I never cared for Stevens' trite little musical ditties and, in the 1970s, would usually change radio stations whenever they were played. (Just like I did in the '80s, whenever The Judds were on the air. But that's a different kettle of lard entirely.)

Moonshadow, my ass.

As a Catholic, I'm not supposed to advocate violence against those who diss my religion. (Unlike a certain misguided faith, whose name begins with 'I'.) Nevertheless, I would find it amusing if the deplorable Mr. Stevens got unlucky enough to get run over by, say, a Peace Train. With a drunken Billy Joel as the engineer. Or Joe Hazelwood.

'Iron Horse'? Hey, I'm thinkin' 'Irony Horse'. (posted 9/25/06, permalink)

Coolest Gay Guy Ever: Zanzibar Muslims are pissed about the planned 60th birthday celebration for deceased rock star and native son Freddy Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara), because his sexual preferences and flamboyant lifestyle insulted Islam. (hat tip - Relapsed Catholic)

Screw 'em. Muslims seem to be "outraged" about every #$@&* thing the West does.

Because they know that We Are The Champions ... of the World. (posted 9/8/06, permalink)

Those Who Would Slaughter Us: Shelby Steele has written an insightful article about the Islamic extremism.

Excerpt: "If this war makes anything clear, it is that Israel can do nothing to appease the Muslim animus against her. And now much of the West is in a similar position, living in a state of ever-heightening security against the constant threat of violence from Islamic extremists. So here, from the Muslim world, comes an unappeasable hatred that seems to exist for its own sake, a hatred with very little actual reference to those it claims to hate. Even the fighting of Islamic terrorist groups is oddly self-referential, fighting not for territory or treasure but for the fighting itself. Standing today in the rubble of Lebanon, having not taken a single inch of Israeli territory, Hezbollah claims a galvanizing victory."

Steele notes that "Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism - not their continuance - forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism." (posted 9/1/06, permalink)

Revisionist History: The Archbishop of Denver has spoken out against it, noting: "Islam has embraced armed military expansion for religious purposes since its earliest decades. .... Much of the modern Middle East was once heavily Christian. Muslim armies changed that by imposing Islamic rule. Surviving Christian communities have endured centuries of marginalization, discrimination, violence, slavery and outright persecution - not always and not everywhere; but as a constant, recurring and central theme of Muslim domination.

That same Christian suffering continues down to the present. In the early years of the 20th century, the Muslim Ottoman Empire murdered more than 1 million Armenian Christians for ethnic, economic, but also religious reasons. Many Turks and other Muslims continue to deny that massive crime even today. Coptic Christians in Egypt - who, even after 13 centuries of Muslim prejudice and harassment, cling to the faith - continue to experience systematic discrimination and violence at the hands of Islamic militants.

Harassment and violence against Christians continue in many places throughout the Islamic world, from Bangladesh, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and Iraq, to Nigeria, Indonesia and even Muslim-dominated areas of the heavily Catholic Philippines. In Saudi Arabia, all public expressions of Christian faith are forbidden. The on-going Christian flight from Lebanon has helped to transform it, in just half a century, from a majority Christian Arab nation to a majority Muslim population.

These are facts. The Muslim-Christian conflict is a very long one, rooted in deep religious differences, and Muslims have their own long list of real and perceived grievances. But especially in an era of religiously inspired terrorism and war in the Middle East, peace is not served by ignoring, subverting or rewriting history, but rather by facing it humbly as it really happened and healing its wounds.

That requires honesty and repentance from both Christians and Muslims.

Comments like those reported in the recent news story I read - claiming that historically, it was European Christians, never Muslims, who tried to root out those who disagreed with them - are both false and do nothing to help." (posted 8/23/06, permalink)

Jihad In Seattle: You've read/heard about the July 2006 shooting at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on Third Avenue in the Emerald City's downtown. The gunman a 30 year-old Pakistani Muslim, Naveed Afzal Haq, who was upset about "what was going on in Israel." So, he calmly walked into the Jewish Center and shot six unarmed women with his semi-automatic 9-mm handgun. One has died. All others were hospitalized; three arrived in critical condition.

Terrorists always seem to go after women, children and the elderly, don't they? Especially if they think the victims are unarmed and unprepared. So, Haq joins the list of evil cowards, who will be portrayed - at some point - as a poor misguided fellow who has had a tough life and is, himself, a victim. The catch phrase "mental problems" was uttered less than two hours after the shooting.

