Greater Liberia

From the New York Times:

"Taylor had a map he carried around with him called Greater Liberia," said Douglas Farah, an analyst and author who has written extensively about Mr. Taylor's links of criminal and terrorist networks.

Find me this map.

Anthem For A Sharia State

Somali Jesus: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
[Barrage of stones]

The Somali morality police don't fuck around.

Bob Dylan - Rainy Day Kafir #12 & 35

Well, they'll stone you when you're trying to be so good
They'll stone you just like they said they would
They'll stone you when trying to go home
And they'll stone you when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Well, they'll stone you when you're walking on the street
They'll stone you when you're trying to keep your seat
They'll stone you when you're walking on the floor
They'll stone you when you're walking through the door
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

They'll stone you when you're at the breakfast table
They'll stone you when you are 'oung and able
They'll stone you when you're trying to make a buck
They'll stone you and then they'll say "Good Luck"
Yeah, but I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Well, they'll stone you and say that it's the end
Then they'll stone you and then they'll come back again
They'll stone you when you're riding in your car
And they'll stone you when you're playing your guitar
Yes, but I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned (alright)

Well, they'll stone you when you are all alone
They'll stone you when you are walking home
They'll stone you and then say they are brave
They'll stone you when you're sent down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

You Do It To Yourself

"We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

Show them your blog. (No one really wants to know what you think.)

North American Disclaimer

In response to the news story about "a 20-year-old woman from Iraq whose father allegedly hit her with his car because she had become too Westernized," I offer the following open letter.

DEAR MIDDLE EASTERN FATHER,

You wish to gain a higher standard of by living in the West while keeping your family's cultural and moral values intact. Know that this is impossible. Your daughter and, if not your daughter, your granddaughter will be entranced by the Babylonian circus of hip-hop, reality television and pants that say Juicy on the ass. She will experiment with lesbianism, have sex with black men who call her "shorty," buy vibrators and reveal her silky hair to any and all comers. If the mere thought of any of these things is already driving you into a murderous rage, DO NOT MOVE TO NORTH AMERICA. I repeat, it is not just possible that your daughter will make out with another woman on a sweaty dancefloor to the cheers of cro-magnon men in baseball hats if you move to North America, IT IS GUARANTEED. You can have material prosperity in a free society or a chaste daughter who keeps her eyes to the floor in the presence of her bearded superiors. You cannot have both. Make an informed decision before deciding to immigrate, for your and her sake.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Westerner

Beyond Right & Life: Prelude To A Politics Of The Future

The usually better Spengler writes:

"Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving against all odds", was the title of Dunham's doctoral dissertation. Dunham's sympathy for the traditional life of Indonesians fighting against the encroachment of the global economy evidently left a huge impression on young Obama, for he thought their lives better than those of poor people in the United States. As he (or Bill Ayers) wrote in Dreams of My Father:

"And yet for all that poverty [in the Indonesian marketplace], there remained in their lives a discernible order, a tapestry of trading routes and middlemen, bribes to pay and customs to observe, the habits of a generation played out every day beneath the bargaining and the noise and the swirling dust. It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like [the Chicago housing projects] so desperate."

That paragraph is a precis of his mother's doctoral dissertation, and may be the most the most important point of self-revelation in Obama's collective utterances. The words may have come from Bill Ayers, but the sentiment is doubtless Obama's. In mature adulthood, Obama continued to identify with the leftist sentiments of his mother.

The above is an example of why I've abandoned the left-right Eurasia-Oceania pole game. Sympathy for traditional life is leftist!? The Indonesian marketplace Obama describes is an essentially conservative institution. The Chicago housing project, and African-American culture in general, is such a mess precisely because too little has been conserved. Africans were stripped of their traditional culture by slaveowners. A consistent conservative should support efforts by all peoples to resist the malicious effects of "the encroachment of the global economy." Yet the bizarre situation has arisen in which to support third world traditionalism is leftist, while to support first world traditionalism is rightist. The rightist must be pro-American tradition while calling for the erosion of all other traditions through the global marketplace. The leftist must be anti-American tradition while calling for the preservation of all other traditions through multiculturalist ideology. Then there are the far-righters who believe all traditionalists should unite - to eliminate the Jewish or Muslim tradition. Three cheers for Indonesia-loving conservatives, America-loving leftists, philo-Semitic fascists and everyone else who throws a wrench in Spengler's neat-fit ideological world.

