The Social Contract.

Osawatomie, oh Osawatomie

2011-12-09T06:51:00.001-05:00

By now you've probably heard about Obama's speech in Osawatomie Kansas, the other day.

Perhaps you've even heard about comparisons, fully intentional, to Theodore Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" speech.

Some of you more informed readers may have heard, or know, that the New Nationalism speech was the speech that Teddy gave to announce his break from the Republican Party, and the formation of the Progressive Party, that great stain on American History.

If you are truly an historian, you'll also know that the uniform understanding of Roosevelt's New Nationalism program was that it was an American Socialism.

And if you are exceptionally well informed, you may have even read some pundits referring to the editorial that was printed in the NY Times at that time describing Roosevelt's plans as "Super Socialism", and not favorably.

But let me give you some more information. In fact, here is how the NY Times editorial titled "Roosevelt's Super Socialism" concludes that day (September 30, 1913)

"Mr. Roosevelt's reconstitution of society would leave it inert by destroying individual initiative, hope, and ambition, which are the foundations of progress. It is a sterile system, yet being sterile, why has he constructed it? Because he knew that with his great skill, he could make this utopian dream attractive to that very considerable part of society which is the material with which agitators work- the discontented, the unsuccessful, the envious. And upon a Progressive Party thus assembled and fortified with delusions, he would rise again to power. It is as the basis of his ambition that he has formulated his plan. The fatal defect of it is that the American People are far too intelligent, they have too much common sense to be deluded by the shallow sophistries of the Roosevelt socialism. But the Colonel had to do something. His party is going to pieces."

Reread that paragraph. Does it sound like Obama and his ever decreasing poll numbers? Does it sound like the cynical way that the Obamites have tried to use the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Most interesting, does Obama think that Americans are too ignorant of their own history to know that he is now openly declaring himself a socialist in the later TR tradition?

What is fascinating about Obama is that even among the most egocentric, arrogant individuals in American society, those that run for or are elected President, he stands out.

Has there ever been a President who has compared himself so regularly to previous Presidents with delusions of grandeur? Wilson, Teddy AND Franklin Roosevelt, and most offensively, Lincoln?

Frankly, I don't know which I find more disgusting, Obama's now unabashed (although to me it was always so) embracing of socialism, or his assumption that we are all too stupid to see what he is doing.

Might we say now, once and for all, that Emperor Obama has no clothes?

Must see videos

2011-08-07T20:03:00.001-04:00

http://youtu.be/d0nERTFo-Sk

Obama's only policy

2011-08-06T19:55:00.000-04:00

By Caroline Glick

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has explained repeatedly over the years that Israel has no Palestinian partner to negotiate with. So news reports this week that Netanyahu agreed that the 1949 armistice lines, (commonly misrepresented as the 1967 borders), will be mentioned in terms of reference for future negotiations with the Palestinian Authority seemed to come out of nowhere.

Israel has no one to negotiate with because the Palestinians reject Israel's right to exist. This much was made clear yet again last month when senior PA "negotiator" Nabil Sha'ath said in an interview with Arabic News Broadcast, "The story of 'two states for two peoples' means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this."

Given the Palestinians' position it is obvious that Netanyahu is right. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that Israel and the PA will reach any peace deal in the foreseeable future. Add to this the fact that the Hamas terror group controls Gaza and will likely win any new Palestinian elections just as it won the last elections, and the entire exercise in finding the right formula for restarting negotiations is exposed as a complete farce..

So why is Israel engaging in these discussions?

The only logical answer is to placate US President Barack Obama.

For the past several months, most observers have been operating under the assumption that Obama will use the US's veto at the UN Security Council to defeat the Palestinians' bid next month to receive UN membership as independent Palestine. But the fact of the matter is that no senior administration official has stated unequivocally, on record that the US will veto a UN Security Council resolution recommending UN membership for Palestine.

Given US congressional and public support for Israel, it is likely that at the end of the day, Obama will veto such a resolution. But the fact that the President has abstained to date from stating openly that he will veto it makes clear that Obama expects Israel to "earn" a US veto by bowing to his demands.

These demands include abandoning Israel's position that it must retain defensible borders in any peace deal with the Palestinians. Since defensible borders require Israel to retain control over the Jordan Valley and the Samarian hills, there is no way to accept the 1949 armistice lines as a basis for negotiations without surrendering defensible borders.

SAY WHAT you will about Obama's policy, at least it's a policy. Obama uses US power and leverage against Israel in order to force Israel to bow to his will.

What makes Obama's Israel policy notable is not simply that it involves betraying the US's most steadfast ally in the Middle East. After all, since taking office Obama has made a habit of betraying US allies.

Obama's Israel policy is notable because it is a policy. Obama has a clear, consistent goal of cutting Israel down to size. Since assuming office, Obama has taken concrete steps to achieve this aim.

And those steps have achieved results. Obama forced Netanyahu to make Palestinian statehood an Israeli policy goal. He coerced Netanyahu into temporarily abrogating Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. And now he is forcing Netanyahu to pretend the 1949 armistice lines are something Israel can accept.

Obama has not adopted a similarly clear, consistent policy towards any other nation in the region. In Egypt, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Libya, and beyond, Obama has opted for attitude over policy. He has postured, preened, protested and pronounced on all the issues of the day.

But he has not made policy. And as a consequence, for better or for worse, he has transformed the US from a regional leader into a regional follower while empowering actors whose aims are not consonant with US interests.

SYRIA IS case and point. President Bashar Assad is the Iranian mullahs' lap dog. He is also a major sponsor of terrorism. In the decade since he succeeded his father, Assad Jr. has trained terrorists who have killed US forces in Iraq. He has provided a safe haven for al Qaeda terrorists. He has strengthened Syrian ties to Hezbollah. He has hosted Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terror factions.. He has proliferated nuclear weapons. He reputedly ordered the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Since March, Assad has been waging war against his fellow Syrians. By the end of this week, with his invasion of Hama, the civilian death toll will certainly top two thousand.

And how has Obama responded? He upgraded his protestations of displeasure with Assad from "unacceptable" to "appalling."

In the face of Assad's invasion of Hama, rather than construct a policy for overthrowing this murderous US enemy, the Obama administration has constructed excuses for doing nothing. Administration officials, including Obama's ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford, are claiming that the US has little leverage over Assad.

But this is ridiculous. Many in Congress and beyond are demanding that Obama withdraw Ford from Damascus. Some are calling for sanctions against Syria's energy sector. These steps may or may not be effective. Openly supporting, financing and arming Assad's political opponents would certainly be effective.

Many claim that the most powerful group opposing Assad is the Muslim Brotherhood. And there is probably some truth to that. At a minimum, the Brotherhood's strength has been tremendously augmented in recent months by Turkey.

Some have applauded the fact that Turkey has filled the leadership vacuum left by the Obama administration. They argue that Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan can be trusted to ensure that Syria doesn't descend into a civil war.

What these observers fail to recognize is that Erdogan's interests in a post-Assad Syria have little in common with US interests. Erdogan will seek to ensure the continued disenfranchisement of Syria's Kurdish minority. And he will work towards the Islamification of Syria through the Muslim Brotherhood.

Today there is a coalition of Syrian opposition figures that include all ethnic groups in Syria. Their representatives have been banging the doors of the corridors of power in Washington and beyond. Yet the same Western leaders who were so eager to recognize the Libyan opposition despite the presence of al Qaeda terrorists in the opposition tent have refused to publicly embrace Syrian regime opponents that seek a democratic, federal Syria that will live at peace with Israel and embrace liberal policies.

This week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a private meeting with these brave democrats. Why didn't she hold a public meeting? Why hasn't Obama welcomed them to the White House?

By refusing to embrace liberal, multi-ethnic regime opponents, the administration is all but ensuring the success of the Turkish bid to install the Muslim Brotherhood in power if Assad is overthrown.

But then, embracing pro-Western Syrians would involve taking a stand and, in so doing, adopting a policy. And that is something the posturing president will not do. Obama is much happier pretending that empty statements from the UN Security Council amount to US "victories."

If he aims any lower his head will hit the floor.

OBAMA'S PREFERENCE for posture over policy is nothing new. It has been his standard operating procedure throughout the region. When the Iranian people rose up against their regime in June 2009 in the Green Revolution, Obama stood on the sidelines. As is his habit, he acted as though the job of the US president is to opine rather than lead. Then he sniffed that it wasn't nice at all that the regime was mowing down pro-democracy protesters in the streets of Teheran and beyond.

And ever since, Obama has remained on the sidelines as the mullahs took over Lebanon, build operational bases in Latin America, sprint to the nuclear finishing line, and consolidate their power in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Wednesday the show trial began for longtime US ally former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his sons. During last winter's popular uprising in Egypt, Obama's foes attacked him for refusing to abandon Mubarak immediately.

The reasons for maintaining US support for Mubarak were obvious: Mubarak had been the foundation of the US alliance structure with the Sunni Arab world for three decades. He had kept the peace with Israel. And his likely successor was the Muslim Brotherhood.

But Obama didn't respond to his critics with a defense of a coherent policy. Because his early refusal to betray Mubarak was not a policy. It was an attitude of cool detachment.

When Obama saw that it was becoming politically costly to maintain his attitude of detachment, he replaced it with a new one of righteous rage. And so he withdrew US support for Mubarak without ever thinking through the consequences of his actions. And now it isn't just Mubarak and his sons humiliated in a cage. It is their legacy of alliance with America.

Recognizing that Obama refuses to adopt or implement any policies on his own, Congress has tried to fill the gap. The House Foreign Affairs Committee recently passed a budget that would make US aid to Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and the PA contingent on certification that no terrorist or extremist organization holds governmental power in these areas. Clinton issued a rapid rebuke of the House's budget and insisted it was unacceptable.

And this makes sense. Making US assistance to foreign countries contingent on assurances that the money won't fund US enemies would be a policy. And Obama doesn't make policy - except when it comes attacking to Israel.

In an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, Muammar Qaddafi's son Seif al-Islam Qaddafi said he and his father are negotiating a deal that would combine their forces with Islamist forces and reestablish order in the country. To a degree, the US's inability to overthrow Qaddafi - even by supporting an opposition coalition that includes al Qaeda - is the clearest proof that Obama has substituted attitude for policy everywhere except Israel.

Acting under a UN Security Council resolution and armed with a self-righteous doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" Obama went to war against Qaddafi five months ago. But once the hard reality of war invaded his happy visions of Lone Rangers riding in on white stallions, Obama lost interest in Libya. He kept US forces in the battle, but gave them no clear goals to achieve. And so no goals have been achieved.

Meanwhile, Qaddafi's son feels free to meet the New York Times and mock America just by continuing to breathe in and out before the cameras as he sports a new Islamic beard and worry beads.

If nothing else, the waves of chaos, war and revolution sweeping through Arab lands make clear that the Arab conflict with Israel is but a sideshow in the Arab experience of tyranny, fanaticism, hope and betrayal. So it says a lot about Obama, that eight months after the first rebellion broke in Tunisia, his sole Middle East policy involves attacking Israel.

Why do people complain about the media?

2011-08-06T19:53:00.000-04:00

There is a fine line between a "conspiracy" and people with like ideas around the world, all following those ideas and defending them to their end.

We see that here in the US, with the seemingly coordinated "we need to spend more" or "Obama's policies prevented us from an even worse recession or depression".

These are simply the intellectual refusals of many supposedly smart people from giving up on the economic policies of John Maynard Keynes.

You've probably heard the term "Keynesian" economics thrown around recently. Keynes died in 1946 and the irony is that his theories were written in response to the Great Depression AROUND THE WORLD, NOT here in the US.

He basically said that the government needs to "prime the pump" when the private sector slows down. That spending is spending no matter where it comes from, even if it's imaginary money, printed by the government to inflate it's way out of trouble.

However, Keynes had no idea that his ideas would be taken to such absurd lengths - although he did claim, to some extent, that the war spending of WWII proved his theories.

By the time of his death, just after the war, he was already warning about the ridiculous lengths that his disciples were taking his theories.

The most well known of his disciples right now is Paul Krugman of the New York Times.

But most US Presidents of the 20th century have followed a basically Keynesian model.

The ultimate example of the Progressive media's being in the bag for Keynes, came just recently in Israel.

Yuval Steinitz, Israel's Finance Minister, and the overseer of the latest phase of Israel's "Economic miracle" (Israel is one of the few economies in the world that has fought the worldwide slump and whose economy continues to grow and expand robustly, largely due to incredible innovation) was getting ready for an interview with Israel's Channel 2 news Anchor Yonit Levy.

This is actually how the interview started. Oozing professional probity, Levy said, "I assume you came here armed with wonderful data about the drop in unemployment and rising economic growth, but I want to ask you, Mr. Steinitz if for all your data you've forgotten the people, you've forgotten an entire class of working people who can't live?"

"So, despite all facts to the opposite, I'm telling you things are not good." That is the essence of what she said.

You see it here now every day, and will see it even more in the coming days.

With the downgrade of the US credit rating by Standard and Poor's, you will hear the media say it really doesn't matter.

Of course, it matters. But worse, perhaps than the downgrade, which is epic, huge, an historical earthquake of biblical proportions, is that ALL the ratings agencies still have the US on negative watch, which means a 75% chance of further downgrade.

You have also seen this recently with the coordinated calling of the Tea Party "Terrorists".

There should be riots on the streets over this obscenity. Those that murder and blow up, mutilate, massacre, innocents in the streets are "miltiants" or "freedom fighters", but those that want less US debt are "terrorists"???????!!!!!!!!!!

When is a cut, not a cut?

2011-08-03T19:51:00.000-04:00

I figured I had about 20 thousand dollars in "discretionary" spending last year. You know, for things like new computers, car repairs, vacations, enough food to make me obese, things like that.

So this year, I "budgeted" 21thousand 6 hundred dollars. That's an 8% annual growth rate.

But I had a chat with my accountant, and he reminded me that actually, I only earned about 12 thousand dollars LAST year in discretionary income.

That other 8 thousand? I put it on my credit card. BIG problem at 5% interest.

So, I promised him. I swear. I will cut my spending this year. I realize it's a big problem.

So, I figure, I'm going to "only" spend 20 thousand 4 hundred dollars this year. That's right. I am cutting 11% of my spending.

Wait, you ask. If you haven't spent it, and it's only a projection, and you're still going to spend more than you earned, and you're going to owe a lot more at the end of this year, than last year, HOW EXACTLY IS THAT A CUT?

Now you got it.

"Hoarders" has got it all wrong!

2011-08-03T19:48:00.000-04:00

Have you seen any of those "hoarding" shows on A and E or the Discovery?

You know, the ones where someone who would be described colloquially as nutso, but who suffers from severe obsessive compulsive disorder has so much sh*t that there's no place to walk?

And yet, what do they all have in common? Even the ones who say, "I've got a problem. I'm going to lose my family", when it comes time to throw things away, they just can't. Everything is too valuable, or might have use sometime in the future.

Sound like anyone you know?

It seems to me, our government should be the star of the next 10 years of "hoarders" with each episode highliting another obscene federal program that is actually just covering up a pile of roaches, or a dead cat, or some rats, that have made a home in the hoarders pile. Let's start with the bridge to nowhere, turn right to the cowboy poetry festival, and then to some serious stuff like Obama-no care, and the Department of Education.

I think I crapped my pants.

2011-07-25T19:45:00.000-04:00

Listening to "our" President tonight, I reached the boiling point.
The man who has amassed more debt than every President in American History combined, who passed the ultimate government TRILLION dollar boondoggle, who has grown government by more than 30% in TWO YEARS, now says debt is our problem!!!!!

But here's the chutzpah. The budget was due more than a year ago. The President never submitted it. When he FINALLY did, it was rejected, UNANIMOUSLY. That means his own party, STILL the majority in the Senate, rejected it.

What is also forgotten, is that the President demanded a straight up or down vote on raising the debt limit. This was also overwhelmingly rejected by his party.

Never before has there been a President who so consistently insults the intelligence of the American Public. And what's worse is that I fear he will get away with it.

What we can all learn from Thomas Voeckler

2011-07-23T19:43:00.000-04:00

Some background, and yes, this post will serve a larger message.

For the few of you left who have been reading me for a while, you know that, despite my baseball background, the Tour de France is my favorite sporting event in the world.

I first fell in love with it the year that Greg LeMond burst on the scene. Not the first American to ride the Tour (Jonathon Boyer was, LeMond, really the second) he was the first to ride on a powerhouse French team, La Vie Claire, and of course the first to win.

In his first great year, the first American team rode (7 Eleven), and on that team was Eric Heiden (now Dr. Eric Heiden) who had shattered every speed skating record in the world, and won every speed skating medal in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. If you don't know him, it is hard to describe just how much of a sporting giant Heiden was. His victories are the equivalent of the man who wins the 100 meters, also winning the Olympic marathon.

Well, the first year Heiden raced, LeMond won, and Heiden couldn't even finish. This giant couldn't make it up the mountains and said, at the time, that nothing he had ever done could compare to the Tour. That was enough to reel me in.

Flash forward to this year. It was generally regarded that the Tour would be between Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, who was second the last two years, and Alberto Contador, the 3 time defending champion.

Also given some consideration was Cadel Evans, an Aussie who had also been the runner up twice in the past but who made the Tour his entire focus this year.

Others mentioned were Ivan Basso, the 2 time winner of the Giro d'Italia, the Italian equivalent of the tour, and perhaps an even harder race; Frank Schleck, Andy's older brother; Samuel Sanchez, the Olympic Road racing champion; Chris Horner, an American on the powerful Radio Shack team who had just won the Tour of California; Bradley Wiggins another multiple Olympic track champion on his best all time form; Jurgen Van den Broeck, a Belgian, and a few others.

In the tour, the winner has the best combined time over 21 stages, 3 weeks of racing an average of about 125-150 miles a day including all sorts of climbing, sprints, individual time trials, etc.

Generally, the best climbers start their careers as climbing specialists and develop their time trialing skills to become overall winners.

The lesser riders will go all out, sacrificing their bodies for one day, to try and win ONE stage of the race (each stage is considered a separate race by the international cycling organizations).

French cycling has suffered greatly since LeMond's mentor turned foe, Bernard Hinault, last won the tour in 1985.

Early in the race, Thomas Voeckler of the French Europcar team, went on a breakaway, and took the "yellow jersey", the maillot jeune, the race lead.

It's not unusual for a lesser rider to lead the race early on as the favorites actually don't WANT to lead, because of the greater responsibility it places on them.

Voeckler has been a journeyman pro for 10 years or so. His most famous moments came as a young cyclist, when, in a similar situation he held the yellow jersey over Lance Armstrong. In that year, 2000, however, there were no imaginings of victory and he held the jersey during stages that were flat, when everyone finishes together. On the one mountain stage, the famed "Plateau de Beille" in the Pyrenees, he lost more than 5 minutes to Armstrong (more than a miles ride on flat ground).

This year, a similar thing happened. Voeckler went on a breakaway in the 9th stage of the Tour. That was the stage in which the most horrific crash took place, with a TV car hitting two of the other breakaway cyclists.

From the beginning of his days in the yellow, Voeckler said he had no chance to win the race. More than that, he said that, with the upcoming Pyrenees, he would hold the yellow only a day or two.

And then a funny thing happened. He tried. There is an old saying in the Tour, the yellow jersey makes you ride like two men.
Well, Voekler not only stayed with the storied climbers over the iconic Col de Tourmalet, the Col d'aubisque but this time he was right there on the Plateau de Beille, where he had lost 5 minutes to Armstrong.

Every day, he assured the now crazed French that he could not win the race, but that he would honor the Yellow Jersey.

And he continued to fight.

They had said he could not do it in the Pyrenees. In fact, to the commentators, it was almost a joke. There were new reasons every day why he still wore the yellow. And every day, Thomas Voekler got on his bike and pushed himself to do things he didn't think he could.

And every day, he did.

They said that, of course, he made it through the steeper, but shorter climbs of the Pyrenees, but that the monsters of the Alps would destroy him. The leading commentator, Phil Liggett, who I love, actually said "When the Tour is over, you'll need binoculars to see Voeckler"

Yesterday's stage was called the queen of stages. The hardest stage in the history of this more than 100 year old race. 3 "Hor's Category Climbs" meaning so long and steep as to not be able to be classified by the international standards.

Starting with the absurd Col D'ignol, and ending with the iconic Col de Galibier.

And yet, there was Thomas, to the cries of "Allez Thomas" (Go Thomas) from the French crowds, literally grinding his way up, evening dropping the 3 time champion, Alberto Contador, on the last climb up the Galibier.

When the stage ended, he had maintained a 15 second lead and his face was wracked with pain.

Finally, today, on the final stage in the Alps, back over the Galibier and the even more famous Alpe D'Huez (where LeMond had made his name) bad luck came his way. I won't get into the racing strategy but he lost the lead and is now in fourth place.

The last time a French rider was as high as fourth in the Tour, was 1996, 15 year ago.

Voeckler, like the little engine that could, won over the hearts of the entire nation of France, and the entire cycling community. Even as one of his teammates and a fellow Frenchman, won the stage, Voeckler received the loudest cheers. It was said by the French, in their highest compliment, that he had defended the jersey with panache.

But more importantly, he won himself over. Every day he seemed as amazed as everyone else that he was able to match up with all of the prerace favorites.

There will be no trophy for Thomas Voeckler, at the end of the Tour de France, but there will be something more important.

In this day and age, we give trophies for everything. You finished 22d in the spelling bee in school? Here's your ribbon and certificate of achievement. Your little league team finished 9th? Take that trophy young man!

But Voeckler showed us all that it is the effort to achieve, the journey to success that is it's own reward. No trophy is necessary when you find that you can exceed even your own limitations simply by making the effort. When you aim for the best, and make your best efforts, you are always rewarded. It is the effort that matters. Eventually, the victories in life come.

ALLEZ THOMAS!

Ikhwan, Ikhwan, we got an Ikhwan

2011-07-05T19:37:00.000-04:00

The Tipping Point: Embracing the Muslim Brotherhood

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

The Obama administration chose the eve of the holiday marking our Nation's birth to acknowledge publicly behavior in which it has long been stealthily engaged to the United States' extreme detriment: Its officials now admit that they are embracing the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic). That would be the same international Islamist organization that has the destruction of the United States, Israel and all other parts of the Free World as its explicit objective.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to downplay the momentousness of this major policy shift by portraying it during a stopover in Budapest as follows: "The Obama administration is continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that have existed on and off for about five or six years." In fact, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out in a characteristically brilliant, and scathing, dissection of this announcement, Team Obama's official, open legitimation of the Brotherhood marks a dramatic break from the U.S. government's historical refusal to deal formally with the Ikhwan.

To understand why the Obama administration's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood is so ominous, consider three insights into the organization's nature and ambitions:

First, here's the MB's creed: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." (Source: Husain Haqqani and Hillel Fradkin, "Islamist Parties: Going Back to the Origins.")

Second, here's the Ikwhan's mission in America:

"A kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within, sabotaging its miserable house with their [i.e., Americans'] hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." (Source: Muslim Brotherhood's "Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goals of the Group," entered into evidence by the Department of Justice in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-finance trial. Archived at the NEFA Foundation.)

Third, here are excerpts from the Muslim Brotherhood's "phased plan" for accomplishing that mission:

Phase One: Discreet and secret establishment of leadership.

Phase Two: Phase of gradual appearance on the public scene and exercising and utilizing various public activities. It greatly succeeded in implementing this stage. It also succeeded in achieving a great deal of its important goals, such as infiltrating various sectors of the Government.

Phase Three: Escalation phase, prior to conflict and confrontation with the rulers, through utilizing mass media. Currently in progress.

Phase Four: Open public confrontation with the Government through exercising the political pressure approach. It is aggressively implementing the above-mentioned approach. Training on the use of weapons domestically and overseas in anticipation of zero-hour. It has noticeable activities in this regard.

Phase Five: Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation under which all parties and Islamic groups are united. (Source: Undated Muslim Brotherhood Paper entitled, "Phases of the World Underground Movement Plan." Archived at Shariah: The Threat to America.)

In short, the Muslim Brotherhood is deadly serious about waging what it calls "civilization jihad" against the United States and other freedom-loving nations in order to secure their submission to the Islamic totalitarian political-military-legal doctrine called shariah. The MB's goal in this country is to replace our Constitution with theirs, namely the Koran. And they regard this task as one commanded by none other than Allah. (For more details on the nature, ambitions and modus operandi of the Ikhwan, see the Team B II Report, Shariah: The Threat to America). To this end, as Andy McCarthy notes in the aforementioned essay, the MB's senior official, Supreme Guide Muhammad Badi, has effectively declared war on the United States.

Were there any doubt that legitimacy is what the Ikhwan is taking away from this gambit, consider this assessment from an expert in Islamic groups, Ammar Ali Hassan, cited by Associated Press: "...The Brotherhood will likely try to float ‘conditions' or ‘reservations' on any dialogue to avoid a perception that it is allowing the U.S. to meddle in Egypt's internal affairs. But in the end, the talks will give a boost to the group, he said, by easing worries some in the Brotherhood and the public have of a backlash if the Brotherhood becomes the dominant player in Egypt. ‘Now the Muslim Brotherhood will not have to worry [about] moving forward toward taking over power,' Hassan said."

Unfortunately, the U.S. government's dangerous outreach to the Ikhwan is not confined to Egypt but is systematically practiced inside the United States, as well. For example:

Muslim-American organizations identified in court by the U.S. government - and, in many cases, by the Muslim Brotherhood itself - as MB fronts are routinely cultivated by federal, state and local officials. Representatives of homeland security, Pentagon, intelligence and law enforcement agencies frequently meet with and attend functions sponsored by such groups.

MB-associated individuals are sent as our country's "goodwill ambassadors" to foreign Muslim nations and communities. MB-favored initiatives to insinuate shariah into the United States - notably, the Ground Zero Mosque and shariah-compliant finance, conscientious objector status for Muslim servicemen and stifling of free speech in accordance with shariah "blasphemy" laws - are endorsed and/or enabled by official institutions.

A blind eye is turned to the presence across the country of shariah-adherent mosques that incubate jihadism. A peer-reviewed study published last month in Middle East Quarterly determined that 81% of a random sample of 100 mosques exhibited such qualities - constituting an infrastructure for recruitment, indoctrination and training consistent with the Brotherhood's phased plan.

Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, individuals with family and other ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have actually given senior government positions. The most recent of these to come to light is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin (who also happens to be former Rep. Anthony Weiner's wife).

It seems a safe bet tha t, as Team Obama legitimates Muslim Brotherhood organizations and groups overseas, it will feel ever less constrained about further empowering their counterparts in the United States. If so, the MB will come to exercise even greater influence over what our government does and does not do about the threat posed by shariah, both abroad and here.

The absolutely predictable effect will be to undermine U.S. interests and allies in the Middle East and further catalyze the Brotherhood's campaign to insinuate shariah in the United States and, ultimately, to supplant the Constitution with Islamic law. Consequently, the Obama administration's efforts to "engage" the Muslim Brotherhood are not just reckless. They are wholly incompatible with the President's oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" and the similar commitment made by his subordinates.

These officials' now-open embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a geo-strategic tipping point, one that must catalyze an urgent national debate on this question: Does such conduct violate their oath of office by endangering the Constitution they have undertaken to uphold?

At a minimum, such a debate would afford a much-needed opportunity to examine alternatives to the administration's present course - as well as the real risks associated with that its intensifying pursuit. For instance, one of the most astute American authorities on the Middle East in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, Dr. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute:

Rather than embrace the Brotherhood, the Obama administration should be seeking to ensure that the group cannot dominate Egypt. Most analysts agree that the Muslim Brotherhood is by far the best organized group in Egypt, but that it only enjoys perhaps 25 or 30 percent support. The secular opposition remains weak and fractured. If the Obama administration wishes to remain engaged in Egypt's future and shape the best possible outcome for both U.S. national security and the Egyptian people, it should be pushing for electoral reform to change Egypt's dysfunctional system to a proportional representation model in which the secular majority can form a coalition to check a Muslim Brotherhood minority for which true democracy is anathema.

The same goes for the enemy within. Instead of relying upon - let alone hiring - Muslim Brotherhood operatives and associates, the United States government should be shutting down their fronts, shariah-adherent, jihad-incubating "community centers" and insidious influence operations in America. By recognizing these enterprises for what they are, namely vehicles for fulfilling the seditious goals of the MB's civilization jihad, they can and must be treated as prosecutable subversive enterprises, not protected religious ones under the U.S. Constitution.

Let the debate begin.

Freedom House ranks the least (and most) free countries in the world

2011-07-04T19:32:00.000-04:00

The Least Free, according to Freedom House?
Belarus
Burma
Chad
China
Côte d’Ivoire
Cuba
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Laos
Libya
North Korea
Saudi Arabia
Somalia
Sudan
Syria
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Tibet
South Ossetia
Western Sahara

Of the other middle East nations, all of them are ranked in the LOWEST category of "NOT FREE" except Lebanon which manages "Partly Free" largely because of it's acceptance of Christianity.

As for Israel? Suprise, it achieves the highest status of "Free" with a 1 (the highest and the same as the US) for political rights.

Oh, and in case you may wonder, the board of Freedom House is comprised of a wide variety of people, and a huge number of Arabs, so bias is not a question.

Does Glenn Beck know something we don't?

