One of Moscow’s trendiest nightclubs recently hosted a night called “Marry a Millionaire”, which is your night of nights if you’re hip young (preferably very young) Russian “millionaire hunter”. You will probably also enjoy the event if you’re seedy cashed-up mafia boss with a taste for women half, a third or perhaps a quarter your age.

The article is a quote goldmine, but this would have to be the money shot:

“He should be smart, really handsome, tall, with a really good body, like some kind of prince. Black hair, really green eyes. He should have around $US45 million.”

Those are the words of “Vikki Kurova, 17, who drives a Porsche and whose father is in the steel business”.

The steel business? Perhaps something was lost in translation, but most Russian Porsche owners are in the “stealing business”. Perhaps for her 18th birthday Vicki could ask daddy to tell her what he really does. Wait a minute. Whats a 17 year old doing in a nightclub anyway? You’ve got to love that good old Russian sense of irony - nightclub “face control” involves looking at everything but. Especially the one on the ID card.

But lets hear a bit more Vikki wisdom:

“I spend a lot of money - in a week $US300 or $US400. I couldn’t marry a guy that’s not rich because I want to live like I live now,”

Wow, that is a lot of money, Vikki. And thinking ahead to when daddy is in jail. Good girl!

Great to see a girl who knows what she wants. But does Vicki know what her hazel-eyed prince charming may be looking for in her?

“If you want to be a millionaire’s wife, you should be young, and of course beautiful. All millionaires love young girls.”

And what do those millionaires do when those young, beautiful girls get old, Vicki? I should mention there’s a big difference between the Russian and Australian definition of “old”. Like, about a 30 year difference.

But things always balance out in this world, so for every airhead bimbo seeking a prince there’s an airhead princess out there scrubbing’s someone’s floor for attention (ok, perhaps its not exactly a one to one ratio):

Although Diana’s life was been covered in excruciating detail, [..] Brown provides details of Diana’s detachment from reality, such as telling Brown over a lunch that she thought she could solve the conflict in Northern Ireland.

“I’m very good at sorting out people’s heads,” Brown quotes her as saying.

[..]”Marks and Spencer have got these very clever little meals that you just put the timer on and press the button and it’s done for you!” Diana is quoted as telling her therapist, Simone Simmons.

[..] She would also spend the day at [her Pakistani heart surgeon boyfriend Hasnat Khan’s messy one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, where she would vacuum, do the dishes and iron his shirts.

Alas, contrary to popular belief (in Russia, anyway) being Royalty doesn’t get you everything:

[..] but her efforts were in vain. Dr Khan’s mother had no intention of letting her son marry anyone other than a Pakistani Muslim girl.

Well, I suppose its nice to know at least someone in this world still listens to their mother.

Stratfor reporting on the case of some Russian multinational employees that were kidnapped by Nigerian militants last week (subscription only), in hope of gaining a ransom payout:

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Nigeria’s ambassador June 4 to discuss the June 3 kidnapping of six Russian employees of giant Russian aluminum producer United Company RUSAL in the Niger Delta. Thus far, the many militant groups in the Delta region have shown no regard for country of origin when kidnapping foreign residents. But this is the first time Russians have been kidnapped in the Niger Delta, and Russia is not likely to respond as other countries have to this common militant practice.

[..]

Consistent with its past dealings with armed groups that kidnap Russians, someone in the employ of either the Kremlin or RUSAL will retaliate against the individuals who participated in the kidnapping — or, should the attackers be affiliated with some larger organization, against other individuals in the organization. In September 1985, Hezbollah militants abducted four employees of the Soviet Embassy in Beirut. The KGB’s response to the kidnapping was to carry out reprisal kidnappings of several family members of the suspected Lebanese abductors and to send them back home in pieces. A few days later, the Soviets were released — unlike U.S. hostages kidnapped in Lebanon, some of whom remained in captivity for years.

Whatever the Russian response to the Niger Delta kidnappings, the desired effect will be to deter future attacks against Russian businesses and citizens. And any reprisal likely will happen after RUSAL has paid for the safe release of its employees.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere for all of us.

That page of course only has room for one… But thats later.

The geopolitical gurus at Stratfor make the following analysis of the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran (subscription only):

Iran handed over a proposal to [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker during a brief encounter at the May 5-6 Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt, but also chose to unofficially publicize its terms for Iraq through the Saudi-owned, British-based daily Al Hayat. The Iranian Foreign Ministry likely chose Al Hayat, a major Arab news outlet, to make a back-channel broadcast of what concessions it is prepared to make to allay Sunni concerns in the region.

