Crusader

CRUSADER
The Truth About Islam pt. 3

Christians love to apologize for the Crusades. In the modern climate of the ever more liberal Christian denominations, this moment in its history is often perceived as an ill conceived war of aggression by a western civilization dominated by an opportunistic Catholic Church. Modern scholars, using modern vernacular, will often attribute this to a form of "Christian Fundamentalism." One could even be led to believe that the Muslims were just peacefully minding their own business, in lands that were legitimately theirs, until the European Crusaders came crashing into their benevolent kingdom forcing Christianity on them by the sword. Worse, the Crusaders are often seen as imperialists simply seeking to create new colonies for the profits of the "not so pious or faithful" adventurers seeking personal fame and fortune. Unfortunately this is a modern fabrication.
Lets make this nice and sparkling clear: The Crusades were absolutely justified by every standard of the world of that time and, if fairly and factually told, they should be seen as justified, and even necessary, by modern standards. It could be fairly stated that sometimes the behavior of the Crusaders themselves was beneath "Christian" standards, but NEVER beneath those applied by the Muslims. For some reason westerners, particularly the liberal academic intelligentsia whose job it is to teach such things, accepts the notion that the Europeans alone were aggressive. Somehow Islam is always allowed to project itself as a victim.
The Crusades were a DEFENSIVE war launched in response to centuries of Muslim aggression and conquests. In fact, by the start of the first crusade, 2/3 of the Christian world had been attacked and subjected to three choices. (1) Fight and die. (2) Surrender and convert to Islam and pay the zakat tax. Or (3) surrender and keep their Biblical faith and pay the jizya tax. Usually they chose the third option if they were allowed to live long enough to make the choice. The truth is that Islam, beginning with the fine example of Muhammad himself, has been on a "crusade" for world domination that began long before the European Crusades and, in fact, continues to this day! The death of Muhammad did nothing to impede the progress of Islamic aggression. In fact, it may have accelerated it. Here is an abbreviated timeline highlighting the major Islamic campaigns of aggression:

632 Muhammad's death
635 Muslims besiege and conquer of Damascus.
636 Muslims defeat Byzantines decisively at Battle of Yarmuk.
637 Muslims conquer Iraq at the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah
638 Muslims conquer and annex Jerusalem, taking it from the Byzantines.
638-650 Muslims conquer Persia (Iran), except along Caspian Sea.
639-642 Muslims conquer Egypt.641 Muslims control Syria and Palestine.
643-707 Muslims conquer North Africa.
644-650 Muslims conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa, and establish Islamic rule in Afghanistan.
673-678 Muslim Arabs besiege Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire.
710-713 Muslim Crusaders conquer the lower Indus Valley.
711-713 Muslim Crusaders conquer Spain and impose the Kingdom of Andalus.
732 The Muslims are stopped at the Battle of Poitiers; that is, France.
809 Muslims conquer Sardinia, Italy.
831 Muslims capture Palermo, Italy; and conduct raids in southern Italy.
837-901 Muslims conquer Sicily, launch raids into Corsica, Italy, and France. 970 Seljuks enter conquered Islamic territories from the East. Seljuks are Muslim Turks.
1012 Beginning of al-Hakim's oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians.
1071 Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk Turks defeat Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia.
1071 Seljuk Turks invade Palestine.
1073 Conquest of Jerusalem by Muslim Turks.
1075 Seljuks capture Nicea
1094 Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus asks western Christendom for help against invasions of Seljuk Muslim Turks in his territory.

As the timeline plainly illustrates, the Muslims were not peaceful nor were they minding their own business. The lands they claimed were, even after their conquest, largely populated by Christians who had to endure the subjugation and ostracization of their Islamic overlords and their draconian laws against non Muslims. These lands were, by no means, territory that they had any right to claim. They were taken by perpetrating violence against the populations living therein. Islam, you should know, sprung up from an exiled tribe of thieves that supported itself initially by conducting raids against the very people who banished them. They sought to anoint their banditry with a religion that they concieved to give their murder, slavery, and extortionist thievery the illusion of a higher purpose. Never forget that Islam is not a religion that has ever attempted to encourage its followers to follow a "higher calling." Instead, it excuses, and even provokes its followers into practicing all of the worst traits of human behavior. If Satan were to establish a worldwide system of worship, you would expect it to display all of the characteristics of Islam. I do not say this out of "Islamophobia." It is history. Learn it!
In 1071 after the annihilation of the Byzantine army at Manzikert, the Byzantine Empire collapsed into civil war and lost most of Anatolia. In 1081 a general named Alexius Comnenus captured the throne and and reimposed control over a considerably reduced empire. With most of his Byzantine Empire already under Muslim control, and fearing Constantinople could be next, the emperor Alexius I Comnenus ASKED the Christians in the west for help. This was not something done casually. By and large the Byzantines viewed western Europe as being inhabited by barbarians, even if they were Christians. They believed these westerners held heretical beliefs, not the least of which was granting the Pope authority over all Christians. Times were desperate however, and he needed help. In fact, as we shall see, he got more help than he could handle.
It is upon this foundation that the Crusades began. The entire reason for the Crusades is as a response to the aggression of Islam, and they went by invitation. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that were it not for these actions taken at this time, there would be no "Western Civilization" as we have come to know it.
At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II asked for the "Knights Of Christendom" to mount the counterattack against Islam. Thousands chose to "take up the cross" and make this armed pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It may be hard to understand now, but the Holy Land was considered very important to the mind of the Medieval Christian. That it was taken by Islam was nothing new as it had been under Muslim control for centuries by this time. However, the Muslims had been allowing pilgrims to visit the Holy sites. This was, in fact, the lucrative reason for wanting to control the area. Pilgrims, or what we would simply call tourists, brought money. The Seljuk Turks however, would not allow Christians access to the Holy Land. At the Council Of Clermont the atrocities that the Turks perpetrated against Christians and their holy sites were laid clear in such a way as to infuriate a culture built on militant Knighthood and Christianity.
It is interesting to note that the term "Crusades" was never used to describe them in their own time. They regarded themselves as "taking up the cross," and truly perceived it as an act of faith and devotion to Christian duty.
At this point it is a good opportunity to look at the motivations of these original Crusaders. Perhaps no group of people have ever been so maligned as the Crusaders. Almost always they are portrayed as rogues and scoundrels, dressed in a false piety, while seeking fame and fortune as they murder and plunder through the Holy Land. Or they were second or third sons who had no wealth or property of their own who sought, through a conquest veiled in religion, what they didn't get through inheritance. This couldn't be farther from the truth but in a "Post-Christian" western society drunk on self loathing, it has become the accepted view of people who need to apologize for the difficult decisions and actions of the past. Actions that they lack the courage to carry out themselves today. I guess if you suffer guilt for the perceived wrongdoing of your ancestors you can claim to be a "victim" of their behavior and, in a sense, entitled to be a protected class of citizen in these "politically correct" times. However, the truth is not so heartwarming as some false sense of rising above your ancestry. The Crusaders, in fact, were quite a noble, if imperfect, collection of personalities.
The reality is that the Crusading Knights were generally wealthy men with great estates that they willingly left behind to "take up the cross" and make the long and dangerous pilgrimage to the Holy Land where they stood a good chance of being killed. And here is the thing: Just who do you think PAID for the Crusades? Wealthy knights sold their own holdings and used their own wealth to raise and finance the armies that marched to the Middle East. Now there is something you won't hear brought up too often. A military venture personally led by the wealthy, and paid for by the wealthy, out of their own pockets. For the modern anti-war liberal this would appear to be a dream army. But alas, their is that other motivating factor...God.
The fact is, that as a financial investment, the Crusades offered a poor rate of return. Especially considering the risk to both life and wealth. They did this not out of an expectation of treasure from this earth, but from the "Kingdom Of Heaven." One cannot disregard the purity of the pious intentions of the Crusaders, no matter how much our modern civilization scoffs at such overtly religious values. The church, of course, provided a further incentive by promising remission of sins for all those who took the vow of the cross. The Crusades were seen by all of Christendom as a noble act of charity. The living breathing example of this Bible verse:

MATTHEW 19:21: Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go [and] sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come [and] follow me...

To a large degree the Crusaders did just that. They cast off their worldly concerns and pursued the path of the cross.
This is not to suggest that the Crusades were full of puritanical saints. Quite the opposite. Their behavior was often not up to the standards of their idealistic motives. Yet they were hardly the first soldiers to succumb to the stresses and temptations that often accompany warfare. They certainly were not against plundering and grabbing such treasure as might make itself available. In fact, the armies of this time didn't carry long supply trains to support them, therefore plundering would often be necessary just to keep the army fed when operating away from its bases. This was just the nature of armed conflict in Medieval times, not the invention of rampaging imperialistic Europeans.
Pope Urban II gave the Crusaders two primary goals. The first, was to rescue the Christians living under the yolk of Islam. It was argued that one could not love his neighbor as as he loved himself if he knowingly allowed him to be bound in Muslim slavery. The Crusade was seen as an act of Christian love and charity. The second goal was to liberate Jerusalem and other places that were considered to be holy through the life of Christ. The Crusaders took a vow to worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher after they arrived, and subsequently liberated, Jerusalem.
It was decided that the main body of the First Crusade would depart from Constantinople on August 15, 1096. But first, those armies had to get there by making their way across the European continent. This, in and of itself, was quite a monumental task. The various armies were to be united in Constantinople, with the Byzantines, for the march to the Holy Land. There were five primary armies, and therefore, five primary leaders for the First Crusade. They were: Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh of Vermandois, Bohemond of Taranto, Raymond the Count of Toulouse, and Robert the Duke of Normandy and son of William the Conqueror. They each arrived at Constantinople separately and, as they arrived, each one was persuaded to swear an oath (liege) to the emperor of Byzantium, Alexius I Comnenus. This oath stated that any lands captured by the Crusaders, that had previously belonged to the Byzantine Empire, would be immediately returned to the emperor. Though there was some reluctance, particularly from Raymond who believed he had come only to serve God, they all inevitably acquiesced and were then given passage across the Bosporus, a strait that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. The First Crusade was under way.
The Crusader army was unlike the armies we know today. It was not a unified army under a single commander. It is an international army with various languages, loyalties and customs adding to their complications. The army itself numbered around 100,000 men however their true numbers were swelled by family members who accompanied them with intentions of settling in the lands to be retaken. Also, due to the fact that a plenary indulgence was offered by the church to all who made the pilgrimage, thousands more people who did not particularly serve any useful purpose were tagging along. It is under these circumstances that the Crusader army approached its first objective. Nicea, the capital city of the Sultan Kilij Arslan. Since Nicea was designed by the Byzantines, it was well prepared for defense, with massive city walls. Arslan, as luck would have it, was not in the city when the Crusaders initiate their siege. For two weeks they attempted to get their siege towers close enough to scale the walls. They also made attempts to dig under them. All to no avail. It would appear to be hopeless except Arslan makes a fatal mistake...he returns with his army. He is convinced, largely through his experience with an earlier expedition of Knightless Christians, that he will make short work of the crusading army. The Turks had never encountered the tactics of "heavily armored cavalry" before. The Crusaders would not break their formations which would have allowed the swifter Turk horsemen to isolate and destroy them piecemeal. Instead, they held solidly together and battered Arslan's lightly armored army. The result was a tremendous victory for the Crusaders with King Arslan fleeing the battlefield. Yet the siege had not succeeded in causing Nicea to surrender. Since Nicea is located on the shores of a lake there is a constant supply of water and food available. This supply line is finally cut off when Alexius arrives overland carrying boats that he puts into the lake.
With their army defeated and their supplies totally cut off, the Turks negotiated for terms to surrender the city. It was a negotiation conducted in the dead of the night so that by the next morning the banners of the empire were flying over the city. This took the Crusaders somewhat by surprise as they fully expected an opportunity to plunder the city, as was the custom in the warfare of the time. The suddenness of the surrender prevented any such thing and since they had vowed to return Byzantine territory back to the emperor, their job at Nicea was finished. They marched on toward Antioch.
DORYLAEUM...Does this name mean anything to you? Well it should, as it is one of the greatest moments in Western military history.
In June 1097 the Crusaders set forth toward the city of Antioch and make both a fatal mistake, and a brilliant tactical decision at the same time. The army decides to separate into two groups. The first army. led by Bohemond, Tancred and Robert, leads the way while a second army, led by Godfrey and Raymond lags one day behind. This would make it somewhat easier for the Crusaders to travel and would also ease some of the competition between Bohemond and Raymond for control of the entire expedition. However, separating your forces in enemy territory can be a fatal mistake, especially if your enemy has his forces concentrated and prepared for battle. Unknown to the Crusaders, King Arslan, freshly offended by his defeat at their hands at Nicea, has joined forces with Danishmend. Together they have prepared an ambush along the narrow road to Dorylaeum. Arslan intends to vindicate himself of his loss at Nicea by massacring the Crusader army. Bohemond's army made camp in a perfect location for disaster. When the sun arose the next morning that disaster came pouring in on them from the mountains...and from all directions!
Bohemond reacts quickly. His knights make up his first line of defense with his infantry standing in close support behind them. In his center he was protecting all of the non-combatants and, fortunately, a standing supply of fresh water. He would need it.
The fighting was fierce and relentless. The Turks charged repeatedly and the Crusaders suffered heavy losses, but they never broke from their tight defensive formation. This is in spite of the fact that Arslan is swarming around them with a 360,000 man force!! Bohemond's defenders number only 30,000!! These torrential attacks went on for over eight hours when suddenly, and quite unexpectedly as far as the Turks were concerned, Raymond and the second Crusader army arrived on the scene. Even with Raymond's arrival the Turks still enjoyed a 3-1 advantage in manpower. However there is a military axiom which states that an army, surprised from behind in battle, will not stand and fight. The Turks, surprised by the arrival of the second Crusader army, did not stand and fight. They panicked, and from the jaws of defeat, the Crusaders turned the battle into a rout. They pursued the Turks throughout the day and the following night and captured much treasure in the process. If they didn't believe it to begin with, the battle of Dorylaeum convinced the Crusaders that God was truly on their side.
The Crusaders resumed their march toward Antioch. This was not a good time to be moving across Asia Minor as the temperatures reach 110 degrees and their are no water sources along the way. There also are no food resources available for the army to forage either. By the time they finally reach a river the army is more depleted by hunger and thirst on the march than by the previous battles. They stop to recover their strength in an area inhabited by Christians who look after them. While they were held up there to collect themselves, several small engagements and raids were conducted that led to the conquest of Edessa. Baldwin was then pronounced Prince of the new territory of Edessa. It would turn out to be the first of the Crusader States that would soon be established.

