Entries from February 2008 ↓

Click thumbnail to view high-resolution flyer (300dpi) in PDF format. Fits letter size paper. Suitable for “flyering” your town or campus.

Mixx is being touted as the alternative to Digg. Of course there are literally millions (give or take) of new social networking sites wanting to be the next Digg, but Mixx is actually pretty good. It’s user-friendly, and thus far seems to have avoided the whole “bury brigade” fiasco. Also, Mixx has taken steps to interact with other social networking programs…very Web 2.0!

Now, from the Mixx Blog:

Now you don’t have to leave Facebook to submit, comment on and share content from around the web, and you can share with your Facebook and your Mixx Friends at the same time. And by setting your Facebook Interests you’ll get the stuff you want delivered right to your profile page.

It’s easy to link your existing Mixx account to your Facebook account or to create a Mixx account and, once you do, voila! It’s a MiniMixx! You’ll be able to:

• See your contacts, your faves, even your Mixx profile
• Find out what’s popular on Mixx: video, stories, photos and tags
• See which of your Facebook friends is also a Mixxer
• Invite Facebook friends to join Mixx
• Find out if any of your Mixx Groups have crossed over
• Take the shortcut to a Facebook version of the MixxLounge and see the Mixxers who are also on Facebook and the number of Karma points they have

And it’s also easy to add content to your Facebook profile page.

If you already have Mixx and Facebook ID’s, the interface is simple. Go to Mixx on Facebook, and follow the directions.

Also, if you’re using the Web Presence application on your Facebook profile, don’t forget to add your Mixx ID to your list of sites.

Also on FHK

Click this link to watch:

Islam: What the West Needs to Know: An examination of Islam, violence, and the fate of the non-Muslim world

(h/t: Lionheart)

Spread the word!

Update 3/30/08:

• Geert Wilders Floods 1389 Blog – Fitna Movie HERE
• Fitna, The Movie Is Here – Where to See It?

From Klein Verzet:
This Week: Fitna, The Movie

Dutch parliamentary member Geert Wilders has announced that his Islam critical film named “Fitna” will be ready at the end of this week. The film, he announced, will soon have its own website:

www.fitnathemovie.com

Revealing fact is that the Dutch parliamentary member choose to host the website not from a server in The Netherlands, but from a server located in North America. Presumably to hold it out of reach of the Dutch government.

Next week, says Wilders, he will start negotiating with Dutch broadcasters to get his 15 minute film broadcasted in The Netherlands. A process that, according to him, can take up to several weeks. This could be sign that the movie will not be released the end of this week. But it could also be a way to put pressure on the Dutch broadcasters who don’t want to broadcast the whole movie, because they all politically oppose Wilders, but who at the same time would even sell their own mother for a scoop.

We keep you posted about the developments around the film Fitna. In the meantime, if people like to provide some free PR to the movie, they should create as many back links as possible to the website “fitna the movie”. This can be done by simply placing links to www.fitnathemovie.com. This can be done on you’re personal blog, other people’s blog comments, discussion forums, websites, etc.

Remember that massive YouTube outage last Sunday?

From The Times of India:
Pakistan lifts curbs on YouTube

26 Feb 2008, 2206 hrs IST, PTI

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities on Tuesday lifted a ban on popular video-sharing website YouTube after it removed “objectionable content” insulting Islam.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had ordered about 70 internet service providers last week to block the website because it had hosted a trailer for a “blasphemous film” by Dutch politician Geert Wilders that portrays Islam in a negative light.

The move by Pakistani authorities to block access to the website caused an accidental near global blackout of YouTube on Sunday.

YouTube , which is owned by Google, said on Monday that an ISP complying with Pakistan’s ban had caused a blackout of the website on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Senate or upper house of Parliament strongly condemned the republication in Denmark of the blasphemous cartoons caricaturing Prophet Mohammed that were also posted on YouTube.

A resolution passed unanimously by the Senate said “serious tensions” are also brewing because of a “sacrilegious film against Islam” made by Wilders.

(Emphasis is ours.)

That’s right… the controversy even brought down YouTube!

