What is Islam, Really?

Anyone who has studied the Koran must realize that Islam cannot be called a religion in the traditional sense.
"Craft" is a better way to describe Islam.
Too few of us know what the Koran says. It actually describes Allah as a "deceiver" at one point. The Koran describes Allah as the best deceiver there is, a liar who is not above using the same evil and wicked schemes of his opponents. For example, the Koran calls Allah a "makr," in fact the best "makr" there is. This web site will give you all the examples you need to understand it: http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/allah_best_deceiver.htm
Those who claim the Koran also allows and even encourages Muslims to lie to non-Muslims, and deal falsely with them, are absolutely correct.
The amalgamation of an ancient idolatry with political aims that use threat, violence and falsehood as an arm of recruitment and diplomacy is not a religion. It is time we called it what it is ... a "craft" if anything at all.
Right now a young female Muslim is attempting to pressure Abercrombie & Fitch into changing their company policy so she can wear a hajib; a headscarf worn by Muslim women that conceals the hair, the neck and usually has a face veil that covers the face. However, the Koran does not require this girl, or any Muslim woman, to wear this piece of clothing that pushes all Muslim women into a position of anonymous personhood. Nevertheless, CAIR, an Islamic support organization has taken up her case.

The push to accept their cultural practices, and the implementation of Islam's Sharia Law are just aimed at gaining control over those who do not subscribe to Islam, which is why Muslims in the U.S.A. are pushing so hard to get local American county and state governments to accept the implementation of Sharia Law. At the same time, pressure is being brought to bear on a number of American businesses, under the guise of political correctness, to gain benefits for Muslim employees that are not available to non-Muslims. These are simply two prongs of the same attack to force the acceptance of Islamic rules and rituals and the justification of Sharia Law. That must not be allowed to happen.

Those who don't take seriously the nuclear threats of destruction toward Israel and the U.S. (the Great Satan) by Iran's Pres. Ahmadinajad don't understand he is doing exactly what the Koran tells him to do. This is not a "religion of peace," and both we and Israel need to take measures to protect ourselves.

Obama Talks, McCain Leads

Obama Talks, McCain Leads
by Ed Evans

Barack Hussein Obama's favorite throw-away line is "John McCain told his advisors, 'If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.'" Then Obama follows up with, "So I want to talk about the economy!"
But you will notice, Obama doesn't talk about the economy, he talks about raising taxes. He think's that's how you help the economy. It helped kings, and emperors and monarchs. It might even help senators and congressman to have more of our money to spend. But it doesn't help the people who have to pay the taxes; you and I.
Obama should be forgiven, though, because he's a product of the Democratic party, and they all seem to think raising taxes is how you help a faltering economy. Even when the news media asks other Democratic politicians, "Can you believe Barack Obama wants to raise taxes in a faltering economy? What do you think about that?" They go right on supporting the idea of raising taxes. But I repeat, they are Democrats. Of course they want to raise taxes.
It apparently has not occurred to them that every shrinking dollar they take away from you and I is a dollar not spent keeping the economy alive. Every dollar they take away from the small business owners -- the ones who accounted for 100% of the new jobs last year -- that's another dollar not paid to their workers, another dollar not spent on their health care, not spent on supporting their social security. In the end, that employee doesn't exist because they can't afford to pay rising taxes and additional employee wages. A working wage earner has been turned into another welfare space holder.
No, John McCain doesn't lose when he talks about the economy. He wins and we win because he talks jobs, wages, family survival and tax cuts.
Barack Hussein Obama talks a good game. He's an excellent speaker, spell-binding with great imagery; clear, concise. But it is still just talk. You can promise anything when it's just talk.
John McCain has the biography and the resume to show that he does what he says he will do. It's not empty talk. It's not ear-tickling rhetoric just to get votes. John McCain has a plan to put America back to work, and he has the experience and background to lead America out of the financial morass he warned about years ago.
Barack Hussein Obama talks a lot about what he wants to do.
John McCain is already out in front leading. He's been a leader all of his life.
Follow John.

How Come the Marine Corps Still Doesn't Get It?

Comment:
This is how it is done.
Get the bad news off the front page as soon as possible. Do what every decent-minded person knows you should do. Then move on.
The 1stSgt. who accepted the donation doesn't deserve to lose his career.
The Haditha Marines in the brig at Pendleton are heroes and victims; America knows it.
Tomorrow's recruits must come from the Moms and Dads who are watching the Marine Corps mistreat its own people.
How is it Wal-Mart can be so smart and our beloved Marine Corps still doesn't get it?