Max Justice

Author of article Do Assholes Finish First? writes:

Perhaps Max's manner of flirting signals confidence and shows he isn't intimidated by beautiful women (which would signal that he has been successful with beautiful women in the past). One could even go so far to say that the type of women who goes for Max's crude chat up lines deserve to be duped by him but I'm not convinced that's reason enough for any women to deserve being treated that way.

I am.

National Anthem Of The Day

"Now when from that primal has come forth what is present before us; when the victory over the land leaves most of us in metropoloi where wildly spread consumption vies with confusion and squalor; when the emancipation of greed turns out from victories on this continent to feed imperially on the resources of the world; when those resources cushion an immense majority who think they are free in pluralism, but in fact live in a monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress, alternating with boredom and weariness of spirit; when the disciplined among us drive to an unlimited technological future, in which technical reason has become so universal that it has closed down on openness and awe, questioning and listening; when Protestant subjectivity remains authentic only where it is least appropriate, in the moodiness of our art and sexuality, and where public religion has become an unimportant litany of objectified self-righteousness necessary for the more anal of our managers; one must remember now the hope, the stringency and nobility of that primal encounter."
- George Grant, "In Defence of North America"

"And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free."
- Lee Greenwood, "God Bless the U.S.A."

Swans - God Loves America

And all across America
The poison fires glow
And in the blood of our procreation
Annihilation grows
Yes, love was made for slaves like us
Designed to fetishize
Consumption, waste and an identity
Based on a dying lie
So God forgive America
The end of history is now
And God may save the victim
But only the murderer holds real power

We came across the seas
We'd fill with offal and disgust
And any object industry required
We bought, enslaved, or we crushed
And now our minds are as naked as the paradise we stripped
And our reward is entropy
Our emptiness is our gift
So God forgive America
And every human on this earth
And God forgive the ruined lives
And nothing is what it's worth

FTW

About.com's "Net for Beginnerz" says:

While there were nastier meanings in previous years, FTW today commonly stands for "For the Win". It is an expression of enthusiasm. "FTW" is the same as saying "this is the best" or "this item will make a big difference, I recommend using it". Examples would include: "anti-lock braking, ftw!", "spellchecker, ftw!", and "low-carb diets, ftw!"

Years ago, "FTW" used to have a very negative meaning: "f**k the world". This was a term commonly used by social rebels, anarchists and anti-authoritarian types to express frustration with modern society. Gratefully, this antisocial meaning has dramatically faded in use in the 21st century, and people largely use "for the win" as the modern meaning for this acronym now.

"Gratefully"!? Fuck you! Some of us "social rebels, anarchists and anti-authoritarian types" still remember what FTW really means. Fuck the world. No asterisks.

Song Of The Day

All Nobel Peace Prize recipients should ask themselves the following important question before making major foreign policy decisions.

Sparks - (Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country?

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn`s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight`s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O`er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets` red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O`er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O`er the land of the free and one more thing,

Can I invade your country, oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Invade your country?

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn`s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight`s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O`er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets` red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O`er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O`er the land of the free and one more thing,

Countries, planets, stars
Galaxies so far
Don`t let freedom fade
Baby, let`s invade

Countries, planets, stars
Galaxies so far
Don`t let freedom fade
Baby, let`s invade

Countries, planets, stars
Galaxies so far
Don`t let freedom fade
Baby, let`s invade

Baby let`s invade
Can I invade your country,
oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Baby let`s invade

Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn`s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight`s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O`er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O`er the land of the free and one more thing,

Can I invade your country, oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?

Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Oh baby, baby, can I invade your country?
Invade your country?

Loyalty Priorities

1. Family
2. Ancestors
3. Bros
4. Countrymen
5. Hoes

Rhyming Couplet Of The Day

The grape that can with logic absolute
The two-and-seventy jarring sects confute
- Omar Khayyam

Two Wrongs Make Right

Six Italian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. When is Mussolini going to come back from the dead and turn that abysmal backwater into Italian Central Asia? The world's most woman-loving people overseeing the world's most woman-hating people: a match made in Versailles! At least Mussolini would have moved the giant Buddha statues to Rome instead of letting the beard mafia blow them up. "But that's colonialism!" - ex-Buddhist silk traders throwing acid at schoolgirls in the name of an illiterate prophet born half a continent away is colonialism. Colonialism atop colonialism is merely history correcting itself. Maybe the Mongols can help civilize these people?

