ZEITGEIST (The Spirit of the Times)

I ran across this Internet movie today and was amazed. Lots of the same things as in my book plus stuff on 9/11 and other things that make this film a "Must See!"

Trust me , it will be well worth it! (when it starts go about ten minutes into it since the first few minutes are long and drawn out without too much content. After that, WATCH OUT!)

Here is the web page; http://zeitgeistmovie.com/ or go H E R E.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Twenty First Century Witch Hunt!

Guest Post; Tim Wieclawski

In his new book Witch Hunts, From Salem to Guantanamo Bay, Ottawa writer Robert Rapley argues that the case of Maher Arar fits all the characteristics of a modern-day witch hunt.

Rapley, a retired civil servant, didn't intend to write a current events book when he began four years ago, but he couldn't help noticing the similarities between his subject matter and the psychological climate of North America.

The paranoia and fear that followed the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks, and the sweeping powers provided to authorities by the PATRIOT Act, created an ideal climate for a modern-day witch hunt, Rapley says. He cautions that another terrorist attack could lead to great danger for average citizens.

For Rapley, one such average citizen is Canadian Maher Arar.

In a high-profile saga that began in September 2002, Arar was arrested while en route to Ottawa after vacationing in Tunisia.

DEPORTED TO SYRIA

After 19 days in custody in New York, unable to secure a lawyer and barely allowed to communicate with his family, Arar was deported to Syria, where he endured a year of torture in prison.

Authorities didn't tell him why they were sending him to Syria, only that they "knew" he was a terrorist -- an allegation to which he confessed only after being beaten and threatened with worse torture.

Without that confession, the only evidence authorities had to incriminate Arar was that he had been seen talking to Abdullah Almalki, who authorities were investigating in connection with an al-Qaida support network in Ottawa.

STILL ON 'NO FLY' LIST

American officials also stated that multiple international intelligence agencies had linked him to terrorist activities, but that's as much as they have ever said. In fact, despite overwhelming evidence pointing to his innocence, Arar is still on a U.S. "no fly" list.

Rapley uses early witch hunts -- such as those in Wurzburg and Bamburg in 1626 when 278 people were put to death as witches -- to illustrate the 10 characteristics of a witch hunt.

At that time, people genuinely believed in witches and were terrified of the devil.

People were easily caught in a climate of fear, so when witches were blamed, the hunt was on.

Rapley emphasizes that a witch hunt is a state of mind.

It's not a hunt for a witch, but a single-minded, inexorable quest to convict the accused regardless of the facts.

In the western world today there is a great amount of fear, according to Rapley.

And, he says, after the World Trade Centre attacks, some fear is justified, but much of it has been fostered by President George W. Bush, his administration and the media.

Rapley is most concerned with the antiterrorism PATRIOT Act -- a 342-page document that was passed within six weeks of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He believes much of the document was produced before the event. Though he writes that it was essential and a logical response to the attack, he argues that parts of it went too far in providing the government with powers that threaten the individual freedoms of its citizens.

He also takes issue with some presidential decisions, such as the creation of a special category of prisoner called "enemy combatants" who can be held in prisons outside the U.S., tried by military tribunal and sentenced to death.

Enemy combatants have no appeal to the American justice system, and they can be held indefinitely without charge.

Rapley says these new methods of treatment allow for actions outside the Geneva convention and are considered by many to be torture.

Our main worry right now, he says, is that we're creating a climate conducive to witch hunts. The way things are going, if we had another trigger event, we could all be in great danger.

"What I suggest is that terrorism will be an issue for a long time, possibly 50 years or more. You have to get used to that, and act against it while still being careful not to create a situation where we give up our personal freedoms," he said in an interview.

INFRINGED ON FREEDOMS

In 2003, then-attorney general John Ashcroft circulated a 87-page document entitled The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, commonly known as PATRIOT II Act.

However, public support for the war was shifting, so discussion on the act was muted. It was put on the shelf, ready to go after the next attack.

The entire act is available online, for anyone to read.

In it Rapley sees threats to freedom of association; arbitrary wiretaps; genetic sampling and cataloguing without consent; and the unrestricted exchange of highly confidential information between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies --something that was prohibited after the McCarthy Trials.

