No music this night because I deem it inappropriate at a time when Japan has to cope with the consequences of one of the biggest ever natural disasters to befall that country. A country and a people, it should be said, which I very much admire and respect.
My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their relatives.
Special attention must of course go to those directly affected by the explosion at the Fukushima plant. In a country where the collective psyche of its citizens is burdened by the memory of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic explosions, the nuclear fallout and possible meltdown at the 40-year old reactor must doubtlessly touch raw nerves.
Knowing the joy that children bring, I am thinking especially of parents with young children and pregnant women. I hope the authorities will do anything in their power and beyond to get people out of the danger zone, treat them well, and neutralize the risk at the plant. All hail to the brave crews who have to move inside the stricken reactor's premises.
"...Since the end of World War I when the German-allied Ottoman Empire was defeated and the sultanate and caliphate were replaced by the Republic of Turkey, Turkey has been an important U.S. ally because of its size, strategic location and profitable business opportunities for American companies. Although designated a "neutral" country during World War II, Turkey supplied the Germans with substantial quantities of chromites, essential minerals which harden steel for armor. The Turks didn't declare war against Germany until 1945, ostensibly to be a party to final negotiations at war's end. That same year, Turkey became a United Nations charter member and, as part of the U.N. command, participated in the Korean War, thereby earning a much desired place in NATO in 1952. The United States and Turkey enjoyed close bilateral relations through the post-Cold war period.
Today the government in Turkey has moved away from the West, particularly the United States and Israel, and toward Iran and Syria, effectively changing the balance of power in the Middle East and across the globe. Turkey is actively and more openly pushing for Islamization and an expanded role for the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2007 on Turkish television, Erdogan admonished Westerners' use of the term "moderate Islam," by declaring, "These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it."
That should have set off alarms in the West and extinguished any fantasies of Turkey's role as a pillar of "moderate" Islam. Erdogan had made earlier alarming statements, similarly ignored as in 1994, while mayor of Istanbul, when he avowed, "Thank God Almighty, I am a servant of the Shariah." Further confirming his strategy in 1996 after he was dismissed as mayor, the future Prime Minister stated, "Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off." Since 2002, the Turkish government has been pursuing a version of Islam closely aligned with the Wahhabi extremist Islam of the Saudis.
....
The Erdogan government publicly claims to be democratizing Turkey but has curtailed freedom of the press, jailed and sued journalists for criticizing the government and confiscated newspapers and sold them to AKP sympathizers. AKP supporters have infiltrated the military and are suspected of wiretapping and evidence fabrication against retired military officers. Erdogan lowered the age for judgeships in order to replace nearly half of all judges with his younger AKP sympathizers. He also removed banking regulatory board members and replaced them with Islamic banking officials and is reported to have received significant financing from Saudi Arabia, including a known Al Qaeda financier.
Anti-Semitism and attacks against Christians and Catholics have increased in Turkey. Expressions of Armenian heritage and culture have been denied, church property has been confiscated, Armenian instruction has been limited to two hours per week (although Sunni Islam classes are required in Turkish public schools) and it is illegal to discuss the Armenian Genocide. Although Turkey previously enjoyed good relations with Israel, the Jewish state is now declared an enemy of Turkey and the media has promoted an anti-Semitic TV series and several anti-Semitic films. Last year, instead of sending aid through legal channels to Gaza and despite Israel's appeals to the government to stop the action, AKP officials openly supported the Gaza flotilla in partnership with the Global Muslim Brotherhood network. Turkey facilitated the purchase and departure from Turkish ports of the lead flotilla ship, the MV Mavi Marmara. Further, the AKP is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood whose spiritual leader -- Yusuf al-Qaradawi -- calls for Islamic domination of Europe. That Turkey, a NATO member, should have such alliances is quite concerning.
In 2010, Erdogan received a human rights award from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and recently refused to impose sanctions on Gaddafi's regime, even as Gaddafi has used fighter jets to kill his own people.
Just this past week, Erdogan visited Germany and told an audience of 10,000 Turkish Germans (of three million in Germany) not to assimilate but to remain part of Turkey. Turkey has used Germany as a strategic base in Europe and sends young Turks, who have fulfilled their military service, into Germany through the extremist Islamic Society of Milli Gorus (IGMG). IGMG members with German-born daughters are encouraged to marry off their daughter to these Turkish males so that they can obtain permanent residency status and create a fifth column of Turkish Islamists. Trade between Turkey and Iran increased by more than 86% last year and Turkey has been supplying Iran's missile program. In return, Iran has agreed to contribute $25 million to the AKP for the upcoming election in June..."
