Why the South Was Right

And Why We Must Renew The Cause
 
by Steve Wilkins

With the defeat of the South, true liberty, liberty in the historic and Biblical sense, was lost to this land. James McPherson has remarked, 'the Civil War changed the United States as thoroughly as the French Revolution changed that country. . . The United States went to war in 1861 to preserve the Union; it emerged from war in 1865 having created a nation.' (Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, p. viii) The War for Southern Independence was indeed the American equivalent of the French Revolution.

            It is little wonder that a young man named Karl Marx who was living in London at the time working as a correspondent for the New York Tribune, followed the War with great interest and excitement. He saw the implications of the War for the world and wrote gleefully to his friend Friedrich Engels that the War would be the beginning of a 'world transforming . . . revolutionary movement.'

            Slavery, so far from being the cause of the war, was merely the pretext for revolution. As Prussian military theorist, Carl Von Clausewitz once stated, 'War is the pursuit of political goals by other means.' There was seldom a more successful revolution. The old Constitutional Republic was destroyed and an octopus?like centralized government took its place.

            James McPherson has noted, 'The war marked the transition of the United States to a singular noun. The 'Union' became the nation, and Americans now rarely speak of their Union except in an historical sense.' This is a significant change. Our speech reflects this. Before 1865 the accepted usage was 'The United States are,' but since that time it has been 'The United States is.' We are no longer a union of confederated states, but a nation where the individual integrity and political sovereignty of the states is denied.

            Thus, the old federal republic in which the national government rarely touched the average citizen except through the post?office is now dead and has been replaced by centralized bureaucracy which seeks to control every action. What we call liberty, our forefathers called slavery.

            This was precisely what Dr James H. Thornwell and others had feared. In a tract entitled 'Our Danger and Our Duty' Dr Thornwell stated in regard to the consequences of a Northern victory, 'If they prevail, the whole character of the Government will be changed, and, instead of a federal republic, the common agent of sovereign and independent States, we shall have a central despotism, with the notion of States for ever abolished, deriving its powers from the will, and shaping its policy according to the wishes, of a numerical majority of the people; we shall have, in other words, a supreme, irresponsible democracy. . . The avowed end of the present War is, to make the Government a government of force.'

            The 14th amendment was particularly notorious in this regard. It has been interpreted so as to apply the Bill of Rights to the individual States. Section 1 says, 'No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. . .' This has had the effect of changing the nature of our government in two ways:

            1) It changed the intent of the Bill of Rights which were originally intended to limit the Federal government's powers, to restrictions upon the particular states. Thus, whereas before this amendment, the states had protection against the intrusions of the Federal government, now the Federal government has become the watch?dog of the states. The states became 'subsidiaries' of the nation rather than 'parties' to the Union. The central government became the master rather than the servant of the states.

            2) This shift has transferred immense power to the Federal government to restrict the internal actions of states. Senator Lot Morrill of Maine stated quite bluntly the purpose of the 14th amendment: 'We must see to it, that hereafter, personal liberty and personal rights are placed in the keeping of the nation...against State authority and State interpretations...The great object of this amendment is, therefore, to restrain the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect these great fundamental guaranties.' (Abraham Lincoln and The Second American Revolution, p. 143)

            Within five years after its ratification, the Supreme Court in the Slaughter?House cases began to redefine 'privileges and immunities.' The Court rejected the historic view of these things as biblically or religiously based and declared that privileges and immunities owed their existence to the grace of the Federal Government. Liberty in short, did not come from God, but was a gift of the Federal Government.

            By this definition, the Federal Government has taken the place of God. It has arrogated to itself the privilege of defining what is right and wrong, good and evil. When God is not acknowledged, man becomes the sovereign. When man becomes the definer of liberty, liberty is lost.

            Thus we find that we have lost what our forefathers called liberty. We have grown up in a world where no one truly 'owns' property (you may think you own it, but try not paying your property taxes one year and you will see who really owns your land).

