Sigrid Weidenweber's Blog

Book Review--Now They Call Me Infidel by Nonie Darwish

This is a wakeup call for all of you who believe that Islam is a religion of peace and that we are all the same in our daily lives. Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian woman, whose father was a Muslim Shahid, takes us deep into the world of Islam and its cultural and religious reality.

First I should explain the role of a Shahid or Shaheed—he is a fighter and martyr for the cause of Islam. The word itself means witness. To become a martyr you must, of course, kill infidels and then be dispatched in this fight.

Nonie’s father was an Egyptian military officer stationed in Gaza, making undeclared war against the Jews. He was very successful with his covert operations, killing many Jews, and was killed in retaliation. For that he was much revered as a shahid. Nonie and her siblings grew up fatherless; her mother remained a widow, although she was a young woman.

Nonie, a very intelligent woman, began to see early on that Islam intrinsically contains the seeds of war against all mankind, because of the stated call in the Koran that eventually all men must become Muslims or be annihilated.

It is impossible to impart all the subtle explanations for Muslim culture, thought and lives described in Darwish’s book. It is for the reader to find out for him- or herself how this culture and religion enslaves women and children, fosters suspicion between husband and wife, female friends and between husband’s family and the wife.

I highly encourage you to find this book and read for yourself what is hidden below the curtain of propaganda put forth for “ignorant infidel” foreigners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review--The Sabres of Paradise

I am very seldom fascinated by the books I come across anymore. I have voraciously read since I was four years old, and have enjoyed a great variety of different genres, styles and worldviews. Lately however, the crop I harvested from bestseller lists and other literary rankings has been disappointing to say the least. Therefore I have refused to recommend books to other readers, no matter how often I am prompted to do so.

So imagine my great joy and almost palpable delight when I followed the suggestions of a writer reviewing at the Wall Street Journal and imported two hard-to-come-by selections through my local library.

Today I will talk about the “Sabres of Paradise” by Lesley Blanch. Anyone who loves history, drama, great research and an interesting writing style will find this book a wonderful read.

The author provides us a marvelous introduction into the Tsarist Russia of the 19th-century, by painting a vivid picture of the Great Caucasus War that raged from 1834 until 1859. Central to this war are the mountain tribes of Daghestan and Chechnya under the leadership of the ‘Lion of Daghestan’ Imam Shamyl. If one truly wants to understand today’s separation agonies between Russia and its former Muslim Soviet Republics one should read this book.

The book hearkens back to the Tsarist conquest of the Caucasus, Georgia, Tartary and Chechnya. I have researched a great part of these conquests when I wrote “Catherine” the first part of the Trilogy ‘The Volga Flows Forever,’ and can vouch for the authenticity of the subject matter discussed.

I found this to be a fascinating read—vivid, epic and heroic—interspersed with alluring tidbits of Russian and Caucasian everyday lives.

This is a book I can wholeheartedly recommend to the discerning reader; however, commit yourself to a lengthy read.  

 

 

 

 

 

Killers kill--Guns are Tools

Recently I talked about the silliness following the shooting of schoolchildren in Newtown. Everyone is once again for instant gun-control. No one remembers all the silly laws on the books that are either not enforced or cannot be enforced. No one addressed the hot potato issue of mental illness.

I, however, believe I am right to insist that we concentrate on mentally ill people who become killers.

Today, Wednesday, December 26, 2012 an article in the Wall Street Journal makes my point succinctly by quoting Chinese statistics on child mass-murders. Note: no guns were involved yet great numbers of children were injured and killed.

Aug. 3, 2010 Man wielding a knife kills three children at a Shandong kindergarten.

Aug. 29, 2011 Staffer at a Shanghai day-care center wounds eight children with a knife.

Sept. 14, 2011 a man in Henan province kills six with an ax, including two young girls.

Dec. 14, 2012 a knife-wielding man injures 23 children outside a primary school in Henan province.

Also, a man who was upset with a court ruling after the murder of his daughter drove car into a group of students eating their lunch. This incident took place in China’s Hebei province and injured 13 students. The murderer almost succeeded setting the car on fire after the incident.

Note not one gun was involved in these crimes.

 

 

 

 

 

Guns, Mental Illness and the Right to bear Arms

Yesterday I opined that the problem with mass-shootings may have little to do with guns but a lot with mental illness, and today I found validation of my belief in the Wall Street Journal. David Kopel, research director and of the Independence Institute and co-author of the law school text book “Firearms laws and the Second Amendment” (Aspen, 2012), documents on the opinion page that the gun laws have no direct influence on crime.

