But first…

I am fearful. I am sickened at the heights and lows of corruption and just in general the slaves to greed that people are. They are shackled by it; dragging it like dead and decaying corpses, all the while looking to the golden idol of the Almighty Dollar. Forget the golden calf- it’s been replaced by the over indulgent, anything goes lifestyle that has become the misleading symbol of happiness to millions. The automotive industry bailout is absolutely sickening. It’s appalling the brazenness of the political thieves these days. Not a day goes by as of late that I do not picture the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves. The corruption is bankrupting us not only LITERALLY, but morally, spiritually and physically. All the eyes that were cast up to Obama to save us- don’t hold your breath. His mandate of change is that of a sloppy seconds Clinton administration. Ta da! There’s your change! It’s a Clinton by another name. Not that the Republican party is by any means virginal white. It’s got the dirty fingerprints and smears and smell of corruption as well. Wall Street and our government are like the high profile man that cheats and flaunts it. They want you to think that they still love and are looking out for you, the people- but when night falls, they’re still going to hop in bed with Wall Street. And you can no longer deny it.  

I believe that this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Rougher, much rougher times lie ahead. Will we need our wheelbarrows that instead of deutschemarks will be full of dollars? I pray that it will not get to that point.

The other issue that is really gnawing at me is the reaction to the passing of Proposition 8. Obama supporters in California were crestfallen to find that yes, Virginia, not everyone can get behind sanctioning homosexual marriage. If you do the research, the same demographics that cast the vote for the Obama/Biden ticket are also the same demographics that have strong traditional family units. Now,  before I get the unwarranted label of bigot- I don’t HATE anyone. If you knew who I was on a day to day basis, you would know that I am not a homophobe, I am not a malicious hatemonger and I am not a close-minded elitist. It falls in line with my particular religious beliefs that while I do not personally agree with the homosexual lifestyle, butI would never, EVER hold it agains or hold it as a standard to judge a person. However, there are those who feel it is their personal job to out or somehow punish the people who hold fast to their religious beliefs and call for retribution in whatever means necessary. Ok, so please explain to me- how does that make you better than the person that you think is a bigot or  hate for no reason other than they don’t want the traditional definition of marriage redefined? And now, as a final kick in the teeth to the California voters, the issue is being shopped to judges who will WRONGLY override the voice of the people? I say that if you keep redefining and stretching and pulling the basic meaning of the word, eventually it loses all of it’s meaning. I also do not find this to be a civil freedom movements akin to the suppression Americans during the Civil Rights era. That is apples and oranges, my friends. But like I said, I need to come together with a more cohesive and even more supportive argument concerning this issue.  

Look, I refuse to be a closet conservative anymore. I do not believe that the country is as “liberal” as the television would have you believe. People would consider me a freak or a weirdo because I don’t watch the trash on HBO or smoke weed or blather on incessantly about how Obama will save the world. I don’t and I WON’T.

It has taken me a long time to come to terms with who I am- I am a Christian, I am a feminist in my own ways, I believe in conservative politics and I refuse to hide in the shadows any longer.

It’s more important now than ever to take a stand. Don’t let the media or people on the street tell you that it is wrong to feel how you do about social issues. If you are like I am and tend to fall on the conservative end of the spectrum, SPEAK UP. Don’t be concerned about the labels that people will wrongly give you. They are sure to come. But never let it stop you.

It has never been more important than NOW.

‘Mother of all suicide bombers’ warns of rise in attacks

A captured Iraqi terrorist known as the “mother of the female suicide bombers” has taunted interrogators that her network of volunteers is too big to be destroyed by her arrest.

 

By Aqeel Hussein in Baquba and Damien McElroy
Last Updated: 11:19AM GMT 16 Nov 2008

Rania Ibrahim, 15, was captured at a checkpoint wearing a suicide vest Photo: AFP

Itisam Adwan, who is accused of grooming young and vulnerable women for bomb attacks, has told police in Baquba that so many others are following her lead that they will not be able to stop them.

Last week a suicide bomber who blew herself killing five Iraqi guards at a checkpoint was revealed by police to have been just 13 years old – making her the youngest such attacker so far in a spate of such bombings in the city, capital of the troubled Diyala province.

Baquba, 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, has suffered an onslaught of women, some barely out of their teens, willing to inflict mass casualties as they target the security forces and public venues like markets. Although female suicide bombers had been seen in other wars, such as Chechnya’s Black Widows or the Tamil Tigers’ Death Maidens, the phenomenon was rare in Iraq until early this year.

The attack on Monday brought to 27 the number of women who had dressed up in explosives to kill themselves and others in Diyala alone. Across Iraq since the beginning of the year in Iraq more than 30 women have died in suicide attacks, compared with only eight in 2007.

Six days after the attack, police said they had still not determined the identity of the girl involved. But they revealed startling details about Itisam Adwan, whom they arrested in late September, and the role of women in fomenting such attacks.

The terrorist, who goes by the nom de guerre, Umm Fatima – the mother of Fatima – is said to be both tough and unrepentant.

