Rod Oram: On the Prius to Obscurity

Let me just say that Rod Oram is probably a very nice guy if you get to know him on a personal basis. There my praise for him ends however.

Mr Oram has the distinction of being widely published, I do not. He is influential because of that, I am not.

His business columns are syndicated by the left wing media and snapped up by an unsuspecting and intellectually lazy New Zealand public because the alternative means you have to have the ability to think and reason rather than soak up garbage like a wet liberal sponge.

Because of this and his views about so-called "global warming" he is also a very dangerous person, as are all advocates of GW in all their various political colours and stages of delusion.

The GW agenda is being pushed as a means of control, higher taxes and will be fatal for business and the global economy when emission trading schemes inevitably collapse in a heap of harmless (in terms of the gas not the fallout for the global economy) carbon dioxide.

Last week, evidence of fraud, lies and cover-ups from the GW pushers themselves - via leaked emails and better known as Climategate - was uncovered that should completely blow GW and its followers out of the water but Rod Oram chose to ignore this last Sunday when yet another diatribe from him about GW pushed the line that he keeps trying to sell his readers - that GW is the most important thing since that first atom exploded quite some time ago and you better be on board the GW Prius or by god you will not be the chosen one and you are gonna go straight to hell in your Range Rover Vogue.

In New Zealand NIWA has been fudging figures to suit their purposes and Mr Oram would be aware of this.

Why then does he continue to push this line?

Is he stupid? I don't think so.

Is he ignorant of the facts? Surely he cant be? He has Google on his computer and can read the scientific evidence against GW.

Does he have an agenda? Like most of us, yes he does, but his agenda is hidden under reams of Climate-babble.

But why?

Well, like most other proponents of GW there is a question of dirty filthy capitalistic profit ( Oh you are such a sarcastic bastard Darren! ) One can only imagine then that for Mr Oram it is also about money.

Al Gore, the number one peddler of the GW myth has become very rich from his connection to the GW religion and the conflicted business interests that he invests in.

We know Mr Oram offsets his "Carbon Footprint" by buying carbon credits when he jets off to the next GW conference in Brazil, London or Wairoa and we also know he pushes "Green Technology" and a fancy new way to run the global economy - see "Green Jobs" for an explanation - at every opportunity.

How much money does Mr Oram have invested in the "Green Economy", an "economy" that relies upon the GW machine to continue to function regardless of the fraud on which it is clearly based?

We don't know but I challenge Rod to come clean and let us know in one of his future columns on this topic just what financial interest he has in keeping the GW windmill spinning.

Until then anything he writes should be viewed with a least suspicion and at worst contempt.

I am convinced that contempt is the most appropriate adjective for him and he deserves the obscurity he so clearly craves as the thread continues to unwind on the emperors clothes.


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MARK STEYN: Franchising terror, mosque by mosque (Part Three)

One by one, through immigration and then through a birth rate that tops every demographic outside the third world, Muslims and their pervasive violent religion spreads its evil tentacles the world over.

The fact that we in the West stand by and watch this happen with our hands open wide for a big Kymbayaish group hug is simply stunning in its stupidity and dangerous beyond comprehension.

Communists had 'deep sleepers' who had
to be controlled in a hierarchical chain.
But with Islam, who needs that?

Islam is not just a religion. Those lefties who bemoan what America is doing to provoke "the Muslim world" would go bananas if any Western politician started referring to "the Christian world." When such sensitive guardians of the separation of church and state endorse the first formulation but not the second, they implicitly accept that Islam has a political sovereignty too. There is an "Organization of the Islamic Conference": It's like the EU and the Commonwealth and the G8 -- that is, an organization of nation states whose heads of government hold regular meetings. Imagine if someone proposed an "Organization of the Christian Conference" that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and presidents and voted as a bloc in transnational bodies.

So it's not merely that there's a global jihad lurking within this religion, but that the religion itself is a political project -- and, in fact, an imperial project -- in a way that modern Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are not. Furthermore, this particular religion is historically a somewhat bloodthirsty faith in which whatever's your bag violence-wise can almost certainly be justified. And, yes, Christianity has had its blood-drenched moments, but the Spanish Inquisition, which remains a byword for theocratic violence, killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in a typical year.

