Category Archives: Jihad

2012 Primary, Israel, Jihad

Ron Paul Staffer: He is “most certainly Anti-Israel”. Believes U.S. Should Not Have Stopped the Holocaust…

Leave a comment

Dondero tries to split a line between anti-Israelism and antisemitism. History demonstrates that such a split is imaginary. You cannot be OK with Jews and say that the holocaust, genocide, is none of our business.

Eric Dondero:

  • Fmr. Senior Aide, US Cong. Ron Paul, 1997 – 2003
  • Campaign Coordinator, Ron Paul for Congress, 1995/96
  • National Organizer, Draft Ron Paul for President, 1991/92
  • Travel Aide/Personal Asst. Ron Paul, Libertarian for President 1987/88

He (Ron Paul) is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.

Dondero continues:

There was another incident when Ron finally agreed to a meeting with Houston Jewish Young Republicans at the Freeport office. He berated them, and even shouted at one point, over their un-flinching support for Israel. So, much so, that the 6 of them walked out of the office. I was left chasing them down the hallway apologizing for my boss.

More:

Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. He denies this charge vociferously. But I can tell you straight out, I had countless arguments/discussions with him over his personal views. For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.

I would challenge him, like for example, what about the instances of German U-boats attacking U.S. ships, or even landing on the coast of North Carolina or Long Island, NY. He’d finally concede that that and only that was reason enough to counter-attack against the Nazis, not any humanitarian causes like preventing the Holocaust.

More HERE.

Jihad

Iran Claims to Have Produced Its First Nuclear Fuel Rod

Leave a comment

Fox News:

TEHRAN, Iran –  Iranian scientists have produced the nation’s first nuclear fuel rod, a feat of engineering the West has doubted Tehran capable of, the country’s nuclear agency said Sunday.

The announcement marks another step in Tehran’s efforts to achieve proficiency in the entire nuclear fuel cycle — from exploring uranium ore to producing nuclear fuel — despite U.N. sanctions and measures by the U.S. and others to get it to halt aspects of its atomic work that could provide a possible pathway to weapons production.

Tehran has long said it is forced to seek a way to manufacture the fuel rods on its own, since the sanctions ban it from buying them on foreign markets. Nuclear fuel rods are tubes containing pellets of enriched uranium that provide fuel for nuclear reactors.

Iran’s atomic energy agency’s website said the first domestically made rod has already been inserted into the core of Tehran’s research nuclear reactor. But it was unclear if the rod contained pellets or was inserted empty, as part of a test.

“Scientists and researchers at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran have succeeded in producing and testing the first sample of a nuclear fuel rod,” said the announcement.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/01/iran-claims-to-have-produced-its-first-nuclear-fuel-rod/#ixzz1iG0FQgQj

2012 Primary, Israel, Jihad, Stuck on Stupid

Ron Paul: US and Israel Created Hamas…

Leave a comment

Another speech filled with half truths, he makes a good point about blowback, but bends reality to make it.

If anything Ron Paul is making an argument for knowing our enemy without the lens of political correctness.

In part, the truth part of what he says is that we helped legitimize Hamas by encouraging the election when we should have known just how radicalized the Arab street is in that part of the world.

But ……his solution is to just let the bad guys do what they want and then maybe they will not try to harm us. And also to not encourage Israel to defend itself. Both are bad ideas that will encourage the enemy.

Showing weakness to Hamas is like showing weakness to the Romulans from Star Trek, you just don’t do it.

Appeasement reflects the hope that the crocodile will eat you last – Winston Churchill 

2012 Primary, Culture War, Egypt, Israel, Jihad, Obama

Islamic militants receive two-thirds vote in Egypt

Leave a comment

“But its just a tiny percentage of them that are like that…”

No it is not.

Reuters:

(Reuters) – Egypt’s two leading Islamist parties won about two-thirds of votes for party lists in the second round of polling for a parliament that will help draft a new constitution after decades of autocratic rule, the election committee said Saturday.

The party list led by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 36.3 percent of the list vote, while the ultra-conservative Salafi al-Nour Party took 28.8 percent, pushing the liberal Wafd party into third place.

The vote, staged over six weeks, is the first free election Egypt has held after the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who routinely rigged polls before he was overthrown by a popular uprising in February.

The West long looked to Mubarak and other strongmen in the region to help combat Islamist militants, and has watched warily as Islamist parties have topped votes in Tunisia, Morocco and now Egypt.

 

2012 Primary, Egypt, Jihad, Obama

AP: Egyptian Women March Against Abuse by Military

Leave a comment

Be sure to check out our Egypt category for more information.

AP:

CAIRO–Thousands of Egyptian women have taken to the streets of Cairo in a mass demonstration against the military’s brutality against women during a crackdown on protesters that shocked many in the largely conservative society.

