Balochistan Forever!

Balochistan is another "phantom stan", along with Kurdistan and Pushtunistan. Before the days of the United Nations and fixed national borders, we had tribes and tribal areas of control. As the strength of the tribe ebbed and flowed, its area of control would expand and contract -- like a beating heart. Observe B-stan, in the middle of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. And yet Balochistan has no UN representative, no army, navy, diplomatic service. Just like Kurdistan and Pushtunistan. But B-stan is considered important in the halls of power, like the other phantom stans.

Strategically, Balochistan is mouth-watering: east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.

Gwadar - a port built by China - is the absolute key. It is the essential node in the crucial, ongoing, and still virtual Pipelineistan war between IPI and TAPI. IPI is the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline", which is planned to cross from Iranian to Pakistani Balochistan - an anathema to Washington. TAPI is the perennially troubled, US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, which is planned to cross western Afghanistan via Herat and branch out to Kandahar and Gwadar.

Washington's dream scenario is Gwadar as the new Dubai - while China would need Gwadar as a port and also as a base for pumping gas via a long pipeline to China. One way or another, it will all depend on local grievances being taken very seriously. Islamabad pays a pittance in royalties for the Balochis, and development aid is negligible; Balochistan is treated as a backwater. Gwadar as the new Dubai would not necessarily mean local Balochis benefiting from the boom; in many cases they could even be stripped of their local land.

To top it all, there's the New Great Game in Eurasia fact that Pakistan is a key pivot to both NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of which Pakistan is an observer. So whoever "wins" Balochistan incorporates Pakistan as a key transit corridor to either Iranian gas from the monster South Pars field or a great deal of the Caspian wealth of "gas republic" Turkmenistan.
_ATimes

Pepe "the punk" Escobar envisions Baluchistan as the object of another US expeditionary force, led by Barak Obama. Of course, Escobar is not thinking clearly, which is more the norm than not it seems. And yet, such visions are useful for writers of pulp fiction and journalists of minimal realism. Something to think about when you are high, and lacking in anything important to discuss or cogitate upon.

The serious fact is the state of the tribal areas of the planet -- unstable. From Africa to Asia to parts of South America and the Pacific, the thought of tribal insurgencies can ruin the digestions of many a regional and global leader.

Will we ever see a nation called Balochistan? Probably not of any consequence. And yet, some very pivotal battles over access to energy may happen not far from B-stan. China is there. Pakistan is there. Iran is there. The US and NATO are not actually that far away.

Whether Pepe the punk is correct about the future of B-stan has more to do with the incompetence of Obama than anything else. Only a very incompetent Obama could make Escobar's paranoid visions come true.

Role-Playing Islam in Schools--Stop Pussy-Footing And go Hard Core!

There are some public school districts inside the US that have implemented a 3-week program of Islamic role-playing, as a way of teaching american students about other cultures. But in the truest traditions of multiculturalism, they watered Islam down into an inoffensive, wimpish, unrecognizable sissy-culture that has nothing to do with the real world.

The 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled that muslim role-playing exercises in tax funded schools are okay:

In a recent federal decision that got surprisingly little press, even from conservative talk radio, California's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it's OK to put public-school kids through Muslim role-playing exercises, including:

Reciting aloud Muslim prayers that begin with "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful . . . ."

Memorizing the Muslim profession of faith: "Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger."

Chanting "Praise be to Allah" in response to teacher prompts.

Professing as "true" the Muslim belief that "The Holy Quran is God's word."

Giving up candy and TV to demonstrate Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Designing prayer rugs, taking an Arabic name and essentially "becoming a Muslim" for two full weeks.

Parents of seventh-graders, who after 9-11 were taught the pro-Islamic lessons as part of California's world history curriculum, sued under the First Amendment ban on religious establishment. They argued, reasonably, that the government was promoting Islam.

But a federal judge appointed by President Clinton told them in so many words to get over it, that the state was merely teaching kids about another "culture."

So the parents appealed. Unfortunately, the most left-wing court in the land got their case. The 9th Circuit, which previously ruled in favor of an atheist who filed suit against the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, upheld the lower court ruling.

The decision is a major victory for the multiculturalists and Islamic apologists in California and across the country who've never met a culture or religion they didn't like — with the exception of Western civilization and Christianity. They are legally in the clear to indoctrinate kids into the "peaceful" and "tolerant" religion of Islam, while continuing to denigrate Judeo-Christian values.