So we have a global terrorist movement insulated within a global political project insulated within a severely self-segregating religion whose adherents are the fastest-growing demographic in the developed world. The jihad thus has a very potent brand inside a highly dispersed and very decentralized network much more efficient than anything the CIA can muster. And these fellows can hide in plain sight. As the Times of London reported in 2006: "An American al-Qaeda operative who was a close associate of the leader of the July 7 [2005] bombers was recruited at a New York mosque that British militants helped to run. British radicals regularly travelled to the Masjid Fatima Islamic Centre, in Queens, to organize sending American volunteers to jihadi training camps in Pakistan. Investigators reportedly found that Mohammad Sidique Khan had made calls to the mosque last year in the months before he led the terrorist attack on London that killed 52 innocent people. Mohammad Junaid Babar, one recruit from the Masjid Fatima Islamic Centre, has told U.S. intelligence officials that he met Khan in a jihadi training camp in Pakistan in July 2003. He claims that the pair became friends as they studied how to assemble explosive devices. Babar, 31, a computer programmer, says that it was at the Masjid Fatima centre that he became a radical."

And so it goes. The mosques are recruiters for the jihad and play an important role in ideological subordination and cell discipline. In globalization terms, that's a perfect model. Unlike the Soviets, it's a franchise business rather than owner-operated; the Commies had "deep sleepers" who had to be "controlled" in a very hierarchical chain. But who needs that with Islam? Not long after Sept. 11, I said, just as an aside, that these days whenever something goofy turns up on the news, chances are it involves some fellow called Mohammed. It was a throwaway line, but if you want to compile chapter and verse, you can add to the list every week.

- A plane flies into the World Trade Center? Mohammed Atta.

- A sniper starts killing gas station customers around Washington, D.C.? John Allen Muhammed.

- A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri.

- A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet.

- A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed.

- A British subject self-detonates in a Tel Aviv bar? Asif Mohammed Hanif.

- A terrorist cell bombs the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? Ali Mohamed.

- A gang rapist preys on the women of Sydney? Mohammed Skaf.

- A Canadian terror cell is arrested for plotting to bomb Ottawa and behead the prime minister? Mohammed Dirie, Amin Mohamed Durrani and Yasim Abdi Mohamed.

These last three represent a "broad strata" of Canadian society, according to Mike McDonnell, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a man who must have aced sensitivity training class. To the casual observer, the broad strata would seem to be a very singular stratum: In their first appearance in court, 12 men arrested in that Ontario plot requested the Koran.

When I made my observation about multiple Mohammeds in the news, Merle Ricklefs, a professor at the National University of Singapore and South-East Asian editor of the 16-volume Encyclopedia of Islam, remarked sarcastically, "Deep thinking, indeed." Well, gosh, maybe it's not terribly sophisticated. But then again, when you're dealing with fellows who decapitate female aid workers in Iraq and engage in mass slaughter of Russian schoolchildren, maybe sophistication isn't always helpful. Particularly when sophistication seems mostly to be a form of obfuscation by experts wedded to the notion that Islam is something that simply can't be understood unless you've read all 16 volumes of their Encyclopedia, or, better yet, written them.

For those of us who aren't professors of Islamic studies, the obvious course is to step back and try to work from first principles: What's happening? Who's doing it? The five-thousand-guys-named-Mo routine meets the "reasonable man" test: It's the first thing an averagely well-informed person who's not a multiculti apologist notices -- here's the evening news and here comes another Mohammed.

From America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it, by Mark Steyn.
Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Copyright (Copyright) 2006 by Mark Steyn.

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Mad Muslims make Israeli Women move from Cafe

The Turkish Cafe owner who kicked out two Israeli women from his Invercargill cafe simply because they were Israeli had every right to do so.

Wrong headed because he is taking the side of Palestinian murdering terrorists who target innocent civilians, the cafe is nevertheless his and he should be allowed to serve anyone he likes.

Sisters Natalie Bennie and Tamara Shefa were upset after being booted out of the Mevlana Cafe in Esk St by owner Mustafa Tekinkaya.

They chose to eat at Mevlana Cafe because it had a play area for Mrs Bennie's two children, but they were told to leave before they had ordered any food, Mrs Bennie said.

"He heard us speaking Hebrew and he asked us where we were from. I said Israel and he said `get out, I am not serving you'. It was shocking."

Mr Tekinkaya, who is Muslim and from Turkey, said he was making his own protest against Israel because it was killing innocent babies and women in the Gaza Strip. continued at Stuff

JOHN HAWKINS/Southland Times

SHOCKED AND HURT: Israeli nationals Natalie Bennie, left, and Tamara Shefa, with Mrs Bennie's two children Noah, 2, and Ella, 4, were told to leave Mevlana Cafe in Invercargill because they were from Israel.

JOHN HAWKINS/Southland Times

TAKING A STAND: Mevlana Cafe owner Mustafa Tekinkaya, left, with family and friends.

Forget for a moment that if it was a Palestinian refused service there would be violent protests from mad Muslims and hangers on.

