re: "Bolton: Biden's Statement that Taliban Not Our Enemy Was No Gaffe"

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs (" Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction. ") agreed with Amb. Bolton's characterization.

Money quote(s):

"The Taliban does not share Western values, goals, objectives. The Taliban's playbook is the qur'an and its stated aims.

The whole idea of a moderate Taliban or a moderate Islam is false"

Reasonable people can disagree whether or not there can be a moderate Islam.

(CAA believes in it on alternating days, himself.)

"Never mind their role in 9/11. Never mind their hosting al-Qaeda camps and working with al-Qaeda.

It amounts to surrender, to prostration before the jihadist enemy.

Now, we know old Joe is none too bright, but here Bolton explains: this was no gaffe."

And here's why:

"Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said Tuesday that Joe Biden’s statement that the Taliban is not America's enemy in Afghanistan was not a gaffe, but instead the vice president was “articulating what the White House strategy is.” Biden made his remarks in a recent Newsweek interview, but the Obama administration is saying they were taken out of context

“I don’t think this is a gaffe by Joe Biden — I think he is articulating what the White House strategy is — I think they know exactly what they are trying to do,” Bolton told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “They are trying to redefine the terrorist threat to be a limited group of al-Qaida people along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

“They are going to redefine Taliban away from that — they are going to ignore Taliban in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Qaida in Iraq, and al-Qaida in North Africa,” Bolton said. “And they’re going to say it’s just that one little thing: We’ve killed Osama bin Laden — the war on terror is over.”"

Based upon my own sporadic observations regarding Vice Pres. Biden's tendency to "gaffe," I wouldn't urgently disagree with Amb. Bolton's assessment.

VP Biden sometimes says things that suggest he's regurgitating, in his own words, the substance of things about which he's been briefed. Specifically, I'm thinking about his remarks a few years ago about the H1N1 flu virus and air travel.

He seems to speak uncomfortable truths, as he understands them and based upon some frank and factual briefings (i.e., not for public distribution), and wholly without regard for the political, economic, or diplomatic fallout. Indeed, he says them without any apparent consciousness that there could be, even should be, such repercussions.

"Bolton said the Taliban treats anyone who does not agree with them horribly."

Word.

""It reminds me of Vietnam. Remember Sen. George Aiken, the Republican of Vermont? It was clear to him that we didn’t have the stamina to go on and actually win,” Bolton said. “So the George Aiken strategy: We’ll declare victory and get out — that is what the administration is going to do in the war on terror. Having redefined who the terrorists are and having said the Taliban is not our enemy, they’re going to say we have won and the war is over.""

And, if we'd put some of our HVT Taliban officials on the other side of a conference table, gotten them to publicly disavow Al Qaeda and UBL, and made it clear that if we ever had to come back to Afghanistan it would not be with gentle words and reconstruction budgets....

....all of that before we'd spent a decade nation-building and taking casualties, then this would have been a reasonable, if limited, outcome for our intervention there.

"The jihad against the U.S. will continue all over the world, not just in Afghanistan."

12/21

re: "Burned Korans & Riots & Feeding the Delusions of the Delusional"

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ offered a helpful suggestion.

Money quote(s):

"If someone's having a panic attack, the worst possible thing to do, as someone trying to help, is to play into it. To pay too much attention. To act very concerned.

People do that, thinking it's helpful. In fact, in exacerbates the situation.

My point is this: To what extent have we played into and exacerbated this absurd Muslim psychopathy over the Koran?

And to what extent would it be defeated if we simply stopped playing into it, and actually routinized the destruction of Korans (or other shows of disrespect, or, more accurately, "refusing to treat the Muslim religion as the officially sanctified state religion of America")?

To what extent are we encouraging these little spells by playing along with them? By treating the Koran as scared, most of the time, to what extent are we writing our own tragic ending when some stupid book gets burned?

Isn't it dangerous to feed the delusions of the deluded? Isn't the right course of action to insist on a more grounded view of reality?

Shouldn't we set the default, routine, expected mode of behavior as "we are not a Muslim nation and furthermore are forbidden by the Constitution from treating one religion as sacrosanct"?"

