Doc's Talk

Why does the ailing west aid its Islamist enemies?

2012-01-31T06:41:00.001+02:00

The Australian

Was there ever a more perverse and self-destructive society than the contemporary West? In its attitude to the Middle East and the Islamic world, it appears to suffer from the political equivalent of auto-immune disease: turning on its allies while embracing its enemies.

One year ago, the US and Britain helped street protesters to overthrow president Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Hailing the revolutionary tumult of the "Arab Spring" as the equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West went on to help armed Libyan rebels remove president Muammar Gaddafi by military force. This regional strategy was promoted even though it was obvious from the start that the people who were best organised to take advantage of any elections in the Arab world were Islamists of one stripe or another - religious extremists all, united by their hostility to the West.

And so it has proved. The Islamists are coming to power in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia, and in turn are being increasingly empowered elsewhere. In Libya, sickening atrocities, including the torture and killing of Gaddafi himself by a lynch mob, have been carried out by those brought to power with the assistance of British and US bombing raids.

Yet Western politicians are even now hymning the brave new dawn of democracy throughout the Muslim world. British Foreign Secretary William Hague conceded earlier this month that the regional violence and votes for Islamism were a "setback", but he insisted: "Greater freedom and democracy in the Middle East is an idea whose time has come."

And the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organisation now in the ascendancy, which uses violence and political manipulation to advance its aim of world domination for Islam, is suddenly being hailed by Western leaders as the acme of moderation.

Yet in helping to get rid of Mubarak and Gaddafi, Britain and the US have managed the signal feat of ousting oppressive regimes that were at least helpful to the West, and replacing them with oppressive regimes that are acutely hostile to the West.

One immediate result is that the Sinai desert, neutralised as a trouble spot ever since Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979, has now become an acute threat to Israel's southern border. Hamas is now building arms-manufacturing facilities in Sinai, including those for building rockets, and other Islamic extremists are piling in.

Arms are being smuggled from Egypt into Gaza without interruption. Oh, and Libyan weapons, including Russian-made anti-plane rockets, are now making their way into the Gaza Strip. Well done, Britain and America!

And then there's Iran. Ever since the Islamic revolution in 1979, when the ayatollahs declared war on the West, Iran has been involved in many acts of terrorism against the US and Western interests. Tehran regularly threatens to wipe Israel off the map, and is now racing to develop nuclear weapons to realise its infernal goals.

Yet despite all this, the West has refused to fight back or even to acknowledge the Iranian war against the West, with President Barack Obama advertising US weakness by extending his hand in friendship to the regime.

Obama's catastrophic strategy has given Iran the one thing it needed above all else: time to bring its nuclear weapons program to fruition.

Only now, with the hands on the doomsday clock pointing to midnight, have Britain, the US and Europe finally imposed tough sanctions against Iran. But what use are these when they will almost certainly be busted by Russia and China?

Sanctions are supposed to force Iran to ‘come to its senses’ and stop its nuclear energy program from producing weapons. But the Tehran regime is dominated by fanatics who believe the Shia messiah, the Mahdi, will return to earth either as result of or to bring about the apocalyptic end of days.

That is why the argument that "They wouldn't dare launch a nuclear attack because they know half of Iran would be obliterated as a result" is fatuous. They would be happy if this were to occur.

But despite all this, Western leaders still behave as if the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the dominant issue in the Arab world, and that the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land is the dominant issue in the Arab-Israel conflict.

Barely a week goes by without Western politicians or the media blaming "Israeli intransigence" in general, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, for blocking the Israel-Palestinian peace process.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says time is running out for the two-state solution to the conflict because of "facts on the ground" - code for the Israeli settlements.

His deputy, Nick Clegg, went further, claiming the "illegal" settlement-building amounted to "an act of deliberate vandalism" that jeopardised a peaceful two-state solution.

Yet this was to ignore the fact it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse to negotiate without preconditions. It ignores the fact that Israel has twice offered the Palestinians a state on most of the West Bank, to which the Palestinians have merely responded by terrorist campaigns.

And it ignores the absolutely fundamental fact that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has said the Palestinians will never accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

So why does the West fail to see what is under its nose? There are several reasons, including prejudice, ideology, strategic short-sightedness and simple funk.

But the deeper reason is surely the Western belief that the world is basically governed by rationality. So all conflicts arise from grievances, and all parties can be persuaded to settle a quarrel in their own interests.

Refracting everything in the world through the prism of its unshakeable faith in universal reason, the West is incapable of recognising or understanding religious fanaticism, and insists instead on treating the fanatic as a rational actor.

The ghastly irony is that in making a fetish of reason, the West is behaving irrationally by refusing to acknowledge the mortal threat posed to its own existence by the Islamic world.

In other words, this could be the point in history at which the West simply disappears up its own arrogant backside.

Dr. Sowell on the occupiers

2012-01-31T06:38:00.002+02:00

Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective. He is currently a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Sowell was born in North Carolina, but grew up in Harlem, New York City. He dropped out of high school, and served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. He had received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1958 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his doctorate degree in economics from the University of Chicago. Dr. Sowell has served on the faculties of several universities, including Cornell and University of California, Los Angeles, and worked for "think tanks" such as the Urban Institute. Since 1980 he has worked at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of more than 30 books.
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The following is written by Dr. Sowell, and I quote:

"The current Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration to date of what President Barack Obama's America looks like. It is an America where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and incompetent rule. It is an America where those who have sacrificed nothing pillage and destroy the lives of those who have sacrificed greatly.
"It is an America where history is rewritten to honor dictators, murderers and thieves. It is an America where violence, racism, hatred, class warfare and murder are all promoted as acceptable means of overturning the American civil society. "It is an America where humans have been degraded to the level of animals: defecating in public, having sex in public, devoid of basic hygiene. It is an America where the basic tenets of a civil society, including faith, family, a free press and individual rights, have been rejected. It is an America where our founding documents have been shredded and, with them, every person's guaranteed liberties.

"It is an America where, ultimately, great suffering will come to the American people, but the rulers like Obama, Michelle Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, liberal college professors, union bosses and other loyal liberal/Communist Party members will live in opulent splendor.

"It is the America that Obama and the Democratic Party have created with the willing assistance of the American media, Hollywood, unions, universities, the Communist Party of America, the Black Panthers and numerous anti-American foreign entities. "Barack Obama has brought more destruction upon this country in four years than any other event in the history of our nation, but it is just the beginning of what he and his comrades are capable of.

"The Occupy Wall Street movement is just another step in their plan for the annihilation of America. "Socialism, in general, has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.""
Thomas Sowell

We Must Lead From The Front

2012-01-31T06:35:00.002+02:00

Speech as Prepared to Be Given

The Orthodox Union Presidential Forum
The Boca Raton Synagogue

The president says "the threat of war is receding" but he’s wrong. The war is on, and its front lines are advancing towards us and our allies, above all toward Israel.

We're facing a global alliance that includes Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and of course Cuba. They are outspoken in their desire to weaken us and drive us out of their regions. Some of them--Iran, and the radical Islamists whose rise to power has been facilitated by this president--speak eagerly of destroying us, and our allies, especially Israel.

We have no strategy to deal with this gathering storm. Indeed, our leaders act as if things are getting better every day. President Obama seems to believe that sanctions on Iran will compel the fanatical rulers in Tehran to abandon their nuclear weapons program, fearing they will lose power if our sanctions continue and intensify. Has he considered the case of North Korea? Fanatical rulers do not care if their people go hungry. Indeed they do not care about their people at all. If their people complain, they go to prison or to the torturer or the hangman. And then they laugh at us, and organize thousands of people to chant "Death to America!"

What does President Obama think they mean? It certainly doesn't mean "yes, America, you are right, let's reason together."

It means, we're going to keep killing your men and women wherever we can, from Iraq to Afghanistan. And why not? We have yet to make them pay a price for the slaughter.

Indeed, our political leaders never talk about that. They talk about nukes, and nukes alone, as if that were the only issue. But it isn't.

The Iranians and their creatures throughout the Middle East and deep into our hemisphere are killing and wounding Americans every day. And even as the president preens himself for sanctions that he reluctantly accepted when Congress demanded them, and which he delays whenever he can, Hezbollah is training and indoctrinating terrorists to our south, Iran and its allies are assembling weapons--including drones and missiles--in Venezuela, and a steady flow of Iranian military and intelligence personnel flows into hostile Latin nations on direct flights from Tehran.

A couple of weeks ago Univision presented an excellent documentary on “The Iranian Threat,” which told one frightening story after another about Iranian-Venezuelan-Cuban plans to attack the United States. The most famous of these was the plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Washington, but another one—a two-step operation for a cyber attack, and then a physical assault, against American targets—precipitated the expulsion of Venezuela's consul general in Miami.

That’s a rare event, and it shows the gravity of the crisis we face. That global network weakens us in many ways, and threatens our security very directly. That network enables Iran and Syria to mitigate many of our sanctions. Money flows east, to Chinese banks, as the Europeans join us in blocking transactions with the Iranian Central Bank. Money gets laundered through Russia and Latin America. Weapons move from Russia to Venezuela, and then to Iran and Syria, enabling the Russians to pretend they are not arming the Middle Eastern fanatics.

And yet the president says the tide of war is receding.

Any concerned American looking at the facts must conclude that the tide of war is swelling. Iran has been at war with us since 1979, and is planning to escalate. That is why the global anti-American alliance was created. Shi'ite mosques in Venezuela are not the reflection of the religious convictions of the Venezuelan people; they are there so that Iranian agents can plan attacks against America.

When President Ahmadinejad recently toured the capitals of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Ecuador, it was not a form of cultural diplomacy; it was primarily to increase the tempo of preparations for the war against America.

It is long past time for us to respond, but instead our president declares imminent victory.

We must respond, and even the Washington Post knows what is at stake: if you want an end to the Iranian nuclear weapons program, the Post's editorialists recently wrote, you have to bring down the regime in Tehran. This regime is not going to give up the dream of becoming a nuclear power. And everyone here knows what the Iranian leaders intend to do with the atomic bombs: they intend to remove Israel from the map, and then bring their jihad to the United States.

Some say that this means we have to launch a military attack against Iran. I don't believe that. I think most Iranian people want to be free of their evil regime, and millions of them have taken to the streets, in the face of security forces all too happy to kill them, to show their contempt for their leaders. It's a revolutionary force, and we should support it.

We defeated the Soviet Union without using military means. We supported the Soviet dissidents and refuseniks, and the Soviet regime collapsed. I believe we can do the same thing in Iran.

Supporting those who fight for freedom in Iran is both strategically smart and morally just, and any president with moral and strategic vision would do it.

But we don't. On the contrary, at the crucial moment a couple of years ago, President Obama reached out to the regime, not to the Iranian people. That was a shameful moment, and the shame continues. Neither the president nor the secretary of state, indeed not a single Administration official, has said "the regime must go." That language was reserved for long-time American friends like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Even in Syria, an enemy, the president reluctantly called for a new government only after the slaughter had reached such a level that even the Arab League said change seemed necessary.

Paradoxically, President Obama’s constant call for open negotiations with Iran only convinces them that they can do anything they wish—even kill Americans, or take them hostage, or frame them for espionage, as they have just done with a young Marine, and we will do nothing to threaten their rule. So our failure to move against the regime itself actually makes military conflict more likely.

What would a serious president do about Iran? What would I do?

I would do six things right away:

1. First and foremost, publicly embrace the opposition, and call for regime change. We need a president and a secretary of state with the political courage to say, "Khamenei and Ahmadinejad must go. The Iranian people must freely choose their form of government and freely choose their leaders."

2. Publicly condemn the regime's repression, the ghastly human rights violations, the systematic misogyny, the censorship of press, internet, access to international broadcasting (including VOA, Farda, etc.).

We need a president who will deliver the contemporary equivalent of President Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech, which inspired a generation of Soviet dissidents and freedom fighters. And we need a president with the political courage to take action against the Iranian regime.

For example, we should take action to end the jamming of our (and other free countries') broadcasts. Meanwhile, we should deny Iran the ability to broadcast to the United States. A president who really understood the gravity of the crisis would shut down Press TV on the basis of reciprocity, just as the British Government has.

3. We must publicly support freedom for Iranian workers, and then work with international trade union organizations to build a strike fund, just as we did for the Solidarity trade union in Poland in the last years of the Cold War.

4. We must help members of the opposition to safely communicate with one another. During the Cold War, we provided fax machines to Solidarity and Soviet dissidents; today the equivalent technologies include anti-filtering software built into cell phones and computers. They may also include safe portals for Iranians to enter...these technologies will change constantly; we need to work with the smartest techies to stay ahead of the Iranian/Chinese censors and listeners.

5. We have to talk to the dissident leaders. This is tricky. The Green Movement insists that they have NO spokesmen or representatives outside the country. We need to establish reliable channels into Iran. It is best to do this without public attention, obviously, but it can be done.

6. We need a campaign of public support for Iran’s political prisoners. We must identify them individually, by name. American diplomats attending international meetings and conferences should have a list of political prisoners, and call for their release and humane treatment.

Even the Nazis found it more difficult to kill prisoners who were publicly named. It's easier to kill those who are anonymous, who don't receive mail, who aren't publicly supported. Once again, our strategic and moral imperatives coincide. We only lack a president with the courage to do what is right and necessary.

I want to close with a reiteration of what I said at the debate; not only does our President not have the courage to do what is right and necessary, in his efforts to appease our enemies he actually has sided with them against our allies.

Our policy in Central and South America under this administration has been abysmal. Take Honduras as an example. When the country’s legislature and judiciary exercised their constitutional right to protect the integrity of their democracy, President Obama said that their efforts were “not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras.” This is after Zelaya, an ally of Chavez and outspoken critic of America, tried to abrogate its constitution and change it to seek re-election beyond his four-year term.

Instead of standing behind the parliament we sided with the despots in region who have been aligned with Iran. This administration has had a consistent policy of siding with the leftists and appeasing those who threaten our security. We haven’t stood up for our friends like Colombia, we haven’t undertaken the effort necessary to build the relational capital and trust necessary to develop a regional economic alignment to compete with the European Union. The EU understands in a global economy the only way to compete it to build economic alliances, why has this escaped our leadership?

I am committed to one of my first trips abroad as President to be to Central and South America, and I am committed to visiting it repeatedly. With the threat of radical Islam growing in the region, the parallels with the Cold War are even clearer. And with this radical ideology comes a new virulent strain of anti-Semitism that is taking hold in our hemisphere. We need a President who understand this threat and takes it seriously.

In closing, instead of leading the forces of democracy, this president lags behind the course of events. "Leading from behind"; waiting for others to make the hard choices and take the hard actions, and then jumping on board. We see this in the Middle East. We see this in Central and South America.

I reject this. I don't think we should wait until Israel is attacked, or until Israel, out of desperation and despair that the United States will not act, moves against Iran. We can’t with until a missile is placed in Venezuela that can reach our soil and then cry fowl.

We can’t wait for our friends to do the hard things, when we are better placed, have greater power, and have better options.

I will lead from the front, which is America's mission.

New York Times Scandalized as NYPD is Trained on Muslim Violence

2012-01-30T15:30:00.001+02:00

Gregory D. Lee

This week, the New York Times breathlessly reported in its New York Region section that the New York Police Department had committed a politically incorrect felony by using a film, The Third Jihad, to train its officers on the hidden agenda of many Muslims residing in the U.S. That hidden agenda is the destruction of the United States.

Apparently, the Times doesn’t realize that some Muslims in and out of this country want to harm New Yorkers and other Americans. The article says about the film: “Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House.
“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. … This is the war you don’t know about.”

Apparently the reporter at the Times didn’t know about it either. What is apparent is that the NYPD felt it was important to educate its officers and to give them insight into the goals of some radical Muslims residing in this country. Obviously, the NYT lacks insight because it’s blinded by political correctness.

Never mind that the FBI and NYPD have uncovered plots by radical Muslims to kill soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, blow up Times Square, kill soldiers at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas, shoot up the Pentagon and Marine Corps museum in Virginia, attack soldiers at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, set off a bomb at Ft. Hood, blow up spectators at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon, and attack several sites in Tampa, Florida. These are examples of the scores of incidents perpetrated by immigrant and native-born Muslims living in this country.

The Times headline described the film as “a dark film on U.S. Muslims,” and reported that the film has been “shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department.” Can you imagine a big city police department training its officers about the perpetrators of actual and potential future terrorist attacks?

The Times reporter gleefully wrote that once “the news broke” last January that the NYPD had shown the film to its officers, a “top” police official originally denied it. However, the Times was on the case to uncover the extent of the training, and find out how many other politically incorrect conspirators it could identify. An NYPD officer said the department received the DVD documentary from the Department of Homeland Security. When the Times reporter interrogated an unnamed DHS spokesman, the official said a DHS “contractor” might have provided it because the documentary is not part of its curriculum.

Under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, the relentless Times reporter discovered to his horror that 1,489 officers had viewed the film, and not just a “couple of times” by mistake, as originally stated by a unnamed NYPD official. The reporter makes it seem that anyone who views the film will catch a fatal disease so it must be reported.

Never once in the article was the accuracy of the film questioned.

Instead of reporting what radical Muslims say or write about plotting to destroy American and Western culture, the newspaper chooses to attack the NYPD, which is doing its best to prevent terrorism within the city limits.

According to The New York Times, being politically incorrect is a far greater crime than any crime a Muslim has committed or is plotting to commit.

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Gregory D. Lee is a retired Supervisory Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the author of three criminal justice textbooks. While on DEA diplomatic assignment in Pakistan, he was involved in the investigation of several notable terrorism events and arrests. He recently retired after more than 39 years of active and reserve service from the U.S. Army Reserve as a Chief Warrant Officer Five Special Agent for the Criminal Investigation Division Command, better known as CID. In 2011 he completed a combat tour of duty in Afghanistan while on special assignment to the Special Operations Command Europe. His articles also appear at North Star Writers Group. Contact him at info@gregorydlee.com.

Weaponizing the Passenger Plane

2012-01-30T15:15:00.002+02:00

Sultan Knish

On September 11 the passenger jet as a weapon came crashing into the consciousness of the citizens of the country which had made international air travel viable. Muslim terrorists had viewed planes in terms of the passengers and hijacked planes to take people hostage. But at the beginning of the millennium it was no longer the people that mattered, only the use of the plane as a makeshift missile aimed at the institutions and infrastructure of the free world.

This change of tactics was a game changer because it meant the potential casualties of airplane hijackings were no longer limited to the passengers in the air who were now flying around in ICBM's with much less explosive payload, but enough to take down skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. Every passenger was no longer just a risk to other passengers, but a risk to everyone in the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower or any other clumping of people in target areas that could be hit. Jet engine aircraft had passed from military to civilian applications, but the military applications of high speed transportation now returned to dominate the civilian tourism and travel industry that had sprung up and become widely available at the cost of jet travel went down.

The most obvious military application of high speed travel is troop transportation and the Muslim world had been using the jet plane for transporting millions of settlers to Western countries. To most citizens of the free world, the military applications of this wave of settlement were not obvious. They would not become obvious until the settlers had given birth to second and third generations which became demographic and domestic terrorist threats. And even then it would remain mostly undiscussed.

With the settlement project going full swing, transforming the vehicles of Muslim demographic conquest into flying missiles was dangerous, but the use of domestic flights sidelined much of the security and the discussions that would have followed had the 9/11 hijackers hijacked flights from outside the country. The use of domestic flights by Muslim terrorists who had spent extensive time in America and Europe revealed just how comfortable the Jihad had become operating on infidel soil.

Muslim enclaves in America and Europe made it easier for terrorists entering the United States to operate and for the rise of native born Muslim terrorists. At a time when Bin Laden's role had declined, the man who eclipsed him briefly even before his death and played a role in a series of attacks against the United States was Anwar Al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, whose termination by drone is still agonized over in some liberal and libertarian circles.

September 11 went beyond previous airline hijackings which had managed to make air travel more dangerous, but not permanently so. Those hijackings had temporarily hijacked the infrastructure of air travel, but the weaponization of passenger aircraft did so permanently. The damage extended beyond international air travel and border security, it reached deep into the infrastructure of domestic air travel which Americans had come to rely on to transverse a large nation with a handicapped rail system.

The rise of Muslim populations in the West made Islamic terrorism into a domestic problem in societies under a legal and cultural mandate to eliminate any negative or discriminatory attitudes toward minorities. That attitude made profiling too dangerous a topic to discuss openly, just as the specific sources of terrorism could not be discussed except in terms of American foreign policy. The only way for those societies to cope was with broad range laws and tactics that applied to everyone.

Nanny state nations had been drifting into police states through the inevitable logic of centralized bureaucracy and urban malaise. There was a growing number of regulations that had to be enforced and immigration, economic uncertainty and industrial decline created crime problems that made entire portions of world capitols uninhabitable without increasingly systematic police tactics.

The creeping militarization and federalization of American law enforcement had kept pace with the rise of crime syndicates, rapid transportation, deadlier weapons and regulatory overreach. As civil liberties monitoring increased, the laws became broader and law enforcement discretion vanished. Combined with doses of sociology and psychology, law enforcement no longer enforced laws, it enforced attitudes. Statistical analysis allowed for broad targeting of neighborhoods and cities with crackdowns meant to change the attitudes of residents on quality of life offenses.

While this was considered a triumph for conservative politicians, it meant that law enforcement had become the billy club of the nanny state. Laws mattered less than nudging, fining and terrorizing the residents into maintaining the right attitude toward their neighborhood and their city. Systematic procedures developed by experts to be carried out by anyone with the right training were the future of law enforcement. The police officer with instincts and a feel for the neighborhood was on the way out. The future was the TSA.

That this process had worked well enough in urban areas said less about its effectiveness and more about the dysfunctional cities created by half a century of liberal regulationism. In the wake of the programs the cities had not become any better, the process of managing their residents however had vastly improved. But all the management really did was keep the lid on while the subsidies were poured in. And the most vital element was still the old fashioned cop who understood the area, while his captain was hard at work meeting with community leaders.

The TSA emerged out of this environment as another reflexive denial of the problem and applied the same solution. Broad range security procedures that applied to everyone, but this time they were overseen by people who would not have been accepted to work in any police force in the country. This was the age of the mall cop set up as the first line of national defense with the power to steal, grope and single out passengers for the most trivial of reasons. The one thing that the mall cops of the TSA were not allowed to do was profile terrorists.

Strip searching children was fine, alienating Muslims was not. Children after all were not likely to become offended and blow up buildings. Muslims were and the entire purpose of the TSA was to apply broad range security procedures that did not single out or offend Muslims.

Like most mall cops, the real purpose of the TSA was to provide the perception of security, rather than the reality. The TSA was never really meant to stop an actual terrorist and it never has. All it could hope to do was discourage them. Its real goals however were to restore confidence in air travel and reshape public attitudes to make flyers easier to manage.

The latter seems to miss the point of the crisis, but it actually is the point. Leaders who don't know how to cope with a crisis respond by limiting the freedom of action of those under them. Generals, CEO's or directors all follow the same pattern of ensuring compliance in subordinates to make the system more manageable and remove as many possible sources of chaos from the system.

Islamic terrorism has shut down the decision making process of the modern Western state by attacking their core assumptions about the future being a place of open borders, multicultural populations and international consensus. Instead rapid air travel is a threat, multicultural cities are becoming No Go Zones and the future is heading toward a clash of civilizations.

The assumptions on which they built their vision of the future are crumbling under them creating the kind of situation where good leaders reevaluate and admit their mistakes while bad leaders try to keep pushing forward in the hopes that this is only a temporary problem. A passing phase that can be resolved by reaching out to the Muslim world, encouraging their reforms and stabilizing their conflicts. Any remaining tensions would be dealt with the time honored methods of liberals, fighting discrimination and promoting positive role models, while covering up the mess by giving law enforcement broad powers over everyone.

A single major successful terrorist attack that gets by the TSA will result in major cosmetic changes for the agency, but no substantial ones. And the lack of meaningful debate over the nature of the problem that it exists to solve means that we are stuck in a debate between broad range security measures and hard line libertarians, both of whom deny that there even is a war on terror. The one thing to come out of a debate between Eric Holder and Ron Paul is that neither believes that Islamic terrorism is a problem, which means that neither of them has anything to say about a solution.

The war against us has been made possible by a leadership that is unable to identify the problem, let alone formulate a meaningful response to it. The weaponization of the passenger plane represented one aspect of how the enemy undermined and exploited our assumptions. Everything that has happened since then has been more of the same.

The jet plane brought the world closer within reach, without considering the consequences of what that growing proximity would mean.The airline hijackings, mass migration and deployment of hijacked aircraft to cause mass destruction all shifted the balance of power over global transportation away from the builder societies of the free world and toward the destroyer societies of the Muslim world.

The Revenants

2012-01-30T15:11:00.001+02:00

Nurit Greenger

The definition of the word revenant is: a person who returns after a lengthy absence, or someone who has returned from the dead.

The origin of the word revenant is French, from present participle of revenir, meaning to return. (Participle is a word formed from a verb and used as an adjective or a noun.)

The word revenant was first known to have been used in 1818.

The Jewish Nation is a revenant nation.

The Jews have returned to the Land of Israel, after lengthy absence, several times, thus the name revenant is the most appropriate for any Jew living in the land of Israel.

The Babylonian empire, under the ruling of Nebuchadnezzar II, conquered and occupied the Kingdom of Judea between 597-586 BC. In 586 BC, the Babylonian army, under the commandment of Nebuchadnezzar, destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem and exiled the Jews to Babylon, mostly, the middle class and above Jewish population. The exiled Jews in Babylon, the first known Diaspora, never lost their affinity for Jerusalem and their faith. According to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, in 538 BC, approximately seven decades after they were expelled from their Homeland, the Jews in Babylon were allowed to return to the Land of Israel. Cyrus the Great, the ruler of the Persian Empire then, issued the Cyrus's declaration, the decree that granted the Jews the right to worship their God in Jerusalem, in some form of an autonomy. Around 50,000 Jews made the first – Aliyah - revenir, to the Land of Israel, and most of the exiled Jews chose to remain in Babylon. During the next 110 years to follow, since the decree of Cyrus the Great, Jewish deportees returned to Judea- returned to Zion. These Jews were the first Jewish revenants.

These Jewish revenants re-established the city of Jerusalem and rebuilt the Second Temple at the original site of King Solomon's First Temple, which had remained a devastated heap during the approximately 70 years of exile. Work resumed at approximately 521 BCE, under the Persian King Darius (Ezra 5) and was completed during the sixth year of his reign in 518/517 BCE. Around 19 BCE, Harod the Great renovated and expanded the Second Temple.

On 70 CE, under Titus, the Romans conquered and destroyed Jerusalem, and burned the Second Temple.

When the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. the second exile of Jews from Judea began. The Jewish people were soon to be scattered throughout the earth knows to be the Diaspora. For the next 2000 years the Jews would have no authority in their land their God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However during most of the 2000 years Second Exile there have always been some Jews living in the Land of Israel, mostly in Jerusalem. Although most of the Jewish nation was in exile from its land, the Jews in the Diaspora never forget their Jerusalem.

Aliyah- revenir of Jewish revenants is a basic tenet of the Zionism ideology. The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile. Sizable scale of Jewish immigration to Eretz Israel and later the State of Israel began in 1882. Aliyah- revenir of Jewish revenants to the State of Israel still takes place today when Jews arrive to love in the State of Israel from all four corners of the world.

In 1948 the nascent Jewish state, comprised of 600,000 revenants, had to fight for its survival when, on May 15, one day after the creation of the State of Israel, the Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon invaded the new Jewish state. Israel won the war but lost a portion of its land to the Arabs. The Gaza strip and Sinai remained under Egypt's control and Judea and Samaria and a part of Jerusalem – the old city – fell into the hands of Transjordan. For nineteen years Israel was missing several of her limbs, which, legally and according to International law, belong to the Jewish State.

In 1967 Israel was compelled to defend itself again from Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The result of the Six Day War was that Israel gained her land back, the land the Arabs were holding to, illegally for two decades.

Jewish revenants began settling their newly gained land in Judea and Samaria and Gaza. While the State of Israel did the unthinkable and made Gaza Judenrein, a growing number of Jewish revenants are inhabiting Judea and Samaria.

Unfortunately, the Arabs are still harboring one goal in mind, which is to capture the State of Israel and destroy it. Along this ominous goal, they have been demonizing and delegitimizing the state of Israel in any method possible. The Arabs' stealth jihad against Jews gained much support from the Jewish state herself. The Jewish revenants, living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, are known to be called by Israelis and Arabs alike "settlers," which is a pejorative and dismissing term. These pioneers, who elected to inhabit the Jewish land that did not see a Jewish inhabitant for over 2000 years, are also called by the enemies of the Jews and the State of Israel, who want to see her fall, by other derogative names such as "racists," "occupiers," "bigots" and the like.

There are two sides to every story. The world chose to hear and narrate only one side of this story and simply refuses to acknowledge the other side of the story. This is therefore, the other side.

The derogative word "settler" has 'occupation' connotation attached to it. Since the French word 'revenir', means to come back after a long time to something that belongs to you, these revenants did just that, returned, after a lengthy absence, to their Biblical land of Judea and Samaria, which is a part and parcel of the Jewish state, Israel. Places which are mentioned in the Bible, such as Shilo, Israel's first Capital in the Promised Land after fleeing Egypt, and where the tabernacle first stood, are resurrected and built by Jewish revenants-pioneers. Ancient Biblical names come alive again.

The Jewish people's Land is Israel. This land was given to Abraham in an unshakeable covenant by God over 3,000 years ago. But not only according to God this land belongs to the Jews. This land was finally, legally and unanimously, returned to the Jews by the world's nations in 1922.

Since the Jewish revenants began heading for the hills of Judea and Samaria, the State of Israel has been in a state of a confusion mode.

The Israelis signed the Oslo Accords and Camp David with terrorists who had no inclination to keep and abide by any of the terms of those agreements; the Israelis disengaged from Gaza and parts of Judea and Samaria and gave the Arabs reasons to demand they disengage from more parts of the Jewish land. These political moves had one goal in the mind of the Jews only, which is achieving peace under false pretence. Every time a so called "peace treaty" agreement was signed, Israel's safety was reduced. It appears that Israel is forever seeking world's approval, without finally realizing that she does not need any approval. God gave His approval to the Jews. What Israel needs is people's fortitude, the Israeli leadership recognition of what is at stake through their judgment and decision making.

Therefore, when the media portrays the Jewish citizens of communities in Judea and Samaria, a/k/a West Bank, as fanatics and intolerant bigots, our response must be, they are simply Jewish revenants. The word "settlers" must be taken out of the lexicon and forgotten. We must end defaming the people who have made Aliyah – revenir to the land God gave the Jewish Nation. These Jewish revenants are pioneers in the land from which the Jews were illegally kept away since 1949 and it was finally returned to her Jewish owners in 1967, through a bloody war of self defense. These revenants-pioneers are principled Jews who chose to live in Judea and Samaria, along majestic aspirations and a great deal of fears of the unknown that only politics can inflict on them. (http://www.israelmuse.com/2010/08/news-videos-show-human-face-of.html)

The Other Side: The Jews of Judea and Samaria, Part 1, 2, 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDQBucm8wiU&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77tWaF9qZVk&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVTokJ0Ljco&feature=player_embedded

Take the H.O.R.S.E by its rein and say: These Jewish revenants have legal and [H]uman rights to live in the Land of Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean land; they are not [O]ccupying any land that belongs to someone else; they are not [R]acists and there are no [S]ettlements; there are simply Jewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria.

Change the lexicon, change the future of the State of Israel.

Denying Islamists Federal Security Clearances

2012-01-30T06:54:00.002+02:00

David J. Rusin
In Politics,Religion
http://pjmedia.com/blog/denying-islamists-federal-security-clearances/?print=1

Federal departments and agencies tasked with safeguarding the U.S. must first safeguard themselves against Islamist [1] infiltration [2]. Recent news items about Muslims having security clearances rejected or revoked suggest that at least some government entities are forgoing political correctness and taking this problem seriously. More need to follow suit, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR [3]) is determined to make life difficult for them.

The disclosures began last June when the Investigative Newsource [4] (IN), then called the Watchdog Institute, published a report [5] in the Orange County Register describing how a multiagency probe had led the Department of Defense (DoD) one year earlier to remove the secret-level clearance of Rahim Sabadia, president of Sabtech Industries [6], a California-based company that manufactures electronics and computer systems for military use. This kept his firm from completing work on a classified contract for the U.S. Navy. Apparently the Pentagon had expressed concerns about Sabadia’s “charitable contributions.” IN’s findings [5] indicate that Sabadia, through his family foundation, “is a frequent donor to Muslim and international charities.” Only one Islamic beneficiary is identified: CAIR has received upwards of a million dollars from Sabadia over the past decade. The IN researchers also note that Omar Zaki, the former executive vice president of Sabtech, has sat on CAIR’s national board. In addition, Sabadia is linked [7] to the Council of Pakistan American Affairs (COPAA [8]), which often teams up with CAIR and other Islamist groups on various initiatives [9], events [10], and letters [11], though the IN piece does not mention any financial backing of it by Sabadia.

As is typical, the government has provided few specifics about why Sabadia lost his clearance. It is conceivable that his COPAA affiliation could have been viewed as placing him too close to Pakistan [12], but the defense contractor’s generous funding of CAIR is particularly intriguing as a potential cause. Surely it should have raised red flags for the DoD, given CAIR’s well-documented radicalism [13] and its status as an unindicted co-conspirator [14] in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF [15]), whose bankrolling of Hamas resulted in 108 guilty verdicts [16]. This prompted the FBI to cut off contact [17] with CAIR. A judge later ruled [18] that “the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR … with Hamas.”

Hussam Ayloush, head of CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter (CAIR-LA [19]), played the victim card in response to Sabadia’s woes. “It would be very unusual if it has anything to do with CAIR,” he insisted [5], because “you’re talking about the Muslim community’s NAACP.” Denying CAIR’s connections to Hamas, Ayloush opined that “the whole situation we’re dealing with is part of an attempt to smear the American Muslim community by targeting its organizations and business leaders.”

One important aspect of the Sabtech case — and another example of how Islamists walk through doors [20] opened for them — is the role of Congressman Gary Miller [21], a Republican from California. Miller, who has collected significant campaign contributions from Sabadia and his employees, “set aside $9.6 million in defense contract earmarks exclusively for Sabtech” since 2008, according to the IN article [5]. Miller pleaded ignorance about any charitable donations that could have led to Sabadia’s clearance troubles, adding, “If Sabtech was taken off that list, shame on them.”

Yet it is unlikely that Sabadia’s massive support of CAIR would have perturbed Miller, given his own record of friendly relations with the group. Not only has Miller attended at least one CAIR-LA banquet, in 2004 [22]. He also dispatched a sugary letter [23] to the 2008 event, extolling CAIR-LA for its supposed ability to help “ensure that our great country continues to be the world’s beacon of freedom and democracy” and for “playing a vital role in the integration of the Muslim community into American society in an effort to promote patriotism and pride in their home country.” To this day, CAIR’s national website carries a quote [24] from Miller’s encomium.

The 2008 CAIR-LA banquet took place more than a year after CAIR’s designation [14] in the HLF case. Additionally, CAIR-LA is quite problematic itself, due to the radical views [25] of Ayloush, its executive director. Readers who wish to ask Miller if he stands by his earmarks for Sabtech and praise for CAIR-LA may reach his office here [26].

