¡¡AQUI Y AHORA TREMENDO PROGRAMA LLENO DE INFORMACIONES

[sirjohn]

OBAMA WHITEWASHING SUDAN 

By Ryan Mauro On March 1, 2011 @ 12:30 am In Daily Mailer, FrontPage

President Obama is rewarding the government of Sudan for permitting the referendum on the secession of South Sudan by removing it from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. This will drop some sanctions on Sudan just as protestors demand the resignation of President Omar Bashir, a man indicted for genocide who has recently pledged to turn his country into a Sharia state.

    “For those who meet all of their obligations, there is a path to greater prosperity and normal relations with the United States, including examining Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism,” President Obama said. The State Department confirms that the process to de-list the African country has begun.

     The U.S. apparently agreed to de-list Sudan if the regime of President Omar Bashir allowed a referendum to be held on whether South Sudan should become its own country. This motion was approved and the new country will be formally created in July. Around the time of the vote, Bashir announced that he’d transform Sudan into a state where all law is based on Sharia and Arabic would become the only language. This means that the U.S. will be starting a new relationship with a fully radicalized Islamic state that will promote the ideology behind terrorism, if not terrorism itself.

     The State Department had previously set the stage for Sudan’s de-listing by saying the “bilateral counterterrorism relationship remains solid” but that “hard-line” elements were upset that the U.S. had not removed their designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism because of this cooperation. The State Department praised Sudan for helping to stop the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and cooperating in the investigation of the murder of two U.S. embassy workers in Khartoum by an Al-Qaeda-linked group on January 1, 2008.

    The State Department glossed over the Bashir regime’s current ties to terrorism, saying that although elements of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda are in Sudan, the government “does not openly support the presence” of the latter two. Hamas is welcomed as “freedom fighters” but their activity is limited to fundraising, the State Department’s report on Sudan claims. The key word to notice in the report is “openly,” as it is highly questionable whether a regime as tyrannical as Bashir’s wouldn’t know about the presence of terrorists on its land. Even if Sudan’s words are being met with action, the State Department’s admission that it allows Hamas to fundraise is surely a qualification for remaining on the list of State Sponsors.

   Various reports cast doubt on the State Department’s assertion about the nature of Sudan’s links to terrorism. An intelligence report in 2006 said that 15 members of Al-Qaeda were helping to train the state-sponsored Janjaweed militia in Darfur. In January 2009, Israel bombed a truck convoy in Sudan that was part of an Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ supply line to Hamas from Port Sudan. In April 2009, Egypt arrested about 50 Hezbollah members planning attacks on Israeli targets, some of which told their interrogators that they sought to send operatives to Sudan for training. The deputy-editor of an opposition newspaper was arrested in June 2010 for reporting that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were operating a weapons factory in Khartoum that was supplying Hamas, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and unidentified extremists in Somalia.

   The ideology of radical Islam will undoubtedly be promoted once Bashir turns Sudan into a state based solely on Sharia law. To make matters worse, it is growing increasingly close to Iran and has declared the beginning of a nuclear program. Government agents have reportedly contacted remnants of the Abdul-Qadeer Khan nuclear black market network and the completion of a nuclear reactor is set for 2020. In 2006, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was in Khartoum when he said that Iran would share its nuclear technology with Islamic countries.

   The de-listing of Sudan sends the wrong signal to the South Sudanese, the victims of the regime’s oppression and the protestors currently demanding the resignation of President Bashir. He has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges and is one of the biggest mass murders alive. His government is already threatening South Sudan, saying that war will follow if it harbors rebel forces from Darfur or if the tribes in the oil-rich Abyei Province unilaterally declare that they’ll unite with the South. The regime has also been accused of being behind a militia in the south that massacred over 200 people in the South this month.

    The announcement will infuriate the protestors in Sudan that have become active since the overthrow of Tunisian President Ben Ali. There have been scattered protests, sometimes numbering hundreds, and dozens of demonstrators have been arrested and even more assaulted.  

     The regime has reacted with swift brutality, including the deployment of members of Bashir’s political party carrying knives to attack students on campuses. The protestors are still trying to organize online with one group having over 16,000 members and a rallying call of, “Our brothers in Tunisia did it and so did our brothers in Egypt. It is about time for us.” The regime has responded by creating an “Electronic Jihad” unit to shut down the opposition’s websites and block Internet access for its enemies.

     The Bashir regime seems particularly concerned about female activists, having arrested a group of them on February 10, including the daughter of former Prime Minister Sadeq al-Mahdi, only to release them shortly after. They were dropped off in different areas of Khartoum, indicating the regime was worried about a gathering forming yet fearful of detaining them for a prolonged period.

     On February 13, two dozen women demonstrated outside the headquarters for the security service to demand the release of political prisoners. At the same time, a group of journalists tried to hold a protest over the arrests of reporters but were stopped. Three journalists were arrested for trying to cover the protests.

   The removal of Sudan as a State Sponsor of Terrorism will be a slap in the face to all those who suffered from Bashir’s evil, from the innocents massacred in Darfur to those threatened by the terrorists he coddles to the protestors that have been beaten and jailed.

OBAMA'S KENYA GHOSTS: THE GENOCIDE OF CHRISTIANS BY MUSLIMS

Mark Hyman

October 12, 2008

    About 50 parishioners were locked into the Assemblies of God church before it was set ablaze. They were mostly women and children. Those who tried to flee were hacked to death by machete-wielding members of a mob numbering 2,000.

   The 2008 New Year Day atrocity in the Kenyan village Eldoret, about 185 miles northwest of Nairobi, had all the markings of the Rwanda genocide of a decade earlier.

   By mid-February 2008, more than 1,500 Kenyans were killed. Many were slain by machete-armed attackers. More than 500,000 were displaced by the religious strife. Villages lay in ruin. Many of the atrocities were perpetrated by Muslims against Christians.

   The violence was led by supporters of Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who lost the Dec. 27, 2007, presidential election by more than 230,000 votes.

    Odinga supporters began the genocide hours after the final election results were announced Dec. 30. Mr. Odinga was a member of Parliament representing an area in western Kenya, heavily populated by the Luo tribe, and the birthplace of Barack Obama’s father.

     Mr. Odinga had the backing of Kenya’s Muslim community heading into the election. For months he denied any ties to Muslim leaders, but fell silent when Sheik Abdullahi Abdi, chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum, appeared on Kenya television displaying a memorandum of understanding signed on Aug. 29, 2007, by Mr. Odinga and the Muslim leader. Mr. Odinga then denied his denials.

    The details of the MOU were shocking. In return for Muslim backing, Mr. Odinga promised to impose a number of measures favored by Muslims if he were elected president. Among these were recognition of “Islam as the only true religion,” Islamic leaders would have an “oversight role to monitor activities of ALL other religions [emphasis in original],” installation of Shariah courts in every jurisdiction, a ban on Christian preaching, replacement of the police commissioner who “allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists,” adoption of a women’s dress code, and bans on alcohol and pork.

    This was not Mr. Odinga’s first brush with notoriety. Like his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the main opposition leader in the 1960s and 1970s, Raila Odinga is a Marxist. He graduated from East Germany’s Magdeburg University in 1970 on a scholarship provided by the East German government. He named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.

Raila Odinga was implicated in the bloody coup attempt in 1982 against then-President Daniel Arap Moi, a close ally of the United States. Kenya has been one of the most stable democracies in Africa since the 1960s. The ethnic cleansing earlier this year was the worst violence in Kenya since that 1982 coup attempt.

    Mr. Odinga spent eight years in prison. At the time, he denied guilt but later detailed he was a coup leader in his 2006 biography. Statue of limitations precluded further prosecution when the biography appeared.

Initially, Mr. Odinga was not the favored opposition candidate to stand in the 2007 election against President Mwai Kibaki, who was seeking his second term. However, he received a tremendous boost when Sen. Barack Obama arrived in Kenya in August 2006 to campaign on his behalf. Mr. Obama denies that supporting Mr. Odinga was the intention of his trip, but his actions and local media reports tell otherwise.

     Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama were nearly inseparable throughout Mr. Obama’s six-day stay. The two traveled together throughout Kenya and Mr. Obama spoke on behalf of Mr. Odinga at numerous rallies. In contrast, Mr. Obama had only criticism for Kibaki. He lashed out against the Kenyan government shortly after meeting with the president on Aug. 25. “The [Kenyan] people have to suffer over corruption perpetrated by government officials,” Mr. Obama announced.

