Lucky that Islam, the religion of peace and, moreover, understanding, has decided that women who are raped absent a hajib (see immediate left) are asking this act to be committed upon them. From The Bangkok Post:

Al-Hilali likened unveiled women to “uncovered meat” in a fasting month sermon in Arabic to 500 worshippers at Sydney’s biggest mosque.

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem,” he said.

Al-Hilali told the congregation he leads that a woman who stayed home and was veiled would be safe from sexual assault. “If she was in her room, in her home, in her hajib (veil), no problem would have occurred.”

This comment has become an issue because a number of teenage Australian girls were subjected to hours of sexual degradation during a spate of gang rapes in Sydney that occurred between 1998 and 2002. The suspects in these assaults framed their rationale in ethnic terms, the young victims being informed that they were “sluts” and “Aussie pigs” while they were being hunted down and raped.

As a result of the above comments by Al-Hilali, Australians and Prime Minister John Howard have reacted strongly:

“They are appalling and reprehensible comments,” Prime Minister John Howard said. “The idea that women are to blame for rapes is preposterous.”

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward accused Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali of inciting sexual assault by excusing the perpetrators while blaming the victims. She said the Egyptian-born Mufti of Australia should be deported. “It’s time we stopped just saying he should apologise,” Goward said of the leader of Australia’s 350,000 Muslims. “I think it’s time he left.”

From FrontPage magazine:

In Australia’s New South Wales Supreme Court in December 2005, a visiting Pakistani rapist testified that his victims had no right to say no, because they were not wearing a headscarf.

And earlier this year Australians were outraged when Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed gave a lecture in Sydney where he informed his audience that rape victims had no one to blame but themselves. Women, he said, who wore skimpy clothing, invited men to rape them.

But these ideas didn’t begin in Australia.

Fjordman, in his “Blog about Islam, Scandanavian Affairs and Global Politics writes:

Numbers released in January 2005 indicate a sharp rise in the number of rape charges in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city:

Alarmed at last week’s police statistics, which revealed that in 68% of all rapes committed this year the perpetrator was from an ethnic minority, leading Muslim organisations have now formed an alliance to fight the ever-growing problem of young second and third-generation immigrants involved in rape cases against young Danish girls.

The German journalist Udo Ulfkotte told in a recent interview that in Holland, you can now see examples of young, unveiled Moroccan women with a so-called “smiley”. It means that the girl gets one side of her face cut up from mouth to ear, serving as a warning to other Muslim girls who should refuse to wear the veil. In the Muslim suburb of Courneuve, France, 77 per cent of the veiled women carry veils reportedly because of fear of being harassed or molested by Islamic moral patrols.

Clearly, Muslims seem to perceive that many Western Cultures dress and portray themselves precisely as the above illustration to the left — making them, naturally, subject to whatever resulting “justice” and “incidents” occur.

Do the Logical Extension.

By deciding that you will, for example, vote Democratic and embrace the overturning of the Patriot Act, the abandonment of Iraq, the gutting of call and internet monitoring, the elimination of waterboarding (which I shall freely admit I believe occurs) — well, you have or you will ensure that Islam comes closer and closer to guiding your life in America. That is, if you happen to survive the CBN event that will result.

It stuns me to think that the very persons who speak of “understanding Islam” and according an attorney to every Islamist captured are those who would first be eliminated under Sharia law. What part of “the United States is a corrupt and secular society and should be completely destroyed” don’t you get? How many times do Militant Islamists have to tell this to your face — literally?

For certainly American women deserve to be raped, do they not? And American women deserve to be the recipients of “smileys,” do they not?

A “smiley.” Holy Mother of God.

How ignorant can you be?

BZ

My ass has been up past my shoulders in alligators, anacondas and reticulated pythons at work. Ever have one of those weeks? This is mine.

In the meantime, the race is on and the Republicans are losing, the Democrats are winning, the Democrats are kicking our butts, no they’re not, yes they are, look at this poll, look at that poll. And the economy, Omigod, the economy is absolutely crashing and has been crashing under the Evil Dictator Bush.

Actually, no it’s not.

Many people, and certainly most Demoncats, er, Democrats, agree readily that the finest economy ever experienced by this nation was under the Clinton Administration — finer than at any time in American history (do you see where my tongue is placed?).

And yet, despite that, please compare the finest economy ever in the history of the United States with that of the Evil Dictator Bush.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an average of roughly 3.7% under Clinton. Anything over 3% is considered good, and anything 4% or above is considered excellent. Under EDB, the economy is just about where it was during the best of the Clinton years. And that despite two massive events: first, the bursting of the stock market when most every “dot.com” you can think of tanked. Then, of course, 9/11/2001. That one day was responsible for almost the near-collapse of our entire domestic commercial air industry. Everything took a hit; many people curled into the fetal position and spending came to a lurching halt.

What about unemployment? What about that most heinous of accusations: “It’s a jobless economy!” Really? Look above.

Note the hit right around — you guessed it, 9/11. Things peaked at around 6.0 in 2003, and the unemployment rate now is just above 4%. That’s a hair above the finest unemployment level during the president with the most ethical administration ever.