            Further, we do not have liberty to use our property in lawful ways. 'Environmental' laws limit the freedom of use as well. We can kill our unborn children, but are forbidden to cut down a tree on our own property without a permit. The Federal Government as if it was God, asserts a pre?eminent claim on the earth and the fullness thereof. One peculiarly blatant expression of this is 'eminent domain.' Whatever and whenever the Government desires the use of your land, it claims the prerogative to it. God destroyed Ahab for doing what the modern Government does every year.
  

          We are no longer free to exercise our gifts and talents. More and more the Federal Government limits how and when and where we may labour. Licensing laws, labour regulations, minimum wage legislation, unemployment taxes, social security taxes, union standards, federal health and safety regulations, racial quotas, anti?discrimination legislation, environmental regulations, and a well?nigh endless host of others laws, fees, prohibitions, limitations, regulations, and specifications, severely restrict the exercise of God?given gifts and abilities.

         Need I mention that by means of the income tax, the Federal Government has claimed the right to the fruit of our labours. By it, the Federal government exalts itself over God (by claiming more than God does in the tithe).

     We have seen how this is in fact a claim on all the livelihood of an individual. Tax exemptions are now viewed as 'subsidies.' The argument is, to be granted a tax exemption is the same as being given a subsidy. The implication is that all your income belongs to the National Government and the Government could take it all should it so desire, but by means of tax exemptions, it graciously allows you to keep some of your earnings.

      In education: certification, accreditation, and educational standards set by Federal bureaucrats continue to limit educational freedom. The Government continues to view the children as belonging to itself by asserting a 'compelling interest' in this or that aspect of our children's upbringing.

            Freedom of religion has come to mean 'freedom to believe whatever you want, so long as you do not act in a way contrary to public policy.' Practically this means, our freedom of religion has been confined to the space between our ears.

            We have now lived to see what our Founding Fathers thought impossible in this land. The Congress regularly legislates immorality, lines its own pockets, makes decisions based upon self? interest rather than upon what is right and best and then brags about its public?spirited generosity and compassion.

            We live in a country where the Constitution has no more real authority than the Royal Family in England. We like to be able to refer to it and trot it out on patriotic occasions, but we have no desire to take it seriously and find those who would suggest that we should, fearfully flatheaded.

            We live in a land in which the people expect the government to protect them and provide for them and secure their futures. We have not freed the slaves, we have simply extended the plantation. Now, we are all slaves, captives to our liberators.

           We think we are free only because we have never known true freedom. Like it or not, all this is the legacy of the South's defeat. Thus, the question of who was right in the old struggle is not so hard to answer after all. Look around you. Do you like what you see? If not, you have answered the question in my favor.

           Alexander H. Stephens, in speaking about the future for this nation and the consequences of the Reconstruction policies, once said that the only hope for our country was that the people would one day realize what had happened to them as a result of this war and that a cry would go up akin to that which filled the land prior to the first War for Independence (the cry then was 'The cause of Boston is the cause of us all'). Now, said Stephens, the only hope left for the preservation and maintenance [of Constitutional liberty] on this continent is, that another like cry shall hereafter be raised, and go forth from hill?top to valley, from the Coast to the Lakes, from the Atlantic to the Pacific: 'The Cause of the South is the Cause of us all!' I appeal to you to consider afresh the consequences of the War for Southern Independence. The defeat of the South spelled the defeat of constitutional liberty in our land.

            If you long for constitutional order, legislative integrity, limited government, and true freedom under law — then you, my friend, agree with me that the South was right.

            The time is passed due for us to think for ourselves and quit allowing the media and the educational establishment and the current orthodoxy to do our thinking for us. It is time to repent of our sins and beg for God's mercy. It is time, in short, to take up afresh the cause of the South.