In sum, this Iranian proposal called for a non-rushed withdrawal and relocation of U.S. troops to bases inside Iraq, a rejection of all attempts to partition Iraq, a commitment by the Sunni bloc to root out the jihadists and acknowledgement by Washington that the Iranian nuclear file cannot be uncoupled from the Iraq negotiations. In return, Iran would rein in the armed Shiite militias, revise the de-Baathification law and Iraqi Constitution to double Sunni political representation, create a policy to allow for the fair distribution of oil revenues (particularly to the Sunnis) and use its regional influence to quell crises in areas such as Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

The terms put forth by the Iranians are so close to the U.S. position on Iraq that, with little exception, they could have been printed on State Department stationary and no one would have noticed the difference. If these are the terms Washington and Tehran are in fact discussing, then we are witnessing an extraordinary turn in the Iraq war in which the U.S. and Iranian blueprints for Iraq are finally aligning. It does not surprise us, then, that Crocker said after his meeting in Baghdad that the Iranian position “was very close to our own” at the level of policy and principle.

Extraordinary indeed. So is this finally a light at the end of tunnel? Maybe, except for a few small problems. Stratfor lists the problems as follows:

• The transnational Sunni Jihadists with their dreams of an Islamic State of Iraq
• the severely and perhaps irreconcilably split Iraqi Shia who are likely to a little rough on each other sooner rather than later
• the much less splintered Iraqi Sunnis, who, although by and large online with these negotiations must be satisfied of their future safety and a slice of the pie in the Shia dominated Iraq (these guarantees are already part of the deal)
• the Iraqi Kurds, who are the Iraqi faction that stands to lose most out of the above settlement and are not about to give up what they’ve worked so hard to finally achieve in Kurdistan
• Ultraconservatives in Washington and Tehran who “can’t negotiate with those people”
• Sunni Regional Powers with that whole Shia Crescent thing on their mind
• Syria, who is feeling pretty important, if not immune right now while the Great Satan is all tied up elsewhere and they are useful to Iran
• Russia, which has really been making the best of the US and Iranian preoccupation in Iraq and would be quite unhappy to have to start caring what the Americans (and even the much closer Iranians) think again

How is that light looking now?

I haven’t seen anyone this confused since… (well, probably since that Communist hijabi the other week):

The city of Tallinn is assessing the damage after two consecutive nights of violent rioting by gangs of mostly young local Russians. The third night passed relatively quietly. Ostensibly triggered by the expected relocation of the Red Army monument (the Bronze Soldier) from downtown Tallinn, the protests turned into a rampage, with drunkenness and plunder overriding the political or ethnic motivations.

Compared to the first night of rioting, April 26-27 (see EDM, April 27), the night of April 27-28 featured even younger mobs, partly under 18 years of age, looting shops in the downtown Viru Street and Vabaduse Square, after having devastated the shops on Tatari Street the preceding night. They particularly sought out sports clothes and liquor. Rioters holding bottles of alcoholic drink became the iconic image of both nights. They also smashed windows at the Estonia Theater, the Estonian Academy of Arts, and the governing Reform Party’s offices.

In a rare political gesture, a large group of secondary-school students demonstrated outside the parliament building under the slogan, “USSR Forever.” Occasionally during both nights, rioters waved the Russian flag or shouted “Russia, Russia;” but such episodes were isolated and uncharacteristic of the events as a whole.

Youths arriving from the Russian-settled northeastern towns of Narva and Sillamae rioted in the nearby Estonian-majority town of Johvi. There they set on fire the monument to Alexander Tonisson, commander of Estonia’s successful defense against Soviet Russian forces in 1918, who was killed after the 1940 occupation by those same forces.

[..]
Russia’s state-controlled television channels misleadingly claimed that the monument had been “cut to pieces,” whereas it is actually being transferred intact to a military cemetery on the outskirts of Tallinn. The Russian channels reported very little about the vandalism and drunkenness. Instead, they blamed Estonian police for “brutality,” characterized the gangs as “Russian school pupils,” “monument defenders,” and “anti-fascists,” and ran archival footage of Soviet-era festivities around the monument. Russian TV generalized that “British MPs” disapproved of Estonia, only to produce the eccentric leftist George Galloway expressing that view.

Wouldn’t expect it any other way from good ol’ George.

Turkmenistan’s new President, Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov, has finally opened his country to Internet access to the outside world. What took them so long? In a word - ‘pizza’:

[The previous President] Niyazov’s government earlier had an unhappy experience with the Internet, when in 1998 London-based NetNames persuaded him to sell top-level “.tm” Internet domain names for a percentage of the profits. NetNames argued that companies would rush to embrace the domain, as “tm” represents “trademark” in the West. After selling more than 4,000 domain names Niyazov pulled the plug on the project, as he was offended by certain registrations, such as “pizza,” which he found uncomfortably close to the Russian word for female genitalia.

