LESLIE J. SACKS

Our Suicidal Impulses

2009-12-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

Is American-born Jewish liberalism pushing us, lemming-like, into the morally opaque sea of self-defeating multiculturalism? This may be the defining question for contemporary American Jewry. That over 75% of Jews voted for Obama, and that in the past the Democratic party generally garnered 70% of the Jewish vote or higher, is no accident. The reasons, however, are many - as well as counter-intuitive.

With Abraham, the first Jewish conservative came into being; his belief-bound pragmatism and his quest for the survival of his (newly born) people became basic conservative seeds. In Pharaoh's Egypt, Jews developed a profound appreciation for freedom and a passion for their homeland, Israel - a passion both amplified and tested by the delayed gratification of 40 wandering years in the desert. There followed a thousand years of Hebrew kingdoms, the codifying of the laws, the writing of the Old Testament and its commentary, the Talmud, the integration of the world's first monotheism into everyday life. During this period, the Jews seemingly fought everyone (sometimes unsuccessfully) to maintain their independence; the Persians followed the Babylonians, then the Greeks moved in, and of course the Romans burned the Second Temple to the ground and banished most of the Judeans to the four corners of the Diaspora.

Thus, for some 2000 years following Abraham, Jews were intimately tied to conservative ideals, coexisting where possible but ultimately dedicated to preserving their heritage and people-hood for future generations. What's more, the Jews simultaneously developed the most comprehensive and advanced system of laws and ethics the world had yet witnessed, establishing standards and rules designed to help maintain social stability and morality as well as codify man's relationship with God.

Then came another 2000 years in exile where anti-Semitism and cruelty were the norm. Herded into ghettos and classified as transient, second-class citizens, Jews learned to practice the arts of invisibility, co-existence among strangers, and pragmatic survival. There was no place, no opportunity for liberalism in these tenuous times. Forbidden from owning land, Jews were forced to be money lenders and petty traders, occupying the lowest rungs of the then agrarian-based economic structures. Universities were forbidden, music and the art excluded. Politics, verboten. So Jews focused inward - on their religion, their culture and their families, always turning towards Jerusalem with hope and undimmed memories.

With the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, modernity arrived with emancipation and enlightenment for Europe's Jews. No longer endemically repressed or barred from science, the arts, politics, and big business, Jews flourished, with many taking nationalism's assimilationist bait wholeheartedly, relegating culture and religion to the back-burner. The best of Europe's Jews began to disproportionately fill the ranks of Nobel Prize winners, and the world opened up as never before. Sigmund Freud, Felix Mendelson, Albert Einstein, Marc Chagall, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Benjamin Disraeli, Leon Trotsky, and so on.

While Hitler and the Holocaust utterly and tragically destroyed the enlightened argument for Jewish assimilation into the nation-states of Europe, liberalism remained a potent force among Jews in the American diaspora.

In the United States - the Goldene Medina - many Jews opted to throw off the yoke of repression and history and determined to reinvent God, religion and culture, dumping intolerance, racism, aggression, selective rights and injustices into the dustbin of history for all time. They wanted distance from the past, and focused on a new future in a new world, born of optimism, hope and ultimately, fantasy. In the effervescence of their new and limitless freedom, these Jews found new religion in every form (including sexual) of expression and in an embrace of multiculturalism, where every people, every culture, and every religion was equal and must be similarly tolerated, irrespective of its tenets or its apparent dangers. In the post-war period, this near-absolute tolerance for all, for everything, infused the universities, the arts and the left-wing of the Democratic party - often with American Jews leading the charge.

As a result, many of us Jews have recreated an image of mankind without our invaluable lessons of human history, forgetting man's fickle bloodlust and his inconsistence justice. We aspire to "world citizenry" and view our national and religious traditions as backwards and tribal. Our bonds to Israel, at the forefront of a struggle against the antithesis of liberalism, become loosened in our over-riding desire to understand and appease the other. Negotiation with and unbridled tolerance towards those who hate us, who wish us ill, is now the sine qua non of much of our most educated set.

This naïve fantasy not only stands in contrast to Jewish history and our current realities; it is also highly dangerous. It risks our ability to save family, country, culture, religion and ultimately Western civilization from the vicissitudes of a venal and jealous world waiting to wrest from us our latest multicolored coat, our inheritance from Joseph. Has the natural evolution of Europe's old world ghetto conservatism progressed far too deep, far too wide, making our sincere, humanistic and tolerant liberalism incapable of protecting our country, our freedom and our future?

It seems the voting record of America's Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, deeply myopic, still has a ways to go.

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The Overactive Ahmadinejad

2009-10-31T15:01:00.000-07:00

We do believe that if war is waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is because of Zionists' provocation. If Sudan is suppressed it is because of Zionists' temptations. Zionists are behind all the conspiracies of the arrogance and colonialism. They do not allow the main factor of excuses for Palestine occupation to be examined and surveyed. The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie - a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust.
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during Iran's annual al Quds (Jerusalem) Day ceremony, repeating the baseless accusation that all of the problems in the Arab world are due to the existence of the Jewish State of Israel. (MEMRI, Sep. 18)

Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's world view - albeit ludicrous - is actually a fascinating study in imaginative paranoia and anti-Semitism. In particular, his views on Zionism make for an entertaining (if infuriating) read. According to Ahmadinejad, it was in fact the Zionists who installed Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban-Al Qaeda nexus in Afghanistan. They then engineered both Saddam's intransigence and Al-Qaeda's terrorism (including, of course, 9/11), allowing America - always the Zionist lackey - to invent the reasons for asserting their hegemony in the Muslim world. Thus, tiny Israel wags the super-power America, who sacrifices thousands of soldiers and a trillion dollars to facilitate Zionism's nefarious conspiracies in Iraq and Afghanistan and maintain Jewish dominance of Muslim holy land.

Perhaps Hitler was also a Zionist conspiracy, wiping out a third of world Jewry purely in order to generate enough world sympathy to ensure a UN mandate for the establishment of Israel in 1948. Clearly there is no end to the fiendish exploits of these ultra-powerful Jews. Somehow Zionists also found succor in arranging for Arab North Sudan to massacre 500,000 African (Christian) fellow citizens in Southern Sudan.

And since biblical Judea, Jerusalem and Israel were likewise fantastical myths (Jewish-controlled Hollywood would be proud), it is not entirely clear who the Babylonians, the Greeks and then the Romans conquered in Judea, why their writings and artifacts confirm the same, and exactly which temples were put to flames in 586 BC and 70 AD. Are a billion Christians misguided to believe Jesus was a Judean Jew, born in Bethlehem and crucified in Jerusalem? Was he rather a Muslim forbearer and the Romans occupied a Muslim Jerusalem over which Herod (another confused Jew) reigned? Apparently, the Jewish Old Testament, seeded in the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai, evolved for a thousand years in Judea, codified in Babylon after the destruction of the First Temple, then finally institutionalized in Judea during the Roman occupation, is likewise a convoluted Jewish conspiracy. Christianity must similarly be a fantasy as without the crucifixion, without the Old Testament, without a Jewish Jerusalem on which to base its essence, it must rank as the preeminent hoax of the millennia.