The moronic Human Rights Commission doesn't think the owner has the right to refuse service but they are hard to work out at the best of times.

Where is John Minto this morning?

c Political Animal 2009

MARK STEYN: Loving thine enemy (Part Two)

In this excerpt from Mark Steyn's America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it, we learn how weakness from Muslim extremists' enemies is used to target the weak minded and feeble left amongst us.

Fighting a war against terror is hard. Israel is a victim of this at present. They cannot fight justifiably against attack on their land because it isn't seen as "right" to kill an insane enemy because, well, they really are just the same as you and me and deserve the same sort of respect.

They don't.

The more the Islamists step on our toes, the more we waltz them gaily around the room

After September 11, the first reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, so did the Prince of Wales, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, the prime minister of Canada and many more. And, when the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died away, you couldn't help feeling that this would strike almost any previous society as, well, bizarre. Pearl Harbor's been attacked? Quick, order some sushi and get me into a matinee of Madam Butterfly!

Seeking to reassure the co-religionists of those who attack you that you do not regard them all as the enemy is a worthy aim but a curious first priority. And, given that more than a few of the imams in those mosque photo-ops turned out to be at best equivocal on the matter of Islamic terrorism and at worst somewhat enthusiastic supporters of it, it involved way too much self-deception on our part. But it set the tone for all that followed, to the point where with each bomb or plot -- from September 11 to London to Toronto -- the protestations of Islam's good faith grew ever more fulsome.

Consider the name given to the current conflict: "war on terror." Wait a minute. Aren't wars usually waged against named enemies? Yes, but, to the progressive mind, the very concept of "the enemy" is obsolescent: There are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated. In part, it's societal forgetfulness. In an electronic age, a present-tense culture, we assume that social progress is like technological progress: It can't be reversed. Just as you can't disinvent the internal combustion engine, so you can't disinvent women's rights. Just as the horse and buggy yielded to the steam train and the Ford Model T and the passenger jet, so the advanced social-democratic society will march onward to state day care and 30-hour work weeks and gay marriage and ever greater ethnic diversity -- and nothing can turn it back, certainly not a lot of seventh-century weirdbeards. Many of us figure the Islamist plan to re-establish the caliphate is the equivalent of that moment in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie when Plankton roars, "I'm going to rule the world!" Towering over him, SpongeBob says, "Good luck with that."

But you never know: It might be that we're the plankton. "Our enemies are small worms," Adolf Hitler told his generals in August 1939. "I saw them at Munich." In Europe today, as in the thirties, the political class prostrates itself before an insatiable force that barely acknowledges the latest surrender before moving on to the next invented grievance.

Indeed, a formal enemy is all but superfluous to requirements. Bomb us, and we agonize over the "root causes." Decapitate us, and our politicians rush to the nearest mosque to declare that "Islam is a religion of peace." Issue bloodcurdling calls at Friday prayers to kill all the Jews and infidels, and we fret that it may cause a backlash against Muslims. Behead sodomites and mutilate female genitalia, and gay groups and feminist groups can't wait to march alongside you denouncing Bush and Blair. Murder a schoolful of children, and our scholars explain that to the "vast majority" of Muslims "jihad" is a harmless concept meaning "healthy-lifestyle low-fat granola bar." Thus the lopsided valse macabre of our times: the more the Islamists step on our toes, the more we waltz them gaily round the room.

As French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself." During the Danish cartoon jihad, The New York Times gave a routinely pompous explanation of why it would not be showing us the representations of the Prophet: Sensitive news organizations, the editors explained, had the duty to "refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols." The very next day, the Times illustrated a story on the Danish controversy with a piece of New York "art" from a couple of seasons earlier showing the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung. Multiculturalism seems to operate on the same even-handedness as the old Cold War joke in which the American tells the Soviet guy that "in my country everyone is free to criticize the president," and the Soviet guy replies, "Same here. In my country everyone is free to criticize your president." Under the rules as understood by The New York Times, the West is free to mock and belittle its Judeo-Christian inheritance, and, likewise, the Muslim world is free to mock and belittle the West's Judeo-Christian inheritance. If one has to choose, on balance Islam's loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than the Western elites' loathing of their own.

Insurgencies, whether explicitly terrorist or more subtle, persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets. The IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. The Islamists have figured similarly. The only difference is that most terrorist wars are highly localized. We now have the first truly global terrorist insurgency because the Islamists view the whole world the way the IRA view the bogs of Fermanagh: They want it, and they've calculated that our entire civilization lacks the will to see them off.

From America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it, by Mark Steyn. 
Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Copyright (Copyright) 2006 by Mark Steyn.

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c Political Animal & Mark Steyn 2009