Saturday, April 29, 2006

Stogie at Saberpoint has a sensitive and sane post on United 93.

http://saberpoint.blogspot.com/2006/04/flight-93-tale-of-heroism-and-courage.html
http://saberpoint.blogspot.com/

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Anti-Americanism and French Manifest Destiny: Update


As time allows I'll come back to this post during the day to add details of language chauvinism and the concept of French Manifest Destiny. We might by the end see a pattern of French triumphalism and exceptionalism, a pattern of thought in the French national mind that begins long before the Revolution, that comes from the forming of France as a nation through the dictionary project of the Academie Francaise. To start, we can look at the current French elitists as inheritors of pre-revolutionary entitlement. The elitists of the Academy are still elitists to this day. The French, no matter that Napoleon is gone, still harbour designs to rule the world. And the Dreyfus Affair is still with us in the anti-Americanism of the French. France is still a feudal "nation."

Below is a first look at the people who would ban Google from Europe and who would control the Internet for chavinistic reasons, for the benefit of the elitist phantasies of the gnostics. If we try to make sense of the anti-Americanism of Europe today we do well to look to the past for some of our clues.
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The Académie française, or French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution, it was restored in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte. It is the oldest of the five académies of the Institut de France.

The Académie consists of forty members, known as immortels (immortals). New members are elected by the members of the Académie itself. Academicians hold office for life, but they may be removed for misconduct. The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language. Its rulings, however, are only advisory, not binding on either the public or the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise
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We see directly above that the elitists of the French academy are few in number, great in power and status. More, they are nation builders within France. They are the few who determine what is legitimately "French." Their primary concern is French language purity. For those with the time and the interest we suggest looking further into the posts below on Herder and Fichte in the archives to see the reactionary developments of language purity and identity politics that so horribly plague us today. Otherwise, continue on to see how today the French still struggle against nature and history to hold back the free flow of Humanity's development through language strangulation. Prior it was the dictionary; today it is the Internet.
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Google, The French, And World Domination; The Culture War Begins
Jason Lee Miller

Published: 2005-05-13


"[T]he Internet [is] the most recent and the most sinister facet of American cultural imperialism to emerge: the Internet is anchored in the United States; the vast majority of World Wide Web sites are based in the U.S and are in English; most software used to navigate the Internet is in English; and search engines are in English (Kim, 1998)".

A cloud is moving toward Europe. It carries with it the thunderous, electrical, (digitized?) calling card of storm-fronted majesty, raining in streams of zeros and ones, boisterous, anarchical, bellowing the dirges of Europe's heyday, reeking of Yankee imposition, a new brand of manifest destiny wearing a name tag pregnant with the usual oddity of foreign names-a name that gurgles from it foghorn style as it moves across the sea-Gooooooo-gle!

Was that a tad dramatic? Judging from France and the EU, it may be an accurate description of how they feel about it.

When Google announced a 10-year, $200 million plan to digitize the literary world, invoking the assistance of Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Michigan University, and the New York Public Library, France's National Library president Jean-Noel Jeanneney spun around in his chair and called up President Chirac.

In protest to what the French press soon called "omnigooglization," and what Jeanneney called a decidedly "Anglo-Saxon" affront, the national librarian wrote a scathing letter to Chirac. In the letter, though he didn't condemn the effort, Jeanneney voiced his fear of what that meant for the representation of France and Europe.

Here are some excerpts from the letter published in Le Monde:

"The real issue is elsewhere. And it is immense. It is confirmation of the risk of a crushing American domination in the definition of how future generations conceive the world."

"[T]heir criteria for selection will be profoundly marked by the Anglo-Saxon outlook."

"It would have meant The Scarlet Pimpernel triumphing over Ninety-three (Victor Hugo's eulogistic account of the revolution)."

Motivated by the fear that French and other European languages, ideas, and cultural heritages would be lost or obscured in an Anglo-Saxon digitized library, the whole of the EU, except for, of course, Anglo-Saxon Britain, met to begin efforts to create a European online library.

The national libraries of 19 countries committed to the mammoth project of digitizing 4.5 billion pages of text, including Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.

Luxembourg P.M., Jean-Claude Juncker seemed especially incensed, saying, "…Europe must not submit in the face of virulent attacks from others."

As I am writing this, I realize that it is difficult to decide how to react to such claims. Nineteen whole countries mobilized against an American search engine?

At first, it's laughable. And then, angering. And then laughable again.

At the very least, from an American perspective, it is hard to understand. You can barely quiet the giant "so what?" boulder ping-ponging though your skull long enough process it. Could they really be that threatened by a research tool living in some abstract realm of space?

French feelings of insecurity are nothing new. They have feared intrusion of American culture for years. There are a number of laws regarding public use of language-guarding against the use of "Franglais," or English-French mutations. The word "cheeseburger" was vilified, and there is a law that at least 40% of radio content must be in French.

Add that to a famous Internet prank, where a Canadian student googlebombed the "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature of Google to the end that when a user typed in "French military victories," a page turns up finding no examples and asking, "Did you mean 'French military defeats?'"

But truthfully, this goes beyond America's love-hate relationship with France. It seems the entire world is forming a love-hate relationship with America.

Take, for example, the musings of Canadian writer, Robin Matthews. Though he recognizes the appeal of US culture, the "dazzle, the variety, the abundance, and the vigor," he goes on to call it an "invading culture" comparable to the Nazis, and those who buy into it, "collaborators."

And this perceived cultural domination is transforming from what one scholar termed as "McDonaldization" to what many are calling "Googlization."

Europe had begun limiting America's technical reach before this fear of Google emerged by slapping Microsoft with antitrust litigation. China's emerging Internet market has caught the ever-expanding hungry eyes of Yahoo, Ebay, and Google.

The appetite seems to go both ways. People worldwide, the general consumer at least, are embracing what American companies have to sell. Understandably, these companies are, in turn, exploiting the markets. This is the nature of a global economy, and along with it comes, perhaps to an extreme, nationalistic outrage and rejection of what is perceived as cultural imperialism.

But realistically, isn't it as simple as America having something to sell, and the world wants to buy it? Is that a conspiracy? Or is it a challenge to the rest of the world to produce?

Those questions aside, it is becoming clear to the Europeans that a presence on the Internet has become extremely important. In the words of Hungarian Culture Minister Andras Bozoki, the concern is "that something not registered on the Net will not be seen as existing."