Another revocation of a Muslim’s security clearance — one previously spotlighted [27] by Islamist Watch [28] — emerged several months ago in a federal lawsuit [29] filed against the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA [30]). Though budget analyst Mahmoud M. Hegab’s legal complaint [31] argues that the loss of his credentials amounts to religious discrimination, the real issue appears to have been the Islamist links of his new wife, Bushra Nusairat, whom he married [32] after passing his original screening but before starting work in January 2010.

Nusairat’s past — including her leadership position [33] with the radical Students for Justice in Palestine [34] during college and her prior graduation [35] from Virginia’s Islamic Saudi Academy [36], which has a history of using violent, bigoted textbooks [37] and whose 1999 valedictorian [38] conspired with al-Qaeda to assassinate President George W. Bush — drew the NGA’s attention as it reevaluated Hegab. However, his complaint indicates that the deal breaker [39] for his clearance was Nusairat’s “current affiliation with one or more organizations which consist of groups who are organized largely around their non-United States origin.”

This passage likely refers [40] to her job with Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA [41]), the country’s most prominent Muslim charity [42]. While IRUSA collaborates with federal [43] bodies [44] on humanitarian projects, it also distributes millions of dollars [45] per year to an international partner immersed in jihad [46], Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW [47]). A NEFA Foundation analysis [48] states that IRW helped launch [49] the Union of Good [50], designated [51] by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for being a Hamas-financing coalition. In 2006, the Israeli government announced the arrest of an operative [52] of “IRW’s Gaza branch” who had “worked to transfer funds and assistance to various Hamas institutions and organizations”; on his computer were photos of “senior Nazi German officials” and Osama bin Laden. Furthermore, several IRW leaders [53] have been tied to the Muslim Brotherhood [54].

Hegab, who ultimately was placed on unpaid leave [35], may be the first to have lost a federal clearance [29] due to a spouse’s Islamist connections. The lawsuit is pending.

A third controversy involving Muslims and clearances came to light in a heavily redacted letter [55] to the DoD from Amara Chaudhry, civil rights director of CAIR’s Philadelphia office (CAIR-PA [56]). Dated November 30, 2011, it is written on behalf of a client “in response to your agency’s tentative denial of his eligibility for access to classified information based upon your concerns regarding his susceptibility to ‘foreign influence.’” A summary [57] on the CAIR-PA website describes him as “a federal employee with over three decades of service” who “was offered a merit-based promotion which required a top-level security clearance.” It states that “his recent pilgrimage to Mecca caused him to have ‘contacts with persons in places in the Middle East,’” thus sparking the rejection. CAIR-PA’s claims cannot be independently verified at this time.

At the core of the dispute is Guideline B [58] of the U.S. government’s Adjudicative Guidelines for Determining Eligibility for Access to Classified Information, which declares that “foreign contacts and interests may be a security concern if the individual has divided loyalties or foreign financial interests, may be manipulated or induced to help a foreign person, group, organization, or government in a way that is not in U.S. interests, or is vulnerable to pressure or coercion by any foreign interest.” An important consideration is whether the foreign country in question “is known to target United States citizens to obtain protected information and/or is associated with a risk of terrorism.”

Chaudhry uses an accompanying blog post [59] to lament that “in practice, the contacts which create such a ‘heightened risk’ are contacts in Muslim-majority countries” — no surprise, given the radicalism and terror being exported by many of them. She goes on to reason that due to their “disproportionate negative impact on American Muslims,” the provisions of Guideline B are “motivated, in whole or in part, by anti-Muslim bias and enacted with discriminatory intent.” Warning of a potential lawsuit, Chaudhry’s letter [55] demands not only that the DoD grant her client his clearance and promotion, but also that the government water down Guideline B.

Denying federal clearances based on support for suspect organizations, a spouse’s dealings with these groups, or contacts in nations of concern is nothing new; it was a common occurrence [29] during the Cold War. Without a doubt, an employee’s links to those who back the jihad should worry the U.S. government no less than did links to communist fronts half a century ago. After all, both Islamism and communism are totalitarian, utopian ideologies that seek to build their “paradises” on the ashes of Western liberal democracy — and both utilize stealth and subversion to advance their goals.

Howls of “anti-Muslim bias” cannot obscure the history of Islamist-aligned insiders abusing their posts to obtain confidential information for illegal ends. A 2008 piece [2] by Daniel Pipes collates numerous examples, including Nada Nadim Prouty [60], who as an FBI special agent searched restricted files on Hezbollah to determine whether family members had been tied to the group, and Weiss Rasool [61], a police officer in CAIR’s orbit [62] who alerted the subject of an FBI counterterrorism investigation to data that had a “disruptive effect” on the case. The trend continues. Last October, Mohamed Elibiary [63], a Khomeini-honoring Islamist [64] who inexplicably serves on an advisory council for the Department of Homeland Security and had been given unique access [65] to law enforcement intelligence records, was accused of downloading materials and shopping them to the media in hopes of furthering the “Islamophobia [66]” narrative.

Despite the aforementioned positive signs at the DoD and NGA, much remains to be done to combat Islamist penetration. Confidence in the overall integrity of background checks for federal security clearances took a hit following a 2011 report [67] about investigators “submitting forms saying they conducted interviews or verified official documents when they never did”; these bureaucratic holes need to be plugged. Additionally, the Elibiary saga demonstrates that various parts of the U.S. government are still largely blind to stealth jihad and all must be more proactive in rejecting Islamists before they do damage. With CAIR-LA’s Ayloush having boasted [5] that “many of our members … end up working for the defense industry and the State Department” and columnist Daniel Greenfield having identified several Muslim defense contractors [12] with unsettling associations, redoubled efforts to weed out Islamists cannot come soon enough.

Muslims should not be excluded from holding sensitive government jobs just because they are Muslims. However, the multifaceted conflict with radical Islam and the inescapable fact that every Islamist is a Muslim first make it imperative for agencies on the front lines to jettison political correctness, realistically appraise the threat, concentrate limited resources, and apply the greatest possible scrutiny [68] to Muslim employees and partners. Eternal vigilance [69] is the price of liberty, but that vigilance is most effective when properly focused.

Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/denying-islamists-federal-security-clearances/

URLs in this post:

[1] Islamist: http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/01/islamists-penetrate-western-security

[2] infiltration: http://www.danielpipes.org/5834/the-wests-islamist-infiltrators

[3] CAIR: http://discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6176

[4] Investigative Newsource: http://www.inewsource.org/

[5] report: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/sabtech-303104-sabadia-miller.html

[6] Sabtech Industries: http://www.sabtech.com/

[7] linked: http://www.councilofpakistanamericanaffairs.org/garymiller.html

[8] COPAA: http://www.councilofpakistanamericanaffairs.org/

[9] initiatives: http://www.lacp.org/2006-Articles-Main/MuslimsAndHomelandSecurity.html

[10] events: http://www.mpac.org/events/muslim-youth-take-up-911-i-will-challenge.php

[11] letters: http://www.muslimadvocates.org/end_profiling/over_40_muslim_south_asian_and_2.html

[12] too close to Pakistan: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/09/29/the-defense-contractors-of-islam/

[13] well-documented radicalism: http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/172

[14] unindicted co-conspirator: http://www.nysun.com/national/islamic-groups-named-in-hamas-funding-case/55778/

[15] HLF: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6181

[16] 108 guilty verdicts: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/25/nation/na-muslim-charity25

[17] cut off contact: http://www.investigativeproject.org/985/fbi-cuts-off-cair-over-hamas-questions

[18] ruled: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2340/federal-judge-agrees-cair-tied-to-hamas

[19] CAIR-LA: http://ca.cair.com/losangeles/

[20] walk through doors: http://www.islamist-watch.org/7954/the-us-government-failed-history-of-muslim

[21] Gary Miller: http://garymiller.house.gov/

[22] 2004: http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/518

[23] dispatched a sugary letter: http://thehollytree.blogspot.com/2008/11/evening-at-cair-socal-banquet-november.html

[24] carries a quote: http://www.cair.com/AboutUs/WhatTheySayAboutCAIR.aspx

[25] radical views: http://www.americansagainsthate.org/cw/profiles_cw.php

[26] here: http://garymiller.house.gov/Contact/

[27] previously spotlighted: http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2011/11/security-clearance-pulled-due-to-wife-islamist

[28] Islamist Watch: http://www.islamist-watch.org/

[29] federal lawsuit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/worker-suing-intelligence-agency-claims-anti-muslim-bias/2011/10/31/gIQABMU0bM_blog.html

[30] NGA: https://www1.nga.mil/

[31] legal complaint: http://www.islamist-watch.org/documents/8449.pdf

[32] married: http://www.islamist-watch.org/documents/8449.pdf#page=3

[33] leadership position: http://www.islamist-watch.org/documents/8449.pdf#page=5

[34] Students for Justice in Palestine: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/sjpstand4facts25.html

[35] graduation: http://www.islamist-watch.org/documents/8449.pdf#page=4

[36] Islamic Saudi Academy: http://www.saudiacademy.net/

[37] violent, bigoted textbooks: http://www.uscirf.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2206&Itemid=1

[38] 1999 valedictorian: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1849

[39] deal breaker: http://www.islamist-watch.org/documents/8449.pdf#page=10

[40] likely refers: http://www.islamist-watch.org/documents/8449.pdf#page=11

[41] IRUSA: http://www.irusa.org/

[42] most prominent Muslim charity: http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/double-digit-growth-for-islamic-relief-usa/

[43] federal: http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2011/pr110504.html

[44] bodies: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/10/islamic-relief-usa-starts-its-first-summer-food-service-program

[45] millions of dollars: http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/islamic-relief-worldwide-islamic-relief-usa/

[46] immersed in jihad: http://www.peaceandtolerance.org/docs/irmemo.pdf

[47] IRW: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6625

[48] NEFA Foundation analysis: http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/nefaunionofgood0109.pdf

[49] helped launch: http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/nefaunionofgood0109.pdf#page=25

[50] Union of Good: http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/html/final/eng/sib/2_05/funds.htm

[51] designated: http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/hp1267.aspx

[52] arrest of an operative: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Terrorism+and+Islamic+Fundamentalism-/British+national+arrested+for+assisting+Hamas+29-May-2006.htm

[53] IRW leaders: http://globalmbreport.org/?p=4938

[54] Muslim Brotherhood: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6386

[55] heavily redacted letter: http://www.islamist-watch.org/documents/8973.pdf

[56] CAIR-PA: http://pa.cair.com/

[57] summary: http://pa.cair.com/civil-rights/representative-cases/

[58] Guideline B: http://www.state.gov/m/ds/clearances/60321.htm#b

[59] blog post: http://pa.cair.com/blog/federal-employee-denied-promotion/

[60] Nada Nadim Prouty: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/13/AR2007111302033.html

[61] Weiss Rasool: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/22/AR2008042201994.html

[62] CAIR’s orbit: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=31352

[63] Mohamed Elibiary: http://pjmedia.com/blog/breaking-homeland-security-adviser-allegedly-leaked-intel-to-attack-rick-perry/

[64] Khomeini-honoring Islamist: http://bigpeace.com/pspoole/2010/10/18/homeland-securitys-muslim-advisor-mohamed-elibiary-spoke-at-conference-honoring-ayatollah-khomeini/

[65] given unique access: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/11/03/alleged-dhs-leaker-elibiary-the-only-adviser-given-access-to-sensitive-law-enforcement-database/

[66] Islamophobia: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/09/07/islamophobia-thought-crime-of-the-totalitarian-future/

[67] 2011 report: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/21/top-secret-clearance-checks-falsified/

[68] greatest possible scrutiny: http://www.danielpipes.org/1009/the-enemy-within-and-the-need-for-profiling

[69] Eternal vigilance: http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Eternal_vigilance_is_the_price_of_liberty_%28Quotation%29

David J. Rusin
David J. Rusin is a research fellow at Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

"Pushing Back, Pushing Forward"

2012-01-30T00:45:00.000+02:00

There's a good deal happening, and much to respond to. Please read this through and act. I like to think of my readers as also actors in the important fights we are fighting -- against some things, for others. Your assistance does make a difference.

~~~~~~~~~~

I begin with a link to my latest article on Front Page Magazine, "Answering Obama's Israel Lies."

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/27/answering-obamas-israel-lies/

It exposes the distortions and half-truths that have been put out in a campaign video purporting to show what a good friend to Israel Obama is. Please, circulate broadly.

Here's the link to the original video, in case you haven't seen it. It's making the rounds big time and must be responded to in a serious fashion, for it's so easy to be taken in if you don't know the facts. When you DO know the facts, the response to this is some combination of rage and deep disgust.

https://my.barackobama.com/page/share/america-and-israel?source=20120120_da&utm_medium=email&utm_source=obama&utm_campaign=20120120_da&email=fallets%40bellsouth.net&zip=33446&firstname=&lastname=Fallet

(My thanks to Debbie B.) very significant vote is coming up in the Knesset this week. The issues are complex and YOUR COOPERATION HERE IS EXCEEDINGLY IMPORTANT.

You've heard about this legislation from me previously: Proposed by MK Zevulun Orlev (Habayit Hayehudi), it would forbid the dismantling of communities of more than 20 families in Judea and Samaria without properly filed documentation that the land was Arab-owned. This would negate the vague, unsubstantiated claims of land being "Arab" that are currently filed in court by Peace Now.

What is more, this legislation stipulates that if the documentation of Arab ownership is filed after a specified period of time (four years, as I understand it), the community still wouldn't be taken down and instead the Arab land owner would be provided with monetary compensation.

~~~~~~~~~~

Prime Minister Netanyahu -- at the behest of Minister Benny Begin, who is attempting to negotiate a "deal" with the residents of Migron and wants them to feel squeezed -- has secured a negative vote on this legislation in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation. Nothing prevents the promoters of a piece of legislation from bringing it to the Knesset without the approval of the committee -- it is simply that without this endorsement it is less likely to pass in the Knesset.

An appeal has been filed -- requesting a re-vote in the committee -- by Minister of Diaspora Affairs Yuli Edelstein (Likud) and Minister of Science Daniel Hershkowitz (Habayit Hayehudi) -- but there has been no response to this. There is reason to believe the original vote would overturned if there were a second vote.

~~~~~~~~~~

Now MK Oren has decided to bring this proposed law before the Knesset -- possibly by Wednesday.

And here's where you have to pay attention to understand the situation and its serious implications:

Coalition discipline will not be invoked, so that members of the Knesset will be free to follow their conscience on this important matter rather than having to vote a party line.

HOWEVER, since the Ministerial Committee voted against the legislation, ministers are expected to also vote against it in the Knesset. They can, if they choose, vote for the legislation, but then, according to the rules, Netanyahu can fire them. He is not obligated to fire them, he is simply at liberty to do so.

Needless to say, Netanyahu is applying pressure, and making noises about firing those who do not toe the line.

~~~~~~~~~~

This has an unpleasant echo of Gush Katif, when then PM Sharon applied every sort of strong-arm technique possible to keep his ministers in line so they'd vote as he wished. We cannot let this happen again. Sharon betrayed his mandate when he behaved this way, and Netanyahu is now playing matters in a similar fashion. I've cut him slack with regard to many issues. But I cut him none here.

~~~~~~~~~~

In my last posting, I asked you to write to the Likud ministers in support of Migron. Now I ask you to write again, to these ministers and those of Shas and Yisrael Beitenu as well:

Say that you understand that legislation that would save Migron and other communities in Judea and Samaria is about to come before the Knesset. It would release Israel from the strangle-hold of Peace Now and prevent Jewish communities from being destroyed.

Remind them that the mandate given to the coalition by the voters was nationalist and that they would be betraying this mandate if they voted against this legislation.

Tell them that, even more importantly, if they vote against it they would be taking a position that is not in the best interests of the State of Israel.

Let them know that you see it as imperative that they vote their conscience on this matter. It is not acceptable for them to place job security ahead of what is best for Israel. In any event there is no guarantee that the prime minister will fire any ministers, and less likely if many ministers stand together to do what is right.

Voters and those who support the parties are very tired of political game playing. The ministers must know that they are being watched and that support in the future will depend on their readiness to do the right thing now.

~~~~~~~~~~

Do NOT send a group message; the message to each minister should be separate. But there is no reason to be intimidated by the fact that there are several names on the list that follows.

There is a way to make it easy for yourself: Compose a message that says "Dear Minister," followed by text of that message. Copy that message and salutation. Then, in turn, click on each minister's e-mail address, paste in the greeting and message, and hit send.

LIKUD:

Minister of Improvement of Government Services Michael Eitan

meitan@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Environmental Protection Gilad Erdan

gerdan@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Welfare Moshe Kahlon

mcachlon@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz

yiskatz@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Culture Limor Livnat

llivnat@knesset.gov.il (a previous typo in this address has been corrected)

Minister Yosi Peled

ypeled@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Education Gideon Saar

gsaar@knesset.gov.il

Minister of the Development of the Negev Silvan Shalom

sshalom@knesset.gov.il

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz

ysteinitz@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon

myaalon@knesset.gov.il

SHAS:

Minister of Internal Affairs Eli Yishai

eyishay@knesset.gov.il

Minister Meshulam Nahari

mnahari@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Religious Affairs Yakov Margi

ymargi@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Housing Ariel Atias

aatias@knesset.gov.il

YISRAEL BEITENU:

Minister of Tourism Stas Misezhnikov

smiseznikov@knesset.gov.il
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
aliberman@knesset.gov.il

Minister of Immigrant Absorption Sofa Landver
slandver@knesset.gov.il

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon
dayalon@knesset.gov.il

~~~~~~~~~~

If Gush Katif infuriated you or pained you, if you want to be part of a democratic process that protects Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, if the idea of their having to turn over their land to Arabs distresses you, please! take the time to do this.

Numbers count a great deal. Send this to others who are likely to also respond.

Thank you. More will follow tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~

In closing, a note of clarification, very broadly, for those who are outside of Israel and perhaps confused by our system: Parties receive mandates (seats) in the Knesset according to the percentage of votes they secured in the previous election. If one party does not have sufficient seats (i.e., more than 60) to constitute a majority of the Knesset, then a coalition is formed; this always happens. Once the coalition is in place, there are ministerial positions allocated to the various parties in the coalition. With very rare exceptions, the ministers are chosen from the ranks of those within the parties who have been elected to the Knesset. Those who are ministers sit in the Cabinet and constitute the government, but they are still members of the Knesset.

~~~~~~~~~~

© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.

See my website at www.arlenefromisrael.info Contact Arlene at akushner@netvision.net.il

This material is transmitted by Arlene only to persons who have requested it or agreed to receive it. If you are on the list and wish to be removed, contact Arlene and include your name in the text of the message.

2012-01-30T00:37:00.000+02:00

David J. Rusin
PJ Media

http://www.meforum.org/3161/islamists-security-clearance

Federal departments and agencies tasked with safeguarding the U.S. must first safeguard themselves against Islamist infiltration. Recent news items about Muslims having security clearances rejected or revoked suggest that at least some government entities are forgoing political correctness and taking this problem seriously. More need to follow suit, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is determined to make life difficult for them.

The disclosures began last June when the Investigative Newsource (IN), then called the Watchdog Institute, published a report in the Orange County Register describing how a multiagency probe had led the Department of Defense (DoD) one year earlier to remove the secret-level clearance of Rahim Sabadia, president of Sabtech Industries, a California-based company that manufactures electronics and computer systems for military use. This kept his firm from completing work on a classified contract for the U.S. Navy. Apparently the Pentagon had expressed concerns about Sabadia's "charitable contributions."

IN's findings indicate that Sabadia, through his family foundation, "is a frequent donor to Muslim and international charities." Only one Islamic beneficiary is identified: CAIR has received upwards of a million dollars from Sabadia over the past decade. The IN researchers also note that Omar Zaki, the former executive vice president of Sabtech, has sat on CAIR's national board. In addition, Sabadia is linked to the Council of Pakistan American Affairs (COPAA), which often teams up with CAIR and other Islamist groups on various initiatives, events, and letters, though the IN piece does not mention any financial backing of it by Sabadia. As is typical, the government has provided few specifics about why Sabadia lost his clearance. It is conceivable that his COPAA affiliation could have been viewed as placing him too close to Pakistan, but the defense contractor's generous funding of CAIR is particularly intriguing as a potential cause. Surely it should have raised red flags for the DoD, given CAIR's well-documented radicalism and its status as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), whose bankrolling of Hamas resulted in 108 guilty verdicts. This prompted the FBI to cut off contact with CAIR. A judge later ruled that "the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR … with Hamas."

Hussam Ayloush, head of CAIR's Los Angeles chapter (CAIR-LA), played the victim card in response to Sabadia's woes. "It would be very unusual if it has anything to do with CAIR," he insisted, because "you're talking about the Muslim community's NAACP." Denying CAIR's connections to Hamas, Ayloush opined that "the whole situation we're dealing with is part of an attempt to smear the American Muslim community by targeting its organizations and business leaders."

One important aspect of the Sabtech case — and another example of how Islamists walk through doors opened for them — is the role of Congressman Gary Miller, a Republican from California. Miller, who has collected significant campaign contributions from Sabadia and his employees, "set aside $9.6 million in defense contract earmarks exclusively for Sabtech" since 2008, according to the IN article. Miller pleaded ignorance about any charitable donations that could have led to Sabadia's clearance troubles, adding, "If Sabtech was taken off that list, shame on them."

Yet it is unlikely that Sabadia's massive support of CAIR would have perturbed Miller, given his own record of friendly relations with the group. Not only has Miller attended at least one CAIR-LA banquet, in 2004. He also dispatched a sugary letter to the 2008 event, extolling CAIR-LA for its supposed ability to help "ensure that our great country continues to be the world's beacon of freedom and democracy" and for "playing a vital role in the integration of the Muslim community into American society in an effort to promote patriotism and pride in their home country." To this day, CAIR's national website carries a quote from Miller's encomium.

The 2008 CAIR-LA banquet took place more than a year after CAIR's designation in the HLF case. Additionally, CAIR-LA is quite problematic itself, due to the radical views of Ayloush, its executive director. Readers who wish to ask Miller if he stands by his earmarks for Sabtech and praise for CAIR-LA may reach his office here.

Another revocation of a Muslim's security clearance — one previously spotlighted by Islamist Watch — emerged several months ago in a federal lawsuit filed against the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Though budget analyst Mahmoud M. Hegab's legal complaint argues that the loss of his credentials amounts to religious discrimination, the real issue appears to have been the Islamist links of his new wife, Bushra Nusairat, whom he married after passing his original screening but before starting work in January 2010.

Nusairat's past — including her leadership position with the radical Students for Justice in Palestine during college and her prior graduation from Virginia's Islamic Saudi Academy, which has a history of using violent, bigoted textbooks and whose 1999 valedictorian conspired with al-Qaeda to assassinate President George W. Bush — drew the NGA's attention as it reevaluated Hegab. However, his complaint indicates that the deal breaker for his clearance was Nusairat's "current affiliation with one or more organizations which consist of groups who are organized largely around their non-United States origin."

This passage likely refers to her job with Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA), the country's most prominent Muslim charity. While IRUSA collaborates with federal bodies on humanitarian projects, it also distributes millions of dollars per year to an international partner immersed in jihad, Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW). A NEFA Foundation analysis states that IRW helped launch the Union of Good, designated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for being a Hamas-financing coalition. In 2006, the Israeli government announced the arrest of an operative of "IRW's Gaza branch" who had "worked to transfer funds and assistance to various Hamas institutions and organizations"; on his computer were photos of "senior Nazi German officials" and Osama bin Laden. Furthermore, several IRW leaders have been tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hegab, who ultimately was placed on unpaid leave, may be the first to have lost a federal clearance due to a spouse's Islamist connections. The lawsuit is pending.

A third controversy involving Muslims and clearances came to light in a heavily redacted letter to the DoD from Amara Chaudhry, civil rights director of CAIR's Philadelphia office (CAIR-PA). Dated November 30, 2011, it is written on behalf of a client "in response to your agency's tentative denial of his eligibility for access to classified information based upon your concerns regarding his susceptibility to 'foreign influence.'" A summary on the CAIR-PA website describes him as "a federal employee with over three decades of service" who "was offered a merit-based promotion which required a top-level security clearance." It states that "his recent pilgrimage to Mecca caused him to have 'contacts with persons in places in the Middle East,'" thus sparking the rejection. CAIR-PA's claims cannot be independently verified at this time.

At the core of the dispute is Guideline B of the U.S. government's Adjudicative Guidelines for Determining Eligibility for Access to Classified Information, which declares that "foreign contacts and interests may be a security concern if the individual has divided loyalties or foreign financial interests, may be manipulated or induced to help a foreign person, group, organization, or government in a way that is not in U.S. interests, or is vulnerable to pressure or coercion by any foreign interest." An important consideration is whether the foreign country in question "is known to target United States citizens to obtain protected information and/or is associated with a risk of terrorism."

Chaudhry uses an accompanying blog post to lament that "in practice, the contacts which create such a 'heightened risk' are contacts in Muslim-majority countries" — no surprise, given the radicalism and terror being exported by many of them. She goes on to reason that due to their "disproportionate negative impact on American Muslims," the provisions of Guideline B are "motivated, in whole or in part, by anti-Muslim bias and enacted with discriminatory intent." Warning of a potential lawsuit, Chaudhry's letter demands not only that the DoD grant her client his clearance and promotion, but also that the government water down Guideline B.

Denying federal clearances based on support for suspect organizations, a spouse's dealings with these groups, or contacts in nations of concern is nothing new; it was a common occurrence during the Cold War. Without a doubt, an employee's links to those who back the jihad should worry the U.S. government no less than did links to communist fronts half a century ago. After all, both Islamism and communism are totalitarian, utopian ideologies that seek to build their "paradises" on the ashes of Western liberal democracy — and both utilize stealth and subversion to advance their goals.

Howls of "anti-Muslim bias" cannot obscure the history of Islamist-aligned insiders abusing their posts to obtain confidential information for illegal ends. A 2008 piece by Daniel Pipes collates numerous examples, including Nada Nadim Prouty, who as an FBI special agent searched restricted files on Hezbollah to determine whether family members had been tied to the group, and Weiss Rasool, a police officer in CAIR's orbit who alerted the subject of an FBI counterterrorism investigation to data that had a "disruptive effect" on the case. The trend continues. Last October, Mohamed Elibiary, a Khomeini-honoring Islamist who inexplicably serves on an advisory council for the Department of Homeland Security and had been given unique access to law enforcement intelligence records, was accused of downloading materials and shopping them to the media in hopes of furthering the "Islamophobia" narrative.

Despite the aforementioned positive signs at the DoD and NGA, much remains to be done to combat Islamist penetration. Confidence in the overall integrity of background checks for federal security clearances took a hit following a 2011 report about investigators "submitting forms saying they conducted interviews or verified official documents when they never did"; these bureaucratic holes need to be plugged. Additionally, the Elibiary saga demonstrates that various parts of the U.S. government are still largely blind to stealth jihad and all must be more proactive in rejecting Islamists before they do damage. With CAIR-LA's Ayloush having boasted that "many of our members … end up working for the defense industry and the State Department" and columnist Daniel Greenfield having identified several Muslim defense contractors with unsettling associations, redoubled efforts to weed out Islamists cannot come soon enough.

Muslims should not be excluded from holding sensitive government jobs just because they are Muslims. However, the multifaceted conflict with radical Islam and the inescapable fact that every Islamist is a Muslim first make it imperative for agencies on the front lines to jettison political correctness, realistically appraise the threat, concentrate limited resources, and apply the greatest possible scrutiny to Muslim employees and partners. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, but that vigilance is most effective when properly focused.

Why Syria’s Regime is Surviving a Revolution

2012-01-30T00:34:00.001+02:00

Barry Rubin

Despite what is now the longest-running revolution in Middle Eastern history, the Syrian regime will probably be in power on December 31, 2012. I don’t say that because it’s what I want to happen—Syria’s revolution is more democratic-minded than those in Libya or Egypt; the government is far more repressive than the former dictatorships in Tunisia or Egypt—but because it seems inevitable.

Why is it that after so many months of massive demonstrations and really bloody repression, that President Bashar al-Assad seems likely to survive? Of course no one knows what will happen but there are three reasons to think that Assad's regime is surviving, though the cost of that is a great deal of suffering and the wrecking of the country.

First, the rulers know that it is a case of kill or be killed. Given the hated and sectarian nature of the regime—overwhelmingly dominated by Alawites who comprise only about 12 percent of the population—the elite can expect no mercy if it falls. At least, the Alawite elite and its closest allies among the Sunni Arab Muslims will lose their wealth and power; at most, they and even their families will lose their lives. A negotiated solution of any sort is not a real possibility and the elite’s members—including army generals—are aware that they must all hang together or they will all hang separately. When they look at Egypt, where they see the former president on trial and the armed forces under serious challenge, they are not encouraged to believe they should compromise with the opposition. And when they remember Libya and Iraq, where the former leaders were executed, that conclusion is reinforced.
Second, the revolutionaries don’t have a strategy for seizing state power. They daily hold courageous demonstrations and suffer severe losses through killings and repression, yet the protests cannot force a determined dictatorship out of power. As in Iran—but not as in Egypt and Tunisia, where the armies were unwilling to mow down their own people—the regime's ruthlessness makes it quite willing to pursue a strategy of brutality.
The Free Syrian Army is the opposition’s other potential route to power. But it remains too small, too inexperienced (many or most of its recruits are not former soldiers), and too lacking in international support to overthrow the dictatorship by force.
Third, the Syrian dictatorship is receiving ample international support, mainly from Iran but also from Russia. While the Arab League has supposedly come out against the regime, its intervention is so toothless and time-wasting that it serves the regime because as long as the League doesn’t call for tougher measures neither will Western countries.
The lack of Western intervention is another international problem for the opposition and advantage for the regime. At present, the opposition has two main requests, drawn from experience in Iraq and Libya. It asks that the West impose a no-fly zone on the Syrian military and that it helps establish an exclusion area along the Turkey-Syria frontier where refugees and dissidents can flee, an opposition government can create a liberated zone, and the Free Syrian Army can mobilize.
There does not appear to be the slightest chance of this happening. Why? I almost wish that I could say it was due to Western fear of an Islamist takeover of Syria. In fact, however, the U.S. government has actually helped the Islamists there. The real reason is fear of making another Middle East commitment, along with a strange radical ideology in the West which makes it more eager to help anti-Western forces than friendly ones.
Obviously, no one could seriously propose sending Western forces to Syria. Yet enforcing a no-flight zone would be a relatively easy, low-cost effort that might help break the regime that has been the main Arab sponsor of terrorism (always exceeding Iraq in that respect) during the last forty years and also the Arab government that has done the most to sabotage any Arab-Israeli negotiated settlement. Again, though, there isn’t any chance of this happening, certainly not under an Obama Administration. Indeed,Russia is selling Syria advanced warplanes so the regime can attack the opposition more effectively! So much for a no-fly zone.
What might break President Bashar al-Assad’s regime? Other than his being assassinated, the only likely development would be if some Syrian generals decided that the rest of the elite can only survive by eliminating him and his family. Even then, though, they would probably try to continue the regime under a different name, offering the opposition a face-saving compromise of making some concessions in exchange for an end to the revolt. This is an offer the opposition, unless it is really desperate by that point, might well reject as insufficient.
Nevertheless, the prospects are quite likely that Assad will be in power when the year ends. If the deadlock goes on without apparent end the revolution might die down, as it did in Iran. Syria will then be another case to show that revolutions usually succeed only when the elite is divided and loses its nerve, rather than being an inevitable response to oppression.
It will also show that in the Middle East only pro-Western regimes (including the temporarily “cooperative” Libyan dictatorship) get overthrown. In contrast, anti-Western governments prosper, often with Western protection or help. Go figure.

Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22

What self inflicted blindness!‏

2012-01-30T00:31:00.002+02:00

Israel Matzav

Just a few hours ago, I reported that the Obama administration plans to reward the Muslim Brotherhood for refusing to speak with Israel by speeding up US aid to Egypt. Now, it appears that the shoe is on the other foot as well. Perhaps that will change things.

Reports out of Cairo indicate that six Americans who were working for American-funded organizations promoting democracy in Egypt have been barred from leaving the country. One of them is Sam LaHood, the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Ray LaHood is a Republican and the son of a Lebanese father and an American mother. Sam (pictured with his father at the father's swearing-in ceremony) is being held in what's being called de facto detention. And the Obama administration is said to be outraged (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

The travel ban came to light on Thursday after the International Republican Institute, an American-backed democracy-building group, disclosed that the Egyptian authorities had stopped its Egypt director, Sam LaHood, at the Cairo airport on Saturday before he could board a flight to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. LaHood is the son of Ray LaHood, the secretary of transportation and a former Republican congressman from Illinois. He is one of six Americans working for the Republican Institute or its sister organization, the National Democratic Institute, whom Egypt has blocked from leaving as part of a politically charged criminal investigation into their activities. ust a day before Mr. LaHood was detained temporarily, President Obama had warned Egypt�s leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, that this year�s American military aid hinged on satisfying new Congressional legislation requiring that Egypt�s military government take tangible steps toward democracy, said three people briefed on the conversation.

Mr. Obama referred specifically to the criminal inquiry into several democracy-building groups with foreign financing, including the Republican Institute, the people who were briefed said, and he made clear that Egypt had not fulfilled the Congressional requirements, but Field Marshal Tantawi did not seem to believe him.

So it's Tantawi's fault and not the Brotherhood's? Of course, why didn't I think of that? But the result will be the same: This could lead to a hold-up of US aid money to Egypt.

But here's the weird part. The Obama administration seems to be wanting to play good cop, bad cop over this - and to make Congress the bad cop.

Then, after the travel ban on the Americans became public on Thursday, the administration made the warning public as well. �It is the prerogative of Congress to say that our future military aid is going to be conditioned on a democratic transition,� Michael H. Posner, an assistant secretary of state responsible for human rights issues, said at a previously scheduled press conference in Cairo on Thursday.

Boy is that one rich. Didn't Hillary Clinton argue precisely the opposite six months ago? This is from the Times:

Though members of Congress have talked this year of imposing conditions on American aid to Egypt, the Obama administration had previously opposed the idea.

The White House negotiated intensely to allow the president the option of waiving the conditions, if necessary, in the name of national security. Now Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state, is required to certify that Egypt is making democratic progress � carrying out �policies to protect freedom of expression, association and religion, and due process of law� � before releasing the aid this fiscal year.

I don't see how she can certify any of those things regardless of whether these six people are released. Freedom of religion with a parliament that's dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists? You've got to be kidding.

Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from Virginia who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, said the Egyptian government continued to flout American efforts and to undermine democratic rights. �This is out of control,� Mr. Wolf said on Thursday. �If the administration follows the law, there�s no way they can continue the aid.�

And in case you're wondering about the head count...

In addition to Mr. LaHood, four other employees from the Republican Institute, including two Americans, had been barred from travel. Officials of the National Democratic Institute said that six of its employees had been banned, including three Americans.

Hmmm.

Free Market Socialism

2012-01-29T19:14:00.002+02:00

Sultan Knish

Before Obama got around to digging up his copy of last year's State of the Union address, crossing out a few lines, adding something about Iraq and Bin Laden, before heading out for another round of golf, David Brooks wrote a New York Times column urging Obama not to forget to mention the importance of promoting education for a free market economy. He titled it, Free-Market Socialism.

Now the idea that Obama or any Democratic politician running for the presidency would forget to mention what has become the chief talking point of their political class on jobs and globalization is about as likely as Bill Clinton taking a vow of chastity. When the working class timorously asks where the jobs are, that are always told the jobs are mostly gone and the only way they will ever come back is if they educate themselves for the better jobs that are out there somewhere.

