May 2006 Letters

Introduction

On Sunday (05/14/2006) I called into Peter Wirbe’s radio talk show which broadcasts throughout the Metro Detroit area and has generally been an oasis in a dessert of mindless talk radio.  I’ve known Wirbe for at least 16 years and truly have a great deal of respect for him on most issues – even when we disagree.  I preface this exchange of emails, with this clarification, because one could easily get the idea that I don’t like Peter Wirbe.  This is definitely not the case.  But his apparent lack of concern for allowing another 200 million legal/illegal immigrants into the United States, over the next 44 years (e.g., by 2050), prompted me call to the NightCall Radio show and subsequently led to this exchange of emails. 

I’d be interested to hear you thoughts after reading through the following “email debate.”

Here’s some additional info on Peter Wirbe’s Late Night Talk Show: NightCall

Listen to Peter's phone-in talk show, Nightcall, Sundays, 11pm-2am, on WRIF-FM 101.1; and his Sunday morning interview shows on WCSX-FM 94.7 (5am) and WMGC-FM 105.1 (6am), in Detroit, or online at www.peterwerbe.com.

To join Peter's Nightcall mailing list, write calltalkyes@yahoo.com with "Add me" on the subject line.

Mailing address: Peter Werbe, c/o WRIF, One Radio Plaza, Ferndale MI 48220.

But to hear him take this

First Email to Peter Werbe

Pete:

This is Bruce Cain (AKA Prof. Hemp).

I really thought you were rude this evening during my attempted conversation on tonight’s NightCall.  First of all you let me say less than 12 words before you preempted me and went on with about 5 minutes of "intellectually lite" verbal diarrhea.  You kept coming back to this drivel about how "we can't solve the problem until we do something about these gross inequities between the US and third world countries like Mexico.  Like what, allow the US working class to be reduced to 3rd World wage slaves by the Corporate Elite that appears to control Business, Government and the Media?

Did someone remove part of your brain over the last 10 years?

What a load of crap, Peter.

These are the points I wanted to make this evening:

(1) All they have to do to expel most of the Illegal Immigrants is to demand that employers cross check there workers SS#'s against the Social Security Administrations Social Security database.  About the only company currently doing this is AMC (the movie theater).  This, according to one study, would eliminate 50% of the Illegal Immigrants within 5 years.  Why?  Because they would no longer be able to find employment.  And the 5-years cost for this is only a mere 2.5 Billion.  Compare that to the 49 Billion we waste every year on the frigging Drug War.

Now later on in the show you said I wanted to "create this massive database."  Where did that come from?  I just want our government to access the existent Social Security database in order to determine whether a given W2 form has a duplicate or nonexistent SS#.   The US government could easily allow thousands of businesses to access this data simultaneously.  And those that still hire illegal’s . . . the employers go to jail.  All the employer requires is a access ID and a PC that has Internet capabilities.  We are not talking about breaking the bank here. 

(2) The biggest threat to this nation right now is uncontrolled population growth.  If current trends in Legal/Illegal Immigration are allowed to continue the US population will grow from 300 to 500 million in the next 45 years.  The only reason the Sierra Club does not support population control is because their primary donor threatened to withhold all funding IF the take a position against Legal/Illegal Immigration.  I find it absolutely insulting that this important argument finds no currency in this important debate.  To ignore the threat -- that immigrant population growth poses to our environment and economy -- is simply insane.

(3) You are acting like a corporate suck up.  I can just hear Bob Newhart now yelling at you . . . "Stop that!"  Sorry Pete but I'm calling 'em as I see 'em.  We are currently being colonized by foreign wealth from the Middle East and other countries through various "quid pro quo" agreements that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the working class (e.g., EB-5 Visas, CFIUS "Direct Foreign Investment deals etc.)..  This is one of the reasons that I have been scratching my head as I have recently listened to your misinformed opinions on the subject of immigration.

(4) Have you not noticed that most of your callers DO NOT agree with you position on Immigration?