“Kenyans are now yearning for change,” he declared. The intent of Mr. Obama’s remarks and actions was transparent to Kenyans - he was firmly behind Mr. Odinga.

Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama had met several times before the 2006 trip. Reports indicate Mr. Odinga visited Mr. Obama during trips to the U.S. in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Mr. Obama sent his foreign policy adviser Mark Lippert to Kenya in early 2006 to coordinate his summer visit. Mr. Obama’s August trip coincided with strategizing by Orange Democratic Movement leaders to defeat Mr. Kibaki in the upcoming elections. Mr. Odinga represented the ODM ticket in the presidential race.

Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama’s father were both from the Luo community, the second-largest tribe in Kenya, but their ties run much deeper. Mr. Odinga told a stunned BBC Radio interviewer the reason why he and Mr. Obama were staying in near daily telephone contact was because they were cousins. In a Jan. 8, 2008, interview, Mr. Odinga said Mr. Obama had called him twice the day before while campaigning in the New Hampshire primary before adding, “Barack Obama’s father is my maternal uncle.”

    President Kibaki requested a meeting of all opposition leaders in early January in an effort to quell the violence. All agreed to attend except Mr. Odinga. A month later, Mr. Kibaki offered Mr. Odinga the role of prime minister, the de facto No. 2 in the Kenyan government, in return for an end to the attacks. Mr. Odinga was sworn in on April 17, 2008.

Mr. Obama’s judgment is seriously called into question when he backs an official with troubling ties to Muslim extremists and whose supporters practice ethnic cleansing and genocide.

    It was Islamic extremists in Kenya who bombed the U.S. Embassy in 1998, killing more than 200 and injuring thousands. None of this has dissuaded Mr. Obama from maintaining disturbing loyalties.

Mark Hyman is an award-winning news commentator for Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc.

[siboneyes]

Obama Will “Spare No Effort” Determining Why Man Screaming “Allahu Akbar” Killed US Airmen
Gateway Pundit ,Rightnetwork ^ | March 2,2011 | Jim Hoft

Really?… Really? The first clue Barack is that the killer was screaming “Allhu Akbar.” Start from there. Obama is going to will “spare no effort” to determine why two American airmen were killed today in Germany.

    The Politico reported:

President Obama says the government will “spare no effort” to determine why two American airmen were killed and two others were wounded in a shooting in Frankfurt, Germany.

     “I’m saddened, and I am outraged, by this attack that took the lives of two Americans and wounded two others. I think the American people are united in expressing our service to those who were lost,” Obama told reporters in a surprise appearance in the briefing room. “We are praying for a speedy recovery for those who were injured.”

    Obama promised that “we will spare no effort” to figure out “how this outrageous attack took place.”

    “We don’t have all the information yet,” he told reporters. “You will be fully briefed as we get more information.” He added that the attack is a “stark reminder” of the “extraordinary sacrifices” made by the members of the military.

    It’s called jihad, Barack.

---

EL ISLAM QUE OBAMA ENSALZA ESTA MUY LEJOS DE LA REALIDAD

Obama’s Ramadan Delusions

By Robert Spencer On August 13, 2010 @ 12:12 am In FrontPage

      This year’s Ramadan message from Barack Obama is the latest in a long line of warmly complimentary communications that he has addressed to the Islamic world over the last eighteen months. Reciprocally warm and friendly greetings have yet to arrive from those to whom Obama has addressed these messages, but the President appears undaunted. Eighteen months into his presidency, he seems to be clinging more determinedly than ever to the idea that soft words about Islam will turn away the jihad – despite the total lack of confirming evidence.

        Just as he did in his June 2009 address to the Islamic world in Cairo, where he used the greeting by which one Muslim is to greet another, as-salaamu aleikum (peace be upon you), Obama in his Ramadan message adopted Islamic terminology. “Ramadan Kareem,” he said near the beginning of the message, and ended it with “may God’s peace be upon you.” Clearly he is doing his best to give the impression that he comes in friendship. And he doesn’t stop there.

            Again characteristically, Obama then retails a few platitudes lifted straight out of a ninth-grade World Religions textbook: “Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God. This is a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared. But Ramadan is also a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and pray during the night; when Muslims provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere.”

         One may legitimately wonder how past Ramadans have resulted in any advancement of “opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere.” In reality, it contravenes Islamic law to give zakat, the almsgiving that is one of the pillars of Islam and is required of every Muslim, to non-Muslims. That’s why it is easy to find Western governmental agencies and Christian charitable organizations busy building and staffing schools and hospitals in impoverished parts of Africa and Asia, but oil-rich Muslim countries have never undertaken similar endeavors.

        With the sharp divide in Islam between believers and unbelievers, such that Muslims are commanded to be “merciful to one another, but ruthless to the unbelievers” (Qur’an 48:29), there simply is no basis in Islamic law for the idea that Islam fosters the advance of “opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere.”

         Heedless, however, of the inaccuracy of his words, Obama charged ahead and compounded it. Ramadan’s rituals of fasting and prayer, he said, “remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

       Here again, one wonders how the designation of non-Muslims as “the most vile of created beings” (Qur’an 98:6) advances human dignity, much less tolerance or justice. The command that Muslims must fight against Jews and Christians until they pay a religion-based poll tax, jizya, “with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29) likewise seems to militate against the idea of universal human dignity that Obama professes to have discovered in Islam.

      Yet still his flights of fancy weren’t over. “Ramadan,” he claimed, “is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality.” Diversity? While it is undoubtedly true that people of all races and nations have embraced Islam, when they do so, they at least partially Arabize. Islam is an Arabic religion; the Qur’an, as it tells us about itself repeatedly, is an “Arabic Qur’an.” Muslims must pray in Arabic, and recite the Qur’an in Arabic, whether they’re weathermen from Minnesota or fishermen from Indonesia.   

          Conversion to Islam led a black American to change his name to Muhammad Ali, a name he undoubtedly shares with innumerable Arabs, Pakistanis, Afghans, and others. A recent meeting of Southeast Asian dignitaries showed participants with names indigenous to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the other countries in the region. Only the Indonesian participant had a name that had nothing to do with the indigenous culture of the country of his birth, and everything to do with Arabia. What’s more, throughout Islamic history Arabs have claimed for themselves a privileged pposition within the Islamic community, and have regarded non-Arab Muslims as second-class. Racial equality? Not by a long shot.

         “And here in the United States,” Obama continued, “Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.” Islam has always been a part of America? Really? Maybe Robert Gibbs will be so kind as to provide us with a list of the Muslim Founding Fathers, the Muslim heroes of the American Revolution, the names of the Muslims killed fighting in the Civil War (for the North, no doubt – you know, “racial equality”!), the Muslim Senators and Congressmen who served with distinction in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – I’m sure the Obama Administration will have no trouble coming up with all that, will they? And I trust it will also contain a list of those “extraordinary contributions” that Muslims have made to our country. Aside from being the impetus for some extraordinary innovations in airport security, I can’t think of any. But I doubt that one will be on Obama’s list.

LA RELIGION DE "PAZ" DE OBAMA ASESINA A MAS DE 500 CRISTIANOS EN NIGERIA

¿ALGUIEN OYÓ LA ENÉRGICA CONDENA DE OBAMA A TAL BRUTAL MASACRE?

Musulmanes matan a más de 500 cristianos en Nigeria

     8 AUG 2010-  Más de 500 habitantes de aldeas cristianas murieron a machetazos y quemados en ataques perpetrados el fin de semana por ganaderos musulmanes en el centro de Nigeria, escenario de enfrentamientos religiosos y étnicos, generando "dolor y preocupación" en el Vaticano y la ONU.

Los ataques, coordinados según los testigos, tuvieron lugar el sábado por la noche en tres aldeas al sur de Jos, capital del estado de Plateau. En tres horas, al menos 500 personas, entre las que había muchas mujeres y niños, fueron masacradas con machetes y quemadas, según algunos testigos, que describen escenas dantescas.

Todas las fuerzas de seguridad de Plateau y de los estados aledaños se encuentran en estado de alerta máxima desde el domingo por la noche por orden del presidente interino, Goodluck Jonathan. El Vaticano manifestó el lunes su "dolor y preocupación" por estas "horribles" violencias en Nigeria. Sin embargo, su portavoz, el padre Federico Lombardi, no quiso pronunciarse personalmente sobre la naturaleza religiosa de los enfrentamientos.

La posición de la Santa Sede fue explicada ayer por el arzobispo nigeriano de la capital Abuja, John Onaiyekan, a la emisora del Vaticano, dijo Lombardi.

