Likewise, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has insisted that we must heed the lessons of 40’s Japanese internment in not resorting to racial or ethnic profiling in our airports. When asked on 60 Minutes whether a 70-year-old woman from Vero Beach would receive the same level of scrutiny as a Muslim young man from Jersey City, he replied “I would hope so,” proving that the first casualty of war is common sense. “Passengers should find all the evidence of equal inspection reassuring, Mineta said.

Reassuring? It’s reassuring to know that the people guarding our jugular have decided on a policy of suspending human judgment? Actually, having robots and nitwits check everyone equally is a sure recipe for disaster. It’s a mindless, exploitable system of window dressing and posturing; its procedure-bound automatons following prescribed guidelines by rote. It’s randomness when we need focus. Its heads up our asses when we needs heads up.

Somewhere along the line we became this oversensitive victim culture where it is assumed that no one is ever supposed to get physically or emotionally hurt. We can’t approach or question anyone about anything for fear of hurting their feelings, making them self conscious, and ultimately becoming the defendant in their discrimination lawsuit. Remember, we’re not talking about beating young Middle Eastern men with rubber hoses or placing Arab-American families into internment camps. We’re asking them to perhaps endure a few extra questions at the baggage check-in line so that we don’t get our buildings destroyed by Jihad-crazed terrorists.

The people who hate us target all Americans- black, white, young and old- but just because they’re indiscriminate about going after us doesn’t mean we must be indiscriminate in going after them. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that it’s a sin to discriminate. But discrimination doesn’t mean racism; it means telling unlike things apart. Iowa grandpas and nine year old girls from Ohio are simply not look to visit “a painful chastisement upon the Western infidels.” “Profiling” like “discrimination,” has become a bad word, even though all police work is based on it, as it must be. If we stopped calling it profiling and started calling it “proactive intelligence screening” or “high-alert detecting,” people would be saying: well it’s about time.

It would be good if we could get with the program. It would be better if we had one first.”

The above is an excerpt from a very intelligent man named Bill Maher. Even though these words were penned only a few years after September 11^th, this stupidity in modern society still pervades to this day. Just a few weeks ago a Muslim terrorist almost blew up Times Square with a car bomb. It’s about time America gets its head out of its ass and at the very least identify who our real enemy is.

The trick I believe is this: In male-Female relationships, females derive pleasure typically by receiving. Whether it be experiences, emotions, or entertainment, girls classically play the role of passive receivers of stimulation. Guys on the other hand play the role of stimulators. Again, whether it be experiences, emotions or entertainment of some sort; guys derive pleasure in the relationship primarily by stimulating the girl. Because of this, spontaneity for females is relatively easy to attain and highly pleasurable. All the female must do is relinquish control of a situation (which they already want to do in the first place) and allow themselves to live in the moment and viola! Spontaneity. For the guy in a male-female relationship, such spontaneity on his part would be foolish. He needs to remain in control of the situation so as to relay the most potent experience to the girl and thereby giving both parties maximum pleasure. Would the guy release himself in the same way girls do, he would be setting himself and his partners experience up for complete disaster.

So my point is this: girls who say they value spontaneity really in actuality value the illusion of spontaneity. They appreciate a well orchestrated adventure. Let me illustrate this with an example: A girl walks into a coffee shop and meets a guy there. Conversation ensues. Before long the girl and the guy hit it off and they decide they both have a few hours to kill and would not mind getting to know each other a little bit better. Here is where spontaneity comes into the play. Once the girl has decided that the guy is worth her time, she (consciously or unconsciously) releases control of the situation over to him. It is now time for him to make his move. Let us say the guy says to her: “let’s take a walk down the road and go window shopping”. She obliges and he leads her down the road to where he knows there is a bicycle shop that rents road bikes. He tells her “let’s rent some road bikes!” So he rents bikes and he leads them up a road or two to where he knows there is a nice and gorgeous vista of the city. After resting there for a little while they ride back and he leads them a different route to where he knows a street fair is going on. They stop at the street fair, ride through it, watch some musicians and have a grand old time. After this they return the bikes, exchange numbers and well… you know the rest. From the girls perspective they just went on a totally random and totally awesome and adventuresome date. From the guys perspective however, the entire afternoon/evening was planed out from the second they set foot outside the coffee shop. The entire experience was spontaneous to the girl. To the guy, absolutely none of it was. He had probably actually done the whole thing a dozen times before.