2011-07-03T19:30:00.000-04:00

Nope, this isn't going to be what you think it is.

Here in NY we have some experience with a media personality leaving the conventional "system".

Actually 2 of them. The first was, famously, Howard Stern.

His show was syndicated all over but he broadcast from WXRK here in NY. Stern was a regular in the gossip columns, regularly appeared on Letterman and other NY shows.

Next was Chris Russo of WFAN, the sports talk station. Russo spent 15 years as the co-host of the "Mike and the Mad Dog" show. He and co-host Mike Francessa are credited with being really the popularizers of the sports talk format.

Both left commercial radio and signed highly publicized deals with Sirrus satellite radio.

After much publicity on their moves, they have both largely disappeared from public consciousness. When was the last time you saw either of them on a talk show, or with a book on the best seller list.

So, I was fascinated when Beck decided to leave Fox (or mutually decided - despite reports, I doubt, with his ratings, that he was fired.).

But he may have hit the mother lode. Why or how you ask?

Simple. He is starting his own internet broadcast.

That in and of itself, is something no one else has really done.

But more than that, he is charging only $4.95/month for his show.

That amount is low enough as to be no "barrier to entry" for the overwhelming majority of people. And barriers to entry are the first thing people look at when trying to decide the viability of a business.

It's such a low price that I can see people saying 'what the heck' I'll give it a try. And like so many automatic credit card charges, people tend to get lazy and let them keep going, particularly when it's that cheap.

So, why is he right? I honestly think he has hit a home run here.

If you think about the numbers, he averaged about 1.4 million viewers a day. If he merely holds on to 5% of that, the numbers are this, 70,000 viewers at $5/mo. (If they sign up for his higher level program of $9.99 you can double some the #'s) adds up to $350,000 a month. 4.2 million a year.

If he holds onto 10% of this audience, than he's REALLY doing well.

I think he may really be at the forefront of a new media. Even a pioneer.

Independence Day (an annual repost with edits)

2011-06-30T19:26:00.000-04:00

Some may wonder what the real significance of July 4th, or Independence day is to the world, let alone the United States.

The 18th century was known as the Age of Revolutions, and for good reason. It was ended, really, with the Russian Revolution of 1917, but there were revolutions throughout the Western World in the century starting in 1775, indicating the ascendancy of the believers in Natural Law and the ascension of the promoters of this humanistic view, the "philosophes".

For the first time in history, there was talk among intellectuals of "human rights". Not the way we know them now, but that mankind had certain rights which could not be proscribed by legislatures, let alone kings.

More directly the entire concept of "divine rule" of a monarch was thrown into dispute and the idea that G*d had granted to man certain rights and that there were also natural laws or "laws of nature" that had to be obeyed were new and revolutionary.

These ideas had been fomenting and had been written about all over the world. They can be seen in the writings of Locke and Rousseau. Jefferson himself had written down many of the same ideas in his Constitution of the state of Virginia and Adams had copied them for Massachusetts.

But what separates the American Revolution was the writing of Thomas Jefferson.

The Declaration of Independence, heavily edited by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and truncated by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, is considered by most historians to be the pre-eminent document of the "Age of Enlightenment".

It is brilliant in it's simplicity and it's execution.

"We hold these truths to be self evident..."

No need for discussion, all intelligent gentleman now understand that these truths are, and of right , ought to be, shared by all (white men, of course).

"...that all men are created equal"

No longer were there serfs and a monarch, but rather gentleman, all of whom had a right to express their opinions.

"...that they are endowed by their creator with rights..."

Rights are divinely granted but of this earth.

Below are the words that this country was founded upon.

Go to UShistory dot org to also read Jefferson's original version, his draft. You will see how the beauty was crafted, and the parts that, had they been allowed to remain, would have changed history.

Most important among these edits was the dis inclusion (the editing out by vote of the Continental Congress) of the following passages dealing with slavery. In order to ensure a unanimous vote, the bloc of Southern States demanded it's removal:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of
a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying
them to slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportations thither. this piratical warfare,
the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian
king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN
should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold
this execrable commerce ^ and that this assemblage of horrors might
want no fact of distinguished die

(Ironic that I wrote this 4 years ago for the first time. I think Michelle Bachmann ought to point this out to George Stephanapolous).

Read it, and appreciate it again, and the men and women who have died to protect these words and what they mean.

Now the text of the Declaration:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

An Obama foreign policy

2011-06-25T19:25:00.000-04:00

Caroline Glick

Outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is worried about the shape of things to come in US foreign policy. In an interview with Newsweek over the weekend, Gates sounded the warning bells.

In Gates' words, "I've spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. It didn't have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong. This is a different time.

"To tell you the truth, that's one of the many reasons it's time for me to retire, because frankly I can't imagine being part of a nation, part of a government... that's being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world."

What Gates is effectively saying is not that economic forecasts are gloomy. US defense spending comprises less than five percent of the federal budget. If US President Barack Obama wanted to maintain that level of spending, the Republican-controlled Congress would probably pass his defense budget. What Gates is saying is that he doesn't trust his commander in chief to allocate the resources to preserve America's superpower status. He is saying that he believes that Obama is willing to surrender the US's status as a superpower.

THIS WOULD be a stunning statement for any defense secretary to make about the policies of a US President. It is especially stunning coming from Gates. Gates began his tenure at the Pentagon under Obama's predecessor George W. Bush immediately after the Republican defeat in the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections.

Many conservatives hailed Obama's decision to retain Gates as defense secretary as a belated admission that Bush's aggressive counter-terror policies were correct. These claims ignored the fact that in his last two years in office, with the exception of the surge of troops in Iraq, under the guidance of Gates and then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Bush's foreign policies veered very far to the Left.

Gates's role in shaping this radical shift was evidenced by the positions he took on the issues of the day in the two years leading up to his replacement of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. In 2004, Gates co-authored a study for the Council on Foreign Relations with Israel foe Zbigniew Brzezinski calling for the US to draw closer to Iran at Israel's expense.

Immediately before his appointment, Gates was a member of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. The group's final report, released just as his appointment was announced, blamed Israel for the instability in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Its only clear policy recommendations involved pressuring Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria and Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to a Hamas-Fatah "national unity government."

In office, Gates openly opposed the option of the US or Israel attacking Iran's nuclear installations. He rejected Israel's repeated requests to purchase weapons systems required to attack Iran's nuclear installations. He openly signaled that the US would deny Israel access to Iraqi airspace. He supported American appeasement of the Iranian regime. And he divulged information about Israel's purported nuclear arsenal and Israeli Air Force rehearsals of assaults on Iran.

A month before Russia's August 2008 invasion of US ally Georgia, Gates released his National Defense Strategy which he bragged was a "blueprint for success" for the next administration. Ignoring indications of growing Russian hostility to US strategic interests - most clearly evidenced in Russia's opposition to the deployment of US anti-missile batteries in the Czech Republic and Poland and in Russia's strategic relations with Iran and Syria - Gates advocated building "collaborative and cooperative relations" with the Russian military.

After Russia invaded Georgia, Gates opposed US action of any kind against Russia.

GIVEN THIS track record, it was understandable that Obama chose to retain Gates at the Pentagon. To date, Obama's only foreign policy that is distinct from Bush's final years is his Israel policy. Whereas Bush viewed Israel as a key US ally and friend, from the first days of his administration, Obama has sought to "put daylight" between the US and Israel. He has repeatedly humiliated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He has abandoned the US's quiet defense of Israel's purported nuclear arsenal. He has continuously threatened to abandon US support for Israel at the UN.

Not only has Obama adopted the Palestinians' increasingly hostile policies towards Israel. He has led them to those policies. It was Obama, not Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas, who first demanded that Israel cease respecting Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first called for the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of 2011. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first stipulated that future "peace" negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be predicated on Israel's prior acceptance of the indefensible 1949 armistice lines as a starting point for talks.

All of these positions, in addition to Obama's refusal to state outright that he rejects the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through unlimited Arab immigration to its indefensible "peace" borders, mark an extreme departure from the Israel policies adopted by his predecessor.

Aside from its basic irrationality, Obama's policy of favoring the Palestinians against the US's most dependable ally in the Middle East is notable for its uniqueness. In every other area, his policies are aligned with those adopted by his predecessor.

His decision to surge the number of US forces in Afghanistan was a natural progression from the strategy Bush implemented in Iraq and was moving towards in Afghanistan.

His use of drones to conduct targeted killings of terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan is an escalation not a departure from Bush's tactics.

Obama's decision to gradually withdraw US combat forces from Iraq was fully consonant with Bush's policy.

His decision to engage with the aim of appeasing the Iranian regime while supporting the adoption of ineffective sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council is also a natural progression from Bush's policies.

His bid to "reset" US relations with Russia was largely of a piece with Bush's decision not to oppose in any way Russia's invasion of Georgia.

Obama's courtship of Syria is different from Bush's foreign policy. But guided by Rice and Gates, Bush was softening his position on Syria. For instance, Bush endorsed Rice's insistence that Israel remain mum on the North Korean-built illicit nuclear installation at Deir-A-Zour that the Air Force destroyed in September 2007.

As for Egypt, as many senior Bush administration officials crowed, Obama's abandonment of 30-year US ally Hosni Mubarak was of a piece with Bush's democracy agenda.

Obama's policy toward Libya is in many respects unique. It marks the first time since the War Powers Act passed into law 30 years ago that a US President has sent US forces into battle without seeking the permission of the US Congress. It is the first time that a president has openly subordinated US national interests to the whims of the UN and NATO and insisted on fighting a war that serves no clear US national interest.

Notably, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the war in Libya. In interviews in March he said that Muammar Gaddafi posed no threat to US interests and that no vital US interests are served by the US mission in Libya.

Yet even Obama's Libya policy is not as sharp a departure from Bush's foreign policy as his Israel policy is. Although Bush wouldn't have argued that the UN gets to decide where US troops are deployed, he did believe that the US needed UN permission to deploy troops.

TO A degree, it is the basic incoherence of Obama's Libya policy that puts it in line with all of his other foreign policies except Israel. Those policies - from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay - are marked by inconsistencies. Like Libya, there is a strong sense that Obama's foreign policy to date has not been guided by an overarching worldview but rather spring from ad hoc decisions with no guiding conceptual framework.

But if Gates's words to Newsweek are any indication, all of this may be about to change. If Gates believed that Obama would continue to implement the policies of Bush's last two years with minor exceptions while sticking it to Israel, he would likely not have spoken out against Obama's policies so strongly. Apparently Gates believes that Obama's foreign policy is about to undergo a radical transformation.

And this would make sense, particularly if, as Obama has said a number of times, he is more committed to transforming America than winning a second term in office.

Until the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives last November, Obama was able to concentrate on passing his domestic agenda. Obama's willingness to lose the elections in order to push through his radical health care reform package demonstrated his commitment to implementing his policies at all costs.

With the Republicans in charge, Obama can't even pass his 2011 budget let alone his far reaching plans to transform US immigration policy, labor policy, environmental policy and Social Security.

In these circumstances, the only place where the power of the presidency gives him wide-ranging freedom of action to transform the US is foreign affairs.

What Gates's fiery departure indicates then is that for the rest of his term, Obama's entire foreign policy is liable to be as radical a departure from Bush's foreign policy as his Israel policy is. The war in Libya is a sign that things are changing. The fact that in recent months even Gates has taken to attacking Obama's Iran policy as too soft, further attests to a radicalization at work.

Then there is Obama's Afghanistan policy. When in 2009 Obama announced his surge and withdraw policy, Gates minimized the importance of Obama's pledge to begin withdrawing US combat forces in July 2011. In recent months, Gates has joined US combat commanders in pleading with the White House not to begin the troop drawdown until next year. But to no avail.

Not only is he unwilling to delay the withdrawal of combat troops. Obama is suing for peace with the Taliban. As Republican lawmakers have argued, there is no way the empowerment of the Taliban in Afghanistan can be viewed as anything but a defeat for the US.

Gates's successor at the Pentagon will be outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta. US military and intelligence officers believe that Panetta's chief mission at the Pentagon will be to slash US defense budgets. Since his appointment was announced, sources inside the military have expressed deep concern that the planned budget cuts will render it impossible for the US to maintain its position as a global superpower. More than anything else, Gates' statements to Newsweek indicate that he shares this perception of Obama's plans.

To date, Obama's stewardship of US foreign policy has been marked by gross naivete, incompetence and a marked willingness to demean and weaken his country's moral standing in the world.

Imagine what will happen if in the next year and a half Obama embarks on a course that makes his Israel policy the norm rather than the exception in US foreign policy.

Losing His Religion: A Pentagon terror scare and a media taboo.

2011-06-21T19:23:00.000-04:00

By JAMES TARANTO

There was a terror scare at the Pentagon this morning. As CBS News reports, it started when the U.S. Park Police "came upon" 22-year-old Yonathan Melaku wandering around Arlington National Cemetery, which was closed. "The Park Police then launched a search for a vehicle, which was found near the Pentagon."

A search of the car turned up "no suspicious items," but Melaku told the cops "that he was carrying explosive materials." They checked his backpack and "found what appeared to be an unknown quantity of ammonium nitrate," a chemical "that is widely used in fertilizers and can be used in explosives with the correct concentration."

We learn from the CBS story that Melaku is a lance corporal in the Marine Reserves. The Associated Press adds that he is a naturalized American citizen, originally from Ethiopia. CBS also reports that "Melaku was carrying a notebook that contained the phrases 'al Qaeda,' 'Taliban rules' and 'Mujahid defeated croatian forces' when he was detained," but "that the suspect is not thought to have been involved in a terrorist act or plot."

All of which raises an obvious question--but one that goes unanswered in the reports from CBS and AP, as well as others from ABC News and the Washington Post. We could only find one news organization that had the answer: Fox News Channel, which reports that Maliku is Muslim.

Now, it's possible that Fox simply got a scoop here, but our guess is that this fact was omitted from the other reports because of the politically correct taboo against making a connection between Islam and terrorism. It's analogous to the case we cited Monday in which the Chicago Tribune refused to mention the race of the members of "groups of youths" who had been attacking people in a downtown neighborhood, but it's worse. Whereas race is not necessarily relevant to the motive of the Chicago attacks, religion almost always is when a Muslim commits an act of terrorism or a related crime.

These politically correct strictures are not applied in a consistent or reciprocal fashion. If Maliku were a Christian and had been arrested outside an abortion clinic, you can bet his religion would have been widely reported. And the press sensationalizes "hate crimes" by whites against blacks or non-Muslims against Muslims.

One possible explanation is the man-bites-dog theory of news: that those types of crimes get more attention because they're unusual. But that doesn't hold up. Remember last August when a Muslim taxi driver was stabbed in New York? It was a sensational story that the New York Times used to further its narrative that anti-Muslim bigotry was behind opposition to the Ground Zero mosque. But the Times deeply buried the real man-bites-dog element: The suspect turned out to be a volunteer for a nonprofit that supported the mosque.

The typical justification for declining to identify criminal suspects as Muslim or black is that it is an effort to counter invidious stereotypes. We're not sure it is even effective at that. The day after the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, we were at a lunch when we received a news-alert email that eight people had been injured in a shooting at an Orlando, Fla., office building. We mentioned this to our table mates, and one asked: "Was it a Muslim?"

The email didn't say, but it turned out the attack fit a different stereotype: the disgruntled former employee going postal. When news organizations evade facts that fit what they see as undesirable stereotypes, they train news consumers to fill in the blanks even when the stereotypes do not apply.

Obama’s knack for handcuffing peace

2011-06-13T19:19:00.000-04:00

By HERB KEINON
10/06/2011

If you want to know what the Palestinians are going to do tomorrow, just listen to what US President Barack Obama says today

If you want to know what the Palestinians are going to do tomorrow, just listen to what US President Barack Obama says today. In May 2009, after the first meeting in the White House between Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the US leader made a comment that set the tone for the next couple of years and pretty much killed any chance of negotiations: Settlements must stop.

“Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward,” he declared.

The Palestinians, who until that point had never made a total settlement freeze – including in areas beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem – a condition for negotiations, heard Obama and pounced. If this was what the American president was saying, how could they ask for anything less?

Or, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said himself in a Newsweek interview in April, “It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump.”

And then again in September 2010, at the UN General Assembly, Obama addressed the Israeli- Palestinian issue just as the 10-month Netanyahumandated settlement freeze was about to come to an end. “We have travelled a winding road over the last 12 months, with few peaks and many valleys,” he said.

With his distinctive soaring rhetoric, Obama declared, “The conflict between Israelis and Arabs is as old as this institution. And we can come back here next year, as we have for the last 60 years, and make long speeches about it. We can read familiar lists of grievances. We can table the same resolutions. We can further empower the forces of rejectionism and hate. And we can waste more time by carrying forward an argument that will not help a single Israeli or Palestinian child achieve a better life.

“Or,” he went on, “we can say that this time will be different – that this time we will not let terror, or turbulence, or posturing, or petty politics stand in the way. This time, we will think not of ourselves, but of the young girl in Gaza who wants to have no ceiling on her dreams, or the young boy in Sderot who wants to sleep without the nightmare of rocket fire.

“This time, we should draw upon the teachings of tolerance that lie at the heart of three great religions that see Jerusalem’s soil as sacred. This time we should reach for what’s best within ourselves. If we do, when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations – an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel.”

And that was it – all of a sudden September 2011 became a magic deadline for declaring a Palestinian state.

True, Netanyahu had said after meeting Abbas in Washington a few weeks before Obama’s UN address that he believed “we should make every effort to reach an historic compromise for peace over the coming year.” But it wasn’t until Obama spoke of Palestine as a new member of the UN by 2011 that this date suddenly became a benchmark.

For instance, since that speech, the EU has consistently set September as a deadline of sorts, including referring to a “framework agreement by September 2011” in a statement released as recently as May 23 by the heads of the EU countries – a statement notable for the degree to which it seemed completely divorced from reality.

Does anyone really think a framework agreement is going to be reached by that date, what with the sides not even directly speaking to each other at this point? Still Obama said September 2011, and neither the Europeans nor the Palestinians are going to appear less Catholic than the Pope.

The Europeans put this deadline in their statements, and the Palestinians have expressed their determination to fulfill Obama’s prophecy in September by asking for UN recognition of a Palestinian state – whether that recognition means anything or not, and regardless of the consequences. Obama set the bar, and the Palestinians are not going to lower it; rather, they will do whatever they can to jump over – even if there is no landing pit on the other side.

And then the pattern of Obama making declarations and the Palestinians adopting those declarations as their tactics repeated itself again last month.

In his State Department speech on the Middle East on May 19, a day before Netanyahu was due in town, Obama said that “while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel.

“The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine.

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” Obama also laid out his policy toward the sequencing of negotiations, essentially adopting the Palestinian position by saying that the “two wrenching and emotional issues” of the future of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees should be deferred and discussed after questions of territory and security were addressed.

With that speech, Obama struck a third time. If Obama said that the basis of negotiations should be the 1967 lines, and that Jerusalem and refugees should be deferred to a later date, then who were the Palestinians to quibble? And, indeed, they did not quibble. In fact, clutching those parameters to his breast is exactly what Palestinian senior official Saeb Erekat did Tuesday during a speech at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

According to The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, Erekat “staked out a new position” in his speech, saying that talks would only commence if Netanyahu formally accepted Obama’s 1967-lines parameters, something Netanyahu has made abundantly clear he has no intention of doing.

If Netanyahu “wants to be a partner he has to say it: Two states on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps,” Erekat said. “He has a choice.” Erekat said that without that declaration, there would be no talks, and the PA would go ahead with its UN push.

“I have no quarrel with the United States,” Erekat stated. “If Mr. Netanyahu says he accepts the two-state solution on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps, he’s on.”

There’s the pattern: Obama makes a declaration – one Israel cannot accept – and it becomes the newest Palestinian prenegotiating position. But when the Palestinians take up this position – knowing full well it is a source of US-Israeli friction – it seems meant not to promote a solution, butto chip away at Israeli-US government ties.

Erekat, Diehl said, “left little doubt that he was staking out a position in response to the Obama administration’s efforts to restart negotiations – a position that appears aimed less at advancing the process than at deepening the discord between the Israeli and US governments.”

Erekat’s comments, moreover, come at a time when the operative assumption in Jerusalem is, and has been for months, that Abbas has no desire in the world to negotiate with Netanyahu.

Indicative of this assumption is a diplomatic cable that arrived in the Foreign Ministry this week from a senior diplomatic official in Washington who met with a senior Palestinian official stationed there. The cable made clear that the Palestinian official believed Abbas was intent on going to the UN in September, and that he had decided to “abandon the process,” and had “no intention of returning to negotiations.” The cable also said that at this point in time Abbas was primarily concerned about his historical legacy.

What Obama does with his various declarations is give Abbas the cover to stay away from negotiations, while blaming Israel for his own rejectionist stance.

Just as Netanyahu could not, for a variety of reasons – political and ideological – declare another settlement moratorium, forcing Obama to have to backtrack on that demand, it is also unlikely he will now accept a return to negotiations based on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed upon swaps, unless some very significant “sweeteners” are thrown into the mix: such as Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, a formula that would imply an abandonment of the Palestinian dream of a “right of return.”

But the chances of that happening are slim indeed. Concerned with his legacy, Abbas is not eager to go down in the Palestinian history books as the one who closed the door to the descendents of Palestinian refugees “returning” to Haifa, Jaffa and Safed.

The negotiations, therefore, remain stymied, and Obama has uncovered an uncanny ability – with his declarations – to handcuff the very diplomatic process he is trying to push forward.

Something you'll never see anywhere else...

2011-06-10T19:17:00.000-04:00

in the Arab world, but certainly do every year in Israel. Now, why is Code Pink protesting Israel?

'It's worth being gay'
By YONI COHEN
10/06/2011
From street parades to beach parties, there's something for everyone at the all-accepting Tel Aviv Gay Pride 2011.

The slogan for this year's Tel Aviv Gay Pride events is “It’s worth being gay!” And indeed, it looks like it'll be worth attending as the 2011 Pride Parade, the central event of the celebrations, is set to be as big and impressive as ever.

The huge street parade set to take place on Friday, is expected to be attended by thousands of locals and tourists, and will culminate with a beach party. The parade will begin in Gan Meir at around 1:30 p.m., pass through Bograshov and Ben Yehuda Streets and end at Gordon beach.

Though the parade is the main event, the weekend's festivities will kick off on Thursday night with "Sunset Beach Cocktail" party located on the southern part of the Tel Aviv beach close to the David Intercontinental hotel in Clara, a trendy open air mega bar. The leading DJs in town will come together to host the official opening of Pride Weekend.

On Friday morning from 10:00 a.m to 12:00 p.m. there will be a two-hour Gay City Tour, which will explore the heart of Tel Aviv, telling the story of the LGBT community. Pre-booking is necessary: telavivgayvibe..com, Starting point: Meir Tower Herzl corner of Ahad Ha’am.

For those in search of something a little more upbeat, MTV will be putting on a crazy drag celebration hosted by TLV’s most favored drag queens, performing the hottest MTV hits. Gan Meir. 10:00 a.m. till 1:30 p.m.

Some of the best DJs in town and international guests will keep the beach party going until 6:30 p.m. Performers include Lovegang (Hamburg), Erez B.I., Samuel Blacher, Israel Aharoni, Ziona Patriot, Offir Malol, Shimai (Barcelona), Oscar Loya (Berlin) and many more.

A number of parties will pump on well into the early hours of Saturday morning. Evita, popular with tourists and locals alike, will be hosting its very own Parade Party, bringing the trash back to the dance floor. Evita bar, 31 Yavne St.

For those that still have energy left on Saturday, the 6th Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival will be opened with a party named "We Will Rock You!" Three Israeli divas - Talula Bonet, Oshree, Betty Licious - will be rocking one stage. The music will be provided by DJs Mikey Hefez, Mikka Shmikka & Adi Dgani, and straight from Berlin DJ Metzgerei. ZIZI, 7 Karlibach St. 10:30 p.m. .

The pride weekend events, which cost a total of some 300,000, are mainly being organized by Tel Aviv's municipality as well as volunteers from the community.

Over 5,000 tourists were expected to arrive from overseas just to join in the celebrations, said Shai Doitsh, "Tel Aviv Gay Vibe" Brand Manager and national board member of the LGBT Aguda.

Doitsh also explained that the municipality and all other bodies are fully supportive of the events and he believes that support will only increase from year to year.

In fact, many of Tel Aviv's residents support the pride celebrations, as well as the city's mayor, Ron Huldai. He recently said that "the gay community serves as a true example of tolerance and openness, and even lights the way for other groups in Israel."

The Real Story

2011-06-08T19:10:00.000-04:00

Those of you who have read my blog know that I have zero love for Sarah Palin. In fact, I don't like, or dislike her.

I AM fascinated by the mainstream media's obsession with her, but that is not the point.

She has no, zero, nada, zilch, bearing or effect on my life. She will never hold national office, so what do I care about her or anything she says. Frankly, she's an idiot.

However, I am more interested in the lambasting of her "Paul Revere" comments, by that same media.

Sorry to say but Sarah's comments about warning the British not to disarm the Americans, and ringing bells and firing warning shots is correct.

The media's apparent belief that it was Paul Revere who actually rode from Lexington to Concorde and put up some lanterns in the old North Church is from the Longfellow poem, NOT history. (There was a lantern put up in the church, but that was to signal across Boston Harbor to Charlestown).

So, for those who don't know.

Revere was a silversmith by trade. And a fairly successful one at that. He also tried his hand at dentistry and a few other things, but the smithing business he got from his father.

He had been involved in the agitation against the British Army Regulars, the royal governor and the crown for some time. In fact, he frequently used his presses to help create the images that went on some of the pamphlets of the day.

He was a member, and leader, of a group known as the "Sons of Liberty".

The Sons had established a warning system. Why?

Two of the most offensive policies to the Bay Colony's residents in that time was the commonplace breaking in of their homes by the British regulars to "impress" American boys into the British army, and also to confiscate weapons, which the British knew could be used against them.

This is the VERY reason that the 2d and 4th amendments were added to the constitution (Right to bear arms in a militia, and the restraint against illegal search and seizures).

In the leadup to the ride, British General Gage had received instructions from the crown to DISARM the rebels and arrest their leaders, in particular, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock.

Remember your history. Samuel Adams known as the "Father of the Revolution".

Revere, along with William Dawes, was dispatched on two separate routes from Lexington to Concorde by Dr. Joseph Warren, to warn Hancock and Adams and to help them escape.

On the way, Revere was joined by Dr. Samuel Prescott, who was on his way back from seeing his fiancee.

Revere and Dawes were both captured by the British on the way back from Lexington. Apparently, Dawes was something of an actor and convinced the British to release him immediately, pretending to be a drunk, or some such thing.

Prescott continued on the ride to Concorde.

Along the route, both the orinal route ridden by Revere and Dawes, and later the route ridden by Prescott and at least a dozen, and as many as 40, other riders (we don't know exactly how many) bells rang out and warning shots were fired to warn of the coming British Regulars.

Under questioning by the British, Revere warned them of the dire consequences that would be suffered if they tried to disarm the "Sons of Liberty" or the other Patriots, or if they detained Hancock and Adams.

As a note, two of the riders that we know of were a woman, and even more fascinating, because of the white washing of African American History, was a 9 year old African American rider named Abel Benson.

Now, if you don't believe me, here's a blurb from the History Channel (Discovery Networks) website:

"Paul Revere would be surprised that he receives sole credit for the midnight ride. In addition to Dawes and Prescott, dozens of other men helped spread the word that night. Still, some historians think Revere deserves the credit. Through his networking and leadership skills, he basically built the massive communications machine that made the night of April 18 a success. Revere started other express riders on their way before leaving Boston, and he also alerted others along his journey. They too began riding, or shot guns and rang church bells to alert the community. Revere covered 13 miles in less than two hours, but he was not working alone."

So I ask you, who is a fool here? Sarah, or the people who think the history of the United States was written by a poet in days leading up to the Civil War, 80 years after the event?

If you want a moderately accurate accounting of the ride, go to the Paul Revere House's website. Obviously, it will emphasize Revere's role, but a more complete picture will be available.

Finally, this is in no way to minimize Revere. He was an incredible Patriot, the ride was largely from a system he designed, and he had to navigate his way through the British troops even to begin his ride. But should he be the only one who is remembered? No. And should Sarah be pilloried for getting it right?

Where Obama is Leading Israel By Caroline Glick

2011-06-01T19:07:00.000-04:00

In the aftermath of US President Barack Obama's May 19 speech on the Middle East, his supporters argued that the policy toward Israel and the Palestinians that Obama outlined in that speech was not anti-Israel. As they presented it, Obama's assertion that peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be based on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps does not mark a substantive departure from the positions adopted by his predecessors in the Oval Office.

But this claim is exposed as a lie by previous administration statements. On November 25, 2009, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's acceptance of Obama's demand for a 10-month moratorium on Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the State Department issued the following statement: "Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements."

In his speech, Obama stated: "The United States believes... the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."

That is, he took "the Palestinian goal" and made it the US's goal. It is hard to imagine a more radically anti-Israel policy shift than that.

