SNAKE HUNTERS

An Informative Weblog

Name: SNAKE HUNTERS

Location: Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States

Eighty-four year old fledgling Editor of Snake Hunters blog. Veteran of WWII, 10th Mountain Division, Italy. AAU Swim Coach, 29 Palms, Yucca Valley, Calif. Mobile Park, Retail Furniture, Indian Gaming Casino in San Diego. Concessionaire at major Co/State Fairs on the West Coast, & State Fair, Phoenix, Arizona. This Editor is never "too busy" or too old to defend this nation in a Time of War. Never too busy to confront enemies here at home that demean our brave leadership, or foreign enemies that hate our 1st Amendment Freedoms. We support our military families here at home, and their combat men & women troopers oveseas. --> TODAY - AT THIS AGE, MY MOST EFFECTIVE WEAPON IS THIS BLOG. -> To Life and Liberty For All Nations on This Earth, and the Pursuit of All The Others Who Threaten It! reb

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Saturday, July 04, 2009

WAR AND OUR FREEDOM

WAR, AND OUR FREEDOM-LOVING NATION'S RESPONSE TO UNBELIEVABLE EVIL

There will always be tyrants & wars, and the necessity to confront those brute realities that threaten to consume the kinder, gentler societies and nations.

Study The World's History of Wars. Teach It In The High School Classrooms, if you value our future.

Wars Are Always Ugly, Nasty Events. If We Are Destined To Defend Liberty & Justice For All Nations, We Must Build Alliances, And Have The Will To Lead, To Confront Bullying Dictatorships, Vain Kingdoms, Or The Grand Ayatollahs Of Ancient Doctrines, Whereever They Might Threaten Our First Amendment Fundamentals With Their Chains of Slavery, or Dhimminitude; That's Unthinkable!

It's Necessary that we remember the details of Vietnam and the "measured response" of President Lyndon Baines Johnson/Robert McNamara's "No-Win War", and 58,000 dead troopers! It is equally important for us to recall the Bush/Cheney Conflict that ended on "Iraqi Sovereignty Day" on June 30th, 2009. We shall not forget our 4300 military families, nor their burdens of grief to secure this victory.

On The Home-front, never again must we allow the Fat-Cat Billionaires, or their Irrelevant "Peace Foundations", or The Political Propaganda Machinery To Distract, Divide Us With Purposeful Confusion, To Gain A Super-Majority Control of Congress, Buy Mainstream Media Journalists, To Gain Control of Either of Our Two Political Parties! We must also Remember September 10th, 2007, when The New York Times displayed a Nationwide Full-page Dirty Ad paid for by MoveOnDotOrg (another George Soros Sleeze Enterprise) smearing General David Petraeus with the bold-print headline of "General Be-Tray-Us".

Our Enemies Hate Us - They Hate Our Freedoms - They Despise Our First Amendment Guarantees. They Will Only Show Respect For Overwhelming Military Power & Bold, Unflinching Leadership.

Moderation, In the Pursuit Of Our Just Liberties, Is Never A Virtue. reb

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn!

Sunday, May 31, 2009

SUMMARY OF WWII

10 things Americans should
know about World War II
by Rick Atkinson

The first thing to know about World War II is that it was a big war, a war that lasted 2,174 days and claimed an average of 27,600 lives every day, or 1,150 an hour, or 19 a minute, or one death every three seconds. One, two, three, snap. One, two, three, snap.

In an effort to get our arms around this greatest calamity in human history, let's examine 10 things every American ought to know about the role of the U.S. Army in WWII.

1) The U.S. Army was a weakling when the European war began in earnest on Sept. 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland. The U.S. Army ranked 17th among armies in size and combat power, just behind Romania. It numbered 190,000 soldiers. It would grow to nearly 8.5 million by 1945.

When mobilization began in 1940, the Army had only 14,000 professional officers. The senior ranks were dominated by political hacks of certifiable military incompetence. Not a single officer on duty in 1941 had commanded a unit as large as a division in World War I. The Army's cavalry chief assured Congress that four well-spaced horsemen could charge and destroy an enemy machine-gun nest without sustaining a scratch.

2) The war affected all Americans. A total of 16 million served in uniform; virtually every family had someone in harm's way; virtually every American had an emotional investment in our Army. That WWII army of 8.5 million existed in a country of about 130 million; today we have an army of roughly 500,000 in a country of 307 million.

Still, the U.S. Army mobilized only 90 divisions by the end of the war. That compares to about 300 for Germany; 400 for the Soviet Union, and 100 for Japan.

One reason was the gradual recognition that the Soviet Union was fighting most of the German army. Another was the recognition that the United States could provide industrial muscle unlike any nation on earth, to build tanks, airplanes, and trucks, to make things like penicillin and synthetic rubber, not only for us but for our Allies. That meant keeping a fair amount of manpower in factories and other industrial jobs, while getting women into the workforce as never before.

3) The U.S. Army did not win World War II by itself. We can be proud of our role, but we must not be delusional, chauvinistic or so besotted with American exceptionalism that we falsify history.

The war began 27 months before America joined the fray. It was fought on six continents, a global conflagration unlike any seen before or since. The British had done a great deal in those 27 months to keep alive the hopes of the western democracies. Russia lost an estimated 26 million people in the war, and its military did most of the bleeding for the Allied cause. By the end of the war, there were about 60 nations on the Allied side. In Italy alone, Brazilians, Poles, Nepalese, New Zealanders, French, Italians and a number of other nationalities fought beside us.

4) The U.S. Army's role in the liberation of Europe didn't start at Normandy. It started in North Africa.

President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed that the first task was to defeat Germany, but they didn't agree on where to begin. U.S. military leaders wanted to cross the English channel and head straight for Berlin. Britain wanted to start by attacking the periphery of the Axis empire in North Africa. Roosevelt eventually sided with the British.

The initial landings occurred on Nov. 8, 1942, in Morocco and Algeria. Over the next two months, the Allies gained air supremacy and almost complete control of the seas, strangling the Axis supply line from Europe. After Africa came Sicily, then the campaign in Italy. Then came Normandy.

5) The U.S. Army for a long time after we entered the war was not very good. Part of the WWII mythology is that all the brothers were valiant and all the sisters were virtuous. War is the most human of enterprises, and it reveals every human foible and frailty, as well as human virtues: cowardice and tomfoolery, as well as courage and sacrifice. The Greatest Generation appellation is nonsense.

In the first couple years of American involvement the Army was burdened with clearly inferior equipment and commanders. Those first couple years of war required a sifting out, an evaluation at all levels within the Army of the competent from the incompetent, the physically fit from the unfit.

It has sometimes been argued that in an even fight, when you matched one American battalion or regiment against a German battalion or regiment, the Germans tended to be superior, the better fighters. But who said anything about an even fight? Global war is a clash of systems. What matters is which system can generate the combat power needed to prevail, whether it's in the form of the 13,000 Allied warplanes available on D-day; the 10:1 American advantage in artillery ammunition often enjoyed against the Germans; or the ability to design, build and detonate an atomic bomb. What matters is which system can produce the men capable of organizing the shipping, the rail and truck transportation, the stupendous logistical demands of global war.

Germany could not cross the English Channel, which is only 21 miles wide, to invade Britain. The United States projected power across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Pacific and into Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Power-projection, adaptability, versatility, ingenuity, preponderance -- these are salient characteristics of the U.S. Army in WWII.

6) The U.S. Army in WWII comprised much more than riflemen. It included, for example, the Army Air Forces, which in turn embodied the single greatest military disparity between us and our enemies: the ability to flatten 50 German cities, to firebomb Tokyo, to reduce Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ashes.

Those fleets of airplanes -- a thousand bombers at a time attacking enemy targets -- are perhaps the most vivid emblem of the "arsenal of democracy" that outfitted our military and our allies. The United States built 3.5 million private cars in 1941; for the rest of the war, we built 139. Instead, in 1943 alone, we built 86,000 planes, 45,000 tanks and 648,000 trucks.

All of this gave the U.S. Army a mobility that permitted the rapid movement and concentration of firepower. The German army relied on hundreds of thousands of horses to pull their artillery and to haul supplies.

7) The Army remained under civilian control throughout the war. When the president made the decision to invade North Africa contrary to the advice of virtually all of his military advisers, he signed the order: "Franklin D. Roosevelt, commander in chief." Harry S. Truman, not the military, made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

8) The U.S. Army in WWII was perhaps the greatest agent of social change in the country during the 20th century. This is ironic given the inherent conservatism of the institution.

In 1939, fewer than 4,000 blacks served in the Army. By early 1944, that number exceeded 750,000, and the disparity between the avowed principles for which the nation fought and the stark, hypocritical reality of American life in the 1940s gave impetus and legitimacy to the civil rights movement. Many African Americans endorsed what they called the "Double V" campaign: a righteous struggle for victory over both enemies abroad and racism at home.

Restrictions on combat roles for black troops gradually eased; a group of fighter pilots known as the Tuskeegee airmen demonstrated the inanity of those restrictions, including assertions that black pilots lacked the reflexes to be good fighter pilots. It's hard to imagine Barack Obama elected as president of the United States in 2008 without the accelerated social change of WWII.

The Army in WWII was also an overwhelmingly male institution, and exclusively male in senior leadership roles. But the extraordinary demand for military manpower meant that women were drawn into the national workplace in exceptional numbers; it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle.

The Army was a democratizing institution, too, even though it was and remains relentlessly hierarchical. Of 683 graduates from Princeton University's Class of '42, 84 percent were in uniform by 1945, and those serving as enlisted men included the valedictorian and salutatorian; 25 classmates would die during the war, including 19 killed in combat.

9) The history of the U.S. Army in WWII is among the greatest stories of the 20th century. It ought to be taught and learned as a story, with character, plot, conflict and denouement.

John Updike wrote that WWII was the 20th century's central myth, "a vast imagining of a primal time when good and evil contended for the planet, a tale of Troy whose angles are infinite and whose central figures never fail to amaze us with their size, their theatricality, their sweep."

Two cautionary notes: first, as the British historian Sir Michael Howard warns, military history has "all too often been written to create and embellish a national myth, and to promote deeds of derring-do." Triumphalism is not the point.

Second, we should not view the present and the future through the distorting lens of the past. One residue of WWII is a tendency to narrowly define power in military terms, and to define threats in terms of traditional human enemies bent on doing ill. Climate change and our addiction to foreign oil have the potential to do more damage to American sovereignty and our way of life than anything al-Qaida can pull off.

10) They died for you. We've talked about the WWII Army as both an organism and a machine, an institution that grew stupendously, that demonstrated flexibility and adaptability. But we ought never forget that at the core of this story is suffering. The U.S. military sustained almost 300,000 battle deaths during the war, and about 100,000 others from accidents, disease, suicide. Many of those deaths were horrible, premature and unspeakably sad. One, two, three, snap.

War is a clinic in mass killing, yet there's a miracle of singularity; each death is as unique as a snowflake or a fingerprint. The most critical lesson for every American is to understand, viscerally, that this vast host died one by one by one; to understand in your bones that they died for you.

Links worth your time

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn!

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

MEMORIAL PARADE (click picture to enlarge)

Saturday, May 23, 2009

The Veteran

It is
the VETERAN,
not the preacher,
who has given us freedom of religion.

It is
the VETERAN,
not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press.

It is
the VETERAN,
not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.

It is
the VETERAN,
not the campus organizer,
who has given us freedom to assemble.

It is
the VETERAN,
not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is
the VETERAN,
not the politician,
Who has given us the right to vote.

It is
the VETERAN,
who salutes the Flag,

It is
the VETERAN,
who serves
under the Flag,

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Bought and Paid For

MoveOn: "We Bought" the Democratic Party
By: Ben Johnson

A standard “action alert” has provided a rare glimpse inside the mind of the Shadow Party.

In a December 9th e-mail signed by “Eli Pariser, Justin Ruben, and the whole MoveOn PAC team,” the Soros front group stated: “In the last year, grassroots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the Party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive. Now it's our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back.”

To clarify, the hysterical Left believes not only that America’s oldest political party is for sale, but that George Soros has already made the down payment.

Such a view would line up with Soros’ own designs. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer (no conservative, she) quotes an unidentified friend describing the billionaire leftist’s modus operandi: “Money is just a tool for him. It’s how he manipulates a lot of things in his life.” Soros spent $18 million in his attempt to buy this year’s presidential election. Now he’s setting his sights a little lower, but his desire to “manipulate” our democracy remains.

MoveOn’s contemptuous assertion comes the weekend Democratic state party officials are to meet, interview, and potentially endorse candidates seeking to head the Democratic National Committee. MoveOn has set up a campaign urging its followers to warn party officials against electing a centrist. Such a scenario, the e-mail assures, is a political loser.

Under outgoing DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, the Party cozied up to many of the same corporate donors that fund the Republicans – drug companies, HMO's, media conglomerates, big banks, polluting industries. The result was watered down, play-it-safe politics that kept the money flowing but alienated traditional Democrats as well as reform-minded independents in search of vision and integrity. And so the Party lost ground.

Aside from Stalinist-like references to “the Party,” the most striking feature of the e-mail is its historical amnesia: it was exactly this formula that allowed Democrats to twice win the presidency.

This same blindness is displayed in an Arianna Huffington column the e-mail cites. Arianna, who ran the 2000 “Shadow Conventions” with Soros money, castigates moderate Democrats who hope the party will take its national drubbing as a signal to move rightward. She asks, “Have these people learned nothing from 2000, 2002 and 2004? How many more concession speeches do they have to give – from ‘the center’ – before they realize it’s not a very fruitful place?” Yet none of these races was run from the center: Al Gore ran his 2000 campaign on the theme of “The People vs. the Powerful”; in 2002, Congressional Democrats ran as the party that valued UN decrees over national defense and collective bargaining above airport security; and MoveOn.org, Americans Coming Together, and the full Shadow Party apparatus ran the show in 2004. Despite the formula’s proven failure, Arianna claims, “The party needs a chairman able to drive a stake through the heart of its bankrupt GOP-lite strategy and champion the populist economic agenda that has already proven potent at the ballot box in many conservative parts of the country.”

The Shadow Party again walks in lockstep on this issue. Bill Moyers’ favorite pet publication, The American Prospect, is also pushing for a more leftist party. TAP recently published an article by David Sirota that hailed diving into the Left’s fever swamps as “The Democrats Da Vinci Code.” Sirota calls for tough “us-versus-them red meat, straight talk about how the system is working against ordinary Americans.” This Bob Shrum psuedo-populism has been the touch of death to every presidential candidate who’s ever towed his rhetorical line. Nonetheless, Sirota claims this recipe is working. His proof? Socialist Bernie Sanders winning in Vermont, and über-liberal Ted Strickland carrying a safe Democratic district in economically depressed southern Ohio (which, like depressed inner cities, has been run by his fellow Democrats for a generation). Strickland, incidentally, ran unopposed this year.

Sirota also claims his advice to lurch leftward is vindicated by the success of Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor. Sirota is right that Taylor is no moderate: he’s racked up a conservative voting record that would be the envy of many Republicans. One of five House Democrats who voted to impeach President Clinton, Taylor voted for the invasion of Iraq, earned an A-rating from the National Rifle Association, supported oil-drilling in ANWR, co-sponsored the Federal Marriage Amendment, and voted to cap medical malpractice suits. He is also a pro-life Democrat who has a zero percent voting record from NARAL. Sirota is right that Gene Taylor presents a winning paradigm for Democrats, but for precisely the opposite reasons he suggests.

The likely intended beneficiary of the MoveOn PAC’s e-mail campaign is Howard Dean, who won the MoveOn.org “virtual primary” and is actively campaigning for the DNC chairmanship on a hard-Left platform. “There's only one thing Republican power brokers want more than for us to lurch to the left – and that's for us to lurch to the right,” Dean told a George Washington University audience on Wednesday.

However, the Shadow Party’s stealth candidate is Hillary Clinton confidant Harold Ickes. Soros funded Ickes’ Media Fund and Center for American Progress. George Soros consulted with both Ickes and Bill Moyers during the campaign.

When asked why he dedicated so much of his personal fortune into opposing President Bush, Soros said, “This is the most important election of my lifetime. These aren’t normal times. The ends justify every legal means possible.” Presumably, including buying a political party. Having already “bought” the party, Soros now wants the Democrats to pick someone who will allow him to act as its absentee owner. He wants to place the party formally under the control of the Shadow Party.

“I want my ideas to be heard,” Soros has pined. If MoveOn PAC successfully influences the party faithful in choosing the DNC chair, Soros’ ideas may find a new outlet. That may represent a great return on investment for George Soros, but it would be disastrous for Democrats…and America.

Links worth your time

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Letter to the President

April 17, 2009
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington , DC 20500

Mr. Obama:

I have had it with you and your administration, sir. Your conduct on your recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally.

You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of America. You are responsible to the citizens of the United States .. You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth.

I personally resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world. Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe? Are you brain dead? What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about? Do you not understand or know the history of the 20th century?

Where do you get off telling a Muslim country that the United States does not consider itself a Christian country? Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States? This country was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country, at least until you came along, came directly from this heritage. Do you not understand this? Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia is an affront to all Americans. Our President does not bow down to anyone, let alone the king of Saudi Arabia . You don’t show Great Britain, our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they deserve yet you bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia .. How dare you, sir! How dare you!

You can’t find the time to visit the graves of our greatest generation because you don’t want to offend the Germans but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey .. You offended our dead and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than the people who saved the German people from themselves. What’s the matter with you? I am convinced that you and the members of your administration have the historical and intellectual depth of a mud puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you.

You are so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend to do about them? Anything? I seriously doubt it. What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members – on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves? I understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus. I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer. You haven’t said anything about that. Who authorized that? I surely didn’t!

Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, that's $45 million more than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million – not a bad take. Who authorized that and why haven’t you expressed your outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic mess we have right now.

I resent that you take me and my fellow citizens as brain-dead and not caring about what you idiots do. We are watching what you are doing and we are getting increasingly fed up with all of you.

I also want you to know that I personally find just about everything you do and say to be offensive to every one of my sensibilities. I promise you that I will work tirelessly to see that you do not get a chance to spend two terms destroying my beautiful country.

Sincerely,
To every real American P.S. I rarely ask that emails be 'passed around'.............PLEASE SEND THIS TO YOUR EMAIL LIST......it's past time for all Americans to wake up!

Ms Kathleen Lyday
Fourth Grade Teacher
Grandview Elementary School
11470 Hwy. C
Hillsboro, MO 63050
(636) 944-3291 Phone
(636) 944-3870 Fax

Friday, May 01, 2009

Postmodern Villain

George Soros, Postmodern Villain

The following article was written by Srdja Trifkovic about how George Soros has influenced Eastern Europe after the demise of the Soviet Union.

The reason I find this article interesting is that it is hard not to draw a parallel between what Soros’ Open Society agenda has done in Eastern Europe and what Soros and his Secular Progressive soldiers are trying to, and in some cases succeded, in the United States of America.

George Soros, Postmodern Villain
by Srdja Trifkovic

George Soros was born in Budapest in 1930 but, today, spends most of his time in New York City. Not much is known about his early years. He is the only eminent “holocaust survivor” who has been accused of collaboration with the Nazis. In 1947, he managed to sneak through the Iron Curtain, and, the official story goes, “he landed penniless in London, but by hard work and sheer genius, he rose to become one of the planet’s most successful investors and richest men.”

Mr. Soros’ peculiar moral values, political views, and ideological preferences would be immaterial without the money that he can spend promoting and imposing them. The bulk of that money-currently estimated at not less than seven billion dollars-was earned in the minus-sum game of currency and stock speculation, contributing nothing to the creation of wealth and making millions of ordinary people poorer in the process. His offshore Quantum Fund-legally headquartered in Curacao, beyond U.S.-government supervision-specializes in speculative investments to take advantage of deliberately induced political and economic weaknesses of different countries and regions. In an interview with the Swiss weekly L’hebdo (May 1993), Soros outlined his strategy: “I speculate on discrepancy between the reality and the public image of this reality, until a correctional mechanism occurs, which approaches these two.”

His profits are staggering. On September 16, 1992, he famously made a billion dollars in one day by betting against the Bank of England and the pound sterling. In July 1997, he contributed to the Southeast Asian financial crisis by shorting the Thai bath. In early 2000, he supposedly suffered losses on tech stocks, but some analysts now suggest that the burn of the NASDAQ was controlled and that Soros helped to start the fire. By last November, he was betting the U.S. dollar would plummet. As the London Independent reported (November 28, 2003), his activities were contributing to a growing belief on Wall Street that the dollar would slide even further.

There is nothing new in Soros’ approach to making money or in the ability of such a person to make an impact, invariably detrimental, on his host society’s morals and culture. What is new with Mr. Soros-in addition to the implausible claim that a private speculator could get as far as he has unaided by any established financial interests-is his systematic, concerted effort to use a large part of his fortune to promote his peculiar social and political views. He does so through a global network of “nongovernmental organizations” named after himself and active primarily in Eastern Europe but also in Africa, Latin America, and the United States. At age 75, money is not his object but his tool. He has used it to develop a well-coordinated global operation centered on the Open Society Institute (OSI) in New York, which funds a network of subsidiaries in over 50 countries.

Even before the Open Society network came into being, Soros’ blueprint for postcommunist “shock therapy” reform had been put to the test. First came Poland, where the first postcommunist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, was close to Soros and subsequently remained associated with his local subsidiary, the Stefan Batory Foundation. In his book Underwriting Democracy, Soros says that he personally prepared the broad outlines of Poland’s comprehensive economic reform:

I joined forces with Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard University, who was advocating a similar program, and sponsored his work in Poland through the Stefan Batory Foundation . . . The IMF approved and the program went into effect on Jan. 1, 1990. It was very tough on the population, but people were willing to take a lot of pain in order to see real change.

Poland was only a start, however; far more important to his goals was his association in 1991-92 with Russia’s “reformist” leaders Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar and their Harvard guru Sachs. Within a year of their “shock therapy,” hyperinflation had wiped out Russians’ savings and the long-suffering middle class with it. Pensioners were literally starving. The parallel “privatization” of Russia’s huge resources-timber, oil, gas, chemicals, media-created the robber oligarchs and contributed to Russia’s effective deindustrialization. The country was lowered into neocolonial dependence: a supplier of energy and raw materials and an importer of high technology and manufactured goods. Nevertheless, in early 1993, Soros felt that Russia had not gone far enough: “The social safety net would also provide a powerful incentive to shut down loss-making enterprises. Factories could be idled and the raw materials and energy that go into production could be sold for more than the output.”

