I hope a spokesperson form CAIR will be on as well. Fair and balanced, right?

Mark your calendars because CNN will begin televising the start of the coalition carpet bombing of Iraq at 4:08 p.m. EST, Saturday, March 1.

Just kidding.

I was hoping there would be a Classroom section on site, but of course, no such luck.

A brief background on the particpants anybody?
Info apart from what can be read on the
[Link: www.worldnetdaily.com...] page.. thnx.

Quote from George Jonas [Link: www.nationalpost.com...]

True as this may be, it's meaningless. It's like saying that Islam is a peaceful religion, only it has been "hijacked" by Wahhabi sheiks, theocratic ayatollahs, and followers of Osama bin Laden. The point about a hijacked entity, whether it's a commercial jet, a great religion, or an international institution like the UN, is that once it has been diverted, it's under the hijackers' command. At this stage, regardless of its benevolent origins, regardless of its innocent passengers and crew, it becomes an instrument of destruction. A hijacked airliner is a missile on its way to the Twin Towers. If it can't be rescued from its hijackers, it must be shot down.

EXCELLOOONT! I want to see these guys in action. Text is not enough!

Oh goodness...It's going to be the anti-idiotarians taking on the RoP.

I never thought C-SPAN could be so exciting! I have to find a video tape
(b/c of course C-Span is showing it on Saturday...when I can't watch)

Outstanding -- this should be epic. Thanks for the heads up.

A brief background on the particpants anybody?

Joseph Farah, Daniel Pipes, Serge Trifkovic, and Kenneth R. Timmerman are all an idiot's worst nightmare.

Joseph Farah:

Arafat and The lesson of al-Hudaybiyah
[Link: www.worldnetdaily.com...]

---

Daniel Pipes:

Militant Islam Reaches America
[Link: www.amazon.com...]

The Enemy Within
[Link: www.danielpipes.org...]

---

Kenneth R. Timmerman:

Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson
[Link: www.amazon.com...]

---

Serge Trifkovic:

Sword of the Prophet: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam
[Link: www.amazon.com...]
 

Kenneth Timmerman has the goods on Iraq. He was writing years ago (for American Spectator) about which European companies enabled Saddam Hussein. Armed him. How we (USA) extended 3 billion in credits to Iraq to buy American rice and wheat. Credits never paid back of course.

OT

BBC says Al Quaeda has dirty bomb

Or, more precisely, BBC says UK gov't says Al Quaeda has dirty bomb.

But of course, Islam being a religion of peace, it will sit in a closet gathering dust...

Any fellow Canucks know if C-Span is available up here?
This will be a very interesting show.
Pipes was interviewed on CBC this morning (he was in Philadelphia). To be charitable, the interview was execrable. The "talking head", Ann-Marie Tremonte sounded as if she didn't know anything and hadn't done any homework...and would be damned if she did!
She just kept asking ridiculous questions, displaying her ignorance and that of her producers who no doubt fed her the questions.
Pipes was pretty good under the circumstances but it was typical fare for the CBC.
The interview was preceded by some "poets" reading their anti-war verse. you know..women, children, napalm, U.s. warmongering etc.
No one had any verse about Saddam gassing Kurdish peasants or children in Iraqi torture chambers, or terrorists (oops the CBC doesn't use that term for Jew-killers) blowing up women and children in pizza parlours...that's not allowed. Sort of reminds you of NPR, doesn't it?

Any fellow Canucks know if C-Span is available up here?

C-SPAN runs their video feed live from their site.

You can watch C-SPAN right now here:
[Link: www.c-span.org...]

They may even have a day or two video archive (can anyone confirm this?)
 

Imagine—a four-person panel where Dr. Pipes will be the moderate!!

#6 abby. Great article, thanks for the link. I used to read Jonas when he wrote for the Sun, but since moving South I haven't kept track.

