Discover the Networks, Religious Extremism, "These are the real stars, not Geldof", Madrassas, Tunnel Detainees

Recommended film -- touching and family fare: Simon Birch. It grows on you.

Resource for information about the political left: discoverthenetworks.org -- What This Site Is About via CCD

There is so much information; check for yourself.

(The resources on this page are devoted to defining the left, which is one of the purposes of this website. For additional conceptual articles about the left, see ISSUES: "Progressive" and "Liberalism," and particularly the articles by Barry Loberfeld and David Horowitz.)

Welcome to DiscoverTheNetwork. This site is a "Guide to the Political Left." It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left's (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas. [. . . . ]

The disingenuous tradition of the political left has continued into the present. In the 1960s, the radical organizers of the mass anti-war demonstrations pretended that their only interest was to "Bring the Troops Home," when in fact their agendas embraced a radical menu that was anti-capitalist and welcomed a Communist victory. In the campaign against the war in Iraq, a similar pattern emerged, as the information provided in this database clearly demonstrates (ANTI-WAR).

World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win Norman Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine, September 2004 -- link posted on Canadian Coalition for Democracies by Al Gordon

[. . . . ] But as I will attempt to show, we are only in the very early stages of what promises to be a very long war, and Iraq is only the second front to have been opened in that war: the second scene, so to speak, of the first act of a five-act play. In World War II and then in World War III, we persisted in spite of impatience, discouragement, and opposition for as long as it took to win, and this is exactly what we have been called upon to do today in World War IV.

For today, no less than in those titanic conflicts, we are up against a truly malignant force in radical Islamism and in the states breeding, sheltering, or financing its terrorist armory. This new enemy has already attacked us on our own soil—a feat neither Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia ever managed to pull off—and openly announces his intention to hit us again, only this time with weapons of infinitely greater and deadlier power than those used on 9/11. His objective is not merely to murder as many of us as possible and to conquer our land. Like the Nazis and Communists before him, he is dedicated to the destruction of everything good for which America stands. It is this, then, that (to paraphrase George W. Bush and a long string of his predecessors, Republican and Democratic alike) we in our turn, no less than the "greatest generation" of the 1940’s and its spiritual progeny of the 1950’s and after, have a responsibility to uphold and are privileged to defend. [. . . . ]

Deputy PM and Min. of Public Security, Anne McLellan: No threat in Canada

OTTAWA (CP) — The federal government assured Canadians they were under no threat Thursday as London faced a second round of subway bombing incidents in two weeks. [. . . . ]

Religious Extremism: Canadian Imams and the CBC

Canadian imams to condemn terrorism -- Religious edict by 120 spiritual leaders to declare London bombings un-Islamic Posted by Toba on 09:50:08 2005/07/21 -- an article by Marina Jimenez, Globe and Mail, July 21, 05

One statement in the article stood out:

[. . . . ] "Tarek Fatah, with the Muslim Canadian Congress, called the imams' initiative long overdue, and said all Muslims must clearly support a separation of religion and state as a first step to fighting extremism." [. . . . ]

I wonder how CBC just happened upon someone with the idea for curbing Roman Catholicism and others who believe in an exclusionary God -- that they must be curtailed by the thought police? (posted earlier today)

A key item would have to be a ban on claims of exclusivity. It should be unethical for any RRP to claim that theirs was the one true religion and believers in anything else or nothing were doomed to fire and brimstone.

Spreading the idea of extremism around so as not to have to accept extremism in the name of Allah as the problem, perhaps?

Most of us don't really care whether others have a religion with a god who is "exclusive" to them--even if they believe others, as non-believers, are sinners (thoughts)--as long as they don't use that god to practice bloody terrorism and murder on the rest of us -- including those others who have their own "exclusive" god(s) (actions).

Catholicism, Judaism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and a few other "isms" preaching a belief in a god or gods in our country have not been the source of world terrorism; it is Islamists who promote jihad among the impressionable young, who talk about nothing higher than dying, causing the death of others, and being rewarded with 70+ houris in Islamic paradise. Barbarism in the name of Allah!

The "peaceful" imams and the enabling fellow cohort had better accept the truth and do something about it before the rest of us do.




Fortunately, saner heads read and reason about what they read: here and here

Reference: Canadian National Public Radio Broadcasts Call for State Control of Religion, Especially Catholicism




What A Society Values, What it Honours

I love this for it touches upon what is eternal, what is worthwhile.
These are the real stars, not Geldof Ben Stein's Last Column... -- posted on CCD

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who . . . .

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, . . . .

Explosions cause panic in London Robert Barr, July 21, 05

Associated Press reporters Thin Lei Win and Kate Bouey in London and Christopher Torchia in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

Have you listened to Australia's John Howard speak on Islamist terrorism? Australia's Prime Minister is so straight forward. He calls a spade a spade, but then, that is a loveable part of the Australian character. . . unlike what is accepted in Canada as a pronouncement from our "leadership".

One of the July 7 bombers, Shahzad Tanweer, 22, is suspected of visiting a madrassa linked with militants in Lahore which has become a focus of the inquiry.

According to a report in a Pakistani newspaper, Tanweer revered Osama bin Laden. The English-language Dawn newspaper said Tanweer visited relatives in November in a farming village near Faisalabad in eastern Pakistan. During his weekslong stay, he was visited by another suicide bombing suspect, Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, Tanweer’s uncle told the newspaper.

Pakistan has pledged to curb religious extremism amid international concerns that Islamic schools, or madrassas, are promoting extremism.

[. . . . ]




Three charged in underground drug tunnel investigation

LYNDEN, Wash. – U.S. authorities have arrested three men in the investigation of a massive underground tunnel connecting the U.S. with Canada discovered near the Whatcom County town of Lynden, Wash., officials said Thursday.

All three men - Francis Devandra Raj, Timothy Woo, and Joseph Valenzuela - were from Surrey, British Columbia and were charged Thursday in a U.S. District Court in Seattle with conspiracy to distribute and import marijuana, said John McKay, U.S. attorney. More charges would likely follow when the suspects appear in court in Seattle at 2:30 p.m. Thursday.

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