Rev Steve Wilkins is the pastor of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in  Monroe, Louisiana, and serves on the national board of the League of the South. This article was excerpted from his closing argument in a debate in Atlanta with Peter Marshall, Jr.

Why The South Was Right

For more on the entire subject goto:

LINCOLN

They go on to say: "[D]ropping trade barriers and freeing U.S. consumers to purchase drugs at far lower prices overseas would significantly threaten the profit margins of the pharmaceutical companies. These companies would be forced to present the price-setting countries with an ultimatum: Either liberalize your market or we will leave. It's hard to imagine that countries in this situation will deny their citizens access to life-saving drugs. Instead, they will most likely ease their controls and increase the price they are willing to pay for their drugs. ... It is neither right nor good that Americans bear so great a portion of the health-care costs of the world.


{NOTE: It's neither right to pay for the world's drugs, nor the Federal Gov. to tell States, they can't buy what they darn well please.--RR}

chuckbaldwinlive.com


~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you've looked at my other links and read '
PCBS', by now you know that I don't like either of the two major parties. They both have Liberals and Neo-Cons. And they both violate the Constitution on a daily basis.--RR

BESMIRCH AND DESTROY


BRING US BACK TO TO A LEGITIMATE NATION

By: Ted Lang

A people's common language, customs, food preferences, and all the other components of their social culture, form the building block foundation of each and every sovereign nation on our planet. Combined with their culture, a people's choice of government, or the government which has been imposed upon them, along with their choice of economic system, or the one that has been imposed upon them, and their chosen or relegated to geographic location, identify their national sovereignty.

Nations can be, therefore, legitimate or illegitimate. As you read this, there are basically no significant legitimate nations in existence on planet Earth! For a nation to be completely legitimate, it must be acceptable to at least a majority of its citizens. Such a majority-governed nation would therefore be termed a "democracy." But what of minority groups, so-called smaller "nations" inside the majority-governed nation? If the majority decides to ethnically cleanse itself of these minorities, wouldn't that be genocide as well as a horrific act of malevolence? That is why "democracy" and "freedom" are not synonymous. Our Nation originated as a limited government republic. Our government was precluded from abusing and ethnically cleansing minority "nations" within our borders.

Considering that my mom and dad fled the oncoming socialist war between national socialism [Nazism] and U.N.-type international socialism [Communism] in pre-FDR Germany and desired to have their progeny, namely me, reside here in the United States, isn't it horribly ironic that those socialist dinosaurs of Nazism and Communism "have collapsed" as we now reside in the most powerful socialist nation on Earth? How has communism "collapsed?" Only a few short years after their arrival upon these shores, FDR and the Democrats imposed Socialist Security upon us, imported ironically from the same German soil from which my parents had escaped!

But full blown socialism, meaning the dark gray Orwellian Big Brother Marxist Communism our media and Hollywood friends are so anxious to impose on us under the auspices of the Democratic Party, is still too easily recognized by a good portion of the American People, especially the older folks. It is therefore not the least bit surprising, that the language control folks in academia, Hollywood, the media and publishing houses, have commandeered our language in order to water down the natural God-given revulsion humans have for communist enslavement. The comrades are "greasing the skids" if you will. And abolition of the word "communist" is vital to their agenda!

Whether or not this "skid greasing" is, or is not, a conspiracy, should never be an issue. Those on talk radio who offer that they do not believe in a formal conspiracy are certainly not doing US a favor. Who cares whether or not there's a conspiracy - would the intended outcome be any different?! It is therefore most beneficial and justifiably "alarmist" if we did consider the comrades' efforts as not only a conspiracy, but a communist conspiracy as well!

This brings us back to the basic building blocks of a legitimate nation. "Legitimate" is defined by the minimum of at least a majority concurrence by the people in accepting their government and its officials. Even better and more legitimate, is a government responding not only to the will of the majority, but one that protects human freedoms and rights of minorities down to the level of every single solitary citizen, ensuring that all have equal protection under law from oppression by their government. Of course, the ideal form of legitimate government is a republic, meaning a nation where the people are equally citizens and governors.