Ironically - and obviously - all this hogwash calls into question the validity of Islam itself, the remaining elephant in the room. Isn't Islam in fact based on the Old Testament and a so-called refinement of the Jewish experience over the previous centuries in Judea? It all gets very confusing, so much so that I await Ahmadinejad's creative eloquence on the origins of his Shia Islam traditions. How exactly does he tie in thousands of years of Jewish persecution, the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust and the decades-long attacks on the state of Israel - are all these somehow hidden advantages the Zionists have cleverly conspired to create? Is there no end to the invisible web Jews spin? If so, I would venture a guess that the Zionists would gladly stop spinning for a few years of peace and quiet. And that's the last thing Ahmadinejad wants to see.

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Capitalist Truths & Capitalist Labels

2009-10-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

It is unfortunate that in media saturated America - with its sound bite obsessed spin-meisters and its attention deficit consumers - the truth behind our ever-present labels is everywhere perverted. "Capitalism," for example, is condemned by (self-described) socialist-leaning leftists. Yet many on the American left have little in common with authentic Marxism or European Socialism. In fact, like the media buffoon Michael Moore, they are often closet capitalists who make a fortune out of exposing selective ills of the society and system from which they benefit. "Capitalism" has been twisted and turned by more prosaic figures as well, first by the Wandering Republicans and now by the Sputtering Democrats. A basic tenet of a mature and evolved capitalism is that the pricing of goods is not artificial and that it incorporates the true costs of production, use and disposal, as well as the true demand for and costs/benefits of their use. In our allegedly hyper-capitalist country, however, subsidies for farmers, trade union pressures for increased salary and benefits, and arbitrary import taxes - among other politically-driven distortions - are all designed explicitly to exaggerate or undercut prices.

More egregious examples come from our (ever-shrinking) energy pot. We charge less than $3 per gallon of gasoline while Europe charges more than double that (around $7). Why? While the Europeans themselves may be motivated by funds for their bloated bureaucracies, in fact their pricing of oil reveals a stronger dose of reality than our "free-er" economy. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars protecting the supply of oil in Iraq, in the wider Middle East and in large swathes of the world. We do not spend the billions needed to reverse and compensate for the often hidden environmental (and thus also social) costs arising out of the production, shipping, processing and use of oil. Either way, these costs need to be factored into the price of gas in order for the price to be authentically capitalist; a capitalism that is defined not by its generally rapacious origins, but rather by its emphasis on cost-driven prices and market solutions to social problems. As in the energy market, we fool ourselves with unrealistically low cost consumables from China, where proliferating pollution is often ignored and the health of the population and environment is deteriorating at an irresponsible rate. China's "capitalist" coffers are overflowing whilst its peoples are accruing birth defects and terminal diseases, suffering from dying rivers and the most rancid urban air in the world. America by contrast has the opportunity to show the world what a mature and civilized capitalism could look like.

In the same vein of this cost-focused capitalism, every citizen should accept his or her responsibilities vis-à-vis society, achieving a balance between limited government and a participatory society and, importantly, helping to achieve an equality of opportunity. Currently, America is in the midst of acquiring the socialized opposite thereof, as our politicians shape a bastardized capitalism where every person has seemingly boundless rights to share in the largess of big bureaucratic government without any corresponding obligations to give back to society. We are mostly about what society owes us by virtue of merely being born, and very little about what we need to give to our future, to our children and their enduring freedom.

Is it conceivable that a compulsory (with reasonable exceptions) national service be implemented after high school or university, whereby every young citizen gives a year of service to his or her country? Potential sectors include health care, education, philanthropy, substance abuse rehabilitation, family and children's services, geriatric support, and support for military, police, and fire forces. Capitalism need not be incompatible with acknowledging a higher order, a deeper meaningfulness about life. Freedom and democracy come at a price. We pay taxes - we need also to give time; and time is of the essence, it is the ultimate service as our soldiers keep proving again and again. In fact, perhaps we can substitute one for the other, leading to better outcomes for all. Call this commitment "big community." In return, the government should reduce "big government:" reduce taxes and other barriers to entrepreneurship, and reduce any undue restrictions on personal freedom and focus its largesse on the ill, the young and the old. A fair exchange.

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Absolutism and Good Intentions

2009-10-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

As a youth, I was infatuated with ideas, the power of the word, the magic of conceptual brilliance. I believed that the purity of my soul and the strength of my convictions would light the path before us and open even the most hardened of hearts. Ideas - my first love: they were so convincing, so true, so complete, so self-validating and right. I vested them with sacredness and held them close to my heart. Of course, very few loves - and even fewer ideas - are in fact sacred.

Now, in my sixth decade of trial and error, of the testing of these ideas, I am increasingly aware of the psychological cover-ups, the social make-overs, the media spin that underlie the (diverse) range of idea-based claims to moral and intellectual superiority.

Egocentric, selfish, and controlling individuals consistently layer their self-seeking motivations with an array of good intentions. The claim to know what is best for mankind is the perfect "feel good" ointment for what is essentially selfishness and narrowness. More dangerously, this approach often grants its propagators the self-righteous high ground from which to impose one’s world view on others. If you have seen the light, and it feels good, and it covers all your insecurities, ambivalences, with vanities (or its corollary, self-loathings), then clearly you are required to enlighten, by persecution or even force if necessary, those less fortunate, less educated, and less informed.

Thus, the Saudi mullahs’ modern day Fatwas, directives from the Spanish Inquisition in 15th century Spain, or the emergence of aggressively proselytizing movements in any setting conspicuously share the sincerity of holy 'good intentions'.

Thus, the tasks of Hitler, Mussolini, Idi Amin, the messianic Khomeini, the trumpeting Chavez and all those who know, without error or doubt, the absolution society craves, are all facilitated by the wondrous music of their good promises, their purity of intentions.

The head-strong scientists who banned the use of DDT in Africa and spurred a malaria driven holocaust as a result, the green fundamentalists who would risk poverty, disease and famine to advance an uncomprising agenda of a carbon free atmosphere - these groups also lay claim to the absolution of pure idealism. They have also spurned democracy and would happily and unilaterally impose their superior understanding on the rest of us.

Previously enthralled with ideas, I am now convinced that people should do more and theorize less; politicians should care more about providing choice than imposing ideals. Every person, from the mother in India saving to buy a sewing machine to the farmer in Idaho tilling his soil, has the inalienable right to their own version of freedom, not your version, or mine. And the sooner our ideologues respect and honor that, the sooner we will face down the scars of war and poverty.