"Se trata del clásico conflicto entre pastores y agricultores, sólo que en este caso los pastores son todos musulmanes y los agricultores son todos cristianos", aseguró el arzobispo Onaiyekan. /AFP
Ref. Fotografia: entierro • Familiares de las víctimas entierran a los fallecidos.

No, Mr. President, We’re not traumatized.
BY William Kristol
August 14, 2010 

Penetrating commentary on President Obama’s remarks last night on Islam, 9/11, and Ground Zero is already available.

      The lawyers at Powerline dissect Obama’s high-flown rhetoric: “a classic of brain-dead multiculturalism,” “the ultimate destination of multiculturalism is platitudinous stupidity.”

     Debra Burlingame of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America has a powerful statement: “We are stunned by the president’s willingness to disregard what Americans should be proud of: our enduring generosity to others on 9/11—a day when human decency triumphed over human depravity. On that day, when 3,000 of our fellow human beings were killed in barbaric act of raw religious intolerance unlike this country had ever seen, Americans did not turn outward with hatred or violence, we turned to each other, armed with nothing more than American flags and countless acts of kindness. In a breathtakingly inappropriate setting, the president has chosen to declare our memories of 9/11 obsolete and the sanctity of Ground Zero finished.”

      “Bad Rachel” is properly contemptuous: “an act of appeasement...[that] will avail him the same scornful response he’s received repeatedly already, and it will keep the rest of us in harm’s way.”

      I’d just add one comment.

Obama: “Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.”

       This is revealing. For Obama, 9/11 was a “deeply traumatic event for our country.” Traumatic events invite characteristic reactions and over-reactions—fearfulness, anger, even hysteria. That’s how Obama understands the source of objections to the Ground Zero mosque. It’s all emotional. The arguments don’t have to be taken seriously. The criticisms of the mosque are the emotional reactions of a traumatized people.

      But Americans aren’t traumatized. 9/11 was an attack on America, to which Americans have responded firmly, maturely, and appropriately. Part of our sensible and healthy reaction is that there shouldn’t be a 13-story mosque and Islamic community center next to Ground Zero (especially when it’s on a faster track to be built than the long-delayed memorial there). But Obama (like Bloomberg) doesn’t feel he even has to engage the arguments against the mosque—because he regards his fellow citizens as emotionally traumatized victims, not citizens who might have a reasonable point of view.

[siboneyes]

Thanks to Blair and Bush  We Dodged Libya’s Nuclear Bullet

     In a stunning trans-Atlantic announcement on December 19, 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush said Libya had agreed, after nine months of secret talks, to publicly disclose and dismantle all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs; to limit its missiles to a range of less than 300 km; and to open the country immediately to comprehensive inspections to verify its compliance. Even more importantly, Libya agreed to provide information on its dealings with the nuclear black market.

    Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi realized that to survive, he needed Western investment and Western markets. His son, Seif, reportedly urged his father to make the deal.

As the New York Times‘ David Sanger reports today:

Today, with father and son preparing for a siege of Tripoli, the success of a joint American-British effort to eliminate Libya’s capability to make nuclear and chemical weapons has never, in retrospect, looked more important.

A Bipartisan Effort Spanning Administrations

Qaddafi’s acceptance of responsibility for the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 led to the suspension of UN sanctions in 1999, but it became clear that he would also have to end his pursuit of nuclear and chemical weapons before Washington would lift its sanctions.  As Blair noted, Qaddafi came to Britain with a proposal to do just that in March, just before the Iraq War begin.

    In March 2003, shortly before the Iraq War began, Musa Kussa, Qaddafi’s chief of intelligence approached British M16 officials seeking to conclude negotiations for the end of its unconventional weapon programs in exchange for normalization of ties. Some officials and experts link Libya’s decision to President Bush’s national security strategy and the invasion of Iraq. The presence of 250,000 U.S. forces in the region undoubtedly had an impact, but it does not seem that Qaddafi feared an U.S. invasion of Tripoli.

More likely, Qaddafi had concluded that he needed Western contracts and markets more than he needed chemical or nuclear weapons. Efforts to end Libya’s weapon programs spanned four presidential administrations.

    The UN had imposed sanctions in 1992 in response to the downing of an airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988. Some U.S. sanctions were already in place by then, having been imposed in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan. More U.S. sanctions followed in 1992 and 1996. In the late 1990′s Libya approached the second Clinton administration with hopes of ending international isolation. The Clinton administration made Libyan cooperation in the Lockerbie bombing case a prerequisite to normalizing U.S.-Libya relations. Even after the United Nations suspended its sanctions in 1999, U.S. sanctions remained in place. U.S. officials made clear that Libya would have to address concerns over its weapons programs before U.S. sanctions would be lifted. These discussions continued in the Bush administration.

      Changing Regime Behavior

Whether by design or by chance, the U.S. and the UK in 2003 struck the right combination of force and diplomacy. Prime Minister Tony Blair seems to have been a decisive influence on President Bush, overcoming opposition from the US Department of Defense to any “deals with dictators.” Former State Department official Flynt Leverett, who was involved in these negotiations, notes, “The lesson is incontrovertible: to persuade a rogue regime to get out of the terrorism business and give up its weapons of mass destruction, we must not only apply pressure but also make clear the potential benefits of cooperation.”

    With the agreement, British, U.S. and IAEA officials visited ten previously secret facilities and removed 55,000 pounds of documents and components for Libya’s nuclear and missile programs, including uranium hexaflouride[sic], centrifuge parts and guidance devices for long-range missiles. The United States also removed Scud-C missiles and their launchers, as well as more than 15 kilograms of fresh highly enriched uranium. Libya destroyed 3,000 chemical munitions, consolidated and secured their stocks of chemical weapons agents and precursors for destruction and joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. IAEA and U.S. officials have verified that Libya’s disarmament was transparent and almost complete.

     More that 4,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium were flown out of the country. The United States also took possession of blueprints for a nuclear bomb. Libya had purchased all of these from the infamous A.Q. Khan network in Pakistan that also supplied Iran with centrifuges. The entire nuclear operation was moved lock, stock and barrel to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

    In late 2009, only a few casks of highly enriched uranium remained. The Obama administration, as Sanger reports, leaned heavily on Qaddafi to surrender these as well. He did. Today, in the chaos of Libya, we do not have a nuclear threat to add to our worries.

    Just as importantly, the world now has two very different models for how to eliminate a threatening nation’s nuclear and missile capabilities. The Iraq model of regime change has been enormously costly, chaotic and uncertain. And the Libyan model of changing regime behavior has been efficient, effective and almost cost-free.

     We will all be better off with Qaddafi out of power. And we will all be better off that this regime change is being effected by the people of Libya, not by a foreign government. The U.S. and British role was to remove the nuclear threat from the nation, no matter who was in control. Thanks to the wise choices of 2003, we have dodged the Libyan nuclear bullet.

Follow Joe Cirincione on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Cirincione

[sirjohn]

ASESINADO EN PAKISTAN MINISTRO CRISTIANO, HEROE Y MARTIR DE LA FE

Pakistan Hero Slain for Reform Efforts

By Nina Shea

March 02, 2011

     Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s minister of minority affairs, was assassinated by gunmen today while he sat in a car outside his mother’s house, where he lived. He had waged a strong campaign — inside the government as a minister and outside it in cooperation with human-rights groups — for the repeal of the country’s draconian blasphemy law, which mandates the death penalty for insulting Islam.

     The 42-year-old was a Roman Catholic, the government’s only Christian minister, and the longtime head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, a non-governmental organization promoting national unity, interfaith harmony, social justice, and human equality. Bhatti’s death comes two months after the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, another opponent of the blasphemy law.

     According to Reuters, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for Bhatti’s killing. Additionally, the AP reports that Bhatti left a video-taped message with news agencies to be broadcast after his death in which he says that threats by al-Qaeda and the Taliban would not change his views or stop him from speaking out for “oppressed and marginalized persecuted Christians and other minorities” in Pakistan.

    I had the privilege of knowing and working with Shahbaz Bhatti. In September 2009, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom invited him to Washington so that chairman Leonard Leo could present to him the commission’s first religious freedom medallion. At that time, Bhatti vowed again to reform the blasphemy law: “They are using this law to victimize minorities as well as Muslims of Pakistan. This law is creating disharmony and intolerance in our society.”

     Death threats were a constant in Bhatti’s life for many years. He once told me that he had never married because he did not think it would be fair to a wife and children to subject them to this concern. His work was his life: At the end of each day, he left his government Cabinet office and headed over to his office at the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, where he continued to help Pakistan’s persecuted minorities until late into the night.