"...A significant component and AKP ally in the changing face of Turkey has been the influential Gulenist Movement led by Fetullah Gulen, a powerful force in Turkey for over four decades. Gulen began a grassroots movement in the 1970's with the Islamist political party, Milli Gorus, a worldwide Islamist movement with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. AKP emerged from Milli Gorus to restore Islamic religion and culture.
The foundation of Gulen's teachings is that state and religion should be reconnected and the country re-emerge as part of a pan-Turkic regional power. A 2009 article in the Middle East Quarterly by Rachel Sharon-Krespin titled "Fethullah Gulen's Grand Ambition" quotes sermons delivered by Gulen on Turkish television in 1999 which provide insights into his methods.
"You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers ... until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria ... like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it ... You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey ... Until that time, any step taken would be too early-like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all-in confidence ... trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here-[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here."
Beginning in the 1970's, Gulen began establishing a worldwide network to promote Islam and Turkish nationalism. His followers have since established hundreds of schools in over 110 countries. Gulenists operate an Islamic bank with over $5 billion in assets and own significant print and broadcast media properties, NGOs, think tanks and a publishing company. Gulen recruits Turkish youth by providing housing and education and grooms them for careers in the legal, political and academic professions. In recent years, the AKP passed legislation allowing graduates of Islamic high schools entry into Turkey's universities, guaranteeing Islamist leadership in the future. Gulen controls the majority of schools, universities and dormitories throughout Turkey. His followers remain loyal and donate up to one-third of their income to the movement. In Turkey, Gulen and the AKP together control the police, the intelligence services and the media and actively recruit diplomats for their utility as foreign intelligence satellites. Overall, the holdings are valued at up to $50 billion.
...
In the United States, Gulen operates the largest charter school network in America and enjoys the cooperation and protection of the U.S. government. His schools stress intercultural dialogue and tolerance. They include a curriculum that teaches the Golden Age of Turkey or the period of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish language, dance, culture, cooking and Islam, all financed by American taxpayers.
Meanwhile, his worldwide network reaches into U.S. politics through aggressive lobbying, political donations and paid trips to Turkey for members of Congress and their staffs. The Gulen Movement in the United States represents itself as a multi-faith global organization designed to bring together businesses, educators, religious leaders, journalists and others. Gulen has placed many of his followers in large U.S. engineering firms, NASA, the White House, universities and Hollywood. Through his U.S. State Department contacts, he has procured H1-B visas to staff his schools with Turkish followers.
Turkey through Gulen wields considerable power in American politics and is actively involved in lobbying Congress to promote its interests in Washington. Gulen was recently honored under Texas State Resolution No. 85, which recognized his contributions and promotion of world peace, with the Texas legislature describing the Gulen movement as fostering intercultural understanding and tolerance. During the 2008 election cycle, a Turkish-American couple, Yalcin and Serpil Ayasli -- founders of Hittite Microwave, a U.S. military contractor -- gave more money, $424,050, to politicians and political action groups than anyone else in the United States. In subsequent years, the Ayaslis have ranked among the country's top 20 donors. The couple's donations have been geared specifically toward advancing U.S. relations with Turkey and promoting Turkish interests, including stopping the Armenian Genocide Resolution. On this issue alone, "Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker", a service that tracks lobbyist interactions with government officials, reported that Turkey lobbied Congress on the Armenian Genocide Resolution and hired foreign agents to work with influential people outside of the government, spending $3.5 million and logging over 2,200 total contacts, including 100 with the executive branch...."
Meanwhile, quite a few ludicrous, ignorant and irresponsible EU leaders have organized in an informal pro-Turkey group, which they use to lobby for that country's entry in the EU. Here's for instance Poland's president Donald Tusk together with Erdogan:
And here is Sweden's Fredrik Reinfeldt with the (not so) closet islamic fanatic:
The degree of ignorance among our so-called "elites" is breathtaking. During the 1,400 year long struggle of islam with the West, the country that most fiercely pursued the islamization of Europe, and deployed the most massive military means to that aim... was Turkey's former incarnation, the Ottoman Empire. And before the Ottoman Empire, the Seldchuks beat the East Roman Empire out of Anatolia.