So the fear is not necessarily economic. It is the fear of losing identity. It is the fear of one global culture dominated by gray-suited American executives.

But the apparent hypocrisy (and racism/culturalism?) has to be noted that what Europe is doing in the name of nationalistic inclusion smacks of extreme exclusivity.

And though Houman Samadi, cultural assistant at the Washington, D.C. chapter of Alliance Fracaise, contends that France and the EU desire "plural worlds with plural points of view," it would appear that the plural world cannot contain anything remotely American.
Google The French and World Domination The Culture War Begins

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French Manifest Destiny and chavinism continue today as usrely as in the age of Richelieu. Today it emerges most clearly as anti-Americanism.

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To continue:

The following details on the origins and actions of the Academie might seem to the causal reader somewhat irrelevant to the questions of fascist Islam and Left dhimmi fascism in our modern times. I argue, however, that these details below will show clearly the roots of French and European anti-Americanism very clearly to the benefit of us all, and that we will see the problems of anti-Americanism and French manifest destinarianism in a look at the Academie Francaise's Dictionary.

Compare the ethos of the Continental nation-builders to that of the English in the making of dictionaries. Formal nations in the modern sense began in 1648 with the making of the Treaty of Westphalia. But what is a nation other than control of restricted and legally recognized land boundaries? What makes a people nationally coherent and valid as a nation? Prior to modern nationality there was the identity of religion, such as we find today in the primitive politics of the caliphate of Islam, the ummah, and the ulema. Below that we find the tribal ties of many primitives, tribes, clans, and family, some of that extending so far as to ethnicity and "race" so-called. but what is a nation? What makes America, for example, a nation? What makes a Black man from New Jersey as American as a Mexican immigrant or a Korean in Los Angeles? According to the Germans Herder and Fichte and others, the commonality is language. Language makes one German regardless of ones place in any other sphere of national life, whether one be a peasant or a lord, whether one is German in Prussia or in Prague. Language is first in identity. (Refer to past posts here if you will on Herder and Fichte or continue here.)

To create a unified national identity one needs a hegemonic language. Latin served that purpose for a thousand years. It was the language of Catholicism. In France as a specific place, Latin gave way to the vernacular Parisian. What good is that to a Norman? None. The source of political power comes from legitimate authority, and that comes from command and obedience. force is not legitimate. Shouting in a foreign language is ineffective. Language hegemony is effective and legitimate authority. Those who communicate in French, for example, share a common and collective mind. To be French is to speak French. To speak a "pure" French is to be more French than those who speak creole or patois. To speak French as a French person is to be French rather that to be other. The less one speaks another language the more one is French. To exclude is to be exclusive and therefore more legitimate and more authentic than the synthetic. The Academie sought purity and Frenchness in a unified language set down for all time in the first Dictionnaire.

Thanks to the catastrophic defeat during the Battle of Hastings of 1066 the English developed a dual language of Germanic and Latinate. English borrowed for the duration and will continue to do so, while the French, victorious in that battle did nothing more than celebrate and gloat. To this day the French fight a rearguard action to keep language purified of borrowed words in a futile attempt akin to keeping rain out of a lake.

To be French is to speak French and to be "not non-French." The French, obsessed with dreams of empire, seek language hegemony across the world, find it possible to assimilate French speakers into the empire on the basis of any pretence of French language skills at all, such as inclusion in Francophonie of for example the nation of Roumania, based on a pretentious French speaking royal court in the 18th century. In this mad and idiotic scamble for hegemony and empire any lie will do if it can be spoken in French. And anything is potetially French so long as it's not Anglo, particularly American Anglo. We see as a result the insanity of deliberate ethnocide in the form of Eurabia. The endof France as a nation begins even before the concept of nationhood.
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Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française

« On dit d'un mauvais traducteur, qu'il fait sa traduction à coups de Dictionnaire. »

The Académie française was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635 with the primary goal of creating a French dictionary. A total of eight editions have been published in the years since its foundation, from the first edition in 1694 up until the eighth edition in 1935. The ninth edition is currently in progress. The ARTFL Project, in collaboration with the Projet d'informatisation du Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, is pleased to offer electronic versions of the first (1694), 4th (1762), 5th (1798), 6th (1835), and 8th (1932-5) editions.

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/projects/dicos/ ________________________________



The Académie is France's official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language, although its recommendations carry no legal power. Sometimes, even governmental authorities disregard the Académie's rulings. The Académie publishes the official dictionary of the French language, known as the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française.

A special Commission composed of several (but not all) of the members of the Académie undertakes the compilation of the work. The Académie has completed eight editions of the dictionary, which have been published in 1694, 1718, 1740, 1762, 1798, 1835, 1878, and 1935. It continues work on the ninth edition, of which the first volume (A to Enzyme) appeared in 1992, and the second volume (Éocène to Mappemonde) in 2000. In 1778, the Académie attempted to compile a "historical dictionary" of the French language; this idea, however, was later abandoned, the work never progressing past the letter A. As French culture has come under increasing pressure with the widespread availability of English media, the Académie has tried to prevent the anglicisation of the French language. For example, the Académie has replaced loanwords from English (such as walkman and software) with French equivalents (baladeur and logiciel, respectively).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise
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We follow the view that today's West is in a state of reactionary violence against the democracies of the Enlightenment project. When the French, for example, attempt to restrict access to the Internet, they do so in the same way the Medieval Church banned literacy from the laity. When the state attempts to guarantee employment to the working classes we see it as the same social relationship as that between manorial lord and serf, the serf indentured to the land and its holder by feudal obligation of labour in exchange for security of arms and provision in times of famine. The neo-serf is indentured to the state in the same way the serf of old was indentured to the estate manor. In the pseudo-capitalist state socialist economies of Europe the serf now works his allotted days in the service of the state to which the serf, rather than owing labour owes taxes through labour. Analogous to church tithes is the payment made to the media for its communications monopoly, the recasting of reality to the masses. The education system, like the scholastics of the Middle Ages, is governed and perpetuated by the professors of the Academies. The entitled aristocracies of the old days are the new aristocrats of the European Union. We see a flight to the future via the past. This is a return to the Middle Ages. We'll look at feudalism first and then at neo-feudalism.