Basically I am disappointed in your inadequate analysis of a subject that does not lend itself to concision.  This does not reflect the well thought reasoning that I used to expect from you.  What the fuck has happened to you Pete?

So . . . lets set up a debate somewhere so I can rip up your arguments without the unfair advantage you have in attenuating the call in lines.  How about it?  I've debated Ficano (Fuck Guano), Conyers and Dingle in the distant past.  I'm certain I could give you a run for your money.  It would be fun for both of us, I'm sure.

Now before you ignore this invitation let me clue you in on something.  I'm going to start dissing you on you're immigration position from my website. 

Bruce W. Cain
www.newagecitizen.com

First Email from Peter Werbe

You're obsessing on this issue. Immigration is about number 37 on the list of what is reducing the working class to third world slaves. Also, your use of language in describing me and what I say sure doesn't make me even want to continue communicating with you. Be respectful in your words or please don't write back. Just spell my name right on your site and give my URL. Thanks.

Try reading some of these sites before you go off half-cocked and hysterical.

Institute for Public Accuracy <dcinstitute@igc.org> wrote:

Institute for Public Accuracy

915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045

(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org

___________________________________________________

PM Monday, May 15, 2006

Big Picture on Immigration Reform

Interviews Available

ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ, (608) 238-3161, (608) 213-3710, xcolumn@gmail.com,

http://hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage

Rodriguez writes the syndicated Column of the Americas with Patrisia Gonzales. His most recent piece is titled "What Is It About Illegal You Don't Understand?"

OSCAR CHACON, (773) 991-9760, (312) 660-1343,

ochacon@enlacesamerica.org, http://www.enlacesamerica.org Chacon is the director of Enlaces America, a support center for

Latino and Caribbean immigrant organizations based in Chicago. He is co-author of the article "Alternatives to a Wall: How NAFTA, CAFTA, and other corporate-friendly trade policies displace farmers and create mass migration, and how we can do better." Among his suggestions: "We should work with our neighbors south of the border to strengthen small- and medium-sized enterprises -- the sector that employs the largest number of people in Latin America. ... We should stop promoting export-oriented agribusiness and instead support small-farmer organizations around the world..."

JULIO HUATO, (212) 817-2067, (718) 972-3817, juliohuato@gmail.com,

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/huato130406.html
Huato is a researcher at the City University of New York's Howard Samuels Center. He said today: "While the U.S. workers are entitled to -- and should -- exercise their democratic right to regulate the pace of social change (as opposed to being passive victims of blind economic forces), it must be recognized that no trade policy reform can change the brutal realities that underlie foreign competition: the gigantic disparities in wealth, productivity, wages, and living standards that prevail in today's world. If the U.S. workers want to exercise a democratic control over the global economic phenomena that disrupt their lives, they need to address the deeper cause: world inequality." See: and

SARAH ANDERSON, (202) 234-9382 ext 227, (202) 352-8685, saraha@igc.org,

http://ips-dc.org/global_econ/index.htm

Anderson is director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is co-author of the book "Field Guide to the Global Economy." She said today: "The United States needs a long-term strategy for tackling the foundation of the problem: the inequalities that are driving migration in the first place.  "Europe offers some important lessons on narrowing the gaps. Today it's taken for granted that citizens of any European Union country have the right to live and work in any other member state. Achieving this 'open door' policy wasn't easy. When Spain and Portugal wanted to join the EU in the 1980s, there was widespread fear in member states that migrants from these poorer countries would flood northward, stealing jobs and straining public services.

"In response, the EU postponed lifting borders with both countries for five years after they were accepted as members in 1986. What happened during that transition is key. Determined to narrow the gaps with their southern neighbors, the richer countries poured in aid for infrastructure and workforce training. They also encouraged Spain and Portugal to strengthen their social safety nets."These efforts helped level the playing field so that when borders were lifted, there was no exodus. If anything, the migration flows went in reverse, as thousands of Spaniards and Portuguese who had been working in northern Europe went back home to take advantage of new job opportunities."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Listen to Peter's phone-in talk show, Nightcall, Sundays, 11pm-2am, on WRIF-FM 101.1; and his Sunday morning interview shows on WCSX-FM 94.7 (5am) and WMGC-FM 105.1 (6am), in Detroit, or online at www.peterwerbe.com.