This degree of ignorance is only matched by the seemingly willful denial of Turkey's drive to islamic radicalization.
It is amazing, but exactly this country, this 1,000 year old foe, throughout history militarily the most successful against our shores and our lands...
...exactly this country lunatic quislings like Cameron, Reinfeldt, Tusk, Zapatero et al are hellbent to make it an EU member.
We sensible Europeans must do whatever is in our means to prevent that from happening.
Over at Townhall.com, Mike Needham has a clear message for the GOP:
"BE BOLD, OR GO HOME."
"Over thirty years ago, in 1978, the United States government ran an annual deficit of $59 billion. In that year, a fiscally conservative legislative strategy might have been to cut $2 billion a week for the last seven months of the year. These “multiple bites at the apple” would have eventually, by year end, eliminated the deficit and actually resulted in a small surplus. Much as the presidency of Barack Obama resembles that of Jimmy Carter, we are not in 1978. Our nation is at a tipping point and our fiscal situation is bleak. Today, we have a projected $1.65 trillion deficit. $61 billion is a mere drop in the bucket of red ink our nation is piling up literally by the minute.
Today, multiple $2 billion bites at the apple are woefully insufficient for the times we live in. Yet, according to Politico, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “are considering pushing forward a series of short-term continuing resolutions with targeted spending cuts that would be difficult for Democrats to oppose.”
Getting the $61 billion in cuts is an important trust-building measure between the American people and Washington – and the tea party activists and the Republican Party – since neither Washington nor Republicans have any credibility after the last ten years on the issue of spending. It is not, however, the only policy battle we must win this year.
Shortly, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will release the Republican budget for fiscal year 2012. It is vital this is a bold budget and conservatives must fight for boldness in the appropriations battles that will follow.
Sometime this spring, there will be a fight over whether to raise the debt limit. Conservatives must fight to have transformational policies attached to any legislation which raises the debt limit. Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. We cannot have another clean increase of the debt limit this year, which would be the sixth such increase in the last four years.
....
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the Senate needed more time to consider H.R. 1 – the House spending bill which would cut $61 billion – since it was sent to the Senate on a Saturday. The question of time to consider H.R. 1 is a funny one considering the Senate’s first move after the House passed that legislation was to take a one-week vacation.
Last week, Senator Reid released an alternative that offered only a token $6 billion in cuts. It appears Senator Reid doesn’t have a real plan to cut spending. Enter Joe Biden. As you may recall, President Obama claims “Nobody messes with Joe.” Vice President Biden was tapped by President Obama to broker a deal between the House and Senate on the budget. With two weeks left on the clock until the next budget showdown, what does Joe do? He leaves for a five-day trip to Europe. I guess it’s tough to mess with him there.
There seems to be a pattern developing. In Wisconsin, when Democrats want to stall what Governor Walker is trying to do, they flee. Two weeks ago, faced with a continuing resolution passed by the House of Representatives, the Senate went on vacation. Today, Vice President Biden, tapped with brokering a compromise, leaves for Europe.
The House of Representatives has passed a modest $61 billion in spending cuts. These cuts pale in comparison to $474 billion in spending increases just since 2008. Now is not the time to be fouling off pitches. America demands and deserves bold leadership in Washington...."
In his first year in office, Obama oversaw a tripling of the already huge budget deficit from 459 billion US$ to 1.4 trillion US$, mainly as a result of the much-vaunted stimulus bill (ARRA), the takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Wall Street bailout and the Omnibus spending bill.
The budget deficit in 2010 was 1.294 trillion US. Together with interests this lifted the exising public debt from 11.9 trillion US$ to 13.8 trillion US$.
The 2011 budget deficit was scheduled to be around 1.48 trillion US$, as the federal budget foresaw expenses of 3.708 trillion dollar while revenues were expected to be 2.228 trillion US$. This would mean that at the end of 2011 the public debt would reach well beyond 15 trillion US$.
However, when in February of this year Obama released his 2012 Federal Budget, it appeared the projected 2011 deficit had been updated to 1.645 trillion US$, or around 165 billion dollars more.