Ringed by a protective chain of male protesters, women from different social classes and religious background gathered in Tahrir Square Tuesday and marched through the streets of Cairo. Many carried signs with images of soldiers dragging protesters by the hair and kicking and stomping on them on the ground. One image was particularly shocking, showing a veiled woman who had been partially stripped by soldiers who dragged and beat her on the ground.

“They say they are here to protect us, but they are stripping us naked,” the chants echoed through the streets of Cairo.

Social-media-savvy protesters have widely circulated some of the most brutal images of the crackdown.

Those images drew the ire of the United Nations rights chief and unusually harsh words from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Addressing students at Georgetown University on Monday, Mrs. Clinton said the events in Egypt in recent days were shocking, and she accused the Egyptian security forces and extremists of specifically targeting women.

“And now, women are being attacked, stripped, and beaten in the streets,” she said. “This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people.”

Over the past few days, the military has dealt with the protesters much more roughly than at any other time since Mr. Mubarak stepped down. The crackdown may reflect the military’s fury over the activists’ distribution of videos showing soldiers bludgeoning women and other protesters. The weak showing of the pro-democracy movement in the parliamentary elections that began last month may have also emboldened the military.

Read more HERE.

Culture War, Jihad

Muslim chops off wife’s fingers to stop her studying for a degree

Leave a comment

UK Daily Mail:

A jealous husband is facing life in prison after chopping off his wife’s fingers because she began studying for a degree without his permission.

Rafiqul Islam, 30, blindfolded his wife Hawa Akhter, 21, and taped her mouth, telling her he was going to give her a surprise present.

Instead he made her hold out her hand and cut off all five fingers. One of his relatives then threw Ms Akhter’s fingers in the dustbin to ensure doctors could not reattach them.

Hawa Akhter courtesy The DailyMail

Mr Islam, who is a migrant worker in the United Arab Emirates, had warned his wife there would ‘severe consequences’ if she did not give up her studies.

‘After he came back to Bangladesh, he wanted to have a discussion with me,’ Ms Akhter told The Times.

‘Suddenly, he blindfolded me and tied my hand. He also taped my mouth saying that he would give me some surprise gifts. But, instead he cut off my fingers.’

More:

The attack is the latest in a series of acts targeting educated women in the Muslim-majority company.

In June, an unemployed man gouged out the eyes of his wife, an assistant professor at Dhaka University, apparently because he could not stand her pursuing higher studies at a Canadian University.

Culture War, Jihad, Lies, True Talking Points

Neil Boortz vs Muslim Caller on “Moral Outrage”

2 Comments

Be warned, this is politically incorrect and Neil is not very fair to this caller. I would not have been so short with this caller rather I would have let him speak to see if he said more things that the host could discuss. With that said Neil makes a series of good points that are difficult to contest, especially the point about “the liars”. Taqiyyah is the Islamic practice of deception, which according to the Hadith has been used to advance the goals of Islam and the Umma.

Not quite my style but a noted point in radio history nonetheless.

Culture War, Jihad

Ann Barnhardt: Lindsey Graham You Jack-Ass!

1 Comment

Ann Barnhardt is a commodities trader and ran a successful business. She has a take no prisoners attitude to what sees as “dhimmitude”. We at Political Arena are not saying that you have to agree with her point of view, but she does make a highly spirited and substantive argument. And like it says at the top of the page, this is an arena and Ann Barnhardt, like her point of view or not, is a rhetorical gladiator if there ever was one. Hold on to your seat and secure your hat.

Ann Barnhardt: Lindsey Graham – If you want to pick a fight with me bring it on player….but the only way it ends is with you sobbing in the men’s room.

After this video she takes a heavily dog eared Koran and reads every quote telling people to beat their wives, engage in prostitution, kill Christians and Jews etc and burns the pages. You can see that video HERE.

Culture War, Israel, Jihad

American Left Acting as Apologists for Sharia Law

Leave a comment

Update – American Thinker has a great post called Obama’s Revisionist History when it comes to our Middle-East policy. It corrects the record while providing a great history lesson.

Via Stephen Gele at  American Thinker:

Daniel Mach, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights program, recently co-authored an article on the Huffington Post attacking legislative efforts to prohibit the application of foreign laws inconsistent with the rights granted by the U.S. and state constitutions or state public policy.

The article posits a series of disjointed, hypothetical misapplications of the legislative efforts to prevent sharia from encroaching into our legal system. Yet, the authors cite no actual examples of misapplications of laws already passed and in force, in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arizona. The authors fail to distinguish this American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) legislation from other legislative efforts, such as the Oklahoma constitutional amendment, which do not explicitly reference the protection of constitutional rights and public policy in prohibiting application of sharia or foreign law.