     “I personally stand for religious freedom, even if I will pay the price of my life,” he had said when he received the USCIRF award. “I live for this principle and I want to die for this principle.”

    Pakistan’s blasphemy law stands in the way of other key reforms and secures the place within society of an ever-radicalizing political Islam. What happened today to Shahbaz Bhatti is tragic and, to Pakistan, even more horrifying.

— Nina Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

OTRA VICTIMA MAS DE LA RELIGION DE PAZ DE OBAMA

Asesinan al único ministro cristiano de Pakistán por defender a Asia Bibi

 

SE OPONÍA A LA LEY ANTIBLASFEMIA

Sabía que podía ser asesinado y asumió al riesgo. Su defensa de Asia Bibi y su enfrentamiento contra los extremistas le ha costado la vida.

LIBERTAD DIGITAL

    El ministro paquistaní de Minorías, el cristiano Shahbaz Bhatti, detractor de las leyes antiblasfemia, fue asesinado hoy en Islamabad por un grupo de hombres armados, informó una fuente hospitalaria al canal televisivo Geo.

   El atentado se produce casi dos meses después de que el gobernador de la provincia oriental de Punyab, el liberal Salman Tasir, fuera asesinado también en Islamabad.

   Los atacantes dispararon contra el ministro, que se hallaba en su vehículo, y huyeron del lugar de los hechos. Bhatti sucumbió a sus heridas mientras era trasladado a un hospital. Las cadenas de televisión mostraron imágenes de su coche acribillado por las balas.

   Las medidas de seguridad en Islamabad se han extremado después de que se conociera el atentado. Bhatti era el único ministro cristiano del Gabinete y estaba en la diana de los grupos integristas por su voluntad de reformar las leyes antiblasfemia del país.

   Fue uno de los mayores defensores de la campesina cristiana condenada a muerte por blasfemia, Asia Bibi, e incluso recibió en Islamabad a su marido y sus hijas para garantizarles que haría lo posible por resolver el caso.

   El gobernador Tasir, conocido también por sus críticas a los clérigos y su oposición a estas leyes, fue asesinado por uno de sus guardaespaldas el 4 de enero en un mercado céntrico de Islamabad.

   Tras su muerte, tanto Bhatti como la ex ministra de Información Sherry Rehman -que extremó desde entonces las medidas de seguridad-, todos ellos del gobernante Partido Popular (PPP), quedaron al frente de la cara visible del liberalismo paquistaní.

   En varias conversaciones con Efe, el ministro de Minorías, siempre cordial con los periodistas, reiteró durante los últimos meses su voluntad de enmendar las leyes antiblasfemia. "Sé que puedo ser asesinado si sigo presionando, pero no tengo miedo", dijo después del asesinato de Tasir.

SIGUEN ASESINANDO CRISTIANOS LOS FANATICOS DE LA RELIGION DE PAZ DE OBAMA

The assassination of another Pakistani politician, shot 30 times on Wednesday, shows how the policy of appeasing the extremists won’t work.

    “Shahbaz, from your blood revolution will come!” Thus the protesters shouted outside the Lahore Press Club some four hours after the assassination on Wednesday of Shahbaz Bhatti, federal minister for minorities. If this scant, disorganized protest—some clutching umbrellas, others holding up blood red crucifixes as irate motorists drove by—is any indication, this crowd is more likely to be at the wrong end of any revolution here in Pakistan.

 

Officials transport the body of Shahbaz Bhatti at a hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan on March 2. (Photo: Irfan Haider / AP Photo)

    Despite the widely known threats to his life, which started in 2009 after Pakistani Christians were massacred in the small Punjab town of Gojra, Bhatti was not traveling with his security detail when he was attacked. Like Salman Taseer, the governor of the Punjab who was assassinated barely two months earlier, also in Islamabad, Bhatti was slain in an audaciously public manner. Bhatti, 42, had just left his mother’s house for a cabinet meeting when a white Suzuki Mehran stopped his black Corolla. Wajid Durrani, inspector-general of capital police, says three men stepped out and opened fire. Bhatti was shot 30 times, according to the autopsy, including in the head. His driver survived the attack.

     “Bhatti’s ruthless and cold-blooded murder is a grave setback for the struggle for tolerance, pluralism, and respect for human rights in Pakistan,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, country representative for Human Rights Watch. “An urgent and meaningful policy shift on the appeasement of extremists that is supported by the military, the judiciary and the political class needs to replace the political cowardice and institutional myopia that encourages such continued appeasement despite its unrelenting bloody consequences.”

    News of the attack broke shortly before noon. And two hours after his death was confirmed, it was back to business for the country’s boisterous TV channels, which focused instead on the cricket World Cup, political intrigue in the Punjab, and the fate of incarcerated CIA contractor Raymond Davis. Bhatti and Taseer had both advocated reforming the country’s blasphemy laws to prevent their misuse, and both had been declared apostates by the jihadists and tens of thousands of their mainstream supporters. If the celebratory reaction to Taseer’s assassination finally put paid to the notion that Pakistan’s militants are a vocal but fringe group (the Senate refused to offer prayers for Taseer), Bhatti’s seems to confirm growing national fatigue over the blasphemy-laws controversy.

      Before they sped off, the assassins dumped pamphlets at the scene of the crime. “This is a warning from the warriors of Islam to all the world’s infidels, Crusaders, Jews and their operatives within the Muslim brotherhood,” it reads, “especially the head of Pakistan’s infidel system, [President Asif Ali] Zardari, his ministers, and all the institutions of this evil system.”

    This document from the Punjabi Taliban continues: “In your fight against Allah, you have become so bold that you act in favor of and support those who insult the Prophet. And you put a cursed Christian infidel Shahbaz Bhatti in charge of [the blasphemy laws review] committee. This is the fate of that cursed man. And now, with the grace of Allah, the warriors of Islam will pick you out one by one and send you to hell, God willing.”

    Bhatti founded the All-Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), an advocacy group, in 1985, and joined government in November 2008. According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Bhatti used his office “to obtain government assistance for victims of the worst instances of religiously motivated mob violence, to advocate publicly for reform or repeal of the blasphemy laws, to gain increased public attention to the concerns of the religious minorities, to ssecure increased employment opportunities in public service for members of religious minority communities, and to promote religious tolerance.”

    In 2009, the government introduced affirmative action for minorities—5 percent of all federal employment—and designated Aug. 11 a holiday to celebrate minorities, who comprise 3.7 percent of the country’s population of 180 million. But the government also distanced itself from Taseer over the blasphemy laws controversy. It is for this reason that Bhatti, who never gave up on his ***********///////********//////****** that the laws be reviewed, was a surprise inclusion in the smaller federal cabinet that was announced in early February.

     “I want to give witness through my actions and through even my life that I am a follower of Christ,” Bhatti told The Christian Post in Washington, D.C., the same month. “That is why these death threats don’t give me fear, but it gives me more commitment.” His 88-year-old father had a heart attack when he heard of Taseer’s killing on Jan. 4. He died a week later. “He knew that I was very close to Taseer and [that] I am also the target of extremists, so he could not bear that,” said Bhatti. “My father used to encourage me a lot. He said that, ‘I devoted you for this cause, for the Christian rights. And you should stand to give witness.’ ”

    The jihadists already have another target in their sights. Like Taseer and Bhatti, Sherry Rehman, a former information minister and member of the National Assembly from the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, has also been declared “fit to be killed” by the Taliban for her advocacy of legal reforms to prevent misuse of the blasphemy laws.

    Despite the threats, she has refused to leave the country. Stepped-up security is no guarantee of one’s safety given that Taseer was killed by a policeman assigned to protect him. In his interview with the Post, Bhatti expressed as much. “I don’t believe that bodyguards can save me after the assassination [of Taseer]. I believe in the protection from heaven, so I ask the people to pray,” he said.

    Pakistanis should pray for Bhatti—and for their dangerously darkening country.

Fasih Ahmed is the editor of Newsweek Pakistan. He won a New York Press Club award for Newsweek's coverage of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. Ahmed was also the inaugural Daniel Pearl fellow and worked at The Wall Street Journal's Washington, D.C., bureau in 2003. He graduated from Columbia University and lives in Lahore.

[siboneyes]

Led by a Follower: The Danger of a Weak President
Pajamas Media ^ | March 4, 2011 | Chris Salcedo

  Obama defers to the tyrants and the UN, and the world is more dangerous because of it.