From wikipedia we pick up some brief history of the term "Feudalism." Regardless of the facts of it, we use the term at least metaphorically here to provide a sense of social relations between members of an economic base. The point is to provide context for our argument that today's Europe is a continuation of Medieval feudalism, today's neo-feudalism in the form of State Socialism.
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The word "feudalism", first coined in the 17th century, is based on the Late Latin feudum, which was borrowed from Germanic * fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages for a fief (land held under certain obligations by feodati).

Even though the word components are from the Middle Ages, the concept of feudalism was not invented until the modern era. Feudalism refers to a general set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility of Europe during the Middle Ages, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs.

The word feudalism was not a medieval term. It was invented by French and English lawyers in the 17th century to describe certain traditional obligations between members of the warrior aristocracy. The term first reached a popular and wide audience in Montesquieu's De L'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws) in 1748. Since then it has been redefined and used by many different people in different ways.

French historian Marc Bloch, is arguably the most influential medieval historian of the twentieth century. Bloch approached feudalism not so much from a legal and military point of view but from a sociological one. He developed his ideas in Feudal Society (1961). Bloch conceived of feudalism as a type of society that was not limited solely to the nobility. Like Ganshof, he recognized that there was a hierarchal relationship between lords and vassals, but saw as well a similar relationship obtaining between lords and peasants.

It is this radical notion that peasants were part of the feudal relationship that sets Bloch apart from his peers. While the vassal performed military service in exchange for the fief, the peasant performed physical labour in return for protection. Both are a form of feudal relationship. According to Bloch, other elements of society can be seen in feudal terms; all the aspects of life were centered on "lordship", and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature, a feudal economy. (See Feudal society.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism

The vast majority of the population living in feudal Europe was legally bound to provide farming, husbandry and other agricultural services on land held by the nobility either directly or as appanage. In return, the lord offered protection and some measure of localized stability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neofeudalism
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Friday, April 28, 2006

BBC Muslim/Terrorism Film Review


I'm coming close to thinking outright that what we have today is the same old version of anti-Semitism now dressed up in p.c. and including hatred of America. I call it anti-semericanism. Hate Jews, hate Americans, it's the same Nazi crap all over again. It's the same people in newer bodies but the mind is the same.

Have I ever mentioned that I hate those people? Look, for example, at today's BBC to find a review of the movie everyone's talking about. No, Not United 93:

At the Tribeca Film Festival in New York there has been an enthusiastic reception for what is said to be the most expensive Egyptian film ever made.

The Yacoubian Building (Omaret Yacoubian) is a film version of Alaa Al Aswany's 2002 novel of the same name which depicts the interlinked lives of the residents of a Cairo apartment block.

The Yacoubian Building is a handsomely staged, ambitious and certainly expensive account of modern life in Cairo.

In the west attention will undoubtedly concentrate on The Yacoubian Building's account of how one young man turns to a violent form of extreme Islam in the face of social isolation.

TV star Peter Krause plays Terry - an American made so paranoid about Arabs that when one moves in next door he eventually turns to violence.

He convinces himself his neighbour - played by Egyptian Khaled Abol Naga - is a terrorist. In fact the story leaves that ambiguous.

The producer Andrew Lanter says a commercial thriller can carry a bigger theme about international relations.

"There's a very strong political message about two sides of a story and shouting one over another and voices not being heard, and what happens in those situations," he said.


Huh?!

There's some mention of United 93 at the bottom of the article:

The Tribeca Festival opened this week with United 93 - about one of the planes hijacked on 9/11. That opens commercially in the US on Friday.

Some research suggests Americans are not yet ready to go to cinemas in large numbers to confront such a topic... although United 93's generally good reviews may help.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4954932.stm

Did I mention that I hate these people?

Let me make it plain: I hate these people.
news.bbc.co.uk/.../24/newsid_2523000/2523345.stm

Did I mention that sometimes I love the IRA?
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Thursday, April 27, 2006

Headline too foul to print.

This comes from Elder of Ziyon, one of my favorite bloggers. Following Elder's piece is some nonsense from a Leftist Christian outfit, link below. And just because I can, a link to some photographs of Presbyterians at the final link.

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I just read a bizarre article from looney left cartoonist Ted Rall, pretty much praising Hamas and ranting against the West, saying Israel should give Hamas lots of money and that Hamas has proven its peaceful intentions, plus some moonbat ravings at neocons for good measure. In his worldview, there is nothing good about the West and nothing bad about radical Islam. For example:

The Bushies might have lost Afghanistan and Iraq, but they got exactly what they wanted in Palestine: democratic elections, a peaceful transfer of power, a radical Islamist group ready to disavow terrorism and transform itself into a parliamentary political party, a majority party willing to work with Israel and her allies. It was a staggering victory for the neoconservative agenda, a golden opportunity to co-opt one of the most prominent organizations of militant Muslims in the world, and proof positive that democracy prevails over terrorism.
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-liberals-and-muslims-have-in.html

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Christians on the West Bank face more fire bomb attacks -26/04/06

A Roman Catholic parish school and a Protestant Bible-study centre in the West Bank have been fire-bombed twice since the Islamist Hamas movement won a legislative election in January 2006, according to Christian clerics in the region.

According to the Presbyterian Church USA News Service, a priest at the Roman Catholic Al-Ahliyya College in the West Bank city of Ramallah says that several fire-bombs were thrown into a school sports room in early March 2006, causing serious damage and destroying equipment stored there.

About a month earlier, said the same priest, several petrol bombs were thrown into an Al-Ahliyya classroom.

In other recent incidents, a Protestant Bible-study centre in the town of Bir-Zeit near Ramallah was attacked, and phrases from the Qur'an were daubed on its doors. Windows in a Lutheran church in Ramallah were also shattered by unknown assailants.

"Our college, our parish school was established in 1856, and during the history of our school such things have never happened before," the parish priest, Father Ibrahim, told Michele Green of Ecumenical News International.

He said he did not know who was behind the violence, but he did not believe that Hamas was involved. He said leaders of the movement who visited his parish after hearing of the attacks offered to send guards to protect the compound.

One theory is that the violence is the work of the rival Fatah faction, aimed at discrediting Hamas and creating chaos in the Palestinian territories.

"We reported it to the police, and up until now we know nothing," Father Ibrahim declared.