&

"(O)ur current policy also seems to not help, and is furthermore repellent."

3/2

re: "Raymond Ibrahim: The Historical Reality of the Muslim Conquests"

Raymond at Jihad Watch ("dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology plays in the modern world, and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts") provided some historical context that contrasts with today's bland pronouncements.

Money quote(s):

"Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World—from the India in the east, to Spain in the west—were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time.

By the standards of history, the reality of these conquests is unassailable, for history proper concerns itself with primary sources; and the Islamic conquests are thoroughly documented. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of primary source materials we rely on do not come from non-Muslims, who might be accused of bias. Rather, the foremost historians bequeathing to posterity thousands of pages of source materials documenting the Islamic conquests were not only Muslims themselves; they were—and still are—regarded by today’s Muslims as pious and trustworthy scholars (generically, the ulema)."

&

"It should be noted that contemporary non-Muslim accounts further validate the facts of the conquests. The writings of the Christian bishop of Jerusalem Sophronius (d.638), for instance, or the chronicles of the Byzantine historian Theophanes (d.758), to name a couple, make clear that Muslims conquered much of what is today called the “Muslim world.”

According to the Muslim historical tradition, the majority of non-Muslim peoples of the Old World, not desiring to submit to Islam or its laws (Sharia), fought back, though most were eventually defeated and subsumed."

What is today called the "Muslim world" was once, variously, the Roman- and Byzantine Christian Mediterranean world and the Persian empire.

"The colorful accounts contained in the Muslim tradition are typified by constant warfare, which normally goes as follows: Muslims go to a new region and offer the inhabitants three choices: 1) submit (i.e., convert) to Islam; 2) live as second-class citizens, or “dhimmis,” paying special taxes and accepting several social debilitations; 3) fight to the death.

Centuries later, and partially due to trade, Islam came to be accepted by a few periphery peoples, mostly polytheists and animists, who followed no major religion (e.g., in Indonesia, Somalia), and who currently form the outer fringes of the Islamic world.

Ironically, these exceptions are now portrayed as the rule in America’s classrooms, as many textbooks suggest or at least imply that most people who converted to Islam did so under no duress, but rather through peaceful contacts with merchants and traders; that they eagerly opted to convert to Islam for the religion’s intrinsic appeal, without noting the many debilitations conquered non-Muslims avoided—extra taxes, second-rate social status, enforced humiliation, etc.—by converting to Islam. In fact, in the first century, and due to these debilitations, many conquered peoples sought to convert to Islam only to be rebuffed by the caliphate, which preferred to keep them as subdued—and heavily taxed—subjects, not as Muslim equals."

Pillage, booty, slaves, and taxes. And all to the greater glory, &tc.

"The dissimulation of how Islam was spread in the early centuries contained in Western textbook’s mirrors the way the word jihad, once inextricable to the conquests, has also been recast. Whereas the word jihad has throughout the centuries simply meant armed warfare on behalf of Islam, in recent years, American students have been taught the Sufi interpretation of jihad—Sufis make up perhaps one percent of the Islamic world and are often seen as heretics with aberrant interpretations—which portrays jihad as a “spiritual-struggle” against one’s vices."

And yet "jihad = inner spiritual struggle" is now the textbook answer throughout the military and the IC, and said with a straight fact to boot!

To aid in the disorientation, while Pres. Bush can not be seen by the current administration to have done anything right, ever, his pronouncing that "Islam is a religion of peace" is accepted without a twitch. Weird.

"(T)he Islamic conquests narrated in the Muslim histories often mirror the doctrinal obligations laid out in Islam’s theological texts—the Koran and Hadith. Muslim historians often justify the actions of the early Islamic invaders by juxtaposing the jihad injunctions found in Islamic scriptures."

&

"In closing, the fact of the Muslim conquests, by all standards of history, is indisputable. Accordingly, just as less than impressive aspects of Western and Christian history, such as the Inquisition or conquest of the Americas, are regularly taught in U.S. textbooks, so too should the Muslim conquests be taught, without apology or fear of being politically incorrect. This is especially so because it concerns history—which has a way of repeating itself when ignored, or worse, whitewashed." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

3/1

re: "Why Will It End?"