Customs, cultural norms and mores may change, but should never be allowed to overshadow the basic foundations of freedom contained in the Rule of Law which was once our heritage as well. Our Founding Documents, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our most precious Bill of Rights, are being relentlessly and successfully attacked to neutralize our inborn God-given revulsion to communism! Yet, our Nation's legitimacy is based on cultural norms constantly under attack by the ACLU, the food police, the watermelons [green on the outside, Red on the inside -The Federalist], feminists, Commie Mommies, animal rights wackos, etc., all attacking our values.

The leading assault on our freedoms is, of course, from that dichotomy termed our "watchdogs of freedom," the American Press. Think of Dan Rather and CBS' suppression of truth in the Condit matter. Think of network TV news' effort to appoint Al Gore over the will of the American People. Think of the hatred emanating from Stalin-trained Hollywood for anything republican, and please note the small "r." Think of Peter Jennings' revulsion for the Republican "Contract with America." The press's hatred for President Bush, Ken Starr and Newt Gingrich is contrasted by their protection of Clinton, Reno and Condit.

So it is understandable that our most basic source of freedom, God Himself, be abolished by the word conspirators. It is imperative to Democrats, Hollywood and the American press that Karl Marx should replace God!

Therefore, our government has ruled that prayer is illegal. Oh sure, this is a limited restriction today, but wait until tomorrow! Regretfully, our government no longer represents either a majority of the people, nor does it protect the rights of any minority. Instead, it enforces the will of socialist minority groups upon us. This minority appears in a variety of forms pleading for the protection of oppressed children, beasts, lakes, forests, and red meat in order to camouflage the real intentions of their limousine-liberal, mansion-ensconced, capitalist-enriched socialist experimenters. As for protections of individual human freedoms, the most powerful Second Amendment has been acclaimed "a myth" by Comrade Chuck Schumer, with the full approval of his comrades in Congress!

By invalidating God we have destroyed both the legitimacy of our government and our human freedoms as established in our Founding Documents. Under the banner of "tolerance" we are now required to accept both the abnormal and the intolerable, and to assist in the destruction of that most basic building block of our society, the moral and spiritual rock solid foundation of the normal family. Without the cultural foundation based upon the family and its support by organized religion, the moral and spiritual character of this once formerly legitimate nation is no more.

Our government and communist-oriented teachers unions join with organized homosexuals to create agendas and programs to brainwash our children.
Graduates of our rotten schools are unable to think, analyze and apply standards to recognize the rot and decay of our political system, and are made further ignorant by our communist- oriented TV news and Hollywood entertainment media. This programmed and organized ignorance is now succeeding as the adventure of popularizing the unpopular, and "being different" by tolerating the intolerant, and accepting as normal the abnormal, and it is now catching on in our churches. Our synagogues will be next on the agenda of the popular unpopular movement.

With all forms of religion and the nuclear family destroyed, the only remaining efficacy left to the American People is firearm ownership, and Republicans are fast selling us out on that front as well.

Voting is a farce since grass roots participation and conventions no longer have applicability. The people and their morality are no longer of significance. It is only a matter of time when door to door visitations from the jackbooted FBI, BATF and IRS will become standard events on every street in every town across America.

Is this what you want for your children, your grandchildren, and their children? We must recognize the increasing tyranny and despotism gently enveloping us as the deadly poisonous gas it is, and we must resist, and we must do it now! And we will be mocked, and told we are vilifiers, and mean-spirited, and alarmist, and extremists, and gun nuts, and McCarthyists and Southern right-wingers, and worse. We will be told to play by the rules while they break them all! We'll be told not to stoop to their level, yet we must stoop to their level to defeat them.

We can always do what they will never be capable of after the fight, and that is standing tall! Do not despair --wear their labels as badges of honor and achievement proudly, and continue to fight! Our posterity is worth more than our posteriors!

