A web journal committed to defend liberty, justice, and peace, by declaring the truth in love.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

27-28 September 2006

Hello. This is a day in which I am required to bide my time. Such things in my home require me to spend time not getting inspired to write, but to go through health-related actions that I would just as soon impose upon my worst enemy. I am one of a multitude of people, telling the world that a faction of Islam, a combination of Salafist-Wahhabist Islam, involving Muslims of both the Sunni and Shiite branches of this faith, are at war to destroy all that we take for granted each day.

Where do I start now? I'll chat later. I have to go, but I'll be back. Au revoir.

---Belisarius II---

26-27 September 2006

Well, hello. While I am here, whiling away the moments before the wife and I head off to bed, I am going to put down a few choice pieces of information that I would like to hand over to everybody. Hamid Gul, the top reporter for the Pakistan official news agency, announced eight days ago that Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan field commander had been interviewed by him, and that, according to the field commander, bin Laden and his partner in Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had given the go-ahead to AQ operatives in the USA to commence a full attack with suitcase nuclear devices against 7-10 major U.S. cities. Furthermore, the AQ associate disclosed to Gul that the devices were in the USA, and that they had been successfully assembled the materials to make and activate the bombs, and that they had been brought in through the coordination efforts of the chief of AQ in the Western Hemisphere, G. Adnan Shukrijumah. He in turn had used his contacts among the MS13 gang on both sides of the Mexican border, and had brought in his deadly contraband through the gangs' smugglers units.

I believe this guy. And I am, in pointing this out, referring to some things said yesterday. We're all acting like the party is still going on. September 11th never happened, and the whole war against Islamofascism thing is just hype by a Bush administration trying to sound the alarm in order to avoid accountability for its own failings.

It's not. And that will be made manifest very soon. In the meantime, au revoir.

---Belisarius II---

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

25-26 September 2006

Well, this is going to have to be short. Another long day of doing busy work in order to get clear to do real work. Oh, well, complaining will not help matters at all, so I won't. I'm mindful of the fact that much more serious issues are emerging on the horizon....heck, they're almost into port. We're fast coming into the realization that we have our own Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo to deal with. It's Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and Kim Jong-Il. And this is a crowd who, once they all get nuclear weapons (as North Korea already has), will not be interested in using them to get bargaining leverage. They will use them. And it won't be pretty.

Yet, the world goes on with the party, as if these tyrants were just made up by a bunch of neighborhood kids inventing a fake war game. You know, how little girls will sometimes make up their own little language to converse with noone but themselves. Everyone is mindless about the emotional-political-cultural-economic train wreck that is coming on the world. I'll talk more about that tomorrow, when I'm less tired. After all, it's 1:45 a.m.

Ciao.

Friday, September 22, 2006

21-22 September 2006

I have been quite busy with my day job today, but I have kept up enough attention to what is going on to note that the storm clouds continue to gather.

First, the eminent columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger, wrote an article today about the "religious cleansing" of the Middle East, North Africa, southern Asia, and some parts of Africa being done by "the religion of peace", Islam. Unless something happens very soon, the very parts of the world that are called "the cradle of Christianity" will be completely bare of anything other than Islamists. And that "cleansing" is being done the way that they always have--no, not through appeals to reason and conscience to convert, no, but through kidnapping, extortion, rape, beating, arson, false imprisonment, torture, and murder.

Then the news comes from Indonesia that three Christian activists were executed in Sulawesi for leading the fight by a Christian militia against Islamofascist paramilitary forces in 2003. They had killed about 70 Muslims in a firefight in at least one town, after the Muslims had killed more than 1,000 Christians, usually in their homes, businesses, and churches. Recently Muslim gangs had set upon Christian schoolgirls, on their way home from school, and hacked off their limbs before killing them with machetes. The Muslims who were responsible for the mass murders, as well as the burning of churches, schools, businesses and homes received either prison sentences of less than five years, or received no punishment at all. Riots have now started on Sulawesi, some by Christians, of course, but more of it done by Muslims, who apparently were angry that the executions were not done fast enough, or to more of them.