And that wasn't Obama's only radically anti-Israel policy shift. Until his May 19 speech, the US agreed with Israel that the issue of borders is only one of many - including the Palestinians' rejection of Israel's right to exist, their demand to inundate Israel with millions of foreign Arab immigrants, their demand for control over Israel's water supply and Jerusalem - that have to be sorted out in negotiations. The joint US-Israeli position was that until all of these issues were resolved, none of them were resolved.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, claim that before they will discuss any of these other issues, Israel has to first agree to accept the indefensible 1967 boundaries as its permanent borders. This position allows the Palestinians to essentially maintain their policy of demanding that Israel make unreciprocated concessions that then serve as the starting point for further unreciprocated concessions.

It is a position that is antithetical to peace. And on May 19, by stipulating that Israel must accept the Palestinian position on borders as a precondition for negotiations, Obama adopted it as US policy.

SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel.

On Friday Yediot Aharonot reported on the dimensions of the threat Obama may pose to the Jewish state.. The paper's account was based on administration and Congressional sources.. The story discussed Obama's plans to contend with the Palestinian plan to pass a resolution at the UN General Assembly in September endorsing Palestinian statehood in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

According to Yediot, during his meeting with Obama on May 20, Netanyahu argued that in light of the Palestinians' automatic majority support at the General Assembly, there was no way to avoid the resolution.

Netanyahu reportedly explained that the move would not be a disaster. The General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed the PLO's declaration of independence in 1988.

And the sky still hasn't fallen.

Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Yediot's report asserts that Obama refused to brief Netanyahu on the steps his administration is taking to avert such an unpalatable option. What the paper did report was how George Mitchell - Obama's Middle East envoy until his resignation last week - recommended Obama proceed on this issue.

According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal.

That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.

Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations.

First there was his speech before AIPAC. Among other things, Obama used the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a justification for his policies of demanding that Israel capitulate to the Palestinians' demands, which he has now officially adopted as US policy.

As he put it, "there is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process - or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab world, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia. That impatience is growing, and is already manifesting itself in capitals around the world."

From AIPAC, Obama moved on to Europe. There he joined forces with European governments in an attempt to gang up on Israel at the G8 meeting.

Obama sought to turn his embrace of the Palestinian negotiating position into the consensus position of the G8. His move was scuttled by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who refused to accept any resolution that made mention of borders without mentioning the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through Arab immigration, Israel's right to defensible borders, or the Palestinians' refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.

If Harper had not stood by Israel, the G8's anti-Israel resolution endorsing the Palestinian negotiating position could have formed the basis of a US-sponsored anti-Israel Security Council resolution.

Israelis planning their summer trips should put Canada at the top of their lists.

THE FINAL step Obama has taken to solidify the impression that he does not have Israel's best interests at heart, is actually something he has not done. Over the past week, Fatah leaders of the US-backed Palestinian Authority have made a series of statements that put paid any thought that they are interested in peace with Israel or differ substantively from their partners in Hamas.

At the Arab League meeting in Qatar on Saturday, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian state "will be free of all Jews."

Last week the US-supported Abbas denied the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and claimed absurdly that the Palestinians were 9,000 years old.

Equally incriminating, in an interview last week with Aaron Lerner from the IMRA newsgathering website, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said that now that Hamas was the co-leader of the PA with Fatah, responsibility for continuing to hold IDF St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit hostage devolved from Hamas to the PA. And the PA would continue to hold him hostage.

Shaath's statement makes clear that rather than moderating Hamas, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal is transforming Fatah into Hamas.

And yet, Obama has had nothing to say about any of this.

Obama's now undeniable antipathy for Israel and his apparent willingness to use his power as American president to harm Israel at the UN and elsewhere guarantee that for the duration of his tenure in office, Israel will face unprecedented threats to its security. This disturbing reality ought to focus the attention of all Israelis and of the American Jewish community. With the leader of the free world now openly siding with forces bent on Israel's destruction, the need for unity has become acute.

MADDENINGLY, HOWEVER, at this time of unprecedented danger we see the Israeli media have joined ranks with Kadima in siding with Obama against Israel in a joint bid to bring down Netanyahu's government. Yediot Aharonot, Maariv, Haaretz, Channel 2, Channel 10, Army Radio and Israel Radio's coverage of Netanyahu's visit and its aftermath was dominated by condemnations of the prime minister, and praise for Obama and opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who called for Netanyahu to resign.

The fact that polling data showed that only 12 percent of Jewish Israelis regard Obama as pro-Israeli and that the overwhelming majority of the public with an opinion believes Netanyahu's visit was a success made absolutely no impression on the media. The wall-to-wall condemnations of Netanyahu by the Israeli media lend the impression that Israel's leading reporters and commentators are committed to demoralizing the public into believing that Israel has no option other than surrender.

Then there is the American Jewish leadership. And at this critical time in US-Israel relations, the American Jewish leadership is either silent or siding with Obama. Right after Obama's shocking speech on May 19, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement endorsing it. Stand With Us congratulated Obama for his AIPAC speech.

With the notable exceptions of the Zionist Organization of America and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA), leaders of American Jewish organizations have refused to condemn Obama's anti-Israel positions.

Their silence becomes all the more enraging when placed against the massive support Israel receives from rank-and-file American Jews. In a survey of American Jews taken by CAMERA on May 16-17, between 75% and 95% of American Jews supported Israel's position on defensible borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian "refugees," Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist and the right of Jews to live in a Palestinian state.

The refusal of most American Jewish leaders, the Israeli media and Kadima to condemn Obama today makes you wonder if there is anything the US president could do to convince them to break ranks and stand with Israel and with the vast majority of their fellow Jews. But it is more than a source of wonder. It is a reason to be frightened. Because Obama's actions over the past two weeks make clear to anyone willing to see that in the age of Obama, silence is dangerous.

The "Arab Spring" continues to look a lot like winter

2011-05-28T19:05:00.000-04:00

By Kristen Chick

CAIRO— (TCSM) An attack by Muslims on two churches in Cairo led to sectarian clashes that claimed at least 12 lives, a reminder that Egypt's religious rift has continued to widen since the successful uprising that pushed Hosni Mubarak from power.

The violence in the Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba, declared in the 1990's to be "liberated" from the Egyptian state by Islamist militants, also highlights the growing role the salafis, a small and strident Muslim sect, are playing in exacerbating sectarian tensions. The salafy strain of Islam, which feeds most militant Sunni movements, was publicly repressed under Mubarak and has been taking advantage of the more open environment since his downfall.

"There is no security in Egypt," says Rober, a 23-year member of the Virgin Mary church, which was largely reduced to a smoldering hulk after it was set alight Saturday night. He stood in a burned-out stairway and watched as a woman walked past, weeping. "This is only the beginning. I'm afraid for my sister, for my mother, from the salafis."

On Sunday, stories of what happened Saturday night varied wildly in Imbaba's maze of dirt alleyways. The sprawling neighborhood on the west side of the Nile is poor and mostly Muslim, but has large pockets of Coptic Christians, who account for as much as 10 percent of Egypt's population. The sectarian violence also left at least 232 injured and saw police and army forces move into the area and impose a curfew. They blocked access to the St. Mina church, where the violence began.

Christian witnesses say St. Mina was attacked by a group of armed salafis carrying Ak-47s and throwing Molotov cocktails on Saturday. The witnesses say the attackers accused the church of abducting a woman who had converted from Christianity to Islam, and also destroyed a nearby Christian apartment building and a Christian-owned shop before setting the Virgin Mary church on fire.

The violence started when rumors spread that Christians had abducted a woman who had converted to Islam and married a Muslim man, and were holding her inside St. Mina church. Christians said the rumor was false, and there was no such woman. Alleged female conversions and abductions have been a flashpoint for sectarian tensions for years.

Last year Camillia Shehata, the wife of a Coptic priest, allegedly disappeared for days. Muslims claimed the church had abducted her when she tried to convert to Islam. Salafis have continued to hold protests demanding her "release."

That storyline spawned violence in Iraq, where a group associated with Al Qaeda attacked a church, killing dozens, and called for attacks on churches in Egypt. One did come, on a church in Alexandria on Jan. 1. An apparent suicide bomber killed more than 20 Christians, though no group ever claimed responsibility for the bombing and it was unclear if it was related to the issue of Camillia Shehata.

Christians have faced discrimination, particularly in the application of justice when they face sectarian attacks. Mubarak's regime refused to acknowledge a sectarian dimension to such attacks. And sometimes authorities imposed forced reconciliation instead of bringing Muslim attackers to justice.

ACCOUNTS
Muslims in the area say that the Christians were armed and attacked first. An Egyptian Army officer standing guard Sunday said that when he arrived Saturday, there were no salafis but two groups of men were fighting each other, and that weapons were fired from within the church. The clashes ran from about 8:30 on Saturday night until early the next morning local time.

Father Mattias Elias, priest of the Virgin Mary church for more than 30 years, says "salafi terrorists" set the church on fire. "We have faith and hope (that) G0d will change what is happening. But practically, we need leadership from the Army, the security forces," he says, sitting in a burned-out former sanctuary, next to the gutted baptismal room where the fire killed a church employee.

The walls and ceiling of the room are blackened, a ceiling fan's blades melted into haunting shapes. A partially burnt altar curtain sits in the corner with children's Bible story books. Acrid smoke hangs in the air.

Hossam Bahgat says the attempt to break into a church to rescue an alleged hostage is "unprecedented." Bahgat runs the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a group that has documented sectarian attacks for years. He also says it is "disturbing" that Christians reportedly used violence in response to the attack. The sentiment that seems to be growing among the Christian community is that "they are going to use force to protect themselves if the state continues to fail to protect them."

"This is why I think we're seeing this time such a strong response from the Supreme Council of Armed Forces and the Cabinet," he says. "They seem to finally realize that the number one priority now, as far as the sectarian violence is concerned, is physical protection of individuals, communities and places of worship."

ARRESTS
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the military government running Egypt, said it had arrested 190 people in connection with the attacks and would try them in military courts "as a deterrent to all those who think of toying with the potential of this nation." Egypt's prime minister delayed a trip to the Gulf to hold an emergency cabinet meeting and Egypt's justice minister announced Egypt would use an "iron hand" against those trying to "tamper with the nation's security."

What Obama did to Israel By Charles Krauthammer

2011-05-27T19:01:00.000-04:00

Every Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The long-standing American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take risks for peace while America balances things by giving assurances of U.S. support for Israel's security and diplomatic needs.

It's on the basis of such solemn assurances that Israel undertook, for example, the Gaza withdrawal. In order to mitigate this risk, President George W.Bush gave a written commitment that America supported Israel absorbing major settlement blocs in any peace agreement, opposed any return to the 1967 lines and stood firm against the so-called Palestinian right of return to Israel.

For 21 / 2 years, the Obama administration has refused to recognize and reaffirm these assurances. Then last week in his State Department speech, President Obama definitively trashed them. He declared that the Arab-Israeli conflict should indeed be resolved along "the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps."

Nothing new here, said Obama three days later. "By definition, it means that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — will negotiate a border that is different" from 1967.

It means nothing of the sort. "Mutually" means both parties have to agree. And if one side doesn't? Then, by definition, you're back to the 1967 lines.

Nor is this merely a theoretical proposition. Three times the Palestinians have been offered exactly that formula, 1967 plus swaps — at Camp David 2000, Taba 2001, and the 2008 Olmert-Abbas negotiations. Every time, the Palestinians said no and walked away.

And that remains their position today: The 1967 lines. Period. Indeed, in September the Palestinians are going to the United Nations to get the world to ratify precisely that — a Palestinian state on the '67 lines. No swaps.

Note how Obama has undermined Israel's negotiating position. He is demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the territory won in the '67 war — its only bargaining chip. Remember: That '67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter are Palestinian — alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.

The very idea that Judaism's holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically or demographically Arab is an absurdity. And the idea that, in order to retain them, Israel has to give up parts of itself is a travesty.

Obama didn't just move the goal posts on borders. He also did so on the so-called right of return. Flooding Israel with millions of Arabs would destroy the world's only Jewish state while creating a 23rd Arab state and a second Palestinian state — not exactly what we mean when we speak of a "two-state solution." That's why it has been the policy of the United States to adamantly oppose this "right."

Yet in his State Department speech, Obama refused to simply restate this position — and refused again in a supposedly corrective speech three days later. Instead, he told Israel it must negotiate the right of return with the Palestinians after having given every inch of territory. Bargaining with what, pray tell?

No matter. "The status quo is unsustainable," declared Obama, "and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace."

Israel too ? Exactly what bold steps for peace have the Palestinians taken? Israel made three radically conciliatory offers to establish a Palestinian state, withdrew from Gaza and has been trying to renew negotiations for more than two years. Meanwhile, the Gaza Palestinians have been firing rockets at Israeli towns and villages. And on the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas turns down then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer, walks out of negotiations with Binyamin Netanyahu and now defies the United States by seeking not peace talks but instant statehood — without peace, without recognizing Israel — at the United Nations. And to make unmistakable this spurning of any peace process, Abbas agrees to join the openly genocidal Hamas in a unity government, which even Obama acknowledges makes negotiations impossible.

Obama's response to this relentless Palestinian intransigence? To reward it — by abandoning the Bush assurances, legitimizing the '67 borders and refusing to reaffirm America's rejection of the right of return.

The only remaining question is whether this perverse and ultimately self-defeating policy is born of genuine antipathy toward Israel or of the arrogance of a blundering amateur who refuses to see that he is undermining not just peace but the very possibility of negotiations.

GEDALIA'S NOTE: My opinion is clear and I continue to be frustrated by people afraid to say the truth. As with most of his other policies in which intelligent people say "He's so smart why would he do this? Doesn't he understand the repercussions?" They fail to ever simply say, yes, he does understand and those results are exactly what he intended.

In this instance, the answer to Krautheimer's "unanswered question" is simple. It is borne of genuine antipathy not only to Israel, but to Jews.

‘Senseless’ seems easier than saying ‘jihad'

2011-05-27T18:55:00.000-04:00

By Diana West

The Army honored a fallen hero of the Ft. Hood Jihad Massacre with a medal this week. Not, of course, that the Army describes the November 2009 attack in such meaningful terms. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan may have shouted "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for "Allah is great") as he killed 14 and wounded more than two dozen; may have been in contact with jihad cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and frequented jihadist websites; may have had business cards proclaiming himself a "SoA" (Soldier of Allah); and may have created and presented an Islamically correct PowerPoint brief outlining reasons for jihad by Muslims within the U.S. Armed Forces, but no matter. His actions remain a total mystery to the U.S. Army.

To wit: "Although we may never know why it happened, we do know that heroic actions took place that day," Brig. Gen. Joseph DiSalvo said in presenting the Secretary of the Army Award for Valor to Joleen Cahill, widow of Michael Grant Cahill. Cahill is recognized as the first person to have tried to stop Hasan and the only civilian to have been killed by Hasan that day. "He will forever be a source of inspiration."

Alas, I have my doubts about the deputy commanding general of Ft. Hood. Despite overwhelming evidence that Hasan committed an act of jihad, DiSalvo -- like the Army, like the U.S. government -- looks the other way. "We may never know why" the Hasan attack happened, DiSalvo said without, apparently, turning red or rolling his eyes.

It's hard to overstate the impact of these words. In honoring the very last thing Cahill did on this Earth, the general pointedly chose to omit its significance. Like a potent spell, his words made all the context of the 62-year-old Cahill's valorous act -- charging Hasan with a chair as Hasan fired on the crowd -- disappear. Of course, the general's omission takes nothing away from Cahill's courage. It does, however, wrongly release the rest of us from our debt to Cahill. In treating Hasan's rampage as no more purposeful than a flood or a cougar attack, the general has also reduced Cahill's ultimate sacrifice to its most personal level; exemplary, admirable, but of no consequence beyond the scene, outside the circle. This is morally wrong. It was the general's duty to place Cahill's death in perspective, to impress upon both his loved ones and his fellow citizens that he died not only to stop a bloodletting but also in defense of liberty, then and now under jihadist attack.

In other words, the general flinched. No surprise there. Ft. Hood may have been a war zone that day but, with few exceptions (Texas Republicans Rep. John Carter and Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn are pressing to see Purple Hearts awarded), neither our military nor our government has the courage to admit it.

There is a ripple effect. This Memorial Day, by U.S. government reckoning, by U.S. military non-fiat, the Ft. Hood fallen do not rate remembrance as war dead. As a result, there have been no Purple Hearts awarded to military dead and wounded (as there were to casualties of the 9/11 attacks), no combat death benefits awarded to their survivors, no recognition of Hasan's jihad. Indeed, as the general says, we may never even know why they died.

This is just the way our leadership wants it -- "senseless," as President Obama put it, describing another 2009 jihadist attack the U.S. government refuses to recognize as an act of war, this one in Little Rock in which Pvt. William Long was killed and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula was severely wounded outside a military recruiting station. The trial, which begins in July, is currently subject to a tug-of-war, almost literally, between the lawyers and defendant Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. Prosecutor Larry Jegley is determined to prosecute Muhammad as "nothing but a street thug" accused of "just a drive-by shooting," defense attorneys want Muhammad to plead insanity, while Muhammad, a Muslim convert who may have studied with a jihadist imam in Yemen where he drew the attention of the FBI, is pleading, strenuously, to be tried as a sane, confessed jihadist. Like the US military, like the White House, the court seems to be pushing jihad, kicking and screaming in this case, down the memory hole.

Which makes you wonder: By next Memorial Day, who will remember?

What exactly is meant by "The 1967 Borders"?

2011-05-22T18:51:00.000-04:00

I'll explain below. Like many things Middle East, this is another PR battle won by the Arab lobby.

Oh, I know, you've been led to believe there is a monolithic Israeli power structure that dictates everything (that, my friends, is the oldest antisemitic screed in the world - right out of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", Tzar Nicholas' famous forgery).

In fact, it is petro dollars that dictates everything. The Saudis spend more lobbying in a week, than all the money supporting Israel in a year. If there was no oil issue in the United States, the absurdity of the situation would be openly discussed and support for Israel would be deep and unfettered. The lies about "occupation" or anything else, would just stop magically.

Ok, back to those 1967 lines.

What does this phrase mean? Simply stated, the 1948 lines.

Why? Because what the Arabs are referring to are the armistice lines that held UNTIL the start of the June, 1967, 6 day war in which Israel recaptured the Sinai, "West Bank" and Gaza Strip from Egypt and Jordan (another PR battle Israel has lost. The west bank? Really, is half of a country the banks of a river? That IS what they are referring to, of course).

The critical part of this rests ONLY, and exclusively in Jerusalem.

During the Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem - remember, in 1948 when the UN recognized "2 states" the Arabs famously immediately rejected, and attacked. Even without an army, Israel managed to survive, but lost Jerusalem and much of it's other territory which now became known as the West Bank.

In 1964, when King Hussein of Jordan massacred thousands of Sunni Arabs (Hussein and his monarchy are Hashemite Muslims, a sect that views itself as basically the priestly class) and made it clear that they would never have full rights, we FIRST heard about "Palestinians" referring to Arab residents of the former mandate. Until then, it was the British term for the Jews of that region.

So, in violation of the UN dictate that Jerusalem remain an open city, what did the Jordanians do when entrusted with the old city of Jerusalem?

OK, take a step back.

A little more history. In biblical times, cities were walled. Why? To keep out invading armies.

Jerusalem was originally a Jebusite city until captured by King David for the Jews of the bible.

His son Solomon, built the first Temple.

Herod the Great, built the Temple Mount that we see today approximately 450 years later.

Over the millenia, the walled city, the original city of Jerusalem, WAS Jerusalem.

Outside the wall remained the provenance of desert bandits, bedouins, and other nomadic peoples.

However, beginning in the 14th and 15th centuries, but accelerating in the 18th and 19th, Jewish pilgrims began coming back.

The reason for this was simple. For Jews, the Temple is the holiest place in the world. In Biblical Judaism, there were times during the year (those times are marked by the blowing of the Shofar - Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Passover - which Christians came to know as the last supper, and Easter) when prayers could ONLY be made at the Temple.

So, when the various invading empires allowed Jews to return, the Jews of the "Diaspora" would send a representative of the village, shtetl, ghetto, etc, to go to Jerusalem, settle there, and make the prayers for the entire community from which he came.

By the 1800's there were simply too many of these pilgrims for the old walled city to handle. So, these new pilgrims began building outside the walls of the old city. Constructing what is now modern Jerusalem.

The city had had a renaissance under Suleiman the Magnificent which culminated with the control over it by the Egyptian dynasties in the 1800's. A railroad connecting it to Jaffa was built in 1892.

By the late 1800's the majority population of Jerusalem was Jewish once again (yes, that's right, 1800's NOT after WWII )

OK. Flip back to the 1948-1967 period.

The armistice that had been drawn up, now split the city.
The Israelis had barely held on to small portions of what was now called the "NEW CITY", that modern city that had been built up in the last hundred years or so. The UN Armistice required that the city be an International city with all of the religious sites open to all. The Jordanians immediately violated this agreement.

Jordan kept "The old City" that part that was the original city with ALL of the Holy Sites.

This began to be called "East Jerusalem".

The only exception was that Jews were supposed to be allowed to maintain control over Mt. Scopus where Hebrew University and Hadassah hospital are.

In addition, Israel was supposed to have control and access to the famous Jewish Cemetery on the Mt. of Olives which has been used for 3000 years. The Jordanians, specifically recreating the roads the Nazis had paved to the death camps (as seen in Schindler's List) desecrated the cemetery and used the headstones to pave a road up the side of the Mount.

Instead, what happened was that the Jordanians not only cut off access to the holy sites for all but Muslims, contrary to the terms of the armistice agreement, Israelis were denied access to Jewish holy sites, many of which were desecrated. 34 of the 35 synagogues in the Old City, including the Hurva and the Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue, were destroyed over the course of the next 19 years, either razed or used as stables and hen-houses. Many other historic and religiously significant buildings were replaced by modern structures. The Jewish Quarter became known as Harat al-Sharaf and was occupied by refugees from the 1948 war. In 1966 the Jordanian authorities relocated 500 of them to the Shua'fat refugee camp as part of plans to redevelop the area.

Jordan allowed only very limited access to Christian holy sites. Worse, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was also used as a manger.

During this period, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque underwent major renovations.

So, when the 1967 lines are referred to, THIS is what they are talking about.

And this is what the world is happily endorsing. Closing Jerusalem to all.

What exactly is meant by "The 1967 Borders

2011-05-22T18:49:00.000-04:00

What's the difference between Nixon and Reagan, Clemens and Pettite

2011-05-22T18:48:00.000-04:00

A comment on a previous post made me decide to post this.

To refresh some memories.

Nixon, obviously, covered up the Watergate scandal (as an aside, those who know about the whole thing and who have heard the Watergate tapes, know he didn't plan it, but he did cover up the lies).

Nixon, famously, when caught said "The American people need to know if their President is a thief. Well, I am not a thief." An out and out lie.

Reagan, in a situation that has now been forgotten (interesting isn't it?) was enmeshed in what was arguable a worse situation. His administration was enmeshed in what became known as the "Iran-Contra Affair" or the arms for hostages scandal.

The scandal entailed illegal funding and arming of Nicaragua’s right-wing contras fighting the leftist Sandinista regime as well as illegally trading arms with Iran in exchange for the release of seven American hostages held by Iranian-sponsored militants in Lebanon. Profits from arms sales to Iran were to be used to buy weapons for the contras.

An independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh was appointed. He concluded that the President's most senior advisers and the Cabinet members on the National Security Council participated in the strategy to make National Security staff members McFarlane, Poindexter and North the scapegoats in the scandal. Walsh discovered much of the best evidence of the cover-up in the final year of active investigation, too late for most prosecutions. This actually bled into the Bush administration and was partially responsible for his being limited to one term.

The difference with Nixon? Reagan first appointed his own board, in addition to the independent counsel appointed by the Attorney General. The report of the board was highly critical.

When the findings came out, Reagan went on national TV, just like Nixon. But instead of saying what Nixon did, a blanket denial, Reagan, looking old, and for the first time to the public, a bit confused, said:

"I've studied the Board's report. Its findings are honest, convincing, and highly critical; and I accept them. And tonight I want to share with you my thoughts on these findings and report to you on the actions I'm taking to implement the Board's recommendations.

First, let me say I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I'm still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as I find secret bank accounts and diverted funds - well, as the Navy would say, this happened on my watch.

Let's start with the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages. This runs counter to my own beliefs, to administration policy, and to the original strategy we had in mind. There are reasons why it happened, but no excuses. It was a mistake."(my emphasis in both places).

Those of us with some subtly understand that much of the differences in the response to these two speeches had to do with the way they were perceived BEFORE their individual scandals. But one, even as he waffled, confessed, the other denied.

Clemens and Pettite?

While easy, that's one's subtle as well. Reagan lied, Nixon lied. In Reagan's "confession" he still said in his heart it's true that he never traded arms for hostages (huh? ) but he still ultimately confessed. Do I wish it had been full and unequivocal? Yes.

Clemens, as anyone who knows anything, was a serial abuser of Performance enhancers. Dan Duquette the GM of the Red Sox famously said that Clemens was done and let him leave the Red Sox. He went to Toronto and suddenly he was better than ever.

He was caught lying to Congress, denying that he had ever used HgH and other drugs.

His teammate and training partner, Pettite, admitted that he had used HgH "3 times" (meaning 3 injections) that he got from his father.

Now, for me, Pettite's "admission" made him almost worse than Clemems. He was clearly still lying, worse, he threw his own father under the bus.

But ultimately, the way the public viewed it, is that Pettite admitted it, Clemens did not.

Now, Clemens is being prosecuted for lying to Congress, and Pettite will probably end up in the hall of fame, or at least, have a career as a Yankee legend.

This is why, I am constantly stunned by politicians who do not offer a mea culpa. Imagine Bill Clinton simply saying what he did AFTER 4 years of Lewinskygate, right away, early on in the scandal. The Country would have been spared and we might be talking about him as one of the great Presidents in history. Instead, he is the butt of an unlimited number of sex jokes.

One of the things that most frustrates people about me is that I have rigid morality. When I'm right, I say it. And loudly. Does that sound arrogant? Yes.

But when I'm wrong I say it. Just as I publicly pronounced my apology to Mysst, in my personal life I say frequently, "I was wrong".

I am always amazed at what happens when I say this. People don't know how to react. I frequently have to say it over and over again. They are so used to people saying "...but...".

I don't (say but). I'm wrong. It's really not that hard.

We ALL make mistakes. That is what makes us human.

There is a difference in what has gone on here recently. Some are now defending their actions. Others are defending the offenders.

I hope everyone recognizes the differences between those two.

The first, by their actions are really admitting that they are wrong, but they are too embarrassed, or whatever their personal reasons are, to admit what happened.

But by NOT defending the offenders, they are acknowledging what happened.

What does this say? Simple, that their values are actually in place. That they CAN recognize right from wrong.

What is sad, is that for a while, they let that get away.

Now, though, but defending their own actions, they are trying to justify. Is this frustrating? Of course, but I would ask you to recognize the difference between the groups.

The first are good folks gone astray. The second group are Nixon and Clemens.

To the first group, I would say, just say "mea culpa".

The very reason you feel persecuted is a) because you are wrong and more importantly b) because people liked you before and WANT to like you again (like is a weenie word but I'm getting tired of typing). People want simply to know that you recognize what REALLY happened. That you weren't neutral. You didn't ignore. You didn't NOT take sides.

You enabled.

Well, just as in my marriage, I enabled my wife. Did that make me the borderline who abused her husband and children?

No, of course not, but I still played my part. And I will be dealing with that forever.

We all recognize that you are NOT the offender. But you played a part.

We want to have open arms. We like you. We really like you.

All we are asking is that you let us.

On Diedrich Bonhofer

2011-05-22T18:40:00.000-04:00

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil:
God will not hold us innocent.
Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
— Bonhoeffer

Who was Diedrich Bonhofer?

Bonhofer was a German theologian in the years before WWII. Like my quote from Niemoller, Bonhofer was far from a lover of the Jews, or even a universally "good" guy, so to speak. However he was an avowed pacifist as befitted a man of the clothe, who eventually made contact with the German Resistance and the members of the Abwehr who had committed to assassinate Hitler.

He was captured, tried, and hung just over a month before Hitler himself committed suicide in the Bunker.

However, Bonhofer had actually come to the United States in 1939, to work here in NY at the Union Theological Seminary.

He felt guilty about being here when Germany was going through the upheavals that he was witnessing and he wrote to a friend:

"I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security." (My emphasis)

It's Finally Over!

2011-05-21T18:42:00.000-04:00

Most of you are newer readers of my blog but several years ago I wrote a serious of posts about performance enhancing drugs in sports:
A brief history of steroids and performing enhancing drugs - Part one
A brief history of steroids and performing enhancing drugs - Part two
A brief history of Steroids and performing ehnhancing drugs - Part 3: Naming names!
A brief history of Steroids and performing ehnhancing drugs - Part 4: How the testing works .
HgH, Sly Stallone and me: An update to "A Brief History of Steroids...", Part 5
The Hall of Fame, McGwire, Dick Pound and WADA: an update to: A brief history of Steroids.....
A new study: An update to "A brief History of Performing Enhancing Drugs..." Part 7
The Tour de France today: An update to "A Brief History of Steroids...."
An update to: "A brief history of Steroids and performing ehnhancing drugs "

You'll notice the Tour De France installment. I have never been a fan of Lance Armstrong. Let me correct that. When he was a young up and comer, before his cancer, and he won the World Championship - usually a portent of big things to come for a young cyclist.

