The American Journal, GamerGate, and other Insanity

A few weeks ago, I posted links to reviews of brand new shows that I wrote for The American Journal, which is a news site that lets me write for them. Usually, the more ranting and raving I am, the more the readers like it.  So, if you want to see me go bat-guano insane on a semi-regular basis, you can get it out. I think I've officially written over half the articles, so hit something at random, it might be written by Declan Finn.



Anyway, I've done a few articles in recent weeks that some of my readers may like.  In a lot of cases, I just keep a relatively neutral stance -- that stance being "Why can't you freaking morons shut up and leave me alone?"



However, you might want to check out some of these.



Walking Dead Actress Breaks up Sex Ring. Yes, this happened. And what did YOU do with your weekend?



Journalists Conspire to Shape News Over GamerGate This was just .... ARGH



Catholic Church to Support Gay Marriage Yeah, if you had questions about what the HELL is going on about this most recent synod, this is part of it. The other part: Here.



Comic Con Announces Guardians of the Galaxy Cartoon Good luck with that



Sequels for Iron Man and Independence Day in the Works



WB Releases DC Comics Movie Schedule



Video: Liam Neeson Returns in 'Taken 3' 



VIDEO: Viking Rejects Job Applicant Based on Faith -- It's not really politics, it's more of a comedy.  And completely insane. You have to see it to believe it.  Most of it isn't commentary, it's just the news story. Oy.



Zero Tolerance, Zero Intelligence. If you're read my official Amazon bio, you can guess why this is near and dear to my heart.



I think you folks might enjoy some of this.



And if you're wondering what I've been doing with my time.... now you know.

Fighting and writing workshop, day 5 and 6: military fight scenes

This is the online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.

Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.

Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.

So, here is day five and six.... Day five was merely an assignment. Day six was more interesting.

 Day Five: Putting It Together

 

At this point, you should have an idea of what you're doing. Take assignments three and
four, and put them together. Whether you start from a weapon and go to hand-to-hand, or vice versa, is up to you. This is the assignment.

Like with most writing, practice makes perfect. So don't be discouraged if you're not writing full-scale battle choreography by now.

 

Day Six: Writing For Military Fights

 

Writing a military fight scene is no different from any other, when you get down to it. Do some research on terms, maneuvers, etc., but don't overstress that part. It's mostly just a matter of vocabulary.

But, seriously, there's little difference from warfare fighting.

Character: In describing filming for Lord of the Rings, and the Battle of Helm's Deep, director Peter Jackson discovered a basic law of fight scenes – Jackson had hours upon hours of stuntmen beating

each other to a pulp, but the battle was boring when the camera was not on the primary characters.

The important thing you need to know is, no matter what, you need to focus on the individuals involved. The more modern your setting, the more things are done by groups of individuals, squads and fire teams, and not massive lines of fire, one against another.

However, no matter how many people you have fighting whatever enemy, you need to have individuals the audience can focus on and care about. Writing about a line of tanks is boring. Writing about someone the audience has met, and is invested in, is much, much better.

For great examples of this, read the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell – he has, on average, about six players in any battle that he focuses on, as well as a massive, historical battle taking place.

 

Setting: If you want to focus on a full-scale battle, in whatever age and setting, one thing you'll
want to focus on is the field of battle. You're going to want to focus on the sounds, and the sights, perhaps even the smells. You want to recreate it as though the battlefield is a character. A loud, monstrous, messy, rampaging character, with lots of property damage.

The best I've ever seen of this type of recreation is John Keegan's The Face of Battle, where he recreated the battlefields of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Verdun.

 

Hand-to-hand combat and weapons:
Depending on the scenario, military battles do not start with close combat, unless it's a type of covert infiltration, where getting in close and killing people silently is important. And, let's face it, the use of weapons will vary wildly depending on what time period and setting you're using. For the most part, it boils down to individuals.

Fighting and writing workshop, day 5 and 6: military fight scenes

This is the online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, here is day five and six.... Day five was merely an assignment. Day six was more interesting.