These crude and heavy-handed efforts to stop people from watching Fitna will eventually backfire. The harder our foes work to censor vital political speech, the more attention it will get, and the more curiosity will be aroused. That’s just human nature; after all, if the movie warrants that much consternation, then what it contains must be very important indeed.

But even though totalitarian censorship fails in the long run, before that happens it always does enormous damage to human societies and to the human spirit. Geert Wilders’ movie is going to be huge – and it deserves every opportunity to reach its eagerly-awaiting audience.

Here’s where YOU come in:

• Cross-post the Fitna movie announcement on your own blog.
• Email the link to http://www.fitnathemovie.com to your friends.
• Add the link to your bookmarks, favorites, or blogroll.
• Publicize it on social news sites, forums, and relevant comments on blog posts.
• Explain why this movie, and the freedom to distribute it and view it, is so important!

Links:

• Category Link: Articles about Geert Wilders on 1389 Blog
  (Note: To page back through the archive of older articles in a category link, please scroll down and click
  the ← Previous Entries link at the bottom of the page.)
• Klein Verzet: And on dhimmis being proud of it

From the Perspective of a Lifelong Republican

By CzechRebel

Well, if you want to consider the 21st century to have begun January 1, 2000, it would be a tough choice between Clinton and Bush, as Clinton’s last thirteen months in office were pretty hideous. More traditionally, though, we have considered the year ’01 to be the actual beginning of each century. From that perspective, while Clinton’s last three weeks in office were no improvement over the rest of those eight years, the damage he managed to do in that time period was trivial by comparison.

But if any president in the next 92 years really wants to look worse than George W. Bush, he or she is going to have to work pretty hard at destroying the Republican Party; promoting the socialist agenda in the United States; aiding and abetting Islamic terrorism; planting “time bombs” in the economy that are set to go off after he or she leaves office; promoting tyranny against the American people; destroying our relationship with the one nation on the planet that has most in common with us and that has the strongest reasons to be our ally; and last, but certainly not least, supporting a criminal gang of Islamic terrorists in establishing a stronghold in the Balkans.

Destroying the Republican Party

In January of 2001, an historic event took place. Or so we thought. A supposedly conservative Republican became President with the backing of a conservative Republican Congress. What could have been better? Cut taxes, raise revenue, promote business growth, provide jobs, cut federal regulation, recognize States’ rights. But George W turned out to be no Ronald Reagan.

We got some temporary tax cuts, slow to take effect and all too quick to expire. Most notably, the draconian death tax, enacted right out of the Communist Manifesto, will spring back to life soon after Bush leaves office. And every Republican in Congress was told to be a “good Republican” and back the President’s plan rather than hold their ground and insist on something better – so such legislation passed.

George W let Ted Kennedy, one of the leading Senate Communists in all but name, write an education bill that firmly entrenched left-wing propaganda into our youth “re-education camps” – otherwise known as “public schools.” And every Republican in Congress was told to be a “good Republican” and back the President’s plan; so such legislation passed.

The list goes on and on. The end result is that Republicans looked more and more like socialists, and less and less like Conservatives, and – surprise! The party lost the Congressional majority that countless Conservatives had worked decades to achieve.

If George W does not get invited to speak at Democratic convention this summer, it will be a sign of the Democrats’ ungratefulness. After all, no one has done so much to bolster the Democratic Party since FDR!

Promoting a Socialist Agenda

You would think that allowing legislation that cuts taxes for a few years, only to bring them back with a vengeance, not to mention the “No Child Left to Grow Up Without Socialist Indoctrination” legislation, would be enough. But not for George W, he stood by passively and allowed a major frontal assault on freedom of political speech in the form of the McCain-Feingold Act. Yes, THAT McCain – he is an enemy of the freedoms that this blog seeks to protect. Under the new law, the leftist news media can say what they will, but all other will be under the gun of government-controlled censors. It’s ironic – and obviously no accident – that John McCain seems to be one of the three finalists to replace George W as America’s next dictator.

George W let pork-barrel spending run wild, and in doing so, he has betrayed the legacy of his party, and he has betrayed the principles of limited government embodied in the Constitution he swore to uphold. Thirty years ago, everyone knew that the Republicans were fiscally conservative and many leftists feared their rise to power would finally doom socialism in America. Would that it were so!