THE SIEGES OF ANTIOCH

On October 21, 1097 the Crusaders caught their first sight of the impressive walls of Antioch. The walls stretch for 25 miles and contain over 400 watchtowers. The city was well prepared to withstand an attack and it possessed an excellent system of deep wells to go along with its high defensive walls.
The Crusaders at this point are as unimpressive a sight as Antioch is impressive. Their supplies are depleted to nothing and desertion has become a problem for the army. It was not the best set of circumstances to be attempting a siege of the most heavily fortified city in Byzantium.
Antioch was ruled by Yaghi-Suyan, who upon seeing the Crusader army massing outside his walls, proceeds to drive all the Christians out of the city. All but one that is. In order to taunt the Crusaders he places the Archbishop in a cage and dangles him out over the wall where everyone can see him.
Yaghi-Suyan had tremendous success at keeping up with the Crusaders plans. When he expelled all the Christians from Antioch he slipped in many Muslims, disguised as Armenian Christians, to spy on the Crusaders and report to him on their ongoing attempts to break into the city. Bohemond became aware of the spy problem and wasn't squeamish about dealing with the situation. He rounded up hundreds of them and had them placed before the main gate to the city. He then has his men slit their throats and skin them. Then they rammed cooking spikes through their bodies so that they could be roasted before the eyes of Antioch's defenders. Spies throughout history have never been looked upon favorably.
As the winter pressed on, the news got even worse. Infighting within the Islamic world led the Fatimids of Egypt to attack the Turks in Palestine. They attacked Jerusalem and many of the Turks displaced in that conflict made their way to Damascus, Aleppo and Mosul. There they combined with other troops under the command of Kerbogha of Mosul, and marched toward Antioch to relieve the city. It seemed as though the Crusaders were destined to be crushed between the besieged Antioch and this huge Turkish army.
Alas, fate, cleverness and corruption would intervene on the Crusaders behalf. Bohemond had been attempting to bribe a disenchanted guard on the the city's wall and he was having success at corrupting him. He then gathered together the other Crusader leaders and convinced them to allow him to keep the city for himself, if he could take the city unassisted. They of course were oblivious to his wheeling and dealing with the guard in the city and, believing there was no real likelihood of him being able to take the city, they therefore agreed to this strange proposition.
On June 3, 1098 Bohemond's men were allowed to climb over the city's wall and open the gates for the Crusaders. As the city slept they poured in and took it. They killed every Turk in sight, including Yaghi-Suyan whose head is presented to Bohemond as a trophy. In a matter of hours all of Antioch, with the exception of the city's citadel, was in Crusader hands.
Meanwhile as Kerbogha was making his way toward Antioch, he allowed himself to be distracted by attempting to retake the city of Edessa. For three weeks he unsuccessfully fought to retake the city from Baldwin and the small force that was left behind to defend it. He ultimately concedes failure and has to resume his march to relieve Antioch. It turned out to be a crucial delay, for had he arrived just 24 hours sooner, he could have saved Antioch. Now, the Crusaders have had crucial time to occupy the city.
Poor Bohemond, in spite of his agreement with the other Crusader leaders to be allowed to keep Antioch for himself, he was not going to be able to bring up the subject just yet. Kerbogha and his army arrived and set upon the complete surrounding of the city. Strangely, the Crusaders, who just days before were laying siege to Antioch, now found themselves besieged inside Antioch! Many attempted to desert the city in the face of this new threat, while others were captured trying. Those captured, were tortured and mutilated within sight of the city's walls. The Crusade appeared to be in a fatal grip. They were surrounded by a powerful Muslim army while also the Muslims still held the citadel within the city's walls...
...And yet it could still get worse. Stephen of Bloise and four thousand Crusaders were separated from the main body of the army when Antioch was taken. When they returned from nearby Alexandria they saw that, although Antioch had been taken by their fellow Crusaders, the Crusade itself appeared certain to be destroyed. Stephen believed the situation was hopeless and decided to abandon the Crusade. He decided he and his men were heading back to France. Inside the city there was no food or water and the dead bodies of all the Turks, killed in the taking of the city, were decaying all around them. The stench from the dead bodies was unbearable. The Crusaders only hope was that the Emperor Alexius would come, with his Byzantine army, and relieve the city from its siege. As luck would have it, Alexius was coming to Antioch, if for no reason other than to be sure the Crusaders would be faithful to their oath to restore the city to him. Unfortunately for the Crusaders, Stephen found Alexius before he got there and relayed the situation to him. When told that Kerbogha had arrived with a superior army, and had himself laid siege to the city, Alexius thought better of the decision to go there and turned his men around. He was returning to Constantinople, and Stephen resumed his trek back to France. The Crusaders were on their own.
Make no mistake about it. The news of Alexius' withdrawal traveled fast. The Crusaders regarded both Stephen and Alexius as cowards. The oath they had taken to restore the territory to the emperor was now officially repudiated. They could not honor a promise to a traitor. However that wasn't going to solve their dilemma...but divine intervention might.
Throughout the Crusade, various people were claiming to have "religious visions." This is not an unusual expectation on an adventure with such "holy" underpinnings. Real or imagined, such "visions" were commonplace. One person making such a claim was a man named Peter Bartholomew. Bartholomew was no religious figure. Quite the opposite. He was a peasant with a reputation for drinking and whoring. Yet he claimed that St. Andrew appeared to him in a vision and told him the location of the Holy Lance, the spear that was used to pierce the side of Christ at the Crucifixion. Now prior to this, it was largely believed this lance was in Constantinople. At least there was a lance there that was being treated as though it was the authentic Holy Lance. Holy relics, and the fraudulent stories that often accompany them, are just as commonplace as "holy visions" at this time. The Papal legate, Adhemar of Le Puy, was openly skeptical of Bartholomew's claim but Raymond was convinced his story was true. Add to this the fact that on June 14 a meteor streaked across the sky, which to many, was a sign from heaven itself. The people were desperate for hope.
The next morning Peter Bartholomew led Raymond to the Cathedral of St. Peter and showed him a place to dig. They proceeded to dig for hours. Of course, nothing was found. At the point they were ready to give up, Bartholomew himself jumped into the hole and began to dig. After a few minutes he came out...bearing the head of a lance. Never mind the fact that he almost certainly went into the hole with it. The people celebrated the delivery of a miracle. Raymond attached it to a pole and carried it throughout the city for all to see. Whether or not the lance was real was not important. They believed the lance was real and it was a sign from Christ himself that he was going to deliver them a victory. Drunk on a religiously inspired euphoria, the morale of the Crusader army skyrocketed. They were not going to let this moment pass. Adhemar ordered a three day fast to begin on June 24. Not a difficult proposition considering their predicament.
At dawn on June 28, the Crusaders confess their sins, attend mass, and receive Holy Communion. Then, the gates of the city are opened. They have only 100 horses and a starving army to go up against Kerbogha's strong and well positioned forces. In spite of this, they came out anyway. Strangely, Kerbogha did not strike immediately. He found himself impressed with the audacity of the Crusaders, and likewise felt they were up to something. It placed a bit of doubt in his mind. Kerbogha actually presumed the siege had impaired the Crusaders more than it now appeared. He sent men to discuss a truce but the Crusaders would have none of it. For their part, many Crusaders claimed they could see angels on horseback, ready to join in battle with them. As a result they were headstrong for a fight.
The reality of the Turk's situation was about to rear its head. Kerbogha's forces were not loyal to him. The coalition that had brought them together was quite fragile, and many in the Muslim army feared the prospect of him acquiring too much power. Just the kind of power that would make itself available with a military victory. When it became obvious that a bloody fight was at hand, many of Kerbogha's allies withdrew their men. The Crusaders, displaying great discipline, advanced in good order and maintained their tight formations as the battle commenced. Still more Turks, seeing this audacious Christian advance, fled the battlefield. By morning's end the battle was over. The Crusaders had won the day. With Kerbogha's forces eliminated, the holdouts at the city's citadel also surrendered. Against the most horrendous of odds, the Crusaders now safely controlled Antioch.
The conquest of Antioch put the Crusaders in a relatively good position. At least they were as well off as they had been since they left Constantinople. They now controlled a port city, which would come in handy for maintaining a steady stream of supplies for their newly acquired territory.
At this point, however, internal bickering would rise up and paralyze the Crusade. Raymond did not want Bohemond to take possession of Antioch. He wanted Bohemond to honor his obligation to see the Crusade through to Jerusalem. Bohemond, for his part, felt he had fulfilled his requirement to take the city and by their previous agreement, the city should belong to him. Certainly there was no way it should be restored to Alexius as he abandoned them in their hour of need.
It was in the midst of this squabbling that a plague broke out in the city and many lives were lost, including the Papal legate Bishop Adhemar. This did not help with the internal bickering as it was Adhemar who had been a voice of reason, moderating the relations between the Crusader leaders. It finally reached a point where Hugh of Vermandois decided he had had enough. He gathered his forces and left to return to France. When he does finally arrive in France he is not looked upon favorably by anybody there. In fact the disdain from his fellow nobles is so great that he would later feel obligated to take part in what would later become the Second Crusade to redeem himself.
After the plague has run it's course, Raymond attempts to get the remaining leaders to renew the mission to Jerusalem. The army is anxious for movement but Bohemond isn't. He initially agrees to go, as long as he can retain the rights to Antioch, but it soon becomes obvious he has no real intention of leaving. As a result, Godfrey and Robert also refuse to take up the march to Jerusalem. Desperate for the mission to be resumed, Raymond and his men leave for the Holy City on January 13, 1099. Raymond makes a big show by leaving barefoot and saying he wants to enter the city where his Lord was crucified in the spirit of piety and humiliation. This had the desired effect of shaming Godfrey and Robert to the point that they gathered their men and joined him. Bohemond, determined that Antioch rightly belonged to him, stayed behind with his forces. The final march toward Jerusalem was under way.
The Crusader army that at one time had as many as 100,000 men now marches toward Jerusalem with a mere 20,000! In a strange twist of fate, the situation in Jerusalem itself has changed. The Fatimid Muslims, who are somewhat friendlier to Christians, have driven the Seljuk Turks out of the Holy City. Alexius is attempting to negotiate a treaty with the Fatimid Muslims, who are willing to resume allowing Christian pilgrims to have open access to the city. That is, providing the Crusaders abandon their plans to take it. The Crusaders swore an oath, at the start of the Crusade, to worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher after liberating the Jerusalem. They intend to keep it. Certainly they were not going to honor any obligations to, or any treaty arranged arranged by, Alexius, after he abandoned them at Antioch. The Fatimid Muslims themselves attempt to dissuade the Crusaders from taking the city by explaining that the Turks were their common enemy, and they should combine forces against them. The Crusaders at this point are reasonably unwilling to trust anyone, and therefore will have none of it. They don't recognize any particular distinctions between Muslims. Islam is Islam. In fairness, Islam has never recognized any distinctions between Christians either.
On May 19 the Crusaders entered into territory now controlled by the Fatimid Muslims. Most of the cities they encountered on the march were willing to surrender and provide the Crusaders with supplies in return for not being molested. The Crusaders were now operating with a singular vision to get to Jerusalem as quickly as possible, so they were generous in their terms. Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, Acre, Haifa and Jaffa all fell to the Crusaders in quick succession. On June 6, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ and a city almost entirely populated by Christians, greeted the Crusaders as liberators. That night they witnessed a lunar eclipse in the heavens....another sign from God. The next day they would arrive at their ultimate destination.