What about inflation? During the most stellar administration ever, inflation got down to around 1.6% in 1998. Frankly, darned decent. But also recall that President Bush stepped into a recession that he acquired from — guess who?

So, I would posit: it IS terrorism; it IS immigration. But it is ALSO the economy and, clearly, it’s NOTHING like what is portrayed in the DEM: the Defeatist, Elitist Media.

In Fornicalia, what’s the first thing the Democratic candidate, Phil Angelides, would do? Raise billions of dollars in taxes. Our onerous registrations fees would reoccur. And more. He’s said precisely that; it’s no secret.

What do you think will occur under a Democratic House, Senate and Presidency? Will they continue tax cuts? Or will taxes increase? Will the military increase, or will it be cut? Will the mantra of “either we attack Islamists on their shores or we’ll fight on our shores” continue? Or will we abandon Iran and encourage another Khmer Rouge where millions more will die?

Is it the economy? It is; and more.

BZ

My five-year-old father, in 1925, sits with his brother Jim in front of their home at 5509 Holmes Street in Kansas City, Missouri.

Here, my eight-year-old father, Richard, stands with his younger brother Jim in front of their 1928 Dallas, Texas home.

Memories from another time.

I sit in reflection of my last two posts and I couldn’t help but think of some of the more memorable points when I was a child. Here will follow some of my favorite memories.

I would ask that you, in the comments section, reminisce and write about some of your favorite times as a child.

What are YOUR favorite memories?

My father, in the military, was frequently gone on trips to WPAFB and to the Pentagon when I was younger. Mom and Dad would leave me with my grandparents in downtown Sacratomato.

My most memorable times were at my Grandparents’ house. They had a two story home at 2526 27th Street. How simple does that address get if you’re a child? My grandfather (on my mother’s side) originally owned many acres around his home, which was originally built by his wife’s father. I never met Little Grandma; but my older brothers did.

Wait. Do you recall the original phone numbers? Grandma’s phone number was GL55483. That meant Gladstone 55483. My original number was Ivy95253. Does this resonate with anyone?

My favorite memories are these:

Going to Grandma’s house; having her cook lamb; getting actual butter; sleeping in the upstairs bedroom in a bed twice as big as my own; having stairs to climb; having a fig tree in the back yard to climb and fall from; having next door neighbors like Glenn and Cecil and seeing their DeSoto in the garage; climbing the huge redwood in Grandma’s yard and getting past the vast amounts of sap so that I could see over the downtown area; riding my pushy-cart up and down the sidewalks (which we never had in the county) and exploring some distance past Grandma’s house; watching Grandma have a dish of peaches and some cottage cheese for lunch; having the entire family over to watch the yearly Wizard of Oz on Grandma’s TV and then, even better, realizing that The Wizard of Oz (when she upgraded) wasn’t just in black and white; it had some color parts too!

There are so many, so many, many more memories than these when I was a child.

I am comforted by these movies in my mind.

What are your memories on a Sunday when YOU were a child?

BZ

The book Flags Of Our Fathers, by James Bradley and Ron Powers was published in 2001, and now makes it to the big screen courtesy of 76-year-old director Clint Eastwood.

You’ve seen them plastered all over the net; in concert with yesterday’s post I found another internet treat addressing this very same issue with some salient comments intermixed.

If you are in your 40s and 50s, considering today’s pampered and coddled children never allowed to fail, don’t you wonder how you managed to survive your childhood?

Yeah, me neither.

Consider:

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our cribs were painted with lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our pushbikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick-up on a warm day was a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hoses and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drink with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING.

We would leave home in the morning, play all day and, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on, despite no one being able to reach us all day, we were fine.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times,we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 399 channels on cable, no videotaped movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms — we had friends, and we went outside and found them.

I bought green plastic soldiers and made wars all over the back yard; headquarters was a cardboard box. The grass was the ocean. I was popular because I had all the Tonka and Matchbox and Dinky cars and trucks.

Myself and the local kids would go down to the Metropolitan Army Navy store at the corner of Fair Oaks and Marconi on our bikes, buy our green helmet liners, web belts, canteens, shovels, ammo pouches, boots, and then ride to Ancil Hoffman park with our plastic handguns and plastic rifles and shoot the crap out of each other, roll down hills, clutch our chests, then argue over who was dead and who wasn’t, who got shot and who didn’t.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

If one mother said one thing, it was like our own mother said it. We knew when we were in trouble. We knew the moment it happened one mother was telephoning the other — and we were in the Doghouse.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, paste from the jar, and no one died.

We were given catapults for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

All the kids in the neighborhood couldn’t wait for late winter, when we could pull up the long green weeds in the field behind our houses and have dirt clod wars.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

We built go karts out of Briggs & Stratton engines, and mini-bikes out of the same engines. Pat Green and I built a mini-bike with an engine that had no brakes but we could disengage the clutch; we used our feet to stop.

Our school teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

• Failure is normal; success is the exception.
• Then came the government;
• Then came regulations;
• Then came the hordes of attorneys;
• Then came the lawsuits;
• Then came the “educators;”

And I would posit: what have we created? Are our children better for all of this, are they better equipped to take on a world economy and world competition?

Many of you are parents: I’d like your answer.

BZ