Zenster guest-posts the second essay of a three part series at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe.We are in a new phase of a very old war.").

Money quote(s):

"Why Will it End?

Short answer ― Islam has “unhappy ending” written all over it.

Tragically, for Islam there is no possibility of a happy ending. It has often been said that the only peace which Islam ― famously known as “The Religion of Peace” ― offers anyone is the peace of the grave."

Islam means "submission" (to the will of Allah). Which is not how CAA defines "peace." Especially when said will tends to interpreted (and enforced) on the ground by what is essentially mob rule.

"The Islamic concept of takfir (“impure”), literally assures this in that a more devout Muslim is religiously sanctioned for killing a less pure Muslim. This lack of purity could be interpreted as someone who does not pray all five times a day or consumes food during daylight hours over the course of Ramadan. The possible paths descending into Islamic “impurity” are as numerous as they are varied and it is an ironclad guarantee that Islam will always be torn by internecine violence.

Exacerbating this situation is the West’s collective inability to discern Islam in general and why there is so little hope for it. It echoes the ancient parable about a group of blind men describing an elephant." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Islam just seems so far away, for most folks. Even those Americans who've had the most exposure to it, our men and women in uniform, have to travel for days before they encounter it. And when they do, it's in environments that seem more like something out of Star Wars or John Carter on Mars than the Planet Earth they're accustomed to.

So until that halal shop or mosque opens up on your block, it's hard to believe islam has much to do with the West.

It's like war, in that way. You may not have much interest in it, but it's very interested in you.

"Islam is so voluminous and just sufficiently varied enough that it seems to defy description. This is especially so for the less informed who can but bear shocked witness to the endless discord and bloodshed that pervades the Islamic world."

Again, it appears to most Westerners as something you see on TV, like a movie or something that's not quite real. Until it is.

"Islam has routinely slithered away from history’s spotlight as the cause of ruined civilizations, genocides, mass enslavements and untold human suffering which transcend anything Europe or America ever aspired to in their wildest dreams.

Islam also manifests as a flag around which this world’s criminal elements continue to rally under a banner of religiously sanctioned murder, rape, pedophilia, looting and thieving which, terrorism aside ― as if that was even possible ― fills police blotters and drains global coffers with an almost enviable consistency unmatched by all but the most accomplished career politicians. Like any wall, Islam continually and everywhere builds enclaves which exclude unbelievers within their own domains and barricades Muslims from influences both external and even the threat of internal “westernization” that just as often sees young Muslim women murdered by their own families in so-called “honor killings”."

These would be some of those uncomfortable (even "inconvenient") truths that don't become apparent until it's much too late. Unless, of course, one reads history and pays attention to the news that's not on their local TV station.

"Islamic hijra has thrust Muslims deep within Western civilization only see them infect every last institution with their steady subversion of Constitutional rights and basic liberties. Hackneyed cries of “racism” and “Islamophobia” ― as if a fear of Islam could ever be irrational ― are trotted out in response to every legitimate criticism of Islam; even as Muslims set about stifling free speech and freedom of expression around the world." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

This is why "Exhibit 3-85" (from the Holy Land Foundation trial) should be required reading.

(Don't be afraid; the English translation starts about midway down the document, p. 15.)

"Compounding all of this havoc are the Islamic “principles” of kitman and taqiyya. They amount to religiously sanctioned deceit and outright lying. As if this were not bad enough, the situation is further exacerbated by Mainstream Media’s adamant refusal to provide accurate and unbiased reporting about Islam’s seditious goal of toppling Constitutional democracies throughout the West.

Islam remains a predatory entity that has not been able to establish any self-sustaining degree of industry or technology for almost a millennium. It has relied upon piracy and looting for nearly the entire span of its existence." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

The Islam "package" of the koran, sharia law, and the various elements of Arabic cultural imperialism that accompany it can be seen as somewhat like a computer program or even a computer virus. The multiple memes and re-inforcing behaviors comprise a sort of meta-meme that acts (and re-acts) to extend the area and population under its sway. In a sense, it's frankly an amazing and elegant piece of business.