Source.

The pathetically diluted form of "Islam" presented to school children said nothing about it being okay to rape girls who do not wear the hijab. The absurdly unrealistic "role-playing" did not include honour killings or shahid suicide bombings of civilian women and children. Somehow they forgot to teach the children about going away to Iran, Syria, or Pakistan to learn terrorist tactics, or ways of betraying your fellow american citizens to a supremacist, alien culture.

Why did the public school system's particular style of role-playing choose to omit some of the most salient aspects of the most expansive forms of Islam in existence at this time? Why not role-play a "consciousness raising session" where the masses are driven to a homicidal frenzy over a few cartoons? Why not teach Sharia in its pure and undiluted form? Were they afraid that genuine exposure to a foreign culture would not fit into "multicultural ideals?"

Why not role-play a school fire where religious policemen forbid the girls from leaving the burning building because they were not properly attired for public viewing--resulting in the burning deaths of several girls? Why not role-play a child caught shoplifting candy and given a sentence of hand amputation for the crime? Why not role-play a girl's honour killing for innocently talking to a boy in public who is not a family member? Why not simulate a child walking into a pizza shop full of civilian teenage boys and girls, and blowing himself up and killing dozens and wounding dozens more? Why not role-play a thirteen year old girl being married to a much older cousin for economic reasons, and being taught to submit to her husband in all things.What is the problem with accurate depiction of a death-worshiping culture, if you are going to teach multiculturalism? Why not get real--go hard core?

What would the 9th Circuit Court say about a role-playing exercise that follows the reality of the death-loving culture much more closely? What would most school districts in the US say about such an exercise?

The Truth? Islam Has Always Been a Religion of War--From the Beginning

An excellent review of the book Islamic Imperialism by Efraim Karsh makes it clear that Islam was always a religion of beheadings and massive blood-letting. There is nothing new about Iraqi Shia-Sunni massacres. That is how Islam has always been.

Growing lawlessness... led to the formation of citizen organizations for defense and reprisals... . Notable among these were... thugs drawn from the lower reaches of society... .

Ready to sell their services to the highest bidder, groups... competed against each other to serve the rival Shiite and Sunni camps in their incessant squabbles...

Yesterday's Financial Times on today's Iraq? No, Efraim Karsh on eighth-century Baghdad. Forgive yourself if "the more things change, the more they stay the same" comes to mind.

Muslim scholars, proud of Islam's cultural feats, often don't know what to say about its endemic violence and militarism. Even great ones fall victim to soft-pedaling the endless battles, assassinations and massacres by which Islam expanded from Arabia to become a world religion. In his Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization (2003), the distinguished Iranian philosopher S.H. Nasr embodied this tradition in a telling, self-contradictory sentence:

"In less than a century after the establishment of the first Islamic society in Medina by the Prophet, Arab armies had conquered a land stretching from the Indus River to France and brought with them Islam, which, contrary to popular Western conceptions, was not forced upon the people by the sword."

You might say that Efraim Karsh, head of the Mediterranean Studies Program at the University of London, gives the other side of the story.

In his nervy, tightly documented Islamic Imperialism, Karsh challenges scholars and Muslim leaders to refute his own picture of Islam: an imperialist seventh-century Arabic movement that forced itself on neighboring lands such as today's Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Egypt for secular colonialist payoffs - money, booty, territory.

According to Karsh, Muhammad, by claiming Allah's authority to act as both a political and religious leader, was able "to cloak his political ambitions with a religious aura" and "channel Islam's energies" into geographic expansion.

In seventh-century Arabia, Karsh argues, the peninsula teemed with people claiming divine inspiration. What Muhammad added, Karsh contends, was insistence on Allah as the sole god, a desire to unite believers equally in a Muslim umma (or "community of believers"), and a will to do so by force if persuasion failed.

On the practical side, Karsh maintains, Islam began in banditry. After going to Medina, Muhammad sought to "entice his local followers into raiding the Meccan caravans," and the multiple attacks increased their war chests. His unpopularity with Meccans stemmed not just from his new beliefs, Karsh asserts, but from his brigandage.