 Day Five: Putting It Together

At this point, you
should have an idea of what you're doing. Take assignments three and
four, and put them together. Whether you start from a weapon and go
to hand-to-hand, or vice versa, is up to you. This is the
assignment.

Like with most
writing, practice makes perfect. So don't be discouraged if you're
not writing full-scale battle choreography by now.

Day Six: Writing For Military Fights

Writing a military
fight scene is no different from any other, when you get down to it.
Do some research on terms, maneuvers, etc., but don't overstress that
part. It's mostly just a matter of vocabulary.

But, seriously, there's little
difference from warfare fighting.

Character: In
describing filming for Lord
of the Rings, and the
Battle of Helm's Deep, director Peter Jackson discovered a basic law
of fight scenes – Jackson had hours upon hours of stuntmen beating
each other to a pulp, but the battle was boring when the camera was
not on the primary characters.

The
important thing you need to know is, no matter what, you need to
focus on the individuals involved. The more modern your setting, the
more things are done by groups
of individuals, squads and fire teams, and not massive lines of fire,
one against another.

However, no matter how many people you
have fighting whatever enemy, you need to have individuals the
audience can focus on and care about. Writing about a line of tanks
is boring. Writing about someone the audience has met, and is
invested in, is much, much better.

For great examples
of this, read the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell – he
has, on average, about six players in any battle that he focuses on,
as well as a massive, historical battle taking place.

Setting: If you want to focus on
a full-scale battle, in whatever age and setting, one thing you'll
want to focus on is the field of battle. You're going to want to
focus on the sounds, and the sights, perhaps even the smells. You
want to recreate it as though the battlefield is a character. A
loud, monstrous, messy, rampaging character, with lots of property
damage.

The best I've ever seen of this type of
recreation is John Keegan's The Face of Battle, where he
recreated the battlefields of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Verdun.

Hand-to-hand
combat and weapons:
Depending on the scenario, military battles do not start with close
combat, unless it's a type of covert infiltration, where getting in
close and killing people silently is important. And, let's face it,
the use of weapons will vary wildly depending on what time period and
setting you're using. For the most part, it boils down to
individuals.

Fighting and writing workshop, Day 4: Guns in Fighting.

This is the online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, here is day four.

***

Day 4: Guns in Fighting.

There are more weapons in Heaven and Earth than there are in Thomistic philosophy. However, guns seem to be the magic weapon that everyone uses, and uses badly.

With any weapon you decide to use, make certain that you have a basic
knowledge of these weapons, even if it's merely researching them
online. This day will also assume that you've never even seen a gun
up close and personal – perhaps an erroneous presumption, but I'm
not going to assume everyone knows guns. If you have do know things
about guns, please bring it up.

Weapons are tools. Knives do more than stab people. Lead pipes do more than club people over the head. And guns do more than shoot people. Don't get me

wrong, guns are great. But if you're writing for someplace like New York, guns are not readily available to the general populace. 

 

Remember Day One,writing the rules for the culture on fighting? Now you know why we
bothered.

Everything in a fight has to feel fast-paced, as we said before. But when you introduce a weapon into any scenario, the characters and the writing have to move fast. Or at least intelligently. What do I mean by this? I mean that no one is going to outrun a bullet – the best they can do is be faster than the trigger finger of the person targeting them – but finding cover, providing distractions, and

shooting elements of the setting or other uses of the gun.

In actuality, gunfights are not like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie – if someone is moving in a straight line, a smart gunman will lead the target. However, smart gunmen do not use fully-automatic fire in extended bursts. Firing a full magazine of ammunition on full automatic will not lead to a stream of bullets that come out in a straight line, but will cause the muzzle of the gun to jerk around like a spastic mime having an epileptic fit. In a gun battle, at a distance, even slight deviations of the gun's barrel will cause bullets to go wildly off course.