"One immense irony is that ― despite Islam’s aspirations for a global caliphate ― it is unhealthy for too many unbelievers to be converted into Muslims. Once this happens, the jizya (“poll tax”) can no longer be collected, nor can possessions, businesses or estates be confiscated so readily. There have already occurred phases in Islamic history where further conversion of natives living in occupied lands was discouraged as it interfered with the appropriation of wealth that is central to financing more jihad. It is also vital to remember that any refusal to pay the jizya is punishable by immediate death.

Conversely, there is a twin principal to jizya known as hijra which derives from the Arabic word for “migration” or “flight”. In this case, it is a that strategy involves flooding Muslim immigrants into those Western nations which cannot be overcome militarily. Displaying a regular pattern of behavior, these new arrivals ― in strict accord with Islamic law ― refuse to assimilate or integrate and form exclusively Muslim enclaves while gradually instituting shari’a law whenever possible.

This form of demographic warfare is commonly known as “stealth” or “soft” jihad and it is the strategy of choice for many within Islam who seek to conquer the West."

Again, Exhibit 3-85 invites much closer reading. Zenster isn't just making this stuff up out of hairballs.

"This is nothing other than a process of colonization and it is reflected in how non-Muslims are routinely driven out of these enclaves through threats of violence, boycotts and extortion. Furthermore, when a sufficient population density is attained, even visiting non-Muslims are subjected to physical assault and threats of violence should they stray into one of these “no-go zones”. Due to Islamic polygamy, such population densities arrive far sooner than typical demographics for the host nations involved.

Once established, there begins a process of draining financial support from local or central government. This is in addition to criminal predation upon surrounding neighborhoods in the form of robbery, theft and extortion. Due to purdah ― the confinement and isolation of Muslim women ― typically there is a surge in the pimping, sexual assault and rape of non-Muslim women in areas around these enclaves. Minors are especially vulnerable to this because of how Islam regards Mohammad’s marriage to his six year-old child bride, Aisha, as a model of perfect conduct. Central to any understanding of Islam is that this entire process is one of obtaining tribute (jizya) from unbelievers.

This tribute is regarded as being their automatic due in that Muslims consider themselves to be the world’s Master Race. A proper understanding of Islam cannot be had without recognizing this one central point." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

9/21

re: "Does the acquittal of Geert Wilders signal a changing Netherlands?"

Robert Zeliger at PASSPORT ("A Blog By The Editors Of Foreign Policy") marked a significant development in Holland.

Money quote(s):

"The Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders has called the Quran a "fascist book" that ought to be banned. He has referred to the Prophet Mohammed as "the devil," and said all Muslim immigration to the Netherlands should be stopped and immigrants currently there should be paid to leave. He's said women who wear the hijab should have to pay a tax and if Muslims continue immigrating, it would mean the end "European and Dutch civilization as we know it.""

Clearly offensive speech (at least to Muslims, and certainly at least some others) but Constitutionally-protected speech in an American context. It's nice to see this sort of thing (free speech, that is) catch on in foreign parts.

"(H)e was acquitted on charges of inciting racial hatred."

If a member of parliament can't speak freely, what hope is there for the average citizen?

"(T)he truth is that the social and political ground have been shifting in the supposedly tolerant society for years. Last year, Wilders's Party for Freedom won 15 percent of the vote in national elections, making it the third largest in parliament. And his ideas are slowly creeping into mainstream politics: The Netherlands has some of the strictest immigration laws in Europe, and has banned face-covering attire like the niqab.

The current government depends on Wilders and his party to remain in power. Though not formally part of government, they are at the very least a silent partner. Without their votes, the minority-government wouldn't be able to pass its legislation."

Good political analysis, answering the question: "So what?"

"Wilders's judge today said that while some of his statements were "crude and denigrating," they were nevertheless protected speech. But the decision might widen the scope of the debate on multiculturalism in Dutch society, and embolden Wilders to take his anti-Islam and anti-immigration crusade further."

Widening "the scope of the debate on multiculturalism" should be considered a feature, not a bug. Why should a social construct or consensus (which is apparently far from universally held) be exempt from debate?

re: "Adventures in Smart Diplomacy, #2,783"

MikeM at Confederate Yankee ("Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state.") reminds us of just how many tentacles the Muslim Brotherhood possesses.

