by Andrew Walden

It took 15 months, but the Advertiser has finally slipped up and mentioned the possibility that the scheduling of Hawaii Islam Day had something to do with celebrating Islam on September 11.  Even better, Volcanic Ash columnist David Shapiro August 11 ruefully admits:

“state Rep. Lyla Berg is still taking grief in her campaign for lieutenant governor for a resolution she sponsored declaring last September 24 as Islam Day.”

If confirmed by the results of the September 18 Democratic Primary, this will be good news.  It is also a teachable moment. 

Contrary to those on both right and left who see Hawaii voters as suffering from a “plantation mentality”; the electorate—when properly informed--can and will punish elected officials who are guilty of especially egregious acts.  In addition to Lyla “Islam Day” Berg, anti-Superferry protester Sen. Gary Hooser (D-Kauai), and HB444 sponsor Rep. Blake Oshiro (D-Aiea) may be headed for political oblivion.  Others who are at risk either in the Primary or in the General election are the child molester’s employer Rep. Rida Cabanilla (D-Ewa) and the child molester’s courtroom advocate Rep. Joe Bertram (D-Kihei).  Sen. Roz Baker (D-Kihei, Lahaina) would be left as the sole remaining former molester employer in office--and she isn’t up for election this year.

The defeat of Mr Kim Coco Iwamoto—the transsexual foster parent of “transgender children” taken from their “transphobic parents”--in the upcoming Oahu BoE elections would be icing on the cake.    Berg’s Islam Day co-sponsors, Rep Faye Hanohano and Rep Della Au Bellati, should not be let off the hook.

All of this is happening without the Star-Advertiser’s help.  The word is spreading through alternative media sources such as Hawai`i Free Press.  The self-censored media is failing in its effort to shield these politicians.  And the media is burning its credibility.

A Gallup poll released August 13 shows that public confidence in newspapers dropped from 37% in 2000 to 22% in 2008.  In other words, eight years of non-stop Bush-bashing cost the media about 15% of the public.  Or, seen another way, newspapers lost 40% of the credibility they started with.  This is what happens when the media dedicates itself to imposing an anti-American culture on the American people.  It happens to politicians too.

To put newspapers’ 22% credibility in perspective, consider this: In a 2002 CBS poll, 8% of respondents said Elvis was still alive.  Another 11% were not certain.  That totals 19% of the public who give some credence to the possibility that Elvis might still be walking this earth.  So giving credibility to the Star-Advertiser is about the same as believing that Elvis is alive, Bigfoot is tramping through the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and space aliens are being kept on ice at Area 51.  “It is all George Bush’s fault” is now the punch line of a joke.

One of the reasons for newspapers’ lack of credibility is sentences like this:

“(Berg’s) harshest critics hauled out the old Julian calendar to ‘prove’ the date was picked as a celebration of 9/11, using logic reminiscent of those who argued that ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ was a drug anthem.”

This writer alone dug out the hidden commemoration of 9-11 in Islam Day.  But it is Berg and her friends at the Muslim Association of Hawaii who “hauled out the old Julian calendar.”  They did this by lying about the foundation date of Islam in the Islam Day resolution:

“the Prophet Mohammad left his house to migrate to Madinah and reached Quba in the vicinity of Madinah on the 12^th day of Rabi ul-Awwal according to the lunar calendar, or September 24^th according to the Gregorian calendar, thereby marking the birth of Islam….” (Emphasis added) 

In fact, the date marked as the foundation of Islam was September 24, 622 in the Julian calendar.  When the switch is reversed and the Gregorian date September 24, 2009 is converted back to the Julian date, it comes up September 11, 2009.  The Muslims lied about the foundation date of their own religion in order to justify the September 24, 2009 date which just happens to be September 11, 2009, Julian. 

Berg, Au Bellati, and Hanohano facilitated their lie.  And almost all of Hawaii’s so-called media covered for them.  The only Hawaii media source to acknowledge that Islam Day coincided with September 11, 2009 in the Julian calendar was the Kauai Garden Isle.  No other print or television media source dared to mention this fact.   

