Friday, July 10, 2009
Arab Festival 2009: Sharia In The USA
A Christian organization was denied free speech rights to pass out leaflets at an Arab festival held on PUBLIC streets in Dearborn, Michigan.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
The Coming Second American Revolution
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
The Coming Second American Revolution
Once again I overstep my friendship with Dr Jack Wheeler and run his entire column (PAID only) from To the Point News, because it needs to be said. And Dr. Wheeler pulls no punches. He tells it straight and true, which is so necessary in these mendacious and Orwellian times. Jack restates the obvious.
Quantum Weirdness Dr. Jack Wheeler
The great physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962), who pioneered the study of sub-atomic or quantum physics, was fond of saying, "If someone says that he can think about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it."
The Alice-in-Wonderland quality of sub-atomic physics is called quantum weirdness. It was in response to such weirdness that Bohr's contemporary scientist J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) claimed "the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
Today, however, the concept of quantum weirdness seems also to apply to politics in America.
Clearly, we are no longer living in a world of normal reality. For the first time in US history, we have a president who hates his own country. A president who is on the side of America's enemies, not on the side of America.
(The latest example, explained this week by Jack Kelly, regards Honduras.)
We have a media who reveres and worships as a demi-god a president who hates his, and their, country.
We have a government spending trillions of dollars it does not have in a seemingly determined effort to destroy everyone's life savings via inflation.
We have a Congress that passes the largest tax increase in the history of the world (literally) via a 1,300 page Climate Bill that no one has read and based on utterly fraudulent science.
We have a governor who goes so around the bend that he trashes his wife, four children, his career and life for some broad in Argentina.
We have a people who go completely bananas with grief over the suicide of a washed-up pedophilic fruitcake ex-rock star.
This is societal quantum weirdness, a dissociation from normal reality, of which additional examples could be endlessly provided. Yet extreme, unhinged, over-the-top weirdness is normally what you get when you get close to a tipping point, close to the bursting of a bubble.
Madnesses of crowds are most often economic, such as the dotcom craze or the housing bubble. A lot of folks lose a lot of money, and that's it. But when such a madness pervades an entire society, the consequences can be far more dramatic. Such a madness is often the runup to a revolution.
Revolutions are chaotic, dangerous things. We were blessed-by-Providence lucky in our first one in 1776. We got freedom and George Washington, while the French with theirs in 1789 got the guillotine and Napoleon. Which will we get in the coming Second American Revolution?
The pervasive quantum weirdness we are experiencing is clearly pointing towards mass societal breakdown. We will emerge out the other side of it with either more freedom or more fascism. You can bet it will be the latter unless there is a planned, concerted, purposeful, and organized effort to secure the former.
The focus of such an effort should be clear: constitutional government. Advocates of freedom in America have an extraordinary advantage over the advocates of fascism: the legal foundation of the country, the Constitution. But will they take that advantage?
There is no constitutional basis whatever, for example, no enumerated power for a single page of the 1,300 pages Climate Bill. None for 90% of the laws, regulations, programs, and agencies of the federal government.
Yet if there is not a Movement to Restore the Constitution that takes hold of the Republican Party - the only political entity that can realistically stop the Democrat drive towards fascism - then the end result of our quantum madness will be Darkness at Noon.
The July 4th Tea Parties - now registered to take place in 1,347 cities - could be the start of such a constitutional movement. If they remain an amorphous unfocused complaint against "too much" government regulation and taxes, then the tea party movement will fizzle.
Only with a clearly understandable and positive focus on what it wants to achieve, not just what it opposes, can it reach a threshold capable of driving the direction of coming chaos towards freedom and away from fascism.
So if you are participating in a tea party this Saturday the 4th, consider doing what you can for it to have a constitutional focus.
We're all in this together. It's up to all of us individually to help enable our country to escape from quantum weirdness, to become normal and sane once again.
[Note: for a well-thought discussion of how quantum weirdness is no stranger than "Newtonian weirdness" - to this day, science really doesn't understand gravity - see this essay by physicistPaul Quincey.]
The Coming Second American Revolution
Once again I overstep my friendship with Dr Jack Wheeler and run his entire column (PAID only) from To the Point News, because it needs to be said. And Dr. Wheeler pulls no punches. He tells it straight and true, which is so necessary in these mendacious and Orwellian times. Jack restates the obvious.
Quantum Weirdness Dr. Jack Wheeler
The great physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962), who pioneered the study of sub-atomic or quantum physics, was fond of saying, "If someone says that he can think about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it."
The Alice-in-Wonderland quality of sub-atomic physics is called quantum weirdness. It was in response to such weirdness that Bohr's contemporary scientist J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) claimed "the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
Today, however, the concept of quantum weirdness seems also to apply to politics in America.
Clearly, we are no longer living in a world of normal reality. For the first time in US history, we have a president who hates his own country. A president who is on the side of America's enemies, not on the side of America.
(The latest example, explained this week by Jack Kelly, regards Honduras.)
We have a media who reveres and worships as a demi-god a president who hates his, and their, country.
We have a government spending trillions of dollars it does not have in a seemingly determined effort to destroy everyone's life savings via inflation.
We have a Congress that passes the largest tax increase in the history of the world (literally) via a 1,300 page Climate Bill that no one has read and based on utterly fraudulent science.
We have a governor who goes so around the bend that he trashes his wife, four children, his career and life for some broad in Argentina.
We have a people who go completely bananas with grief over the suicide of a washed-up pedophilic fruitcake ex-rock star.
This is societal quantum weirdness, a dissociation from normal reality, of which additional examples could be endlessly provided. Yet extreme, unhinged, over-the-top weirdness is normally what you get when you get close to a tipping point, close to the bursting of a bubble.
Madnesses of crowds are most often economic, such as the dotcom craze or the housing bubble. A lot of folks lose a lot of money, and that's it. But when such a madness pervades an entire society, the consequences can be far more dramatic. Such a madness is often the runup to a revolution.
Revolutions are chaotic, dangerous things. We were blessed-by-Providence lucky in our first one in 1776. We got freedom and George Washington, while the French with theirs in 1789 got the guillotine and Napoleon. Which will we get in the coming Second American Revolution?
The pervasive quantum weirdness we are experiencing is clearly pointing towards mass societal breakdown. We will emerge out the other side of it with either more freedom or more fascism. You can bet it will be the latter unless there is a planned, concerted, purposeful, and organized effort to secure the former.
The focus of such an effort should be clear: constitutional government. Advocates of freedom in America have an extraordinary advantage over the advocates of fascism: the legal foundation of the country, the Constitution. But will they take that advantage?
There is no constitutional basis whatever, for example, no enumerated power for a single page of the 1,300 pages Climate Bill. None for 90% of the laws, regulations, programs, and agencies of the federal government.
Yet if there is not a Movement to Restore the Constitution that takes hold of the Republican Party - the only political entity that can realistically stop the Democrat drive towards fascism - then the end result of our quantum madness will be Darkness at Noon.
The July 4th Tea Parties - now registered to take place in 1,347 cities - could be the start of such a constitutional movement. If they remain an amorphous unfocused complaint against "too much" government regulation and taxes, then the tea party movement will fizzle.
Only with a clearly understandable and positive focus on what it wants to achieve, not just what it opposes, can it reach a threshold capable of driving the direction of coming chaos towards freedom and away from fascism.
So if you are participating in a tea party this Saturday the 4th, consider doing what you can for it to have a constitutional focus.
We're all in this together. It's up to all of us individually to help enable our country to escape from quantum weirdness, to become normal and sane once again.
[Note: for a well-thought discussion of how quantum weirdness is no stranger than "Newtonian weirdness" - to this day, science really doesn't understand gravity - see this essay by physicistPaul Quincey.]
Monday, July 06, 2009
ISNA's Reform Hasn't Shed It of Radical Ideologues
ISNA's Reform Hasn't Shed It of Radical Ideologues
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) hooked a big fish for its 46th convention starting Friday in Washington, D.C. when evangelical Pastor Rick Warren agreed to appear.
But ISNA wanted a bigger star – President Barack Obama. There's been no public response from the White House to ISNA's invitation. But the conference is expected to feature a significant government presence, in the form of sponsored-informational booths and speakers from the Departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security and others.
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is also seeking volunteers to work at an information table during the conference.
On the surface, it's understandable why government agencies would want to line up for a spot at the three-day convention. It is expected to draw thousands to the nation's capital and is far and away the largest gathering of Muslim Americans.