Why is it that people that lived under Oppression get it (Jonas was a refugee, or his parents were, from Communist Hungary, I think, could've been somewhere else in Europe), and those that live in freedom don't? We left Britain when I was a bairn because my parents saw what Labour was doing to Britain (1970) and wanted no part of it, and they weren't toffs either (No future for you...). Having seen that, I wouldn't think of voting for anything remotely socialist (slightly OT, but like the Jihadis they also certainly believe that they know what's best for you)

In looking up who Serge Trifkovic is, I found an ad
at conservativebookservice.com
[Link: www.conservativebookservice.com...]
for his book "The Sword of the Prophet". The ad points out 2 dangers from those who portray an idealized version of Islam:
(1) "it blinds to the true nature of the enemy that threatens us"
(2) "it betrays a hidden agenda: to discredit Christianity and the West by comparison to [a] sanitized, idealized Islam that bears no resemblance to its actual teachings or history."

On the other hand,
(3) isn't it right to support moderate Muslims who follow a more liberal version of Islam than the fundamentalists? (Islam lite?)
(4) And should we let the radical Islamists who say we re fighting Islam itself gain credibility in the eyes of the Muslim world?

I think that for the right balance we should: expose the lies of those who totally whitewash Islam and present only an idealized version; expose the viciousness of the actions and the ideology of the radical Islamists; and admit that there are Muslims who are not fanatic, and even a few who actually oppose the fanatics in one way or another.

Yeah. We should heap praise and give a medal to the Muslim petrol station attendant who prevented the synagogue from being burnt down.

We should also never stop criticising the guys who rape, stone to death, torture, murder and lie.

%&*#, I have to work Saturday. Any reshowings?

#17 EE,

The mere mentioning of the words "moderate Muslim" makes me lose visual focus and mental cohesion.

Moderate Communist, moderate Nazi, Moderate prophet Mohammed?
As to the great moderate leaders, I haven’t yet been able to find a single volume or book about these guys. Why is this?

I see your point though, about balancing the less violent against the more violent, but feel much more inclined to make them accommodate to our perceptions and interests instead of we always adapting to theirs. The latter, I believe, are merely the initial steps of Jihad.

If you experiment with a socio-political cum judicial idea for 1423 years, and you are still # last with a shitty forecast, maybe it’s a sign to move on to something new.

Excellent! I should be able to watch this. Wonder if it has been taped already though. If not, expect death-threats, law-suits and crocodile tears to keep this from proceeding as intended.

I pray we get non-stop quotes from the Koran and from the highest Imams of this faith. Bring the polls too that show the support for terrorism. Promising indeed.

#19 Taro - CSPAN has archived video on their website. You might have to dig to find it. On the other hand if everybody here tunes in, the link to the archive will probably make it to the main page of CSPAN in the most watched video column. I know that the VDH interview & discussion link that was posted on LGF was on the main page until just the last few days. I think LGF was at least partially responsible for it's popularity.

The panel mentioned is part of the Conservative Political Action Conference. Here is the schedule for the 3-day deal...

[Link: www.cpac.org...]

If I remember correctly, C-SPAN showed several chunks of it last year, so maybe they will liven up their 3am viewing with some. Here is c-span's full schedule, as usual pathetically incomplete.

[Link: inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080...]

And they generally keep stored video items available for 2 weeks, I believe.

C-Span might be playing in the islamic republic of chanukistan, to the north of the U.S. I can't be sure.

What happened to canada? I heard from a friend of mine, that the gov't gives welfare the unemployed's pets!

Now that's socialism! And they hate us now, what's with that? They will change their tune, soon enough.

O, chanukistan we stand on guard for thee...

SH

C-Span might be playing in the islamic republic of chanukistan, to the north of the U.S. I can't be sure.

What happened to canada? I heard from a friend of mine, that the gov't gives welfare the unemployed's pets!

Now that's socialism!

O, chanukistan we stand on gaurd for thee...

SH

Brenda, #23, thanks for the link to the C-SPAN schedule.

Check out what they have at 4:45 PM, that should be worth a look as well:

4:45pm - Multiculturalism and the Balkanization of America
        &n bsp;      *Linda Chavez, President, Center for Equal Opportunity
 

We should all try like hell to get the whole world to watch.

Charles! Make tapes so you can sell 'em and stop qvetching so much about being poor.

A double mitzvah: helps you, helps educate the world.

Sorry, I stutter sometimes.