To join Peter's Nightcall mailing list, write calltalkyes@yahoo.com with "Add me" on the subject line.Mailing address: Peter Werbe, c/o WRIF, One Radio Plaza, Ferndale MI 48220.

Second Email from Peter Werbe

Bush calls the tune; you dance, and forget about every other issue confronting this country. Here's an essay which has the same title as your subject line.

And, what don't you understand about "marijuana is illegal?" Oh, I know, "that's different." http://hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/

Second Email to Peter Werbe

I did look at one of the citations from your email: "What Is It About Illegal You Don't Understand?"  Here is an excerpt:

"There actually is an alternative by way of the policies of the European Union that would solve this crisis overnight. All workers from member nations are eligible to work in each others’ countries, without losing their rights, citizenship or humanity."

I am absolutely dumbfounded that you would have the audacity to send such intellectually weak garbage.  So perhaps we should just allow billions of immigrants to simply "come on over?"  I know you are not so intellectually challenged that you would subscribe to such crap.  Are you not aware that this is exactly what those "capitalistic" members of the Council on Foriegn Relations are trying to do?   You know, one of the same elitist groups that you diss each Sunday on Night Call?

How do you square these desperate positions: (1) You hate Capitalism but (2) You favor this merging of the America's which is exactly what the "Turbo Capitalists" want to do.  I'm confused here, Pete.  If I was a "conspiracy nut" I would wonder if they didn't switch your brain out with some elitist.  Could it be that the owners of WRIF are sending you signals about what position you should take on immigration?  I know this to be occuring elsewhere.  Who actually owns WRIF?  Isn't it Clearchannel?

At any rate you don't seem to be biting on the debate idea.  Could be fun though.

And you don't seem to think that the United States will suffer any environmental impact when we are a nation of 500 million in 2050. Amazing.

Well, I'll tell you what (sic).  I'll just share our little dialogue on my website -- and yes, I will include your website -- and the debate shall be initiated from there.  I continue to have a great deal of respect for your past work, but I am absolutely dumbfounded by these weak intellectual positions that you are taking on immigration.

No need to reply unless you agree to a debate.

Yours in Freedom,

Bruce W. Cain

Third Email from Peter Werbe

I know this will sound like only an insult, but you're verging, no, past, hysteria. Here, we can settle this. Mark my words. Save this email; note the date. I predict immigration will be another non-issue erected by the Busheviks to throw sand in our eyes to disguise the real issues that you and I both care about. In other words, in just a few weeks or months, it will be as dead as Bush's attack on our Social Security.

Plus, you're becoming Islamaphobic. This is more of the gateway to rightwing nationalism. I'm an anarchist. Fuck all borders; they're set-up to suppress people. Established by men with guns. Sometimes you're on the right side of them, like us; sometimes you're on the wrong side, like our fellow workers from Mexico. Rather than depending on the capitalist rulers to do anything to benefit those of us on either side of the artificial line drawn across the land, we'd all do better to start a mass movement to rid ourselves of rulers entirely. And, if that's not possible, which its chances don't look good now, we're all screwed.

My final reply, too.

Third Email to Peter Werbe

I may have neglected a few issues but certainly have not forgotten the most important issues concerning American workers . . . that is legal American workers.  And the link you gave is the very link that I cited in the last email you had sent.  Been there, done that.

Frankly,. I think we all basically want the same things: decent wages, fresh air, good scotch and better ganja.  But it is also inescapable that the storm clouds are gathering (e.g., Iran, Globalization, Peak Oil, Corporatism) and ANY decisions that we make are going to be tough ones.  But capitulating with illegal immigrant groups -- who are actually just proxies for the Corporate elite -- is definately NOT the answer. 