George Soros is out to deconstruct nations and states as Europe has known them for centuries, with Russia always the main prize. In an interview with the Moscow daily Komersant (August 8, 1997), he declared that “a strong central government in Russia cannot be democratic.” “The rescue of a free Russian economy depends on the attraction of Western investments,” he added, and, to that end, “Russia’s general public must accept the ideology of an open society.”

By that time, a total of 29 “Soros Foundations” were active in every postcommunist country. In 1994, his foundations spent a total of $300 million; by 1998, that figure had risen to $574 million. These are enormous sums in an impoverished and vulnerable Eastern Europe.

Those foundations say that they are “dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society.” What this means in practice is clear from their many fruits. Regarding “women’s health” programs in Central and Southeastern Europe, for instance, one will look in vain for breast-cancer detection or prenatal or postnatal care. Soros’ main goal is clear and frankly stated: “to improve the quality of abortion services.” Accordingly, his Public Health Program has supported the introduction of medical abortion in Albania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia and the introduction of manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) abortion in Macedonia, Moldova, and Russia. In addition,

OSI has also worked with international and local NGOs to respond to the growing strength of the antiabortion movement. Through its influence on ministries of health and hospital administrators, that movement has made strides in reducing access to abortion . . . OSI will continue to support training in quality of care and efforts to keep abortion legal, safe, and accessible for all women in the region.

Why is Soros so interested in promoting more abortions in Eastern Europe? Overpopulation cannot be the reason: The region is experiencing a colossal demographic collapse and has some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Unavailability of abortion cannot be the answer either: According to a recent U.N. report, five European countries had more abortions than live births in 2000-the Russian Federation, Bulgaria, Belarus, Rumania, and Ukraine. Overall, the report said, abortion rates are “substantially higher in central and eastern Europe and the CIS countries than in western Europe and North America.” The only logical answer is that Soros wants as few Russians and others born into this world as possible.

Soros’ public-health programs also “support initiatives focusing on the specific health needs of several marginalized communities” and promote “harm reduction”: “Its primary goal is to empower drug users to protect their health. Needle/syringe exchange and substitution therapies (e.g., methadone) are at the center of harm reduction health interventions.” His “harm reducers” have expanded their work with special initiatives on “sex workers” and prisoners and launched a policy initiative that attempts to ensure that “repressive drug policies do not impede the expansion of harm reduction efforts.”

Over the past five years, the Soros network has given a successful start to previously nonexistent “gay” activism in almost all of its areas of operation. The campaign for “LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] Rights” is directed from Budapest, where Miriam Molnar’s 1999 policy paper published by OSI defined the “problem” as discrimination and the low level of acceptance, visibility, and political representation of LGBT’s. It was necessary either “to convince the society to accept LGBT people as equal and let the society make pressure [sic] to the politicians (through media) to change laws” or “to convince the politicians that LGBT people are equal and that they need help in convincing the rest of the society.” The overall goals were to generate discussion about LGBT identity within the community, to make them visible and “create a positive image,” and to establish regular forums of discussion with other groups in the region. Specific tasks included the development of websites in English with subsites in local languages, the establishment of task forces that would react to all “homophobic” media outbursts in one “Pink Book,” and the organization of two-week summer schools for teachers that would “provide training about discrimination of [sic] LGBT people, disabled people, overweight people etc.”

In November 1999, a pilot project began at the Center for Publishing Development (OSI Budapest) on homosexual books in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, and Slovakia. That same year, Nash Mir (Our World) Gay and Lesbian Center announced that it had been registered as an NGO in the Ukraine. From that moment, the group was free to pursue its stated goals, including “fight against sexual-orientation discrimination” and “homophobic sentiments in societal consciousness” and “assistance to upbringing of gays’ and lesbians’ self-consciousness as equal and valuable members of society.” The group expressed gratitude for its legalization to the “Ukrainian branch of Soros Foundation Network (Renaissance Foundation) which lobbied our question in the Ministry of Justice and render [sic] legal assistance to us.”

Gay.ru is a Soros-funded Moscow NGO that has developed “into an established and recognized Russian gay and lesbian center” and “the clearing house for lesbian and gay groups scattered across the country”:

We keep contacts with all existing gay, lesbian, and AIDS organizations in Russia and maintain on-going correspondence and reporting to international gay and lesbian organizations . . . We have collected the biggest off-line library that features over a hundred Russian titles and some fifty English classic books on gay studies. It was greatly enhanced by the Core Collection on Gay and Lesbian Issues awarded to us by the Soros Foundation in 2000.

In Bucharest, Monika Barcsy of the local Soros branch bewailed the fact that, in Rumania, “the homosexual identity is stigmatized” and is one of the main bases for treating individuals as “the others” in an attitude of intolerance. Their families became the victims of prejudice “just because the society is unable to accept the legitimacy of same-sex relations as a ‘normal’ manifestation.” The author singles out the Rumanian Orthodox Church as a prime culprit: “The problem is that many Christian Orthodox students’ organizations and other student groups support the church.” In 1994, she points out, more than 100 theology students began a series of demonstrations in front of Rumania’s parliament against homosexual propaganda in the media and collected signatures demanding legislation to criminalize same-sex relations. Barcsy concludes by reiterating the standard Soros line:

Gay men and lesbians need rights that guarantee them the expression of their identity in the public sphere . . . [T]he legal status of gays and lesbians, their ability to move and appear in public, to speak out and act together should be considered a very good test of the civic openness. [It] can’t be resolved with the new laws made under the pressure of different human rights organizations. Romania needs . . . to ameliorate the negative responses towards the homosexuals from the majority population . . . There are “problems” with the society as a whole, and the society’s mentality can’t be changed overnight.

A key pillar of Soros’ activities is his dictum that “no-one has a monopoly on the truth” and that “civic education” should replace the old “authoritarian” model. Civic education does not have to be “just a dialogue” between a teacher and students, he says; in addition, “we have projects like health education, where people use new ways to discuss issues like hygiene, diet, and sex.” While “this does not sound like traditional civic education,” he continues, it is “a new way for teachers to relate to their pupils,” just as citizens must relate in new ways to governments and elected officials in societies trying to become more open and democratic.

Accordingly, throughout postcommunist Eastern Europe, the Soros Foundation’s primary stated goal is to “democratize the education system” by “instituting curriculum reforms.” What this means in practice has been demonstrated over the past three years by Serbia’s education minister Gaso Knezevic, a friend and confidante of Soros. Since the first day of his tenure, Mr. Knezevic has insisted that schools must be transformed from “authoritarian” institutions into “exercise grounds” for the “unhindered expression of students’ personalities in the process of equal-footed interaction with the teaching staff, thus overcoming the obsolete concept of authority and discipline rooted in the oppressive legacy of patriarchal past.” Mr. Knezevic started his reform with primary schools, with a pilot program of “educational workshops” for children ages 7 to 12. The accompanying manual, financed by the Open Society, rejects the quaint notion that the purpose of education is the “acquisition of knowledge” and insists that the teacher has to become the class “designer” and that his relationship with students should be based on “partnership.”

In Russia, Soros’ associates exercise great control over the selection of textbooks for Russian schools. According to a press release by the Gaidar Youth Library, financial support from the Open Society Institute provided it with computers, videocassettes, and CD’s, all of which made “special training” for the children of “underprivileged people” possible in the library:

We organized a special seminar “Children’s rights nowadays” for all specialists who took part in our project . . . The working group of the program “The Circle of Friends” is grateful to the “Open Society” Institute (Soros Fund, Budapest) for the opportunity to realize this project in a full volume.

In 1999, the Moscow Open Society office started a major five-year project, “The Development of Education in Russia.” Its goal is to “reeducate rural teachers at a cost of US $100-150 million” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, September 19, 1998). It is also applying a program called “Tolerance” in Russian secondary schools, but its masterminds may have made a linguistic blunder. According to a Russian critic of the program,

The Russian translation of this Latin word-tyerpimost-has the dual meaning of prostitution and could be confused with doma tyerpimosti, houses of ill fame . . . How come this financial manipulator tries to teach us about tolerance, us who grew up with Leo Tolstoy, one of the first philosophers of non-violence? . . . But Mr. Soros is also a horribly distorted mirror, which should make us see our own, present image, without blinking or turning away. There are times when evil can become an eye-opener, when its derisive laughter can waken us up and help regaining our strength. We should not miss this opportunity.

A first step in that direction may have been taken last November 7, when the OSI Moscow office was raided by a private security company hired by the owner of the building with whom the foundation was engaged in a protracted legal battle. Only weeks before, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the billionaire oligarch and OSI Moscow executive director who has his own NGO called the Open Russia Foundation, was arrested and charged with tax evasion, theft, forgery, and fraud. Soros denounced the arrest as an act of “persecution” that should disqualify Russia from belonging to the G-8 group of industrialized countries. “I believe that he acted within the constraints of the law. I am doing the same in the United States,” said Soros, alluding to his multimillion-dollar donations toward “regime change” in Washington next November. The American press indignantly reported that the raid was directed against a philanthropic organization that had spent “more than $US 1 billion on charitable projects in Russia in the past 15 years.”

“Racism” is Soros’ regular obsession, but he faced the potential problem of finding it in racially nondiverse Eastern European countries. This has been resolved by identifying a designated victim group-Gypsies! “Few minority groups in Europe face as much social, economic, and political discrimination as do Romani people,” says OSI. Being a “Roma activist” has become a lucrative designation within the community. Seventy of the most promising ones came to the conference “Roma in Expanding Europe: Challenges for the Future,” held in Budapest last summer, at which Soros inaugurated a “Decade of Roma Inclusion.” The conference offered policy recommendations, some of which could have been written by Jesse Jackson: first, obligatory and free preschool education in desegregated classrooms; second, Romani assistants in the classroom, especially in preschool; third, antibias training for teachers and school administrators; and fourth, integration of Romani history and culture in textbooks at all levels.

Legally mandated affirmative-action programs for Roma in high schools and universities were recommended by the delegations of Rumania and Serbia-Montenegro. On employment, the conference recommended tax incentives for those who employ Roma and access to low-interest credit for small Roma-owned family businesses. The Czech and Slovak delegations also proposed setting aside a percentage of government contracts for Roma construction firms. In the area of housing, specific demands were made to combat “racism and discrimination,” including the “legalization” of shantytowns and “equal access” to municipal housing. The conference concluded that combating racial discrimination against Roma must be pursued through the adoption of comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation complying with the requirements of the E.U. Race Equality Directive.

The Rumanian delegation demanded that the Bucharest government recognize the Roma holocaust by issuing a public apology along with urgent adoption of a reparations package. The European Union was asked to make sure that Roma are broadly involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of all E.U. spending on Roma projects.

Soros’ “programs” would have been deemed laughable or outrageous in their target countries only a decade ago. No one is laughing today, however. For thousands of young Eastern Europeans, to become a “Soroshite” represents today what joining the Party represented to their parents: an alluring opportunity to have a reasonably paid job, to belong to a privileged elite, and, for many, to travel abroad. The chosen few go to Soros’s own Central European University in Budapest, where they are taught that affirming a scientifically grounded truth is “totalitarian” and that the sovereign nation-state is evil.

There is not one patriot (Russian, Croat, Latvian, Serb, Rumanian, Hungarian) or one practicing Christian on Soros’ payroll. In all postcommunist countries, Soros relies on the sons and daughters of the old communist establishment, who are less likely to be tainted by any atavistic attachments to their native soil, culture, and traditions. The more successful among them-and the most loyal-may spend years drifting from one “project” to another, and some have been living that way for more than a decade. Soros has revealed (in Underwriting Democracy) that his Open Society foundations will help create an international web, at the heart of which will be the computerized base of personal data that will enable Western multinationals to find the local candidates they need.

These new janissaries, just like those of the Ottoman army of old, have to prove their credentials by being more zealous than the master himself; as the Balkan proverb has it, “a convert is worse than a Turk.” Nobody is more insanely vehement in his insults against the Serbian people and their history, religion, art, and suffering than a dozen Serb-born columnists who are on the payroll of Sonja Licht, Soros’ Gauleiter in Belgrade.

Hoi polloi are force-fed the daily fare of OSI agitprop by “the Soros media”-the term now exists in over a dozen languages-from the Gazeta Wyborcza in Warsaw to Danas (Today) in Serbia, the Monitor in Montenegro, the Markiza TV channel in Bratislava, and Vreme weekly and the B-92 electronic media conglomerate in Belgrade. They invariably parrot Soros’ views and ambitions, reflected by the agenda of the local Soros foundation at home and, in world affairs, by the International Crisis Group (ICG), largely financed by Soros and run by his appointees.

Soros’ agenda in world affairs is clear from the fact that his appointees include Gen. Wesley Clark, who commanded NATO forces in the war against Serbia in 1999; Louise Arbour, the former chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal at The Hague; former assistant secretary of state Morton Abramowitz, an enthusiastic supporter of Bosnian Muslims and Albanians in the wars of Yugoslav succession; and former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose visceral Russophobia aided and abetted the rise of Osama bin Laden and his jihadist cohorts.

As Gilles d’Aymery noted two years ago, Soros is not just the power behind the Open Society Institute, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the National Endowment for Democracy, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Crisis Group:

[L]ike an immense Jules Verne octopus, [he] extends his tentacles all over Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, the Caucasus as well as the republics of the former Soviet Union. With the help of these various groups [it is possible] not only to shape but to create the news, the agenda and public opinion to further aims which are, in short, the control of the world, its natural resources and the furtherance of the uniform ideal of a perfect world polity made in America.

That polity will not be “American” in any recognizable sense if Soros has his way, however. Here, he supports increased government spending and tax increases, drug legalization, euthanasia, open borders and immigration, immigrant entitlements, feminism, free abortion on demand, affirmative action, and “gay” rights. He opposes the death penalty in any circumstance. One of the trustees of OSI is Lani Guinier, the law professor whom Bill Clinton tried to nominate as head of the civil-rights division of the Department of Justice but changed his mind when she was found to favor minority veto power over legislation. Its president is Aryeh Neier, who had for 12 years been executive director of the Soros-funded Human Rights Watch and, before that, national director of the American Civil Liberties Union for eight years.

That he is anti-Bush is unremarkable, but Soros’ statement last December that the defeat of the President is “a matter of life and death” was silly. His largesse to Bush’s foes-although substantial-does not reflect the stated urgency of the moment: $15 million for America Coming Together; $3 million for John Podesta’s new think tank; and $2.5 million for MoveOn.org falls far short of a month’s cost of running his many foundations around the world.

Soros remains primarily committed to destroying the remaining bastions of the family, sovereign nationhood, and Christian Faith east of the Trieste-Stettin line. He senses that his full-throttle intervention in America is not necessary, because things are gradually going his way anyway. No matter who is his party’s anointed candidate come next November, the real choice will be between George and Gyorgy, and that is not much of a choice.

About the Author: Srdja or Serge Trifkovic, (born July 19, 1954, in Belgrade) is an American historian, journalist and political analyst, and (since 1998) foreign affairs editor for the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles. He is also Director of the Center for International Affairs at The Rockford Institute, which publishes Chronicles. Trifkovic is the author of the bestselling The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World, an expert on Balkan politics and a regular columnist for several conservative publications in the United States.

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Monday, April 20, 2009

An Open Letter To Mohamed

IF a young person seeks wisdom, knowledge & truth, and desires to share these gifts with others, that person must first be guided by a biblical quote:

Matthew 7:15-16 "Beware of false prophets... (and)

You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbush, or figs from thistles?"

IF The Devil Is 'The Author of Deception' he will cleverly disguise his intention with marvelous gifts, enlisting the many nabobs of negativity that sit proudly in their leadership positions, and he will seduce the young...to Do His Bidding!

He Will Corrupt, using his vast wealth, to bend the Legislators & Journalists, and he will buy celebrities by the dozen. Do you know him?

He Will Manipulate International Currencies to multiply his wealth; and he will spend just enough to promote his image as a Great Philanthropist!

He Will Personally Fund...a vast electronic network, with a cadre of billionaires, and he will coax his puppet-minions to demonize his enemies.

These gullible followers will spew ridicule & reviles...like "neo-nazi, fascist, xenophobic-racist, imperialist war-mongers", etc... and he will influence and build huge impressive loyalties from within an unquestioning majority of these people with powerful Weapons of Mass-Deception.

He is Satanic; do you know his name? reb

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Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Man-caused disaster?

by John Washburn

So much has happened since my last post, so little time to write. Let’s start with the new and improved executive power grab. Timmy Turbo Tax is asking for the power to seize any private company whenever he determines it to be necessary. He also wants the power to regulate corporate pay. And now Barney wants to regulate the salary of any employee in any company that receives government assistance. If these things should happen, then the Sec of Treasury effectively becomes the most powerful man in the world. And remember, this is an appointed position, not someone duly elected by the people. Change we can believe in?

And then there’s Turbo Tax’s plan to ease the credit crunch. This is the plan that was supposed to be unveiled 2 months ago and is basically the same plan that Paulson initially proposed before changing his mind. We’re back to square one. He is asking for the private sector to invest in the bad paper that has caused all this mess, along with some gov’t help. Basically, a private company puts in 10%, the gov’t puts up the other 90%, the money will be aimed at buying up bad mortgage debt to free the banks and allow more lending. Sounds good on the surface, but with one big problem. Remember, Obama has spent much time hammering corporate executives for making too much money. Anytime a bonus is paid out on Wall Street, the recipient is brutally flogged by the media while Obama verbally abuses them for their greed. Thus the question: Why would anyone want to go into business with the government? Even with such attractive investment terms, a company who makes such an investment runs the risk of being demonized by the administration should they actually make money on the deal. Does this plan make sense to anyone?

If any company needs further insight on the consequences of dealing with Washington, then maybe they should chat with the folks at GM. President Obama is now apparently the de facto CEO at GM, since he executed a non-existent executive power to fire the sitting CEO. This is a first. The Supreme Court – which is supposed to step in whenever one branch of government oversteps its legal bounds – is nowhere to be found. Now Obama wants us all to take comfort knowing that the government will honor all GM warranties. Does that make give you more confidence in GM’s cars? I’d have felt more comfortable buying from GM before Obama became the new CEO, even if they went bankrupt. Regardless, they are still on my boycott list and no “come on down, we’re cutting prices to the bone” promotion from Obama will change that.

And now Obama is in Europe asking his fellow leaders to implement their own stimulus plan and to pledge more troops to Afghanistan. Neither will happen and Obama will likely return home empty handed. Why? Well, those other leaders may like Obama, but it’s clear to me they don’t respect him, and that makes a big difference. They don’t respect him because Obama has no bargaining power. With him in office, there will be no consequences for not cooperating with him. He’s too interested in being liked. This is different from Bush, who didn’t care about popularity. They may have hated the guy, but they respected him because he drove hard bargains and followed through on any threats of negative consequences. But at least the Queen has a new ipod, complete with copies of all of Obama’s major speeches.

You know things are bad when the European socialists are telling Obama that he’s spending too much money. And why would our “allies” commit more troops to a war on terror that doesn’t exist. This guy has become a master ventriloquist. He demotes the war to an “overseas contingency operation” against something other than enemy combatants in order to avoid “man-caused disasters”, which sounds more like a job for the Red Cross than the military. Now, he wants other nations to assist in these “overseas contingency operations” because we need more troops to fight the non-enemy combatants and prevent another man-caused disaster. This has me thoroughly confused, so no doubt the leaders of Europe feel the same way, which is probably why no one will help us.

And finally, his latest quest is to dump all nuclear weapons. Sounds great. I’m sure North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and all major terrorist organizations will line up to join the world in unified disarmament, lest we risk a major big-time man caused disaster.

Man-caused disaster? Come to think of it, there's probably no better way to describe Obama's first 100 days in office.

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Friday, March 20, 2009

AXIS OF IDIOTS

"AXIS OF IDIOTS" -- So True

This is a savvy man. He has nailed it down pretty well. Too bad it won't do much good. There won't be 1 in 10 who receive it that will forward it. It sure loses steam that way.

(Too bad we don't have folks on Capitol Hill willing to speak out like this.
J.D. Pendry is a retired Marine Sergeant Major who writesfor Random House. He is eloquent, and as taught by the Marines,seldom beats around the bush!)

'THE Axis of Idiots'

Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You're the runner-in-chief.

Bill Clinton, you played ring around the Lewinsky while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia and then you ran from it. Your weak-willed responses to the U.S.S. Cole and the First Trade Center Bombing and Our Embassy Bombings emboldened the killers. Each time you failed to respond adequately, they grew bolder, until 9/11/2001.

John Kerry, dishonesty is your most prominent attribute. You lied about American Soldiers in Vietnam. Your military service, like your life, is more fiction than fact. You've accused our military of terrorizing women and children in Iraq. You called Iraq the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, the same words you used to describe Vietnam. You're a fake. You want to run from Iraq and abandon the Iraqis to murderers just as you did to the Vietnamese. Iraq, like Vietnam, is another war that you were for, before you were against it.

John Murtha, you said our military was broken. You said we can't win militarily in Iraq. You accused United States Marines of cold-blooded murder without proof and said we should redeploy to Okinawa. Okinawa, John? And the Democrats call you their military expert! Are you sure you didn't suffer a traumatic brain injury while you were off building your war hero resume? You're a sad, pitiable, corrupt and washed up politician. You're not a Marine, sir. You wouldn't amount to a good pimple on a real Marine's butt. You're a phony and a disgrace. Run away, John.

Dick Durbin, you accused our Soldiers at Guantanamo of being Nazis, tenders of Soviet style gulags and as bad as the regime of Pol Pot, who murdered two million of his own people after your party abandoned Southeast Asia to the Communists. Now you want to abandon the Iraqis to the same fate. History was not a good teacher for you, was it? Lord help us! See Dick run.