That word is pizda, if you’re wondering. When I checked pizda.tm was still up for grabs, so get in there.

Undettered by the possibility of obscene connotations is North Korea’s top guy Kim Jong-Il, who had an Italian chef interrogated until the chef broke the ice by saying he spoke Russian and delivered to North Korea to make pizza for Kim. Word on the NK street is Kim was also at first confused by the p-word, having his foreign guest initially delivered into his harem, before the confused Italian was told to get back in the kitchen where he belongs. “So sorry, Great Leader, I said I’ve got some great PIZZA for you!”

No signs of confusion about the meaning of the word ‘pizza’ from NK’s nukilar-wannabe pals Iran. The Iranians know exactly what it means and where it comes from. That is why it is banned there. The blaphemous infidel word ‘pizza’ that is, not the dish. “Elastic loaves” however remain ever popular. Can someone tell these clowns what Shiite means, while I go and register shiite.tm?

Presumably following a similar logic Pakistani Shiites like to burn Pizza Huts (Elastic Loaf Huts?) because they identify them with the “American administration”. Which leads me assume Pakistani Shiites also identify KFC and gas stations with Pakistani Sunni extremists. Pakistani Sunni mobs on the other hand prefer churches, the Holiday Inn, McDonald’s, trains and Christian schools and convents. Oh, and “blasphemers”, but that goes without saying.

Not to be outdone across the border in India earlier this month mobs destroyed the residence a of poorly performing cricket star:

“An AFP reporter at the site reported that the protesters were shouting “Dhoni die, die”, burning effigies of the long-haired player, who has scored 1,958 runs in 68 one-day international matches and is counted among India’s most aggressive batsmen.”

But back to the pizza.

Under the cover of pizza: In November 2004 Dutch police arrested Morrocan Islamist who was doing reconnaissance for a terrorist operation while delivering pizza. He was described in the the Dutch paper De Telegraaf as a “radical Moroccan pizza courier”. No moderate Moroccan pizza couriers were available for comment, but rumours has it they were quite incessed about the hijacking of their scooters by the radicals.

But back to the mob attacks.

On Sunday the British embassy in Tehran was under siege from a rock and firecraker pelting mob chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Britain”. “Pizza, pizza!” came the defiant reply from inside the high security compound.

Parallels have being drawn with the 1979 seige of the US embassy in Tehran, when the Islamists adorned the building with slogans such as “This is not a struggle between the US and Iran, it is a struggle between Islam and blasphemy” and “The more we die, the stronger we become”, but there is an earlier and bloodier precedent:

When in 1979 a horde of students invaded the American embassy in Tehran and took the entire staff hostage, it was not the first time such a thing had happened in the city. In 1829, a mob had broken into the Russian legation and killed all but one of its diplomats. The unfortunate head of the Russian mission was Alexander Griboyedov, who died in the carnage.

[….]

Griboyedov’s arrival in Tehran coincided with Ashura, a festival which involved great numbers of flagellants parading in the streets to re-enact the deaths of Hassan and Hussein, the sons of the Imam Ali. The atmosphere was highly charged with religious emotion and the crowds were putty in the hands of the mullahs. Griboyedov tactlessly chose to ride a black stallion, the same colour as the stallion ridden in the plays by the murderer Yazid. Doubtless still under Yermolov’s influence, he displayed a signal lack of courtesy to the Shah, and the members of his mission, with their public drunkenness and insulting behaviour, did not endear themselves to the people of Tehran.

The atmosphere became more charged when one Mirza Yaqub sought refuge at the Russian mission. An Armenian Christian, he had been captured during the siege of Erivan, castrated, converted to Islam and eventually promoted to become the Shah’s personal treasurer.

The situation was now extremely delicate, and became more so when the palace claimed that Mirza Yaqub had absconded with a hefty part of the royal treasure. To make matters worse, Griboyedov was persuaded to take in two young Armenian girls, the property of the Shah’s son-in-law. After some days in the Russian mission, the girls began to smell and were taken to the bathhouse. The Persians assumed they were being given a ritual bath prior to a forced marriage to a Russian, and word got out that two Muslim girls were about to be violated. The next morning a huge mob gathered at the mosque. Fired by the mullahs, the mob attacked the Russian mission. All those inside, bar one, were slaughtered and everything movable was looted, including a substantial amount of bullion.

The Persian authorities were powerless to prevent it, and the rioting lasted for four days. Griboyedov’s body was sent on an ox cart back to his wife at Tiflis. Today, in the Kremlin, is displayed an 89-carat diamond, sent by the Shah to the Tsar by way of an apology.

