Islamofascism

Fascism
"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. "

Well, I believe in God -- and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze – Verbal Kint

I’ve been listening to Hoguester talk about “Islamofascism.” Dubya has received criticism over it and Dan Lungren locked horns with good ole Charlie Rangel over the term. Rangel excused Lungren of broadbrushing all of Islam with that rubric. What rot and how typical of the Left. We really need to title our enemy with a proper name. Your basic American doesn’t really get the “Global War on Terror” or GWOT. Just what does that mean anyway? Who’s “terror” and what country are they from? As nomenclature, “GWOT” is downright incoherent. Superior Court judges don’t understand it that’s for sure. A message to Judge Diggs Taylor: The NSA is going to be mighty bored if they’re listening to my phone calls. With knuckleheads trying to bring 10 airliners down over the Atlantic, I really think they have something more important to listen to than my phone calls with my 80+ year old parents. If journalists are trading funny emails and phone calls with al-Queda lieutenants, I could really care less if they feel their journalist’s integrity is in danger. People don’t get “GWOT.” Fascism, however, is an understandable term just like communism. Add “Islamo-“ to that root and now we have an understandable enemy. I did some research on fascism and frankly was shocked at what I found. “Islamicists” or “Jihadists” and fascists have known each other for a long time. The connection is quite unsettling. Facing down evil is never at the top of anyone’s favorite list. Perhaps that’s why there’s a perceptible lack of backbone in our so-called political leaders these days. But who is our enemy? Its fascism and has been fascism for a long time.

You have to go back to the roots of fascism to understand our enemy today. In Latin, “fascio” means bundle or group usually reserved for political groups, surprise, surprise. Benito Mussolini’s movement (began in 1919) used an emblem of a bundle of rods around an axe head (fasces) symbolizing the power of ancient Roman magistrates. There’s the word defined – in a word; power. The movement itself is defined at the top of this post. Other political opportunists saw that Benito was on to something and adopted his political theory to their own. Hitler and his Nazis top the list naturally, but there were several others who recognized the personal benefit of Mussolini’s peculiar institution. One of those movements was the Ustase in Croatia during WWII. As I peeled away at the links involving the Ustase, the heart of darkness that is Islamofascism began to reveal itself.

The Ustase were installed as the government of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis in 1941. They were the worse example of Roman Catholicism that comes to mind. They adopted Nazi social theory and spent the war years doing their best to wipe out Serbs, Gypsies, and Jews (of course), basically, anybody who wasn’t Roman Catholic. The death toll was in the hundreds of thousands depending on whose body count you read. They made one very interesting exception in their pogrom, however. Bosnian Muslims were considered Croats, but Muslim Croats. More interesting is some of the Muslim Croats were members of the 13th SS Mountain Division Handschar of the Waffen-SS administered by Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler. It gets better (or worse). Enter one Mohammad Amin al-Husayni or the Mufti of Jerusalem, an unrepentant anti-Semite.

This fellow made contact with Hitler’s government as early as 1933 looking forward to spreading their ideology in Palestine. The Nazi’s finally accepted the offer in 1938 after their initial fear of alienating the British had ebbed and started supplying al-Husayni with financial and military assistance. In 1941, al-Husayni issued a fatwa for holy way against the British in the Middle East. In gratitude for his assistance to the cause, Adolf Hitler himself received al-Husayni in Berlin as a head-of-state.

In 1943, al-Husayni really went to work for the Nazi’s and their Ustase proxies by recruiting Bosnian Muslims for the 13th SS Mountain Division, or Handschar Division. The Handschar spent the war in operations against Balkan partisans. While they did not engage in active extermination against Jews, al-Husayni was not shy to try his hand in that dark craft even though he was rather clumsy about it. The extermination mindset had reached those corners of his brain, the rest of us try to keep wrestled to the ground. In 1944, he organized a mission to Tel Aviv to poison up to a quarter million inhabitants (Jewish) by poisoning the water system. The saboteurs were caught in a cave near Jericho before they could carry out their mission. After the war, al-Husayni denied any knowledge of the Holocaust, but was accused by a Nazi war criminal (Adolf Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny) of being “one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan.” Whether one should believe a Nazi is another story, but that al-Husayni had no love for Jews was readily apparent.
From exile in Egypt, al-Husayni did his part to engineer the 1948 war with Israel not long after the British created the nation. He agitated against Israel until his death in 1974 in Beirut. He wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. Israel replied with a flat no. This man was described by another murdering Islamofascist as “our hero” – none other than Yasir Arafat. The mere fact that this man, this Islamo leader, associated with the Nazis, who would have exterminated him once they were done with him is quite troubling. Fascism and the worse extremists in Islam are kindred souls it appears. The depth of that evil scares me. Keyser Soze and Islamofascists would see eye to eye. Why is that? What’s with this murderous hatred of us and Jews in particular? That’s the next post.

But is it Art????

Whadda????

Okay, I’ve seen some weird stuff from the county before, but what is this thing at the North Transfer station? Per Channel 10 last night it’s a “Recyclone?!?!?!”

Okey- dokey. I just want to know what the county’s been smoking when whoever dreamed this thing up because I want some of that, too!!

Are You Empty?