Money quote(s):

"The Muslim Brotherhood is arguably the oldest, most influential and most extreme Muslim organization in the modern world. Founded in 1935 in Egypt, its most modern jihadist incarnation began in 1952 when Sayed Qtub, arguably the modern father of the Jihadist movement, returned to Egypt. He had been studying, of all things, American Literature at the University of Northern Colorado. The behavior of American women he saw in movies and in society in general—remember, we’re talking about the early 1950’s—convinced him that western society and Christianity were depraved and turned him irrevocably toward Jihad. His writings had a major influence on Jihadist thinking, an influence still being powerfully felt.

With branches in at least 70 countries (Hamas is the Palestinian branch), including America, the MB is very influential to Muslims around the world. Fatwas—religious edicts—issued by MB mullahs (priests or pastors) are taken very seriously in the Muslim world. A 2004 Fatwa by MB Shiekh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, for example, proclaiming the religious duty of Muslims to abduct and kill Americans in Iraq was widely observed and cost many lives.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Americans tend to analyze such things through the lens of America’s tradition of tolerance of all faiths and of the separation of church and state. Observant Muslims do not think of themselves as Egyptians or Yemenis—for example--who happen to be Muslim, but as Muslims first and foremost. Their nationality and loyalty to any nation tends to be far down on their list, after being Muslim, family, tribe, clan, and other concerns, if it registers for them at all. When Muslim Brotherhood members speak of jihad and “dying in the way of Allah,” they are not engaging in pandering or politically correct rhetoric but expressing their duty and willingness to die killing anyone they consider the enemy of Islam.

It is, for Americans, a bizarre paradox that American Muslims, people who identify themselves as loyal Americans who happen to practice Islam, people who would not take up the call of Jihad, are different from Jihadist Muslims, from Muslims who support the MB. In fact, these American Muslims are seen as apostates, fit only for death, by their more radical co-religionists. In fact, Muslims not taking the path of Jihad are not truly observing the dictates of their religion, not the other way around."

This may be the best four-paragraph explanation of the Muslim Brotherhood ever written.

If you've go the time and dedication, take a look at this as well.

"Consider that the MB certainly considers all Americans to be infidels, fit only for slavery, conversion to Islam and Sharia, or death. This is not political rhetoric read from a teleprompter, but the life and belief and passion of all observant Muslims who follow MB philosophy. They particularly consider women to be nothing more than chattel, the possessions of men."

Those of you are curious should look into the status of women taken prisoner or captive in war, under koranic observances. Apparently, the misadventure involved in being taking captive suffices to dissolve the captive's matrimonial bonds, thus absolving those who enslave them from committing the serious sin of adultery as they enjoy a bit of rapine thereafter.

How convenient.

"Prominent MB thinkers have already been speaking of completely Islamicizing Egypt, and calling her archeological treasures such as the pyramids and statuary “idols.” This is significant in that Islam brooks no depictions of Muhammed, Allah, or photographs, statues or similar images, considering it to be idolatry. They would gladly do to Egypt’s priceless treasures what the Taliban did to Afghanistan’s priceless and irreplaceable Buddhist statuary: destroy it as contrary to the Koran."

One would think that the pyramids and all the antiquities of Ancient (and not-so-ancient) Egypt would be safe, being such a money-maker and tourist draw for the country. Certainly there are plenty of Egyptians, in and out of government, who understand the economic realities involved in the millions of Egyptians whose livelihoods are dependent upon the successful exploitation of these pre-Islamic treasures.

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees that those who do understand Egypt's economic realities are going to be any match for those who combine a madrassa-style education (i.e., nothing resembling science or reason) with access to modern weaponry and high explosives.

re: "OIC Demands Action Against Free Speech"

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs understands that compromising on Constitutional principles will only encourage our enemies.

Money quote(s):

"Qur'an-burning is a stupid idea, of course, but is protected under the laws of free speech. The burning of books is wrong in principle: the antidote to bad speech is not censorship or book-burning, but more speech. Open discussion. Give-and-take. And the truth will out. There is no justification for burning books. If free men are to be free and not live under Islamic law (sharia), then this man can do this if he wants, and his freedom and rights should be protected. Islamic supremacists should not be allowed a victory for their violent intimidation -- if these people want to burn a book, they're free to do so.