And even when he began to win the Tour, well he had been a protege of my cycling hero, Greg LeMond.

Of course I knew he used drugs, every world class athlete does. But then things changed. He became "Lance the superhero". The man who had been tested "more times than any other athlete" according to him (well, at least the same # of times as the other cyclists in the tour with him).

And then, worse, he became so holier than thou about the whole thing.

His Dr. busted for providing for blood doping all his clients earning the nickname "Dr. Blood"? Nothing

The fact that his blood, used as a test sample for the new test for EPO, the drug cyclists use most to build additional aerobic capacity, test positive for his 2d tour victory but b/c it was for a past tour he couldn't be suspended? Not a chance

The fact that every top rider who ever rode in support of him has been busted for drugs or admitted to using them? No way, NOT Lance!!

Floyd Landis saying that he personally used drugs with Lance, from testosterone to EPO? Not a chance, Floyd was busted and lost HIS tour de france win and he is just vindictive (why against Lance, Lance has never explained).

Test positive at the 2001 Tour de Suisse? No,not Lance! (oops well maybe, but if we deny it enough maybe people will forget).

Frankie Landreu (another longtime teammate on the US Postal Team) and his wife testifying that Lance openly discussed his drug use with his oncologists (cancer doctors)? LIARS!!

But now, this Sunday, 60 minutes will be airing an interview with Tyler Hamilton, yet another teammate will be saying yet again, that he used drugs with Lance.

But don't worry, Lance the Great has already come out and reiterated the most tested athlete mantra, and of course Tyler is only doing it because he is writing a book. Oh, and that funny Grand Jury testimony.

But now. OOOOPS. George Hincapie, who Lance described as "like my brother" who was his roommate for years and his teammate for EVERY one of his Tour de France Victories, has apparently ALSO testified to the Grand Jury that he and Lanced used Testosterone and EPO repeated during all the Tour de France wins.

Let's see. George is STILL cycling so it would look really bad for him to admit this.

But, it's just another person out to get Lance the great.

My hero Greg LeMond tells a story. LeMond won the Tour 3 times. He would have won at leat 5 if not Lance's 7 if not for a hunting accident when he was shot by his brother in law. LeMond came back and won two more Tours after that accident, but later in his career, the shotgun pellets left in his body caused a blood infection and so he had to take a few years off again to get healthy.

When he came back, LeMond said he was in the best shape of his life, riding faster times than he ever had. And then he went to the Tour and in a Mountain day he said he saw people doing things that he knew were impossible, and that he knew he could never do. He knew WHY they were able to do them. So he dropped out of the Tour and retired.

Funny, but that is exactly what Frankie Andreu said, but he said it to explain why he and Lance DID use drugs.

Busted. The myth of Lance, with his good friend George's testimony should now finally be over.

The EIchmann Trial: 50 Years Later

2011-05-16T18:38:00.000-04:00

In May 1960, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer in charge of orchestrating the Final Solution – the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps – was captured by Israeli agents near Buenos Aires. Eichmann was given a choice between instant death or trial in Israel. He chose to stand trial, which began in Jerusalem on April 11, 1961.

During the trial, the Israeli public was exposed to the details of the Holocaust nightmare for the first time, as well as to the heroism and ingenuity of those who survived.

In his defense, Eichmann insisted that he was only "following orders." Yet scores of witnesses contradicted that contention – testifying to Eichmann's "fanatical zeal and unquenchable blood thirst." Throughout, Eichmann listened impassively to a translation of the entire trial from a specially-designed glass cubicle in the crowded Jerusalem courtroom.

One year later, after all the evidence was in and all appeals exhausted, the cold-eyed Nazi monster was hanged at a prison in the Israeli town of Ramla.

Former Supreme Judge Gavriel Bach – at the time an up-and-coming lawyer and deputy state attorney – was asked to join the team of prosecutors. Fluent in German, he conducted most of the interrogations of Eichmann. At a recent talk in Jerusalem, with the 50th anniversary of the Eichmann Trial approaching, Bach described the unforgettable influence that the trial left on him.

"We were three prosecutors. We gathered millions of pages of documentation and read a great deal of background sources. I don't think I slept more than three hours every night throughout the trial," Bach recalls. “The German government was very cooperative and sent us a great deal of material.” Despite that, chief prosecutor Gideon Hausner preferred to call up as many witnesses as possible rather than presenting his case via historical documents, because "it would be more shocking and have more impetus."

"Some of us thought that Eichmann may have experienced regret at the terrible things done to the Jews in Europe," says Bach. While in custody, Eichmann was shown part of a film that portrayed the horrible conditions of the camps and the crematoria. “We all waited to see how he would react to the emotional film,” says Bach. But when a German-speaking guard asked Eichmann for his reaction, he simply changed the subject and complained about not being allowed to appear at the trial in a Nazi uniform.

Instigator of the Crimes

Among the many documents that Bach found was an interview which Eichmann gave to a fascist Dutch journalist in 1956 while hiding in Argentina. Eichmann expressed satisfaction over the sight of continuous railroads cars arriving in Auschwitz. "It was a glorious sight," he said.

"Did you have any regrets at any time?" asked the journalist.

"Yes", answered Eichmann, "I'm sorry that I wasn't stricter in carrying out our goal. Look what happened," he declared angrily in 1956. "The State of Israel now exists and that cursed race continues."

A book written by the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoes, describes how up to a thousand Jewish children were gassed daily. "Occasionally a youngster would beg for his life on bended knees in front of me, and I have to admit, I sometimes felt weak myself. I have children of my own. But then I was embarrassed at my frailty. The Oberfuhrer (Eichmann) strengthened my resolve by explaining that we had to kill the accursed Jewish children above all; they represented the future, and the Jewish future had to be erased from the face of the world."

Prosecutors found several examples of Eichmann’s steadfast, even stubborn resistance to any show of lenience. One of the Nazi leaders in Poland sent a request to delay the deportation of a certain Dr. Weiss and his wife. Dr. Weiss was a world famous expert on radar, and the officer thought it would be useful for the Reich to obtain key information before annihilating him. Eichmann wouldn't hear of it "as a matter of principle," and the doctor and his family perished along with their entire community.

At one point during the war, Hitler himself, for political reasons, asked Eichmann not to touch 8,000 Jews left in Budapest. Yet despite his loyalty to the Fuhrer, Eichmann planned otherwise. (Only the war's progression prevented him from deporting this group.) These examples counter Eichmann's claim throughout the trial that he was merely a cog in the machine, carrying out orders.

"There were many dramatic incidents during the trial," says Bach, some which never came to the floor of the courtroom. "We received an important document from an anonymous source which detailed the number of arrivals at Auschwitz, the dates, and the numbers given to each Jew. We tried to verify the details and find the person who had sent us the valuable material, but couldn't make headway. We called in experts from the police department to examine the document and help us find its author. Then I had a brainstorm. Let's find survivors with the numbers mentioned in the document and ask them when they arrived at the camp. That will give us the proof we need to present the document at the trial.

"One of the policeman in the room, after some hesitation, rolled up his sleeve and showed us a number engraved on his arm. 'This number appears on the report; and indeed I arrived in Auschwitz on the date mentioned,' he said quietly. There was complete silence in the room. None of his police colleagues even knew that he'd been in the Holocaust. Like so many, he had hidden his past. We had our proof on the spot. But none of us could speak for several minutes."

Horror Stories

The Eichmann trial had the effect of creating huge public awareness about the Holocaust in Israel and worldwide.

"Nobody wanted to talk about their Holocaust experiences," says Yosef Kleinman, a survivor who arrived in Palestine in 1945 during the days when the tiny Jewish community was struggling to survive and prepare for statehood. There was neither energy, time nor patience to hear the newcomers out. “No one was interested in hearing our stories,” says Kleinman.

"They called us 'sabonim' (soapers),” he says. “They couldn't fathom why we hadn't stood up to the Nazis in the camps and fought back. In those days Israelis were taken up with the macho image of the ‘new Jew.’ They didn't understand what we were up against in Europe, and we ourselves didn't want to be reminded. We just wanted to get on with our lives and put that all behind us."

Indeed, the main drama of the Eichmann trial was the Holocaust survivors who appeared as witnesses. As first it was difficult to even locate witnesses, since they had gotten so used to not talking about that period in their lives. "I had a hard time convincing some people to come forth and tell their story," Bach recalls. “One man told me, ‘If I start talking, you won't be able to stop me for four or five days.’"

The prosecution team argued among themselves how much time to give each witness. "I was adamant that at least one witness should appear from every country that had been under Nazi rule," says Bach.

Kleinman, one of the youngest witnesses, described the selection process he endured as a 14-year-old. "First we were put into a ghetto, and several weeks later we were sent in cattle cars to the camp. For three days we had nothing to drink or eat.”

At Auschwitz, there was a selection table where the infamous Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele, sent the most able-bodied to the right for slave labor, and the weaker ones to the left for extermination. “My 13-year-old brother was held up for inspection,“ Kleinman recalls, “but in the end they told him to run along and join our parents to the left, which he did happily, not knowing what that meant. That was the last time I saw any of them.

”In the barracks, the old timers quickly filled us in and callously pointed to the smoking chimneys we could see through the window. 'That's where your parents are. They're all dead by now.' That's how we learned the terrible truth.”

At the Eichmann trial, Kleinman testified about an incident where Auschwitz guards called the prisoners out to see one young boy getting punished. Kleinman describes:

“Usually they'd give 25 lashes. This boy withstood the punishment and didn't let out a sound. That made the tormentor angry and he continued beating him – 30, 35, 40 lashes. And still the boy didn't cry out. We ourselves couldn't take it anymore. But the soldier continued hitting him all over – on his legs, face, stomach, wherever the whip landed.

“When he got to 50, and the boy was already on the ground, he threw away his whip and left in disgust. We ran over to the hero, picked him up and washed him off. 'What did you do to get this punishment?' we asked him. He could barely talk, but he said, “I brought siddurim (prayer books) to the barracks. It was worth it. I'm glad I did it.'"

This story had a deep influence in the courtroom. The court-appointed defense attorney wept openly, and the judges called for a break in the procedures.

Little Red Coat

At the trial, another witness who had been inside the gas chamber lived to tell about it. As a youngster, he arrived in Auschwitz together with 200 other children, after a horrendous three-day train trip. After the selection, he was pushed into a large dark room with shower piping, and the door was shut behind them. At first the children began to sing, to lift their spirits, but that soon gave way to wailing and screaming. Suddenly the heavy metal door swung open and a guard pulled out 20 of them into the bright sunlight. The Nazis needed workers to unload bags of potatoes and there weren't enough soldiers for the job. That's how this man was able to give a first-hand description of the insides of the crematorium.

At the trial, Dr. Martin Foldi, related how he and his family arrived at Auschwitz in the winter of 1944. As the bewildered Jews stumbled out of the cattle cars, they were hounded by dogs and Nazi soldiers with whips. He described being sent to the right with his 11-year-old son. His wife and two-year-old daughter were taken to the left. The little girl was wearing a little red coat. At the last minute, a guard sent Foldi's son with the crowd to the left. Dr. Foldi panicked thinking, how could this young boy find his mother and sister among the thousands there at the station. But then he knew... he could find his sister because she was wearing the red coat. It would be "like a beacon" for the boy. Then he states, "I never saw them again."

This testimony is likely to have formed the inspiration for the iconic red coat in Steve Spielberg’s classic film, Schindler’s List.

The horrible story shook the courtroom. But for prosecuting attorney Gavriel Bach, it was by far the most upsetting moment of the 16-week trial. Bach had just bought a red coat for his own daughter.

In the courtroom, Bach played with his papers and kept the whole court waiting for his next question while he conquered his emotions.

Historic Impact

The Eichmann trial made headlines all over the world, but in Israel the subject was the center of everyone's attention. The long-term effects of the trial were dramatic and many. The Israeli public understood at last what the survivors had undergone, and became much more empathetic. The enormity of the Holocaust was suddenly brought to the fore, through the witnesses who gave a personal voice and face to the 6 million victims.

Today, far from the days of Israelis “not wanting to acknowledge the tragedy,” there is a whole different attitude. Israeli universities have professors of Holocaust Studies; thousands of Hebrew books have been printed on the subject; government agencies grant special privileges to survivors; and every year on Yom HaShoah the media devotes an entire day to interviews with the nearly-extinct generation of survivors.

Half a century later, the Eichmann trial is not merely a historic event. It represents the turning point in Israel’s understanding of the Holocaust.

An Ignominious Anniversary

2011-05-15T18:33:00.000-04:00

This spring and summer is an anniversary that many wish we did not have to note.

It is the 50th anniversary of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the man who was largely credited with the actual mechanical creation of, and carrying out of Hitler's "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" i.e. the Holocaust in all of it's brutal efficiency.

One of the interesting things is the loss of historical perspective that we have today, versus in 1961.

Many of you, like me, were not alive then, or were too young to know what was going on in the world.

In the immediate aftermath of WWII, Europe was in a shambles.

The immediate issue for the allied forces, with regard to the death camp survivors, was how to try and nurse them back to health.

They could not be just given food, as a huge percentage were suffering from Typhus, Dysentery, and other diseases of extreme malnutrition and lack of even basic hygiene.

Even more, like many of the other residents of Europe, there was no place for these people to go back to. The Soviets and the Germans had both engaged in scorched earth policies on retreat, and of course, the allies bombed many of the major cities, like Dresden, into oblivion.

Refugees remained in camps until 1956, more than a decade after the end of the war in Europe.

If you know any survivors, you can ask them, but most of them did not want to discuss what they had seen, and what they had been through. The Jews did not know how to deal with what had happened to them, and their families. It was like waking up from a 15 year nightmare, except that your loved ones were dead.

In addition, the British were actively trying to prevent migration to the Mandate of Palestine, and then to the new nation of Israel.

Those that did make it, quickly became involved in trying to forge the new nation and defend it. Israel was attacked immediately upon the declaration of the state, and then again in 1956 by Egypt.

Just as importantly, unlike today's world of 24 hour news cycle, videophones, etc, there was no way to learn of what happened in Europe at the death camps unless one of the liberating soldiers wanted to discuss it. And since the Americans had not liberated the worst camps, there was only so much they could discuss, although again, most had no interest in talking about what they saw. Without video cameras, cable news, or even nightly news on the 3 networks (news reports back then were only 15 minutes long and mostly local) there was just no way to find out.

And in fact, the worst camps, Auschwitz and it's sub camps, and all the camps in Poland, Czechoslavakia and other points east, were liberated by the Soviets, who had engaged in their own holocaust in the Ukraine, so they had no interest in advertising what happened.

The only way to see what had happened were from the films that were played during the Nuremberg trials. Even the trials though, did not anticipate the prosecution focusing on the Holocaust. The principle charge was waging aggressive war, and that was the chief line of questioning. However, when the films were played near the end of the trial, the news observers were left crying, or worse.

The newsreels were not shown in the United States and only small amounts of information about what had happened got out.
Dwight Eisenhower did declare martial law, and ordered all German townspeople to tour the camps in their regions and to bury the remaining skeletal corpses, but once that immediate action was over, the German people became enmeshed in what would eventually be termed the "economic miracle" of the government of post war Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

Most importantly about Adenauer was that his national security adviser, Hans Globke, had worked with Eichmann in the Department of Jewish Affairs, and in fact, had been one of the architects of Hitler's Nuremberg Laws.

The Americans, who, through the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and the new Cold War with the Soviets, were trying to capture as much of the European sentiment as they could.

Both Adenauer's government, and the various allied governments had no interest in advertising the help they were receiving from the former Nazis (how 'former' is something historians still debate).

As a result of all of these things, by the time Eichmann was captured in Buenos Aries, Argentina on May 11, 1960 by agents of the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, led by their director Isser Harel, the world knew little of the horrors that had been witnessed, or had forgotten already.

Harel wrote a wonderful book about this covert operation entitled "The House on Garibaldi Street". It is in fact, a model for many espionage novels, which can't help fail to live up to the real live suspense of the true story of the tracking, capture and removal of Eichmann from Argentina to Israel to stand trial.

The trial was stunning for the world. News agencies from virtually every country covered it, and the New Yorker magazine famously sent Political Philosopher Hanna Arendt to cover it. (Arendt's "Totalitarianism" is one of the most important books of the 20th century.) It was her reporting that led her to coin her now ubiquitous phrase "The Banality of Evil" when she first saw Eichmann, a small bespectacled man sitting in his bulletproof glass case.

Sadly though, Arendt spent precious little time at the trial, and missed ALL of Eichmann's own testimony so her report was not at all accurate.

What came out in the trial was exactly how bloodthirsty Eichmann had been. Far from "just following orders" Eichmann had relished his task and had expressed regret that he hadn't done more.

Back on point. So, at the time of Eichmann's capture and trial most of the world did not know the details of what had happened.

Even more surprisingly, most Israeli's didn't know, or didn't discuss it.

So, the chief prosecutor Gideon Hausner had decided that it was critical that survivors testify. Not just about seeing Eichmann at the camps, but about what had happened.

This testimony again stunned the world. The outlining of the Wansee conference, the meeting in which Reinhold Heidrich had actually assigned Eichmann to oversee the slaughter of the entire Jewish population of the Reich (in their view, the world) which had been unknown until then - the actual meeting at which the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe" had been formulated, left no doubt that Eichmann had been the master architect of the most heinous crime the world had ever seen.

Still, after the trial, the Holocaust was not what it is today. Remember, the trial was in Hebrew, and German, and still, in 1960 television was limited, even here in the US TV's were a luxury not an every household item.

The real breakthrough on the recognition of the Holocuast in the US was the TV miniseries which introduced the world to Meryl Streep, "The Holocaust" on ABC, in 1978.

For the next few days, I will be posting various articles about different aspects of the trial.

As Homer Simpson would say... Koh!!! Or, I told you Koh... Or just, INCONCEIVABLE

2011-03-27T14:11:00.002-04:00

I hate to say I told you so, but, I told you so.

Two years ago I wrote about the appointment of former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as senior legal advisor to the State Department.

Why did I warn you? Because Koh is the leading proponent of an unconstitutional reading of what is known as "The Supremacy Clause" of the Constitution*

Simply stated, the Supremacy Clause says that in cases where State and Federal law conflict, Federal Law will govern. It was put there to deal with many of the issues that had arisen in the early days of the Republic, and previously under the Articles of Confederation, largely commerce issues.

However, the Supremacy Clause has also always been read as saying that US Law supersedes International Laws or agreements. In other words, the President cannot sign treaties or agreements that violate the Constitution.

The purpose of Obama reaching out for Harold Koh, and then appointing an entire coterie of Koh's supplicants, from Sotomayor, to Holder, et al, is to begin the process of moving toward George Soros' "Open Society".

What does that mean? A world without borders, essentially.

It is why Obama, for the first time in US history has subjugated US military personnel in a large action, to an international body

It is no small difference that in the past, US Presidents may have sought UN affirmation, but never was it that body that made the US act.

Even more so, we have always led NATO actions, limited as they have been.

And once again, I sit stunned by the failure of even a single member of the Press to recognize, let alone discuss, this.

*Article IV, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."

I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right.... A not so subtle reminder

2011-03-19T19:20:00.000-04:00

....You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a "greater government activity in the affairs of the people." But they have been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves--and all of the things that I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say "the cold war will end through acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says that the profit motive has become outmoded, it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state; or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government." Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me--the free man and woman of this country--as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government"--this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy....

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they are going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they've had almost 30 years of it, shouldn't we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead....

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always "against" things, never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so. We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those who depend on them for livelihood. They have called it insurance to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified that it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is $298 billion in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble! And they are doing just that....

I think we are for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we are against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among the nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we are against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in Soviet colonies in the satellite nation....

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth. Federal employees number 2.5 million, and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force is employed by the government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury, and they can seize and sell his property in auction to enforce the payment of that fine....

As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the part of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party, that honorable party, down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England. Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men...that we are to choose just between two personalities....

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy answer--but simple.

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness....

Massacre in Itamar - warning, graphic photos inside.

2011-03-15T11:12:00.001-04:00

This past Shabbat, the 12 year old daughter of the Fogel Family living in Itamar, Israel, a town approximately 15 miles west of the Jordan River and 30 miles from the Meditterranean, in what has become known as the northern west bank, arrived home from a youth group meeting.

She was unable to open the door to her house, and summoned a neighbor for help.

What she found can not be described in any other way than horrific.

Her parents, 11 year old, 4 year old, and 3 MONTH OLD siblings were found murdered, stabbed to death in their beds, their throats slashed.

To let the public understand the brutality of the crimes, and what they face every day, the family released some of the official investigative pictures of the murders.

Here in the US, a person who committed this crime would be known as a "family annhilator", a particularly heinous type of serial killer.

In Palestinian society, this type of person has a street, soccer stadium or School named after them, as Dalal Mughrabi, the worst murderer in Israeli history (a female Palestinian terrorist) had.

Worse, these "namings" are applauded and supported by ALL of the Palestinian leadership, including Abbas and Fayyad. Abbas said recently that of course they would name things after Mughrabi, she is a hero.

A Challenge to the 'Peace' Camp

2011-03-14T12:43:00.001-04:00

By David Suissa

It is fashionable when talking about the "peace process" to focus on hope — to try to nurture the moderate elements among our "peace partners" and constantly inject good faith and good will to keep the process moving "forward."

Because I crave peace by nature, I've always had some sympathy for this approach, which is why I have many friends on the left and why I occasionally take a break from my hard-nosed realism to indulge in more dreamlike and wishful prose.

This is not one of those times.

When I saw the horrifying pictures of the Jewish family members in Itamar who were stabbed to death in their own home— Udi and Ruth Fogel (36 and 35 years old), and their children Yoav (11 years old), Elad (4) and their 3-month-old daughter, Hadas— I thought of recent reports on the glorification of terrorism in Palestinian society.

It was impossible not to connect the dots.

In the reports, from Palestinian Media Watch, I learned that the terrorist responsible for the most lethal attack against Israel, Dalal Mughrabi, is now immortalized in two elementary schools, a kindergarten, a computer center, summer camps, football tournaments, a community center, a sports team, a public square, a street, an election course, an adult education course, a university club, a dance troupe, a military unit, a dormitory in a youth center, a TV quiz team and a graduation ceremony.

I also learned that today, a Palestinian child can walk to school along a street named after the terrorist Abu Jihad, who planned a bus hijacking that killed 37, spend the day in a school named after Ahmad Yassin, the man who founded Hamas, play soccer in the afternoon in a tournament honoring terrorist Abd Al-Basset Odeh, who killed 31, and end his day at a youth center named after Abu Iyad, who was responsible for killing 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.

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These are the heroes of Palestinian society— not Abraham Lincolns and Albert Einsteins and Martin Luther Kings but murderers who crave the spilling of Jewish blood.

Before you rush to defend our "new and improved" Palestinian "peace partners," note that it was Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas who funded a computer center named after Dalal Mughrabi in 2009, and who supported the naming of the square in her honor in 2010.

"Of course, we want to name a square after her," he said to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on Jan.17, 2010.

And who sponsored a sporting event named after one of the most prominent terrorist of all, Abu Jihad, in May 2010? None other than PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the man who is building the "new" Palestine.

Just last year, Mahmoud Al-Aloui, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, said in an interview in Al-Hayat Al Jadida: "It is our right and our duty to take pride in all of the Shahids (martyrs), and it is our duty to convey this message in the most direct manner to the generations to come."

He wasn't kidding. Only a month ago, PA President Abbas awarded $2000 to the family of a terrorist who attacked two Israeli soldiers in December.

And the very day before the Itamar murders, PA presidential advisor Sabri Saidam delivered a speech reported in Al Ayyam, in which he emphasized that "the weapons must be turned towards the main enemy [Israel] and internal differences of opinion must be set aside."

This glorification of Jew-hatred and murder in the name of martyrdom— which marinates all strata of Palestinian society— is happening under the watchful eyes of our Palestinian "peace partners," who have convinced most of the world, and many Israel supporters, that the real obstacle to peace is not Palestinian incitement to murder but Jewish building of apartments in East Jerusalem.

Even if you're a passionate peacenik, you have to admit that this is a bad joke. What does Jewish construction have to do with a Jew-hatred that has been burned into Arab hearts since before the first settlement or even Israel ever existed?

What else but Jew-hatred can explain the consistent refusal by Palestinian leaders to recognize a Jewish state and prepare their people for the inevitable compromises that peace with Jews will require?

As Sari Nusseibeh once said, "How can we Palestinians expect Israel to think we want co-existence when our position on the refugee issue has been tantamount to a call for Israel's destruction?"

So, here's my message to my friends in the peace camp. You've done an amazing job of telling the world that a peace agreement with the Palestinians is really, really important, and that Israel is primarily responsible for the absence of this agreement.

In fact, you've done such an amazing job of blaming Israel that my friend Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the Jewish Week, wrote last week that Israel has become a "source of embarrassment" for many American Jews. Imagine that.

Well, now you have a chance to make amends and bring some balance to your message.

In honor of the children who were stabbed to death in Itamar, you can release this statement to the world: "It is really, really important, for the sake of peace, that Palestinian leaders eliminate the glorification of terrorism and Jew-hatred that permeates their society, and begin immediately to teach the benefits and compromises of peaceful co-existence with a Jewish state."

Who's brave enough in the peace camp to sign their name to that statement?

Can you talk when the conversation itself is illegitimate?

2011-03-11T23:40:00.001-05:00

I've written often over the years about the Orwellian nature of conversations about the Middle East. That the very subjects being discussed are so backward and irrelevant to the bigger issues of tyrannical regimes that the very ideas, and those in support of them must be living in some alternate reality.

Now, the same thing is going on here in the US. We have been sucked into a debate in Wisconsin about the validity of Governor Walkers attempt to limit public service union's collective bargaining rights (not eliminate them, and not all unions as the left media would have us believe).

And yet, every day, the bigger story of an entire class of state senators simply leaving, refusing to engage even in debate is being ignored.

Where is the line? I don't want to name that school after FDR. I'm leaving!! I don't want to name the street Oak, it should be Elm!!! I'm leaving!!

I don't want Monday's as a state holiday for the Cheese Festival I want Tuesday!! I'm leaving!!!

It's called a slippery slope. And we've slipped so much we don't even notice the collective hole in the backseat of our collective pants from the friction on the way down.

This is obfuscation, point changing and political sleight of hand of the worst order.

Our conversion to a dictatorship is now complete.

2011-03-09T08:50:00.001-05:00

If you have read my blog over the last few years, you will have read my entreaties concerning the single thread that runs through the bizarre decisions of our current president. I have argued that it is never a question of left vs right, but rather that in true Progressive (or as I call them Regressive) fashion, he has concentrated more power in the office of the President than all of the chief executives who came before him combined.

One of the things that he did that most concerned me was his changing the definition of who could be detained without warrant under the guise of national security.

He took the Bush "enemy combatants" a clearly defined category well within the Geneva Conventions, and changed it to "Anyone the President deems in support of Terrorism".

Well, this weekend, the final straw was put into this potion of lost liberty.

In signing the executive order keeping Guantanamo Prison open and restarting Military Tribunals there, he did something that even I never thought any President would try and get away with.

No nation in history, even those with "show" trials, has ever declared that the President can keep imprisoned EVEN SOMEONE FOUND NOT GUILTY.

In other words, Barack Obama has now signed orders saying that he can arrest and imprison anyone he wants, REGARDLESS of what the courts say.

Call him Comrade, say Heil before his name, Your imperial highness, glorious leader, or any other appellation taken by the deviant dictators of our times, but he is well within that group.

Follow the Bouncing Bahrain...

2011-02-25T08:21:00.001-05:00

While the headlines are focusing lately on Libya, and to a lesser extend, Jordan, Lebanon, et al, the most significant country in terms of the immediate impact on the United States, and indeed the rest of the world, is Bahrain.

Why? Simple geography.

A little background. Bahrain is an island in the Straits of Hormuz. It lies closer to Saudi Arabia and is ruled by a Sunni minority. The Saudis, in case you don't know, are Sunni.

Immediately on the other side of the Strait is Iran, a Shiite country, and the Saudi's main rival (more on Iran, and the President's bizarre machinations in the next post).

There is perhaps more Sunni - Shiite antagonism than there is anti Americanism in the Middle East.

Iran is clearly demonstrating exactly what I have been writing about, nay, practically screaming about, for the last 3 years, their attempt to become not just a regional super power, but a global one.

Their sphere of domination now runs almost all the way through the Middle East (and the President's removing of US Battleships in the Mediterranean for the first time in 31 years - the unannounced reason the Iranians were allowed to send their ships through the Suez - is a major reason for this) stopping only in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt - though less today than yesterday, and to a smaller extent, the Emirates.

I mentioned before the Sunni minority in Bahrain. That means there is a Shiite majority.

If the shiites that are now agitating there, have there way, it will mean that Iran will be in full control of the Straits. And thus, the transport of most of the oil in the Middle East, including the Saudis.

If this happens, we are looking at $10/gallon gas. Not to mention the full control of the Middle East by the Shiite minority and the new Iranian empire.

Follow the bouncing Bahrain. It holds the key.