Ted Kennedy, for days on end you held poster-sized pictures from Abu Ghraib in front of any available television camera. Al Jazeera quoted you saying that Iraqi's torture chambers were open under new management. Did you see the news, Teddy? The Islamic Nazis demonstrated another beheading for you. If you truly supported our troops, you'd show the world poster-sized pictures of that atrocity and demand the annihilation of it. Your legislation stripping support from the South Vietnamese led to a communist victory there. You're a bloated, drunken fool bent on repeating the same historical blunder that turned freedom-seeking people over to homicidal, genocidal maniacs. To paraphrase John Murtha, all while sitting on your wide, gin-soaked rear-end in Washington

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Pat Leahy, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Hollywood Leftist morons, et al, ad nauseam: Every time you stand in front of television cameras and broadcast to the Islamic Nazis that we went to war because our President lied, that the war is wrong and our Soldiers are torturers, that we should leave Iraq , you give the Islamic butchers - the same ones that tortured and mutilated American Soldiers - cause to think that we'll run away again, and all they have to do is hang on a little longer. It is inevitable that we, the infidels, will have to defeat the Islamic jihadists. Better to do it now on their turf, than later on ours after they have gained both strength and momentum.

American news media, the New York Times particularly: Each time you publish stories about national defense secrets and our intelligence gathering methods, you become one united with the sub-human pieces of camel dung that torture and mutilate the bodies of American Soldiers. You can't strike up the courage to publish cartoons, but you can help Al Qaeda destroy my country. Actually, you are more dangerous to us than Al Qaeda is. I am happy that your company is sinking like a greased cinder block and will probably be bankrupt by the middle of 2009. I'm not surprised, as no one wants to read the trash you publish. Think about that each time you face Mecca to admire your Pulitzer.

You are America 's 'AXIS OF IDIOTS.' Your Collective Stupidity will destroy us. Self-serving politics and terrorist-abetting news scoops are more important to you than our national security or the lives of innocent civilians and Soldiers. It bothers you that defending ourselves gets in the way of your elitist sport of politics and your ignorant editorializing. There is as much blood on your hands as is on the hands of murdering terrorists. Don't ever doubt that. Your frolics will only serve to extend this war as they extended Vietnam. If you want our Soldiers home as you claim, knock off the crap and try supporting your country ahead of supporting your silly political aims and aiding our enemies.

Yes, I'm questioning your patriotism. Your loyalty ends with self.

I'm also questioning why you're stealing air that decent Americans could be breathing. You don't deserve the protection of our men and women in uniform. You need to run away from this war, this country. Leave the war to the people who have the will to see it through and the country to people who are willing to defend it.

Our country has two enemies: Those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt it from within.

Semper Fi, J. D. Pendry - Sergeant Major, USMC, Retired

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Monday, March 16, 2009

The Left
and a Woman's Severed Head

By Phyllis Chesler

Within hours of the news of Aasiya Z. Hassan's February 12th beheading, allegedly by her husband, Muzzamil Hassan, in Buffalo, American-Muslim organizations and individuals began a dirge bemoaning the existence of domestic violence. But thanks be to Allah, they affirmed, such violence exists among all faiths and ethnicities. Such family violence, they insisted, had nothing to do with Islam. Muslim leaders emphasized that honor killings were “anti-Islamic" or "un-Islamic," a holdover from "pre-Islamic times." They vowed to preach against it in the mosque. All well and good.

That Mr. Hassan beheaded his wife--well, that simply wasn't dwelled upon. Muslim religious feminist, Asra Nomani, and Irshad Manjie, both referred to the Buffalo beheading as an "honor killing" and despaired of the silence which still surrounded this form of domestic violence against Muslim girls and women. As Muslim women, they were not as squeamish about condemning violence against Muslim women by Muslim men and by Islamic culture.

Zarqa Abid, a soulful-sounding religious Muslim woman claimed that her cousin was once married to this same Hassan, and she denounced Hassan as a "monster." Abid also criticized the Islamic community for having refused to listen to her when she attempted to alert them to Hassan's criminal nature and deeds. Instead, they shunned her and continued to shower him with their money and to honor him.

Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a Muslim author and activist, said that "there is so much negativity about Muslims (this beheading) sort of perpetuates it. The right wing is going to run with it and misuse it. But we've got to shine a light on this issue so that we can transform it."

Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali, of Sterling, Virginia, vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America, said that "violence against women is real and cannot be ignored."

Nevertheless, Muslim organizations are relatively silent about this atrocity, given how vocal they usually are when Islam or Muslims are involved. A Google search of CAIR and beheadings only revealed that CAIR had given the alleged murderer an award."

Alright, some Muslims are calling it an honor killing, most are insisting that it is not an honor killing and that it has nothing to do with Islam; some Muslims are admitting that, like other groups, Muslims also have a serious problem with violence against women. Progress, of sorts.

What did American feminists have to say? Well, I’m certainly one, and I have been on record a long, long time opposing Islamic gender and religious apartheid, both in Muslim lands and in the West. I write about this subject weekly, often daily. Nonie Darwish, a Muslim-born Palestinian-American feminist, has condemned Sharia law as dangerous to women and other living beings. Now, for the first time, an American non-Muslim feminist has joined us.

On February 13, 2009, Marcia Pappas, the President of NOW-New York State, hit the ground running. She was quoted world-wide, even as far away as India. Pappas bravely asserted that the Buffalo beheading was a domestic violence murder that smacked of terrorism and jihad. The February 16, 2009 NOW-New York State press release quoted her as saying:

And why is this horrendous story not all over the news? Is a Muslim woman's life not worth a five-minute report? This was, apparently, a terroristic version of "honor killing," a murder rooted in cultural notions about women's subordination to men. Are we now so respectful of the Muslim's religion that we soft-peddle atrocities committed in its name?...What is this deafening silence?

And exactly what do orders of protection do? Was Aasiya desperately waving the order of protection in Muzzamil's face when he slashed at her throat? Was it still clutched in her hand when her head hit the floor? You of the press, please shine a light on this most dreadful of murders. In a bizarre twist of fate it comes out that Muzzamil Hassan is founder of a television network called Bridges TV, whose purpose it was to portray Muslims in a positive light. This is a huge story. Please tell it!

Alas, other than Pappas, and the feminists who supported her privately, most feminist leaders either attacked Pappas or remained silent.

News of the beheading became public the evening of February 12, 2009. Eight days later, on February 20, 2009, more than a week after NOW-NY State President Pappas began talking to the media, and four days after Pappas released a press release, President of the National Organization for Women, Kim Gandy, finally published a column in which she stated that the beating of pop music star Rihanna is every bit as bad as the beheading of Aasiya Z. Hassan. Or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Gandy joins many of the Muslim groups in failing to differentiate the difference between a terrible, humiliating beating, (Rihanna), and being stabbed many times and then beheaded while you are, quite possibly, still alive, perhaps even conscious.

Yes, I agree, and I share Gandy's concern: Domestic violence against women is an epidemic. Although we have laws against it, police officers and judges ready to arrest and prosecute, as well as (too few) shelters available for those intended victims who manage to escape--still, we have not managed to abolish the scourge of domestic violence. Gandy is, understandably, frustrated.

Many women, (the statistics vary), are killed by their intimate partners. Amy Siskind, at The Daily Beast, tells us that "Sadly, this type of tragedy is hardly unusual in our country, where each and every day three or more women are murdered by their husband or boyfriend. In fact, statistics tell us that in the ten days since Aasiya died, 30 or more women in America have been murdered by their husband or boyfriend. The attention on this case comes as a result of the gruesome way in which Aasiya was murdered—torture and then decapitation—and what a beheading symbolically means."

Yes, I agree. However, Gandy and her supporters still refuse to consider that Muslim women and immigrant women in general probably face much greater danger, both in terms of being beaten and being killed than do non-Muslim women; that Muslim women in Muslim countries are prey, targets, human sacrifices, every single day; and that if we do not stop the forces of jihad that are headed our way that many more women will be beaten, veiled, and killed both at home and on the street.

Feminist women. Educated women. Christian and Jewish women. Yes, even me and Kim Gandy.

Gandy rejects focusing on Aasiya Z. Hassan's beheading because it might play into the hands of conservative "racists;" it might lead to "profiling." Wait a minute. NOW has conducted a serious campaign against religion, mainly against Christianity and Judaism. Why the sudden respect for Islam, a religion which is, in reality, not a religion at all but is rather, a totalitarian political ideology which has undergone no evolution for 1400 years and which is dangerous to women and other living beings?

Gandy fears that we might only focus on Aasiya's beheading or even on Rihanna's beating as entertainment, escape, lured by such sensational or celebrity cases. It's possible, but, perhaps it is equally possible to learn from such cases precisely because they've grabbed our restless attention spans.

Let me repeat: Apples are not oranges. Domestic violence is not femicide. Let’s be careful not to mix the two up. And, western-style domestic violence/femicide does not often end with an Islamic-style beheading. I am saying that we must make these distinctions, not be blinded by political correctness.

For those American feminists and Muslim-Americans who still insist that beheadings and domestic violence/femicide against Muslim girls and women has absolutely, definitely, positively, nothing to do with Islam or Muslims: I dunno. Ask Nonie Darwish, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Robert Spencer, Geert Wilders, read Nonie's recent book Cruel and Usual Punishment, about the nature of Sharia law and Muslim women. My God, talk to Muslim feminist dissident-activists like UK-based Maryam Namazie, or the group “Muslims against Sharia Law” which I have now joined.

Kim Gandy: Please, I implore you, read what I've written about Islamic gender apartheid and its penetration of the West in The Death of Feminism. Read what I've written about this Buffalo case, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Yes, domestic violence exists everywhere, both in America and on every other continent. But it is not normalized nor is it glorified everywhere. In the West, it is now criminalized and increasingly prosecuted, with imperfect but increasing success. In Pakistan, where Mr. Hassan comes from, it rarely is. In Pakistan, girls and women are still decapitated by the Arabized Taliban, buried alive, routinely beaten in childhood and in marriage, (yes, and while they are pregnant); women are gang-raped--and when they legally protest, threatened with death. Women who want a divorce are shot, even in their feminist lawyer's offices.

Muzzamil "Mo" Hassan's heart and mind remains in the East, in Pakistan. His body remains in custody in Buffalo, charged with second degree murder. Until or unless "torture" can be proved, he is eligible to be tried only for second-degree murder. In my article, “A “Cultural” Offense/Defense—But For the Prosecution. Some Thoughts for the Prosecutor of the Buffalo Beheading,” at Pajamas, I have suggested that the prosecutor consider that Mo Hassan was completely in control.

Hassan selected the weapon or weapons. He planned this beheading. He was not out of control when he stabbed and beheaded his wife. He was controlling the situation in a Pakistani male Muslim kind of way: By decapitating the woman, who had once been his wife, who had turned uppity enough to dare to eject him from his own home and who planned to keep his children. Hassan may have been living in America for more than thirty years but he still remains a Pakistani Muslim male through and through. Beating a wife is the "normal" way to relate to her. Killing her for being disobedient, in his mind, was what she deserved.

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Friday, March 13, 2009

Beheadings and Honor Killings

By Phyllis Chesler

She was an accomplished, professional woman, in her late thirties, a wife, and a mother. But her husband beat her. Terribly, and for a long time. Finally, after much suffering, she worked up the courage to leave him. That's when, acting on his own, he killed her.

No, I am not talking about Aasiya Z. Hassan in Buffalo. I am talking about the 1999 St. Clairsville, Ohio case of Dr. Lubaina Bhatti Ahmed.

I know: All the major Muslim organizations, and the mainstream media, continually say that these deaths are examples of domestic violence. They say that domestic violence is a plague that afflicts women of all cultures and religions and which has nothing to do with Islam.

And yet, these very organizations say the exact same thing when young teenagers like Palestina Isa in St Louis, (1989) Aqsa Parvez in Toronto (2007) and Sarah and Amina Said in Dallas, (2008) or when young woman in their twenties like Sandeela Kanwal of Atlanta (2008) are murdered by their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and male cousins. The organizations and media deny that the classic honor killings are, indeed, honor killings, and that such honor killings have anything to do with Islam. Please read the kinds of things they routinely say in my study, just published in MEQ HERE.

Only now, perhaps for the first time, are the Muslim organizations saying that the Buffalo case does not resemble a "real" honor killing (see above), because the man acted alone, there was no family collusion, and there had been a long history of domestic violence.

Although my study found that the majority of honor killings in the West are not of wives but of daughters--let's compare the 1999 Ohio case and the 2009 Buffalo case.

Both families are Pakistanis, both husbands were "successful" in America. Both wives had professional training and careers. Both women were in their late thirties, both had two children, both marriages had a history of terrible domestic violence, both wives, after much suffering, finally dared to leave and to sue for divorce. Indeed, this sounds like a western-style domestic violence/femicide.

However, here is one sign that both femicides may also be Islamic-style honor killings. Both murders involved sensational overkill. Although Hasssan will be pleading "not guilty," and did not confess his guilt to the police, after years of beating and threatening her, Hassan's wife was found beheaded in Hassan's office--after she had him ejected from his own home. In my view, really, who else could have done this? How did Hassan know that her head and her body were there?

Barbarianism describes what happened in St. Clairsville as well. Nawaz Ahmed, a former pilot in the Pakistani army, cut his physician-wife's throat--and, for good measure, cut the throats of her father, her sister, and her sister's child.

Although both men acted alone, I would nevertheless still argue that both men acted with the full cultural entitlement of Pakistani male Muslim culture. Hence, the murderous overkill.

It is true: Beheadings sometimes occur in the West but this occurs when serial killers murder prostituted women or once, when a student went on a berserk rampage. A beheading is an act committed against a stranger, not against a wife. Granted, many cases of Western-style domestic violence/femicide can also be gruesome; but, they do not involve beheading and they do not routinely involve killing the wife and the wife's family members because they dared to support her move away from violence.

Let's consider two other cases in America which involved Muslim men who were domestically violent and who, seemingly, acted alone.

In 2000, in Chicago, Shapara Sayeed, aged 33, was burned alive by her Pakistani husband, Mohammed Haroon. They had allegedly been "fighting for a long time." It looks like another case of western-style domestic violence/femicide except for the method of murder: Immolation, which is associated with the Muslim honor killings both of intimate family women and of women who are seen as not "covered" enough, too "western" by the Taliban, etc.

In 2002, in Jersey City, New Jersey, another victim, aged 29, was Marlyn Hassan, who refused to convert from Hinduism to Islam. Her husband, Alim Hassan, a Guyanese Muslim, stabbed her to death while she was late in pregnancy with his twin children--and he also stabbed her sister and her mother. Again, gruesome overkill.

In the St. Clairsville, Chicago, New Jersey and Buffalo cases we discern what may happen to a Muslim wife who lives in America and who acts as if she is entitled to certain rights. All died horrible deaths, the kinds of deaths these days, that are visited upon infidels and upon enemy Muslims who belong to the "wrong" Muslim sect, clan, tribe, or family.

In both the Ahmed and Hassan cases, from the husband's point of view: These wives took the kids away from their father (who, in his view, literally belong to him, not her). Ahmed moved away, Hassan had her husband ejected from "his" home, (which, from the husband's point of view, belongs only to him, not to her). Both wives exposed their husband’s violence instead of staying to absorb it. From a Pakistani, Muslim, male point of view, both wives deserved to die.

Yesterday, World Net Daily reminded us about beheadings in the Islamic world. I am reprinting their article here in part:

“Beheadings are more common in Hassan's former homeland of Pakistan and throughout the Islamic world:

Just a week ago, Taliban terrorists in that country beheaded a Polish geologist abducted in an effort to arrange a prisoner swap.

An American U.N. worker, John Solecki, is currently facing a similar fate at the hands of Islamic terrorists in that country.

Terrorists in Pakistan video recorded the beheading of American reporter Daniel Pearl.

Terrorists in Iraq video recorded the beheading of American Nicholas Berg.

Beheading is a common form of execution in Saudi Arabia.

Beheading is a common way to conduct a so-called "honor killing" – the murder of a wife – throughout the Islamic world.”

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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Roots of the Gaza Conflict

By Nonie Darwish

With the explosive current events in Gaza, the world needs to understand the roots of this eternal conflict, otherwise we are all kidding ourselves with hopes of peace.

For decades, Arabs had demanded that Israel end the "occupation," and in 2005, Israel did so, disengaging unilaterally from Gaza. With their demands met, there was no ‘cycle of violence’ to respond to, no further justification for anything other than peace and prosperity. With its central location and beautiful beaches on the East Mediteranean, a peaceful and prosperous Gaza could have become another Hong Kong; a shining trade and commerce center. But instead of choosing peace, the Palestinians chose Islamic jihad. They rolled their rocket launchers to the border and started bombing Israeli civilians.

Understanding the reasons why the Palestinians chose violence over peace requires connecting the dots from the behavior of Muslim states back to the laws of Islam: Sharia. Mainstream Sharia books define Jihad as: "to war against non-Muslims to establish the religion." (Shafi’i Sharia o9.0). Jihad is not just the duty of the individual Muslim, but it is also the main duty of the Muslim head of State (the Calipha):

"A Muslim calipha is entrusted to take his people into war and command offensive and aggressive Jihad. He must organize Jihad against any non-Muslim government, which prevents Muslim da’wah (meaning preaching and spreading Islam) from entering its land." (Shafii Law o25.0 to o25.9).

Sharia law# o25.9 states:

"(When the caliph appoints a ruler on a region, his duty includes) if the area has a border adjacent to enemy lands, (he will) undertake Jihad against enemies, dividing the spoils of battle among combatants and setting aside a fifth for deserving recipients."

Also:

"The Caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax provided he has first invited them to enter Islam or pay Jizya, the non-Muslim poll tax, (in accordance with the word of Allah Most High Chapter 9 verse 29)."

Zia-Ul-Haq, former President of Pakistan, said "jihad in terms of warfare is a collective responsibility of the Muslim Ummah."

One of Islam’s eminent 20th century scholars, Sheikh Maolana Maududi said:

"Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of its own ideology and program … the objective of Islamic jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish instead an Islamic system of state rule. Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single state or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution."

Some people seem to think that such laws are just historical relics, on the books but not in practice or in control of the minds of Muslims. But that is the kind of denial we cannot afford; these laws rule the hearts, minds and actions of a majority of Muslim individuals and states around the world today. These scriptures are taught, preached and promoted as the incontrovertible and eternal word of God and funded by Saudi petrodollars throughout the world, including Western nations such as the U.K. and the United States.

No Muslim leader can survive in a Muslim country if he announces the end of Jihad against non-Muslim countries and states that all references to Jihad in Islamic law do not apply today. Treating non-Muslim neighboring countries and individual as equals, with respect and in peace without trying to convert them to Islam, is simply against Islamic Law.

Muslim leaders who dare to go against this theology are called traitors and puppets of the ‘Great Satan’ West. That is a description that no Muslim leader wants to be labeled with. When president Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed the peace treaty with Israel in 1979, he told his confidants that he knew he was signing his own death warrant. He understood that under Sharia he must have permanent war with non-Muslim Israel.

How can a Muslim leader or individual avoid the hundreds of Quran and Hadith commandments to Muslims to kill Jews and Christians? Q 9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah until they pay the Jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued." Q 9:5: "Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them". Q47.4: "When you encounter the unbelievers, Strike off their heads."

A Muslim leader cannot face his devout Muslim subjects after making a decision to engage in friendship and peace with Jews. Mosques all over the Middle East, after all, recite Mohammed’s commandment to Muslims:

"The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and kill them. And the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!" (Sahih Muslim 41:6985, also Sahih Bukhari 4:52:177)

This Hadith, issued by Mohammad, makes a whole group of people illegal to exist. It was issued in the 7th century, not after the 1948 creation of the State of Israel. It is not a response to modern-day grievances; it is a permanent commandment.

Many Muslims claim that Arabs and Jews lived well together for many years before 1948. But that claim ignores the fact that Jews had to live as ‘dhimmies’ under Islamic Law and were never allowed to rule themselves separate of the Islamic Sharia. When Muslims were weak they often treated their dhimmi subjects well and ignored the commandments to kill, subjugate and humiliate them. But Jew hatred is intrinsic to Islamic scriptures that do not permit reformation under the penalty of death.

This is the real basis of the Arab/Israeli conflict: not a conflict over land or occupation, but a divine obligation to destroy neighboring (non-Muslim) Israel, where Jews are no longer dhimmis but are free to rule themselves. We cannot ignore the root of the problem in Muslim scriptures. That is the true force behind the hate and propaganda Jihadist machine against Jews in the Muslim world.

Some Muslims tell me that they don’t believe in Sharia and question why am I making a big deal about it. My answer is that Sharia is the law of the land in 54 Muslim countries and many Muslim groups are demanding Sharia in the West. In 1990, 45 Muslim countries signed the Cairo Human Rights Declaration which stated that Sharia has supremacy over the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Muslim world must look within to its sacred laws, scriptures, sermons, teaching and preaching, and reform the obstacles for peace that have condemned them to a permanent state of jihad. The non-Muslim world must have no illusions.

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Now They Call Me Infidel

By Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Nonie Darwish, author and founder of ArabsForIsrael.com. She grew up in Cairo and Gaza, the daughter of a high-ranking Egyptian army officer. She now lectures around the country to civic organizations, universities, churches, and synagogues. She is the author of the new book, Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror.

FP: Nonie Darwish, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Darwish: My pleasure.

FP: Tell us some of the things you were taught as a child in the Arab Middle East.

Darwish: I was born and raised as a Muslim in Cairo, Egypt and the Gaza Strip. I attended Gaza elementary schools where I learned hatred, vengeance and retaliation. Peace was never as an option; it was considered a sign of defeat and weakness. Those who wanted peace and compromise were called traitors. Jews were described as monsters, apes and pigs and the enemies of God from the pulpits of mosques. When I asked: “why do we hate Jews?” The answer was: “aren’t you a Muslim?”

Shaming is very strong in Arab upbringing. We were told outrageous lies about Jews: "Don't take candy from strangers since it could be a Jew trying to poison you." We were also told that Israeli soldiers would kill pregnant Arab women just for fun, place bets on whether she was carrying a boy or a girl, and cut her open to see who won the bet.

My classmates would cry while reciting Jihadist poetry daily, wishing to die as martyrs. The teachers filled our hearts with fear of Jews, which made hatred come easy and terrorism tolerated. The propaganda of jihad, hatred and anti-Semitism was everywhere and not just in schools; it was in mosques, newspapers, movies, by politicians, in the arts and in many Jihadist songs over the radio. Mosque prayers often ended with cursing of the infidels (non-Muslims). Believe it or not, if you grow up with prayers like that, it can sound and feel normal.

