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Earlier generations of Britons believed that certain things simply could not happen in Britain. Even in the country’s darkest moments of war or depression, this conviction differentiated the then proud nation from the U.S.S.R., third world countries, and unstable regimes that might fall to dictatorship any moment. News blackouts, and the banning of a book or film of course occurred here or there, but these never seemed very serious events. for more click here

ANTI-terror police are today questioning a man who has claimed to have recruited hundreds of British Muslims to fight for al-Qaeda.

Hassan Butt was arrested at Manchester Airport yesterday, where he was reportedly waiting for a flight to Lahore, Pakistan.

A police spokesman said: “Greater Manchester Police’s Counter Terrorism Unit arrested one person under the Terrorism Act on the afternoon of Friday May 9. for more click here

IN HIS recent book, Courage: Eight Portraits, Gordon Brown praised the Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi as a fearless prisoner of conscience battling a state with one of the worst human rights records in the world. So, where is Gordon Brown now Burma has been devastated, and the generals discredited, by cyclone Nargis? Courage seems suddenly to be in short supply in Number 10.

Apart from a token denunciation of the junta’s “unacceptable” behaviour, Brown has largely absented himself form the worst natural disaster since the Asian tsunami. Yet we all remember how Gordon Brown leapt onto the international stage after the Boxing Day inundation in 2004. Then, he commanded the international stage; challenged the conscience of the developed world; campaigned, not just for emergency relief, but for the elimination of the debts of poor countries. for more click here

ONE of Scotland’s leading historians has accused the SNP of failing to act on its promises to improve history education in schools.
Professor Tom Devine said the Scottish Government came to power with a laudable commitment to the subject but has taken “precious” little action since. for more click here

source-The Gathering Storm

I find this video very revealing about the rocket-firing process. It appears that Hamas and its constituency will not cease the rocket firing unless Israel forces the issue. Cat-and-mouse games do not prevent the continuing firing of rockets against Israeli citizens. It appears that only a full-scale Israeli invasion to protect and defend Israeli citizenry will finally put a stop to the rockets. Maybe Fox has done a service to actually show the utter determination of Hamas to murder innocent civilians in their homes, shops, schools, hospitals as well as on their streets and roads. What civilized people would stoop to such amoral behavior instead of trying to make peace by stopping the terrorism? This video does not glorify the Palestinians murderers: it exposes their evil intentions for the world to see. Hamas is definitely intent on destroying the State of Israel at any means and any cost whatsoever. This video is evidence of such crimes against humanity. Furthermore, it proves that Hamas is a terrorist organization pure and simple.

Posted by: Yoel Nitzarim at May 7, 2008 9:17 PM

source-One Jerusalem

This result isn’t just a wonderful victory for Boris and the termination of Livingstone. It’s also a defeat for the campaign – an exceptionally dirty one, at that - waged against Boris by a small band of separatists claiming to act in the name of all London’s Muslims. The effects of Boris’ win will be felt not only in the capital, but nationwide – and they’re worth probing in detail.

This campaign’s aim was to attack Boris as an Islamophobe; swing Muslim voters unanimously behind Livingstone; deliver the election for him; emerge, thereby, as a leading force in British Islam, and thus send an uncompromising message to the main political parties – follow our line, or there’ll be electoral consequences. for more click here
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What happens when Marxism meets Islam at one of America’s most left-wing universities?

You get a conference called “Deconstructing Islamophobia: Immigration, Globalization and Constructing the Other,” dedicated to the ideas that the USA is the source of all the world’s evil and Americans are mean-spirited hicks who denigrate Islam, in particular by stereotyping the religion—even though Islam has declared war on the U.S. and western civilization by direct attack. for more click here

Perhaps the greatest secular gift to the world by Judeo-Christian civilization is its seminal concept of the individual, which it raises above the tribe or the collective. In Genesis, we are told that man is made in the image of God. Deuteronomy tells us that “each human by his own sin is to be judged” and “do not punish children for the sins of their fathers.” And of course, the biblical life and teachings of Jesus reflect the deep importance of the individual. Thus was planted in the soil of the West our uniquely heightened respect for the individual. for more click here

“If You Believe In Nothing, You Believe In Anything”

This was said by G.K. Chesterton about a hundred years ago: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.” If we substitute the word ‘culture’ for God, an we have the state of non-Muslim cultures today.

There are two recent articles that bring home this sad fact. One by Melanie Phillips and the other by Luigi Frascat. They describe the threat to our cultural survival.

First, Melanie Philips.

* Suddenly , Britain seems to be developing into a cultural and religious battleground. Hard on the heels of Jack Straw’s criticism of the Muslim full-face veil, local government minister Phil Woolas has said that Aishah Azmi, the Dewsbury teaching assistant who insists on wearing such a veil in her primary school classroom, should be sacked. Not to be outdone, the Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, has accused Muslims of promoting a kind of ‘voluntary apartheid’ by shutting themselves away in closed societies and demanding immunity from criticism, corroding the very foundations of British culture. Meanwhile, British Airways is being sued for religious discrimination after it required a Christian woman employee to conceal her cross while permitting other faiths to wear turbans, hijabs or Hindu bangles. This echoed the controversy earlier this month when the BBC agonised over whether newsreader Fiona Bruce should wear a small cross on a chain in case it might cause offence. How can Britain have arrived at a situation where it is seriously argued that a class of children who don’t speak English as their first language should be taught by a shrouded woman whose expression they can’t see and whose voice they can’t even hear properly - while the BBC thinks that wearing the symbol of Britain’s established religion might be offensive? The source of this confusion is a profound loss of national, cultural and religious nerve. The Christian values that once defined national identity have simply collapsed, creating a cultural vacuum which Islam - Britain’s fastest-growing and most assertive religion - is busily filling.

She ends the article with this.

* This is why the argument over the place of the veil and the cross in public life is so significant. This is not about prejudice or discrimination. It is about cultural survival.

But the quote from Luigi Frascat about Pope Benedict XVI’s speech that caused an uproar in Muslims around the world is even more accurate in describing the current weakness in Western culture undermined by political correctness and multiculturalism.

* In its bare essence, the substance of Pope Benedict XVI’s argument can be summed up in the following syllogism: Islam is faith devoid of reason; modern secularism is reason devoid of faith.

I would add that by ‘devoid of faith’, we can mean a “profound loss of national, cultural and religious nerve”. As I wrote in a previous post “Winds of War: Why the West Needs to Grow a Moral Backbone”:

* Islam is a complete way of life. It embraces the spiritual, social, moral, economic and cultural life of its followers, as well as their belief in God. This all encompassing system is similar to the Rule of the Holy Roman Empire and the Popes who headed it up in the Middle Ages. Just as Christian morals, ideals and ideas permeated the society of the Middle Ages to its core as ruled by the Holy Roman Church, so did Islam at the beginning of the 21st Century. A secular culture without absolutes - no right or wrong, no good or evil, cannot stand up to an absolute believing culture with finely defined lines between what they believe and don’t believe, what is advantageous to is and what is not, what they find good and what they find evil, and what behavior is appropriate and what is not. A cultural moral equivalency where everything is equal can not muster the will to stand up for some absolute morals and beliefs. It becomes a culture not worth defending. The belief in self-preservation is lost. The relativistic culture is not worth preserving because in accepting in everything, it believes strongly in nothing.

It’s jihad all the time and not just the militant kind. Our Western Judeo-Christian culture is under attack and most are oblivious to the insidious tactics the Islamists are using to first convert, and if not confront our culture and to bring it in line with Islamic customs, mores and laws.

source-The Gathering Storm