A Christian humanitarian worker in the Gaza Strip said a Baptist Bible-study centre that serves as a charity arm for the local Christian community was threatened with fire-bombing if it didn't close its doors.

"Fliers handed out in downtown Gaza City ordered them to shut down their work in Gaza," the aid worker said, "and if they didn't do it, then their building would be burned down. They continued to work there. Some people received threats from an unknown group."

Christians in the Holy Land account for less than 2 per cent of the population these days. There are long-term fears for the future of the historic churches in the region, and Christian leaders in other parts of the world are calling on people to support them.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_060426wbank.shtml
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Here are some very cool photographs of Presbyterians:

www.presbyterians-r-us.com/

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Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!


Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

[More:]
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/b/h/bhymnotr.htm

Left Coprophagist Pigs Out


Sometimes it's nice to sit back and experience another's mental illness just because it's so fitting that the mad suffer without realising it, and they can never get over it, will lose any hope of ever living lives of any meaning, and will end with nothing of any worth. It's cruel but it's interesting or even funny to see creepy people suffer from their own vicious ignorance, they being their own worst tormentors, the ones who destroy any hope of good in their own lives that others have in life.

Yes, a senstive person would smash the fool's head till he came to his senses. A decent person would take the fool to the puppy doctor and have him put to sleep. I present the fool's rant just so we can look at him as he is. Here, a Left caprophagist at his finest:
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Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?

No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.

Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so. Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.

All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. "Let the Spanish keep it, it’s a shithole," we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.

The next dickwad who says, "It’s your money, not the government's money" is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That’s right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It’s too easy, asshole, they’re blue states. It’s not your money, assholes, it’s fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.

Let’s talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It’s fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that’s right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that’s just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.

But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you're ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that's ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we're fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you're fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that's a workable formula. Maybe us fucking Northerners don't talk about religion as much as you because we're not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you're too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up here in the North, assholes.

Well this gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.

And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off.
www.sachsreport.com/archive2.8.htm
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Is it cruel to post the works of a Left caprophagist in public? Who gives a shit?

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Left Goes Ape

We've covered this kind of article before in looking at the anti-humanism of the fascist ecology movement. This, however, does come as a bit of a surprise, topping all the weird rubbish the fascist Left has dropped on the world in the past hundred years. Not to worry. They'll likely top this one. There's always tomorrow.
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Socialists: Give apes human rights

Spain Herald

The Spanish Socialist Party will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for "the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings." The PSOE's justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.

The party will announce its Great Ape Project at a press conference tomorrow. An organization with the same name is seeking a UN declaration on simian rights which would defend ape interests "the same as those of minors and the mentally handicapped of our species."
According to the Project, "Today only members of the species Homo sapiens are considered part of the community of equals. The chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orangutan are our species's closest relatives. They possess sufficient mental faculties and emotional life to justify their inclusion in the community of equals."
http://www.spainherald.com/3438.html
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The Left is an evil joke. To suggest that more EUrocrats and UN supervisors will save mokeys from whoever is to miss the point entirely: it is that reason will prevail in spite of government controllers. Laws from the Left aren't for the good, they are against the people. The Left, dear reader, THEY HATE YOU.
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"The Retreat of Reason"...

I'm still reading this 100 page indictment of Political Correctivism, The Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain (pdf) by Anthony Brown, but I wanted to get it out to y'all.

The Author Summarizes His Work Thus:
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Summary

For centuries Britain has been a beacon of liberty of thought, belief and speech in the world, but now its intellectual and political life is in chains.

Members of the public, academics, journalists and politicians are afraid of thinking certain thoughts. People are vilified if they publicly diverge from accepted beliefs, sacked or even investigated by police for crimes against received wisdom. Whole areas of debate have been closed down by the crushing dominance of the moralistic ideol-ogy of political correctness.

Political correctness started as a study of cultural Marxism in Germany in the 1920s, and was adopted by the 1960s counter culture, eager to promote tolerance and alternatives to the conservative values of the time.

Political correctness quickly infiltrated US academia and spread its tentacles across the West. By the early twenty-first century, political correctness had completed its long march through the institutions in Britain, and had ensnared almost all of them, from schools to hospitals, from local government to national government, and from major corporations to the police, army and the church. In 1997, Britain became governed for the first time by a government largely controlled by politically-correct ideol-ogy.

Its influence has spread across the entire policy range, not just women's pay and race relations, but education, health, law and order and the environment. It is upheld by a powerful array of lobby groups, from Liberty to Amnesty International, from Friends of the Earth to Refu-gee Action, and an array of domestic and international laws, charters and treaties.

Starting as a reaction to the dominant ideology, it has become the dominant ideology. It defines the terms and parameters of any national debate. Anything that is not PC is automatically controversial. Across much of the public sphere, it has replaced reason with emotion, subordinating objective truth to subjective virtue.

In the early days, political correctness brought benefits as it helped spread decency and consideration to the more vulnerable members of society, from the handicapped to women to ethnic minorities.

But, as political correctness spread and deepened its influence, it became more dogmatic and intolerant of dissent, until it became a betrayal of the very liberalism that first fuelled it. It has lead to new political censorship laws being introduced to curb freedom of speech, and membership of legal democratic parties being curtailed. Rather than opening minds, it is closing them down.

The aim of political correctness is to redistribute power from the powerful to the powerless. It automatically and unquestioningly supports those it deems victims, irres-pective of whether they merit it, and opposes the powerful, irrespective of whether they are malign or benign. For the politically correct, the West, the US and multinational corporations can do no good, and the developing world can do no wrong.

Political correctness is often ridiculed, but it is more than just a joke. With its earlier benefits already won, it has now become a hindrance to social progress, and a threat to society. By closing down debates, it restricts the ability of society to tackle the problems that face it.

PC promoted multiculturalism in the Netherlands while silencing debate about its drawbacks, until the results exploded in religious violence leaving much of the country living in fear. In Britain, it allowed the creation of alien-ated Muslim ghettoes which produce young men who commit mass murder against their fellow citizens. By promoting the rights of criminals over their victims, it hinders law enforcement and leads to escalating crime. By challenging the authority of teachers, it fuels poor discipline in schools, and by promoting equality over excellence, it degrades the standard of education and inflates exam grades until they become almost mean-ingless.