FP: Who was your father and what were the circumstances of his death? How did this affect your family?

Darwish: My father was Colonel Mustafa Hafez and he headed the Egyptian military intelligence in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai in the 50s. The Egyptian President at that time was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was committed to unifying the Arab world, destroying Israel and standing against Western interests in the region. Under orders from Nasser, my father started the Fedayeen, which means “armed resistance”, a guerrilla-style operation against Israel. They made cross-border attacks into Israel and caused a great deal of death, damage and destruction.

There were several assassination attempts on my father by Israel. My father wanted to leave his post as a result but this was delayed because Nasser needed to find a replacement. In response to the terror, one night Israel sent its commandos to our heavily guarded home in Gaza City, but my father was not home. All the Israeli soldiers found were us, women and children. The Israeli soldiers left us unharmed. I was grateful they did not kill us; especially since the Fedayeen did kill Israeli civilians. The next morning the security personnel around were taken for interrogation by the Egyptian government to find out who was the traitor. My favorite guard who always played with us was killed during the interrogation.

After two years of intense Fedayeen operations, my father was killed in the first targeted assassination in Gaza in July of 1956. I was 8 years old and had four siblings. My father was extremely loved and respected by many and until today his name is on a street and school in Gaza city and in a street in Alexandria. In Nasser's famous speech to nationalize the Suez Canal, he hailed my father as a national hero, a Shahid. President Nasser vowed that all of Egypt would take revenge and made no mention of the heavy toll of death and destruction brought upon Israel by the Fedayeen. My siblings and I were asked by top government officials: "which one of you will avenge your father's blood by killing Jews?" We all looked at each other, speechless; none of us wanted to kill anyone or be burdened by such a question.

FP: You show how polygamy is a religiously sanctioned structure in the Islamic world. Tell us how you witnessed its affect on women and on the rest of society.

Darwish: Polygamy is allowed under Sharia Islamic family law. The Muslim marriage contract allows a man to marry up to 4 wives and thus loyalty to one woman is not required. Men do not even have to exercise that right to additional wives for the damage to be done. By allowing men to be “loyal” to up to four wives, the stage is set for women to distrust their husbands, especially in times of trouble. Nor can they trust women friends who can be eligible to marry their husbands.

The basic loyalty bond between husband and wife is the basis of all loyalties in the family. In polygamy this basic bond shifts from husband/wife to wife and her father or male blood relatives and later to a woman’s first born son. A woman’s father or son becomes her protector and defender in time of trouble in the marriage or when the husband marries another woman.

Many Muslim apologists say that Muslim women have more rights than Western women because they keep their own wealth separate from the husband's. But they refuse to say why. The reason a Muslim woman keeps her wealth is because her father will never allow her inheritance to go to a Western style community property where it could be shared with a second, third or even a fourth wife and their children.

Even though most Muslim men do not practice polygamy, many others do. Because polygamy is allowed and sanctioned by Allah, it changes the dynamic of the wife/husband relationship and family loyalties. A Muslim woman does not change her name after marriage, but often goes by her first son’s name; for example “Um Muhammed” or “Um Ali” - that is mother of Muhammed or mother of Ali. It becomes a Muslim woman's identity and source of pride.

Even in Arab folklore and stories such as Tales from the Thousand and One Night, it reflects the impossible life of the main character Shahrazad who was one of a Harem struggling to survive by telling tales to the polygamous Arab kind. Listening to these stories taught us the art of manipulation to survive among competing women and one king.

That injustice to women is further complicated with an easy divorce existing only in the hands of the man. Women do not have the same right to divorce but can only ask the husband for it -- but if he refuses she has to go to court for years to get it. Sharia law also allows husbands to beat their wives who are not obedient. Just imagine that: a husband can have a second wife and not give his wife a divorce and if she disobeys, he can beat her. All of that is legal under Sharia Islamic law. Such laws turn the relationship between husband and wife from that of partners to one of slave and master. The victims in all of this are also the kids who are brought up by an oppressed mother who constantly need their support and approval against the father if he gets himself another wife. The children will have a lot of competition over the attention of the father who has several wives and several sets of kids.

I believe that even Muslim men are harmed by their right to polygamy which deprives them from a secure loving one man/one woman commitment. Because of polygamy and other sexual restrictions in Muslim society, poorer men have a hard time finding wives who sometimes prefer to be the second, third or fourth wife of a wealthier man. The end result is a large population of sexually deprived unmarried young Muslim men, angry and ready to listen to the calls of jihad in their mosques. Jihad and martyrdom thus become the only guarantee for heaven where 72 virgins will greet them with open arms. In this divine promise from God, polygamy still exists in heaven – and to the disadvantage of the Muslim woman.

FP: You make the point that Islamic terror has its roots in the rage that exists within the Muslim family. Can you talk about that a bit?

Darwish: Every Muslim family that lives in a majority Muslim country lives under Family Sharia (Islamic) Law. Sharia Law is divided into Criminal and Civil and Family Law. Criminal Sharia Law is not practiced in all Muslim countries and the reason is because it is simply cruel and unusual punishment; it includes amputation of limbs, flogging, beheading and stoning to death

Family Sharia law is practiced in all Muslim countries and some Muslims in the West are demanding it. Family Sharia law gives most rights to men and very little rights to women. For example, Muslim men can marry up to 4 wives and even have the right to engage in sexual relations under the concept of “ma malakat aymanahum” -- which means owned women slaves. Slavery has been abolished officially in Muslim countries, but a man’s sexual right to “owned women” is still wide-open for reinterpretation.

In Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim countries, for example, maids are systematically raped since some men interpret their position in the family as a sort of slavery. The Muslim marriage contract is different from the Judeo/Christian marriage contract. In a Muslim wedding, the man does not vow loyalty to only one wife. Even if the man never exercises the polygamy right, the damage to the marital relationship has already been done. In the back of the mind of every Muslim woman in time of trouble is the reality that her husband can choose to solve the problem by having a second wife instead of going to marriage counselling.

I have heard Muslim women in the Middle East beg their husbands during an argument: “You can have a girlfriend if you want, but please do not marry on me for the sake of the kids.” In the West, the source of all loyalties in a family originates with the husband/wife loyalty and trust relationship where the man vows to be faithful and true to his one and only wife -- till death do us part. Such a vow by a husband adds stability and trust in the marriage. That gives wives equality, dignity and protection; not only for them but also for their children. Because of polygamy rights to the Muslim man, Muslim women have developed a need to protect themselves; thus you see no community property in the Muslim family unit. Muslim scholars often claim that Muslim women have more rights than Western women because they have the right to keep their property separate from that of their husbands; that is true, but they don’t tell you why.

The right in question has developed so as to protect a wife’s property inherited from her family from going to the second, third or fourth wife. Polygamy thus totally changes the dynamics of the relationship between husband and wife or wives. The loyalty unit is no longer husband/wife, but wife and male members of her own family and later wife and her first born son who will protect her interests if the husband gets another wife. In the Arab world, women do not take their husband’s name but keep their family name and often go by their first son’s name. Thus you see Arab women proudly call themselves “Um Ali” or “Um Muhammad” -- meaning mother of Ali or mother of Muhammad.

Polygamy rights are often complicated by other oppressive laws to women. For example, divorce is in the hands of the man only; a woman can only ask her husband for divorce, but he can refuse so she has no alternative but to spend years in court where her testimony is half valid than a man’s. Divorce is not only in the hands of the man, but it is also the easiest divorce in the world; all the man can do to have a divorce is bring any witness and say “I divorce you” three times; that’s it and the wife is divorced.

This injustice to the Muslim woman is compounded by the right of a Muslim man to beat his wife if she is disobedient. Think about it; a Muslim woman can legally turn into one of several wives, beaten if the man perceives her actions as disobedient and cannot even divorce the husband unless she goes through years of divorce court.

There are many other injustices for women which add insult to injury; a woman’s testimony in court is half valid to a man and she only gets half the inheritance of her male brothers. What complicates all of that to the Muslim woman, and even man, is that a Muslim man’s honor is directly linked to the sexual purity of his female relatives. Thus you see the Muslim man burdened by monitoring the behavior and chastity of his females. Many Muslim men are always eager to cover up their women whose bodies are considered great temptation that must be covered. Thus the family honor is linked to women’s bodies; a value which often ends in tragedies such as the honor killing of girls.

Of course not all Muslim women are abused or a part of a harem. There are many powerful and educated Muslim women whose husbands do not choose to marry a second wife. However they are not the majority and in time of trouble even the most powerful Muslim woman in Sharia courts will often lose to her husband simply because she has very few rights. Because of the inferior position of the Muslim woman and because of depriving the Muslim man from the security and stability of a one man/one woman marriage contract the scene is set for a lot of turmoil, anger and manipulative behavior for self-protection between the spouses.

How can an oppressed woman bring up happy and healthy children? Even sons? Character is dependent on an oppressed woman in the first years of life. That is the dilemma of the Muslim family. Polygamy rights do not only hurt women, but they also negatively impact younger and poorer males in the Middle East from having wives. Some Muslim women often choose to be an additional wife to a wealthy man than the first wife of a poorer man. The Middle East has a large number of unmarried and sexually frustrated young men who are ready for jihad and the 72 virgins awaiting them in heaven. That is what they hear in mosques every Friday.

FP: You describe how Arabs see a virtue in never admitting a mistake. To say the least, this kind of psychology necessitates pathology and the failure of a culture. No? Tell us about this mindset and its effects.

Darwish: The Arab culture is famous for its concept of pride. Image is very important and pride and shame are great motivators. Protecting the image of Muslims in front of the non-Muslim West is vital. Thus elaborate behavior is done to saving face. Admitting to a mistake can bring terrible shame and is not regarded as a virtue; those who admit to mistakes are not rewarded for their honesty but ridiculed and shamed or even severely punished. Until today most Muslims blame 9/11 on a Jewish conspiracy. The father of Muhammad Attah in Egypt, for 4 years denied that his son headed the 9/11 terror attack even when the whole world saw him checking into the airplane that slammed into the twin towers. Only recently Atta's father come out and admitted he is proud of what his son “the Shahid” and not the terrorist has done.

There are people in Arab jails right now who are accused of defaming Islam or their country in front of non-Muslims. This defamation can be a simple praise of Christians or Jews and of being critical of radical Islam. Fear of being accused of defaming one’s tribe, nation or religion leads to a culture that tends to blame others rather than look within. The Judeo Christian culture concentrates heavily on the concept of “we are all sinners and only through the grace of God we can be saved.” That is a big relief to the Western psyche. Muslim education views members of other religions as sinners; the infidel non-Muslim sinners can only be saved by announcing they are Muslims. It is a prominent part of the Jewish faith to talk about God’s punishment when they are disobedient to God’s laws.

That honest admission by Jews is not viewed by Muslims as a virtue and a step towards self-improvement, but as an admission of wrong doing and that Jews are bad and deserve God’s wrath; that is why to many Muslims Jews do not deserve land or a nation. “They themselves even admit that they are sinners,” I once heard a Muslim say. There is also a concept in Islam called “taqueya” which allows lying to non-Muslims if it is in the best interest of Islam. That concept is very deep in Muslim culture that we don't even think of the term “taqueya” any more; it has simply penetrated every aspect of Muslim life. Because of it there is very little self-criticism.

Thus, saying sorry, admitting guilt or looking within for solutions is not a strong value; it will surely get a person in deep trouble instead. Such a person will bear the blunt of the blame for everything -- even for what he did not do; thus you have Muslim denials and defensiveness over matters that many in the West cannot comprehend. Muslims are in denial when they say that Muslim women have more rights than Western women; even many Muslim women convinced themselves with that and defend Sharia Law rather than say the truth in front of the non-Muslim West.

Muslims are in denial when they say Israel is behind all Muslim terrorism across the globe, even 9/11; they are in denial when they say that Arab tyrants are the product of American foreign policy, but when America takes out Saddam, they say “you are interfering in our internal affairs.” That is why many Muslims say one thing to the West in English and the opposite to Arabs in Arabic.

Shaming is prominent in the Arab child. To avoid the intense pain of shaming, denying responsibility turns into a virtue to save face and protect one's pride. The concept of “taqueya” is one of the reasons many Muslims were silent after 9/11. Only a few were speaking out honestly and openly by admitting there is a problem in Muslim culture that needs to be examined and corrected. The few Arab Americans who did that where not rewarded for their honesty by their Muslim community; instead they were condemned, shunned and shamed by the majority of Muslims. They are doing everything they can to silence us. They do not want to get into Western style dialogue with us or debate us in the open.

We rarely see Muslim vs. Muslim debate and that is why when the brave Arab American Dr. Wafaa Sultan, debated a Muslim cleric on Al Jazeera TV, it became international news. The thank you she got for her honesty by powerful radical Muslims was a Fatwa -- a death warrant. This explains and exposes the deep cultural need to even lie for self-preservation and protection. They don’t want an honest debate for reform from within; but they want to continue the lies to save face.

Very simply, Islamists do not want to admit to the world their jihadist agenda and their sympathy with terrorists. That is why they simply want to silence the opposition; a Danish cartoonist; the Pope; a Dutch film maker or politicians and the few Muslims and Arabs who dare to speak out.

Our crime is being honest and open about our culture, radical Islam and our wish for reformation. Even after leaving the Middle East and becoming US citizens we still carry the baggage of never admitting to a mistake and always blaming others such as the West or Israel for all internal problems of the Arab world.

This charade of denials and games has done nothing but keep the Muslim world in a permanent state of stagnation, turmoil and poverty despite of the wealth from oil.

FP: Your chapter about how you came to America very much touched my heart. As a young boy who came from the Soviet Union to New York, I found very much in common with how much you loved America. Till this day, several decades later, I remain intoxicated with the littlest things about America. I love America -- like you also do. Can you just share briefly a story or two about your first romance with America when you first got here?

Darwish: Many Americans who came from your or my background never let a day go by without remembering where we were and where we are now. I too remain intoxicated with the littlest of things about America. There was a Russian comedian who praised America for choice; he did that in a comedy setting, but the best jokes are the ones based on truth.

The first thing that an immigrant sees in America is the range of choices; in style of life, religion or affiliations. Respect for diversity, minorities and equality under the law is especially noticeable if you come from a culture that treats women and religious minorities as second class citizens under Sharia Law.

What is most noticeable to a new comer to America is not just a good paying job, but the virtues of many aspects of American culture. The “thank you” or “may I help you” with a smile in the stores and markets of America; the “good morning”, “hello” and a smile to a perfect stranger on the street; the self-sufficiency and pride in physical labor; the openness, honesty and decency of the American people.

No, not all cultures are equal; there are some that make it easier to be human.

FP: You discuss a crucial issue in how you noticed the hate being taught in the mosques when you got here. You also noticed the bizarre phenomenon of Muslims who hate America come to America to live, who live against American values and seek to destroy America through the liberty that America provides. Can you talk about this a bit?

Darwish: I moved to America in 1978 and was glad to leave the culture of jihad, dictatorships and police states behind. I was looking forward to be part of America. But when I went to the local mosque, we were told not to assimilate in America; show your pride in Islam by being noticed as Muslims in America. Women were encouraged to wear Islamic clothes with pride even if Egyptians like myself have never covered their heads or wore Islamic clothes in Egypt.

To my surprise, I started seeing Egyptians and other Arabs getting radicalized right here in US mosques. We were told that Saudi Arabia is building all these mosques, sending their clerics from the most radical Muslim backgrounds and even send the Friday sermons to such preachers directly from Saudi Arabia. When I asked why are we building more mosques than the need of the American Muslim community, I was told we are here to fill them with Americans; to bring Islam to America and change America’s constitution to the Qur’an. I heard some say “congratulations, Europe is now dominated by Muslims; may God bless America with Islam too.”

When Louis Farrakhan was making anti-Semitic and anti-American comments, I heard some Arab Americans who attend mosques regularly, say “Farrakhan is useful for the Arab cause.” Some of the moderate Muslims that I knew started to gradually behave and act more radical. They only befriended other Muslims and criticized me for befriending and marrying an American. They rejected me when I refused to cover my head; something I have never done before. Even my mother and grandmother never covered their heads or wore Islamic clothes all their lives in Egypt. Some even called Americans stupid or naïve for being such an open society. I then started seeing Muslim students becoming extremely active on college campuses while wearing their Islamic clothes with pride. I stared noticing a drift between Muslims and the rest of America, and an attitude of “us against them.”

There seemed to be an attempt to push the envelope further and further every day by some new demand or complaint by radical Muslims in America. Some advocated taking advantage of loop holes in America’s open system and to further Muslim power. Some radical Muslims and shady characters started coming to America and I often wondered why they were here. Why would they choose to live in a country they consider the “great Satan”? Why would they subject their children to the temptations of the West? It became clear to me that America was being flooded by radical Muslim clerics with a political rather than a religious agenda.

One shady character was Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman from Egypt. This man caused so much problems in Egypt and was a suspect in the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat. He fled Egypt to Sudan to cause more turmoil and trouble. From the Sudan he was able to get a visa from the American Embassy in Sudan. He came to the USA to preach in a New Jersey mosque.

Such preachers are often regarded as a joke and as extreme even by moderate Muslims in Egypt only to find themselves with new respectable status and freedoms they could only dream of under Muslim dictatorships. Such Muslim radical preachers should never have been allowed in America. But believe it or not they have discovered that only in America can they work the system to their advantage to demand this and that and if anyone criticizes them they learn the good old buzz words in America: racist, bigot and Islamophobia -- the choice words they learned quickly from some Muslim American organizations who claim to be moderate. These are expressions represent realities that are a way of life in the old country where racism, bigotry and anti-Semitism are the norm. In America these individuals are finally free to spread their hatred, rage and subversion and cause a rift between Muslims and the rest of America.

FP: Nonie Darwish, thank you kindly for joining us. And thank you for your courage to tell the truth.

Darwish: Thank you and Frontpagemag for giving me the opportunity.

*If Your Blog (or organization) would like to Assist Our Ground Troopers in Winning the 'Hearts & Minds' of Iraqi citizens, tap this: Operation Iraqi Children

http://www.operationiraqichildren.org

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

PALESTINE vs ISRAEL

Been There, Done That in the Middle East

By Victor Davis Hanson

With much fanfare, President Barack Obama announced a new effort to end the endless Israeli-Palestinian struggle -- by naming a brand-new Middle East envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell.

The announcement was underwhelming, to say the least. For 40 years, we've seen such serial envoys, communiqués and peace conferences -- and the little that followed from them.

Can anyone distinguish Annapolis, Beirut, Camp David, Geneva, Madrid, Oslo, Taba or Wye River -- and all the other places that hosted much-heralded but failed meetings that we can no longer even recall?

Then there the billions of dollars (well over $100 billion) and euros for peace given by the United States and Europe to Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians over the last half-century. Not to mention all those ballyhooed United Nations decrees -- Resolutions 242, 338, 1397, 1515 and others -- likewise lost to our collective memory.

The Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai nearly 30 years ago was supposed to have led to a general peace.

So was the withdrawal from Lebanon. So was the withdrawal from Gaza.

We also used to hear that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle was "really" about Egypt's ruler Gamal Nasser (1956-1970) and his pan-Arabic movement. Then it was really about the Cold War and the Soviet Union. Then it was really about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Now it is really about Iran.

Well before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised to destroy Israel, Saddam said the same thing. And well before Saddam, Nasser promised destruction of the "Zionist entity." And so on with almost every Middle East strongman dating back to Israel's creation.

The current "benchmarks" and "roadmap" toward peace in the region simply follow earlier failed formulas with similarly catchy names.

Remember all those brilliant American statesmen, like the current George Mitchell, who were sent over to find the "missing peace" but came home empty-handed -- James Baker, Philip Habib, Gen. James Jones, Henry Kissinger, Sol Linowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Dennis Ross and Gen. Anthony Zinni?

And then there's former President Jimmy Carter, who always seems to be loudly advising everyone to read his latest book to learn how they can solve the crisis.

In the early 2000s, we were told that peace would come when the old calcified rivals -- Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat -- vacated the scene. Their passing would allow a new generation of leaders on both sides to negotiate without the ghosts of the 1967 or 1973 wars. Instead, new leaders gave us new wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

While the names of Palestinian terrorist organizations multiply over the years, the agenda of destroying Israel remains mostly unchanged.

There has been no resolution to the last 40 years of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, because Israel after 1967 has decided not to return all of its battle-won territories on the West Bank until the Palestinians there accept Israel's right to exist.

Israel has felt that if it gives all the conquered territory back, too many Palestinians will see that not as magnanimity, but as a sign of weakness, and we would be back to square one before 1967: Israel inside its 1948 borders -- with yet another new generation of Palestinians promising to finish the job and push the Jews into the sea.

Most everywhere else in the world, wars lead to defeat for one side and victory for the other. The issue, brutally or not, is resolved on the battlefield. Look at the fate of a Saddam Hussein or a Slobodan Milosevic.

But in the Middle East nearly alone, war breaks out and immediately hysteria follows before one side can win and the other lose. "Peace" is imposed, and then we are back to the same old unresolved hatred, terrorism -- and the next war.

In such a bleak landscape, what will Barack Obama do?

Probably what Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes tried to do -- the same old so-called "land for peace" deal: Israel is supposed to go back to something approaching the pre-1967 borders, and the Palestinians, with their brand-new state, on the West Bank must promise that this time they will really let Israel be.

Good luck.

So, for now we watch for a new "Mitchell Plan," another conference somewhere, more billions in aid, new names for old terrorist organizations, and more pious speechmaking at the U.N. Then soon the next administration will come in to power, with the next peace plan, the next new envoy -- and the next new war.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Obama's Legal Left Brain Trust

By John Perazzo

Six months ago, Eric Holder, now president-elect Barack Obama’s Attorney General-designate, spoke at a convention of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS). Predicting an Obama victory in the November election, Holder told his audience that the U.S. would soon be “run by progressives.”

“With this new administration that will be taking its place in January of 2009…we are going to be looking for people who share our values,” he elaborated. A “substantial number of those people” with their hands on the levers of power, added Holder, were likely to be ACS members. Indeed, Holder was himself a member of the ACS Board of Advisors.