Then again, stupid things happen with guns. The average shootout with the police takes place at a distance of nine feet, but three out of every four bullets will miss, mainly because everyone is popping in and out of cover, snapping off shots and hoping they'll hit something.

Again, now is not the time for technical terms. If you're writing for a medieval setting, or a fantasy setting, if specific parts of specific weapons are going to come into play, you may want to introduce them before the fight even begins. And, if you're using a technical detail of a gun that only people who field-strip their own weapons would know, don't discuss it in the middle of a fight. A previous example has been the Lee Child model, where his character Jack Reacher describes how a fight will turn out and why, before the first punch was even thrown. You can have such discussion then, but when the bullets start flying, try not to dwell too much on the pieces and parts.

You can, however,  have a technical analysis as the hero/ine is taking cover, and thinking about what to do next. If the pieces of the gun are important to the solution, and you can provide a “lull” in combat (if that's how one can describe taking cover while being shot at),then by all means, make it relevant. However, you do not want to give the vital statistics on a gun in mid-battle. In fact, you mightnot want to go into it at all.

The most anyone needs to know about most guns might include:

Ammunition capacity: Do not use Hollywood forever shooters. You will want to reload – if only because it's more thrilling to have a count of how many bullets your hero/ine doesn't have. (Would the end of Die Hard work at all if John McClane had had a full magazine left, instead of just two bullets?)

Type of ammunition: This only matters for level of impact, and penetration. If it's a .22-caliber from a handbag pistol, you can stop if with a pocket Bible. If it's a .45-caliber, you will stop someone if only from the shock value (no one takes an impact from a .45, rolls into a doorway, and returns fire. It's gonna suck to be that person). If it's a .50-caliber handgun, you can disable engine blocks and amputate limbs. If you're writing science fiction, ammunition type is doubly important. 

Type of gun: Revolvers, pistols, assault weapons, submachine guns, hunting rifles, and machine guns all have different strengths, ranges, weaknesses, and abilities inherent in the type of gun. You will not put a bayonet on a pistol, and no one should try to rob someone with a sniper rifle.

Length of weapon (optional): many handguns make for great blunt-force weapons.
 

Appearance: I'm a very visual reader. There are some guns that are very visually distinct: a FAMAS assault rifle looks nothing like an M-16, which looks nothing like an Uzi, which looks nothing like an H&K G-11, which looks nothing like an AK-47. However, there are a lot of knockoffs that resemble M-16s, AK-47s, and Uzis. You don't need make, model, and serial number; just say “it looked like X, Y, or Z” gun, unless you want to go into more detail.

In essence, you can boil down someone's handgun to “short-barreled .22-caliber revolver,” or “a semi-automatic that looked more like a hand cannon” (for an example of this, look up the image of a “Desert Eagle” .50 caliber.)

 

Note:
Please remember that Kevlar is not a magic shield. At best, it will take that small metal object going at hundreds of feet per second, and redistribute its force so that your character will essentially feel like s/he's being slapped with sheet metal at ten miles an hour.
 

Assignment #4: Choose Your Weapon.

 

Take your setting, hero/ine and the enemy from assignment #3. Pick a weapon and put it into a fight between the two. It does not have to be a gun (for thoughts on weapons, and improvised weapons, check the “How To” article link in the initial documents packet). It doesn't matter if your hero has the weapon, or your villain does. It doesn't matter if the weapon was found at the fight location, or if it was brought.

If your hero does not have a weapon to start with, they will need to disarm the bad guy and/or find their own weapon.

Youcan check the how-to article again to at least get the principles for gun and knife disarms, though the principle is mostly based in common sense – don't get in the way of the weapon.

Remember, you do not need to have anyone killed, even if you're using a gun in the scene. Guns can shoot the environment, make people flinch, duck, or buy the characters time.

Fighting and writing workshop, day 3: Writing Fight Technique

This is my online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, here is day three.

****

 Day Three: Now, Let's Talk About Writing Fight Technique.