ISNA's documented history with the Muslim Brotherhood – an 80-year-old Egyptian movement that seeks to spread Shariah, or Islamic law, far and wide – and the troubling association many of its current leaders hold should give these agencies pause about what message their participation endorses.
Much of ISNA's history was concisely reported by an Indianapolis television station in 2003. The two-part WTHR report can be viewed here.
Beyond the high-profile outsiders like Warren, the 2009 ISNA conference offers representatives from Muslim Brotherhood front groups and others who buck American law enforcement efforts to curtail terrorist financing. One group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been deemed persona non-grata by the FBI due to its Hamas ties.
Competing assessments of the government's posture toward ISNA have emerged in the past week. A widely-circulated email from a knowledgeable source claimed that the FBI had pegged ISNA as its official outreach partner to the American Muslim community and relayed that information in a meeting with ISNA Vice President Mohamed Magid.
The IPT spoke with an FBI source who confirmed that a meeting did take place at FBI headquarters. The FBI's embrace of ISNA came over the objections of case agents and supervisors investigating Muslim Brotherhood activity in the U.S., the source said.
The next day, FBI spokesman John Miller denied any relationship with ISNA had been cemented and called the email's claims "factually inaccurate and generally misleading." Magid did meet with an FBI official, Miller said, but that's because he has long been an FBI liaison through his role as head of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center.
To be clear, it is not likely that the FBI would have a memorandum declaring ISNA the official Muslim partner of federal law enforcement. Magid may be a long-time FBI liaison, but he still wears two hats when he meets with law enforcement – the ADAMS Center and ISNA.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism reviewed recent ISNA conference activity and found a host of examples of radical ideology that belies its moderate image. It also details ISNA's foundation by U.S. members of the Muslim Brotherhood, some of whom remain active in ISNA today, and extremist connections by other active ISNA leaders. You can read that report here.
ISNA remains an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas-financing prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which ended with guilty verdicts on 108 counts last November and lengthy prison terms for HLF leaders in May.
HLF is included among "individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood." ISNA petitioned the court to be removed from the list a year ago, but no ruling has been made.
Trial evidence showed accounts held by ISNA and its subsidiary, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), were used to funnel money to HLF and, ultimately, to Hamas. ISNA officials claim the organization has moved beyond its Muslim Brotherhood roots to evolve into a more mainstream American organization. That strategy has been successful, as this Associated Press preview of the ISNA convention shows.
Brotherhood Roots
ISNA's leadership ranks include a number of people who date back to the group's foundation by Muslim Brotherhood members. The organization grew out of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), which also was founded by Brotherhood members.
One of those founders, Muzammil Siddiqi was a co-founder of ISNA in 1981 and served two terms as ISNA's president from 1997-2001. He still serves on the ISNA governing board.
Likewise, Sayyid M. Syeed was a founding ISNA board member and served as secretary-general, and now heads ISNA's Center for Interfaith and Community Outreach in Washington, D.C.
A third ISNA founder, Iqbal Unus, serves on the board of directors today. He also held the title of Acting Secretary General for ISNA in January 1984 after serving at the General Secretariat since January 1977 for MSA, and later ISNA.
Siddiqi, Syeed and Unus all are scheduled to speak during ISNA's 46th annual convention.
So are two ISNA leaders who were not a part of the founding group, but nonetheless have extensive and troubling connections to terror supporters. Jamal Badawi is a member at large on ISNA's Board of Directors. Badawi was individually listed in the HLF trial as an unindicted co-conspirator for his role as a fund raiser for the defunct charity.
His number appears in a telephone book of U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood members that was admitted into evidence in the original HLF prosecution, which ended in a mistrial in November 2007. FBI agent Lara Burns testified that this phone book was found at the home of Ismail Elbarrasse, a former assistant to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook
Finally, Louay Safi directs the ISNA Leadership Development Center. He has a history of close relations with U.S. fronts for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He served on the board of advisory editors for the Middle East Affairs Journal, which was published by the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). Its editor, Ahmed Yousef, is the spokesman for deposed Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh. The UASR was founded by Hamas political leader Mousa Abu Marzook and was part of a Muslim Brotherhood-created Hamas support network in the U.S.
He also worked as research director at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in Herndon, VA. The IIIT has been under investigation for terror financing, including at least $50,000 sent to a think-tank run by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) board member Sami Al-Arian. The think tank employed at least four members of the PIJ governing board in the early 1990s. No charges have been filed in the IIIT investigation.
Conferences Still Feature Extreme Rhetoric
A review of recent ISNA conferences further raises the question of how far the organization's reformation really has come. During the 2008 conference, speakers rationalized Hamas terrorism and revised history.
For example, Hatem Bazian, a professor of Near East Studies at the University of California-Berkeley, rewrote history to say violent Palestinian opposition to Israel started after the 1967 war:
"The violence is not a genetic motivation or genetically defined in the Palestinians. The Palestinians don't wake up in the morning and think yeah, I'm inclined towards violence. The Palestinians when they woke up they see that they're land has been taken from underneath them, that they have to go through five or six checkpoints before they get to school, that they are no longer able to use the hospital, that they are seeing a new settlement being built every other day, and they wake up in the morning and see that it's a land grab day, all these factors, including the diminishing return of the so called peace."
In that same panel, Palestinian Jamal Dajani moderated the discussion and echoed Bazian's false history:
"That is Palestinians are sick and tired of dialogue. I mean they've been listening to dialogue for six decades. It is great to have people from different places and come and interfere and put themselves between the occupier and the victim, and Palestinians listening to promises, and they see their future disappear right in front of their eyes."
In fact, Palestinians have rejected dialogue since Israel's creation in 1948. The PLO agreed to renounce terror and joined in President Clinton's peace efforts in the early 1990s, resulting in Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. The refusal of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to recognize that agreement, and the wave of terrorist attacks they launched in the agreement's wake, doomed the U.S.-led peace effort.
Similarly, during the 2008 ISNA annual convention in Columbus, Ohio, Rick Hannis, a Christian and member of the Christian Peacemakers Team, a group founded by Quakers and Mennonites with a stated purpose of working toward "nonviolent alternative to war," spoke. He described the "amazing work" Hamas does in West Bank education and health care and supposedly non-violent leaders of that organization:
"Now, most people only know about the militant part of Hamas. They don't know about the education or healthcare issued in the West Bank part. It really does amazing work."
"If there is a suicide bombing or something their militant wing has done, often Hamas leaders who promote non violence, will be assassinated, and then, of course, it is put in the paper that Hamas did this violent act-Hamas leader was assassinated as if that was an [unintelligible]. The people that know this leader, they are disenfranchised even more."
During ISNA's 2006 convention, Kamran Memon, an attorney from Muslims for a Safe America, asked the audience to raise their hands if they believed Al Qaeda committed the 9/11 attacks. In response to their raised hands, he helped rationalize Al Qaeda's actions by discussing how America's foreign policy helped to infuriate Muslims around the world.
"Some Muslims in the Muslim world decided that they were just not going to take it anymore. They were angry at our ongoing support from their enemies, so they began to attack American targets to pressure our government to change its foreign policy. They attacked American targets in 1992 in Somalia; in 1993 in New York; in 1995 and 1996 in Saudi Arabia; 1998 in Tanzania and Kenya; and 2000 in Yemen. But the U.S. government did not change its foreign policy, so those Muslims who decided that they weren't going to take it anymore attacked America on September 11.
...They are also angry at us because they look at us, the elder generations, and they see us sitting on our hands not doing anything serious to alleviate the suffering of Muslims in the Muslim world. And when they get that angry, then they do things, like if you believe that Muslims did it, they do things like the London bombings in July 2005; because they see no other way to change American foreign policy other than violence."
The list of conference panels this year does include some important issues, including one on domestic violence in the Muslim community, an emerging issue that gained added urgency earlier this year.
Such positive moves are offset, however, by the presence of speakers from other Muslim Brotherhood-tied groups including the Muslim American Society (MAS) and CAIR.
CAIR is taking advantage of the crowds expected in Washington to host an open house.
It is important to note that if the FBI in any way is increasing its outreach with ISNA, it likely replaces work CAIR previously did. The Bureau has made it clear that CAIR and its national leaders had "a connection" to Hamas, and it is unclear whether that connection remains. Until that is resolved, "the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner."
ISNA apparently does not share that concern. It also endorses the canard that law enforcement action to cut off terror financing by U.S.-based charities like HLF creates "a chilling effect on Muslim charitable giving in accordance with the Islamic faith."