    Remember when U.S. presidents were regarded as the “leader of the free world”? They earned that moniker. FDR spoke of a day of infamy and rallied our nation to fight the Nazi threat to global freedom. JFK stood strong in the face of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And Ronald Reagan recognized the strength of America and stood up to one of the most deadly totalitarian regimes in human history.

       Now we have President Obama.

He’s the one — we were told — who would restore our credibility in capitals around the globe. He was to reassert our moral authority: the nation that stands for basic human rights and the dignity of the individual. We were told that his intellect alone could bring tyrants to heel — Obama infamously expressed a desire to meet with dictators, never minding that such meetings would elevate despotic regimes by offering the prestige of the American presidency.

   As has come to pass: emboldened by a weak or non-existent foreign policy, buoyed by the confidence that Obama’s White House is unwilling to act, and inspired by strongmen that openly defy the president’s wishes, thugs of all shapes, sizes, and degrees of brutality are challenging the United States.

    Those challenges are met with silence, when condemnation is required. They are greeted with ambivalence, when the world cries for decisiveness. The world begs the U.S. to lead, and the “leader of the free world” is content to go with the flow.

    Vice President Joe Biden said Obama would be tested, and he has been tested several times over. Each instance seemed a surprise, a distraction to the president. He appeared bothered that each crisis took him away from his stated goal of remaking America. Unfortunately, the rogue elements of the world were not inclined to give the president time to learn on the job. They, unlike Mr. Obama’s devout followers, were not fainting in the aisles after his inauguration. In fact, the despots felt just the opposite: they were reinvigorated. They smelled blood in the water.

    In May of 2009, the dictator of North Korea tested a nuclear weapon that was rumored to have been as powerful as the device used over Hiroshima. The nuclear test was a clear violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions and international agreements. President Obama’s response was less than inspirational: he declared that North Korea’s actions were “directly and recklessly challenging the international community,” and that “such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea’s isolation.”   

      Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the U.N., reinforced the president’s stance, saying Pyongyang will “pay a price for the path that they’re on if they don’t reverse.” To date, nothing of substance has been done, and this lack of American leadership may have emboldened the communist nation. North Korea has since attacked and sunk a South Korean ship, killing 34 people, and the North launched a deadly shelling on South Korea in November 2010. Obama’s White House called for an end to the North’s “belligerent action.”

     The weakness projected by President Obama on North Korea is bad enough. But the president’s timidity elsewhere on the world stage has led to far greater consequences and loss of life.

     In the summer of 2009, Iranian citizens took to the streets of Tehran to protest “questionable” election results. The bloodshed that followed was horrific. The Iranian theocracy clamped down on freedom seekers with iron-fisted ruthlessness. The Telegraph, hardly conservative, summed up the White House response as “cowardly, lily-livered and wrong.” That was one of the more flattering accounts of the president’s policy toward Iran, or lack thereof.

    It’s not like we weren’t warned of Mr. Obama’s predilections towards appeasement. All of his opponents in the 2008 election cycle, including his current secretary of state, warned that Mr. Obama’s desire to “sit down” with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions would lead to disaster. It was Mr. Obama’s naive notion of talking with such a morally bankrupt regime that, many speculated, led to days of terror for the Iranian people with no opposition from the so-called “leader of the free world.”

    In the beginning days of the protest, the administration — through VP Biden and Secretary Clinton — conveyed President Obama’s ***********///////********//////******: “We’re going to withhold comment…. I mean we’re just waiting to see,” Biden said. Clinton declared in a statement: “The United States has refrained from commenting on the election in Iran.”

Is that leadership?

    Only after nearly two weeks of criticism from the international community and conservatives at home did President Obama abandon his “engagement” policy with the thugs in Iran and strongly condemn the regime’s actions. Again, Mr. Obama had to be led before standing for American ideals. Yet a few months later Obama made his first speech before the UN General Assembly, where he called for a “new era of engagement with the world” – he was still leaving the door open to rogue regimes.

    Obama’s lack of leadership in standing up to tyranny again evidenced itself a little over a year later.

     The Middle East has exploded in protests. Countries that have been ruled by strongmen for decades are seeing a popular uprising of epic proportions. And once again the American administration was caught unaware. Once again the Obama administration was caught flat-footed, as Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow dictator and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak. Egypt, being a U.S. ally, must have enabled the Obama administration to come out early and call for Mubarak to step down.

    It’s well-documented how this administration treats traditional U.S. allies: the return of the bust of Winston Churchill and the gift of Obama speeches on an iPod for the queen, his treatment of Israel, his lackluster support for South Korea, his policy toward trade with democratic Colombia. All the while, Obama treats tyrants and dictators, self-declared enemies of the U.S., with kid gloves.

     What else explains the timidity shown in the face of Libyan uprisings, and murders in the streets? When Obama finally got around to commenting on the hundreds of Libyan citizens dead, he couldn’t even bring himself to mention dictator Muammar Gaddafi by name or call for him to step down. He eventually got around to it after a fresh round of shame from his political opposition. As the situation worsened, nations from around the world evacuated their citizens from Libya. Did President Obama send one of our carrier groups to evacuate and guard our citizens? No, he … charted a ferry. We wouldn’t want to project American power and stability in the region, would we? A move like that might have sent an unmistakable message to Gaddafi and other tyrants in the Middle East that the mass murder of their citizens would not be tolerated by the United States.

    It might have made other despots think twice before ordering their air forces to fire on protesters if they knew American air power was minutes away. I’m sure the calculus was made in the White House: a carrier group would have negated all the good will America has enjoyed since Mr. Obama’s American apology tour early in his presidency. There has been no show of strength or stability in the Middle East. Instead, Mr. Obama has turned once again to the UN to tame Libya’s mad-dog dictator.

      Mr. Obama is a weak president. This isn’t my calculation. It’s the consensus of every thug and dictator around the world. Has there been any evidence to the contrary? The world’s despots seem reasonably assured that the most negative consequence for their mayhem is a severe tongue-lashing. And the world is now a much more dangerous place because of Mr. Obama’s lack of experience, his lack of an American-centered resolve, and his pattern of embracing America’s enemies and alienating our friends.

    Instead of leading the world as the head of the nation that stands for freedom and liberty, Mr. Obama abdicates that responsibility to the United Nations. We no longer have the “leader of the free world” in the White House. We have “the follower of the oppressed world.” And as long as he occupies that office, America stands to lose its influence around the globe. It’s an influence that, before Obama, made America a beacon of light for human freedom and dignity. That light is growing ever dimmer, allowing the world’s anti-American tyrants to thrive, and leaving our friends and those yearning to breathe free with no guide out of the increasing darkness.

[siboneyes]

Led by a Follower: The Danger of a Weak President
Pajamas Media ^ | March 4, 2011 | Chris Salcedo

  Obama defers to the tyrants and the UN, and the world is more dangerous because of it.

    Remember when U.S. presidents were regarded as the “leader of the free world”? They earned that moniker. FDR spoke of a day of infamy and rallied our nation to fight the Nazi threat to global freedom. JFK stood strong in the face of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And Ronald Reagan recognized the strength of America and stood up to one of the most deadly totalitarian regimes in human history.

       Now we have President Obama.

He’s the one — we were told — who would restore our credibility in capitals around the globe. He was to reassert our moral authority: the nation that stands for basic human rights and the dignity of the individual. We were told that his intellect alone could bring tyrants to heel — Obama infamously expressed a desire to meet with dictators, never minding that such meetings would elevate despotic regimes by offering the prestige of the American presidency.

   As has come to pass: emboldened by a weak or non-existent foreign policy, buoyed by the confidence that Obama’s White House is unwilling to act, and inspired by strongmen that openly defy the president’s wishes, thugs of all shapes, sizes, and degrees of brutality are challenging the United States.

    Those challenges are met with silence, when condemnation is required. They are greeted with ambivalence, when the world cries for decisiveness. The world begs the U.S. to lead, and the “leader of the free world” is content to go with the flow.

    Vice President Joe Biden said Obama would be tested, and he has been tested several times over. Each instance seemed a surprise, a distraction to the president. He appeared bothered that each crisis took him away from his stated goal of remaking America. Unfortunately, the rogue elements of the world were not inclined to give the president time to learn on the job. They, unlike Mr. Obama’s devout followers, were not fainting in the aisles after his inauguration. In fact, the despots felt just the opposite: they were reinvigorated. They smelled blood in the water.