And then there is the statements of both Iranian and Venezuelan dictators Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez in recent days, during the UN General Assembly in New York. Ahmadinejad condemns the USA and Great Britain falsely as guilty of mass murder and conquest, and then offers a prayer---a prayer!---asking that God send the 12th Imam to create the final apocalypse of war and death. The prayer is covered by virtually noone at all in the worldwide media, except for talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Chavez calls President Bush "the devil" in their, the UN's midst and that Bush believed himself to be the "ruler of the world." Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal columnist extraordinaire specializing in Latin American issues, points out that Chavez is seeking to work with Bolivian president Evo Morales to take over that country's natural gas supplies, which are the fourth largest in the world and upon which South America is deeply dependent, particularly Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

In reference to Mr. Henninger's article, he discusses Pope Benedict XVI's purpose in the speech in Regensburg, Germany, and concludes that it is a direct response to Ahmadinejad's recent demands by letter to several world leaders to convert to Islam. Benedict is urging dialogue, based on reason, with the members of both Islam and "Western" faiths, including those who have embraced a secular ideology. The Muslim leaders are not willing to meet Benedict half way, but have demanded his immediate resignation. Well, not only no, but hell , no.

These articles are to be found at: the Wall Street Journal;
Captain's Quarters;
Hugh Hewitt.

The darkness is growing. And we are not ready. But I have a feeling that we will be. Adios.

---Belisarius---

Thursday, September 21, 2006

20-21 September 2006

Greetings, everybody! Well, after being away from everyone, that is, from blogging for two weeks, I'm back. We have been finally finishing a move of our office from one room of our house to another, with all sorts of meetings and distractions in between. I am really glad to be working at this new work station, for it has a lot more room, and doesn't have the feel of a dungeon in 140 deg. F. heat.

Speaking of feeling the heat, I have heard that a Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir, has disclosed meetings that he has had with high-level Al Qaeda-Taliban leadership in the last week. Mr. Mir has had access to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri on multiple occasions over the last decade and a half, and has been privy to information that heralded major attacks of the past: 9/11, Bali, the Kenya-Tanzania U.S. embassy attacks in 1998, to name a few examples. Now Mr. Mir has said that he was told on September 12th by the Al Qaeda field commander in Afghanistan that the next great attack on the United States is imminent. His story appears credible, especially since the leader of the attack is G. Adnan Shukrijamah, the recognized Al Qaeda leader for the Western Hemisphere, and it has been well-known in intelligence circles that Osama and Al Qaeda have planned suitcase nuclear attacks for years against 7-8 U.S. cities. Well, the date is so close at hand, according to Mr. Mir, that he was told to announce the attack and urge all Muslims living in the USA to leave, in order to escape becoming victims of these attacks.

Well, I cried 'wolf' about a possible strike by Hezbollah on August 22nd, so I'm a little gunshy. However, I think it's time for people to err on the side of caution, and listen to those public service announcements of having 3-7 days worth of non-perishable provisions and other supplies in the case of a disaster. Our open-like-a-sieve borders have been exploited at last, and any laws that may be passed to ensure border security are now probably too late. We will now become serious about the threat to us by radical Islamism. What a horrible way to finally realize our need to unite as a nation and change ourselves to meet and conquer this threat to our civilization.

If you are a praying person, go to it. If you're not, I suggest starting now. This is serious.

--Belisarius--

Friday, September 08, 2006

8 September 2006---PM

I simply am amazed at the willingness of the opinion leadership and the newsmakers from around the planet to join together and happily join in a lie. The U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence has released its findings on pre-Iraq war intelligence and the impact on its alleged errors by anti-Hussein exile groups (which are today involved in the Iraqi government, particularly one Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress). In that report, they contained "findings", which were a recitation of what they understand to be facts which they believe is different from what the SSCI believed to be true in March 2003, the beginning of the Iraq war. The report also contains a small section called "conclusions", which was added at the end of the full report by members of the panel who are Democrat Party members, along with a few Republicans. Those "conclusions" have been publicized and spread all over the world, with the lead story saying that, "No link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein found by Senate panel...major Bush claim discredited." The Democrats have used the "conclusions", made by their own, to claim that President Bush should just hide in the White House in shame and make no more public arguments that Iraq is a major battlefield in the war against Islamist Jihadism, that a second fundamental reason for going to war is now taken away from him, along with the lack of WMD. The "revelations" prove Bush to be a fraud, deceiving the world to take the USA to war, and thereby make him and his closest advisors guilty of monstrous war crimes. The pathetically weak responses by Republican senators, saying in effect, that the findings contain "nothing new", that the conclusions by Democrats are "unwarranted", sound like the whining of whipped puppies. George Bush now, the word is, even more of an incompetent idiot and criminal and pathological liar than ever. We have the grand conclusions of the "independent" body of august United States Senators!