It has condemned terrorist plots, like the one to bomb New York synagogues and to try shooting down a military plane that was broken up by law enforcement in May. And President Ingrid Mattson has called for the Muslim community to be more assertive in confronting radical elements and "vague accusations of conspiracies, and exaggerated protests of attempts to ensure security to be used as excuses for violating the rights of women, non-Muslims and others."
However, that admirable charge is undermined by her organization's embrace of CAIR, MAS and similar groups. Agha Saeed of the American Muslim Task Force, is scheduled to speak on a panel on "Culture and Politics: Strategies of Self-Empowerment." Saeed is chairman of the group, which has spent most of 2009 advocating a Muslim boycott of the FBI. The reason? FBI investigators have sent informants into mosques to pursue information on terror suspects. That's how the New York bombing plot was broken up.
CAIR and MAS are among the groups signing on to the Taskforce's proposed boycott.
If government representatives are going to speak to the ISNA conference, they shouldn't offer simple platitudes about getting along. They should challenge ISNA and its audience to be a true partner in the fight against terror by confronting extremist ideologies in their own communities, at their own conferences. That might generate real change.
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) hooked a big fish for its 46th convention starting Friday in Washington, D.C. when evangelical Pastor Rick Warren agreed to appear.
But ISNA wanted a bigger star – President Barack Obama. There's been no public response from the White House to ISNA's invitation. But the conference is expected to feature a significant government presence, in the form of sponsored-informational booths and speakers from the Departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security and others.
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is also seeking volunteers to work at an information table during the conference.
On the surface, it's understandable why government agencies would want to line up for a spot at the three-day convention. It is expected to draw thousands to the nation's capital and is far and away the largest gathering of Muslim Americans.
ISNA's documented history with the Muslim Brotherhood – an 80-year-old Egyptian movement that seeks to spread Shariah, or Islamic law, far and wide – and the troubling association many of its current leaders hold should give these agencies pause about what message their participation endorses.
Much of ISNA's history was concisely reported by an Indianapolis television station in 2003. The two-part WTHR report can be viewed here.
Beyond the high-profile outsiders like Warren, the 2009 ISNA conference offers representatives from Muslim Brotherhood front groups and others who buck American law enforcement efforts to curtail terrorist financing. One group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been deemed persona non-grata by the FBI due to its Hamas ties.
Competing assessments of the government's posture toward ISNA have emerged in the past week. A widely-circulated email from a knowledgeable source claimed that the FBI had pegged ISNA as its official outreach partner to the American Muslim community and relayed that information in a meeting with ISNA Vice President Mohamed Magid.
The IPT spoke with an FBI source who confirmed that a meeting did take place at FBI headquarters. The FBI's embrace of ISNA came over the objections of case agents and supervisors investigating Muslim Brotherhood activity in the U.S., the source said.
The next day, FBI spokesman John Miller denied any relationship with ISNA had been cemented and called the email's claims "factually inaccurate and generally misleading." Magid did meet with an FBI official, Miller said, but that's because he has long been an FBI liaison through his role as head of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center.
To be clear, it is not likely that the FBI would have a memorandum declaring ISNA the official Muslim partner of federal law enforcement. Magid may be a long-time FBI liaison, but he still wears two hats when he meets with law enforcement – the ADAMS Center and ISNA.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism reviewed recent ISNA conference activity and found a host of examples of radical ideology that belies its moderate image. It also details ISNA's foundation by U.S. members of the Muslim Brotherhood, some of whom remain active in ISNA today, and extremist connections by other active ISNA leaders. You can read that report here.
ISNA remains an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas-financing prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which ended with guilty verdicts on 108 counts last November and lengthy prison terms for HLF leaders in May.
HLF is included among "individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood." ISNA petitioned the court to be removed from the list a year ago, but no ruling has been made.
Trial evidence showed accounts held by ISNA and its subsidiary, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), were used to funnel money to HLF and, ultimately, to Hamas. ISNA officials claim the organization has moved beyond its Muslim Brotherhood roots to evolve into a more mainstream American organization. That strategy has been successful, as this Associated Press preview of the ISNA convention shows.
Brotherhood Roots
ISNA's leadership ranks include a number of people who date back to the group's foundation by Muslim Brotherhood members. The organization grew out of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), which also was founded by Brotherhood members.
One of those founders, Muzammil Siddiqi was a co-founder of ISNA in 1981 and served two terms as ISNA's president from 1997-2001. He still serves on the ISNA governing board.
Likewise, Sayyid M. Syeed was a founding ISNA board member and served as secretary-general, and now heads ISNA's Center for Interfaith and Community Outreach in Washington, D.C.
A third ISNA founder, Iqbal Unus, serves on the board of directors today. He also held the title of Acting Secretary General for ISNA in January 1984 after serving at the General Secretariat since January 1977 for MSA, and later ISNA.
Siddiqi, Syeed and Unus all are scheduled to speak during ISNA's 46th annual convention.
So are two ISNA leaders who were not a part of the founding group, but nonetheless have extensive and troubling connections to terror supporters. Jamal Badawi is a member at large on ISNA's Board of Directors. Badawi was individually listed in the HLF trial as an unindicted co-conspirator for his role as a fund raiser for the defunct charity.
His number appears in a telephone book of U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood members that was admitted into evidence in the original HLF prosecution, which ended in a mistrial in November 2007. FBI agent Lara Burns testified that this phone book was found at the home of Ismail Elbarrasse, a former assistant to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook
Finally, Louay Safi directs the ISNA Leadership Development Center. He has a history of close relations with U.S. fronts for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He served on the board of advisory editors for the Middle East Affairs Journal, which was published by the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). Its editor, Ahmed Yousef, is the spokesman for deposed Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh. The UASR was founded by Hamas political leader Mousa Abu Marzook and was part of a Muslim Brotherhood-created Hamas support network in the U.S.
He also worked as research director at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in Herndon, VA. The IIIT has been under investigation for terror financing, including at least $50,000 sent to a think-tank run by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) board member Sami Al-Arian. The think tank employed at least four members of the PIJ governing board in the early 1990s. No charges have been filed in the IIIT investigation.
Conferences Still Feature Extreme Rhetoric
A review of recent ISNA conferences further raises the question of how far the organization's reformation really has come. During the 2008 conference, speakers rationalized Hamas terrorism and revised history.
For example, Hatem Bazian, a professor of Near East Studies at the University of California-Berkeley, rewrote history to say violent Palestinian opposition to Israel started after the 1967 war:
"The violence is not a genetic motivation or genetically defined in the Palestinians. The Palestinians don't wake up in the morning and think yeah, I'm inclined towards violence. The Palestinians when they woke up they see that they're land has been taken from underneath them, that they have to go through five or six checkpoints before they get to school, that they are no longer able to use the hospital, that they are seeing a new settlement being built every other day, and they wake up in the morning and see that it's a land grab day, all these factors, including the diminishing return of the so called peace."
In that same panel, Palestinian Jamal Dajani moderated the discussion and echoed Bazian's false history:
"That is Palestinians are sick and tired of dialogue. I mean they've been listening to dialogue for six decades. It is great to have people from different places and come and interfere and put themselves between the occupier and the victim, and Palestinians listening to promises, and they see their future disappear right in front of their eyes."
In fact, Palestinians have rejected dialogue since Israel's creation in 1948. The PLO agreed to renounce terror and joined in President Clinton's peace efforts in the early 1990s, resulting in Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. The refusal of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to recognize that agreement, and the wave of terrorist attacks they launched in the agreement's wake, doomed the U.S.-led peace effort.
Similarly, during the 2008 ISNA annual convention in Columbus, Ohio, Rick Hannis, a Christian and member of the Christian Peacemakers Team, a group founded by Quakers and Mennonites with a stated purpose of working toward "nonviolent alternative to war," spoke. He described the "amazing work" Hamas does in West Bank education and health care and supposedly non-violent leaders of that organization:
"Now, most people only know about the militant part of Hamas. They don't know about the education or healthcare issued in the West Bank part. It really does amazing work."
"If there is a suicide bombing or something their militant wing has done, often Hamas leaders who promote non violence, will be assassinated, and then, of course, it is put in the paper that Hamas did this violent act-Hamas leader was assassinated as if that was an [unintelligible]. The people that know this leader, they are disenfranchised even more."
During ISNA's 2006 convention, Kamran Memon, an attorney from Muslims for a Safe America, asked the audience to raise their hands if they believed Al Qaeda committed the 9/11 attacks. In response to their raised hands, he helped rationalize Al Qaeda's actions by discussing how America's foreign policy helped to infuriate Muslims around the world.