Further, the authors contend that these laws, explicitly protecting established constitutional rights, are superfluous because the First Amendment already protects these rights, and then allege that these laws violate the religious freedom granted by the First Amendment. The authors thereby dangerously conflate the judiciary’s interpretation and enforcement of secular law with interpretation and enforcement of religious doctrine. The freedom of religion and establishment clauses of the First Amendment do not address the application of foreign law, including sharia, in American courts, and, as demonstrated below, have not been applied to prevent such application.

Additionally, American courts have repeatedly held that freedom of religion does not require the judiciary to void secular laws which may incidentally conflict with religious doctrine, and that the First Amendment prohibits the judiciary from interpreting or enforcing religious doctrine. For example, in the case of S.D. v. M.J.R., the New Jersey Superior Court of Appeal reversed a trial court judge who did not find sexual assault to have been proven when a husband admitted forcing his wife to engage in sex, because the husband lacked criminal intent as he was a Muslim, and sharia, as described by an imam, mandated that a wife submit to her husband’s sexual advances. The New Jersey appellate court cited several U.S. Supreme Court decisions that held that freedom of religion does not include violating criminal laws, including Reynolds v. United States and Cleveland v. United States regarding polygamy, and Employment Div., Dep’t of Human Res. of Oregon v. Smith regarding smoking peyote, even when religious doctrine permits or mandates the prohibited practice. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church and its progeny, have also consistently held that deciding disputes over religious doctrine violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Most egregiously, the title of the article, “Anti-Sharia Law: A Solution In Search Of A Problem,” suggests that the enforcement of sharia law in the United States is simply not a problem worth addressing. The authors completely ignore dozens of published state appellate decisions in which American courts addressed litigants who demanded the enforcement of sharia, and on many occasions succeeded.

A recent study entitled “Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases,” released by The Center for Security Policy, identifies 50 such appellate court cases from 23 states. Many of these cases involve blatant violations of constitutional rights, usually to the detriment of women and children, including the enforcement of foreign custody orders to wrest children from their mothers.

For example, a Maryland appellate court in Hosain v. Malik enforced a Pakistani custody order, issued under a sharia rule granting sole custody to the father when the child reaches age seven, handing a little girl brought to America by her mother over to the father. The Maryland court bowed to the Pakistani court order even though the mother did not appear for the Pakistani proceedings, because, although she may have been arrested for adultery if she returned to Pakistan for the hearing, and been subject to “public whipping or death by stoning,” the court found such punishments were “extremely unlikely.” The judges explicitly proclaimed that the best interest of the child should not be “determined based on Maryland law, i.e., American cultures and mores,” but rather “by applying relevant Pakistani customs, culture and mores.” The court, explaining that “in the Pakistani culture, the well being of the child … is thought to be facilitated by adherence to Islamic teachings,” intentionally applied Islamic, rather than American, cultural and legal precepts.

Elite Media, Flashback!, Jihad, Lies

ABC News promoted militant Islamist as a “Peaceful representative of Islam”

Leave a comment

Just a little reminder of how transparently corrupt the elite media has become.

Via Answering Muslims:

ABC News recently did a 20/20 special titled “Islam: Questions and Answers,” with Diane Sawyer, Bill Weir, and Lama Hasan. The program drew attention to moderate Muslims who will serve as America’s “first line of defense” against terrorism. Unfortunately, one of the moderate Muslims presented by ABC isn’t so moderate.

Jihad, Obama, School Indoctrination, Treason

Islam’s Ignorant Defenders

Leave a comment

Simply one of the wisest columns on this subject ever written. It is worth reading twice.

By David French:

Our cultural elite knows nothing about Islam, yet they defend with it with sneering, condescending ferocity.

One of the more interesting phenomena of recent times has been the cultural elite’s aggressive defense of Islam. Whether they’re decrying the alleged “Islamophobia” of their fellow Americans, storming off TV sets, offering impassioned defenses of religious liberty, or offering uninformed theological statements about the religion’s alleged true nature, many of our most educated and politically aware citizens are united in outrage. A great religion is under attack, they say, and it’s under attack by a bigoted citizenry who let the actions of a tiny few define the nature of the many.

But what do they actually know about Islam?

Isn’t the “true” nature of a religion defined through its theologians and adherents? “True” Islam has been debated — and fought over — for more than 1,000 years. The existence of Sunni and Shi’ite divisions demonstrates that there is no monolithic definition of Islam even within the Islamic world. And yet men like our most recent presidents purport to define it as a “religion of peace” (President Bush’s favorite phrase) or a “religion that reaffirms peace, fairness, and tolerance” (President Obama’s recent description).

Again and again when I face outraged and indignant liberals — people who defame Ground Zero mosque opponents as bigots or pass around the latest Jon Stewart video as if it were more documentary than comedy sketch — I find their knowledge is skin deep, at best. “Jihad is really the inner struggle,” they say. “Islam had a glorious civilization in the Middle Ages,” they argue. Some cite the Muslims they know — kind-hearted, hospitable people — who serve as stand-ins for Muslims everywhere.