He questions why we have an increase in mass-shootings today when we have much stricter gun controls than before when such incidents were rare. He believes one of the plausible answers is rooted in the media, where the greatly magnified instant celebrity of the mass killer is instantly broadcast, leading to copycat shootings.

He further believes what I stated yesterday that the mental health of the people committing these crimes is the reason for the mass killings committed. Kopel writes that in the mid-1960s many of the killings would have been prevented because the severely mentally ill would have been cared for in state institutions. Today, while our government as a whole has become bloated, mental health services have been starved of funds.

Kopel cites a study by the Treatment Advocacy Center that shows the number of hospital beds in America per capita has fallen to 1850 levels—imagine: 14.1 beds per 100 000 people. That fact alone is frightening.  

The most aggravating fact he states is that many of the mass shootings happen in pretend “gun-free zones,” such as schools, movie theaters and shopping malls. However, a fact the media hardly ever mentions, and if it is mentioned at all, it is obscured, that many mass shootings were thwarted by armed citizens.

He names Shoney’s Restaurant in Alabama (1991), the high school in Pearl Miss. (1997), middle-school dance in Edinboro, Penn. (1998), and recently a case at the Clackamas Mall in Oregon where a shopper with a hand gun carry permit, aiming at the shooter got him to commit suicide.

In Oregon, I, too, had a gun permit to carry. I began to carry a hand gun after a harrowing encounter with three baseball-bat swinging thugs. I was saved by an airport patrol, but decided I was better off providing for my own protection.

I believe if the brave young teachers confronting the shooter in Newtown had had a gun far fewer lives had been lost.  

 

 

 

The Evil In Our World

Is it possible to prepare for evil? Can one prepare to understand a deranged mind? Are we ever secure and protected from horror?

The answer to these purely rhetorical questions is no! The inconceivable horror of Newtown found all of us totally unprepared. But should we have been so surprised that once again a person with mental problems has taken lives—an enormous amount of innocent lives. No, we should have expected that there was a possibility for that to happen.

We have seen tragedies like this before, although not as enormous and visited upon young, delightful and vulnerable lives. I do not have to mention the names of the other horrors; they are burned into our minds.

Once again, the moment after the terrible thing happened we hear the call to gun-control, as if gun-control has ever solved a thing. People kill just as efficiently with bats, knifes, bombs and other means of distraction. Islamic psychopaths love bombs.

But have you ever wondered why none of the busy politicians have called for the curtailments of mental patient’s rights when they quit taking their medications. Psychiatrists tell us that they cannot force a violent patient to take medications until they are appraised and adjudicated by a judge.

This process takes months. The patient has to be released although he may constitute a danger to others. He has his rights and the rights of the public to be safe are forfeited. I have talked to mothers who frantically sought to have a child committed to a mental facility because the child or young adult was a danger to others or himself. It is almost impossible to arrange for quick confinement. Nothing happens until the person commits an assault of some kind.

If a person is judged to need confinement we often do not have the facilities to hold him or her and they are placed among the general population.

Adam Lanz had been known to be different from the time he was five, a classmate of the shooter said on twitter. Teachers knew that he could not feel pain and showed no emotion. His mother dealt with an increasingly unstable young adult and was afraid of him. There was no help or confinement for him because he had not yet hurt anyone.

I myself have experienced the unimaginable trauma of needing confinement for a son who was a danger to himself, and the frustration of being unable to get treatment for him. Those of our mental patients lucky enough to get evaluated in a psych-unit are soon given psycho-active drugs and then released.

Once released, they self-medicate by substituting the prescribed drugs with street drugs. You can imagine the influence cocaine, meth and heroin have on a mind already in disarray.This is the real problem. I believe that as long as the rights of mentally ill persons supersede the rights of the public at large we will live with terror.

 

 

 

Our Fiscal Mess

It’s the season to be jolly, to party and to celebrate. So why do I see so much gloom and doom in the realm of the American wonderland? Just watch the news, or your paper in the morning and you will be scared out of your skin.

Had we not been promised that after the election a great uniting would take place no matter who won or lost? We were promised an attempt to balance the budget because if the debt was a pile of manure all of Washington and much of the country side surrounding it would be covered with s**t. Most of the people I know want to the government to balance the budget and live within its means.

Here's what we know about Obama's uncompromising offer:

•          Obama is insisting on $1.6 trillion in tax increases, twice what he campaigned on.

•          Obama is also demanding $150 billion in new stimulus spending.

•          Obama is demanding another $30 billion extension in unemployment benefits -- an admission that his economic policies have failed to create jobs and grow the economy.