Twenty years ago, we had already seen some hypocrisy from a Republican-controlled Senate. Even so, Ronald Reagan’s veto pen had pretty much kept the GOP’s image intact, no matter who was in control of Congress. However, in this decade, little boy Bush did not even have the guts to veto his own Republican party’s pork-barrel spending. Now, there is no longer any major party in America that Eugene Debs would have hesitated to embrace. Thanks, George W!

Of course, if George W had ever bothered to read the Constitution, and the Articles of Confederation that preceded it, he would have known that the primary task of the federal government is, and has always been, to secure the homeland. No, like a true socialist, this Georgie Porgie el presidente created a new bureaucracy to do the job that he had already taken an oath to do. Now we have a Department of Homeland Security, multiplying layers of bureaucracy, providing another arena for turf battles, and putting even more roadblocks in the channels of communications. Just try getting rid of that outsized and pointless boondoggle. No matter how well, or indeed how poorly, the DHS does its job – that department will remain in power. So we have more bureaucrats, more spending, more taxes to support it and more socialism, thanks to the present US dictator.

Aiding and Abetting Islamic Terrorism

On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists flew four kamikaze missions against US targets. George W was either too stupid to notice that fact that the terrorists were Mohammedans, or he simply wanted to aid and abet their cause. But then, his family is in the oil business. If he forgets for an instant which side his bread is buttered on, they’ll remind him.

So George W sidestepped the issue. He declared war on “terrorism” rather than on the terrorists themselves and their hate organization, which we allow to masquerade as a religion. Make no mistake about it, Islam and religion, as the rest of the world defines religion, have nothing in common. You don’t see Baptists hijacking planes and flying them into buildings. You don’t see Jains strapping on suicide belts and walking into places were they can kill innocent civilians. You don’t see Hindus killing people for having left their faith. You don’t see Buddhists blowing up trains in Spain. You don’t see Jews getting all bent out of whack because someone makes a political cartoon that includes Moses.

But you do see followers of Mohammad doing all these things, and other heinous things besides. And it happens often. George W. had a golden opportunity to expose Islam for the hate organization that it is now, and has been for 1400 years.

Yet, he praised Islam after 9-11. Instead of interning the enemy, as FDR had the courage to do during World War II, he invited one of them to pray with us right after the horrible event. It should surprise no one that the imam he invited, Hamza Yusuf, turned out to be no moderate at all, but a radical Wahhabist convert who played George W for all he’s worth. And then there’s George W’s other friend, Imam Hassan Qazwini, closely linked to various Islamist organizations in the US.

He even aided and abetted the relatives of Osama bin Laden in their efforts to leave the US, post 9-11. We must agree with our liberal friends on one thing they often say – though not for the reasons they claim. George W. is, in fact, a terrorist, because he aids and abets terrorists.

Economic Time Bombs

1389, the primary admin of this blog, has a degree in economics, and she would not allow the following data to be posted on this blog if she were not 100% certain that it is true. High taxes discourage economic activity. It’s the working poor, those of modest income, those who are in debt, and most of the middle class, who really suffer when taxes are high. When taxes are low, economic activity is stimulated and those at the bottom benefit the most from those opportunities. (Politicians like to talk about “soaking the rich” – but when was the last time a poor person hired anybody? And anyway, rich people will never pay that much in taxes, no matter what you do. They are comparatively few in number. Moreover, they are mostly smart people and that is why they are rich!)

Bush could have insisted that his tax cuts, especially the estate tax cuts, must remain permanent. He did not. After all, “we can always do that later.” Well, later came and no one has been in a tax cutting mood. Income taxes will increase. Estate taxes will revert to what they had been, back in the day when you could still get something for a dollar or so. Tax shelters and estate planning will prevent the rich from losing anything. Middle class families, especially small businesses and family farms, will suffer, as they always do when taxes go up.

Historians don’t always understand economics, so they may even make George W look as though he was a “good president” for the economy. But unless someone steps to the plate, which seems mighty unlikely, economic woes are soon to follow.