Obama has added the refrain has added to it a warning that if we don't spend more money on education that China will out-compete us. Given that China's biggest asset is cheap labor and our assets are factories that are too expensive to run, natural resources we can't touch and a massive over-educated and over-entitled class that was promised jobs and instead got student loans, it's hard to see how more of the same will fix the problem. If our chief competitors in the economic arena were Russia, Japan or Sweden, pushing college degrees might make more sense. Or at least engineering degrees, but we're not losing a competition for college jobs, we're losing a competition for industries. American manufacturing hasn't gone down the tubes because we don't have enough college grads, it's gone down the tubes because it became too expensive and too difficult to be worth the effort.

New York, Minnesota and North Dakota have some of the highest degree rates in the country. New York has 8 percent unemployment. North Dakota has 3 percent unemployment. Because as it turns out degrees do not magically create jobs. They can only fit existing jobs. New York has a surplus of graduates. North Dakota seems to have just about enough though I suspect a sizable amount of that 3 percent are degree holders too.

To prop up his thesis, Brooks reaches for an Atlantic article that studies the case of a South Carolina woman who works on an assembly line, who had to drop out of school due to a pregnancy and is raising two children as a single mother making it difficult for her to continue her education. Instead she makes 13 dollars an hour in a unskilled job.

Brooks expects us to see this as a tragedy when quite a few college graduates would kill for a 13 dollar an hour job. The woman had planned to go to a four year college to become an animal control officer. The website for one South Carolina county advertises an animal control officer position at 15 dollars and 28 cents an hour.

Would Brooks' victim really be better off if she had gone into debt for a four year college program only to earn less than 2.50 more an hour? And would anyone really be better off with another government employee on the payroll instead of a productive worker?

The ability to get a decent paying work in the manufacturing sector is what really built a prosperous middle class in the United States. The decline of that middle class has been proportional to the growth industry in bureaucratic activists. Take the factory that is the topic of piece. Why is it located in South Carolina? Among other things, South Carolina is a right to work state and a business friendly state. Moving to South Carolina is a patriotic alternative to moving to China.

Rather than ask why there's a factory in South Carolina that's operating close to the economic redline as a family owned business competing with international conglomerates, the Atlantic and Brooks wonder how the workers can be moved into better paying jobs. As it turns out they can't be because there is no money for it. And there's no money for it because the cost of manufacturing is too high.

For decades the Democrats have offered the same technocratic prescription, more education for the high paying technology jobs of tomorrow. Never mind that our technology revolution was the brainchild of college dropouts and outsourced to Chinese factories. The high tech jobs of tomorrow are still in Shanghai and technology has made outsourcing much easier than ever. The technology revolutions of tomorrow will only do the same thing. Americans can take the lead in innovation, but unless those innovations are translated into viable manufacturing jobs than all the brilliant ideas coming out of Harvard and Yale grads will still end up being assembled in Chinese factory towns.

When Democratic presidents went around touting the college mantra did they seriously believe that we could replace every lost job with a college job without further raising the costs to employees and employers resulting in a continuing diminution of purchasing power? And did they really believe that those jobs wouldn't be able to be outsourced either? If Clinton could have feigned naivete back in the nineties, today when radiology, records and programming jobs are being organically outsourced at the establishment level it's more ridiculous than ever for Obama to make the same old college pitch.

We already have David Brook's "Free Market Socialism" which has done a fantastic job of attracting unskilled workers who take jobs at lower rates than American workers do. All those policies have done is attract illegal aliens who want the benefits and are willing to work at illegal per hour wages and without the rules and regulations. They haven't empowered Americans to work, all they have done is expanded the underclass by undermining working class jobs.

The higher education boondoggle has done an excellent job of shifting jobs from the private sector into the public sector through government or government subsidized jobs. The shift is as much cultural as it is economic, its mainspring is the perception that ordinary jobs are worthless and the truly meaningful jobs are their kinds of jobs. The culture extends to the kind of people that they seek to create. Out with the working middle class, in with the college graduate who has spent an extra four years being programmed by the more sophisticated model of their indoctrination machine and who will think more like them and live more like them, who will share their values and politics.

Mass education also devalues the actual education being received. Today's college students know less than yesterday's high school graduates. Today's high school graduates know less than a middle schooler from 50 years ago. And there is no way around that. Tossing everyone into the same system and expecting the same results leads to a lower quality system. The more education is universalized, the more it is simplified.

Making matters worse is technocratic standardization which insists that the only reason some students fail is inadequate teaching or funding, which leads to more money being tossed into the shredder and more national standards that expect teachers to accomplish the impossible. Either the results have to be faked or the standards have to be lowered. Usually a combination of both which leads to a nation where everyone has a degree and no one knows anything.

Russia, which still leads the world in degrees, mastered this version of universal education in the Soviet period, pumping out degrees for everyone, while still lagging behind the rest of the world in every area that mattered. Like so many other collective efforts, its mass production and central programming did not lead to success, it led to worthless results and purely statistical achievements.

Like the Soviet Union we can push to be the nation with the most degrees dispensed, which will be a costly statistical achievement because our educational system costs a good deal more than the Soviet one did. The USSR could afford to process students like cattle, but trying to duplicate this achievement with a college education that often costs as much as a house, will lead to a huge burden on the taxpayers and on the students.

Obama's response to this economic reality was equally predictable. Faced with high costs, socialists demand that the producers lower their prices. Obama demanded that universities bring tuition down, which if he is really serious about it they will do. At a price. The cost of higher education may be inflated, but it's not going to be reduced by cutting the non-essentials, it's going to be reduced by cutting the essentials, which means an education that will be increasingly worthless as the mass production model is used to drive costs down.

In the State of the Union, Obama demanded that all states compel students to finish high school. And after that why not make higher education into a mandatory mandate as well? If everyone can be forced to buy health care, then the same economics can be applied to forcing everyone to buy a higher education as well. Sallie Mae will get more customers and colleges will get reluctant students that they can quickly dispense with at low cost and high profit. Call it ObamaEducation.

Will any of this help us beat China? About as well as the Soviet Union beat us with its degree mills. Our problems are not that we don't have enough education options, it's that we have a liberal elite with a disdain for traditional jobs and a conservative elite with a disdain for protecting American jobs. Combine the two elites together and you get the Free Market Socialism that Brooks is calling for. But there's no need to call for it, it's already here.

Between the socialists and the free traders, we're bleeding jobs and industries, we are overwhelmed by immigrants and the cost of subsidizing a post-American society on a post-American economy. And no amount of degrees is going to fix that as long as we have a surplus of ideologues talking about jobs, without considering the real world consequences of their policies.

Foreign Woman Attacked in Egypt’s Tahrir Square

2012-01-29T05:48:00.002+02:00

CHALLAH @ Bikya Masr

A foreign woman was stripped and sexually assaulted on Wednesday evening in Egypt’s iconic Tahrir Square, one eyewitness said on Twitter and another confirmed in an email to Bikyamasr.com.

The woman, who’s identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident.

“I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness.

What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.”

There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands.

The report adds some interesting and shocking statistics:

Instances of sexual assaults on female journalists covering the events in Tahrir Square have continued in the year since Mubarak’s ouster. According to studies conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Right (ECWR) in 2008, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment in Egypt.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of Egyptian men confessed to harassing women and 53 percent of Egyptian men faulted women for “bringing it on.”

This assault should bring forth memories of the assaults on Lara Logan, Mona Eltahway, and Caroline Sanz.

Update: Bikya Masr now has an interview with the attacked foreigner.

“They started fighting over who was going to do what,” Heather told Bikyamasr.com in an exclusive interview. She came forward after seeing the report on a foreign woman who was stripped naked and assaulted only hours after her own incident.

“My roommates and I fell to the ground when they attacked us. The people pulled our pants off even as we yelled and tried to fight,” she continued.

The incident occurred around 7:30 PM local time, just as night was taking hold of the city. Heather said the attack happened “in the center of Tahrir.”

She said that after the men pulled their pants off, they continued to grab and grobe the women’s bodies. “It is disgusting. They put fingers up my ass,” she revealed.

Later in the report we learn

Heather said that she came forward to talk about what happened to her “because people need to know what goes on. It is the only way to start making it a problem that will have to be dealt with.”

However, many people told her to not reveal what happened to her because she was told, “it would hurt the image of the revolution.” But Heather said after seeing the reports of others and their assaults, “I felt it was right to say something.”

Update: In a third article at Bikya Masr, Joseph Mayton adds:

At least four women have been reported to have had their clothes ripped from their bodies, assault and groped endlessly by mobs of men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Certainly more reports of assaults will flood editors’ email in the coming days. It seems whenever there is a mass protest in Egypt it is accompanied by attacks against women.

Egyptians have attempted to avoid the situation plaguing society for far too long. If it happens to a foreigner, they apologize, but if it happens to their sister, their mother, their girlfriend, their spouse, there has always been a tacit denial of any real problem. Instead of trying to save face, what should be happening is a real dialogue, a real open discussion about the causes of sexual violence in society. Without one, these women will not be the last victims of sexual brutality.

Update: Below is a video of the incident.

Romney and Gingrich on Peace Between Palestinians and Israel

2012-01-29T05:42:00.001+02:00

Lauren Appelbaum, Political Director

Washington – In last night’s CNN Debate, an audience member who identified himself as a Palestinian-American Republican asked how the republican candidates would bring peace to Palestine and Israel. Both former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich blamed the Hamas leadership for the lack of peace in the region. Below is the transcript. Also, read Fact Checks on Romney and Gingrich’s Statements

BLITZER: Let’s take another question from the audience. Please give us your name and tell us where you are from. (UNKNOWN): Abraham Hassel (ph) from Jacksonville, Florida. How would a Republican administration help bring peace to Palestine and Israel when most candidates barely recognize the existence of Palestine or its people? As a Palestinian-American Republican, I’m here to tell you we do exist.

BLITZER: All right. Let’s ask Governor Romney, first of all. What would you say to Abraham?

ROMNEY: Well, the reason that there’s not peace between the Palestinians and Israel is because there is — in the leadership of the Palestinian people are Hamas and others who think like Hamas, who have as their intent the elimination of Israel. And whether it’s in school books that teach how to kill Jews, or whether it’s in the political discourse that is spoken either from Fatah or from Hamas, there is a belief that the Jewish people do not have a right to have a Jewish state.

There are some people who say, should we have a two-state solution? And the Israelis would be happy to have a two-state solution. It’s the Palestinians who don’t want a two-state solution. They want to eliminate the state of Israel.

And I believe America must say — and the best way to have peace in the Middle East is not for us to vacillate and to appease, but is to say, we stand with our friend Israel. We are committed to a Jewish state in Israel. We will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally, Israel.

This president went before the United Nations and castigated Israel for building settlements. He said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained in on Israel from the Gaza Strip. This president threw – (APPLAUSE)

I think he threw Israel under the bus with regards to defining the ’67 borders as a starting point of negotiations. I think he disrespected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

I think he has time and time again shown distance from Israel, and that has created, in my view, a greater sense of aggression on the part of the Palestinians. I will stand with our friend, Israel.

BLITZER: Thank you, Governor. (APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: Speaker Gingrich, you got into a little hot water when you said the Palestinians were an invented people.

GINGRICH: It was technically an invention of the late 1970s, and it was clearly so. Prior to that, they were Arabs. Many of them were either Syrian, Lebanese, or Egyptian, or Jordanian.

There are a couple of simple things here. There were 11 rockets fired into Israel in November. Now, imagine in Duvall County that 11 rockets hit from your neighbor. How many of you would be for a peace process and how many of you would say, you know, that looks like an act of war.

You have leadership unequivocally, and Governor Romney is exactly right, the leadership of Hamas says, not a single Jew will remain. We aren’t having a peace negotiation then. This is war by another form.

My goal for the Palestinian people would be to live in peace, to live in prosperity, to have the dignity of a state, to have freedom. and they can achieve it any morning they are prepared to say Israel has a right to exist, we give up the right to return, and we recognize that we’re going to live side-by-side, now let’s work together to create mutual prosperity.

And you could in five years dramatically improve the quality of life of every Palestinian. But the political leadership would never tolerate that. And that’s why we’re in a continuous state of war where Obama undermines the Israelis.

On the first day that I’m president, if I do become president, I will sign an executive order directing the State Department to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to send the signal we’re with Israel. (APPLAUSE)

Syrian capital flight intensifies

2012-01-28T23:25:00.000+02:00

Abigail Fielding-Smith in Beirut

Money has been streaming out of Syria as fears for the unstable economy lead Syrians to seek a safer place for their assets, according to members of the country’s business community.

Cash is being smuggled over the border to Lebanon “every day, every hour,” said one Syrian businessman, while another claimed Syrian money is being stashed in the grey economy that has long existed between the two countries.
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In what many see as an example of the cross-border transfer, Syrian state news reported last month that officials had intercepted over $100,000 worth of Syrian pounds being smuggled across the Lebanese border under the seat of a car.

Samir Seifan, a Dubai-based Syrian economist, estimated Syria’s middle and upper classes had moved between three and five billion dollars out of the country since unrest broke out in March, alarmed by pressures on the currency and the dearth of investment opportunities.

“The easiest way to smuggle money out of Syria is into Lebanon,” said Mr Seifan. “There are established channels.”

Reports of the cash exodus highlight the growing financial pressure on President Bashar al-Assad’s Damascus regime, after nearly eight months of bloody confrontations between anti-government protesters and the regime’s brutal security forces. The loss of foreign currency earnings from the decimation of the tourism industry and an EU embargo on Syrian oil exports have put pressure on the Syrian pound, which has lost 10 per cent of its value against the dollar on the black market since the start of the unrest.

Capital controls introduced by Damascus in August prevent people from buying more than $2,000 a year in Syria without justification. Though locals say dollars can still be bought, with increasing difficulty and risk on the black market, many people are said to be seeking ways around restrictions on transferring money out of the country.

According to one of the Syrian businessman interviewed by the Financial Times, some people exchange Syrian money brought into Lebanon ‘under the table’. “We’re not Europe,” he said wryly.

As quantities appear to be either small or bypassing formal channels, the money does not show up in financial institutions in Lebanon, Syria’s neighbour, which is a crucial link to the wider world. The banking sector, under the watchful eye of the US Treasury, which this year placed sanctions on a Lebanese bank it alleged was laundering drugs money, has increased its customer accountability requirements, and overall deposits of local currency and dollars have gone up by less than they did over the same time period last year.

Lebanon’s usually freewheeling money changers are reluctant to talk about Syrian money, although the owner of one exchange bureau in Beirut said he was currently processing 400-500,000 Syrian pounds a day (roughly $8-10,000), compared with 100-200,000 ($2-4,000) a week before the crisis.

Another man in the bureau warned: “Its more dangerous to talk about this than politics,” an oblique reference to the Syrian security services’ tentacular reach into Lebanon.

Jihad Yazigi, an economic analyst and editor of the newsletter ‘The Syria Report’, said Syrians had “got used to finding ways to get money out of the country,” after years of tough restrictions on capital movement before limited economic reforms began in 2005. He said one trick was to pay someone inside Syria in Syrian pounds, in exchange for a return payment in a foreign currency in a bank overseas.

Observers of the capital flight say it is a steady flow rather than a panicked rush that could bring the Assad regime down in the short term. The Syrian Central Bank governor recently claimed Damascus had $18bn worth of foreign reserves – about 30 per cent of GDP – to keep the pound stable.

But analysts say the real amount of resources with which Mr Assad’s government has to defend the pound – and keep itself alive economically – is unknown because of a lack of transparent accounting. “The truth is that probably no one knows – not even the regime,” said one diplomat in Damascus.

The Perry Mason school of life

2012-01-28T16:19:00.002+02:00

SARAH HONIG

Israel’s elected leaders shouldn’t be subjected to diktats whereby they must suppliantly seek permission to save Israel from annihilation.

Back in 1940, as whodunit author Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Baited Hook got typically tangled, fictional legal wizard Perry Mason opined to his trusty secretary Della Street that “Every time you stop to figure what the other fellow’s going to do, you unconsciously figure what you’d do in his place.

“The result is that you’re not fighting him, but yourself. You always come to a stalemate. Every time you think of a move, you think of a perfect defense. The best fighters don’t worry about what the other man may do.”

Words to live by – unless, like America’s current commander-in-chief, the last thing you want is to conceive of yourself as a fighter.

Clearly, President Barack Obama didn’t attend the Perry Mason School of Law. Instead he honed his attitudes at Harvard Law. It’s a crucial difference – quite possibly the single biggest danger to global peace and, most immediately and acutely, to Israel.

Regardless of whether he lacks the intellectual integrity to unfetter himself from what was inculcated into him or whether he cannot resist the expediency of exploiting superficial truisms for political ends, Obama appears to expect all international arena players to abide by Harvard conventions. All are required to non-judgmentally tolerate adversarial viewpoints, to submit a priori that no cause is unavoidably more just than any other and to effectively prefer Third World ostensible underdogs with a peeve.

My country, Obama was taught at Harvard, isn’t necessarily more right, democracy isn’t necessarily democratic or superior and belligerents can be soothed with sufficient sympathy, flattery and concessions. Obama’s 2009 tour de force at Cairo University epitomized the ethos of post-hippie-era Harvard.

Its bottom line is that fanatics like Iran’s ayatollahs or the Muslim Brotherhood have compelling grievances and that it behooves us to see things through their eyes. This would, in theory, enable us to get a feel for their strategy and anticipate their tactical moves. They’d thereby be humanized in our view, the fear factor would abate and levelheaded accommodation would ensue.

So while Obama ups his anti-Iranian nukes rhetoric, he simultaneously escalates his pressure to prevent Israel from launching a preemptive operation against Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

Despite years of Israel warning and Washington dithering, the plain fact of the matter is that not much has changed. Israel still warns and Obamaesque Washington still dithers.

Despite a tough Senate sanctions bill, Obama is loath to fully impose it. He still palavers about that elusive international coalition to browbeat Iran, although it cannot evade the cognizance of even his most starry-eyed spinmeisters that Russia, China and assorted hangers-on won’t do their utmost to foil Iranian nuclear ambitions (that is, if they at all go through the motions).

Why, then, would the ayatollahs see reason, as Obama supposes they should? Iran consistently receives indications that it isn’t obliged to mend its thuggish ways.

For example, when Obama’s top defense officials underscore the negative consequences of resorting to military means, the Iranians get a message diametrically contradictory to the one Obama insists he’s sending. Rather than abide by his Harvard guidelines, the Iranians deduce that they can proceed with impunity to make whatever mischief strikes their fancy – nuclear or otherwise.

It boggles the mind that at this exceedingly late stage the delusion still persists that Iran can be somehow dissuaded from its nefarious plots, that it’ll be wowed by dynamic diplomacy and see last-minute sense.

Obama may have been given a stick by America’s legislators but he’s hesitant to wield it. He’s still trying to figure out what Ahmadinejad is going to do, which, as per Perry Mason’s insightful observation, means that Obama subconsciously strives to envisage what he’d do in Ahmadinejad’s place.

Here, however, the result isn’t a stalemate because the Iranian bomb becomes a more potent threat with each wasted day. Counting on a miraculous Iranian epiphany is as far-sighted as believing in the blossoming of the Arab spring that has so far only sprouted Muslim Brotherhood weeds throughout the region.

Rarefied Harvard moral relativism, though, can portray invasive noxious weeds as desirable fragrant roses. And so Obama rationalizes that the Brotherhood (its rabidly pro-Nazi roots dismissed from mind) could well become the nurturer of the tardy flowering of democracy and civil liberties in the Arab sphere.

His secretary of state Hillary Clinton confirmed reports that the Obama administration would work with ascendant Islamist parties in the Muslim world.

She’s willing to do business with the infidel- bashers, arguing that they might not be quite as bad as depicted by their deposed antagonists: “For years, dictators told their people they had to accept the autocrats they knew in order to avoid the extremists they feared. Too often we accepted the narrative ourselves.”

The line now is that moderate Islamists comprise the Brotherhood’s mainstream, that they can be counted upon to conduct a sane foreign policy, uphold the rights of women and religious minorities and justify Obama’s Harvard hopes.

They probably will. Just like Tehran’s ayatollahs did.

This is painfully reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s foreign secretary Lord Halifax, one of the prime architects of appeasement, who signaled Hitler that German designs on Austria, chunks of Czechoslovakia and Poland weren’t altogether unpalatable to British tastes, so long as German territorial expansion was “peaceful.”

Only after the Axis bully began misbehaving with particular impudence following 1938’s Munich pact did Halifax finally work out that this wasn’t quite cricket. But to his credit Halifax did agonize, even if belatedly, and he did draw some extremely cogent conclusions. “I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage,” he mused, “if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.”

But they weren’t – just as the entire Middle Eastern coterie of baddies never imbibed Harvard liberalism. However, nothing suits these jihadists better than a leader of the free world who so dutifully complies with Harvard rules. So what if he assumes that they would too. Let him. They’ll do as they please, undeterred because he’s Harvard-bound to consider their perspective.

Israel, in contrast, is ineligible for similar indulgence and is slated to pay the price for Obama’s broadmindedness toward our region’s Muslim warlords.

The onus for quelling the chaos isn’t on the merchants of mass-murder but on Israel.

While Israel doesn’t ask that a single US soldier lay his life on the line for it, neither should Israel’s elected leaders be subjected to diktats whereby they must suppliantly seek permission to save Israel from annihilation. No Israeli government was elected to preside over another Holocaust.

That’s why the Jewish state’s coalition and opposition both must memorize Perry Mason’s precept.

Obama might kid himself that he’s playing for time till after November’s Election Day. Only by then, all bets will likely be off. Obama’s inaction inexorably pushes Israel to the desperate unilateral action it itself is leery of. We cannot remain pawns in Obama’s gamble that Ahmadinejad can be converted to Harvard niceties. Or as Perry Mason reiterated: “You can’t sit back and wait for things to happen to you.”

Islamists Take Over Tunisia

2012-01-28T16:15:00.000+02:00

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

In the aftermath of the Tunisian Jasmine revolution, Salafists, as in Egypt, are taking advantage of the new freedoms to be a threat to the growth of democracy. Islamist groups are now flourishing and are trying to transform Tunisia into an Islamic emirate. For now, they did not manage to take over big cities, however they are expanding their control over the Tunisian town of Sejnane with its 5000 inhabitants, located in the country's northwest. According to Tunisian media, a group of about 250 individuals managed to "talibanize" Sejnane , imposing their hardline Islamic rule, without being in any way contravened by the country's security forces.

Famous for its pottery artifacts, Sejnane is not different from many other Tunisian towns, in its sidewalk cafés, small shops, a few mosques and dusty roads. However, in Sejnane about 80% of the population lives under the poverty line; unemployment is almost 60% with no sign that this situation may get any better. In this environment, for the last few months a group of Salafists, most of them young, have been imposing Islamic law . Salafist gangs of young individuals have begun terrorizing people, in search of "disbelievers." There have been countless episodes of intolerance and violence --- including a man beaten after the mosque service for having argued that tobacco was not haram (forbidden); another man wounded in his leg while buying cigarettes; a wine vendor having his fingers broken; and a young girl attacked at school for not wearing a veil.

Salafists have also established in Sejnane Sharia tribunals and even a jail, where they have been torturing people arrested for not "respecting" the Islamic code. It was reported that Salafists arrested people for celebrating the New Year Eve. Salafists not only forbade the sale of alcohol, but also the sale of cakes on New Year's Day, on the pretext that it was a Christian holiday that a true Muslim is not supposed to celebrate.

There are seven mosques In Sejnane, the most important of which is run by a young imam. "He is a Salafist," a Sejnane dweller declared to the media. "He is only 22 and did not even finish high school." "The state is absent," complained another man, "and the Salafist seized the opportunity to fill this void." According to reports, the head of the Salafist group in Sejnane is an old jihadist close to Al-Qaeda. He is accused of having attempted a coup in 2006 and was therefore sentenced to 104 years of prison. He was, however, freed in a general amnesty after the revolution.

The population in Sejnane feel abandoned by the government, which is doing nothing to protect their individual freedoms. The new regime seems absent and not willing to take any steps to crack down on Islamist violence. The President of the Tunisian League of Human Rights (LTDH), Abdel Sattar Ben Moussa, finalized a report on the situation in Sejnanel: he said the Salafist phenomenon is present throughout the country, but managed to proliferate in Sejnane due to the lack of functioning government institutions in the area.

Some media called Sejnane "the First Salafist Emirate in the Country," mentioning that if nothing will be done, other emirates will flourish in Tunisia. Liberal journalists have already been attacked and beaten for having denounced the Salafist violence in the country on the media. Hamadi Dimassi, a secular, liberal journalist attacked by Islamists, claims that there is a silent complicity from the Islamist party, Ennahda, which won the largest share of seats in Tunisia's Constituent Assembly, towards the Salafists. Sofiene Ben Hamida, another journalist recently beaten, declared that the government is not taking any serious actions to try to halt the Salafists.

Ennahda leaders admit that they are backing Salafist tendencies in the country, claiming that the government is not absent, but is simply "cautious" about take any actions that might worsen the situation or deepen the divide between the different parts.

In the meantime, this Ennahda's "caution" is transforming a revolution that was liberal and secular into a religious one. A nurse from Sejnane declared to the media that her home town now belongs to the Salafists and they are the ones now making the laws. If the government will continue its policy of not acting, as looks likely, the population will be scared to denounce the violence or to rebel, leading the country towards becoming another new Islamist State.

A Taste of Islam: An Interview with Bill Warner

2012-01-28T16:13:00.001+02:00

Mark Tapson

In the years after the 9/11 attacks, more non-Muslims than ever before have studied Islam to understand the religious motives of those who had declared war on us. And yet non-believers who are alarmed at what they have found in the foundational texts of Islam are always told by apologists that we don’t understand the true Koran, that we labor under misconceptions about the Religion of Peace, that we don’t understand the complexities of sharia, that our objections and criticisms stem from racism (even though Islam is not a race) and an irrational fear of Islam and its adherents. The problem always seems to lie with us. What is the truth and how can we get to it behind the contradictions and the mystification?

Bill Warner has the answer. The founder and director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI), he holds a PhD in physics and math. He has been a university professor, a businessman, and an applied physicist. But Dr. Warner has also had a lifelong interest in religion and its impact on history, and so the day after 9/11 he decided to make the source texts of Islam available for the average person who wants to know more. As part of that effort, Mr. Warner has produced a dozen books, including a Koran, a biography of Mohammed and a summary of the political traditions of Mohammed. He writes articles and produces news bulletins that record the suffering of the victims of political Islam. And he has spoken nationally and internationally about Islamic political doctrine.

Mark Tapson: Mr. Warner, your background is in physics and mathematics. How did you come to devote yourself to the study of religion and to feel compelled to share your insights on political Islam? How did the field of statistics shape your perspective on Islam?

Bill Warner: I was raised in a very religious family and read the Bible a great deal. I studied physics and math, but my interest in religion expanded to the effects of religion on history. After graduate school I was attracted to mysticism and Eastern religions. So, forty years ago, I looked into Sufism, mystical Islam. I went to Sufi dances, learned zikr (a Sufi devotional practice), met Sufi masters and read Sufi literature. But, there was always this jarring background noise of the history of Islam. So, I left my study of Sufism.

Twenty years later as a professor I had Muslims in my classes and they sparked my interest in the Koran. It was a tough read, but I read it cover to cover. The text was literally a puzzle, but I set it aside until 9/11.

On 9/11 as soon as the second plane hit the second tower, I knew it was an act of jihad. I stood up, turned off the TV and I haven’t watched it since. In that moment it came to me that the rest of my life would be spent explaining the meaning of Islamic texts.

I sat down and reread the Koran, read the Sira (Ishaq and Al Tabari), read the Hadith (Bukhari and Muslim). These are the absolute foundational texts of Islam, the source code, the DNA. I was following Sun Tzu’s advice; know your enemy and attack your enemy’s strategy.

My attack was to reveal the Koran, Sira and Hadith in a rational form that was easy to read. This became the Trilogy Project. I assembled a team of volunteers and paid writers and editors. From the beginning, I knew that it was the political aspect of Islam that offered the only chance of success. The religious aspect has too much misunderstood protection of the First Amendment.

MT: What is the Trilogy Project?

BW: The approach to the Trilogy was new and unorthodox, and its only chance of success lay in a scientific approach to the texts. Every paragraph can be verified by going back to the source texts. These books are not opinion, but give us the facts of the sources. For this reason, nearly every paragraph has an index number that allows it to be verified.

The greatest fun was solving the Koran puzzle. The Koran must be the most famous book that is not read or understood. The first step, which is not unique to me, is to lay out the Koran in the correct time sequence. The bookstore Koran is arranged by chapter length, and is not in the right time order. It was created by Uthman, the third caliph. The bookstore Koran is Uthman’s Koran.

If you take the life of Mohammed, the Sira, and lay it out alongside the Koran in the right time order, it is like matching a key to a lock. What is happening to Mohammed is reflected directly in the Koran. So if you integrate the life of Mohammed into the same text as the Koran and use separate fonts, so there is no confusion, you get a recreation of the Koran of Mohammed, the historical Koran. The Koran becomes an epic story that begins with a hymn to god and ends with the triumph over the world—the annihilation of all other civilization.

In 2006, I published the complete foundational doctrine of political Islam in three volumes. The Trilogy Project was finished. Now anyone can read and understand the Koran, Sira and Hadith. You can know Allah and Mohammed from the source texts.

This system of knowledge integrates the entire body of Islam into one view. If it is in the Trilogy, it is Islam. If it is Islam, it must be in the Trilogy.

Once the Trilogy was assembled, there was a bonus prize. Part of making the texts readable included sorting and reordering of the ideas. Once the work was all correlated, concepts leapt off the page. The ideas of Islamic ideology stood out. The simple statistical method of counting the words devoted to ideas clearly showed the themes of the doctrine.

The biggest statistical surprise was the dualistic nature of Islamic doctrine. Islam holds contradictory ideas that are simultaneously true. Now this confounds all Western logic, but this gives Islam its great strength. Islam is peace. Islam is jihad. Islam is a brother to Christianity and Judaism. Islam annihilates Christianity and Judaism.

I find it revealing that 64% of the Koran deals with Kafirs (non-Muslims), not Muslims. The Trilogy has a greater textual devotion to Jew hatred, 9%, than Mein Kampf. We are led to believe that there are a few verses about jihad in the Koran, but 24% of the Koran written in Medina is about jihad.

My work is from the view point of the Kafir, the non-Muslim. The Kafir is the victim in nearly every verse by Allah and most actions by Mohammed. The grandest lie of Islam is that Muslims have the correct view of Islam. But dualism demands that there are two correct views that contradict each other and cannot be logically aligned. Hence, there is the Kafir-centric view of Islam that is equally valid as the Muslim-centric view. Islam, the universities, and the apologists all insist that only the Muslim view is the true view. This is an error that is not supported by facts.

We can now hold fact-based discussions about Islam. There is no longer any need for “experts”, since we have the supreme experts in our hand — Mohammed and Allah.

MT: You’re speaking in Los Angeles on “A Taste of Islam.” Why is it necessary to appreciate “the full menu” of Islam in order to understand it?

BW: It is impossible to understand Islam based on just the Koran, but it is simple to understand when you look at the entire picture, both of Allah and Mohammed.

Muslims and their apologists want us to look at Islam one verse at a time. But this is like trying to understand a jigsaw puzzle by looking at it one piece at a time. If we put all the pieces together, as a system, the picture is obvious.

MT: Pointing out the theological motivation of Islamic fundamentalists always brings the politically correct objection that they constitute a “tiny minority of extremists” who have “hijacked” a religion of peace and interfaith tolerance. How are we to answer that objection?

BW: The use of the term “extreme” implies that something is being measured, and it is off the chart. There is one and only one measure of Islam and that is its doctrine as found in the Trilogy. For example, Mohammed preached the religion of Islam for thirteen years and made only 150 converts. But when he turned to jihad, ten years later he died, he was the ruler of Arabia and every Arab was a Muslim. Conclusion: jihad is normal, not extreme. But notice that since Islam is dualistic, Muslims can claim that it is peaceful.

As to the claim that the jihadists are few in number, look at war statistics. During WW II only 10% of our population was in the military. Did that mean we were not at war? No. In war only a few are doing the actual work, the rest of the country backs them with labor, money and morale.

There are four ways to be a jihadist – sword, pen, speech and money. Jihad is incumbent on ALL Muslims; therefore, it is the sixth pillar of Islam.

MT: Especially in the wake of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration wants us to draw a distinction between the terrorists and the “moderate” Islamists we can work with. How do you respond to that?

BW: First, a terrorist is a jihadist, modeled after Mohammed, the supreme jihadist. A moderate Muslim can be one who is not observant or it can be a Muslim who is following the Koran of Mecca, the religious Koran.

The apologists always want to talk about people, Muslims, not doctrine. Remember: when a Muslim is talking to a Kafir, there are twelve verses of the Koran that state that a Muslim is not the friend of a Kafir. Also, Mohammed repeatedly told Muslims to deceive the Kafir if it would advance Islam. There is one Muslim who will tell us the complete truth about Islam and that man is Mohammed.

The iron rule of Islamic doctrine is: if someone is talking about Islam and does not mention Mohammed or Allah (Koran) they are only building castles in the air.

An Islamist wants Sharia. Sharia destroys human rights and Kafir civilization. Why would we want to cooperate with someone who wants Sharia?

We don’t need politicians, religious leaders or academics to explain about Islam, we now have Mohammed and Allah. Forget the opinions of experts. For the first time in history, the common man can read the facts of the Trilogy and find out all of the answers without the “experts.”

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/16/a-taste-of-islam-an-interview-with-bill-warner/

Dredging the BottomDredging the Bottom

2012-01-28T15:57:00.001+02:00

Sultan Knish

Republican primaries are like visiting embarrassing relatives, no matter how bad you think it's going to be, it always turns out to be even worse. After months of this we're going to have a convention where we will be asked to believe in one of these men.

The latest attack is that Gingrich was actually anti-Reagan or at least had strong differences with Ronald Reagan. That is a serious attack or would be, if the conclusion to be drawn from even the heavily censored and selected quotes are that Gingrich thought Reagan was being too liberal.

So far the revelations are that Gingrich wanted budget spending frozen, Reagan refused because it would undermine defense. Gingrich said of Reagan's meeting with Gorbachev that it was, "the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich." And overall that the United States lacked a comprehensive dedicated strategy for defeating the USSR.The takeaway is that Gingrich was attacking Reagan from the right. Which is not all that damning unless you assume that any deviation from Reagan's positions in any direction is treason. It seems to help Gingrich's conservative credentials more than it hurts him.

If you actually look at the context of some of the remarks, then the tone changes a great deal.

"The fact is that George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Irving Kristol, and Jeane Kirkpatrick are right in pointing out the enormous gap between President Reagan's strong rhetoric, which is adequate, and his administration's weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail."

Was Gingrich wrong? His views on sitting down with Gorbachev were not all that unusual for many conservatives at the time. Freezing spending might not have been that bad of an idea, whether it was workable is another question. And the United States did not have much of a strategy for defeating the USSR, which spared us the trouble by defeating itself.

When Romney distanced himself from Reagan he appeared to be doing it from the left, the Gingrich attacks appear to have come from the right. The only way they work is if we detach Reagan from conservative principles and place him above them.