"Some Muslims in the Muslim world decided that they were just not going to take it anymore. They were angry at our ongoing support from their enemies, so they began to attack American targets to pressure our government to change its foreign policy. They attacked American targets in 1992 in Somalia; in 1993 in New York; in 1995 and 1996 in Saudi Arabia; 1998 in Tanzania and Kenya; and 2000 in Yemen. But the U.S. government did not change its foreign policy, so those Muslims who decided that they weren't going to take it anymore attacked America on September 11.
...They are also angry at us because they look at us, the elder generations, and they see us sitting on our hands not doing anything serious to alleviate the suffering of Muslims in the Muslim world. And when they get that angry, then they do things, like if you believe that Muslims did it, they do things like the London bombings in July 2005; because they see no other way to change American foreign policy other than violence."
The list of conference panels this year does include some important issues, including one on domestic violence in the Muslim community, an emerging issue that gained added urgency earlier this year.
Such positive moves are offset, however, by the presence of speakers from other Muslim Brotherhood-tied groups including the Muslim American Society (MAS) and CAIR.
CAIR is taking advantage of the crowds expected in Washington to host an open house.
It is important to note that if the FBI in any way is increasing its outreach with ISNA, it likely replaces work CAIR previously did. The Bureau has made it clear that CAIR and its national leaders had "a connection" to Hamas, and it is unclear whether that connection remains. Until that is resolved, "the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner."
ISNA apparently does not share that concern. It also endorses the canard that law enforcement action to cut off terror financing by U.S.-based charities like HLF creates "a chilling effect on Muslim charitable giving in accordance with the Islamic faith."
It has condemned terrorist plots, like the one to bomb New York synagogues and to try shooting down a military plane that was broken up by law enforcement in May. And President Ingrid Mattson has called for the Muslim community to be more assertive in confronting radical elements and "vague accusations of conspiracies, and exaggerated protests of attempts to ensure security to be used as excuses for violating the rights of women, non-Muslims and others."
However, that admirable charge is undermined by her organization's embrace of CAIR, MAS and similar groups. Agha Saeed of the American Muslim Task Force, is scheduled to speak on a panel on "Culture and Politics: Strategies of Self-Empowerment." Saeed is chairman of the group, which has spent most of 2009 advocating a Muslim boycott of the FBI. The reason? FBI investigators have sent informants into mosques to pursue information on terror suspects. That's how the New York bombing plot was broken up.
CAIR and MAS are among the groups signing on to the Taskforce's proposed boycott.
If government representatives are going to speak to the ISNA conference, they shouldn't offer simple platitudes about getting along. They should challenge ISNA and its audience to be a true partner in the fight against terror by confronting extremist ideologies in their own communities, at their own conferences. That might generate real change.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Seniors Refuse to Eat Dirt and Die
Seniors Refuse to Eat Dirt and Die as Ordered
SENIORS REFUSE TO LIVE ON THEIR KNEES
By Andrew C. Wallace
July 4, 2009
NewsWithViews.co
WE WILL FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES AND STRONGLY ENCOURAGE Obama, Bush and the other Traitorous Fascist Officials and Judges who refuse to obey our Constitution to go straight to hell. Oh yes, leaders of both parties have identical orders to enslave us from the same Criminal Family Elites. Senior Citizens, when told, will never tolerate the mandate in the recently enacted Unconstitutional $855 billion stimulus bill to have bureaucrats reduce health care; and kill those not deemed worthy by refusing them treatment. This is now the law, and a close copy of Hitler’s “Useless Eater Program” that denied care to those unable to contribute. To further prove their intent, the Fascists have just announced that they will take a substantial part of the funds for their new Universal Health Care program from Medicare and Medicaid funding which would further reduce payments to our medical providers. Of course the traitors would also increase our taxes.
“PRESIDENT OBAMA SUGGESTED AT A TOWN HALL EVENT Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don’t stand to gain from the extra care.”As reported by Peter Nichols of the Los Angeles Times. Former Senator Daschle said “Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them”, Bloomberg News. “In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass, because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed”.
WHEN INFORMED, MORE THAN 50 MILLION SENIORS WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO LIVE. Seniors earned their benefits and have no intent of allowing Fascist Traitors in government to force them to suffer and die so Fascists can loot their benefits to bribe those who earned nothing. Our Officials and Judges took the same solemn oath that most of us did,” to serve and protect the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, both foreign and domestic”; they have repudiated that oath, and the constitution by making war on the people who are the sovereign source of all constitutional power. Our oath was a solemn part of our permanent bonding to America and we will die defending our Constitution and Republic, as so many have already done. We would never rebel against constitutional actions taken by government officials, but we take serious exception to the continuous unconstitutional, and criminal, actions taken by Fascist Usurper Officials and Judges, who by definition of their words and actions, are Traitors. Their heinous actions will not stand. Thomas Jefferson said it best when he articulated a key principle of liberty–“any government that willfully violates the rule of law and encroaches on the rights of the people ceases to be a legitimate government”.
RESIGN AND LEAVE THE COUNTRY is our only advice for Officials and Judges who have betrayed their oath and made war on the people. If the traitors could count they would know that it is impossible for them to win this war, ultimately numbers are everything. Stupid is another quality of our traitors, otherwise they would know better than to attack the old people. Most Seniors are proud of their accomplishments, educated by experience, suffer fools not at all, want to be left alone, have few family responsibilities to restrain them, short tempers aggravated by pain, and a propensity to fight like hell without reservations to win if attacked; and because they refuse to surrender their country, and what little remains of their lives to arrogant reprehensible Traitors.
OFFICIALS AND JUDGES WHO REFUSE TO OBEY THE CONSTITUTION ARE TRAITORS. This is an indisputable fact. Defeating our unlawful gangster government can be accomplished easily by ordinary citizens without funding, or formal organizations. These Traitors receive compensation, support, and direction from a criminal cabal of Corporations, corporate owned Media, Tax Free Foundations and the Criminal Family Elites who control everything. Your duty, as an American, is to tell all of your officials and Judges who have supported unconstitutional laws and actions that you despise their treason. Appeasement and being nice never works with dictators, traitors and gangsters. You must tell them in the strongest possible terms to resign and leave the country they betrayed because it is our intent to prosecute their treason to the full extent of the law. Our objective is to defeat enough of the traitors so that we can impeach the Supreme Court of the United States, fire the remaining judges and prosecute all the Traitors wherever they are.
TEA PARTIES ARE GREAT, BUT HOME DELIVERY OF YOUR CONTEMPT IS MORE EFFECTIVE. As Ron Ewart said, you must show our Traitors the great depth of your contempt and loathing, up close and personal, where they cannot ignore reality. This also means the legal picketing of homes and offices of government and media officials using the same tactics that Acorn used on the Bankers resulting in the economic depression. . Keep it legal, don’t harm them, leave that to their friends in prison. If local officials don’t like it, picket them too. Letters and calls alone do not compare with the power of special interest money. Do not fail to go to http://www.opensecrets.org/ for names of those who give money to your politicians so you can publicly boycott them if they continue to support treason. Find and support candidates of any party who really support the constitution and the rule of law.
OFFICIALS AND JUDGES WHO DISOBEY OUR CONSTITUTION HAVE NO LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY FOR TREASON USING FEAR AND GANGSTER POWER. A majority of Americans are well aware that a coup d’etat has taken place by criminal traitors who control our government and therefore deny us access to the use of government to remove the traitors and return to our Constitutional Republic. It is very difficult to tell people who are losing everything from looting, while under the ruthless boots of proven Fascism, not to respond with justifiable force. Maintaining restraint is doubly difficult because the treason is so obvious to most people and committed with such an arrogance of unlawful gangster power. Being one of the serious, and thoughtful patriots, I am highly visible, and an obvious target of the Fascist Traitors. But, if they take us out, by whatever means, they remove most constraints from the more action oriented patriots. Thoughtful patriots want to remove traitors from office in a proper nonviolent manner. I don’t give a damn for the well being of traitors, I want them in jail. We must avoid a civil war if at all possible, because many Americans would die, devastation would be total, but the fascist traitors would all be dead. Many think the fascist leaders want to start a civil war because in the past when they started a war the leaders were protected.