Fill my hole with precious dirt, love. Till the soil and part the weed. - E. Schrody (aka Everlast)

Often I find inspiration from strange sources. Eric Schrody is a white rapper who speaks like a rapper sometimes. I wouldn't necessarily want Bat Jr. (not his real name) listening to Everlast CD's. However, Mr. Schrody seems to have traveled a spiritual path not traveled by most of us. This the guy that admonished us

"God forbid you'd ever walk a mile in her shoes, then you might really know what
it's like to have to choose."

The subject being abortion, of course. Ouch. Christians I know tend to squirm at that lyric. Yes, it's easy to stand outside abortion clinics and protest and hold signs up, scream and yell, "Abortion is a sin" etc, etc, but to actually embrace that girl confronted with a horrible "choice" is hard. I've always found that to be lazy faith anyway, abortion clinic protesting that is. Which leads to the topic; Are You Empty?

Faith is a veneer on some people. Beneath the thin skin is nothing, which would explain when that skin gets bruised or cut it falls away to nothingness. Today Rick Stedman with Adventure Christian Church talked about cleaning up one's act. There's one problem with cleaning up anything, however, is it gets refilled with something. The fetching Mrs. Guano (not her real name) and I recently steamed cleaned some carpets in our house. To do so meant moving funiture out of the room being cleaned. Just suppose for a moment that the funiture we moved out of the room was infested with cockroaches (it ain't but just go with it, alright?). What did we solve by refilling the clean, unoccupied, room back up with that same bug infested funiture? You solve nothing according to Christ:

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places
seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I
left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied,
swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits
more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition
of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked
generation."

From Matthew 12:43-45. Notice the key word there - unoccupied. When I was wandering back in my college days, I bought several self-help books; The Art of War, Effective Persuasion, The Kama Sutra, etc, etc. The list went on and on. They got me nowhere. As Stedman said this morning, the word "self-help" is an oxymoron. No one has EVER helped themselves except to more of what's mine. I don't mind really, what's mine is yours but have the courtesy to ask. Jesus' parable above might as well have been His review of every self-help book ever written. To clean, to clean up one's act, to sweep up the dirt all by yourself leaves an empty house (your soul) behind. Yes, you've sweeped away the filth that resided in your heart - congratulations BTW - but what are you going to fill that empty space with now? Know that it will fill up.

Much of what we see in the world today is emptiness. We Americans look at the terrorists, who want to kill us in our beds, and are somewhat awestruck by the apparant ferocity of their faith. "They're willing to die for it. Wow! There must be a "there," there, right?"

Wrong. Terrorists are filled with what we all fill ourselves with. Their evil is unrepetant and seemingly irreversible. The difference is we terrorize ourselves with our own sin when we choose it over Christ. That can be reversed by Him. What kind of dirt have you filled your hole with? Let Him fill it with the kind that blooms and part the weed.

Mel-odrama

The Hoguester gave it the right name this am. This is the kind of crap the MSM thrives on anymore - ad hominem journalism. Mel Gibson has an issue. So do I and so do you. It's called sin. I remember as if it was yesterday my first observation that Original Sin is a real thing. One day when he first started to talk, Bat Jr. (not his real name) lied to me. No one taught him how, no one gave him the example on how to do right (so to speak), he just knew.

Mel sinned and sinned big far as us humans tend measure its levels ("Boy, and I thought I screwed up!" sez Jimmy the Greek), but God could hardly care less how BIG Mel's sin is - He hates it all. As much as He hates mine. Was I disappointed to hear the guy that brought us the Passion of the Christ would say something so obscene and revolting? Absolutely. Am I surprised? No. Am I capable of Mel's Friday night degeneracy? I don't know - could be. I haven't had to face this kind of trial. But like me, Mel at least fully understands he's a sinner:

“There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of Anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge
“I am a public person, and when I say something, either articulated and thought out, or blurted out in a moment of insanity, my words carry weight in the public arena. As a result, I must assume personal responsibility for my words and apologize directly to those who have been hurt and offended by those words.
“The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God’s child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.
“I’m not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one on one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.
“I have begun an ongoing program of recovery and what I am now realizing is that I cannot do it alone. I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery. Again, I am reaching out to the Jewish community for its help. I know there will be many in that community who will want nothing to do with me, and that would be understandable. But I pray that that door is not forever closed.
“This is not about a film. Nor is it about artistic license. This is about real life and recognizing the consequences hurtful words can have. It’s about existing in harmony in a world that seems to have gone mad.”

Wow. I'm impressed if still saddened that Mel's devils kicked his posterior Friday. However, the last line is partly his fault and mine and yours. The world is mad because we and it are fallen. What still revolts me more is the gloating by his enemies. Mel Gibson made some serious enemies with the audacity of making the Passion. It's a in-your-face movie about what yours and my redemption cost our Lord and Mel is very in-your-face about it. In the movie, his hand held one of the nails being driven into Christ's hand in all its gory glory. He probably replayed that scene over and over in his mind after sobering up Saturday morning. But what bothers me the most is the MSM crowd celebrating the fact Mel fell off the pedestal they put him on. Talk about the ultimate straw man argument.

He didn't make the Passion to show he's holier than thou. He made it for exactly for the behavior he displayed Friday night. As the Hollyweird parties start up celebrating Mel's fall from grace, the nagging thought that will remain long after their hangovers are gone, is the Passion strikes really close to home and they know it. That's why they hate him so much and are so happy to see him beaten and bloody in the ditch. Somehow that enhances their own purity for them. Lucky for Mel and you and me, Christ travels the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, along with priests, Levites and Samaritans.