On that occassion when the rabid mob stormed the building the Persian guards fled and soon the fanatical rioters, chanting “Allahu Akbah” were tearing through the roof of the compound and then tearing through its inhabitants, literally tearing them apart. Griboyedov’s body was recovered from the mob three days later and only recognised by a duelling scar on his hand. Another unfortunate victim had his head proudly displayed on a skewer at a nearby kebab stand. Only one person survived the attack. Griboyedov was also an outstanding playwright and his famous work “Woe from Wit” is still studied in Russian schools.

Back to modern times, and only days after the the 1979 attack on the US embassy in Tehran, the British embassy in Islamabad suffered a similar fate:

In November 1979, false rumors that the United States had participated in the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca provoked a mob attack on the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. The government’s delayed response enabled the mob to burn the embassy. Four people died, two of them U.S. nationals.

Its currently looking like another wave of pizza politics is on the creep in Pakistan.

From the Manilla Times last week:

When nations stop breeding
by Dan Mariano

HERBERT MEYER was the first senior official of the US government to predict the disintegration of the Soviet Union. For this feat he was awarded the US National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the highest honor in the American intelligence community. Under President Ronald Reagan, Meyer served as special assistant of the Director of Central Intelligence and vice-chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.

Meyer later parlayed his record as one of America’s top intelligence analysts into a career as a consultant and writer. He has authored several books; his views are highly regarded by conservative American businessmen. He was also an associate editor of Fortune magazine.

In a recent article—titled “What in the world is going on? A global intelligence briefing for CEO’s,”—Meyer tackles four major transformations that, taken individually or in combination, will produce radical changes on how to do business worldwide. These transformations arise from the war in Iraq, the emergence of China, shifting demographics of Western civilization and the restructuring of American business.

Each of these developments will give rise to monumental changes, but it is Meyer’s discussion of shifting demographic patterns in the US, Europe, Japan and elsewhere that drew this column’s keenest interest. His forecasts in the area of population seem to have the greatest relevance to countries like the Philippines.

[..]

Meyer’s discussion of “shifting demographic pattern” drew the keenest interest around here also. I haven’t been able to find the original source where Meyer’s essay appeared, although you can find a few articles by him on American Thinker (“An open letter to Europe” is good for a laugh!). On the blogs where the essay has appeared in the last couple of weeks, people mentioned getting it by email, so it seems to have gone viral. Herbert Meyer has also been briefing CEOs about “What in the world is going on?” at least since August 2005 and a number of things in the essay hint at a mid-2005 writing date. For example the statement that other than the US only China is putting money into its military ignores developments in Russia (and a number of small players) and the assertion that Lebanon is moving in the right direction does not match current reality, although it would have matched the apparent reality post Cedar Revolution in March 2005. The section on demographics has not lost any relevance however. You can read the whole essay here, I’ll post just the sections from Meyer’s essay that relate to demographics:

FOUR MAJOR TRANSFORMATIONS

A GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING FOR CEOS

HERBERT MEYER

Currently, there are four major transformations that are shaping political, economic and world events. These transformations have profound implications for American business owners, our culture and our way of life.

1. The War in Iraq
[..]
2. The Emergence of China
[..]
3. Shifting Demographics of Western Civilization

Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding. For a civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable. Maintaining a steady population requires a birth rate of 2.1. In Western Europe, the birth rate currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement. In 30 years there will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are today. The current birth rate in Germany is 1.3. Italy and Spain are even lower at 1.2. At that rate, the working age population declines by 30 percent in 20 years, which has a huge impact on the economy.

When you don’t have young workers to replace the older ones, you have to import them. The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the Moslems comprise 10 percent of France and Germany, and the percentage is rising rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem populations are not being integrated into the cultures of their host countries, which is a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France don’t support the Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will explode on them. By 2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be non-European.

The huge design flaw in the post-modern secular state is that you need a traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. The Europeans simply don’t wish to have children, so they are dying.

In Japan, the birthrate is 1.3. As a result, Japan will lose up to 60 million people over the next 30 years. Because Japan has a very different society than Europe, they refuse to import workers. Instead, they are just shutting down. Japan has already closed 2000 schools, and is closing them down at the rate of 300 per year. Japan is also aging very rapidly. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be at least 70 years old. Nobody has any idea about how to run an economy with those demographics.