Hairless Mammals Belong In The Sea

Why would any man choose not to grow facial hair? The beard or moustache is to a man what the breast is to a woman: a flourish of the gods. All the great prophets, dictators, cowboys, barbarians and Jews have had facial hair. Penis envy is a less likely explanation for feminine resentment than beard envy. The clean-shaven male is a symptom of Western decline, or at the very least a symptom of growing Sinoization. Grow a beard and you will grow gravitas. Grow a moustache and you will grow stones. It's not about looking attractive, it's about demanding attraction. The bearded men of antiquity all had at least five wives. The sign of (Western) Christianity's lack of divine severity is its clergy's absence of beards. What sort of religious figure does not grow facial hair? The kind who plays acoustic guitar while singing MOR hymns. And don't get me started on the cosmic, sky god meets earth mother crackle of facial hair tickling vagina hair. Would a peacock clip its feathers? No less should a grown man shave his chin!

Best Opening Sentence To A Wikipedia Biography

Raymond Roussel (Paris, January 20, 1877 - Palermo, July 14, 1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, chess enthusiast, neurasthenic, drug addict, and likely suicide.

Lesser Jihad: Paeans To The Human Bomb

Violence, when not in the hands of the law, threatens it not by the ends that it may pursue but by its mere existence outside the law.
- Walter Benjamin, Critique of Violence

Truth is, it's not hard to understand how a suicide bomber thinks; a lot easier than understanding how an accountant thinks, if you ask me.
- Gary Brecher, If it Ain't Fixed, Break it All Up

Terrorists, like pirates, must be given their proper status in law: hostis humani generis, enemies of the human race.
- Douglas R. Burgess Jr, The Dread Pirate bin Laden

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions.
- G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

All revolutionary situations, all revolutionary discourses . . . justify the recourse to violence by alleging the founding, in progress or to come, of a new law, of a new state. As this law to come will in return legitimate, retrospectively, the violence that may offend the sense of justice, its future anterior already justifies it.
- Jacques Derrida, Force of Law

The inner nature of this nihilistic terrorism is that everything is permissible, whether because God exists and I am his representative, or because God does not exist and I take his place.
- André Glucksmann

If I do not kill I shall never establish the world dominion of justice . . . that is the argument of the intelligent terrorist. . . . We, however, profess that higher even than the happiness and justice of existence stands existence itself.
- Kurt Hiller, Das Ziel

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.
- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

The reason terrorists don’t use those risible cosmetic terms of ours such as "collateral damage" is that they not only have no intention of sparing the innocent, they have no more desirable target in mind.
- Clive James, The Question of Karl Kraus

The building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by their people. By itself, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world.
- Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

We have said a hundred times or more that when modern revolutionaries carry out actions, what is important is not solely these actions themselves but also the propagandistic effect they are able to achieve. Hence, we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda.
- Johann Most

The desire for destruction, change, and becoming can be an expression of an overflowing energy that is pregnant with future . . . but it can also be the hatred of the ill-constituted, disinherited, and underprivileged, who destroy, must destroy, because what exists, indeed all existence, all being, outrages and provokes them.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The persistent illusion of the terrorists is to invoke a success in order to justify themselves before posterity. In effect, only the success can absolve them. But this success, where is it? The terrorists devoured by the scaffolds that they themselves erected, the Republic not only lost but rendered execrable, the political counter-Revolution victorious, despotism in place of the liberty for which a whole nation swore to die: is that success? How long will you go on repeating this strange nonsense, that all the scaffolds were necessary to save the Revolution, which was not saved?
- Edgar Quinet

We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.
- Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.
- Arthur Schnitzler

The Terrorists cannot overthrow the government, cannot drive it from St. Petersburg and Russia; but having compelled it, for so many years running, to neglect everything to do nothing but struggle with them, by forcing it do so still for years and years, they will render its position untenable. Already, the prestige of the Imperial Government has received a wound from which it will be very difficult to heal. An Emperor who shuts himself up in prison from fear of the Terrorism is certainly not a figure to inspire admiration.
- Sergius Stepniak, Underground Russia

Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.
- Miguel de Unamuno

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
- Oscar Wilde

The top winner in the contest for the greatest blunder of 1998 was a Latin American patriotic terrorist who sent a letter bomb to a US consulate in order to protest against America interfering in local politics. As a conscientious citizen, he wrote his return address on the envelope. However, he did not put enough stamps on it, so that the post returned the packet to him. Forgetting what he put in it, he opened it and blew himself to death.
— Slavoj Žižek