Captain Ahmed Jasim, a spokesman for the Baquba police, said that the 38-year-old had described how a group of women, mainly widows of terrorist “martyrs”, who are grooming younger relatives and acquaintances for death.

“She said she is just one of many mothers who do the same job,” he said. “And there are many girls who are willing to die. The mothers tell them that they will go to heaven, where they will sit by rivers of honey and have lunch with the prophet Mohammad and live in comfort.

“The girls are the wives of al-Qaeda members, so their husbands tell them that their martyrdom would be glorious and the husbands too will automatically get to heaven as a result of their wives willingness to kill themselves in the name of religion.”

Rania Ibrahim, a 15-year old who was captured at a checkpoint wearing a suicide vest in Diyala in August, is one of those pushed into terrorism in this way. She was a frustrated, poorly-educated teenager who had been sold into marriage with a terrorist operative. Umm Fatima, her husband’s aunt, then cajoled her into attacking a police station.

“I left school at 11 and my mother spent the rest of the time trying to find a buyer to marry me,” she said. “I wanted to be a doctor but my husband said he wanted me to go to paradise, where he would soon join me.”

But Rania, who claimed she was fed pills and alcohol before her attack, attracted the suspicions of police at the check-point. She was called forward and the police cut the belt from her body. Umm Fatima, who is believed to have held the remote electronic trigger for the device, was unable to explode the bomb.

Rania is now in prison in Baquba but her mother, Bassad Selman Mohana, lives in a dilapidated house near the centre of the once neat and prosperous central Iraqi city. She said she felt betrayed and deceived by her son-in-law, Mohammad Hassan, who was himself arrested a month after his young wife was taken into custody.

“My daughter is a good girl and I thought he was a good man,” she said. “Around here, everyone makes price the first factor in determining who the girls marry. He deceived me, I did not know he was involved with al-Qaeda.”

The Jamestown Institute, a terrorism research foundation, reported that al-Qaeda has recognised the success of the tactic of using women to stage suicide attacks in Iraq. For the first time the group has now nominated a woman as an emir or prince of its operation. Websites have dubbed the women, Umm Salameh, as the emir of the al-Nitaqayn – the battalion of the two belts.

The name alludes to a famous Koranic figure who was the daughter of the prophet Mohammad’s closest lieutenant and first successor, Abu Bakr.

Umm Salameh is the widow of an al-Qaeda leader in northern Iraq who was killed last year in an airstrike.

“When Muslim land is occupied by non-believers, jihad is mandatory for all Muslims, male and female,” said Dr Hani al-Sibai, a London-based Islamist Sunni scholar. “Women are allowed to conduct jihad without the approval of parents or spouse.”

The enshrouding black gowns, known as abayas, that many Iraqi women are forced to wear in deference to Islamic guidelines on modesty, afford the perfect camouflage for a would-be bomber. Islamic tradition prevents men from searching Iraqi women.

Farhana Ali, an analyst with Rand Corp, told an American radio station: “It’s creating an enormous security problem for US and Iraqi forces.”

Baquba has been a stronghold for al-Qaeda since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the American-led coalition. The city has been named by al-Qaeda propagandists as the putative capital of an Islamic state of Iraq. A senior interior ministry official has acknowledged that conflict on its streets has impelled some woman to strike out at the authorities.

Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf said: “The psychological pressures of the security situation that we used to have in Diyala – the systematic killing, especially in some parts of Baquba where the government’s forces’ presence was weak – allowed the insurgents to use religion to exploit women. Women bombers are a problem for us. Men can’t search women… so they take advantage of this weakness in Iraqi society.”

Some see the recruitment of women suicide bombers an act of desperation by al-Qaeda, which has been pushed out of its former strongholds in Baghdad and western Iraq by a surge of US forces. Diaa Rashwan, who follows Islamic militancy for Egypt’s Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies said women should be in the “last rows” of fighting. “So to see women (suicide bombers) shows an abnormal situation: the absence of men.”

To cope with the higher threat the Baquba police has recruited a 200-strong women only force to search females passing though checkpoints.

But the cult of the suicide bomber is now part of the city’s daily life. One student said that whenever he passes a heavy-set girl, he is often tempted to ask if she is concealing plastic explosives.

One thing that shocked even me about this article:

It wasn’t shocking.

The very first thought I had concerning this article from the London Telegraph was Oh, this girl would have so many lawyers and probably even the ACLU just chomping at the bit for this one.

Seriously, you could hardly deny that.

And read what those archaic husbands tell them- oh, it would give me and the family such great glory… oh, and give me my one way ticket to hang with Mohammed! My heart just aches for these women who just do not know any different. These barberic jerks now believe that finally a woman might actually be resourceful after all- well, you know, for something besides wearing the latest in white supremecist fashions. Killing themselves! That way they can get the glory, get the VIP card to the afterlife and still get rid of that pesky woman. I’m sure at the words honor killing, those eyes just light right up and glaze over with visions of all those brownie points.