Democracy - 100,000, Theocracy - 1,000,000

2011-02-22T08:14:00.000-05:00

Funny, but I have yet to see on the front page of my daily NY Times, or in that bastion of "news" that the President pushes, the Huffington Post, any stories about the speech given on Friday by the spiritual head of the Muslim brotherhood in front of 1,000,000 Egyptians in Tahrir square.

Interesting that this is a man that was deemed so dangerous he had been banned from Egypt until the new government took over. You know, the new government, same as the old government. Except that now their golden goose, the US government led by that enigma of part time democracy support, Barack Obama, told them that the new government SHOULD allow the Muslim Brotherhood to participate.

What does it say when the Brotherhood outdraws the largest of the "pro democracy" crowd of the recent 'revolution' 10-1? I think you can figure that out.

Egypt: The Distance Between Enthusiasm and Reality

2011-02-16T03:30:00.001-05:00

MORE SUPRISINGLY ACCURATE INFORMATION FROM STRATFOR AND GEORGE FRIEDMAN

By George Friedman

On Feb. 11, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned. A military council was named to govern in his place. On Feb. 11-12, the crowds that had gathered in Tahrir Square celebrated Mubarak’s fall and the triumph of democracy in Egypt. On Feb. 13, the military council abolished the constitution and dissolved parliament, promising a new constitution to be ratified by a referendum and stating that the military would rule for six months, or until the military decides it’s ready to hold parliamentary and presidential elections.

What we see is that while Mubarak is gone, the military regime in which he served has dramatically increased its power. This isn’t incompatible with democratic reform. Organizing elections, political parties and candidates is not something that can be done quickly. If the military is sincere in its intentions, it will have to do these things. The problem is that if the military is insincere it will do exactly the same things. Six months is a long time, passions can subside and promises can be forgotten.

At this point, we simply don’t know what will happen. We do know what has happened. Mubarak is out of office, the military regime remains intact and it is stronger than ever. This is not surprising, given what STRATFOR has said about recent events in Egypt, but the reality of what has happened in the last 72 hours and the interpretation that much of the world has placed on it are startlingly different. Power rests with the regime, not with the crowds. In our view, the crowds never had nearly as much power as many have claimed.

Certainly, there was a large crowd concentrated in a square in Cairo, and there were demonstrations in other cities. But the crowd was limited. It never got to be more than 300,000 people or so in Tahrir Square, and while that’s a lot of people, it is nothing like the crowds that turned out during the 1989 risings in Eastern Europe or the 1979 revolution in Iran. Those were massive social convulsions in which millions came out onto the streets. The crowd in Cairo never swelled to the point that it involved a substantial portion of the city.

In a genuine revolution, the police and military cannot contain the crowds. In Egypt, the military chose not to confront the demonstrators, not because the military itself was split, but because it agreed with the demonstrators’ core demand: getting rid of Mubarak. And since the military was the essence of the Egyptian regime, it is odd to consider this a revolution.

Mubarak and the Regime

The crowd in Cairo, as telegenic as it was, was the backdrop to the drama, not the main feature. The main drama began months ago when it became apparent that Mubarak intended to make his reform-minded 47-year-old son, Gamal, lacking in military service, president of Egypt. This represented a direct challenge to the regime. In a way, Mubarak was the one trying to overthrow the regime.

The Egyptian regime was founded in a coup led by Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser and modeled after that of Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, basing it on the military. It was intended to be a secular regime with democratic elements, but it would be guaranteed and ultimately controlled by the military. Nasser believed that the military was the most modern and progressive element of Egyptian society and that it had to be given the responsibility and power to modernize Egypt.

While Nasser took off his uniform, the military remained the bulwark of the regime. Each successive president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, while formally elected in elections of varying dubiousness, was an officer in the Egyptian military who had removed his uniform when he entered political life.

Mubarak’s decision to name his son represented a direct challenge to the Egyptian regime. Gamal Mubarak was not a career military officer, nor was he linked to the military’s high command, which had been the real power in the regime. Mubarak’s desire to have his son succeed him appalled and enraged the Egyptian military, the defender of the regime. If he were to be appointed, then the military regime would be replaced by, in essence, a hereditary monarchy — what had ruled Egypt before the military. Large segments of the military had been maneuvering to block Mubarak’s ambitions and, with increasing intensity, wanted to see Mubarak step down in order to pave the way for an orderly succession using the elections scheduled for September, elections designed to affirm the regime by selecting a figure acceptable to the senior military men. Mubarak’s insistence on Gamal and his unwillingness to step down created a crisis for the regime. The military feared the regime could not survive Mubarak’s ambitions.

This is the key point to understand. There is a critical distinction between the regime and Hosni Mubarak. The regime consisted — and consists — of complex institutions centered on the military but also including the civilian bureaucracy controlled by the military. Hosni Mubarak was the leader of the regime, successor to Nasser and Sadat, who over time came to distinguish his interests from those of the regime. He was increasingly seen as a threat to the regime, and the regime turned on him.

The demonstrators never called for the downfall of the regime. They demanded that Mubarak step aside. This was the same demand that was being made by many if not most officers in the military months before the crowds gathered in the streets. The military did not like the spectacle of the crowds, which is not the way the military likes to handle political matters. At the same time, paradoxically, the military welcomed the demonstrations, since they created a crisis that put the question of Mubarak’s future on the table. They gave the military an opportunity to save the regime and preserve its own interests.

The Egyptian military is opaque. It isn’t clear who was reluctant to act and who was eager. We would guess that the people who now make up the ruling military council were reluctant to act. They were of the same generation as Hosni Mubarak, owed their careers to him and were his friends. Younger officers, who had joined the military after 1973 and had trained with the Americans rather than the Soviets, were the likely agitators for blocking Mubarak’s selection of Gamal as his heir, but there were also senior officers publicly expressing reservations. Who was on what side is a guess. What is known is that many in the military opposed Gamal, would not push the issue to a coup, and then staged a coup designed to save the regime after the demonstrations in Cairo were under way.

That is the point. What happened was not a revolution. The demonstrators never brought down Mubarak, let alone the regime. What happened was a military coup that used the cover of protests to force Mubarak out of office in order to preserve the regime. When it became clear Feb. 10 that Mubarak would not voluntarily step down, the military staged what amounted to a coup to force his resignation. Once he was forced out of office, the military took over the existing regime by creating a military council and taking control of critical ministries. The regime was always centered on the military. What happened on Feb. 11 was that the military took direct control.

Again, as a guess, the older officers, friends of Mubarak, found themselves under pressure from other officers and the United States to act. They finally did, taking the major positions for themselves. The demonstrations were the backdrop for this drama and the justification for the military’s actions, but they were not a revolution in the streets. It was a military coup designed to preserve a military-dominated regime. And that was what the crowds were demanding as well.

Coup and Revolution

We now face the question of whether the coup will turn into a revolution. The demonstrators demanded — and the military has agreed to hold — genuinely democratic elections and to stop repression. It is not clear that the new leaders mean what they have said or were simply saying it to get the crowds to go home. But there are deeper problems in the democratization of Egypt. First, Mubarak’s repression had wrecked civil society. The formation of coherent political parties able to find and run candidates will take a while. Second, the military is deeply enmeshed in running the country. Backing them out of that position, with the best will in the world, will require time. The military bought time Feb. 13, but it is not clear that six months is enough time, and it is not clear that, in the end, the military will want to leave the position it has held for more than half a century.

Of course, there is the feeling, as there was in 2009 with the Tehran demonstrations, that something unheard of has taken place, as U.S. President Barack Obama has implied. It is said to have something to do with Twitter and Facebook. We should recall that, in our time, genuine revolutions that destroyed regimes took place in 1989 and 1979, the latter even before there were PCs. Indeed, such revolutions go back to the 18th century. None of them required smartphones, and all of them were more thorough and profound than what has happened in Egypt so far. This revolution will not be “Twitterized.” The largest number of protesters arrived in Tahrir Square after the Internet was completely shut down.

The new government has promised to honor all foreign commitments, which obviously include the most controversial one in Egypt, the treaty with Israel. During the celebrations the evening of Feb. 11 and morning of Feb. 12, the two chants were about democracy and Palestine. While the regime committed itself to maintaining the treaty with Israel, the crowds in the square seemed to have other thoughts, not yet clearly defined. But then, it is not clear that the demonstrators in the square represent the wishes of 80 million Egyptians. For all the chatter about the Egyptian people demanding democracy, the fact is that hardly anyone participated in the demonstrations, relative to the number of Egyptians there are, and no one really knows how the Egyptian people would vote on this issue.

The Egyptian government is hardly in a position to confront Israel, even if it wanted to. The Egyptian army has mostly American equipment and cannot function if the Americans don’t provide spare parts or contractors to maintain that equipment. There is no Soviet Union vying to replace the United States today. Re-equipping and training a military the size of Egypt’s is measured in decades, not weeks. Egypt is not going to war any time soon. But then the new rulers have declared that all prior treaties — such as with Israel — will remain in effect.

What Was Achieved?

Therefore, we face this reality. The Egyptian regime is still there, still controlled by old generals. They are committed to the same foreign policy as the man they forced out of office. They have promised democracy, but it is not clear that they mean it. If they mean it, it is not clear how they would do it, certainly not in a timeframe of a few months. Indeed, this means that the crowds may re-emerge demanding more rapid democratization, depending on who organized the crowds in the first place and what their intentions are now.

It is not that nothing happened in Egypt, and it is not that it isn’t important. It is simply that what happened was not what the media portrayed but a much more complex process, most of it not viewable on TV. Certainly, there was nothing unprecedented in what was achieved or how it was achieved. It is not even clear what was achieved. Nor is it clear that anything that has happened changes Egyptian foreign or domestic policy. It is not even clear that those policies could be changed in practical terms regardless of intent.

The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had. This has caused worldwide shock and awe. We were killjoys in 2009, when we said the Iranian revolution wasn’t going anywhere. We do not want to be killjoys now, since everyone is so excited and happy. But we should point out that, in spite of the crowds, nothing much has really happened yet in Egypt. It doesn’t mean that it won’t, but it hasn’t yet.

An 82-year-old man has been thrown out of office, and his son will not be president. The constitution and parliament are gone and a military junta is in charge. The rest is speculation.

More background: Egypt, Israel and a Strategic Reconsideration

2011-02-11T01:59:00.000-05:00

I am not a huge fan of George Friedman, a name being heard more and more frequently because of his site Stratfor.

Generally I find his analysis' simplistic and superficial. He is widely read, however.

Here, his concluding statements reflect what I have been describing for years to my many friends in Israel, and here in the states.

What Friedman misses, incredibly, is that the Egyptian army has been training, and in recent years intensifying that training, to invade Israel. In fact, ALL of their military official "maneuvers" are mock invasions across the Sinai. In addition, they have been remilitarizing the Sinai, in abrogation of the Camp David Accords, for many years.

By George Friedman of Stratfor

The events in Egypt have sent shock waves through Israel. The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel have been the bedrock of Israeli national security. In three of the four wars Israel fought before the accords, a catastrophic outcome for Israel was conceivable. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, credible scenarios existed in which the Israelis were defeated and the state of Israel ceased to exist. In 1973, it appeared for several days that one of those scenarios was unfolding.

The survival of Israel was no longer at stake after 1978. In the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the various Palestinian intifadas and the wars with Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2008, Israeli interests were involved, but not survival. There is a huge difference between the two. Israel had achieved a geopolitical ideal after 1978 in which it had divided and effectively made peace with two of the four Arab states that bordered it, and neutralized one of those states. The treaty with Egypt removed the threat to the Negev and the southern coastal approaches to Tel Aviv.

The agreement with Jordan in 1994, which formalized a long-standing relationship, secured the longest and most vulnerable border along the Jordan River. The situation in Lebanon was such that whatever threat emerged from there was limited. Only Syria remained hostile but, by itself, it could not threaten Israel. Damascus was far more focused on Lebanon anyway. As for the Palestinians, they posed a problem for Israel, but without the foreign military forces along the frontiers, the Palestinians could trouble but not destroy Israel. Israel's existence was not at stake, nor was it an issue for 33 years.

THE HISTORIC EGYPTIAN THREAT TO ISRAEL
The center of gravity of Israel's strategic challenge was always Egypt. The largest Arab country, with about 80 million people, Egypt could field the most substantial army. More to the point, Egypt could absorb casualties at a far higher rate than Israel. The danger that the Egyptian army posed was that it could close with the Israelis and engage in extended, high-intensity combat that would break the back of Israel Defense Forces by imposing a rate of attrition that Israel could not sustain. If Israel were to be simultaneously engaged with Syria, dividing its forces and its logistical capabilities, it could run out of troops long before Egypt, even if Egypt were absorbing far more casualties.

The solution for the Israelis was to initiate combat at a time and place of their own choosing, preferably with surprise, as they did in 1956 and 1967. Failing that, as they did in 1973, the Israelis would be forced into a holding action they could not sustain and forced onto an offensive in which the risks of failure — and the possibility — would be substantial.

It was to the great benefit of Israel that Egyptian forces were generally poorly commanded and trained and that Egyptian war-fighting doctrine, derived from Britain and the Soviet Union, was not suited to the battle problem Israel posed. In 1967, Israel won its most complete victory over Egypt, as well as Jordan and Syria. It appeared to the Israelis that the Arabs in general and Egyptians in particular were culturally incapable of mastering modern warfare.

Thus it was an extraordinary shock when, just six years after their 1967 defeat, the Egyptians mounted a two-army assault across the Suez, coordinated with a simultaneous Syrian attack on the Golan Heights. Even more stunning than the assault was the operational security the Egyptians maintained and the degree of surprise they achieved. One of Israel's fundamental assumptions was that Israeli intelligence would provide ample warning of an attack. And one of the fundamental assumptions of Israeli intelligence was that Egypt could not mount an attack while Israel maintained air superiority. Both assumptions were wrong. But the most important error was the assumption that Egypt could not, by itself, coordinate a massive and complex military operation. In the end, the Israelis defeated the Egyptians, but at the cost of the confidence they achieved in 1967 and a recognition that comfortable assumptions were impermissible in warfare in general and regarding Egypt in particular.

The Egyptians had also learned lessons. The most important was that the existence of the state of Israel did not represent a challenge to Egypt's national interest. Israel existed across a fairly wide and inhospitable buffer zone — the Sinai Peninsula. The logistical problems involved in deploying a massive force to the east had resulted in three major defeats, while the single partial victory took place on much shorter lines of supply. Holding or taking the Sinai was difficult and possible only with a massive infusion of weapons and supplies from the outside, from the Soviet Union. This meant that Egypt was a hostage to Soviet interests. Egypt had a greater interest in breaking its dependency on the Soviets than in defeating Israel. It could do the former more readily than the latter.

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The Egyptian recognition that its interests in Israel were minimal and the Israeli recognition that eliminating the potential threat from Egypt guaranteed its national security have been the foundation of the regional balance since 1978. All other considerations — Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the rest — were trivial in comparison. Geography — the Sinai — made this strategic distancing possible. So did American aid to Egypt. The substitution of American weapons for Soviet ones in the years after the treaty achieved two things. First, they ended Egypt's dependency on the Soviets. Second, they further guaranteed Israel's security by creating an Egyptian army dependent on a steady flow of spare parts and contractors from the United States. Cut the flow and the Egyptian army would be crippled.

The governments of Anwar Sadat and then Hosni Mubarak were content with this arrangement. The generation that came to power with Gamal Nasser had fought four wars with Israel and had little stomach for any more. They had proved themselves in October 1973 on the Suez and had no appetite to fight again or to send their sons to war. It is not that they created an oasis of prosperity in Egypt. But they no longer had to go to war every few years, and they were able, as military officers, to live good lives. What is now regarded as corruption was then regarded as just rewards for bleeding in four wars against the Israelis.

MUBARAK AND THE MILITARY
But now is 33 years later, and the world has changed. The generation that fought is very old. Today's Egyptian military trains with the Americans, and its officers pass through the American command and staff and war colleges. This generation has close ties to the United States, but not nearly as close ties to the British-trained generation that fought the Israelis or to Egypt's former patrons, the Russians. Mubarak has locked the younger generation, in their fifties and sixties, out of senior command positions and away from the wealth his generation has accumulated. They want him out.

For this younger generation, the idea of Gamal Mubarak being allowed to take over the presidency was the last straw. They wanted the elder Mubarak to leave not only because he had ambitions for his son but also because he didn't want to leave after more than a quarter century of pressure. Mubarak wanted guarantees that, if he left, his possessions, in addition to his honor, would remain intact. If Gamal could not be president, then no one's promise had value. So Mubarak locked himself into position.

The cameras love demonstrations, but they are frequently not the real story. The demonstrators who wanted democracy are a real faction, but they don't speak for the shopkeepers and peasants more interested in prosperity than wealth. Since Egypt is a Muslim country, the West freezes when anything happens, dreading the hand of Osama bin Laden. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was once a powerful force, and it might become one again someday, but right now it is a shadow of its former self. What is going on now is a struggle within the military, between generations, for the future of the Egyptian military and therefore the heart of the Egyptian regime. Mubarak will leave, the younger officers will emerge, the constitution will make some changes and life will continue.

The Israelis will return to their complacency. They should not. The usual first warning of a heart attack is death. Among the fortunate, it is a mild coronary followed by a dramatic change of life style. The events in Egypt should be taken as a mild coronary and treated with great relief by Israel that it wasn't worse.

RECONSIDERING THE ISRAELI POSITION
I have laid out the reasons why the 1978 treaty is in Egypt's national interest. I have left out two pieces. The first is ideology. The ideological tenor of the Middle East prior to 1978 was secular and socialist. Today it is increasingly Islamist. Egypt is not immune to this trend, even if the Muslim Brotherhood should not be seen as the embodiment of that threat. Second, military technology, skills and terrain have made Egypt a defensive power for the past 33 years. But military technology and skills can change, on both sides. Egyptian defensiveness is built on assumptions of Israeli military capability and interest. As Israeli ideology becomes more militant and as its capabilities grow, Egypt may be forced to reconsider its strategic posture. As new generations of officers arise, who have heard of war only from their grandfathers, the fear of war declines and the desire for glory grows. Combine that with ideology in Egypt and Israel and things change. They won't change quickly — a generation of military transformation will be needed once regimes have changed and the decisions to prepare for war have been made — but they can change.

Two things from this should strike the Israelis. The first is how badly they need peace with Egypt. It is easy to forget what things were like 40 years back, but it is important to remember that the prosperity of Israel today depends in part on the treaty with Egypt. Iran is a distant abstraction, with a notional bomb whose completion date keeps moving. Israel can fight many wars with Egypt and win. It need lose only one. The second lesson is that Israel should do everything possible to make certain that the transfer of power in Egypt is from Mubarak to the next generation of military officers and that these officers maintain their credibility in Egypt. Whether Israel likes it or not, there is an Islamist movement in Egypt. Whether the new generation controls that movement as the previous one did or whether they succumb to it is the existential question for Israel. If the treaty with Egypt is the foundation of Israel's national security, it is logical that the Israelis should do everything possible to preserve it.

This was not the fatal heart attack. It might not even have been more than indigestion. But recent events in Egypt point to a long-term problem with Israeli strategy. Given the strategic and ideological crosscurrents in Egypt, it is in Israel's national interest to minimize the intensity of the ideological and make certain that Israel is not perceived as a threat. In Gaza, for example, Israel and Egypt may have shared a common interest in containing Hamas, and the next generation of Egyptian officers may share it as well. But what didn't materialize in the streets this time could in the future: an Islamist rising. In that case, the Egyptian military might find it in its interest to preserve its power by accommodating the Islamists. At this point, Egypt becomes the problem and not part of the solution.

Keeping Egypt from coming to this is the imperative of military dispassion. If the long-term center of gravity of Israel's national security is at least the neutrality of Egypt, then doing everything to maintain that is a military requirement. That military requirement must be carried out by political means. That requires the recognition of priorities. The future of Gaza or the precise borders of a Palestinian state are trivial compared to preserving the treaty with Egypt. If it is found that a particular political strategy undermines the strategic requirement, then that political strategy must be sacrificed.

In other words, the worst-case scenario for Israel would be a return to the pre-1978 relationship with Egypt without a settlement with the Palestinians. That would open the door for a potential two-front war with an intifada in the middle.

There are those in Israel who would argue that any release in pressure on the Palestinians will be met with rejection. If that is true, then, in my view, that is catastrophic news for Israel. In due course, ideological shifts and recalculations of Israeli intentions will cause a change in Egyptian policy. This will take several decades to turn into effective military force, and the first conflicts may well end in Israeli victory. But, as I have said before, it must always be remembered that no matter how many times Israel wins, it need only lose once to be annihilated.

To some it means that Israel should remain as strong as possible. To me it means that Israel should avoid rolling the dice too often, regardless of how strong it thinks it is. The Mubarak affair might open a strategic reconsideration of the Israeli position.

Background heah, get ya' background heah, Egypt background heah'...

2011-02-08T03:21:00.000-05:00

I realize that few people have as big an interest in the Middle East as I.
Egypt is one of my particular area of interests. Why? Well, lots of reasons. One unique thing about Egypt that separates it from the rest of the Arab world is it's appreciation for it's own past.
I'm sure many of you has seen Dr. Zawi Hawass at one time or another. He's the old man that dresses like Indiana Jones and is in charge of Egypts entire archeologic community. I don't know if Hawass is truly antisemitic, but as an employee of the government he has made obscenely antisemitic statements in the past. Why do I mention this? For the following reason.

One of the incredible archeologic sites in Egypt is a synagogue. Not just any synagogue, but the Rav Moshe synagogue. For non Jews, it may have no meaning, but it was the home site of the Rabbi who became known as Maimonides. You can look him up, if interested. He is considered one of the towering intellectual figures in history, on par with Da Vinci. He was a practicing physician. His most famous patient? Saladin, who drove the Catholics out of Jerusalem. Maimonedes full name was Mussa bin Maimun ibn Abdallah al-Qurtubi al-Israili. That, in and of itself, should tell you of the close ties between the Egyptians and Jews. This synagogue dates to the 12th century. What is amazing is the Hawass led the restoration of this synagogue. Demanded it even. As he has with numerous churches. Why? There are no Jews effectively left in Egypt. Certainly no active synagogues. Because he has said that ALL history of Egypt is important.

It is this attitude, and the long non Muslim history of Egypt that gives it it's unique attitude in the Arab world.

So, that is one reason. Another being the way I have always been treated there. Despite arriving from Israel, with a clearly Jewish name, I was never harassed, and, while my guides were Coptics, was always treated wonderfully.

So, for the next few posts, I want to provide some background to the current situation. Why? Again, because there is so much misinformation floating around. For example. Are you aware that the current President, Hosni Mubarak, was installed BY the Muslim Brotherhood? This seems to have been forgotten.

Are you aware that in 2004-5 he began to enact real reforms under pressure from George Bush. Allowing free flow of the internet, for example (where did that lead?).

So, I will repost several outside articles to give you a frame of reference.

Here's the first.

A look at the major players in Egypt's political crisis

By Jonathan S. Landay and Miret El Naggar

CAIRO — (MCT) Although President Hosni Mubarak announced Tuesday that he wouldn't run for a sixth consecutive term, he will retain a considerable ability to influence the political upheaval unleashed by the biggest anti-government protests in his 30-year rule.

Here are brief profiles of Mubarak and some other major players in the crisis roiling the most populous nation of the Arab world.

—President Hosni Mubarak

Mubarak was born in the Nile Delta province of Menoufiya in 1928 and graduated from Egypt's prestigious Military Academy in 1949. A pilot, he participated in two major wars — 1967 and 1973 — with Israel.

Mubarak rose to the rank of general and commanded the air force during 1973 conflict. He became president after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat by army officers opposed to peace with Israel. He promptly imposed the emergency rule that the regime has used ever since to justify arbitrary arrests, infinite detentions and other harsh measures against opponents.

He became a close U.S. ally, preserving Sadat's 1978 peace treaty with Israel and ruthlessly pursuing Islamic extremists. Since 2004, he's permitted criticism of his regime by independent news media and bloggers, and allowed some protests. At the same time, Mubarak gave the police free reign to crackdown on his political opponents, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.

During his 30-year rule, Egyptians endured rising food prices, deteriorating infrastructure and public services and high unemployment, especially among the young. They also complained of rampant official corruption symbolized by businessmen appointed to Cabinet positions and top posts in the ruling National Democratic Party.

—Mohamed ElBaradei

ElBaradei, 69, gained prominence as the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, winning the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for the agency's work.

While some opposition activists consider him a unifying figure who could win the presidency, others regard him as too pro-Western and an opportunist who remained outside the country for years while they took on the regime.

ElBaradei was born in 1942 to a well-off Cairo family. His father headed the Egyptian Bar Association.

He obtained a law degree at Cairo University and went to work for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. He earned an international law degree at New York University Law School in 1974.

In 1984, ElBaradei became a senior official at IAEA headquarters in Vienna. He was selected in 1997 as the agency's director general, a position in which he took on the regimes of North Korea, Iraq and Iran.

But he also disputed the Bush administration's justification for invading Iraq, saying there was no evidence that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear arms program. He also challenged U.S. charges that Iran was close to developing a warhead.

The U.S. was the only country to oppose ElBaradei's reappointment to a third term as IAEA chief in 2005, eventually dropping its objections.

After leaving the IAEA in 2009, he returned to Egypt to co-found the National Association for Change, a loose coalition of opposition groups, and said that he was prepared to contest this year's presidential election.

—Muslim Brotherhood

Started by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood is one of Egypt's oldest political organizations and its largest, most cohesive opposition movement.

In its contemporary incarnation, the brotherhood forswears violence and opposes al-Qaida, embraces the democratic process, and says women can hold public office, except for the presidency. It is fiercely critical of Israel and the United States, but it says it would preserve the peace accord with Israel.

The brotherhood was founded to promote Islamic morals and charitable works with the stated goal of making the Quran and Sharia the "sole reference point for . . . ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community . . . and state." One of its key slogans is "Islam is the solution."

The organization's political involvement grew out of its agitation for an end to British colonial rule. The brotherhood supported a 1952 military coup that brought Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser to power. But he outlawed the movement in 1954, jailing and killing hundreds of activists. Others fled, establishing branches abroad.

The movement moved underground. A leading member, Sayyid Qutb, is regarded as inspiring the founding of al-Qaida and other radical groups by advocating the establishment of Islamic rule through jihad. Qutb was accused of trying to overthrow the government and hanged in 1966.

The mainstream movement re-emerged in the 1980s, seeking to join the political mainstream. It built a large following by providing social services and appealing to the religious sentiments of Egypt's conservative Muslim-dominated population.

It won an unprecedented 88 seats in Parliament in 2005 by having its candidates run as independents. During the 2010 election campaign, the regime cracked down so severely on the movement that it boycotted the vote.

—Omar Suleiman

Born in the impoverished Upper Egypt governate of Qena in 1936, Mubarak's former intelligence chief was appointed first vice president last weekend.

Not much is known about Suleiman, 75, who kept a low profile in line with his previous post as intelligence czar, a go-between Israel and Palestinians who was close to the U.S. and Mubarak's most trusted adviser and troubleshooter.

Some experts suggest that he could lead a transitional government. But many protesters have rejected that idea, chanting that he, too, should leave office.

Stephen P. Cohen, a U.S. scholar who has served as an intermediary between Arab and Israeli leaders and has known Suleiman for years, said Suleiman has no interest in taking over from Mubarak.

"He sees his main responsibility now to make sure that there is no confrontation between the military and the people," said Cohen, the head of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development. "That he considers a disastrous outcome that would challenge the very nature of the state."

Suleiman, who's fluent in English, is said to be brilliant, urbane and well-read.

But as head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, or EGIS, he's closely identified with the abuses meted out to Mubarak's opponents. He also worked closely with the CIA on renditions of al-Qaida operatives, including one who was tortured in Egyptian custody.

Suleiman entered the Military Academy in 1954 and served as an army officer during the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel. He rose to become deputy chief of military intelligence in 1986.

In frequent contact with Mubarak, he was elevated to EGIS director in 1993, a post in which he directed a harsh clampdown on Islamic extremists.

He reportedly sealed his position of trust with Mubarak by insisting on having an armored car flown into Ethiopia for a 1995 visit there by the Egyptian strongman. The vehicle saved the pair from an ambush by Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

—Ayman Nour

Nour, a lawyer and a former member of Parliament, is the founder of the opposition al Ghad (Tomorrow) Party. He ran a distant second to Mubarak in the country's first multi-candidate presidential election in 2006.

The following year, Nour was jailed and spent more than three years behind bars on disputed charges that he used forged signatures to start his party. He suffered ill-health while in jail and the Bush administration repeatedly called for his release, infuriating Mubarak.

While Nour, 46, was in jail, his party split into factions and its headquarters caught fire.

After his release, Nour resumed his opposition activities and regularly attended anti-Mubarak demonstrations.

Nour was a founder of the National Association for Change, the informal movement of secular and Islamic opposition groups pressing for constitutional changes that would allow ElBaradei to run for president this year.

What's really going on in Egypt...

2011-01-29T21:02:00.001-05:00

If you're reading this, clearly you're following developments to some degree. I have to laugh at a few things I've heard from some commentators in the last few days. From being called "our greatest ally" to "a bastion of democracy" the ignorance of the press overwhelms me. The worst, and most ridiculous of these claims is that the Muslim Brotherhood, granddaddy and founding entity of virtually every terrorist group in the world today, has "forsworn" violence.