Let us imagine for an instance that the guy in the coffee shop was actually spontaneous. What would he have done? It is highly unlikely that anyone’s day could go so perfectly without prior planning involved so most likely after exiting the coffee shop the couple would just have gone on a walk, had good conversation, exchanged numbers and parted ways. Best case scenario is the girl would be left with the impression of an interesting and pleasant gentleman who took her on a mediocre but spontaneous date. The guy on the other hand would be slapping himself for not thinking of something “spontaneous” to do.

The real kicker is that almost all the girls who I know who put a high value on spontaneity are completely devoid of decisiveness themselves. You would think someone who was truly spontaneous would possess highly developed decision making capabilities; after all isn’t spontaneity itself essentially the ability to make quick decisions and come to quick conclusions? I would hesitate to call anyone who lacks decisiveness truly spontaneous just based off the simple truth that someone who can’t quickly make decisions is going to sit around and think things through a whole bunch: basically the opposite of spontaneity. Despite this simple logic I can throw my shoe out my college window and probably hit 20 girls who admit to being indecisive yet will swear by the fact that they are spontaneous. (obvious exaggeration).

So finally, what do girls mean when they say these things? A girl expressing her desire for a man who is spontaneous, or “fun loving” is, in my mind, her expressing a desire for a partner who will properly care for her emotionally. As weird (and possibly sexist) as it may sound, girls enjoy having no control over situations (when and only when it involves those who they trust!). Girls enjoy situations where they can fully let go and allow themselves to become fully “spontaneous” receptacles for whatever their loved one may have planned for them. This is why men who take the approach of appeasing women mentally consistently fail. Men who are constantly saying “where do you want to go?” and “What do you want to do?” tend to quickly exasperate women who just want to be shown a good time by someone who knows where they are going and what they are doing. This is why surprise dates and well planned out adventures are classically so successful with women.

So to sum it all up; women will tell men all day long how much they admire and enjoy spontaneity. In reality, true spontaneity has nothing to do with it. Women just enjoy and appreciate a guy who works hard at playing hard and has an ace up his sleeve at all times. But women, go easy on us guys. It’s hard. Nobody’s life is filled with constant spontaneous adventures; and truely spontaneous decisions are usually foolish ones on top of that. And fellas, take the advice of the boy scouts and be prepared. It can pay off in big ways.

To answer this question we must go back to the beginning, to the founder of the religion. I won’t go into a huge amount of detail here just for brevity’s sake; but I encourage anyone reading this to do a bit of research on Muhammad, even Wikipedia will do. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad) Anyways, Islam was started by a relatively wealthy merchant named Muhammad who lived in a city called Mecca, which was a religious shrine long before Muhammad was even born. In the city was(is) a small black building called the Kaba, which contained(s) a vast amount of Idols that were worshiped by people from all around. The people of the land were primarily polytheistic and practiced animism as a form of religion.

Muhammad was conscious of this flawed religious system that his people followed, and he was gravely concerned. He began to go up to a cave in the nearby Mount Hirah and ponder religion for long periods of time. It was in these long cave sessions that the religion of Islam was formed. Muhammad began claiming that Allah (God) was speaking to him and was giving him a message for mankind. At first he was greeted with some ridicule, but eventually the people of Mecca began to persecute him because his teachings were monotheistic and could potentially ruin the lucrative business of pilgrims coming to worship the idols which Mecca provided. However, while he was preaching in Mecca, he managed to gain a small but devoted number of followers. As his followers grew, he began to get more attention and soon the leaders of Mecca began to take notice of the growing cult and began to openly and violently persecute them. Eventually it got so bad that Muhammad decided to leave Mecca.

He fled north to a city now called Medina and began preaching his doctrine there. In Medina, he was well received. It was not long before he controlled the city and his eyes turned back to Mecca, where he had been persecuted. Finally now Muhammad was no longer just a religious leader, he was also the government. He controlled every aspect of his people as a religious and military authority. As his power grew, so did his lust for conquest, and only eight years after he was forced to flee Mecca, he had conquered the whole Arabian peninsula; all in the name of Allah. From this point on, war for the purpose of religion was sanctioned as “jihad” or “holy war.” It became not only something acceptable, but a duty for all Muslims. Soon after, Muhammad died, but his legacy far outlived his life span. Islam was now a stable religion and the conquest did not stop. Him and his armies of converts proceeded to conquer Palestine, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, most of Central Asia, and the Black Sea area. They plundered what was left of the Byzantine Roman Empire, practically stamped out Persian paganism and made converts of most of the Greek and Coptic Christians. Their conquests only really ground to a halt in the 16^th century.   The rest is history…

The Nature of Islam

In spite of this background of conquering, almost the entirety of the media will tell you Islam is still in fact a religion of peace. They say even the name “Islam” itself is synonymous with peace. This is a common misconception. The word Islam, which was used by Muhammad, is based on the root SLM which in Arabic which means peace.  But when put with the IS prefix it means the act of submitting or surrendering oneself. The Arabic word for peace is “Salam”, not Islam. But this is a moot point as it does not prove the integrity of the religion either way.