Anti-Semitism

We’re tired of hearing the widespread myth that “the Jews” control the media and American thought, and that, because of their influence, US policy is highly pro-Israel. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The US is no ally of Israel, not by any stretch of the imagination. Israel had no problem caring for itself before America supposedly became its “ally”. Witness the way Israel defended itself in 1948, 1967 and 1973. American became its “ally” and convinced it to give back territory. (Note that Israel never asks the US to give Texas or California back to Mexico.) Anybody with normal powers of observation can figure out that, ever since the Carter Administration, it’s petrodollars that have been doing the talking.

Israel is a tiny strip of land surround by Islamic states. Only 7/24 vigilance and sheer determination to survive secures this Jewish homeland. The Arabs have many countries in which to live. Yet, a number of these Arabs have been camping out in Israel – mostly in the hopes of a better economic future than what was available in Muslim-controlled lands – and calling themselves “Palestinians.” Well, the Romans did start calling Judaea “Palestine” and anyone living there when it was called that – including Christians and Jews, had they thought in those terms – would have had every right to call themselves “Palestinians.” But that cannot make “Palestinian” an ethnic identity any more than living in New York City could create an ethnic identity of New Yorkers.

Yet, George W still insists on squandering tax dollars on financial aid to the Palestinian terrorists, who are our enemies. He even supports providing them a terrorist base so they have a safe haven from which to kill more Jews. Calling it a “homeland for the Palestinians” is like calling the area around Auschwitz a homeland for the caretakers of a concentration camp.

Make no mistake about it, support for a Palestinian “homeland” is vile anti-Semitism, and serves as proof that George W is every bit as anti-Semitic as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Anti-Patriot Acts

It is clear to anyone who has at least half a brain, or who has any reading comprehension ability at all, that radical Islam has declared war on the US. Osama bin Laden’s fatwa against the US was in the news well before 9-11. And there was no question about what he meant – none at all. He meant to destroy us, and his followers still mean to do exactly that. And the only way to change their minds is to defeat them.

In World War II, after the Empire of Japan perpetrated an act of war on the US, Japanese-Americans who remained loyal to the Emperor of Japan, and other Japanese-Americans who wished to remain on the West Coast, were watched very carefully. Many were interned. Those who were decidedly in support of the Japanese war efforts were even held as foreign enemies. We won the war and very few of them bothered to complain. They knew what was at stake and they were willing to help the US war effort in that fashion.

FDR never even thought of stripping all Americans of their basic rights and their financial privacy. But George W has done exactly that. Much as I detest FDR, I have to say he was a better man than George W in this regard.

The Holy Land of Kosovo

George W promised to remove US troops from the Balkans, and to honor the treaty with the Serbian people that ended the 1999 Kosovo War (a/k/a the Kumanovo treaty or UN Security Council Resolution 1244). Did he keep his promise? No way! Camp Bondsteel is still alive and well. The Serbs should have known better than to trust the US to honor a treaty. Ask any American Indian. Once you disarm, withdraw, or abandon your struggle in any way, the tendency is for the US to keep whatever the other side gave, and to keep on doing whatever it had been doing. We had expected George W to be a man of character and to keep the agreement with the Serbs. But clearly, little boy Bush has no character.

According to the Kumanovo treaty that ended the 1999 Kosovo War, the Serbs had the right to move their forces back into Kosovo to protect their church property and to protect their people who had been abandoned when the KFOR peacekeeping troops took over that war-torn Serbian province. The Serbs were willing to fight to the finish, perhaps to the last living person, to keep Kosovo as part of their homeland.

When the Clinton Administration had so depleted the American conventional arsenal that the security of US interests elsewhere had been severely compromised, Clinton and company finally agreed to Slobodan Milosevic’s original terms of peace. For some reason, the same wonder weapons that allowed the US to devastate Saddam Hussein’s forces in the 1991 Gulf War were making little, if any, dent in Serbia’s commitment to keep Kosovo as part of Serbia. Yet, the dumb-dumb son of the earlier President Bush, who claimed to be a Christian himself, never could understand that Christian people of Serbia were very committed to keeping the most important part of Serbia as part of Serbia.