Holder’s comment was not merely designed to stroke the ego of ACS; it was a prophecy of things to come. According to a December 11th article in the New York Times, “observers expect that the Obama team will turn to [ACS] members to fill subcabinet positions and judgeships.” Already ACS members include Obama’s staff secretary, at least two members of the transition team, and Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff. Another member is believed to be in the running to become Solicitor General.

That is good news for ACS but bad news for the country. ACS members are outspoken supporters of a kinder, gentler War on Terrorism; Constitutional rights for terrorists; open borders; redistribution of the wealth; radical environmentalism; and the most extreme acts of infanticide.

ACS is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank claiming to have approximately 22,000 affiliates nationwide—mostly law students, law professors, practicing attorneys, and judges. In addition to its student chapters at some 165 law schools across the country, the organization maintains professional chapters in 30 cities.

ACS was officially co-founded by Walter E. Dellinger III, who served as Bill Clinton’s Solicitor General in 1996-97, and Peter J. Rubin, a Georgetown law professor who was counsel to Al Gore in the two Supreme Court cases involving the Florida recount in 2000. Dellinger and Rubin launched ACS on July 30, 2001, with the stated goal of countering the influence of the Federalist Society, whose conservative views they believed to be corrupting legal young minds from coast to coast.

The American Constitution Society’s annual budget comprises several million dollars, a portion of which is used to publish a journal and to produce white papers on contemporary legal issues. Several foundations have contributed large sums of money to ACS, most notably the Streisand Foundation, the Deer Creek Foundation, the Ford Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Overbrook Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation – all major funders of left-wing causes. This support is a harbinger of ACS’s platform and agenda.

ACS aggressively recruits and indoctrinates young law students, with the ultimate objective bringing them into the Legal Left. ACS conventions typically feature high-profile guest speakers like Eric Holder, Ralph Nader, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, Rosa DeLauro, Jesse Jackson Jr., John Lewis, Jan Schakowsky, Al Gore, Senator Chuck Schumer, Rep. Barney Frank, former Attorney General Janet Reno, former Assistant Attorney General Bill Lann Lee, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, and communist icon Angela Davis.

When addressing ACS audiences, these speakers commonly engage in inflammatory rhetoric aimed at stoking the passions of the left. At an ACS event on June 24, 2004, for instance, Al Gore likened President Bush to the Roman dictator Julius Caesar and accused Republicans of monitoring the Internet with “digital Brown Shirts” prepared to ambush any journalist who dared to criticize America’s war effort in Iraq. He accused President Bush of authorizing “what plainly amounts to the torture of prisoners” and labeling “any law or treaty” which “attempts to constrain his treatment of prisoners in time of war” as “a violation of the Constitution.” Gore further accused the President of asserting “that he has the inherent power…to launch an invasion of any nation on earth, at any time he chooses, for any reason he wishes, even if that nation poses no imminent threat to the United States.” And he said that Bush had declared himself “no longer subject to the rule of law so long as he is acting in his role as Commander in Chief.”

In its Mission Statement, ACS laments that “[i]n recent years, an activist conservative legal movement has gained influence—eroding [the] enduring values” of “individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, access to justice, democracy and the rule of law.” While condemning what it calls “judicial activism” by conservative judges, ACS encourages judicial activism by the left. To cultivate such a spirit, the organization has initiated a working group under the heading “Constitutional Interpretation and Change,” which seeks to “debunk” the “neutral-sounding theories of…originalism and strict construction” that “ideological conservatives” purportedly have used to smear “judges with whom they disagree as judicial activists who make up law instead of interpreting it.” This working group falls under the heading of “The Constitution in the 21st Century” and seeks “to promote positive, much-needed change in our legal and policy landscape,” “to formulate and advance a progressive vision of our Constitution and laws,” and “to popularize progressive ideas through papers, conferences and media outreach.”

ACS also administers a number of additional working groups. One of these is “Access to Justice,” which condemns “efforts to…insulate wrongdoers from suit, limit remedies and deprive legal aid services of resources.” This initiative is co-chaired by three individuals with impeccable leftist credentials: Lucas Guttentag, a national director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, which seeks to expand the rights and liberties of illegal aliens; Marianne Lado, a former staff attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and Bill Lann Lee, the Clinton administration’s top civil rights prosecutor from 1997 to 2001.

ACS’s “Criminal Justice” working group produces and disseminates reports founded on the premise that “racial inequality permeates the [justice] system from arrest through sentencing.” A noteworthy co-chair of this project is Professor David Cole, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) who has defended such abetters of Islamic terrorism as the radical attorney Lynne Stewart and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian. CCR initiated a wave of lawsuits on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees, seeking to grant jihadists Constitutional rights. It is a pro-Castro organization that consistently condemns American foreign policy, calls for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, characterizes the U.S. criminal-justice system as racist and in need of an overhaul, and seeks to cripple most American anti-terrorism efforts.

The aims of ACS’s “Democracy and Voting” (D&V) working group are broadly consistent with those of ACORN, the pro-Obama organization whose infamous voter-registration efforts on behalf of Democrats in recent election cycles have been marred by massive levels of fraud. Specifically, D&V “identifies barriers to political participation that stem from race, redistricting, the partisan and incompetent administration of elections, registration difficulties, [and] felon disenfranchisement.” One ACS Board member, Georgetown law professor Spencer Overton, contends that instituting a photo ID requirement for voters would disenfranchise “political groups whose members are less likely to bring ID to the polls.” The D&V project is co-chaired by Julie Fernandes, who served as Special Assistant to President Clinton at the White House Domestic Policy Council; Sam Hirsch, who has longstanding ties to the Democratic National Committee; Pamela Karlan, a former attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and Nina Perales, who has served as Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, both of which favor expanded rights for illegal aliens.

ACS’s “Equality and Liberty” working group is devoted to “combating inequality resulting from race, color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age and other factors.” The project’s co-chairs include Paul Wolfson, who currently represents the Texas chapter of the NAACP; Nina Pillard, a former fellow at the ACLU who also worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and for President Clinton’s Office of the Solicitor General; and Alan Jenkins, who has had close ties to the Ford Foundation (one of the world’s leading funders of the left), the Clinton Justice Department, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the ACLU, and the Center for Community Change (which favors expanded rights for illegal aliens in the U.S.).

The “Separation of Powers and Federalism” working group was established by ACS to “promote the ability of government at all levels to pursue progressive policies,” and to counter what it describes as the Bush administration’s efforts to “increase…executive power at the expense of the other branches of the federal government.” This project is co-chaired by three people who worked for the Clinton Justice Department—Preeta Bansal, Neil J. Kinkopf, and Christopher Schroeder—as well as by Simon Lazarus, who served on President Jimmy Carter’s White House Domestic Policy Staff.

Through its “International Law and the Constitution” working group, ACS disparages American law as antiquated and inequitable, and calls on judges to make American jurisprudence subservient to United Nations treaties and European Court of Human Rights decisions. Co-chairing this group are Jamil Dakwar, a former Human Rights Watch staffer who currently directs the ACLU's Human Rights Program; Catherine Powell, a Board member of Human Rights Watch; and Cindy Soohoo, Director of the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Domestic Legal Program.

With an eye toward cultivating a new generation of leftists, ACS has developed a “Constitution in the Classroom” program whereby volunteers, under the ostensibly noble banner of “education,” indoctrinate young students across the United States.

A number of major ACS figures already have secured positions in the forthcoming Obama administration. Executive Director Lisa Brown, for instance, will be Obama’s White House Staff Secretary. In the 1990s, Brown served as an Attorney Advisor in the Clinton Justice Department and as Counsel to Vice President Al Gore.

ACS Board of Directors member Goodwin Liu, who also sits on the Board of the ACLU’s Northern California chapter, is a member of the Obama-Biden transition team.

Joining Liu on the transition team is another ACS Board of Directors member, Dawn Johnsen, who spent five years in the Clinton Justice Department, five years as Legal Director of the abortion-rights group NARAL, and one year as a Staff Counsel Fellow for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

Former ACS staffer Melody Barnes will direct the Obama administration’s Domestic Policy Council. Barnes previously served as Executive Vice President for Policy at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (a think tank dominated by Hillary Clinton and former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta), and as Chief Counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Former ACS Board member Ronald Klain will be chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden. In 1993, Klain directed the judicial selection process that resulted in the confirmation of the Supreme Court’s most radical justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the high court. The following year, Klain became chief of staff and Counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno, and in 1995 he became Assistant to President Bill Clinton and chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore.

Current ACS Board of Directors member Teresa Wynn Roseborough is believed to be in the running for the post of Solicitor General in the Obama administration.

ACS’s Board of Directors also includes a large roster of additional leftist luminaries who may be in line for roles in the Obama administration. Among these are:

Spencer Overton, the aforementioned Georgetown law professor;
Stephen P. Berzon, former Legal Director of the Children's Defense Fund;

Antonia Hernández, currently a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation (a major funder of the Left) and formerly president and general counsel of MALDEF;

Anne Irwin, who has worked for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project;

William P. Marshall, who served as Deputy White House Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President during the Clinton administrati;

Robert Raben a longtime Counsel to Rep. Barney Frank and former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Clinton administration who currently serves as a Board member of Alliance for Justice. This group systematically paints Republican judicial nominees as “extremists” beyond the pale;

Teresa Wynn, a principal attorney for the Al Gore campaign in the litigation surrounding the controversial 2000 presidential election;

Theodore M. Shaw, Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund;

Paul M. Smith, a Board of Directors member of the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, which deals in litigation aiming for “full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV”;

Geoffrey Stone, a member of the ACLU’s National Advisory Council who participates in the “Straight for Equality Project” of PFLAG;

Stephen Susman. A practicing attorney for more than four decades, this National Council member of Human Rights First and Board member of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law of Texas is very active in global warming litigation. He successfully represented a coalition of 37 Texas cities which sought to prevent TXU Energy Corporation from securing permits for the construction of new coal-fired electric generating plants. He also served as counsel to a Northwest Arctic Inuit tribe that sued 24 major energy companies for $400 million, claiming that the defendants’ industrial activities had contributed to the “global warming” which allegedly was causing rising tides, warmer ocean temperatures, and more frequent storms that were damaging the tribe’s natural environment;

Patricia Wald. This former Chair of the Open Society Institute’s Justice Initiative Board served in the Carter administration as Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs, and in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration as a consultant on matters of criminal justice and poverty; and

Roger Wilkins. This George Mason University professor was an Assistant Attorney General in the Johnson administration, and is currently a Board member of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He views the U.S as a persistently bigoted nation that refuses “to accept fully responsibility for the consequences” of its racist history, and for the resultant “personal racial wounds” that allegedly afflict all contemporary black Americans.

ACS’s Board of Advisors is similarly populated with a host of leftists, including:

Walter E. Dellinger III, ACS’s aforementioned co-founder;

Abner J. Mikva, ex-Clinton White House Counsel;

Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard law professor and a member of Al Gore’s legal team in the 2000 election crisis;

Mario M. Cuomo, former New York State governor;

Janet Reno, ex-Clinton Attorney General;

Drew Saunders Days III, who served as President Clinton’s Solicitor General from 1993 to 1996, and as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of President Carter’s Justice Department from 1977 to 1980;

Maria Echaveste: This former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Clinton and former advisor to Howard Dean is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, an Executive Committee member of the Democratic National Committee, and a Board of Directors member of People for the American Way;

Christopher Edley, Jr.: Having taught Barack Obama at Harvard Law School in the late 1980s, Edley served as an advisor to President Clinton’s “One America Initiative” and as Chair of Clinton’s “Affirmative Action Review” in 1998. During Obama’s run for the presidency in 2008, Edley worked as an advisor to the campaign. Last month, the president-elect named Edley to the Advisory Board of the Obama-Biden Transition Project which is chaired by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta;

Shirley Mount Hufstedler, who served as U.S. Secretary of Education under President Carter; and

William Albert Norris, whom President Carter nominated in 1980 as a U.S. Court of appeals judge.

One particularly influential former member of the ACS Board of Advisors, Hillary Clinton, already has been named to be President Obama’s Secretary of State. While Mrs. Clinton’s name is of course recognizable to everyone, most of the individuals named above are entirely unfamiliar to most Americans. So, too, are the radical-to-revolutionary agendas of the organizations with which they are affiliated. Familiar or not, however, they are likely to play a major role in transforming the United States into a nation where leftist politics and mores reign supreme.

Specifically, the myriad leftists who will populate President Obama’s administration will dramatically speed up America’s seismic shift toward a general acceptance of open borders; expanded rights and privileges for illegal aliens; radical environmentalism; judicial activism; opposition to the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism measures; racial preferences; taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; socialized medicine; redistributive economic policies; ever-expanding social welfare programs funded by escalating taxes; softer approaches to dealing with crime; the provision, for terrorism suspects, of all the benefits and procedural protections afforded by civilian trials; the removal of all religious symbols from the public square; the subordination of the American justice system to the mandates of international tribunals; the promotion of the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation; and America’s gradual, unilateral military disarmament.

Leftists have much to be disappointed about in Obama’s foreign policy and defense teams, and in his scaling back of his tax-hiking agenda. But on the judicial front, “change” is coming, soon.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Egypt’s Double Game

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Michael Widlanski, a research fellow at the Shalem Center. A Schusterman Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis for 2007-8, he teaches at Hebrew University. He has also served as a special advisor to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem.

FP: Dr. Michael Widlanski, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Widlanski: Thank you.

FP: I would like to talk to you today about Egypt’s role in what we see unfolding in Gaza today -- and what effect the developments will have on Egypt. What relationship does Egypt have with Hamas exactly?

Widlanski: Egypt, the largest Arab country, is playing a dangerous double-game in its ties with its neighbors, Israel and Hamas.

Ever since Hamas's rise to power in Gaza three years ago, Egypt has tried to sell itself as an honest broker in mediating a truce between Israel and the Hamas terrorists, but, in fact, Egypt has been and continues to be part of the problem.

FP: And how is it part of the problem?

Widlanski: Well, if Egypt is really an honest broker, what has it condemned Israeli retaliation against Hamas, calling it aggression, without ever condemning a single Hamas attack? Egyptian police and soldiers have been turning a blind eye to weapons smuggling from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, allowing massive digging of some 50 miles of tunnels—some equipped with rails for carrying heavy equipment—into Gaza. Egyptian officials have actually encouraged attacks on Israel, which Egyptian President Husni Mubarak recently described as "legitimate resistance."

In a major New Year's Eve address on December 30, Mubarak criticized Hamas for goading Israel into the kind of military action which would hurt Hamas and all Palestinians, but he justified Hamas attacks, while excoriating Israeli "aggression" no less than 11 times in a ten-minute speech

"I say honestly and with full conviction that the right of resisting the occupation is a solid and legal right, but the resistance must be responsible before its people," said Mubarak, using the term "the resistance"—al-muqawwima in Arabic—to describe Hamas. [In Arabic Hamas is an abbreviation for Harakat al-Muqawwima al-Islamiyya –The Islamic Resistance Front.]

Like the late Yasser Arafat, who never condemned the suicide bomb attacks of Hamas or his own Fatah organization, Mubarak is basically saying that the attacks themselves are okay and legitimate, but that they bring Israeli reprisals.

For Mubarak, like for Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the current head of the PLO, such attacks are not immoral, but only "counter-productive."

Mubarak did not explain why attacking Israel with rocket fire on cities or bomb-carrying infiltrators was a form of "resistance" even after Israel troops had completely withdrawn from Gaza, evicting all Israeli citizens with them.

This is hardly an accident, because the term "The Occupation"—al-ikhtilal— is often used as a synonym for Israel itself, and Mubarak ended his speech by saying that "the Palestinian case will never ever die." This kind of terminology again suggests the Arabic rhetoric of Arafat-Abbas-Hamas that no Israeli withdrawals will ever satisfy the Arab opponents of Israel but that diplomatic agreements or truces are nothing but a transitory stage in the ultimate erasure of "the occupation."

Still, Mubarak castigated Hamas in his speech, and he was obviously trying to strike a pose of being insulted by Hamas's refusal to heed his advice on tactics.

At the same time, Mubarak and other Arab leaders are facing increasing pressure not to seem to be acquiescing to Israel's air-strikes against Hamas, in which more than 200 Hamas terrorists have been killed, including several regional military commanders and spiritual leader Sheikh Nazir Reian.

Professor Yoram Meital of Ben Gurion University said on January 1 that an Israeli ground attack, which we are witnessing now, would likely spark increased domestic opposition to Mubarak and might undermine his regime and other "moderate" Arab governments.

FP: So Mubarak is worried about the consequences of Israeli actions in terms of what will happen inside Egypt. Please explain.

Widlanski: Hamas, though currently supported and trained by the Shiite regime of Iran, is actually the outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood organization inside Egypt which is the strongest opposition to Mubarak.

Jordan's King Abdullah is also worried about the rising profile of the Islamists inside Jordan, and he just recently fired the head of his domestic intelligence agency for taking too lax a hand against Hamas and its supporters.

Some analysts in Israel feel that Mubarak is worried that a tough Israeli policy against Hamas in Gaza will cause a kind of "blowback" of Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives flowing back into Sinai where they might link up with incipient elements of Al-Qaeda that have taken root in the rocky peninsula, already staging terror inside Egypt and at the Israeli and Jordanian resorts of Eilat and Aqaba.

Off the record, some Israeli officials say that this would probably serve Mubarak right: he and his officials were just as happy to keep the violent Islamists pointed at Israel, but the current Israeli counteroffensive may be pointing the Islamists back at Egypt's heart.

Mubarak, who succeeded to power after Anwar Sadat was murdered by Islamists in 1981, would like to avoid a similar fate.

FP: What are the chances that jihadis might overthrow Mubarak? What would the consequences be to the region and to Israeli and American interests?

Widlanski: I don't believe there is any immediate threat to Mubarak. He has successfully repressed the extremist Muslim elements—the Islamists, if you will—over the past few years. But he has not eliminated them. They have a long wind, and they have a philosophy of steadfastness, patience and camouflage—sumuud, subr and taqiyya.

The Muslim Brothers and their satellite organizations are always poised to take action and to pounce on a regime's weakness. These organizations include Al-gema'at al-Islamiyya—The Islamic Groups-and al-Lagii'n Min al-Nar—literally "The Refugees from the Fire" or the "Refugees from Hell."

Remember, too, that Hamas itself masqueraded as a purely religious social service organization until December 1987, but when the so-called "Intifada" erupted, they quickly got involved and came out of the closet so that they would not lose footing to groups like Islamic Jihad, which is far, far smaller, and Fatah, which is less religiously oriented.

It is clear that the rise of a Jihadi regime in Egypt would be a catastrophe for America, the West and for the entire world. We are still paying for the transfer of Iran —in the days of Jimmy Carter—to the hands of the Ayatollahs. Losing Iran was bad, and is bad. Losing Egypt would be absolutely horrible. Egypt is centrally located, and it is the most important and most populous Arab country with major communications and literary influence. However, I don't think that moment is near. Mubarak is working hard to smooth the transition to his son, Gamal, and to people close to him, but there is a danger. That danger is the perception that the current regime is corrupt or unethical. That is the same weakness that plagues other regimes, such as the Saudi regime, whose corruption has immense proportions. And it is this corruption and the perception of corruption and insensitive bureaucracy which breeds the strength for all the Islamist movements, whether they are Shiite, as in Iran, or the Sunni-oriented Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, in Gaza and Egypt.

FP: What policies should Israel and the U.S. pursue in this context?

Widlanski: Israel and the US must pursue a political-cultural-military offensive that is a kind of multi-disciplinary version of combined arms theory:

They need to attack the terrorist organizations mercilessly and ceaselessly by physically killing or capturing their members, preferably killing them. And no truces or ceasefires ever—not for Ramadan, not for Christmas and not for Rosh Ha-Shana.

They have to isolate them financially and politically by not allowing them passage between countries and not allowing passage of their funds. Rather, we should be confiscating all of their assets

They need to uncover and publicly reveal all hidden Hamas and Hizballah-oriented organizations which try to pass themselves off as charitable organizations. There are many in the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands etc

FP: Dr. Michael Widlanski, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Widlanski: Thank you Jamie.

Monday, January 26, 2009

It's Official

War on Terror Is the Most Successful Military Campaign In US History.

Before President George W. Bush leaves office it's only fitting to give credit to where credit it due. Although you would not know this from the anti-Bush media or democrats, the US military has waged the most successful major military campaign in American history these past 8 years.

The War on Terror has been an amazing success not only in what has been accomplished but in what it has cost in lives. Two brutal regimes were obliterated, Al-Qaeda was decimated, fledgling democracies were established. But, most importantly, the US was able to do this while sacrificing the fewest number of soldiers monthly than in any other military campaign in US history. In fact, the US today is losing fewer soldiers each month in Iraq and Afghanistan combined than the average number of soldiers lost monthly during the Clinton years (~35 to 78).

Here's how the War on Terror stacks up with other US Wars:

The population today in the US is much larger than when these previous wars were fought. If you factor that in it really puts things into perspective.

In Afghanistan: The US has suffered 604 fatalities in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda has suffered 12,000 fatalities. 28,700 militant Islamists have been captured.

In Iraq: The US has suffered 4227 fatalities in Iraqi Freedom. More than 19,429 Al-Qaeda and Islamic militants have been killed. Over 18,900 insurgents have been captured.

Not only that but as Vice President Dick Cheney said this week we've achieved most of the objectives in Iraq that were established in the spring of '03:

We've got the violence level down to its lowest level since '03. We've had three national elections, a constitution written, a new government stood up, new army recruited and trained, the Iraqis increasingly able to take on responsibility for themselves. And we've now entered into a strategic framework agreement with the new Iraqi government that will provide for the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. forces.

You could not have asked for much more than that in terms of the policies that we started on in '03.

It's only fitting that this is reported before President Bush leaves office. Obviously, you won't hear this from the liberal media. It certainly doesn't fit their narrative that Bush's War was the worst foreign policy mistake in US history.