Europe and Japan, which comprise two of the world’s major economic engines, aren’t merely in recession, they’re shutting down. This will have a huge impact on the world economy, and it is already beginning to happen. Why are the birthrates so low? There is a direct correlation between abandonment of traditional religious society and a drop in birth rate, and Christianity in Europe is becoming irrelevant. The second reason is economic. When the birth rate drops below replacement, the population ages. With fewer working people to support more retired people, it puts a crushing tax burden on the smaller group of working age people. As a result, young people delay marriage and having a family. Once this trend starts, the downward spiral only gets worse. These countries have abandoned all the traditions they formerly held in regards to having families and raising children.

The U.S. birth rate is 2.0, just below replacement. We have an increase in population because of immigration. When broken down by ethnicity, the Anglo birth rate is 1.6 (same as France) while the Hispanic birth rate is 2.7. In the U.S., the baby boomers are starting to retire in massive numbers. This will push the “elder dependency” ratio from 19 to 38 over the next 10 to 15 years. This is not as bad as Europe, but still represents the same kind of trend.

Western civilization seems to have forgotten what every primitive society understands-you need kids to have a healthy society. Children are huge consumers. Then they grow up to become taxpayers. That’s how a society works, but the post-modern secular state seems to h.ave forgotten that. If U.S. birth rates of the past 20 to 30 years had been the same. as post-World War II, there would be no Social Security or Medicare problems.

The world’s most effective birth control device is money. As society creates a middle class and women move into the work force, birth rates drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living. The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic development. After World War II, the U.S. instituted a $600 tax credit per child. The idea was to enable mom and dad to have four children without being troubled by taxes. This led to a baby boom of 22 million kids, which was a huge consumer market that turned into a huge tax base. However, to match that incentive in today’s dollars would cost $12,000 per child.

China and India do not have declining populations. However, in both countries, there is a preference for boys over girls, and we now have the technology to know which is which before they are born. In China and India, many families are aborting the girls. As a result, in each of these countries there are 70 million boys growing up who will never find wives. When left alone, nature produces 103 boys for every 100 girls. In some provinces, however, the ratio is 128 boys to every 100 girls.

The birth rate in Russia is so low that by 2050 their population will be smaller than that of Yemen [TOD: Yemen’s population is now about 21 million, but the birthrate is 7 children per woman. Interestingly the population is evenly split between Sunni and Shia. The projection for Russia in 2050 is 100 million]. Russia has one-sixth of the earth’s land surface and much of its oil. You can’t control that much area with such a small population. Immediately to the south, you have China with 70 million unmarried men – a real potential nightmare scenario for Russia.

4. Restructuring of American Business
[..]

IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOUR TRANSFORMATIONS

3. Demographics

Europe and Japan are dying because their populations are aging and shrinking. These trends can be reversed if the young people start breeding. However, the birth rates in these areas are so low it will take two generations to turn things around. No economic model exists that permits 50 years to turn things around. Some countries are beginning to offer incentives for people to have bigger families. For example, Italy is offering tax breaks for having children. However, it’s a lifestyle issue versus a tiny amount of money. Europeans aren’t willing to give up their comfortable lifestyles in order to have more children.

In general, everyone in Europe just wants it to last a while longer. Europeans have a real talent for living. They don’t want to work very hard. The average European worker gets 400 more hours of vacation time per year than Americans. They don’t want to work and they don’t want to make any of the changes needed to revive their economies.

The summer after 9/11, France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In August, the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on vacation. That year, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living in nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave the beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to scramble to find enough refrigeration units to hold the bodies until people came to claim them.

This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in America, yet it didn’t trigger any change in French society. When birth rates are so low, it creates a tremendous tax burden on the young. Under those circumstances, keeping mom and dad alive is not an attractive option. That’s why euthanasia is becoming so popular in most European countries. The only country that doesn’t permit (and even encourage) euthanasia is Germany, because of all the baggage from World War II.

The European economy is beginning to fracture. The Euro is down. Countries like Italy are starting to talk about pulling out of the European Union because it is killing them. When things get bad economically in Europe, they tend to get very nasty politically. The canary in the mine is anti- Semitism. When it goes up, it means trouble is coming. Current levels of anti-Semitism are higher than ever. Germany won’t launch another war, but Europe will likely get shabbier, more dangerous and less pleasant to live in.

Japan has a birth rate of 1.3 and has no intention of bringing in immigrants. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be 70 years old. Property values in Japan have dropped every year for the past 14 years. The country is simply shutting down.

In the U.S. we also have an aging population. Boomers are starting to retire at a massive rate. These retirements will have several major impacts:

• Possible massive sell-off of large four-bedroom houses and a movement to condos.

• An enormous drain on the treasury. Boomers vote, and they want their benefits, even if it means putting a crushing tax burden on their kids to get them. Social Security will be a huge problem. As this generation ages, it will start to drain the system. We are the only country in the world where there are no age limits on medical procedures.