The problem is, just as on the case of WMD, none of it is true. The factual findings are in complete contradiction to the "conclusions", and demonstrate that, while Saddam Hussein may not have personally shaken their hands, his government was up to its eyeballs with Al Qaeda in particular and Islamist terrorists in general. I shall continue this thread next time. Sad, how we can't observe the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks without spending our time lying about our leaders, protecting the guilty and criminal, and attacking and destroying the good names of the innocent. We are totally setting ourselves up for really serious trouble, and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Back tomorrow. Shalom.

7-8 September 2006

Hi. Once again late. I will talk to you again later today (Friday the 8th). I have heard and read enough. But I am going to be a bit more systematic. Each day I will share with you what I have learned from about 8-12 different publications. I will confess without shame, I will be biased. I have only so much time to read so many online journals and websites. They will all be moderate to conservative, with perhaps one exception. But I have full confidence that they will be factual, and what bias they have will be, frankly, a bias that is in line with truth, rather than falsehood. I think that will become more clear as time goes by.

God bless for now.

---Belisarius II---


Thursday, September 07, 2006

6-7 September 2006

Hello, everyone. I hope that your days have been blessed, and full of success in what you're doing, rather than a drudgery. To those who are in unhappy circumstances, my heart goes out to you, and my prayers for you. The world is a very unhappy place these days, more so than normal, so I root for everyone's happiness.

I confess that I have been rather convicted in my heart of the need to control my anger over things in the world that disappoint or outrage me. Telling the truth, warning people about conditions in the world that are dangerous and deadly, such as Islamofascism, is not a pleasant affair. It doesn't help that I allow anger to keep me from speaking with rationality and calm reliance upon the facts of a matter.

So, I'll chat a little about things in a new way, and hope that it remains the norm for good. I have been keeping up with the statements made by U.S. President Bush about the nature of the threat of terrorism, the relationship of the war in Iraq with the war against Islamist terrorism, and the necessity for clandestine intelligence operations and clearly defined ability to detain and try terrorists seized in battle in well-secured military tribunals. I have to say that he has started to sound more like the President I admired, not the tired, frustrated, distracted man he has appeared to be lately.

I'll talk more about it tomorrow. Got to go, it's after midnight. Ciao.

---Belisarius II---

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

5-6 September 2006

Yes, I haven't said much. Well, I have been busy, more than expected. I hope to talk more in a little while. Hasta al pronto. Adios.

---Belisarius II---

Monday, September 04, 2006

4 September 2006

Hi. Hope your Sunday and weekend were good. It's late, but I've come upon some good new info on the War on Terror which I think that you may be interested to know, especially with U.S. congressional elections coming up on November 7th. Talk to you later. Adios.

---Belisarius II---

Sunday, September 03, 2006

2-3 September 2006, Sat-Sun.

Hello, everybody. There's a lot of reason for concern, but I know that a rational and balanced man can only be bothered by the conditions of the world around him for so long. He has to keep his attention to the matters of his personal life: his job, his wife, his children (at home or grown), his spiritual life. Today was a good day. I let my wife talk me into buying a small refrigerator for my youngest daughter, who lives in LA, and who really needs a good unit to replace the old, often breaking-down refrigerator she has. We worked on cleanup of the house, new storage for our outdoor tools and equipment, talked to our daughters, planned a really neat weekend next weekend. It has been a long time since I was able to do some of the things that I am starting to do. Some of them...I never have. This is a good time. More to come, I hope.