When I did the "Cartoon Controversy" story in 2005 the proxy reality was exposed.  The organization "New Detroit" basically orchestrated the various minority groups that conspired to silence Bill Mangold for publishing his cartoon on immigration.  And yes, I am aware of how "New Detroit" got established after the '67 Detroit Riots.   It turns out the "New Detroit" is extremely close to "JP Morgan" which is definitely a major proponent of globalization.  But when I requested a list of corporate donors I was refused and I simply don't have the resources to further pursue "New Detroit."  And I have documented at least a half dozen examples of where this Islamic lobbyist group, CAIR, has effectively pressured media companies to fire or reprimand columnists and cartoonists that dared to challenge the prudence of further immigration.  Three members of CAIR, Texas Chapter, were convicted of terrorism last year and are now serving life time sent ences without the possibility of parole.  Where does CAIR get the money to open chapters in all 50 States, Canada and many other countries?  How is it that nearly all gas stations are now owned by Mid Easterners?  Why doesn't the media break through the surface of these questions?

I'm simply trying to sketch, for you, a picture of what is really happening behind this so-called immigration debate. It is a carefully crafted strategy, by large Multinational interests,  to pass the Senate immigration bill in order to open the flood gates of cheap foreign labor into the US market.  If amnesty is granted I predict major, major "blowback" on the part of the American worker before the next Presidential Election in 2008.  Just wait till the ink dries on that Delphi deal.

As far as immigration goes my biggest fear is that this country will become balkanized over the next 10 years and we will begin to see many of the things that are already happening in the 3rd world, in Madrid, in London and in France.  As the working class becomes increasingly marginalized -- by a combination of tech advance, outsourcing, offshoring and insourcing cheap illegal foriegn labor -- the violence will begin to rear it's head.  I'm actually concerned that there may be a second civil war in the United States over the next 10 years.  As the father of two young adults -- 17 and 23 -- that is the last thing that I want to see occur.  Hence my positions.

But to say that I have lost sight of the other issues?  I don't think so.   An excerpt of "New Agenda for American" from my website www.newagecitizen.com is pasted below to emphasize that point.

Don't feel compelled to reply to this email.  You won't go for the debate idea and I don't know exactly how I want to proceed myself.  One thing I'm considering is going on a little speaking tour: "The Case Against Legal and Illegal Immigration".  I do like to hear myself talk and I do like really large audiences.  Could be fun. Could be dead.  Could just sit on my butt instead.

Later,

Bruce W. Cain

New Agenda for America: Overview

In the early 90's Newt Gingrich proposed a conservative elitist agenda that was known as "Contract for America."  Though he was eventually discredited, much of this anti-worker agenda has come to roost.  We see it in the outsourcing of our jobs, the destruction of our pensions and the demise of our environmental standards.  It basically sent the pendulum swinging far to the right where it appears to have got stuck. 

"New Agenda for America" (NAFA) is "New Age Citizen's (NAC's) attempt to pull that pendulum out of the wall, on the right, and keep it suspended somewhere between the middle and the left.  In order to achieve this end it will be imperative to recognize that this can only be achieved if the rest of the world also begins moving along those same lines.  So really, in order to have a "New Agenda for America" we also need to realize that there needs to be a "New Age for the Earth."  The end goal is a utopian world where nations become increasingly self sufficient and tensions between nations become reduced.  The keystone of this agenda is to rejuvenate the freedoms spelled out in the United States Constitution and insure that they are enjoyed by every human throughout the planet.

There are a number of fundamental difference between NAFA's agenda and the imperialist agendas that have plagued civilizations for the last 5 millennium.  First and foremost, we are not going to allow the elite to sacrifice the economic security of our own citizens to attain the elite's goals.  Both bounty and sacrifice will be shared.  Secondly, we will be looking for complete transparency, in our econometrics, so that we don't deceive ourselves, should we find ourselves on the wrong path.

