Saturday, May 21, 2005

Sign of the End Times

This may be the only time I ever do this, but I am linking to a DailyKos piece approvingly. This is important, if you are a blogger or enjoy reading politically-oriented blogs. The FEC is really over-reaching here, but the big-government types on both sides of the aisle are likely to let this go without a fight. I'm not willing to go quietly into the night on *my* free speech rights.

Harry Reid (who is generally not held in high regard by this blogger) is the sponsor of a bill to protect blogs from the proposed FEC regulations. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, is sponsoring a counterpart bill in the House of Representatives. Both bills need support, as the Shays-Meehan and McCain-Feingold CFR crowd are trying to include the internet in their speech-stifling efforts. This is not a partisan effort, as DailyKos and Instapundit are both on board, as is the founder of RedState.org.

The Kos piece I linked includes a quick and easy form to fill out (here) from the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. They are going to submit all of the completed surveys to the FEC in an effort to stop this in its tracks. If you blog, fill the whole thing out. If you read blogs, fill out the first half. But fill it out!

(Link courtesy of Instapundit.)

posted at 09:41 PM | permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Sweden falls over the side

We've all seen some the studies that show that Sweden, the prototypical socialist paradise, is not all it's cracked up to be, but Gates of Vienna has a report (translated from an unidentified Norwegian newspaper) which shows just how bad it is. Most of its problems stem directly from an issue I have discussed before —Cultural self-loathing. Unlike the United States, there don't appear to be enough people in Sweden who value their own culture over that of those who immigrate into it, and consequently there is no push to assimilate these people. Sweden's immigrants are responsible for a hugely disproportionate share of the violent crime, and one result is that Sweden's murder rate is almost twice as high as the allegedly violent and lawless United States. (Sweden has a higher murder rate than the Washington DC metro area, and one almost as high as metro Detroit.) In Malmø, 70% of the rapes are committed by immigrants, in a city that is only 40% non-Swedish.

GoV asks if Sweden is the canary in the coal mine for multiculturalism. I, for one, hope not. However, the US— a country that supposedly has no culture (or faceless, anonymous culture like Big Macs and Hollywood action flicks)—is more likely than the oh-so-sensitive European nations to resist a takeover by the multi-cult. I can take being called a xenophobic, racist bastard for expecting that people who come to our country change themselves (rather than the other way around), and I will do everything I can to make sure that it stays that way.

Note that I do not advocate the elimination of the cultural traditions and mores of immigrants, but simply expect them to adapt to ours. One does not need to reject one's heritage to successfully assimilate, but the multi-cultis don't want assimilation; balkanization is their ultimate goal.

UPDATE: This astonishing post contains even more information, and is even more disturbing.

(Links courtesy of ¡No Pasaran!)

posted at 07:12 PM | permalink | Comments (1)

Monday, May 16, 2005

Parallels

The news media loved to make parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam; here's another one:

Isikoff/2005=Cronkite/1968

The Tet Offensive was thoroughly misreported by CBS and "Uncle Walter", and represented a turning point in the war. The Isikoff hit piece against American troops could be a turning point in Afghanistan as well. To be sure, the analogy is not exact, but media lies are at the heart of both stories. The aim is to turn public opinion against the US military; the Tet offensive reporting was aimed at US opinion, while the Isikoff report was aimed at Afghan public opinion, and appears to have been spectacularly effective in igniting a fire.

Newsweek cannot possibly issue a retraction that will undo the horrific damage done by their reckless disregard for the truth. If it was an Al Jazeera report, it could have been explained away as anti-American bias from an openly anti-American source, but Newsweek is an AMERICAN media source, in the heart of the "Mainstream media". Newsweek has hammered in the final nail of the coffin of responsible reporting by the professional media.

posted at 09:04 AM | permalink | Comments (0)