There are a lot of basic moves that you
don't need to describe too much. Most kicks and punches are like
that, for example. You don't necessarily require a full description
on a “forward vertical defensive kick” (as seen in the article on
how to throw a stop kick) – you can just write “X kicked Y in the
chest the way a fireman would kick down a door.” It's the same kick, just a less technical way of writing it. 

 Speed of attack: keep in mind that most fights don't even last for five seconds. A kick to the groin, a punch to the throat, and it's game over. Even a fight with a weapon can only last so long. Fighting over a knife will ensure that all sides get cut, and someone will be hurt in short order.

And, keep in mind, fighting is hard work. Even something as simple as punching is going to take a lot out of someone. If you don't believe me, go hit a punching bag for a minute. Punch it, kick it, headbutt it if you like, but do it at full speed, as hard as you can. You're going to find that it is very, very hard work. After the initial burst of energy, you're going to slow down after thirty seconds. Stamina should not be important in a fight, because most fights shouldn't last very long.

Another element to keep in mind: the enemy is also reacting. We don't need three-dimensional chess with hand-to-hand combat, but we also have to remember that (for example) kicking someone between the legs (even if they're feeling no pain), will still force the body to lean forward, and that opens up possibilities. If we punch someone, their head will go back. If we feint, they become defensive, preferably where we don't want them to be

If you're going to have a long fight scene, it should be for a good reason. Either it's a war—in which case it's perfectly understandable—or there are multiple attackers, or both participants are very, very well-trained.

 

Yes, you can have a half-page of description for something that takes only a split second. You can have all of the technical details down cold, but you must at least convey to the audience the speed. And, even if you don't go into exacting, excruciating detail for your audience, you should at least know the mechanics, so you know what you're doing. Don't be insulted – trust me, I used to do that a lot.

If you like, look at the fights scenes of Lee Child's character Jack Reacher. He'll give a half-page dissertation on something like the tactical usefulness of a headbutt, or he will work out a fight, chess-like, before the first punch is thrown. He then does it, writes a few lines of the enemy's reaction, and keeps going.

Note: If you have formal training, or have practical experience in a self-defense system or martial art, realize that high kicks, spin kicks, or any kick that goes above the hip can pose a danger in a real fight. In a real close-combat situation, there are no rules, and there is no tapping out. This may sound patronizing, but trust me, there are plenty of people who try to use fancy moves they learn on a gym mat and try to use the same moves on concrete. It doesn't end well, sometimes.

Assignment
#3: Writing Hand-to-Hand Technique

Look at the various articles assigned here: http://shar.es/giQgA.
Choose at least one technique. Do not worry about plagiarizing; there are only so many ways to describe some moves.  All that I require is that you use one element of one described technique over the course of your fight scene.

 

Step 1: Set up the fight, be it a mugging, or something with a minor villain, what have you. Write out a full technical description of what your character will do – not only with the technique, but most importantly with what comes next. (Continue to fight, to run, et al). How does the other combatant react/reply? 

Step 2: Give reasons for their actions, and how it fits with your character.

Step 3. Repeat step one, only take the entire technique and condense it.  Boil the technique into only a paragraph, at most. Now that you know what your character is doing, there's no reason to belabor the point for your audience. You can go into great detail, if it's an obscure method, or if you have a style similar to Lee Child, described above. You don't have to do one or the other in your writing, but you should at least be able to do both.

Please note: when writing your fight scene, be certain that you, and your readers, can keep track of
what side everyone is on. Even professional writers of military fiction, like Bernard Cornwell, will occasionally leave out details like “Character Y is blocking with the sword and hitting with the empty hand, and kicking someone else …. what direction  are all of these people coming from!!

Fighting and writing workshop, Day 1: fighting, your characters, and your world

As I mentioned, two weeks ago I said I was going to host an online forum workshop in writing fight scenes -- it was loosely based on one of my own blog posts. It just spun out of control.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, since this workshop screwed over my blog posts last week, I figure that I should get some use out of it.



This was the first day.