Wal-Mart: Brain-damaged former employee can keep money
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/law/04/02/walmart.decision/index.html
From Randi KayeCNN
(CNN) -- A former Wal-Mart employee who suffered severe brain damage in a traffic accident won't have to pay back the company for the cost of her medical care, Wal-Mart told the family Tuesday.
Debbie Shank, 52, has severe brain damage after a traffic accident in May 2000.
"Occasionally, others help us step back and look at a situation in a different way. This is one of those times," Wal-Mart Executive Vice President Pat Curran said in a letter. "We have all been moved by Ms. Shank's extraordinary situation."
Eight years ago, Debbie Shank was stocking shelves for the retail giant and signed up for Wal-Mart's health and benefits plan.
After a tractor-trailer slammed into her minivan, the 52-year-old mother of three lost much of her short-term memory and was confined to a wheelchair. She now lives in a nursing home.
She also lost her 18-year-old son, Jeremy, who was killed shortly after arriving in Iraq. When Debbie Shank asks family members how her son is doing and they remind her that he's dead, she weeps as if hearing the news for the first time.
Wal-Mart's health care plan lets the retail giant recoup the cost of its expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit. And Wal-Mart set out to do just that after Shank and her husband, Jim, won $1 million after suing the trucking company involved in the wreck. After legal fees, the couple received $417,000.
Wal-Mart sued the Shanks to recoup $470,000 it paid for her medical care. However, a court ruled that the company could only recoup about $275,000 -- the amount that was left in a trust fund for her care.
The Shanks appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined in March to hear the case. CNN told the couple's story last week, prompting thousands of angry blog responses and at least two online petitions to boycott the company.
Brain-damaged woman at center of Wal-Mart suit
On Tuesday, Wal-Mart said in a letter to Jim Shank that it is modifying its health care plan to allow "more discretion" in individual cases. Watch Wal-Mart reverse its decision »
"We wanted you to know that Wal-Mart will not seek any reimbursement for the money already spent on Ms. Shank's care, and we will work with you to ensure the remaining amounts in the trust can be used for her ongoing care," Curran said.
"We are sorry for any additional stress this uncertainty has placed on you and your family."
Wal-Mart's reversal came as shock to Shank.

Comment:
I feel certain that if Gen. Petraeus can just get the two three-star knives out of his back, he will do just fine. Of course, we need to remember my grandfather's advice, that it takes two people to hurt you; you to say it, and one to bring it to you.
Does anyone remember when there was honor among men of stars?

Retired Generals Question Iraq Surge 'Success'
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200804/POL20080402b.html
By Josiah Ryan CNSNews.com Staff WriterApril 02, 2008
(CNSNews.com) - In a press conference touted as a "prebuttal" to Gen. David Petraeus' testimony on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, two retired U.S generals said they disagreed with the notion that the surge in Iraq has been successful. Petraeus is in charge of the Multi-National Force fighting in Iraq.
However, an active duty general who recently spoke at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he has witnessed great progress on the ground in Iraq and sees both hope and political progress because of the surge.
The Win Without War Coalition, which hosted the press conference call on Tuesday, is a liberal anti-war activism group that includes organizations such as Greenpeace, the National Council of Churches, MoveOn and Veterans for Peace.
"Petraeus said he could lower the violence and buy us some time in Iraq," said retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, a retired three-star U.S. Army general and the former director of the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan. He is now a national security fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute and an adjunct professor at Yale University.
"But buying some time is not the goal. The goal is a deal. In some areas we have seen the violence drop, but we are nowhere near a political settlement," Odom said. Retired Lt. Gen. Robert Gard - a West Point graduate who fought in Korea and Vietnam, who is currently is senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation - at the same press conference, expressed views similar to Odom's.
"The purpose of the surge, according to the administration, was to give breathing space for political reconciliation," he said. "We have not moved towards that goal. General Petraeus himself has said there is no military solution." But Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commanding general of U.S. III Corps of the U.S. Army, said in a March 13 speech that the surge has created a needed chance for Iraqis to prove themselves.
"The surge helped set the stage for progress in governance and economic development," Odierno said at the Heritage Foundation. "When security conditions improve, a narrow focus on survival opens up and makes room for hope. For the government of Iraq, the surge has provided a window of opportunity. This window will not remain open forever."
Gard added that beyond the loss of borrowed money to pay for the war, and the loss of American lives, the surge is making the situation in Iraq worse. "The record shows the surge is prolonging instability and not creating conditions for political unity the president claims," said Gard.Odierno, however, said there has been political progress in Iraq. In recent weeks, "several major pieces of legislation have been passed by the Iraqi parliament: accountability and justice, provincial powers, and amnesty law," he mentioned in his speech.
Long-term, Odom believes that when the United States withdraws from Iraq there will be substantial violence. "Chaos will follow our withdrawal," he said. "The path to stability - whether we stay or leave - will be bloody. Once you have broken Iraq, there is no way to put it back together without further violence. The real moral choice we face is - are we going to risk more American lives or fewer?"
Gard was positive about Petraeus. "I am not implying any criticism of General Petraeus," he said. "He was given a mission to go into Iraq with a new tactic, which was classical anti-insurgency, and he has done a good job. There has been a reduction of violence in certain areas."