The point Rapley wants to make with his book is that after the Sept. 11 attacks, people were so afraid and so shocked that they overwhelmingly supported a bill that severely infringed on their personal freedoms.

Now there's another bill on the shelf that would take it much further and Rapley suggests it's time to examine our counter-terrorism measures because emotions were far too high to do it reasonably after an event like Sept. 11.

How to conduct a witch hunt:

1. Assume guilt at the moment of accusation.

2. Apply any pressures necessary, including torture, to get a confession and to accuse others.

3. Accept any incriminating evidence, no matter how dubious or vague.

4. Ignore testimony or evidence inconvenient to your version of the truth.

5. Create or employ false evidence if necessary to convict.

6. Threaten anyone speaking in favour of a defendant as a suspected accessory.

7. Treat the accused as if he has no human rights because he is so dangerous.

8. Accept secret accusations, to protect the accuser.

9. Take a tip-of-the-iceberg approach, assume there is more and search and expand the hunt for others.

10. Justify and excuse all errors by appeals to national security, the good of the state or the protection of society.

Your "Burn em at the stake" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com

"Hanoi Jane" on the loose again!

Jane Fonda set her sights on Baghdad and didn't wear a veil or Burka!

Jane stood in front of tens of thousands of protesters this weekend and brought back memories of Anti-Vietnam rallies 35 years ago! The woman once known as "Hanoi Jane" is lashing out at the "mean spirited" and "vengeful" Bush administration.

It was her first appearance on an anti-war podium in 34 years and she was joined by a Hollywood contingent of Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins!

(I'm sorry! Every time I hear "Jane Fonda" all I can think about is Barbarella in that "Orgasmatron" machine! Or that thing she did with the guy with the wings! Or when she joined hands with..................! Well, you get the idea!)

Meanwhile, in Washington about 100,000 people demonstrated while Sun Media (Canada) Foreign Affairs columnist Eric Margolis reported that;

"The contemptuous, neo-totalitarian impulses of the Republicans Far-Right, led by Dick Cheney and a cabal of pro-war neo-conservatives, are the prime exponents of an Imperial Presidency!

(Gee, he doesn't beat around the Bush, does he? -Pun intended-)

This looks as if it could become a major constitutional crisis between the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government.

Margolis went on to say that Bush's last term marks the zenith of the long growth of the Imperial Presidency, and the decline of Congressional authority.

The 9/11 attacks and a docile Republican majority, dominated by Southern Rustics and Holy-Rollers, turned Congress into a rubber stamp for Bush's policies.

Most members of Congress have demonstrated political cowardice, moral failure and gross dereliction of their duty to defend the constitution, their nations laws,and citizens' rights!

Yea, Eric doesn't really mince words when he has something to say!

As a matter of fact this is how he ended up his rant!

In 2008 American voter will hopefully censure those legislators who voted for this faked, totally unnecessary war, and approved the Bush Administrations growing use of torture, kidnapping and secret prisons.

Never in my memory, has the U. S. Congress brought so much shame on itself nor sunk so low! It is precisely Congress's duty to stop a President and Vice-President who have lost touch with reality, violated the constitution, and are taking America over a cliff.

Congress must end it's timidity and demand that Bush and Cheney, who have gone dangerously astray, cease and desist!

I imagine he would have been even more direct if he was American, but coming from a Canadian, what can I say?

That's what Friends are for!

Your "Go get em" Scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Not all heroes are people!

James Crane worked on the 101st floor of Tower 1 of the World Trade Center. He was blind so he had a golden retriever "seeing eye dog" named Daisy. She was with him on that 11th day of September, 2001!

After the plane hit 20 stories below, James knew that he was doomed, so out of an act of love he let Daisy go. She darted away into the darkened hallway.

Choking on the fumes of the jet fuel and the smoke, James just sat there waiting to die!

About 30 minutes later, Daisy comes back along with James' boss, who Daisy just happened to pick up on floor 112.

On her first run out of the building, she lead James, James' boss, and about 300 more people out of the doomed building.

But she wasn't through yet, she knew there were others who were trapped. So, highly against James' wishes she ran back in the building.

On her second run, she saved 392 lives.

Again she went back in.

During this run, the building collapses. James hears about this and falls on his knees into tears.

