Because of this disturbing story, I am beginning a move to Wordpress.

This blog will remain, but will not be updated any further. http://neoprophet.wordpress.com will be your new destination.

An image manipulation exercise for shameless propaganda.

What is fascism?

Dictionary definitions of fascism

George Orwell once said the word fascism was being twisted to mean nothing more than "something undesirable." From the Italian fascio, meaning group or bundle, Mussolini's Fascism promised to unite Italy against petty internal partisan riots.

What fascism is, if it is appropriate to describe a certain general class of political movements as fascist, is united action for the sake of unity. Fundamentally, fascism is populist activism.

This call for unity claims to transcend politics, but in reality attempts to push a particular policy, and browbeats any who oppose it as "partisan", "divisive", and "obstructive". This obsession with unity ends up evading the means by which a policy is normally subject to debate and criticism.
To drive this united action almost always requires a threat - either an enemy or a crisis. This is necessary because people are naturally self-interested, and a collective threat, if real, is a perfectly justifiable reason for people to make an extra effort to work together. The difference between a fascist and the great leader is that the great leader is put there by circumstance and goes away when the job is done, while the fascist desires to be the great leader ahead of time, and may set in motion plans to create a suitable situation.
In modern leftism, I cannot help but taste the flavor of fascism when the supposed global warming crisis is used to justify legislation to place controls on various sectors of the economy, when various distinctly socialist causes like nationalized health care and mass public education are fraudulently cast as bipartisan goals, or when critics of these policies are aggressively marginalized in mainstream institutions.

What do Agent Smith, Naruto, and Barack H. Obama have in common?

There are too freaking many of him.

From PA election return website at about 9:25pm.

And apparently even though John McCain technically has the nomination sewn up, about 30% of the state still wishes strongly that he had not.

I think that's something for Senator McCain to consider.


UPDATE 9:35

He hasn't held a press conference involving lots of groveling and apologies for his conduct as a Senator in the past 10 years, but John McCain has demonstrated his own mastery of the dreaded clone technique.




Another UPDATE 9:55
John McCain is strong, but Mike Huckabee is the true master.

The Fitna Saga Continues: LiveLeak Strikes Back

Congratulations to LiveLeak. Their decision to pull Fitna turned out to be a temporary pragmatic move that was soon reversed after taking appropriate precautionary measures. At the time, accusations of cowardice were understandable and perhaps even appropriate, but it has turned out that LiveLeak was merely turning back, as it were, to make sure they had enough Twinkies and Red Bull, and not simply to hide and cower like so much of Britannia already has.

Their statement quoted here:

** 30/3/2008: Liveleak Update **

On the 28th of March LiveLeak.com was left with no other choice but to remove the film "fitna" from our servers following serious threats to our staff and their families. Since that time we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don't consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted.

**Addendum 2008/4/9 **

The posted version of Fitna has been pulled from LiveLeak, now concerning copyright considerations regarding the display of Kurt Westergaard's Muhammad cartoon.

Fitna

The film anticipated by some and dreaded by others, Fitna, has been out for a while, produced by the heroic Dutch politician Geert Wilders, of the Party for Freedom.

Get it here.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has come out against this film.

Apparently, juxtaposing video footage of Islamic violence with verses from the Qu'ran that endorse such violence, is somehow a kind of hate speech. Yes, it is hate speech, it is unacceptable provocation, to point out that these damnable people are simply those who take seriously the Qu'ran's calls to war against all infidels.

Ban Ki-Moon, you are an idiot. I don't care how many awards your essays won in school; you clearly have a very limited capacity for moral reasoning. By using your office to condemn this film, you are willfully harmonizing yourself with those who have made violent threats; these threats have caused so many websites already to withdraw their display of Fitna. The people making these threats have, from time to time, shown the will and the capability to carry them out. You are betraying the purpose of the United Nations by lending your authority, as imaginary as most of it is, to the demands of terrorists. I am sorry that it is necessary to say this.