•          Obama is demanding that the death tax go back up to 45% on estates and family farms worth $3.5 million and more. Several influential Senate Democrats from farm states are opposed to that.

•          And Obama is demanding that Congress permanently give up its authority over raising the debt ceiling. So he wants an unlimited credit card too!

Here are the Republican demands in a nutshell:

·              No new  taxes—even for the Rich

·              Cut entitlements

·              Close loopholes in the tax system

However, the Republicans are not willing to become the sacrificial goats and get blamed for the harsh things that need to happen. So, in the end they will all muddle about and do nothing much to solve the real problem. I for one cannot wait to see how Americans will like it when they become just another Europe.

 

Why all politicians should have a classical education before they are allowed to run for political office!!!!

By now you are well aware that our great country is beset with problems caused by a political class bent on keeping their power and privileges. They care little about the population at large and rule to the detriment of the country and its people. It becomes ever more apparent that the elected, most, but not all of them, are lacking in virtues and honor, as well as in education.

I can state this with a great fortitude, for if they had been led through the educational regime of our forefathers they would, at least have an inkling of history and its teachings.

Take for example Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman, philosopher, lawyer and political theorist, who described for his own declining republic correctly what also ails our own country.

Cicero:  The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled. Assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. The mob should be forced to work and not be dependent on government for sustenance.

Wow! Does this not grab your attention? How could anyone state our current situation better than this great statesman and orator did more than two thousand years ago? He faced in Rome the dissolution of the republic for a democracy, or better kleptocracy enabling the politicians to keep their hands in the public till. For this, and his many oratories against outrages committed by politicians and other accusations against Roman politicians he was killed by assassins in 43 BC. His teachings on the republic were part of the ground work that prepared our constitution. The Founding Fathers of the United States greatly valued his understanding of the republic and the cupidity of most politicians.

To summarize: Would it not behoove every politician to study history, Cicero and especially our own constitution, which they seem to not know or seemingly have forgotten.

 

In My Opinion Our Culture Is Changing For The Worse

One of my blogs concerned itself with high crimes and misdeeds in Washington and the apparent tendency of large sections the electorate to vote for names that promise monetary rewards to those who cannot see that those doled out rewards will enslave them and their thinking forever.

I am well acquainted with the concept. I observed it full flower in communist East Germany. Those of my sorry countrymen who toed the party line and mouthed the slogans were well rewarded. I saw sadly inadequate scholars, spouting the party line, promoted and others, with independent thoughts, relegated to the sidelines. I saw questionable doctors, psychiatrists and health care workers rise to prominence, while sardonic, anti-communists with brilliant minds scraped for a living in small semi-private practices. Having experienced those things first hand I am suspicious of any hand-out by government. Nothing is free in life—as the first prostitute you ask will tell you. If you receive—expect to perform for the giver.

I know that my sentiments are true, having known families of four generations to live on nothing but welfare. By now, the notion that they are owed their monthly check, their subsidized housing and their food stamps seems inbred into their psyche. They just know that they must be provided for, because what else is there? The families of that type also had many unwed teen girls with children from different fathers. Rational: What else is there to do?

Yes, the other scourge of our time is that responsibility for our actions is not required anymore. Personal responsibility has gone by the way of the Dodo, together with honor, guilt, honesty, morality and ethical thought.

So how did America get to this point in history? When I came to this country in 1964 it was so different a place that our young people would not recognize it if they were placed in it. I almost imagine they would find it dull. Kids were quite happy I remember. They also had jobs and chores, which they were asked to perform from the time they were about six-years-old. They started with small things and grew into greater responsibility as time went by.

At that time, people also had great freedom. Kids played in the dark streets on summer nights till late—until their parents called to come in. No one feared abduction, molestation—murder. How could that be? How could a mother allow her children to ride bikes all over the city without worry? Well, we raised people by a different measure then. And we all knew right from wrong. No one worried about injuring our psyche by telling us unvarnished truths about ourselves. It was fine to criticize and expect the same in turn.     

And---children were spanked when they were sassy and defiant. Believe it or not, they had to respect their elders. I do propose that they mindlessly submitted to adults, no, on the contrary I just advocate for well-mannered treatment of those people who raise and teach the young generation. When we lost the titles of respect, Mr., Mrs., Sir, and Mam, we all amalgamated into dough where a six-year-old is treated in the same manner as a seventy-year-old Professor Emeritus.

I will believe forever that there is world of difference between the two.