SH

I have this feeling that when I watch it, I"m going to want to have some sort of sign, or one of those giant foam fingers like they have at sporting events to cheer the panelists, and their anti-idiotarian arguments on. :-)

In all seriousness, this promises to be a very intellectual and quality panel.

How can I watch it from Australia ? Anyone ?
I have CNN, BBC, Sky and Foxnews on cable but thats as far as it goes. If not, somebody please link to a transcript afterwards.

Intelligent debate is the best thing, especially when the left only look at one side of the facts.

Why havent a billion balanced documentaries been made on issues ranging from terrorism, the Saudi royal family, Hezbollah, palis ?

Idiots like Pilger make their rubbish and its broadcast around the world !

William: Thanks! Linda Chavez rocks. She speaks in such a straight-forward manner and really gets to the core of issues.

For #5, just came across this excellent Joseph Farah article.

Definitely a must-read. Some excerpts:

Palestinian people do not exist
July 11, 2002

A provocative headline? It's more than that. It's the truth.

Truth does not change. Truth is truth. If something was true 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, it is still true today.

And the truth is that only 30 years ago, there was very little confusion on this issue of Palestine.

Way back on March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

That's pretty clear, isn't it?

In fact, on the same day Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn in 1993, he explained his actions on Jordan TV. Here's what he said: "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."

[Link: www.worldnetdaily.com...]

Doubt you will ever hear that information on CNN.
 

OT, but news to make you wiggle with glee over at instapundit:

two more eastern european countries have come out for us. Slovakia and Albania, i think. Also, a note from someone about EU reps wanting to know, (finally) what the money they give the Palistinians is going to.

Is there not a new moon that night?

Wolves baying(sp?)

Scott Hansen,

I heard from a friend of a friend of mine that in America every five-year-old is issued a semi-automatic weapon and told to point at an abortion clinic and shoot. It must be true -- I heard from a friend of a friend of mine. Aren't those Americans ridiculous? Let's all make fun of the way Americans are fat and ignorant and talk funny, too!

Seriously, don't you think we have enough problems up here without you making idiotic accusations?

So an American TV network is not shown in Canada?! Big flipping deal. Different countries, different TV networks. We don't get HBO either -- it's not a symptom of a socialist society, it's a symptom of having two different countries. We don't get TV Finland, either - must be some kind of communist conspiracy!

Jono:

That URL is [Link: www.c-span.org...] You can watch live or view the archive of recent/most popular items. I watched some stuff today and the quality is impressive. That Helen woman should be taken out back and given some nice camomile tea, though.

CAIR are slow off the mark...i'd have expected them to have a "seething" press release already out on this one :-)

Fatwa's all round after it goes out methinks...

I HAD sarcasm tags on that one, and the "post this comment" button ate them.

NOTE THE SARCASM ABOVE, PEOPLE!

I'll see what I can do, but I might be able to get the video captured, but I'll have to see what I can do. Should be a good talk.

3PM - which time zone???

I'd guess EST, since most C-Span stuff is.

Everyone theres an ABC poll in Australia about whether we should go to war against Iraq. The ABC is pretty leftwing, you can tell by the way they phrase the question.

They could have asked "Should Saddam be removed?" or "Do you support the disarmament of Iraq?"

At the moment, its 86% against war.

Vote here

#20

Moderate Communist, moderate Nazi, Moderate prophet Mohammed?

can't speak for the rest of your list but i can give you an example of a communist and a moderate communist: Stalin and Khrushchev.

As one of the Russian dissidents pointed out at the time, Stalin killed 100 people when he needed to kill one, Khrushchev killed 1 when he needed to kill one.

now, does that make you feel better about moderates?

there are people among Muslims who are trying to modernize it so as to make it accept modern norms of tolerance. i am not sure if the term moderate is the right one to describe them.

#42

how can one modernise something that demands the world submit to the premise that a paedophile, bigamous, mass-murdering torturer is "the best of mankind"?

I'm all for them trying but in reality it's an exercise in futility...a moderate anything would have nothing but contempt for the monster that was muhammed.

and Gorbachev killed 0 when he needed to kill 100

Yeltsan drank 100 bottles of vodka when he needed to kill one person.

Putin gasses 100 Russians when he needs to kill 1 terrorist.