As a bonus. Misleadingly edited videos always help make the case. More at The Hayride

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has a piece putting some of the quotes in context, but he doesn't provide the complete floor statement either. It would be good if he did, to avoid all these snippets and see what Gingrich actually said in full so we can decide for ourselves.

SMOKING A KORAN

Pakistan’s largest real export is its off-the-books heroin trade and its economy runs on heroin. The ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, which backed the Taliban, also took a cut of Afghanistan’s highly profitable opium trade. Iranian and Pakistani interference in Afghanistan marry their Islamic initiatives with the drug trade as Sunnis and Shiites compete for the lucrative traffic in the world’s leading source of opium which is smuggled through Pakistan and Iran.

Speaking of Iran, the Islamic Republic has the world’s highest percentage of heroin addicts, and the traffic is run by the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution which acts as the religious thugs of the ayatollahs. One of their means of smuggling heroin out of Iran is piggybacking the trade on Shiite Muslim pilgrims visiting holy sites abroad.

The Muslim world doesn’t have much to export besides oil and drugs. Countries that don’t have oil export drugs. Countries that do have oil, export drugs anyway. Terrorist groups with their secret cells, forged documents and covert funding sources make perfect drug smuggling networks until it is impossible to tell whether they are Islamic terrorists who smuggle drugs to fund their operations or drug smugglers who kill people to religiously justify their drug smuggling. When the commanders and the foot soldiers have spent enough time in the drug trade and are sampling their own product then they stop knowing the difference.

See my entire piece on the Islamic drug connection at The Islamic Paradise of the Needle and Powder

LOOK TO THE FUTURE

The good news is that our economy is recovering. We have not only broken the back of the recession, but kicked in the spleen of its brother the depression, and karate chopped the wrist of its uncle, the complete economic meltdown. The stock market is riding high thanks to its transformation from an index of companies, to an index of racehorses and greyhounds. I have been told by GE CEO Jeff Immelt that his horse, Foreseeable Disaster is coming up 4th, behind Microsoft's Blue Nag of Death, GM's Safety Issues and EcoTech's Al Gore. Betting is high and anyone who wants to get in on the action, please come see Vice President Biden in the cashier's cage to the right.

And there is still more good news. After yesterday's speech commemorating those killed in the Seattle Polar Bear Invasion, my popularity has shot up all the way to 27 percent. This puts me ahead in the polls, in front of my rivals, Republican challenger, George Prescott Bush III and my Neo-Monarchist challenger, the King of Nebraska, but still well behind Chinese Supreme Leader Hu Jintao, who has seized control of several key states.

Additionally with my new proposal to take all our remaining money and bury it in Michelle's vegetable garden, we may finally have a plan to cut spending that really works. At least until we dig it up that same night and spend it on one of those really bad ideas that I and my advisers come up with when we get high together.

How I saw the State of the Union Address 2012 shaping up. It could still happen...

THE WORDS... THEY HAVE NO MEANING

"To talk with Gingrich supporters is to enter a world where words have no meaning... Romney is now the only remaining candidate for president who opposes amnesty for illegals."

From Coulter's "Re-elect Obama: Vote Newt"

"Romney described immigration proposals by McCain and others as 'quite different' from amnesty, because they required illegal immigrants to register with the government, work for years, pay taxes, not take public benefits, and pay a fine before applying for citizenship. 'That's very different than amnesty, where you literally say, 'OK, everybody here gets to stay,''

Boston Globe, 3/16/07

THERE ARE NO ATHEISTS IN MUSLIM FOXHOLES

The trajectory of persecution is not very difficult to calculate. In the UK, Muslims outnumber Jews six to one. In France, Muslims outnumber Jews ten to one, and in Sweden by as much as twenty-five to one. These are not just numbers; they also accurately chart the trajectory of religious persecution, with the Muslim persecution of Jews spiking horrifyingly in Sweden, high in France, but not as high in England. One reason why the situation is not yet as bad as in the United States is because Jews still outnumber Muslims at least two to one.

Muslim persecution of a hated minority group increases proportionally in relation to their numerical advantage. Atheists are a larger percentage of the population in Europe, but demographics are still catching up to them. In the United States the demographic race may already be done, as far as atheists are concerned.

In the United States approximately 0.7 percent of the population identifies as atheist and 0.8 percent of the population as Muslim. If these surveys are correct then the number of Muslims in the United States has already exceeded the number of atheists. While not a single member of Congress identifies as an atheist, two identify as Muslims.

from my article, The Most Dangerous Place to be an Atheist

BUT HE ONLY SUPPORTS RAPING US AT THE STATE LEVEL

Whether you like a state-wide insurance mandate or not, it's a world of difference when the federal government does it... It was on account of the difference between state and federal powers that the Supreme Court overturned the federal Violence Against Women Act. The court was not endorsing rape, but reminding us that states make laws about rape, not Congress.

Romney supported the idea of other states doing something along the lines of his health care bill, but always opposed insurance mandates from the federal government (just as I oppose the federal government issuing general laws about rape, but support state laws against rape.)

From that same bulletin from CoulterWorld.

So Coulter's proposal is that we nominate a rapist because his rapine instincts are governed by the Constitution and though he supports rape at the state level, he will oppose it at the Federal level.

The only thing keeping Romney from raping us at the Federal level (Coulter's metaphor, not mine) is that he's apparently solid on State's Rights. Probably as solid as he is on immigration, the second amendment, abortion, gay rights and well any other issue.

If we do put our faith in Romney as a rapist within the Constitution, then he'll hand out the state waivers on ObamaCare. But what if he prioritizes rape over constitutionalism just like every other president from both parties going back further than we would like to think about?

If a candidate opposes a policy, then regardless of his Constitutional integrity, we at least have some confidence that he will not implement it. But if a candidate supports a policy, but opposes it only at the Federal level, then we have to put our faith in his restraint to not use the powers of the office that he has, or in this case to actively use them to undermine a policy that he supports in practice, but not in legal principle.

Ron Paul might have an inkling of credibility arguing that he would not enact a policy that he supports at the Federal level. Considering his earmarks dance, it's a small inkling, but he at least has some credibility on the issue.

With Romney, his establishment defenders have been reduced to arguing that Romney may support the practice of ObamaCare, but he will oppose it to protect states rights. Not only is this position ridiculous, not only does it ask us to take so much on faith that it's downright mindboggling. In Coulter's own metaphor it asks us to elect a rapist and trust that his principles will prevent him from raping us.

Worst of all Coulter has conceded and even defended the mandate, and is now just arguing against it on a Federal level.

"In a world where words have meaning, Mitt Romney is not the "moderate" in this race. He is the most conservative candidate."

The problem is that in CoulterWorld, the words mean something different than they mean here. It's entirely legitimate to state that none of the remaining three candidates are conservative. That is a defensible view.

Billing a man who called himself progressive and repeatedly disavowed the conservative label until it came in handy, who is conservative is demeanor, but has no consistent conservative record on the issues, as the most conservative candidate is a head spinner.

To seriously believe that Romney is more conservative than Santorum isn't the worldview of a world where words have meaning, it's a world where the word conservative has no meaning.

BUFFALOED SPENDERS

Yesterday, the Republican-controlled House passed HR 1022, a bill that would require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a study of the history of Buffalo Soldiers in the establishment of national parks. The study will cost $400,000.

Voting in favor of this fantastic piece of budget cutting legislation was budget cutting hero, Paul Ryan. Michelle Bachmann voted against.

In between various bills about the importance of the budget, Ryan voted to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to study the suitability and feasibility of designating prehistoric, historic, and limestone forest sites on Rota, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, as a unit of the National Park System.

The bill was co-sponsored by five Democrats and one Republican. Can we really afford to be extending the national park system into the Northern Mariana Islands. Is that really the priority now?

SOROS MANUFACTURED CHAOS IN ISRAEL

In the warm summer of 2011, a twenty-something Israeli named Daphne Leef set up a Facebook protest page agitating against the high cost of housing in Tel Aviv. She pitched a tent and helped touch off a social protest movement that received national and international attention.

While the protests were billed as grassroots, there was nothing grassroots about them. The protests had been organized and funded by the New Israel Fund. Daphne Leef worked as a video editor for the New Israel Fund.

In the winter of that same year, as the protests had died down, a woman named Tanya Rosenblit boarded a bus which runs through religiously hyper-conservative neighborhoods and staged an incident with the passengers. Rosenblit was dubbed an Israeli Rosa Parks and her stunt helped generate waves of articles about major social problems in Israel.

Rosenblit was associated with One Voice, an organization funded by the New Israel Fund, whose board included Alon Liel, the husband of New Israel Fund director Rachel Liel. Hardly had the NIF gotten through manufacturing one phony social protest movement than it was hard at work on another.

See the entire piece at Front Page Magazine in Soros Manufactured Chaos in Israel

AND NOW THE ROUNDUP

Western Rifle Shooters has found a truly fantastic illustration to go with my SOTU parody. This should be Obama's presidential portrait.

Dress for success and the going rate for a 99 percent secretary

Romney hearts Hezbollah's health care system from Pamella Galler at Atlas Shrugs The takeaway here is that Romney operates on truisms from the same foreign policy experts who helped put the Brotherhood into power. He really does not get it.

Hezbollah and Hamas and the Brotherhood in Egypt are not popular because they offer health services or food. Those are bonuses that help lock in people. It's their Islamic beliefs that are popular and Romney is foolish to think that if America provided health care to them that it would swing them around.

... in other good news

The inauguration of Egypt's new parliament is an important step toward fulfilling public demands for the establishment of a regime based on Islam, said Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian parliament, in a letter on Wednesday. The letter was sent to Saad al-Katatny, People's Assembly speaker.

Shouldn't he have sent the letter to Obama who deserves much of the credit for the Caliphate?

New York Times now outsourcing its stories to CAIR

Learn about the legal claim to the State of Israel, from Eli Hertz, who has done a great deal of research on the topic at a Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors event in February

Another way

Yes, I am an Arab and despite that I love the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. I believe in the responsibility of Arabs to be loyal to the State of Israel and I believe that Jews should be able to settle everywhere in Israel,

With a predictable ending

Into The Fray: A study in impotence

2012-01-28T15:53:00.002+02:00

MARTIN SHERMAN

Israel’s diplomatic reaction to recent charges that its water policy is racist exposes a preference for passivity over preemption.

Water reveals a new apartheid in the Middle East. The 450,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank use as much or more water than some 2.3 million Palestinians... even if only a few dare to use the word, all indications are that the Middle East is the scene of a new apartheid.... And in this situation, water is a particular element of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. – Excerpt from the French parliamentary report on “The Geopolitics of Water” My most recent columns have been devoted to analyzing Israel’s public diplomacy, the reasons for its manifest ineptitude, and the mechanisms that produce this abysmal performance.

Last week, by coincidence, an illustrative example, underscoring precisely what I have been trying to convey, broke into the headlines.

It came in the form of a French parliamentary report on Israel’s water policy, authored by Jean Glavany, a Socialist member of the National Assembly, and accusing Israel of using water as an instrument of apartheid and oppression against the Palestinians.

Responses, recriminations, repudiations
The report sent Israeli officialdom into a tizzy.

The media were peppered with responses, repudiations and recriminations. Foreign Ministry officials claimed to have been unaware of the document until several days after its posting on the National Assembly website.

One diplomatic source characterized the report as “a serious mishap that... has seriously damaged Israel’s image in France.” The embassy in Paris was accused of falling asleep on the job for not alerting the Israeli authorities of the impending publication and the malevolent nature of its contents.

Israel robustly repudiated the report. The Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned it – correctly – as “unacceptable,” “loaded with the language of vicious propaganda, far removed from any professional criticism” and tainted with “blatant tendentiousness.”

Moreover, according to official Israeli sources, some members of the working group involved in compiling the report disassociated themselves from its anti-Israel tenor.

However, the damage had already been done. Israel had – once again – been linked to the dreaded “A-word.”

Cyberspace was replete with websites seizing on the report as yet another affirmation of the odious nature of the Jewish state and its dastardly discrimination against the “other.”

Delusional derogatory drivel
Israel’s firm rebuttal of the report was factually correct and morally justified. This was a document that comes as close to unadulterated, uninformed drivel as the written word can get, with accusations as malicious as they were mendacious.

Its allegations range from the highly implausible to the totally impossible. For example, one of its more ludicrous allegations is that Israel’s security barrier – “the wall”– “prevents Palestinian access to the Jordan River.”

However – as the most cursory glance at any map will show – the “wall” is located along, or close to, the 1967 Green Line, so it cannot constitute an impediment of any kind to Palestinian access to the Jordan River.

The river has anyway been reduced to a highly polluted trickle south of the Kinneret.

As such, it has been insignificant as a water source for decades, and access to it – or lack thereof – is irrelevant to Palestinians’ hydrological situation. So contrary to the impression the report creates, it has no bearing on the quantity of water available to them.

Only marginally less absurd is the document’s supposition that avaricious hydrological calculations lay behind the construction of “the wall,” to ensure Israeli supplies and to prevent Palestinians from extracting water from sites in the adjacent “buffer” zone.

In fact, construction of the security barrier was undertaken solely in response to the horrific Palestinian terrorism that took place between 2000 and 2003. It seems that a few “minor” details eluded Monsieur Glavany’s memory when forming his opinion of the function of the security barrier and the events that lead to its construction – such as the Passover massacre at Park Hotel in Netanya, and the carnage at the Sbarro restaurant and the Moment Café (both in Jerusalem), the Dizengoff Center and the Dolphinarium (both in Tel Aviv), and at the Beit Lid and Meggido junctions, to name but a few.

Had it not been for Palestinian terrorism there would have been no barrier. To suggest otherwise is either ignominious or ignorant.

Passivity over preemption
Despite all this, the French hydro-report episode was indeed a diplomatic debacle for Israel, not because of what was done after its publication, but because of what was not done before it.

Once again, Israeli diplomacy was seen to be slamming the stable doors long after the horses had bolted, reacting to events rather than anticipating them. It was a classic illustration of what I described in last week’s column, of “Israeli [diplomatic] endeavors [being] reduced to defensive tactical responses, chasing events rather than preempting them, and doomed to failure.”

There is little room for excuses, particularly when it comes to the water issue.

For while it may not have been possible to predict publication of this particular report at this particular time, the appearance of some similar document from some source or other was a near certainty, which should have been foreseen and preempted.

Sense of déjà vu
The situation that has arisen in the wake of the Glavany report has an eerie sense of déjà vu about it. It was barely two years ago that a similar document was produced by Amnesty International, brandishing similarly baseless accusations berating Israel’s water policy as an instrument of apartheid.

The report immediately became a centerpiece of a US lecture tour by Omar Barghouti, arguably the most prominent leader of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. Flyers billing his talks splashed the title: “Thirsting for Justice: Israel’s control of water as a tool of apartheid and means of ethnic cleansing.”

The Israel diplomatic establishment had ample warning of Barghouti’s appearances.

Despite this, no action was taken on suggestions – including from this writer – to preempt his appearances with the massive distribution of factual material, refuting the cavalcade of distortions, falsehood, exaggerations, omissions and half-truths that comprised his talk.

Lessons unlearned
The lessons of the Amnesty/Barghouti episode remained unlearned.

Rather than adopt an offense strategic initiative to remove Israel’s water policy for the list of topics that can be used to denigrate the country, those charged with the conduct of its public diplomacy have opted for defensive tactical responses to hostile initiatives. Rather than launch an ongoing enterprise to set, a priori, the context in which later events are interpreted/perceived, they have opted to fend off individual accusations and condemnations, made in the inimical context prevailing today.

This is particularly exasperating in the case of water, which is one of the topics most amenable to mounting such an preemptive enterprise.

For while it is always possible to find heartrending anecdotal evidence involving highly localized incidents in which an elderly Palestinian may have been inappropriately treated, or in which the IDF damaged a cistern, these in no way reflect the intent or consequences of Israeli policy. This can only be fairly assessed by the overall impact that policy has had on the Palestinians’ water situation.

Here the facts are unequivocal. They should be used to quash any allegation of discriminatory deprivation, as part on an ongoing proactive initiative to inform opinion-makers, hydro-professionals and the general public, and to create a context in which any accusatory documents are likely to be dismissed with the contempt they richly deserve.

Facts, figures, fabrications
The Palestinians’ hydrological situation improved beyond all recognition under Israeli administration, not only in absolute terms compared to initial pre-“occupation” conditions, but in relative terms compared to that of Israelis.

Whether one focuses on overall consumption of fresh water; per capita consumption of fresh water; consumption of fresh water relative to Israelis; accessibility of running water to households; the area under agricultural cultivation; or the size of the agricultural product, the conditions for the Palestinians have been dramatically enhanced by Israeli rule.

Between 1967 and 2006, the overall annual consumption of fresh water by “West Bank” Palestinians grew by 300 percent, from 60 million cubic meters to 180 m.cu.m. The annual per capita consumption in the same period rose by almost 15%, from 86 cubic meters to 100 cu.m.

Overall consumption by Israel dropped by 15% (from 1,411 m.cu.m. to 1,211 m.cu.m.), while the per capita consumption plummeted by 70% (from 508 cu.m to 170 cu.m.), a remarkable decrease made possible not only by more efficient usage but also by massive replacement of fresh water by recycled sewage for irrigation, and of naturally occurring fresh water by desalinated water for domestic use.

By contrast, the Palestinians have steadfastly refused to undertake agreed-upon sewage purification projects, allowing untreated effluents to endanger “downstream” Israeli supplies.

Palestinian claims that it is Israel which has prevented the construction of recycling plants are preposterous. For what twisted logic could conceivably induce the fiendishly cunning Zionists to oppose the construction of installations that would protect their own water resources from Palestinian pollutants?

The wimpiness of ‘Zionist oppression’?
Moreover, from 1967 to the years just before Oslo, Palestinian household consumption rose dramatically – by almost 600%, significantly higher than the 230% in Israel.

Similarly, water-conveyance to households also increased impressively.

Whereas in 1967 only 10% of the “West Bank” Arab population was connected to a running water system, the figure today stands at 95%. So much for discriminatory deprivation.

Palestinian agricultural performance improved dramatically as well, even though water allocations were not increased. (In recent years Israeli farmers have had their freshwater allocations slashed by 50% and more.) This was facilitated by the introduction of more advanced methods of irrigation and cultivation, resulting in an increase of the area cultivated by about 160% and of the agricultural product by 1,200%.

As world-renowned soil-physicist and hydrologist Daniel Hillel observes, by the 1990s, farming “was transformed from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry.”

Furthermore, the inflammatory claims that luscious lawns and shimmering swimming pools in Jewish settlements unfairly and provocatively deprive Palestinians of water are belied by a single statistic: Israel conveys more water (nearly 56 m.cu.m.) from inside the pre-1967 borders into the “West Bank” than the total consumption of the entire Jewish population in the settlements across the “Green Line” (just over 48 m.cu.m.).

In other words, there is a net inflow of water from pre-1967 Israel to the Palestinians which more than compensates for the much-maligned lawns and pools.

Demand – not discrimination
While claims that per-capita consumption of water by Israelis is much higher than that of the Palestinian population are true, this is principally a result of differences in demand – not supply – because of differences in lifestyles. (Clearly, the fact that a millionaire in an opulent penthouse in Manhattan will use far less water than equally affluent owner of a sprawling estate in Bel Air is not a matter of discriminatory deprivation).

Different rates of consumption are found between the Jewish and Arab populations within pre-1967 Israel – and between different socioeconomic groups within the Jewish population – without anyone raising the claim that this is the result of purposeful deprivation.

Interestingly, per-capita consumption in the frequently vilified settlement of Kiryat Arba is 25% lower than in the Beduin city of Rahat – and 90% lower than in up-market Savyon). What perverse discrimination does that indicate?

The perils of PC-diplomacy
These facts and many others should be assertively and proactively inserted into the public discourse, not only as a response to attacks, but as part of an ongoing endeavor to mold public awareness and perception of the realities that pertain to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

One of the principal reasons that this is not occurring is the PC (Palestinian-compliant) perspectives of the Israeli civil society elites, discussed in my previous columns, who exert a dominant influence on the conduct of our public diplomacy.

These entrenched elites cannot permit accurate portrayal of Palestinian society without undermining their own worldview.

(With regard to the water issue, I can attest to this personally.) After all, this would entail exposing the fundamental reasons why the Palestinians find themselves in the miserable state in which they are today: a) a chronic and cavalier disregard for the truth; b) an enduring propensity to blame others for their fate; and c) an obdurate refusal to take responsibility for their own actions – and inaction.

And that is something one does not say in polite company.

www.martinsherman.net

Europeans Increasingly Converting to Islam

2012-01-28T15:38:00.001+02:00

Soeren Kern

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2790/europeans-converting-to-islam

Irish actor Liam Neeson says he is thinking about becoming a Muslim after undergoing a spiritual awakening in Turkey.

Neeson, who was born into a Roman Catholic family in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, told the London-based newspaper The Sun that he was impressed by the religious atmosphere in Istanbul while filming a movie in the city.

He said: "The [Islamic] call to prayer happens five times a day, and for the first week, it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit, and it's the most beautiful, beautiful thing. There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning, and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim."Neeson is just one of hundreds of thousands of Europeans who are trading their Christian heritage for the supposed exoticism of Islam. The surge in conversions is contributing to the mainstreaming of Islam in Europe and contributing to the Islamization of the continent.

In Britain, the number of Muslim converts recently passed the 100,000 mark, according to a survey conducted by an inter-faith group called Faith Matters. The survey revealed that nearly two thirds of the converts were women, more than 70% were white and the average age at conversion was just 27.

The survey, conducted by Kevin Brice from Swansea University in Wales, asked converts for their views on the negative aspects of British culture. They identified alcohol and drunkenness, a "lack of morality and sexual permissiveness" and "unrestrained consumerism."

More than one in four acknowledged there was a "natural conflict" between being a devout Muslim and living in Britain. Nine out of ten women converts said their change of religion had led to them dressing more conservatively. More than half started wearing a head scarf and 5% had worn the burka.

Separately, government authorities revealed that an increasing number of inmates at British prisons are converting to Islam. For example, one-third of the inmates at one of Britain's most notorious youth jails are Muslims and the religion is attracting a large number of converts.

There are 229 Muslims out of a total of 686 youngsters detained at Feltham Young Offenders' Institution in West London, according to Ministry of Justice figures. There are now so many worshippers at Friday prayers that they have to be split between Feltham's mosque and its gym.

Prison insiders say most non-Muslims are locked up during Friday prayers because so many guards are needed to monitor the lunchtime service. As a consequence, many disillusioned youngsters are becoming attracted to Islam by the prospect of getting better food and superior treatment at the prison.

One of the more prominent Britons to convert to Islam is Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Booth, who converted after feeling a "shot of spiritual morphine" on a trip to Iran, now wears a hijab head covering whenever she leaves her home and prays five times a day.

In France, an estimated 70,000 French citizens have converted to Islam in recent years, according to a report by France 3 public television. As in Britain, the majority of converts to Islam in France are young women who say they are disenchanted with materialism.

Conversions to Islam are also rife in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway (and here and here), Poland, Portugal and Spain.

In Italy, Ambassador Alfredo Maiolese, an Italian MP, recently became a Muslim and now dedicates his time trying to improving the image of Islam in the West. In Sweden, there are now at least 5,000 converts to Islam.

In Germany, at least 20,000 people have converted to Islam in recent years, according to a report by RTL television. Some of these converts are playing a growing role in jihad in Germany. In 2010, for example, two German converts to Islam who were found guilty of plotting to create what a judge called a "monstrous blood bath" by carrying out terrorist attacks against American targets in Germany.

"This trend has taken on a very threatening quality toward our security, and while not every convert is a potential terrorist, we are facing a sort of homegrown terrorism that has sprouted in our own backyard," according to Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

Many European coverts to Islam on fact become vastly more pious than Muslims who were born into Islam. Such converts, taking an absolutist approach, are often easily led into extremism.

In Belgium, for example, Muriel Degauque, a woman from Charleroi and a convert to Islam, committed a suicide car bomb attack in November 2005 against American troops in Iraq. A bakery worker, Degaugue had married a Muslim man and quickly became radical in her religious views.

In Switzerland, young converts to Islam are a potential threat to the country's security, according to Alard du Bois-Reymond, who was head of the Swiss Migration Office until he was removed for his politically incorrect observations.
Du Bois-Reymond told the German-language newspaper NZZ am Sonntag that Swiss converts include people who want a "radically different society" and are "resistant to dialogue." He described the Central Islamic Council of Switzerland, which was founded and is run by Swiss converts to Islam, as "the most radical group in Switzerland."
Also in Switzerland, Daniel Streich, a former member of the Swiss People's Party (SVP) who rose to fame for his campaign against the construction of minarets for mosques, converted to Islam. He now says Switzerland needs more mosques.

In Spain, at least 50,000 native Spaniards have converted to Islam in recent years, many of them women. Webislam.net, a Spanish-language website devoted to propagating Islam in Spain, recently published an article that encourages Spanish women to wed Muslim men. The article describes marriage to a Muslim this way: "Multiculturalism is a rewarding experience for all concerned."

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Obama: Of course I intend to prevent a nuclear holocaust . . . in a few months

2012-01-28T15:34:00.002+02:00

Caroline B. Glick

In truth, American Jewry's diffidence towards taking a stand on Iran, or recognizing Obama's dishonestly on this issue specifically and his dishonestly regarding his position on US-Israel ties generally, is not rooted primarily in American Jews' devotion to Obama. It isn't even specifically related to American Jewry's devotion to the political Left. Rather it has to do with American Jewish ambivalence to Israel

European and American perfidy in dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program apparently has no end. This week we were subject to banner headlines announcing that the EU has decided to enact an oil embargo on Iran. It was only when we got past the bombast that we discovered that the embargo is only set to come into force on July 1.

Following its European colleagues, the Obama administration announced it is also ratcheting up its sanctions against Iran in two months. Sometime in late March, the US will begin sanctioning Iran's third largest bank.

At the same time as the Europeans and the Americans announced their phony sanctions, they reportedly dispatched their Turkish colleagues to Teheran to set up a new round of nuclear talks with the ayatollahs. If the past is any guide, we can expect for the Iranians to agree to sit down and talk just before the oil embargo is scheduled to be enforced. And the Europeans — with US support — will use the existence of talks to postpone indefinitely the implementation of the embargo.

There is nothing new in this game of fake sanctions. And what it shows more than anything is that the Europeans and the Americans are more concerned with pressuring Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear installations than they are in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

For his part Obama has a second target audience — American Jews. He is using his fake sanctions as a means of convincing American Jews that he is a pro-Israel president and that in the current election season, not only should they cast their votes in his favor, they should sign their checks for his campaign.

For their part, both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were quick this week to make clear that these moves are insufficient.

They will not force Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. More is needed. As to American Jewry, the jury is still out.

In truth, American Jewry's diffidence towards taking a stand on Iran, or recognizing Obama's dishonestly on this issue specifically and his dishonestly regarding his position on US-Israel ties generally is not rooted primarily in American Jews' devotion to Obama. It isn't even specifically related to American Jewry's devotion to the political Left. Rather it has to do with American Jewish ambivalence to Israel.

The roots of that ambivalence — which is shared by other Western Jewish communities to varying degrees -- predate Obama's presidency. Indeed, they predate the establishment of Israel. And now, as the US and the EU have given Iran at least another six months to a year to develop its nuclear bombs unchecked, it is worth considering the nature and influence of this ambivalence.

Today's principal form of Jew hatred is anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is similar to previous dominant forms of Jew hatred such as xenophobic and racist anti-Semitism, and Communist anti-Jewish cosmopolitanism in the sense that it takes dominant, popular social trends and turns them against the Jews. Anti-Zionism's current predominance owes to the convergence of several popular social trends which include Western post-nationalism, and anti-colonialism.

The problem that anti-Zionism poses for American Jewry is that it forces them to pay a price for supporting Israel. This is problematic because Zionism has never been fully embraced by American Jewry. Since the dawn of modern Zionism, the cause of Jewish self-determination placed American Jewish leaders in an uncomfortable dilemma.

Unlike every other Diaspora Jewish community, the American Jewish community has always perceived itself as a permanent community rather than an exile community. American Jews have always viewed the United States as the new Promised Land.

With the formation of the modern Zionist movement in the late nineteenth century, American Jews found themselves on the thorns of a dilemma. Clearly, the state of world Jewry was such that national self-determination had become an existential necessity for non-American Jews.

But while supporting Jewish refugees and a scrappy little country was okay, support for the Zionist cause of Jewish national liberation involved an acceptance of the fact that Israel — not the US — is the Jewish homeland. Moreover, it involved accepting that there are Jewish interests that are independent of — if not necessarily in contradiction with — American interests. For instance, irrespective of the prevailing winds in Washington, and regardless of whether the US supports Israel or not, it is a Jewish interest that Israel exists, thrives and survives.

In a recent oped in Haaretz, Hebrew University political science professor Shlomo Avineri contrasted world Jewry's massive mobilization on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s and their relative silence today in the face of Iran's Holocaust denial and open calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Avineri is apparently confounded by the disparity between Western Jewry's behavior in the two cases.

But the cause of the disparity is clear. Supporting the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate was easy. Unlike Israel, Soviet Jews were powerless. As such, they were pure victims and supporting them cost Diaspora Jews nothing in terms of their position in their societies. Just as importantly, the cause of freedom for Soviet Jewry was perfectly aligned with the West's Cold War policies against the Soviet Union. The frequent Jewish demonstrations outside Soviet legations provided Western leaders with another tool to fight the Cold War.

In contrast, supporting Israel, and the cause of Jewish freedom and self-determination embodied by Zionism is not cost free for Diaspora Jews. At root, to support Israel and Zionism involves accepting that Jews have inherent rights as Jews. To be a Zionist Jew in the Diaspora means that you embrace and defend the notion that the Jews have the right to their own interests and that those interests may be distinct from other nations' interests. That is, to be a Zionist involves rejecting Jewish assimilation and embracing the fact that Jews require national independence and power to guarantee our survival. And this can be unpleasant.

Pro-Israel American Jews have historically tried to tie their support for Israel to larger, more universal themes in order to extricate themselves from the need to admit that as Jews and supporters of Israel they have a right and a duty to support Jewish freedom even if it isn't always pretty. Again, for Israel's first several decades, it was about helping poor Jews and refugees. In recent years, the predominant defense has been that Israel deserves support because it is a democracy.

Certainly, these are both reasonable reasons for supporting Israel. But neither support for Israel because it was poor nor support for Israel because it is free are specifically Zionist reasons for supporting Israel. You don't have to be a Zionist to support poor Jewish refugees and you don't have to be a Zionist to support democracy.

You do have to be a Zionist however, to defend the Jews in Israel and throughout the world in a coherent manner when the predominant form of Jew hatred is anti-Zionism. You have to be willing to accept and defend the right of the Jewish people to freedom and self-determination in our national homeland against those who deny that right. You have to be a Zionist to defend Israel's right to survive and thrive even though it is no longer poor and its democratically elected government is not liked by the Obama administration.

And you have to be a Zionist to realize that since Jewish survival is dependent on Jewish power, and anti-Zionists reject the right of Jews to have power, that anti-Zionists seek to bring about a situation where Jewish survival is imperiled.

The weakness of American Jewry's response to Iran's genocidal intentions towards Israel is of a piece with its weak response to the forces of anti-Zionism generally and to Jewish anti-Zionists particularly. Since 2007, the US government has effectively ruled out the use of force against Iran's nuclear weapons program and embraced a policy of pursuing negotiations with ayatollahs while enacting impotent sanctions to quell Congressional pressure. At least in part, this policy owes to the US's assessment that a nuclear Iran does not pose a high-level threat to US national security.

At the same time, both then president George W. Bush and Obama determined that an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear weapons program does pose a high-level threat to the US. As a consequence, both administrations have taken concerted steps to prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

On the merits, both of these policies are easily discredited. But the fact that they continue to be implemented shows that they are supported by a large and powerful constituency in Washington.

To oppose Iran's nuclear program effectively, American Jews are required to oppose these strongly supported US policies. And at some point, this may require them to announce they support Israel's right to survive and thrive even if that paramount right conflicts with how the US government perceives US national interests. That is, it may require them to embrace Zionism unconditionally.

No doubt, if they do so, their own conditions will improve. They will finally be able to speak coherently against the gathering forces of anti-Zionism — both from within the Jewish community and from without. This in turn will act as a lightning rod for inspiring American Jews to embrace their Judaism.

With their leaders to date having abjectly failed to contend with the most powerful form of Jew hatred, it is no wonder that so many Diaspora Jews are leaving the fold. If they reverse course and go after their attackers, American Jewish leaders will give community members a meaningful reason to proudly embrace their identity.

In a speech this week at the Knesset, Netanyahu explained the different lessons the Holocaust teaches the international community on the one hand, and the Jews on the other. As far as its universal lessons are concerned, Netanyahu said, "The lesson is that the countries of the world must be woken up, as much as possible, so that they can organize against such crimes. The lesson is that the broadest possible alliances must be forged in order to act against this threat before it is too late."

As for the Jews, Netanyahu embraced Zionism's core principle: "With regard to threats to our very existence, we cannot abandon our future to the hands of others. With regard to our fate, our duty is to rely on ourselves alone."

We must hope that world Jewry will recognize today that the fate of the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world is indivisible and rally to Israel's side whatever the social cost of doing so. But even if they do not recognize this basic truth, the imperatives of Zionism, of the Jewish people, remain in place.

Ireland's top diplomat in Gaza to see blockade impact

2012-01-28T02:33:00.002+02:00

GAZA CITY - Agence France-Presse

Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore (L) shakes hands with UNRWA commissioner-general Filippo Grandi during his visit to the UNRWA aid distribution centre in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on January 27,2012. AFP photo

Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore (L) shakes hands with UNRWA commissioner-general Filippo Grandi during his visit to the UNRWA aid distribution centre in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on January 27,2012. AFP photo
Visiting Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore on Friday kicked off a three-day trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories with a brief visit to the Gaza Strip.

It was Gilmore's first visit to the Hamas-ruled coastal territory which has been languishing under an Israeli blockade for more than five years.

"Ireland is completely opposed to the blockade," Gilmore told AFP in Gaza City. "It has a huge impact on people who are living in Gaza and it is clearly having a devastating impact on the local economy," said the minister.

"The blockade should be ended soon in order to allow the local economy to grow and ensure that people who live in Gaza can exercise their human rights: freedom of movement and travel." Gilmore's spokesman Philip Grant earlier said the minister wanted to see first hand the impact of the embargo.

"Within the European Union, Ireland has been one of the most forceful countries calling for a lifting of the Gaza blockade. He is here to see what the economic and social impact has been on the people of Gaza," he said.

The minister's visit comes nearly three months after Israeli forces blocked a vessel carrying 15 Irish activists, among them a member of the European parliament, from reaching Gaza in defiance of Israel's controversial naval blockade.

The move sparked tensions with Dublin, which has repeatedly expressed its opposition to the Israeli embargo that was first imposed in 2006, then tightened a year later when Hamas seized control of the territory.

"Flotilla is a voluntary activity by individuals and organisations -- they do that obviously in response to the blockade," Gilmore said.

"The role of the Irish government is playing through the European Union and the United Nations and international organisations, and we made very clear the position of the Irish government -- that it opposes the blockade, and that we believe it is wrong." Irish activists were also part of an earlier 10-ship flotilla which tried to reach Gaza in July but their vessel was damaged, with the organisers accusing Israel of sabotage.

At the time, Dublin said it would take a "very serious view" if the allegations were proven.