For the last 100 years we have been living off billions of years of accumulated carbon-based energy -- the vestiges of the accumulated corpses of all plant and animal life.  Unfortunately, in this geological blip in time, we have already exhausted at least 25 to 50 percent of that stored energy.  Furthermore, during this same 100 years the Earth's population has grown exponentially and the per capita energy use has increased as well.  It does not take a genius to recognize that this behavior is not sustainable.  And that is why Population Control is at the very top of the agenda.  The United States needs to present itself as a model, to the rest of the world, as a leader in population control and reduction.   If we cannot achieve this goal we might as well "party like its 1999" (remember that old Prince song) and accept our inevitable demise.

Here is an initial set of policy planks that will become part of "New Agenda for America"

(1) Universal Health Care for All American Citizens

(2) A 20-year moratorium on all immigration into the United States

(3) Legal Marijuana for all Adults and Medical Patients

(4) An immediate reversal to the Offshoring and Inshoring of American Jobs

(5) A strict enforcement on issues of Separation of Church and State

(6) An immediate move from so-called Free Trade Agreements to Bilateral Trade agreements

(7) A major R&D project to bring energy independence to the United States and the World through recycling, reuse, ending hyper-consumerism and investing in the development of sustainable energy sources (e.g., solar, photovoltaic, wind, geothermal)

(8) Increasing the "minimum wage" to a "living wage"

 Fourth Email from Peter Werbe

My last messge to you: My prediction: you are going to wind up a rightwinger with this as the entre issue. You really believe that 200 million more people are going to enter this country? They come here for jobs; no jobs; no come.

I don't want to do any more with you on this.

thanks. please respect my wishes.

cainw@comcast.net wrote:

Fourth Email to Peter Werbe

Pete:

Sorry old guy but I'm just calling 'em as I see 'em. You were rude. You don't allow opposing opinions to be fully -- or even partially -- expressed. And frankly, your position on immigration is not even logically based. You also tend to be pretty pompous. Reminds me of someone I know.

Let's just focus on one important aspect of immigration. US Census predicts that US population will grow from 300 to 500 million in the next 45 years -- primarily due to both legal and illegal immigration. While immigration might be 37th on your list it will be first on everyone elses list as the social fabric is ripped to shreds by population stress over the next 45 years..

If nothing else at least answer this one question. Do you really think the United States can absorb an additional 200 million Legal/Illegal Immigrants in the next 45 years without incredible cultural balkanization and severe resource shortages?

Doing nothing, as you seem to be inclined to do in the case of immigration, will turn the US into a 3rd world country. I cannot see passing that legacy on to my children.

Now I am serious about the debate. And, of course, I would be courteous if you are up for it. But if you won't debate the immigration issue publicly a one sided debate will be launched from my website. I think it could be fun. Perhaps Mike Whitty could make the arrangements though I think he is on sebatical in Washington state.. Last thing I did with Whitty was a Drug Policy Debate, between myself and John Conyers, at the U0fD Law School off Jefferson.

From another old guy,

Bruce W. Cain

www.newagecitizen.com

Fifth Email to Peter Werbe

Pete:

OK.  You call me Islamaphobic and hysterical.  Then you say, "final reply."  Of course I did call you intellectually weak, so I guess I don't have a lot to complain about here.

But, can't resist a final clarification of sorts.  I'm going to append a book review to this email.  I suggest you read it.  In a nutshell this writer is trying to answer the question: "How did Europe end up with 20-30 million Mid-Easterners?"  No, this isn't a joke so don't anticipate a punch line in the next paragraph.

Her research basically concludes that:

(1) It was the result of pressure from OPEC, who back in 1972 said "either allow a large influx of Muslim immigrants or you don't get any more of our oil."

(2) This was negotiated with a European group that would eventually become the "European Union."

(3) Further research suggests that this was a concerted effort to destabilize Europe with the ultimate goal of turning it into a Islamic theocracy.

Of course 32 years later we started seeing Islamic terror visit Madrid, London, France, the Netherlands.  Then there was that ridiculous over reaction to a stupid cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb on his head.  Yeah, that was worth rioting over.