#46 50 terrorists

with enough explosives to kill all 800 hostages, I might add.

I know. I just had to say something about Putin. ;)

what you you have said?

pardon?

#45 nik

Yeltsan drank 100 bottles of vodka when he needed to kill one person.

On the other hand, Yeltsin did not drive.

The real crime here is that Charles Johnson is not on the panel.

Charles: you need a publicist. And a marketing person.

It's absurd that someone who is adding the value that you are to the world's intellectual economy is having to beg for change to pay your ISP bill. Absurd. You're young, good looking, know your facts, have a distinct point of view, have humor, have received accolades from top pundits, make sense, have long hair, are a certified rock/fusion guitarist etc ... all of which adds up to one magic word: Telegenia.

I'm serious. Get a publicist. Make your voice be heard by the millions who need to hear it (and who aren't hearing anything but the daily slant from CNN and the BBC and the NYT and WaPo)... not just by the couple of thousand of the choir that you are preaching to here.

With the highest respect,

ww

ps: to anyone who knows a political media publicist out there: pick up the phone damn it. E Nough? Mark Steyn? Johah Goldberg? GET CHARLES ON TV.

wordwarp (#52)

That is just beautiful, and of course I agree with every word.

Hey Charles! Are you listening?

Re: #14
Thanks, William,
I've got it bookmarked now.
JB

Moderate Muslims may exist but is difficult to know. If moderate muslims are moderate only in the methods but the final goal is Sharia, then it is difficult to categorise them as moderate. The means are the same but the goals are the same.

The other aspect of moderate muslims is that it allows the fanatics to hide amongst the moderates. It is inconceivable that large numbers of islamists can remain invisible in the West, without the active support of the moderates.

In any case muslims, its not humans that are intrinsically evil but the ideology that guides them. In Islam, it is the koran that needs to be exposed.

Exposing the hateful parts of the Quran serves to help us understand radical Islamists (who take all those hateful statements literally). It also is a defense against the militant Islamists who want to establish Sharia by converting people to Islam with the help of a dishonest comparison: comparing an ideal version of Islam (that doesn't exist anywhere), with the actual world of Christendom.

But admitting that there are Muslims who are not fanatic is the right thing to do because it is true. I know for a fact that my neighbors are friendly with non-Muslims and lead ordinary lives, and are peaceful, good people. I suppose they just don't pay attention to the hateful parts of the Quran. That was then and now is now, is probably how they look at it. Or it just has no relevance for their relationships with their non-Muslim neighbors.

Maybe Dave Winer can slot Charles into a weblog program when he gets to Harvard. We KNOW how popular the anti-idiotarian viewpoint is on campuses!

OT : Remember, these folks are not representative of the peaceful, pro-West majority!

Italy arrests 28 Pakis with explosives, NATO map
(opens in new window)

#52 wordwarp 1/31/2003 02:02AM

GET CHARLES ON TV.

I wonder why no one thought of this before. I agree completely, of course. I think being on a panel of a BBC Television show would reach the widest audience. I remember this program they aired late last year that had Ed Koch who was able to counteract Michael Moore and company. I wonder what Mr. Johnson thinks of this idea.

P.S. The "sarcasm" tags I had created for my previous post (#58) seem to have vanished :(

#43

and there is the rub. Christianity practiced forced conversions and religious cleansing for centuries. During the Renaissance, the view on Christianity changed and what was considered the foundation of Christian theology, e.g. Earth centric cosmological view, was discarded. That was a fundamental change and yet the religion survived.

In a similar way, some Muslims are reviewing the fundamentals of their faith. The problem is that there are very few of them, they are all in the West, and the traditional murderous Islam is on the rise thanks to the money from our friends, the Saudis.

#35 angua

It is true that pets of the unemployed in chanukistan receive welfare.

I must have struck a nerve.

It is true many of us yanks are fat, ignorant and talk funny to the chanukistani illuminati. Well sorry.

Oh and I for one will not be standing on guard for thee,
with my firearm, recevied in childhood, NOT, pointing at an abortion clinic.

I only wish your mother had had one, (more) instead of having such a great chanukistani specimen as you.