If they had burned a Bible, no one would be threatening violence against them.

The Islamic warning that this will threaten American troops is just another terror tactic. This is based on the assumption that they are fighting us because we are doing things they don't like. Actually they are fighting us because of imperatives within the Islamic faith. They will never like us unless we convert to Islam or submit to Islamic rule. If we stop doing things they dislike, where will we draw the line? How far will Sharia advance in the U.S., with Americans afraid to stop its advance for fear of offending Muslims and stirring them up to violence? The Muslim Students Association is already pushing for halal cafeterias, segregated dorms, segregated gym facilities on campus. This is incompatible with American freedom. We have to draw the line.

I will tell you this, Islamic law (sharia) cannot, must not, and will not have its way over our free speech. That is worth fighting for, worth dying for."

re: "Muslim Immigration into the UK: Part Three"

El Ingles (writing as Pike Bishop) at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe.We are in a new phase of a very old war.") fleshes out Ralph Peter's scenario for Britain.

Money quote(s):

"Normally, technologically and economically more advanced peoples colonize peoples who are less advanced in these regards. This is why, try as they might, the native American Indians could not effectively oppose, much less reverse, the colonization they underwent at the hands of the British and other European peoples. However, in our case, the opposite will be true, as our colonization will be taking place at the hands of technologically and economically inferior peoples who, barring the odd Afghan on the back of a truck, have to be let in by our immigration apparatus to be here at all.

What this means, in a nutshell, is that this colonization will take place only as long as we allow it to, and we will not allow it forever. Eventually we will completely cast aside the various psychological restraints that have been imposed upon us (and without which said colonization could never have occurred at all), resist it, and, at least to some extent, reverse it. There are only two ways this can happen: a) in a relatively orderly and civilized fashion, when a government with the political will to deal with the problem finally comes to power, or b) in an exceptionally violent and brutal fashion, with government playing by no means the only role, and perhaps not even a particularly large one.

It would be asinine to argue that something of this nature could not happen in modern Europe when we have so recently witnessed similar events in the Balkans."

Ralph Peters surfaced this possibility in his much-discussed New York Post article.

"The war that awaits us is tribal war, and we assure our readers that it does not consist of generals exchanging pleasantries before battle, folk riding forth and shooting at each other a bit, and some backslapping over a glass of port at the end. Rather, it consists of people identifying entire communities as their enemies and more or less indiscriminately killing them off until the threats they are perceived to constitute have been reduced to acceptable levels, whatever those levels may be. It is surely one of the greatest failures in the history of (supposedly) democratic government as an institution that so many otherwise prosperous, peaceful European countries have been deliberately hurling themselves along this path despite the fact that the eventual outcome must have been reasonably obvious from the start, and is painfully so now.

When such tribal conflict breaks out in Britain (and it certainly cannot be avoided without radical changes to immigration and other policies), the only way for it to come to an end will be for the overwhelming majority of the Muslim population of Britain to leave permanently. There will be no Good Friday Agreement to bring it to an end, and, for deep structural reasons, no equivalent agreement can exist."

Tom Kratman explored a similar possibility in his 2010 novel Caliphate.

"It will be clear to the British people in the case of tribal conflict between them and their Muslim fifth column that defeat will result in the disappearance of their civilization, their way of life, and their existence as a people. Accordingly, they will have to win it, which means they will have to do what needs to be done to win it, which means they will have to do a great many violent and unpleasant things, things that, though quite inconceivable to many at present, will seem right and obvious to most when the nature of the conflict has become sufficiently clear.

We would like to avoid this, but feel that the window of opportunity is closing rather more quickly than some might imagine. Our greatest concern is that, despite the growing anger and alarm on the part of the British people with respect to mass immigration in general and Muslim immigration in particular, these feelings might not give rise to the necessary coalescence of political will on the part of our elected representatives in time to try and prevent the horrendous future that otherwise awaits us. We say again that the only course of action that gives us the slightest chance of avoiding the horrors outlined here is that of shutting down Muslim immigration and refusing to subsidize the higher Muslim fertility that is pushing us towards the brink."