There are two separate things going on in the demonstrations in Egypt.

The first, is good. A genuine grass roots, democratic movement, not much different than Tunisia, or even Iran. However, this is small in number and unorganized. They respect the army and it is why they seemed to back off when the army came out yesterday.

This will peter out, as it has over the years (Mubarak has faced these types of demonstrations before).

But, as a result of the demonstrations the Egyptian Army has been removed from the Rafah crossing in Gaza. Hamas operatives are pouring into Egypt to team with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is organized, directed, and leading the new wave of demonstrations.

This is the dangerous aspect and it is due totally to our failure to demand of the Egyptians, over the years, true movement toward greater institutional freedoms, and civil freedom.

The Egyptian population is highly radicalized. Worse, the Egyptian press, print and TV, all of it state run, has proffered the most vile anti western, anti American, and most of all, anti semitic messages continuously for the entire length of Mubarak's reign. It is one of our greatest failures - the refusal to address this radicalizing of their own citizenship in an attempt to distract from the failures of Mubarak to improve the lot of his people.

This situation is incredibly dangerous.

I hate it when I'm right...

2011-01-28T18:44:00.002-05:00

Approximately fourteen months ago, I wrote a post "If world war III starts in Yemen and no one covers it, do you hear it fall?", talking about the boiling over of tensions between the Iranian backed forces in the Middle East, and the rest, or what some term "moderate" factions.

Make no mistake, the entire situation that we are seeing, which unquestionably is the greatest immediate security threat to the US right now, is due almost entirely to the policy of appeasement that President Obama has engaged in since his first days in office.

There are the obvious sparks of his refusing to face up to the Iranian threat directly. More important was his appointment of an ambassador to Syria, ending a policy that had been followed by Democrat and Republican alike. Syria, responible for the assassination of the Lebanese President, Rafik Harriri, is the Iranian proxy in that area.

It is this that allowed the infiltration and now takeover of the Lebanese government by Hizbullah, the Iranian backed terrorist army.

Worse, the unrest in Egypt, which will clearly lead to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, is something I have been warning about for 20 years or more.

Shockingly, I've been discussing, questioning, this with Israeli officials and politicians the entire time.

The real danger of Egypt, as I've written here so many times, is that the US has funded the Egyptians to the tune of $2 Billion since the Camp David accords (thanks again Jimmy Carter) and the population is highly fundamentalist, as the recent murder of so many Coptic Christians highlights.

While it's hard to predict exactly what will happen, I would not be surprised to see a fundamentalist regime in Egypt within the year.

As a side note, this is why the Israelis constantly insist on fundamental change in Palestinian attitudes as well as words from the leadership.

You sign treaties not with governments, or leaders, but with peoples. And for decades the Egyptian government has been airing the most vile anti semitic propoganda on state run television (the highest rated program in Middle East history remains the Egyptian government channels airing of a dramatization of the famed anti semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion".

The past months, from the radicalization of Turkey, with Obama doing nothing, to the revolution in Tunisia, to this, has highlited just how misguided, and impotent, is the Obama foreign policy, and foreign policy team.

State of the Union

2011-01-26T18:40:00.000-05:00

Sturring rhetoric. Beautiful metaphors. Inspirational imagery.

It was all there. Sadly, like most of the Obama agenda, the real issues were hidden.

As I have written here before, the actual politics that proceed for the next two years are irrelevant.

Why? Simply because of the creation during the first two years of a full bureaucracy that will now rule by regulatory structure.

The 18,000 police force created for the IRS to enforce the health care law. The takeover of the student loan industry. The control of the automakers. The declaration by the EPA that carbon regulation falls not to Congress, but to them. The same thing with the FCC and the internet.

A perfect example of the foolishness is the so called "freeze" on government spending.

What does "non discretionary" spending mean? It means 16% of the budget. That is what he is proposing to freeze. Insulting enough that he thinks this will actually fool you all. Worse, that he doesn't get that it is cuts to spending that we need.
Why is that federal employees now make an average of $114,000 year, vs roughly $40,000 in the private sector? As the largest employer in the country, that is a significant figure. Where are the cuts there? To the Dept's of Energy, Agriculture, Education... all the departments who, since their creation have done nothing but make things worse?

In other words, I'm still going to spend us into oblivion.

Can we take a lesson from the states, that are now looking into various methods for declaring bankruptcy?

The level of delusion is so great it is hard to fathom.

The President convicted of rape....

2011-01-19T18:38:00.000-05:00

No, not here. In Israel. Moshe Katsav, who preceded current president Shimon Peres, was just convicted in Tel Aviv not only of raping a young staff member, but also of harassment of two others.

Katsav lost a recall election when these allegations came out.

The actions of the man speak for themselves and clearly need no comment from me.

What does need comment is the very fact that this happened in Israel. How many nations in the world can you imagine this happening?

Ironically, just this week in Russia, the person who was placed by Vladimir Putin to be a puppet opposition party candidate in Chechnya, made accusations against the puppet leader of the region. The response? Throw the accuser in jail.

More importantly, how many nations in that region of the world can you imagine the President being convicted on these charges?

Even more specifically, anyone remember William Kennedy Smith? Need I say more?

The most important judicial decision of the last 200 years. Oh, you missed it?

2010-12-15T18:36:00.000-05:00

No, it's not the decision on health care.

As usual, the press has largely missed it. Here in NY, my hometown "paper of record" actually did cover it. In a small article on page 14.

What decision am I referring to?

Well Nasser Awlaki, father of Anwar al Awlaki, the "American Taliban" who has been targeted for assasination by President Obama, sued, with the help of the ACLU and several other constitutional groups for a Restraining Order to prevent the President from assassinating his son.

First, the judge, declared that Mr. Awlaki had no standing. Based on that decision, the case ended there. But frighteningly, the judge went further and declared that this type of decision had no place in the courts, that it deserved to be in what is loosely termed "the public policy carve out".

What does that mean? The courts have certain issues, largely national security, that they say are best decided by the legislature.

But never before has the court said that a citizen can be denied their basic right as guaranteed by the constitution, to LIFE, and not be able to stop the government from taking it.

What this court has said, is that any criminal on death row, has more rights than Awlaki. Simply because the President says so.

I hope you can all see the danger in this.

Does anyone remember Richard Nixon's "enemies list"? What this court has said is that Nixon could have simply claimed that it was in the interest of national security, and assassinated anybody on that list.

Or, that if you did not vote for Obama, you are now a threat to national security and must be assassinated.

Far fetched? Not according to the reasoning of the court which left NO exceptions.

Most of you know that I am as hawkish as it comes when national security is involved. However, as American citizens we are DIFFERENT, in the eyes of US Law, from all other residents of this planet. That is the true blessing of being an American, and why so many want to come here.

But this court has said that we are no different than a Chinese dissident, a Russian "refusnik" or a member of the Christian Sudan being targeted by the Janjaweed militias.

We can be killed for convenience, at the order of one man.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Lies, Linkage and the truths hidden in the Wikileaks case...

2010-12-02T18:33:00.000-05:00

Lost in much of the controversy over the 'Wikileaks' story of the leaked state department memo and research is the revelation that the central tenet of the Obama administrations' foreign policy, what has become known as "linkage" is a total, and absolute lie.

What is "linkage"? Simply put, Obama and his acolytes have long contended that all of the problems in the middle east are "linked" to the Israel-so called Palestinian issue.

Obama has made the case since the first day of his Presidency that solving that problem will make all of the other problems in the area simply fall away.

Even more, he has argued that solving this, will enable the US to enlist the aid of the intransigent Saudis and Egyptians in helping to convince the Iranians to stop their nuclear madness.

But what the leaks tell us is just the opposite. In fact, it confirms what I have written here many times over the last few years. That actually Egypt and Saudi Arabia were literally begging Obama to take more serious action against the Iranian regime and that it is the US that has been reticent, refusing to take any serious action against Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs.

What's the key to Middle East Peace?

2010-11-28T18:31:00.000-05:00

I have been writing, and explaining, for years, that the real issue in the middle east is not land, or borders, but simply, religion.

This was emphasized once again this week by the so called "moderate" Palestinian authority, the group the Obama administration so desperately wants the Israelis to make absurd concessions to (no Jewish building? certainly seems biased to me).

On the official Palestinian Information Office website, the PA published a "study" that purported to demonstrate that there is no Jewish connection to the "Kotel" or wailing wall.

In fact, the study went on to say the the tunnels, the paths on the side of the wall, used for centuries by Jewish Pilgrims to the Temple (including Jesus) had always been used by Muslims and never Jews or Christians.

Of course, the study fails to note, as always, that Jerusalem is NEVER mentioned, not one time, in the Koran.

Ironically, even the PA's own website, in it's history of Jerusalem timeline, lists Jewish residency there.

This is part of an ongoing deligitamization campaign that has been going on publicly, and behind closed doors, for decades.

One of the worst examples of this, has been the raping of archeologic items from inside the Temple Mount.

Jewish Law will not allow any digs under the Mount. However, during the Oslo accords, and the Wie River accords, the Israelis allowed Yasser Arafat, at his specific request, to widen doorways to the underground prayer areas of Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock mosques.

What was discovered shortly after, was truckloads of dirt, filled with artifacts from the first and second temple periods simply dumped into the Qidron valley, the valley between the Temple and the Mount of Olives.

This extends throughout the Muslim world.

This week, the front page of many British papers describes the type of horrible anti semitic lies being taught in the weekend Muslim schools. There are all the classics. Jews are developed out of Apes and Pigs, Jews are conspiring to take over the world, etc.

Of equal concern to the British is the fact that the children, as young as 6, are also being taught the basic Sharia requirements for severing of hands and feet for petty crimes.

The British Education Secretary has condemned this in no uncertain terms.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government have also been on the forefront of this battle.

Where is the US? If the Saudis are sponsoring this in England, what do you think is going on in the middle east?

Until we understand who and what the real enemy is, we can't help to see true peace.

Obama a Socialist? No, not him!

2010-11-04T18:25:00.000-04:00

Obama a Socialist? No, not him! Oh, the irony. On the very day, during the very week, when the NY Times was telling us over and over about who to vote for, and what the real message of the elections was, I found the ultimate irony in their business section. In an article entitled “In G.M.’s Comeback Story, a Pivotal Role Played by Washington” the Times repeatedly discusses the fact that, for all intents and purposes, the President and his team are running General Motors and have been. “Yet interviews with G.M. and federal officials show decisions by the government have played a pivotal role in shaping the automaker’s leadership, its business strategies, and now it’s initial stock offering…” “People familiar with the contact between G.M. and the Treasury Department say Ron Bloom, a senior adviser to the Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, is told about actions that G.M. management and the board are contemplating before they occur.” “To ensure a fresh start for the company, the GOVERNEMENT CHOSE A NEW CHAIRMAN AND SEVERAL NEW DIRECTORS FOR ITS BOARD (my emphasis), which in turn picked two of its members to serve as successive chiefs of the company.” “The government also set parameters for G.M.’s strategic direction – FEWER BRANDS AND MODELS, A LEANER ORGANIZATION, AND A SWEEPING OVERHAUL OF ITS PLODDING CORPORATE CULTURE (my emphasis).” When I referred to the structural changes Obama has wrought, this is exactly what I was referring. Even the current stock offering is being run by the government in such a way as to give the appearance of ceding control, when in fact, there would be no loss of government control. Sigh, more of the same… Obama a Socialist? No, not him! Oh, the irony. On the very day, during the very week, when the NY Times was telling us over and over about who to vote for, and what the real message of the elections was, I found the ultimate irony in their business section. In an article entitled “In G.M.’s Comeback Story, a Pivotal Role Played by Washington” the Times repeatedly discusses the fact that, for all intents and purposes, the President and his team are running General Motors and have been. “Yet interviews with G.M. and federal officials show decisions by the government have played a pivotal role in shaping the automaker’s leadership, its business strategies, and now it’s initial stock offering…” “People familiar with the contact between G.M. and the Treasury Department say Ron Bloom, a senior adviser to the Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, is told about actions that G.M. management and the board are contemplating before they occur.” “To ensure a fresh start for the company, the GOVERNEMENT CHOSE A NEW CHAIRMAN AND SEVERAL NEW DIRECTORS FOR ITS BOARD (my emphasis), which in turn picked two of its members to serve as successive chiefs of the company.” “The government also set parameters for G.M.’s strategic direction – FEWER BRANDS AND MODELS, A LEANER ORGANIZATION, AND A SWEEPING OVERHAUL OF ITS PLODDING CORPORATE CULTURE (my emphasis).” When I referred to the structural changes Obama has wrought, this is exactly what I was referring. Even the current stock offering is being run by the government in such a way as to give the appearance of ceding control, when in fact, there would be no loss of government control. Sigh, more of the same…

Calif. high school ends 'Beat the Jew' game

2010-06-08T18:19:00.001-04:00

(06-04) 13:18 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) --

Seven seniors at a Southern California high school were facing disciplinary action for participating in a game called "Beat the Jew" in which losers were subjected to "incineration" or "enslavement," a school administrator said Friday.

The game involved some students playing the role of Nazis who blindfolded and dropped off other students playing Jews who must find their way back to the campus, said Sherry Johnstone, assistant superintendent of personnel for Desert Sands Unified School District.

It was not immediately clear what either punishment comprised for losing players, she said.

Seven seniors at La Quinta High School could be suspended or barred from graduation, among other measures, Johnstone said.

"This is appalling to us," she said. "We want our students to understand the horror of a title like this."

The district about 130 miles east of Los Angeles referred the matter to police because of the possibility that the game contained a threat, said La Quinta police Lt. Jason Huskey. No threat had been found so far, but the investigation was ongoing, he said.

The district started investigating a week ago after students reported the game to administrators.

The game was promoted online, attracting about 40 students. Seven showed up to play one evening in the campus parking lot, Johnstone said.

The district is working with Jewish organizations to review its tolerance curriculum. A voluntary tolerance program will be held after school next week.

If Brian Williams cries in the woods, can anyone hear it?

2010-05-25T21:58:00.001-04:00

I don't usually put my economic advice here, but several weeks ago, the market "topped" at approx. 11,800.

For those that know anything about what is called technical analysis, what it means is that the market tends to move in trading ranges. Technical analysts look to see if the market breaks out of those ranges. The previous high for the market was that 11,800 number. The low we are looking at is about 9800. FYI, it the Dow goes below that number, look out. You're probably looking at another quick 1000 point drop or more.

As I watched what was happening in Europe, and in particular, the German reticence to bail out Greece, as well as the election of the Conservatives in Britain (a very good thing and a lesson we should take. Btw, Conservatives in Britain roughly correspond to the OLD Democratic party here) I simply told my friends, and the folks who I still advise on their investments to get into cash. Not money markets, cash.

Why? Well, there are several countries that S & P considers to be in almost as deep trouble as Greece. We, and the Brits are on that short list.

The unfunded liabilities of the US are now approximately $120 TRILLION dollars. How much is that? More money than there is in the world.

That's right.

Worse, our structural deficit – the deficit for permanent programs like medicare, and the new health care plan, is rapidly approaching that magical 8% of GDP that economists consider the point at which default is unavoidable.

Now, as I painted my scenario for many, they poo pooed. However, slowly but surely, you are starting to see articles in mainstream papers that essentially repeat what the original Standard and Poors evaluation of US debt said, that measures that would cause "social unrest" were necessary to avoid default.

So, what about Brian Williams? Well, I'm certainly no fan of his, but working for GE which is in the pocket of the Obama administration b/c of the billions in "green" government energy projects they've been promised, he can't say anything on NBC.

But a week or so ago, he appeared on David Letterman, and after reciting the story of Greece, he said that he was "so scared I don't want to come out of my house".

I wonder why this hasn't been reported?

Pardon the interruption of your hysteria, but how about a few inconvenient facts?

2010-05-17T03:12:00.001-04:00

I've waited to write this post (and another one I had planned) until some of the brouhaha over the new Arizona law died down a bit. As so often happens to me, I am left befuddled over the uproar. Call it once again, much ado about nothing.

Why do I say that? Well, it has been brought out that non citizens are already required to carry their identification at ALL times under federal law. And then there's that inconvenient fact that illegal immigrants are, well, illegal. And of course, you and I are generally required to carry identification if we want to engage in things such as driving, cashing checks, etc.

But more to the point, there has long been ensconced in federal law 2 things that make the Arizona law essentially just a restatement of what already is, and what is already required of local law enforcement.

The first is known as a "Terry Stop" which comes from a 1968 case, Terry v. Ohio. It had to do with the stopping of 3 men who were thought to be casing a store with the intent of robbing it. The detective stopped and frisked them. Weapons were discovered.

The Supreme Court ruled that there was a limit on the unlawful search and seizure rule and that an officer, with reasonable suspicion, could stop someone.

In the years after, the "stop and frisk" as it became known was expanded to include traffic stops and allowing police to request and require identification.

Next is a program that is known as 287(g) which EXPLICITLY empowers local law enforcement to enforce the immigration laws.

This program was started 15 years ago under President Clinton, and guess who expanded it? You got it, Obama. So, the squeaks you hear coming from Eric Holder and Obama himself might just be so much, well let's say it, lies.

There are those inconvenient facts getting in the way of the storyline again. Sorry.

Transparency?

2010-05-15T23:46:00.003-04:00

I've written often over the last year and half about the fact that Obama administration has taken government secrecy to levels never seen before.

I've also written that it is actually far worse than that, with the white house press office having created an agency who actually PRODUCES news clips, photos, blog posts, tweets, etc. It all started oh so innocently, with the Rutgers women's basketball team's visit last year, but escalated with the "Beer Summit".

Now it has been taken to a new level with the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Not only is no one allowed to get near her, and the White House conducting sham interviews made to look like news clips, but what ISN'T getting coverage are things like this. The New York Times, even in trying to do a puff piece about Kagan, was FORBIDDEN, yes, totalitarianism raises it's head again, forbidden from attending a class at Hunter college here in NY to hear what Kagan's BROTHER has to say!!

As I continue to write, and express to those around me, there are no historical precedents for the depravity, the criminality, and unconstitutional behavior of this administration.

It continues to befuddle me why no one can piece this together.

Does this look like a “settlement”?

2010-04-29T01:23:00.004-04:00

Above is a picture of Ramat Schlomo, the “settlement” that caused the rucus with Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel and which allowed many to finally see Obama’s real agenda regarding Israel.

The population of Schlomo is approx. 250,000 – the same as Newark, New Jersey. Settlement? Hardly.

Why weren’t any of our allies at the Nuclear “summit”?

2010-04-24T01:32:00.000-04:00

A clue to this may have come in the debate for Prime Minister this week in England (of course why Israel wasn’t there has to do with Bibi not wanting to twiddle his thumbs while Obama ate dinner again). When discussing missile defense, current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the Labour candidate (England’s Left party) said this “Get real about the dangers we face if North Korea, Iran and other countries with nuclear weapons, and we give up our own.”

In response, the Conservative (David Cameron) candidate replied “I didn’t think I’d ever utter these words, but I agree with Gordon”.

Amazing that quasi socialists France and England, are now out front of the US on this (and other) issues.

Who is Goodwin Liu and why should you care?

2010-04-14T08:08:00.002-04:00

Who is Goodwin Liu and why should you care?

The easy answer is he is Obama's controversial nominee for appellate court justice in the 9th circuit. (It's no coincidence that this is the court that has been most aggressive in strikeing down Obama's attempts at usurping ever more power into his hands).

The longer answer is, another graduate of Yale Law School, where, like Sandra Sotomayor, Eric Holder, and many other of the new justice staff and undoubtedly the next nominee to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, he is a disciple of Harold Koh, former Dean of Yale Law School and Obama's appointee as chief legal advisor to the state department.
Amazingly, know one has yet (other than your intrepid blogger) picked up on the importance of all of this and the confluence of events that we are seeing this week and over the coming summer when the new justice is confirmed.
Why is it important?

As I wrote last year, during Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, liberal or conservative, strict constructionist or loose, doesn't matter. The President has the right to nominate who he likes, as long as they follow the law, as they interpret it.
However, what is true, and critical, about all of these people, and all the people Obama is using to fill the legal departments and judicial appointees is this.
They all believe, in direct contradiction of US Law, that the supremacy clause of the Constitution does NOT apply to international law.
What is the Supremacy clause? Article VI, clause 2 of the Constitution states "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

What does it mean? Well, it is generally applied to the states and it means that when in conflict, federal law prevails.
However, it also means that US Law supersedes international law. In other words, a President cannot sign an agreement that would otherwise violate the constitution, or abridge the rights of citizens of the United States. Interestingly, although they did not admit it, it was the Supremacy clause that was the reason Obama pulled out of the Durban II conference on Human Rights because the preliminary agreement put severe restriction on speech (no anti Muslim speech) and had he signed it, it would have been thrown out as violating the supremacy clause.

So, how do all the strands of Obama tie together here?

Well, as you have seen, he has signed a new treaty with the Russians, and this week has brought in all the countries that DON'T matter to sign a non binding nuclear agreement.
He has subjugated himself to the UN.
This idea is perfectly in line with the greatest (read worst, biggest disaster) of all the Prgressives, Woodrow Wilson, who believed, like Obama in the concept of a 'one world government'.
With each appointee to the Federal Bench, and the Supreme Court, he moves closer to being able to do what even Roosevelt (the second most horrific progressive) could not.
Change the US Court system so that he can have the whole nation, and not just it's President, bowing before the world.
Of course, in Obama's mind, the sheer force of his personality makes him think that HE will be the leader of this one world government.

Watch carefully, warn your Senators, THIS is the danger ahead, not Roe v. Wade, or gun control, or any of the other single issue cases that can go back and forth like the breeze.
This is part of the "fundamental transformation" that no one but a few of us, foresaw.

A nuke here, a nuke there…

2010-03-28T18:05:00.001-04:00

Lost by the Obamites amid the President’s jubilation at the new start treaty, is that Obama was absolutely taken by the two headed monster, Dmitiri Medvedev and Vladimir Putin.

The START treaty that had expired in December called for a maximum of 2200 Ballistic missiles.
Did Obama fail to notice that the Russians currently have more than 2600? That’s not a near miss, that’s a willful failure.
We now have approximately 1500 or so of these most deadly nukes.

However, of much greater importance is what is known as battlefield tactical nuclear weapons.

Everyone acknowledges that there will be good defenses available against ICBM’s launched from thousands of miles away.
This is for any number of reasons, the distance they must travel, the ease of following their locations in hardened, permanent positions, etc.
Just as important is the fact that only a few of these megaton monsters are needed to ensure Armageddon.

The Russians specifically EXCLUDED battlefield tactical weapons from the list of items to be included in the treaty, and inspection regime..
And these are the weapons that are MOST DANGEROUS in today’s world.
They are mobile, use solid fuel and cannot be traced easily using satellite, or even “feet on the ground” technology.

Currently, Russia has a 4 to 1 advantage over us in the number of these weapons, approximately 2000 to 500.

Of much greater concern however, is that these are exactly the weapons that are being sought by dissident terror groups, and which can be stolen, or easily lost track of in regime changes, etc.
And it’s certainly not like the Russians to ally themselves with regimes that might be prone to use these battlefield nukes (wink, wink).
So, once again, we have been made less safe.

11 + 16 + 4 + 14 = Permanent Majority

2010-03-26T21:31:00.000-04:00

Lost in the maelstrom of the health care debacle is the ultimate goal of the Obamites.

How to ensure a permanent majority - at least until the dictatorship takes hold - for the progressive party (now in control of the Democrats).

How are they doing this?

Well, in the 2 days since the health care bill, you've seen two immediate actions.

First, the move to immediately grant citizenship to between 11 and 25 million illegal aliens (no one is sure how many there really are - I've used the smaller number).

Ever wonder why union cadillac health plans were excluded from the monstrosity of the fines we all will pay from now on? To ensure the votes of the 16+ million union members in the country.
That's right, unlike you, no matter how good their plan is, they will not be hit with the taxes on that plan the way you will be.

The next move is being called a new voting rights act.
The next piece of legislation is to grant the right to vote BACK to roughly 4 million convicted felons.

Finally, are the approximately 14 million federal employees, who of course receive wonderful health care benefits.

As you know, most of these people will tend to vote Democratic.

If you total up the numbers you get 47 million votes (unless you take the higher end number for illegal aliens who will be granted citizenship, than the total is 61 million votes).

John McCain received approximately 59 million votes in the last election.

Do you think that 61 million number is any coincidence?

Surprising words...

2010-03-24T03:59:00.000-04:00

I almost fell off my chair today in reading the op ed section of the Times.

David Brooks, the Times' house Republican (although how a progressive can call himself that, I don't know), has been perhaps Obama's biggest fan, and cheerleader for the better part of the last year.

It's why he is, or was, the only journalist from the right who is given unfettered access.

But in his article today, in discussing his democratic past, and his current position, he said something that I think, reflects much of the country.

To quote:
"Yet I confess, watching all this, I feel again why I am no longer spiritually attached to the Democratic Party. The essence of America is energy - the vibrancy of the market, the mobility of the peole and the disruptive creativity of entrepreneurs. This vibrancy grew up accidentally, out of a cocktail of religious fervor and material abundance, but it was nurtured by choice. It was nurtured by our founders, who created national capital markets to disrupt the ossifying grip of the agricultural landholders..."

I say, bravo David, and welcome back to America.

THE United States v. The UNITED States

2010-03-12T18:43:00.001-05:00

A Subtle but important distinction. I wonder when the deaf, dumb and blind kids in the administration and Democratic Leadership are going to take note of the fact that at the present time 34, I repeat 34 State’s Attorney’s General have said that they will file a class action suit against the federal government if the current Health Care Bill (the Senate Version) is passed making it mandatory that we all buy insurance.

This has the potential to lead to a major constitutional crisis. However, even if some deal were reached with the states, it’s almost assured that large private groups would sue on the same grounds, that you cannot require to someone to buy something simply to be allowed to exist.

More importantly, it continues to show the hilarity of Obama’s “I’m not an ideologue. Really, I’m not” statement to the Republican caucus.

Be afraid, be very afraid…

2010-02-10T06:22:00.000-05:00

I have been writing for more than a year that Obama’s Iranian policy is being set by the Brooking’s Institute’s Kenneth Pollack. More importantly, that policy is that allowing Iran to have nuclear weapons is the goal. You read that right. The absurd idea is that the Iranians can be “controlled” to remain what is known as a regional nuclear power and that they can be used as a Shia block against the Sunni bomb of the Pakistanis and/or Al Qaeda.

Of course, this flies in the face of the Iranians open discussion of their intention of becoming a GLOBAL nuclear power, not to mention their rapid missile advancement (I will discuss this in the next post).

Why am I mentioning this now? Well, as all the pundits have continued to be duped by the Obama “look at my mouth, not my hands” method of fooling everyone about who and what he is, and have discussed his purported attempts at bipartisanship, what they have missed is his retrenchment and the hardening of his views.

This was seen clearly today in the farce that was the supposed meeting with Republican leaders, and in the pronouncements by Obama and his proxies of not just full speed ahead on all the programs that have so clearly been repudiated, but beyond full speed.

As such, they have now openly disclosed their plans vis a vis the Iranians, in the form of an op – ed article in today’s NY Times.

I will simply reprint it below, and when you are able to close your stunned mouths, be sure to get on the phone to your Senators and Congresspeople. They are listening these days. Just imagine the idea of this man, who believes as deeply as possible, that it is his sacred duty to hasten the apocalypse to aid in the return of the 12th Imam, with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

To whit:

Iran’s Two-Edged Bomb
By ADAM B. LOWTHER
Published: February 8, 2010
Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

With Iran having notified the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency that it is now enriching its stockpile of uranium to a higher level, we should admit that Washington’s approach to countering the Islamic Republic is leading nowhere. What’s needed, however, may be less of a change of plan than a change in how we view the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Believe it or not, there are some potential benefits to the United States should Iran build a bomb. (I’m speaking for myself here, and in no way for the Air Force.) Five possibilities come to mind.

First, Iran’s development of nuclear weapons would give the United States an opportunity to finally defeat violent Sunni-Arab terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Here’s why: a nuclear Iran is primarily a threat to its neighbors, not the United States. Thus Washington could offer regional security — primarily, a Middle East nuclear umbrella — in exchange for economic, political and social reforms in the autocratic Arab regimes responsible for breeding the discontent that led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Until now, the Middle East autocracies have refused to change their ways because they were protected by the wealth of their petroleum reserves. A nuclear Iran alters the regional dynamic significantly, and provides some leverage for us to demand reforms.

Second, becoming the primary provider of regional security in a nuclear Middle East would give the United States a way to break the OPEC cartel. Forcing an end to the sorts of monopolistic practices that are illegal in the United States would be the price of that nuclear shield, bringing oil prices down significantly and saving billions of dollars a year at the pump. Or, at a minimum, President Obama could trade security for increased production and a lowering of global petroleum prices.
Third, Israel has made clear that it feels threatened by Iran’s nuclear program. The Palestinians also have a reason for concern, because a nuclear strike against Israel would devastate them as well. This shared danger might serve as a catalyst for reconciliation between the two parties, leading to the peace agreement that has eluded the last five presidents. Paradoxically, any final agreement between Israelis and Palestinians would go a long way to undercutting Tehran’s animosity toward Israel, and would ease longstanding tensions in the region.