Long may your maple leaf quake in the wind.

affectionately

SH

To those who do not get C-Span, they usually have downloadable or streaming (I can't remember which) video of their shows.

I watched the Netanyahu testimony in front of a Senate committee off their website. I think they keep most of their programs on there for a few weeks.

RE #60:

Christianity practiced forced conversions and religious cleansing for centuries. During the Renaissance, the view on Christianity changed and what was considered the foundation of Christian theology, e.g. Earth centric cosmological view, was discarded. That was a fundamental change and yet the religion survived.

??? What ???

I've never heard that an Earth-centric cosmology was central to Christianity, or that dropping such a cosmology has happened.

Steve, #63

I believe it was Copernicus who had to recant all his theories about the stars and earth because the church viewed him as a heretic for publishing them. He faced death for espousing a non-earth-centric view.

(May be wrong with the name. i was first thinking it was Galileo..., and i'm a bit shaky on the names of the early astronomers, but i think galileo had some trouble, too)

But the earth-centric view is not the foundation, that's for sure. And we do not order people killed, now, for publishing theories that go against the church's official teachings. There's another religion that does, though :P

#63

I've never heard that an Earth-centric cosmology was central to Christianity

i did not say it was THE central point, just one of them. Copernicus, Galileo - ?

or that dropping such a cosmology has happened.

I am not a scholar of Christian theology but i vaguely recall from somewhere that Steven Hawking had a livey discussion with the Pope regarding his work without being burned alive.

anyway, that was just an example. the main point was not what is the cornerstone of Christianity but that people can adapt religion to the circumsatnces if they want to.

I've never heard that an Earth-centric cosmology was central to Christianity

I can assure you that even today, many Christians would steadfastly maintain that Earth is the center of Creation, albeit not of the physical universe.

Moreover, if on some distant planet a hapless seven-legged lizardoid is right now being devoured by a carnivorous telepathic carrot, the poor creature's agonies are entirely the responsibility of Adam and Eve, for it was by humankind's Sin that death and suffering entered into God's perfect creation.

Daniel Pipes is my god. I'm heading down to my school to update my college ID and then tomorrow I'm heading down to the conference. I just wish Victor David Hansen was there.

Ok, now I understand where that whole "don't feed the trolls" business came from. I've learned my lesson.

I am still slightly miffed that a troll can insult me personally, with impunity, but no one minds since he's got the "right" views on politics in general. Charles?

I think the troll is correct.

#63

I'm a bit hazy on this but I think it goes like this. Thomas Aquinas, a big man in the Catholic Church, had basically harmonized Aristotle's pagan teaching on science and the Church's understanding of scripture. Both held that the earth was the center of the universe and both were decidedly unempirical.

The scriptural understanding of the sun revolving around the earth was based on Joshua 10:12-14, where the G*d is said to have stayed the sun's course through the heavens so that the Israelite's would have more daylight to complete their conquest of their enemies. Of course this reflects the understanding of the times that the sun was actually traveling across the heavens. If you try "updating" this understanding, and instead have G*d stop the rotation of the earth to give the Israelite's more daylight to hunt down their enemies, you end up with a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, so the story seems a bit "off".

The conventional wisdom has been that questioning this scripture might lead people to question other scripture, and that's why the Church was so vehemently opposed to a solar-centric theory of the solar system.

However Jonah Goldberg recently did a great essay called
The Starry Environmentalist where he argued that the Catholic Church has gotten a bum rap on this, and the whole Galileo thing was more like a conflict between an established vested interest, the current society of astronomers (think of them as tenured, respected professors), and a threat to their entire paradigm and public standing (they don't know math, and now they are being told that to do astronomy properly, you have to do it empirically and mathematically). It was an interesting story. Goldberg indicates that Galileo had many supporters within the Church who supported him.

It's wonderful that in this day we can still get away with bashing an entire group of people. How many Muslims do any of you know?
Hitler would be proud to think that his racist, fascist ideology lives on in the likes of those who are ready to condemn all Muslims.
Shall we line them up and make them all wear a star and crescent, so we will know who the enemy is? Shall we attempt to convert them? Really, what are we to do with all those belonging to the world's second largest religion, Islam?
Shame on all of you.