During his brief visit to the coastal territory, Gilmore met representatives of Palestinian civil society and also talked with officials from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, but did not meet any Hamas representatives in line with EU policy, which blacklists the group as a terror organisation.

He left around midday (1000 GMT) and headed to Jerusalem where he was to be briefed by OCHA, the UN agency for humanitarian affairs, before heading out on a tour of the Old City and a visit to the flashpoint Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan in the city's annexed eastern sector.

Israel has vigorously defended its right to maintain a blockade on the Gaza Strip, saying it is necessary to prevent weapons from entering the Hamas-run territory.

Last September, a UN report into a deadly Israeli commando raid on a Turkish-led flotilla in May 2010, which left nine activists dead, found the Jewish state had acted with "excessive force" but said its naval blockade on Gaza was legal.

Mahmoud Abbas Continues Ruthless Campaign Against Opponents

2012-01-28T02:30:00.002+02:00

Challah Hu Akbar

Last week I reported that Mahmoud Abbas was monitoring the phone calls of political opponents. A few weeks before that Jordan, at Abbas’ behest, seized Mohammad Dahlan’s assets as well as those of his brother and an unidentified individual.

Palestine Press and Palestine Today are both reporting that Fatah has expelled Samir Mashharawi. Mashharawi is a friend of Dahlan and worked with him in Gaza, when Dahlan was in charge of the security forces. Dahlan was expelled from Fatah back in June, with ratification of the expulsion coming in August. According to Palestine Press, Mashharawi slammed Fatah a few weeks ago in an article on Al-Arabiya. Mashharawi reportedly said that Fatah “lacked leadership” and had lost “the spirit of the struggle.” According to Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Mashharawi has been residing in the UAE, where he is engaged in business dealings with Dahlan.

Abbas is also targeting Mashharawi due to his comments in support of Dahlan in the Abbas-Dahlan affair. According to Mashharawi, the dispute between Dahlan and Abbas is“personal” and Abbas is using it as a distraction as he “wants to run away from five years of failure in running the Palestinian Authority and the political portfolio.”

In July 2011, Palestinian Authority security forces, at the behest of Abbas, raided Dahlan’s home in Ramallah. During the raid they arrested 23 guards and confiscated 16 guns and two vehicles. According to Mashharawi, Abbas wanted to do far more.

“They wanted to initiate an armed clash with Dahlan’s men so that the police could open fire. The goal was to kill Dahlan and then announce that he was part of a conspiracy to overthrow the Palestinian president.”

All of these events further emphasize the points recently made by Jonathan Schanzer.

All things considered, Dahlan’s fate is inconsequential. His star fell long ago. More noteworthy is the ruthlessness Abbas has employed in pursuing him. With Washington’s full support to fend off Hamas’s challengers, Abbas has become relentless against anyone who dares challenge him.

While Dahlan will probably not pose a political threat from exile, Abbas will likely keep after him. But it won’t end there, either. The Palestinian president has also picked fights with other potential political threats, including Prime Minister Fayyad, and Yasser Abbed Rabbo of the PLO. All three share a belief that the Palestinian Authority under Abbas has become less transparent and strayed from its original goal: a viable and transparent state that coexists with its neighbors, including Israel.

The Dahlan affair can best be understood as a witch hunt. It underscores the fact that Abbas has consolidated power, and that he will abide no challenges. Abbas’s whims bode poorly for the Palestinian Authority, which may now expend more energy settling scores than resolving the long-standing conflict with Israel.

Don’t you just love Palestinian politics?

Turkey is Hamas’ New Primary Funder

2012-01-27T20:23:00.002+02:00

Challah Hu Akbar | Jan 27, 2012

Back in December IMEMC reported:

Turkish sources reported that Prime Minister of Turkey, Receb Tayyip Erdogan, sent a confidential letter to Ismail Haniyya, Prime Minister of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip, inviting him to visit Turkey, and informing him that he has decided to grant Haniyya’s government $300 Million.

Jonathan Schanzer wrote shortly thereafter:

…this pledge would cover nearly half of Hamas’s reported $769 million budget next year, and would make Turkey its primary benefactor.

Hamas and Turkish officials deny the report, and Hamas probably won’t submit to an external audit any time soon. But let there be no doubt: Hamas is for sale, thanks to the Iranian nuclear program and the Arab Spring. .With Iran stepping back, could Turkey step in? From publicly clashing with Israeli president Shimon Peres over Israel’s Hamas policy at Davos in 2009 to sponsoring the ill-fated flotilla that attempted to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza in 2010, Erdogan has become a champion of the Hamas cause.

In recent years, the Turkish government has provided nominal assistance to Hamas in Gaza through a series of charities. Hamas reportedly now operates on Turkish soil, meaning Ankara is already a patron. And Hamas recently announced that leader Ismail Haniyeh plans to visit Turkey soon.

Now, more confirmation of that IMEMC report has arrived. A diplomat was quoted by Reuters today.

“Iran used to give $250 million to $300 million to Hamas but there have been interruptions in the payments in past year. Our understanding is that there has been no payment since August 2011,” he said.

Hamas Gaza Strip leader Ismail Haniyeh was thought to have “received promises from Turkey to provide the movement and his administration with $300 million a year to help Gaza”.

In addition to this Reuters report, Palestinian news sources are reporting that Yediot Ahranot in its Friday paper is reporting that Turkey has agreed to provide Hamas with $300 million.

The Yediot Ahranot article does not appear to be online currently. If it becomes available I will link to it. If anyone has a hard copy and would like to email it, please do.

A Slashed and Burned Military

2012-01-27T18:53:00.001+02:00

Mike Brownfield

January 27, 2012

The future is not bright for the U.S. military. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave America a glimpse of the half-trillion dollars in defense spending cuts requested by the Obama Administration and detailed how the U.S. military’s capabilities would be affected in practical terms. The result is a slashed and burned military that woefully lacks the forces it needs to meet America’s security challenges on a global scale.

On the ground, in the sea, and in the air, American forces will shrink drastically — the Army will shrink by 72,000 people, the active Marine Corps will be reduced by 20,000, the Air Force will see six tactical fighter squadrons de-established while an additional training fighter squadron will be eliminated, the next-generation F-35 Join Strike Fighter procurement will be slowed, and the Navy will retire seven cruisers and two amphibious ships at an early juncture while delaying the procurements of new ships. To put these cuts in context, we are returning to ground forces levels we had under President Bill Clinton when the Army strained and scrambled to execute smaller missions like Kosovo and Bosnia–let alone significant ground force operations. In order to compensate for the drastically reduced military capabilities, the Administration plans to increase reliance on unmanned drones and special-operations teams based around the globe. But special operations are a scalpel, not a Swiss army knife. They are not an “easy-button” substitute for the many security missions the United States undertakes worldwide. And they rely on a strong backbone of conventional forces in order to succeed. The U.S. Navy’s presence was essential in Somalia during the recent hostage rescue, as was the Air Force’s support in the first phase of Afghanistan and the Army’s muscle during the surge in Iraq. Special forces without robust conventional forces is like a wide receiver without a quarterback and a line.

In a new paper, The Heritage Foundation’s Baker Spring, the F. M. Kirby Research Fellow in National Security Policy in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, explains that the U.S. military is in danger of becoming the broken force it was in the Carter era:

As was the case following the Vietnam War in the 1970s, defense budget reductions of the scope previewed by Panetta generally lead to reduced combat readiness and, ultimately, a hollow force. This is because a force that is too small has to endure higher operating tempos and rotation cycles. It also results in a reduction in the technological edge that permits the U.S. military to achieve victory on the battlefield quickly and with fewer casualties. Finally, it becomes more difficult to man the force with high-quality personnel and maintain high morale.

Unfortunately, these cuts are just the beginning. Under the Budget Control Act that Congress passed last summer, the military will face automatic budget cuts amounting to as much as $600 billion in addition to those that Panetta laid out yesterday. As Spring explains, the only way to avoid these automatic cuts is for the Budget Control Act to be amended or repealed — a measure that President Obama has said he would veto.

All of this comes despite the fact that spending on national defense — a core constitutional function of government — has declined significantly over time, despite wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Spending on the three major entitlements–Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid–has more than tripled. And while Washington attempts to cut spending, it is the military that is taking the brunt of it: For every dollar the President hopes to save in domestic programs, he plans on saving $128 in defense.

This leaves America in a precarious position. Fewer troops in all the services will be scrambling in a global shell game to mask the fact that the United States can’t defend all of its interests. The force will be even more stressed than at the height of Iraq and Afghanistan. By cutting the defense budget, the United States is undermining the responsiveness of its defense industrial base. In addition, without proper investments, the United States will lose technological advantages vis-a-vis its future strategic competitors.

Meanwhile, America’s enemies are watching. They can count our troops, our planes, and our ships. They can look on as America’s military retreats and loses its ability to project forces around the world. And they will quickly realize that the United States will not be able to cover its responsibilities worldwide. That is an invitation for the sort of security threats America cannot afford — and they are threats that America may not be able to respond to with its stripped-down military.

Quick Hits:

The U.S. economy anemically grew 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter last year, and indicators point to even slower growth in the beginning of 2012, leading the Federal Reserve to say it expects to keep interest rates low through late 2014.
GOP presidential candidates engaged in their 19th debate last night, their last chance to spar before Florida’s primary vote on January 31.
A “very high escalation” of violence has been reported in Syria over the last four days despite the presence of Arab League observers sent to monitor the organization’s plan to end the 10-month-old crisis.
Censorship is coming to Twitter. The micro-blogging company announced that it will begin to censor content in countries where particular words are against the law but will be displayed in countries where they are legal.
LUNCHTIME CHAT: How have President Obama’s economic policies impacted America? Find out in our live chat with Bill Beach, director of Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis, today from 12 PM to 1 PM ET. Click here to join in.

The Zionist imperative

2012-01-27T18:50:00.002+02:00

Caroline Glick

European and American perfidy in dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program apparently has no end. This week we were subject to banner headlines announcing that the EU has decided to place an oil embargo on Iran. It was only when we got past the bombast that we discovered that the embargo is only set to come into force on July 1.

Following its European colleagues, the Obama administration announced it is also ratcheting up its sanctions against Iran... in two months. Sometime in late March, the US will begin sanctioning Iran's third largest bank.
At the same time as the Europeans and the Americans announced their phony sanctions, they reportedly dispatched their Turkish colleagues to Tehran to set up a new round of nuclear talks with the ayatollahs. If the past is any guide, we can expect for the Iranians to agree to sit down and talk just before the oil embargo is scheduled to be enforced. And the Europeans - with US support - will use the existence of talks to postpone indefinitely the implementation of the embargo.

There is nothing new in this game of fake sanctions. And what it shows more than anything is that the Europeans and the Americans are more concerned with pressuring Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear installations than they are in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Obama has a second target audience - American Jews. He is using his fake sanctions as a means of convincing American Jews that he is a pro-Israel president and that in the current election season, not only should they cast their votes in his favor, they should sign their checks for his campaign.

Both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were quick this week to make clear that these moves are insufficient. They will not force Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. More is needed.

As to American Jewry, the jury is still out.

In truth, American Jewry's diffidence towards taking a stand on Iran, or recognizing Obama's dishonesty on this issue specifically and his dishonesty regarding his position on US-Israel ties generally is not rooted primarily in American Jews' devotion to Obama. It isn't even specifically related to American Jewry's devotion to the political Left. Rather it has to do with American Jewish ambivalence to Israel.

The roots of that ambivalence - which is shared by other Western Jewish communities to varying degrees - predate Obama's presidency.

Indeed, they predate the establishment of the State of Israel. And now, as the US and the EU have given Iran at least another six months to a year to develop its nuclear bombs unchecked, it is worth considering the nature and influence of this ambivalence.

Today's principal form of Jew-hatred is anti- Zionism. Anti-Zionism is similar to previous dominant forms of Jew hatred such as Christian anti-Judaism, xenophobic and racist anti- Semitism, and Communist anti-Jewish cosmopolitanism in the sense that it takes dominant, popular social trends and turns them against the Jews. Anti-Zionism's current predominance owes to the convergence of several popular social trends which include Western post-nationalism, and anti-colonialism.

The problem that anti-Zionism poses for American Jewry is that it forces them to pay a price for supporting Israel. This is problematic because Zionism has never been fully embraced by American Jewry. Since the dawn of modern Zionism, the cause of Jewish self-determination placed American Jewish leaders in an uncomfortable dilemma.

UNLIKE EVERY other Diaspora Jewish community, the American Jewish community has always perceived itself as a permanent community rather than an exilic community. American Jews have always viewed the United States as the new Promised Land.

With the formation of the modern Zionist movement in the late 19th century, American Jews found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Clearly, the state of world Jewry was such that national self-determination had become an existential necessity for non-American Jews.

But while supporting Jewish refugees and a scrappy little country was okay, support for the Zionist cause of Jewish national liberation involved an acceptance of the fact that Israel - not the US - is the Jewish homeland. Moreover, it involved accepting that there are Jewish interests that are independent of - if not necessarily in contradiction with - American interests. For instance, irrespective of the prevailing winds in Washington, and regardless of whether the US supports Israel or not, it is a Jewish interest that Israel exists, thrives and survives.

In a recent op-ed in Haaretz, Hebrew University political science professor Shlomo Avineri contrasted world Jewry's massive mobilization on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s and their relative silence today in the face of Iran's Holocaust denial and open calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Avineri is apparently confounded by the disparity between Western Jewry's behavior in the two cases.

But the cause of the disparity is clear. Supporting the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate was easy. Unlike Israel, Soviet Jews were powerless. As such, they were pure victims and supporting them cost Diaspora Jews nothing in terms of their position in their societies.

Just as important, the cause of freedom for Soviet Jewry was perfectly aligned with the West's Cold War policies against the Soviet Union. The frequent Jewish demonstrations outside Soviet legations provided Western leaders with another tool to fight the Cold War.

In contrast, supporting Israel, and the cause of Jewish freedom and self-determination embodied by Zionism, is not cost-free for Diaspora Jews. At root, to support Israel and Zionism involves accepting that Jews have inherent rights as Jews. To be a Zionist Jew in the Diaspora means that you embrace and defend the notion that the Jews have the right to their own interests and that those interests may be distinct from other nations' interests. That is, to be a Zionist involves rejecting Jewish assimilation and embracing the fact that Jews require national independence and power to guarantee our survival. And this can be unpleasant.

PRO-ISRAEL AMERICAN Jews have historically tried to tie their support for Israel to larger, more universal themes, in order to extricate themselves from the need to admit that as Jews and supporters of Israel they have a right and a duty to support Jewish freedom even if it isn't always pretty. Again, for Israel's first several decades, it was about helping poor Jews and refugees. In recent years, the predominant defense has been that Israel deserves support because it is a democracy.

Certainly, these are both reasonable reasons for supporting Israel. But neither support for Israel because it was poor nor support for Israel because it is free is a specifically Zionist reason for supporting Israel. You don't have to be a Zionist to support poor Jewish refugees and you don't have to be a Zionist to support democracy.

You do have to be a Zionist however, to defend the Jews in Israel and throughout the world in a coherent manner when the predominant form of Jew-hatred is anti-Zionism.

You have to be willing to accept and defend the right of the Jewish people to freedom and self-determination in our national homeland against those who deny that right. You have to be a Zionist to defend Israel's right to survive and thrive even though it is no longer poor and its democratically elected government is not liked by the Obama administration.

And you have to be a Zionist to realize that since Jewish survival is dependent on Jewish power, and anti-Zionists reject the right of Jews to have power, that anti-Zionists seek to bring about a situation where Jewish survival is imperiled.

The weakness of American Jewry's response to Iran's genocidal intentions towards Israel is of a piece with its weak response to the forces of anti-Zionism generally and to Jewish anti- Zionists particularly. Since 2007, the US government has effectively ruled out the use of force against Iran's nuclear weapons program and embraced a policy of pursuing negotiations with ayatollahs while enacting impotent sanctions to quell congressional pressure. At least in part, this policy is due to the US's assessment that a nuclear Iran does not pose a high-level threat to US national security.

Both then-president George W. Bush and later Barack Obama determined that an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear weapons program does pose a high-level threat to the US. As a consequence, both administrations have taken concerted steps to prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

On the merits, both of these policies are easily discredited. But the fact that they continue to be implemented shows that they are supported by a large and powerful constituency in Washington.

To oppose Iran's nuclear program effectively, American Jews are required to oppose these strongly supported US policies. And at some point, this may require them to announce they support Israel's right to survive and thrive even if that paramount right conflicts with how the US government perceives US national interests.

That is, it may require them to embrace Zionism unconditionally.

No doubt, if they do so, their own conditions will improve. They will finally be able to speak coherently against the gathering forces of anti-Zionism - both from within the Jewish community and from without. This in turn will act as a lightning rod for inspiring American Jews to embrace their Judaism.

With their leaders having abjectly failed to contend with the most powerful form of Jew-hatred, it is no wonder that so many Diaspora Jews are leaving the fold. If they reverse course and go after their attackers, American Jewish leaders will give community members a meaningful reason to proudly embrace their identity.

In a speech this week at the Knesset, Netanyahu explained the different lessons the Holocaust teaches the international community on the one hand, and the Jews on the other.

As far as its universal lessons are concerned, Netanyahu said, "The lesson is that the countries of the world must be woken up, as much as possible, so that they can organize against such crimes.

The lesson is that the broadest possible alliances must be forged in order to act against this threat before it is too late."

As for the Jews, Netanyahu embraced Zionism's core principle: "With regard to threats to our very existence, we cannot abandon our future to the hands of others.

"With regard to our fate, our duty is to rely on ourselves alone."

We must hope that world Jewry will recognize today that the fate of the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world is indivisible and rally to Israel's side whatever the social cost of doing so. But even if they do not recognize this basic truth, the imperatives of Zionism, of the Jewish people, remain in place.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Settlements Freeze – an Obstacle to Peace!

2012-01-27T18:29:00.000+02:00

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought”
"Israel Hayom” Newsletter, November 4, 2011
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=770

Abu Mazen's September 23, 2011 UN speech and the Palestinian Authority's education system reaffirm the fact that Jewish settlements within pre-1967 Israel – and not in Judea and Samaria (J&S) – are the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In his UN speech, Abu Mazen highlighted the "63 years old occupation” since 1948; this message is reinforced throughout his K-12 education system. He heralded the PLO – which was established three years before the 1967 War and before the establishment of contemporary Jewish settlement in J&S - as his supreme authority. Abu Mazen denies the existence of Jewish roots between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Thus, the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not the J&S settlements, but the existence of the Jewish State. Freezing Jewish settlements in J&S diverts attention away from the core cause of the conflict. Moreover, it constitutes an obstacle to peace, by reflecting submission to pressure, thus fueling further pressure, radicalizing Arab demands, intensifying Arab terrorism and eroding Israel's posture of deterrence, while the only peace-possible is deterrence-driven peace.

The pre-1967 area of Israel was the focus of the systematic campaign of Arab terrorism during the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, as well as of the conventional Arab wars on Israel in 1948, 1956 and 1967.

A giveaway of all Jewish settlements in J&S was offered by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in October 2000. Abu Mazen and Arafat responded with an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings in pre-1967 Israeli towns, which are defined as "settlements” by Abu Mazen's school textbooks.

The September 2005 uprooting of 25 Jewish settlements in J&S and Gaza induced an unprecedented barrage of missiles, hitting Jewish settlements in pre-1967 Israel.

*If the 350,000 Jews, among 1.6MN Arabs, in J&S constitute an obstacle to peace, are the 1.5MN Arabs, among 6MN Jews, within pre-1967 Israel, an insurmountable obstacle to peace?!

*If Jewish construction in J&S should be frozen, lest it prejudge the outcome of negotiations, then Arab construction in J&S should be frozen as well, unless one wishes to prejudge the outcome of negotiations.

*If the uprooting of Jewish communities advances peace, why would the uprooting of Arab communities undermine peace?!

*The uprooting of Arabs communities would be immoral; so, too, is the uprooting of Jewish communities.

*No opposition to an Arab presence in pre-1967 Israel should be tolerated; so, too, should the opposition to a Jewish presence in J&S.

*Illegal Jewish homes in J&S are razed by Israel; so, too, should the 1,100 illegal Arab homes built annually in Jerusalem and the thousands of illegal Arab homes in J&S?

The 1950-67 Jordanian occupation of J&S was recognized by only Britain and Pakistan. The most recent internationally-recognized sovereign over J&S was the 1922 British Mandate, which defined J&S as part of the Jewish National Homeland. Article 6 of that Mandate acknowledges the right of Jews to settle in J&S. Judge Stephen Schwebel, former President of the International Court of Justice, determined that Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria was rooted in self-defense and therefore did not constitute "occupation." Eugene Rostow, former Dean of Yale Law School, former Undersecretary of State and co-author of UN Security Council Resolution 242, asserted that 242 entitled Jews to settle in J&S. The Oslo Accord does not prohibit the construction of Jewish settlements in J&S. Moreover, settlements are established on state-owned – and not private – land.

Peaceful coexistence and the determination to uproot Jewish or Arab communities constitute an oxymoron. The concepts of "Durable peace” and "Judenrein areas" contradict each other. The litmus test of Palestinian/Arab intent is the acceptance or rejection of Jewish settlements presence in J&S.

Jewish settlements in J&S are not the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They are located at the roots of 4,000 years old Jewish religious and national aspirations. They are located at the crux of Israel's national security which also provides 40% of Israel's water supply. The mountain ridges and water aquifers of J&S are the "Golan Heights” of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and 80% of Israel's transportation, business, economic, health, education, scientific and irrigation infrastructure in the 9-15 miles wide sliver, which is the pre-1967 Israel.

Freezing of Jewish construction in J&S is not a peace-enhancer; it is an appeasement-enhancer, thus undermining the cause of peace and advancing the cause of war.

Shabbat Shalom,

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative"
www.TheEttingerReport.com

Obama Administration holds talks with Muslim Brotherhood, speeds pace of aid to Egypt

2012-01-27T18:27:00.002+02:00

Jihad Watch

The Brotherhood and the Salafis don't even need to collect the jizya from the Copts, as long as they've got Barack Obama.

"Obama set to speed aid to Egypt: official," by Warren Strobel for Reuters, January 25 (thanks to Wimpy):

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama plans to accelerate the pace of American aid to Egypt, a top State Department official said on Wednesday, as the most populous Arab nation reaches a critical stage in its uncertain transition away from autocratic rule.

Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats, part of a U.S. delegation that held unprecedented talks last week with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington wanted to provide "more immediate benefits" to Egyptians, who earlier this month conducted their first democratic elections in decades. "During this period, we want to be as supportive as we can. This is an historic moment. Egypt's a country of enormous importance," Hormats said.

Under the plan, some non-urgent U.S. aid slated for other countries - he did not name them - would be redirected to Egypt. And funding in the pipeline for long-term programs in Egypt would be shifted to quick-impact projects, he said.

Hormats, speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum, emphasized that the White House had not made any final decisions, and that he was providing Washington's "broad thinking" on the subject.

It was unclear whether the total amount of U.S. aid to Egypt would be increased. "Whether it's an increase or whether it's reprioritizing existing assistance, we're still working this out," Hormats said.

Still, he made clear the United States wants to be seen as doing more to assist a hoped-for democratic evolution in Egypt, where the military still holds ultimate power on the first anniversary of protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt has long been among the top recipients of U.S. aid, which began flowing in substantial sums after it became the first Arab nation to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1979, regarding the money as an investment in regional security.

According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, the United States gave roughly $2 billion or more annually for 25 years after the peace agreement, most of it for the military.

That figure has drifted down to hold steady at around $1.55 billion in recent years.

Congress approved $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt for the current fiscal year, but with conditions attached. It also approved $250 million in economic aid, as well as an "enterprise fund" of up to $60 million.

For the money to flow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must certify that the Egyptian government is supporting the transition to a civilian government, including holding free and fair elections, and implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.

In addition, the law says that none of the aid, military or economic, can be spent unless Egypt is meeting its obligations under the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

U.S. lawmakers appear in no mood to approve more, at least for Egypt's military, which has earned U.S. criticism for cracking down on pro-democracy non-governmental organizations and for the way security forces have treated women protesters.

SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRACIES

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Obama said the United States had a "huge stake in the outcome" of the revolutions that have swept the Arab world. He pledged to "support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies," but offered no concrete proposals for additional assistance.

Obama is to unveil his proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2013, including foreign assistance, on February 13.

He has yet to announce major new aid packages following the overthrow of governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.

U.S. officials have cited fiscal restraints at home, as well as resistance in the Congress.

"It's unfortunate the juxtaposition, that our budgetary constraints come at the same time that you have this enormously hopeful series of changes in the region," Hormats said.

When the Cold War ended in 1989 and it was clear which anti-Communist leaders would take power in former Soviet bloc states, Congress was quick to provide backing "without a lot of cajoling," Hormats noted.

Following the revolts of the "Arab Spring," and in Egypt particularly, "you have a much more fluid situation, and we don't know what the government's going to look like," he said.

Underscoring that point, Hormats last week held what he called the first-ever economic meetings between a senior U.S. official and the Muslim Brotherhood, a once-banned Islamist group that this month won the biggest share of seats in Egypt's lower house of parliament.

The delegation that met with the Brotherhood, which Washington had long kept at arm's length, was led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

Hormats described the half-dozen Brotherhood officials he met with as "very pragmatic. They understand, they're the majority party now in the parliament. They are going to be the primary political party in Egypt. They need to deliver results."

"And their focus primarily is on small- and medium-enterprise" as generators of job creation, he said.

Earlier this month, Representative Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, wrote to Obama and Clinton, warning them that recent raids on foreign non-governmental organizations in Cairo could jeopardize U.S. military assistance.

While acknowledging lawmakers' concerns over trends in Egypt and other Middle East countries where dictators have been toppled, Hormats said, "democracy is not always a smooth or predictable process."

"We have to understand that and not expect miracles. ... We have to explain to the American people that patience is needed and support is needed," he said.

Along with formal government assistance to Egypt, the Obama administration is promoting expanded trade ties; supporting efforts by the International Monetary Fund to reach an agreement with Cairo; and encouraging U.S. firms to explore investment.

A U.S. business mission led by General Electric (GE.N) is headed to Egypt next month, Hormats said.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Jon Boyle and Sandra Maler)

'Israel doesn't have to face Iran alone,' says French envoy

2012-01-27T18:23:00.002+02:00

French Ambassador to Israel Christophe Bigot tells Israel Hayom's weekend edition: "The Iranian nuclear program is a threat to the entire world...and every country has the right to defend itself. But we are not there yet" • He says the West needs to offer Iranian opposition support.
Boaz Bismuth

Earlier this week, the EU voted to impose an unprecedented embargo on Iranian oil. This was not an easy task. For Greece and Spain, this marked a significant concession. France was one of the countries that worked tirelessly to win the agreement of the 27 EU partners. In recent years, France has been among the leaders in pushing a militant stance against the Iranian nuclear program. Still, sanctions are one thing, but talk of military action is another. Christophe Bigot, the 46-year-old French ambassador to Israel, knows this country and its inhabitants very well. He served for three years here as the deputy ambassador before returning to us as top envoy in the summer of 2009. Since coming back, he has not rested for a moment, though he did manage to find time in his schedule this week to speak with Israel Hayom about a host of issues, including the Iranian nuclear program, Gilad Schalit, and the issue that most riles up the Israelis – the French nationals suspected in causing the hit-and-run death of Lee Zeitouni, who subsequently fled the country to evade arrest and trial. To some Israelis, France has come to represent a safe haven for criminals.

This week the EU decided to impose a historic oil embargo on Tehran. There are those who see this as substantive sanctions with teeth, but they will only come into effect in July. Mr. Ambassador, since we are all aware that time is running out, why wait until July?

“Since 2003, we have been trying to put an end to the Iranian nuclear project. We worked hard to achieve this goal. First we tried to persuade the Iranians, to get clear answers from them, promises. We tried again in October to get clear answers regarding the uranium enrichment, but we didn’t get any answer from them.

“In November, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued its report, which laid bare what many of us already knew to be true or suspected was true: The Iranian nuclear program was geared toward military purposes. In the wake of the report, French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanded unprecedented sanctions against Iran. You have to remember that oil represents 80 percent of Iranian exports, so we decided on an embargo on Iranian oil. In addition, we also decided to freeze assets belonging to the Iranian central bank, so here we are touching the heart of the matter, touching the money. This wasn’t all done in a day. I’m aware of the fact that there are those who are raising a brow and asking, ‘Why wait and give the Iranians time?’

“Indeed, many countries have agreements with Iran that need to expire. In countries that did not have agreements, the embargo has already come into effect, and the markets are already responding to the embargo. One can see how this is having an impact. The Iranian economy is beginning to collapse.”

So should Israel be satisfied?

“Israel seems to feel that it is all alone in facing the Iranian nuclear threat, but Israel is not left to face Iran on its own. First, because Israel has friends, and also because the Iranian threat is against the entire region. The Iranian nuclear program is a threat to the entire world. The Iranian nuclear program poses an existential threat. What we need is for fewer states to purchase oil from Iran, and those who continue to do so will pay low prices, so either way Iran comes out on the losing end.”

What about a new round of sanctions in the Security Council?

“We are certainly hopeful that this will happen, but the Russians and the Chinese reject this idea.”

Is the military option a legitimate one?

“I would not put it that way. Every country has the right to defend itself. But we are not there yet. We are currently in the exploratory stage of figuring out what is the most efficient means that we can utilize to change the situation in Iran. The most efficient thing is for the entire international community to join unprecedented sanctions against Iran. This is what we are trying to do. For some, this will always be too little, too late. But when one examines the decisions from this week, they are unprecedented.”

There is much talk about the Arab Spring that began in Tunisia, but there are those who believe it began with the protest movement in Iran following the president elections that were 'stolen.'

“I absolutely agree with you on this point.”

Did U.S. President Barack Obama err in not extending his support to the Iranian demonstrators? Was it not a mistake by the West to refrain from aiding the wave of unrest?

“France offered extensive aid. When people talk about Iran, people always think about the nuclear issue, and this is obvious, but there are other issues as well. At the U.N. and the Human Rights Council in Geneva, we had very harsh words about the state of human rights in Iran and resolutions were passed.

“You have to remember that the Arab Spring was initially a ‘Persian Spring,’ and that Iran is not North Korea. There are students, there are universities, and there is a population that is much more pro-Western than we tend to think. We also need to work in providing assistance to the opposition there, and to bolster it. There are radio stations whose frequency is picked up in Iran. I am hopeful that the Arab Spring that started in Tehran will resume there.

“Take for example [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial. On this issue, we are also quite clear. Whenever he raised the matter in Geneva or New York, we left the assembly hall. There is no compromise on an issue like Holocaust denial.”

Perhaps the option as to how to deal with Iran will come from the Iranian people who will topple the ayatollah regime. In that scenario, nobody would be particularly moved by an Iranian nuclear program that is civilian in nature, just like there was during the reign of the Shah, correct?

“We have no problem with a civilian nuclear program in Iran. The problem is that Iran lied. Iran is developing a nuclear program that is not aimed for civilian purposes. The Iranian regime is issuing aggressive statements. We say ‘yes’ to a civilian nuclear program, so to that end we proposed a plan that would call for providing the Iranians with fuel rods instead of enriched uranium, and they could then use those rods for doing medical research. The problem is when this nuclear program becomes militarized.”

Does Paris have information as to how far the Iranians have progressed toward a nuclear weapon?

“This is a matter for our intelligence people, but I can say that we need to act quickly. Time is working against us. This is why the sanctions that were approved by the European Union are so important. Now we need to persuade Russia and China to sign on.”

“An end to the oppression in Syria”

Let us revisit the Arab Spring, if you will. Does Paris agree with Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s assessment that Syrian President Bashar Assad is living on borrowed time?

“I think that a leader who raises his hand against his own people, and who does so repeatedly, has a serious problem of legitimacy. It seems to me that there are already 5,000 deaths in Syria from the start of the rioting. Europe imposed sanctions against the Syrian regime. We are demanding a democratic process and an end to the oppression.”

Let us assume that Assad survives in power. In such a scenario, could France resume working with him?

“Assad has shown no signs of returning to his top form. We need to look forward, and forward means democracy.”

France was the driving force behind the recent war in Libya. Why not in Syria as well?

“The situation is different. In Libya, there were two resolutions passed by the U.N. Security Council. As for Syria, Russia and China have opposed any resolution in the Security Council. We are acting according to the principle of respecting international law. You need to remember that in Libya there was support for military action from all countries in the region, including the Arab League. In Syria, the Arab League is active, but it opposes military intervention. Syria’s neighbors and the Arab League are opposed to a military operation.”

I know the extent to which you were involved, both personally and emotionally, in the efforts to free Gilad Schalit. Would France go to the same lengths as Israel did for the sake of one of its own prisoners of war?

“We are in the same situation. You have been in a state of war since 1948. This is not the case with France. But we too have soldiers fall into enemy captivity every year, many soldiers. We have had dozens in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Africa, and Yemen.”

But in France there isn’t that same public pressure on the authorities to release prisoners as there is in Israel.

“I’ve been serving for more than five years in Israel. I got to know Schalit's family and his exceptional parents. In December, when it was cold outside, there weren’t always a lot of people at their tent. France saluted the Israeli government’s difficult decision to release Palestinian prisoners because we know that there are families of the victims of terrorist attacks. But the Schalit prisoner swap gave much honor to the state of Israel.”

“We believe in a Palestinian state”

Why did France vote in favor of Palestine’s membership in UNESCO?

“We believe that the solution to this crisis is a Palestinian state. UNESCO, a place that represents peace and culture, was the appropriate stage to show that one day there needs to come into existence a Palestinian state. But that same week we also said that we would abstain from voting to admit Palestine into the U.N. because on that stage we think that this would lead to tension. That request would not advance peace.”

“The judges will decide”

The hit-and-run accident that killed [25-year-old Israeli woman] Lee Zeitouni [in Tel Aviv in September 2011] harmed France’s image since both suspects fled to France, where they are walking free. Could France do more to act against these two suspects?

“I visited the family of Lee Zeitouni at Kibbutz Neve Or in the Beit Shean valley, and I didn’t discern any desire for revenge on the part of her parents. I promised them that day that I would extend them my full support. What happened was shocking, and justice needs to be done.

“France wants to arrest the suspects and bring them to trial, but Israel needs to make an official request, or the family needs to do this. Both options are available. I am as frustrated as Israeli citizens, seeing two suspects walking around free. I am frustrated because I know that they could be brought to trial in Israel.

“There are two ways to arrest them. This is the message that I sent to the Knesset. I passed this information along to the highest level of Israeli authorities. This was mentioned by the French president, but it hasn’t been done.

“Why? Because they would have preferred to stand trial in Israel. I too would have preferred for them to be tried in Israel. They lived in Israel, they were not tourists. The accident occurred in Israel and the victim was Israeli, but these people said via their attorney that they did not wish to return to Israel. I am French, and from a moral standpoint, I think that they need to return to Israel."

Is it not possible to extradite them given the severity of the crime which they are suspected of committing?

“We don’t extradite French citizens to Israel just as we don’t extradite them to Australia, Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, or Switzerland. We don’t do this solely in cases involving EU states. So people tell me that we need to change the law. In this instance, the law states that France does not extradite its citizens to countries outside of the EU.

“There are a number of other countries who do not extradite their citizens. Israel began extraditing in 2002. Since we do not change the law and these people do not wish to return to Israel – and I am sorry for this – the only way is for them to stand trial in France.