So when it comes down to it, the document of religion, or the canon of the religion must be scrutinized in order to determine if, in fact, the endless wars are sanctioned by the religion or if they are done in spite of it as proponents of Islam claim. Let us look into the Qur’an, the holy scriptures of Islam.

Most supporters of Islam in the western world will quote the Qur’an in Surah 2:256 which the first part says very simply: “There is no compulsion in religion.” They will also quote Surah 109:6 which says: “Unto you, your religion and unto me, my religion.” Proponents of Islam will tell you this very simply as a blanket explanation that Islam is not violent and will not force itself upon anyone. This is an oversimplification of a very complicated issue and should be considered a lie.

There is a law in Islam which is backed up in the Qur’an. It is called the law of Abrogation. Abrogation means to replace or to overrule something. Islamic scholars know very well about it, yet they do not acknowledge it in discussions or debates save to attempt a defense for it. It is mentioned in Surah 2 verse 106. It says: “Nothing of our revelation (even a single verse) do we abrogate or cause be forgotten, but we bring (in place) one better or the like thereof.” This verse is saying that nothing in the Qur’an should be discarded, but (since there are too many contradictions in the Qur’an) verses that were written chronologically later should be brought in place, as the verse says, of other verses. This means later written verses override earlier written verses.

Now the verse that is frequently quoted as proof of Islamic peace fits in its context. Surah 2 and Surah 109 were written while Muhammad was beginning to preach in Medina. He could not afford to preach destruction and war. He did not have a big enough support base. Now read Surah 9:29. It says: “Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.” Also read Surah 9:5 which says: “Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.” In addition read Surah 61:9 which says, “He it is Who hath sent His messenger with the guidance and the religion of truth, that He may make it conqueror of all religion however much idolaters may be averse.” These verses clearly say to fight those who have been given the scripture which is all Christians and Jews. It says kill unbelievers wherever you may find them, and conquer any and all lands belonging to unbelievers. And guess when these verses were written? They were written toward the very end of Muhammad’s life during the time he was conquering the Arabian Peninsula. By their own rules of Qur’anic interpretation, these laws abrogate the laws which say to be peaceful.

In addition to this terrible revelation the Qur’an and Muhammad take it even farther. Later Muhammad adds if you are slain in jihad for Islam against unbelievers: “forgiveness and mercy from Allah are far better than all they could amass”. (Surah 3:157). This explains the suicide bombers and the fearless nature of the terrorists. They follow a religion which will reward them for their warfare.

So what does this mean for modern day Islam? Islam is not just a religion of the heart. Islam is a comprehensive way of life. It is a way of life which demands at its core, that Islam must be the top echelon of humanity. It demands Islam to be the top rung, the highest of the high. But Islam has not been a world power since the 15^th century and more recently in the past two hundred years virtually the whole Islamic world has been under the subjugation of various European Empires. It has only been since the end of world war II that most of the Islamic world has been given back their national freedom and so now they are acting on it. Islam existing as anything besides a major world power is an impossibility for the Islamic world view. While it is true that most Muslim people are not violent, and it is true that most Muslim people would never become a terrorist and take up arms against anyone, they are quite simply not following their own religion. The REAL Muslims are the terrorists and political activists.

Islam: Following Muhammad

Think of it like this. Christians are called to follow and emulate the life of Jesus, Buddhists are called to follow and emulate the life of Buddha. Likewise, Muslims are called to follow and emulate the life of Muhammad. In the Qur’an, Surah 7:158 says: “So believe in Allah and His messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, who believeth in Allah and in His Words, and follow him that haply ye may be led aright.” The problem with following him is Muhammad was not only a religious leader but he was also a political leader and a conqueror. He preached in one place until he had a sizeable enough percentage of the population to do as he pleased. Then he proceeded to either conquer adjacent cities and countries or to send out people to spread his word. The objective of these missionaries was to make converts obviously. But the ultimate goal of converts was to get a sizeable enough portion of a population to then seamlessly take control. If Muslims are called to follow the actions of Muhammad, then they are not only called to military conquests but they are also called to subversive conquests. Once the Muslim population is large enough, it is expected that Islamic law should be applied to the laws of the countries they dominate.