Ted Lang is a staff columnist for the Missouri League and is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.


Published in the August 28, 2001 issue of  Ether Zone.

Copyright © 2001 Ether Zone
(http://www.etherzone.com).

BESMIRCH AND DESTROY... BRING US BACK TO TO A LEGITIMATE NATION

Address:http://www.etherzone.com/2001...

This wasn't supposed to happen here

The coming nightmare of Balkanization

Professor and writer Victor Davis Hanson offers his knowledge and insights on the subject of Mexican immigration and its impact on our society. In October, he spoke to students and faculty of Hillsdale College. Following are excerpts from what he had to say.

What we see going on with Mexican immigration today is a tragedy, and it is not simply a result of the federal government abdicating its responsibility to control our borders (although the federal government has certainly done precisely that). The citizens of my state of California and others are also complicit in this tragedy. For instance, millions of us who used to cut our own lawns and clean our own houses now consider such tasks beneath us, as if America's middle class has embraced as its birthright the culture and leisure once confined to an aristocratic elite. Suddenly our young people, our poor and our unskilled find jobs picking apples or laying tiles somehow demeaning. So-called dead-end jobs are no longer a rite of passage for our youth, but are deemed proper only for unskilled laborers from Mexico, whose toil, we are assured, keeps our produce, restaurants and hotels inexpensive.

Related to this trafficking in human capital, a serious social and moral dilemma looms a mere decade away, when the Baby Boomers of California finally--and nearly all at once--reach retirement. Influential, affluent, informed--and not shy about self-interested self-promotion--these retirees will demand that Social Security and state retirement programs remain funded at promised levels. But these benefits will remain possible only with a complacent majority population of younger Hispanic immigrants with larger families, working for wages that are less, on average, than what is being paid out to these aging white retirees with no dependents.
Data alone cannot decide for us whether California is saved or ruined by illegal immigration. Liberal economists, for example, offer models that demonstrate that illegal immigrants bring in $25 billion to America in net revenue per annum. Other statisticians employ quite different models showing that these same immigrants cost the United States over $40 billion a year--indeed, that the average California household must contribute at least $1,200 each year to subsidize the deficit between what illegal immigrants cost in services and what they pay in taxes. Who can sort out all the wildcard effects of cash income, fraudulent Social Security numbers and politicized research?

Tragically, political correctness makes it nearly impossible to discuss illegal immigration in any kind of rational way without being labeled racist or nativist. Indeed, even the legal term "illegal alien" is now politically incorrect, and is being replaced by "undocumented worker." But most know that not all illegal immigrants are workers, and that the problem of illegal immigration involves more than a lack of proper documentation.

We are told that blanket amnesty and a grant of legal status will ensure assimilation and prosperity. But statistics suggest that after 20 years, even legal Mexican immigrants have double the welfare rates of American citizens. And in one study, students surveyed at 13 years of age and then again at 17 were 50 percent more likely at 17 to identify themselves as "Mexicans" as opposed to "Mexican-Americans"--this despite, or perhaps even because of, having spent four years in American high schools.

We now ponder honoring identification documents from Mexico (alone of foreign countries) {Ed. note: And now giving them the right to vote, in California.} as legal American identification, even as we read of endemic corruption among police and bureaucrats across the border. In response, aliens from myriad other countries now demand that their own foreign IDs be honored, and the other 49 states of the Union are not so sure they should accept California driver's licenses, given how promiscuously they are granted, at intrastate security check points. Thousands of immigrants from the Punjab, Korea and the Philippines wait patiently for five years or more to become naturalized citizens in the proper and legal fashion, only to watch hundreds of thousands cross illegally from Mexico in the expectation of a periodic and privileged amnesty designed only for them.

