News Teasers

Each of these news nuggets warrants a post in their own right.

• CARACAS, Venezuela (AP)President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.

  Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort—Venezuela’s military nerve-center—before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: "Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!"

  "We must continue developing the resistance war, that’s the anti- imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday," said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation’s immense oil reserves.

"Fatherland, Socialism or Death." Sound familiar?

And let’s not forget the ties between Chavez and Iran. Two peas in a pod!

• Mark Steyn reminds us that the war against Islamic fascism started with Iran. Steyn suggests that when we did little or nothing to oppose the "fatwa" against Salman Rushdie, we set the train in motion to where we are today.
  

  Mark Steyn: We’ve replaced Rushdie in hiding

  …In 1989 Salman Rushdie went into hiding under the protection of the British police. A decade later he decided he did not wish to live his life like that and emerged from seclusion to live a more or less normal life. He learned the biggest lesson of all – how easy it is to be forced into the shadows. That’s what’s happening in the free world incrementally every day, with every itsy-bitsy nothing concession to groups who take offense at everything and demand the right to kill you for every offense. Across two decades, what happened to Rushdie has metastasized, in part because of the weak response in those first months. "Death is perhaps too easy"? Maybe. But slow societal suicide is easier still.

• Following up on that theme, Christopher Hitchen’s writes about how "Rage Boy" pictured below seems to show up whenever Muslims in Pakistan perceive some offense against Islam. In fact he’s become quite famous for his outrage act.

  

  Hitchens makes the point so many of us have that we cannot appease these crazies. I’d go further and say we cannot appease them, but we can defeat them. "Rage Boy" got his big break in the outrage industry with the publication of the Danish cartoons. It reminds us of this funny, offensive flash cartoon from YAFM. See it again to refresh your memory.

• Or, see the latest contribution from the brave Danes who instead of burning a witch as the symbol of evil for their harvest rites burned Mohammed in effigy instead. The American Israeli Patriot brought it to our attention.
  
  Translation of the text: Saint Hans’ Eve has always celebrated the tradition of burning away the evil, in earlier times symbolized by the witch, who was supposedly directly connected to Satan. And if the witch was not burned then the harvest could not be safely brought into the house.

  Now a new evil has arrived in Europe, an evil that lies and kills in the name of their so-called God. An evil that springs from the so-called Prophet Mohammed. Therefore, in our time, it is he who symbolizes evil and it is not just one harvest that will disappear, but all of Western Europe’s future that will vanish if this evil is not dispatched to Hekkenfeldt [i.e. Hell, literally the Hekla volcano in Iceland.

• Following up on Mark Steyn’s observation on Western weakness encouraging the Muzzies, The Sun (U.K.) reports that Iranians are ferrying soldiers into Iraq with helicopters. Iranian agents continue to kill British and American allies in Iraq.
• None of Iran’s acts would surprise Joshua Muravchik writing in Opinion Journal.Com…. Muravchik goes right down the line from Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah and more describing how the weakened position of the U.S. in the Middle East (thanks to Democrats) has emboldened Iran to threaten a war outside the shadows of their usual proxy terrorists.

The clock is ticking folks! How much longer will we sit and watch as dangers gather?