***

Day One:
Fighting, Your Characters, and Your World.

Before one even gets to writing a fight
scene, you have to answer multiple questions, not only about you
character, but about the world s/he inhabits.

For example: if your main character is
a civilian in the modern world, not only do you have laws to contend
with, but a question of training.

Start with a situation. Your character
is mugged. Some strung-out druggie who needs a fix wants your
character's money. This character has a feeling that things are going
to end badly no matter what s/he does. It is time to resist.

But then you have a problem before you
even get to the technical aspects of writing a fight. Why would your
character know how to fight?

Family – is fighting in the family
business? Mercenary, samurai, knight, military family?

Culture – does your world resemble
Sparta 2.0? Are there laws against fighting? For fighting? Is
dueling outlawed or celebrated?

Profession – is your character a
SEAL? An enthusiastic reservist?

Sports: Does your character like MMA?
Wrestling? Target shooting? Hockey? Soccer? Any of these can be
adapted to create the realities of a fight scene.

Hobbies: Your character may be nothing
more than a smart, reasonable person who believes in self defense.
S/he may also be a ballerina who can launch a nasty spin kick because
that's what s/he did in Swan Lake – don't laugh, it works
for actresses Jennifer Gardner and Summer Glau. S/he may have taken
capoeira because s/he thought it was only a dance class. If
s/he likes to fire off a hundred rounds a week at the local shooting
range, why not? Even the basics of handling a gun can be useful.

As an example, you can check outseveral characters from one of my books.

Now, fight scenes do not necessarily
require fisticuffs. Running away is a good, reliable tactical
maneuver. Your character can always run.

Why does this matter? Establishing your
character's own style of fighting is perfectly reasonable, otherwise,
you have fight scenes that you've stolen from action movies … Yes,
I've done that. Then I took a real self defense system, and I'vesince rewritten every last one scene.

Assignment
#1

1) What are the cultural
rules/legalities of your world when it comes to fighting? In modern
settings, these laws vary by country, and even by state. In New
York, if you defend yourself against an armed mugger, laws can be
used to prosecute you. In Texas, if you defend yourself, you get a
medal.

2) If your character had to fight, how
would they do it? What is the style of fighting your character uses?
It can be straight up punching and kicking, or furious punching and
gouging, or something more informal like Krav Maga, or much more
formal, like Tae Kwan Do. Does your character fight with improvised
weapons, or instead use traps and trickery to dispose of the
adversary? Or (also acceptable) do they run away until they can find
a solid position to fight from?

3) Why does your character know that
system of fighting? If you're writing the character of a Navy SEAL,
that's one thing. If it's the civilian offspring of a military
family, that's another. Does a family member teach the fight system?
Was it something they thought was cool when they were twelve? Did
they read too many thrillers growing up? Did they take ballet, or
soccer, or football – something with a lot of kicking?

Evil Religions 1: Allahu Akbar.

An evil religion blog post.



When I first proposed the "Evil Religions" series of blogs, I figured I would make it ironic. You may all remember the "first" Evil Religion post back on April 1st. This is the real one.



Before you get your panties in a twist, I warned readers of this blog quite some time ago that there would be a series of “Evil Religion” blog posts, and that it wouldn't be what you think it is. Guess what, it's still not going to be what you think it is. Read the rest of this preface here.



Now, let's start with our first “Evil Religion.”  The following can be footnoted in the works of Bernard Lewis, David Dalin, Ralph McInerny, or Roy Schoeman’s “Salvation is from the Jews”



The Middle East has a problem, and it's not Islam. It's their culture... which is also not Islam.



Yes, sorry, hate to break it to all of you, the culture of the Middle East was not substantially altered by The Prophet. Mainly because there were no real fundamental building blocks for the culture to be altered …



The trouble with the Middle East, in part, can be traced to the Nazis.



No, I am not being allegorical, but literal.