UPDATE: Terry Gain adds this:

1. More innocent Iraqis were being killed and dying because of sanctions when Hussein was in power than have been killed during the liberation of Iraq. The war has saved lives even as it’s being fought.
2. The vast majority of the killing of innocent Iraqis has been by the domestic insurgents and foreign terrorists. Americans have killed a small percentage of the innocents who’ve been killed.
3. The American war against Iraq ended on April 9, 2003. The war against Iraq by domestic insurgents and al Qaeda followed. That war is also largely over. The pacification of Iraq is continuing apace.
4. The pacification is also proceeding inexorably. Iraqis show every sign of keeping the gift of democracy they have received from the United States.
5. Calling for an end to the war – as have Reid and Pelosi – when it is insurgents and al Qaeda who are continuing the war is a brain -dead Democrat talking point. Even Obama understands that if the United States withdraws prematurely the hard won victory over the insurgents may be reversed.
6. Premature withdrawal will cause the war to continue, not end.

UPDATE 2: Bill Kristol added this on Bush's legacy today:

But I don’t think keeping us safe has been Bush’s most impressive achievement. That was winning the war in Iraq, and in particular, his refusal to accept defeat when so many counseled him to do so in late 2006. His ordering the surge of troops to Iraq in January 2007 was an act of personal courage and of presidential leadership. The results have benefited both Iraq and the United States. And the outcome in Iraq is a remarkable gift to the incoming president, who now only has to sustain success, rather than trying to deal with the consequences in the region and around the world of a humiliating withdrawal and a devastating defeat.

Monday, January 05, 2009

Why Israel Is Bombing Gaza

By Ephraim Sneh

When demands are made of Israel to halt its military activities in Gaza, a brief historical reminder is in order.

In September 2005, Israel vacated Gaza, dismantled all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and did not leave a shred of a presence there.

In January 2006, rule over Gaza passed to the Hamas government under Ismail Haniyeh. Instead of bringing investors to Gaza, the Hamas government brought the guerrilla-warfare trainers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Instead of launching economic projects, this government launched rockets every day at Israeli towns and villages across the border. They smuggled in vast amounts of explosives, weapons and rockets; they prepared themselves for battle.

In June 2007, in a brutal and bloody military coup, Hamas took control of Gaza and soon killed or chased out the leaders of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement. Gaza became nothing less than a military base for Iran.

Up until the Hamas takeover, 750 trucks would cross the border each day with imports and exports. As Israel's deputy defense minister at the time, I was in charge of this activity and promoted this trade with Gaza, since the border crossings were being controlled by Abbas's Presidential Guard, not by terrorists. The Hamas takeover is what in effect locked the gates of Gaza and forced its residents to suffer.

The rain of rockets on the citizens of Israel intensified. The cease-fire that lasted from June until Dec. 19 was used by Hamas to increase its military strength -- mainly to smuggle in Grad-type rockets from Iran, which have a range of 20 miles. In recent days, these missiles have struck cities such as Ashdod, Israel's main port, and Beersheva, the capital of Israel's south. No sovereign state would have resigned itself to having its cities -- cities such as Houston or Atlanta -- bombarded. No sovereign state would allow itself to be hit by even a single missile. That is the reason for the military campaign that Israel launched this week in a series of aerial strikes.

But the campaign's objective is not to end the rocket fire. The true objective should be the end of Hamas rule in Gaza. Israel cannot resign itself to having a missile and terror base five miles from one of its principal cities, Ashkelon.

Gaza's Palestinians, too, in telephone and e-mail conversations, are expressing their urgent wish to end the nightmare that Hamas has imposed on them. An end to the Hamas regime in Gaza is essential for them, as well. It is not possible to govern Gaza in the absence of close cooperation with Israel on issues of trade, energy, environment, water and health. Those who reject the legitimacy of Israel can't provide a normal life for Gaza's 1.5 million residents, who on average are living on $2 a day.

Israel could bring about a collapse of the Hamas regime in Gaza by means of a lengthy, large-scale ground campaign. With a clear exit strategy lacking, this is not an appealing option for us. At the moment, unfortunately, this is the only option available.

Yet there is another way. Those demanding a cease-fire must produce a comprehensive solution, a "package" containing the following elements:

· Full dismantling of the military power of Hamas in Gaza, including destruction of all stockpiles of rockets and missiles.

· Transfer of control over border-crossings between Gaza and Egypt and between Gaza and Israel to the Palestinian Authority government of Salam Fayyad.

· Until the elections to the Palestinian parliament and the presidency in January 2010, Gaza is to be run by a civilian administration appointed by the government in Ramallah.

· Augmented Egyptian supervision of the border between Gaza and Egypt.

· The return of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Such an agreement will require international and regional support. Countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia can play an important role. Syria, if it uses its influence over the Hamas leadership that is comfortably hosted by Damascus, can win points toward any future discussions with the United States and Israel.

In the absence of such a package, the fighting in Gaza will not end. Israel has no reason to end it.

Ephraim Sneh, a former member of the Israeli cabinet and deputy defense minister from 1999 to 2001 and from 2006 to 2007, is chairman of the Strong Israel party.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

How Hamas Governs Gaza

By Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Jonathan Schanzer, director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center. He has served as a counterterrorism analyst at the U.S. Department of Treasury and as a research fellow at Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the author of the new book, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle For Palestine. Daniel Pipes wrote the foreword to the book and some of the research was undertaken at Pipes' Middle East Forum.

FP: Jonathan Schanzer, thank you for joining us again.

Schanzer: My pleasure, Jamie.

FP: Today, I'd like to talk about the way Hamas has governed Gaza since taking it over by force in 2007. But first, please briefly review the thesis of your new book Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle For Palestine.

Schanzer: My new book documents the ongoing political and military struggle between the two largest Palestinian factions – Hamas and Fatah – dating back to 1988. Today, as a civil war rages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel, the international community cannot even identify a legitimate Palestinian interlocutor. The book looks at how we arrived at this difficult place.

FP: Please tell our readers about the June 2007 war between Hamas and Fatah.

Schanzer: In a word, it was brutal. The battle for Gaza lasted a mere six days. Fatah’s forces, trained and armed by the United States and other western nations, failed miserably. Some left the field of battle. Others joined the Hamas fighters. Those who stood their ground were likely not prepared for their brutal enemy. According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Hamas violence was indiscriminate, demonstrating a willful disregard for the conventions of war. Hamas fighters pushed Fatah members from the roofs of tall buildings. Hamas even killed people who were already injured, or shot their enemies at point-blank range to ensure permanent disabilities. Hamas also attacked private homes and apartment buildings, hospitals, ambulances, and medical crews. All told, the June fighting claimed the lives of at least 161 Palestinians, including 7 children and 11 women. Some 700 Palestinians were wounded.

FP: What happened when the guns fell silent?

Schanzer: Hamas began to govern through a combination of violence, authoritarianism, and Islamism. Ismael Haniyeh, the ascendant ruler of Gaza, officially denied accusations that Hamas intended to establish an Islamic emirate. However, by November, the British press reported that “only believers feel safe” in Gaza and that “un-Islamic” dress sometimes resulted in beatings. According to a UN report, women “felt coerced to cover their heads not out of religious conviction but out of fear.”

The new Hamas government attacked the media and peaceful demonstrations, and engaged in the “destruction, seizure, and robbery of governmental and non-governmental institutions,” according to one human rights report.

In short, the few reluctant steps toward liberalization that the PA had taken during its 13-year rule in Gaza—small advances in press and political freedoms, for example—were wiped out in days.

FP: There were reports of torture. Were these accurate?

Schanzer: Yes. Some 1,000 people, almost all members of Fatah and the PA, were illegally arrested in the first months of Hamas rule by the new Hamas police, the Executive Force. The leader of the Executive Force actually admitted to the use of torture and violence against Hamas’s political enemies. He stated in August that torture occurred in Hamas prisons but that the EF was trying “to minimize violations and avoid them through the training of our members.”

The allegations of torture continued, however. In September, Hamas abducted five Fatah men who were later transferred for treatment to a Gaza hospital, where evidence of torture was reported. Rights groups reported that other Fatah prisoners “sustained fractures to the feet” as a result of beatings with sticks. In other instances, Fatah men were “handcuffed and blindfolded” and had pieces of cloth stuffed in their mouths to stifle their screams.

FP: How did Gaza’s Christian population fare?

Schanzer: They probably suffered the most. Hamas grossly mistreated the minority Christian community, mostly Greek Orthodox, which had lived in relative peace for centuries amid Gaza’s predominantly Sunni Muslim population.

In June 2007, masked gunmen attacked the Rosary Sisters School and the Latin Church in Gaza City. Hamas gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to storm the main entrances of the school and church. Then they destroyed almost everything inside. That same month, Hamas kidnapped Professor Sana al-Sayegh, a teacher at Palestine University in Gaza City, and forced her to convert to Islam against her will. Her family’s attempts to meet with Hamas leaders to find her repeatedly failed. Requests by community leaders to meet with Hamas were also turned down.

In October, the body of 30-year-old Rami Ayyad, the owner of the Holy Bible Association, was found in an eastern suburb of Gaza City. Ayyad’s organization had been the target of a grenade attack during protests stemming from the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.

In February 2008, unidentified gunmen blew up the YMCA library in the Gaza Strip. Two guards were kidnapped, offices were looted, and vehicles were stolen, and more than 8,000 books were destroyed. That attack came only days after a Hamas “modesty patrol” attacked a Christian youth’s car after he was seen driving a female classmate to her home. Both were injured in that attack.

By one count, more than 50 attacks had taken place in the first few months following the June coup. Targets included barbershops, music stores, and even a UN school where boys and girls played sports together.

FP: Did the Gaza population fight back?

Schanzer: Some tried non-violent resistance. However, those who held demonstrations against the lack of law in Gaza also suffered. According to al-Jazeera, the Executive Force beat peaceful Fatah demonstrators after the coup. By August, Hamas banned unlicensed demonstrations by the Fatah party. According to Hamas, the demonstrations were “being used to create chaos and terrorism.”

Hamas’s apprehension over the demonstrations was understandable. They sometimes turned violent, particularly when Hamas security forces began forcefully dispersing the crowd. Associated Press television aired images of Hamas men beating an unarmed protester with sticks. In some cases, according to Amnesty International, Hamas deliberately shot unarmed demonstrators. In two cases, Palestinians were shot and killed while trying to help other demonstrators who were injured.

It is interesting to note that when Hamas threw rocks at Israelis during the 1987 and 2000 uprisings, the group called this “resistance.” When Palestinian protestors threw stones at Hamas, the new rulers of Gaza called them “outlaws” and arrested them.

FP: So, why did most people not hear about this in the West?

Schanzer: Hamas worked assiduously to cover its own tracks. To control the reporting out of Gaza, Hamas began to issue government press cards to journalists. Predictably, journalists whom Hamas did not like did not receive credentials. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate protested that the tactic threatened journalists and prevented them from doing their jobs. The syndicate alleged that under the Hamas government’s draconian rules, phrases such as “Hamas militias” and “ousted government” were banned. Hamas also announced it would ban stories that did not support “national responsibilities” or those that would “cause harm to national unity.”

The more journalists complained, the more difficult Hamas made it for them. The Union of Palestinian Journalists reported that after a series of threats, Hamas forces raided the home of one journalist. The union further noted that its ranks had been threatened and blackmailed by Hamas on a daily basis. The Foreign Press Association confirmed these reports, claiming Hamas had engaged in “harassment of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.” Reporters Without Borders, an international media watchdog group, noted that Hamas “failed to investigate” these incidents.

FP: How did Hamas manage the Gaza economy?

Schanzer: Rather horribly. Due to Israel’s sanctions against the Hamas government, stores in Gaza were out of many products, and hospitals ran low on crucial supplies, including anesthetics and antibiotics. Seeking to avert a humanitarian crisis, the Israelis eventually allowed certain medical supplies into Gaza but vowed to withhold other nonessentials. However, Hamas ensured that goods and supplies would be cut off every time they launched rockets into Israel. Indeed, they had a choice. They could either fire rockets and ensure continued suffering for their people, or cease the violence and make sure the population was provided for. For nearly a year, Hamas chose violence.

Hamas also neglected Gaza’s infrastructure. As a result of Hamas mismanagement, several Gaza sewer pipes burst, which flooded homes and businesses with a foul river of waste that was several yards high. Gazans were infuriated when it was learned that the Israeli-made pipes that were intended to repair Gaza’s decrepit sewage system had been sold to Hamas but used to assemble Qassam missiles and bunkers.

The most anger, however, likely stemmed from the Hamas government’s decision to raise taxes on cigarettes. Lucky Strikes used to cost 10 shekels ($2.50) per pack. After Hamas came to power, the same pack of cigarettes cost 16 or 17 ($4.00 or $4.25) shekels. Other American cigarettes could cost Gazans upward of 40 shekels per pack ($10.00). The Gazans who could not afford to smoke were said to be “fuming.”

FP: Some people say that there were positive aspects of Hamas rule. How is that possible?

Schanzer: Hamas, of course, attempted to highlight the positives. Within weeks of the takeover, the Islamists boasted that crime, tribal clashes, and kidnapping had all dropped precipitously in the Gaza Strip. But, this drop in crime was more than likely the result of fear on the part of Gaza residents rather than a sign of increased or improved law enforcement.

Hamas proved once again that terrorist groups, much like their Fatah predecessors, were unfit to govern. The Islamist group exhibited an almost criminal indifference to the suffering of Gaza citizens impacted by the violence, lack of services, deepening poverty, collateral damage from the battles, and the predictable Israeli reprisals that resulted from Hamas attacks.

FP: Jonathan Schanzer, thank you for joining us.

Schanzer: You’re quite welcome, Jamie. Always a pleasure.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

World Proclamation...

FREEDOM NATIONS CHALLENGE TO GLOBAL JIHAD....

We The People, Declare The Following Truths, Plus The Evidenciary Material...Self-Evident.

We Shall Always Remember Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, London, Madrid, Mumbai, and Victims of Sovereign Embassies Around the World.

We Jointly Declare Our Intention to End Forever, The Oppressive, Coercive, & Brutal Actions of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, And All Their Many Affiliate Groups & Sub Groups, be they Salifist, Wahhabi, Sunni, or Shiite Iran.... including the Pious Claims Of All Grand Ayatollahs, Imams, & Mullahs.... and Furthermore, that any Imposed Death Penalty Within Saudi Borders, et al, Be Subject To An International Board For Final Review & Its Final and Superior Adjudication, and Also, Let It Be Understood, That Adequate Legal Defense For The Accused, Shall Not Be Denied.

We Hereby Demand The Immediate End... to the Gross Criminality of Suicidal Bombings, and the Murder & Maiming of Innocent Civilians in Any & All Cities, Townships, & Villages Anywhere on Planet Earth;

Furthermore, The Freedom-Loving Nations Demand The Immediate Cessation Of All Efforts To Coerce, Intimidate, Proseletize, or Spread The Doctrines and Ancient Beliefs of All Forms Of Hateful Islam, or Its Sharia Jihadist Laws; Also The Murderous Creed of the Most Evil Muslim Brotherhood, That Is Clearly In Evidence Far Beyond The Borders of the Saudi Kingdom.

Furthermore, We Anticipate The Inevitability, If Aforementioned Efforts Are Permitted To Continue, a Grim Escalation....To The Use of Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Weaponry Will Be The Disasterous Result That No Nation Should Be Expected To Endure.

We, The Free Nations Recognize The Purpose & Core Beliefs That Spawn These Insane and Hideous Criminal Actions That Murder, Maim and Destroy the Lives and Property of Innocents, in order to Facilitate & Perpetuate A Distorted, Sick Version of Islam, and its Sharia Law...This Insanity Must End!

We Are United, and Invite All Aware Nations Large & Small, to Join in this Noble Enterprise, to Guarantee the Humane Privileges, for Ourselves, and For Our Posterity, and for All Future Generations, the following Freedoms...

BY UNANIMOUS CONSENT....
Freedom Of Religions (plural), of Speech, of Print & Electronic Press, of Citizens To Peacefully Assemble, and to Seek Final Redress From These Oppressive & Violent Governmental Actions, and/or The Pious Declarations or Claims; We The People, Declare, and Reserve Our Humane Rights & Privileges, to Freely Choose from Among Our Citizens,To Be Our Legal Representatives in Jurisprudence, and In All Civil Paradigms of Enforcement, Without Equivocation.

Conclusion: It is Not Illogical to Assume, that Future Assembled Free Nations, convinced beyond any reasonable doubt, that an Equally Terrible Retribution must be visited on the Leadership Councils of the Funding & Implementation Networks that Sponsor these Crimes Against Humanity.

RESOLVED: Lacking Clear Evidence of Radical Reform, Let This Ruling Stand ~ An Eye For An Eye...And A Tooth For Every Tooth. {Non-Negotiable}-- anonymous --

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Pelosi Hires Soros'

Right-Hand Man

By John Perazzo

One can learn a great deal about the values and core beliefs of a political figure by taking note of the people he or she assigns to key government posts. Consider, for instance, what we can learn about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the basis of her February 8th appointment of Joseph Onek to be her Senior Counsel. “This is a critical time for the Congress and the country,” Onek said following his appointment, “and I thank the Speaker for the opportunity to return to government service and work on behalf of the American people.”

But who is Joseph Onek, and how exactly does he define working “on behalf of the American people”? A not insignificant clue is provided by the fact that Onek, a 1967 graduate of Yale Law School, is currently a Senior Policy Analyst for George Soros’s Open Society Institute (OSI), one of the world’s major financiers of the political far Left. OSI is a member of the benignly named Peace and Security Funders Group, an association of more than 50 foundations that earmark a sizable portion of their $27 billion in combined assets to leftist organizations that undermine the war on terror in several interrelated ways:

by characterizing the United States as an aggressively militaristic nation that exploits vulnerable populations all over the globe

by accusing the U.S. of having provoked, through its unjust policies and actions, the terror attacks against it, and consequently casting those attacks as self-defensive measures taken in response to American transgressions

by depicting America’s military and legislative actions against terror as unjustified, extreme, and immoral by steadfastly defending the civil rights and liberties of terrorists whose ultimate aim is to facilitate the annihilation of not just the United States, but all of Western civilization

by striving to eradicate America’s national borders and institute a system of mass, unregulated migration into and out of the United States — thereby rendering all distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants anachronistic, and making it much easier for aspiring terrorists to enter the U.S. Toward this end, OSI has poured rivers of money into the coffers of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, theNational Immigration Law Center, the National Immigration Forum, the National Council of La Raza, and the American Immigration Law Foundation.

In September 2002, Joseph Onek’s OSI also made a $20,000 grant to the Legal Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the criminal-defense attorney who had unlawfully abetted her incarcerated client, Omar Abdel Rahman, in transmitting messages to the Islamic Group, the Egypt-based terrorist organization he headed. At the time of Stewart’s crime, Rahman was already serving a life sentence for his role in masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; he also had conspired, unsuccessfully, to plant additional bombs at the United Nations building, FBI offices in New York, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge.

OSI’s money is further apportioned to a far-flung variety of leftist groups, including:

radical feminist organizations that portray America as an irredeemably sexist nation and consider taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand to be an inalienable right for all women (the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority, the Ms. Foundation for Women, Planned Parenthood, Catholics for a Free Choice, and NARAL Pro-Choice America)

members of the Legal Left, which, in the name of civil liberties, seeks to dismantle virtually all government safeguards against terrorism (the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild)

organizations that, under the revered banner of human rights, direct a grossly disproportionate share of their criticism at the United States (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights, and Human Rights First)

political organizing groups and think tanks of the Left (America Coming Together, the Center for American Progress, the Brennan Center for Justice, MoveOn.org, the Center for Community Change, People for the American Way, the Urban Institute, and Alliance for Justice)

anti-prison organizations seeking to transform the criminal-justice system’s current “punitive” model into one that is “rehabilitative” (the Sentencing Project and the Prison Moratorium Project)

The Open Society Institute’s funding priorities reflect a vision of America as a nation infested with all manner of inequity, a country in desperate need of radical social and economic transformation. It is more than noteworthy that Joseph Onek has secured for himself a leadership position within this Institute.

Another highlight of Mr. Onek’s resume is his current position as Senior Policy Analyst for the Open Society Policy Center (OSPC), which, like OSI, was founded by the billionaire leftist George Soros. Established in the aftermath of September 11th, this organization helped draft the Civil Liberties Restoration Act, which in June 2004 was introduced in the Senate by Democrats Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Russell Feingold, Richard Durbin, and Jon Corzine. The Act was designed to roll back, in the name of defending civil liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

OSPC’s range of concerns extends also to “the proper treatment of detainees” — a polite reference to the bloodthirsty al Qaeda combatants captured on Middle Eastern battlefields and currently incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay.

Extending its advocacy on behalf of inmates to the American prison system at large, OSPC considers “rehabilitation,” rather than punishment, to be the proper function of criminal justice. Key to the attainment of this objective, in OSPC’s calculus, are colossal boondoggles whereby American taxpayers foot the bill for a multitude of “needed services and treatment” programs designed to help ease prison inmates’ transition back into society after their release.

Joseph Onek’s busy life also requires that he reserve some time for his duties as Senior Counsel for the Constitution Project (CP), an organization that seeks “solutions to difficult legal and constitutional issues.” These “solutions” are essentially calls for the United States to abandon every aggressive anti-terrorism and anti-crime measure it has ever initiated, on grounds that such measures violate the rights and freedoms of suspected wrongdoers.

Onek serves as Director of CP’s Liberty and Security Initiative (LSI), which flatly rejects most of America’s post-9/11 homeland security efforts as misguided “government proposals that [have] jeopardized civil liberties.” Specifically, LSI:

opposes President Bush’s decision to try suspected terrorists in military tribunals rather than in civilian courts

opposes “the use of profiling” in law-enforcement and intelligence work alike holds that state and local law-enforcement agencies should be uninvolved in pursuing suspected terrorists

opposes government efforts to “conduct surveillance of religious and political organizations”

opposes “increased federal and state wiretap authority and increased video surveillance”

calls for the creation of a commission “to investigate the abuse of people held at detention facilities such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay” (“When you think about it,” Onek says, “Guantanamo became a symbol around the world for American disrespect for law.”)