Indeed, the clash between freedom and absolutism speaks to one of the quintessential questions our time. How do free, tolerant societies pragmatically develop the requisite intolerance to the near-fascistic, aggressively evangelical approach of other cultures, religions and systems that wish to impose their views, beliefs and behaviors on us? More specifically, can such societies defend themselves and their freedoms when doing so may require the use of overpowering military force or the uncomfortable limitation of rights for those who use our generosity, our legal protections and our charity to pursue their radical and totalitarian goals? In short, can we protect and maintain free societies at the same time?

I am reminded often enough that war is never the answer. Exactly, I reply - except when one party unilaterally starts the war. Or that violent preemption is also never the answer, never legal. Precisely, I concur - except when the other side is actively, passionately and irredeemably planning terrorism. Nuclear disarmament is desirable, of course - except when the only parties verifiably disarming are democratic countries.

Now seven decades old, Churchill’s advice about the unfortunate habit of civilized society to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them silently echoes in the background of our current scenario. “[For] want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”

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A Time for Choosing

2009-09-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

According to the intellectual class, Bill Clinton was a political genius - and therefore could do no wrong. By stark contrast, Ronald Reagan was castigated as a dummy, and could do no right - never mind delivering a speech of great courage and foresight.

In 1964, Reagan irrevocably established himself as a political force when he made such a speech - entitled A Time for Choosing - during Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. Goldwater's bid was an abysmal failure, yet much of Reagan's speech was prescient; indeed, his confident and powerful words are just as relevant today. Once again, we face a choice between freedom and big government; between retaining control of each our fates and giving up too much of that control to intellectual elites ensconced in our capital; between appeasement and strength. For Reagan, there was no left or right, just up and down - fulfillment of our American ideals or surrender to fear, insecurity and domination. It seems that the more things change in our frenetic politics, the more they stay the same.

A video of the speech can be viewed here and below is the transcript of the speech.

A Time for Choosing
by Ronald Reagan
October 27, 1964

Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used "We've never had it so good."

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend $17 million a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We have raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations in the world. We have $15 billion in gold in our treasury - we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are $27.3 billion, and we have just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

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

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

Now, we have no better example of this than the government's involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming is regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we have spent $43 in feed grain program for every bushel of corn we don't grow.

Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater as President would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he will find out that we have had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He will also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress an extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He will find that they have also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.

At the same time, there has been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There is now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.

Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but who are farmers to know what is best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights are so diluted that public interest is almost anything that a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes for the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more compatible use of the land." The President tells us he is now going to start building public housing units in the thousands where heretofore we have only built them in the hundreds. But FHA and the Veterans Administration tell us that they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosures. For three decades, we have sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency. They have just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over $30 million on deposit in personal savings in their banks. When the government tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.

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

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

So now we declare "war on poverty," or "you, too, can be a Bobby Baker!" Now, do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add $1 billion to the $45 million we are spending...one more program to the 30-odd we have - and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs - do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain that there is one part of the new program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We are now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps, and we are going to put our young people in camps, but again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we are going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person that we help $4,700 a year! We can send them to Harvard for $2,700! Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.

But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who had come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning $250 a month. She wanted a divorce so that she could get an $80 raise. She is eligible for $330 a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who had already done that very thing.

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

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

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary...his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee $220 a month at age 65. The government promises $127. He could live it up until he is 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now, are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis so that people who do require those payments will find that they can get them when they are due...that the cupboard isn't bare? Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provisions for the non-earning years? Should we allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under these programs, which we cannot do? I think we are for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program was now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate planned inflation so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents' worth?

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

I think we are for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We are helping 107. We spent $146 billion. With that money, we bought a $2 million yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenyan government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought $7 billion worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth. Federal employees number 2.5 million, and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force is employed by the government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury, and they can seize and sell his property in auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier overplanted his rice allotment. The government obtained a $17,000 judgment, and a U.S. marshal sold his 950-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work. Last February 19 at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-time candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States." I think that's exactly what he will do.

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

Well, what of this man that they would destroy? And in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear. Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well, I have been privileged to know him "when." I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I have never known a man in my life I believe so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.

This is a man who in his own business, before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan, before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provided nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by floods from the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.

An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas, and he said that there were a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. Then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such," and they went down there, and there was this fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in the weeks before Christmas, all day long, he would load up the plane, fly to Arizona, fly them to their homes, then fly back over to get another load.

During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, "There aren't many left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to know I care." This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, "There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life upon that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start." This is not a man who could carelessly send other people's sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all of the other problems I have discussed academic, unless we realize that we are in a war that must be won.

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

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

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

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

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

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

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Did Obama Meet Chamberlain?

2009-09-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

Neville Chamberlain was by all accounts a kind and clever man, an idealist with the best of intentions. Eminently civilized, he always took high tea at the prescribed time. A confident and highly experienced negotiator, he truly believed that he could successfully appease Hitler and Nazi Germany. His desire for peace was profound and authentic. And he was dead wrong.

Likewise, Barack Obama, has a seemingly limitless faith in his ability to negotiate with our avowed enemies, to prod and persuade the likes of Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez and Putin. He appears to believe that if we hedge our country's bets and keep our adversaries close to the vest, our enemies will be appeased and our friends will remain loyal - if insecure - partners in peace.

"Peace in our time," so declared Chamberlain after sacrificing Czechoslovakia to Hitler's Panzers in March 1939. This seminal event should have destroyed any rationale for appeasement - Czechoslovakia's fate preordained that of wider Europe.

Observing Obama and his non-interventionist acolytes, one wonders: has Obama met Chamberlain? Is he still convinced that Iran's nuclear ambitions are for ploughshares, that its leaders' eliminationist proclamations have nothing in common with those of Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot?

If so, there is hope that all is not lost. Obama has shown focus and fortitude in Afghanistan, increasing troop strength and commitment. To his credit, he knows full well that a Taliban victory there would further destabilize an already unstable region - including nuclear Pakistan - with catastrophic results to follow.

Thus, the real question is not if Obama has met Chamberlain. Rather, it is what did he learn from him? While his multitudinous advisors and czars pull him to the left, he has shown a marked ability to learn on his feet, to assimilate changing political realities. His fate and the fate of our country depend, in large measure, on whether he successfully veers from his leftist origins toward the opposing trends of our time.

Dealing weakly with Nazi Germany's rise contributed mightily to the 50 million casualties of the Second World War. Will Obama's appeasement-laden overtures similarly result in unmitigated disasters over the next decade?

The jury is still out.

Image: Chamberlain meeting with Hitler, 1939

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Letter to The Economist

2009-09-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

The following is my response to a special report on the Arab world in The Economist called "Waking from its sleep," published on July 23, 2009. The original article can be read at this link.

