Update: Culture of corruption: Holder, terrorists, Covington & Burling/Michelle Malkin

The Obamadrama, the first and (hopefully  last) “post-American” presidency….

Thomas Sowell,  here on WoJ!

In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.

Obama: Judge & Executioner?

Andrew Bolt:

Barack Obama makes a farce of the civilian trial he foolishly ordered for the sake of “justice”:

A TOUGH-TALKING President Barack Obama went on the offensive today, saying that accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be convicted and executed… In interviews with NBC and CNN during his trip to Asia this week, Mr Obama said those offended by the legal privileges afforded to Mohammed by granting him a civilian trial, rather than a military one, won’t find it “offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him”.

“When”? So already this trial is delegitimised.

Charles Krauthammer explains why the circus of a civilian trial is exactly what Mohammed will love anyway, allowing him to broadcast his message to the world to the joy of jihadists everywhere:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8BGt2bxboE[/youtube]

Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Convention, nor are they among those covered by it.

But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents. The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense– information that told the Al Qaeda international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it.

This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime– something for which people have been executed, as they should have been. Secrecy in warfare is a matter of life and death. Lives were risked and lost during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from discovering that Britain had broken its supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and could read their military plans that were being radioed in that code.

“Loose lips sink ships” was the World War II motto in the United States. But loose lips are mandated under the rules of criminal prosecutions.

Tragically, this administration seems hell-bent to avoid seeing acts of terrorism against the United States as acts of war. The very phrase “war on terrorism” is avoided, as if that will stop the terrorists’ war on us.

The mindset of the left behind such thinking was spelled out in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, which said that “Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way– the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation’s adherence to the rule of law.”

This is not the rule of law but the application of laws to situations for which they were not designed.

How many Americans may pay with their lives for the intelligence secrets and methods that can forced to be disclosed to Al Qaeda was not mentioned. Nor was there mention of how many foreign nations and individuals whose cooperation with us in the war on terror have been involved in countering Al Qaeda– nor how many foreign nations and individuals will have to think twice now, before cooperating with us again, when their role can be revealed in court to our enemies, who can exact revenge on them.

Behind this decision and others is the notion that we have to demonstrate our good faith to other nations, sometimes called “world opinion.” Just who are these saintly nations whose favor we must curry, at the risk of American lives and the national security of the United States?

Internationally, the law of the jungle ultimately prevails, despite pious talk about “the international community” and “world opinion,” or the pompous and corrupt farce of the United Nations. Yet this is the gallery to which Barack Obama has been playing, both before and after becoming President of the United States.

In the wake of the obscenity of a trial of terrorists in federal court for an act of war– and the worldwide propaganda platform it will give them– it may seem to be a small thing that President Obama has been photographed yet again bowing deeply to a foreign ruler. But how large or small an act is depends on its actual consequences, not on whether the politically correct intelligentsia think it is no big deal.

As a private citizen, Barack Obama has a right to make as big a jackass of himself as he wants to. But, as President of the United States, his actions not only denigrate a nation that other nations rely on for survival, but raise questions about how reliable our judgment and resolve are– which in turn raises questions about whether those nations will consider themselves better off to make the best deal they can with our enemies.

Even Europes Dark Age was (a lot) Brighter than Islam’s Mythical “Golden Age”

Islam Watch

Quote from this excellent article:

“An Islamic world of enormous cities endowed with all the wealth of antiquity and the plunder gathered in the Muslim wars of conquest.”

Now we all know why this period of history was called the Golden Age of Islam. This was because of the piles of ill-gotten gold from looted temples and churches, booty from the conquered and Jjizya (tribute) from infidels.  When the source dried up after they killed the Golden Goose, so did this Golden Age come to an end.

Popular history books tell us that Euruope’s Dark Ages (8-10th century) was Islam’s Golden Age — a Golden Age without any hard facts…

According to the history books, the Early Middle Ages, the period stretching roughly from the first quarter of the seventh century to the first quarter of the tenth, was a crucial time forEurope and the Middle East. For Europe, this was the very darkest phase of the so-called Dark Ages, an era during which the light of Classical Civilization was finally extinguished. However, for the Middle East, which from about 635 onwards became Muslim, it was a very different story. The next three centuries, far from constituting a “Dark Age”, became a veritable Golden Age. This was to be the high point of Islamic civilization: three centuries during which the Islamdom led the world in science, philosophy, wealth and culture. As Europe floundered in poverty and darkness, with cities abandoned and violence everywhere, Muslim rulers such as Harun al-Rashid and Al-Mamum presided over a flourishing and enlightened urban civilization.