The Rape of Europe

Comment:
This was written and published in Brussels two years ago. We can only imagine how much Europe has changed, for the worse, since then.
Check out the unbelievable statements in the fourth and fifth paragraphs. These are not survivors, unless someone else is willing to die for them.

The Rape of Europe
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1609
From the desk of Paul Belien on Wed, 2006-10-25 21:57
The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: “We are watching the world of yesterday.”
Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. “I am too old,” he said. However, he urged young people to get out and “move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable.”
Many Germans and Dutch, apparently, did not wait for Broder’s advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, like Henryk Broder, that Europe is becoming Islamic. Just consider the demographics. The number of Muslims in contemporary Europe is estimated to be 50 million. It is expected to double in twenty years. By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families. Today Mohammed is already the most popular name for new-born boys in Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other major European cities.
Broder is convinced that the Europeans are not willing to oppose islamization. “The dominant ethos,” he told De Volkskrant, “is perfectly voiced by the stupid blonde woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death.”
In a recent op-ed piece in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard (23 October) the Dutch (gay and self-declared “humanist”) author Oscar Van den Boogaard refers to Broder’s interview. Van den Boogaard says that to him coping with the islamization of Europe is like “a process of mourning.” He is overwhelmed by a “feeling of sadness.” “I am not a warrior,” he says, “but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”
As Tom Bethell wrote in this month’s American Spectator: “Just at the most basic level of demography the secular-humanist option is not working.” But there is more to it than the fact that non-religious people tend not to have as many children as religious people, because many of them prefer to “enjoy” freedom rather than renounce it for the sake of children. Secularists, it seems to me, are also less keen on fighting. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, this life is the only thing they have to lose. Hence they will rather accept submission than fight. Like the German feminist Broder referred to, they prefer to be raped than to resist.
“If faith collapses, civilization goes with it,” says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means “submission” and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it.
Some of the people I meet in the U.S. are particularly worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. They are correct when they fear that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit.
This is why they have come to hate Israel and America so much, and the small band of European “islamophobes” who dare to talk about what they see happening around them. West Europeans have to choose between submission (islam) or death. I fear, like Broder, that they have chosen submission – just like in former days when they preferred to be red rather than dead.

A Candidate for What?

At the web site http://rawstory.com, blogger Mark Finklestein asks, "Does [Obama] perhaps believe that, like wearing the flag pin, the hand on the heart isn't 'true patriotism'?"
This refers to a story and photo showing Presidential candidate Barak Obama standing with others, hand over their heart as the National Anthem is played, and he with his hands clasped in front of him, during a Sept. 16 steak fry hosted by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in Indianola, Iowa. Beside Obama are Gov. Bill Richardson and Sen. Hillary Clinton holding their right hands over their hearts.
The photo is by Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1662530_1446035,00.html), the video by ABC News.
Finklestein's question is a good one. But more pertinent is this: "Since Americans honor their national anthem by placing their right hand over their heart, and Barack Obama deigns not to do that, what nation is he a candidate for President of? Obviously not America."
Maybe he's just out to make a point. And that's fine, so long as he's not a serious candidate for the presidency of the nation he dishonors.

Why the Gun is Civilization

GUEST COMMENTARY
Why the Gun is Civilization
by Major L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.