********************************************

The Editor:

While generally objective and informative, your report suffers from a disconcerting and revealing inconsistency. On Page 4, you highlight "Israel's ruthless mini-wars in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza at the beginning of this year." In a contextual vacuum, I wonder about the motivation (and editorship) behind your word choice; in light of your subsequent (pg. 5) listing of death tolls from Arab-involved conflicts in Darfur (400,000), Algeria (150-200,000), and Iraq (101-109,000) - all well and gruesomely ahead of Gaza (1,400) and Lebanon (1,200) - that wonder evolves into outrage. Indeed, it is the intentional massacre of civilians in the non-Israeli conflicts that deserves the term 'ruthless.' The clear restraint (however flawed in execution) exercised by the region's most powerful army while fighting terrorist belligerents operating from civilian areas is quite the opposite.

Sincerely,
Mr. Leslie J. Sacks

Los Angeles, CA

Is America Like Rome?

2009-07-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

Rome was a great civilization, perhaps the greatest according to certain accounts. Its citizens - modern, wealthy, empowered - were the envy of the world. Content with their luxuries and successes, the Romans imported slaves until citizens were a de-facto minority. They stopped manufacturing and creating. Instead, Rome became the center of a vast bureaucracy, controlling and delegating while outsourcing actual production to their slaves and colonies.

Rome thus became lazy and fat, hedonistic and selfish, unwilling anymore to do the dirty work and make the sacrifices that earned its position atop the civilizational heap. They became utterly dependent on imported labor and imported products, hostage to their own egocentricities.

America cannot anymore produce preeminent cars; its industrial might - not to mention its massive debts - resides in the grasps of its fiercest competitors. America now wearies quickly of its own defense, its wars, its security needs. Its attention is sated by “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars,” giving short shrift to Iraq and Afghanistan, to females enslaved and children oppressed beyond our shores. Whereas Reagan’s America defeated Communism by sheer willpower, now the teleprompting Obama - facing radical Islam, Communism’s totalitarian successor - unclenches America’s vital fist.

Are we going the way of Rome - are we already too rich, too fat, too soft? Must we read Nero to our Congress? Have we still got what it takes not only to build the greatest civilization the world has ever seen, but also - and especially - to keep it?

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FREEDOM vs. TOLERANCE

2009-06-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

Transcript of a speech I delivered at the American Freedom Alliance and Council for Democracy and Tolerance annual "Heroes of Conscience" dinner on June 7, 2009. The event paid tribute to Geert Wilders, Dutch politician and leader of the Party for Freedom, and Alan Craig, London councilor and campaigner in opposition to the planned Olympic Mega Mosque, as well as honored Barak Lurie and myself, both of Los Angeles.

I am humbled and gratified to be given this honor by the American Freedom Alliance, and somewhat overwhelmed by the recognition. For it is the AFA and like groups, institutions and charities at the cutting edge – on the front line, as it were – that are the real champions. Likewise, of course, all the troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel, and the members of our various intelligence agencies. Everyone who sacrifices for our security and our freedoms, who puts their own safety on the line: they are the true heroes, and they are ultimately our salvation.

People like me are in fact the ones who should be grateful, because we are given an opportunity to support those in the front line, without risking our lives, or even our life style. Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Zuhdi Jasser and countless others, moderate Muslims, Arab women, Marines, undercover agents -- they are the ones who deserve our everlasting gratefulness, our thanks and our generosity.

It usually goes without saying that we are living in important times. And yet, particularly at gatherings like these, it is important to re-affirm the critical nature of the task before us. Radical Islam, while battered and bruised, remains a ferocious opponent, the advocates of Shariah law a dangerous fifth column.

In the Muslim world, Radical Islam is encroaching on a dysfunctional and nuclear-armed state in Pakistan. It is resurgent in Afghanistan, awaiting our precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, and posing as the harbingers of a new, Judenrein regional order by way of the theocrats in Iran.

Here in the West – the primary concern, unabashedly, of those of us gathered here tonight – the threat is just as real, if not as immediate. The reach of Shariah extends even further into both the de facto and de jure reaches of North America and Europe, welcomed with all-too-open arms by the multi-culturalists and relativists who dominate our intellectual classes -- and even some Western governments.

As a result, beheadings, honor killings, draconian restrictions on women, even absurd aversions to pork — all are on the up-and-up. As for the victories of radical Islam in suppressing our precious freedoms of expression and of conscience, our civilization’s comparative advantage in inquiry and truth-telling…well, I will leave such things to the experts.

From where does this insidious commonality derive, between the extreme left and the fascist Jihadist movements like Hamas and Hezbollah? What are the origins of this red-green alliance?

Perhaps it is the fact that these coalescing extremes share one special ideological tenet – that of the certainty of their paths and their righteousness, and thus the obligation to impose these beliefs on society, removing choice – and ultimately the basis of freedom -- from the imperfect masses. From the rest of us.

This is finally the challenge of our times, whether Shariah from the right or relativistic, multicultural political correctness from the left.

But the point here is not to frighten, or to catalog our losses, or to express despair or remorse. No, no – quite the contrary. The point here is to remind ourselves that we have arrived at a critical juncture in our efforts to protect our unique freedoms, and to ensure the expansion of those freedoms to those who yearn to taste it, to our natural allies all over the world. And to remember that at times like these, those efforts become that much more urgent, that much more crucial.

Perhaps no recent event better captures the “fierce urgency of now” – to borrow a phrase from our new leader of the free world – than the recent on-goings in Geneva. There, we observed all the farcical and frightening idiocies of the United Nations, whose “human rights” commission convened a meeting on racism and discrimination attended by a litany of racists and discriminators to discuss a previously-endorsed racist and discriminatory document – a document that was produced by delegates to that infamously anti-Semitic Durban conference in South Africa in 2001. The bloodied hounds of the virtuous – Sudan, Iran, Syria, Libya – were everywhere present.

[As an aside, and as a South African who protested against the apartheid regime, the association of this international disgrace with the so-called “rainbow nation” of my youth carries a particularly sad irony.]

Returning to Geneva. It warrants mention that, this time around, the conference delegates – led, once again, by the paragons of human rights from the Organization of the Islamic Conference – that this time around these delegates managed to go even further down the path of absurdity. This time, the commission very nearly “banned” so-called religious defamation, attempting to classify critical media like the Danish cartoons or Mr. Wilders’ courageous film as criminal violations of human rights.

As a result, the UN’s official human rights body came bizarrely close to abrogating the fundamental rights to free expression and conscience as laid out in the UN’s own universal declaration of human rights. Orwell could not have written it better.

Indeed, I venture to say that even Orwell could not have foreseen this same “human rights” conference being addressed, by none other than Iran’s hate-spewing Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The world thus witnessed a man who mimics Hitler in both style and substance receiving ovations from a UN body not only for denying the consequences of the genocidal policies perpetrated by his tutor, but also for attacking the legitimacy of Israel, a UN member state that ranks among its few genuine democracies. And this while Holocaust survivors still bear witness.

