I still distincly remember the first anniversary of Princess Diana’s untimely death. I remember the sorrowful effigy cultivated within the extravant media maelstrom, the solemn ruminations offered by barely intelligible TV personalities and socialites, the latest conspiracy theories surrounding her death, the latest scurrilious book detailing “startling” and “scandalous” new details of her ad infinium affairs, the overall increasingly lucid and fantastical simulacrum of the lady. I casually thought, ahh well, its just been a year, this is how people contend with the grief.

But then it became increasingly apparent, as the years carried on, that this phenomenon wasn’t going disspate any time soon. Indeed, “Dianamania” as become a booming industry at the very best, with new and sensationally absurd books and TV movies being released all the time, and at the very worst a full-fledged cult catering to the worst human tendencies to glorify and worship extreme materialist individualism and popular aristocratism.

The breadth and influence of this cult can be no better exemplified by the fact that Diana is not only exalted and idolized by Britons of her own constituency, but Americans as well. Legions of American women probably hold her in higher regard than their own kinsmen. Its almost pathological now to expect some dribbling new Oprah or Larry King interview with a “close confidant” of the royal family revealing a startling new “revelation” about the princess. One can almost expect a CNN headline proclaiming “Was Diana abducted by aliens? Find out more tonight on Anderson Cooper 360!” Why all the hysteria?

This is rather unextraordinary woman, even distasteful one, a chronic adulterer and pseudo-humanitarian who thought she would feel important by taking company with the likes of newly discovered faithless religious charlatans like Mother Teresa. On top of that we fully well know that she was not hardly an “illuminating intellect”, to put it most respectfully, and her lack of wordly knowledge could only be dwarfed by her toxic vanity and obsession with fashion and high society affairs.

Am I arguing for her to be treated with ridicule and disgust? Hardly not, she was a good-intentioned decent human being, just not an exceptional one. She was still a princess and even anti-monarchists like myself should pay respects.

But good lord, its over. A decade has passed, people of Britain! She’s not a princess anymore! The royal family even had her name strikken from being cited in royal prayers! And, Americans, she was never your princess to begin with. Get over her, and more importantly, get over yourselves, we have real work to do.

Time doesn’t stop for the vanity of the heart, and it certainly doesn’t stop for Princess Diana. Wake up and smell the ashes.

I hardly need to admit that I’ve been an admirer and endorser of Jihad Watch, one of the premier Islamist activity surveillance blogs, for a better part of this year. I’ve found itswritings and journalistic prowess on the issue of the global jihadist culture and its violent and anti-civic manifestations all over the world to be a refreshing alternative to the politically correct multicultural etiquette exhitibted by the mass media.

However, it would appear thatthe proprietor of JW, Robert Spencer, has revealed himself to be (0r always was) an evangelist racketeer in the fanatic tradition of charlatans and liars like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and the rest of that ilk. I just recently discovered Mr. Spencer has released a new book, the first in his repetoir to openly attempt to polarize the monotheisms against each other. Religion of Peace?: What Christianity is and Islam Isn’t, a patently absurd little tract which attempts to generate a dichotomy of peaceful tendencies between the two, as well as incite animosity and pugnacious distrust of one another.

If its intentions as a open war herald for fundamentalist Christianity against fundamentalist Islam was in quesiton, all uncertainty can be imediately defenestrated. Right on top of the cover we can read in crystal clear a silly little quip from the ugliest, stupidest, most religiously perverse and extremist transexual fundamentalist Christian bitch ever to sap the Earth of its precious oxygen resevoirs: Ann Coulter. This living avatar to everything thats wrong with religion (and humanity I suppose) is the primary advocate of this little bargain bin political hackery.

This harpy, who has attacked 9/11 widows for voting Democrat, thinks evolution is a liberal conspiracy, and believes the reason the war on terror should be prosecuted is to spread Christianity and is too fucking stupid to figure out the irony in that statement, wants you to read Robert Spencer.

Well, I can’t impugn my own integrity, or that of any secularist or non-fanaticist to further link to the musings of a Christianist-whore. These are the same people who want to bring about the apocalypse by fulminating an epic confrontation between the monotheisms and want the brutal expansion of Christanity.

And what a mockery of the truth…”religion of peace”. Islam certainly isn’t, but neither is Christianity, or any other arcane remants of a 3000 year old age of dogmatic barbarism. You think Christanity is a religion of peace, tell that to the Bosnians or the Irish. Secularist society will always be preponderant to theocracy, which is the ambition of both Islamo-fascists in Tehran and Riyadh, as well as Spencer’s friends at CBN and Liberty Universiy. I can’t seriously support a war against Islamic tyrants in the Middle-East while supporting Christian dominionists in the Middle-West.