• An enormous drain on the health care system. This will also increase the tax burden on the young, which will cause them to delay marriage and having families, which will drive down the birth rate even further.

Although scary, these demographics also present enormous opportunities for products and services tailored to aging populations. There will be tremendous demand for caring for older people, especially those who don’t need nursing homes but need some level of care. Some people will have a business where they take care of three or four people in their homes. The demand for that type of service and for products to physically care for aging people will be huge.

Make sure the demographics of your business are attuned to where the action is. For example, you don’t want to be a baby food company in Europe or Japan. Demographics are much underrated as an indicator of where the opportunities are. Businesses need customers. Go where the customers are.

Sean Scallon understands the appeal of Islam and Islamism to certain alienated subgroups on both the far Left and the far Right rather well:

[In the 21st century] growth in Islam will come from Third World immigration of course. But it will also come from white converts as well and they will come from two sources of thought.

Islam always has had an ideological appeal to those on the far left and right. To a cultural Marxist, Islam is the God that hasn’t failed (unlike Communism), at least not yet. Its diverse, multicultural following and the fact that it is the religion of the Third Word i.e. it was founded there and expanded there outside of Europe and the West, makes it a perfect vehicle for cultural upheaval and egalitarianism. Marxism derided religion which limited its appeal while Islam is a religion and has mass appeal. And within an adversarial culture, converting to Islam becomes the perfect vehicle to shock one’s parents and friends and peers. Indeed, Jean-Paul Sartre himself became more and more fascinated with Islam as the communist left declined in his later years. This has more of chance of happening with the nominal baptized or secular Christian than anyone else. Think of John Walker Lindh, the Marin County, California teenager who got fed up with empty secularist lifestyle of parents and neighbors and converted to Islam and joined the Taliban in Afghanistan, and you’ll understand the type. Since 9-11 and since George Bush II give Islam his stamp of approval by calling it a “religion of peace,” there’s been a growing study of Islam within in the media and with others who are curious to know more about it. Such study, no doubt, will increase the size of the pool of converts for Islam within the U.S.

On the other side, Nazis have always appreciated Islam’s marshal spirit and ascetic, non-bourgeois lifestyle along with its ability to submit the will of the mass towards one deity or person. They found it far superior to Christian piety which they found to be nothing more than religion for wimps, not the supermen they were supposed to be. Those who are not inclined towards Nazism still find these same qualities admirable, along with Islam’s male-dominated patriarchy. Women and men do not pray together. If you are a fellow who is unchurched right at the moment because you think the modern church in the U.S. is too female dominated and has no place for you, then Islam may be your scene. Think of [the] guy who used to attend Promise Keeper rallies in football stadiums and spent his time crying on the shoulder of another guy while being told what an awful person he was. When he realized the whole thing was nothing more than a religious version of 1990s male bonding without the tom-tom drums, campfires and war paint and when he realized his wife and her friends were laughing their heads off at him down at the solon, then you’ll know the kind of person I’m talking about. In fact the crisis of the maleless church has become such a concern that, according to religious news reports, that certain pastors have gotten to the point of parking Harley Davidson motorcycles out front of the entryways of their churches and putting on football uniforms and using football metaphors to attract males back into the pews again. But Islam’s call may be more enticing than that just more passing Christian fads.

Examples are fun, so here’s a couple more.

The alliance between Hezbollah (and Iran) and the far Left in Lebanon and around the world is a great example of the first trend described above.

A “story” (read: propaganda piece) in the Montreal Gazette, Dec 10th, by Maria Abi-Habib:

Ibtisam Jamaleddine stood in the room of her dead son, Maxim. Maxim was 18 years old when he was mistaken for a fighter and killed by an Israeli missile during this summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Pictures of Che Guevara and soccer players as well as a plaque dedicated to Shiite Islam’s most revered imam, Ali, adorn the walls of his room. They tell a story unknown in the West, of the complex nature of forces that fought Israel last summer.

During the war, U.S. President George W. Bush pitted the conflict as one fuelled by “Islamo-fascism,” pushed by Hezbollah, the Party of God. But fighting alongside Hezbollah was an older, more seasoned resistance movement - the Lebanese Communist Party, which allied with the Islamic party for the first time and showed its members that Islam and communism can complement each other.

For Maxim’s mother, the alliance of these two ideologies was natural and the pictures in her son’s room of a communist martyr and a Muslim hero attest to that.

She said her son wasn’t religious. She said she sees her son as part of a line of resistance fighters “that began with Imam Ali and went to Che and then to Maxim. It’s one lineage of struggle.”