GERALD WALPIN IS AN AMERICAN HERO OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONS, who at 77 years of age, on his own, has struck the first significant blow to expose the criminality and treason of our gangster government by coup d’etat. Gerald Walpin, as Inspector General for CNCS, was given an hour to resign by the White House, or be fired (contrary to law), because he refused to overlook criminal actions by Obama’s friend and supporter Kevin Johnson. Mr Walpin refused to resign and took his case to the public to defend himself against the White House’s attempt to smear him as a senile old man for exposing their ongoing criminality; a view repudiated by millions who have seen him on Television and cheer his bravery. Mr. Walpin will be remembered in history as the first, and most effective patriot in the fight to expel the ruthless traitors and return to a Constitutional Republic.
BOTH IRANIAN AND AMERICAN CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE ARE SELECTED BY ELITES, NOT THE PEOPLE. The outcome of our elections and theirs was irrelevant to the control of government. President Obama and his Fascist Officials must envy the Iranian government’s ability to shoot the protestors down like dogs because they have no weapons to defend themselves. Maybe, that helps explain Obama’s reluctance to condemn Iranian officials for their brutality. If the Iranian people had guns there would be a new government in Iran, and if our fascist government attempts to control us with similar unconstitutional force, many will die, but the fascists will all be dead. There is no other reason for our fascist government to do everything possible to take away the peoples guns, because without the means of self defense we are either dead or slaves. REMEMBER IRAN for its lessons on gun control..
IT IS IRONIC THAT THE TREASON AND OPPRESSION OF OUR FASCIST JUSTICE SYSTEM, concealed by the Fascist Media, has so alienated poor and middleclass Americans that they delivered our country over to Obama, another employee like Bush, of the Fascist Elite (who have controlled our government for years) by promising unspecified Change. The “Change” we got was much more of the same, a ruthless gangster government that is destroying our Constitutional Republic and impoverishing the people by theft and treason.
FEAR AND INTIMIDATION HAS BEEN USED FOR MORE THAN 100 YEARS by Traitors in government to control the people, going so far as to allow prosecutors and judges to frame, prosecute, and imprison people by denying their constitutional rights. All of this in addition to theft and crimes against the people on an unheard of level. These unconstitutional actions are the rule, rather than the exception, and explains why poor and moderate income people, even if they love their country, fear and hate the justice system with good cause. Judges routinely refuse to allow juries comprised of average citizens to be told that they have the constitutional power to find the defendant innocent because they think the law is unfair or defective, and to ignore the judge’s instructions. Judges and prosecutors also routinely refuse to allow the jury to see all of the evidence. Grand Juries and Criminal Juries no longer serve to protect us from government as was the intent in our constitution. Many dedicated and capable Defense attorneys are mostly victims of an expensive facade, who can no longer protect innocent Americans in a justice system that is unconstitutional, criminal, and corrupt. The corrupt Justice System was not the only cause of alienation of the poor and middle class, but it was the deciding factor.
SENIORS, GET OUT AND PROCLAIM YOUR RIGHTS ON JULY FOURTH, AND PICKET YOUR TRAITOROUS OFFICIALS AND JUDGES UNTIL THEY ARE GONE, THE LIFE YOU SAVE WILL BE YOUR OWN. The new acts of treason are being accomplished so rapidly that I can’t keep up with them to report in this article. But, as an Economist, I can swear to you that everything that is being done by our usurper government is guaranteed to destroy and loot the Economy of America leaving us totally destitute. Capitalism, did not fail, could not fail, because bankruptcy corrects the mistakes with minimum losses while our forced nationalization will result in losses in perpetuity. Everything our fascist government is doing has been proven to fail everywhere it has been tried. It is no mystery, if we follow the Constitution we will prosper as we did before 1913 when the looting really began.
SENIORS, FIGHT NOW OR YOU WILL SURELY DIE, HOMELESS, HUNGRY AND IN PAIN.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Wallace/andrew118.htm
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009
SENIORS REFUSE TO LIVE ON THEIR KNEES
By Andrew C. Wallace
July 4, 2009
NewsWithViews.co
WE WILL FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES AND STRONGLY ENCOURAGE Obama, Bush and the other Traitorous Fascist Officials and Judges who refuse to obey our Constitution to go straight to hell. Oh yes, leaders of both parties have identical orders to enslave us from the same Criminal Family Elites. Senior Citizens, when told, will never tolerate the mandate in the recently enacted Unconstitutional $855 billion stimulus bill to have bureaucrats reduce health care; and kill those not deemed worthy by refusing them treatment. This is now the law, and a close copy of Hitler’s “Useless Eater Program” that denied care to those unable to contribute. To further prove their intent, the Fascists have just announced that they will take a substantial part of the funds for their new Universal Health Care program from Medicare and Medicaid funding which would further reduce payments to our medical providers. Of course the traitors would also increase our taxes.
“PRESIDENT OBAMA SUGGESTED AT A TOWN HALL EVENT Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don’t stand to gain from the extra care.”As reported by Peter Nichols of the Los Angeles Times. Former Senator Daschle said “Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them”, Bloomberg News. “In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass, because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed”.
WHEN INFORMED, MORE THAN 50 MILLION SENIORS WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO LIVE. Seniors earned their benefits and have no intent of allowing Fascist Traitors in government to force them to suffer and die so Fascists can loot their benefits to bribe those who earned nothing. Our Officials and Judges took the same solemn oath that most of us did,” to serve and protect the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, both foreign and domestic”; they have repudiated that oath, and the constitution by making war on the people who are the sovereign source of all constitutional power. Our oath was a solemn part of our permanent bonding to America and we will die defending our Constitution and Republic, as so many have already done. We would never rebel against constitutional actions taken by government officials, but we take serious exception to the continuous unconstitutional, and criminal, actions taken by Fascist Usurper Officials and Judges, who by definition of their words and actions, are Traitors. Their heinous actions will not stand. Thomas Jefferson said it best when he articulated a key principle of liberty–“any government that willfully violates the rule of law and encroaches on the rights of the people ceases to be a legitimate government”.
RESIGN AND LEAVE THE COUNTRY is our only advice for Officials and Judges who have betrayed their oath and made war on the people. If the traitors could count they would know that it is impossible for them to win this war, ultimately numbers are everything. Stupid is another quality of our traitors, otherwise they would know better than to attack the old people. Most Seniors are proud of their accomplishments, educated by experience, suffer fools not at all, want to be left alone, have few family responsibilities to restrain them, short tempers aggravated by pain, and a propensity to fight like hell without reservations to win if attacked; and because they refuse to surrender their country, and what little remains of their lives to arrogant reprehensible Traitors.
OFFICIALS AND JUDGES WHO REFUSE TO OBEY THE CONSTITUTION ARE TRAITORS. This is an indisputable fact. Defeating our unlawful gangster government can be accomplished easily by ordinary citizens without funding, or formal organizations. These Traitors receive compensation, support, and direction from a criminal cabal of Corporations, corporate owned Media, Tax Free Foundations and the Criminal Family Elites who control everything. Your duty, as an American, is to tell all of your officials and Judges who have supported unconstitutional laws and actions that you despise their treason. Appeasement and being nice never works with dictators, traitors and gangsters. You must tell them in the strongest possible terms to resign and leave the country they betrayed because it is our intent to prosecute their treason to the full extent of the law. Our objective is to defeat enough of the traitors so that we can impeach the Supreme Court of the United States, fire the remaining judges and prosecute all the Traitors wherever they are.
TEA PARTIES ARE GREAT, BUT HOME DELIVERY OF YOUR CONTEMPT IS MORE EFFECTIVE. As Ron Ewart said, you must show our Traitors the great depth of your contempt and loathing, up close and personal, where they cannot ignore reality. This also means the legal picketing of homes and offices of government and media officials using the same tactics that Acorn used on the Bankers resulting in the economic depression. . Keep it legal, don’t harm them, leave that to their friends in prison. If local officials don’t like it, picket them too. Letters and calls alone do not compare with the power of special interest money. Do not fail to go to http://www.opensecrets.org/ for names of those who give money to your politicians so you can publicly boycott them if they continue to support treason. Find and support candidates of any party who really support the constitution and the rule of law.
