You can put your trust in France. You can trust the French. You can trust us."

July 04, 2005

A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO AMERICA

Iowahawk has landed an exclusive, July 4 interview with a true hero of the anti-Bush patriotic left.

Iowahawk Special July 4 Guest Commentary by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

Americans are famous for their diversity, and nowhere is this diversity more on display than in the various ways we celebrate the Fourth of July. Whether you are a traditional infidel enjoying hot dogs and cold watermelon, a recent immigrant infidel celebrating your new citizenship with a colorful piñata full of sweet treats, or like me, a not-as-yet-arrived-there-American who celebrates our independence through videotaped beheadings, we Americans have an almost infinite variety of ways of ‘lighting up the Fourth.’

Unfortunately, there are some who are angered by this rich Independence Day tapestry of watermelon and piñatas and decapitations, and express their anger through intolerance. Ironically, these angry voices have chosen to ignore the message of the Founding Infidels, and have instead lashed out against their fellow Americans, and aspiring-Americans, by openly questioning our patriotism and threatening our civil liberties with their GPS-guided ‘Bunker Busters.’

Sadly, this chorus of intolerance has grown since America embarked on its disastrous campaign of militarism in the Mideast. Instead of focusing on the real issues that trouble us -- like rampant poverty, Zionist aggression, and our immodestly dressed female cousins who have dishonored our clans -- these ‘neocon’ voices have sought to distract us with a stupid war for oil and empire. Those of us who have stood up in principled, armed opposition to Bush’s misadventure have been branded “unpatriotic.”

This chilling wind should alarm the millions of Americans and future-Americans everywhere who have called for the immediate timed withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, and have expressed their opinion through their local newspapers, peace marches, and rocket-propelled grenades. It sometimes seems that the Administration is more interested in the “rights” of their foreign Iraqi clients than the rights of their own citizens, and their own inevitable invading conquerors.

If nothing else, the Fourth of July should prompt all Americans, whether they are an infidel fornicating whore-woman in a Miami strip club or a fresh-faced enlistee in a secret Prague martyr cell, to reflect on the true meaning of ‘patriotism.’ To me, patriotism is not some empty flag-waving gesture, or spouting jingoistic slogans. To me, dissent is the real patriotism. And what could be more patriotic than the ultimate in dissent – bloody jihad against the kufr and their heretic puppets in Baghdad?

So, on this day when we mark the birth of the Great Satan, let us remember that true patriotism is not a “one-size-fits-all” idea. While there may be precious little to celebrate America as it is, millions of us real patriots will continue to celebrate the idea of America as it could be. Allah willing.

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