As for me, I spent a year in Iraq, talked to countless Muslims, have read the Koran and much of the Hadith, and I still don’t know what “true Islam” is. How could I? I struggle enough to define (and live) “true Christianity.” Can I really purport to understand Islam in all its complexity?

But I’m not entirely ignorant. Some things I do know, and I know them all too well.

We face an enemy that is recruiting its followers using explicit, religious themes. To them, jihad is not an “inner struggle” but a call to war. The call to jihad has grown so strong that thousands of young Muslims have served as suicide bombers, hundreds of thousands have served as jihadist fighters, and untold millions more support armed jihad through donations, public demonstrations, and in public opinion polls.

Even allegedly moderate Muslims, like a key investor in the Ground Zero mosque property, have been caught giving money to terrorist organizations, and the imam at the center of controversy has a history of radicalism that would shock the conscience of most Americans (declaring America an “accessory to the crime” of September 11 is moderate?).

And it’s sometimes tough to tell the difference between moderates and extremists. Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, served as a Chaplain at George Washington University, and the Fort Hood shooter was not only an Army officer, he gave briefings on the “Koranic World View” to physicians at Walter Reed Hospital.

Moreover, anti-Semitism is rampant in the Muslim world, with children’s shows in Gaza featuring such characters as Assud, the Jew-eating rabbit, ancient anti-Semitic hoaxes like the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” aired as a “documentary” in Egypt, and Saudi-written and distributed textbooks preaching hate to Muslim children around the world.

Let’s flip the script for a moment. Let’s imagine that in the United States our Christian population was producing thousands of suicide bombers, recruiting tens of thousands of Jihadists, financing hundreds of millions of dollars of arms and ammunition, and distributing literature proclaiming Jews and others as worthy of death. Would Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walk of the set at criticism of Christians? Would Time magazine decry “Christophobia”? Of course not. They would argue that Christianity was in crisis, and they would be right.

During my time in Iraq I met Muslims who laid down their lives every day to protect their community from the jihadists. After all, many thousands more Iraqi soldiers and police officers have died protecting their own country than have American soldiers. Moreover, many Muslim Americans have rendered courageous, indispensable service in the War on Terror. Their faith is real, and their service is greater than that of the vast majority of their fellow citizens. So, what is true Islam?

That definition I leave to Muslims. And as they struggle to work through the complexities of their own faith, I doubt they’ll consult President Bush, President Obama, or Joy Behar.

At the same time, however, all Americans have to deal with and guard against the actions and attitudes of many millions of Muslims, people who believe their faith calls them to support, to finance, and to fight an unending jihad against unbelievers. There is something rotten at work within Islam, and whether it takes five years, five hundred, or five thousand, that rottenness (regardless of its relationship to “true Islam”) must be resisted and defeated.

David French is a lawyer, writer, soldier, and veteran of the Iraq war. He is the director of the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom.

Culture War, Egypt, Jihad, Libya, Obama

Libya’s transitional leader says Islamic Sharia law will be the “basic source” of all law

Leave a comment


The readers of this web site are not surprised by this at all. This is trajic, especially for the women of Libya and Tunisia and as well know the women of Egypt are already suffering forced virginity checks etc.

On the domestic front, this will not inspire women to vote for Obama.

AP/Yahoo News:

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Libya’s transitional leader says Islamic Sharia law will be the “basic source” of all law.

Al-Reuters:

The leader of an Islamist party predicted to win the biggest share of the vote was heckled outside a polling station by people shouting “terrorist” — highlighting tensions between Islamists and secularists that are also being felt in other countries touched by the Arab Spring.

Telegraph:

Libya’s liberation: interim ruler unveils more radical than expected plans for Islamic law …

Carter, Editorial, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Israel, Jihad, Libya, Obama

My Concerns About the Operation in Libya & Egypt

Leave a comment

[Flashback March 2011 (LINK– LINK). Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

I have had this column in my head for over a month, but I resisted posting it because I was using history as a guide along with my knowledge of the Middle East and the Obama Administration to make a trajectory. I had little evidence to go on but my instincts were strong. I ended up being correct and it was a valuable lesson in trusting onesself as a columnist and a person who does hi homework.

While I support the idea of the international community stopping a mad dictator from orchestrating a mass slaughter of his own people when able, we have only seen uprisings in Arab countries where the governments are not associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. There is no freedom in Gaza or in Lebanon since Hezbollah took over and yet there are no democracy, peace and love protests. This did not look spontaneous to me.

On the English web sites of the Muslim Brotherhood they spoke of “peace, love, democracy, and social justice”, while watchdogs reported that on the Arabic web sites, sub groups were saying to get ready to deal with the Christians, infidels and Jews.

The Muslim Brotherhood is making moves to take power in Egypt and the elite media is keeping that pretty hushed in spite of the fact that it was in the NYT. If the Muslim Brotherhood does take over Egypt and Libya, it would mean that the United States under the Obama Administration helped them to do it.