    In May of 2009, the dictator of North Korea tested a nuclear weapon that was rumored to have been as powerful as the device used over Hiroshima. The nuclear test was a clear violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions and international agreements. President Obama’s response was less than inspirational: he declared that North Korea’s actions were “directly and recklessly challenging the international community,” and that “such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea’s isolation.”   

      Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the U.N., reinforced the president’s stance, saying Pyongyang will “pay a price for the path that they’re on if they don’t reverse.” To date, nothing of substance has been done, and this lack of American leadership may have emboldened the communist nation. North Korea has since attacked and sunk a South Korean ship, killing 34 people, and the North launched a deadly shelling on South Korea in November 2010. Obama’s White House called for an end to the North’s “belligerent action.”

     The weakness projected by President Obama on North Korea is bad enough. But the president’s timidity elsewhere on the world stage has led to far greater consequences and loss of life.

     In the summer of 2009, Iranian citizens took to the streets of Tehran to protest “questionable” election results. The bloodshed that followed was horrific. The Iranian theocracy clamped down on freedom seekers with iron-fisted ruthlessness. The Telegraph, hardly conservative, summed up the White House response as “cowardly, lily-livered and wrong.” That was one of the more flattering accounts of the president’s policy toward Iran, or lack thereof.

    It’s not like we weren’t warned of Mr. Obama’s predilections towards appeasement. All of his opponents in the 2008 election cycle, including his current secretary of state, warned that Mr. Obama’s desire to “sit down” with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions would lead to disaster. It was Mr. Obama’s naive notion of talking with such a morally bankrupt regime that, many speculated, led to days of terror for the Iranian people with no opposition from the so-called “leader of the free world.”

    In the beginning days of the protest, the administration — through VP Biden and Secretary Clinton — conveyed President Obama’s ***********///////********//////******: “We’re going to withhold comment…. I mean we’re just waiting to see,” Biden said. Clinton declared in a statement: “The United States has refrained from commenting on the election in Iran.”

Is that leadership?

    Only after nearly two weeks of criticism from the international community and conservatives at home did President Obama abandon his “engagement” policy with the thugs in Iran and strongly condemn the regime’s actions. Again, Mr. Obama had to be led before standing for American ideals. Yet a few months later Obama made his first speech before the UN General Assembly, where he called for a “new era of engagement with the world” – he was still leaving the door open to rogue regimes.

    Obama’s lack of leadership in standing up to tyranny again evidenced itself a little over a year later.

     The Middle East has exploded in protests. Countries that have been ruled by strongmen for decades are seeing a popular uprising of epic proportions. And once again the American administration was caught unaware. Once again the Obama administration was caught flat-footed, as Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow dictator and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak. Egypt, being a U.S. ally, must have enabled the Obama administration to come out early and call for Mubarak to step down.

    It’s well-documented how this administration treats traditional U.S. allies: the return of the bust of Winston Churchill and the gift of Obama speeches on an iPod for the queen, his treatment of Israel, his lackluster support for South Korea, his policy toward trade with democratic Colombia. All the while, Obama treats tyrants and dictators, self-declared enemies of the U.S., with kid gloves.

     What else explains the timidity shown in the face of Libyan uprisings, and murders in the streets? When Obama finally got around to commenting on the hundreds of Libyan citizens dead, he couldn’t even bring himself to mention dictator Muammar Gaddafi by name or call for him to step down. He eventually got around to it after a fresh round of shame from his political opposition. As the situation worsened, nations from around the world evacuated their citizens from Libya. Did President Obama send one of our carrier groups to evacuate and guard our citizens? No, he … charted a ferry. We wouldn’t want to project American power and stability in the region, would we? A move like that might have sent an unmistakable message to Gaddafi and other tyrants in the Middle East that the mass murder of their citizens would not be tolerated by the United States.

    It might have made other despots think twice before ordering their air forces to fire on protesters if they knew American air power was minutes away. I’m sure the calculus was made in the White House: a carrier group would have negated all the good will America has enjoyed since Mr. Obama’s American apology tour early in his presidency. There has been no show of strength or stability in the Middle East. Instead, Mr. Obama has turned once again to the UN to tame Libya’s mad-dog dictator.

      Mr. Obama is a weak president. This isn’t my calculation. It’s the consensus of every thug and dictator around the world. Has there been any evidence to the contrary? The world’s despots seem reasonably assured that the most negative consequence for their mayhem is a severe tongue-lashing. And the world is now a much more dangerous place because of Mr. Obama’s lack of experience, his lack of an American-centered resolve, and his pattern of embracing America’s enemies and alienating our friends.

    Instead of leading the world as the head of the nation that stands for freedom and liberty, Mr. Obama abdicates that responsibility to the United Nations. We no longer have the “leader of the free world” in the White House. We have “the follower of the oppressed world.” And as long as he occupies that office, America stands to lose its influence around the globe. It’s an influence that, before Obama, made America a beacon of light for human freedom and dignity. That light is growing ever dimmer, allowing the world’s anti-American tyrants to thrive, and leaving our friends and those yearning to breathe free with no guide out of the increasing darkness.

[sirjohn]

A Burqa for Lady Liberty and a Mosque for Ground Zero
Right Side News ^ | 3/3/2011 | Daniel Greenfield

    A Muslim group has announced plans to cover the Statue of Liberty with a burqa and then replace her with a minaret.

     But there's no reason at all to take such plans seriously. Lady Liberty being treated the way the Muslim world treats women in general, is as unlikely as a massive mosque being built just downwind of Ground Zero. Or Queen Elizabeth donning a hijab on a visit to Abu Dhabi. It's one of those things that we're told not to worry about until it happens and then objecting to it becomes a crime against tolerance. The tolerance of intolerance.

     In Germany, a Kosovar Muslim airport employee cried, "Allahu Akbar" and opened fire on a group of US airmen. Of course the motive has yet to be determined, and after a long period of speculation touching on everything from his mortgage problems to his scratchy uniform, the truth will be known and quietly buried, along with the two men he killed. Little more than a decade ago, the United States Air Force was instrumental in helping create a terrorist state for Kosovar Muslims. This is the gratitude they got in return. A hail of bullets. And this is the gratitude that Westerners can always expect for their aid. (Clinton's armed intervention in Yugoslavia on the side of Muslims vs. Christians)

   Anjem Choudary, the leader of the Islamic group that would like to sandblast Lady Liberty, and Arid Uka, the airport gunmen, were not hatched in some cave in Pakistan. Choudary was born in the London Borough of Bexley. Arid Uka was born and raised in Germany, where his family had lived for some 40 years. They are not immigrants, but native born European Muslims fighting to remake Europe into an Islamic state. The idea is fanciful, just like the Statue of Liberty being blown up by the American Taliban to make way for a minaret. But there was a time when a short Austrian corporal's plans to build a Thousand Year Reich on the bones of Europe were as laughable as Choudary's antics.

     In 1993, Americans laughed at a gang of stu..pid Muslim terrorists who had tried to blow up the World Trade Center using a Ryder rental van, and then actually tried to get their deposit back on the van. 8 years later a gang of terrorists not all that much smarter than them hijacked four planes with box cutters and knocked down both towers, killing 3,000 people. And suddenly it wasn't funny anymore.

    Evil is often ridiculous in its pretensions, but horrifying in its execution. It is silly only until it begins to succeed, and then the joke turns to horror and madness. We may find Kim Jong Il funny, but no one in North Korea does. Saddam's love poems, Stalin's toupee, Hitler's comic bellicosity, Khaddafi's eccentricity are funny only because we never lived under them. The presumptuousness of a Choudary presuming to wave the flag of Islam over the White House and announce plans for dynamiting the Statue of Liberty is a joke. But the punchline is how little we are doing to halt the day when it really does fly over the White House.

     "All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." But our governments are not doing nothing, they are aiding it along. European leaders grumble about multiculturalism and call for more integration. Choudary and Arid Uka are the successes of their integration. The politicians talk and the refugees swarm and the mosques spread. Most European Muslims are not going out guns blazing or cursing returning soldiers. They don't need to. They can do the math better than the politicians can. And they already know they will win.

    We don't have the same demographic gun to our heads yet, but we are retreating almost as quickly. In the aftermath of 9/11, the temerity of a Ground Zero mosque was unthinkable. Now it's not only thinkable, it's downright mandatory. And does anyone really believe that Barack Hussein Obama could have been elected at any other period in history, but the one in which our relations with the Muslim world have become of paramount importance?

    This is how craven we have become in the face of enemies armed only with box cutters, IED's and the occasional RPG. But the days of the suicide bomb are passing, and the day of the suicide nuke is coming.