Lest anyone think that Haq was some impoverished unfortunate, I would point out he was driving a late-model Mazda B-series pickup truck. I watched the police tow it away from a pay parking garage. He either had a pretty good job or was well-funded.

This is not a 'lone wacko' isolated incident. There have been many worrisome problems in the Pacific Northwest since 9/11. For example, two years before, prosecutors filed assault and extortion charges against individuals associated with an Islamic religious school run out of a South Seattle barbershop. The school was "training children ... in Anti American rhetoric," and "how to shoot and fight the Americans."

Jihad Watch notes that if Haq "has no ties to Al-Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah, officials will hasten to assure us that this was not a terrorism-related murder. After all, non-Muslims go on killing sprees, don't they? Of course; but until officials address the ideology that fuels killings such as this, there will be a peculiarly high occurrence of "random" incidents such as this in which the one who "snaps" is, coincidentally, a Muslim who believes deeply in jihad warfare."

Hugh Hewitt has written, "Any crime of violence done to avenge a political grievance is an act of terrorism. Haq's murder of at least one employee of the Jewish Federation is an act of terrorism."

Imagine if, in the 1970s, IRA sympathizers began attacking Episcopalians in the U.S. - shooting up women's bible study groups and the like. I can assure you that the Ancient Order Of Hibernians would have called a press conference and denounced the scum. Harsh anti-IRA screeds would have poured forth from pulpits in every Catholic Church in America. The press would have been invited in to record such proclamations. Any and all 'pass-the-hat' covert funding for "the poor lads over there" would immediately have dried up.

Fast forward to today. What's the Muslim community doing? Not much. Where are the cries of outrage? Why hasn't CAIR called a press conference? Why haven't the scum in the midst of the Muslim community been exposed by its own members shining the light of truth upon such human excrement?

This shooting incident is another example of terrorism in our midst.

I hope that the fine Jewish ladies on Third Avenue start packin' heat.

Because the world's goin' to Hell. And Hell has arrived in the state of Washington. (posted 7/29/06, permalink)

Learning From History: Salim Mansur, a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario and a syndicated columnist in Canada, has written, "Following the London bombings a year ago, I asked in this space how long the civilized world would continue to deny the reality of a war declared on it by modern day al-Qaida bandits and their global affiliates? ...

Islamists have succeeded this far in turning the strength of democracies to their advantage. They have exploited the restraint of modern civilization that opts in criminal justice for proportionality, restitution and rehabilitation as evidence of guilt and weakness.

Islamists declared war on the modern world much before September 11, 2001. But the modern world - despite President George Bush's leadership and effort since 9/11 - opted instead to study the neuroses of Islamists, discover root causes of their depravity, offer palliatives by acknowledging their grievances as legitimate, and view the warfare launched by them merely as a problem of domestic law and order."

Salim offers a solution based on history, noting, "The time is long past to wait upon a corrupt and cynical United Nations to devise a response that should have been prompted by 9/11." (posted 7/18/06, permalink)

Intifada Interruptus: A series of terrorist attacks plotted against unspecified targets in southern Ontario, Canada was stopped when police rounded up 17 terrorists caught with triple the amount of explosives that McVeigh used to blow up Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

These terrorists have first names like Fahim, Zakaria, Asad, Shareef, Qayyum, Mohammed, Yasim, Jahmaal, Amin, Ahmad, Saad were arrested. No one named Tom, Mary, Tony, Kevin, Sue or Jessica seems to be involved. Nor anyone named Bob or Doug.

Excerpt: "Osama bin Laden didn't force anyone to go to Iraq, murder its people and destroy its institutions. He didn't force anyone to murder innocent people in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, America and Europe. Bin-Laden did not tell the Muslims in the West: 'Hate the country that gave you shelter when you fled [from your homelands], made you rich when you were poor, fed you when you were hungry, gave you freedom after the bondage you suffered in your Muslim countries, and educated you when you were ignorant." (hat tip - Relapsed Catholic) (posted 4/18/06, permalink)

Punished For Truthfulness: A Catholic priest in Belgium is to be tried for "hate crimes". The priest, who fled from Turkey to Belgium under Islamic persecution, made this "offending" statement: "Every thoroughly islamized Muslim child that is born in Europe is a time bomb for Western children in the future. The latter will be persecuted when they have become a minority."