Against all known odds, Daisy makes it out alive, but this time she is carried by a firefighter. "She led us right to the people, before she got injured," the fireman explained.

Her final run saved another 273 lives. She suffered acute smoke inhalation, severe burns on all four paws, and a broken leg, but she saved a total 967 lives. Daisy was the first civilian Canine to win the Medal of Honor of New York City.

And now you know, "The rest of the story!"

Your "grateful" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Oh no you don't!

The "no-fly" list in the States is getting ever longer but the people on it are wondering what's going on! Lots of people with names like "John Smith" and "Mary Smith" and "Robert Johnson," while some foreign heads of state are even included by mistake. Also - 14 of the 9/11 hijackers are included even though they are dead!

Even worse, because the gargantuan lists have to be widely circulated, the CIA won't allow the names of actual terrorist suspects to be added to them -- in other words, the No Fly lists..........are you ready for it?........... Here it comes!......Only contains the names of people who aren't under any serious suspicion.

Just so you know!

Your perplexed scribe;
Allan W Janssen

9/11 (Out of the Ashes)

Conspiracy Theorists!

Reading the Saturday morning paper and naturally it is full of 9/11 since this is the fifth anniversary. (Think I'll take the fifth and also drink a fifth.)

There were lots of articles including one about the "conspiracy theorists" and some of the different scenarios people had come up with. You know, the U.S. Government was behind it, the Jews did it, Buddy Whatshisname and the Udder Fellows did it, and so on.

Listening to these theorists is struck me that they used the exact same arguments and had the same mindset for their bullshit as is employed by "religious theorists" (Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu etc.) to promote their own particular belief system. No difference at all. Interesting eh?

Allan

Also spoke Ayn Rand!

I will let this piece speak for itself!!! But it will be referred to in our next look at the Middle East.

The Terrorists' Motivation: Islam - Their attempt to practice religion consistently explains the terrorists' actions. By: Edwin A. Locke and Alex Epstein
It is now five years since September 11, 2001--and since that horrific day we have witnessed numerous additional attacks by Islamic terrorists against the West. In the face of a seemingly never-ending supply of suicidal killers, many still do not understand the motivation of the terrorists. Commentators are eager to offer a bevy of pseudo-explanations--poverty, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc.--while ignoring the motivation the terrorists themselves openly proclaim: Islam.

The near silence about the true role of Islam in motivating Islamic terrorists has two main causes: multiculturalism and religion. Multiculturalism asserts that all cultures are equal and therefore none may criticize another; intellectuals and politicians are therefore reluctant to declare the obvious superiority of Western culture to Islamic culture. And the strong commitment to religion of many Americans, especially conservatives, makes them reluctant to indict a religion as the cause of a massive evil. But if we are to identify the fundamental cause of the terrorists' actions, we must understand at least two fundamental premises of the religion they kill for.

First, Islam, like all religions, rejects reason as a means of gaining knowledge and guiding action; it holds that all important truths are grasped by faith in supernatural beings and sacred texts. The Koran explicitly states that knowledge comes from revelation, not thinking. (Christianity in pure form entails a similar rejection of reason, but it has been heavily diluted and secularized since the Renaissance.)

Islam advocates the subordination of every sphere of life to religious dogma, including the legal system, politics, economics, and family life; the word "Islam" means literally: submission. The individual is not supposed to think independently but to selflessly subordinate himself to the dictates of his religion and its theocratic representatives.

We have seen this before in the West--it was called the Dark Ages.

Second, as with any religion that seeks converts, a derivative tenet of Islam is that it should be imposed by force (you cannot convince someone of the non-rational). The Koran is replete with calls to take up arms in its name: "fight and slay the Pagans wherever you find them . . . those who reject our signs we shall soon cast into the fire . . . those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads . . . as to the deviators, they are the fuel of hell."

These ideas easily lead to fanaticism and terrorism. In fact, what is often referred to as the "fanaticism" of many Muslims is explicitly endorsed by their religion. Consider the following characteristics of religious fanatics. The fanatic demands unquestioning obedience to religious dogma--so does Islam. The fanatic cannot be reasoned with, because he rejects reason--so does Islam. The fanatic eagerly embraces any call to impose his dogma by force on those who will not adopt it voluntarily--so does Islam.