She is not a voice in the wilderness, Pete.  You have CIA analysts such as Baer and many, many other credible sources that also have grave concerns with the Muslim Terrorist Fundamentalism (MTF) [Hey, just coined a new acronym].  Many experts believe that it is just a matter of time before we see Islamic Terrorist cells commit new acts of terrorism within the United States.

Check out this link for info on Baer:

Robert Baer, Former CIA Case Officer and Author of "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude."

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/12_baer.html

Of course this book makes me wonder what similar agreements were made between America's elite, and the OPEC/Islamic lobbyists, back in 1972.  Did OPEC twist our arm into allowing increased immigration to Islamic Fundamentalists back in 1972 also?  Does it partially account for the nearly complete ownership of gas stations, cell phone stores, dollar stores and goodness knows what else . . .  by Mid Easterners?  Is there Islamic terrorist money behind the purchase of some/many businesses owned by US Mid Easterners?

Then there is the case of the Mid Eastern lobbyist group CAIR.  3 member imprisoned for life for terrorism and funded by a Syrian terrorist who was involved in the 1993 WTC bombing.  He gave them $500,000 to get their business started.  How many other Mid Easterners are buying up our businesses with proceeds from foreign terrorists?  Why are they (CAIR) able to get referenced within so many news articles, yet no one ever comments on their links to terrorism.  How much terrorist funding is circulating within the Mid Eastern communities within the United States?  Why did AOL/Time Warner allow a Saudi billionaire to buy a significant chunck of their stock the other month?  To what extent is he using his money to prevent unabridged discussion of topics such as Islamic Terrorism or immigration?

Then there was the email death threat that I received after attending the Mid-Eastern/Aftrican trade summit at the Fairlance Club in Dearborn in December 2005.  Yeah, it was probably just coincidence that I got a death threat the next day . . . something that has never happened in all the time I have been on the internet.  And the email account, from which the email was sent, was linked to a company in Singapore.  The account was deleted within 12 hours of sending the email.

Pete, I am not making this stuff up.  And the fact that I ask these questions does not make me Islamaphobic -- it makes me a responsible citizen of this country.  It is part of our responsibility, as US citizens, to ask these questions.  And it could well be a responsibility with very real consequences attached.  And that just makes it even more important to ask the questions.

I think I've made my point here.

You said you were an anarchist.  I think of myself in those terms sometimes.  But I do realize that there must always be some semblance of law . . . at least until we become much more like gods.  I believe Benjamin Franklin once voiced a similar opinion.

Unless you reply, this is the end of the series.  Always up for a good discussion.  Here is that article I mentioned earlier:  In the meantime, try taking off those rose colored glasses for a few minutes.

Yours in Freedom,

Bruce W. Cain

www.newagecitizen.com

Is Muslim immigration to Europe a conspiracy?

http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/the-fallaci-code/12921/

By BRENDAN BERNHARD

Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - 8:00 pm

Oriana Fallaci Photo by Francesco Scavullo

In The Force of Reason, the controversial Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci illuminates one of the central enigmas of our time. How did Europe become home to an estimated 20 million Muslims in a mere three decades?

How did Islam go from being a virtual non-factor to a religion that threatens the preeminence of Christianity on the Continent? How could the most popular name for a baby boy in Brussels possibly be Mohammed? Can it really be true that Muslims plan to build a mosque in London that will hold 40,000 people? That Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are close to having Muslim majorities? How was Europe, which was saved by the U.S. in world wars I and II, and whose Muslim Bosnians were rescued by the U.S. as recently as 1999, transformed into a place in which, as Fallaci puts it, “if I hate Americans I go to Heaven and if I hate Muslims I go to Hell?”

In attempting to answer these questions, the author, who is stricken with cancer and has been hounded by death threats and charges of “Islamophobia” (she is due to go on trial in France this June), has combined history with episodes of riveting firsthand reportage into a form that reads like a real-life conspiracy thriller.