Medina, originally known as Yathrib, had been partly "settled by Jewish refugees fleeing Roman persecution." Karsh says Muhammad first tried to persuade Yathrib's three Jewish tribes - the Quainuqa, Nadir and Quraiza - to convert to Islam. He adopted "a number of Jewish rituals," including praying "toward Jerusalem" and not eating pork.

When the "Medina Jews" demurred, Karsh states, Muhammad turned on them, dropping Jewish rituals and changing the direction of prayer to Mecca.

Eventually, Karsh writes, Muhammad expelled the Quainuqa and Nadir and stole their goods. Then, in 627, after accusing the Quraiza of conspiring with Meccan enemies, Muhammad ordered its nearly 800 men beheaded. The Muslims sold the women and children into slavery and split the tribe's money.

Muhammad also continued his conquest of Arabia. He conducted raids throughout the peninsula and "resorted to the assassination of political rivals." In 630, he showed up at Mecca with an army, the city capitulated, and Islam's great rise began.

In Karsh's view, Muhammad has served as a model for Muslims not just as a wise man and prophet, but as a warrior.

Anyone not expert on early Islam will need a scorecard to follow the innumerable murders, impalings, decapitations and dismemberments that marked the early Islamic caliphates and Shiite/Sunni split. You think what's happening in Iraq is new? So many severed heads get sent from one leader to another in Islamic Imperialism, you wonder why "Fed Head" didn't get off the ground as a Meccan firm.

From Muhammad's farewell address in 632 ("I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no God but Allah.' "), to Saladin in 1189 ("I shall... pursue them until there remains no one... who does not acknowledge Allah"), to Osama bin Laden in 2001 ("I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah..."), Karsh finds Islam's outward imperialism consistent.

But internally, Karsh notes, mayhem against rival Muslims also implicated Islam's spiritual side as "a facade that concealed what was effectively a secular and increasingly absolutist rule," one by which Arab caliphs could "enjoy the material fruits of imperial expansion."

Every Islamic takeover, Karsh emphasizes, came with a demand for tribute, taxes, or both: "Arab conquerors were far less interested in the mass conversion of the vanquished peoples than in securing their tribute." Meanwhile, infighting made "a mockery" of Muhammad's ban on fighting among Muslims.

This history of Islam's internal wars forms the timely, eye-opening side of Karsh's book. By the first Abbasid caliphate in 749, Karsh summarizes, "the Islamic empire was an Arab military autocracy run by Arabs for the sole benefit of Arabs."

Source.

It is instructive to study the history of a long-lived movement, to understand where present day irrationalities originate. During the so-called "golden age of islam", it was not the barbaric arab conquerors who brought knowledge to the conquered. The result of the muslim conquest was an extended dark age settling over the muslim countries, lasting for a thousand years, and still smothering the muslim lands.

Islam is a cult of ignorance and murder. There is no refinement, no honour, no future in Islam. It has always been that way. Pity the poor muslim who does not know better.

In the Demography Contest, Islam is Kicking Western Butt

Demography is destiny. If the prosperous developed nations of the world decide to stop having children, the people that shaped those nations will disappear from the earth, and be replaced by other people with a, perhaps, less savoury history.

A recent Fjordman Report discusses this issue most bluntly--in the only way in which it is worth being discussed. Al Fin has posted on this issue many times, but this is the first time I have seen a well-known European blogger discuss the issue so plainly. Here is just a taste of Fjordman's excellent report:

Japan has a declining and ageing population, Yemen and Pakistan have booming populations. Does anybody seriously believe that it would be “good” for the Japanese to open their doors to millions of Muslims from Yemen? “Do you have any education?” “Yes, I know the Koran by heart and can say ‘Death to the infidels!’ in ten different ways.” “Splendid, just what we need here in Japan. Can you start tomorrow on developing a new line of plasma TV screens for SONY?”

When it comes to stagnating populations and Muslim immigration, the problems are not nearly as damaging as the cure.

Among political right-wingers, there is frequently a belief that what is good for business interests is good for the country. The problem is, this isn’t always true. There is sometimes a gap between the short-term interests of Big Business for cheap labor from Third World countries, and the long-term interests of the country as a whole. You cannot compete with cheap commodities from Third World countries unless you lower the general wages to Third World levels.

