To my comrades in arms who survived the War on Xmas ...

Armed and Dangerous: The Camel suits up for the War on Christmas

If you haven't been paying attention you probably missed the fact we are engaged in a great civil war...commonly referred to by GOP Christian fanatics as the annual "War on Christmas". 

Lest you forget, we  atheists and heathens who represent 5-10% of the population - along with President Obama, our "Muslim in Chief" -  have been waging a war against  Xmas that the 76% of our population who identify as Christian observe by decorating pagan trees, burning pagan yule logs, invoking a gift giving magical fat old elf, avarice and greed. 

I for one almost forgot, since I do not watch FOX News thus never hear the droning whine of  Bill "The Tide Goes In And The Tide Goes Out; You Can't Explain That" O'Reilly ... the self declared Commander in Chief of the Christian defenders of the holiday.

I was, however, recently reminded of said war when Sid Miller, TexAss' Commissioner of Agriculture, threatened to slap the next person who says "Happy Holidays" to him instead of Merry Christmas.*  Seems Sid don't cotton none to them thar folks who ain't worshipin' the baby Jesus, and who fail to celebrate the baby Jesus' invented birthday with the requisite holy day well wishes. It seems bitch slappin' folks is the kind of gentility, peace, and good will toward men that his imaginary man-god had in mind.

Never mind that December also marks the observance of Hanuka, Saturnalia, Kwanzaa, The Winter Solstice, and New Years ... to the enraged and put upon majority December belongs to Christians.    Well, shit - I don't think so.

So, while I am late for the first wave of attack and advances against the co-opted pagan holiday referred to as Xmas, I have dragged  my old combat paraphernalia out of moth balls; loaded my .50 cal. and strapped it to my hump; dusted off my mortar, and got Achmed - my faithful ex-Muslim anti-Christmas combat comrade- to ride shotgun. We plan to launch our surprise attack on Xmas Eve.

They'll never see us coming ...after all, word has it they're they're still on the look out for the Jade Helm invasion of TexAss by the US Army, and the gay Rainbow Army secretly trying to indoctrinate their youth.  They're screwed now.

Happy Holidays to all my readers and their families.  May the New Year bring us more reasoned and thinking compatriots, health, and happiness.
   

* Story on TexAss Sid here:  http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/31529/republican-ag-commissioner-sid-miller-say-merry-christmas-or-ill-slap-you

Reality Check - I just need to be sure I have this right.

In 2015 Radicalized Muslims have killed 19 Americans.

In 2015 Radicalized Christians killed 9 black folks in a church, killed 3 people at a Planned Parenthood Clinic, and three black churches were set afire by white supremacists; while the vast majority of this year's 9,000 gun murders nation wide are committed by Christians.

And the GOP presidential wannabes, their ditto headed drones, and Christian Dominionists, are fear mongering about being killed by radicalized Muslims under ISIS' influence?

Do I have that right?
Sompthin is awry.

"Our Meaningless and Insipid Godly Platitudes are With You ...That Is All."

The Daily News is about as far from Left Wing or atheistic in their politics or philosophy as I've seen in a daily tabloid. And yet even a broken clock is right twice a day.  They nailed it with today's cover and headline.

In the wake of yet another mass murder, this time at the hands of home grown Muslim citizens of the USA, the GOP does what it always does best: Pray.  Period.

Oh...they'll go on to try and connect this to foreign born Muslims, probably invoking Syrian refugees in some bizarre and twisted logic, the only logic the the Right possesses. Trump can now reaffirm his plan to register all Muslims and make them carry papers ("Your papers, please, mein Herr.").  It's what the GOP does.

They'll go on to accuse Obama of politicizing the tragedy ... using this incident as a political ploy...an excuse to once again open the dialog on reasonable gun controls, or in their terms: "Justification for over-reach to confiscate guns and erase the 2nd Amendment."  It's what the GOP does.