By silencing debate and curbing objective analysis, political correctness can harm those it intends to help. The victims are taught to blame others for their vulnerability, discouraging them from taking responsibility for improv-ing their lives if their problems are self-inflicted.

Black communities are encouraged to blame racist teachers for the failure of their boys at school, rather than re-examine their own culture and attitudes to education that may be the prime reasons. The poor sick have ended up having worse healthcare in Britain than they would in mainland Europe because PC for long closed down debate on fundamental NHS reform. Women's employment opportunities can be harmed by giving them ever more rights that are not given to men. The unemployed are encouraged to languish on benefits blaming others for their fate. Poor Africans are condemned to live in poverty so long as they and their governments are encouraged to blame the West for all their problems, rather than confronting the real causes of poor governance, corruption and poor education.

Political correctness once had a purpose, but it now causes much more harm than good. For the last few decades, reason has been in retreat—but the time has come for reason to advance once again.
Permalink
Why gunbloggergeeks kick ass.
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Don't complain. You vote and then expect the world of politics to go on as if you mattered, and that is the individual's choice of reaction. You must be involved all the time, as an actor in your own life. If you are not, if you refuse, then you eat the crap you get.

It's a Beautiful Day.

Stogie picked this one up from Atlas Shrugs.


http://saberpoint.blogspot.com/

Sometimes it's nice to indulge in a bit of over-reaction. I feel like this is one of those times.

http://americasnewcrusaders.blogspot.com/
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Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Tradition, Misoneism, and Modernity

Tradition is an evil practice. To act according to tradition is to fore go rationality, to allow oneself to slip into the darkness of mental habit received from above, to quit thinking and to submit to authority for the sake of authority regardless. To practice tradition is to sink into misoneism, to become and to remain a primitive, a corruption of Humanity. To do as has been done because all do as is done as it was done is to become nearly Muslim. To fear and hate change, to endlessly replay the same sorry tunes of yesteryear because it is tradition, because it is heretical to change, because it is innovation, that is to be Islamic. To murder for the sake of ones misoneism is to be a Muslim to the fullest extent.

Modernity is not merely new, Modernity is different today from Modernity ten years ago, and if one were to look out the window, then Modernity might well change before ones tired eyes. After countless generations of Man and that like man and less like man, unchanging generations of Man, suddenly, a mere 5,000 years ago Man changed radically, a revolution in Human life, the Agricultural Revolution. Hunters and gatherers settled here and there and made cities. Cain slew Abel. There are those today who will never forgive it. There are those who hate the Agricultural Revolution more intensely than life itself. Imagine how they react in the deserts of Arabia and the mosques of Islam to the triune Revolutions of Modernity: France, America, and Industry. Imagine them and see our own Leftists.

The pre-lapsarian longing of the average Utopian Left phantasist is causing murder and mayhem across the world, their longing for the perfect return to Eden. Those of us who value Modernity are more inclined to support a gradual climb to reality and betterness. Tradition? A lost pile of out-worn and dangerous ideas passed down by maniacs and blood-sacrificers. The Stalinists, the Pol potters, the lot, all longing for the past of the Golden Age, and willing to kill Humanity to achieve their visions of purity, they are the dangerous traditionalists.

Look at the first page of Buruma and Margalit, Occidentalism. "Their topic of discussion was 'how to overcome the modern.'"


Misoneism, the hatred of change, and look at the cost of it.

That reference comes from the Japanese fascists who waged war on America.

But before we go stupid and hate tradition, let's turn to some sober reflection of what we're on about:
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1 - The Mind's Gravitation Back to the Familiar

The Mind's Gravitation Back to the Familiar
By Emile Cailliet

THE familiar setting constitutes for us the substantial reality to which we revert as through a law of our being. The substantial character of the experience is happily suggested in Coleridge's phrase, "palpable and familiar." And just as we are at home in the familiar, so are we likely to be homesick in strange surroundings. The experience recalled by George Pope Morris speaks to the condition of many of us:

In other countries, when I heard
The language of my own,
How fondly each natural word
Awoke an answering tone.


Natural words act upon us as do familiar names. Once more it took a poet to apprehend this deep affinity. Thus Shakespeare exalted the magic of names as familiar in one's mouth "as household words." The familiar gives us a sense of security in the midst of precarious circumstances, that is, of circumstances that call for prayer. And so, to revert to the safe haven of the familiar often turns out to be for us a mostly unconscious way of praying.

Where our treasure is, there will our heart be also. Because he so highly values the pearl of great price, the Christian is likely to experience more deeply than others, this gravitation of the mind back to the familiar

I

There is something sacred about the familiar. This word "sacred" originally meant untouchable, as in the Latin dictum, Res est sacra miser (the miserable one is untouchable), where a primitive connotation is readily apprehended. The perennial character of such primitive views must be ascribed to a deep-seated misoneism, or fear of innovation. As primitives see it, to innovate is to expose oneself to the most dreadful dangers. A pertinent motto for the primitive landscape of reality could read, "Do not disturb."

As subsequent meanings of the word "sacred" come to light, it appears that the sacred object is no longer only the untouchable object, but further the desired, beloved object. In this connection our young people today may find it worthwhile to dwell on the tradition of courteous love as it developed through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. I refer especially to the devotion of the knights of the Round Table to their lady in that state of near-worship which was then coming to fuller expression in the Virgin cult. It is historically true to say that the highest expression of human love originated in religious mysticism. And so, as we speak of the sacredness of the familiar we find ourselves treading on holy ground.



The reason I have insisted on this question of origin is that it helps us understand why we should respect views of long standing. They constitute patterns of sacred memories through which the soul perseveres in a wisdom unaware of itself. That wisdom we call tradition. It should never be lightly tampered with, still less allowed to become an object of ridicule. What may mislead many of us is that the deeper the roots, the better hidden they are. Conversely, the familiar becomes all the more sacred as its origins are lost in the night of ancient days. Hence the impression on the part of the faithful that things have always been as they are now found to be. The status quo accordingly may be felt to pertain to the very order of God. No wonder a religious fear is likely to be aroused at the thought that it might be disturbed.