Fourth, a growth in exports of weapons systems, training and advice to our Middle Eastern allies would not only strengthen our current partnership efforts but give the American defense industry a needed shot in the arm.

With the likelihood of austere Pentagon budgets in the coming years, Boeing has been making noise about shifting out of the defense industry, which would mean lost American jobs and would also put us in a difficult position should we be threatened by a rising military power like China. A nuclear Iran could forestall such a catastrophe.

Last, the United States would be able to stem the flow of dollars to autocratic regimes in the region. It would accomplish this not only by driving down the price of oil and increasing arms exports, but by requiring the beneficiaries of American security to bear a real share of its cost. And in the long run, a victory in the war on terrorism would save taxpayers the tens of billions of dollars a year now spent on overseas counterinsurgency operations.

What about the downside — that an unstable, anti-American regime would be able to start a nuclear war? Actually, that’s less of a risk than most people think. Unless the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and his Guardian Council chart a course that no other nuclear power has ever taken, Iran should become more responsible once it acquires nuclear weapons rather than less. The 50-year standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States was called the cold war thanks to the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons.

There is reason to believe that the initial shock of a nuclear Iran would soon be followed a new regional dynamic strikingly like that of cold-war Europe. Saudi Arabia and Iraq would be united along with their smaller neighbors by their fear of Iran; the United States would take the lead in creating a stable regional security environment. In addition, our reluctant European allies, and possibly even China and Russia, would have a much harder time justifying sales of goods and technology to Tehran, further isolating the Islamic Republic.

Iran may think its enrichment plans will put fear into the hearts of Americans. In fact, it should give us hopes of a renaissance of American influence in the Middle East.

Adam B. Lowther is a defense analyst at the Air Force Research Institute.

R.I.P. Miep Gies – Last of Anne Frank’s Protectors

2010-01-13T22:10:00.001-05:00

R.I.P. Miep Gies – Last of Anne Frank’s Protectors

The following is the NY Times obituary for Miep Gies who died Monday. I have recommended it before, but you can see Ms. Gies in the movie “Paper Clips” about a Tennessee school’s student project about the Holocaust. It remains one of the most moving movies about the Shoah that does NOT include the horrible videos of the atrocities.
Ms. Gies defined the words “quiet dignity” and was truly a hero.

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Miep Gies, the last survivor among Anne Frank’s protectors and the woman who preserved the diary that endures as a testament to the human spirit in the face of unfathomable evil, died Monday night, the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam said. She was 100.

The BBC said Mrs. Gies suffered a fall late last month and died at a nursing home.
“I am not a hero,” Mrs. Gies wrote in her memoir, “Anne Frank Remembered,” published in 1987. “I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more — much more — during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the heart of those of us who bear witness.”

Mrs. Gies sought no accolades for joining with her husband and three others in hiding Anne Frank, her father, mother and older sister and four other Dutch Jews for 25 months in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. But she came to be viewed as a courageous figure when her role in sheltering Anne Frank was revealed with the publication of her memoir. She then traveled the world while in her 80s, speaking against intolerance. The West German government presented her with its highest civilian medal in 1989, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands knighted her in 1996.

When the Gestapo raided the hiding place in the annex to Otto Frank’s business office on Aug. 4, 1944, and arrested its eight occupants, it left behind his daughter Anne’s diary and her writings on loose sheets of papers. The journals recounted life in those rooms behind a movable bookcase and the hopes of a girl on the brink of womanhood. Mrs. Gies gathered up those writings and hid them, unread, hoping that Anne would someday return to claim them.

But when Anne’s father, Otto Frank, returned to Amsterdam at the end of World War II, having been liberated from Auschwitz, he was the lone survivor of the family. Anne Frank had died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp three months before her 16th birthday. Her sister, Margot, died there at age 19 and their mother, Edith Frank, died at Auschwitz.

Mrs. Gies gave Anne’s writings to Mr. Frank, and they were first published in the Netherlands in 1947 in an abridged version. “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” has since been translated into dozens of languages in several editions, read by millions and adapted for the stage and screen, a voice representing the six million Jews killed by the Nazis.

But Mrs. Gies remained largely anonymous until an American writer, Alison Leslie Gold, persuaded her to tell her story and worked with her on “Anne Frank Remembered.”
Miep Gies was born Feb. 15, 1909, as Hermine Santrouschitz, a member of a Roman Catholic family in Vienna. When she was 11, she was sent to Leiden to be cared for by a Dutch family, being among the many Austrian children suffering from food shortages in the wake of World War I. She was given the Dutch nickname Miep and later adopted by the family.

When she was 13, the family moved to Amsterdam, and in 1933 she became a secretary to Otto Frank, who was overseeing the Dutch branch of a German company selling an ingredient for manufacturing jam. Mr. Frank had fled Hitler’s Germany, and he was soon joined by his wife and daughters.

Miep became a trusted employee and friend of the Frank family and joined in its alarm over the persecution of German Jews. In May 1940, the Netherlands fell in Germany’s invasion of the Low Countries. In July 1942, when thousands of Dutch Jews were being deported to concentration camps, the Frank family went into hiding in unused rooms above Mr. Frank’s office. He asked Mrs. Gies if she would help shelter them, and she unhesitatingly agreed.

The annex became a hiding place not only for the Franks but for three members of a family named van Pels — the father a business colleague of Mr. Frank’s — and Mrs. Gies’s dentist, Fritz Pfeffer.

Having married a Dutch social worker, Jan Gies, in 1941, Miep Gies joined with him and three other employees of Mr. Frank’s business in sheltering the eight Jews and caring for their daily needs. The protectors risked death if caught by the Nazis.
Mrs. Gies, while continuing to work for Mr. Frank’s business, which remained open under figurehead Christian management, played a central role in caring for the hidden. She found food for them, brought books and news of the outside world and provided emotional support, bringing Anne her first pair of high-heeled shoes and baking a holiday cake. On one occasion, Miep and Jan Gies (he is referred to in the diary as Henk, one of many pseudonyms Anne used) spent a night in the annex to experience the terror there for themselves.

At their apartment a short bicycle ride away, Mrs. Gies and her husband, a member of the Dutch resistance, hid an anti-Nazi university student.

When the Gestapo raided the hiding place — tipped off by someone unknown to this day — Mrs. Gies was working in the building. But one of the Nazi agents spared her from arrest, probably in light of their common Austrian heritage. Mrs. Gies later went to Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam in a futile attempt to offer a bribe for the lives of the eight arrested Jews.

Mrs. Gies endured the “Hunger Winter” in the Netherlands during the war’s final months, then lived quietly in Amsterdam, a homemaker. But upon publication of her memoir, she began to travel widely as a living link to Anne Frank and spoke on the lessons of the Holocaust, often talking to schoolchildren who were reading Anne’s diary. A small woman — just a shade over 5 feet tall — whose hair had turned white, she bore a single remembrance of those days in the hiding place, a black onyx ring with a diamond in the center, worn on her left hand. It was a gift from Auguste von Pels, one of the doomed Jews she had sheltered.

Every Aug. 4, the anniversary of the raid on the annex, Miep and Jan Gies remained at their Amsterdam home. They withdrew from the world and reflected on the lost.
Mrs. Gies is survived by her son, Paul, and three grandchildren. Her husband died in 1993. The other three people who helped shelter the Frank family — Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler and Elisabeth Voskuijl — died earlier.

Otto Frank, who lived with Miep and Jan Gies for a time after the war, died in Basel, Switzerland, in 1980. The building housing the secret annex, at Prinsengracht 263, has become a museum.

In her diary entry on May 8, 1944, Anne Frank wrote how “we are never far from Miep’s thoughts.”

In her memoir, Mrs. Gies told of her emotions when she finally read the diary.
She wrote: “The emptiness in my heart was eased. So much had been lost, but now Anne’s voice would never be lost. My young friend had left a remarkable legacy to the world.

“But always, every day of my life, I’ve wished that things had been different. That even had Anne’s diary been lost to the world, Anne and the others might somehow have been saved.

“Not a day goes by that I do not grieve for them.”

How do you take the measure of a man?

2009-12-20T04:33:00.001-05:00

For those who don't follow such things, Chris Henry, a young wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals died this week in a car accident. Even just that sentence begins the idea behind this post. What really happened was that he had some type of dispute with his fiancée, and as she left their home, he jumped into the back bed of her pick up truck.

He fell, or was thrown, from the car, severed his spinal cord, was in critical condition for approximately half a day, and finally passed away.

What struck me were the incredibly disparate things that were heard about him.

Again, for those that don't follow these things, Henry was one of the members of the Bengals who largely were responsible for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to install a stricter behavior requirement. Henry, in fact, had been suspended from the league.

The owner of the Bengals, however, believes in giving troubled players a second chance, and, even over the objections of his coach, Marvin Lewis, known for HIS openness to "questionable" players, brought Henry back.

But those who knew him for years universally described him as quiet, sweet, shy, caring, loving, considerate, respectful, and many more hyper positive attributes.

But these were not the typical post mortem type of statements but I sensed that they were truly genuine expressions of feeling for this tragic young man.

What is also true, though, is the description that the judge gave him just over a year ago during sentencing for his latest crime "Young man," the judge said to him, "it seems you have become a one man crime wave".

There were arrests and convictions for drugs, assault, and all the usual other offenses associated with the overpaid, babied athlete.

And yet, there were those testimonials. And not a few, but dozens. By good, honest people. There were the 4 children, who by all accounts, he adored. But for whom, he clearly was a terrible example.

And I was left wondering, what makes us who we are? When do we say "this person is bad" or "this person is good"? Can we ever say either? I am one who decries the failure by our society to ever simply say "this is wrong", so it is a particularly difficult question for me.

No answers here, simply questions.

The ultimate hate crime

2009-12-18T22:19:00.001-05:00

Police in Poland have reported that the infamous sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" that stood over the entrance to the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, was stolen this week.

"Work will make you free" was posted at the entrance to many of the Nazi death camps in a perverse campaign to make the newly arrived murder victims believe that they were not entering extermination facilities, but that they were "ONLY" being made into slave labor.

However, the Auschwitz sign, even in this gallery of infamy, was the most infamous.

Auschwitz of course was the murder capital of the Nazi Empire, where at least 1 million Jews met their deaths and where countless Polish, Russian, and Czech prisoners of war were also exterminated, along with the Gypsies, Homosexuals, mentally and physically ill, and other 'undesirables' of the Nazi's.

Officials at the memorial quickly replaced the original sign with a copy that was made several years ago when the original was having restoration work done.

Many of the facilities in the camp are in dire condition – the barracks were not built to last 60 years, and there is significant funding shortage. The German government has pledged approximately $30 million dollars, roughly half of what is needed, to rehabilitate the facility, which receives 1,000,000 or more visitors a year.

The alarming thing about this act, so brazen, so vicious, is the reflection of what has been an alarming increase in anti-Semitism throughout the world.

Agencies that track hate crimes have all noted this. In fact, just this week, the Canadian foreign minister, in a speech regarding anti Semitism in Jerusalem, discussed the rising number of incidents in his native land. Worse, during his time in Israel, swastikas were painted on several synagogues in Toronto, home to a large Canadian Jewish population.

As I have written before, the history of the world, since biblical times, has followed a frighteningly similar pattern.

Roughly, it goes as follows. Some cataclysmic murderous event: e.g. the Inquisition; the Holocaust; the pogroms; the Crusades, etc, followed by a period of apology and guilt on the part of the offenders, than acceptance of Jews and assimilation by Jews back into the general society. This is then followed by increasing tides of anti-Semitism, usually starting with the same type of stereotypes and finally after about a century, the next "Holocaust".

Depending on what year you want to trace things from in Europe, it's been between 70 and 80 years since the real escalation with the publication of the Nazi 25 points in 1920; election of Hitler in 1933, the Nuremburg Laws of 1935; or even Kristalnacht of 1938.

It is thus no surprise, based on 3000 years of history, that we are entering the descending period of this cycle once again.

Except that now, things are accelerated and more sophisticated. And "Israel" has, in many instances, replaced "Jew" as the word used.

Where have you been?

2009-12-15T15:14:00.001-05:00

Well, to answer the question that I keep receiving via email, it's simple.

Every once in a while things get so bad, so corrupt, so backward, that I find myself unable to continue to relay the news to everyone.

What most of you who don't spend time studying the things that I do probably don't realize, is that I sanitize by a factor of about 99% most of what I read.

And no, I don't read the lunatic fringe websites, I read source material. From the published sermons of the leading imams, to Al Aram and Al Jazeera, to the CBO and the Federal register.

Running through the Arab press every day, or listening to the call to prayer, is truly frightening.

As we speak, the usual Christmas time "blood libel" is running rampant (for those who don't know, this is the continuation of the anti semitic story put forth by Czar Nicholas that says that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood for matzoh).

But it is so much more than that.

There is a full on, universal effort to teach that Jerusalem has no religious or historic significance to Jews or, by extension, Christians.

A British court has now issued a warrant for the head of the opposition party in Israel, Tzipi Livni, who was foreign minister during the "Operation Cast Lead" defense against Gaza.

Worse, the European Union has voted to declare Jerusalem a divided city, and condemned Israel control of it.

In Afghanistan, we have been lied to by our King once again. You think he is sending 30,000 troops? NOT. He has sent 43,000.

Like all of his lies, it is so stupid, and so transparent it boggles my mind why he does it. To placate the left wing, I guess, but to me it is just another example of his ridiculous mendacity.

Or how about Hilary Clinton's admission this week "I guess our Iranian policy of negotiation hasn't worked".

And the final admission of what I have been saying for 2 years now, that this idiot, accepts an Iranian bomb, believing he can control them.

But here at home things are worse.

14 TRILLION dollars. 37 TRILLION dollars in unfunded medicaid liabilties.

These are numbers so large that they are inconceivable in the true sense of that word.

Here in NY, Governor Paterson has simply WITHHELD a percentage of funding across the board from all cities, school districts etc.

Why? He stated that he would not be the governor who oversaw the insolvency of NY State.

If you think this is a problem of ours alone, you are wildly misinterpreted.

California and NY. Don't you think the two largest states are reflective of the overall national problem?

It will take at least a generation of solid, no holds barred, no compromise effort to undue what this disaster of a President has wrought.

We as a nation will be bankrupt.

Let me repeat that. We will be bankrupt.

There have been significant moves already to remove the dollar as the international currency.

If China, Russia, or any of our other creditors decides to say, "no, we don't need any more Treasury bills, thank you", we are finished at that moment.

And this has already started. There have been several unsuccessful Treasury auctions recently.

Without going into the details of this, let me explain it this way.

If this happens, there will be a depression of BIBLICAL proportions.

50% unemployment. Death by starvation, mobs roaming the streets.

And what is going on?

Another $1 TRILLION stimulus being legitimately discussed.

Taking the TARP payback money and NOT using it to pay down debt but to fund a jobs bill.

INSANITY!!!!

I cannot describe how bad this is.

And now, the inevitable has happened.

While you were sleeping, the FED has been pumping Billions of dollars into the economy.

All well and good, however with virtual 0% interest, what this guarantees is runaway inflation.

And it has started. The inflation rate for last month was just announced. 1.8%. The core rate, excluding food and energy? .5%

That is now 6% inflation.

This may not seem significant, but what it means is that every dollar you earn is worth 94 cents compared to yesterday.

And it will get MUCH worse.

He told us "change" and that is what we've gotten.

He is now in direct personal control of every aspect of your life when this health care reform passes.

From banking to insurance, business to personal, arrests to wiretapping, torture to rendition.

You are not safe.

WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!

114, “Endangerment” and the ascension of Neo Fascism in the United States

2009-12-10T19:25:00.001-05:00

One of the revolutionary concepts that Hannah Arendt put forth in her ground breaking study of the first half of the 20^th century, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" was the use of governmental institutions in their most banal form to control the population and to suppress opposition.

As many of you who read my blog know, I have long promulgated that Obama has nothing so much as the expansion of his own power as his goal and that he accomplishes this from the right and the left.

Events of this week are prime examples of that fact. The Health Care Bill being discussed in the Senate contains as many as 114 new commissions that will directly supervise your life. You have heard discussions of the Federal Government taking over 1/6^th of the US economy; however it is this fact, the direct supervision of your health care decisions, which is most frightening.

The next thing that happened, was an official EPA ruling that declared CO2 emissions as an "endangerment" to humans. This is an official term and the net result of this fact is that it gives authority to the executive, i.e. Obama, to control ANY, I repeat, ANY company, organizations or other entity that emits CO2.

As you may or may not know, for example, this includes farms, since it has been shown that cattle produce more CO2 emissions than automobiles!

What is particularly frightening is the use of this same definition, open ended authority of this man to take control, which was used before congress to justify the takeover of the auto industry and of the banking and insurance industries, as well as the definition used in court to justify the expansion of the arrest without warrant program.

More of this will be occurring next week in the Copenhagen meeting on global warming. Understand, I do not subscribe to the conspiracy yelled about by the global warming deniers. I believe that we should do anything possible to "go green", mainly for national security reasons.

However, what will be happening there, is the expansion of what I have termed the "Koh-inization" of America. Obama's appointment of the former Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, who believes that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution does not pertain to international agreements, flying in the face of the last 150 years of American history.

“A date that will live in infamy…”

2009-12-07T14:00:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days, or even weeks, ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. This morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December seventh, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Support the troops? Please show you care… Here’s how.

2009-12-03T14:02:00.001-05:00

Once again this year, Xerox corporation is involved in a wonderful program in which anyone can send a thank you card to a soldier currently serving overseas, for free. Just go to http://www.letssaythanks.com/ThankYou.aspx and you can choose a card designed by a child and one of many messages to be sent.

It is such an easy way to say thank you to those who are putting their lives on the line for all of us, everyday.

Even Thomas Friedman gets it these days…

2009-11-30T23:08:00.001-05:00

America vs. The Narrative

NY Times

November 28, 2009

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Here's my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled "Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam," and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by "The Narrative." What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand "American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy" to keep Muslims down. Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.

Although most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, you'd never know it from listening to their world. The dominant narrative there is that 9/11 was a kind of fraud: America's unprovoked onslaught on Islam is the real story, and the Muslims are the real victims — of U.S. perfidy. Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders. The Narrative was concocted by jihadists to obscure that. It's working.

As a Jordanian-born counterterrorism expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said to me: "This narrative is now omnipresent in Arab and Muslim communities in the region and in migrant communities around the world. These communities are bombarded with this narrative in huge doses and on a daily basis. [It says] the West, and right now mostly the U.S. and Israel, is single-handedly and completely responsible for all the grievances of the Arab and the Muslim worlds. Ironically, the vast majority of the media outlets targeting these communities are Arab-government owned — mostly from the Gulf."This narrative suits Arab governments. It allows them to deflect onto America all of their people's grievances over why their countries are falling behind. And it suits Al Qaeda, which doesn't need much organization anymore — just push out The Narrative over the Web and satellite TV, let it heat up humiliated, frustrated or socially alienated Muslim males, and one or two will open fire on their own. See: Major Hasan. "Liberal Arabs like me are as angry as a terrorist and as determined to change the status quo," said my Jordanian friend. The only difference "is that while we choose education, knowledge and success to bring about change, a terrorist, having bought into the narrative, has a sense of powerlessness and helplessness, which are inculcated in us from childhood, that lead him to believe that there is only one way, and that is violence."

What to do? Many Arab Muslims know that what ails their societies is more than the West, and that The Narrative is just an escape from looking honestly at themselves. But none of their leaders dare or care to open that discussion. In his Cairo speech last June, President Obama effectively built a connection with the Muslim mainstream. Maybe he could spark the debate by asking that same audience this question:"Whenever something like Fort Hood happens you say, 'This is not Islam.' I believe that. But you keep telling us what Islam isn't. You need to tell us what it is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted in your schools and mosques. If this is not Islam, then why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves."

IMPACT-SE

2009-11-27T20:27:00.002-05:00

Institute for Monitoring Peace And Cultural Tolerance-School Education

In doing some research on recent statements by Salaam Fayad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, I came across this NGO. Their sole job is to monitor textbooks and educational curricula around the world.

They have done studies in many places, from around the middle east and Asia. Their latest report is about Tunisia.

Their concept is to determine how a society's educational institutions deal with the idea of the "other" i.e. those who are either political enemies, or foreign sources of conflict socially.

Not surprisingly, they have done recent reports on both Israeli, and Palestinian schools.

One of the reasons that I supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries was a speech she gave some time ago discussing the preconditions for any Two state settlement. She was the first politician on a national level that I had heard discuss the necessity of changing the culture of violence that permeates Palestinians society. And to begin that process of change she said, we need to demand a change in the way Palestinians treat, and educate their children.

These poor youngsters are indoctrinated from birth in a culture of hate and death, and while I have been talking about this for years, I had never heard it recognized before by someone in the position to do something about it.

So, the results of IMPACT's study? No surprise here. But I will let you read the conclusions about the Palestinian texts:

As it happened, the books for grades 1-10 were all prepared and published under YasirArafat, while the books for grade 11 were written under his successor, Abbas, and the books for grade 12, under the Hamas government. The PA schoolbooks for grades 11 and 12 were studied in the light of the educational fundamentals regarding the "other" and peace that existed in the PA textbooks for grades 1-10 published under the late Yasser Arafat. As shown in this study, these fundamentals deny the Jewish and Israeli "others" any legitimacy, demonize them, assign them exclusive responsibility for the Mideast conflict, avoid any expression that would openly advocate peace, and encourage instead violent struggle againstthem. These fundamentals, in their various manifestations, are spread throughout the Palestinian curriculum and are found in books for all grades, as is easily discernable in the quoted source material within this study.

AND:

This report covers the school textbooks of the last two grades of the PA educational system, which were published in 2005 and 2006, thus ending a seven-year process in which the PA replaced the old Jordanian and Egyptian schoolbook for all grades with its own ones. While the books for grades 1-10 were all written and published under the late PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, the books for grade 11 were written under his successor Mahmud Abbas and the books for grade 12 were written under the Hamas government, which may account for the changes therein.

In fact, the books of grade 11 provide us with several significant changes, compared to the guidelines governing earlier books. The fundamentals have not changed, to be sure, and they are as follows:

Rejection of any rights the Jews might have in Palestine.
Non-recognition of their holy places there, which are presented as Muslim holy places the Jews aspire to take over.
The Jews themselves are presented in negative light both in the historical context and in the context of the present conflict.
The Jewish national movement in modern times – Zionism – is presented as an expansionist movement created by Western Imperialism and striving to seize control of Arab lands between the Euphrates and the Nile rivers.
Israel is not referred to as a sovereign state. Its establishment in 1948 is referred to as "occupation". The books consider Palestine the sole legitimate sovereign state between River Jordan and the Mediterranean.
Regions within Israel's pre-1967 borders are presented as Palestinian.
Israel is demonized by a long list of accusations presenting it as a source of evil, not as a neighbor with its own legitimate rights and interests. The list of its perceived crimes includes its very establishment, occupation of various parts of Palestine, expulsion of the Palestinian people from its homeland, massacres, assassination of Palestinian leaders, aggression against Arab neighboring countries, destruction of Palestinian economy, even responsibility for the meager participation of Palestinian women in economic activity, for Palestinian social ills – such as drug abuse and illiteracy, for cultural deficiencies, etc. The accompanying term "Imperialist" appears in
this context for the first time, emphasizing Israel's illegitimate status in the books' view.
The conflict is presented in a very biased way as a result of Jewish-British conspiracy against the Arabs. Israel is solely responsible for all its developments.
The Palestinian refugee problem is presented as a result of Jewish aggression and its only solution is said to be the complete return of the refugees' descendants to their ancestors' former homes. The Palestinians' share of responsibility for the creation of this problem, the mass flight of Jewish refugees from the Arab countries to Israel and the obvious difficulty of the suggested solution are never discussed.
Peace with Israel is never openly advocated. Even the discussion of the peace process – in some cases in great detail – is devoid of expressions of support. Israel, on its part, is presented as a party acting against peace.
As before, terrorist actions against Israel are not openly encouraged or rejected but there are indications of implicit support represented by the positive reference to "martyrs", "prisoners-of-war" and "Fidais" (members of the Palestinian armed organizations).

The conclusions about Israeli textbooks? The conclusion here:

Despite the deterioration in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians since September 2000, no negative changes were noted in the new textbooks with regard to the image of the Arabs, the description of the conflict, the presentation of Islam, questions of war and peace and education to tolerance and conciliation. On the contrary, the positive trends noted in the earlier report have, if anything, been strengthened. There are some innovations, as in a textbook published by the Ministry of Education, which presents the pupils with information on an issue little known even to the majority of the Jews: those Arabs who are the "absent present"1. The textbook also deals with the Israel Lands Law, 5720-1960, and its implications for the Arabs of Israel. A number of textbooks have aroused public controversy by certain groups, who have accused them of "post-Zionism" and "self-hatred". These textbooks were reviewed in the previous report and with one exception2, are still included in the list approved by the Ministry of Education.

AND:

The new textbooks give information about the peace agreements between Israel and Arab countries and the Palestinians, in particular on the question of the borders between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Factual presentation of the Arab and Palestinian political position.
The Palestinians' struggle is presented as that of a national movement whilst not identifying with their aims.
The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians continues to be presented as a clash between two national movements, thus legitimizing the existence of the Palestinian national movement. None of the new textbooks contains indoctrination against the Palestinians as a people.
Islam is presented in a positive light and its doctrines factually explained.
Information is provided about Muslim holy places and sites holy to both Muslims and Jews. Places holy to the Jews and also held holy by the Muslims or Christians are mentioned. Traditions that have developed around Jewish holy sites or personalities that are shared by both Jews and the Muslims are depicted in one of the textbooks.
No instance of education to hatred of the Arabs or of any other people was found. In the new editions of literature readers, stories depicting Arabs in a positive light continue to appear. The textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education still include literature readers that contain stories written by Palestinian and other Arab authors.
No illustrations or caricatures depicting Arabs in a negative light are to be found in the books.
New elements are introduced to heighten the pupils understanding of the Arab point of view concerning the conflict.
Textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education continue to present the Palestinian point of view both with regard to the unfolding of the conflict and responsibility for therefugee problem. Some textbooks blame the Arab leadership for bringing about the flight of the Arabs. A new dimension is the reference to towns of mixed Jewish and Arab population and the chain of events that led to the flight of the Arabs from these towns.
Civics textbooks present the pupil with details of the debate over the national character of the State of Israel: Israel as a Jewish state vis-à-vis Israel as a state for "all its citizens".
The national and cultural identity of the Israeli Arabs is discussed in detail.
The main atlases provide information on Palestinian Authority areas. The atlas most commonly used in the State and State Religious schools continues to include a map which shows the area of the West Bank with its division into Areas A, B and C. In the 2002 edition the map of the areas of the Autonomy is updated to include the latest changes. (see Appendix I)
In the other atlas the "Area of the Palestinian Autonomy" is colored gray within the map of Israel. On the physical maps in both atlases the political borders with Jordan and Egypt are marked, without any indication of the green line.

If world war III starts in Yemen and no one covers it, do you hear it fall?

2009-11-25T04:46:00.002-05:00

Almost incredibly, one of the most important stories of the last century is getting no coverage in the American press. The Saudis resumed their bombing of Shiite rebels in Yemen yesterday.

These rebels are sponsored by the same folks who sponsor Hamas, Hezbullah and the insurgency in Iraq. That's right, our favorite "little Hitler" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranians.

Now, this may be a surprise to you, but the fact that it is a surprise to our President, his foreign policy team, and the crack press we have here in the country, is truly frightening.

First, some new facts. As a result of the renewed bombing, the Iranians responded with two unprecedented moves this week. The first was to call for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy.

The second is far more serious in the eyes of the Muslim world. They called for terrorist activity to disrupt the "Haj". For those that don't know, the Haj is the required pilgrimage that Muslims are supposed to make by visiting Mecca. You may have seen in the past the images of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Pilgrims in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, doing their revolutions. The idea of Muslims disrupting this most important rite of passage, not to mention calling for the deaths of fellow Muslims….

But what are the larger implications of what is happening? Well, this too, should be obvious, but apparently it isn't to those in charge here in the US.

It has been the stated goal of the Iranian Revolution since it's inception in 1979 to export it wherever and whenever it can. Now, this is a fundamental tenet of Islam anyway, and particularly of Shia Islam.

However, the Ayatollah took this to a new level. As we speak, Iran control an arc in the middle east extending from their own nation, to Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and now Yemen.

The Egyptians are desperately afraid of the Iranian influence in Gaza which is why have supported a blockade of their own, in addition to cutting off power and water.

The Jordanians are also worried, as Saudi Arabia has served as their buffer until now.

In fact, it was fear of the Iranian terrorist machine that cause the Saudis and Egyptians to meet with Bibi Netanyahu in advance of his first meeting with Obama. Not to mention having the Saudis agree to allow Israel to fly through their air space in order to reach Iran on a bombing mission

The dange of any action against Iran is multi pronged. The best that can be expected is a major disruption of the world's oil supply. Can you imagine waiting on lines even longer than those of the 1970's.

More catastrophically would be that the Iranians would unleash a major terrorist war using Hezbollah and Hamas in the forefront, of course, with Israel the main target.