Prof. Niall Ferguson spoke of this very concern on MSNBC – be sure to watch the ENTIRE video:  

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist whose family was close to the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood agrees – LINK

Now we have learned that the rebel commander in Libya fought against the United States in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda is fighting alongside the rebels – LINK. Imagine a Muslim Brotherhood with al-Qaeda that have oil revenue at their disposal.

We have been fooled before. Jimmy Carter actively helped the Mullah’s in Iran take over the country and they too spoke of “peace, love, democracy and social justice”. When they took over the killings, rapes,  stonings and suppression of freedoms began. The United States pressured Lebanon to show the Islamists tolerance. As their numbers grew by immigration and they used our Western tolerance as a weapon against them.  Then the violence began. Now Hezbollah has taken over the country and freedom in Lebanon is fast coming to an end. They did so using the exact same tactics the Mullah’s used in Iran and the same tactics that Islamists are using in European countries now.

Traditional conservatives like myself have said that we believed that Obama would be the second administration of Jimmy Carter, it seems that we were even more correct than we feared. If the Muslim Brotherhood and its splinter groups like al-Qaeda manage to take over Egypt and Libya with our assistance this could prove to be the biggest disaster since we helped the Iranian regime come to power in 1979.

Why didn’t I say this so directly before? I have been concerned since I noticed the almost simultaneous rumblings of uprisings starting in mid to late January only happening in countries with governments opposed by the Muslim Brotherhood and its associated factions. Other than my noticing that particular coincidence I had no strong evidence to go on to bring to you here at IUSB Vision. I was not confident enough to make a declaration based on my gut feelings and the tiny craps of information I had.

Even after I saw that Prof. Ferguson and Walid Shoebat suspected as I did, at the time it was still a prediction, a suspicion of what they believed might come. After the chaos was over, the largest organized force in these countries is the Muslim Brotherhood. Now the evidence is coming in and it seems we have a real problem.

So lets examine the path we are going down.

Remember when the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said that the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular organization? – LINK. The DNI was mocked my many including Niall Ferguson for this preposterous testimony. It is like he swallowed the propaganda on the Brotherhood’s English web site and regurgitated it as gospel.

Then Obama came out and said that the Muslim Brotherhood should be a part of the new Egyptian Government.

LA Times:

The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.

The organization must reject violence and recognize democratic goals if the U.S. is to be comfortable with it taking part in the government, the White House said. But by even setting conditions for the involvement of such nonsecular groups, the administration took a surprise step in the midst of the crisis that has enveloped Egypt for the last week.

/facepalm Iran II here we come…

So Thursday, after the train has left the station, here comes the New York Times to play catch up:

CAIRO — In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.

As the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a military that vilified it.

“There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,” said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.”

There is a battle consuming Egypt about the direction of its revolution, and the military council that is now running the country is sending contradictory signals. On Wednesday, the council endorsed a plan to outlaw demonstrations and sit-ins. [Yup real democratic – Iran & Lebanon here we come – Editor] Then, a few hours later, the public prosecutor announced that the former interior minister and other security officials would be charged in the killings of hundreds during the protests.

Egyptians are searching for signs of clarity in such declarations, hoping to discern the direction of a state led by a secretive military council brought to power by a revolution based on demands for democracy, rule of law and an end to corruption.

“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”

Suckers.

Fool me once shame on you (Iran). Fool me twice shame on me (Lebanon). Fool me three times and you’re a far left Democrat (Egypt). Fool me four times and you’re a progressive secular leftist who writes for the Washington Post. That’s right folks, even after all we have seen, the far left in the media are still fooled (or shall I say duplicitous). The Washington Post had a piece today saying that we should do the same in Syria – LINK. I see talking heads on the news say that we are supporting lawful democratic governments to take over. What nonsense.  The ties between the radical left and Islamists are no secret, especially on campus.

On a side note, Joe Biden once said that if President Bush took us to war without consulting Congress he would move to impeach him. Of course the Senate cannot impeach, another gaffe the elite media ignored, but now his administration has done just that in Libya.

UPDATE I – Let us be very clear just who it is that we are likely helping to take over a country.  This LINK will take you to a video of members of a different islamic sect being stoned and brutally murdered by a large group of Indonesian Islamists shouting Allah Akbar. This was done under police supervision according to the up-loader. I have the video cloned in case it is removed. The video is horrible and is not for the timid. Consider yourself warned.

UPDATE II – Amnesty International:

EGYPTIAN WOMEN PROTESTERS FORCED TO TAKE ‘VIRGINITY TESTS’

23 March 2011

Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.

After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.

‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.

“Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women,” said Amnesty International. “All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such so-called ‘tests’.”

20-year-old Salwa Hosseini told Amnesty International that after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window.  During the strip search, Salwa Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women.