But wait. These are the guys that our new president elect will befriend, right? These are the tender and kind-hearted individuals whose hands we will hold around the Global Campfire as we dance in our new utopian society! Break out the s’mores supplies! But sorry, libs- NEWSFLASH! They detest Western civilization. They wish to destroy all that a place as great as America stands for. They would happily blow you up, blow up your kids and grandparents, your pets, your car and even your great-Aunt Alice twice removed.

It’s mind baffling. I think of a typical teenager here in the US. You’ve got your iPod, your cell phone, your Seventeen magazine, your boyfriend with braces, your $75 Polo shirt. Then I compare that to the teenager in a multi-layered burqua with explosives taped to themself, ready to blow all the dissenters into oblivion and caring only about the flowing lands of abundance they are about to enjoy.

Do you think they would shake hands and find a lot in common? Would they talk about television, books or best friends? In an ideal world, yes.

But in reality, no.

I have more thought on this, but it will come in a later post. Duty calls.

 

 

Behold: THE MALL ON A SATURDAY.

It is probably the closest I have personally come to having an honest emotional and mental breakdown in about… a week.

The biggest problem? Parents. Parents who refuse to discipline their children. The parents who are classic screamers, weaving empty threats into each outburst and sticking their hand in the AS IF they are going to make contact with that bottom.

Yeah, it never happens.

I witnessed something today that about made me want to remove all my hair, strand by strand. A young girl was sliding on her belly through a very busy thoroughfare in the mall. I almost plowed into her not once, but twice. I was thisclose to bending over, sliding my hands under her armpits and pulling her up straight-but then she probably would have used her hybrid sneaker/roller skates to smash my foot regardless.

I need to change the subject.

I will make mention that as I waited in line at Target, there was not just one glossy with the Obamas… but two. What a red letter day! Reptilian children and the Messiah looking at me like he had not one care in the world as he was framed by headlines about Angelina Jolie and Pam Anderson or some other ridiculousness.

Good thing I at least managed to get almost my entire family’s shopping done today, and even better was the lack of law enforcement’s involvement.

It is time I wrote this letter to you.

The words have been bubbling beneath my skin for a very long time.

I think we have to break up. Wait- no, we must break up. And yes, it won’t be easy… although I have already began taking the first small steps of an otherwise long journey to make it to where I have almost completely forgotten about you.

I’m not reading the gossip columns, the tabloids or even the newspapers. I could care less what and where the stars eat, what the latest diet trend is or which attention-starved celebutard has made a new sex tape. It becomes clearer and clearer to me each day that you have almost successfully completed the brainwashing you initially set out to do.

Your heinous crime? Molding and luring the glassy eyed sheeple to your knees, looking piously up to you so that they may know what to do next. And yes, you almost had me in that same lump of gullible boot lickers…

but not anymore.

You have found a gold mine in exploiting all that is temporary, all that is salacious and all that is cynical. Somewhere, some fake-bake, veneer sporting Hollywood schmuck must be laughing his butt off as we pay our hard earned $12 (gasp- it takes some of us an HOUR to make that!) and spend it on a crappy movie that doesn’t do much of anything for you. The kind of movie in which the chaste heroine always has to make her self over to be the center of attention and loved, or to get the boy of her dreams. No movie ever really ended where the nerd was still the nerd in the end, right? Normally she has to have a makeover reminiscent of a Bratz doll to garner any positive feedback.

Hollywood,  I’m tired of the way you attempt to mock and sneer at the conservative values millions of Americans hold dear. I’m offended that people pay money to go see a concert and have to listen to some overpaid, out of touch, coke-snorting jerk as they spout off all the reasons why they hate and abhor a country that has given them so much. They sure do love that green though, don’t they? (And no, I don’t just mean the Mary Jane, either.) 

I am disgusted at the way you influence the youth of this nation. I cringe when I hear young girls fret because they don’t have the latest bag or the newest $150 shoes. I want to hide in embarrassment as I see shows like The Hills splayed across television, and all the young people aspire to be such vapid carbon copies of one another. Creativity, individualism and heart are things that won’t be on sale at Abercrombie and Fitch this week, sheeple. Sorry. 

You play on people’s insecurities and their emotions. You beg, you plead, you cajole until your demand has been met. You influence women that plant poison is what their faces need to be beautiful. Even a laugh line is something to be repulsed by, right? You drive men’s egos into the ground by inundating them with messages that they could never be satisfying enough for their partner without some pill (that I might add is almost always complete with some cheesy and incorrect spelling). You hawk your wares not out of necessity, but out of downright manipulation. Hollywood, I have seen you sidle up to some of the biggest names- only to drop them like a bad habit if they utter one word that may be  interpreted as somehow being in touch with us, the bourgeoisie. You gleefully clap your hands as starlets have meltdowns, marriages are broken and children are swept up into Child Protective Services.

You have no conscience, no class and no respect. 

You trivialize those of us with values, morals and some self-respect. 

This is why it’s over. 

You add nothing to my life, and I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to see the writing on the wall. 

Signed,

A Former Sheeple