Iran is not secretly plotting to destroy Israel.

They're really quite transparent and public about it. (LGF)

To the Republican Party and Senator McCain.

I don't know if you are quite entirely aware of what you are going to do to your Party in the long run.

John McCain has a lot to answer for in his recent Senate record. We the voters require a monumental gesture demonstrating a willingness to listen to the party base. He would go a long way to secure the votes of the people who do not trust him, by choosing a running mate with a solid conservative record, especially in domestic matters.

Slim, efficient government and low taxes.
Independence for Individuals.
Stop regulating so much.

I recommend Governor Sarah Palin.
For one thing, Democrat-affiliated blogs seem to be terrified of her when her name is mentioned. I believe this would be a good thing for us.

Any campaign people reading this, know that unless John McCain does this, or something similar, he gets nothing from me. There are a lot of reasons people don't trust him. We all rightfully expect to be given better reasons to vote for him, and the sooner he brings that to the table, the sooner he can get some more expansive support. Until then, may God have mercy on America.

Goodbye, Fred.

Well, Fred Thompson just dropped out of the race. That leaves very few remarkable candidates. And he was doing better than Giuliani.

Quitter.

Well, to be fair, the media had a hand in this. You, the enlightened journalists, decided to pretend the man didn't exist, and you shall be held accountable for your part in this.

As a cartoonist I have a deep respect for the 1st and 2nd Amendments. The first guaranteeing my right to draw cartoons, the second guaranteeing my right to protect myself from anyone who might want to kill me over my cartoons.

And with regards to those who might want to kill me over a cartoon, I'm sorry, but a bit of mayhem overseas is going to be necessary to make that stop. So that leaves out Uncle Ron as well, not like he's likely to win anything anyway.

Therefore, I cannot endorse any of the current front-running candidates for the office of President of the United States. My vote will now be reduced to who I calculate to cause the least damage, to whoever can beat the worst candidate in an election.

I cannot endorse anyone because this is what I expect:

1. Kill the terrorists. If you have to invade Iran, do it. If you have to invade Mecca, do it. If you want to choke their supply of money, find a way to end the world's dependence on petroleum. If you can't do that, dust off the old nuclear warhead activation codes.
2. Let Americans protect themselves from domestic threats. Terrorism is fundamentally a decentralized menace. A decentralized defense is the proper opposition to such a thing. You won't be able to win by simply running more background checks on customers at Chemical Supply Warehouse Emporium.
3. Cut taxes already.

I want these three things, and I want to vote for a president who will deliver. Until then, suck it.

10/9 Debate Followup

Factcheck.org: Fred Thompson better at stating facts than Rudolph Giuliani

This is important enough to dock Giuliani a few more points in my highly unscientific subjective debate scoring.

However, it's important to point out that Giuliani's supposedly inaccurate statements regarding Hillary Clinton's policies may not be as inaccurate as they seem to be if you go on just what Mrs. Clinton said.

If you entertain for a moment the notion that Hillary Clinton is actually a power-hungry witch who can play public opinion like a digereedo, you might be tempted to look beyond her statements as you try to decipher her intentions.

While this is probably true, Rudy Giuliani still demonstrated a greater looseness with the facts than some other candidates. But I don't think that will hurt him necessarily. He has a good conciseness to his statements that makes him stand out in debate, and having a few factual errors is the sort of thing that many people will end up overlooking. I would suggest though that the person we want as our head of state be someone whose statements can stand up to scrutiny.

The October 9 Republican Debates

Top performers: Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and Tom Tancredo.

Who didn't go over time limits too much: Giuliani, Thompson. While I am not a strong believer in the idea that a candidate be heavily judged on his ability to articulate policy in 30 second sound bites, it is a plus to be able to demonstrate that you actually paid attention to the rules.

Mitt Romney, for the most part very strong, but also seems rather rehearsed, and the seductive movements of his eyebrows didn't help that perception. For him the timer was something that just applied to other people. I'm sorry, but in the context of the debates, I want to hear what your policy is and why I should believe it will work. Don't break into anecdotes for 5 minutes.