“I am of the opinion that there is no possibility remaining for the suspects to return to Israel. I will say that since the accident, the Israeli authorities have made a number of secret requests and we have acceded to them. An investigative judge has been named to the case and a police investigation is ongoing. The results of the investigation have been turned over to the Israelis.

“We located the suspects in October. We know where they are, but our hands are tied because we have not received an Israeli request to arrest them. You need to trust the French judicial system. People say that prison terms in France are lighter but this is only when talking about maximum penalties. The results are different when one speaks of the average sentences that are meted out.

“We are both democratic countries, and the judges are the ones who will make the ruling. I appeal to you: Trust the French courts. Morally, it is inconceivable that the individuals responsible for the death of Lee Zeitouni will not stand trial. The French media have reported extensively on the accident. The French president spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the issue. Sarkozy’s wife sent a letter to Lee Zeitouni’s mother. I don’t remember an instance where an accident that didn’t take place in France has been covered so extensively.”

‘Peace Now’ Faults Israel For Palestinians’ Genocidal Urges

2012-01-27T18:13:00.002+02:00

Arlene Kushner
Jan 27th, 2012

On January 19, President Barack Obama’s campaign staff released a video, “America and Israel: An Unbreakable Bond” – a piece rife with half-truths and distortions. As patently false as it seems to anyone with a properly jaundiced eye, it nonetheless requires a response. For one suspects that those American Jews eager to find a reason to vote for Obama may be all too ready to stand convinced of what they are being told.

Recently elected NY Congressman Bob Turner gave an interview in Israel last week, in which he said, “I think American support militarily has been more an investment in our own defense..” It was a refreshingly honest and significant observation that directly applies here.

Obama likes to claim – as he does in this video – that US military cooperation with Israel makes him a huge supporter of Israel. But this cooperation serves US needs and goals in important ways: the US requires an Israel that is militarily solid. Nothing wrong with that. It means US interests coincide with Israeli interests in this respect. But Obama misrepresents when he claims the US does this for Israel. And it should be noted here that it is the Pentagon, which understands the military situation, that has always been the major promoter within the US of cooperation with Israel. This same principle applies to other, related, matters. Last year the Israeli embassy in Cairo was attacked. The ambassador and his staff got out, but two Israeli security guards were caught in the building and in danger of being killed. Obama (and I note here there were others from elsewhere involved as well) intervened and helped get those guards out safely. He then made a great deal about how he worked on Israel’s behalf. Nonsense. Imagine what would have happened if those guards had been killed, when, according to international law, a country is responsible for the safety of foreign embassy personnel within its borders. Israel would have had to respond very strongly – perhaps there would have been war. Obama knew this, knew that there was risk of a disastrous turn of events in the Middle East and he had to try to cool things. All to the good. But he didn’t do this for Israel.

Did Israelis, including Netanyahu, thank him for his actions here and elsewhere? Of course. That’s the diplomatic thing to do. But the Israeli prime minister did not do so with the expectation that Obama would use this expression of appreciation as an endorsement come election time. The Obama team merely borrowed an earlier clip and added it to their video. I haven’t discussed this with Netanyahu personally, but I am reasonably confident that the prime minister is privately praying that Obama loses – for Obama has been rude to him and a thorn in his side in many respects. But it’s neither politic nor appropriate for him to voice any opinion in the matter.

As to Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s praise of Obama, which is given considerable play in the video: It’s long been known in Israel that Barak is an Obama “buddy.” This is a man who is intensely disliked by those Israelis who care about preserving their nation. Barak is the one who sanctions middle of the night expulsions of people in “unauthorized” communities in Judea and Samaria, allowing young children to be dragged from their beds into cold rain. What Barak says should carry no weight with caring people.

The imagery of Obama at the Kotel, which begins the video, is designed to grab at the heart. But for some this is more likely to grab the stomach: Obama has not visited Israel once since he’s been in office – even though he is a much-traveled president. Where does he travel? To Muslim countries, mostly. He had no trouble visiting Indonesia, which is engaged in horrendous human rights violations. Not a word about that. But from a podium in Indonesia, of all places, he criticized settlements in Judea and Samaria. It was no accident – he was showing Muslims how tough he is with Israel. This is a friend of Israel?
The footage in the video showing Obama in Israel comes from his time as a candidate, when he needed to appear friendly to the Jewish State in order to garner support (financial and electoral) from American Jews. Much as he needs to do now. In the video he talks about how touched he was with the hardships of the people of Sderot, who get hit by rockets from Gaza. But from Israel he went to Germany for a major speech. In that speech he addressed the problems nations of the world are having with terrorism. He spoke about Spain and Great Britain, etc. etc., but neglected to mention Israel. No point in appearing supportive of Israel on the international scene. The Arabs might not like it. This is a friend of Israel?

As to Obama’s unswerving dedication to Israel’s security, it should be noted that he is the first president to explicitly call for a freeze on settlement building, and for the ’67 lines (with minor adjustments) to be the basis for negotiations with the PA. Those lines would not constitute a secure border for Israel. This has been widely acknowledged since 1967; the Security Council resolution 242 said as much. But Obama denied that he had to honor the letter written to then PM Sharon by his predecessor President Bush regarding recognition of settlements in Judea and Samaria in the course of final negotiations. Some friend to Israel.

In another respect, Obama has severely weakened Israel’s security, by courting Islamic forces. He does not work to strengthen Western interests in the Middle East and his policies have been a horror. While his errors of judgment are too numerous to detail in full here, some examples will suffice:

In Egypt, the overthrow of Mubarak (who supported the peace treaty with Israel and was an ally of the US) and the rising influence of the Muslim Brotherhood (which is virulently anti-Israel as well as being anti-Western) came about to a very great degree because of Obama policies.

The US, as commentator Caroline Glick has just observed, has actually intervened on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood since 2009: When Obama addressed the “Muslim world,” in his speech at Cairo University (a Brotherhood stronghold), he was embracing the Muslim Brotherhood vision of a pan-Arab world, which they see united by Islam via a caliphate. This was a rejection of Arab nationalism and constituted a direct hit on Mubarak’s national legitimacy. Subsequently, Obama played a primary role in pushing out Mubarak.

Additionally, the US has now embraced Turkey, which is moving into the Islamist camp, as its most solid ally in the Middle East.

Obama refused to support the Green Movement in Iran, which was seeking to overthrow the Islamist regime, even as they begged for assistance.

And where Iran is concerned, it gets even worse. In spite of the fact that Iran is an enormous danger to Israel and all moderate interests in the Middle East, Obama has not applied sanctions with the stringency that the Congress endorsed. In fact, using Turkey as a conduit, he is – incredibly – reaching out to Iran yet again regarding “dialogue.” What he is doing is buying time for a duplicitous Iranian regime.

Thus, there are solid reasons for not voting for Obama even beyond his failure to be a true friend to Israel. He is, more broadly, making the world less safe for the forces of moderation and freedom.

The Islamic Paradise of the Needle and Powder

2012-01-27T18:08:00.002+02:00

Daniel Greenfield

The world’s largest drug field was formerly in the Bekaa Valley where the land is warm and moist. Reflecting the poor state of agriculture in the Muslim world, some of the most arable land in Lebanon where the Romans raised acres of wheat was turned over to cannabis and opium production. In the ’90s the situation was so bad that 80 percent of the world’s cannabis came out of the valley. The valley helped finance the PLO, Hezbollah and the Syrian army which invaded Lebanon partly to get in on the drug trade. The Clinton Administration cut deals with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Syrian occupation of Lebanon to try and cut down on production. Officially production went down, unofficially the party never really stopped.

With the Syrians gone and the PLO living off American foreign aid on the West Bank of Israel, the lucrative Lebanese drug trade is in the hands of the Shiite Islamists of Hezbollah. Drugs have turned the Party of Allah into a global narcoterrorist ring with tentacles in Latin America and ties to Marxist narcoterrorists there and up to America and out across Europe and Asia.

There is no contradiction between the Islamic identity of Hezbollah and its drug trade financed wealth. The Mumbai terrorists of the Army of the Righteous, who during their killing spree murdered a rabbi and his pregnant wife, snorted cocaine. The Beslan terrorists of the Islamic Brigade of Martyrs who murdered hundreds of children were running on heroin. Forensic tests conducted on the bodies of suicide bombers have found that they were routinely given heroin before being sent off on their missions. And if we had been able to run forensic tests on the Al-Qaeda terrorists who carried out September 11 there would probably be a miniature pharmacy in their bodies.

The intimate connection between drugs and Islam began with the prohibition of alcohol. The ban on wine and other spirits made the need for alternatives more urgent. Coffee was the safer alternative to alcohol, and the Middle Eastern obsession with it reflected the outlawing of wine and beer. Religiously coffee was also useful as a stimulant and came in handy in some Muslim rites. But there were more efficacious stimulants that could do more than coffee and those were equally popular.

While there were at times attempts to similarly prohibit drugs, they never achieved the same status as the ban on liquor. Hashish in particular had useful religious and military effects. The right drugs could give the devout the illusion of a mystical experience, allow them to stay up all night memorizing verses from the Koran or make it easier for them to kill and for Muslim leaders to control their private armies.

The Order of Assassins, whose name “Hashishin” derives from the substance they were addicted to, consisted of young men given the drug and told that their visions were a foretaste of paradise. While the Hashishin achieved legendary status the same pattern has become commonplace among Muslim terrorist groups who ply their followers with drugs to addict them and direct them along the path of Islamic terror as the road to the paradise of the powder and the needle.

Culturally the use of drugs is far more widely accepted in the Muslim world than alcohol is. The Ayatollah Khomeini even ruled that, “Wine and all other intoxicating beverages are impure, but opium and hashish are not.” In some countries drug use is so widespread that it has practically become a national identity. That is the case with Qat in Yemen, a plant-based amphetamine whose use is so widespread that its cultivation consumes nearly half the country’s water supply.
While the Yemeni Qat addiction is fairly obvious, entire Muslim countries which do not have oil run on their drug trade. Pakistan’s largest real export is its off-the-books heroin trade and its economy runs on heroin. The ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, which backed the Taliban, also took a cut of Afghanistan’s highly profitable opium trade. Iranian and Pakistani interference in Afghanistan marry their Islamic initiatives with the drug trade as Sunnis and Shiites compete for the lucrative traffic in the world’s leading source of opium which is smuggled through Pakistan and Iran.

Speaking of Iran, the Islamic Republic has the world’s highest percentage of heroin addicts, and the traffic is run by the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution which acts as the religious thugs of the ayatollahs. One of their means of smuggling heroin out of Iran is piggybacking the trade on Shiite Muslim pilgrims visiting holy sites abroad.

The Muslim world doesn’t have much to export besides oil and drugs. Countries that don’t have oil export drugs. Countries that do have oil, export drugs anyway. Terrorist groups with their secret cells, forged documents and covert funding sources make perfect drug smuggling networks until it is impossible to tell whether they are Islamic terrorists who smuggle drugs to fund their operations or drug smugglers who kill people to religiously justify their drug smuggling. When the commanders and the foot soldiers have spent enough time in the drug trade and are sampling their own product then they stop knowing the difference.

The miserable state of agriculture in Muslim countries can be partly attributed to this toxic mix of drugs and jihadists. Subsidized food prices give farmers more incentive to cultivate opium than wheat. Islamic groups provide protection and drug smuggling routes to fund their activities. Food prices rise and the popular protests are hijacked by the Islamic groups who can hand out food backed by their real cash crops. From that angle the Arab Spring looks more like an Islamic Cartel Woodstock. FARC with a Koran instead of Das Kapital.

Drunks are not particularly dangerous. It’s hard to weaponsize them in the same way that Islamic groups have weaponized drug users. Islamic drug cartels are in the process of turning parts of Asia and the Middle East into theocracies overseen by the Koran and the needle. But while the cartels make much of their money selling their products to the infidels in America and Europe, most of their real users are at home.

The American and European drug trade brings big profits but requires long journeys that pass under the vigilant eyes of first world customs inspections. It’s much easier and simpler to sell the stuff at home in Iran and Pakistan. The godfathers of Islamic terrorism in Tehran and Islamabad are not only funding Islamic terror using drug money, they are addicting their own populations en masse. Countries cannot become major drug exporters without also creating a major domestic market for drugs along the way. While the ISI and the mullahs have tried to poison the West for profit, they have done a much more thorough job of poisoning themselves with their own wares.

While Islamists like to think of themselves as the moral alternative to the decadent West, they have thoroughly corrupted themselves and their own people. The heroin addicts of Iran and Pakistan are a grim reminder that Islam is not only brutal and violent; it is also a force of moral decay that justifies any crime in the name of its religious aspirations. The millions of Muslim heroin addicts who were made that way by heroin smuggled in the name of Islam are the true fruits of the Islamic Revolution.

Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model

2012-01-27T17:10:00.002+02:00

Frontpagemag.com
on Jan 27th, 2012

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich recently made news by referring to Barack Obama as a “Saul Alinsky radical” whose philosophy is destructive of traditional American values. Who was Saul Alinsky? What was his message? How has his radical vision, a key element of the 1960s leftist assault on America, influenced Obama?

You can find the answers by reading David Horowtiz’s Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model posted below. Since its publication in 2010, more than 2 million copies of this best selling pamphlet have been distributed. Horowitz shows the entire iceberg whose tip was revealed in Newt Gingrich’s comment.FrontPage has been covering the connection between Obama and Alinsky and other 60s radicals since the election of 2008. This leftist network, which heavily influences the current White House, is dissected in detail in our encyclopedia of the Left, discoverthenetworks.org.

Please help the Freedom Center educate our citizens in this critical time about Obama’s efforts to radically transform America—his intellectual inheritance from Saul Alinsky. Please support the Freedom Center and help us immediately get another printing of Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model into circulation.

The UN's sleight of hand in considering Gaza "occupied"

2012-01-27T17:05:00.001+02:00

Elder of Ziyon

Recently, UN Watch asked the UN to comment on why it still considers Gaza to be "occupied territory" when even Hamas has said that there is no occupation there. The UN promised to get back with a rationale.

The UN has now answered:

Spokesperson: Under resolutions adopted by both the Security Council and the General Assembly on the Middle East peace process, the Gaza Strip continues to be regarded as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The United Nations will accordingly continue to refer to the Gaza Strip as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory until such time as either the General Assembly or the Security Council take a different view.

Question: Can I follow up on that? It is the legal definition of occupation and why is Gaza considered occupied?
Spokesperson: Well, as I have just said, there are Security Council and General Assembly resolutions that cover this. For example, there was a Security Council resolution adopted on 8 January 2009 — 1860 — and that stressed that the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967. And as you know, Security Council resolutions do have force in international law.

Furthermore, there is a resolution from the General Assembly from 20 December 2010, and while it noted the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the northern West Bank, it also stressed, in quotes, “the need for respect and preservation of the territorial unity, contiguity and integrity of all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”. So just to repeat that the United Nations will continue to refer to the Gaza Strip as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory until either the General Assembly or the Security Council take a different view on the matter.

What the UN seems to be saying is that if part of the territory is occupied, then all of the territory is considered occupied, since there is are UN resolutions that declare the two territories are considered united.

This flies in the face of logic, and international law. The definition of "occupation" from the 1907 Hague Regulations - the only legal definition there is - says:

[T]erritory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.

The wording shows that "occupation" exists only in areas where there is in fact a physical occupation. Obviously an army that occupies part of another nation cannot apply the laws of occupation on the portions of that nation that are not under physical occupation, and just as obviously the Hague allows occupation of a portion of territory, no matter whether that territory is contiguous or not with other territories not under occupation.

From the perspective of the Geneva Conventions, the laws of occupation are meant to protect the citizens actually under occupation. It is impossible for an "occupying army" to protect citizens when it is not physically there.

Amnesty International expands on this:

The sole criterion for deciding the applicability of the law on belligerent occupation is drawn from facts: the de factoeffective control of territory by foreign armed forces coupled with the possibility to enforce their decisions, and the de factoabsence of a national governmental authority in effective control. If these conditions are met for a given area, the law on belligerent occupation applies. Even though the objective of the military campaign may not be to control territory, the sole presence of such forces in a controlling position renders applicable the law protecting the inhabitants. The occupying power cannot avoid its responsibilities as long as a national government is not in a position to carry out its normal tasks.

For example, the US occupied part of Iraq - but not all of it.To say that all of Iraq was "Occupied Iraqi Territory" would be laughable.

What the UN is really saying here is that the name it has given to the territories is "Occupied Palestinian Territories." That name has nothing to do with the reality of whether they are legally occupied or not. (In fact, I would argue that the name has nothing to do with whether they are legally considered "Palestinian" or not.) It is a title, from which people may think that the territories are under occupation, but it is not a legal declaration that they are occupied.

After all, the ICRC says "A transfer of authority to a local government re-establishing the full and free exercise of sovereignty will normally end the state of occupation." Any way you look at it, Hamas is the government of Gaza, and not subjected to any Israeli restrictions on how it governs. The UN can declare the territories to be a single entity all it wants, but the definition of occupation is at odds with the title "Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Similarly, Area A in the West Bank is not by any definition "occupied;" because Israel transferred authority over the administration of Area A to the PA, just as it did in Gaza. This is the textbook definition of how to end occupation of a territory.

The UN's answer is a contortion meant to obfuscate reality and international law.

Foreign Woman Attacked in Egypt’s Tahrir Square

2012-01-26T16:42:00.001+02:00

CHALLAH @ Bikya Masr

A foreign woman was stripped and sexually assaulted on Wednesday evening in Egypt’s iconic Tahrir Square, one eyewitness said on Twitter and another confirmed in an email to Bikyamasr.com.

The woman, who’s identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident.

“I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness.

What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.”

There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands. The report adds some interesting and shocking statistics:

Instances of sexual assaults on female journalists covering the events in Tahrir Square have continued in the year since Mubarak’s ouster.

According to studies conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Right (ECWR) in 2008, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment in Egypt.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of Egyptian men confessed to harassing women and 53 percent of Egyptian men faulted women for “bringing it on.”

This assault should bring forth memories of the assaults on Lara Logan, Mona Eltahway, and Caroline Sanz.

Update: Bikya Masr now has an interview with the attacked foreigner.

“They started fighting over who was going to do what,” Heather told Bikyamasr.com in an exclusive interview. She came forward after seeing the report on a foreign woman who was stripped naked and assaulted only hours after her own incident.

“My roommates and I fell to the ground when they attacked us. The people pulled our pants off even as we yelled and tried to fight,” she continued.

The incident occurred around 7:30 PM local time, just as night was taking hold of the city. Heather said the attack happened “in the center of Tahrir.”

She said that after the men pulled their pants off, they continued to grab and grobe the women’s bodies. “It is disgusting. They put fingers up my ass,” she revealed.

Later in the report we learn

Heather said that she came forward to talk about what happened to her “because people need to know what goes on. It is the only way to start making it a problem that will have to be dealt with.”

However, many people told her to not reveal what happened to her because she was told, “it would hurt the image of the revolution.” But Heather said after seeing the reports of others and their assaults, “I felt it was right to say something.”

Israel Is Not About to Attack Iran and Neither is the United States: Get Used To It

2012-01-26T15:11:00.001+02:00

Barry Rubin

The radio superhero, The Shadow, had the power to “cloud men’s minds.” But nothing clouds men’s minds like anything that has to do with Jews or Israel. This year’s variation on that theme is the idea that Israel is about to attack Iran. Such a claim repeatedly appears in the media. Some have criticized Israel for attacking Iran and turning the Middle East into a cauldron of turmoil (not as if the region needs any help in that department) despite the fact that it hasn’t happened. On the surface, of course, there is apparent evidence for such a thesis. Israel has talked about attacking Iran and, objectively, one can make a case for such an operation. Yet any serious consideration of this scenario—based on actual research and real analysis rather than what the uninformed assemble in their own heads—is this: It isn’t going to happen.

Indeed, the main leak from the Israeli government, by an ex-intelligence official who hates Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been that the Israeli government already decided not to attack Iran. He says that he worries this might change in the future but there’s no hint that this has happened or will happen. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has publicly denied plans for an imminent attack as have other senior government official.

Of course, one might joke that the fact that Israeli leaders talk about attacking Iran is the biggest proof that they aren’t about to do it. But Israel, like other countries, should be subject to rational analysis. Articles being written by others are being spun as saying Israel is going to attack when that's not what they are saying. I stand by my analysis and before December 31 we will see who was right. I'm not at all worried about stating very clearly that Israel is not going to go to war with Iran.

So why are Israelis talking about a potential attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities? Because that’s a good way –indeed, the only way Israel has--to pressure Western countries to work harder on the issue, to increase sanction and diplomatic efforts. If one believes that somehow pushing Tehran into slowing down or stopping its nuclear weapons’ drive is the only alternative to war, that greatly concentrates policymakers’ minds. Personally, I don't participate--consciously or as an instrument--in disinformation campaigns, even if they are for a good cause.

Why should Israel attack Iran now? Because one day Iran will have nuclear weapons that might be used to attack Israel.

Does Iran have such deliverable weapons now? No.

If Israel attacks Iran now does that mean Iran would never get nuclear weapons? No, it would merely postpone that outcome for at most a year or two more than it would take otherwise. And then it would ensure an all-out endless bloody war thereafter.

If Israel attacks Iranian nuclear installations would that ensure future peace between the two countries? Would it make it less likely that the Tehran regime uses such weapons to strike at Israel in future? No. On the contrary, it would have the exact opposite effect. Again, it would ensure direct warfare between the two countries and make Iran’s use of nuclear weapons against Israel 100 percent probable.

Why is this different from Israeli attacks on Iraqi and Syrian nuclear facilities? Because in those case a single strike by a small number of planes would be sufficient to destroy a single building. And the two regimes, precisely because of the strategic situation, would and could not respond. And if you believe Iran's regime to be so totally irraitional then factor that point into how it would respond to a direct attack like that.

If Israel attacks Iran would it have backing from anyone else in the world? No, in fact the United States strongly opposes such an operation. Iranian retaliation against oil shipping and terrorist attacks would lead (not overly brave and already appeasement-oriented) Western governments to blame Israel, not Iran. Launching such an attack would ensure a level of international isolation for Israel far higher than what exists today.

Would such an attack by Israel be likely to succeed even in doing maximum damage to Iranian facilities? No, a great deal could go wrong, especially against multiple hardened targets at the planes’ maximum range. Planes could get lost or crash or have to turn back. Planes arriving over the targets could miss, or accidentally drop their bombs on civilians, or simply not do much damage. Many targets would remain unscathed.

Additional waves of attack would be needed in a situation where Iran would be better prepared to shoot down the planes. And the second wave would face huge Western opposition. But it would be too late either way since Israel would now be in a full war with Iran.

So given all of these factors why should Israel possibly attack Iran? It is an absurd idea.

The counter-argument is this: Iran’s regime is irrational and wants to destroy Israel even if the resulting counterattack would kill millions of Iranians and wreck the country. Yet while that analysis should not be totally ruled out, it is far from a certainty. Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons to make itself invulnerable to the costs of its non-nuclear subversion and support for terrorist and revolutionary forces. And a lot of what the Iranian leadership says is demagoguery to build support for itself at home, and to convince the masses to ignore its incompetence and mismanagement.

Yet given the points made above, even the Iran as irrational analysis--and even assuming it to be correct the probability of being right about Iran ever trying to launch a nuclear attack is far lower than 100 percent--does not justify an Israeli attack at this time.

And, finally, Israel has other options. The alternative is this: As the Iranian regime works hard to get nuclear weapons and missiles capable of carrying them, Israel uses the time to build a multi-level defensive and offensive capability. These layers include:

U.S. early warning stations and anti-missile missile installations in the Gulf; Israeli missile-launching submarines; Israel long-range planes whose crews have rehearsed and planned for strikes at Iranian facilities; different types of anti-missile missiles capable of knocking down the small number of missiles Iran could fire simultaneously; covert operations, possibly including computer viruses and assassinations, to slow down Iran’s development of nuclear weapons; improved intelligence; help to the Iranian opposition (though the idea of "regime change" in the near future is a fantasy); and other measures.

If and when there was a clear Iranian threat to attack Israel, then Israel could launch a preemptive assault. And if no such threat ever materializes, Israel need never attack. Any future Iran-Israel war will happen if Iran’s regime makes it unavoidable, not in theory but in actual practice.

Note that attacking a limited number of missiles and launch facilities, that must be located closer to Israel within Iranian territory, is easy. Attacking multiple nuclear facilities buried deep in the ground anywhere in Iran is hard.

Ah, but what if Iran gives small nuclear devices to terrorists? Well ask yourself two simple questions:

1. Would an Israeli attack on Iran ensure that this didn't happen? Answer: Not at all.

2. Would an Israeli attack on Iran ensure that Iran would definitely give nuclear devices to terrorists and try to strike against Israel as quickly and as frequently as possible? Absolutely yes.

Does this Israeli strategy assume that Iran’s regime is “rational” and “peace-loving” and will be deterred by Israel’s ability to strike back? Absolutely not. Indeed, quite the opposite. No such assumption is required. Israel will simply be ready and alert based on the assumption that Iran might attack some day. But such a war, however possible, is not inevitable. And since Israel cannot prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons by attacking, there is no point in doing so.

Whether you hope for or fear an Israeli attack on Iran, it isn’t going to happen.

At the same time, a new theme in the America mass media--for example here and here--is that the United States is headed toward war with Iran either by electing a Republican president, the inevitable weight of events, or through having sanctions so effective that a cornered Iran will attack. The fact is that neither country wants to have an armed conflict and such a battle is easily avoidable. Ironically, those who claim Iran is going to attack are using the crazy Tehran regime concept that they reject when it comes to nuclear weapons. And the "watch out for the warmongering Republicans slogan" is part of the election campaign.

Warning against tough sanctions is a way of avoiding tough sanctions. The argument boils down to saying that sanctions better not hurt Iran or else the consequences will be disastrous. We will be hearing the same argument soon about Hamas, Hizballah, Egypt, and maybe even Libya or Turkey. The effort to use U.S. leverage will be said as triggering war or an anti-American explosion among Muslims. Thus, for example, whatever the Egyptian regime does toward Israel or its own people, we will be told that reducing U.S. aid is not an option.

Going to war with Iran is a mistake and the hysteria on this issue, including claims the regime is about to fall, that it can easily be brought down, or that an Iranian nuclear attack on others is inevitable, should be reined in. That's precisely why sanctions and other measures should be applied to the fullest extent possible.

And there isn't going to be any war unless Iran's regime tries to use them or make a big mistake. It could, as Egypt did in 1967 or Saddam Hussein did in the late 1990s, rattle "nuclear sabers" enough to convince Israel that an attack is imminent. Even if it did not intend to attack, Tehran could push too hard and trigger an Israeli attack. By the same token, some Iranian attack on Western forces or on oil traffic in the Gulf--more likely triggered by a local commander without regime permission--could produce a slide into war with the United States.

But here's what's most likely going to happen: Iran will get nuclear weapons. Iran is not going to stop its nuclear drive (though it could stop short of actually building bombs or warheads ready to go). Western policies are not so bold or adventurous as to go to war; Israel's interests and capabilities do not make attacking sensible. An attack would not solve but increase problems. And no matter how crazy you think Iran's regime is, the inescapable predicable threat is not high enough to force policymakers to risk getting hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people killed, when the chance of avoiding such an outcome is very high.

Barry Rubin is director of the GLORIA Center, at IDC, and editor of MERIA Journal. His new book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press.

Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22

It’s Jewish money, stupid’

2012-01-26T15:08:00.001+02:00

Ruthie Blum

Last week, on Jan. 19, U.S. President Barack Obama released a video called "America and Israel: An Unbreakable Bond."

The seven-minute clip is an amalgamation of sound bites from the president's own speeches, interspersed with statements made by different prominent Israeli leaders, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Its apparent purpose is to refute claims on the part of the Republicans that the Obama administration is anti-Israel. Its true goal is to keep the president's campaign afloat with Jewish cash. To achieve this objective, the video features the voices of President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, and Netanyahu himself waxing poetic about Obama.

It's a neat trick.

In his first three years in office, Obama has emerged as the most openly hostile U.S. president Israel has ever known. This is no surprise, given his oft-stated commitment to "outreach and dialogue" with sworn enemies across the globe, chief among them Iran.

Nor is it peculiar that, in spite of the above, Obama continued to take the Jewish vote for granted. After all, it is no secret that American Jews -- even many who do care about Israel's fate and survival -- would rather be nuked by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's mullahs than cast their ballots for a Republican candidate.

What Obama didn't bank on, however, was getting a cold financial shoulder from Jewish backers he assumed he would have in his pocket, along with their millions. Imagine his horror when figures like TV and media magnate Haim Saban, of “Power Rangers” fame, decided to cut a substantial amount of his support for the very president he had helped usher into the White House. Nor was Saban the only Jew to grow uncomfortable with Obama's blatant aggression against Israel in word and deed.

What Obama and his team came to grasp was that, of all the factors which had handed him a landslide into the Oval Office, an empty till was not one of them.

With fiasco after disaster under his belt by now -- and a Middle East on fire not with democracy, but with increased anti-Western radicalism -- the inept incumbent can ill afford, both literally and figuratively, to lose Jewish money.

This predicament is compounded by the fact that, like his sycophants in the liberal mainstream media, Obama has been only too happy to blame Wall Street, not his own socialist policies, for the economic woes of the American people. Nevertheless, he still has to hedge his bets on hedge-fund bucks.

It remains to be seen whether his campaign managers' transparent attempt at assuring rich Jews that Obama is Israel's best friend will have the desired effect. It will certainly be welcomed by the Peace Now-niks and JStreeters who want Obama to win, precisely so that he will continue to pressure Israel to make concessions in exchange for nothing.

But it should also serve as a lesson to Netanyahu and co. for being so foolish as to have made public statements about Obama's undying loyalty and friendship which they knew to be patently false.

Though it is, and always has been, par for the course for Israeli leaders to behave with deference to the U.S. administration, it is neither necessary nor desirable for them to bend over backwards to defend American moves that run contrary to Israeli interests. Netanyahu's tight spot with a president who was caught on tape commiserating with counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy about having to "deal with" Netanyahu on a regular basis deserves no small degree of empathy.

But his response to it has been worse than counter-productive. Going out of his way (with the help of Oren) to laud Obama at synagogues and AIPAC conferences is taking the need to stress the U.S.'s friendship way beyond the call of duty. And all it has accomplished is to provide the president with grist for his PR mill.

Ruthie Blum is a former senior editor and columnist at The Jerusalem Post. She is currently writing a book about the radicalization of the Middle East, to be published by RVP Press in the spring.

Thanks Ted Belman

State of Disunion

2012-01-26T15:05:00.002+02:00

Sultan Knish

We know that the state of the union is good no matter how many Americans are out of work, how many families are counting every penny, how many industries are falling off a cliff and how high the national debt gets. We know it's good so long as another politician takes a victory lap up to the podium and tells us that it's all good because he's here.

Iraq? Nothing to worry about. We just brought all the troops home. Sure it's breaking up into a civil war, but you won't hear about it on the news. Osama bin Laden is no longer a threat, but his allies have taken over Egypt and Tunisia, and are moving on Libya. The Taliban's momentum has been broken and they are on the verge of taking over the government which means they will finally have been defeated. These achievements are a testament to a military which is facing the biggest budget cuts in decades. The American soldier is a role model to us. I take away his weapons, fire him, put him on trial and force him to marry his bunkmate to show his tolerance, and he never complains because he's not allowed to. The rest of you need to take a lesson from him. Stop complaining or I'll send you to a military tribunal.

Now it's time for an applause break. We need to spend more money funding college degrees and political indoctrination for everyone. More applause. Only by creating more unemployed people with six figure student debts working at McD's will we be able to restore the post WW2 economy that was built on manufacturing jobs which my administration is working hard to completely eliminate.

More applause? No you shouldn't have. And I didn't get you anything but a monopoly for my buddy Warren Buffett's rail line. Sure it cost a 100,000 American jobs, but who needs them anyway. We need to keep the promise alive and fight the rich whose irresponsible investing tanked this economy. And the only way we can do that is by going deep into debt with irresponsible investments. That's why we've put new rules in place to hold Wall Street accountable in case they ever borrow more money than they can pay back and we've also put new rules into place so the government can borrow as much money as it wants.

The economy is great right now. There are millions of jobs everywhere, even if you can't see them because they're invisible jobs. They only come out at night and during State of the Union addresses. In the last 5 minutes over 3 billion jobs have been created. The auto industry used to be on the verge of collapse. It's still on the verge of collapse but now it's being subsidized by taxpayers. Now the auto industry is too big to fail, no matter how many Volts it makes and how few people buy them. And just wait till you see the GM Lada that uses Soviet manufacturing processes to create a car that only works one day a month and runs entirely on hot air. Just like me.

I will work with anyone who agrees with me, but fight anyone who disagrees with me through executive orders, appointments that I have no right to make and any other way that I can find to violate the Constitution and appoint myself King of America. Applause? Damn right you should be applauding. Your applause just created 300 trillion jobs and eliminated all our debt. Why? Because I said so! I'm the King of America!

What we did in Detroit, we can do in Philly, Raleigh and any other place where a bunch of working class white people are worried about their jobs. As long as they are represented by unions and as long as I need the support of those unions, and as long as my good buddy Warren Buffett can't make any money by putting them out of work, and as long as the Chinese keep lending us money, then I will subsidize every industry until we beat the Chinese.

I don't know why you're all applauding, even I think that's stupid and I used to own a Zune. I still haven't learned how many states there are and even I know that's not going to work. I believe money is made by leprechauns which is why it's so green, but even I'm not serious about the crap I just said. If I was really into creating white working class jobs, I wouldn't have killed Keystone XL. Look Warren Buffett's secretary is applauding. Isn't that sweet?

The real problem is that we're outsourcing too many jobs, that's why I just signed a bunch of trade agreements that will make it easier for South Korea to sell their products here. It's time we stopped giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas and start subsidizing them, like my stimulus plan which created more jobs in China than it did here. Applause? I didn't know Beijing had their own congressional delegation. Hell we invested 2 billion in Brazilian offshore oil drilling in support of my left wing buddies in the gov over there. If that doesn't create American jobs, I don't know what will.

And hey, you guys are gonna think this is funny, but remember when we loaned half a billion to make electric cars in Finland. Yeah Al Gore loved that one, he was an investor. But don't pay attention to anything I'm saying. As I stand here today, I vow that I will bring the jobs back to America. They just have to go through China, South Korea and Finland first. When they're done with them, we get first dibs. Indonesian scout's honor.

I will go anywhere to open up new markets to American products. Like Martha's Vineyard and the golf course. Thanks to my inability to hit a golf ball anywhere besides a lake, a thousand Americans are hard at work in Shanghai making new golf balls for me to hit. And it doesn't end there. German companies are forming partnerships with community colleges to shoot lasers. Chinese wind turbines are making Finnish cars grow Arugula. All we need is more teachers unions to make it happen.

We have told every state to raise their standards which means more kids who can't read or add being promoted from class to class so the schools don't lose Federal funding. And now we need to start paying teachers more. I don't care if you can't afford to keep your home and pay property taxes, the teacher's unions need more Viagra benefits. Statistics show that a great teacher can teach her students how to cheat off each other's tests just like I did at Harvard. If we just pay teachers 250,000 a year, then every student will be able to cheat their way to Harvard just like me.