What’s more, it was the horror of those very same policies that, in many ways, led to the creation of the United Nations itself, and it was the creation of the United Nations that helped bring Israel into existence. Perhaps Kafka is indeed the man to read.

And yet, to echo the theme above, all is not lost. For it is important to remember that the United States –even under our most multi-culturalist, internationalist, and arguably most appeasement-happy administration to date – these United States boycotted this absurd, disturbed, and thankfully non-binding conference. So did the Western outposts of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and of course so did Israel. Perhaps most importantly, Germany, Italy, Poland, and ultimately Czechoslovakia – four former epicenters of totalitarianism – also joined the boycott, along with Mr. Wilders’ own Holland.

In addition, the 24 remaining delegates from Europe walked out on the tyrant Ahmadinejad, that latter day Hamman, in an all-too-rare display of European unity in the face of aggressive anti-Semitism. And the disgraceful ‘religious defamation’ resolution was eventually dropped, for the time being, replaced by a watered-down version focused on the individual and not the faith.

Small victories in a purely symbolic setting, I do concede. I dare say that no-one who knows me or my writings would accuse me of dewy-eyed optimism. But I do believe that these events help point out the critical nature of the work being done by the American Freedom Alliance, and like-minded advocates of human freedom and opponents of fundamentalism and tyranny. By calling Radical Islam for what it truly is – a threat to Western values and civilization – we help draw the right lines in this battle of ideas. We encourage the unity of freedom-loving people and discourage weakness in the face of hatred and extremism. And we challenge the stranglehold of self-loathing, self-defeating cultural relativists on the terms of debate in the West. All these efforts help tip the balance in our favor, and in the favor of our children.

To continue down this path, we need to remind Americans that our country’s unrivaled success is not a reason for complacency, but rather for strident attention. America needs to focus on preserving its unique culture and character – its future ultimately depends not on security or military superiority, but rather on its citizens not going the way of Antwerp, Marseille and London’s Finsbury Park. It depends on preventing Sharia proponents from subverting – whether by legal, financial, or political means – our openness and our freedoms. It requires the recognition that our weaknesses lie within, not without: with our lack of love for, our lack of commitment to and belief in, the value of our heritage, our religions, and our unique Judeo-Christian civilization.

The consequences of these weaknesses are tragically apparent in Europe. To stem that tide of appeasement and prevent it from reaching our own shores, we must acknowledge and forcefully protect the strengths that define us: freedom, liberty, and the power of reason over fear.

We are, after all, living in important times.

Perhaps never more so.

Just last night I was fortunate to have dinner with Alan Craig and Geert Wilders during which time I first heard the auspicious news of Geert’s strong showing in the European Parliament elections in Holland. With good fortune he may be the next Prime Minister, he may indeed become the first force to roll back European Appeasement, the first leading politician to make a stand and say:

“NO MORE.”

“ENOUGH.”

He has my congratulations.

Thank you.

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Alcatraz or NIMBY

2009-06-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pelosi - our water-boarding, flip-flopping Speaker of the House - needs to rise to the occasion of her own making and offer up Alcatraz Island as the new home for all 241 inmates in GuantanamoBay. If Sarah Palin can see Russia from her Alaskan front porch, why can't Pelosi enjoy her morning herbal tea whilst watching the mist waft in amongst the cells of some of the world's most dangerous terrorists and murderers?

The San Francisco of Alice B. Toklas, Allen Ginsberg and Harvey Milk should seize the opportunity to blaze yet another "progressive" trail for the rest of the country. By putting their (substantial) monies where their (ever-moving) mouths are, Pelosi and her constituents can extend the city's famous embrace of 'alternative lifestyles' to the most nefarious enemies of our most precious union. Inmates' hatreds for Jews, gays, and infidels of all stripes could be soothed by a daily (and mandatory) regimen of yoga, taught by burka-clad instructors. Their bloodlust could be tackled by the unique prescriptions of homeopaths and the meditative effects of the latest in multi-cultural fusion, Koran chant.

Ponder for a moment history's mostly forgotten lessons. During the Second World War - aka the 'Good War' - we interned over 400,000 prisoners of war right here in the United States, with another 1.6 million housed elsewhere. Imagine a former-day Pelosi or the ACLU prevailing on the Senate, Congress and U.S. Court system to extend our substantial and just laws and protections to these two million POWs. Hitler and the Japanese might not have needed to prosecute the war after all: our justice system would have ground to a debilitating halt, and the costs would have put us in permanent penury. Habeas corpus and the (then) unavailability of significant evidence would have ensured most, if not all, a quick pass to "GO." Even if most were deported, imagine the self-destructive time bomb represented by the release of even a fraction of these two-million avowed Nazis and otherwise fascistic soldiers into the United States of America.

We are still fighting a vicious war - roughly 8,000 Americans have died, 3,000 on September 11th and 5,000 of our bravest since. Hitler's war ended when we bombed Dresden, invaded Germany and buried his totalitarian regime; the Japanese surrender required history's only use of a nuclear weapon. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda doesn't leave a return address and this war may drag on for years - even decades. History has shown us valid, reasonable and successful rules of engagement. We deny them at our peril.

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Hindsight

2009-06-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

Hindsight is great, especially when it comes to political expediency. President Obama and his surrogate, Attorney General Eric Holder, are in the process of determining how many good faith attorneys, operatives and advisors in the previous administration and the CIA will be held criminally liable for their interrogation activities and advice. Never mind that the activities and advice in question likely saved the lives of many US citizens and our soldiers on the frontline. Instead of being praised for successes and excused for excesses, these patriots have become the targets of a new witch hunt, set to be sacrificed at the altar of Obama's unrivalled public relations juggernaut.

Of course, Obama and his coterie hold no exclusive title to hindsight. And history often delivers far more powerful indictments than even the US Attorney General.

Consider an Obama administration that fails to reverse the recession and continues to court the tragic consequences of Iran's nuclear ambitions and suicidal Jihadism. An administration that insists on hampering and handicapping the CIA, the FBI and the military's ability to prosecute this war and achieve its intelligence requirements in the most pragmatic and effective manner, leading-most likely-to another wave of terrorist strikes. Such unfortunate events would not only obliterate the sycophantic love affair America now has with Obama and produce a likely change in government. They would also expose this administration to charges-if not legal, then certainly moral-of gross negligence and irresponsibility, of causing many American deaths and recklessly sacrificing national security as well.

Despite what your kids learn in university, hindsight can be 20/20 for Republicans as well. The past is not the only source of reckoning-the future counts as well. Eric Holder beware.

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The Emasculation of America

2009-05-26T13:37:00.001-07:00

It's as though our modern liberal democracy is so porous and malleable, so rife with insecurity and uncertainty, that we aspire-perversely-to the fascist certainties of our Jihadist adversaries. The victim takes on the jailor's persona.