A few decades ago, Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew realized that Singapore could never win the worldwide competition to offer cheap labor. He decided instead that the country was to become a high value-added producer. To Lee, that meant wages had to be high enough to encourage Singapore’s businessmen to invest in labor-saving technology. To raise Singapore’s salaries he had to make sure that local wages wouldn’t be undercut by migrants. Yes, you could pay an unskilled Bangladeshi $400 dollars a month. But in that case you had to pay the state another $400 a month.

In Europe, the one nation that has proved to be most successful in technology, ”Nokia nation” Finland, is also perhaps the one country within the EU that has accepted the least amount of immigration. Today, this small Nordic nation boasts a thriving hi-tech economy ranked the most competitive in the world and the best educated citizenry of all the industrialized countries. Neighboring Sweden, in contrast, with the largest per capita immigration in Europe, is in serious economic decline, and the only thing growing seems to be the crime rates.

Ethnically homogeneous nations enjoy a “trust bonus” which reduces the amount of conflict. There is little evidence that any theoretical “diversity” bonus from immigration will cancel out the loss of this “trust bonus.” South Korea and Japan are among the world leaders in technology. They are both ethnically homogeneous nations. Even China, which does have significant ethnic minorities, could soon be more ethnically homogeneous than many so-called Western nations. There will be no lack of “diversity” in the 21st century, but there could be a lack of functioning, coherent nation states. Maybe the West will “celebrate diversity” until our countries fall apart, and global leadership will be transferred to East Asia.

Yes, it is true that the ability to attract ambitious and talented scientists from other countries has benefited the USA in the past, and given it an edge over Europe. However, it is not without dangers to “celebrate diversity” in a country as diverse as the US. Americans should try celebrating what binds them together instead, or they may wake up one day and discover that they don’t really have a lot in common. What then for the United States?

Anthony Browne notes that Britain “became the largest economic power in the world in the nineteenth century, in the almost complete absence of immigration to these isles. Japan became the world’s second largest economy after the second world war in the almost total absence of immigration.” “Britain can never compete on the basis of low wages with low cost countries such as China for the simple reason that the cost of living is so much higher, and it is a mistake to try. Although cheap labour immigration may have staved off the demise of those industries for a short while, it also compromised them by encouraging them to go down the cheap labour route, and discouraging them from going up the high productivity/value added route.”

The revered former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, stated in a testimony given to the U.S. Senate: “Although discovery of new technologies is to some degree a matter of luck, we know that human activities do respond to economic incentives. A relative shortage of workers should increase the incentives for developing labor-saving technologies and may actually spur technological development.”

Robert Rowthorn, academic economist, criticizes the claim, frequently repeated by Tony Blair’s Labour government since it took office in 1997, that “if we don’t have immigration, we won’t have economic growth.” According to Rowthorn, “if you repeat something often enough, you can perhaps make people believe it.” There is no evidence “that large-scale immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the benefits are either close to zero, or negative” as unskilled migrants and their families often are net consumers of taxes.

“Immigration can’t solve the pensions crisis, nor solve the problem of an ageing population, as its advocates so often claim. It can, at most, delay the day of reckoning, because, of course, immigrants themselves grow old, and they need pensions.” “The injection of large numbers of unskilled workers into the economy does not benefit the bulk of the population to any great extent. It benefits the nanny-and housecleaner-using classes; it benefits employers who want to pay low wages; but it does not benefit indigenous, unskilled Britons.” “While Britain has always had immigration, the recent influx is totally without precedent in modern times. Relative to population, the scale of immigration is now much greater than during any period since the Anglo-Saxon and Danish invasions over a thousand years ago.”

Rowthorn also points out, correctly, that “refugees and others granted special leave to remain under the asylum rules account for only 10 per cent of immigration to Britain. Most permanent immigration consists of people who are economic migrants together with their dependants.” Most of them aren’t people fleeing persecution.

There is much more at the Fjordman Report, on the GatesofVienna blog.

Very slowly, the hardworking citizens of the developed nations are beginning to realise that their politicians are selling them out. Some of these politicians are susceptible to the voters, and should be removed from office. Others, within the EU bureaucracy, have insulated themselves from voters, and may have to be dragged--kicking and screaming--from their well paid sinecured positions of arbitrary power.

It is nothing less than a question of the survival of western civilisation--the most advanced and enlightened civilisation the human world has ever known. The alternatives are dismal throwbacks to more brutal and barbaric times. Wake up, western world. You have not much more time to decide.