The best way to create more American jobs is by legalizing illegal aliens and paying for their college educations. Applause? By the Prophet's beard, you people really will applaud anything. We need to kill puppies. Applause. It's time to start burning down more churches. Applause. If we kill every tenth person there will be more jobs for the survivors. Applause. Sometimes I'm embarrassed at how easy this is.

The rate of crossings from Mexico has gone down ever since I tanked the economy and I pledge to you if you give me another four years, every Mexican who doesn't work for the government will be back home trading in his dollars for pesos before American currency is completely worthless. That's why we need to legalize them right now and ply them with benefits so they don't run away before they get a chance to vote for me a third time as El Dictador.

But that's not all. I am opening millions of acres for offshore oil drilling. Not. I am also investing more money in training children to harness the power of positive thinking. Scientists at Federally funded labs estimate that every child who thinks positively can create enough power to light up an entire city. The only problem is figuring out how to stick the plugs into his head while we stick him in some sort of Matrix. And that's where our Federally funded labs come in. That is why I am asking Congress not to gut funding for the Matrix.

Take a look at Wilson E. Picket-Rammsby over there. Born in a shack in an up for grabs district in North Carolina, he had no arms or legs. Ever since my stimulus plan he works at the Buffett-Gore Wind Turbine Making Co. which is entirely financed by taxpayers. Wilson's job is to take 'Made in America' stickers and affix them with his mouth to imported Chinese wind turbines.

I promised Wilson that I would not walk away from workers like him. I will not allow China to buy more Chinese wind turbines than we would buy Chinese wind turbines with their money. I will not allow Germany to seize the lead from us in wind turbines or paper kite manufacturing or aura beaming technology. We've subsidized oil companies long enough. It's time to start subsidizing Al Gore.

Best of all while the Navy will be losing a whole bunch of ships and Marines, they will be purchasing all that clean energy so that our armed forces will have even less money and Al Gore will have even more money.

Now that I spent 15 minutes discussing tax credits and incentives for companies owned by my friends and my supporters, let me completely switch topics and state firmly that it's time to stop the bailouts, the handouts and the copouts. After we pass my Bailouts, Handouts and Copouts plan to force the Navy to buy Finnish electric submarines from a company co-owned by some guy who hosted a fundraiser for me last week. It's possible the submarines don't work underwater, but they're painted green which means they're good for the environment.

We've all paid the price for lenders who sold mortgages to people who couldn't afford them. And by that I mean the lenders paid me money and helped finance my campaign. That's why we need smart regulation. Regulations that are so smart that they automatically exempt me.

Rules that prevent Gibson from making guitars, prevent Canada from selling us cheap oil and prevent businesses from creating new jobs don't destroy the free market. They make the free market work better by taking it out back and putting a bullet in its head, just like my stepfather, the Colonel, used to do to dissidents back home in Indonesia.

Four years after the economic meltdown, I am asking my Attorney General to take some time from being investigated by Congress for shipping assault rifles to Mexican druglords in a plot to subvert the Constitution, and form a special super commission of fact finding investigators to root out financial corruption that we're not responsible for and make them give us our cut.

This proposal is in no way belated election pandering or a way to shake down Wall Street firms into donating to us. They're already donating to us. Applause. Oh yeah, they're donating to us like a Mexican drug dealer with a brand new AK-47.

Because of all the loopholes and shelters and basements in the tax code, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Unfortunately other people besides Warren Buffett are also benefiting from these loopholes and we need to close them so that only Warren Buffett benefits from them.

I'm a Democrat, but I believe what Abraham Lincoln believed, that habeas corpus should be suspended, First Ladies should be able to spend as much money as they want during a war and that some races are inferior to others. But most of all I believe that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time-- but I am hoping that I can do it at least long enough to get reelected.

Losing the war in Iraq has allowed me to shift the war to Afghanistan where we are losing the war from a decisive position of strength. A wave of change has washed across the Middle East. Women are running for their lives and the Al Qaeda flag is flying in Libya. Iran is on the verge of getting the bomb. And I just want to take credit for all of it.

The renewal of American leadership can be felt around the globe. Now the world knows that they don't have to take us seriously anymore. We're not even paper tigers, we're more like paper tigers who set themselves on fire and then the chief paper tiger gets up and makes a speech about how much fire has done for the standing of paper tigers in restoring human dignity around the world.

To keep pace with our new global role, I have called for eliminating most of the parts of the military that don't buy clean energy from my supporters or bomb the people that the President of France orders me to bomb as incidental to my core mission of destroying America.

And I would just like to finish by invoking the inspirational words of a truly great American. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party who wrote in his his autobiography, Soul on Ice, that he began his career as a rapist by practicing on black girls in the ghetto before moving on to other prey. Like him I began practicing on Chicago and then moved on to the Great State of Illinois and then to America.

Thank you and God Damn America.

NY Times enraged over showing of film on stealth jihad to NYPD; Bloomberg apologizes;

2012-01-26T14:49:00.002+02:00

Jihad Watch

This whole controversy is epitomized by the photo illustration and lead paragraph of the first New York Times story on this issue: "In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims," by Michael Powell, January 23. The photo shows the black flag of jihad flying above the White House, with the caption, "An Islamic flag atop the White House in 'The Third Jihad.'”

Then the lead paragraph says: "Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House." Both the Times' use of the image and its reference to it at the beginning of the story suggest that the producers of The Third Jihad doctored the photo themselves in order to push their cockamamie idea that some Muslims want to "infiltrate and dominate America." But in reality, Muslims originated this image, as we have reported here several times. Here is a photo of Muslims holding up this photo at a rally in New York in February 2006:

Islamwilldominate.jpg

And another:

Anti_UAC_protesters_feb1_raid_lrg.jpg

Yet this whole controversy is predicated on the assumption that The Third Jihad is whipping up hysteria about a non-existent threat. In reality, it covers much the same ground that I cover in my book Stealth Jihad, in which I show that the agenda of infiltration and subversion on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied groups is very real.

In "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991, Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the U.S. are told that they "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

There are other indications as well:

"We reject the U.N., reject America, reject all law and order. Don't lobby Congress or protest because we don't recognize Congress. The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it. . . . Eventually there will be a Muslim in the White House dictating the laws of Shariah." -- Muhammad Faheed, Muslim Students Association meeting, Queensborough Community College, 2003

"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth." -- Hamas-linked CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad, 1998 (denial noted and full story explained at link)

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future." -- Hamas-linked CAIR spokesman Ibrahim "Honest Ibe" Hooper, 1993

"If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate." -- prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj, 2002

Yet the initial Times article and all the coverage that followed are based on the assumption that no Muslim in the U.S. believes or acts upon such ideas. None of the coverage deals with the possibility that the film might be accurate, and to what extent:

During that time, at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film.

News that police trainers showed this film so extensively comes as the department wrestles with its relationship with the city’s large Muslim community. The Police Department offers no apology for aggressively spying on Muslim groups and says it has ferreted out terror plots.

But members of the City Council, civil rights advocates and Muslim leaders say the department, in its zeal, has trampled on civil rights, blurred lines between foreign and domestic spying and sown fear among Muslims.

“The department’s response was to deny it and to fight our request for information,” said Faiza Patel, a director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which obtained the release of the documents through a Freedom of Information request. “The police have shown an explosive documentary to its officers and simply stonewalled us.”

Tom Robbins, a former columnist with The Village Voice, first revealed that the police had screened the film. The Brennan Center then filed its request.

Instead of investigating its accuracy, the Times, predictably, looks into who funded the film:

The 72-minute film was financed by the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit group whose board includes a former Central Intelligence Agency official and a deputy defense secretary for President Ronald Reagan. Its previous documentary attacking Muslims’ “war on the West” attracted support from the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major supporter of Israel who has helped reshape the Republican presidential primary by pouring millions of dollars into a so-called super PAC that backs Newt Gingrich.

Commissioner Kelly is listed on the “Third Jihad” Web site as a “featured interviewee.” Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that filmmakers had lifted the clip from an old interview. The commissioner, Mr. Browne said, has not asked the filmmakers to remove him from its Web site, or to clarify that he had not cooperated with them....

Clarion’s financing is a puzzle. Its federal income tax forms show contributions, grants and revenues typically hover around $1 million annually — except in 2008, when it booked contributions of $18.3 million. That same year, Clarion produced “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.” The Clarion Fund used its surge in contributions to pay to distribute tens of millions of copies of this DVD in swing electoral states across the country in September 2008.

“The Third Jihad” is quite similar, in style and content, to that earlier film. Narrated by Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim doctor and former American military officer in Arizona, “The Third Jihad” casts a broad shadow over American Muslims. Few Muslim leaders, it states, can be trusted.

“Americans are being told that many of the mainstream Muslim groups are also moderate,” Mr. Jasser states. “When in fact if you look a little closer, you’ll see a very different reality. One of their primary tactics is deception.”

Seeing as how most of them are listed as allied groups in that Muslim Brotherhood memorandum I linked above, this is an entirely reasonable statement.

Nonetheless, and again predictably, the Times is pressing on with its campaign, New York Mayor Bloomberg is in full retreat, and the Islamic supremacist thugs at Hamas-linked CAIR smell blood and are calling for the resignation of police commissioner Ray Kelly.

And so New York has taken a decisive step today toward outlawing the truth about jihad and Islamic supremacism, which only makes it more vulnerable to them.

Media Smokescreen Ties the IDF’s Hands

2012-01-26T14:46:00.002+02:00

Pesach Benson
[Translate]

Here’s a classic example of media coverage tying the IDF’s hands.

The IDF’s debating the use phosphorus shells in future Gaza action. According to the Jerusalem Post, the debate focuses on PR damage, not operational considerations.

The shells — made in the US and approved for NATO use — are legal to use in populated areas to illuminate or mark targets and to create a smokescreen for troops. But that’s not what the army brass is concerned about. The JPost writes:

Images of the exploding shells – appearing like a white octopus – featured widely in the press during Operation Cast Lead and it took the IDF days before it confirmed that it was using shells that contain white phosphorus in Gaza . . . .

While the shell’s use is said to be critical in assisting ground operations in urban terrain like Gaza and Lebanon, there is an ongoing debate within the IDF whether it should be used in a future operation in Gaza due to the potential public relations damage it could cause Israel.

Earlier this month, The Jerusalem Post revealed that the IDF General Staff had instructed the Southern Command to complete preparations for a large-scale operation in Gaza within the coming months.

“There is no question that the use of the shell caused Israel’s image unbelievable damage, since a number of NGOs claimed that its use was a war crime,” one defense official said this week.

Let’s clear the air.

It’s legal to use phosphorus shells within proper procedures.
The IDF shot itself in the foot when it initially denied using phosphorus when the Times of London first raised the issue.
Media hype insisted that Israel deliberately used phosphorus shells on a wide scale to harm people and destroy buildings.
The army disciplined two senior officers for improperly ordering their use in one incident.

I often wish the IDF were more sensitive to public opinion. This isn’t one of those times. Using phosphorus shells should be a purely operational matter. Just streamline the system to allow IDF representatives to respond quickly and accurately.

Palestinians have no inhibitions about adding white phosphorus to their shells. As recently as this month, two phosphorus mortars struck the western Negev. Hamas wasn’t creating a smokescreen or marking a target.

Moral of the story: Media spin games can successfully tie the IDF’s hands.

Weaponizing the Passenger Plane

2012-01-26T14:42:00.002+02:00

Daniel Greenfield

On September 11 the passenger jet as a weapon came crashing into the consciousness of the citizens of the country which had made international air travel viable. Muslim terrorists had viewed planes in terms of the passengers and hijacked planes to take people hostage. But at the beginning of the millennium it was no longer the people that mattered, only the use of the plane as a makeshift missile aimed at the institutions and infrastructure of the free world.

This change of tactics was a game changer because it meant the potential casualties of airplane hijackings were no longer limited to the passengers in the air who were now flying around in ICBMs with much less explosive payload, but enough to take down skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. Every passenger was no longer just a risk to other passengers, but a risk to everyone in the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower or any other clumping of people in target areas that could be hit. Jet engine aircraft had passed from military to civilian applications, but the military applications of high speed transportation now returned to dominate the civilian tourism and travel industry that had sprung up and become widely available at the cost of jet travel went down.

The most obvious military application of high speed travel is troop transportation, and the Muslim world had been using the jet plane for transporting millions of settlers to Western countries. To most citizens of the free world, the military applications of this wave of settlement were not obvious. They would not become obvious until the settlers had given birth to second and third generations which became demographic and domestic terrorist threats. And even then it would remain mostly undiscussed.

With the settlement project going full swing, transforming the vehicles of Muslim demographic conquest into flying missiles was dangerous, but the use of domestic flights sidelined much of the security and the discussions that would have followed had the 9/11 hijackers hijacked flights from outside the country. The use of domestic flights by Muslim terrorists who had spent extensive time in America and Europe revealed just how comfortable the Jihad had become operating on infidel soil.

Muslim enclaves in America and Europe made it easier for terrorists entering the United States to operate and for the rise of native born Muslim terrorists. At a time when Bin Laden’s role had declined, the man who eclipsed him briefly even before his death and played a role in a series of attacks against the United States was Anwar Al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, whose termination by drone is still agonized over in some liberal and libertarian circles.

September 11 went beyond previous airline hijackings which had managed to make air travel more dangerous, but not permanently so. Those hijackings had temporarily hijacked the infrastructure of air travel, but the weaponization of passenger aircraft did so permanently. The damage extended beyond international air travel and border security, it reached deep into the infrastructure of domestic air travel which Americans had come to rely on to transverse a large nation with a handicapped rail system.

The rise of Muslim populations in the West made Islamic terrorism into a domestic problem in societies under a legal and cultural mandate to eliminate any negative or discriminatory attitudes toward minorities. That attitude made profiling too dangerous a topic to discuss openly, just as the specific sources of terrorism could not be discussed except in terms of American foreign policy. The only way for those societies to cope was with broad range laws and tactics that applied to everyone.

Nanny state nations had been drifting into police states through the inevitable logic of centralized bureaucracy and urban malaise. There was a growing number of regulations that had to be enforced and immigration, economic uncertainty and industrial decline created crime problems that made entire portions of world capitols uninhabitable without increasingly systematic police tactics.

The creeping militarization and federalization of American law enforcement had kept pace with the rise of crime syndicates, rapid transportation, deadlier weapons and regulatory overreach. As civil liberties monitoring increased, the laws became broader and law enforcement discretion vanished. Combined with doses of sociology and psychology, law enforcement no longer enforced laws, it enforced attitudes. Statistical analysis allowed for broad targeting of neighborhoods and cities with crackdowns meant to change the attitudes of residents on quality of life offenses.

While this was considered a triumph for conservative politicians, it meant that law enforcement had become the billy club of the nanny state. Laws mattered less than nudging, fining and terrorizing the residents into maintaining the right attitude toward their neighborhood and their city. Systematic procedures developed by experts to be carried out by anyone with the right training were the future of law enforcement. The police officer with instincts and a feel for the neighborhood was on the way out. The future was the TSA.

That this process had worked well enough in urban areas said less about its effectiveness and more about the dysfunctional cities created by half a century of liberal regulationism. In the wake of the programs the cities had not become any better, the process of managing their residents however had vastly improved. But all the management really did was keep the lid on while the subsidies were poured in. And the most vital element was still the old fashioned cop who understood the area, while his captain was hard at work meeting with community leaders.
The TSA emerged out of this environment as another reflexive denial of the problem and applied the same solution. Broad range security procedures that applied to everyone, but this time they were overseen by people who would not have been accepted to work in any police force in the country. This was the age of the mall cop set up as the first line of national defense with the power to steal, grope and single out passengers for the most trivial of reasons. The one thing that the mall cops of the TSA were not allowed to do was profile terrorists.

Strip searching children was fine, alienating Muslims was not. Children after all were not likely to become offended and blow up buildings. Muslims were and the entire purpose of the TSA was to apply broad range security procedures that did not single out or offend Muslims.

Like most mall cops, the real purpose of the TSA was to provide the perception of security, rather than the reality. The TSA was never really meant to stop an actual terrorist and it never has. All it could hope to do was discourage them. Its real goals however were to restore confidence in air travel and reshape public attitudes to make flyers easier to manage.

The latter seems to miss the point of the crisis, but it actually is the point. Leaders who don’t know how to cope with a crisis respond by limiting the freedom of action of those under them. Generals, CEO’s or directors all follow the same pattern of ensuring compliance in subordinates to make the system more manageable and remove as many possible sources of chaos from the system.

Islamic terrorism has shut down the decision making process of the modern Western state by attacking its core assumptions about the future being one of open borders, multicultural populations and international consensus. Instead rapid air travel is a threat, multicultural cities are becoming No Go Zones and the future is heading toward a clash of civilizations.

The assumptions on which they built their vision of the future are crumbling under them creating the kind of situation where good leaders reevaluate and admit their mistakes while bad leaders try to keep pushing forward in the hopes that this is only a temporary problem. A passing phase that can be resolved by reaching out to the Muslim world, encouraging their reforms and stabilizing their conflicts. Any remaining tensions would be dealt with the time honored methods of liberals, fighting discrimination and promoting positive role models, while covering up the mess by giving law enforcement broad powers over everyone.

A single major successful terrorist attack that gets by the TSA will result in major cosmetic changes for the agency, but no substantial ones. And the lack of meaningful debate over the nature of the problem that it exists to solve means that we are stuck in a debate between broad range security measures and hard line libertarians, both of whom deny that there even is a war on terror. The one thing to come out of a debate between Eric Holder and Ron Paul is that neither believes that Islamic terrorism is a problem, which means that neither of them has anything to say about a solution.

The jet plane brought the world closer within reach, without considering the consequences of what that growing proximity would mean.The airline hijackings, mass migration and deployment of hijacked aircraft to cause mass destruction all shifted the balance of power over global transportation away from the builder societies of the free world and toward the destroyer societies of the Muslim world.

Soros’s ‘Glee’ Over OWS Violence

2012-01-26T14:36:00.002+02:00

Matthew Vadum
Jan 26th, 2012

George Soros is delighted that chaos is coming to his adopted homeland.

“In the crisis period, the impossible becomes possible,” the anti-American financier told Newsweek in a recent interview, restating the Alinskyite adage that a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros says. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.” Like some of the more dimwitted commentators on economics, Soros loves to spew the usual socialist drivel about so-called market fundamentalism running amok as if he were living during the Cleveland administration. “The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening.”

To people like Soros, the mortgage bubble was caused by the Snidely Whiplashes of the financial world, not by venal real-life politicians like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and the monstrous financial blunderers known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Free markets are to blame even though they have never been tried.

As the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate, anger will grow and rioting in the streets is sure to follow. “It’s already started,” he says. “Yes, yes, yes,” Soros adds “almost gleefully,” Newsweek writer John Arlidge editorializes.

For years Soros has longed for an opportunity to transform America into a socialist state. “The system we have now has actually broken down, only we haven’t quite recognized it and so you need to create a new one and this is the time to do it,” he said in 2009 as he created the Institute for New Economic Thinking with a $50 million endowment.

This Communist sympathizer co-founded the ultra-secretive Democracy Alliance, a billionaires’ club that funds leftist political infrastructure. He has said that European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now” and favors American decline. Soros praises Red China effusively, saying the totalitarian nation has “a better-functioning government than the United States.”
Soros now counts on the armies of street thugs that comprise the “Occupy” movement to ramp up the violence. He praises Occupy Wall Street as “an inchoate, leaderless manifestation of protest,” disingenuously distancing himself from the supposedly spontaneous uprising.

The movement will spread. It has “put on the agenda issues that the institutional left has failed to put on the agenda for a quarter of a century,” he says.

In a sense Soros is right. It’s impossible to turn on the radio or the TV without hearing today’s issues framed in Marxist terms, as pitting the “1 percent” against the “99 percent.”

In an impressive feat of cognitive dissonance Soros holds himself blameless for the state of the economy.

“Unrestrained competition can drive people into actions that they would otherwise regret,” said the convicted inside-trader whose speculative adventures have harmed perhaps hundreds of millions of people worldwide. “The tragedy of our current situation is the unintended consequence of imperfect understanding. A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.”

When asked if the financial wizards who played a role in the economic meltdown were not just wrong but evil Soros replies, “That’s correct.”

In other words, this man who has described himself as “some kind of god” blames everyone else on Wall Street for the current economic mess.

Meanwhile, Soros has virtually admitted he plans to flood this year’s campaign with money to help Democratic candidates.

In case the economy doesn’t completely implode, Soros is counting on Democrats to help administer the coup de grace.

A Return to Andalusia

2012-01-26T06:21:00.000+02:00

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought”
"Israel Hayom” newsletter, January 25, 2012
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1262

The collapse of Israeli-Palestinian agreements from the 1993 Oslo Accords until today stems from the fact that both Israeli and US leaders ignore the real root of the conflict. The heart of the conflict is the denial of the existence – and not the size - of any non-Muslim entity on land that, in the eyes of Muslims, is Waqf – an inalienable religious land endowment.

On Jan. 9, 2012, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, a close associate of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, stated that all of Israel has been Waqf since 637 C.E. and will be forever. The statement was made at the annual rally of Fatah, which Abbas heads. It was broadcast on the official Mahmoud Abbas television station, and called for the killing of Jews to hasten the Islamic Resurrection. The message of the Mufti has become rooted in the Palestinian consciousness, with the help of Mahmoud Abbas' educational system. Thus, according a July 2011 poll, conducted by the leading US pollster, Stan Greenberg, a liberal-democrat, closely associated with former President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, 73% of Palestinians viewed killing Jews as a springboard to Judgment Day. On March 27, 2010, Abbas declared: "Jerusalem and all its surrounding areas are Waqf land, as provided by Allah. We must do everything we can to save them from the threat of Judaization."

The principle of the Waqf land is permanent, and transcends leaders and policies which are provisional. It applies to any land that was ever under Islamic control. It is an inseparable part of the legacy of Muhammad and Islamic law, especially at this time of the surge by the trans-national Muslim Brotherhood, which views Allah, the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad, jihad and martyrdom as the goal, the law, the leader, the way and the exalted aspiration respectively. Their loyalty to the Waqf land obligates Muslims to "holy wars" and the restoration of sovereignty in the Philippines, Thailand, parts of China, Kashmir, Chechnya, Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere.

The centrality of the Waqf land in the Muslim experience can be understood from the precedent of Andalusia, the Arabic name for most of the Iberian Peninsula, which was under Islamic rule from 711-1492 C.E. The Muslim Golden Age did not take place between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, but rather in Andalusia, especially in the Alhambra palace/fortress in Granada. At the beginning of the 8th century, the Muslims conquered the Iberian Peninsula, southern France, Sicily and the Italian coastline and declared it "the Abode of Islam." In 1492, Spain was liberated from the occupation by Muslims, who today still view "Al-Andalus" as Waqf. The March 2004 Muslim terrorist plots in Madrid, which murdered 191 people and wounded around 1,800, intended to rectify the "Injustice of Andalusia." Currently, Saudi Arabia is constructing the second largest mosque in the world in Cordoba, the former capital of Andalusia, while mosques proliferate all over Spain.

Prof. Efraim Karsh, Head of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies at King's College in London, writes in his book "Islamic Imperialism" (Yale University Press, 2007): "In 1980, there was a huge map in Afghanistan on which large parts of what was then Soviet Central Asia and China's Xinjiang Province were labeled 'Temporarily Occupied Muslim Territory….' Dr. Yusuf Qaradawi, a spiritual guide of the Muslim Brothers [reiterated the message of Muhammad that] the city of Hirqil [Constantinopol] will be conquered first … The other city Romiyya [Rome] ... we hope and believe that it too will be conquered … That means that Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror."

Recognition of foreign sovereignty over Muslim Waqf land amounts to humiliation, betrayal and servitude for Arabs and Muslims. According to the 628C.E. Prophet Muhammad's Treaty of Hudaybiyya – which underscores the shifty nature of contemporary Arab policies in general and the "Phased Plan" in particular – Muslims are permitted to conclude tactical agreements that temporarily relinquish Waqf land, but never abandon the overarching, permanent strategy of reclaiming it all at a later stage.

Persisting in the "land-for-peace" policy ignores the roots of Arab hostility; repeats – rather than avoids - past mistakes; plays into the hands of our enemies; raises Arab expectations and exacerbates violence and terrorism in the region.

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative"
www.TheEttingerReport.com

The Palestinian Campaign to Delegitimize Israel

2012-01-26T06:18:00.001+02:00

Jonathan Schanzer, David Barnett

Israeli envoy Isaac Molho met Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat recently for the third time in the new year. The talks, widely praised across the international community, have been billed as a much-needed jumpstart for negotiations between the two sides. But they are actually a distraction from the real game, in which the Palestinians are working to outmaneuver Israel in the international arena. The game began last year when Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas launched a bid for full UN membership for a sovereign state of Palestine. Abbas sought to gain international recognition for his bureaucracy and strengthen the consensus against Israel’s presence in the disputed territories of the West Bank, which Palestinians hope to claim for their national project. Abbas pursued this strategy while shunning direct talks with his Israeli counterparts.

In the end, the Palestinians fell short of the nine votes necessary for consideration in the UN Security Council. The Obama administration further vowed that the United States would veto the resolution, even if it passed in the future. As a result, the bid stalled.

But the Palestinians had another option. Indeed, they had enough votes to pass a nonbinding measure in the General Assembly. Apparently unsatisfied with anything less than formal recognition, Abbas elected to punt.

But this does not mean that the crisis has passed.

As it turns out, Abbas has been regrouping. On January 1, several countries that would have voted against the Palestinian bid rotated off the Security Council, making way for Guatemala, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Morocco and Togo. Notwithstanding the looming threat of a U.S. veto, these states afford the Palestinians new opportunities in the diplomatic battles that are likely to unfold this year. And Palestinians have been vague about the General Assembly option, which is still a viable one.

The Palestinians may have other strategies in store, too.

Senior Fatah official Nabil Sha’ath recently said on Palestinian radio that 2012 “will be the start of an unprecedented diplomatic campaign on the part of the Palestinian leadership, and it will be a year of pressure on Israel that will put it under a real international siege. The campaign will be similar to the one waged against apartheid in South Africa.”

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has been the official negotiating partner for the Israelis since the late 1990s, is already bringing pressure to bear.

Specifically, Abbas is threatening to form a political union with rival faction Hamas, the terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip. Palestinians view unity as a necessary step toward independence, so his rhetoric has been very popular on the “Palestinian street.” But the likelihood of a merger is unlikely. Rather, the PLO is using the prospect of a government partially constituted by unrepentant terrorists to pressure Israel into making concessions.

The message is simple: If the Israelis don’t give the PLO what it wants, it could join hands with Hamas, which repeatedly refuses to renounce “armed resistance,” making it virtually impossible for Israel to achieve the peace that it craves.

And while the recent outreach to Hamas may be a bluff rather than an earnest attempt to foster a strategic partnership, it is increasingly clear that Abbas and company are less inclined to fight the terrorist group that disrupted the peace process of the 1990s with suicide bombings. Rather, they are happy to use Hamas as leverage for their demands.

With all of these moving parts, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture: Palestinian leaders seem to have no interest in talking to Israel this year. Instead, they may be gearing up for a full-scale diplomatic campaign to delegitimize it.

Struggling to stay abreast of an ever-changing political landscape in the turbulent Middle East, Western governments have yet to acknowledge this shift in strategy. Perhaps this is because the Palestinians have yet to officially recognize it themselves.

When news outlets reported on the latest attempts at dialogue in Jordan, Abbas responded that any chance at peace should be seized. Yet Erekat, his representative, stated that the meetings do not “constitute a return to negotiations.”

Such ambivalence keeps false hopes alive for peace through diplomacy while the Palestinians prepare for an entirely different—and dangerous—diplomatic campaign.

Jonathan Schanzer is vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where David Barnett is a research assistant.

Palestinian Father Locked Daughter in Bathroom for 9 Years

2012-01-25T20:36:00.001+02:00

Challah Hu Akbar

CHALLAH @ WAFA

A father in the city of Qalqilia, northern West Bank, locked his daughter inside a bathroom in their house for nine years and had not allowed her to leave, a police statement said Saturday.

It said police went to a house in the city after they received information that a father was holding his daughter inside the bathroom.

When the police arrived at the house, they heard screams from inside the bathroom.

They forced the father to get the keys and open the door to find his daughter, whom police said seemed to be 20 years of age, inside along with a mattress and a blanket. The father, said the police, admitted to locking up his daughter in the bathroom since she was 11, first in Nabi Elias village and then in Qalqilya, following family differences.

Police arrested the father and handed the girl to social welfare staff.

Sadly, there have been a number of similar stories in recent months.

In December, Palestinian police found a mentally ill girl in Hebron, who had been locked up by her parents for years.

In August, CNN reported on the case of two mentally ill sisters, who were recently freed after being chained up by their parents for a decade.

Update: CHALLAH @ Ynet

The woman’s parents divorced several years ago and it would seem that the father prevented the mother from seeing her daughter. After the two broke up the father remarried and at that point imprisoned his daughter.

According to [Azat] Maluach [head of the Qalqilya welfare department] the father’s ‘new’ family was all aware of the fact that the daughter was imprisoned and yet no one reported anything to the authorities.

Update: Below is a photo of the girl who was just freed.

Update (Wednesday): Walla is reporting that the father of the girl threatened to get her pregnant. The girl was also given a razor blade and urged to kill herself. (h/t Avi Mayer)

Obama's State of Omission

2012-01-25T17:39:00.001+02:00

Mike Brownfield

January 25, 2012

Speaking last night from the U.S. Capitol, President Barack Obama described the state of the Union as he sees it — strong and getting stronger, with future growth fueled by his pursuit of progressive policies and an expansion of government, all architected to bring about his brand of “fairness.” The President essentially redelivered his 2011 State of the Union address — complete with the same empty rhetoric, class warfare cloaked in “fairness,” and proposals for massive tax and spending increases.

The speech was notable for the items he did not mention, including many of the failed spending programs and policies he undertook over the past three years, the foreign policy and defense challenges he has exacerbated, and the economic actions he failed to take that would have created jobs and spurred economic growth. Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN), who delivered the response to the State of the Union address, shined a light on those titanic omissions — the state of America’s economic and fiscal crises, the President’s promise to fix them, and his failure to do anything but make matters worse, all amid a trillion dollars in stimulus spending and a rapidly expanding bureaucracy:

The percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades. One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today.

In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends.

Apart from the truth about the depths of America’s unemployment crisis and the scope of government spending, the President barely mentioned his signature legislative item, Obamacare, which is facing a Supreme Court constitutional challenge; Social Security and the country’s entitlement crisis; his decision to say “no” to the Keystone XL pipeline and the jobs it would bring with it; the Solyndra scandal and the failures of his green energy initiatives; the illegality of his appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board; the Senate’s failure to pass a budget for 1,000 days under the leadership of his own party; the high costs that his additional regulations bring with them; his party’s opposition to free trade agreements; the fraudulent elections in Russia; the ongoing collapse of the Euro; warnings about his decision to slash defense spending; the remaining challenges in Afghanistan; and the violence that has erupted in Iraq after the departure of U.S. troops.

It’s not surprising, of course, that the President would want to hide from his failures, but it’s troubling to see that he plans to continue on the progressive course he has set for the country. In the President’s words, “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

This “fairness” argument, which the President cloaked in the most moderate of terms, lays the foundation for a wholesale deconstruction of America as we know it. Instead of a country where individuals are free to rise and fall on their own merits, the President seeks a system where an all-powerful federal government guarantees equal outcomes, regardless of one’s merit. The Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Spalding explains:

In [Obama's] view, “fairness” flows not from opportunity and freedom of the individual, but from more government power, federal education programs, economic regulations, and infrastructure spending. And, of course, raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for these “investments” would only be fair.

Such policy prescriptions lead to a governing class that insists on enforcing political and economic ‘fairness’ rather than letting us govern ourselves, choose our own vocations and earn our own success. The idea that the government can and should step in to guarantee economic fairness is contrary to the founding principles that make America so great-and that enable its citizens to achieve success. It is contrary to the very meaning of the American Dream.

The United States faces significant challenges: a $15 trillion debt, 13.1 million unemployed Americans, exploding entitlement and health care costs, a broken education system, a military in disrepair, the continued threat of terrorism, a nuclear Iran, and the ongoing war in Afghanistan, among others. There is hope, but it does not emanate from a bigger, more powerful federal government that squelches entrepreneurship, ignores our fiscal crisis, and disregards the need for a strong national defense. The President says the state of the Union is getting stronger, but he is doing very little to ensure that happens.

The Heritage Foundation’s analysts provided in-depth, issue-by-issue expert analysis of last night’s State of the Union address. You can find our 2012 Reaction Roundup on The Foundry blog.

Quick Hits:

Navy SEALs rescued two Western foreign aid workers who were taken hostage by pirates in Somalia. The two workers — one of whom is American — had been kidnapped in October.
Today marks the first anniversary of the Egyptian uprising that ultimately removed President Hosni Mubarak from power. Activists, though, say that given the continued military control, the revolution must continue.
Gulf Arab monitors are leaving Syria, saying that they are “certain the bloodshed and killing of innocents would continue.” Reuters reports that the Arab League has extended its monitoring mission but is seeking U.N. support for ending Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
Apple says that it plans to “continue to innovate like crazy” in the tablet computing arena. The iPad catapulted it to being the largest computer maker for the first time ever.
Much has been made of Mitt Romney’s asserted 15 percent or so tax rate. There is both a material error and an irony to this story. Read more about it on The Foundry.

U.S. Universities Closely Tied to Qatar Pro-Islamist Faculty

2012-01-25T17:03:00.002+02:00

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report

In the latest development concerning the relationship between U.S. universities and the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies (QFIS), the QFIS website reveals that six U.S. universities have established a permanent relationship with QFIS. According to a QFIS web page:

Established in 2007, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies (QFIS) is an international center for Islamic thinking and dialogue. Its aim is to enhance research into Islamic culture and promote the diversity and tolerance of the Islamic Fiqh, or understanding. Learning takes place in an open, intellectual environment and produces a structure of study that will enable future generations of scholars to become experts in Islamic culture and ideology. These graduates will be well-equipped to tackle the challenges facing Muslim communities across the world. QFIS offers programs in: Master of Science in Islamic Finance, Master of Arts in Public Policy in Islam, Master of Arts in Islamic Studies with a specialization in Contemporary Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence) and Religion and Contemporary Thought, Master of Science in Urban Design and Architecture in Muslim Societies, Master of Arts in Contemporary Muslim Societies .Postgraduate Diplomas in: Islamic Finance. General Islamic Studies. Public Policy in Islam. Research is a critical component, with six specialized centers providing opportunities for postgraduate students, residents, and visiting scholars to investigate research topics in their field of interest.

The QFIS page then goes on to identify its six research centers with the Al-Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal at the top of the list. A post from 2008 had discussed the plans for the center named after Youssef Qaradawi, the most important leader of the Global Muslim Brotherhood. At that time, the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar and Northwestern University in Qatar were identified as the two most recent additions to the Qatar Education City,

Another QFIS web page now identifies what it describes as “branch campuses of eight strategically selected elite international universities, delivering world-class programs chosen to ensure Qatar is equipped with essential skills and specialisms.” Six of those campuses represent the following U.S. universities:

Texas A&M University at Qatar

Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar

Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar

Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar

Northwestern University in Qatar

Four of the above universities were among the six U.S. universities that helped to co-organized the launch ceremony for the newest of the QFIS research centers to be headed by Tariq Ramadan, another critically important leader of the Global Muslim Brotherhood, and co-directed by a close associate of Qaradawi. As discussed in an earlier post, the launch ceremony also included representatives of two organizations headed by Youssef Qaradawi and an organization tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas fundraising, and support for Al Qaeda. Another post reported that Georgetown University academic and Global Muslim Brotherhood supporter John Esposito was amongst the event speakers who also included Qaradawi himself.