JERUSALEM

On June 7, 1099 the Crusaders finally cast their eyes on the Holy City of Jerusalem, the center of the world. Jerusalem is protected by two walls. The outer wall being lower than the main city wall. It also has a 62 foot wide and 23 foot deep dry moat between these walls. It is a more than formidable defensive fortification.
The size of the city, along with the size of the attacking Crusader army, made a fully enveloping siege of the city impossible. Jerusalem was governed and defended by an Egyptian named Iftikhar al-Daula, and he saw to the preparation of the city's defenses effectively. He expelled all the Christians in the city to prevent Jerusalem from being compromised in the way that Antioch had been previously, even though the same precaution had failed to save Antioch from the consequences of espionage and betrayal. He also poisoned all the nearby wells forcing the Crusaders to expend considerable manpower retrieving and transporting water from the Jordan River. Also, Iftikhar al-Daula is not expecting a long siege, as he has sent word to Cairo requesting reinforcements. He has confidence in his defensive preparations and is therefore willing to resist the attacks of the Crusaders, fully knowing the consequence that befalls cities that resist sieges in warfare of this time....sacking! His overconfidence, even though based on reasonable knowledge and observation of the situation, is at least as much to blame for the ensuing sequence of events as are the actions of the Crusaders.
On June 12, a hermit approached the Crusader's encampment claiming to be a prophet. He said he had a message from God and stated that if they strike the city in the ninth hour of the next day, the city would be delivered into their hands. This, in spite of the fact that a source of wood to construct siege towers, ladders and trebuchets (counterweight catapults) had not yet been located. Such weapons were to bulky and heavy to transport and had to be built on location and they were necessary for a reasonable chance at successfully assaulting the city. The Crusaders were simply not prepared to attack Jerusalem's fortifications at this time. Nonetheless, being firm believers in visions at this point, they attacked anyway. No doubt they were themselves overconfident they possessed the unique blessing of God from their previous successes, which they considered nothing less than Divine Intervention.
The Muslims are totally surprised at the foolhardy assault the Christians made the next day, June 13. Few of the Crusaders even made it to the outer wall and those that did were compelled to retreat when Greek fire was poured on them. The medieval equivalent of napalm, Greek fire would burn anything it attached to, and was very difficult to put out. The attack is a dismal failure and the Muslims are left thinking little of the Crusaders intelligence or sanity. This only furthered the overconfidence of Iftikhar al-Daula.
Although this miracle failed to materialize, another one, requiring a little more patience, did. Six Genoese and English vessels bearing supplies for the Crusaders, arrived in the port of Jaffa. By utilizing the wood used to construct the ships, the Crusaders now had the materials to build proper siege weapons. This was time consuming work, and with an Egyptian army closing in on them, time was something they could not spare. It was known to them that the Egyptian army would arrive within the month. As had happened so many times on this Crusade, they found their backs against the wall facing impending disaster.
And it happened....again. The Crusaders were presented with a vision and an accompanying miracle. A priest named Peter Desiderius received a vision from none other than the recently deceased Bishop Adhemar. Adhemar, you will recall, had succumbed to the plague that struck Antioch after the successful conquest of the city. Now, in the form of this vision, he chastised the Crusaders for their lack of faith and ordered them to fast, and to walk around the city of Jerusalem....barefoot! He told them that if they would parade around the city barefoot in humility before God, and put their sins behind them, then in nine days the city would be delivered to them.
On the morning of July 10, the 20,000 Crusaders did just as the vision instructed. Many of the Crusaders were wearing only their underwear on their barefoot march around the city. The Muslims, already overconfident in their situation and doubting the sanity of the Crusaders, jeered at them and made obscene gestures as they paraded around the city. Eight days after Adhemar's vision, they are prepared to make their attack. Their siege machines are constructed, including a massive battering ram that requires sixty soldiers to operate.
On July 14, 1099 the Muslim defenders of Jerusalem are awakened by the sound of the massive battering ram pounding against the outer defensive wall. Their attempts to disable the battering ram with Greek fire are this time met with accurate Crusader trebuchet fire. They quickly smash through the outer wall and begin filling in the moat that separates the two walls with rubble and rock to make it passable. As it grows dark the Crusaders are able to bring their siege towers toward the larger inner city wall. The Muslims throw tremendous volleys of arrows and Greek fire at the towers as they approach the wall. Several times the towers and the battering ram are hit, and start to catch fire, but the Crusaders successfully squelch the flames. Nightfall forces the Crusaders to pull back and wait.
The attack resumes again the next morning. The Muslims attempted to cushion the walls from the battering ram by hanging bales of straw and matresses over the wall. Unfortunately for them, this quickly catches fire, and greatly reduces their visibility as the smoke rises up and into the faces of the Muslim defenders up on the high wall. By noon on July 15, Godfrey's siege tower reaches the inner city wall. The Crusaders would enter the city at the same hour Jesus is said to have died on the cross and, perhaps more importantly, on the exact day the vision of Bishop Adhemar had prophesized.
And then it happened....
If you have been told anything about the Crusades, doubtless it was of the massacre that followed as the Crusaders stormed into Jerusalem. By all the standards of warfare at the time, the Crusaders would be justified in sacking the city and killing all the city's inhabitants. It sounds gruesome to modern ears, but this was a time when war was not entered into lightly. Particularly where the applications of laying siege to a city are employed. If a city is approached by an aggressor army and it surrenders, generous terms are expected and normally granted. No army believed there was any good or glory to come from waging wars on noncombatants. However, if a city chooses to resist and a battle ensues, then the standard that would be applied to a defeated army in the field would be applied to the entire population of the defeated city. Armies at this time in history tended to fight battles of annihilation. This means that when the battle is over, only one of them is left. Any soldiers that were allowed to survive from the defeated army would be sold into slavery unless they possessed enough wealth to purchase their own ransom. When a city chooses to resist a siege, its population forfeits its right to be viewed as noncombatants. Iftikhar al-Daura had confidence in his ability to defend Jerusalem long enough to allow the the coming Egyptian army to arrive and relieve the city of the siege. He gambled. He lost. It was he who put the city's population at risk. He knew what he was doing and he is entitled to an equal share of blame for the carnage that ensued in the subsequent sacking of Jerusalem.

Contrary to popular belief, the Crusaders did NOT kill everyone in Jerusalem. The blood did not run in rivers up to the Crusader's knees. There has been considerable exaggeration as to the extent of the massacre over the centuries. Some of this, of course, is due to the Crusaders themselves in retelling the stories. However, in modern culture it has become the "politically correct" norm to blame all Christian/Muslim conflicts on the Crusades. Particularly for the Crusaders' treatment of the inhabitants remaining in Jerusalem when it was taken. In truth, the Crusaders surely killed most of the Muslims in the city, although many were ransomed. It is also a popular myth among the "politically correct" crowd that the Crusaders were so "blood drunk" that they killed indiscriminately and even slew the Christians in Jerusalem. Since the Christian population was expelled from the city upon their arrival, the Crusaders would certainly not have been looking to cull Christians from the rest of the population. Quite the opposite. Since the Muslims expelled the people they felt were not loyal to them, the Crusaders had every reason to believe that all those remaining inside the city were hardcore supporters of their Muslim defenders. It is true, that sacking a city is hardly something that fits with the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but these historical denunciations of the conquest of Jerusalem are merely exaggerations by people whose agenda is to disgrace the Crusades as an act of Christian imperial aggression. There is simply no truth to this. The Muslims bear considerable responsibility for their own fate. The sack of Jerusalem was well within the rules of engagement considered normal for the time.
Let us also not forget that in 1187, when the Muslim leader Saladin would himself lay siege to Jerusalem,it was his entire intention to put every Christian to the sword. He was only prevented from doing so because Balian threatened to kill every Muslim in the city, and destroy the Dome of The Rock, before he could do it. This, combined with a more effective defense, forced Saladin to negotiate. Iftikhar al-Daura, having himself expelled the Christian inhabitants of the city, could not make such a threat. He therefore had no bargaining leverage. An extremely important factor in determining the outcome.
At sunset on July 15, the Crusaders gather at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and fulfill their vows. They celebrate mass just as they promised they would when this adventure began. Against all odds the First Crusade achieved all of its objectives. Ordained by God?....You better believe it!
I bet you are wondering about that Fatimid army dispatched from Cairo that was on its way to relieve Jerusalem from the siege. It looks like it could be a repeat of Antioch doesn't it? The Crusaders could find themselves trapped in Jerusalem with a huge Muslim army pressing them from the outside. But this story doesn't end that way. Instead, quarreling among the Crusader leaders rears it head again. After a brief period of celebration, the Crusaders got together and offered the Raymond the crown of the city. Ever the pious one, he declined, however when the same offer was made to Godfrey he initially refused, but then accepted. This angered Raymond so much that he and his troops left the city.
The Fatimid army that was closing in on Jerusalem expected the Crusaders to remain in the city the same way they remained in Antioch. When Raymond vacated the city he discovered the Egyptian army was encamped at Ascalon and making preparations to retake Jerusalem. Raymond informed the other Crusaders and rejoined them for an attack on their encampment. This caught the Egyptian army totally by surprise and it was thoroughly destroyed. The Holy land was now, not only conquered by the Crusaders, it was safe.