     While we have been dismantling our nuclear weapons, Pakistan has been building them. Pakistan has passed the UK to become the world's fifth largest nuclear power with 100 nuclear weapons.

   Today the mobs bay in the streets of Pakistan for the blood of Christians charged with blasphemy. What happens when an Islamic regime tells us to ban all criticism of Islam or they will ***********///////********//////****** a full scale nuclear strike? Do you think we will still have freedom of speech left then.

   If we have not been able to stand up to suicide bombers without flattering and pandering, what will we do when we are confronted with the cold hard choice. Either put a burqa on Lady Liberty or fight a nuclear war.

    Most of Europe has already made its choice. Some states are still dragging out the inevitable. But there are only two options. There have only ever been two options. While the debates drag on, the size of the occupying army grows.

     No less a figure than Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan proclaimed that the “Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets, believers our soldiers.” In the secular Turkey of the day, he was jailed for it. But with support of the European Union, he now rules over an Islamist Turkey. A prospective member of the EU.

    Yesterday Erdogan paid a visit to Germany, and delivered a boisterous speech to German Muslims, the likes of which Dusseldorf had not been seen since Schicklgruber was entertaining industrialists with promises of a better tomorrow.   Today a German Muslim killed two American airmen in a scene that might have been lifted from Turkish propaganda films such as Valley of the Wolves.

    Germany attempted to ban the movie, but it has been screened nonetheless, and now German and American audiences have been treated to a live showing, with Arid Uka taking on the Polat Almedar role. Erdogan leaves Europe to attend a funeral for Turkey's first Islamist Prime Minister, alongside the leader of Hamas and other world terrorists, but his work has been done. And done well.

    If Europa is halfway to donning the veil, is Lady Liberty any better off? Choudary's march will be met with the fiction that he only represents a tiny minority of extremists. Arid Uka's killing spree will be filed in that same folder with all the other lone gunmen and bombers who just happened to shout, "Allah is Great" at a crucial juncture. Meanwhile the Muslim Brotherhood will keep on slithering deeper and deeper into the corridors of power. And our leaders will go on trying to win over the Muslim world with a buffet of appeasement. And evil will go on triumphing.

    There was a time when Hitler and Lenin could have been squashed like bugs, until a few years later when it would take half the armies of the world to stop their ambitions. They could have been stopped. But the world chose not to. And that is what is genuinely awful. Beyond the death camps and the gulags, the terrible knowledge of how easy it was to shut them down. How many people died, how much of the world was destroyed, because men did nothing to stop them.

   The Islamists could have been stopped yesterday. They can still be stopped today. But tomorrow the cost will be much higher, if it will even be possible at all. Each passing year erodes our power and grows theirs. The balance of power has already shifted in the minds of our leaders. But it will shift in reality as well. The difference between a mad dream and a terrible reality is power. Alone Charles Manson was another lunatic drinking deep of the poisoned well of his own power fantasies. With only a few women and men, he terrorized California. And the evil we face now makes Manson seem as harmless as a stuffed bunny.

    History's monsters were rarely geniuses, most often they were men with a bad idea, willing to do absolutely anything to see it through. Islam is a very bad idea that breeds monsters. It has all the usual components of of the "Bad Ideas" that nearly destroyed humanity in the 20th century.    Absolutee power in the name of a perfect order, conspiracy theories and the rise of the oppressed. The Koran 2.0 has gone digital and a new generation is being taught to see the world as a target rich environment-- from a German airport to an island in New York harbor where the 'mighty woman with a torch' is attracting a new breed of exile these days. Who come not to be free, but to enslave us all.

    A burqa for Lady Liberty and a mosque for Ground Zero-- that is their vision for us, if we allow it to happen. Freedom undefended turns easily to slavery. Not only defended by force, but in meaning. We have forgotten that freedom is not universal tolerance, but a moral force that springs from the determination of each individual in a society to be free. It is no more a safe space for the burqa, than it is for the slave's chains, it is not an open door of tolerance for the crescent and star, the swastika or the hammer and sickle.

    Freedom is not blind, that is anarchy and soon undone. It is not only a negative absence of law, but a positive determination to maintain the free society against those who would threaten it. Without that determination Americans will bend under the same chains that a billion already wear in the East and Lady Liberty will don her burqa.

---

[sirjohn]

Our Schizoid Foreign Policy
There are two possible diagnoses — neither of them very reassuring.
Victor Davis Hanson

NRO 3/2/2011

  Are we stupid abroad by accident or design?

In the manner of a doctor, let us review the symptoms of our present foreign policy and then offer a diagnosis:

    Autocratic and dictatorial Russia has become a veritable friend. America will say very little about the Russian government’s involvement in the chronic assassination of journalists and dissidents. We don’t mind passing along nuclear-weapon information about our British allies to Russia if it furthers better relations with Moscow and results in a treaty. We apparently are more worried about offending Vladimir Putin than about offending our Polish and Czech allies. We eagerly sign an arms treaty that most people believe favors Russia more than ourselves, and we shrug when Russia does not, as promised, help thwart Iranian nuclear proliferation.

   In the last three budget years, we have borrowed $4 trillion, some of it from China, mostly to expand our existing entitlements, almost all of which China does not extend to its own people. We cannot quite assure Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, or the Philippines of past levels of support, since we are worried that our old high military profile would now only provoke Chinese sensibilities. And yet we are depressed when our creditor China in turn seems to resent even the barest mention of its deplorable human-rights violations or its treatment of Tibet.

    America vows not to “meddle” on behalf of Iranian dissidents, reaches out to Syria, and was initially silent in the face of Libyan atrocities — in a landscape in which we earlier declared Hosni Mubarak a dictator, and not a dictator, who should depart kinda yesterday, if he did not stay on for a transition to a military dictatorship, which might in turn oversee elections some day that might include the Muslim Brotherhood, which is sorta nonviolent and kinda secular.

    In the last two years scarcely a week has gone by in which we did not in some way criticize democratic and once allied Israel. Perhaps if the Israeli government had stoned some homosexuals, or assassinated a leading Lebanese reform figure, or bombed its own cities, we might either have kept silent or publicly promised not to meddle in Israeli affairs. Or we might have apologized for something we purportedly did decades ago that offended Israeli sensibilities.

    The Guantanamo Bay detention center is al-Qaeda’s chief recruiting tool, and that is precisely why we closed it — at least virtually. Military tribunals, renditions, preventive detention, and Predator drone attacks during the Bush administration raised “serious” constitutional questions, and that is why we, also virtually, stopped all such problematic protocols. An architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, is currently facing a virtual civilian trial in Manhattan. Iraq is both our worst disaster and our greatest achievement. As proof that we are withdrawing according to set deadlines from Afghanistan, we are sending thousands more troops there.

     Terrorism of the home-grown kind is now a “grave” concern, and that is why we do not use the offensive terms “Islamist” or “jihad,” and have evolved to nomenclature like “overseas contingency operations” for “war on terror” and “man-caused disasters” for “terrorism” — although one may doubt that any serious American security official has ever phoned his European counterpart to discuss joint “overseas contingency operations” against “man-caused disasters.” When jihadists strike, they do so “allegedly” until formally convicted, and the resulting American uproar and threats to diversity programs can be as serious a concern as the actual terrorist operation. Formerly one-dimensional agencies like NASA now have new expanded missions, namely, reaching out to the Muslim world.

     In the theoretical sphere, we are unsure that America is any more “exceptional” than, say, Greece, since such perceptions are always relative and merely rest in the eye of the beholder. Britain certainly does not really hold a “special relationship” with the United States in the past Churchillian or Thatcherian sense. And there is a greater need to fly abroad to lobby for a Chicago Olympics than there is to visit Germany to commemorate the downfall of Communism. France, hitherto not known for having greater idealism than the United States, from time to time reminds us that centrifuges are still “spinning” in Iran.

     We promised increased billions in foreign aid to our allies, much of which is borrowed from foreign bondholders, along the lines of, “Dear China, could you lend us another $2 billion at 3 percent to help Pakistan, and then please act as if the ensuing grant is really our money?” Apparently, we really must believe that America is exceptional to try to get away with that.

    America is terribly worried about the volatility of the oil-exporting Middle East, and that is why we put large regions of the United States and its coasts off limits for new oil, gas, and tar-sands exploration. Apparently other countries can extract and export oil in far more environmentally sound fashion than can America, and, in any case, we have plenty of cash reserves to import at high prices.

     What diagnosis might we make on the basis of such symptomology?