After hearing of his upcoming trial, the popular priest repeated his statement and warned against "the islamic invasion" of the West. (posted 4/3/06, permalink)

A Memorable Quote came from the Daily Demarche: "We have been told repeatedly that Islam is not the enemy - it is only that the enemy is Islamic. Fine. And of course the Germans living outside the camps six decades ago had no idea what that awful smell was, either. We, the Allies, heaped generations of shame on the Germans - with the result that it is highly unlikely that the fringe anti-Semitic German political groups will ever gain power again.

Today, however, we tiptoe around the idea that all Muslims share the responsibility to put an end to the ideals of hatred that lead to terrorist attacks. Muslims in New York, Washington, Madrid, London, Bali and on and on - are quick to assure us that none of them have any idea where that horrible smell is coming from today, and they do not seem too interested in finding out." (posted 9/4/05, permalink)

Gitmo Griping: I am sooooo sick and tired of people carping about the "inhumane" conditions at Guantanamo Bay. These are the best-treated POWs in the history of mankind.

Dinner selections at this "prison" include Baked Tandoori Chicken Breast, Mustard-Dill Baked Fish, Lyonnaise Rice and Fish Amandine. Ann Coulter provided this saddening quip: "Sounds like the sort of thing you'd get at 'Windows on the World' – if it still existed." I'm sure these meals are an improvement over the gourmet fare these terrorists and wanna-bees experience at home - sun-dried goat.

If I were running the place, I'd be serving be nuttin' but pulled pork on Jewish Rye. Every day. (But then, wasn't it the Eagles who sang, "You can't hide your Lyonnaise"?)

On the subject of Gitmo, Christopher Hitchens has observed, "I should very much like to know how a Gore administration would have dealt with the hundreds of foreign sadists taken in arms in Afghanistan. I should also like to know how other Western governments, which are privately relieved that the United States assumed responsibility for the last wave, expect to handle the next wave of fundamentalist violence in their own societies. No word on this as yet." I'd like to know, too. And: "The man whose story of rough interrogation (at Gitmo) has just been published in Time had planned to board a United Airlines flight and crash it into a skyscraper. I want to know who his friends and contacts were ..."

Speaking of torture, put things in perspective by reading about "the German chair" here.

Meanwhile, Joe Katzman has written: "... if respecting the terrorists' Islamic beliefs is so critically important, and we can't just wrap them in pigskin, deny them prayer ("why? you're not a real Muslim anyway") and inter them with dogs - does that mean these guys are the true Islam after all, bonafide believers rather than the hijackers of a religion as they are relentlessly portrayed? Because that's certainly the implication.

... It seems like an odd set of messages to send: you tell the outside world that terrorists are authentic Muslims, and in the same move you tell your own people that all this "religion of peace" stuff is complete b.s. Maybe you have to be a liberal to understand." And: "Under Islamic law, non-Muslims are deemed unfit to touch the Quran. According to the Islamic law, we are unclean. ... That means the Christian, the Jew, the unbeliever in Islam - and, chances are, the Gitmo guard.

In effect, then, with its official policy of clean cloves and detainee towels, the United States military is promoting, enabling and accepting the Islamic concept of najis - the unclean infidel - a barbarous notion that has helped fuel the bloodlust of jihad and the non-Muslim subjugation of dhimmitude. Our soldiers are many things: self-sacrificing, bold, loyal and true. They are not unclean."

Finally: "James Taranto of the Wall St. Journal foolishly calls this "magnanimity." Tell me, if we capture Aryan Nations terrorists, will black troops all have to say "yas massah" to them, avoid making eye contact, and refuse to touch them - in the name of magnanimity? This is insanity." Yep. (posted 6/21/05, permalink)

Holiday Whine: Many years ago, I was on a committee to pick future show/meet dates for a national car club. We began by crossing off all national, Christian and Jewish holidays. Then we eliminated the 'bad weather months' - when snow or rain might be a consideration. Then we eliminated those dates which conflicted with other car-related events - Pebble Beach, Meadowbrook, etc. We ended up with a narrow window of time between mid-May and early-October.

Later, I received an angry letter from a Muslim fellow who complained that we had scheduled a major event during a Muslim holy day. I replied, asking him to provide us with dates of Muslim significance for the next four years so we could avoid future conflicts. (Muslim holidays were never listed in those 'Future Planner' sections of DayRunners, etc.) I also invited him to join our planning committee.