We proved (no sneer quotes) that Islam Day was predicated on a lie about the foundation date of Islam.  By refusing to acknowledge until now that existence of a controversy over the September 11 date, the Advertiser/Star-Bulletin/Star-Advertiser editors indirectly acknowledged that it was inexcusable to celebrate Islam on September 11.  So inexcusable, that they could not find a way to justify it and therefore had to bury the story.  And now we hear from Shapiro that this protection was not enough for Lyla Berg.  Good.  This is confirmation of our effectiveness.

Shapiro’s closes with some phony evenhandedness:

“Some on the left would do well to lose the smug hostility to Christian beliefs in which the red states are insultingly dismissed as ‘Jesusland.’

“Those who don’t want religion forced on them should be as considerate about not forcing pop values that glorify drugs, promiscuity, and vulgarity on fellow citizens who take their religion seriously.”   

It these words meant anything, the Star-Advertiser would have to shut its doors and go out of business.  Its entire propaganda apparatus has been dedicated to the promotion of gay marriage. Its writers and editorialists want readers to believe that anybody who opposes gay marriage is against civil rights.  The Honolulu Advertiser in 2006 endorsed transsexual activist Mr. Kim Coco Iwamoto for school board along with a UH Manoa activist with semi-nude online photos featuring airbrushed wings. 

In its previous incarnation as the Star-Bulletin, the editors actually inveighed against this year’s “I Vote” church-based voter registration campaign. This writer is not aware of other examples of a US newspaper editorializing against voter registration efforts.  Perhaps some Southern newspapers editorialized against civil rights activists attempting to register black voters in the 1950s or 1960s.  If so, that underscores the kind of company the Star-Bulletin/Star-Advertiser keeps. 

Shapiro can’t sweep all of that under the rug with a couple of throwaway lines.

The argument that “Puff” is a “drug anthem” is like a lot of other arguments about art or culture.  There is no correct answer.  Songwriter Peter Yarrow claims the song has nothing to do with drugs.  Many listeners apparently see marijuana-related references in the lyrics.  That is the nature of art.  Different people will see different messages in the lyrics of a song.  But Shapiro apparently thinks he can determine which is right and which is an illusion and he arrogantly looks down on Sen John Forbes Kerry (D-MA) and others who may disagree.  

But unlike Yarrow’s mysterious lyrics, there are solid facts relating to Hawaii Islam Day:

1) The Islam Day resolution falsely states that Islam was founded on September 24, 622 Gregorian.

2) Islam actually was founded on September 24, 622 Julian—the date Mohammad arrived in Medina after being chased out of Mecca.

3) September 24, 2009 Gregorian is September 11, 2009 Julian.

4) Muslims celebrate Islam Day only according to the Islamic lunar calendar.  The Islamic date 12th of Rabi ul awwal is Islam Day to Muslims and that fell on March 9, 2009. 

Amusingly, Shapiro in the same column calls opposition to construction of the 9/11 Mosque in New York City at Ground Zero “religious Intolerance.”  Wrong. 

Is is a sign of Islamist intolerance that they wish to build on the site of the attack.  The 9/11 Mosque would be a post-modern counterpart to the “intolerant” Mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, at Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (Requisitioned in 1935 by the secularist Ataturk as a museum), at the site of Lord Rama’s birth in Ayodhya, India (cleared off in 1992 by angry Hindus) or any of the dozens of mosques constructed by Islamic conquerors worldwide arranged specifically to defile the most holy sites of the conquered.  Islam’s long history of gratuitous destruction of the holy sites of other religions is the real “intolerance”. 

And in spite of Shapiro, and that other Manoa Liberal, Barack Obama, who has also endorsed the 9/11 Mosque, there will not be any mosque built in lower Manhattan. The American people are far too intelligent to fall for the argument that the terrorists will leave us alone if only we show how warm and cuddly we are.  Even the backwards and poorly educated denizens of Greenwich Village have put down their bongs to protest against the Obama 9/11 Mosque.  Lyla Berg isn’t the only politician whose career is going down in flames.

If Obama and Berg believe terrorism can be stopped by showing how eager America is to submit to Islam, then they should quit beating around the bush.  Let Lyla Berg propose a permanent Hawaii Islam Day to be celebrated on September 11 every year--in the modern calendar--and let Obama propose a Mosque be built directly on top of the destroyed World Trade Center site.  Shapiro can cheer both of them onwards--alone. 

---30---

Shapiro: Religious Intolerance is still strongly expressed in the U.S. 

REALITY:

• Hawaii “Islam Day” secretly marks September 11