The United States is doing its best to reassure the world it is not following George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism policies by often following George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism policies. The earlier Afghan war was not a mistake, and that is why Afghanistan is still violent and our troops are still being deployed there; while the later Iraq war was a mistake, and that is why Iraq is now quiet and our troops are leaving.

    Countries that are pro-Western are somewhat suspect and do not warrant the same level of trust as those which in the past were overtly anti-American — apparently either because prior positive views of the Bush administration render them now suspect, or because resistance to an anti-American regime makes grass-roots dissidents somehow less than genuine or authentic. Past alliances during world wars, and shared support for capitalism, free markets, and constitutional government, are relevant only in the sense that such kindred countries have, like us, a lot of apologizing to do.

     Left-wing governments that brutalize their people and deny them freedom — like Cuba’s or Venezuela’s — offer interesting opportunities for new relations. The president’s mixed heritage, his patrimonial tie to Islam, his exotic nomenclature, his progressive Chicago past — all that allows him to meet and conduct business with Third World leaders in a way impossible under a white southern conservative like President Bush. That is a rare advantage that we should not squander by mindlessly supporting the removal of such dictators by their own angry people.

    The degree to which America deems itself not exceptional is in direct proportion to the fact that it does consider itself quite exceptional in its entitlement to borrow trillions of dollars on the world stage and consume world oil that it will not itself produce.

    There is also another possible diagnosis for all these symptoms: We simply have no clue what the United States is or should be doing, and we more or less make things up as we go — day by day.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.

[siboneyes]

PRAVDA Warns Obamazombies to Avoid Communism!

An opinion piece that appeared on April 27 in the English edition of Pravda, long the propaganda mouthpiece of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, laments that American is descending into Marxism "like the breaking of a great dam."
  Understand, now.  Pravda is whining that the U.S. is becoming a Socialist state.
  This, of course, follows closely on the heels of the U.S. being passively lectured by both the Chinese and the French about becoming too socialist, too quickly.
   Karl Marx is right now distributing cigars bearing the slogan, "It's an Obama," in hell.
   And the Russian writer refers to the Obamazombies as "hapless, passive sheeple."
   Yes, that was not Limbaugh or Hannity that wrote that. That was a former Communist.
   How did it happen, according to our intrepid writer? Reading his explanation is like reading a list of "The Top Ten Things That Make Neal Boortz Apoplectic."

* A dumbed-down education system ("dumbed down" are his words).
* Americans "care more about their 'right' to choke down a McDonald's hamburger... than they care about their constitutional rights."
* Loss of faith in God, loss of integrity in religious practice, and a consequent flight to Marxist politicians who promise to remake the world.
* And I quote, the "The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama."

The Democrat Party, complains our former hobnail-booted Commie, "make our [Russian] oligarchs look like little more than street thugs.... Yes, the Americans have beaten our own thieves by [the] shear volume [of their corruption]."
   How is that whole hopey-changey thingy working out for you people?

The Fallacy of Tyranny

By Jed Gladstein

3/6/2011

   No matter how long a people may suffer under tyranny, their yearning to be free can never be permanently extinguished.  That much should be obvious from the events we are now witnessing in the Middle East: a new generation of Iranians is defying the tyranny of the ayatollahs, and angry uprisings are taking place in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen.  If the last hundred years have taught us anything, it is the fallacy that tyranny can succeed as a long-term social strategy.

    But tyranny is not just about the iron-fisted rule of autocrats.  It is about the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power, even when that power is wielded in a society devoted to democratic self-rule.  That is the kind of tyranny we see in our country today, and many Americans are deeply concerned about what it means for a nation whose highest ideals are epitomized in the expression "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." 

    While the extension of federal control over health care sparked the Tea Party Movement, the flames of popular indignation are big enough to engulf a multitude of powers now claimed by the federal government.  As the Canadian essayist David Solway recently said about the policies of the Obama administration:

   ... there can be little doubt that the attempt to impose an unpopular leftist program of Robin Hood economics, environmental thuggery, and transnational accommodation upon what is historically a free-market constitutional republic must release the demons of social dissension and cultural rupture.

    But the aggrandizement of power by our national government is only part of the tyranny faced by Americans today.  At every level of government, the expansion of bureaucratic power threatens people's personal freedom over how to live their lives.  That expansion is taking place without the informed consent of the citizens.  And for Americans who value freedom, it is important to understand why that is happening and what can be done about it.

    In the broadest sense, the erosion of freedom in America is as much a result of ignorance and inattention as it is the product of cabal and conspiracy.  A powerful few believe that limited government is too restrictive, and they are aided and abetted by an elite group who think that the constitutional limitations on government shouldn't be taken seriously.  These people in power must work their will through a vast bureaucracy of government employees, and in order to do that, they must obtain the obedience of those bureaucrats.  Of course, paychecks go a long way toward purchasing that obedience.  But keeping the bureaucrats ignorant about the totalitarian nature of their activities is also important, for the elites know that it is easier to lead people out of error than confusion.

    So, to ensure obedience, the cultural elites have deliberately mis-educated the last two generations of Americans to think that freedom in America is a fatuous narrative used to exploit unfortunate victim groups.  Instead of teaching the value of self-reliance, personal initiative, and individual responsibility, the elites have propagated collectivist ideas that come right out of the cultural Marxist school of social engineering.  Such notions reward conformity, not individual excellence, and their socio-political legitimacy depends upon the approval of little committees and groups of self-interested experts, not on the support of the people.  Raised up in ignorance to unquestioningly accept elitist group thinking, it never occurs to today's bureaucrats that the activities of government must be rooted in the informed consent of the governed in order to be legitimate.

    But the ignorance of government bureaucrats isn't the entire explanation for the loss of freedom in America today.  The inattention of the people to the preservation of their own liberty has played a critical part as well.  Although the desire for freedom is born in every human heart, political liberty can be lost in a single generation if the people don't prize it highly enough.  As the noted Irish lawyer John Philpot Curran once said:

    It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

   So what does "eternal vigilance" consist of in a republic like the United States, where political institutions are rooted in a free and democratically self-governing society?  Does it mean abdicating to politicians and bureaucrats the governance of one's life?  Or does it mean taking an active part in deciding what politicians and bureaucrats can and cannot do as they wield the awesome power of government? 

  These aren't just academic questions; they are practical questions of the utmost significance for every freedom-loving American citizen.  After all, when the power of government is not restrained by vigilant citizen supervision, it will spread like a cancer and consume the liberties of the people.  

  To regain the liberty usurped by government officials in America today, the people must take affirmative action to reclaim the rights vouchsafed to them by the Founders of the Republic.  First and foremost is the right to be left alone, for that is the principal limitation on the exercise of government power.  In each city and suburb, in every town and rurality, the people must act to limit government involvement in their lives.

    Instead of accepting bureaucratic regulation as legitimate and inevitable, the people must insist that bureaucrats meticulously justify every policy and procedure that they propose.  Rather than assuming that bills passed into law are necessary and proper, the people must demand that the government prove by clear and convincing evidence that every law is essential to the preservation of public order, or that it reflects the will of a fully informed citizenry.  Only by enforcing such strict scrutiny and high standards can the people win back their own freedom.

American capitalism gone with a whimper

   It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

   True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

   Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

   First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

   Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

   The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

   These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

    These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

   Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

   So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

    Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

    So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

     The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this andthe option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

     The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin

[siboneyes]

FLASHBACK: FEBRUARY DEFICICIT Larger Than Entire 2007 Deficit... $223 BILLION

Government posts biggest monthly deficit ever

By Stephen Dinan
-
The Washington Times
3/7/2011

     Glen Perkins delivers copies of the Fiscal Year 2012 Budget to the Senate Budget Committee hearing room in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Feb. 14, 2011. President Barack Obama will send Congress a $3.7 trillion budget that would reduce deficits by $1.1 trillion over a decade, setting up a battle with Republicans who have already deemed the plan insufficient to reduce federal debt

     The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion, according to preliminary numbers the Congressional Budget Office released Monday morning.

    That figure tops last February’s record of $220.9 billion, and marks the 29th straight month the government has run in the red — a modern record. The last time the federal government posted even a monthly surplus was September 2008, just before the financial collapse.

      Last month’s federal deficit is nearly four times as large as the spending cuts House Republicans have passed in their spending bill, and is more than 30 times the size of Senate Democrats’ opening bid of $6 billion.

     Senators are slated to vote this week on those two proposals — both of which are expected to fail — and then all sides will go back to the negotiating table to try to work out a final deal.