That, at least, is the story told in all the textbooks. But proper examination of facts suggests that this is mostly, if not completely, a myth. In reality, neither the European Dark Age nor the Islamic Golden Age has any basis in fact: These are little more than two facets of a single fictitious historical narrative, a narrative which has however been around for many centuries; one that derives from the written histories of early Islam and of Europe. Until the nineteenth century, no-one had any real reason to question this version of events. After all, the Islamic world, at least by the beginning of the eleventh century, did seem to be far ahead of Europe. Did we not get our numeral system (“Arabic numerals”) from the Arabs, as well as algebra, alcohol, and a host of other techniques and technologies? All the evidence seemed to indicate that the Muslim world was, in the centuries preceding the eleventh, advanced and sophisticated, while Europe was mired in a primitive barbarism.

But this view has now faced a serious challenge: For, in the twentieth century, a whole new body of evidence became available to historians; evidence unavailable to previous generations of scholars: The evidence of archaeology. And what archaeology tells us has been devastating to the traditional view.

By the mid-twentieth century, archaeologists had begun to put together a fairly comprehensive picture of the archaeology of Europe and the Near East. Indeed, several areas of the Near East, such as Egypt, Palestine and Iraq, were and remain among the most thoroughly excavated regions of the earth.

Medievalists had, of course, been very interested in throwing light on the somewhat romantic though apparently fabulously wealthy and cultured Islamic world of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries. Strange and wonderful tales were told of this epoch, though all agreed it was an age of high civilization. This was the age of the Omayyad and Abbasid Caliphs; the romantic epoch of Scheherazade and Harun Al-Rashid, the fabulously opulent Caliph of Baghdad, who is said to have donned the disguise of a commoner and wandered by night through the dimly-lit streets of the metropolis—a city of reputedly a million people. This epoch, and this alone, is said to have marked the age of Islam’s cultural ascendancy. Consider the following description from an English historian of eighth-tenth century Cordoba, typical of the genre: “In Spain … the foundation of Umayyad power ushers in an era of unequalled splendour, which reaches its height in the early part of the tenth century. The great university of Cordova is thronged with students … while the city itself excites the wonder of visitors from Germany and France. The banks of the Guadalquivir are covered with luxurious villas, and born of the ruler’s caprice rises the famous Palace of the Flower, a fantastic city of delights” (H. St. L. B. Moss, The Birth of the Middle Ages; 395-814, Oxford University Press, 1935, p. 172). All agree that, in later years, from the late eleventh century onwards, the Islamic world began to fall rapidly behind the West.

On the word of the written histories, then, archaeologists expected to find, from Spain to eastern Iran, a flourishing and vibrant culture. An Islamic world of enormous cities endowed with all the wealth of antiquity and the plunder gathered in the Muslim wars of conquest. They hoped to find palaces, public baths, universities and mosques; all richly decorated with marble, ceramic and carved stone.

In fact, they found nothing of the sort.

The archaeological non-appearance of the Islamic Golden Age is surely one of the most remarkable discoveries to come to light in the past century. It has not achieved the sensational headlines we might expect, for the simple reason that a non-discovery is of much less interest to the public than a discovery. Then again, as archaeologists searched in vain through site after site, they imagined they had just been unlucky; that with the next day’s dig, the fabulous palaces and baths would be uncovered. And this has been the pattern now for a hundred years. In fact, the entire Islamic world is a virtual blank for roughly three centuries.

Normally, we find one or two finds attributed to the seventh century, then nothing for three centuries, then a resumption of archaeological material in the mid- or late-tenth century. Take, for example Egypt,the largest and most populous Islamic country during the Early Middle Ages. The Muslim conquest of the country occurred in 638 or 639, and we should expect the invaders to have begun, almost immediately, using the wealth of the land to begin building numerous and splendid places of worship, but apparently they didn’t. Only two mosques in the whole of Egypt, both in Cairo, are said to date from before the eleventh century: the Amr ibn al-As (641) and the Ahmad ibn Tulun (878). However, the latter building has many features found only in mosques of the eleventh century, so its date of 878 is disputed. Thus, in Egypt, we have a single place of worship, the mosque of Amr ibn al-As, dating from the mid-seventh century, then nothing for another three-and-a-half centuries. Why, in an enormous country with up to, perhaps, five million inhabitants, should the Muslims wait over 300 years before building themselves places of worship?