One of the reasons some people are so hard on Fundamentalism may be detected in their ignorance of the distant origins of that position. Casting ridicule upon it is the natural reaction of detractors whose memory hardly goes further back than the year of our Lord 1909 when millions of copies of The Fundamentals published in Los Angeles spread over the Protestant world, preparing the way for the Christian Fundamentals League and the World's Christian Fundamental Association. Henceforth slogans take over, and the whole conservative position is easily dismissed amid catcalls and name-calling. The very name, Fundamentalist, is even currently abbreviated for the sake of brevity in final judgment. Whereupon the straw man supposed to incarnate the backward beliefs freely ascribed to him, is summarily disposed of. It is nevertheless a fact that he may have been an earnest evangelical Christian, as has often proved to be the case.

The plain truth is that the Fundamentalist attitude constitutes by birth and by right one of the essential aspects of the Reformation. This is stated in the awareness that men like Luther, and more especially the Renaissance scholar, Calvin, blazed the trail in more than one way to the modern attitude toward the Bible. What actually happened is that having opened the Scriptures to the laity, the Reformers were led by controversy to indiscriminately claim for the whole Bible an absolute authority henceforth substituted for that of the Church of Rome. Their theological interpretations of the book moreover remained controlled by the traditional schema. The main point is that the Fundamentalist's affirmation of the infallibility of Scripture originally was that of the Reformers. Were it only for this consideration, it should not be scornfully disparaged.

Sheer intellectual honesty would have us make a further acknowledgment with regard to this matter. As the Reformers opened the Book to the laity, an enthusiastic fervor greeted a Gospel now accessible in one's native tongue. Thus the Christian message was apprehended afresh in its pristine dynamism. A newness of life animated the Body of Christ. The fact to acknowledge further is that there comes to light at this juncture another striking similitude between Fundamentalism and the Reformation. Making full allowance for occasional cases of smug complacency and lack of charity on the part of some Fundamentalists, an incontrovertible belief in the verbal inspiration of all Scripture today also generates the same enthusiastic fervor as of old, among the proponents of the ancient view. While many a sophisticated Christian feeds on an Ersatz diet of learned up-to-date disquisitions, Fundamentalists are out in every sort of weather ringing door bells. It is also a fact that Pentecostal sects hold the field in South America as well as on other continents where missionaries are at work. If it still be true that "by their fruit ye shall know them," what is to be the stand of many of us on the Day of Judgment?

Having thus attempted to do justice to Fundamentalism in the context of I Cor.13, however, we must admit in the next breath, that ignoring to all practical purposes four centuries of cultural advances amounts to a serious declension. It is a terrible thing for Christianity to allow itself to be out of touch with the world of men and affairs which is its mission field. I recently directed a university retreat in the "Bible Belt." There I found myself confronted by a generation of students who had been "conditioned" against the evangelical message. A discreet inquiry revealed that in practically every case youth had been submitted to obsolete pressure methods of approach. It further appeared that quite a number of the younger instructors had already known a similar revulsion and, as a result, turned to Unitarianism. Moreover, currently available books had hardly proved a help. What purpose is ever served, may I ask, by reprint editions of obsolete theological dissertations, whose essential merit today is to act as tranquilizers for cases of religious misoneism? And yet a whole section of the publishing industry today is thriving on this business of warmed-over titles. What this means is that the vacuum which has naturally appeared during the last fifty or sixty years in the production of ultra-conservative Biblical literature, is being artificially filled. Conversely, as new manuscripts catering to the old stereotyped outlook may not get access to the wider cultural market, they worm their way into that late nineteenth century vintage of publications. The cultivation of obsolescence in this age of intense scientific progress truly has become an end in itself in a whole area of traditionalism.

Henceforth references to evangelism may be construed as labels of doubtful intellectual quality. This is particularly grave in the midst of a generation groping for trustworthy guidance, We are undeniably confronted at this point with baleful aftereffects of the mind's gravitation back to the familiar.

II



Let us now turn to a somewhat composite group of conservatives, quite a number of whom have achieved distinction in their own special field. Anxious to steer clear of identification with Fundamentalism, yet equally concerned with an unswerving commitment to traditional interpretations of theology, they have chosen to be called "Evangelicals." In so doing, incidentally, they would seem to have claimed a monopoly on evangelical Christianity, and ipso facto revived the suggestion that any other construction put on the faith amounts to liberalism, and that liberalism is not Christianity. Many of us would take exception to all such suggestions of monopoly,however praiseworthy the intention behind them may be.

The real intention of these "Evangelicals," moreover, is hardly veiled by seeming concessions made in the hope that the day may be at hand when the old solution will once more come into its own. For this real intention is to all practical purposes conditioned by the mind's gravitation back to the familiar; in this case, back to the crystallized formulations of old. Should a man of good will suggest specific instances where the liberation of the natural sciences from the encroachments of an unenlightened theologism need not be duplicated in the case of the historical method painstakingly developed by the human sciences, the "Evangelicals" may temporarily agree. And yet their next move may well be to call him in for the sake of slightly "amending" his wording. This once done, however, it would readily appear that the mind's gravitation back to the familiar had run its natural course.

This is not meant to imply that "Evangelicals" agree among themselves. They do not, as even Billy Graham has had occasion to find out. Just as the most bitter disagreements are likely to materialize between neighbors across the fence, so the sharpest theological arguments originate among those conservatives who differ on minor points. Give them a rank atheist, and they will love him because he is "convertible." It is the minor dissident that arouses their ire. Meanwhile the children of this world pass by the island of discord, as an army would ignore quarrels among stragglers on the path of advance.

Billy Graham has done just that, yet in his own way. He has done it with bravery. I have in many respects reluctantly come to the conclusion that a great deal of controversy around him has originated in unconscious envy, if not professional jealousy, and this is particularly bad among servants of the same Lord. The fact remains, nevertheless, that to ignore obvious difficulties in no way disposes of them. Throw a problem out through the door, and it will reappear at the window. It is in many respects commendable to proclaim to a large gathering, "The Bible says . . . and the Bible says ," as it nothing had ever happened since the days of the Reformation to affect the total picture. Yet the receptive listener who steps forward is likely to find out for himself sooner or later that even the India paper which bears the sacred text is no longer negotiable at face value. Not that the text itself has lost any of its significance. Quite the contrary. It commands higher value than ever before, and this, to the last word. It is merely that it has been identified as a dated and culturally conditioned human record of God's disclosure. Any profession of faith and statement of beliefs accordingly must proceed from both the account of events and the meaning actually implied in them in a given social and cultural context. Any attempt to perpetuate the element of relativity which may have become involved in the process is bound to bring the one who makes it out-of-touch with the later age in which he lives, and moves, and has his being. Not only does such a situation prevent useful communication with contemporaries, but it interferes with the knowledge of God and of his design.