If you're a newcomer to this blog, you may not have heard of the term “Hitler’s Pope”: that Eugenio Pacelli, aka Pope Pius XII, worked with, for, or around Hitler in support of the final solution of the Holocaust.



What I'm almost certain you never hear about is what has been labeled Hitler’s Mufti.



To be more precise, he is properly called the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Now, a bit of background: in the 1920s, as a prize of World War I, Palestine was a mandate of Britain—they ran it and everything in it. Al-Husseini was installed by the English; he had, in fact, been put into power by a Jewish Minister of the Palestinian Mandate, Robert Samuel. Samuel even rigged the votes a little, in part on behalf of an anti-Semitic “advisor” Ernest Richmond (who may or may not have been al-Husseini's boyfriend; there were rumors, and Richmond was British, after all....).



Through the 1920s, al-Husseini incited two “intifadas” that killed mostly Jews (which I can only assume means that intifada now translates as “pogrom”), and Robert Samuel caved in each time, eventually cutting off any and all Jewish immigration into Palestine.



And you thought British appeasement started with Neville Chamberlain, didn't you?



Hajj al-Husseini was, in essence, local aristocracy. His brother had been the previous Grand Mufti, and his family had been in government positions for the previous seventy years. Unfortunately, his mind had been a little warped by a propaganda piece out of Tsarist Russia called the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”



For those of you who don't know about the Protocols, it is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that makes anything Dan Brown has written look like a well-researched historical treatise. According to the Protocols, the entire world is run by three hundred Jews out of Europe. Al-Husseini got it into his head that the British forces in Palestine were, in fact, there on the behest of their Jewish overlords, therefore, the British were mere puppets of the vast Zionist conspiracy ...



At this point, it feels like the moment I should grab the Thorazine and cue The Illuminati Polka.



Even after al-Husseini became grand Mufti, he called for an anti-Jewish jihad in Palestine during the 1930s, saying “Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”  This was how he started riots in 1929 and 1936-1939. He would later move his rhetorical style to Berlin radio, stating in one “Kill the Jews—Kill them with your hands, kill them with your teeth! This is well pleasing to Allah!” Al-Husseini’s connection with Hitler begins in 1933, when he sent emissaries to Berlin, first lending support, then suggesting collaboration. When the German anti-Jewish laws went into effect in 1934, the Islamic world sent them congratulations. Husseini would become friends with Adolf Eichmann (the banal evil that logistically engineered the Holocaust), and pushed for the extermination of Jews as soon as possible.



In 1937, al-Husseini met with Hitler, and they apparently got along quite well. Afterwards, Al-Husseini tried for a Nazi tour of the middle east; he briefly led an overthrow of the government in Iraq, only to be run out by the British. He hid in the Japanese embassy in Iran for a little bit, until the British and the Soviets invaded. He ran through Turkey and made it to Mussolini's Italy. He finally ended up in Germany.



SS chief Heinrich Himmler took Husseini on tours of the death camps, and the mufti pushed for greater diligence in running the gas chambers. Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny mentioned that the mufti “played a role in the decision to exterminate the European Jews.” At the Nuremburg trials, he stated that “the mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler… one of Eichmann’s best friends” And don't think Dieter got anything out of saying all of this—he was executed after the trial.



Al-Husseini also had a Muslim clerical school in Dresden, where Muslims could be trained in Nazism, and introduce it to the Middle East. In exchange for this service, Husseini went into Bosnia to recruit Muslims for the SS, Hanjar (or Handschar) units, who wore specially marked fezzes with the swastika on them. You can also see photos of Husseini in Bosnia inspecting the SS troops (see: Shoeman, 258. If you want to see more research on Muslim/Arab Nazis, hit the Yad vashem archives , or the Simon Wiesenthal Center). The Muslim SS Hanjar (“sword”) unit massacred about 90% of Bosnia’s Jews.