The terrorists are not "un-Islamic" bandits who have "hijacked a great religion"; they are consistent and serious followers of their religion.

It is true that many Muslims who live in the West (like most Christians) reject religious fanaticism and are law-abiding and even loyal citizens, but this is because they have accepted some Western values, including respect for reason, a belief in individual rights, and the need for a separation between church and state. It is only to the extent that they depart from their religion--and from a society that imposes it--that they achieve prosperity, freedom, and peace.

In the last year, there has been more and more of a call for a "War of Ideas"--an intellectual campaign to win the "hearts and minds" of the Arab world that will discourage and discredit Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, the centerpiece of this campaign so far has been to appeal to Muslims with claims that Islam is perfectly consistent with Western ideals, and inconsistent with terrorism.

America has,with little success, groveled to so-called moderate Muslim leaders to strongly repudiate terrorism. (Those leaders have focused little energy on damning Islamic fanaticism, and much on the alleged sins of the U.S. government.) Such a campaign cannot work, since insofar as these "moderates" accept Islam, they cannot convincingly oppose violence in its name. A true "War of Ideas" would be one in which we proclaim loudly and with moral certainty the secular values we stand for: reason, rights, freedom, material prosperity, and personal happiness on this earth.

Why We Are Losing Hearts and Minds
By: Keith Lockitch

Our leaders have failed to answer the evil moral ideal of Islamic totalitarianism with a rational ideal of our own. Five years into our "war on terror," the Iraqi insurgency is raging, with no apparent end to the new recruits eager to wage jihad against the West. Support for offensive action has faded among a disheartened American public, while the terrorists are growing in number and in boldness.

Where have our leaders gone wrong? What kind of leadership failure can demoralize a whole nation of honest, productive citizens, while leaving suicide murderers stirred to righteous action?

The power that inspires righteous action--and which, by its absence, breeds discouragement--is the power of moral idealism. What has brought us to our present state is our leaders' moral weakness in response to the jihadists' moral zeal.

Observe that what draws the recruits to terrorist cells is a powerful ideal: the advancement of their religion. The jihadists believe fervently that Islam is the revealed word of Allah, that selfless submission to Allah is the purpose of life, and that all individuals should be subjugated to Islamic law under a theocracy. They believe in spreading the rule of Islam worldwide, and killing any "infidels" who stand in their way. They are morally outraged by the American ideal of individual liberty and regard our this-worldly, capitalistic culture as an evil that must be destroyed.

America can only defend itself against such a zealous, militant movement if we have moral confidence in our own ideals--and fight for them. We must repudiate the Islamists' "ideals" of other-worldliness, of blind faith, of renunciation and suffering, of theocracy, and proudly uphold the superior, American ideals of reason, freedom, and the pursuit of worldly happiness.

But our leaders have not shown such moral confidence.

When the terrorists of Sept. 11 struck in the name of Islam, President Bush did not identify them as Islamic totalitarians and condemn their murderous ideology and its supporters. Instead, he painted the hijackers as a band of isolated lunatics who had "hijacked a great religion." (Only recently has President Bush even acknowledged that our enemy is Islamic, with his use of the term "Islamic fascism.")

In response to Muslim denunciations of America’s secularism, our leaders did not defend this attribute of America, but instead stressed Americans' religiosity. A mere two weeks after Sept. 11, with the ruins of the World Trade Towers still smoldering, our planned Afghanistan campaign, "Operation Infinite Justice," was renamed to appease Muslims protesting that only Allah can dispense "infinite justice."

Unable to defend America intellectually, our leaders are unable to defend her militarily.

Have our leaders acted consistently against terrorist regimes? Consider our policy toward Iran, the primary state sponsor of terrorism. Refusing to identify Iran as the fatherland of Islamic totalitarianism, our president initially beseeched its Mullahs to join our "war on terror." And he has consistently answered their chants of "Death to America" and their quest for nuclear weapons with negotiation and spineless diplomacy.

Have our leaders asserted that they will use America’s formidable military to secure our way of life by whatever means necessary? No. Lacking the moral confidence to defeat our enemies, they have instead squandered our military resources and sacrificed our brave soldiers in a futile quest to spread "democracy" around the globe--as though bringing the vote to Muslim mobs sympathetic to Islamic totalitarianism will somehow end the terrorist threat.