EPILOGUE

There were many subsequent crusades but the generally accepted rule is that there were seven crusades launched between 1095 and 1250 that constitute "The Crusades." The Crusader states lasted until 1291 when the Muslims took Acre and the other remaining outposts either fell or were abandoned. After 200 years the Europeans seemed to lose interest in expending "blood and treasure" in faraway lands.
What did the Crusades accomplish? Some would suggest that since they inevitably abandoned the Holy Land, that they ultimately accomplished nothing. Well nothing could be farther from the truth. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that Western Civilization, as we have come to know it, would not have even come into existence were it not for these defensive military campaigns. For 200 years, the expansion of Islamic conquest was halted. The Crusades may ultimately have failed to hold the territory they retook, but they certainly thwarted the expansion of Islam.
This can be proven by just how quickly the Jhihadist expansion of Islam resumed afterward. The Muslims moved against Europe, occupying Gallipoli in 1354 and captured Adrianople in 1357. It didn't stop there. The Islamic juggernaut roared into Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and Macedonia. On June 5, 1389 they defeated a Western army in Kosovo. The Europeans called for more crusades, but now they were fighting a lot closer to home. In 1426 Cyprus fell. In 1430 it was Thessalonica that succumbed to Islam's sword. Then, on May 29, 1453, the crown jewel of the Byzantine Empire fell...Constantinople. There, the Muslims massacred men women and children without discrimination or mercy. A scene far worse than either the reality, or the fiction, of the massacre at Jerusalem in 1099. Yet we are supposed to accept guilt for the atrocities of Christian Crusaders in Jerusalem, when the sacking of Constantinople and so many other Islamic massacres goes unmentioned in our "politically correct" culture. Constantinople is now renamed Istanbul.
Twice, the "religion of peace" got as far as Vienna. Imagine how far Islam might have gotten if the Crusades hadn't stunted its growth for 200 years. We OWE the Crusaders our gratitude, NOT our condemnation. Instead, we see the same sort of condemnation that has historically been heaped on the Crusades applied to President Bush's "War On Terror." Islam is again being portrayed as the victim of Western aggression as though they have been peacefully minding their own business. Too many people are willing to blame their own countries and their policies instead of seeing Islamic terrorism for what it is. The great military strategist Carl von Clausewitz would recognize it as "war by other means."
The first siege of Vienna failed in 1529. But Islam is on a course for world domination and therefore setbacks are only temporary. They always come back. Islam reached its high water mark when it again laid siege to Vienna in 1683. Islam would enter into a period of decline when Poland's King Jan III Sobieski and 30,000 soldiers broke the siege.....
.....And don't you want to know what day that was?....September 11, 1683....Now you know why Osama Bin Laden chose September 11 to send his message to the world. Islam is prepared to pick up where it left off in 1683. They always come back...It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what God you believe in or what God you don't believe in. They have time, and they are prepared to use that as their greatest weapon.
All religions are NOT created equal. Islam is an expansionist, imperialistic theocratic tyranny. It has more in common with Stalinist communism and National Socialism (Nazism) than it has with true religion. It just uses God to give it the false impression of a higher validation. The Crusades neither inspired nor amplified the aggressive behavior of Muslims. It was there from the time of Muhammad. They also didn't put an end to Islam's desire to dominate with a worldwide Caliphate. But for 200 years the Crusades held Islam in place. Not a weakened Islam, but an Islam of equal, or perhaps superior, military capability. Islam does not negotiate in good faith, and it preys on any sign of weakness. We dare not display any. We could do worse than to follow the Crusaders' example today. In fact, if we fail to show equal resolve and courage, Islam will steal our culture away from us. Just as it has done to all the cultures that have crossed its path before. Believe it...Or bury your face in the dirt facing Mecca.

The author is a true believer

"For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it."
From Pope Urban II's call for the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont, 1095

Reading Material:
"The New Concise History Of The Crusades" Thomas F. Madden
"Crusades: The Illustrated History" Thomas F. Madden
"The Politically Incorrect Guide To Islam And The Crusades" Robert Spencer
"The Idiot's Guide To The Crusades" Paul L, Williams
"The Crusades: An Illustrated History" James Harpur
"God's War" Christopher Tyerman
"The First Crusade" Thomas Asbridge
"The Crusades," David Nicolle

The Science Of Denying God

THE SCIENCE OF DENYING GOD

There is a threat in our world, the likes of which we have never seen before. All of civilization hangs in the balance and the actions taken, or not taken, by those of us alive today will determine whether or not we will have a future. Is the government or the media leading the charge to solve this problem? No! They are more interested in promoting a gathering of wackadoo musicians and actors doing a series of concerts to promote the fraudulent cause of "manmade global warming." Real flesh and blood enemies are working to bring more terrorism and death to us. Yet we are constantly told that the threat of terrorism is being overblown by an unpopular presidential administration. The war on terror is nothing more than a bumper sticker slogan. It is the threat of catastrophic climate change that is the real danger...And the children shall lead.
Now just what exactly is Global Warming? (Also known as global climate change). That the earth appears to be warming, at least relative to recent history, is possible, if not a "consensus" fact. The real question at hand is whether or not any of this supposed warming has anything to do with manmade industrial emissions. The idea being that these greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 (carbon dioxide), are causing the atmosphere to heat up. Carbon Dioxide is a natural occurring ingredient. Plants need it to survive and as they consume it they in turn put oxygen in the air. This has been the natural order of things since the beginning. Carbon Dioxide is called a "greenhouse gas" because it absorbs and redirects infrared radiation from the sun. Simply put, the more CO2 molecules we have in the air, the hotter the air should be...but then again maybe its not so simple.
In 1996 the United Nations issued a report stating that Global Warming was a fact, yet before releasing the report two key paragraphs were deleted. Those two paragraphs, written by the scientists who did the actual scientific analysis stated: A. "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate change to increases in greenhouse gases" B. "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man made causes.
Contrary to the lies you have heard...THERE IS NO "SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS" THAT GLOBAL WARMING WILL CAUSE DAMAGING CLIMATE CHANGE!. There is also NO "scientific consensus" that manmade emissions are the cause of the warming of the earth, or more importantly, that any actions taken by mankind have or will have any effect on the situation. We know that in the past the climate of the earth has been both colder AND warmer. At the time the Vikings were making settlements in Greenland and North America the climate was suitable for the farming that sustained their colonies. When the warmer climate left in favor of a cooler one, so did the Vikings. The fact is, we cannot even be certain that the climate, as it stands now, is even the most desireable one.
The current projections from the proponents of global warming claim that the earth may warm 2 to 3 degrees celsius by 2100AD. This may sound impressive until you consider that meteorological predictions are fraught with more variables than virtually any other kind of science. This is especially true when taken on a planetary scale where everything affects the result. Just look at your local newspaper. Check the seven day forecast and see how accurate it is. These things are almost always wrong and they are based on a local area with fewer variables. How can any reasonable person put any faith on a planetary forecast set over 100 years? Let alone the dire consequences of melting polar icecaps, rising sea levels, intensified storms and droughts that the fear mongers of this movement would have us believe.
Half of this century's global warming occurred between 1900 and 1945. If manmade Carbon Dioxide emissions are responsible why wasn't there a greater increase in temperature in the second half of the century? After all, fossil fuel emissions more than doubled in that time. Manmade carbon dioxide accounts for only 5% of the total of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Thats right 5%! The rest comes from natural sources such dying vegetation (rotting wood) and volcanoes...the earth's own smokestack. Volcanic activity can add more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in a few weeks than every internal combustion engine on the planet has over the last decade. Think about that. Termites and other insects are a larger source of greenhouse emissions than all the industrial plants in the civilized world! Yet it is the oceans that are most responsible since the primary greenhouse gas is not carbon dioxide or methane but....water vapor. Human activity does not add water vapor to the atmosphere. However, warmer air can hold much more moisture which can increase temperatures and intensify the effects of climate change. There are even those who dare to suggest that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the result of, not the cause of, Global Warming.
There is also a cadre of scientists who attribute the warming of the earth to increased solar activity. Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, has said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures." To determine the Sun's role in global warming, Dr Solanki's research team measured sunspots, which are believed to intensify the Sun's energy output. The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period, which could last up to 50 years, but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth's climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected in Greenland. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth's atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases.
Combine that with the reports from NASA that say Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period. This would appear to suggest that rapid changes in planetary climates could be a natural phenomena. Unless, of course, you believe that the ultra conservative corporate Martians are pursuing a policy of unregulated industrial developement. Damned extraterrestrials!
If that isn't enough to throw the "scientific consensus" into question there is also the matter of the natural ability of the earth to compensate for changes in the atmosphere. For example, when carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increase, plantlife on the planet experiences an increase in its growth rate. This has the effect of CONSUMING more carbon dioxide and converting it into oxygen. The more carbon dioxide, the faster the plants grow and the more carbon dioxide that is removed. Sounds almost like somebody had forseen this possibility and designed a system to account for that. Who do you reckon that was?
All of this has to be accounted for in any model about climate change. All of these factors and the long periods of time involved will wreak havoc on any forecasts of global doom. You could call them..."inconvenient facts." Reasonable people have good reasons to question the so called "scientific consensus" of the followers of the "Church Of The Global Apocalypse." Now if you haven't heard any of these arguments before then you are NOT informed...because someone doesn't want you informed.
There are two kinds of science. In one kind of science, the scientists look at the facts and conduct experiments. They report on the results and other scientists can reproduce the conditions of the experiments and therefore reproduce the results. This has the effect of verifying the validity of the conclusions. In the other kind of science, the scientist KNOWS what outcome he desires and he creates the data needed to to generate the results that will validate those preordained conclusions. He then collaborates with other like minded scientists to claim there is a "scientific consensus" and suppress any debate on the issue. These scientists tend to be dependent on grants from people whose agenda is enhanced by the outcomes of this "science."
So what is the true driving force behind the great Global Warming Swindle? It is nothing more than a great socialist attempt to redistribute the wealth of the United States to the rest of the world. It was never about the supposed catastrophic consequences of a global climate change. It is all about money and control. If you are suspicious of that assertion then take as an example the infamous Kyoto Protocols that the United States currently has, thus far, wisely not signed onto. Even if we were to assume, for the sake of argument, that the apocalyptic global climate models were correct it would have NO measurable effect on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere because it imposes no restrictions on major developing countries like China and India. Those countries have made it clear they will not now, nor in the future, agree to, or adhere to, any such restrictions. Yet the world clamors over the United States failure to agree to the treaty. Why? Because the United States, or more accurately, the United States money, was always the objective. It was just another attempt to bring the United States in line with the socialist leanings of the majority of the world. Yes my friends, you can say the words...New World Order.
According to the Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, implementing the Kyoto restrictions in the United States would cost the average family $225.00 a month! And thats on the lowest end of possible emissions restrictions that could be placed on the United States if we acquiesce to the Kyoto Protocols. Emission reduction proposals hurt the poorest hardest. Full implementation of the Kyoto Protocols would cost the United States no less than 4,000,000 jobs with absolutely NO measurable effect on reducing temperatures, and yet there are eco-terrorists who would dare to extort more from us if we were foolish enought to allow it. Alarmists such as Al Gore have suggested nothing short of the abolition of the automobile itself. The United States is always at the center of these grandiose apocalyptic measures. Apparently we are expected to finance the entire project. This is in spite of the fact that the United States already leads the world in both the developement and implementation of emission restriction technology.
You would think that a clean burning technology like nuclear power would be desireable as an alternative to the fossil fuel burning power plants that generate greenhouse gases. However, the people who align themselves with the Global Warming alarmists are the same people who oppose the expanded use of nuclear power. There hasn't been construction on a new nuclear power plant in over 20 years. Why? Because by eliminating fuel alternatives they put you at their mercy to pay extravagant penalties for the fuels you consume as well as gain greater control of your freedom of movement. Once again we see money and control as the true source of their motivations.
There is also the matter of the penalizing/money acquisition scheme they refer to as "carbon offsets." These are the dirty little devices that allow you to pay for the priviledge of dispersing carbon into the atmosphere. They refer to each individual's personal carbon dioxide responsibility as a "carbon footprint." Carbon Offsets essentially operate in the same manner as the infamous indulgences that were once sold by the Catholic Church. In that despicable scheme, absolution for sins could literally be purchased for a price. And of course, sin was for sale on a progressive scale based on the particular sin you were buying. This was at the very core of reasons that led to the Protestant Reformation. It was a policy that obviously allowed the rich to avoid any real spiritual responsibility or commitment to their religion. Now the religion of Global Warming is resurrecting this policy for its own quick cash grab. For Al Gore or any of the musicians and actors that participated in the recent Live Aid concerts this is no big deal. After all these are the wealthy and, in their minds at least, the elite. They can, and will, continue to live frivolously as they use their political influence to find ways to coerce the rest of us into footing the bill. Ultimately it always comes down to that.
I recently watched an episode of the Today show on NBC and Lester Holt had one of these "green" experts come in and analyze his personal "carbon footprint." Since he travels a lot by jet plane, he had a sizeable one. Iit was therefore suggested that he compensate for this by "donating" money to organizations that do things to "work against the effects" of carbon emissions. Basically these groups go around planting trees and organizing rock concerts that themselves generate huge carbon footprints. I was impressed that Mr. Holt could keep a straight face through the whole experience. Currently this farce about carbon offsets is built around creating a "guilt complex" in the more sensitive members of the citizenry and is therefore voluntary. However, the Global Warming Gestapo is not interested in volunteers, they are looking for legislation. Unfortunately in the current congressional climate they will find this an easy task to accomplish. They desire to levy a heavy tax on such things as gasoline, jet fuel, coal etc. as well as insist on emission controls on vehucles that will add thousands of dollars to their prices. All these guaranteed economy busting ideas will be viewed by a democratically controlled congress as new revenue with which to finance their own socialist schemes such as a national health care system. So you can see how one bad idea feeds into another one. Then of course there is the ever present desire to limit your freedoms and control every facet of your life through government regulation. All these things will combine to severely limit your freedom of movement and crippling the economy will destroy your way of life as you know it. The greatest misconception of this whole scheme is the idea that the government must act now...and drastically.
And yet, I would tell you there is even something more sinister than that afoot here. All these things are merely manmade manifestations of an even greater conspiracy against you. As always there is something deeper and more spiritual involved. Brilliant conspiracies of this magnitude are above the abilities of disagreeable men to carry out in spite of their sincerely malevolent intentions. Too many people are involved. Politicians, actors, musicians, activists and other assorted "do gooders" don't come together this way on their own. There is a guiding hand, or should I say, a guiding spirit:

Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

There are verses in the Bible's book of Revelation that have always made me wonder about the people in the end times. Their behavior, as described, always seemed a little strange to me. It is these principalities and powers in high places that are truly at work here. And they are fulfilling a great purpose right before our eyes...if only we will see it:

Revelation 16:8-9 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

I have always wondered how people in the midst of such great misery could blaspheme the name of the God that possessed their only hope for mercy. I always had a problem believing that anyone could have that much hatred for God. But then again it isn't really hatred so much as it is arrogance. The Global Warming hoax has a greater purpose. Even as these hypocritical activists bombard us with their fraudulent alarmist claims of impending disaster they are unwittingly indoctrinating and conditioning the population to blaspheme God precisely as those verses describe. We are being indoctrinated and conditioned to believe that such matters as the climate are actually under OUR control. We are denying God. Just as Charles Darwin's false science has convinced many they are just the random result of of evolution from an ape, so too will Global Warming convince many that they, and not God, are the masters of the earth's climate. If the theory of evolution is designed to indoctrinate and condition mankind to deny God the creator, then Global Warming is designed to indoctrinate and condition us to deny God's continuing role in the earth's affairs. That has always been one of the goals of the very first conspirator...a certain angel actively working for the destruction of us all. Global Warming is not the science of catastrophic climate change. It is the science of denying God.

"There Is No God But Allah" The Truth About Islam pt. 2

"THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH"
The Truth About Islam pt. 2

It was an amusing beginning to a not so amusing story. In the year 610AD Muhammad Ibn Abdullah, a 40 year old merchant from the town of Mecca on the Arabian peninsula, was awakened from his sleep (in a cave no less) by a heavenly(?) voice telling him he was the messenger from God. This man, who would go on to establish one of the largest, most militaristic and intolerant religions ever concieved, reacted the way any cold and calculating conqueror would.....he hid under his wife until it went away!! Thus, Islam was born.
Muhammad was born on approximately August 20, 570 AD. His father died soon after his birth and his mother died when he was six leaving the future prophet to be raised as a shepherd by his uncle Abu-Talib. At the age of 25 he cleverly married a rich widow 15 years his senior named Khadeejah. They spawned six children, all of whom died young except for a daughter, Fatima.
The Arabia of the time was populated by warring tribes (sectarian violence anyone?) who took a particular delight in raiding one another's caravans. Muhammad was a member of the Quraysh tribe and had participated in two local wars with the Banu Hawazin tribe. He was subjected to epileptic seizures, and addicted to prayer and fasting even before his "divine" visitations with the angel he identified as Gabriel had begun. He was also familiar, though somewhat erroneously, with the traditions and customs of the Jewish and Christian people that also inhabited the region.
After his initial encounter with the "angel," he worried that he was actually being pursued by demons and feared he was becoming possessed by them. His wife encouraged him that these apparitions were real and that he should open himself up to be the prophet of God. This made her his first convert and, as could be expected, his immediate family tended make up his initial following. He began preaching to his own Quraysh tribe about one god and, from the very beginning, was adamant about his role as this god's one true prophet.
Initially the Meccans were relatively indifferent to his preaching. Their society was a pluralistic one so they were somewhat accustomed to a variety gods and religions. This was further enhanced by their trade relations which likewise kept them aware of "alternative" belief systems. It wasn't even particularly unusual to declare himself a divine prophet as there were actually quite a few "would be" prophets making the rounds in the Middle East of that time. Since the citizenry of Mecca weren't responding particularly well to his preaching, Muhammad decided he needed to step up his rhetoric and began assailing the popular pagan gods of the region, as well as to promote the idea that their ancestors may have earned a less than heavenly reward for having died in their disbelief of the one true god. Faced with a "hellfire" preacher in their midst the Quraysh lost their tolerance. His situation deteriorated rapidly when Muhammad's uncle Abu Talib, head of his Banu Hashem clan, died and was replaced with another of his uncles, Abu Lahab. This uncle particularly disliked Muhammad and his teachings so much that he earned a special mention in the, as yet unwritten, Qur'an.

Qur'an 111 1. Perish the hands of the Father of Flame! Perish he! 2. No profit to him from all his wealth, and all his gains! 3. Burnt soon will he be in a Fire of Blazing Flame! 4. His wife shall carry the (crackling) wood - As fuel!- 5. A twisted rope of palm-leaf fibre round her (own) neck!

As you can see he did not take this rejection well. Intolerance of criticism is a trait that his religion retains to this day.
This rejection, and the ensuing persecution of Muhammad and his approximately 40 followers, led to what the Muslims now call the Hejira. He left Mecca and fled to a nearby village called Medina, in hopes of finding a climate more suitable to incubate his new religion. It is in Medina that Muhammad would truly get his act together and would transform himself from a relatively unsuccessful private preacher to a political and military leader. He established the "Constitution Of Medina" which organized the the new local following, and those who followed in the migation to Medina, into one community called an umma. This one document essentially laid the foundation for all of Islamic law and order to follow. It established the religion of Islam as the source of all social and political organization. This firmly married the religion to the state and they have been INSEPARABLE ever since!
It was in Medina that Muhammad would also begin his military career. Although initially, this amounted mostly to piracy as he and his followers raided the caravans of the Quraysh. These raids provided both a source of income and an opportunity for training his followers. This training would serve a theological purpose as well as the more obvious military one. One particular raid on a caravan at Nakhla was done during the sacred month of Rajab, when such fighting is not permitted. However, not surprisingly, a new "revelation" came from Allah that allowed the raid to be justified because the opposition of the Quraysh to Muhammad was a greater transgression than violating the prohibition against violence during the sacred month. To reject Muhammad is the moral equivalent of persecuting Islam, and accordingly, is worse than killing. Thus the "situational ethics" of Islam is born.

Qur'an Surah 2:216-217: Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not. They question thee (O Muhammad) with regard to warfare in the sacred month. Say: Warfare therein is a great (transgression), but to turn (men) from the way of Allah, and to disbelieve in Him and in the Inviolable Place of Worship, and to expel his people thence, is a greater with Allah; for persecution is worse than killing. And they will not cease from fighting against you till they have made you renegades from your religion, if they can.

There are those Islam apologists who will tell you that Islam actually prohibits the targeting of innocent people in conflicts. However the "Doctine of Nakhla" is one of the justifications for doing exactly that. Since non-believers by definition are guilty of persecuting Islam, fighting that persecution, by any means neccessary, is not only tolerated, it is expected. This is not an extremist position. This is mainstream Islam! This is why they celebrate in the streets and rejoice when two buildings full of innocent people come crashing down at the hands of Osama Bin Ladin's terrorists. It is also why mainstream Islam fails to condemn the actions of terrorists. Quite the opposite, in mosques all over the world (including the United States!) they encourage violence against civilians. Moral absolutes do not exist in Islam. That which benefits Islam at the expense of Islam's enemies is the whole of the law....And if you are not for them, you are against them.
Shortly after the Nakhla raid, Muhammad and his Muslims fought their first major battle when they attacked a Quraysh caravan at Badr. What first looked like an easy target for the Muslims turned into a much bigger affair when Muhammad's 300 men found themselves facing a force of over 1000. Yet the Muslims surprisingly routed the Quraysh. The prophet even went so far as to claim that Allah had sent an army of angels to insure that the Muslims prevailed in the engagement.
The victory at Badr came at a convenient time for Muhammad as his influence in Medina had actually been on the wane. He thus used the victory at Badr to consolidate his authority and move against his opposition. The first to find themselves in the line of fire were the Jews of Medina. They had refused to acknowledge him, or his "revelations," as coming from God. Upon migrating to Medina, Muhammad tried to convert the local Jewish population by pointing out the similarities (some might call it plagiarism) between Islam and Judaism. He even adopted certain Jewish practices such as the fast of Yom Kippur and the Day of Atonement. It is also interesting to note that originally Muslims faced toward Jerusalem for their daily prayers. Instead of being impressed by all these overtures toward their faith, the Jews turned into his biggest critics. They consistently pointed out the errors and inconsistencies of his teachings. Now Muhammad was going to "correct" them.
Since the three Jewish tribes living in Medina also happened to be wealthy, this provided Muhammad with another opportunity for plundering. He banished from Medina the Qainuqu tribe, with whom he had a truce, citing their unwillingness to recognize him as the prophet of God. He then divided up their property among the Muslims. This of course, had the effect of providing the Muslims with an incentive continue to follow Muhammad's instructions as they tended to profit from them. He even authorized murder when a young Muslim volunteered to fulfill his wishes to kill a Jewish poet, who was accused by Muhammad of insulting Muslim women.
Not all of Muhammad's military ventures were successful. After a defeat in the battle of Uhud, Muhammad attributed the loss to a lack of faith on the part of his followers.

Qur'an 3:152 GOD has fulfilled His promise to you, and you defeated them by His leave. But then you wavered, disputed among yourselves, and disobeyed after He had shown you (the victory) you had longed for. But then, some of you became distracted by the spoils of this world, while others were rightly concerned with the Hereafter. He then diverted you from them to test you. He has pardoned you. GOD showers the believers with His grace.