And it is the same throughout the Islamic world. No matter where we go, from Spain to Iran, there is virtually nothing between circa 650 and 950. Spain, as we have seen, is supposed to have witnessed a flowering of Islamic culture and civilization in the two centuries after the Arab conquest of 711; and the city of Cordoba is said to have grown to a sophisticated metropolis of half-a-million people or more. We recall the description of a flourishing and vastly opulent metropolis painted by the writer quoted above. Yet the same author admitted that “Little remains of the architecture of this period.” Little indeed! As a matter of fact, the only Muslim structure in the whole of Spain dating from before the eleventh century is the so-called Mosque of Cordoba; yet even this, strictly-speaking, is not an Islamic construction: It was originally the Visigothic Cathedral of Saint Vincent, which was converted, supposedly in the days of Abd er-Rahman I, to a mosque. Yet the Islamic features that exist could equally belong to the time of Abd er-Rahman III (latter tenth century), whom we know did conversion work on the Cathedral, adding a minaret and a new façade (Louis Bertrand, The History of Spain, p. 54). Most of the Islamic features in the building actually come after Abd er-Rahman III, and there is no secure way of dating anything in it to the eighth century.

The poverty of visible Islamic remains is normally explained by the proposition that the Christians destroyed the Muslim monuments after the city’s re-conquest. But this solution is inherently a suspect. Granted the Christians might have destroyed all the mosques, though even that seems unlikely, but they certainly would not have destroyed opulent palaces, baths, fortifications, etc. Yet none of these—none, at least, ascribed to the eighth to early tenth centuries—has survived. And even granting that, such a universal and pointless destruction did take place, we have to assume that at least under the ground, we would find an abundance of Arab foundations, as well as artifacts, tools, pottery etc. Indeed, in a city of half-a-million people, as Cordoba of the eight, ninth and tenth centuries is said to have been—the archaeologist would expect to find—a superabundance of such things. They should be popping out of the ground with almost every shovel-full of dirt.Now Cordoba has been extensively excavated over the past seventy years or so, often specifically to search for Arab/Moorish remains. What then has been found?

According to the prestigious Oxford Archaeological Guide, the city has revealed, after exhaustive excavations: (a) The south-western portion of the city wall, which was “presumably” of the ninth century; (b) A small bath-complex, of the 9th/10th century; and (c) A “part” of the Umayyad (8-9th century) mosque (The Oxford Archaeological Guide, Collins, 1998). This is all that can be discovered from two-and-a-half centuries of the history of a city of supposedly half-a-million people. And the rest of Spain, which has been investigated with equal vigor, can deliver little else. The foundations of a small house here and a few fragments of pottery there, usually of doubtful date and often described as “presumably” of ninth century or such like.

The sheer poverty of these remains makes it clear that the fabulously wealthy Cordoba of the eighth, ninth and early tenth centuries is a myth; and the elusive nature of all materials from these three centuries, in every part of the Islamic world, makes us wonder whether the rise of Islam has been somehow misdated: For the first real mark left (in archaeological terms) by Islam in Spain is dated to the mid-tenth century, to the time of Abd er-Rahman III, whose life bears many striking comparisons with his namesake and supposed ancestor Abd er-Rahman I, of the eighth century.

Again, there are strange and striking parallels between the major events of Islamic history of the seventh and eighth centuries on the one hand and of the tenth and eleventh centuries on the other. Thus, for example, the Christian Reconquista in Spain is supposed to have commenced around 720, with the victory of Don Pelayo at Covadonga; but the real Reconquista began three hundred years later with the victories of Sancho of Navarre around 1020. Similarly, the Islamic invasion of northern India supposedly commenced around 710-720 with the victories of Muhammed bin Qasim, though the “real” Islamic conquest of the region began with the victories of Mahmud of Ghazni, roughly between 1010 and 1020. Yet again, the impact of Islam on Europe seems not have been felt until the late tenth and eleventh centuries, though commonsense would suggest that it should have been felt three hundred years earlier. Henri Pirenne, for example, was criticized by Alfons Dopsch for suggesting that Islam terminated Classical Civilization in Europe in the seventh century by its blockade of the Mediterranean. Thus, said Dopsch, Europe should have become “Medieval” by the late seventh century. Yet many of the characteristics of medieval society, such as the rise of feudalism and castle-building, said Dopsch, only appear in the late tenth century. And obviously Islamic ideas, such as Holy War, were only copied by the Europeans in the eleventh century.