The bipartisan CBO (Congressional Budget Office) itself projects significant debt increases as it sees only comparable budget deficits ahead - adding "give and take" something in the neighborhood of 1.3 trillion US$ on average to the national debt every year for the coming decade. This means that already in 2015 the debt will have reached the colossal level of 20 trillion US$.
It is only when you ponder these gigantic numbers that the folly of Boehners 61 billion dollar cuts becomes apparent. As for Harry Reid's 6 billion dollar cuts...
... I wonder how it is possible to even mention that and still be able to walk home without having taken a tar bath and plastered over with feathers? Just watch this video:
Check out that idiot Harry Reid. But the most "memorable" moment is of course the clip where CBS's Charles "Chip" Reid asks Obama "the total over those 10 years, the total debt is $7.2 trillion on top of the $14 trillion we already have. How can you say that we’re living within our means?"
And the reply from the POTUS is... is.... is......
"Well here, he,he,he,he here's a, let me be clear on what I am saying because, um, I'm not suggesting that we don't have to do more."
MY.
GOD.
Who killed the guys who insisted Bush was an idiot?
Mark Steyn sheds light on the killing of two US servicemen at Frankfurt Airport by a muslim. From the OC Register, March 6, 2011:
"According to Bismarck's best known maxim on Europe's most troublesome region, the Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Americans could be forgiven for harboring similar sentiments after the murder of two U.S. airmen in Germany by a Kosovar Muslim.
Remember Kosovo? Me neither. But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the wake of his Monica difficulties: Make war, not love, as the boomers advise. So Clinton did – and without any pesky UN resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them. Instead, he and Tony Blair and even Jacques Chirac just cried "Bombs away!" and got on with it. And the Left didn't mind at all – because, for a modern Western nation, war is only legitimate if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever war you're waging. Unlike Iraq and all its supposed "blood for oil," in Kosovo no one remembers why we went in, what the hell the point of it was, or which side were the good guys. (Answer: Neither.) The principal rationale advanced by Clinton and Blair was that there was no rationale. This was what they called "liberal interventionism," which boils down to: The fact that we have no reason to get into it justifies our getting into it.
A decade on, Kosovo is a sorta sovereign state, and in Frankfurt a young airport employee is so grateful for what America did for his people that he guns down U.S. servicemen while yelling "Allahu akbar!" The strange shrunken spectator who serves as president of the United States, offering what he called "a few words about the tragic event that took place," announced that he was "saddened," and expressed his "gratitude for the service of those who were lost" and would "spare no effort" to "work with the German authorities" but it was a "stark reminder" of the "extraordinary sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are making ..."
The passivity of these remarks is very telling. Men and women "in uniform" (which it's not clear these airmen were even wearing) understand they may be called upon to make "extraordinary sacrifices" in battle. They do not expect to be "lost" on the shuttle bus at the hands of a civilian employee at a passenger air terminal in an allied nation. But then I don't suppose their comrades expected to be "lost" at the hands of an army major at Fort Hood, to cite the last "tragic event" that "took place" – which seems to be the president's preferred euphemism for a guy opening fire while screaming "Allahu akbar!" But relax, this fellow in Frankfurt was most likely a "lone wolf" (as Senator Chuck Schumer described the Times Square Bomber) or an "isolated extremist" (as the president described the Christmas Day Pantybomber). There are so many of these "lone wolves" and "isolated extremists" you may occasionally wonder whether they've all gotten together and joined Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists, but don't worry about it: As any Homeland Security official can tell you, "Allahu akbar" is Arabic for "Nothing to see here."
Bismarck's second best-known maxim on the region is that the Balkans start in the slums of Vienna. The Habsburg imperial capital was a protean "multicultural society" wherein festered the ancient grievances of many diverse peoples. Today, the Muslim world starts in the suburbs of Frankfurt. Those U.S. airmen were killed by Arid Uka, whose Muslim Albanian parents emigrated from Kosovo decades ago. Young Arid was born and bred in Germany. He is a German citizen who holds a German passport. He is, according to multicultural theory, as German as Fritz and Helmut and Hans. Except he's not. Not when it counts.
Why isn't he a fully functioning citizen of the nation he's spent his entire life in? Well, that's a tricky one.