Fred Thompson was a bit underwhelming, unfortunately, and didn't talk enough about the implementation of his policies.

Giuliani was articulate, and very effective with the optimism angle. Certain policies on which he has a historical habit of weakness were not addressed very well by the questions. Although even if I were asking the questions I'm sure he'd still make at least second place.

Tom Tancredo did his part in keeping immigration in the forefront of people's heads. In that respect he himself is something of a one-issue guy.

Ron Paul, was just embarrassing whenever he opened his mouth on foreign policy.

The questions themselves were unimpressive.

Who won the debate?
I would say the best performer was Giuliani, but in terms of who beat Chris Matthews the best, it was Thompson.

Some of the questions that I would ask:

Considering the problem with criminal aliens, it seems fair to say that the government of Mexico is being criminally negligent with regards to the lower classes of its people. To what extent would you go to encourage Mexico to take responsibility for its own people?

Assuming that all small arms are legalized, what sort of regulations would you suggest to keep crew-served weapons and artillery only in the hands of responsible citizens?

Do you think setting a Constitutional maximum on the tax rate is necessary?

There's this Bill of Rights thing in the Constitution. If an elected official uses his or her official powers to violate any of these enumerated rights, should it be prosecuted as treason punishable by death?

Now this is my perspective on what needs to be done. Who should be in charge is whoever can agree the most with this: implementing public policy or avoiding interference where appropriate.

The Global Crusade on Islamic Imperialism
For starters, the War on Terror needs a more descriptive title. Our terrorist enemy is at this time Islamic in nature. While certainly not representative of all Muslims, the ideology is nonetheless globally pervasive, with the Wahhabi doctrines that are promoted by the Saudi government and accepted by a majority of Muslim clergy. And that I think is the warning sign that the theology of Islam itself is the problem. That the majority of Muslims are decent peaceful people just goes to show that most people are not theologians. But there are in fact severe problems that arise from an orthodox interpretation of the Quran and Hadiths, which include calls to warfare of every type against all infidels until they are subdued and dominated by Islamic government. And that's just Jews and Christians. Atheists and pagans get completely hosed in the deal, in that they don't even get the option of living.
With regards to any religion, you can't simply ignore its established canon of authoritative holy scripture and then expect to be able to claim that you are practicing the truest version of that religion. And so far there isn't much in the way of textual evidence from the Quran or those Hadiths that are considered reliable that the practices of the terrorists and of Islamic governments are something other than devout Islamic orthodoxy.
That doesn't mean we need to be raiding every mosque in the country. While such a thing might be beneficial it would not do well in the long term to establish such a drastic precedent. A more effective opposition would be one with a similar type of organization as the jihadists, but based on a more benevolent ideology, with its various branches coming out of any compatible religion. Criticism of Islam in Art and Logic (two of three universal languages) should be heavily advanced, while the use of Violence (the third universal language) must be strictly defensive. With regards to that last bit, I am thinking that it would be a particularly good idea for this hypothetical Network to focus on providing trained and armed bodyguards to authors, speakers, filmmakers, cartoonists, and others who nonviolently criticize Islam. A vital step in this battle is crushing the myth that criticizing a religion is inherently an act of paranoid bigotry.
From there, we can track those who make credible threats and drop a train on them and all their friends, and then spread the protection effort to the rest of the world's Islam critics, and see how things go from there when people feel like they can talk without being killed.

Other Things that Relate to Terrorism
Immigration: America is a big party, but it's BYOB, and we need our bouncers to enforce this rule. It's not just Mexicans that are trying to sneak in. There are jihadist terrorists coming in too, some of whom are remarkably good at playing Mexican. Therefore we need to be a little more serious about catching and deporting those who sneak in. Those who get in line and do the paperwork should of course be welcomed with open arms. That's why this is not anti-immigration. To characterize it as such is deceptive and malicious.