Almost everything stern and uncompromising that for two centuries has helped other immigrants to the United States--entry under legal auspices, language immersion, autonomy from government assistance, rapid assumption of an American identity and eager acceptance of mainstream American culture--has either been dismissed as passé or carried on halfheartedly.

Most Californians of all backgrounds understand the growing social and cultural costs that flow from this situation. Yet the Orwellian alliance of many libertarian-leaning conservatives--who embrace the idea of a perpetual supply of hard-working, unskilled and inexpensive workers--with the race industry of the Left--which envisions an endless influx of unassimilated potential voters who can be appealed to on the basis of group rather than individual identity--tends to demonize any discussion of the issue. Opposition to massive illegal immigration is customarily and cleverly equated with disdain for immigration per se, hence characterized as un-American.

Meanwhile Mexico, a richly endowed but nearly failed state, continues to refuse to do the political, cultural and economic restructuring that is needed to turn itself around. Indeed, why should it bother making these reforms when it can export potential dissidents from its hinterland to the U.S., gaining in the process $12 billion in remittances from expatriates? (These remittances constitute the second largest source of foreign exchange to the Mexican economy.)

A full 50 percent of real wage labor losses was recently attributed by the Labor Department to the influx of cheap immigrant labor. While we continue to import this labor, millions of second-generation Hispanic and other legal laborers are making not much more than the minimum wage. Of course, few of the professors and politicians who support illegal immigration--whether for continuance of cheap labor or for the sake of the entitlement industries--live in California's new apartheid communities like Orange Cove, Mendota or Parlier, communities where Mexican immigrants make up the vast majority of the population and struggle with dismal schools, high crime, little revenue and other social problems akin to those in Mexico.

In a country where there may be anywhere from eight to fifteen million illegal immigrants, is there any hope for avoiding the nightmare of Balkanization? Perhaps. After all, we got into our present mess only during the last 30 years, and then only by doing almost everything wrong. Thus we need not do everything right, but simply return to what we used to do so well: insist that immigration be measured and legal, do more of our own unpleasant work, enforce all of our laws equally, emphasize assimilation and return to thinking and speaking of Americans as individuals rather than in terms of their racial or group identities.

-- Victor Davis Hanson is Professor of Classics at California State University, Fresno. He has authored and co-authored many books, including Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power and Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.

  
This article was found at

www.issues-views.com


Copyright © 2004 Issues & Views


All rights reserved.

Editors note:

Please visit Issues and Views for very enlightening articles and news of special concern to all Americans...RR

When we do that to ourselves we are creating enormous problems. It doesn't matter if they're here illegally or not once you have that kind of internal dynamic. ..
READ ARTICLE

I'm not sure what horror is supposed to befall the nation if the liberals started ignoring the law more than they already do, but apparently it would be even worse than a country in which the Ten Commandments have been stripped from every public space, prayer in schools is outlawed, sodomy is a constitutional right, and more than 1 million unborn children are aborted every year.

Place Your Right Hand On The Quran And Repeat After Me


www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/123003p.htm

Jihad in the Skies

By Dr. Walid Phares


FrontPageMagazine.com | January 2, 2004

Since September 11, one thing is sure: Jihad has reached the skies of the world. With the simultaneous hijacking of four planes and the targeting of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, al-Qaeda opened the skies to its worldwide fury. On the one hand, the Jihadists have launched operations from Kenya to Newark, New Jersey. On the other hand, the U.S. and many other governments have structured an unprecedented cooperation against this rising threat. One of its earliest results was the victorious move ending with the prosecution of the three men involved in the SAM 18 missiles few months ago. With this December Orange alert, the jihad in the skies has returned to target American and international transportation systems.

The main two questions now are: 1) Have the Jihadists, including al-Qaida, decided to use the skies as a space of mass destruction? Put another way, is the entire international transportation system at risk, or at least a target? 2) How will the world respond to this plague?