Some of the most rabid Right Wing religionst GOP devotees will call this a "false flag" incident, devised and conducted by the government as a first step toward martial law. It's what the GOP does.

But the opportunity to invoke God and Prayer can never be missed. It's not only good politics it's virtually de rigueur if one wants to appeal to the Evangelical Christian base of the party.  For if you fail to wear your religion on your sleeve you are suspect. Are you really a "true Christian"?  Are you pious enough to be President? Obviously, the four scumbags depicted on the cover of the News qualify in their eyes.

So, what's next?  What can we expect?  I'll tell you what: Nothing.  Well, nothing meaningful anyway.  We will continue to see mass murder on a regular basis. We'll see the prayers of the faithful, the holding of hands, the floral and flame lit make shift monuments to the victims.  And the GOP will spout its usual platitudes invoking Faith and God and Prayer and Jesus and say: "This is the price we pay for being the freest and greatest God given nation on the planet."

Here's a hot flash: we long ago stopped being the greatest nation on the planet.  It stopped when we became the only industrialized nation besides Turkey that has a majority population believing in Creationism over evolutionary theory.  It stopped, when we became the only western nation that doesn't offer paid maternity leave, or universal healthcare.  It stopped when our infant mortality rate became the highest among the 27 wealthiest nations on the planet.  It stopped when we cut food coupon benefits to the poorest, and gave tax breaks to the wealthiest. It stopped when we casually committed our youth to wars costing $ Trillions and all its death and maiming...then claimed there is no money to help our homeless and disabled veterans to the degree they deserve.  It's what the GOP does.

As for our being the freest nation...that ended when gerrymandering became the way to manipulate election results and dilute the will of the people; and when we handed over the process for candidate selection for the office of President to the wealthiest individuals / companies in the nation and lobbyists ;and when the GOP first attempted, and continues to pursue, truncating voting rights of those demographics who tend to vote against them; or when we stopped opening our arms to those most in need of our national embrace.  It's what the GOP does. 


Look, I'm all about the 2nd Amendment.  I own more guns than probably a third of my readers combined.  But this insanity cannot continue to be accepted as the norm in this nation, as it rapidly is by the dulling of our outrage resulting from its frequency.  It cannot be made better by prayer to some imaginary  boogieman in the sky or public demonstrations of piety by the frauds, phonies and religiously afflicted.  Until that is realized we'll continue our spiral toward 3rd World status, and we'll deserve it. 

"Every nation gets the government it deserves" - Joseph de Maistre (1811)

One More Thought on the Politics of Fear and Being a Good Christian

The hysteria over 10,000 Syrian immigrants continues.  Here in New Hampshire, the nation’s first primary state, we are being visited daily by the unholy scum that represent the GOP Presidential hopefuls.  Each are airing commercials around the clock playing on the American fear of ISIS.  Each is claiming to have the plan to defeat them, and each is sworn to stop Muslim immigration, including “children under five years old” according to Chris Christie.  

Some, like Trump, are demanding the registration and tracking of Muslims in the US and the closing of Mosques.  Jeb Bush only wants to admit Christian Syrians. When asked how he’d conduct such a test of religious acceptability he wasn’t quite sure, preferring to dodge the question. I imagine he’d use a technique similar to how ISIS identifies devout Muslims - demanding they quote from memory some passages from their holy book…on punishment of death.    


Some of the far right web sites are insisting that the Obama plan to help those Syrian refugees is his attempt to destroy America from within - a sickness that infects the brains of Birthers, and assorted extremist right wing racists, not so surreptitiously supported by innuendo from the Ultra-Conservative talking heads (AKA FOX News). 