Guns: The real issue is self-defense. People should be allowed to do it, especially with a gun, if they're about to be attacked by terrorists.

Note that on these two secondary points I question Rudy's seriousness, and suggest that he would make a better Attorney General or Vice President than President.

So that you may know that my wisdom is legitimate.

Am-I-Dumb.com - Intelligence Test

Never Forget

19 young men of diverse backgrounds from broad strata of society hijacked four airplanes and crashed three of them into American buildings, killing three thousand people, utterly destroying three World Trade Center buildings (the twin towers and WTC7).

What motivated these men remains an utter mystery, because to suggest that there was some kind of religious connection would threaten to start a religious war, and we can't have any of that can we?

Yeeeargh!

Howard Dean met with the Islamic Society of North America (unsurprisingly, among the unindicted co-conspirators mentioned in the Holy Land Foundation terror case).

His bright idea: Tell attendees of an event sponsored by a front organization of radical Muslim imperialists to run for office.

Shameless Islamophobia

Congratulations, Venezuela.

I'd like to extend some recognition to Ex-President Jimmy Carter, author of Protocols of the Elders of Zion II: Palestine, Peace not Apartheid for certifying the election of 21st century socialist jackass Hugo Chavez, who is now on his way to being Eternal President of Venezuela.
I hope you're proud of yourselves people.

You whined for 7 years about the evil triumvirate of Bush, Cheney and Rove who will almost certainly, any day now, declare martial law, suspend elections, and round up all the poor widdle Democrats to cart them off to the camps to be gassed--except of course for the few valiant members of the Democratic Underground who have an AR-15 stashed in the back of the closet, intended for the sole purpose of shooting the evil Republicans in the kneecaps. How you're going to manage to do that when you're so afraid of the thing you won't even practice with it or consider it to defend your home from the more mundane breeds of hooligans and scoundrels is beyond me.

Only goes to show you wouldn't know a real dictator from a well-meaning bumpkin if they looked you in the face and gave you a hug. Clearly Sean Penn hasn't anyway.

As for President Chavez, he can't ride the wave forever. He's going to find out sooner or later that 'life' is a negotiable length of time for him to be president.

I pose to you a riddle:

In the year 2007, Doug "Ibrahim" Hooper, head of national Islamist lobbying organization CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case, somehow manages to flagrantly and falsely attribute some slightly extreme statements to Robert Spencer of JihadWatch. Incidentally, in an argument with Christopher Hitchens and Dennis Prager on Paula Zahn, which in its context was something of a non sequitur.

Robert Spencer maintains that these statements appeared in JihadWatch's comments, and JihadWatch has a distinctively long disclaimer that should make it clear even to the most daft of nincompoops that its comments sections are not endorsed by JihadWatch. If that is to be believed, then Hooper is clearly either:
1) An inexcusable moron who, in the year 2007, is somehow clinically incapable of understanding the basic concept of blog comments.
2) A poor liar. When Muhammad (police be upon him) told his followers "You may lie" in order to achieve the assassinations of prominent infidels, he probably would have said to Dougie, "I wasn't talking to you. You couldn't lie your way out of a wet paper bag. Go and wash the camels."

Islam: What the West Needs to Know

Just got the DVD today, and it's a very smartly executed documentary.

The absence of music was a smart move. For such a criticism of Islam you don't need to draw accusations of trying to put an emotional spin on the material by adding a soundtrack.

The million dollar question: What are we supposed to do about it? I think it's important to consider this from a multitude of perspectives.

From a secular perspective, it's no contest, the obvious answer is to recognize that orthodox Islam has declared war on the rest of the world, and begin seriously to fight back.