Boldface added for emphasis.

"There is no theological or legal distinction in Islam between ‘moderates’ and ‘radicals.’ These terms are part of a Western discourse which seeks to grapple with the alarming possibility that a religion adhered to, more or less strictly, by approximately 20% of the world’s population, is fundamentally antithetical to everything good in our way of life. Trying to define a moderate Muslim is an exercise in futility."

Moderate Muslims are some of those things you know when you see them. Like my former uniformed comrades-in-arms, serving their adopted country whether it makes their imam happy or not.

"(L)aws, treaties, and the like are human constructs and therefore open to being changed by human efforts on the basis of human concerns. And changed they will be, sooner or later. If it disapproves, the EU will just have to invade us and show us the error of our ways."

El Ingles raises a good intellectual point. Only the the Ten Commandments were carved by the finger of God onto the faces of stone tablets. Pretty much everything else is the creation of mankind, and subject to revocation, rebuttal, or revision.

(To those who would assert that the Koran, in its classic Arabic version, is the literal perfect word of Allah, I must demur, since that is a matter of faith and I am not a Muslim.)

"It must be observed that all real debts have certain characteristics, most obviously principals (initial amounts owed), and interest rates. If one believes that, once upon a time, Britain owed a debt of some sort to recently independent peoples in ex-British Empire territories, then one must give some idea of the size of the debt, the rate at which that debt accrued interest, and the conditions that would have to be satisfied for that debt to have been fully paid off. In the absence of this information, the ‘debt’ becomes nothing more than an instrument of moral intimidation."

The parallels to the perennial issue of slavery reparations are obvious.

Further, in the U.S. we're not subjected to this particular version of guilt infliction, but rather assertions of the obvious and unassailable virtues of "diversity."

Uh huh.

"(M)any ex-British territories have either stagnated or gone backwards since the Union Jack ceased to fly over them. Many of their people are desperate to leave them, which means that they are desperate to leave the conditions that they and their people have created."

Blaming colonialism will only get you so far.

"If the people of these countries are to flee them and, officially or unofficially, take refuge in a Western country like Britain, then they must, in some fashion, convince the British people to let them in. But given that they already have their own countries, they will have to come up with something especially persuasive. This is the ‘debt.’ None of the people who insist that they should be allowed into Britain because of this supposed debt have ever given the slightest thought to whether or not this debt might already have been paid off, because they have never taken their own argument seriously in the first place. It is simply what these folk say when they feel that access to the UK, for them or their compatriots back home, might be jeopardized."

Thus far, it is not yet a principle of international human rights law that guarantees free movement of peoples irrespective of sovereign national borders. Yet.

"None of this should be taken to imply that there never was any debt at all. Rather, it means that when this debt mysteriously refuses to go away no matter how many immigrants are allowed in, and no matter how much Britain is demographically transformed, then it has become a fake debt, an instrument used to cudgel the ex-imperial master around the head and induce him to allow the ex-imperial subjects to escape the squalor, corruption, poverty, and violence that, they now realize, tend to ensue when they are left to their own devices.

Our ex-imperial peoples wanted to be independent of us. Now they are, with everything that that implies. We wish them the best of luck in their own countries. But all debts are now paid."

I do rather like this simple, bookkeeping approach to debt. If someone is going to imply a debt is owed in order to collect some benefit from the debtor, then by all means lets quantify the current balance of that debt, and any rate of increase. That should be done before paying even a cent.

"(I)f Turkey ever becomes a full member of an EU that Britain is still a member of, with the Turks being granted full freedom of movement across all the EU member states, then the British people will simply have to revolt. If this be treason, rest assured we shall make the most of it."

Britain has already had the joy of seeing many thousands of non-EU citizens crossing the whole of Europe to the coast of France in order to find some way to cross the channel into Britain's welfare state. That's to say nothing of the EU citizens who flock to take advantage of generous salaries, standards of living, and eventual unemployment benefits.

"If there is any particular reason for the British to allow themselves to be colonized by Muslims, whatever their provenance, now is the time for it to be explained."