"If we all don't stand up to Islam together, we all go down," writes Amazonian Culture Warrior Atlas re "left-wing" Dutch MP Geert Wilders's much-censored film short "Fitna," now enjoying top billing in the blogosphere. "This is a great film and I will tell you why," says Atlas. "It is powerful and succinct. There is no editorial, no opinion. Just Islam. There are the violent acts of war by Islam and the Koranic verses that call for them." Images above and below are screen shots from the film. Tchaikovsky's haunting "Arabian Dance" -- based upon a Georgian lullaby -- is woven in and out of the soundtrack, with its images of mayhem and carnage, to ironic effect. YouTube recording of the music here.
"He focuses on reason precisely to show that when faith is devoid of reason, the result is a fundamentalist approach that is not true to the essence of that tradition," says Francesco Cesareo, president of Assumption College in Worcester, in a brief but excellent Boston Globe interview whose headline says a mouthful about what's wrong with the Globe and other MSM big mouths:
On closer look, a more complex pope.
Nearly three years since white smoke was seen coming out of the Sistine Chapel stovepipe, and the Globe and fellow travelers are just getting around to taking a "closer look"? If they'd been paying attention, they could have gotten a sense of the arc of his Papacy the very day before his election to the Throne of Peter back in April of 2005, when we wrote:
"In his homily Monday morning, [Cardinal] Ratzinger -- powerful Vatican official from Germany often mentioned as a leading candidate to become the next pope -- spoke in unusually blunt terms against 'a dictatorship of relativism' -- the ideology that there are no absolute truths," reports FOXNews:
"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."
Whether or not you're a Catholic, the Cardinal's words ring true on a fundamental human level. "True joy" can come only from striving towards a goal higher than "one's own ego and one's own desires."
You probably caught the MSMs usual misunderstanding of all things Papa Ratzi, this time the Pope's baptism of Allam, a Muslim-born convert who is one of Italy's most famous and controversial journalists, on Easter eve last weekend. You convert, you die!!! We were particularly enchanted by a piece -- can't find the source, but it comes with the territory -- that called Benedict XVI to task for saying something that might offend Osama Bin Laden.
It took Time only seven months to get wind of what Papa Ratzi was up to, as we wrote in November of 2006:
"Suddenly, when he speaks, the whole world listens," gushes a breathless Time Mag, enthralled with its belated discovery of Papa Ratzi, the Pope who loves cats and Mozart. Long before Cardinal Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, the great student of history and human nature was warning the West of the gathering Eurabian storm. But only when Time notices the "hard-knuckle intellect with a taste for blunt talk and interreligious confrontation" is this voice in the wilderness "suddenly" heard.
This angry litttle guy from Geert Wilders' piece called to mind the RIGHT Reverend Jeremiah Wright, until recently the right-hand man of the man who would be Leader of the Free World. That type of oratory is SO yesterday. Unbelievable that modrin folks buy into it.
That's what comes of gazing at one's navel 24/7.
How sad to think of the worst impulses of our species being promoted, big time, by the tribalistic proselytizers of the "religion of peace."
Fortunately, just as the Jihadists use the internet tools developed by their betters to promulgate their message of hatred and fear of the other, the internet becomes the vehicle of deliverance of Geert Wilders's message of wisdom and truth.
As I have said before it is my opinion that the Judeo-Christian beliefs represent the best compilation of the wisdom of how to have a successfully functioning society and it is time liberals, MSM, and other relativist thinkers began to take note.
Posted by: goomp | March 30, 2008 at 05:17 PM
I fear that things will get worse before they get better; in the meantime, the extraordinary Papa Ratzi will continue to enlighten and illuminate our thought processes. Ultimately, however, I very much suspect that our way of life is seriously threatened by the forces of unreasoning fanaticism.
Posted by: Gayle Miller | March 31, 2008 at 04:32 PM