From a religious perspective, many Christians have probably considered how Islam might fit into the final sequence of events described in the Revelation. It is therefore tempting to adopt a nihilistic theology assuming that since Islam is apparently the instrument of Satan's final move against humanity, we can't do anything about it except wait for God to personally come and make everything better, so we might as well sit tight and not worry too much if most of us end up becoming martyrs (Christian martyrs being of course, notoriously nonviolent), because it's all going to end with the saints going to 1000 years of blissful jury duty. I would ask if this is really what God intends, if one takes the entire history of the world from beginning to end into perspective.
The message that I think the entire story of humanity, in the Bible and beyond, is about -- is that of the power of liberty. A certain amount of law is required to sustain liberty, those which protect the individual and his self-determination -- but that is an enormous difference from trying to regulate people into behaving correctly all the time. People have tried to understand this throughout history, and often have failed. You can't make people better with laws, not by adding more laws, nor by more draconian enforcement. And I don't think the divine ideal of perfect behavior involves adhering to a long list of rules as such. Righteousness cannot exist without freedom, because the most righteous of deeds is the act of creation, just as the most descriptive word to use regarding God is "Creator". To build, invent, and educate are among the greatest things a person can aspire to do, and to become obsessed with more than a few laws threatens to destroy that urge. Compare that to the message of Islam, where jihad in the way of Allah and obedience to an exhaustive list of rules in the Shari'a is the most glorified. Indeed, we might even be approaching perfect opposition.

I think there will be a time and a place to exercise that opposition, and I think only by seriously endangering the human forces of evil in the world will the rest of Satan's forces be compelled to make their final move, because that will be the only thing they can do then. Only then will it prove too much for us to handle, I think, and time to start seriously examining that last book in the Bible. I think it will work out this way, because I believe humanity has a part to play in terms of the grand scheme of things and the causal chain of events that will eventually lead to the conclusion of this era, and are not just along for the ride in a predetermined schedule.

Jihad: The Musical!

My Conservative Identity:

You are a Freedom Crusader, also known as a neoconservative. You believe in taking the fight directly to the enemy, whether it’s terrorists abroad or the liberal terrorist appeasers at home who give them aid and comfort.

Take the quiz at www.FightLiberals.com

Interesting. Of course, if one comprehends the symbolism in my banner up there it's not entirely surprising.

Disproportionate response.

Guy drops Koran in toilet. Koran is university property.
In theory, the worst this can be considered is some kind of misdemeanor. That is, if we're operating on American values here.
No. Because it is a Koran, certain people become enormously offended and demand that hate crime charges be pursued, which means Stanislav Shmulevich is now being charged with two felonies.
(hat tip: LGF)

Come on, this is disappointing.

From LGF:
Fred Thompson hires Spencer Abraham as campaign manager.

Mr. Abraham is an open-borders moron, who St. Dubya selected as his token American of Middle Eastern ancestry in his cabinet in 2000. As Energy Secretary, he happily continued UN sponsored programs that allowed foreign visitors to tour US nuclear facilities.

Happy 4th

If you can't root for your own team, get out of the stadium.
Happy Independence Day.

For peeks at the progress of Project Anduril, check out the artblog.

Fred! And secret project.

The Prophet recommends Fred Thompson as the best candidate for US President for the election in 2008.
But all you get is a yellow hyperlink, not a fancy widget. The fancy widget cramps my style. Literally. It turned all the text black, which on a black background is unequivocally inferior to silver.

Also, I am announcing Project Anduril, which will eventually result in a video series with an indefinite number of episodes. It will be something akin to an animated talk show, so while some parts could be written ahead of time, I would like to make as much of it as timely as is practical.

BWAHAHA! Sorry, Dubya.

From Pat Dollard, a box of awesome.

I understand entirely why civilians have to wait to find out about this stuff, though it is kind of distressing to have to start mistrusting people because of the apparent evidence.

Even so, Dubya: If you don't take the fact seriously that the entire criminal population of Mexico, plus an unknown number of Other-Than-Mexican (read Jihadistani) undocumented immigrants are walking over our southern doorstep, you might as well have bent over for Iran, because it won't make any difference in the long run.

But for now, let's see how this next bit goes.