What of Christianity?

Some people will say this is not Islam at fault. People say Islam is just being used by radicals who would do the same were they Christian. After all, Christianity is as well riddled with military “holy wars” like the Crusades. This is in fact true, although Jesus himself never took part in any military engagement while Muhammad most certainly did. However, besides this point, it is true that people can use religion, even Christianity, for justification of unjust wars. This is why, as stated earlier, the religious document or canon of the religion must be intensely scrutinized to decide if it is the religion or the followers of the religion at fault.

So on that note, let us contrast the Qur’an and the Bible. Proponents of Islam will say the Bible contains just as much violent material as the Qur’an. They use for an example the conquering of Canaan multiple times in the Bible. This is best referenced in Exodus 23:23-24 where it says “When my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, The Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them, or follow their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars in pieces.” As is clearly noted, this verse does not say to kill anyone besides the Hittites, the Perizzites, Canaanites…etc. It is clearly a one-time order for a very specific group, time, and place. Contrast this with the Qur’an which says in Surah 8:65: “O Prophet! Exhort the believers to fight. If there be of you twenty steadfast they shall overcome two hundred, and if there be of you a hundred (steadfast) they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they (the disbelievers) are a folk without intelligence.”

Not only is this clearly saying to kill unbelievers, but it is calling unbelievers people without intelligence.

Another notable difference between the Islam and Christianity is in the way each deals with persecution. In Islam, it is better to slaughter your enemies than to let them persecute you as the Qur’an eloquently states it in Surah 2:191 and 217. In contrast to this the early Christians were also persecuted but instructed to count it as a blessing and privilege in Matthew 5:10-12, Mathew 5:44, Romans 12:14, and Peter 4:12-16.

Quite obviously there are some doctrinal differences between Islam and Christianity. People who say the Bible and the Qur’an are not so different most likely have not critically read either. Judging by what the Qur’an says, it is easy to see how devoted followers would be compelled to act violently in a variety of circumstances.

Acknowledging this, would it then be fair to assume Christianity is less violent and more conducive to modern society even from a secular viewpoint? I would say so. With this in mind, Christian efforts should be supported in the Middle East to bring about a Christian revival. With a rise in Christianity in the Middle East, the area would have a peace not attained since before the 7^th century AD.

Solution?

It is now clear that Islam is the single and greatest threat to the world at large today. How then should the world at large deal with this rising threat? What should be the solution? What do you do about a religion which will always spawn a percentage of terrorists and political dissidents? Acknowledging that Christianity is a more peaceful, legitimate ‘religion’, it would be prudent to support the conversion of the Middle East to Christianity, even from a secular viewpoint. With this in mind, Christian efforts should be supported by ours and other allied governments to bring about a Christian revival in the Middle East. Aside from this universal support of the word of God, little else can be politically done aside from military action. Some other radical ideas come to mind but realistically in this day and age of political correctness; there is almost no way to combat the rise of Islam. You cannot declare war on a religion in this country. But what if the religion is bent on your destruction? What if a religion was deemed violent and unstable? Islam needs to be redefined. If Islam is defined as the dangerous and destructive ideology which it really is, then that is the first step to stopping it. It needs to be acknowledged by the government that we are in a war not against terror but against Islam. Saying we are in a war against terror is like saying we are in a war against guns. Nobody fights against guns. You fight against the people who wield the guns. We should not be in a war against terror. We should be in a war against those who wield the terror.

As far as a plot goes, the movie is essentially Pocahontas in space… (With smurfs). The parallels to the native American Indians are unquestionable and blatant. The culture of the Na’vi (the natives/smurfs) is essentially a conglomeration of everything we tend to think we know about the Native Americans.

It’s no new development with me, as some people know, Eric, that I am not really very happy about some things regarding the Native Americans in the 21^st century. When I was a freshman in high school one of my good friends was this guy named Matt. He was a really cool guy and all; but after being friends with him for a while it came to my understanding that his father was full blood Native American from some obscure tribe that has barely any people left in it. That’s fine and dandy, but what I had a problem with is that his father got about $10,000 dollars a month from the State of California… just for being Indian. Upon further inquiry I found out that this is not even very unusual. Granted most Indians do not get as high a sum as 10k a month from the government but a great deal of them get some sort of monetary compensation just for being Indian.

Now let me break down for you how ludicrous this is.