Onek was formerly the Director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLSP), which promotes the familiar leftist theme of massive taxpayer expenditures, coupled with a diminution of personal responsibility, as the proper means of achieving virtually every societal objective one can name. For example, CLSP:

proposes increased funding for “child care and early education initiatives” such as Head Start

opposes “family cap” policies that would make welfare recipients ineligible for incrementally higher payments if they procreate further while on public assistance

advocates “a comprehensive range” of new, government-funded services for “low-income children and their parents”

calls for “reorienting the child support program into an income support program, emphasizing the need to improve family resources by providing tailored services to both parents”

aims to make more money available to cover the cost of college tuition and “college support services” for “low-income adults” proposes to help ex-prisoners “find work, get safe housing, go to school, and access public benefits.”

To disseminate his perspectives to the widest possible audience, Onek has been an occasional guest blogger on the website of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS), a Washington, DC-based think tank that seeks to radicalize American jurisprudence by recruiting and indoctrinating law students, law professors, attorneys, and judges — and helping them to acquire positions of power. The roster of speakers who address ACS conventions includes such luminaries as Ralph Nader and the communist icon Angela Davis.

Apart from the foregoing organizational affiliations, Onek has also held important posts in two presidential administrations. Under President Clinton, he served as State Department Rule of Law Coordinator and Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General. In the latter role, Onek was a key figure in the Justice Department headed by Attorney General Janet Reno and Assistant Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. You might recall that Gorelick in 1995 issued the monumentally important “wall memo” to then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White. Titled “Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations,” Gorelick’s memo read:

“We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978] is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.”

In short, this mandate stressed the importance of maintaining a legal barrier, or “wall,” barring intelligence investigators and law-enforcement investigators from collaborating and sharing information — even if they were both trailing the same suspect who was plotting a terrorist act. This restriction (which had first been put in place by the Carter administration) effectively crippled the government’s ability to fight terrorism, and can arguably be blamed for America’s failure to prevent the 9/11 catastrophe. Two noteworthy examples of the policy’s deadly consequences are the following:

On August 29, 2001, an FBI investigator in New York desperately pleaded for permission to initiate an intensive manhunt for al Qaeda operative Khalid Almihdar, who was known to be planning something big. The Justice Department and the FBI deputy general counsel’s office both denied the request, explaining that because the evidence linking Almihdar to terrorism had been obtained through intelligence channels, it could not legally be used to justify or aid an FBI agent's criminal investigation; that is, it would constitute a violation of Almihdar’s “civil rights.” Thirteen days later, Almihdar took over the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.

The same wall of separation prevented FBI agents in Minneapolis from searching the computer hard drive of Zacarias Moussaoui — the so-called “20th hijacker” — in August 2001. Had those agents been given access to Moussaoui’s computer, two of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers would have been identified along with the Hamburg-based terrorist cell that planned the attack; it can reasonably be argued that if that had happened, the mass murders of 9/11 could have been averted.

As noted above, it was during the Carter administration that the aforementioned “wall” (dividing law-enforcement from intelligence) was first created to defuse allegations of FBI espionage abuses. And Joseph Onek served as Deputy Counsel to President Carter, advising the latter on all legal issues pertaining to the Presidency.

In other words, Onek has played major roles in the two presidential administrations that did more harm to America’s terror-fighting capacity than any other administrations in U.S. history.

On June 21, 2005, Onek testified at the invitation of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment. His chief concern involved Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which he referred to as “the so-called library records provision.” “The FBI,” Onek warned, “will seek financial records, employment records, transportation records, medical records and yes, sometimes, library records. ... Inevitably, FBI investigations will sweep up sensitive information about innocent, law-abiding people.”

Onek and his fellow critics of the Patriot Act have portrayed Section 215 as an egregious invasion of personal privacy. But as Heather MacDonald points out, “grand juries investigating crimes have always been able to subpoena the very items covered by 215 — including library records and Internet logs — without seeking a warrant or indeed any judicial approval at all. Section 215 merely gives anti-terror investigators the same access to such records as criminal grand juries, with the added protection of judicial oversight.”

During his June 21 testimony, Onek also expressed deep concern about “the danger that the government will use the information it gathers and shares in ways that unfairly discriminate against Muslim Americans.” “Muslims will appear disproportionately on the government’s computer screens,” he explained, “because they are the people most likely (naturally and innocently) to visit, telephone and send money to places like Pakistan and Iraq. Inevitably, government officials will learn more about Muslim Americans than about other Americans.” He predicted that this would lead to the injustice of Muslims being disproportionately caught violating immigration laws, and that “[t]his unfairness will breed discontent in the Muslim community and undermine the fight against terrorism.”

And then, incredibly, Onek said this: “The government remains free to bring criminal or immigration cases against Muslim Americans, provided that it does not use information generated by anti-terrorist data-mining systems in cases not involving terrorism or violent crime. This limitation will require some segregation of information and impose some burdens on the government. But these burdens are a small price to pay to ensure fairness to all Americans and strengthen the fight against terrorism.”

In other words, Onek continues to advocate the very same “wall” — barring intelligence officials and law-enforcement officials from sharing information and collaborating on investigations — that his former employers at the Clinton Justice Department sanctified in the 1990s.

You have read correctly: Onek favors precisely the policy that made it impossible for the U.S. to avert 9/11, and he characterizes its most (literally) fatal flaw as “a small price to pay.”

There could be no starker illustration of blind devotion to a seemingly enlightened ideology that has, in practice, shown itself to be the wellspring of failed and foolish policy. And this is the man who Nancy Pelosi, the powerful Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, has named as her Senior Counsel. The American people should know that.

*If Your Blog (or organization) would like to Assist Our Ground Troopers in Winning the 'Hearts & Minds' of Iraqi citizens, tap this: Operation Iraqi Children

http://www.operationiraqichildren.org

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn!

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Act For America - Brigitte Gabriel

By Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Brigitte Gabriel

FP: Brigitte Gabriel, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

FP: I would like to talk to you today about ACT for America. It has become the largest grass roots movement in the United States focused on national security. Tell us the history of this organization and why it was founded.

Gabriel: Jamie, I founded ACT! for America 15 months ago because I realized that there was a void that needed to be filled. I had founded our educational foundation American Congress for Truth (ACT) in 2003 and quickly found that due to its tax status a 501c3, the organization is limited in what it can do in areas like lobbying.

I knew that if we were to really make a difference in our struggle against Islamofascism that we needed a strong, organized grassroots component. We needed to mobilize the masses to begin applying pressure on their elected official as well as corporations and create a force from the bottom up to influence policy. So I founded ACT for America. We launched it in Sept 2007, and in just 14 months we’ve grown to nearly 50,000 members and 230 local chapters nationwide.

We are rallying people around the world to rise up in defense of our Western civilization and way of life. We have launched ACT! Australia, ACT! Canada, ACT Nigeria and we are talking to different people in 5 other countries about launching chapters there: Britain, Israel, New Zealand, France and Spain.

FP: Wow, sounds like a powerful rising movement. What sets ACT for America apart from other organizations dealing with the same issue?

Gabriel: We’re the only national organization dealing with the issue of national security and Islamic terrorism that is building a grassroots organization. There are many fine organizations that have been researching and publishing information on this, some for many years. And that education and information is essential to our long-term prospects for victory. But it’s not sufficient. Education must be followed by organized action. I traveled the nation and abroad the last few years speaking about Islamic terrorism and realized that once people became educated, they were asking what can I do? Give me something to do because I want to make a difference.

I also knew that it doesn't take many to make a difference -- only a dedicated few. I wanted to organize the dedicated and create synergy by the passionate to rise up and become a loud voice in their community and in our nation. As one key member of Congress has told me, it’s going to take a grassroots demand for public policy changes. This member said we cannot count on our government to act “courageously,” especially in dealing with the threat of cultural jihad, without the grassroots rising up and demanding that it do so. This is the heart of the mission of ACT for America, and its summed up in our motto: Rising in defense of our safety, security and our values.

FP: Has ACT for America grassroots power already had an impact of some kind?

Gabriel: Yes indeed, and I could give you several examples. Here’s a recent one: Tyson Foods in Tennessee had caved to Muslim employees demands through the union to replace Labor Day as a holiday by the Islamic holy day of Eid el-Fitr. We were outraged that an American corporation would cave to such a demand. Labor Day Holiday is a part of the fabric of America. We sent out an email action alert to our members explaining the situation and giving them the telephone number of Tyson's customer service department. Hundreds of people from around the country contacted Tyson. In few hours they shot down their phone lines.

We also have many producers of top TV news show who are subscribers to our action alerts. They aired the story to millions exposing Tyson's decision. Because of the massive pressure on Tyson, three days later the company announced it had renegotiated the contract, restored Labor Day, and removed Eid al-Fitr as a paid holiday for all employees after next year.

This is the power of an organized mass movement. We knew that this issue was very important because two major players were watching Tyson’s reaction: The Islamic Lobby and other American corporations. We wanted to send a message that the American public is alive and well and ready to take action. Americans are not going to lay down and play dead.

Here’s something else: In the past four months we’ve had 231,000 people use our “contact Congress” feature on our website. They have been contacting their members after visiting our site and reading our email action alerts. Our motto at ACT! for America is: “If our elected officials are not going to see the light we are going to make them feel the heat.”

FP: How can people find out more or help ACT for America?

Gabriel: Go to our website, actforamerica.org. At a very minimum, sign up for our daily email alerts. I urge people to watch the video posted on the home page about "Islamic Sharia finance" or Jihad with money as we call it. The video details how Islamists are trying to introduce Sharia Islamic law into our country through our banking system.

Those who are concerned about the advancement of Islamic cultural Jihad in our society can sign up to join an ACT! for America chapter in their community. Some may want to be chapter leaders or help start a chapter. And of course, we need financial support to grow and rally the nation. You cannot fight a war without bullets in your gun.

We are truly fighting a war against the Islamic infiltration and influence in our western countries funded by the Saudis to the tune of millions. We cannot wait until we look like Eurabia (former Europe). We need to stand up now before it is too late. For the holiday season, anyone who makes a contribution of $50 to ACT! for America will receive an autographed copy of my latest New York Times Best Seller, They Must Be Stopped, Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It.

History reveals very clearly that the apathetic give way to the passionate and the complacent are subdued by the committed. This is the time for people to rise up and defend our freedoms. We will force elected representatives and corporations to choose: align themselves with the voice of grassroots America or the voice of political correctness.

FP: Brigitte Gabriel, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview. And thank you for being such a noble, courageous and valiant fighter for freedom.

Gabriel: Thank you Jamie.

*If Your Blog (or organization) would like to Assist Our Ground Troopers in Winning the 'Hearts & Minds' of Iraqi citizens, tap this: Operation Iraqi Children

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

'Obama's First Act...

Obama’s Road to Damascus
By John Perazzo

History will record that Barack Obama’s first act of diplomacy as America’s president-elect took place two days after his election victory, when he dispatched his senior foreign-policy adviser, Robert Malley, to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—to outline for them the forthcoming administration’s Mideast policy vis-à-vis those nations. An aide to Malley reports, “The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests” than has President Bush. The Bush administration, it should be noted, has rightly recognized Syria to be not only a chief supporter of the al Qaeda insurgency in Iraq, but also the headquarters of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the longtime sponsor of Hamas—the terrorist army whose founding charter is irrevocably committed to the annihilation of Israel. Yet unlike President Bush, Obama and Malley have called for Israel to engage in peace negotiations with Syria.

A Harvard-trained lawyer and Rhodes Scholar, Robert Malley is no newcomer to the Obama team. In 2007, Obama selected him as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign. At the time, Malley was (and still is today) the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the International Crisis Group (ICG), which receives funding from the Open Society Institute of George Soros (who, incidentally, serves on the ICG Executive Committee).

In his capacity with ICG, Malley directs a number of analysts who focus their attention most heavily on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the political and military developments in Iraq, and Islamist movements across the Middle East. Prior to joining ICG, Malley served as President Bill Clinton’s Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs (1998-2001), and as National Security Adviser Sandy Berger’s Executive Assistant (1996-1998).

Robert Malley was raised in France. His lineage is noteworthy. His father, Simon Malley (1923-2006), was a key figure in the Egyptian Communist Party. A passionate hater of Israel, the elder Malley was a close friend and confidante of the late PLO terrorist Yasser Arafat; an inveterate critic of “Western imperialism”; a supporter of various revolutionary “liberation movements,” particularly the Palestinian cause; a beneficiary of Soviet funding; and a supporter of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. According to American Thinker news editor Ed Lasky, Simon Malley “participated in the wave of anti-imperialist and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World [and] … wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against Western nations.”

In a July 2001 op-ed which Malley penned for the New York Times, he alleged that Israeli—not Palestinian—inflexibility had caused the previous year’s Camp David peace talks (brokered by Bill Clinton) to fall apart. This was one of several controversial articles Malley has written—some he co-authored with Hussein Agha, a former adviser to Arafat—blaming Israel and exonerating Arafat (the most prolific Jew-killer since Adolph Hitler) for the failure of the peace process.

Malley’s identification of Israel as the cause of the Camp David impasse has been widely embraced by Palestinian and Arab activists around the world, by Holocaust deniers like Norman Finkelstein, and by anti-Israel publications such as Counterpunch. It should be noted that Malley’s account of the Camp David negotiations is entirely inconsistent with the recollections of the key figures who participated in those talks—specifically, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, and then-U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross (Clinton’s Middle East envoy).

Malley also has written numerous op-eds urging the U.S. to disengage from Israel to some degree, and recommending that America reach out to negotiate with its traditional Arab enemies such as Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah (a creature of Iran dedicated to the extermination of the Jews and death to America), and Muqtada al-Sadr (the Shiite terrorist leader in Iraq).

In addition, Malley has advised nations around the world to establish relationships with, and to send financial aid to, the Hamas-led Palestinian government in Gaza. In Malley’s calculus, the electoral victory that swept Hamas into power in January 2006 was a manifestation of legitimate Palestinian “anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat’s imprisonment, Israel’s incursions, [and] Western lecturing …”

Moreover, Malley contends that it is both unreasonable and unrealistic for Israel or Western nations to demand that Syria sever its ties with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or Iran. Rather, he suggests that if Israel were to return the Golan Heights (which it captured in the 1967 Six Day War, and again in the 1973 Yom Kippur War—two conflicts sparked by Arab aggression which sought so permanently wipe the Jewish state off the face of the earth) to Syrian control, Damascus would be inclined to pursue peace with Israel.

Malley has criticized the U.S. for allegedly remaining “on the sidelines” and being a “no-show” in the overall effort to bring peace to the nations of the Middle East. Exhorting the Bush administration to change its policy of refusing to engage diplomatically with terrorists and their sponsoring states, Malley wrote in July 2006: “Today the U.S. does not talk to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah…. The result has been a policy with all the appeal of a moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.”

This inclination to negotiate with any and all enemies of the U.S. and Israel—an impulse which Malley has outlined clearly and consistently—has had a powerful influence on Barack Obama.

It is notable that six months ago the Obama campaign and Malley hastily severed ties with one another after the Times of London reported that Malley had been meeting privately with Hamas leaders on a regular basis—something Obama had publicly pledged never to do. At the time, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt minimized the significance of this monumentally embarrassing revelation, saying: “Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.”

But indeed, within hours after Obama’s election victory, Malley was back as a key player in the president-elect’s team of advisors—on his way to Syria. Mr. Obama, meanwhile, received a most friendly communication from Hamas, congratulating him on his “historic victory.”

*If Your Blog (or organization) would like to Assist Our Ground Troopers in Winning the 'Hearts & Minds' of Iraqi citizens, tap this: Operation Iraqi Children

http://www.operationiraqichildren.org

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn!

Sunday, November 02, 2008

They're Muslims!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

THE GREAT OBAMA SWINDLE OF 2008
by Raymond S. Kraft

PART ONE
OBAMA: THE ILLEGAL ALIEN

I have become 100% convinced, to a moral certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Barack Obama is not only not a "natural born citizen" as required by the US Constitution to be president, but that he was not even born in the USA, not born in Hawaii, probably in Kenya, never naturalized. If he is elected, he will be the UnConstitutional President from the moment he takes the oath of office, the first president who is not a citizen of the United States. He may even be an illegal alien, if he was born in Kenya and has never become a naturalized citizen.

My opinion. Why I am so sure?

I was not convinced by the lawsuits filed by Philip Berg, Andy Martin, Jerome Corsi, and others seeking disclosure of Obama's birth certificate. I was not convinced by the books and articles that now abound contesting Obama's origins. I am convinced by the behavior of Barack Obama who, according to Jerome Corsi writing in World Net Daily, Obama's Birth Certificate Sealed by Hawaii Governor on October 26, 2008, has had the governor of Hawaii seal Obama's birth certificate so it could not be seen, by anyone. So far, he has refused to prove his qualification to be president. And by the behavior of Barack Obama, having his records sealed at Columbia University and Harvard Law. Barack Obama is hiding himself from America. And he wants to be POTUS, and Commander in Chief.

In the litigation business, one quickly learns that if somebody has a document that will be good for them, they can't wait to give it to you. And if somebody has a document that will hurt them, they'll be tap dancing faster than Richard Gere in Chicago to keep you from getting it.

Obama is tap dancing.

If I were Obama's lawyers, and if there was a good, authentic, birth certificate that proved Barack Obama's birth in Hawaii, I would tell him to instruct the Hawaiian Department of Health to provide a certified copy to every journalist who asked about it, to the Courts and plaintiffs in all the lawsuits, and to make the original available for inspection by any expert forensic document examiner any litigant or news agency engaged to examine the birth certificate for authenticity . I would tell him to come clean, and end the speculation. And I would tell him that the speculation could cost him the election.

But that's not what Obama and his lawyers are doing, they're filling motions for summary judgment, not on the merits of the case, but on "technicalities," at least in the Berg case, arguing that Citizens, voters, do not have standing to enforce the United States Constitution, and at least one judge, Richard Barclay Surrick, has agreed.

But what Obama and his lawyers and the Democrat National Commitee (DNC) are not doing is being open and honest with America. So we are forced to this conclusion as a matter of logical necessity:

1. If Barack Obama could produce a good birth certificate that would verify his status as a "natural born citizen," he would. Failing to do so can only hurt him. Failing to do so can cost him the election.

2. He hasn't, and it looks like he won't.

3. Therefore, we can only conclude that he can't, and that his birth certificate, if it exists at all, is either altered, forged, or shows him born outside the US. We have to conclude that producing his birth certificate, if he can, will prove he is not eligible to be president, not a natural born citizen, or not a citizen at all. We can only conclude that Obama knows that producing his birth records will hurt him even more than not producing them.

Now, I could be wrong. Barack Obama can prove me wrong by producing a good birth certificate. But he hasn't. Will he? Can he?

PART TWO
NO "STANDING" TO SUE?

In the case of Berg v. Obama, US Federal Judge Richard Barclay Surrick agreed with Obama's lawyers and ruled that Berg, as a citizen, as a voter, has no "standing" to enforce the United States Constitution. I have read that other agencies have asserted that only another presidential candidate has standing to sue respecting the qualifications of a candidate, presumably because, arguendo, only another presidential candidate could be injured (lose an election) as a result of a non-qualified candidate on the ballot.

This may be the most patently absurd, illogical, incomprehensible, astonishing, mind-boggling, and utterly stupid argument I have ever heard in my life. And from a Federal Judge, at that. And if I didn't make myself perfectly clear, let me know and I'll try again.

Let's do the analysis.

1. The US Constitution is a CONTRACT between The People, The States, and The United States, that defines and limits the role of the federal government, and the rights of the States and The People, and, among other things, defines and limits the qualifications for president, i.e., that the president must be over the age of 35 years, and must be a natural born citizen.

2. Any party to a CONTRACT has standing to enforce it. This is as basic as it gets. Contract Law 101. First week of law school stuff. And it seems that lawyers and judges all over the country have forgotten all about it. Also, the Constitution was intended to benefit all American citizens, We, The People, and in basic contract law the intended beneficiaries of a CONTRACT, i.e., us, also have standing to enforce it.

3. If We, The People, do not have standing to enforce the CONTRACT, the US Constitution, then it is unenforceable, and if it is unenforceable it is just a historic curiosity that means nothing. Just an old piece of parchment. But that was not the intent, and to give intent to the CONTRACT it must be enforceable by its parties and beneficiares.

4. We, The People, have standing under the First Amendment "to petition the government for redress of grievances." If we have a grievance, that a non-citizen, possibly an illegal alien, is running for president, I think the First Amendment unequivocally gives every American citizen standing to sue the government to redress that grievance and enforce the Constitution.

I think Judge Richard Barclay Surrick is dead wrong, illogically wrong, irrationally wrong, legally wrong, I think his legal analysis of this issue, in legalese, stinks.

PART THREE
THE DUTY OF CONGRESS

Article II, Section 1, requires that upon taking office the President of the United States shall take the following oath:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Article VI, Clause 3, requires that Senators and Representatives requires:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution . . ."

Members of Congress take this oath:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Having taken this oath, Senator Barack Obama has violated his oath of office if he is refusing to disclose a birth certificate that proves his candidacy for president is unconstitutional, and I believe this is a mandatory basis for his impeachment.

Having taken these oaths, the President, the Vice President (an executive officer of the United States), every member of the Senate and House, every member of every State legislature, and every executive and judicial officers of the United States and of each State, has a mandatory duty per Article VI Clause 3 of the US Constitution to "support and defend" the Constitution, and that would necessarily include taking whatever action is necessary to assure that no person who does not meet the Constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen" ever becomes President.

And every Federal Judge, and every Justice of the Supreme Court, having taken this oath, also have a mandatory duty to "protect and defend" the Constitution by doing whatever is necessary to assure that no person who does not meet the Constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen" ever becomes President. Indeed, I believe that the Supreme Court has a sua sponte duty to resolve this dispute by ordering, on its own initiative, the immediate production of all of Obama's birth records in order to confirm his place of birth, and prevent the election of an UnConstitutional President. So far, all Justices of the Supreme Court have failed this mandatory duty.

So far, the President, the Vice President, every member of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, ever Federal Judge and Justice, every member of every State legislature, and every governor, have failed in this duty. They have all failed to fulfill their oaths of office. Every one. They must all demand that Senator Barack Obama either (a) produce a good birth certificate proving his status as a "natural born citizen," or (b) withdraw his candidacy before November 4.

All those who do not should be impeached for having failed their oath of office.

