Thanks, very interesting.

We have touched this issues before, but as a person who has traveled extensively in the Balkans, is married to a Bulgarian girl, whose children are half that and speak the language fluently, I am passionate about this.

Why many Muslim Bosnians can be blond, blue-eyed, or not different from any other Serb? Because they are of the same race. These are descendants of converts to Islam under Turkish rule. At that time, when a rich Serb had to dismount and bow to a Muslim, conversion brought many benefits and gains. Still, they were, and still are, despised as traitors to their own race and Orthodox Christian religion. Add to that that these converts were the main recruiters for that nasty Turkish militia called the Bashi Bozouk, that engaged in orgies of murder and rape while drunk against their own people, and you have a formula for distrust and hate for centuries to come.

Balkans, World War II, number one culprits by far: the Catholic-fascist Croats. The Poglavnik (Fuhrer in Serbo-Croat) Ante Pavelic, who once told Hitler in the Berghof that the Croats were nor Slavs, but a lost Germanic tribe, engaged in Ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Jews. The Ustasha militia was able to murder all of their Jews (about 48,000) and between 200,000 to 300,000 Serbs. Mind you, no gas here, clubs and good old throat slitting, the famous Ustasha way. Entire Serbs villages were razed to the ground. In the Jasenovac concentration camp, probably the cruelest in Europe, several Catholic Franciscan monks engaged in hands on killing. That great Pope Pius XII, who knew everything, was mute about the deeds of his faithful Croats who were now adding souls to heaven through forced conversion of Serbs and Jews (Muslims were left alone).

Great POTUS Slick Willy, who probably could not locate any of these Balkan countries on a map of Europe, but could surely locate his affair on a little map of Little Rock, set back centuries of European history together with the Battle of Poitiers and the Siege of Vienna, in the most dirty and shameful little war the US has ever engaged in.

President Franklin Daihatsu Obama announced ]
talks without preconditions with Hidecki Tojo,
bowed profusely to Emperor Hirohito, embraced
Benito Mussolinni and assured Herr Schickelgruber that the blondes were peroxided Jews and not real Ayrans at all.

I noticed you were born in New York, and wasn’t surprised to find out you live in New Zealand after the Maori comment. Yes indeed, that’s way down there. If the “event” did not make it to Miami, which is “almost” in the US, imagine.

I once had a couple of friends in the 90s from Bulgaria that moved there to do a PhD. Due to low income, they ended up renting in a Maori neighborhood. They said the partying was so loud that they could not take it and left the country. Whether they exaggerated I don’t know, but that was after I had watched that iconic NZ movie from 1994 “Once Were Warriors” with Rena Owen and Temuera Morrison. Some tattoos!

Anyhow, the Jihadis could use the Maori martial arts, and the scary facial gestures, as for the weapons, the Mere and the Wahaika are probably good additions to the scimitar for the beheadings. Problem with Islam and Maoris is the consumption of alcoholic beverages, but then there are the jails there for conversions too.

Yes, your picture shows you worry. As for worries, please allow to quote the Book of James: “Do not worry about anything, but on everything, let your requests be made known to God.”

Since you are a poet and critic, please allow me to copy a poem I wrote in 2001 to my Kriya Yoga Guru, for your perusal:

Gurudev

1 My old Gurudev, who look’d straight from his bed
2 And hardly moved, his age showing in his quiet face,
3 Having my visit gracefully again accept’d,
4 I smiled at him, and dismiss’d,
5 With a bow and his feet unkiss’d,
6 His teachings, learned, forgotten, and again sought.
7 Like St. Paul I know what needs to be done,
8 But do it not,
9 The will brightens not for long,
10 It flickers, grows, then turns to mud,
11 How frail this human lot!
12 And I, with tears,
13 Stood outside his house, subdued by fears;
14 For, what else to ask from you my God,
15 If my own good
16 Escapes me and is never to me dear?
17 The hunger I desire is of Thine spiritual food,
18 Thy guidance and comfort,
19 Thy solace and support,
20 A glance, an approval, a word or silence, a little of your skillful art,
21 To bring peace to my heart.
22 So when after meditation I pray’d
23 To Him, I promised, and said:
24 I will remember you through the shortest breath,
25 No separation by so-called death,
26 And please Thou rememberest this weak flesh of us,
27 That causes the loss
28 Of sight of the other worthy shore,
29 Misplacing the goal, Oh Lord,
30 Then, carry me along!
31 On your broad shoulders across the river I will take flight
32 To the other side.

This “event” did not make it all the way down here, but it is disturbing even more just because it is not considered newsworthy by our antipodean media.

I worry about too many things. Just last week there was a ceremonial launching of the first translation of the Koran into Maori. A noble academic exercise, a gesture of inter-communal good faith… but I fear how it may be used in prisons to proslytize activists and the malcontents of all persuasions.

We do live in interesting times. That’s the problem.

Norman

I like the analogy that you used to try to get through to Mr Know-It-All – that the ‘Palestinian’ Arab Muslims include many who may be described as real life ‘death eaters’. It had occurred to me also. (Slight correction: the ‘death eaters’ in the Potter books, are the human cult-followers of ‘Lord Voldemort’ – murderous supremacists resembling both Nazis and jihadists. The evil creatures that suck out the soul are ‘dementors’).

Have you seen the film version of ‘Order of the Phoenix’ – if you haven’t, do. Like ‘Goblet of Fire’ which preceded it, it is – whether its makers knew that or not – a ‘war movie’ for this undeclared unnamed war against that which may not be named. It is doing, at the level of the imagination and the unconscious, the deep psychological work that needs to be done, if people are to find the strength to resist the Jihad.

Once one sees this, the films gain a terrible poignancy from the fact that Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry, is the son of a Jewish mother.

Besides giving us the terms ‘death eaters’ and ‘dementors’, Rowlings has given us other words we can use. There are two groups in her epic that fight the Death Eaters…that fight on when their world has been subverted and taken over. There is Harry’s ‘Dumbledore’s Army’ – a group of students who meet secretly in the ‘room of requirement’ to practise their ‘defence against the dark arts’ (see ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’). And there is… The Order of the Phoenix.

I don’t think Rowlings knew that she had given us the perfect name for all who resist Jihad and Sharia. But there it is.

And my dear Phyllis: you and all Jews, all the House of Israel, the Jewish state of Israel: it is you who are the real-life equivalent of the Order of the Phoenix – fighting the Death Eaters, the Thanatos principle that is those who ‘slay and are slain in the cause of allah’.

As are also all who join this Resistance. The unofficial Order of the Phoenix (the Phoenix being, as represented by Rowlings [drawing on medieval Christian poetry and heraldry] an embodiment of loyalty, of invincible life and Resurrection and self-giving love. That which though it may appear to die, cannot die, but rises again out of the fire (fusing, in that way, with the biblical image of the Burning Bush).