The reason the terrorists and their state sponsors are not demoralized is that our leaders have failed to demoralize them. Our leaders' words and actions have signaled that we are not as morally committed to our lives and freedom as the terrorists are to our destruction.

We must make it clear to the jihadists that we will destroy anyone who takes up arms for Islamic totalitarianism. No one wants to fight and die for a hopeless cause. The jihadists will continue to be emboldened and to attract new recruits until they are convinced their goal is unachievable. They must see that we have the moral confidence to defend our lives--to answer their violence with an overwhelming military response, without pulling punches. They must see us willing to visit such crushing devastation on them that they fear us more than they fear Allah.

It is often said that we must win the "hearts and minds" of supporters of totalitarian Islam. Indeed we must: their hearts must be made to despair at the futility of their cause, and their minds must be convinced that any threat to our lives and freedom will bring them swift and certain doom.

The ideologues of totalitarian Islam have seized the power of moral idealism in the service of our destruction. It is time we reclaimed that power in defense of our freedom.

Keith Lockitch, Ph.D. in physics, is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand--best-selling author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism.

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html

Allan in Wonderland

Universities in North America house not only the most liberal, but at the same time, also the most radical thinkers in the world. All this while at the same time, going to extremes in the way of “political correctness!”

You have to wonder if the liberals, radicals and the “thought police” on campus do indeed all come from different planets. I heard a couple of stories today that left me both shocked and amazed at the society we live in.

There is a well-known and respected University in Madison, Wisconsin that employs a professor who teaches Muslim studies. He is lecturing on the 9/11 terrorist attack.

This in of itself is nothing to get too excited about until we learn that he is teaching students that the attack on the World Trade Center was actually a C.I.A plot. Not only that, but that there were also bombs planted in the building to make sure it collapsed and all the Jews who worked in the building were told to stay home that day.

He claims all this was done to bolster George Bush and the White House by giving them an outside source with which to rally the population.

Now as soon as this became common knowledge the University naturally sent in a Provost to investigate the matter and have a talk with the professor.

A week or two later a press release was circulated stating that not only was the University not going to censor him because that would interfere with his academic freedom, but had actually hired him on for a second term.

We now take you from the Heartland to the East Coast where at Harvard, or Yale or some such place, there is a professor who is teaching “Sociology of Gender.”

He had to nerve to suggest, and it was only a suggestion by the way, that more research should be done to into the possibility that males and females process information differently.
(I could have told you that, I only have to talk to my wife to know!)

This outraged not only some of the Femi-Nazi’s but also many of the other freethinkers in the school. The end result was that the Professor was literally run out of town and is now looking for another job.

It’s just like Alice in Wonderland, things get curiouser and curiouser!

Your confused scribe;
Allan W Jansse

The logic (?) behind Arab thinking

GUEST POST By Lee Harris

When 9/11 happened, no one asked me to write an article about it the next day, because no one, outside my immediate circle of friends, had any interest in my opinion. This was fortunate, because I did not need to make a snap judgment about the significance of that fateful morning.

Had I rushed my violent first impressions into print, I might have found it difficult to ever get around to having any second thoughts -- second thoughts like the ones that finally came together in the essay "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," published in Policy Review a full six months after 9/11.

This morning, after Nick Schulz encouraged me to write a piece on the terror attacks in London, I was tempted to put the project off until I had had time to reflect on the events. What else could I say in the immediate aftermath of such an attack than what every other decent man or woman would say about it, namely that it was an outrage against all human decency, and a violation of everything that civilization stands for?

Then a thought went through my mind that has been haunting it for over three years now. A simple idea, really, yet one that when it is clearly stated can offer us a radically different way of understanding events like 9/11, the Bali attack, the Madrid bombings, and now the carnage in London.

Immediately after 9/11, the general consensus was that we were at war. And yet this evocation of the concept of war bothered me because it did not quite fit. Wars were things that Westerners did.

They were fought for economic reasons or for territorial expansion; they were instruments of policy; they had a point and an objective. You knew when a war started, and you knew when it was over. On both sides of a war you had diplomacy -- the breakdown in diplomacy normally started wars, and a recommencement of diplomacy inevitably signaled their termination.