I keep my eyes open, however, on the dark clouds gathering. I'm not interested in seeing innocent people die, women and children especially, no matter what nation or "by what name one calls on God," to paraphrase Mel Gibson in the movie, "We Were Soldiers." I am, however, very interested in seeing the guilty die. I support the death penalty for those who are guilty men. And the thugs of Hezbollah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the killers of Al Qaeda,---they are very, very guilty men. And if they are not defeated, there will be many, many more who will die. Innocent people. People of every race and religion. The world cannot afford to keep averting their heads from the dark clouds gathering, the way too many of us try to pretend that the poor and homeless are invisible when we find ourselves in a downtown area of our city.

Indeed, I shudder when I read of the scenario of what may happen with just a small band of individuals, carrying weapons of unspeakable horror, in briefcases, and vials of concentrated liquid. I shudder to think that these people actually want to unleash such vile instruments of death in the most densely populated places possible, around the greatest numbers of innocent people possible. These murderers will not care if many who die oppose America's entry and continued advancement of the war in Iraq, or if they are members of the Muslim faith, or if they see the images of death, mayhem, poverty, and despair in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and their hearts fill with compassion for the less fortunate. All they will care about is the successful slaughter of those caught in their crosshairs.

I have to stay engaged, in multiple areas. I believe that my culture, my country, my civilization is worth defending. And while I am too old to fight with a gun, I can do it with my keyboard, and I shall. But it is no use fighting for civilization if what passes for it loses its faith, its heart, its desire to see justice done. There are things that I believe God has exposed in my own character that forces me to think of the feelings of others beside myself, in ways that I did not before. I'll talk more about that in the future, and I hope that people who read what I have to say will see a purpose to my passion that does not fit neat stereotypes.

I read today, in the Wall Street Journal, a really provocative article by two of the leaders of the Iranian democracy movement, battling against the Ahmadinejad-Khameni regime, Ali Afshari and Akbar Atri. These two men, while entreating U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to challenge Ahmadinejad about their treatment of their own people, and to visit the prison where so many human rights activists have been held, tortured, even killed. The perspective about the West's inability to come to terms with the enemy that is the Iranian government (not its people) is something that every person who wishes to seek peace at all costs should observe, and upon which they should reflect whether the most peace-loving thing to do is to prepare for conflict---further conflict.

I'll refer you to the most salient words in Messrs. Afshari and Atri's article:

"Scores of other student activists are languishing in prisons throughout the country. The noose has been tightened around the neck of writers, journalists and bloggers in the past few months -- in their struggle to still remain afloat, they are committing bizarre acts of self-censorship. Satellite dishes are being collected so as to cut off the public's access to the free press and the news of the global community. Women's groups, labor organizations and student groups are not permitted even the most peaceful acts of protest. Women don't have the right to dress as they choose. And to show their respect for the international community, to the very inaugural session of the Human Rights Council where Mr. Annan delivered his historic speech, Iran sent the notorious Chief Justice Saeed Mortazavi, who is known to us as the butcher of the free press. These are the law-enforcement officials of the government with whom Mr. Annan plans to conduct civilized negotiations.

"In the nearly three decades since the 1979 revolution, Iranian activists have learned the hard way how essential it is to respect international conventions. We have realized that nothing can be accomplished by radicalism or unilateralism. Our dream is to see an Iran that stays true to the U.N. and its values and covenants. We also believe that all the violent rhetoric of our rulers, especially that of President Ahmadinejad, is rooted in our domestic problems. An undemocratic Iran will be a danger to the world, with or without nuclear arms. An Iranian government that has no regards for human rights cannot be a reliable party in any negotiations. Time and time again, these very points have proven true about Iran in the last 30 years. When the regime conducted its political assassinations of Iranian dissidents on European soil, European countries thought this was only the domestic problem of another country -- until terrorism became a global affliction.

"As two student activists, we urge Kofi Annan to place the issue of human rights as the top priority on his agenda. His visit happens to coincide with the anniversary of the massacre of political prisoners in 1987, when several thousand were executed in the span of two weeks -- a crime for which the regime has never been held accountable, and whose perpetrators remain in power. We hope that Mr. Annan pays a visit to the Evin prison to lend an ear to the numerous peaceful activists who want nothing but to see Iran join the world community as a credible partner."

The most important thing that will make people, who are reluctant to leave a secure, peaceful personal life and do what they can to oppose an insane mass murderer is education. I hope I can be of help to that. Ciao for now.

---Belisarius II