What then does all this mean?

The lack of Muslim archaeology from before the tenth and eleventh centuries (with the exception of two or three monuments such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Amr ibn al-As mosque in Cairo, usually of the mid-seventh century), would indicate that the rise of Islam has been misdated, and that some form of error has crept into the chronology. But error or not, the fact that, virtually nothing from before the mid-tenth century has been found, means that Islam was not a flourishing, opulent and cultured civilization whilst Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. By the late tenth century, Europe was experiencing her own “renaissance”, with a flowering of “Romanesque” art and architecture, much of it strongly reminiscent of the Late Classical work of the Merovingian and Visigothic period.

The meaning of this archaeological “dark age”, of central importance to our understanding of European and Islamic history, will be discussed more fully in a subsequent article.

The above article summarizes arguments found in John O’Neill’s Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization (Felibri Publications).

…And the Aztecs Invented the Wire-Recorder

by Baron Bodissey

On September 25th, 1957, during his address to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said the following:

“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Soviet Russia. It was Russia — at places like the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute — that carried the light of learning through so many decades, paving the way for the liberation of Europe. It was innovation in the Soviet Republics that developed the light bulb; radio and television; our mastery of outer space; our ability to conquer many diseases. Soviet culture has given us majestic avenues and soaring towers; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant iconography and places of political refuge. And throughout history, socialism has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of social justice and political equality.”

No he didn’t, not really.

But I didn’t make the quote up entirely. It was taken, with a few judiciously-chosen alterations in the text, from Barack Hussein Obama’s famous speech in Cairo back in June.

Here’s what President Obama actually said:
- – - - – - – - -

“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

Muslims, like the Soviets, claim to have invented virtually everything in the world.

As Fjordman remarked:

Is there even a single truthful statement in this entire paragraph? Muslims did create some fine calligraphy, and a few of their scholars made contributions to algebra, but apart from that it’s almost total nonsense. The magnetic compass was invented by the Chinese and possibly by Europeans and others independently. Printing of books, too, was invented by the Chinese, and was stubbornly and persistently rejected by Muslims for a thousand years or more due to Islamic religious resistance. They liked the Chinese invention of gunpowder a lot more.

The misattribution of scientific and cultural achievements to Islam is now widespread among the elite dhimmis of the Western world. Our political and cultural leaders are falling all over themselves to rewrite history and attribute to Islam a wide range of major accomplishments that do not belong to it.

The problem with this willful campaign of misinformation is not just that popular knowledge of the facts of history is on the wane — which is bad enough — but that we are purveying these lies and distortions ourselves.

Imagine what it would have been like during the Cold War if President Eisenhower had journeyed into the heart of the Evil Empire and told the Soviets what a grand job he thought they were doing.

Picture John F. Kennedy praising Fidel Castro for his accomplishments in agriculture, medicine, and education.

What if Ronald Reagan had apologized to Mikhail Gorbachev for America’s half-century of misguided hostility towards Soviet Communism?

Under the current circumstances, we can’t even acknowledge that we are in a deadly civilizational war, let alone fight it and win it. To the culture at large, the war doesn’t even exist.

All we can do is hunt down “terrorists” in the mountains of Afghanistan — without ever profiling them or violating their civil rights, mind you.

President Obama has done much to accelerate the Frankfurt School’s long-term goal of inducing a general cultural amnesia about Western Civilization. Our grandchildren will go down to their ruin without ever knowing what it is they have lost.

We would do well to learn a lesson from the Russians about the long-term effectsof the Memory Hole:

For journalist Masha Gessen who was brought up on Soviet post-war patriotic songs claiming Soviet science led the way to the skies, it was a shock to learn that fiction had often been blended with fact.

“What you learn as a child really stays with you,” she says. “And sometimes it’s a revelation to me now when I find out — now, in my 30s — that something has its origins elsewhere in the world when I was convinced the whole time that it had its origins in Russia.”

Within a generation or two, everyone will know that all the wonders of modernity — or whatever remains of them by that time — can be credited to the magnificence of Islamic civilization.