"We are at war, and we will use every instrument of national power - civilian, military, law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic and others - to win,"

2009-11-18T09:29:00.002-05:00

This was from attorney general Eric Holder today in regard to the decision to try KSM in NY. If so, how to explain his decision and the official policy of the Obama administration to NOT use the term "war on terror" or the official policy to not regard attacks as terrorism, but as the absurdly named "man made disasters"?

The mullahs' big week

2009-11-09T02:14:00.002-05:00

Caroline Glick

Posted: 06 Nov 2009 07:29 AM PST
At first glance, this past week seems like a week that Iran's mullahs would very much like to forget. Early Wednesday morning, IDF naval commandos boarded the merchant ship Francop and diverted it to the naval base at Ashdod. There the IDF displayed its cargo of 3,000 rockets and various and other sundry ordnance useful only to terror forces.

The Francop originated in Iran and was intercepted en route to Iran's Hizbullah proxy force in Lebanon via Iran's Arab toady Syria.

As Israel's political leadership noted, this shipment constitutes hard proof that Iran is actively sponsoring terrorist armies in Lebanon, and doing so in full breach of binding UN Security Council resolutions. The commando raid also exposed the depth of Syria's collusion with Iran in arming Hizbullah. After Israel's seizure of the Francop, voices claiming that Syria is but a bit player in the terror game can be laughed off the international stage.

Israel's interception of the Francop came a week after Yemeni forces seized an Iranian ship transporting armor-piercing weapons to Houthi Shi'ite rebels in northern Yemen. As Saudi Arabia's Al-Watan reported over the weekend, Iranian Revolutionary Guards are training Houthi rebels in Eritrea and sponsoring their insurgency against the Yemini regime.

Earlier in October, the Hansa India, which sailed from Iran to Germany, fell under suspicion as it made its way to Syria. It was diverted from Egypt to Malta, where its cargo of bullets and industrial materials intended for weapons production was removed.

On Wednesday morning, just as Israel was announcing the capture of the Francop, scores of thousands of Iranians in cities throughout the country took advantage of the regime's planned demonstrations celebrating the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy in Teheran to protest against the regime. These regime opponents willingly placed themselves in front of the batons, tear gas cannons and guns of Iranian regime goons to protest June's stolen presidential election and to call for the overthrow of the mullahs' regime of tyranny and its replacement with a democracy.

The protesters turned regime supporters' calls for "Death to America," and "Death to Israel" into big, deadly jokes by calling out, "Death to the Dictator" (that is, supreme ruler Ali Khamenei) and "Death to Russia."

Far from embracing the regime's 30-year war against the US and the nation-state based international system, representatives of the "Green Revolution" asked the US to forgive Iran for taking 52 US Embassy personnel hostage in 1979.

Back in Israel, for the past two weeks some 1,400 US military personnel have been deployed throughout the country for the biennial Juniper Cobra missile defense exercise with the IDF. Although Juniper Cobra is a routine maneuver, this year's exercise was unprecedented in size and scope. Observers claim that there have never been so many American generals in Israel at one time.

No previous Israeli-American joint exercise has been conducted with such a high profile. And Israeli leaders did not hesitate to name the enemy in this year's exercise. This year's Juniper Cobra exercise, they said, was part of the two nations' preparations for a joint response to a potential Iranian strike against Israel. The obvious message Israel and the US hoped to transmit to Teheran was that the strategic alliance between the two countries remains strong.

ALL IN all then, on the surface, this past week seemed like a horrible week for the mullahs. But appearances can be deceiving. Unfortunately and counterintuitively, the past week has been one of the best weeks the mullahs have had for a long, long time. Certainly, it was the best week the Iranian regime has had since it falsified the results of the June 12 presidential elections.

In January 2002, the IDF commandeered the Iranian Karine A weapons ship en route to Gaza. The Karine A was carrying a 10th of the weapons that the Francop was carrying. But the impact the Israeli commando mission then had on Israel's political position was more than 10 times greater than the political impact of this week's successful operation.

The exposure then of Iran's support for Palestinian Authority-backed terror forces caused the Bush administration to abandon its previous acceptance of Yasser Arafat as a legitimate political leader. That in turn paved the way for Israel's launch of Operation Defensive Shield three months later. In that operation Israel wrested military control over Judea and Samaria away from Palestinian militias and terror cells.

Wednesday's raid has had no discernible impact on American policy. The US did not denounce either Syria or Iran for breaching the UN Security Council resolution barring Iranian arms shipments as well as the Security Council resolution prohibiting nations from arming Hizbullah. The US did not state that in response to what Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called a "smoking gun," it will reconsider its decision to send an ambassador to Damascus or its commitment to appeasing Iran through its nuclear talks in Geneva. The only thing a State Department official could bring himself to say was that the US is concerned about "Hizbullah's efforts to rearm in direct violation of various UN Security Council resolutions," and remark that the groups remains, "a significant threat to peace and security in Lebanon and the region."

Despite the government's energetic efforts to use the Francop interception as a means to convince the nations of the world to unite against Iranian-backed terror, no one seems willing to acknowledge the clear strategic implications of Iran's exports of terror weaponry. Today no one is any more willing to treat Iran as the enemy of the international system it has been for 30 years than they were before Israel exposed the Francop cargo of terror for all the world to see.

And the US-led international community's refusal to take any action against Iran in response to this latest evidence of its rogue behavior is a great victory for the mullahs. Thirty years after their first criminal challenge to the US and the free world as a whole, no one seems to care when their criminality is so graphically exposed.

WITH THE international community making clear its unwillingness to confront Iran for its support of global terrorism, the greatest single threat to the Iranian regime today is the Iranian people. Since the likes of Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the June 12 presidential elections, the Iranian people have daily risked death in their desperate and courageous bid to overthrow the regime.

The Iranian opposition movement announced weeks ago that its members would be out in force at the anniversary rallies on Wednesday. And on Wednesday, the protesters begged the world for support. They called out to US President Barack Obama, "You're either with us or with them."

But Obama - in full appeasement mode - issued a statement ahead of Wednesday's "Death to America" rallies announcing, "We do not interfere in Iran's internal affairs." That is, when asked to choose between Iran's freedom riders or their oppressors, he chose the oppressors. The US is with the mullahs against the Iranian people.

No doubt Obama's statement brought contemptuous smirks to faces of the illegitimate leaders in Teheran.

As for the Juniper Cobra exercise, far from being a cause for concern for Teheran, it is a cause for celebration. As Iran's centrifuges churn on, by loudly voicing its determination to defend Israel if Israel is attacked by Iran, the US signaled that it is willing to take its chances with a nuclear-armed Iran. More than anything, Juniper Cobra demonstrated that the Obama administration has abandoned its previously stated pledge that it will not accept a nuclear-armed Iran. Rather than working with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the US is using Juniper Cobra to noisily demonstrate that it merely hopes to deter Iran from using nuclear weapons once it acquires them.

While this was perhaps the mullahs' greatest reason for rejoicing this week, three additional developments no doubt also warmed the cockles of their hearts. First, Obama's pledge not to support the anti-regime protesters was part of a larger message in which the president of the United States effectively groveled at the mullahs' feet and begged them to allow the US to enrich uranium for them.

Obama said, "I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect... We have recognized Iran's international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran's request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community."

And when Khamenei responded to Obama's obsequious bowing and scraping by saying that negotiating with the US was a "naïve and perverted" enterprise, the Obama administration had nothing to say.

The White House won't even acknowledge that the Iranians have already rejected the IAEA-brokered deal to have the US, France and Russia enrich uranium for them. Indeed, rather than accept that the Iranians are playing them for fools, administration officials were furious at Israel for Defense Minister Ehud Barak's announcement early last week that their proposed deal with Iran would have little impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program.

According to Channel 10, the White House demanded that Netanyahu applaud their efforts. They threatened Israel with unspecified sanctions if he failed to announce his support for their pathetic attempts at appeasement. And so he did. And about five minutes after Netanyahu applauded the Americans for their brilliant offer to enrich uranium for Iran, the Iranians rejected their offer as insufficient.

Finally, Obama has threatened that if Iran rejects his nuclear appeasement offer the US will move swiftly to enact painful sanctions against it. But with the UN the only international institution the administration believes can legitimately initiate sanctions, and with the UN currently busy discussing the Goldstone Report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in its campaign against Iran's Hamas proxy in Gaza, no one can expect any movement on yet another sanctions resolution against Iran any time soon. (And as to Gaza, neither the US nor anyone else had any significant reaction to Israel's revelation Tuesday that Hamas successfully tested an Iranian missile capable of reaching Tel Aviv.)

Today we are in a waiting period. At the end of this period, either Iran will emerge as a nuclear power or Iran will see itself disarmed of nuclear power, its regime humbled and its terror proxies deterred.

Through their actions again this week, the US and the international community as a whole have demonstrated their preferred outcome. It must be fervently hoped that like the brave Iranian people themselves, Israel will not bend to their cowardly will.

Silencing dissent in America

2009-11-09T02:10:00.003-05:00

Caroline Glick
Posted: 02 Nov 2009 09:38 AM PST
Former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold should probably buy himself a flak jacket. Gold is scheduled to debate Richard Goldstone at Brandeis University next Thursday and the anti-Israel forces are organizing quite a reception for him.

Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council's commission charged with accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, has become a darling of the anti-Israel Left in the weeks since his report accusing Israel of committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity was published last month. And anti-Israeli leftists don't like the idea of someone challenging his libelous attacks against Israel in a public debate at a university.

In an e-mail to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the "neutral" Goldstone against Gold with his "wildly pro-Zionist message." Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to "discuss a possible response."

As the young community organizer sees it, "Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action." He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: "F**k the occupation."

Apparently the aspiring political organizer never considered another possibility: listening to what Gold has to say.

It seems rather unfair to pick on a small fry like Sussman. A brief Web search indicates that Gold's would-be silencer divides his time fairly equally between publishing rambling, Communist verses to paramours and calling for the overthrow of the US government.

The problem is that Sussman's planned "direct action" against Gold is not an isolated incident. On college campuses throughout the US, Israelis and supporters of Israel are regularly denied the right to speak by leftist activists claiming to act on behalf of Israel's "victims," or in the cause of "peace." In the name of the Palestinians or peace these radicals seek to coerce their fellow students into following their lead by demonizing and brutally silencing all voices of dissent.

This, by the way is true regardless of where the speaker fits on the pro-Israel spectrum. Earlier this month former prime minister Ehud Olmert - who during his tenure in office offered the Palestinians more than any of his predecessors - could barely get a word in edgewise above the clamor of students at the University of Chicago cursing him as a war criminal.

While many commentators claim that the situation on college campuses is unique, the fact is that the attempts of leftist activists on campuses to silence non-leftist dissenters regarding Israel and a host of other issues is simply an extreme version of what is increasingly becoming standard operating procedure for leftist activists throughout the US. Rather than participating in a battle of ideas with their ideological opponents on the Right, increasingly, leftist activists, groups and policy-makers seek to silence their opponents through slander, intimidation and misrepresentation of their own agenda.

CASE IN point is J Street. The 18-month old, multi-million dollar American Jewish political action committee held its inaugural convention this week in Washington. J Street seeks to present itself as the representative of a silent majority of American Jews. However, its signature positions - while in line with the Obama administration's policies - are deeply discordant with mainstream American Jewish views.

J Street asserts that Israel must freeze all Jewish construction beyond the 1949 armistice lines; that Israel should withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, including in Jerusalem and expel all Jews now living beyond the 1949 armistice lines; that the absence of peace is due to the absence of a Palestinian state; that Israel used excessive force in Operation Cast Lead and the Goldstone Report is legitimate. J Street also opposes both sanctions on Iran and military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Just how profoundly out of synch these positions are with the American Jewish community was made clear with last month's publication of the American Jewish Committee's 2009 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion.

According to the survey, a majority of US Jews oppose the Obama administration's call for the prohibition of Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Similarly, the vast majority of US Jews rejects the call for Israel to surrender parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians; believes the cause of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the Arabs' desire to destroy Israel rather than the absence of a Palestinian state; and supports Israel's right to defend itself against Palestinian terror. A whopping 94 percent of American Jews believe the Palestinians should be required to accept Israel's right to exist as a precursor to any viable peace. Finally, a solid majority of American Jews supports either a US or an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

But no matter. Facts are no obstacle for J Street. Just as Sussman smears his opponents to discredit dissenting views, so J Street has not only misrepresented its own place on the American Jewish ideological spectrum. It has misrepresented the position of mainstream American Jewish groups on the ideological spectrum. Owing no doubt to the fact that most American Jews self-identify as liberals, J Street condemns organizations like AIPAC and the ADL as right-wing or conservative or hawkish to try to make American Jews feel uncomfortable supporting them.

At its conference this week J Street's radicalism was on full display. According to the JTA account, one panel discussion featured members of Congress debating the proposition that American Jewish money controls US foreign policy. Congressman Bob Filner (D-California) was reportedly the darling of the crowd for arguing that indeed, Jewish money exerts inordinate and destructive influence over US foreign policy.

Filner related how in 1994 he was one of the few members of Congress who refused to sign onto a resolution condemning an anti-Semitic speech given by Nation of Islam lieutenant Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Filner claimed that by refusing to condemn a public figure's calumny against the Jewish people he lost some $250,000 in electoral contributions in each subsequent election cycle. "That kind of money is an intimidating factor. I raised a lot less in succeeding years, but my conscious was cleared," he bragged.

Filner went on to condemn pro-Israel lobbyists in general. Indeed he insinuated that the act of lobbying on behalf of Israel is inherently treacherous. Filner argued that unlike labor lobbyists who provide some public benefit, pro-Israel lobbyists are dangerous because they convince legislators to take "positions that can lead to war."

Then there was the self-professed "pro-Israel, pro-peace" group's panel discussion on Iran's nuclear program. As James Kirchick reported in The New Republic, the panel included two of Iran's most outspoken apologists in Washington. Both former National Security Council staffer Hillary Mann Leverett and National Iranian-American Council head Trita Parsi asserted a moral and security equivalence between Iran, Israel and the US. Leverett accused opponents of Iran's nuclear program of racism. In her words, those calling for Iran to be denied nuclear weapons are "reinforcing stereotypes of Iranian duplicitousness," and their warnings are "fundamentally racist."

Here we see how just as Sussman seeks to demonize dissenting views, so J Street gives an open forum to radicals who castigate their opponents as illegitimate, racist and treacherous.

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of the far-left's behavior is its trenchant refusal to acknowledge that it is the far-left. Just as J Street fatuously claims to represent the American Jewish majority, so it claims to be the American Jewish equivalent of the Kadima Party. J Street's Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami told The Jerusalem Post, "The party and the viewpoint that we're closest to in Israeli politics is actually Kadima."

This of course is pure nonsense. Kadima - like every other Zionist political party in Israel - supports strong sanctions on Iran. Indeed, Kadima supports taking whatever steps are necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Beyond that, Kadima waged two wars while it was in office. Both Operation Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War were opposed by the far-left. J Street was outspoken in its criticism of Cast Lead. Moreover, Kadima's leaders have emphatically opposed the Goldstone Report.
So other than its support for the rapid establishment of a Palestinian state, Kadima shares none of J Street's positions.

THE FACT that J Street represents neither mainstream Israeli thinking nor mainstream American Jewish thinking is of little concern to its leadership. J Street represents the Obama administration. In his keynote address before the conference, National Security Adviser James Jones told his cheering audience that J Street has a friend in the Obama White House. As he put it, "You can be sure that this administration will be represented at all other future J Street conferences."

In recent weeks we have discovered that like its agent J Street, and indeed like Sussman at Brandeis, the Obama White House is also dedicated to silencing opposing voices by marginalizing and demonizing dissent. In fact, the White House's modus operandi is startlingly similar to theirs.

There are six national television networks in the US. Five of them support President Barack Obama. One - Fox News - does not. Rather than rejoice in what is an overwhelmingly favorable state of affairs for it, in recent weeks, the Obama White House has gone to war against Fox News. Obama's senior advisers have castigated the network as "the research arm of the Republican Party," and claim daily that it is "not a news organization."

Obama as well as top administration officials boycott Fox programs and are seeking to intimidate friendly news organizations into joining them in isolating Fox. In a spate of recent statements on the subject, Obama's top advisers have warned the other networks not to follow Fox's lead on any of the stories it reports, lest they discover they have allowed themselves to become the tool of the Republicans.

A straight line connects Sussman's rants, J Street's lies and the Obama administration's attempt to destroy a news organization. In each case, actions aimed at silencing debate are falsely characterized as the brave moves of an underdog seeking to confront the evil powers that be. Sussman writes of the need to overthrow the "oligarchs." J Street claims to be breaking the "right-wing stranglehold" on US Israel policy. And Obama's adviser Valerie Jarrett claims that by attacking Fox News, the White House is "speaking truth to power."

Luckily, the falseness of all of these claims has not been lost on the American public. Despite the actions of the likes of Sussman, "wildly pro-Zionist" voices still resonate on college campuses just as they do throughout the US. J Street has been unable to convince American Jews that its anti-Israel positions are the true expression of American Jewish Zionism. And Obama's approval ratings now stand at a mere 51%.

But the fact that these views have not become dominant in America is no reason to be sanguine about the future. That opponents of free speech today occupy the top echelons of power in Washington and are represented at all levels of American society constitutes a critical challenge to the continued vibrancy of American democracy.

When the Saudis bomb civilians, no one hears about it.

2009-11-09T02:06:00.002-05:00

FROM YAHOO NEWS (if you can believe it!!)

Nov. 5, 2009 6:19 pm ET SAN'A, Yemen – Saudi Arabia sent fighter jets and artillery bombardments across the border into northern Yemen Thursday in a military incursion apparently aimed at helping its troubled southern neighbor control an escalating Shiite rebellion, Arab diplomats and the rebels said. The Saudis — owners of a sophisticated air force they rarely use — have been

increasingly worried that extremism and instability in Yemen could spill over to their country, the world's largest oil exporter. The offensive came two days after the killing of a Saudi soldier, blamed on the rebels. Yemen denied any military action by Saudi Arabia inside its borders. But Yemen's president is a key ally of the Saudis, making it highly unlikely the kingdom would have

launched the offensive without tacit Yemeni agreement.

A U.S. government official said the Yemenis were not involved militarily in the fighting. The official spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The offensive immediately raised concerns of another proxy war in the Middle East between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally. Shiite Iran is believed to favor the rebels in Yemen while Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni, is Iran's fiercest regional rival. The same dynamic has played out in various forms in Lebanon, where Iran supports the Shiite militant Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia favors a U.S.-backed faction, and in Iraq, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have thrown support to conflicting sides in the Sunni-Shiite struggle. A top Saudi government adviser confirmed "a large scale" military operation underway on the Saudi-Yemeni border with further reinforcements sent to the rugged, mountainous area. "It is a sustained operation which aims to finish this problem on our border," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. He said Saudi troops were coordinating with Yemen's army, but Yemen's defense ministry denied the Saudis were inside the country.

The northern rebels, known as Hawthis, have been battling Yemeni government forces the past few months in the latest flare-up of a sporadic five-year conflict. They claim their needs are ignored by a Yemeni government that is increasingly allied with hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, who consider Shiites heretics. The rebels said the Saudi airstrikes hit five areas in their northern stronghold Thursday but it was not possible to independently verify the reports. They said there were dead and wounded, and that homes were destroyed. The rebels' spokesman said people were afraid to get near the areas being bombed, making it difficult to count the casualties. "Saudi jets dropped bombs on a crowded areas including a local market in the northern province of Saada," Hawthi spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam told The Associated Press. "They claim they are targeting al-Hawthis, but regrettably they are killing civilians like the government does." He said the attacks were followed by hundreds of artillery shells from the border. "So far, three killed have been pulled out of the rubble, including a woman and a child who perished when their houses were bombed and burned down," said Abdel-Salam. The fighting is more than 600 miles from Saudi Arabia's oil fields on the kingdom's eastern Persian Gulf coast.

But northern Yemen overlooks the Red Sea, the world's busiest route for oil tankers. Two Arab diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Saudi Tornado and F-15 warplanes had been bombarding targets inside Yemen since Wednesday afternoon, inflicting significant casualties on rebels. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to talk to the media. They said army units and special forces also had been sent to northern Yemen, and that several Saudi towns on the border had been evacuated as a precaution. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters he had no information about whether the conflict had spread across the border but expressed Washington's concern over the situation. "It's our view that there can be no long-term military solution to the conflict between the Yemeni government and the Hawthi rebels," Kelly said. "We call on all parties to the conflict to make every effort to protect civilian populations and limit damage to civilian infrastructure." The weak central government of Yemen, which has little control outside the capital San'a, is fighting on multiple fronts including the northern rebels and a separatist movement in the south. But the most worrisome is a lingering threat from al-Qaida militants.

The U.S. also fears any Yemeni fighting could spill over into Saudi Arabia and is concerned that Yemen could become a haven for al-Qaida militants hiding out in the nation, at the tip of the Arabian peninsula. The Yemeni government openly accuses Iran of arming the Hawthis rebels, but there has been no public evidence to back those claims, said Joost Hiltermann, deputy program director of the Middle East program for the International Crisis Group think tank in London. "I think Iran is probably pleased with what is happening, but that is not the same as saying they are supporting the Hawthis," Hiltermann said. Simon Henderson, director of Gulf and energy policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, agreed that there is no clear evidence that Iran funds the rebels. But he said there is a wide assumption that Iran favors the Hawthis and the Saudis are backing Yemen's Sunni president. "So it is a Saudi-Iranian proxy war," he said. Saudi Arabia, rich in oil, has one of the world's most sophisticated air forces but rarely uses it. The bulk of its air power, with more than 350 combat aircraft, derives from squadrons of F-15s and British-supplied Tornados, according to the military and intelligence analysis group GlobalSecurity.org.

The kingdom also for decades has received U.S. military assistance in the form of training. The Saudi incursion marks the first time since the 1991 Gulf War that the country has deployed military might beyond its borders. In that war, Saudi forces assisted the U.S. Marine Corps, providing staging grounds for airstrikes and in joint operations targeting Iraqi positions in Kuwait with artillery fire and ground offensives. The incursion is not, however, Saudi Arabia's first involvement in internal Yemeni conflicts. During Yemen's 1962-70 civil war, sparked by a military coup that overthrew Yemen's royalist government, Saudi Arabia supported the royalists against the Egyptian-backed government. When civil war erupted again in 1994, it was widely believed that the Saudis sided with southern secessionist rebels against the central government. A security official told Saudi Arabia's state news agency that the soldier died when gunmen infiltrated from Yemen and attacked security guards patrolling the Mount Dokhan border area Tuesday. Rebels said that area was among the bombing targets Thursday.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, the region's main diplomatic forum, condemned what it called the "violation and infiltration" of Saudi Arabia's borders. "Saudi Arabia is capable of protecting its lands," it warned in a statement.

____

Nasrawi reported from Cairo. Associated Press Writers Omar Sinan and Ben

Hubbard in Cairo and Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.

“He leapt on the desk, began shouting ‘Jesus saves’ and killing everyone in sight”

2009-11-09T01:22:00.002-05:00

Need I say more?

Tonight’s election results

2009-11-04T01:40:00.002-05:00

Not surprisingly, both sides are interpreting the results of the election tonight totally incorrectly.

First - the Democrats. The idea that the elections mean nothing about Obama and his policies is simply silly. Of course it does.

But it means less about his policies, which every poll, including those done at the time of his election, indicated were NOT supported by a majority of the country, than it does about confirming that he won for 2 primary reasons.

First, he won because of the rock star quota. That is borne out by the failure of those who voted for Obama, to come out in big numbers for the Democratic gubernatorial candidates.

Second, he won because he was viewed as the "out" of favor party.

And that is the principal force for the Republican victories tonight.

No better example of that can be seen than in New Jersey.

While John Corzine has been far from good, he certainly cannot be blamed for a ALL of NJ's problems - loss of manufacturing base, the national recession, etc.

But he has been a statewide officeholder for 10 years now. 4 as governor and six as US Senator.

This was a rejection of the incumbent.

And the same can be said of the Virginia race, which was not an explicit rejection of an incumbent, but clearly a call for the out of favor party.

But what is overriding for all the races is screaming for tax relief.

Here in my home county, Westchester, NY, the incumbent, Andy Spano, who was deemed unbeatable, was absolutely crushed by the Republican challenger based on a tax relief platform.

This was Chris Christie's platform in NJ as well.

I saved the NY mayor's race for last because it was very interesting. Mike Bloomberg polls the way every politician wishes they would. Virtually every organization, every newspaper, union, religious group, citizens organization, etc. all say he has done an amazing job as our mayor and endorsed him.

Voter polls showed overwhelming support of his track record.

He outspent his rival, NY Controller Bill Thompson, more than 10:1.

However, his victory was, while not narrow, far closer than anyone predicted.

This was an anti incumbent vote again, and with more bite, because of Bloombergs usurping and overturning of the term limit laws voted on by NY voters only a few years ago.

The bottom line, though, for the Democrats is actually good. The Republicans lost the House seat in the upstate New York district because of the conflict between the conservatives and the moderate/liberals.

But the bottom line was a loss of a long term Republican House seat to the Democrats.

So, for Obama, it means he actually, despite what seemed to be a bad night, GAINED an increased majority in the House.

Huh???

2009-10-30T19:12:00.002-04:00

With the release of the government jobs report, Joe Biden was out front touting that, despite rapidly rising unemployment, and millions of jobs lost, not to fear, that in fact, we have actually SAVED a million jobs. 600,000 thousand plus from stimulus money and 400,000 from tax breaks (?? Really, who got tax breaks?).

This is the ultimate Orwell. We have less jobs, but we saved jobs…. (yes I know the math and the O mans' argument. Doesn't change the absurdity of the statistics).

OK, right.

Btw, as an aside… rare kudos to the President for his trip to Dover. Anyone that criticizes a President for paying his respect to American heroes, even if it is for political gain, just doesn't get it. It was nice to see Obama look at acknowledge those that actually HAVE sacrificed for us all.

The Times finally catches up…. to me!

2009-10-26T21:12:00.002-04:00

Those who read my posts regularly know that my disagreements with this President lie on both the left and the right. One of my areas of concern has been the single theme that that I feel runs through all of his decisions, the expansion of his own power.

One of the ways he has done that is a continuation, or increase, of Bush policies on secrecy, rendition, off shore torture, wiretapping, etc.

Today's NY Times FINALLY recognizes the arguments that the Obama administration has been making in both federal and overseas courts for 10 months now.

They do try and paint as much as possible as the fault of the Bushies, but they can no longer deny the policies of this administration almost a year in.

Here is today's lead NY Times editorial:

Editorial

Published: October 25, 2009

The Cover-Up Continues

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration's expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama's cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama's passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush's abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.

In Britain earlier this month, a two-judge High Court panel rejected arguments made first by the Bush team and now by the Obama team and decided to make public seven redacted paragraphs in American intelligence documents relating to torture allegations by a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay. The prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British national, says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco and at a C.I.A.-run prison outside Kabul before being transferred to Guantánamo. He was freed in February.

To block the release of those paragraphs, the Bush administration threatened to cut its intelligence-sharing with Britain, an inappropriate threat that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated. But the court concluded that the actual risk of harm to intelligence-sharing was minimal, given the close relationship between the two countries. The court also found a "compelling public interest" in disclosure, and said that nothing in the disputed seven paragraphs — a summary of evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in Mr. Mohamed's ordeal — had anything to do with "secret intelligence."

The Obama administration has expressed unhappiness with the ruling, and the British government plans to appeal. But the court was clearly right in recognizing the importance of disclosure "for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law."

In the United States, the Obama administration is in the process of appealing a sound federal appellate court ruling last April in a civil lawsuit by Mr. Mohamed and four others. All were victims of the government's extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture.

In that case, the Obama administration has repeated a disreputable Bush-era argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever it makes a blanket claim of national security. The ruling rejected that argument and noted that the government's theory would "effectively cordon off all secret actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.I.A. and its partners from the demands and limits of the law."

The Obama administration has aggressively pursued such immunity in numerous other cases beyond the ones involving Mr. Mohamed. We do not take seriously the government's claim that it is trying to protect intelligence or avoid harm to national security.

Victims of the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques," including Mr. Mohamed, have already spoken in harrowing detail about their mistreatment. The objective is to avoid official confirmation of wrongdoing that might be used in lawsuits against government officials and contractors, and might help create a public clamor for prosecuting those responsible. President Obama calls that a distracting exercise in "looking back." What it really is is justice.

In a similar vein, Mr. Obama did a flip-flop last May and decided to resist orders by two federal courts to release photographs of soldiers abusing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, just in time to avoid possible Supreme Court review of the matter, Congress created an exception to the Freedom of Information Act that gave Secretary of Defense Robert Gates authority to withhold the photos.

We share concerns about inflaming anti-American feelings and jeopardizing soldiers, but the best way to truly avoid that is to demonstrate that this nation has turned the page on Mr. Bush's shameful policies. Withholding the painful truth shows the opposite.

Like the insistence on overly broad claims of secrecy, it also avoids an important step toward accountability, which is the only way to ensure that the abuses of the Bush years are never repeated. We urge Mr. Gates to use his discretion under the new law to release the photos, sparing Americans more cover-up.