We worry more about sleep deprivation for the 241 hardened terrorists at Guantanamo than we do about the two million innocents butchered recently in the Congo. We rail against humiliating self-admitted murderers by-gasp!-handling Korans without gloves; by using loud noises, isolation or cramped confinement; and by holding faces immobile. In other words: by using the same intense interrogation techniques employed by our British and French (and certainly many other) allies without tortured (pun intended) public discussions.

We flagellate ourselves and prostrate ourselves before those who call for our destruction, apologizing for these indiscretions and justifying our own murder. We hold ourselves (but none others) to standards no civilization before us has considered even remotely possible.

We pledge to negotiate as equals with Iran and Syria, two medieval autocracies that stone women (Iran), incarcerate children (Iran and Syria) and eliminate opposition (Syria)--no Geneva Convention anywhere in sight. We bow before the Saudi king, whose regime allowed female students to burn to death rather than let them escape the flames inappropriately dressed, which beheads disbelievers and amputates the limbs of everyday thieves.

The world is rife with genocide, with indiscriminate torture of the innocent and the young.

Yet our human rights movements, women's rights movements, and our ACLUs spend their time and resources railing against every transgression by our military and those who make us safe-as imperfect as that process may be?

Why are we emasculating ourselves?

Do we believe that if we defang ourselves, make ourselves vulnerable, weak and fearful, we will engender understanding and support from those who wish us ill? Will emasculation reduce their jealousy and their hate? If we berate ourselves, humiliate our defenders publicly in court, weaken our defenses and our interrogation techniques, will we gain the love and the admiration of Ahmadinejad, of Al Qaeda, of the Taliban? If we continue to hate ourselves enough, to belittle our culture of freedom and individualism, will we sufficiently reduce our hard-won differences, our unique and ennobling values, to pacify the radical Islamists?

Such is our 21st century sociology of capitulation: we must beat our swords into ploughshares and validate Shariah law in every court before we can be prideful as Americans. Are we compulsive lemmings rushing leftwards into the suicidal sea? When will our emasculation end?

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Here is a succinct and eminently relevant review of a crucial issue of our day ~

2009-04-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

"An End to Dependence on Middle East Oil" by Janet Levy

Over the last 40 years, the United States has become increasingly dependent on foreign oil and reluctant to develop domestic, fossil fuel resources. Today, America imports two-thirds of its oil at a cost of $300 billion per year, much of it from politically unstable, Middle East countries which control 45% of the world's oil, overall.

This is occurring despite the existence of bountiful, untapped oil resources within the United States. Developing these resources could free America from imports, create badly needed, oil-production jobs and meet U.S. energy demand for the next 200 years. With nearly three-fourths of Americans favoring increased energy exploration, the only obstacle standing in the way of our energy independence is a lack of political vision and will.

We need only look to our Canadian neighbors to realize how forging ahead politically to develop oil resources could help increase our energy supplies, boost our sagging economy and increase our tax base. Canada's experience could become our own, if we simply took the initiative and plunged ahead with proven technologies that could release not only oil from the ground, but our country from crippling, energy dependency.

Canada's Oil Sands

Canada supplies more oil to the United States than any other single country in the world. Canadian oil represents 21% of our imports, double that of Saudi Arabia, our nation's second largest oil supplier. But while Saudi Arabia has an estimated remaining 270 billion barrels of oil, Canada's total oil sands resources are placed as high as 2.6 trillion barrels, which includes the Athabasca Oil Sands Deposit in Alberta, the largest petroleum resource in the world.

The successful development of Canada's oil sands arose from a long-term, committed partnership between government and industry focusing together on economic, environmentally sound and technologically innovative methods of oil sand extraction and processing. For over 30 years, the Canadian government worked with the oil industry to conduct research and to foster a financial environment to help support the growth of its oil sands. Government tax incentives and infrastructure construction have significantly benefited the industry, helping transform Canada into an energy super power, creating tens of thousands of jobs and infusing billions of dollars into the economy.

Canadian oil sand production now stands at more than one million barrels per day and is expected to approach 2.5 million barrels per day by 2017. Meanwhile, production costs for Alberta's oil sands declined by as much as 80% between 1980 and 2003, according to the Oil and Gas Journal[1].

Oil sands resources successfully compete with conventional fuels, achieving high recovery efficiencies, dependable production rates and uniform, high quality products. Federally mandated reclamation requirements have insured that development sites are returned to their natural state. New technologies could further reduce emissions and energy use for production, plus improve water management.

Alberta's oil sands development has demonstrated an effective balance between environmental protection, economic growth and energy security, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI), a non-profit, energy think tank. Every dollar invested in oil sands creates $9 of economic activity, according to the CERI, which estimates the economic benefit of oil sands could reach $885 billion from 2000-2020.

U.S. Oil Shale Deposits

A similar resource exists within the southwestern United States. Oil shale deposits there have a commercial viability comparable and in sufficient magnitude to the Alberta oil sands. In comparison to Saudi Arabia's oil reserves, America's recoverable oil shale resources are nearly three times as large, according to a 2008 report by the Utah Mining Association[2]. That study affirmed that utilizing U.S. oil shale deposits could provide America with the "potential to be completely energy self-sufficient, with no demands on external energy sources."

Oil shale, a sedimentary rock, contains kerogen, a less evolved form of crude oil. With additional oil-extraction processing, kerogen can be used to produce jet fuel, diesel, gasoline and heating oil. The oil shale extraction process "results in products that are super clean -- even cleaner than super diesel (ultra low sulfur diesel)," according to Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research.

The largest, richest and most concentrated deposits of kerogen are found in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. These states comprise respective percentages of 60%, 30% and 10% of the available resources, with sufficient oil shale to meet U.S. energy demand for the next 200 years.

Locked within these oil shale resources are approximately 2 trillion barrels of oil, according to a 2005 report[3] given to President Bush and the Congress, by the Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuels. Depending on technological developments and economic feasibility, an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil could be recovered, three times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.

Oil shale conversion is a proven technology that has been used in other parts of the world for over 50 years. Since the 1950s, Brazil has used oil shale to produce commercial fuel. Estonia currently derives 85% of its electricity from oil shale and China now produces 1.5 million barrels of shale oil per year. In the United States, shale oil technology has been developing for close to 30 years. It's an energy production process far ahead of techniques for renewables and biomass, with far greater potential to meet U.S. energy needs sooner.

Oil Shale Demonstration Projects

Several companies have experimented with extraction methods that could result in commercial production in the near term, with development price estimates of $30 to $55 per barrel of oil.