Husseini made it to France after the war, after the Swiss kicked him out. The pro-Nazi French government (which was still in charge for a while) refused to extradite him, and by the time the Allies could lay their hands on him, it was inconvenient to prosecute him (Tito didn't want the “Handschar units” as an issue in his ethnically-divided Yugoslavia; the new English government didn't want to antagonize the Arabs in their Middle East mandates, and the Soviets had their eye on the middle east as future clients). He managed to stay free and clear until 1974, when death caught him.



So why does Mufti al-Husseini matter today? Well, let’s start with the fact that the grand mufti imported Nazi experts to train young Palestinians in guerrilla tactics—the start of a group we know as the Palestinian Liberation Organization.



During the Six Day War in 1967, Israelis found Egyptian prisoners carrying issues of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Ironically, it had been translated into Arabic by a man known as el-Hadj…aka former Nazi propagandist Lius Heiden. Mein Kampf would be republished by Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in 2001 and was an instant bestseller throughout the Middle East—in 1999, it was sixth on the bestseller list in Palestine (and this is before the reprint). By the way, did I mention that “Schindler’s List” is banned?



The legacy of al-Husseini lives on into the 21st century. To start with, it was in the form of his nephew—Abd al-Rahman abd al-Bauf Arafat al-Qud al-Husseini. If you blink you miss the key word—Arafat. Yes, that Arafat. Second Lieutenant Wilhelm Boerner, a guard at Mauthausen concentration camp, and Erich Altern (Gestapo, head of their “Jewish Affairs” section), trained members of the Palestine Liberation Front. Former Nazi Johann Schuller, supplied arms to Fatah. Jean Tireault, neo-Nazi, also paid by Fatah. In the 1970s, neo-Nazi Otto Albrecht was hired by the PLO to act as a middle man for weapons.



Then there’s the Grand Mufti’s grandson, Skeikh Ekrima Sabri, the current Mufti of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He said recently “The figure of 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust is exaggerated…It was a lot less. It’s not my fault if Hitler hated the Jews. Anyway, they hate them just about everywhere.” Nice guy.



And let’s not forget that the Socialist nationalist party of Syria had a “Furher” and their banner donned the swastika as well. It's also known as the “Ba'athist party.” The one that's currently running Syria, and used to be Saddam Hussein's party.



Remember that pro-Nazi coup that got Husseini tossed out of Iraq? One rally member was a man named Khayrallah Tulfah. After the war, he lived with his nephew, and in the main room of his house he had an idolized portrait of Hitler on the wall. He raised the nephew personally, and had al-Husseini over to his home repeatedly until Husseini died. This nephew would grow up to be one mean fellow—one of his mistresses noted that he would look himself in the mirror and state “I am Saddam Hussein. Heil Hilter!”



The Grand Mufti, this (literal) Islamofascist, helped form the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And let us not forget Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser, who helped the Nazis in Egypt during the war, and who later led the Six Day War against Israel. He even adopted the slogan “One folk, One party, One leader.” His successor, Anwar Sadat, also had ties to the Reich—he spied for Germany during the war. Johannes von Leers, Goebbel’s executive officer, was put in charge of Egypt’s Ministry of Information in 1955. Gestapo man Hans Becher went on to become a police instructor in Egypt.



Let's look at the bad stuff that have come out of the middle east in the last hundred years, shall we? The psycho dictators have decided to enforce laws written down when Islam was still an emerging power, using the literal xenophobic rules of the day to enforce their own will. In fact, most of the stuff they're using isn't really the Koran, but bastardized versions of it, at best. They tend to work with scholars who have very.....old views about how Islam works, or should work.



Many of these were laws that were not in place during the Ottoman empire. It falls, and within a few decades, tada, archaic rules that no one noticed suddenly become applicable, and some which were completely made up two hundred years ago, or two decades ago – basically, whatever they “found” that could be useful. There is no Islamic Vatican. They devolved into a bunch of different opposing viewpoints that tended to disassociate Islam from itself more than anything.



Such transparent bull …



And let's target Israel, because, yes, a nation the size of Vermont is a threat to an Islamic geographical area equal to or greater than the entire United States of America … Israel just reminds Arabs that they're no longer on top of the world, and that there's no changing it.