  So, what exactly is the truth about this Muslim refugee threat to our lives and property and way of life?  The U.S. has brought in more than 1.5 million Muslims through the refugee program since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. They have been coming from Islamic states with active jihadist movements such as Somalia, Bangladesh, Burma, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Bosnia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the past five years 680,000 Muslims were admitted to the US under the refugee program.*

While an estimated one to two-hundred US Muslims are believed to have gone to Syria to fight along side ISIS… I’m having difficulty finding examples of Muslims who have come here through the refugee program committing a single act of murder.  In fact, of all the FBI and Homeland security arrests for terrorism conspiracy, or attempting to support ISIS with money all were US home grown Muslim converts, or immigrants except for nine ( 9 ) who were admitted under the Refugee Act.**  NINE OUT OF 1.5 MILLION MUSLIM REFUGEES.   As for how many murders and mass killings were caused by Muslim refugees allowed in under the strict controls of the Refugee Act - the number is ZERO.


Meanwhile, yesterday another good Christian committed another act of terrorism, killing three and wounding nine in a Planned Parenthood invasion.  I’ll bet dollars to donuts he is going to declare he was doing God’s Work protecting the unborn.

In TexAss armed white Christian vigilantes in masks and carrying semi-auto rifles are stalking Muslim citizens as they walk to their Mosque -their campaign of terror and intimidation unhampered by the local white Christian police because of the “open carry” idiocy in that state of horrors.
June 17th of this year, a man rose from a pew in the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, and opened fire killing nine worshipers. The shooter had been photographed wearing patches representing the racist apartheid regimes in Southwest Africa, had a Confederate license plate on his vehicle, was shouting about how blacks have been raping white women, and was a member in good standing of a local Lutheran Church.

Jim David Adkisson, a devout Christian and anti-abortion right-winger, walked into a Knoxville church on July 27th, 2008, and began firing a shotgun at children who were performing Annie Jr. He killed two and wounded seven, targeting “the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country.”

The KKK, a Christ loving organization, has more blood on its member’s hands than we can count.  Hell… American’s murder each other at a rate of 25,000+ a year…more than any nation on the planet not fighting a war on their home turf.  But lets just focus on 10,000 Syrian refugees causing mass mayhem because...Islam.
So, where is the outcry from the GOP and their religious faithful against their own religious brethren's violent streak and terrorism?  Why are they not calling for the registration and tracking of Christians, and closing of churches ?  Where is the justification, reason and logic behind their Muslim refugee fear mongering?  Where is that Christian love they always talk about?

How do they reconcile their behavior with what their man-god was alleged to have said in Mathew 25:   “…for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; ³⁶ I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’   

And when he was asked how they could have done that for him, when they never in fact did, it is written that he answered: Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

“Good Christians”?  I say not one “good Christian” stands among the self-righteous and hypocritical self-proclaimed Christians of the GOP and their supporters.  Let fear and distortion and hypocrisy rule… let their man-god thing and his words be damned.  

* http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/staggering-number-of-muslim-refugees-under-obama/#bIXtqiY4R6lAxoe6.99

**  www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3322649/The-enemy-Nearly-SEVENTY-arrested-America-ISIS-plots-include-refugees-given-safe-haven-turned-terror.html

On Islam, Immigration, and Humanity: A Nation’s and Camel’s Dilemma

I’ve remained largely silent on the Syrian refugee issue. But the rhetoric flowing from the crisis, and the hysteria over the president’s intention of permitting 10,000 refugees to immigrate to the US, has gone beyond the bounds of reason, civility and decency thus I feel compelled to state my position.   

Anyone who has read my books or blog should be pretty much familiar with my perspective on Islam, its dangers, inequities, and the threat it holds for Western Civilization.   In my first book “The Atheist Camel Chronicles”, back in 2008, I wrote this in the afterword:

“As …[Islam] … immigrates to industrialized nations the danger that it represents to the most basic freedom, freedom of speech and expression, is threatened.  Already European countries whose Muslim populations are steadily growing are truncating the freedoms of their native populations out of fear of Islamic power.