If The Force of Reason sells a lot of copies, which it almost certainly will (800,000 were sold in Italy alone, and the book is in the top 100 on Amazon ), it will be not only because of the heat generated by her topic, but also because Fallaci speaks for the ordinary reader. There is no one she despises more than the intellectual “cicadas,” as she calls them — “You see them every day on television; you read them every day in the newspapers” — who deny they are in the midst of a cultural, political and existential war with Islam, of which terrorism is the flashiest, but ultimately least important component. Nonetheless, to give the reader a taste of what Muslim conquest can be like, in her first chapter, Fallaci provides a brief tour of the religion’s bloodiest imperial episodes and later does an amusing job of debunking some of its more ex aggerated claims to cultural and scientific greatness.

The book is also animated by a world-class journalist’s dismay that she could have missed the story of her lifetime for as long as she did. In the 1960s and ’70s, when she was a Vietnam War correspondent and a legendarily ferocious interviewer going mano a mano with the likes of Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat, Fallaci was simply too preoccupied with the events of the moment to notice that an entirely different narrative was rapidly taking shape — namely, the transformation of the West. There were clues, certainly. As when, in 1972, she interviewed the Palestinian terrorist George Habash, who told her (while a bodyguard aimed a submachine gun at her head) that the Palestinian problem was about far more than Israel. The Arab goal, Habash declared, was to wage war “against Europe and Americ a” and to ensure that henceforth “there would be no peace for the West.” The Arabs, he informed her, would “advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.”

Fallaci thought he was referring simply to terrorism. Only later did she realize that he “also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country from its citizens … In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism.” It is a low-level but deadly war that extends across the planet, as any newspaper reader can see.

Fallaci is not the first person to ponder the rapidity of the ongoing Muslim transformation of Europe. As the English travel writer Jonathan Raban wrote in Arabia: A Journey Through the Labyrinth (1979), in the mid-1970s Arabs seemed to arrive in London almost overnight. “One day Arabs were a remote people … camping out in tents with camels … the next, they were neighbors.” On the streets of West London appeared black-clad women adorned with beaked masks that made them look “like hooded falcons.” Dressed for the desert (and walking precisely four steps ahead of the women), Arab men bestrode the sidewalks “like a crew of escaped film extras, their headdresses aswirl on the wind of exhaust fumes.”

Writers far better acquainted with the Muslim world than Raban have been equally perplexed. In 1995, the late American novelist Paul Bowles, a longtime resident of Tangier, told me that he could not understand why the French had allowed millions of North African Muslims into their country. Bowles had chosen to live among Muslims for most of his life, yet he obviously considered it highly unlikely that so many of them could be successfully integrated into a modern, secular European state.

Perhaps Bowles would have been interested in this passage from Fallaci’s book: “In 1974 [Algerian President] Houari Boumedienne, the man who ousted Ben Bella three years after Algerian independence, spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations. And without circumlocutions he said: ‘One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.’”

Such a bald statement of purpose by a nation’s president before an international forum seems incredible. Yet even in British journalist Adam LeBor’s A Heart Turned East (1997), a work of profound, almost supine sympathy for the plight of Muslim immigrants in the West, a London-based mullah is quoted as saying, “We cannot conquer these people with tanks and troops, so we have got to overcome them by force of numbers.” In fact, such remarks are commonplace. Just this week, Mullah Krekar, a Muslim supremacist living in Oslo, informed the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that Muslims would change Norway, not the other way around. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes,” he said. “By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim.”

In other words, Europe will be conquered by being turned into “Eurabia,” which is what Fallaci believes it is well on the way to becoming. Leaning heavily on the researches of Bat Ye’or, author of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Fallaci recounts in fascinating detail the actual origin of the word “Eurabia,” which has now entered the popular lexicon. Its first known use, it turns out, was in the mid-1970s, when a journal of that name was printed in Paris (naturally), written in French (naturally), and edited by one Lucien Bitterlin, then president of the Association of Franco-Arab Solidarity and currently the Chairman of the French-Syrian Friendship Association. Eurabia (price, five francs) was jointly published by Middle East International (London), France-Pays Arabes (Paris), the Groupe d’Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva) and the European Coordinating Committee of the Associations for Frien dship with the Arab World, which Fallaci describes as an arm of what was then the European Economic Community, now the European Union. These entities, Fallaci says, not mincing her words, were the official perpetrators “of the biggest conspiracy that modern history has created,” and Eurabia was their house organ.