The mind's gravitation back to the familiar has this in common with the larger aspect of gravitation: to ignore or hide its existence does not prevent it from being there.

III


Our inquiry further brings us into contact with a rather likable group of Christians, conciliatory and ever ready to placate and mollify, yet withal anxious to hold on to the alloy of set ways of thinking. They are aware that the world in which they live keeps moving on and that there can be no turning back of the clock. While accepting as inevitable the inroads of the well established historical method into traditional interpretations, however, they are far from being wholehearted in their acceptance. In actual practice they welcome contributions likely to prove harmless while easing undeniable tensions. Yet they hardly control their wistful eagerness to have enough left of the old interpretations to carry on as usual. This is their way of not offending the congregation if they are in the ministry, or of professing Christianity with a tenable open-mindedness if they are in the pew. In the course of conversations with inquirers, they proceed in the same spirit, ready to concede the seemingly unessential. But then, where is their frame of reference for essentiality? And so they essay a tentative give-and-take while holding on to what they cannot do without. In other words, they do their best to safeguard selected parts of their disintegrating profession, even while the facts which inspired it have been put in jeopardy. Their Christian conversation admittedly may be admirable in actual practice, as if they wanted to atone for the confusion of their ideas.

Eclecticism has often sought in activity, if not in activism, ways of creating unity among discordant intellectual views. This tendency is well known in schools of philosophy. It is also noticeable in ecumenical gatherings where participants of different theological persuasions come to realize that they can work together even in the face of unresolved tensions in matters of doctrine. Yet in a case where all such tensions come to light within the same individual person, it becomes obvious that a divided soul can hardly achieve that single-mindedness which makes light of obstacles encountered along the appointed way. Apart from a consistency grounded in a well-ascertained motivation, life is bound to be a succession of semantic nightmares in anguish and endless misery.

The mind's gravitation back to the familiar can never safely be taken for granted as a force in a component of forces. It must be squarely faced as a major source of disturbance across the path to maturity.

IV

New Christian currency has been issued in the world of thought since the days of the Reformation. It does indeed bear the same old symbols. More surprising still, these symbols would seem to command higher value today than they ever did, were it only because the realities to which they point now may be ascertained with more accuracy. This is new currency nevertheless, a currency devised to meet the changing needs of a new social and cultural environment which implies new ways of thinking. The mind's gravitation back to the familiar notwithstanding, we must as adults face the fact that it is not what we like to hear, read, or see, that constitutes the criterion of correctness, but the adequacy of our apprehension of the meaning and purpose of him who speaks to us. What matters in interpreting the Bible in particular is to apprehend and convey as accurately as possible the thought and intention of the original writer in his own situation.

Conservative Christians are right in insisting upon the wholeness of the Bible, and in holding on to every word of the precious record. The fact of the matter is that the historical method of studying the Bible is equally as insistent that it cannot possibly destroy a single word in that record. Its main concern is to find out what the words meant to say in the mind of those who used them. Once viewed in this light, the New Testament in particular bears witness to the actual preaching of the early Christian community. To construe it otherwise amounts to distorting it. To set it within the living context of the apostolic age that produced it, safeguards its genuine meaning for all times, including our own.

There always will be those who will ascribe to God the kind of thinking they would do, were they in his place. Ours is happily a simpler task, namely, to figure out what the Word of God who meets us in and through the Bible, actually says to us and expects from us. This we may safely do only in the measure as we counteract in his grace that ingrained tendency to gravitate back to the familiar. The Book of Deuteronomy (32:11) beautifully suggests the nature of the ordeal implied therein for a man of good will, as the Lord leads him:

Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
that flutters over its young,
Spreading out its wings, catching them,
bearing them on its pinions.

We do need this divine stirring up of our natural propensities; yet we need not fear it as we trust ourselves to the protection of the everlasting-wings.
http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1958/v15-1-editorial1.htm
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I'll return to Buruma and Margalit in the next post to look further at the hatred of the modern.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Just bombing around in the sun.


"Everyone wants to go to Egypt. Everyone wants to return to Italy."
Tourist Expression.
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Ahmed Mustafa, a waiter at a coffee shop near the first blast, said a fireball tore through a shopping mall car park in Sharm el-Sheikh town at about 1:15am.

The blast turned cars into twisted metal, blew down masonry on nearby buildings and shattered windows for hundreds of metres around.

"I saw a car flying up in the air, people running," restaurant owner Yehya Mohammed said by telephone. "This is a horrible setback for tourism here."
www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1420973.htm

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Tourists and terrorists have in comon a love of travel, meeting new people, living new and exciting experiences not to be found in the old hometown. Both groups bring new ideas, new business opportunities, and new experiences to the locals. We have such a lot in common.

The two groups just can't get along! Tourists tend to romanticise the locals in the hope of heightening the experience of their vacations, of bringing back to the drudgeries of mundanity some stellar memories of exotica, days of living that shine brightly in the life of the harried and bored. No one wishes to go to a boring and unmemorable place on ones limitied vacation. No, one goes to a place where people are special, where things are greater than great, making the expences worth the expences. Terrorists take the same tack, in a sense, going to foreign and exotic places to kill and wreck and exterminate the worst people on Earth, to have the greatest experiences they can in their limited time and at the limited expence they can afford. No more drudgeries for the terrorist who manages in a couple of weeks off from the toil of peasnatry to have a lovely break in the name of a great vacation for the sake of Allah. Paradise.

Boom goes Dahab, Boom Paree.

For the third time in a year and a half Muslims have attacked tourists in Egypt on a large scale. There is some method to the madness. It's not simply an attack on the tourists and infidels themselves: it's an attack on the Egyptian economy, and more directly on the ability of the Egyptian government to control the lives of the Egyptian people. If, as so many Egyptians do, they rely on tourist money to survive in the style to which they are accustomed, then to withdraw that money from the hands of locals is throw them into even greater poverty than they exist in at present; the result being a further hatred of the government. The plan, of course, is to destroy the credibility of the government, or actually to destroy the willingness of the Egyptian people to tolerate the misrule of said government any longer. Destroy the tourist-based economy, ruin the lives and livelihoods of the people, and end the government's rule. It works.
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The Economics of Tourism

[....]