Utah-based Red Leaf Resources, which estimates a 100,000 barrel of oil yield per acre, uses an environmentally-sensitive proprietary technology to encapsulate the shale at depths of 60 to 90 feet in a lined capsule. Using natural gas heaters, Red Leaf heats the oil shale and extracts the oil. The depleted shale, an inert inorganic material classified as "non-hazardous" by the EPA, is thus contained in an impermeable shell. In other countries, spent shale has been used for cement manufacturing, construction materials and road base. Reclamation of the land occurs within weeks of completion of the extraction process. Red Leaf currently operates on School and Institutional Trust Lands for its demonstration project, but estimates it can move into limited commercial production within one year without access to federal land.

The Shell Oil Corporation has completed several research and demonstration projects within the Green River oil shale formation over more than 30 years. Shell utilizes a patented, in situ technology. Without mining the rock, Shell heats oil shale formations at depths of 1,000 feet to 650-700 degrees Fahrenheit for three to five years. Heating allows kerogen oil (2/3 of the volume) and gas (1/3) to be released from the shale and brought to the surface using traditional pumps. The process requires no open-pit or subsurface mining, avoids groundwater contamination and does not produce shale waste or other unwanted byproducts. Estimated oil yields using this technology in the kerogen-rich Green River formation are 1 million barrels per acre.

Political Landscape

A June 2008 Zogby poll found that 74% of American voters supported increased energy exploration. The federal government owns 80% of oil shale lands in the United States, the parcels with the richest kerogen deposits. Yet, despite the will of the American people to increase domestic energy supplies and take advantage of these vast resources, politicians have successfully thwarted these desires. Politics has trumped market forces and resource availability to actually decrease American-extracted oil supplies, especially under the new administration.

Championing environmental concerns ahead of economic and national security interests, politicians -- largely Democratic -- have advanced legislation that discourages new development, particularly in offshore areas and for unconventional sources, thereby increasing our dependency on foreign oil. Environmental groups have been allowed to sabotage government-issued leases for exploration. For example, in 2007, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) added Section 526 to the Energy Independence and Security Act, a clause that banned the use of oil shale and other fossil fuel sources.

Previously, oil shale development seemed to be moving forward. Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Secretary of the Interior was directed to provide an environmental impact statement for a commercial oil shale leasing program on public lands. The Act authorized the acceleration of oil shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and set up a task force to study the fuel's potential. Following completion of the study, preparation of leasing regulations and the release of the environmental impact statement, six of 19 available leases were made available in November 2008. Bans on leases for oil shale research, development and demonstration projects were rescinded.

But, in February 2009, when Ken Salazar became Secretary of the Interior for the Obama administration, additional lease offers were withdrawn that would have made expansions of existing programs possible. Salazar also called for a reexamination of proposed royalty rates. Although he didn't cancel existing leases, Salazar's announcement appeared to signal that the pace of oil shale development in the United States would be slowed. A 90-day public comment period, followed by a four-month evaluation period prior to any new proposals for a second round of leasing arrangements is now in place.

The current, U.S. administration focus on renewable options, such as wind and solar -- which make up only 1% of current usage -- plus unproven alternatives, such as biomass, will lead to rising dependence on foreign oil and increased opportunity costs at home. Wind farms occupy thousands of acres to produce electricity at seven times the cost of an average, coal-fired plant. Solar cells take up several square miles of land to achieve a similar result. Both rely on unpredictable energy sources, the sun and the wind.

Similarly, an acre of corn yields only five barrels of corn ethanol with an energy yield of less than two-thirds of a gallon of oil. Cellulosic ethanol from grasses yields 800 barrels per acre which a seeming improvement until compared against the yield from oil shale of 100,000 to 1 million barrels per acre.

A report by U.S. Dept. of Energy's Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves[4] suggest that the richness and magnitude of America's oil shale resources warrants management as a long-term strategic resource. However, long-term investments must have income flow to encourage investors and new capital. Economic incentives already exist in the free market that lend themselves to the development of resources like oil shale. Government should get out of the way and allow free enterprise to develop this ample resource so that America can achieve greater energy independence and not compromise our national security in the balance.

The cost of developing new technologies and sources needs to be weighed against the heavy cost of further reliance on imported oil. The "hidden cost" of defending oil supplies in the Persian Gulf alone is conservatively estimated at $305 billion annually.

Oil shale development would stimulate the economy with money that would otherwise be spent overseas. It would contribute to our national security and mean that the United States would not have to import hundreds of billions of barrels of oil from the Persian Gulf. With oil sands and oil shale resources , the combined U.S. and Canadian energy supplies would comprise the largest oil reserves in the world and make the United States independent of Persian Gulf oil.

[1] Oil and Gas Journal, July 14, v. 101.27.

[2] "Developing of Utah Oil Shale and Tar Sands Resources," Utah Mining Association, October 2008.

[3] "Development of America's Strategic Unconventional Fuels Resources," September 2006.

[4] "America' Oil Shale, A Roadmap for Federal Decision Making," December 2004

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/an_end_to_dependence_on_middle.html at April 06, 2009

Of Innocents and Savages

2009-03-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Google “Congo killings” and the search engine will find you 3.56 million references. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is 2.3 million square kilometers, and is home to 62.6 million people.

Enter “Gaza killings” and Google will locate 8.56 million references. The Gaza Strip is 360 square kilometers, and home to 1.5 million people. That is one-thousandth of the land mass, and two-hundredths of the population, of the DRC.

The media (both ‘new’ and ‘old’) bias is indisputable.

Less than 1,000 Gazans were reliably documented as killed in their last war with Israel, many of which were armed militants. In Congo, over four million unquestionably innocent civilians have now been killed—by weapon or disease—in the past twelve years. Horrific stories of rape, burnings, and mutilations abound. And yet, the media’s fixation on Israel’s ‘oppression’ of the Arabs continues. The question is evitable: why is there such a focus on deaths in Gaza—a war triggered by the firing of over 6,000 rockets at Israeli civilians—while the exterminations in the DRC are comparatively ignored? Is it because the Congolese are black and invisible people who cannot help but murder each other? Or is it because Hamas and the Gazans have been granted victim status amongst the worldwide left, giving the cognoscenti and ‘activists’ everywhere a perfect whipping boy in Israel? Either way, it doesn’t speak well for the evolution of mankind: blacks, apparently, are still savages, and Jews still deserve to be killed.

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The Value of Understanding

2009-03-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

Now that appeasement is back in vogue, the post-9/11 notion that we must "understand" the terrorists - their unique motivations, their sad backgrounds - has re-emerged among the talking heads and diplomatic elites. The presumption is that such understanding will grant us insight and empathy, confirming our inherent similarities and bringing us reconciliation, compromise and resolution. The terrorists are merely aggrieved - not evil. Therefore, they are eminently capable of negotiation.