Briefly put, the alleged plot was an arrangement between European and Arab governments according to which the Europeans, still reeling from the first acts of PLO terrorism and eager for precious Arabian oil made significantly more precious by the 1973 OPEC crisis, agreed to accept Arab “manpower” (i.e., immigrants) along with the oil. They also agreed to disseminate propaganda about the glories of Islamic civilization, provide Arab states with weaponry, side with them against Israel and generally toe the Arab line on all matters political and cultural. Hundreds of meetings and seminars were held as part of the “Euro-Arab Dialogue,” and all, according to the author, were marked by European acquiescence to Arab requests. Fallaci recounts a 1977 seminar in Venice, attended by dele gates from 10 Arab nations and eight European ones, concluding with a unanimous resolution calling for “the diffusion of the Arabic language” and affirming “the superiority of Arab culture.”

While the Arabs demanded that Europeans respect the religious, political and human rights of Arabs in the West, not a peep came from the Europeans about the absence of freedom in the Arab world, not to mention the abhorrent treatment of women and other minorities in countries like Saudi Arabia. No demand was made that Muslims should learn about the glories of western civilization as Europeans were and are expected to learn about the greatness of Islamic civilization. In other words, according to Fallaci, a substantial portion of Europe’s cultural and political independence was sold off by a coalition of ex-communists and socialist politicians. Are we surprised? Fallaci isn’t. In 1979, she notes, “the Italian or rather European Left had fallen in love with Khomeini just as now it has fallen in love with Bin L aden and Saddam Hussein and Arafat.”

Considerably less intemperate than her last book on the topic of radical Islam, the volcanically angry The Rage and the Pride, The Force of Reason is despairing, but often surprisingly funny. (“The rage and the pride have married and produced a sturdy son: the disdain,” she writes with characteristic wit.) And, Fallaci being Fallaci, it is occasionally over the top and will no doubt be deeply offensive to many, particularly when, in a postscript the book might have been better off without, she claims that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Nonetheless, the voice and warmth and humor of the author light up its pages, particularly when she takes a leaf out of Saul Bellow’s Herzog by firing off impassioned letters to the famous both living and dead. She is savage about the Left, the “Peace” movement (war is a fundamental, if regrettable, condition of life, she states), the Catholic Church, the media and, of course, Isl am itself, which she considers theological totalitarianism and a deadly threat to the world. She is much more optimistic about America than Europe, citing the bravery of New Yorkers who celebrated New Year’s Eve in Times Square despite widely publicized terrorism threats, but here one feels that she is clutching at straws. Though Fallaci now lives in New York, little amity has been extended to her by her peers since the post-9/11 publication of The Rage and the Pride, and she remains almost as much of a media pariah here as she does in Europe. The major difference is that we’re not putting her on trial.

As that Norwegian Mullah told Aftenposten, “Our way of thinking … will prove more powerful than yours.” One hopes he’s wrong, but if he is, it will be ordinary Americans and Europeans, including courageous Arab-Americans like L.A. resident Wafa Sultan and the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali (two women openly challenging Islamist supremacism), who prove him so, and not our intellectual classes (artists, pundits, filmmakers, actors, writers …). Many of the latter, consumed by Bush-hatred and cultural self-loathing, are perilously close to becoming today’s equivalent of the great Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun, who so hated the British Empire that he sided with the Nazis in World War II, to his everlasting shame. The Force of Reason, at the very least, is a welcome and necessary antidote to the prevailing intellectual atmosphere.

Staff writer Brendan Bernhard is the author of White Muslim: From L.A. to New York to Jihad, a study of converts to Islam in the West (Melville House).