Finally, wars, when they were fought, tended to resolve into a series of increasingly climactic battles, allowing each side to keep score of its position, as in a game of chess, and ending in some well-established gesture, like waving the white flag or slaughtering your enemies en masse.

If you try to make the random and scattered terrorist attacks since 9/11 fit into this pattern, you will soon realize that it takes a good bit of twisting and squeezing to make these events match the profile of Western warfare. Indeed, when I wrote "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," I argued that war was not the appropriate model to employ in order to gain an understanding of the enemy that we faced -- and yet at the time I was still unclear what model of conflict would make more sense.

After the London bombing, I feel more than ever that the war model is deeply flawed, and that a truer picture of the present conflict may be gained by studying another, culturally distinct form of violent conflict, namely the blood feud.

In the blood feud, the orientation is not to the future, as in war, but to the past. In the feud you are avenging yourself on your enemy for something that he did in the past. Al Qaeda justified the attack on New York and Washington as revenge against the USA for having defiled the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia by its military presence during the First Gulf War. In the attack on London, the English were being punished for their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the blood feud, unlike war, you have no interest in bringing your enemy to his knees. You are not looking for your enemy to surrender to you; you are simply interested in killing some of his people in revenge for past injuries, real or imaginary -- nor does it matter in the least whether the people you kill today were the ones guilty of the past injuries that you claim to be avenging.

In a blood feud, every member of the enemy tribe is a perfectly valid target for revenge. What is important is that some of their guys must be killed -- not necessarily anyone of any standing in their community. Just kill someone on the other side, and you have done what the logic of the blood feud commands you to do.

In the blood feud there is no concept of decisive victory because there is no desire to end the blood feud. Rather the blood feud functions as a permanent "ethical" institution -- it is the way of life for those who participate in it; it is how they keep score and how they maintain their own rights and privileges. You don't feud to win, you feud to keep your enemy from winning -- and that is why the anthropologist of the Bedouin feud, Emrys Peters, has written the disturbing words: The feud is eternal.

We in the West cannot imagine a war that goes on forever; but those for whom the blood feud is the established mode of settling difference cannot imagine a world without it. We are puzzled when they attack us viciously on a single day, and then wait for years before they attack us again -- an irrational policy from the point of view of Western military strategy, but perfectly sensible when seen from the point of view of the blood feud.

If your sole interest lies in annoying and irritating your enemy, and not in vanquishing him, then the sporadic and the occasional attack makes more sense to you than a systematic frontal assault. Indeed, to those adept at the blood feud, nothing can be more absurd than provoking a feuding partner into an all out war of annihilation -- which perhaps explains why the Islamic terrorists tend to vary the locations of their attacks and to string them out over the course of years, rather than concentrating on a single target and hammering it repeatedly over the course of days and weeks, as in a normal military campaign.

If the terrorists attacked the same people continuously, day after day, week after week, they would be bound to stir up a fury that would result in their own extermination.

By intermittent and infrequent attacks, on the other hand, they are able to injure and wound their enemy, without the fear that they will be overwhelmed by their enemy's desperate desire to be rid of them once and for all. Even better, such sporadic violence permits the enemy to discount their own suffering, by realizing after each fresh attack that life goes on -- as indeed it does for those who chance to survive.

The art of the blood feud, if it can be called an art, requires the participants in the feud to imitate the random and unpredictable nature of what we in the West call acts of God. Like lightning, you can never predict the next attack; you can never know where it will strike, or who it will strike.

You only know that one day it will happen again, as it happened again today in London. By this means, the victims of the attack are lulled into a sense of impotence and helplessness, accepting the attacks the same way we accept tornadoes and other natural disasters.

Contemporary Islamic terrorism has permitted the ancient practitioners of the blood feud to introduce its brutal and primeval logic into a world of modern technology and parliamentary politics.

The sooner we grasp this fact, the sooner we will be in a position to know our enemy for who he really is. Until then we will be as dazed and confused as those who, while peacefully riding a commuter train, suddenly find themselves bloodied and blackened, in the midst of maimed corpses and twisted steel, whispering to themselves over and over, "Why? Why?"

Lee Harris is author of Civilization and Its Enemies