One of the problems these psychos have taken advantage of is : you can't translate the Koran in the Middle East. Seriously, it's illegal. Which becomes a problem because most people can't read the Koran. I'm serious. Imagine how hard it is to read Shakespeare. It takes entire college courses, because it's poetry, and requires historical context. Now take the Bible, which also requires whole college classes (my bible course took a whole semester, and we only got through the Old Testament), because it's partly written in poetry, and also requires historical context. You get the worst of both possible worlds in the King James Bible.



Now, imagine that the King James Bible was written in Olde English—and I mean Beowulf English, not Chaucer.



And now you have the Koran, a document that's heavy on poetry, that is illegal to translate, study, dissect, or give any historical context to, written in a language no one has used in fifteen centuries.



And it has been translated. I've read it … it's still bloody unreadable.



Congratulations, your local leaders can now make it say whatever they like. Say what you like about the Bible, but it has been poked, prodded, dissected, vivisected, and footnoted to within an inch of its life, and it gets a new translation every few years.



And in Europe, you have a whole bunch of immigrant youth, being brought up in Mosques so insane that they're run by rejects from the Middle East, because they were so nuts even the Wahhabi's wouldn't take them. They're all in an environment that is either so antithetical that they're hostile (Chirac's France) or so accommodating that they're letting the nutjobs take over (Holland).



Oh, and you didn't have suicide bombers in the 1920s. Or the 1940s—and the technology was there, the Japanese Imperial Army had suicide bombers near the end of the war in the pacific. Suicide bombers were not invented in the Middle East ... they were invented by the Ayatollah Khomeini, in the 1980s, when he was fighting a war against Iraq, and losing, badly. Suicide bombers were his way of balancing the scales. And as one book notes, Khomeini was inspired by … post-modern, French deconstructionists.



At the end of the day, does being Muslim make you evil? Hell no. Otherwise we would already have the Caliphates of Dearborn Michigan, Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, and possibly Detroit. The problem with the modern Middle East actually start in the “Post-Christian” Europe, with Fascism, and Tsarist Russia creating the Protocols … if you never thought anything good ever came out of Tsarist Russia, well, you were right.  However, all of this grew up in a soil rich for planting – the middle east has a culture that hasn't changed in over two thousand years.



And it has nothing to do with the religion. It has everything to do with a warped cultural and political sense that occasionally intersects with bad religion and bad people. And the culture that is so very very static …



Still don't believe me?



There is An example that recently came to my attention: an old text that discusses the locals making their women cover their faces.



Was this written in the Wahabist 19th century? No.



In the High Imperial, Ottoman time period, in, say, the 1500s? No.



Was it even back in Mohammed’s time? No.



It was the Bible.



One of Joseph's brothers sleeps with a “Canaanite woman” who had her face covered, in the custom of “her people.” It was a scam, but it made me think. Canaan was a long, long time ago… does anything ever change there?



Because in the beginning, there was the Persian Empire. You know them, you saw 300—and the Persian Empire was actually worse than the film portrayed. No, they weren't Lord of the Ring-like mutant orcs, that was dramatic license when the story is told in bardic format. But the Persian Empire had no concept of freedom or liberty. No concept. No frame of reference. Not even the basic idea. How do I know? Simple.



There was no word for “freedom.”



Eight hundred years later, after Darius III, Alexander the Great, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Byzantines … all of whom weren't big on freedom, unless you were a citizen of said empire (and that only came in with the Romans). And up comes the rise of Islam, The Prophet, blah blah blah … When exactly was the word “freedom” supposed to come into play?



Add Western fascist ideology. Stir well.



I believe I will leave the last word to my friend, Jason Bieber (this is paraphrased, so bear with me).  "Islam changed the culture at the top. It didn't change the culture at the bottom."



And, when you consider that large parts of the culture hasn't changed much since Xerxes, that says something.

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