The nature of forces and alliances in Lebanon may be complex, but this is hardly an example of that complexity. Communism and Islamism in bed together makes perfect sense, as both are totalitarian fantasies of a utopia, which, at every attempt at implementation turns into its hellish opposite. (Isn’t it hilarious when Muslims counter real-world examples of the failings of Islam by saying the examples don’t apply to “true” Islam because “there is currently no ‘true’ Islamic state in existance”? Gee, I wonder why?) Neither is the above alliance happening “for the first time”. Hezbollah and Lebanese Communist Party members have been running on voting tickets together in Lebanese elections ever since Hezbollah was forced to change its image from sectarian terrorist militia to a political party of “resistance” at the end of the civil war in the early nineties.

Here’s a couple of recent happy snaps of the happy couple:

“Supporters of the Lebanese Communist Party wave a party flag last Sunday during a peaceful sit-in organized by Hezbollah in Beirut.” according to the Montreal Gazette

Dec 2006, Hezbollocks-led protest in Beirut - A drop of Red in a sea of Yellow and Orange.

And if you think that a portrait of Che Guevara on the wall next to an Islamic one is an anomaly, think again:

Prime Minister of Chechnya is not a man to be messed with, especially if you work for him.

At the age of just 30, Ramzan Kadyrov counts the Russian President Vladimir Putin as a close ally, wields enormous power in his war-ravaged world-infamous republic, and is the object of a Stalin-style personality cult.

[..] He has advocated polygamy, banned gambling, and clamped down on the sale of alcohol - all policies that would cause a riot if implemented elsewhere in Russia.

[..]Inside, Kadyrov’s office resembles the boardroom of a multinational corporation, albeit with a few significant differences. The federal Russian flag stands alongside the green flag of the Chechen republic, and from one wall, a framed black-and-white picture of Che Guevara stares down. Kadyrov clearly identifies with the Argentine who made his name in Cuba, since his fan club (yes, he does have a fan club) often waves aloft stencilled posters of the Chechen leader wearing Che’s beret and adopting the same uncompromising stare.

[..]A colourful portrait of a woman wearing a headscarf adorns another wall, presumably Kadyrov’s mother, and I notice at least two likenesses of his benefactor, Vladimir Putin.

Through the window, the green-topped minaret of a newly built mosque reaches up into the gloomy Grozny sky, a reminder that Kadyrov has styled himself as a devout Muslim and adopted elements of shariah for his regime.

Yep, you read correctly, a chunk of Russia is now partially implementing Sharia Law. But don’t get too carried away with that one - this is an elaborate and cynical exercise in sock-puppetry, not a naive subjugation to a creeping Islamification. This is Russia, not Sweden, and the Russia Empire has centuries of experience with “self-governing” Muslim populations within its borders. More importantly it has several centuries experience of being governed by Muslims - an experience permanantly etched into the national psyche and untempered by Western political correctness and one Russia will not be repeating any time soon (”scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar”, goes a Russian proverb). And by soon I mean ever. I had a post on Islam and demographics in Russia in the works that I am thinking of posting in several smaller posts, largely in response to the “Russia is turning Muslim” silliness that swept the blogosphere recently. Chechnya is only a very small part of Russia, the Muslims of the North Caucasus are a very different breed to say the Tartars, who make up the biggest Muslim segment in Russia, and the whole Islamification-of-Russia line is a misfire. But I digress.

Now a quick look at the other end of the spectrum - the far right and Islamism. Its not called Islamo-Fascism for nothing, and if you need proof, look up the collaboration of Bosnian Muslims with the Nazis in World War 2. Look up the relationship between the Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler. Look up the list of speakers at the recent Holocaust conference in Iran.

I’ll throw in just one more example though, that relates directly to the “Promise Keeper rally enthusiast” types Scallon is talking about:

Turning Muslim in Texas

Praying in Texas
George W Bush may be backed by Christian fundamentalists but in his home state of Texas, Islam is the latest big draw. The Bible belt is transferring its allegiance to the Qur’an because, for many erstwhile Christians, believe it or not, the church is too liberal.

Eric was a Baptist preacher before he became a Muslim 14 years ago. Now he prays five times a day – even in the middle of watching a football game. His wife, Karen, also a convert, is covered from head to toe in the traditional Muslim burka. Islam, says Eric, ‘is everything I wanted Christianity to be’.

The Bible belt is not about to turn into the Our’an belt, any more than Russia is about to turn into Russiastan, so don’t take the “transferring its allegiance” baloney above too seriously. But do check out the video for the comedy. You can watch the full 24-minute documentary, “Turning Muslim in Texas”, on Google Video. Here it is:

See also my previous posts on Islam’s useful idiots on the Left.