Well, yes, it may be hard for anyone who is not a Serb to understand the importance of Kosovo to the Serbian people. Kosovo is the place where the Serbian people pledged themselves and one another to serve the Lord. That is not a familiar concept these days! It may even be impossible for anyone who is not an Orthodox Christian to understand it fully. However, it would be liking telling any Christian—be he Roman Catholic, Protestant or anyone else who adheres to the traditional definition of the faith, as agreed upon in the Seven Councils—to preach the Gospel, but to leave out the part about God walking on Earth as a mortal man and the part about Jesus Christ rising from the dead. There simply would be nothing left.

Kosovo is Serbia. Those words are embedded in the heart of every Serb I have ever met, and trust me, I have met many of them. To a Serb, Serbia is Kosovo – just as, to a Serb or any other Christian, the Gospel message is our Lord coming to Earth as a mortal man and Jesus Christ having risen from the dead.

Yet, because of George W’s love for the pseudo-religion, or rather, the expansionist totalitarian ideology, of Islam, George W recognized the claim of radical Mohammedans that Kosovo should be torn away from Serbia and placed under the rule of a criminal gang of thugs who were nothing less than the local branch of al Qaeda.

The Friend of Terrorists

Clearly, George W. Bush prefers Islam over Christianity. He prefers helping al Qaeda to honoring his oath of office and his pledge to uphold the Constitution. He is obviously working on behalf of al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, both in the Israel and in the Balkans. In siding with terrorists, he has become one himself.

So, we must agree with our liberal friends on this one point – though our reasons are, of course, very different. We at 1389 Blog consider George W. Bush to be every bit as much a terrorist as those nineteen quasi-human wastes of protoplasm who flew hijacked airliners into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

Links:

• Category Link: Articles by CzechRebel on 1389 Blog
  (Note: To page back through the archive of older articles in a category link, please scroll down and click
  the ← Previous Entries link at the bottom of the page.)
• Category Link: Balkans for Dummies Series on 1389 Blog
• Category Link: Articles about the Balkans
• Category Link: Articles about Kosovo
• Category Link: Articles about Orthodox Christianity
• Category Link: Articles about Serbia
• Never Knew that the Church was Orthodox
• What Happened in 1389?
• Kosovo News and Views Roundup 2/23/08
• Serbianna News (feed widget available; see 1389 Blog sidebar)
• AFP: Man Killed At US Embassy In Belgrade Was Serb Student
• AP: UN shoots at Kosovo Serbs
• AP: Serbia hunts down rioters
• AFP: Czech President Fears Post-Kosovo Separatist Snowball
• Israel Matzav: Kosovo: First they came for the Jews?
• Daily Record – George Galloway: We’re On The Brink Of A Balkan Bloodbath
• Chronicles – Serge Trifkovic: Kosovo as a Symbol of Anti-Postmodernism
• Chronicles – Serge Trifkovic: Kosovo: A New Day of Infamy for a New Century
• Political Mavens – Julia Gorin: The Serbian “Myth” of Greater Albania Strikes Again
• Doctor Bulldog and Ronin: Kosovo Recognition a Tricky Question
• Dhimmi Watch: Fjordman: Why We Should Oppose an Independent Kosovo
• “NATO has become the aggressor”: The Case of Kosovo and Metohija, by Bishop Artemije
• Victory or Death: Kosovo
• Victory or Death: London Demonstration
• Victory or Death: Towards Renewal and Renaissance

Today’s Links:

• AdelaideNow:
  • NATO to tackle Kosovo violence
  • Riots greet Kosovo’s new independence
  • Serbia orders ambassador out of United States
  • Serbian president rejects Kosovo independence declaration
• Atlas Shrugs:
  • Dr. Arieh Eldad, Knesset, PM Candidate: “The Moslem Republic of Kosovo”
  • Glick Eviscerates West on Kosovo
  • Pandora’s Box: “The independence of Kosovo is a precedent that all EU countries with an ethnic minority should pursue”
• BalkanInsight.com:
  • Explosions Shake Northern Kosovo
• Brisbane Times:
  • Belgrade recalls ambassador in Australia
• Byzantine Sacred Art Blog:
  • A Stillborn State of KosovA
  • Continued Protests
  • Cyprus Not Alone in the EU
  • EU Unjust, Obsessed with Kosovo Independence
  • Join “Kosovo Is Serbia” Protests
  • Massive Demonstrations in Serbia
  • No “Independence” Even for a Second
  • Other Ways to Fight
  • Patriotic Forces in Serbia Organize
  • Putin: Europeans Should be Ashamed
  • Raving Madman Inching Towards Oval Office
  • Recommended Articles
  • Russian Support
  • Serbia Has Risen!
  • Serbia’s Darkest Hour
  • Stay in Your Province, Stay in Serbia
  • The Bitter Fruits
  • The Sovereignty Issue
  • Unmasking Western Neocolonialism
• DhimmiWatch:
  • John McCain armed Kosovo Islamic terrorists
• Diario de América / America’s Daily:
  • The Islamization of Europe takes a new turn por Petar Petrov
• Doctor Bulldog & Ronin:
  • United States and United Nations help steal Kosovo
• EarthTimes:
  • ‘Zero tolerance’ for armed Albanian groups, Serbia says

• Gates of Vienna:
  • If Kosovo Can, Why Can’t Palestine?
  • Serbia’s Reaction Continues…
  • Sir Edward Grey Revisited
• Gray Falcon:
  • Isn’t Albania Enough?
• Herald Sun (Australia):
  • Voices raised against Kosovo’s split
• Independent (Ireland):
  • Not one fragment of logic in a new broken-down Europe
• Independent (UK):
  • Serbia endorses bomb attack on Kosovo border
• Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy:
  • Is There Anything McCain Could Do to Persuade Me to Support Him? Yes, One Thing: Kosovo!
  • Liberalism 101
    How our own “leaders” have become our enemies.
• Jerusalem Post:
  • Israel won’t recognize Kosovo, for now
  • Kosovo Jews uncertain about future
• PipelineNews.org:
  • U.S. Recognition Of An Al-Qaeda Infiltrated Kosovo Is Indefensible
• Republican Riot:
  • After the Holocaust, we Asked God: “How, Lord, oh HOW Could this have Happened? How could the World Let this Happen?
    And God answered, “You want to know how this could happen? Here, I’ll show ya.”
  • Bush Hands al Qaeda the Keys to Europe: Kosovo
  • In Honor of this Week’s Birth of a U.S.-Sponsored Terror State in Kosovo
  • Kosovo Kool-Aid a No-Brainer for Campaigning Candidates
  • Shmuck, Schlemiel, Schlimazel Shlomo Avineri Selling Schlock
  • The Unprogrammed Muslims of Serbia
• SerbBlog:
  • Kosovo and Islam’s Balkanization of the World
  • Organized Protests Against Kosovo Independence & For Serbia, Sprouting Up All Over the Globe!
  • The West’s Fatal Mistake: We Are All Serbs Now
• The Brussels Journal:
  • Kosovar Endgame
  • Why Belgium Loves Kosovo. And the Consequences for Southern California
• Winds Of Jihad:
  • Another A**hat for the United Nations
• World Net Daily:
  • ‘Independent’ Kosovo: A threat, not a country
• Yahoo! News:
  • Russia denounces Kosovo independence bid
• Yale Daily News:
  • An independent Kosovo could breed terrorism

Our Category Links:

• 1389 Blog Category Links:
  • Articles on the Balkans
  • Articles on Kosovo
  • Articles on Serbia
• 1389 Message Blog Category Links:
  • Articles on the Balkans
  • Articles on Serbia

Flight 93 is the symbol of our woken vigilance. We are supposed to be alert now, to jihadist enemies that hide amongst us, pretending to be trustworthy friends.

Those charged with the memorialization of Flight 93 have instead embraced an anti-spirit of Flight 93, regarding vigilance as somehow beyond the pale even of contemplation.

Listen to the words of Clay Mankamyer, one of the founders of the Flight 93 Memorial Project, describing the Project’s reaction to warnings of Islamic symbolism in the Crescent of Embrace design. They asked the accused architect Paul Murdoch about it. They agreed with him that it was "too big a stretch" to think that he had conspired to intentionally include Islamic symbolism, and so they decided that: "we’re just not going to address the issue." They made an up-front decision NOT to look at the facts.