 

 

 

Multiple Myeloma--Blood Cancer

Let me preface this article by saying that it is not a scientific writ but just an informative report of treatment options and hope. Way back in January I wrote about my husband’s blood-cancer, the treatment with chemo-therapy, steroids and support meds like calcium treatments. Since then great things have happened. I want to write about the developments because they are a cause for hope of those diagnosed with this illness.

First I want to mention that men and women in their mid-fifties who suddenly experience tiredness and shortness of breaths from ordinary energy expenditure without symptoms of a flu, cold or other easily explainable cause, should seek out their doctors immediately and ask for a total blood and urine work-up. The proteins produced by the illness show up in the urine quickly. The blood-picture will show Anemia, Leukopenia and or Thrombocytopenia—all are shortage of red and white blood-cells and thrombocytes, the cells that help clot your blood.

As the illness, untreated, can progress fairly fast, early diagnosis is of the essence. A diagnosis of stage one development of myeloma can result in containing the illness with the least amount chemo—perhaps none at all. By the time stage three is reached, serious chemo is needed to stop progression. There is a bevy of drugs available for treatment; a doctor will find what works best for the particular case.

Don was treated with valcade, which helped contain the illness for a while but then stopped working. He went on to take revlimide, a thalidomide, together with dexamethasone and, for a while, went into remission. He did great. He was once again playing tennis and going on hikes. However, this idyll did not last long. His doctors decided his best chance would be a stem-cell-transplant. A very serious treatment that is best undertaken while the patient is still in good physical condition.

If one waits too long the chance for the transplant passes and it is too late. Don went through the transplant. It was difficult. For a week he did not care whether he lived or died. But, oh, the results were amazing. And his quality of life is great! You should see him playing ball with his grandsons.

I felt that I should give you this update, for I talked about the men and women stricken with the illness and their amazing attitude. I also should tell you, by the way, that I have met quite a few people who have held the illness at bay for fifteen years and more.

Good health to all of you!

 

 

 

September 11, 2001-----September 11, 2012

Ten years ago I lived in another state and my son was still alive on the morning when the unimaginable happened. I will never forget my son’s shout for me to come to family room where he was watching television. It was morning, I remember. I thought my son had hurt himself and I flew into the room as he cried out, “Look mom, oh God, look!” It was thus that I saw the second air plane fly into a tower of the World Trade Center. It looked like a scene from a movie set, as the enormous air plane flew straight into the huge building, punching a hole through concrete and steel. Parts of the plane emerged on the other side and plunged toward the ground. The other tower, I now noted, looked like a wounded, bleeding arm, reaching for the sky.

My knees gave way. In horrible bewilderment I sank into a chair. “What? What is this?” I wondered. “These are attacks on the World Trade Center,” said Michael, who had already heard a few snatches by the commentators. I remember tears spilled from my eyes as I watched the horror. I did not notice them then. Visions of my WWII early childhood in Germany came to the fore: bombs falling, houses disintegrating, craters erupting before us as we ran through streets. War—I had hoped never to be in another.

As the day wore on we heard the details of the assault, heard who the perpetrators were and that there had been other targets. I attended somnambulistic to chores. I think I fed people and cleaned up, but none in my family was ever far from the television, seeking for information.

The before I had baked German Pflaumenkuchen, (plum cake,) sheets of it, because I expected guests on this day that had turned horrific. It was my day to host our neighborhood book-club of about fifteen women. The first call came from a friend now dead. “Will you still have the club at your house today?” she asked. I said yes, I would. “I will be damned if I alter my life to the dictates of terrorists.” “I cannot come,” said my friend and there were tears in her voice. “I cannot quit crying and I am sick to death by the whole thing.” “You must come,” I coaxed. “If you don’t you are fulfilling their desire to scare us, to isolate us—to mess with our lives. We must talk about this. Examine what this means for us in the future, but most of all we must comfort each other, for we all hurt.”

I said these same words many more times on that day. Some of the women held the same view as I and felt as I did. They required no coaxing. In the end, all the women came. We cried, we talked, examined the horror spread by mind-set of the seventh century, talked about rabid Islamists and their abhorrence of freedom, especially women’s freedom. We ate Pflaumenkuchen heaped with heavy, sweet whipped cream and drank coffee. Nothing removed our pain and anger, nothing could make it well again, but underneath, deep in our soul a small spark began to make us realize that the perpetrators of such crimes would never be able to find us such an easy target.

I was wrong! Terrorists found us an easy target once more in Libya on September, 11 2012. Terrorists only appreciate strength and a show of force—all else to them is the weakness and maudlin softness of an effete society.