The women were then subjected to ‘virginity tests’ in a different room by a man in a white coat. They were threatened that “those not found to be virgins” would be charged with prostitution.

According to information received by Amnesty International, one woman who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise was beaten and given electric shocks.

“Women and girls must be able to express their views on the future of Egypt and protest against the government without being detained, tortured, or subjected to profoundly degrading and discriminatory treatment,” said Amnesty International.

“The army officers tried to further humiliate the women by allowing men to watch and photograph what was happening, with the implicit threat that the women could be at further risk of harm if the photographs were made public.”

Journalist Rasha Azeb was also detained in Tahrir Square and told Amnesty International that she was handcuffed, beaten and insulted.

Following their arrest, the 18 women were initially taken to a Cairo Museum annex where they were reportedly handcuffed, beaten with sticks and hoses, given electric shocks in the chest and legs, and called “prostitutes”.

Rasha Azeb could see and hear the other detained women being tortured by being given electric shocks throughout their detention at the museum. She was released several hours later with four other men who were also journalists, but 17 other women were transferred to the military prison in Heikstep

Egypt, Elite Media, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Libya, Niall Ferguson, Obama

Prof. Niall Ferguson Blasts Obama and MSNBC on Egypt

Leave a comment

[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

Niall Ferguson is the kind of academic that one ideally thinks of when it comes to a first rate academic. He is a Senior Fellow at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford.

Niall Ferguson is brilliant and his credentials are second to none. He has no regard for sacred cows or political correctness. This makes sense because an academic should first be a truth teller who makes every effort to avoid putting on rose colored glasses.

Ferguson plays no favorites. He is happy to write for Newsweek, be a regular on MSNBC, and then feels perfectly comfortable telling accurate history and making analysis for Glenn Beck. No matter who Prof. Furguson is in front of he pulls no punches and tells things as they are to the best of his ability. This is exactly the kind of ethical courage and fortitude that every academic should strive for.

One quality that many good academics have is that they go out of their way to correct ignorance no matter who is spewing it. I understand Ferguson’s frustration with the Obama Administration and the State Department who sit back and get their analysis on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood completely wrong.  Prof. Ferguson cops a bit of an attitude when it comes to this because anyone who just does a few hours of history homework could tell Mika (or Obama) what Ferguson explains here.

The State Department is on the campus of George Washington University. If one studies far left academia and its myopic culture, one soon understands the State Department.

Prof. Ferguson took Mika to school when she challenged Ferguson saying that she thought Egypt was a success for the President. This is a great example of how far removed the elite media is from reality.

This is a must see video.

Ironically, what Prof. Ferguson says about what the Middle East thinks about the naivety of this administration mirrors what Donald Trump says that hid Chinese government contacts are telling him.

UPDATE – Walid Shoebat agrees with Prof Ferguson – LINK.

Prof. Ferguson has little tolerance for spin and nonsense. I am going to start reading his books.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Culture War, Jihad, Lies, School Indoctrination

PBS’ Tavis Smiley Tells Ayaan Hirsi Ali that Christians in America Blow Up People Every Day…

1 Comment

Ayaan Hirsi Ali lives under a death mark. She needs security 24/7 and likely will for the rest of her life. She made a film with Theo van Gogh about the status of women is Islamic countries. Van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight by a militant Islamist. The knife driven through his chest had a note addressed to Ali essentially saying that she was next. Radicalized Muslim communities that function as a state within a state are popping up around Europe and the Western European governments do not have the will to stand up to it.

Ali escaped a life of forced marriage and virtual slavery from her Islamic family. She escaped, got educated, and became a Member of the Dutch Parliament. When it became clear that her security needs could not be met she came to the United States.

She writes about her experiences and how the West should stand up to preserve our freedom and our culture. Reflexively the progressive secular left in the elite media, which has been taught in American Universities that Western Culture is “the oppressor” and that Christianity is evil, often attacks her and throws the most outrageous false premises at her in an effort to embarrass her. They end up just embarrassing themselves. Watch the following exchange between PBS  Tavis Smiley and Ali.

[gigya src=”http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=XdqGZu2Guz” width=”518″ height=”419″ quality=”high” wmode=”transparent” allowFullScreen=”true” ]

How can anyone be this deranged and foolish? I saw this level of idiocy frequently among the campus left. Smiley and his close fron Cornell Belcher ‘West’ are icons among far left academics. From 2008-2010 162 Muslims have been arrested in the United States for plotting against America. How many Christians have been? It happens every day according to Smiley so how about he produce just 50? Anyone care to take that challenge?

With that said, Smiley’s outrageous statements can be debunked by anyone with  access to an internet search engine. Post offices are not blown up every day. In fact, using Google to search only two threats of blowing up post offices in the US appear; one from a homeless man who wanted money and another from a man who was likely  mentally disturbed as he false reported about an alleged bomb threat to a post office.