Here is the audio (50 seconds) followed by a transcript:

The controversy then arose. When I first heard it, it was a street preacher who had drawn attention to the similarities to the red crescent, and when you heard what he had to say about it, and looked at the design, there were without a doubt some striking similarities. He went to, I went to, Paul Murdoch and expressed some concern and wondered what they were going to do about it. Their decision was that, well, certainly everybody is going to see that any similarity is going to be just coincidental and it’s too big a stretch to think that anybody conspired to create anything but a memorial to the heroes who WON the battle that fateful morning, and so they decided that, ‘we’re just not going to address the issue.’

Mankamyer is not ideologically disposed to be politically correct. He is a conservative Christian patriot, speaking in this instance to a Christian Coalition meeting (recorded by Bill Steiner, with the knowledge and permission of those in attendance, 9-18-2007, Greensburg PA). What seems to be operating here is a generous spirit of goodwill, unwilling to believe anything bad about this architect they had all worked with and put their trust in.

Goodwill only towards the man accused of an enemy plot

The problem is that Mankamyer et al. failed to similarly give the benefit of the doubt to those who were issuing warnings about the design. If they had treated the critics as credible people too, they would have let the facts decide, and Murdoch’s dishonesty would have been quickly exposed.

When the controversy over the crescent name and shape first erupted, Murdoch denied that his giant crescent had the same shape as an Islamic crescent:

Theirs is a lunar crescent. Ours isn’t based on that.

Oh yeah? Zombie posted a "throbbing crescent" animation (no longer active) that showed otherwise, and Michelle Malkin broadcast it to the online masses. Here is a three panel re-creation:

"Throb on" shows the Tunisian crescent, matching the geometry of the Crescent of Embrace almost exactly: about 2/3rds of a circle of arc, with a circular inner arc. (Most definitely NOT a lunar crescent, which covers half a circle of arc and has an elliptical inner arc.) "Throb off" shows bare crescent site plan. (Click pic for larger image.)

All that people like Mankamyer had to do was actually look at what people were telling them and they would have known immediately that Murdoch was deceiving them. Instead, they explicitly decided that they were NOT going to look at the facts. They extended good will only to the man who was accused of perpetrating an enemy plot, while extending nothing but ill will towards his accusers.

"A shrine to Micky Mouse"

Mankamyer’s presentation includes some wrenching examples of just how willfully blind he and others have become as they continued down their chosen fact-free path. Listen to the crazy excuse he comes up with for not being concerned about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent (ten seconds):

You see what we are up against though. I could come in here and say… I could draw a point from this window to that window, and it goes right to Orlando Florida and this is a shrine to Micky Mouse. [laughter]

This is clever? A Mecca-oriented crescent or arch shape is the central feature around which every mosque is built. A line across two windows does not orient anything, and the scumbags who hijacked Flight 93 did not pray to Micky Mouse five times a day.

Of course Mankamyer was intentionally offering the stupidest example he could concoct as a way of suggesting that it is just as stupid to be concerned about planting a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the Flight 93 crash site. If he had said that directly everyone in the room would have been disgusted, so instead he made the most disingenuous comparison he could come up with.

This is what their spirit of goodwill has degenerated into: pure malignant bias.

They all know about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent

Notice that Mankamyer does not deny the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. This squares with what Flight 93 Advisory Commission member Tim Baird told Alec Rawls in July 2007: that everyone involved in the Memorial Project is fully aware that the giant crescent does in fact point within two degrees of Mecca. They all just have excuses for why they are not concerned about it.

"I won’t be concerned unless you can prove intent," Baird said, "and it is impossible to prove intent." i.e. Baird does not care what the facts are. There is absolutely nothing that could ever wake him up from his anti-vigilant slumber.

They all know that the public would never accept a giant Mecca oriented crescent on the crash site, regardless of whether it was intentional or not, so they lie about it. One project spokesman after another keeps declaring that factual claims like the Mecca orientation of the crescent are false and "preposterous."

How long before one of these fine upstanding citizens recognizes that it is wrong to keep lying to the public about explosive information that they all know to be true?