Muhammad's prestige was dented by this setback so he used this as an opportunity to strike against another Jewish tribe. The Nadir. He banished them from Medina and, once again, divided their land and property among the Muslims. However it would be the third Jewish tribe, the Quraiza, that would suffer the worst, as a scapegoat for Muhammad's greater ambitions.
In 627AD, 10,000 Meccan bedouins laid seige to Medina. Apparently they had tolerated all they could from Muhammad and his Muslim raiders and were determined to rid themselves of the problem once and for all. Unfortunately their military enterprise quickly turned into a disaster. Muhammad had cleverly dug trenches around the city where it would have been vulnerable to calvary attack. Since the cavalry was the strength of the Quraysh army, this rendered their attacks ineffective and, after only two weeks, they left. Muhammad subsequently accused the Quraiza, the richest and most powerful of the original three Jewish tribes of Medina, of collaborating with the Meccans. The 800 men of the tribe were coerced into digging a trench and then told to sit on the edge of it. Then, one by one, they were sytematically beheaded and their bodies tossed into the trench. They then sold their women and children into slavery and, of course, divided the proceeds among the Muslims. From this point on, Muhammad would only regard the Jews as trecherous and evil people. He claimed it was they who falsified scriptures and taught doctrines in error. He changed the Sabbath from saturday to friday as well as changing the direction of daily prayers from Jerusalem to Mecca. Its good to know the history of how these things came about...isn't it?
After the failed seige of Medina, Muhammad had a "revelation" of making a pilgrimage to Mecca. This was, in fact, a current pagan tradition that he wanted to apply to Islam. We see once again the fluidity of logic that allows Muhammad to plagiarize ideas from other religions and absorb them into his own. Now he would claim that the holy shrine of the Kaaba, in Mecca, was actually built by Abraham and his son Ishmael. Most Arabs are descendents of Ishmael, the illegitimate elder son of Abraham and his wife's handmaiden Hagar. The Jews, of course, are descended from Abraham's "legitimate" son by his wife Sarah, who was named Isaac. There is no evidence that Abraham and Ishmael built the Kaaba but it was clever of Muhammad to make this claim and showed his shrewdness in constructing the Islamic myth through his conveniently opportunistic "revelations."
In 628AD Muhammad led 1500 men on a "pilgrimage" to Mecca. However, the Meccans made it clear they would not let him enter the city. He then negotiated the infamous "Treaty Of Hudaybiyya." With this treaty, Muhammad agreed to go home but Muslims would be allowed to make the pilgrimage the next year. He even agreed to some terms that most Muslims found distressing. Quraysh men seeking asylum with the Muslims were to be returned to the Quraysh, but Muslims seeking asylum with the Quraysh did not have to be returned. Even worse to the Muslims, Muhammad agreed to not identify himself as "Muhammad the Prophet Of God," instead he would identify himself as his father's son in the traditional manner. Despite the extremely unfavorable terms that Muhammad had negotiated, he had the audacity to claim the treaty was, in fact, a victory for both himself and the Muslims.
Because most Muslims viewed this negotiated "victory" a lot less favorably than he did, Muhammad had to find some way of distracting the dissenters among his people. Since turning against the Jews had proved to be a profitable distraction in the past, he decided to stay true to the formula. But alas, there were no more Jews remaining in Medina for him to persecute. He would have to find them elsewhere. Therefore he attacked and laid seige to the Jewish community at Khaibar. When they inevitably surrendered, he followed the now well established tradition of stripping them of their property and dividing it among the Muslims. Initially he wanted to force them to leave, however there weren't enough Muslims to work the land. Conveniently he was blessed with another "revelation" that instructed him on how to properly subjugate the Jewish population.....To the considerable profit of the Muslims of course.
The "Treaty Of Hudaybiyya" is probably more well known, not for Muhammad's willingness to make such overwhelming concessions, but for the relative ease with which he would discard its terms. Soon after agreeing to the treaty, a Quraysh woman, Umm Kulthum, came to the Muslims of Medina seeking refuge. When her brothers came for her and demanded she be returned according to the terms of the treaty, Muhammad refused. He claimed Allah forbade it. You see, he had a new "revelation:"

Qur'an 60:10 O you who believe, when believing women (abandon the enemy and) ask for asylum with you, you shall test them. GOD is fully aware of their belief. Once you establish that they are believers, you shall not return them to the disbelievers. They are not lawful to remain married to them, nor shall the disbelievers be allowed to marry them. Give back the dowries that the disbelievers have paid. You commit no error by marrying them, so long as you pay them their due dowries. Do not keep disbelieving wives (if they wish to join the enemy). You may ask them for the dowry you had paid, and they may ask for what they paid. This is GOD's rule; He rules among you. GOD is Omniscient, Most Wise..

In 629AD Muhammad finally made his pilgrimage to Mecca. He made a relatively strong impression and managed gather a host of new converts along the way. The next year, when a Muslim was killed by a Meccan in a dispute that had nothing to do with the Muslim/Quraysh rivalry, Muhammad used the incident as a pretext for totally discarding the Hudaybiyya Treaty. He advanced on Mecca and, without serious resistance, they surrendered the city to him. This established, for all time, an important principle for Muslims. All truces and treaties forthwith were to be negotiated for no more than ten years, and only entered into to afford a weakened Muslim situation time to strengthen itself, and then it is to be discarded.
To his credit, or more likely, his shrewdness, Muhammad did not force the Meccans to convert to Islam immediately, although he did take to smashing numerous idols to pagan gods. He established the pilgrimage to Mecca as an annual event, now known as the Hajj, and insisted every Muslim must make the journey at least once in their lifetime. In 632AD Muhammad made his first and last "annual" pilgrimage to Mecca. Three months later Muhammad, complaining of headaches and fever, ended his existence on this earth on June 8, 0632AD.
The life of Muhammad is extremely important to understanding how we should interact with Islam in the modern world. 1400 years later he has a much greater influence on the world than he had during his lifetime. In this, and this alone, he shares a similarity with Jesus. As I have shown in this very brief overview of his life, Muhammad established Islam, not just as a religion, but as the basis for all social, political and military associations. It has been that way from the very beginning. Worse, he used the religious aspect of Islam to validate all the morally questionable actions he undertook. This is particularly illuminating with respect to his military expeditions that, all too often, had the objective of providing a source of income for the Muslims as well as suppressing opposition.
Jesus, by contrast, spoke of a kingdom "not of this earth" and said to "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." This is the origin of the concept of a separation between church and state. It is an entirely and uniquely Christian principle! Muhammad, on the other hand, set about acquiring an earthly kingdom and dispensing heavenly justice on earth. There is absolutely no moral equivalence between the two philosophies!
Christianity survived for three centuries as a shunned and persecuted philosophy. Only with Constantine's Edict of Milan, in 313AD, did Christianity gain tolerance within the Roman system. Contrary to popular belief, Constantine did NOT establish Christianity as the official religion of Rome. That was done in 380AD by Flavius Theodosius. This gives Christianity almost 400 years of incubation as a persecuted cult. By contrast, Islam's first 400 years saw it conquer the Middle East, Persia, Spain, as well as much of the Byzantine empire. All this would be done in the name of Jihad or "holy war." It would be the year 1095 with the first Crusade before the concept of 'holy war" would rear its head in the Christian world....and that would be as a direct result of contact with Islam!
Once the Christian church got a taste of the power and influence it could wield over the populations of Europe through the Crusades, the same corruptions always present in Islam began to take hold in the Christian church. This would eventually work itself out, unfortunately violently, with both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation. Eventually Christianity would extract itself from direct participation in government and political affairs as much for its own sake as for that of state sovereignty. However this was accomplished largely through one major act. That of Martin Luther translating the Bible into his own native language, and then utilizing the then new technology of the printing press to distribute it. Thus making the words of, and life of, Jesus available for all to read for themselves. Then informed faithful congregations could "reform" the church themselves. They were no longer vulnerable to those who exploited and profited from their ignorance. This worked because of the life Jesus led and the words he said. This is going to be a problem for those who are looking for an "Islamic Reformation."
President Bush, shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, tried to quell a potential backlash against Islam in this country by saying that we worship the same God. There are also those who would have you believe in the concept of "Radical Islam" or "Political Islam" as though they are somehow different and separate from the "Real Islam." As we can see by looking at the life of Muhammad, Islam is a religion that justifies violence, not only to spread its influence, but as a means of providing a financial income as well. Anyone who is not a believer is automatically guilty of persecuting Islam and therefore justified as their prey. Osama Bin Laden is perfectly correct in his behavior according to a true and accurate understanding of Muhammad and Islamic law. How can we realistically hope for so called "moderates" to reform Islam? On what will they base this reform? In truth, there is nothing to reform!
Christianity had the example of a peaceful martyr who laid down HIS life for the salvation of others. Muhammad was no martyr and he was definitely not a peaceful man. He was an opportunistic pirate who was clever enough exploit religion for his own advantage. In this he has much in common with David Koresh and Jim Jones. There is much to suggest, particularly in the successful worldwide expansion of Islam after his death, that his "revelations" may have been the result of real contact with a spiritual being. But it definitely was NOT authorized by the God of Abraham, Moses or Jesus. Whether or not Islam is a Satanic counterfeit religion (which I do believe) or simply the result of a very charismatic fraud, almost doesn't matter at this point. The die is cast. It's interesting to note that when Jesus was asked about the sign of his return, he warned his disciples of false religions, explaining that false prophets and even false messianic figures would arise. Check this one off as another fulfilled prophecy.
Considering Islam sustained itself during Muhammad's life through small raids on caravans, the modern terrorist can find much inspiration to fuel an effective justification of small quick attacks on both local government entities as well as U.S. led coalition forces. Its just the type of warfare they have been engaging in from the very beginning. It is entirely JUSTIFIED by Islam and ISLAM IS THE LAW!! They have been entirely consistent with the teachings and examples of Muhammad. Islam as a religion is a predator. It requires external enemies to provide them with a purpose and to serve as prey. It does not matter what we are fighting for, or if we fight at all. Their's is a struggle that can not end until we submit to them. It is war they have been fighting for almost 1400 years. The word "Islam" translated means to surrender or submit to the will of God......THEIR GOD! Their God is NOT the same God as the Christian God. Unfortunately, even the President of the United States does not properly understand this fact. I wish he did. If you have read all of this, then perhaps you now understand it.
Islam is at war with the world. It always has been. It is a religious war. It always has been. Still don't think so? Do you still believe we can "talk" to these people? Dialog? Negotiations? I will leave you with their own words:

"I was ordered to fight all men until they say 'There is no god but Allah.'" Muhammad, 632AD.

"I shall cross this sea to their islands to pursue them till there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah" Saladin 1189AD

"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no God but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad." Osama Bin Laden 2001AD.

With all apologies to Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are NOT A-Changin!'"

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS

There I was, certain I would finally get to writing an essay about Global Warming, or at least another one of the many I want to write about Islam. Things lately have a way of not working out as I expect they should. A couple of rock musicians caught "foot in mouth" disease and I feel compelled to comment about it. I was more than capable of ignoring Sheryl Crow's attack on white house advisor Karl Rove and her suggestion (joke we hope) about toilet paper conservation. Who among us possesses high expectations of Sheryl's intellect or influence? But this statement I could not overlook:

"The current administration needs to be tried, hung and shot. We need to treat them like the war criminals they are." Zack de la Rocha