No one was called the N word in front of the Capitol Building. The event was being recorded from many angles by a sea of new media recording devices that captured every moment of the event which demonstrated that nothing of the kind happened. A $100,000 reward for evidence of it happening was offered by Andrew Breitbart with no takers. Of the two Democrat politicians who made the false claim, one back-pedaled and the other is the same politician who compared John McCain to Democrat Governor George Wallace  in October 2008.

The only  known acts of violence at Tea Party events have been carried out by far left extremists and paid union thugs who showed up to physically attack the participants. All of this has been reported in detail on this site (see the violence category on my old college blog as I have every incident detailed with evidence).

So what do you think? Is Smiley mentally challenged, delusional, as ignorant as the day is long, or just a liar? In any case he has won the coveted title of “Pinhead of the Year”.

“It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is ‘really’ inciting it” – Christopher Hitchens writing about how the elite media, in its reflexive defense of Islamic extremism, uses the most outrageously bogus moral equivalences to try to discredit Ayann Hirsi Ali.

Related:

Liberal Talker Alan Colmes: Muslims aren’t the terror problem, white males are…..

Budget, Jihad, Obama

AIM: American tax dollars for Al-Jazeera inspired terrorism

Leave a comment

Amazing. Your money being used to fund enemy propaganda, but Democrats say we cannot cut funds for this nonsense.

AIM:

An analysis of the propaganda campaign to get Al-Jazeera carried by more cable and satellite systems reveals an interesting fact. The terrorist TV channel is already available through something called MHz Networks. And it turns out that the MHz Networks is supported by the American taxpayers at the federal and state levels.

MHz Networks is a division of Commonwealth Public Broadcasting and receives over $2 million a year from federal and state governments. In this case, because Commonwealth is based in Virginia, the culprit is the state of Virginia. However, Governor Robert F. McDonnell has proposed eliminating state funding of public broadcasting by cutting $2 million in fiscal 2012 and $2 million in fiscal 2013. Even if state legislators go along with this proposal, that still leaves the federal subsidies for Commonwealth and MHz Networks.

According to figures supplied by Joseph H. Koch, Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, $1.4 million of that $2 million came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is funded by Congress. The CPB distributes taxpayer money to public broadcasting stations and entities.

Since Al-Jazeera is totally owned, run, and paid for by the Emir of Qatar, officially known as “His Highness,” this means that American tax dollars are paying for foreign propaganda in the U.S.

Not only that, but American taxpayers are being fleeced on behalf of an Arab dictator with billions of oil dollars. The Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, is number 8 on the Forbes list of the “richest royals,” with an estimated net worth of $2.4 billion. His channel has been labeled “the greatest Arab media organization” by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has spawned various terrorist organizations and is now poised to take power in Egypt and perhaps other countries.

MHz distributes Al-Jazeera, as well as the Moscow-funded Russia Today channel, under the rubric of “Programming for globally-minded people.”

Foreign Policy, Israel, Jihad, Niall Ferguson, Obama

Prof. Niall Ferguson on Obama: A colossal failure of American foreign policy.

Leave a comment
Niall Ferguson


WANTED: A Grand Strategy for America

By Niall Ferguson

“The statesman can only wait and listen until he hears the footsteps of God resounding through events; then he must jump up and grasp the hem of His coat, that is all.” Thus Otto von Bismarck, the great Prussian statesman who united Germany and thereby reshaped Europe’s balance of power nearly a century and a half ago.

Last week, for the second time in his presidency, Barack Obama heard those footsteps, jumped up to grasp a historic opportunity . . . and missed it completely.

In Bismarck’s case it was not so much God’s coattails he caught as the revolutionary wave of mid-19th-century German nationalism. And he did more than catch it; he managed to surf it in a direction of his own choosing. The wave Obama just missed—again—is the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy. It has surged through the region twice since he was elected: once in Iran in the summer of 2009, the second time right across North Africa, from Tunisia all the way down the Red Sea toYemen. But the swell has been biggest in Egypt, the Middle East’s most populous country.

In each case, the president faced stark alternatives. He could try to catch the wave, Bismarck style, by lending his support to the youthful revolutionaries and trying to ride it in a direction advantageous to American interests. Or he could do nothing and let the forces of reaction prevail. In the case of Iran, he did nothing, and the thugs of the Islamic Republic ruthlessly crushed the demonstrations. This time around,

in Egypt, it was worse. He did both—some days exhorting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave, other days drawing back and recommending an “orderly transition.”

The result has been a foreign-policy debacle. The president has alienated everybody: not only Mubarak’s cronies in the military, but also the youthful crowds in the streets of Cairo. Whoever ultimately wins, Obama loses. And the alienation doesn’t end there. America’s two closest friends in the region—Israel and Saudi Arabia—are both disgusted.  The Saudis, who dread all manifestations of revolution, are appalled at Washington’s failure to resolutely prop up Mubarak. The Israelis, meanwhile, are dismayed by the administration’s apparent cluelessness.