Mankamyer says that he would like to see a Congressional investigation

The scenes are quite astounding. Clay Mankamyer, a conservative Christian, manages to get a Christian Coalition meeting laughing about the Mecca orientation of the Flight 93 crescent. How do you ever live that down?

You start by trying. In the question and answer part of the meeting, Bill Steiner asked for an independent investigation, and Mankmyer said he would join Bill in that (10 seconds):

Bill Steiner: "The only concerns we have is that this design be fully vetted by a Congressional investigation before it goes any further."

Bill talks over Mankamyer’s reply, but Mankamyer repeats himself enough to be heard: "And I would like … I would join you in that."

If Mr. Mankamyer would insist publicly on a Congressional investigation, it would go a long ways. So would admitting to the public that he and others in the Project are aware of the factual accuracy of the Mecca-orientation claim.

Tom Burnett Sr. is asking everyone to help him get state and Congressional investigations started. It would certainly help if at least a few people from inside the Memorial Project would start telling the truth.

"I came into this world to be a witness for truth"

The heroes of Flight 93 did not obfuscate. They faced the harsh truth of their situation and acted as love required. Mankamyer understands that. He is a genuine patriot, who dedicated himself to the memorialization of Flight 93.

Somehow–apparently at the urging of architect Paul Murdoch–he let himself be guided by presumption, finding excuses to avoid unpleasant truths. (It was in talking to Murdoch that Mankamyer and others decided it was "too big a stretch to think anyone conspired" and they should therefore "not … address the issue.")

Facing threat of death, Jesus told Pilate that he "came into the world to be a witness for truth" (Jn 18:37). This is his most fundamental instruction to his followers: trust in truth. Never EVER put presumption ahead of witness. For those who make this mistake, it is never to late to undo it.

To join our blogbursts, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.

Blogging Vermont:
US court wields censorship hammer on Wikileaks

Wikileaks, a website that has brought to light many scandalous acts by giving whistleblowers a forum to expose wrong doing anonomously, has been ordered by US District Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California to display blank pages and goes even further by barring them from redirecting traffic to offshore servers. It also bars them from transfering ownership of the domain name wikileaks.org. Once again, a Bush appointed judge has over-extended the government’s conrtrol over our essential freedoms. If ever there were any doubt about our Constitution being under attack, this would be a shining example.

Wikileaks was founded in 2006 by people from a host of countries, including the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa. It has generated headlines by hosting documents exposing several high-profile scandals, including those related to the collapse of the UK’s Northern Rock bank and to prisons in Iraq and and Guantanamo Bay. The site says it has posted more than 1.2 million documents.

In the case in dispute, Wikileaks claimed a bank located in the Cayman Islands engaged in money laundering and tax evasion. The latest agreement came in a lawsuit brought by Bank Julius Baer, the parent company of the accused Cayman bank. After trying unsuccessfully to get Wikileaks to remove the documents, Swiss-based Julius Baer went after Dynadot, the California web hosting company, which according to this copy of the court order [PDF], agreed to roll over in exchange for the suit against it being dismissed. Dynadot also agreed to turn over records related to Wikileaks, including “IP addresses and associated data used by any person, other than Dynadot, who accessed the account for the domain name”. Wikileaks claims that it is an “uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis”. But this is true only if its webhosts can be trusted not to pull the plug on its customers or divulge sensitive client information.

Wikileaks lawyers were given only a few hours notice of this latest hearing, and amazingly the judge allowed the hearing to proceed and issued the injunction without hearing any counter-claim from Wikileaks lawyers. One would hope that this type of shotgun injunction will be overturned on appeal based on the patent unfairness of the proceedings. It would also appear that the court is engaging in what amounts to Government sanctioned censorship. It all is a fascinating story to follow.

Wikileaks has also been banned in China and Thailand. Apparently they have pissed off many rich and powerful people around the world. It will be interesting how this plays out in the U.S. courts, as I’m sure this is only round number one. Stay tuned for more on this one…..

Wikileaks.org under injunction – Wikileaks
(you may get a certificate error from this link, but it is safe to follow)

This is the main site: (hosted outside of the U.S. of course)

https://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks
you may get a certificate error from this link, but it is safe to follow)

Thanks to Blogging Vermont.