For those that don't know, Zack de la Rocha is the lead singer for a politically charged rap metal band called "Rage Against The Machine." I don't know why this incident at the band's reunion performance at the Coachella Music Festival has gone relatively unreported. I don't want to let such an irresponsible remark go unchalleged.
Rock stars, whether knowingly or not, have long been the stooges of the socialist left wing of American politics. In the sixties they were quite eloquent at vocalizing an anti-establishment point of view. There are those who would suggest that this point of view is as essential to the music as is the sexuality that permeates throughout it. The youth of the sixties were convinced that they were going to change the world and music was going to be their instrument of change. Rolling Stone Magazine is giving itself a pat on the back for this very reason in its current 40th anniversary edition. The mantras of the time were "peace and love," the "Age Of Aquarius" and all that beautiful naivety. (OK, If I had been around back then I am sure I would have been the supreme Doors fan just because they weren't all of that). The Vietnam war, and the necessary military conscription that came with it, was a wonderful catalyst to provide young people with both an incentive and a collective cause to stand against. But today's war in Iraq is not the same. There is no longer military conscription and, more importantly, the enemy we fight seriously threatens the American homeland. Sorry, but the unity of the "good old days" that the aging "baby boomers" pine for is still long gone.
Rock music, and the musicians who play it, have always tried to portray themselves as unifiers and parlayers for peaceful change. It has always bothered me when musicians (or actors) try to inject themselves into politics. It makes no sense to presume that these people, who shut themselves off from reality to pursue their musical endeavors, possess any real insight into the political machinations that hold our society together. It is good to remember that in the great society of ancient Rome, musicians and actors were looked upon as favorably as prostitutes. Useful, but not dignified trades. Self absorption is a skill requirement for rock stars and there are many excellent biographies out there to prove it. In other words, the preponderance of rock musicians and the establishment constructed around them are.....not smart. There can be no greater example of this than the music industry's fawning over the recent politically charged Green Day record "American Idiot." Does anyone really believe the same people who gave us "Dookie" are qualified to comment intelligently on politics? Only an "American Idiot" could believe so.
"Rage Against The Machine," however, is a different breed of band entirely. This band has been thoroughly engorged in radical politics from its inception. They also embraced the cause to free convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Tom Morello, the bands guitarist is an avowed socialist as well as a Harvard graduate. In other words, these are not low level common stock rock star dummies. But they are emblematic of the current divisions within the country and how very serious they have become. Most of Rage's songs (ironically written during the Clinton administration) rail against what they percieve to be a "fascist" establishment. Yet fascism and socialism have a lot more consistent historical relationship than anything one could reasonably percieve from the so called American imperialism that socialists and, unfortunately, the left wing of the democratic party rail against. After all, what is Nazism? National Socialism. Fascism, communism and socialism are all in bed together. Always have been. The particular brand of socialism advocated by socialist democrats, for which so many rock stars, actors and other meddling entertainers are made stooges for, is essentially "international socialism." Or as it is more infamously known: "The New World Order." Considering how much of this has infiltrated the entertainment we consume, we may have to revisit the work of Senator Joe McCarthy. It appears he was right.
Though this tries to portray itself as a "progressive" movement it is nothing of the sort. As Mr. de la Rocha's statement makes clear. It is not now, nor has it ever been, a movement concerned with human rights. It is all about human control. Here in America, the movement for the last 40 years has masqueraded as a human rights enterprise. It has concentrated on creating what are essentially protected classes of people. They argue that these groups were the victims of discrimination in the past, therefore they are entitled to extra protections and extra rights. In other words, more government intrusion through regulation and law. Simply put; more control. The irony about socialist movements however, is that they turn against these "aggrieved classes" of people as soon as they can assume total control. This is done to placate the very masses they have sought control over. That is how socialism, fascism and communism acquire and keep power. Class warfare. All rock music politics stems from class warfare. And what happens to the political enemies of socialist/communist movements?....they are "tried, hung and shot!" So you see the new boss isn't really new at all is he?
You have to be empathetic to Mr. de la Rocha's predicament though. Think of all the pseudo-intellectual nonsense that a lot of 20 year old males say while they are going to college, to try and appear "sensitive" to the plight of others, just to get laid by the artistic, politically active girls who are vulnerable to that sort of thing. Now imagine if you did that within the scheme of a rock band and all of your ignorant diatribes were recorded and subsequently revered by a generation of people who, through their own ignorance, think you are an enlightened soul and buy into your "political awareness." Now you come back and reform your band in your thirties and try to sound convincing singing that same nonsense to a crowd of people you are now old enough to know haven't got a clue. But hey, earning a guaranteed visit from the Secret Service for threatening the life of the president will certainly add to your street credibility with this crowd of would-be revolutionaries.
Rage Against The Machine should have taken a clue from Motley Crue. Getting laid for being stupid is a lot easier to live down than getting laid for being smart when you are not. There tends to be more regret associated with that. Perhaps everyone needs to forget Rage Against The Machine and give that old rocker that failed to "die before he got old" a listen. Pete Townshend seems quite prescient in this new light:

We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
Though I know that the hypnotized never lie

There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Are now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Women...Where Is Your Outrage? The truth about Islam pt. 1

WOMEN.....WHERE IS YOUR OUTRAGE?

The truth about Islam pt. 1

This is the first in a series of essays I hope to write leading up to the release of the fourth Babylon Mystery Orchestra CD, "Axis Of Evil," to be released early next year.

Rarely do I let things affect me this much. Ok, that is probably a lie, I do it all the time, but it does take a lot to motivate me to take the time to research one of these and write it. That all happened very fast for this one, causing me to move some others aside, because I wanted to get this one out. I believe this is important.
This was sparked by seeing an interview with a woman named Ghazal Omid, the author of a book called "Living In Hell." The interview, and her book, is about the treatment of women living in Iran. She went on to tell about some recent protests in Iran, not the government sponsored (ie. planned and paid for) protests chanting "death to America and President Bush" that the media love to show, but instead an apparently un-newsworthy protest against their own government. This was a gathering in support of teachers who had not been paid. As should be expected, some of these women were arrested, which led to still more protests. These were not small protests either. Apparently 8000 women took to the streets to protest the arrests of these women. I know what you are thinking, it sounds hopeful doesn't it? Protests in Iran against their government. Well it gets ugly from here.
Asu Zaladida was one of these protesters. This 22 year old woman was subsequently arrested and taken to jail where, in keeping with a time honored Iranian tradition, she was brutally raped. Multiple times. Lets speak a little more plainly here....She was repeatedly anally raped with a baseball bat. After her family found, and then parted with enough money to convince the authorities to release her, she was then taken to the hospital. Her injuries got the best of her and she died. Taking treachery to the next level, the government would not allow the family to have her body for burial. Her family was warned not to speak against the government or they too would be arrested. Considering the arrest of Miss Zaladida led to her death, it would not be unreasonable to call this a death threat for the entire family.
As Ghazal Omid told this story, it was the next words she said that actually meant the most to me; "This is how women in Iran stand up to their abusers, and you guys don't hear about them because apparently they're not important." Is this true? Are these women just not important? She continued: "We need five minutes of your time per day to show you whats going on inside Iran." Apparently we can't spare that much time in America for these truly courageius women. After all we have Anna Nicole Smith, Sanjaya Malakar, Don Imus and his ghetto basketball commentary and Rosie O'Donnell to consider. Where can we find the time?
What happened to Asu Zaladida is NOT an isolated incident. You want another example? Take the case of Roya Tolouee, a 40 year old woman beaten and raped when she refused to sign "confessions." They finally coerced her by threatening to burn her two children to death right in front of her. Strange how she believed they would actually do it. Let her tell her story:
"Four armed men and three armed women barged into my house at night and took me away," she said. "My kids were terrified and crying. I was questioned all night by different interrogators and then thrown alone into a cell. When I wouldn't do what they wanted, they slapped me. But after the sixth night, the routine changed. I was left alone in a small dark room with two men. One was the assistant prosecutor and called himself Amiri. The other had a filthy mouth and said terrible things. They started slapping me again. For the rest of the night they did to me what no woman should ever experience. Amiri said, 'I'm going to hang you, but before I hang you, I will make an example of you so that no woman will dare to open her mouth here again'." He then sexually assaulted her. When she asked Amiri how he could act like that, he told her that only Islam and clerical rule were important to him. The attack left her badly bruised and bleeding internally, but she still refused to sign the papers they put before her. To further anger her attackers, she demanded to see a lawyer and cited international treaties on human rights. The following night they did not sexually assault her because she was still bleeding from the first assault. According to Islamic law, this rendered her "unclean" and therefore unfit to rape. So they told her they would kill her children by setting them on fire before her eyes.
Mainstream Islam takes a dim view of women's rights. When Islam reaches a level of authority that enables it to control and subjugate a population under Islamic law, oppression of women becomes the norm and these atrocities are NOT the exceptions. They even use their own belief system to enhance the enthusiasm for those who perpetrate these atrocities. Many years ago I remember reading a biography of the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez (yes, I really do read those kind of books all the time), and I was interested to learn that the Spaniards under his command would often "baptize" the native women before they took them sexually. This was all part of being a "good" catholic, since having sex with a "heathen" female, consent notwithstanding, would go against the acceptable church policies of the time. It appears our Islamic friends take that a step further. Sexual abuse as an interrogation technique is common. Young women are often raped BEFORE execution so they cannot reach heaven as virgins!!! This, as you can imagine, provides a considerable incentive to obey the Islamic state. This is the truth about Islam.
Meanwhile here in America, we are blessed with the ever illuminating political wisdom of Rosie O'Donnell who has recently taken to accusing the Bush administration of orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. She also believes that the kidnapping of the British Sailors and Marines by Iran was a conspiracy, and a plot to start a war with Iran by Britain and the United States. She has made herself one of the biggest detriments to womens rights in the Islamic world by making such a spectacle of herself. The jhihadist puritans of Islam can point to this loudmouthed lesbian woman speaking against her own country in a time of war and say "this is what we are fighting against." You would think she would want to speak up for these women, but her own anti-christian and anti-American crusade is more important to her than the plight of women seeking not just freedom, but the simple dignity of being treated better than a dog. To Ms. Odonnell the question has been answered. These women are NOT important.
The New York Times, in an article published on May 28, 2006, accused Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being "a proponent of women's rights." The ever liberal newspaper is interested in portraying him as a reformer, and Iran as a negotiating partner that we can trust. Speaking of a "negotiating partner," we also have senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, who on a recent lovefest appearance on David Letterman's program, insisted that the United States should seek what he called "aggressive negotiations" with the Islamic regimes in Iran and Syria. Just exactly how do you aggressively negotiate? The President has chosen a policy of isolating these governments because decades of negotiations have failed. If these Islamic fundamentalist regimes will treat their own women as less than dogs, just what kind of negotiating partners can they be? Appeasement is in the air, but when has it ever worked? In the 1930's "aggressive negotiations" were attempted with Nazi Germany even as the world was well aware of the atrocities already being committed against their Jewish citizens. Did these aggressive negotiations prevent a war? Did they improve the conditions of the Jewish people in Germany? No! It bought the Nazi regime more time, making both the war, and the ultimate treatment of the Jews, worse by far. In fact, negotiations have never prevented a war. They only delay the inevitable, to the advantage of the aggressors. This has the effect of making the wars that follow worse. Remember that when we get into a shooting war with Iran....and we will. By negotiating with Iran, or likewise with its sister regime in Syria, we would be not only displaying weakness in their eyes, but also tolerating these atrocities committed against women. But I forget, liberals do preach tolerance don't they? So long as it suits their short term political needs.
Nancy Pelosi may be the worst of all. She takes it upon herself to show support for the plight of women in Islamic countries by going to Syria and offering, essentially, an alternate foreign policy. One that validates and endorses this treatment of women. Yes it does validate and endorse it because nowhere has she called for any human rights reform. You can add to that her "leadership" in attempting to get the United States to militarily withdraw from Iraq. Just what do you think will happen to the rights and wellbeing of the women there if we leave? Do you think women will be able to retain what rights they have gained after a longstanding 5 year history of them? There was a story on Nightline the other night where the president of Afghanistan pointed out that, legally, women do have rights, but that in reality, they may not be allowed to exercise them. It takes a culture awhile to adjust to change. The American civil rights movement should have taught us that. How much harder must it be in countries without a traditional belief in individual liberty and with violent militias working against them. When the American military leaves Iraq, so will any and all gains for women. Like it or not, President Bush has done more for women's rights in the Islamic world than any president in recent history. You won't find a statement like that in the media!
Ghazal Omid had this to say: "We need five minutes of your time per day to show you what's going on inside Iran, because we don't have podiums. If we don't, this government will not go anywhere. If you really want to get rid of this Iranian regime, help us to help you." The trouble is that Miss Omid does not understand how America works. The media is the podium, and the people who control it will do anything to oppose this administration and its policies. The media likes to portray America as unpopular in the Islamic world. Women represent over half the population in those countries. They don't have freedon to speak out without fear of reprisals. We are their only hope. Don't kid yourselves, we are wanted there, and when women are no longer afraid to speak out, they will tell us just that. If we just have the resolve to stay.
It amazes me to no end that the feminists in America refuse to speak out about the mistreatment of women in Muslim countries. Where is the outrage? Is the alliance with feminism to the liberal democratic party so important that they would remain silent just to help them win some more seats in goverment? Are muslim women being sacrificed on the altar of American liberalism? I would say these women, who would dare to resist their own government in the face of certain humiliation and death, represent the best of everything we claim to stand for. In this instance, the president has been taking exactly the right approach in not negotiating with these governments. Women's groups, however, not only won't stand with him, they joyously celebrate their opposition to his administration's policies with their continued adherence to an outdated alliance with the liberal democratic party! Their silence on these Islamic atrocities is deafening. In a word: outrageous!
There is a massive movement by the American media to be tolerant of Islam. Just be sure what it is you are tolerating. Islam is not and has never been a religion of peace or freedom. This is doubly true if you are a woman. There are those who would have you believe that it is extremist radical Islam and not mainstream Islam that is the problem. If that is so, where are the voices of the so called moderates speaking out against this behavior? Either they are silent on this subject or the media is keeping them silent by not reporting them. Meanwhile Islamic women, many of them brave enough to stand against their own government, continue to be tortured and abused as apart of Islam's continuing policy of subjugating them and rendering them docile and obedient. This is the truth about Islam.