So henceforth I will no longer link to Jihad Watch. I’ll continue to link to Hot Air, which has Spencer as a columnist, but that can’t be helped. In general Spencer is still an astute Islam expert and his observations are generally spot on. But since he’s chosen to take comfort in the battlements of the Christian reich to increase book sales, I have too high of standards to help consummate them.

As I’ve said before, indeed Alberto Gonzales should have been expelled from the Bush administration, and today’s news of his resignation is infinitely overdue. However, he is not to be indicted  upon the charges Democrats have obtusely delineated.

He is to be lampooned for allowing standard political proceedings to be easily agitated into nodes of controversy for the administration; consequenting in a rather precarious and embarassing scenario in which they and other right-wing pundits have to clean up after him. His ineffectiveness and inefficiency have burdened the Bush entourage for far too long, good riddance.  Hopefully his replacement will exhibit the ruthless cunning and wit lawyers (and future lawyers like yours truly) are notorious for.

It has been rightfully observed that it would appear even the most base and consciously conniving and fraudulent charlatan or crook can be abdicated of all wrongdoing so long as they have the bulwark of religious affinity shielding them; like fanaticist charlatan Jerry Falwell or sadist and pillager Mother Teresa. Similarly, any crystal-clear, flat-out infringement upon a nation’s legistlative code can be reprieved, so long as a subtext of pity can be contrived.

Such is a perfect exemplification of this principle with the case of Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant who has been twice extradited from this country for trespassing on its border sovreignty, and has been defying 10 years of deportation orders by taking refuge in the one place where plebians feel they cannot tread. You guessed it, a church. Now they’ve finally extirpated her from her sanctuary for good, and she’s created a massive media spectacle of it and the fact that she’s now been seperated from her son in the process.

I’ll openly admit, and have so before, that I at one time afforded a bit more sympathy for such circumstances, and in a sense I still do. I have no doubt that Arellano was just trying to improve the life of herself and her son and was undoubtably quite a very hard-worker.

But the ends don’t justfiy the means, at all. There is an untouchable sacrament resonating from a nation’s legal framework, it cannot be impeded upon because of the impetus of circumstance. Are we to forgive ghetto shoplifters and bank-robbers who are just trying to pay for their family’s financial misfortunes? Can we ignore the murderers executed in the name of Islam by Hizbollah and Hamas just because they’ve helped poor Lebanese and Gaza families?

No, we cannot abate genuine and serious infractions on a nation’s sovreignty because of fragmented mind-illusions of relatvistic compassion. You want to get into this country? You get in the hard way, just like everyone else, including my parents who went through hell to get in here from Iran. But they came in the right way, not by illegally cheating like those on the Mexican border are so keen on doing. You let one in, you let them all in, and one of them (and much more) will be Islamist killers.

Hows that for your bleeding heart conscience, eh liberals? That your compasionate heart resulted in the death of your legal kinsmen?

Oh, who am I kidding. Liberals don’t have consciences, those require brains.

God knows the entire VT microcosm community has weathered a lugubrious test of endurance and will-power in the face of a devastating tragedy. So the concept of a timely welcome back concert to commemorate the onset of a new school year for what is essentially a whole new school altogether, as well as to ostensibly slowly stultifythe scars of memory which so ail the campus, is an admirable endeavour.

The thought of a still recovering traumatized student populous returning to campus to be treated by a musical experience conjures up images of perhaps defiant hard rock ballads, mournfully beautiful 90s grunge, perhaps the sublime aura of an orchestra or operatic outfit, the soulful evocation of a jazz troupe, something within those parameters surely.

But it appears injustice wanted an encore at Virginia Tech. Not only were the students subjected to the ghastly non-musical dischords and anti-virtuosity of South African pot-rock band Dave Matthews, but, even more objectionably  they were exposed to Nas, a third-rate, criminal-record brandishing rapper thug who casually expouses a message of domestic violence advocation and hoodlumism in all of his songs. It was to the latter that the staff of the college newspaper editorialized against in consortium, only to be ignored by the school administration.

The plight of the Virginia Tech community has been palpable for quite some time, and the almost impossible secnario of further exasperating the problem seemed almost impossible untill now. The fact that the administration thought it even remotely suitable to cater to the woes of a student body which had just survived a bloody massacre by offering a repugnant vandal who’s entire career is predicated upon his visceral endorsement of violence is almost obscene. The VT administration has had to deal with a great many aspersions the past few months, but right now they really do deserve a pummeling.

Virginia Tech has been through an arduous ordeal most people will never have to encounter in their lifetimes. They don’t deserve the disgraceful ineptitude of the college administration, and they certainly don’t deserve such cultural and artistic mockeries like Dave Matthews and Nas. If nothing else, these people ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.