PART FOUR
THE GREATEST SWINDLE IN HISTORY

If Senator Barack Hussein Obama cannot prove that he is a "natural born citizen," then Obama, the Democrat National Committee, the Democrats in the Senate and House who support him, and others such as former president Bill Clinton who openly support him, have perpetrated the greatest swindle in history by falsely and fraudulentaly misrepresenting Obama as Constitutionally eligible to be president, concealing the truth about his place of birth, thereby inducing millions of Democrats by the fraud of concealment, by the lie of non-disclosure, by "trick and device," to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the Barack Obama presidential campaign to elect an UnConstitutional President.

My opinion.

Note, this is a fraud perpetrated by Senator Barack Obama, the DNC, and hundreds of Democrats in Congress, on their own constituency, the Democrat voters of America. It is a fraud of the Democrats, by the Democrats, and perpetrated on the Democrats. And it has defrauded Democrats out of more than $600 million.

According to their oaths of office, every Democrat member of Congress has an affirmative duty to assure that their presidential candidate is Constitutionally qualified. As soon as questions about Obama's birth arose, every Democrat in Congress had a mandatory duty to confirm his eligibility by demanding release of his birth records. But, they have not. Not to my knowledge. Instead, every Democrat in Congress is complicit in the cover up - the cover up - of Obama's birth certificate, by failing to demand full disclosure to confirm his place of birth.

In my opinion, unless Obama can produce a good birth certificate proving that he is a "natural born citizen," then every Democrat member of Congress, every person managing Obama's campaign, every officer and director of the Democrat National Commitee, and every person who has ever taken an oath fo "support and defend" the Constitution and is now supporting an UnConstitutional candidate for president, has participated in a vast left-wing conspiracy to defraud millions of Democrats out of hundreds of millions of dollars to elect an UnConstitutional President.

In my opinion, every one of these people, hundreds of them, should be prosecuted for fraud under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), for if Obama is not a "natural born citizen," that is what the Democrat National Committee (DNC) has become. And every one of them should be tried, convicted, and sent to prison for decades, for this is a $600 billion swindle of America's Democrats, a swindle perpetrated by the DNC and Barack Obama.

Now, I could be wrong. I could be wrong about every opinion I have expressed here.

Senator Barack Hussein Obama can prove me wrong, quickly, simply, easily, by opening the doors of the hospitals and the Hawaiian Department of Health and showing us, showing America, showing the Democrats, all of his birth records.

Unless and until he does, I will remain convinced that Barack Hussein Obama is not an American citizen.

___________________________

Raymond S Kraft is a retired attorney in Northern California. He may be contacted at rskraft @ vfr.net.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

GIVE A MUSLIM AN INCH

Syria, Lebanon, Iraq were once mostly Christian countries. Then one day they let in one Muslim.

Before it was Pakistan, the population that lived in that area were once mostly Hindu. Then one day they let in one Muslim.

Indonesians once practiced Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Then one day they let in one Muslim and today it is the most populous Muslim country in the world.

The peoples of Malaysia before the 15th century could practice whatever they wanted, Buddhism, Hinduism, or their native Animism. Then one day they let in one Muslim and so today, if you are a native Malay, by Law you must be Muslim, there is no choice [Article 160 of the Constitution of Malaysia] if you want to remain a Malay citizen. Malays who convert out of Islam are no longer considered Malay under the law and lose their favored Bumiputra privileges.

So you may ask, 'What's the big deal' So you lose your citizenship, at least you are allowed to convert out of Islam.' But that's a joke too:

Western Resistance Blog, 24 Jan 2006, Malaysia: Muslim Court Allows Apostate To Be Buried As BuddhistThe case of people being classed as Muslims is complicated by the issue of apostasy. Cases where people have tried to leave Islam have to receive permission from an Islamic court, and such permission is universally denied. The Straits Times from Sept 20 2005 stated that a sharia court has never granted permission for a Malaysian Muslim to convert out of Islam.

You will find various travel websites that post Muslim Jokes like this: 'Malaysia's official religion is Islam, but the freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution.' Yes, it is true that if you are not a Malay you can practice whatever religion you like, with a few minor restrictions:

<>Do not marry a Muslim person in which case you are required to become a Muslim also.

<>If Christian, do not try to construct a new church.

<>You cannot talk to any Muslim about your religion; Article 11(4) of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia expressly prohibits the propagation of any religion other than Islam to Muslims.

<>You can celebrate Christmas as long as you don't mention mention Jesus Christ.

<>If you are Hindu your temples will be destroyed: On October 30, 2007 the 100-year-old Maha Mariamman Temple in Padang Jawa was demolished by Malaysian authorities [Hindu American Foundation]. On April 21, 2006, the centuries old Malaimel Sri Selva Kaliamman Temple in Kuala Lumpur was reduced to rubble after the city government sent in bulldozers obstensibly because of a 'violation of construction laws' [Malaysiakini]. On May 11, 2006, armed city hall officers from Kuala Lumpur forcefully demolished part of a 90-year-old suburban temple that serves more than 3,000 Hindus [Financial Express].

But given the rules that once a Malay always a Muslim, that marrying a Muslim means you must convert also, that other religions are in fact discriminated against, that new churches or temples cannot be constructed and old ones are demolished, then it's only a matter of time before Malaysia becomes infested with 90% or more Muslims just as in:

Pakistan 97%
Bangladesh 90%
Egypt 90%
Turkey 99%
Iran 98%
Morocco 99%
Algeria 99%
Afghanistan 99%
Iraq 97%
Saudi Arabia 100%
Yemen 99%
Syria 90%
Niger 80-95%
Senegal 94-95%
Mali 90%
Tunisia 98%
Somalia 99.9%
Azerbaijan 93-96%
Tajikistan 97%
Libya 97%
Jordan 95%
Mauritania 99.98%
United Arab Emirates 96%
Oman 93%
Kosovo 90%
The Gambia 90%
Comoros 98%
Djibouti 94-99%
Western Sahara 99.8%
Maldives 99.8%
[from wiki]

Let one Muslim in and in a matter of years your country turns out to be 99.98% to 100% Muslim. Why is that?

*If Your Blog (or organization) would like to Assist Our Ground Troopers in Winning the 'Hearts & Minds' of Iraqi citizens, tap this: Operation Iraqi Children

http://www.operationiraqichildren.org

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn!

Monday, October 27, 2008

Editor's Note:

A Flood of Great Articles Keep Coming In From.... Dick Eckersall, Raymond S. Kraft, Dr. John Washburn, Mark Steyn, Charles Krauthammer, etc and it's just too much for regular, open-forum 'comments' to handle. Sorry...we still love ya! And Next, This Mind-Snapper...'GIVE A MUSLIM AN INCH'! reb

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Point of No Return

Point of No Return
Will we vote for the same soothing siren song as our enervated allies?

By Mark Steyn

Across the electric wires, the hum is ceaseless: Give it up, loser. Don’t go down with the ship when it’s swept away by the Obama tsunami. According to newspaper reports, polls show that most people believe newspaper reports claiming that most people believe polls showing that most people have read newspaper reports agreeing that polls show he’s going to win.

In the words of Publishers’ Clearing House, he may already have won! The battleground states have all turned blue, the reddest of red states are rapidly purpling. Don’t you know, little fool? You never can win. Use your mentality, wake up to reality. Why be the last right-wing pundit to sign up with Small-Government Conservatives For The Liberal Supermajority? We still need pages for the coronation, and there’s a pair of velvet knickerbockers with your name on it.

Yes, technically, this is still a two-party state, but one of the parties is like Elton John’s post-Oscar bash and the other is a church social in Wasilla. As David Sedaris put it in The New Yorker:

“I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of s—t with bits of broken glass in it?’

“To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

Well, to be honest, I’ve never much cared for chicken.

McCain vs Obama is not the choice many of us would have liked in an ideal world. But then it’s not an “ideal world”, and the belief that it can be made so is one of the things that separates those who think Obama will “heal the planet” and those of us who support McCain faute de mieux. I agree with Thomas Sowell that an Obama-Pelosi supermajority will mark what he calls “a point of no return”. It would not be, as some naysayers scoff, “Jimmy Carter’s second term”, but something far more transformative. The new president would front the fourth great wave of liberal annexation — the first being FDR’s New Deal, the second LBJ’s Great Society, and the third the incremental but remorseless cultural advance when Reagan conservatives began winning victories at the ballot box and liberals turned their attention to the other levers of the society, from grade school up. The terrorist educator William Ayers, Obama’s patron in Chicago, is an exemplar of the last model: forty years ago, he was in favor of blowing up public buildings; then he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within.

All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can’t the government sort out my health care? Why can’t they pick up my mortgage?

In his first inaugural address, Calvin Coolidge said: “I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.” That’s true in a more profound sense than he could have foreseen. In Europe, lavish social-democratic government has transformed citizens into eternal wards of the nanny state: the bureaucracy’s assumption of every adult responsibility has severed Continentals from the most basic survival impulse, to the point where unaffordable entitlements on shriveled birth rates have put a question mark over some of the oldest nation states on earth. A vote for an Obama-Pelosi-Barney Frank-ACORN supermajority is a vote for a Europeanized domestic policy that is, as the eco-types like to say, “unsustainable.”

More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?

“People of the world,” declared Senator Obama sonorously at his self-worship service in Germany, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people — the Barack Obamas of the day — were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity. And the wall came down not because “the world stood as one” but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire (notwithstanding its own incompetence) would have survived and the wall would still be standing. Senator Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing the easy listening anthems of one-worldism, and the planet will heal.

To govern is to choose. And sometimes the choices are tough ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving “fetuses” of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – ie, the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex — voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely “present?”

The world rarely stands as one. You can, as Reagan and Thatcher did, stand up. Or, like Obama voting “present,” you can stand down.

Nobody denies that, in promoting himself from “community organizer” to the world’s President-designate in nothing flat, he has shown an amazing and impressively ruthless single-mindedness. But the path of personal glory has been, in terms of policy and philosophy, the path of least resistance.

Peggy Noonan thinks a President Obama will be like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what? I think Obama will be content to be King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets. His rise is, in many ways, testament to the persistence of the monarchical urge even in a two-century old republic. So the “Now what?” questions will be answered by others, beginning with the liberal supermajority in Congress. And as he has done all his life he will take the path of least resistance. An Obama Administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a “point of no return,” the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

If a majority of Americans want that, we holdouts must respect their choice. But, if you don’t want it, vote accordingly.

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WINFRED MANN

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The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn!

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Democracy Is Fragile

By Dr. John Washburn "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." This was said many years ago by a man named Tyler, and later repeated by Alexander Hamilton. I couldn’t agree more, which is the basis of my concern for America’s future. Our democracy has been in existence for nearly 233 years and I don’t recall in history any other democracy lasting that long. How exactly did the Roman empire fall? And when the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, the moderate members of the Russian parliament walked out in protest, prompting Trotsky to say this to them: "You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!" Sound familiar? Shortly thereafter, the Bolsheviks passed the Decree on Land, which ratified the actions of the peasants who had been seizing private land and redistributing it amongst themselves. In addition to this, the Bolsheviks: nationalized all banks, granted control of all factories to the soviets, confiscated private bank accounts, seized all church properties, fixed wages at higher rates and implemented a shorter 8-hour work day, repudiated all foreign debts. Indeed, I have seen a trend in the Democrat party for several decades, basically one of alienating the wealthy and pandering to the middle and lower class. I’ve heard some call this class warfare, and Barack Obama has taken it to an even higher level. This man’s campaign tactic, taken right from the writings of Saul Alinsky, is to cast away the 5% of America’s wealthiest and pander to the other 95%, literally promising them money for their votes. We hear things like “bottom up” growth and “fairness”. And it just may work. During the primaries, Obama did an interview and was asked about his tax policy. The questioner pointed out that past tax increases have often led to a DECREASE in government revenue. Obama acknowledged this to be true, yet when pressed about his tax plan he responded by saying that it was a matter of “fairness”. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” – Karl Marx I have a deep problem with Obama’s perspective. In my mind, taxes are a necessary evil. I don’t believe in anarchy, so we must have a functioning government to provide things like courts, roads and national defense. This costs money and the citizens are responsible for providing that money. It’s simply the toll we pay for reaping the benefits of a free society. But Obama, and most democrats, take a much different approach. They see taxes as means of balancing society, establishing “fairness” whatever that means. They describe the rich as “fortunate” and the poor as “less fortunate” as though the only difference between the two is varying degrees of luck, and they use taxation to balance the good and bad luck as a matter of fairness. In other words, taxation is the government’s way of exerting control over its citizens, by punishing the upper class and giving to the middle and lower class, essentially redistributing wealth. But more than that, taxation is the democrat’s method of self-preservation, a means of achieving and maintaining power by nothing else than taking from the minority and giving to 95% of the citizens. You buy votes, implement programs that encourage government dependence, and in doing so you guarantee yourself power. The more citizens depend on the government, the less likely they are to vote you out, this is how communists keep power by ensuring the citizens need them in power. Cater to the middle and lower class, isolate the upper class because you don’t need their vote to gain power, and if that’s not enough then you literally promise the “less fortunate” money for putting you in power, thus the ability to vote themselves rewards from the treasury. It’s simple. And, folks, if Obama DOES win this election and he is given a super-majority in Congress with a filibuster-proof Senate and just one or two Obama Supreme Court choices – easily appointing the most radical of liberals with his rubber-stamp Senate - then exactly how close will we be to a dictatorship? In theory, they could pass any law they wanted. Honestly, who will stop the Dems from doing it? This makes me very uncomfortable. I believe Obama’s economy will be disastrous. The last time our economy was this bad was 1980, when Carter lost 10 million jobs, had a 21% interest rate and inflation was at a staggering 12%. Reagan stepped in and immediately dropped taxes to the floor. The top rate was cut from 70% to 28%. As a result, 20 million jobs were created, and government revenues doubled. This is historical fact, yet Obama claims that trickle down economics doesn’t work. Obama plans to do the exact opposite. His plan couldn’t be any further from Reagan’s and instead represents a hybrid of Carter and Hoover. Remember, it was Hoover’s policy that turned the recession of 1929 into the decade-long Great Depression by minimizing free trade and raising income taxes. Obama’s plan is dangerous, and McCain is committing campaign malpractice by not hammering home this issue enough. You NEVER raise taxes in the midst of a recession. NEVER! He calls for a “new” new deal, which makes sense considering his basic beliefs. The New Deal was our first brush with socialism as the government basically began acting as a major employer, attempting to replace the private sector, which had been choked by excessive taxation. It was very costly and, more importantly, it didn’t work. The Depression continued until the industrial boom of world war two revitalized the economy. Obama’s tax plan will no doubt increase unemployment, hitting small businesses especially hard. He says only 5% of small businesses will be affected, but this is not the whole story. The truth is 50% of small businesses who employ 20 or more people will see an increase in taxation. These are America’s major employers. And I just don’t get the “bottom up” theory. How exactly does the economy grow bottom up? The economy grows through employment, and a $1000 check doesn’t get you employed. In fact, it will probably not even pay one month of credit card bills. If people are employed, they have money to spend. If they have money to spend, then investments increase, especially if capitol gains rates are low; retail sales increase; borrowing and major purchases increase; and all of this ultimately leads to more business growth and more employment. There’s a reason why immigration became such a major issue and it’s because our economy was so strong that we actually had to import workers to fill the need. And business taxes are passed to consumers. Let’s be clear about this, businesses DON’T PAY TAXES, they simply pass the cost to the consumer. As a result, the cost of living goes up, investments decrease and the economy staggers. You can write checks to the middle and lower class, but those will quickly be consumed by the higher cost of living and does nothing to create jobs. This was tried just this summer when we all got rebate checks, and it amounted to nothing more than a speed bump in the economic decline. Bottom-up economics is unsound. It just doesn’t make sense. If you want to grow the economy it starts by growing business since they are the ones who employ people. Instead, it is the businesses and corporations – the “petite bourgeoise” - that are demonized by the Left in their class warfare tactics as they maintain efforts to appeal to the middle and lower class. And one sector of the economy that continues to thrive is exports. The US is still the world’s largest exporter, accounting for $1.3 trillion annually or 20% of our GDP. This has come mainly through free trade, which has also resulted in a net GAIN of US jobs despite the dem’s claim to the contrary. Obama wants to limit free trade in the name of keeping jobs from going overseas. Again, this is nothing but pandering to key swing states hit hardest by some of the negatives of free trade, despite the fact that free trade is overall beneficial for the whole country. If trade is affected, it could potentially affect 16 million US jobs that would be threatened by trade restrictions. This is on top of what could be lost by the taxation on small businesses. And this doesn’t take into account the fact that free trade increases the buying power of middle and lower class citizens, who can buy cheaper goods and make their dollars last longer. Restrict free trade and you raise the cost of everyday goods, on top of the cost of living that goes up with higher corporate taxation. When Hoover restricted trade by imposing a 40% tariff on imports, it led to a loss of 6.5 million jobs in his 4 year term, half of these were lost in his final year, and the GDP dropped by 25%. Obama is talking about doing much of the same. Our economy simply can’t handle it and if he has his way the recession of 2008 could quickly become the next great depression. And if this happens it will compel the Dems to enact more government programs, make more people dependent on their power. Again, McCain has failed to make this point clearly enough. Biden says Obama will be tested by an international crisis and that’s concerning enough, but still not nearly as concerning as what will happen to our economy. The signs of disaster couldn’t be any clearer. I wonder if the chaos on Wall Street is somehow related to his current position in the polls, and I fear that on Nov 5 if he’s declared the winner the market could plummet. His ideas are radical, hardly those of a moderate democrat, and he has a radical as House Speaker and as Senate leader. Not a good combination when we are in dire need of economic growth. Mark my words, if he wins we’re looking at some very dark days ahead. posted by John Washburn @ 12:59 PM 6 comments links to this post -->

Monday, October 20, 2008

Judging A Man

OBAMA'S SPIRITUAL ADVISOR JEREMIAH WRIGHT
- Obama's Pastor for most of his adult life.
- Wright married the Obamas and baptized their children.
- Obama 'found religion' through Pastor Wright.
- Obama consulted with Pastor Wright before running for Senate.
- Obama prayed privately with Wright before announcing his presidential run.
- Wright said 'the U.S. brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own terrorism'.
- Wright called Israel an 'outlaw nation'.
- Wright supported movement in his church to divest from Israel to try to bankrupt the Jewish State.
- Wright said Israel's treatment of Palestinians is state sponsored terrorism.

OBAMA'S POLITICAL MENTOR BILL AYERS
- Obama's political career launched in his dining room at a meet and greet in 1995.
- Ayers and Obama served together for 4 years on the Board of the Woods Foundation.
- Ayers and Obama served together for 6 years on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
- Ayers donated to Obama's 2000 Congressional Campaign.
- Ayers belonged to a domestic terrorist organization known as the 'Weathermen'.
- Ayers blew up the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol Building and N.Y City Police headquarters.
- Ayers tried to murder the family of a Judge.
- Ayers was a 1020year fugitive from the law.
- Ayers said: 'Kill all rich people… Bring the Revolution home. Kill you parents'.

OBAMA'S GOOD BUDDY RASHID KHALIDI (MR. PLO) - Khalidi and Obama were professors at the University of Chicago.
- Khalidi is a friend and frequent dinner companion of Obama.
- Khalidi held a political fundraiser for Obama in 2000.
- Khalidi was a spokesman for PLO when it was a terrorist organization.
- in 2003, Obama threw Khalidi a farewell party before he left for Columbia University. At the party, Khalidi told the mostly Palestinian American crowd that Obama deserves their support and that 'You will not have a better senator under any circumstances'.
- Khalidi organized Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University.
- Khalidi praised Obama 'because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the 'Palestinian cause'.
- Khalidi praised Obama for 'saying he supports talks with Iran'.
- Khalidi has stated that Israel is not a democratic ally but rather an 'apartheid system in creation' and a destructive 'racist' state.

OBAMA'S BIGGEST CHEERLEADER
LOUIS FARRAKHAN
- Farrakhan recently called Obama 'the Messiah'.
- Obama's church awarded Farrakhan with the Dr. Jeremiah Wright Trumpeter Award for 'truly e pitomizing greatness'.
- Farrakhan called Judaism a 'gutter religion'.
- Farrakhan called Jews 'bloodsuckers'.
- Farrakhan called white people 'blue eyed devils'.
- Farrakhan said 'Jews cooperated with Hitler '.

OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY ANALYST Jesse Jackson
Stated that under Obama, the most important change would occur in the Middle East, where 'decades of putting Israel's interests first' would end.
- Jackson recently stated that, a lthough 'Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades' remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Obama enters the White House.

SNAKE HUNTERS

About Me

Saturday, July 04, 2009

WAR AND OUR FREEDOM

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Sunday, May 31, 2009

SUMMARY OF WWII

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

MEMORIAL PARADE (click picture to enlarge)

Saturday, May 23, 2009

The Veteran

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Bought and Paid For

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Sunday, May 10, 2009

Letter to the President

Friday, May 01, 2009

Postmodern Villain

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Monday, April 20, 2009

An Open Letter To Mohamed

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Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Man-caused disaster?

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Friday, March 20, 2009

AXIS OF IDIOTS

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Monday, March 16, 2009

The Left and a Woman's Severed Head

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Friday, March 13, 2009

Beheadings and Honor Killings

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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Roots of the Gaza Conflict

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Now They Call Me Infidel

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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

PALESTINE vs ISRAEL

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Obama's Legal Left Brain Trust

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Egypt’s Double Game

Monday, January 26, 2009

It's Official

Monday, January 05, 2009

Why Israel Is Bombing Gaza

Thursday, January 01, 2009

How Hamas Governs Gaza

Sunday, December 07, 2008

World Proclamation...

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Pelosi Hires Soros' Right-Hand Man

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Act For America - Brigitte Gabriel

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

'Obama's First Act...

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Sunday, November 02, 2008

They're Muslims!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

THE GREAT OBAMA SWINDLE OF 2008by Raymond S. Kraft

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

GIVE A MUSLIM AN INCH

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Monday, October 27, 2008

Editor's Note:

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Point of No Return

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Saturday, October 25, 2008

Democracy Is Fragile

Monday, October 20, 2008

Judging A Man

The Left
and a Woman's Severed Head

Pelosi Hires Soros'

Right-Hand Man

THE GREAT OBAMA SWINDLE OF 2008
by Raymond S. Kraft