OFFICIALS AND JUDGES WHO DISOBEY OUR CONSTITUTION HAVE NO LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY FOR TREASON USING FEAR AND GANGSTER POWER. A majority of Americans are well aware that a coup d’etat has taken place by criminal traitors who control our government and therefore deny us access to the use of government to remove the traitors and return to our Constitutional Republic. It is very difficult to tell people who are losing everything from looting, while under the ruthless boots of proven Fascism, not to respond with justifiable force. Maintaining restraint is doubly difficult because the treason is so obvious to most people and committed with such an arrogance of unlawful gangster power. Being one of the serious, and thoughtful patriots, I am highly visible, and an obvious target of the Fascist Traitors. But, if they take us out, by whatever means, they remove most constraints from the more action oriented patriots. Thoughtful patriots want to remove traitors from office in a proper nonviolent manner. I don’t give a damn for the well being of traitors, I want them in jail. We must avoid a civil war if at all possible, because many Americans would die, devastation would be total, but the fascist traitors would all be dead. Many think the fascist leaders want to start a civil war because in the past when they started a war the leaders were protected.
GERALD WALPIN IS AN AMERICAN HERO OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONS, who at 77 years of age, on his own, has struck the first significant blow to expose the criminality and treason of our gangster government by coup d’etat. Gerald Walpin, as Inspector General for CNCS, was given an hour to resign by the White House, or be fired (contrary to law), because he refused to overlook criminal actions by Obama’s friend and supporter Kevin Johnson. Mr Walpin refused to resign and took his case to the public to defend himself against the White House’s attempt to smear him as a senile old man for exposing their ongoing criminality; a view repudiated by millions who have seen him on Television and cheer his bravery. Mr. Walpin will be remembered in history as the first, and most effective patriot in the fight to expel the ruthless traitors and return to a Constitutional Republic.
BOTH IRANIAN AND AMERICAN CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE ARE SELECTED BY ELITES, NOT THE PEOPLE. The outcome of our elections and theirs was irrelevant to the control of government. President Obama and his Fascist Officials must envy the Iranian government’s ability to shoot the protestors down like dogs because they have no weapons to defend themselves. Maybe, that helps explain Obama’s reluctance to condemn Iranian officials for their brutality. If the Iranian people had guns there would be a new government in Iran, and if our fascist government attempts to control us with similar unconstitutional force, many will die, but the fascists will all be dead. There is no other reason for our fascist government to do everything possible to take away the peoples guns, because without the means of self defense we are either dead or slaves. REMEMBER IRAN for its lessons on gun control..
IT IS IRONIC THAT THE TREASON AND OPPRESSION OF OUR FASCIST JUSTICE SYSTEM, concealed by the Fascist Media, has so alienated poor and middleclass Americans that they delivered our country over to Obama, another employee like Bush, of the Fascist Elite (who have controlled our government for years) by promising unspecified Change. The “Change” we got was much more of the same, a ruthless gangster government that is destroying our Constitutional Republic and impoverishing the people by theft and treason.
FEAR AND INTIMIDATION HAS BEEN USED FOR MORE THAN 100 YEARS by Traitors in government to control the people, going so far as to allow prosecutors and judges to frame, prosecute, and imprison people by denying their constitutional rights. All of this in addition to theft and crimes against the people on an unheard of level. These unconstitutional actions are the rule, rather than the exception, and explains why poor and moderate income people, even if they love their country, fear and hate the justice system with good cause. Judges routinely refuse to allow juries comprised of average citizens to be told that they have the constitutional power to find the defendant innocent because they think the law is unfair or defective, and to ignore the judge’s instructions. Judges and prosecutors also routinely refuse to allow the jury to see all of the evidence. Grand Juries and Criminal Juries no longer serve to protect us from government as was the intent in our constitution. Many dedicated and capable Defense attorneys are mostly victims of an expensive facade, who can no longer protect innocent Americans in a justice system that is unconstitutional, criminal, and corrupt. The corrupt Justice System was not the only cause of alienation of the poor and middle class, but it was the deciding factor.
SENIORS, GET OUT AND PROCLAIM YOUR RIGHTS ON JULY FOURTH, AND PICKET YOUR TRAITOROUS OFFICIALS AND JUDGES UNTIL THEY ARE GONE, THE LIFE YOU SAVE WILL BE YOUR OWN. The new acts of treason are being accomplished so rapidly that I can’t keep up with them to report in this article. But, as an Economist, I can swear to you that everything that is being done by our usurper government is guaranteed to destroy and loot the Economy of America leaving us totally destitute. Capitalism, did not fail, could not fail, because bankruptcy corrects the mistakes with minimum losses while our forced nationalization will result in losses in perpetuity. Everything our fascist government is doing has been proven to fail everywhere it has been tried. It is no mystery, if we follow the Constitution we will prosper as we did before 1913 when the looting really began.
SENIORS, FIGHT NOW OR YOU WILL SURELY DIE, HOMELESS, HUNGRY AND IN PAIN.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Wallace/andrew118.htm
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Is Anything Made In USA ?
Made In ... ?
John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN ) for 6 am.
While his coffeepot(MADE IN CHINA )was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG )He put on a dress shirt(MADE IN SRI LANKA ),designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE )and tennis shoes(MADE IN KOREA)
After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet(MADE IN INDIA )he sat down with his calculator(MADE IN MEXICO )to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch(MADE IN TAIWAN )to the radio(MADE IN INDIA )he got in his car(MADE IN GERMANY )filled it with GAS(from Saudi Arabia )and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.
At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his Computer(made in MALAYSIA ), John decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals(MADE IN BRAZIL ),poured himself a glass of wine(MADE IN FRANCE )and turned on his TV(MADE IN INDONESIA ), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in AMERICA.
NOW HE'S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM A PRESIDENT MADE IN KENYA
John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN ) for 6 am.
While his coffeepot(MADE IN CHINA )was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG )He put on a dress shirt(MADE IN SRI LANKA ),designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE )and tennis shoes(MADE IN KOREA)
After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet(MADE IN INDIA )he sat down with his calculator(MADE IN MEXICO )to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch(MADE IN TAIWAN )to the radio(MADE IN INDIA )he got in his car(MADE IN GERMANY )filled it with GAS(from Saudi Arabia )and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.
At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his Computer(made in MALAYSIA ), John decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals(MADE IN BRAZIL ),poured himself a glass of wine(MADE IN FRANCE )and turned on his TV(MADE IN INDONESIA ), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in AMERICA.
NOW HE'S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM A PRESIDENT MADE IN KENYA
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
The Muslim World
June 6, 2009 7:00 AM
‘The Muslim World’
One-way multiculturalism.
By Mark Steyn
As recently as last summer, General Motors filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week. But it’s not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened the market barely noticed and the media were focused on the president’s “address to the Muslim world.” As it happens, these two stories are the same story: snapshots, at home and abroad, of the hyperpower in eclipse. It’s a long time since anyone touted GM as the emblematic brand of America — What’s good for GM is good for America, etc. In fact, it’s more emblematic than ever: Like General Motors, the U.S. government spends more than it makes, and has airily committed itself to ever more unsustainable levels of benefits. GM has about 95,000 workers but provides health benefits to a million people: It’s not a business enterprise, but a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making commercial sector. As GM goes, so goes America?
But who cares? Overseas, the coolest president in history was giving a speech. Or, as the official press release headlined it on the State Department website, “President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo.”
Let’s pause right there: It’s interesting how easily the words “the Muslim world” roll off the tongues of liberal secular progressives who’d choke on any equivalent reference to “the Christian world.” When such hyper-alert policemen of the perimeter between church and state endorse the former but not the latter, they’re implicitly acknowledging that Islam is not merely a faith but a political project, too. There is an “Organization of the Islamic Conference,” which is already the largest single voting bloc at the U.N. and is still adding new members. Imagine if someone proposed an “Organization of the Christian Conference” that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and presidents, and vote as a bloc in transnational bodies. But, of course, there is no “Christian world”: Europe is largely post-Christian and, as President Obama bizarrely asserted to a European interviewer last week, America is “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” Perhaps we’re eligible for membership in the OIC.
I suppose the benign interpretation is that, as head of state of the last superpower, Obama is indulging in a little harmless condescension. In his Cairo speech, he congratulated Muslims on inventing algebra and quoted approvingly one of the less bloodcurdling sections of the Koran. As socio-historical scholarship goes, I found myself recalling that moment in the long twilight of the Habsburg Empire when Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress were found dead at the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling — either a double suicide, or something even more sinister. Happily, in the Broadway musical version, instead of being found dead, the star-crossed lovers emigrate to America and settle down on a farm in Pennsylvania. Recently, my old comrade Stephen Fry gave an amusing lecture at the Royal Geographical Society in London on the popular Americanism “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade” — or, if something’s bitter and hard to swallow, add sugar and sell it. That’s what the president did with Islam: He added sugar and sold it.