Last week, while other commentators ran around Cairo’s Tahrir Square, hyperventilating about what they saw as an Arab 1989, I flew to Tel Aviv for the annual Herzliya security conference. The consensus among the assembled experts on the Middle East? A colossal failure of American foreign policy.

This failure was not the result of bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of the Obama administration’s lack of any kind of coherent grand strategy, a deficit about which more than a few veterans of U.S. foreign policy making have long worried. The president himself is not wholly to blame. Although cosmopolitan by both birth and upbringing, Obama was an unusually parochial politician prior to his election, judging by his scant public pronouncements on foreign-policy issues.

Yet no president can be expected to be omniscient. That is what advisers are for. The real responsibility for the current strategic vacuum lies not with Obama himself, but with the National Security Council, and in particular with the man who ran it until last October: retired Gen. James L. Jones. I suspected at the time of his appointment that General Jones was a poor choice. A big, bluff Marine, he once astonished me by recommending that Turkish troops might lend the United States support in Iraq. He seemed mildly surprised when I suggested the Iraqis might resent such a reminder of centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule.

The best national-security advisers have combined deep knowledge of international relations with an ability to play the Machiavellian Beltway game, which means competing for the president’s ear against the other would-be players in the policymaking process: not only the defense secretary but also the secretary of state and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. No one has ever done this better than Henry Kissinger. But the crucial thing about Kissinger as national-security adviser was not the speed with which he learned the dark arts of interdepartmental turf warfare. It was the skill with which he, in partnership with Richard Nixon, forged a grand strategy for the United States at a time of alarming geopolitical instability.

The essence of that strategy was, first, to prioritize (for example, détente with the Soviets before human-rights issues within the U.S.S.R.) and then to exert pressure by deliberately linking key issues. In their hardest task—salvaging peace with honor in Indochina by preserving the independence of South Vietnam—Nixon and Kissinger ultimately could not succeed. But in the Middle East they were able to eject the Soviets from a position of influence and turn Egypt from a threat into a malleable ally. And their overtures to China exploited the divisions within the Communist bloc, helping to set Beijing on an epoch-making new course of economic openness.

The contrast between the foreign policy of the Nixon-Ford years and that of President Jimmy Carter is a stark reminder of how easily foreign policy can founder when there is a failure of strategic thinking.  The Iranian Revolution of 1979, which took the Carter administration wholly by surprise, was a catastrophe far greater than the loss of South Vietnam.

Remind you of anything? “This is what happens when you get caught by surprise,” an anonymous American official told The New York Times last week.

“We’ve had endless strategy sessions for the past two years on Mideast peace, on

containing Iran. And how many of them factored in the possibility that Egypt

moves from stability to turmoil? None.”

I can think of no more damning indictment of the administration’s strategic thinking than this: it never once considered a scenario in which Mubarak faced a popular revolt. Yet the very essence of rigorous strategic thinking is to devise such a scenario and to think through the best responses to them, preferably two or three moves ahead of actual or potential adversaries. It is only by doing these things—ranking priorities and gaming scenarios—that a coherent foreign policy can be made. The Israelis have been hard at work doing this. All the president and his NSC team seem to have done is to draft touchy-feely speeches like the one he delivered in Cairo early in his presidency.

These were his words back in June 2009: America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles—principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Those lines will come back to haunt Obama if, as cannot be ruled out, the ultimate beneficiary of his bungling in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains by far the best organized opposition force in the country—and wholly committed to the restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Sharia. Would such an outcome advance “tolerance and the dignity of all human beings” in Egypt? Somehow, I don’t think so.

Grand strategy is all about the necessity of choice.  Today, it means choosing between a daunting list of objectives: to resist the spread of radical Islam, to limit Iran’s ambition to become dominant in the Middle East, to contain the rise of China as an economic rival, to guard against a Russian “reconquista” of Eastern Europe—and so on. The defining characteristic of Obama’s foreign policy has been not just a failure to prioritize, but also a failure to recognize the need to do so.  A succession of speeches saying, in essence, “I am not George W. Bush” is no substitute for a strategy.

Bismarck knew how to choose. He understood that riding the nationalist wave would enable Prussia to become the dominant force in Germany, but that thereafter the No. 1 objective must be to keep France and Russia from uniting against his new Reich. When asked for his opinion about colonizing Africa, Bismarck famously replied: “My map of Africa lies in Europe. Here lies Russia and here lies France, and we are in the middle. That is my map of Africa.”

Tragically, no one knows where Barack Obama’s map of the Middle East is. At best, it is in the heartland states of America, where the fate of his presidency will be decided next year, just as Jimmy Carter’s was back in 1980.

At worst, he has no map at all.