On November 17, 1997, a terrorist attack targeting visitors to the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, threw Egypt's tourism industry into turmoil. The negative effect of the Luxor tragedy is clearly reflected by the data. Visitor arrivals to Egypt declined by 13.8 per cent from 1997 to 1998. Egypt's international tourism receipts decreased by 45.4 per cent in1998 compared to 1997. Egypt is one of those countries in the world in which tourism is a substantial share of overall economic activity. Tourism is Egypt's second largest foreign exchange earner, [foreign aid being number one] and Egypt accounts for 50 per cent of all tourist arrivals to Africa and the Middle East.

[....]

The tourism industry generates substantial economic benefits to both host countries and tourists' home countries. It is an especially important industry to developing countries. The main benefits of tourism to a country are foreign exchange earnings, tax revenues, business opportunities for budding entrepreneurs, and employment for workers in the industry.

According to the WTO, "Tourism is one of the top five export categories for as many as 83% of countries and is the main source of foreign exchange earnings for at least 38% of countries." Foreign exchange earnings from exports are used to purchase imports and augment reserves. They generate income in the host country and can stimulate consumer spending and investment in other sectors of the economy.

Tax receipts from tourism are both direct and indirect. Direct tax receipts are generated from the incomes earned by businesses and workers. Indirect taxes are duties levied on goods and services purchased by tourists. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that tax contributions related to tourism worldwide were US $800 billion in 1998.

Tourism is a monopolistically competitive industry. It has many relatively small enterprises producing slightly differentiated products and services. Barriers to entry and exit are relatively low. For these reasons, the tourism industry provides tremendous opportunity for relatively small businesses to thrive and is a leading generator of jobs. The hotel accommodation sector alone provided around 11.3 million jobs worldwide in 1995, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). Tourism generates jobs directly through hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, taxis, and souvenir sales. Indirectly, jobs are generated through the supply of goods and services required by tourism-related suppliers. The WTO estimates that tourism represents 7% of jobs worldwide.

International Tourism Receipts: % of Export Earnings (1998)
Egypt 19.0
http://www.sonic.net/~schuelke/TerrorismVsTourism.html
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This is the Politics of Confrontation that we have written about so often here. The local social conditions made delibverately so unbearable by direct and planned chaos leads the state into disproportionate reaction agianst the general populace to the point the people rebel and do the work of the terrorists for them. Wreck the tourist industry, destroy the economy, impoverish poor people even further, and bring about a repressive police response to that as well, and The Revolution is on the march.

The following article was written less than nine months ago.
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All is not lost


28 July - 3 August 2005

In recent years, tourism has advanced in its position as one of Egypt's top hard currency earners. Two years ago, tourism trailed Suez Canal revenues as Egypt's second largest source of revenue, bringing in roughly four billion dollars annually. Today however, it is Egypt's greatest source of income, generating $6.6 billion just last year. Moreover, Egypt hopes to increase tourism by 50 per cent to 12 million visitors a year by 2015.

[T]he listed companies related to tourism were delivered a heavy blow with Orascom Hotels and Development, the largest builder of hotels and leisure facilities in the Middle East, losing 13 per cent on Sunday only to lose another 3.8 per cent on Monday to end at LE32.1.
It is estimated that after the Luxor attack, Egyptian tourism fell by over 20 per cent. Consequently, the Egyptian economy continued to suffer for years as a result of the incident, particularly since it was augmented by the Asian financial crisis. The Luxor incident is often cited as one of the reasons for the hard currency crunch which eventually lead to the devaluation and later the floatation of the pound in January 2003.

The Standard Chartered Bank report illustrates that following the Luxor attacks, tourist arrivals dropped by seven per cent and it took two years of stability before numbers recovered to their 1996 level. In the wake of 9/11, tourist numbers dropped by 16 per cent after already being depressed by the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000.

Only in the last two years has the tourism industry begun to show strong signs of recovery. Numbers rose by 16 per cent in 2003 and by 34 per cent in 2004, the latter case representing an increase of two million visitors -- the largest ever annual increase.

[....]
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/753/fo6.htm
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The following list of terrorist attacks in Egypt will certainly bring a wry smile to the lips of our jihadi readers. We'll passover the attacks of April 7, '05, April 30, '05, and July 22, '05 to include just one from April 24, 2006. The rest are available at the link at bottom.


April 24, '06 -- Three powerful bomb blasts thundered through Egypt's Red Sea resort town of Dahab today, killing 30 people & seriously injuring more than 100 more victims, rescue officials reported to Reuters. An outraged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak condemned the blasts as a terrorist act, the state-run Egyptian news MENA said. Local residents told reporters they saw body parts & debris littering the street outside one restaurant. Several eye-witnesses said the explosions were centered at the tourist bazaar in Dahab, a Sinai peninsula beach & scuba diving center that is popular with foreign vacationers, including Israelis. Terrorist attacks have killed about 100 people at several tourist resorts of Egypt's Sinai region in the past two years. Bombings in the resorts of Taba & Ras Shitan, near the Israel border, killed 34 people in October '04. In July '05, suicide attackers in the resort of Sharm el-Sheik killed at least 88 tourists & hotel workers. The Egyptian government has said the militants who carried out the bombings were locals without international connections. However, other security agencies contend they suspect Al Qaeda is behind this latest attack. Dahab is a popular, low-cost getaway for young Western backpackers including Israelis, who are lured in by exotic scuba diving sites and low-cost resorts, mainly huts nestled alongside the beach. In recent years, a number of more upscale hotels have sprouted on these beaches, including a luxurious 5-star Hilton property. Dahab is located on the Gulf of Aqaba, over on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula -- roughly 65 miles south of Taba -- near the border at the southern tip of Israel.
http://www.usdivetravel.com/T-EgyptTerrorism.html
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This is the time to go to Dahab. The room rates will be dirt cheap, the cafes nearly empty, and the dive schools will be begging you to sign up for your next ticket. Even the sea snakes will likely find another place to feast for a while. There's a window of opportunity here that the sensible tourist will take advantage of. As for me? I'm not risking it. I'm off to Bali or Moscow or London or Madrid or New York.