The GMDR has devoted an unusual amount of space to this topic because we believe that the formation of the center represents a highly significant coming together of Qaradawi and Ramadan, the two most important leaders of the Global Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi is known as a virulent anti-Semite often referred to here as the most important leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, an acknowledgement of his role as the de facto spiritual leader of the movement. In 2004, Qaradawi turned down the offer to lead the Egyptian Brotherhood after the death of the Supreme Guide. Based in Qatar, Sheikh Qaradawi has reportedly amassed substantial wealth through his role as Shari’ah adviser to many important Islamic banks and funds. He is also considered to be the “spiritual guide” for Hamas and his fatwas in support of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens were instrumental in the development of the phenomenon. A recent post has discussed a video compilation of Qaradawi’s extremist statements.

The fact that major U.S. universities feel comfortable with associating themselves so closely with Qaradawi and his representatives speaks volumes as to how rapidly the Global Muslim Brotherhood is becoming legitimized as a mainstream political force.

Related posts:

IIIT Holds Discussion On Islamic Studies in American Universities.
Launch Ceremony For New Qatar Islamic Center Organized By U.S. Universities, Qaradawi Organizations, And Group With Ties to Hamas and Al-Qaeda
Qaradawi Center Inaguarated In Qatar
Muslim World League Conference Criticizes Israel; Calls For Islamic Studies Chairs At Western Universities
Georgetown Academic John Esposito Spoke At Launch Of New Qatar Islamic Center

Georgetown Academic John Esposito Spoke At Launch Of New Qatar Islamic Center

The Qatar Foundation has identified Georgetown academic John Esposito among the list of speakers at recent the launch for the new Islamic center in Qatar to be headed by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Tariq Ramadan. According to the Qatar Foundation report, the following individuals of note spoke at the event:

Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development;

Dr Tariq Ramadan, Director of Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics

Dr Jasser Auda, Deputy Director of Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics

Sheikh Yusuf Al Karadawi, President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars

H.E. Sheikh Dr. Mustafa Ceric, Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina

Mr. Yusuf Islam, Yusuf Islam Foundation

Prof. John Esposito, Director of Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, USA

Dr. Esposito, a former U.S. State Department advisor, has espoused views consistent with Brotherhood doctrine and during the 1990′s was known for his claims that Islamic fundamentalism was, in fact, democratic and posed no threat to the U.S. Dr. Esposito has at least a dozen past or present affiliations with global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas organizations including having served on the advisory board of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in the U.K. headed by Azzam Tamimi, a leader in the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood and often described as a Hamas spokesman. Dr. Esposito has also served with global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi on the Steering Committee of the Circle of Tradition and Progress and enjoyed a close relationship with the United Association For Studies and Research (USAR), part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and part of the Hamas support infrastructure. In 2005, Saudi prince Alaweed bin Talal, a financial supporter of the global Muslim Brotherhood, donated $20 million to the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown, headed by Dr. Esposito.

An earlier post reported on the formation of the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CLIE) which appears to be a highly significant coming together of Global Muslim Brotherhood leaders Tariq Ramadan and Youssef Qaradawi, noting that the Deputy Director is a close associate of Qaradawi’s at the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS).The new center appears to be the latest in the series of research centers being established by the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies (QFIS). A subsequent post reported that the launch ceremony for Center was co-organized by a group that included five U.S. universities, among them Georgetown University, together with representatives of two organizations headed by Youssef Qaradawi and an organization tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas fundraising, and support for Al Qaeda.

Obama’s State of the Union Speech: My Response Discovers Some Curious Insights and Strange Formulations

2012-01-25T15:24:00.000+02:00

It seems innocent but that sentence to me has devastating implications (see below)

Obama’s State of the Union Speech: My Response Discovers Some Curious Insights and Strange Formulations

By Barry Rubin

In his State of the Union message, President Barack Obama began by wrapping himself in the flag, patriotism, and love of the armed forces while trying to highlight his foreign policy achievements. Among his points:

--“The United States [is] safer and more respected around the world.”

Presumably, a lot of Americans will believe this. The United States may be said to be safer in terms of facing direct terror attacks but that was basically true in 2002. As for “more repected”—a phrase no doubt chosen to seem more statesmanlike than saying “more popular,” that is a joke. If there’s one thing that should be obvious (and this is often revealed even by international public opinion polls) the United States is not more respected at all.

Moreover, while individual Americans may be relatively safe from terrorist attacks in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces within the territory of the United States—a perception partly reinforced by redefining terrorist attacks as something else—U.S. interests abroad are far less safe. “For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.”

True, though the remaining forces may have to fight to defend themselves. This withdrawal, of course, was planned by Obama’s predecessor and Iraq is not doing so well today.

“For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated.”

Aside from the lack of grammar here—was Obama trying to avoid saying that these people were killed?—the statement is true. The problem is that Hamas, Hizballah, the Turkish regime, Iran, Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood add up to a far bigger threat, a problem magnified by Obama refusing to acknowledge they are a threat.

--“The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.”

While the latter point about withdrawal is true, the Taliban is still quite strong. It would be quite possible for the Taliban to return to power within five years.

Then Obama rearranges history—quite obviously though no one in the mass media will point this out:

“Ending the Iraq war has allowed us to strike decisive blows against our enemies. From Pakistan to Yemen, the al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can't escape the reach of the United States of America.”

In fact, of course, the successes against al-Qaeda were obviously achieved before the withdrawal. Are al-Qaeda operatives trembling in fear before the might of America? Of course not. And in both Pakistan and Yemen (one should add Somalia) they are doing quite well. Obama could have done better by referring to the defeat of al-Qaeda as being part of the American “victory” in Iraq.

“From this position of strength, we've begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Ten thousand of our troops have come home. Twenty-three thousand more will leave by the end of this summer. This transition to Afghan lead will continue, and we will build an enduring partnership with Afghanistan, so that it is never again a source of attacks against America.”

Again, Obama tells an unnecessary lie. The withdrawal from Iraq is a correct move but hardly puts the United States in a position of strength, especially given Obama’s deep cuts on the military. And of course the end of the war in Afghanistan was planned long before any withdrawal in Iraq; indeed it was basically planned during his predecessor’s term.

As for an “enduring partnership with Afghanistan,” that’s the kind of statement bound to come back to haunt Obama. Afghanistan remains unstable, its government is angry with Obama, and the tide may well turn there after a U.S. withdrawal.

Next, Obama turns to the Arab Spring. He refers to his success in Libya:

“A year ago, Qadhafi was one of the world's longest-serving dictators - a murderer with American blood on his hands. Today, he is gone.”

True, but what will replace him?

“And in Syria, I have no doubt that the Assad regime will soon discover that the forces of change can't be reversed, and that human dignity can't be denied.”

In fact, for two and a half years, Obama strongly backed—in contrast to predecessors—that regime which denied “human dignity.” And he’s doing very little to help that transformation now.

My number-one complaint about Obama—not that there aren’t others but this is in first place—is that he never hints at the dangers in the region precisely because he doesn’t recognize that they exist.

And, in total contrast to his actual policy, he gives lip service to doing something productive:

“While it is ultimately up to the people of the region to decide their fate, we will advocate for those values that have served our own country so well. We will stand against violence and intimidation. We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings - men and women; Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We will support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies and open markets, because tyranny is no match for liberty.”

In fact, though, Obama has basically ignored the “violence and intimidation” against Israel; the people of the Gaza Strip; the Turkish people; the Iranian people; the tyranny taking shape in Lebanon; the Christians in Iraq and Syria; and elsewhere.

How can “tyranny” be “no match for liberty” when U.S. policy is largely on the side of tyranny, indeed a tyranny of a worse kind that has previously prevailed in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Turkey?

When it comes to U.S. security interests, Obama can only talk about Iran, where he claims success:

“Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran's nuclear program now stands as one. The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent.”

Nice. But Iran is still advancing in its nuclear program and its influence in Lebanon and Iraq increases while Tehran adequately defends its interests in Syria. If the State Department had not restrained Obama, he would also have handed Iran a victory in Bahrain.

On nuclear weapons, Obama repeats the standard line:

“America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.”

And if it doesn’t? Yes, it is quite true that Obama led a move to tougher sanctions on Iran but he did so only by excluding Russia, Turkey, and China from compliance. I would argue that the same result could have been achieved far earlier than Obama did it.

Here is the worst sentence of the speech: “The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe.” It is precisely the lack of American leadership that is being felt.

“Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever.” Really? The South Koreans would probably agree but generally the alliances are not stronger than ever but about as weak as they have ever been.

“Our ties to the Americas are deeper.” Actually, Latin American leaders are very unhappy, feeling that Obama has coddled the Chavez dictatorship while ignoring them.

“Our iron-clad commitment to Israel's security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history.”

This is a carefully constructed sentence which I find makes me even more suspicious about Obama’s commitment toward Israel. Why? Because it is true that the bilateral military cooperation is as good as it has ever been. But all other areas of relations are terrible. This sentence tells me that Obama understands that and wants to accentuate the positive without doing anything to improve the negative. He thinks U.S.-Israel relations are good enough and will not—even if, or especially if, elected to a second term.

And then he concludes with this statement, remarkable for being so directly opposite to the truth:

“America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about.”

Wow, first, America is NOT back because Obama has reduced U.S. influence, leverage, and activism. Second, who has done more than Obama to assert that U.S. power is in decline? And, third, this fact is totally obvious to leaders in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Obama, however, is always one for doubling down on his lies or errors. (You choose the word you prefer.):

“That's not the message we get from leaders around the world, all of whom are eager to work with us. That's not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Capetown to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they've been in years.”

The truth is generally the exact opposite and even in the polls one can see this. Obama can be daring because he knows the media won’t bash him for saying stuff like this.

There's something else I find fascinating and generally ignored about this speech. All presidents, of course, want to put the accent on the positive. But with Obama I don't see any real consideration of threats and problems. Yes, he mentions al-Qaida and the Taliban (no longer a problem, he says) and Iran (under control and they will be pressed into making a deal), and democratic transitions (we don't know what will happen but...).

Nevertheless, America faces no real threats or enemies. revolutionary Islamism doesn't exist as an issue; Russia poses no problem; Chavez and Castro and various other dictators are vanished; even underdevelopment or instability aren't mentioned. There is a Pollyanna aspect to Obama arising from his belief that everything would be okay as long as America behaves properly and he is president. In his world there are no real conflicts; few true enemies but only misunderstandings. With Obama the problem is not merely his politics and views but also his total lack of true understanding about international affairs, security issues, and strategy.

Governor Mitch Daniels gave the Republican response and stuck completely to domestic economic issues, which was after all Obama’s main theme. Yet international affairs was the only other theme and if Obama’s critics can’t do a better job of analyzing his claims, responding to his policies, and offering an alternative to his strategies he is more likely to remain president for five more years.

Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22

Food Fights and Class Warfare

2012-01-25T15:22:00.002+02:00

Sultan Knish

There was a time when full tables signified prosperity and thick waistlines were considered attractive. The ability to eat one's fill was what separated the gentry from the peasant making do with a few crusts and salted leftovers. Fat was in because it represented leisure and wealth. Thin meant you were on the road to the poorhouse or to consumption, which meant your body was being consumed, not that you were the one doing the consuming.

Then feudalism went the way of the dodo, agriculture was revolutionized and starvation went extinct in the West. Between the widespread availability of cheap food and social welfare programs covering everything from soup kitchens to food stamps, it became hard to starve. Not only was the availability of food no longer associated with prosperity, but even the poor had begun to eat so well that fat began to carry working class and lower class associations. Fat was no longer wealth, instead conscientious fitness became a mark of prosperity. The laden table made way for micro portions and exotic but barely edible foods. Thin was in on the plate and the waistline.

In Third World countries where feudalism never ended and the agriculture revolution never mattered, the values often never flipped. Instead of anorexia, teenage girls suffer from being force fed to make them more marriageable. The wealthy are fat and the feasts at the top never end.

In the West, weight stands in for class, at a time when explicit classism has become politically incorrect. When Europeans sneer at how fat Americans are, and American coastal elites sneer at the rest of the country for being fat, it's a class putdown that dressed up longstanding contempt in the colors of the welfare state.

Just because the left and its class warfare worldview, which pretends to be concerned about the plight of the underclass, dominates Western societies does not mean that it is not classist. The left is elitist and its underclass protectionism creates a new wave feudalism with a vast government funded upper and middle class dedicated to caring for the underclass, subsidizing it, caring for it and taxing it to pay for all those services.

The obesity concern trolling is a combination of classism and nanny statism that brings to mind the days when their ideological forebears thought that the way to deal with the poor was to sterilize those who seemed less capable than the rest to improve the breed. There is something equally Darwinian in the sneers aimed at Paula Deen. The breed being culled while the elites try to teach their less evolved cousins to survive by eating their arugula.

The nanny state is built on a technocratic confidence in the ability to create one size fits all solutions, overlaying that on a map of the current medical wisdom leads to the creation of single standards, which often have less to do with health than they do with the status symbols of the leisure class. 19th century popularized medicine created so many of these fads that some of them are still around today. The 20th century created even more.

Death though is not only inevitable, but it cannot be dodged with a one size fits all standard. Fitness guru Jim Fixx who helped kickstart the running craze died in his early fifties of a heart attack. Fixx had quit smoking and lost weight, and still died at an early age. Jackie Gleason who spent his life looking like a walking health attack, smoking and drinking, outlived him by nearly twenty years.

Medicine is individual and the collectivization of medicine is a technocratic solution that leads nowhere except to few doctors and ranks of unionized medical personnel nudging patients into following the script handed down to them by professors who have never actually practiced medicine a day in their life. This is the outcome of a nanny state outlook that sees individuals as dispensable, that is concerned only with group outcomes.

This view requires seeing all people as endowed with certain problems that require broad stroke solutions, like adding calories to menus and other rats in a maze tactics designed to modify human behavior on a national level. The targeting of fast food restaurants, public school meals and food stamps reeks of the same elitist arrogance that drives the nanny state.

The politicization of food by the elites of the left always comes down to class, no matter how it may be disguised in liberal colors. From exotic to locally grown, the trajectory of food politics follows the upselling of food prices The only difference is that the dominance of the left has wrapped the added cost with no added value in their own politics. The more affordable food becomes, the more the left finds ways to add cost to food, without adding value.

But the politicization of food goes beyond the fair trade and locally grown fetishes of the politically correct elites, the more politics ends up on your plate, the more the elites are driven to involve everyone else in their food fights. What begins as a way of raising prices while diminishing value to assert wealth and privilege becomes imposed on everyone in the name of their political morality. Once everyone else is paying more and getting less, then the classist left demands new ways to set its superior moral eating habits apart. Instead of everyone ending up with more food, everyone ends up with less.

The cultural ascendance of the left has meant that instead of conspicuous consumption, the consumption has to be disguised with conspicuous political pieties. The food may cost twice as much, but it's locally grown on a farm run by handicapped union workers who visit Cuba to receive free health care or by the indigenous peoples of Tuba-Tuba with the proceeds going to a complete sonic library of their chants and ceremonies. The entire thing is meaningfully meaningless, but it disguises the consumption in a hairshirt, which is the entire point.

Conspicuous consumption is now for the poor while conspicuous conservation is for liberal elites. Al Gore may live in a mansion but he still has the carbon footprint of a mouse. The problem is the truck driver whose vehicle emissions are killing the planet. Whole Foods is just fine, but we need to do something about McDonald's.

Conspicuous conservationism has made America a poorer country, destroyed millions of jobs and outsourced them overseas. Now it's beginning to make America a hungrier country. In a moment of horrifying tone deafness that makes Marie Antoinette seem enlightened, the left is cheering that fewer Americans are eating meat, without seeming to understand that it's because fewer Americans are able to afford it because of their economic policies.

What the left's food police can't accomplish with nudges and shaming, they can finish off with policies and regulations that end up raising the price of food or by making it too difficult to sell. As the left tries and fails to sell the general public on conservation as a status symbol, it moves in the heavy bureaucratic artillery.

It isn't unusual for elites to use the legal system to enforce their own values on the general public, though it was the kind of thing that the universal franchise was supposed to put a leash on, but there is something grim about their growing preoccupation with the habits and mortality of the population. It's the kind of concern that has a habit of ending in eugenics and the more medicine is universalized, the easier it is to start cutting off access to medical treatment for those who haven't been nudged far enough in the right direction.

Social medicine politicizes food consumption and a globalized economy politicizes food production. And the politicized American plate has less on it and at a higher price. While the left obsessively pursues its mission of destroying fast food in the name of lowering social medicine costs and being fairer to farmers, what they are truly accomplishing is to take affordable and filling food off the shelves, as they have done with countless other products that they have targeted.

By the time the left was done with Russia, it had gone from a wheat producer to a wheat importer and many basic food staples were hard to come by even in a country filled with collective farms. Finding modern day examples of that isn't hard. We only have to look as far south as Venezuela to see empty store shelves under the weight of government food policies. But one day that may be the local grocery store if the left gets its way.

The Secrecy of the Oslo Accords and the PLO Phased Plan

2012-01-25T15:15:00.000+02:00

Nurit Greenger

The PLO Phased Plan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1N77BKCKE4&feature=player_embedded

History consistently reminds us that indifference in the face of an merciless enemy invariably leads to disaster. Further, more often than not, our enemies tell us exactly what they intend to do before they do it. Acting on their warning requires our personal courage, collective insight, and national will.

Prelude

on January 20, 1993 the Israeli Knesset voted to lift a ban on contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), legalizing meetings with members of the group. Israeli Lawmakers voted 39 to 20 to repeal a 1986 law prohibiting Israelis from meeting the PLO members. The change was supported by legislators from the governing coalition led by the Labor Party, although the Government continues to reject negotiations with the PLO, which Israel considered to be a terrorist group. The law banning contacts with the PLO was passed in the administration of a coalition Government of Labor and the right-wing Likud. It has been repeatedly defied by peace campaigners and leftist members of Parliament who have met PLO officials abroad. Several Israelis have been tried and two were jailed, including a veteran peace advocate, Abie Nathan.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was conspicuously absent from the late-night vote, attended by less than half the 120-member Parliament. Mr. Rabin has consistently opposed PLO participation in the Middle East peace talks, and has expressed concern that the new legislation might invite moves by the United States to involve the PLO openly in the negotiations.

The PLO was banned from the talks in Madrid in October 1991. However, the Palestinian negotiators from the West Bank openly consulted with PLO leaders at its headquarters in Tunis, thus direct talks were rejected.

A month earlier, Israel expelled 415 Arab-Palestinians to Lebanon and left-wing Meretz Party cabinet ministers urged Mr. Rabin to meet a pro-PLO leaders in the West bank and to consider inclusion of the organization in later stages of the talks in Madrid.

These ministers argued that the expulsions, aimed at suspected Islamic militants opposed to the peace talks, should be balanced by overtures to the Palestinian leadership supporting the talks.

There were also growing support for talks with the PLO among Mr. Rabin's Labor Party. But Mr. Rabin has rejected direct talks with the PLO in the current discussions of interim self-rule arrangements in the occupied territories, arguing that those talks can only be held with Arab-Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But he has tolerated open consultations between Arab-Palestinian delegates and PLO leaders.

In December 1992, in the background of the official "Madrid negotiations" in London, Israeli vice-minister of foreign affairs Yossi Beilin and Norwegian researcher Terje Rød-Larson set up a secret meeting for PLO representative Ahmed Qurei and Israeli history professor Yair Hirschfeld. Qurei and Hirschfeld made a connection and decided to meet again in what was going to be a series of 14 meetings in Oslo. During the first few meetings, a concept of an accord was discussed and agreed upon. The Foreign Affairs of Israel, Shimon Peres, was interested and sent the highest-ranking non-political representative and a military lawyer to continue the negotiations. Unlike the Madrid negotiations, the Israeli and the Arab-"Palestinian" delegations in Norway were usually accommodated in the same residence, they had breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same table, resulting in mutual respect and close friendships. The Norwegian government covered the expenses, provided security and kept the meetings away from the public eye, using the research institute Fafo as a front.

Negotiations concerning the agreements were conducted secretly, without the knowledge of the entire Jewish Nation, in Oslo, Norway, hosted by the Fafo Institute, and completed on 20 August 1993. What made the Oslo Accord negotiations different however, was the government of Israel's decision, against its law that banned negotiating with the terror organization PLO, to hold direct, face-to-face negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, as the representative of the Arabs a/k/a Palestinian people.

On the other hand, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) realized the loss of its most important diplomatic patron, the Soviet Union, that started in 1989, and Arafat's failing relationship with Moscow. Another factor which pushed the PLO to the Accords was the fallout from the 1990-1991 Gulf War; because Arafat took a pro-Iraqi stand during the war, the Arab Gulf states cut off financial assistance to the PLO. The PLO was not invited to the 1991 Madrid Conference at which Israel discussed peace with Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and Palestinian groups that were not associated with the PLO, although the PLO, behind the scenes coordinated the Palestinian delegation at Madrid.

In August 1993, the delegations had reached an agreement which was signed in secrecy by Peres while visiting Oslo, who took the agreement to the United States to the surprise of US negotiator Dennis Ross. This was not yet the Arab-Palestinians and Israelis agreement on the wording of the Letter of Mutual Recognition, in which the PLO would acknowledge the state of Israel and pledge to reject violence, and Israel would recognize the (unelected) PLO as the official Palestinian Authority, allowing Yasser Arafat to return to the West Bank.

The Accords were subsequently officially signed at a public ceremony in Washington DC, in the White House Rose Garden, on 13 September 1993, in the presence of PLO chairman terrorist Yasser Arafat, the Prime Minister of Israel Yitzchak Rabin, and the United States President William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton. The documents themselves were signed by Mahmoud Abbas, Araft's right hand man for the PLO, the Foreign Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres for Israel, Secretary of State Warren Christopher for the United State and foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev for Russia.

The Oslo Accords, was a political attempt to resolve the ongoing Arab a/k/a Palestinians conflict with Israel. It was the first direct, face-to-face agreement between the Government of Israel and the terror organization Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The intent was to establish the framework for future negotiations and relations between the government of Israel and the Arabs, within which all outstanding "final status issues" between the two sides would be addressed and resolved.

The Oslo Accords provided for the creation of a Palestinian National Authority (PNA), now known as the Palestinian Authority - PA. The Palestinian Authority was delegated the responsibility for the administration of the territory it was allocated to control. The Accords granted the Arab-Palestinians right to self-government on the Gaza Strip and the city of Jericho and in certain areas in the West Bank, through the creation of the PA. Yasser Arafat was appointed head of the Palestinian Authority and a timetable for elections was laid out, which saw Arafat elected president in January 1996, 18 months behind schedule. Although the PLO and the PA are not formally linked, the PLO dominates the administration. The headquarters of the PLO were moved to Ramallah on the West Bank.

Additionally, it was agreed that there would be a transfer of authority from the Israel Defense Forces to the authorized Palestinians, concerning education and culture, health, social welfare, direct taxation, and tourism. The Council would establish a strong police force, while Israel would continue to carry the responsibility for defending against external threats.

On 9 September 1993, Arafat issued a press release stating that "the PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security".

Both Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, before and after the Accord. At the same time, a significant portion of the Israeli public and some political leaders, including the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed doubt over whether a peaceful, coherent state can be founded by the PLO, and call for significant re-organization, including the elimination of all terrorism, before any talk about independence.

In Israel, a strong debate over the accords took place; the left wing supported them, while the right wing opposed them. After a two-day discussion in the Knesset, on 23 September 1993, a vote of confidence was held in which 61 Knesset members voted for the decision, 50 voted against and 8 abstained.

Palestinian reactions were also divided. Fatah, the group that represented the Palestinians in the negotiations, accepted the accords, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine objected to the accords because their own charters refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist in Palestine.

On both sides, there were fears of the other side's intentions. The Israeli government, the Israeli's trust in the accords was undermined by the fact that after the signing, the attacks against Israel intensified, which, some explained, was an attempt by certain Palestinian organizations to thwart the peace process. Others believed that the Palestinian Authority had no interest in stopping these attacks and was instead endorsing them, as they do to this day. As evidence showed, when violence flared up in September 1996, Palestinian police turned their guns on the Israelis in clashes which left 61 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers dead.

Since the start of the second Intifada, known as the al-Aqsa Intifada, in 2000, the Oslo Accords are viewed with increasing disfavor by both the Arab-Palestinians and the Israeli public.

The Oslo Accords were secretly negotiated against Israeli Law prohibiting negotiating with the PLO, which Peres and Beilin blatantly violated. The Oslo Accords was conceived in violation of the Law and was therefore a criminal act, and it still is.

It is also publically known fact that in his book, Yitzchak Rabin identified Peres as an underhanded saboteur and they never really had a good relationship.

In summation, Shimon Peres does today what he has done for decades, which is to subterfuge and act underhandedly and secretive, all behind the back of the government of Israel. He conspired with his protégée Yossi Beilin right through the Oslo Accord. In fact, one can see the Oslo Accord as a process to destroy the Jewish State as was created by David Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharet, Abba Eban, Golda Meir and Menachem Begin and others.

In 2012, we can comfortably say that the Oslo Accords were a waste of time and a great loss of hope, blood and lives, mostly for the Israelis, who want peace, have adhered, as much as possible, and beyond, to the Agreement. To achieve her desired peace, Israel made irreversible, painful and regrettable concessions to people who had no intention to have peace with her, and they say it loud and clear.

Therefore, without exposing the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a whole, who all stand for inciting against Israel and her demise Israel has no chance of survival.

On September 23rd, 2011, Abbas Zaki the former representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon and a member of Fatah's central told Al Jazeera television that any negotiated “settlement” should be based on 1967 borders. Indefensible for Israel, true, but not an outrageous thing to say in public discourse, as President Obama has said the very same - http://www.theblaze.com/stories/obama-endorses-palestinian-border-demands. Further, Zaki then went on to say, “When we say that the settlement should be based upon these borders, President Abbas understands, we understand, and everybody knows that the greater goal cannot be accomplished in one go.” Code for: negotiate, get as much as you can, and then move the yardstick down the road saying that's not enough. He also said that Fatah is going to destroy Israel in stages but needs to be quiet about it.

The Oslo Accords weakened Israel. Just like Neville Chamberlain harmed Britain and all of Europe by playing pretend with Hitler, Obama also has weakened Israel and the entire world and strengthened Islamofascist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

The time is now for the table to turn: The PA must be considered a "terrorist", "apartheid", "imperialist", entity, not Israel. Only then we can get around to promote 'zot ha'haretz shelanu-This is Our Land, Israel's real history, and why even talking about dividing Jerusalem is immoral and against all Jewish belief. Only then we will be able to turn the anti-Israel tide.

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References: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/20/world/israeli-parliament-lifts-a-ban-on-plo-contacts.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

Egyptian minister: "Israel is the #1 enemy of Egypt and Arabs"

2012-01-24T21:41:00.002+02:00

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/01/egyptian-minister-israel-is-1-enemy-of.html

Dr. Gouda Abdel-Khalek, Egyptian Minister of Supply and Internal Trade, has said that the calls by some Egyptians to dismantle the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is "absurd."

He said that the Egyptian military is "the only coherent military institution in the Arab world, capable of facing any external force."

Abdel-Khalek told Al Masry al Youm, "I ask the revolutionaries to cease the demand for dropping SCAF, if they consider that Israel remains the number one enemy of Egypt and the Arabs."
Abdel-Khalek was, unsurprisingly, appointed by the military council. And the Egyptian military owns a lot of Egypt's internal trade, even of non-military items.
In the cabinet reshuffling currently taking place under Egypt's militarily-appointed premier Kamal El-Ganzouri, he places the responsiblity for regulating food prices back on the lap of the Minister of Social Solidarity - now renamed the Ministry of Supply and Domestic Trade.

This revives a ministry that had recently been eliminated, simply transferring the post under the new name to Gouda Abdel Khaleq, who served as minister of social solidarity in the last administration.

Abdel Khaleq is a veteran leftist associated with Al-Tagammu party.

Prime Minister El-Ganzouri, who was chosen by Egypt’s ruling military junta to replace Essam Sharaf last week, has previously stated that the ministry of Supply and Domestic Trade will be mandated to face the rising prices of basic goods and food stuffs. It will also be responsible for supplying goods to limited-income citizens through its outlets.

Food prices, which account for 44 per cent of Egypt's consumer price index (CPI), dropped 0.5 per cent in October below September’s level. Egypt’s annual inflation registered 7.5 per cent in October, a significant dip from September's figure of 8.5 per cent.

The CPI, however, is expected to rebound in November and December as inflationary pressures still exists, mostly due to persistent food market inefficiencies and a lack of regulation in production, rather than any rise in household incomes.

Where the “Counter-Obama” View of the Middle East is Right and Where It’s Wrong

2012-01-24T20:42:00.001+02:00

Barry Rubin

Jackson Diehl is by far the best journalist writing in the mass media about the Middle East. In a recent column he tries to find some middle ground between the dominant ideas--that Islamist regimes are no problem at all and that the Muslim Brotherhood is really moderate—and what he defines as an excessively extreme conservative and Republican analysis.

While I don’t quite agree with him, there is much of merit in his dichotomy. We should all learn from it even though I’m going to suggest that it needs to be adjusted. Even if Obama's critics are on the right side about the Middle East and generally understand what's happening, many of them also make factual and analytical mistakes that undermine their credibility and may sometimes subvert their policies if they win office.

In addition, Diehl reminds us (how rarely that happens nowadays!) how good it feels to debate with people who actually think about the issues and cite evidence even if we disagree with them. He actually believes that there is merit on both sides of the argument, again an attempt at balance that often seems to be close to extinction in this sad era. Diehl begins with a highly critical account of a Fox news host and Governor Rick Perry’s hard-hitting but flawed account of contemporary Turkey.

The former said of Turkey—in Diehl’s view, a “mostly accurate but extremely one-sided description”—that since an “Islamist-oriented party took over . . . the murder rate of women has increased 1,400 percent. Press freedom has declined to the level of Russia. [Prime Minister Recep Erdogan] has embraced Hamas, and Turkey has threatened military force against both Israel and Cyprus.”

Diehl provides what he sees to be the other side, that the Turkish government:

“has just stationed an advanced radar on its territory that could be used to track and shoot down missiles from Iran; that joined the NATO operaiton against Moammar Gaddafi [sic] in Libya; that has become the host of the opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; and that, having repeatedly won free democratic elections, amended Turkey’s constitution to expand rights for women, ethnic minorities and unions.”

Diehl, to his credit (it’s amazing how rare any balanced account is in the mass media nowadays!) continues, “that, too, was a one-sided account of the Erdogan record. But that is precisely the point: Turkey has become a complex, dynamic, difficult, sometimes infuriating, sometimes very helpful and indisputably important ally of the United States.”

Now Diehl presented five items as being to the credit of Erdogan’s regime. But let’s take them one at a time:

–Advanced radar. True, but it was with extreme reluctance, statements that it would not be used against Iran, and the demand that no information from this installation be supplied to Israel. Arguably a plus but less of one than it might seem.

–Libya operation. True but the Turkish regime’s goal was to have an Islamist regime installed in Libya, a government whose anti-Western policy would not bother Erdogan a bit. Hence, not exactly a wonderful gesture.

–Syria. Same as above, only worse. This is not a pro-democratic policy but a pro-Islamist policy.

–Repeatedly won free elections. Absolutely true but how does this undermine the Fox journalist, Bret Baier’s, analysis?

–Expanded rights. It is true that the constitutional reform offered some real alleviations of historic Turkish statism but, as many liberal critics in Turkey pointed out, the candy coating concealed major steps to subordinate the judiciary to the current government. Arguably, these changes are resulting in diminished rights for Turks.

In other words, if the case against the Turkish regime isn’t 100 percent, it’s far closer to that than half-and-half.

Diehl continues:

“The reality is that, like it or not, `Islamist-oriented’ governments are about to become the new normal in a region dominated for decades by secular autocrats and pro-American generals. So the crude bias about Muslim movements that is baked into the worldview of many U.S. conservatives—that they are inevitably fundamentalist, anti-democratic, anti-Israel and anti-American, if not explicitly “terrorist”—has become a serious liability. If heeded, it will make it impossible for this administration and future ones to navigate the region’s new politics and preserve crucial alliances.”

Unfortunately, Diehl did not repeat here his discussion of how both sides are too “one-sided” in this debate. After all, while I and a lot of pro-Western forces in the Middle East don’t like what’s happening, the Obama Administration does. It’s one thing to say that we have no choice—that is often a valid point in policy debates—and quite another to show that the Western political establishment is helping create a bad situation.

Leaving that aside, it is true that much of the analysis of Islam, Islamism, and Middle East politics on the right is too crude. Yet in part this is a reaction to the failure of the mass media, experts, the government, and the policy establishment to offer a reasonable picture. By portraying Islam as a perfect “religion of peace” and revolutionary Islamism as moderate, these institutions have created a suspicious opposition ready to go to another extreme.

But the truth does not lie completely in the middle either. Diehl continues:

“Some Islamic movements may turn out like Hamas and Hezbollah — implacably hostile. But others, like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, are likely to weave through an ambiguous middle ground, trying to balance the need for Western investment and the secular aspirations of their populations with their religious ideology. The right way to respond to them is to be nimble: tolerate some turbulence, roll with some punches, push back against others and keep pressing leaders to stick to democratic principles.”

His last sentence is quite correct. What’s needed is a policy of maneuver and pressure, not one of sledgehammer negativity. At the same time, though, it is quite reasonable to doubt that the Brotherhood will weave through a middle ground. How can one say their populations have “secular aspirations” when they don’t vote that way? Of course, Tunisia is different from Libya or Egypt but unfortunately the last two are the strategically significant countries.

There are two things that the Western establishment simply cannot seem to admit:

–There can be democratic elections in which a majority votes for what is in effect a dictatorial government.

–There can be populations where a majority or a sector large enough to dominate have radical Islamist, not secular, aspirations.

Can the Brotherhood be constrained by a combination of tough Western policies, a nationalist president in Egypt, the carrots of military aid and investment? Maybe. But one thing for sure: Obama policy, with its apologies, concessions, and coddling can’t do it.

In addition, one should add into that alternative policy the following elements: Alliance with regional anti-Islamist forces (Israel, Saudi Arabia and the GCC states, Jordan, and Algeria); strong support for democratic opposition movements (in Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, and Syria); figuring out how to help real moderate forces (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya); and an energetic strategy to counter the radicals’ aggressive and subversive foreign policy efforts.

At least one can have a serious dialogue with Diehl, who is actually thinking about the complexities of the issues involved. I simply cannot think of a single other mass media journalist—not one–who either thinks or writes as he does. That’s pretty devastating.

Moreover, since the columns and airtime of the mass media is basically closed for contrasting views, how can one possibly reach the same audience, especially since part of the mass media’s propaganda mission is to caricature the critics by highlighting the dumbest statements (and painting dissent as Islamophobia)?

Equally, though, Diehl’s challenge to the critics of the mainstream thinking on the Middle East is also very serious. Unless Republican presidential candidates, conservative thinkers, and those holding alternative views can develop an accurate and sophisticated analysis, they are not going to win this debate or develop a better strategy.