The imposition of laws demanding “cultural sensitivity,” political correctness, and self-censorship under penalty of the law have been adopted by Great Britain, parts of Scandinavia and other Western European countries. These laws are in response to threats and intimidation, both veiled and overt, by an intolerant philosophy and insulated culture that laughs at the Infidel’s acquiescence and sees it as a weakness-and an opportunity. Parts of Europe have already begun the process of surrendering their birthright. They are losing their culture to Islamic fundamentalism.” 

In other chapters of my books I warned against the spread of the most virulent form of Islam and what it could mean to the very survival of a civilized culture.
 
If I sounded like I opposed Islamic immigration it’s because I did.  If it sounded like a warning that what is happening in Europe can happen here it’s because it can. My opinion in that regard hasn’t changed… I stand firm on those precepts. However, there comes a time when even the most closely held perspectives can – no- must, be moderated.  That time is now.   

Muslims in the United States’ represent approximately 0.8% of our total population.  Compare that to France’s 7.5% almost ten times greater;  Belgium at 6%, Germany 5.6%,  Netherlands 5.5%, Greece 4.7%, United Kingdom 4.6%, Denmark 4%.  In short, the US has one of the lowest Muslim populations as a percent to total population in the West. 
Frankly, I’d like to see it kept that way.

Additionally, while Muslim immigrants to European nations have largely not assimilated into their adopted nation’s cultures...indeed are treated as 2^nd class citizens to one degree or another … US Muslims have largely adopted our culture and blended into our society, facing less prejudice and overt discrimination  than do their European counter parts  (I know, hard to believe).  That the US has experienced a much lower instance of Muslims going to fight along side ISIS versus the European nations ...not just in shear numbers but as a percent to their Muslim populations… testifies as to how Muslims perceive their acceptance and the opportunities that they enjoy in the US.

So, where does this leave the nation? Where does it leave me and my position?  

It is impossible for me to watch the plight of these refugees and not reflect on their similarity to the almost one-thousand Jews desperately trying to escape Nazi Germany in 1939.  In my minds eye I see the image of that ship, the SS St. Louis, filled with hopeful German Jewish refugees that subsequently were first rejected by Cuba and then refused entry to the US. They were ultimately sent back to Europe – condemning half of those innocent men, women and children to extermination.  And why?  Because they were “the other”, because we had met our quota of Jews, or because there may have been a Nazi saboteur among them?  It makes no difference the reason, that shame must never be repeated.

The Syrian refugees are hoping to save the lives of their family, their children, from what is arguably the most heinous doctrine, regime and fighting force since the Third Reich or Pol Pot's Cambodia. The 10,000 proposed refugees will not impact the current 0.8% US Muslim population we have now one bit, it’s a rounding error at most. They will be subjected to between eighteen months to two years of delay as their applications are screened and vetted before they are allowed entry.  Compare that to the 20 million people who have come into the US under the current “no Visa necessary” policy we’ve had in place for years.  If I were an ISIS operative, I know which route I’d take.

If this nation succumbs to the hysteria of the xenophobes, if we abandon our humanity, if we deny our own immigrant roots and reject the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” when they need us most, then we have relinquished some of our freedom and civility.  We will have forgotten the lessons of history, and repeated them leaving a legacy of shame for all time.  If that happens the terrorists will have already won.

No Words...but these

As the heinous slaughter in Paris took control of the internet and the body count rose, people were busily posting appeals to "pray for Paris and the people of France."  It disgusted me.  

How many slaughters must occur at the hands of those who worship the very same god these sheep are praying to on behalf of Parisians before they are shaken to consciousness? 

At what point does it begin to occur to these bleating sheep that the jihadists prayers for success and their own death ... their appeals to Allah to take them into Paradise for their god inspired acts ... is perceived to have been answered by that god by their Islamic brethren? 

When does the grotesque self deception of a prayer answering, all loving, all knowing deity that responds to telepathic appeals and loves all its creations begin to stink from the rotting, decomposing ancient ignorance that is at its very core?

And so it goes on as it has for millennia: the obscenity of the religious belief of those who kill in its name, and fools who pray to it for it to stop. Stalemate.