The speech nevertheless impressed many conservatives, including Rich Lowry, my esteemed editor at National Review, “esteemed editor” being the sort of thing one says before booting the boss in the crotch. Rich thought that the president succeeded in his principal task: “Fundamentally, Obama's goal was to tell the Muslim world, ‘We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don’t hate us and murder us in return.’” But those terms are too narrow. You don’t have to murder a guy if he preemptively surrenders. And you don’t even have to hate him if you’re too busy despising him. The savvier Muslim potentates have no desire to be sitting in a smelly cave in the Hindu Kush sharing a latrine with a dozen halfwitted goatherds while plotting how to blow up the Empire State Building. Nevertheless, they share key goals with the cave dwellers — including the wish to expand the boundaries of “the Muslim world” and (as in the anti-blasphemy push at the U.N.) to place Islam, globally, beyond criticism. The non-terrorist advance of Islam is a significant challenge to western notions of liberty and pluralism.
Once Obama moved on from the more generalized Islamoschmoozing to the details, the subtext — the absence of American will — became explicit. He used the cover of multilateralism and moral equivalence to communicate, consistently, American weakness: “No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.” Perhaps by “no single nation” he means the “global community” should pick and choose, which means the U.N. Security Council, which means the Big Five, which means that Russia and China will pursue their own murky interests and that, in the absence of American leadership, Britain and France will reach their accommodations with a nuclear Iran, a nuclear North Korea, and any other psycho-state minded to join them.
On the other hand, a “single nation” certainly has the right to tell another nation anything it wants if that nation happens to be the Zionist Entity: As Hillary Clinton just instructed Israel re its West Bank communities, there has to be “a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.” No “natural growth”? You mean, if you and the missus have a kid, you’ve got to talk gran’ma into moving out? To Tel Aviv, or Brooklyn, or wherever? At a stroke, the administration has endorsed “the Muslim world”’s view of those non-Muslims who happen to find themselves within what it regards as lands belonging to Islam: The Jewish and Christian communities are free to stand still or shrink, but not to grow. Would Obama be comfortable mandating “no natural growth” to Israel’s million-and-a-half Muslims? No. But the administration has embraced the “the Muslim world”’s commitment to one-way multiculturalism, whereby Islam expands in the west but Christianity and Judaism shrivel remorselessly in the Middle East.
And so it goes. Like General Motors, America is “too big to fail.” So it won’t, not immediately. It will linger on in a twilight existence sclerotic and ineffectual, declining unto a kind of societal dementia, unable to keep pace with what’s happening and with an ever more tenuous grip on its own past, but able on occasion to throw out impressive words albeit strung together without much meaning: empower, peace, justice, prosperity — just to take one windy gust from the president’s Cairo speech.
There’s better phrase-making in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in a coinage of Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The president emeritus is a sober, judicious paragon of torpidly conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, musing on American decline, he writes, “The country's economy, infrastructure, public schools, and political system have been allowed to deteriorate. The result has been diminished economic strength, a less vital democracy, and a mediocrity of spirit.” That last is the one to watch: A great power can survive a lot of things, but not “a mediocrity of spirit.” A wealthy nation living on the accumulated cultural capital of a glorious past can dodge its rendezvous with fate, but only for a while. That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower.
‘The Muslim World’
One-way multiculturalism.
By Mark Steyn
As recently as last summer, General Motors filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week. But it’s not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened the market barely noticed and the media were focused on the president’s “address to the Muslim world.” As it happens, these two stories are the same story: snapshots, at home and abroad, of the hyperpower in eclipse. It’s a long time since anyone touted GM as the emblematic brand of America — What’s good for GM is good for America, etc. In fact, it’s more emblematic than ever: Like General Motors, the U.S. government spends more than it makes, and has airily committed itself to ever more unsustainable levels of benefits. GM has about 95,000 workers but provides health benefits to a million people: It’s not a business enterprise, but a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making commercial sector. As GM goes, so goes America?
But who cares? Overseas, the coolest president in history was giving a speech. Or, as the official press release headlined it on the State Department website, “President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo.”
Let’s pause right there: It’s interesting how easily the words “the Muslim world” roll off the tongues of liberal secular progressives who’d choke on any equivalent reference to “the Christian world.” When such hyper-alert policemen of the perimeter between church and state endorse the former but not the latter, they’re implicitly acknowledging that Islam is not merely a faith but a political project, too. There is an “Organization of the Islamic Conference,” which is already the largest single voting bloc at the U.N. and is still adding new members. Imagine if someone proposed an “Organization of the Christian Conference” that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and presidents, and vote as a bloc in transnational bodies. But, of course, there is no “Christian world”: Europe is largely post-Christian and, as President Obama bizarrely asserted to a European interviewer last week, America is “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” Perhaps we’re eligible for membership in the OIC.
I suppose the benign interpretation is that, as head of state of the last superpower, Obama is indulging in a little harmless condescension. In his Cairo speech, he congratulated Muslims on inventing algebra and quoted approvingly one of the less bloodcurdling sections of the Koran. As socio-historical scholarship goes, I found myself recalling that moment in the long twilight of the Habsburg Empire when Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress were found dead at the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling — either a double suicide, or something even more sinister. Happily, in the Broadway musical version, instead of being found dead, the star-crossed lovers emigrate to America and settle down on a farm in Pennsylvania. Recently, my old comrade Stephen Fry gave an amusing lecture at the Royal Geographical Society in London on the popular Americanism “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade” — or, if something’s bitter and hard to swallow, add sugar and sell it. That’s what the president did with Islam: He added sugar and sold it.
The speech nevertheless impressed many conservatives, including Rich Lowry, my esteemed editor at National Review, “esteemed editor” being the sort of thing one says before booting the boss in the crotch. Rich thought that the president succeeded in his principal task: “Fundamentally, Obama's goal was to tell the Muslim world, ‘We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don’t hate us and murder us in return.’” But those terms are too narrow. You don’t have to murder a guy if he preemptively surrenders. And you don’t even have to hate him if you’re too busy despising him. The savvier Muslim potentates have no desire to be sitting in a smelly cave in the Hindu Kush sharing a latrine with a dozen halfwitted goatherds while plotting how to blow up the Empire State Building. Nevertheless, they share key goals with the cave dwellers — including the wish to expand the boundaries of “the Muslim world” and (as in the anti-blasphemy push at the U.N.) to place Islam, globally, beyond criticism. The non-terrorist advance of Islam is a significant challenge to western notions of liberty and pluralism.
Once Obama moved on from the more generalized Islamoschmoozing to the details, the subtext — the absence of American will — became explicit. He used the cover of multilateralism and moral equivalence to communicate, consistently, American weakness: “No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.” Perhaps by “no single nation” he means the “global community” should pick and choose, which means the U.N. Security Council, which means the Big Five, which means that Russia and China will pursue their own murky interests and that, in the absence of American leadership, Britain and France will reach their accommodations with a nuclear Iran, a nuclear North Korea, and any other psycho-state minded to join them.
On the other hand, a “single nation” certainly has the right to tell another nation anything it wants if that nation happens to be the Zionist Entity: As Hillary Clinton just instructed Israel re its West Bank communities, there has to be “a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.” No “natural growth”? You mean, if you and the missus have a kid, you’ve got to talk gran’ma into moving out? To Tel Aviv, or Brooklyn, or wherever? At a stroke, the administration has endorsed “the Muslim world”’s view of those non-Muslims who happen to find themselves within what it regards as lands belonging to Islam: The Jewish and Christian communities are free to stand still or shrink, but not to grow. Would Obama be comfortable mandating “no natural growth” to Israel’s million-and-a-half Muslims? No. But the administration has embraced the “the Muslim world”’s commitment to one-way multiculturalism, whereby Islam expands in the west but Christianity and Judaism shrivel remorselessly in the Middle East.
And so it goes. Like General Motors, America is “too big to fail.” So it won’t, not immediately. It will linger on in a twilight existence sclerotic and ineffectual, declining unto a kind of societal dementia, unable to keep pace with what’s happening and with an ever more tenuous grip on its own past, but able on occasion to throw out impressive words albeit strung together without much meaning: empower, peace, justice, prosperity — just to take one windy gust from the president’s Cairo speech.