From an opinion piece by Serge/Srdja Trifkovic, on the topic of the ongoing negotiations on the status of Kosovo:

[..] the untold news is that Kosovo will not become independent. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the Western “mainstream” will go on huffing and puffing and pretending otherwise, but there is not much they can do: Kostunica will not be duped, Serbia will not cave in, Russia will not relent, and the Albanians will not give up on what they had been promised by those who had never had the right to make the promise in the first place. They threaten renewed violence, but the threat only serves to reinforce the argument that they should not be allowed to get away with it. As Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. told his Western colleagues last Wednesday, “you may be willing to give in to Albanian blackmail, but we are not.”

Unfortunately there is plenty of other blackmail the UN and the EU can give in to unimpeded.

“Problem principle” blowback:

[..] Alexander Litvinenko, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died Thursday of heart failure after falling gravely ill from what doctors said was poisoning by a rare radioactive substance.

Tests by forensic toxicologists found radioactive polonium-210 in Litvinenko’s urine, Britain’s Health Protection Agency announced Friday. Agency officials said discovery of the element in a poisoning case was “an unprecedented event.”

[..] Litvinenko spoke to academics James Heartfield and Julia Svetlichnaja from the University of Westminster in three interviews that lasted a total of about six hours in April and May. The Daily Telegraph published a syndicated version of the interviews Saturday.

Litvinenko was recruited into the Soviet-era KGB and also worked for its successor, the Federal Security Service, or FSB. He was later promoted to a specialist counterterrorism and organized crime unit. After the fall of communism, he said his directive was to recruit powerful businessmen who could stimulate an economic boom, and to hire assassins.

“So if somebody was the victim of a crime — like his daughter was raped — you would offer to let them take revenge on the perpetrator,” Litvinenko was quoted as saying. “This was how we recruited killers.”

[..] In the interviews, Litvinenko said that as a favor to a senior former colleague who was in debt to moneylenders from the Caucasus, he was told to arrest the creditors and execute them.

“Our department worked on the so-called problem principle — the government had a problem and we had simply to deal with it,” he said.

He said he was ordered to kill Mikhail Trepashkin, another security officer who had spoken about the FSB’s activities. He said he was also told to kidnap a prominent Chechen businessman based in Moscow to trade for Russian intelligence officers taken hostage by Chechens.

By 1997, Litvinenko said his department had become “responsible for illegal punishments or so-called extralegal executions of unsuitable businessmen, politicians and other public figures. In parallel, the department blackmailed the same targets for funds.”

[..] Government opponents were “illegally killed — not court executed” in Russian streets or forests by the agency, Litvinenko said, speaking in English.

In 1998, Litvinenko publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who was living in exile in London. He spent nine months in jail on charges of abuse of office, then was acquitted and moved to Britain, which granted him asylum in 2000.

[..] In Moscow, the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta made a series of allegations Saturday about the killing, pointing suspicion at London’s Russian exile community. It portrayed Litvinenko as a violent and unintelligent pawn who “made his choice and drank his poison … when he betrayed those he worked for.”

The newspaper speculated Berezovsky was involved, aiming either to use the death to discredit Putin’s government or settle a business dispute. A presenter on Russia’s state-run Channel One television channel said there was “a theory Litvinenko poisoned himself.”

He went to the trouble of acquiring Polonium just to poison himself in a cafe and die of radiation poisoning? Why didn’t he just overdose on nutmeg or tie himself up and feed himself to ravenous goldfish?

Meanwhile, ZZ Top inspired Jihad Monkeys at KavkazCenter.com (thank you Google News!) quote Anti-Zionist conspiracy wackos from the loonasphere… who quote flakey Zionist “intelligence” site: “Dead Russian Spy was israeli Double Agent”:

Sure as heck puts israeli relations with Russia in a whole new different light.

Enlighten me, oh Illumined ones, what “whole new different light” would that be? Other than the one shining out of your anus?

Meanwhile The Sunshine Band at KC have been doing a little sleuthing of their own and found the smoking/radiating gun in.. China!

The Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, a former Soviet spy currently in intensive care in London after being poisoned with thallium, was granted asylum in the United Kingdom in 2001. A few months later he released his book “Blowing up Russia : Terror from Within”:

In this book Litvinenko alleged that the FSB was responsible for the apartment block bombings in Russia that were blamed on Chechens and became the pretext for the second Chechen War. I have not read the book myself, although it has been sitting in my Amazon Wish List for a couple of years now, but the reviews and the cover suggest the book’s thesis is that the FSB used acts of terror, abduction and contract killings to influence public opinion in Russia, using fear and nationalism to steer the country under authoritarian rule. The book has just shot to the top of my reading list.

(h/t Noisy Room)