Heavy Metal's Golden Goose....Cooked! By the Ku Klux Klan

HEAVY METAL'S GOLDEN GOOSE....COOKED!
By the Ku Klux Klan

Its now official, the proverbial goose that laid the golden eggs for heavy metal's glory years is now dead. Murdered by the narrowminded bigotry of those who claim to love the genre the most. The pursuit of "metal purity" that began in earnest in the wake of grunge's successful overthrow of the "Hollywood Hair Metal Club," is now complete. As with all puritanical cleansings that came along, heavy metal's pious arbiters of purity have killed the genre in the name of "true metal."
I have been staking this opinion for quite some time, but several recent revelations have confirmed the demise of this once vibrant and powerful genre of music. Recently I was reading an interview with Iron Maiden in Classic Rock or Metal Hammer magazine (sometimes they seem almost interchangeable), where Maiden doesn't see themselves as a metal band. At first this might seem strange that the defining band of "The New Wave of British Heavy Metal" would be shying away from calling themselves a metal band, but in the current climate of heavy metal it makes perfect sense. Many of the artists whose careers have been associated with the words "Heavy Metal" are not wanting to be associated with the genre anymore. This is not because of what heavy metal was....but because of what heavy metal has become. This genre that once represented empowerment, freedom and, dare I say.....fun, has largely become a community of self-serving sycophants who are addicted to the culture of metal...not the music. Therein lies the problem. By seeing metal as more of a cultural movement rather than a strictly musical one, they have choked the genre with all sorts of definitions and restrictions as to what constitutes "true metal." The majority of the metal media, in order to stay on good terms with this highly vocal crowd, have largely acquiesced to the demands of this "Ku Klux Klan" of heavy metal puritans. This has enabled a relatively small group of people (I will be demonstrating just how small later in this essay) to decide not only who is metal but also, and perhaps more importantly, they take it upon themselves to annoint the bands that will carry the genre's flag as the true front line of Heavy Metal. The currently annointed ones being Mastodon and Lamb Of God.
Don't ever let anyone tell you that heavy metal is a genre populated with individual thinkers, for the "Ku Klux Klan" of heavy metal has run all of those off, even as they are likewise running off the very artists who have contributed to heavy metal's great past....all in the name of "true metal." The extreme metal crowd has pushed their narrow vision of metal, transforming it into a drum dominant, gutteral vocal embarrassment. We are all the worse for it.
If you peruse any of the metal media (internet or print) you could be led to believe that heavy metal was born in the 80's. It seems a common belief that Metallica created it out of thin air with their first record, and perfected by the time they released "Master Of Puppets." A veritable heavy metal "creationist" theory because, as you know, there are no "evolutionists" in this Ku Klux Klan. There is a complete denial that heavy metal existed in the seventies in spite of the fact that the fossil record shows that prehistoric dinosaurs called Black Sabbath, KISS, Judas Priest and Deep Purple all existed and even thrived, in that decade. The words "Heavy Metal" were actually coined just to describe the music of these bands. Mark Gromen of BW&BK, in reviewing the new Dimmu Borgir record, took the opportunity to belittle KISS by saying of them: "the mainstream media and music fans outside the genre typically regard (them) as 'a metal band.'" We can't have that now can we! This is of course a ridiculous rewriting of history but it appears to be the attitude of too many of the most vocal of fans, and they are enabled by the metal media. Metal creationism is a natural byproduct of metal bigotry.
The biggest fallacy of this crowd, however, is an overwhelming belief that Slayer's "Reign In Blood" is the greatest metal record ever. There is an entire "metal religion" devoted to this idea and without a doubt this is the single most influential record in destroying the genre. Before "Reign In Blood" heavy metal is unquestionably a guitar dominated form of music. After "Reign In Blood" it has been transformed into a drum dominant one. The cult that has sprung up in its aftermath has given us the concept of "extreme metal." Everything faster than everything else. Speed is the single most important defining characteristic to the Ku Klux Klan of metal. It is also this crowd that has unleashed the indistinguishable, and usually incoherent, croak and growl vocal style. This has had the effect of rendering all the vocals, and therefore all the lyrics, inconsequential and irrelevant. Thanks a lot.
All this has been perpetrated in the name of "brutality." Pick up any metal magazine or go to any website and try to count how many times the word "brutal" is used. Its like sand on a beach. They can't help themselves. Savvy music fans know that the word "brutal" is synonomous with "clueless metal musicians full of themselves" and never buy these records. Also, wrapped up in this festival of "brutality" is the underlying belief that all this speed is indicative of a technical prowess and complexity that marks them as superior musicians. They view music as a "craft" rather than an "art," so displaying their percieved skills is more important than actually having a purpose. The music exists for the craft, and like professional wrestlers, who delude themselves into believing they are "competitors" and "atheletes," this new breed of metal musician is more than willing to tell us how good they are. This would and should be a minor amusement but since the commercial death of hair metal in the early nineties, this cult has successfully waged a campaign to define heavy metal according to their rules. They have pruned all the other branches off the heavy metal tree. This has not only led to a funny looking tree, and rest assured metal is quite funny looking these days, it has also killed the tree. Only the lemmings of heavy metal's "religious right" (those for whom metal is their religion) persist in their delusions and barely keep this sonic embarassment afloat.
Sakis Tolis, of the band Rotting Christ, recently made this statement to Decible magazine: "This is a well organized trick in order to control society, so when I see someone thats very much Christian, I feel sorry for him because he is not free." Strange, because if you replace the words "society" and "christian" with the word "metal" you have accurately described the current state of the world of heavy metal. It has become a religion and a culture for too many people, and like the real Ku Klux Klan, they view their culture through a very narrow lens.
Which now brings me to the consequences of this foolish line of thinking. What has this Ku Klux Klan of brutal heavy metallers done to this once proud and powerful genre? It would appear that they have finally succeeded in rendering it totally irrelevant. As a case in point, take my favorite example....MASTODON. As you may remember I wrote an editorial at the time of Blood Mountain's release bemoaning all the "affectionate" reviews that were heaped the CD. This is the band chosen by the "powers that be" of heavy metal to be the next big thing. The next Iron Maiden. According to all the fawning metal media this is top of the line modern metal performing at its peak. Universal praise always looks suspicious and "annointing" a band as the next big thing has a habit of backfiring...and so it has. According to their manager Nick John, in speaking with Decibel Magazine, Blood Mountain has sold.......are you ready for this?......a grand total of......75,000 copies in the United States. No I did not leave off any zeros. 75,000 copies! With all the power, money, and influence of a major label, and all the good reviews that money could, and did, buy, that is all it sold. In the independent metal world this might be seen as a small setback and satisfactory sales but in the world of the major labels this was a failure more disasterous than the Union assaults on the Confederate lines at the battle of Fredericksburg (ok, get a history book).
Also of interest, in the same article, was the sales figure for Lamb Of God's most recent CD "Sacrement," likewise on a major label. It has sold only 200,000 copies. A better showing than Mastodon, but bands that deliver gold records (500,000 units sold) are dropped regularly as being unprofitable for major labels. Both Mastodon and Lamb Of God had their records firmly notched at the top of most of the metal media's year end polls for best record. Yet they have been resoundingly rejected by the record buying public. This is what heavy metal has come to...failure. the major labels, in a sense, shouldn't be blamed for not knowing any better than to sign these bands. After all, these are the bands that the metal underground and its media satellites have annointed as the best in true metal. But they can't sell it and for a good reason. The albums are nothing but infomercials for the musicians playing on them. Utterly void of content or purpose. I will concede that these records prove that the musicians involved can play their instruments extremely well. But why? The musicianship is the LEAST important reason to buy a record!
Here is something that must be said. Those people of heavy metal's religious right have been trying to convince themselves for quite some time that metal music is some sort of panacea of musicianship. Those of the heavy metal religious right will tell you that not selling a lot of records is a good thing. It keeps metal pure. They actually believe that this form of music is the modern day equivalent of classical music. "If Beethoven were alive today he would play metal." Anyone who believes that is an imbecile! The creationists of the metal Ku Klux Klan, who deny metal's origins and history, don't want to admit what the record buying public has never forgotten. HEAVY METAL IS ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC! It is NOT classical music. No amount of self percieved importance will ever change that. More importantly, that which kills Rock and Roll...kills metal! This music is meant to be a populist form of entertainment and it cannot survive as an elitist musician's disease infected genre. In the April edition of Decibel Magazine, the editor Albert Mudrian, claims he has been getting calls from National Public Radio inquiring of him about the current state of metal. His implication is that this bastion of Jazz and classical music, and international news has started to look upon metal as more musically favorable. Not just "music for dummies" anymore. See, it didn't take them but one issue to go from reporting the Mastodon disaster to seeking yet another annointing, this time from the "important" people of NPR. I guess if NPR approves of musician's disease metal, then their belief is that we will be compelled to acknowledge the greatness of the bands they tell us to like. I repeat, that which kills Rock and Roll kills metal. Snobbery is so not metal. Please make this stop. Why can't we insist that these bands work for their audience and not for themselves and their position in the "metal culture." Maybe then the shows of these bands will be attended by people other than fellow musicians. Audience Deficiency Syndrome is fatal 100% of the time.
Rock music, and its heavy metal descendant, was never meant to be exclusionary. It is not a fraternity, religion or a culture. It is music. Music is supposed to communicate with people, not impress them. Especially since the sales figures of Mastodon and Lamb of God indicate that not that many people were impressed anyway. As the English would say...."They've lost the plot." The low record sales of Mastodon and Lamb of God are not reflective of "successful elitism" or a "puritanical" adherence to the metal faith. It just means nobody likes it. That is the sad state of metal, and will continue to be, so long as metal's Ku Klux Klan are able to hold an influence over the way this music is percieved.
The solution is simple. A return to the roots, and the great and glorious history of the genre. This was once a dominant force in the music industry, it can be again. Lose the intolerance and maybe bands like Iron Maiden and Motorhead won't bristle at the thought of being labeled a metal band. Welcome back AC/DC and KISS. They have had more positive influence over this genre than Mastodon ever will. Do as the magazine Metal Hammer does and embrace all the various genres of metal. They put My Chemical Romance on their cover in spite of the complaints they get from the metal KKK. They sell more magazines and somebody finds out about Dimmu Borgir, who never would have otherwise, and buys their CD's. A rising tide lifts all boats. Or do you not believe that some people in the past might have used Motley Crue as a stepping stone to Megadeth and Anthrax. A low tide grounds all the boats. We are seeing that in metal now.
Gee, I just realized that all this talk about inclusiveness and tolerance makes me sound like a musical li......lib.......liberal. I feel dirty just saying the word. I think I'll take a bath, put on some good American metal like Ted Nugent or Manowar, and read a copy of the Weekly Standard. I gotta get my "neocon" back on.
Death to False Metal!

ALL HAIL TRUE METAL.....OR ELSE