There’s better phrase-making in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in a coinage of Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The president emeritus is a sober, judicious paragon of torpidly conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, musing on American decline, he writes, “The country's economy, infrastructure, public schools, and political system have been allowed to deteriorate. The result has been diminished economic strength, a less vital democracy, and a mediocrity of spirit.” That last is the one to watch: A great power can survive a lot of things, but not “a mediocrity of spirit.” A wealthy nation living on the accumulated cultural capital of a glorious past can dodge its rendezvous with fate, but only for a while. That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Pressure On Israel Raises War Risk
Pressure on Israel raises war risk
Obama peace efforts may prove explosively counterproductive
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. | Tuesday, June 2, 2009
JERUSALEM -- From this vantage point, two events this week appear to be ominous straws in the wind, warnings of a "man-caused" maelstrom that inexorably may plunge the Middle East into another, potentially cataclysmic war.
The first is that Israel feels obliged to undertake an unprecedented, countrywide civil defense exercise this week. At one point, every man, woman and child in the Jewish state is supposed to seek shelter from a simulated attack of the kind Iran may shortly be able to execute against it.
The second is President Obama's latest effort to reach out to the Muslim world, on Thursday from one of its most important capitals, Cairo. There, he is expected to make a speech reiterating his previous statements on the subject - which, unfortunately, can only have been interpreted by his intended audience as acts of submission.
If the past is prelude, the president of the United States will: apologize yet again for purported offenses against Muslims by his country; promise to be respectful of Islam, including those who adhere to its authoritative, if virulent, theo-political-legal program known as Shariah; and enunciate diplomatic priorities and initiatives designed to reach out to America's enemies in the region while putting excruciating pressure on its most reliable ally there, Israel.
This pressure has become more palpable by the day. It has taken various forms, including: U.S. stances adopted at the United Nations that will isolate Israel; blank political and even financial checks for Palestinian thugs such as Mahmoud Abbas; diminishing U.S.-Israeli cooperation on intelligence and military matters; and the withholding from Israel of helicopters (and perhaps other weaponry) being provided to Arab states.
Perhaps the most chilling example of this coercive pressure so far, however, was reported originally in the Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot and given international prominence by my esteemed colleague and Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick. According to these accounts, in a recent lecture in Washington, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, the American officer charged with training Palestinian military forces in Jordan, made a shocking declaration.
In Ms. Glick's words, Gen. Dayton "indicated that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million could begin killing Israelis." She noted that neither the general nor the Obama administration seemed to find this prospect grounds for rethinking the wisdom of such a training-and-arming program. In fact, her column observed that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates "just extended Dayton's tour of duty for an additional two years and gave him the added responsibility of serving as Obama's Middle East mediator George Mitchell's deputy."
Taken together with the U.S. administration's refusal to come to grips with what truly is the most serious threat to peace in the Middle East - Iran's rising power and growing aggressiveness, reflecting in part its incipient nuclear-weapons capabilities - the stage inexorably is being set for the next, and perhaps most devastating, regional conflict.
Whether the signals Mr. Obama is sending are intended to communicate such a message or not, they will be read by Israel's enemies as evidence of a profound rift between the United States and the Jewish state. In this part of the world, that amounts to an invitation to an open season on Israel.
It is hard to believe the Obama Middle East agenda enjoys the support of the American people or their elected representatives in Congress. Historically, the public and strong bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill have appreciated that an Israel that shares our values, that is governed democratically and that is in the cross hairs of the same people who seek our destruction is an important ally. Quite apart from a sense of moral and religious affinity for the Jewish people's struggle to survive in their ancient homeland, most of us recognize it is in the United States' strategic interest to stand with Israel.
It is worrisome in the extreme that Mr. Obama does not appear to share this appreciation. To those who worried about his affinity for the Saudi king and Islam more generally and his long-standing ties to virulent critics of Israel such as Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi and former Harvard professor-turned-National Security Council staffer Samantha Power, the president's attitude is not exactly a surprise.
His administration's posture may have been further reinforced by Arab-American pollster John Zogby's recent Forbes magazine article arguing that friends of Israel made up John McCain's constituency, not Mr. Obama's. (This raises an interesting question about the sentiments toward Israel of the 78 percent of American Jews who voted for the latter in 2008.)
My guess, however, is that, as the implications of Mr. Obama's Middle East policies - for the United States as well as Israel - become clearer, he will find himself facing the sort of popular and congressional revolt that has confronted him in recent weeks on Guantanamo Bay. The question is: Will such a reaffirmation of American solidarity with and support for Israel come in time to prevent the winds of war being whipped up by Mr. Obama's posturing and rhetoric - and driving Israelis into bomb shelters - from wreaking havoc in the Middle East, and perhaps far beyond?
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy.
Obama peace efforts may prove explosively counterproductive
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. | Tuesday, June 2, 2009
JERUSALEM -- From this vantage point, two events this week appear to be ominous straws in the wind, warnings of a "man-caused" maelstrom that inexorably may plunge the Middle East into another, potentially cataclysmic war.
The first is that Israel feels obliged to undertake an unprecedented, countrywide civil defense exercise this week. At one point, every man, woman and child in the Jewish state is supposed to seek shelter from a simulated attack of the kind Iran may shortly be able to execute against it.
The second is President Obama's latest effort to reach out to the Muslim world, on Thursday from one of its most important capitals, Cairo. There, he is expected to make a speech reiterating his previous statements on the subject - which, unfortunately, can only have been interpreted by his intended audience as acts of submission.
If the past is prelude, the president of the United States will: apologize yet again for purported offenses against Muslims by his country; promise to be respectful of Islam, including those who adhere to its authoritative, if virulent, theo-political-legal program known as Shariah; and enunciate diplomatic priorities and initiatives designed to reach out to America's enemies in the region while putting excruciating pressure on its most reliable ally there, Israel.
This pressure has become more palpable by the day. It has taken various forms, including: U.S. stances adopted at the United Nations that will isolate Israel; blank political and even financial checks for Palestinian thugs such as Mahmoud Abbas; diminishing U.S.-Israeli cooperation on intelligence and military matters; and the withholding from Israel of helicopters (and perhaps other weaponry) being provided to Arab states.
Perhaps the most chilling example of this coercive pressure so far, however, was reported originally in the Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot and given international prominence by my esteemed colleague and Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick. According to these accounts, in a recent lecture in Washington, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, the American officer charged with training Palestinian military forces in Jordan, made a shocking declaration.
In Ms. Glick's words, Gen. Dayton "indicated that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million could begin killing Israelis." She noted that neither the general nor the Obama administration seemed to find this prospect grounds for rethinking the wisdom of such a training-and-arming program. In fact, her column observed that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates "just extended Dayton's tour of duty for an additional two years and gave him the added responsibility of serving as Obama's Middle East mediator George Mitchell's deputy."
Taken together with the U.S. administration's refusal to come to grips with what truly is the most serious threat to peace in the Middle East - Iran's rising power and growing aggressiveness, reflecting in part its incipient nuclear-weapons capabilities - the stage inexorably is being set for the next, and perhaps most devastating, regional conflict.
Whether the signals Mr. Obama is sending are intended to communicate such a message or not, they will be read by Israel's enemies as evidence of a profound rift between the United States and the Jewish state. In this part of the world, that amounts to an invitation to an open season on Israel.
It is hard to believe the Obama Middle East agenda enjoys the support of the American people or their elected representatives in Congress. Historically, the public and strong bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill have appreciated that an Israel that shares our values, that is governed democratically and that is in the cross hairs of the same people who seek our destruction is an important ally. Quite apart from a sense of moral and religious affinity for the Jewish people's struggle to survive in their ancient homeland, most of us recognize it is in the United States' strategic interest to stand with Israel.
It is worrisome in the extreme that Mr. Obama does not appear to share this appreciation. To those who worried about his affinity for the Saudi king and Islam more generally and his long-standing ties to virulent critics of Israel such as Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi and former Harvard professor-turned-National Security Council staffer Samantha Power, the president's attitude is not exactly a surprise.
His administration's posture may have been further reinforced by Arab-American pollster John Zogby's recent Forbes magazine article arguing that friends of Israel made up John McCain's constituency, not Mr. Obama's. (This raises an interesting question about the sentiments toward Israel of the 78 percent of American Jews who voted for the latter in 2008.)
My guess, however, is that, as the implications of Mr. Obama's Middle East policies - for the United States as well as Israel - become clearer, he will find himself facing the sort of popular and congressional revolt that has confronted him in recent weeks on Guantanamo Bay. The question is: Will such a reaffirmation of American solidarity with and support for Israel come in time to prevent the winds of war being whipped up by Mr. Obama's posturing and rhetoric - and driving Israelis into bomb shelters - from wreaking havoc in the Middle East, and perhaps far beyond?
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy.
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