OK, why is a Muslim who wants to kill Americans holding down a job at a European airport? That's slightly easier to answer. Almost every problem facing the Western world, from self-detonating jihadists to America's own suicide bomb – the multi-trillion dollar debt – has at its root a remorseless demographic arithmetic. In the U.S., the baby boomers did not have enough children to maintain their mid-20th century social programs. I see that recent polls supposedly show that huge majorities of Americans don't want any modifications to Medicare or Social Security. So what? It doesn't matter what you "want." The country's broke, and you can vote yourself unsustainable quantities of government lollipops all you like, but all you're doing is ensuring that when, eventually, you're obliged to reacquaint yourself with reality, the shock will be far more devastating and convulsive.
But even with looming bankruptcy America still looks pretty sweet if you're south of the border. Last week, the former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Steve Murdock, told The Houston Chronicle that in Texas "it's basically over for Anglos." He pointed out that two out of every three children are already "non-Anglo," and that this gap will widen even further in the years ahead. Remember the Alamo? Why bother? America won the war, but Mexico won the peace. In the Lone Star State, Murdock envisions a future in which millions of people with minimal skills will be competing for ever fewer jobs paying less in actual dollars and cents than they would have earned in the year 2000. That doesn't sound like a recipe for social tranquility.
What's south of Europe's border? Why, it's even livelier. In Libya, there are presently one million refugees from sub-Saharan Africa whose ambition is to get in a boat to Italy. There isn't a lot to stop them. Between now and mid-century, Islam and sub-Saharan Africa will be responsible for almost all the world's population growth – and yet, aside from a few thousand layabout Saudi princes whoring in Mayfair, they will enjoy almost none of the world's wealth. Niger had 10 million people in 2000, and half-a-million of them were starving children. By 2010, they had 15 million, and more children were starving. By 2100, they're predicted to hit 100 million. But they won't – because it would be unreasonable to expect an extra 90 million people to stay in a country that can't feed a population a tenth that size. So they will look elsewhere – to countries with great infrastructure, generous welfare, and among the aging natives a kind of civilizational wasting disease so advanced that, as a point of moral virtue, they are incapable of enforcing their borders.
The nations that built the modern world decided to outsource their future. In simple economic terms, the arithmetic is stark: In America, the boomers have condemned their shrunken progeny to the certainty of poorer, meaner lives. In sociocultural terms, the transformation will be even greater. Bismarck, so shrewd and cynical about the backward Balkans, was also the father of the modern welfare state: When he introduced the old age pension, you had to be 65 to collect and Prussian life expectancy was 45. Now life expectancy has near doubled, you get your pension a decade earlier, and, in a vain attempt to make that deformed math add up, Bismarck's successors moved the old East/West fault line from the Balkans to the main street of every German city.
Americans sometimes wonder why, two decades after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. Army still lives in Germany. The day is approaching when they will move out – if only to avoid any more "tragic events" "taking place."
Now that I've got you in the mood - hopefully - you may want to check out the following video:
To cut a long story short, on the one hand the left has been waging a decade-long war to make whites reduce their fertility, either by:
* instilling in people's minds the phony worldview that humans are destroying the planet * instilling in people's minds the false notion that whites are Earth's oppressors and that to atone for that, we must cede dominance to other races * actively promoting non-reproductive forms of relationship * actively promoting abortion
... while at the same time, they have successfully exported their non-workable political and economical theories across the globe.
* the political theories have led to the world's most oppressive regimes * the economical theories have caused massive poverty, which in turn has led to overpopulation - the causal correlation between poverty and high fertility is well established
In short, had rightwing theorems on how to govern a state and how to run an economy been dominant, the world would have been a far, far better place. For instance, the great mass of African countries that now applied afrosocialism would have gotten richer and its populations would long since have stabilized.
The accomplishments of leftist ideologies can be summed up as follows: spreading unfreedom and poverty around, thereby contributing to overpopulation. Subsequently causing migration towards rich countries, which are predominantly white. After that, in all these countries facilitating the immigration influx from exactly those poor, unfree countries, at the expense of the economy of the rich ones.
No matter which way you turn it, whatever the left touches... goes wrong. Whatever they do, whatever they promote... goes wrong. Wherever leftist thoughts are applied or enforced... it goes wrong. Nazi Germany, mass starvation in Ukraine, the "Great Leap Forward", the Killing Fields, afrosocialism, nationalizations from Bolivia to Egypt, unsustainable welfare states, killing in the womb, freedom of speech under fire in courts from Canada over The Netherlands to Austria and beyond....
... whatever the left does, or proposes, or implements...