(1)   Our nation is founded on the very principle that every man is equal before the State and under the law. These principles came about because the pilgrims were fed up with getting bullied around by a rich nobility class that they could never break into just because they were born into the wrong families. So they created a sociological system in which people are judged by their individual merit and not by who their daddy was. In this country people swear by the philosophy that the sins of the father do not transfer to the son and the merits of father do not transfer either. So then can someone please tell me why my hard earned tax money is being given to a bunch of people just because a long time ago some of “my” ancestors killed some of “their” ancestors? Insanity! Look I realize that what was done to the Native Americans was horrible and uncalled for. I not saying I support the actions of those people who were responsible for killing, raping, murdering, and displacing the Native Americans; but seriously? The perpetrators of those crimes are all dead; and the people victimized by those said perpetrators are all dead as well. Nobody whose alive today has any stake whatsoever to those crimes. The most direct descendants are removed by at least 3 or 4 generations.

(2)   By its’ very definition giving money to someone just because they are of a particular race is blatant racism. Yes, racism can be a positive favoritism for a race as well as a negative persecution of a race. It’s just not right to award someone for nothing other than who they were born as, that’s not how we should roll in America.

So where does Avatar come in? Avatar is just a simple example of the kind of thinking that makes us want to give the Native Americans a whole bunch of money for doing nothing. I really liked the movie so I won’t try and bash it too hard but just remember that the Na’Vi from the film are not the Native Americans and the movie is not a perfect parallel. The Europeans had tons of stuff that the Native Americans wanted (guns, booze, technology, ect) whereas the Na’Vi explicitly wanted and needed nothing from the Humans. The Native American tribes more frequently than not killed and pillaged each other, worship demonic spirits, and took part in macabre and horrific practices. They were not the enlightened, “at one with the forest”, “noble savages”, that we tend to portray them as today. They possessed every vice that was present in Europe, they had pitiful life expectancies, and honestly lived pretty sad and very difficult lives for the most part. Now I am by no means saying that Europeans are/were any better because they were not. People are people and are sinful no matter what.

But the culture and lives of the Native Americans need to be seen for what they really were; not the romanticized Hollywood versions people usually see them as today.

The book Spirit of the Rainforest by Mark Ritchie talks about this concept a whole lot. Out in the most remote areas of the world where people still live in relatively untainted, tribal settings, the indigenous people usually only come in contact with two different types of foreigners: missionaries and anthropologists. Typically the anthropologists get really pissed off at the missionaries because they come in and give the native people clothing, supplies, technology, and worst of all try and convert them to Christianity. Gasp! The anthropologists come in and give them nothing, tell them nothing and leave them with nothing. Their primary concern is to leave the culture of the native peoples intact whilst still being able to observe them. In the book there is one part where one of the natives tells off one of the anthropologists and approximately says: “do you think we like living like this?! Of course I would rather have shoes like yours and live in a tent like yours. Do you think we like smearing our bodies with mud to keep the bugs away?! Of course I would rather have the bug spray you use. Do you really think we would rather hunt with spears than with guns?! Of course not!”

It just shows that the idea we have in our society of the Indians and their culture is wrong. And those misconceptions we have of them spill over to how we treat their ancestors in modern society. I know I have made a couple different points in this post, but just think about how we view the Native Americans of old, and think about the racism involved in giving a select group of American Citizens money for doing nothing but belonging to a particular race. It’s all built on misconceptions and none of it adds up.

This blog came about essentially because my good esteemed friend Miles Grimes felt it would be appropriate for me to get plugged into the blogging community. As of right now, I have not the slightest clue as to how extensive this blog is going to be/become. I’ll probably try to post something new at least every couple of weeks and we’ll go from there. Most likely your not going to be reading these posts unless you know me personally or were referred here by someone I know and that is totally fine with me. Anyways, the title of this blog is the Dystopian Penguin. The reasoning behind this is that the word Dystopia is defined as “an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives” (Merriam Webster Online). I’m predicting that the vast majority of my posts are going to be complaints and mutterings on some subject of world affairs or the human condition over which I have absolutely no control. However, this does not mean I am a horrifically negative person. In fact, I usually have a mildly positive outlook on life; hence Dystopia: this is the imaginary realm where I will pour all my discontents about the human condition. This is my Pandora’s box where I’ll put all the bad and fearful things of the world into; and maybe, just maybe, I’ll make some interesting writing in the process… Or I could just write about happy and fluffy things anyways… we’ll just have to see. O ya and the Penguin part of the title is just because I like penguins.

Anyways, I hope whoever you are reading this that you will not take anything I say too seriously, and that you’ll enjoy!

Lets kick this off with a really cute video shall we?