First, the Jihadists plans: When I watched the amateur video tape of Osama bin Laden celebrating 9/11 released in the U.S. back in the fall of 2001, I realized how serious al-Qaeda was about the use of or the destruction of airliners. Osama was praising the Mujahedeen who "outsmarted the infidels" by using the latter's commercial planes to kill thousands of people. In his words, and in the words of his aides such as Sleiman abul Ghais on al-Jazeera, the men behind the September genocide were thrilled with this new weapon. It gave them what many jihad strategists call the "ultimate balance of power." In an interview to al-Jazeera that year, Libyan leader Muammar Quaddafi said of Osama: "The man is more powerful than all regimes in the region. He has ICBMs capable of crossing oceans into America." When asked which ones he replied, smiling, "He can hijack planes around the world and smash them into any target in the U.S."

 
Both Islamist and Communist radicals have targeted air transportation since the 1970s. Palestinian groups, Lebanese Arab factions and other Pan Arabists have distinguished themselves in hijacking American, European and Israeli civilian planes, using their passengers as pawns in exchange for their imprisoned comrades. Conquering a passenger plane became a model for terrorists around the world. But this older generation of hijackers played tangent to international morality, even if they broke international law. The Jihadist brand of terrorism has gone beyond the common radical tradition.

 
The al-Qaeda jihad of the skies basically shattered the boundaries of morality by taking inhumanity to a sky level altitude. The target is not limited to the political consequence of hijacking, but the actual quantitative killing of civilians. "I thought thousands will be killed," said bin Laden on the private tape, captured by the U.S.

 
This explains the determination by the Jihadists to strike again and relentlessly in and from the air. But how do they explain it to their own followers? Sheikh Yussef al-Qardawi, the main Jihadi theologian on al-Jazeera, spent many Sundays over the past two years legitimizing the death of civilians on the path of jihad. "If the enemy is hiding behind civilians or is mixed with them, then the enemy has made his choice and the Mujahedeen have no choice but to strike." Others, abusing Muslim history, have circulated comparisons with early seventh century military operations between Mecca and Medina, disrupting the pagans' transportation lines. But 9/11 surpassed all ideologies. There are no legitimate Islamic rulings allowing the sheer massacre of air bound civilian passengers. In technical Islamic law, this is called Hiraba, an illegal war.

 
But the radical Islamists have developed a theology of their own. They push jihad into any space they can reach, and widen their scope boundlessly. With no significant resistance by moderate intellectuals, the fatwas against the infidel skies are up and running. From "ji-hacking" planes and using them against targets (all civilians), they have moved to consider the planes themselves as targets; hence, the latest foiled attempt to purchase anti-aircraft missiles.

 
How about the world's response? Is there one? Ironically, the response is the daughter of the Jihadists' stubbornness.

The more al-Qaeda and company move the jihad into the skies, the more the international community unites against them. From Los Angeles to Vladivostok, from Amsterdam to Bombay, international cooperation is tightening. Despite their initial divide on Iraq, the coalition against terrorism has no parallel in world history.

From China to Peru, humans will not tolerate airplanes used in jihad, for any passenger of any nationality, race or religion could be targeted. The world may have been fragmented on most issues of international relations, but up in the skies, they are united against bin Laden and the Islamists' jihad. And Osama has no one to blame but himself. 

frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11529

New E Magazine article on population - excellent reading!

http://www.emagazine.com/january-february_2004 /0104feat1.html" title="http://www.emagazine.com/january-february_2004 /0104feat1.html" target="_blank"http://www.emagazine.com/janu...

The Numbers Game

Myths, Truths and Half-Truths About Human Population Growth and the Environment

By Jim Motavalli

There's a minefield in the American environmental movement, and its name is population. Because negotiating that minefield is so dangerous, many environmental groups and leaders have stopped trying to cross it. But to ignore population as a central issue while talking freely about sprawl, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, agricultural land and animal habitat, global warming and many other crucial environmental issues is to deny reality.


READ ARTICLE