Is it not strange that the victims are pleading for reconciliation, thereby donating their victimization to the perpetrators? 1

Is not every citizen of the world - six billion plus people - in some way aggrieved, at some stage denied justice? What then separates these six billion aggrieved from the tens of thousands of active Jihadists, suicide bombers and terrorists? 2

Those who support negotiation won't consider this remarkable statistic - that of six billion citizens versus only tens of thousands terrorists. If they did they would have to conclude that an overwhelming proportion of the world's inhabitants choose non-violent methods of redress. I dare say that the victims of the Holocaust, those raped in Darfur, those with limbs chopped off in the Congo, those women stoned in Iran, those imprisoned in dictatorships, are all infinitely more deserving of aggressive redress, of violent redemption, than those who bridle at America's presence (or its Jewish proxy) in the Middle East.

Surely, then, the methods of redress chosen ultimately define the difference between human and inhuman, between, civilized and uncivilized, between fallibility and irrevocable evil.

Indeed, it is in those methods that the chasm between us and the terrorists is evinced - a chasm that cannot be spanned by negotiation. When one chooses very specifically to bomb a children's school, a hospital, a pizzeria, a wedding - despite plenty of military targets, governmental installations, and police stations - then methods reveal madness, and there is no similarity between them and us. It is then that those apologizing for terrorists, those advocating unremitting negotiations, are providing support for terrorism itself. Wittingly or unwittingly, they are undermining the defenses civilized societies must build to secure their survival. 3

For all their emphasis on the terrorists' motivations, by ignoring their methods the appeasers' self-proclaimed 'understanding' is in fact far from it.
After all,

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something," said Hussein Massawi, a former leader of Hezbollah.

"We are fighting to eliminate you."

1 "Islam Should Prove It's a Religion of Peace" by Tawfik Hamid

2 MEMRI TV: Heralding Anthrax attack in US

3 Pajamas Media "The Appeasers"

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Elegant Preemption

2009-02-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

It seems quite likely that in the near future, a terrorist group or jihadist state like Iran may just be suicidal enough to attack America or our allies with a weapon of mass destruction. In that event, the response will be a massive, time-, money-, and life-consuming war effort to combat and destroy the attacker. Why not preempt that awful circumstance now and use the forthcoming stimulus package to develop the cutting-edge weapons and other military technologies necessary to prevent such an attack? This approach would produce solid, long-term jobs and see taxpayers’ money spent in a pragmatic way, exactly when we have great need for these jobs and enough time to re-vamp our military, saving us invaluable blood and valuable treasure down the line.

Contact your Congressperson and Senator!

You Cannot Kill an Ideology

2009-02-09T17:50:00.000-08:00

Deepak Chopra—the most prolific of New Age self-help spiritual gurus—appears to have expanded his mandate to offer guidance in the angst-ridden realm of international affairs.

His résumé speaks for itself—no political, economic, or military training, experience or prior erudition. He has, however, written a series of guaranteed self-help solutions for all our modern-day spiritual needs that compete with American tax laws in awards for repetition and transparent agendas.

Nonetheless, Chopra recently stated on CNN, with accustomed certainty, that ‘you can kill a terrorist but cannot kill an ideology.’ Never mind the past 60 years of American foreign policy—Chopra was born in Delhi, so he understands the Third World. Along with all things at all times.

Of course, history is replete with examples of conclusive wars defeating blatant evil, of ideologies waning and disappearing when the price of fanaticism becomes too high.

Most recently, the fundamentalist ideology of Al Qaeda has been resoundingly defeated in Iraq by the principles of self-government, freedom and secularism. Certainly Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s Fascism got wacked during the Second World War. And what of Pol Pot’s fanatical collectivism in Cambodia, or the terror-communism of the Baader Meinhof Gang in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy? None of these once-powerful ideologies are around today in any sort of viable form. And now the Arab world is giving short-thrift to bin-Ladenism, condemned as it is to ignonimity in Waziristan’s endless caves.

Deepak Chopra’s pronouncements ring further hollow given that his “peace at all costs” mantra is most widely consumed in the United States, where freedom has been wrought at enormous cost (military, human and financial). His ideas would not be so welcome (or profitable) in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan, countries and societies that he professes to know so well, ideologies he professes such tolerance towards.

Thus, Chopra joins the ranks of American successes who show boundless deference towards societies that reject them, yet castigate their own country and protector that provides unrivaled freedom of expression.

Indeed, Chopra is a committed member of the “war is never a solution” gang, who see America’s heavy military fist behind every confrontation, at the seat of every radical cause, the wellspring of every extremist’s grievance. To him, there are no irredeemable terrorists, no non-negotiable evils—only freedom fighters and disrespected refugees. Fighting these forces just makes things worse. After all, you cannot kill an ideology.

Deepak’s philosophy has its appeal: decide that war is bad and ideology (or anything, for that matter) is never evil, and adapt easily to what everyone wants to hear. Especially, make us all feel good. He’s like the legal Marijuana Man, wafting mellifluously in on CNN’s transmissions and dismissing history’s harsh lessons with his modern-day opiates.

Hollywood – here we come.

San Francisco Chronicle: A military solution to a war on terrorism is doomed (Deepak Chopra and Ken Robinson, Feb. 3, 2009)

Deepak Chopra, foreign policy expert? CNN seems to think so

Deepak Chopra on Hannity and Colmes Dec. 1, 2008

Deepak Chopra on CNN Nov. 30, 2008

Deepak Chopra Too Controversial for CNN? (Michelle Haimoff, Huntington Post Nov. 27, 2008)
Deepak Chopra speaks on CNN (Nov 26, 2008)

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There Have Been Many Tests

2009-02-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

Thomas L. Friedman’s warning This is Not a Test about the urgency of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute echoes the growing (and understandable) concern of advocates of a two-state solution following the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Yet Mr. Friedman misstates the case: the Israelis have already formed ‘centrist, national unity’ governments (as well as leftist and rightist ones) committed to implementing a two-state solution. While Israel’s ‘fanatical’ Jewish settlers and their enablers in Jerusalem have made that implementation more difficult, the bulk of the Israeli public has repeatedly endorsed politicians who support the removal of the most problematic settlements.

A much larger obstacle is the persistent lack of a credible Palestinian partner, an obstacle which has only grown since Yasser Arafat walked out of Camp David in 2002. With Hamas firing rockets into Israel from the ruins of (forcibly) evacuated settlements in the Gaza Strip, the true ‘window-closers’ on the two-state solution seems tragically clear.

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Solving the "Palestinian Problem"

2009-01-28T17:21:00.000-08:00

Little-noticed among those decrying Israel's 'imprisonment' of Gaza, the Egyptians — who man the southern border of the strip — are just-as-willing wardens, having (mostly) sealed off the Gaza-Egyptian border to their Arabs brothers and sisters in distress. In a recent and creative article, Daniel Pipes advocates a more hands-on Egyptian approach: reincorporating the territory into Egypt itself. In this way, Israel could wash its hands of Gaza and donate it back from whence it came.

Solving the "Palestinian Problem" by Daniel Pipes (Jerusalem Post) Jan. 7, 2009

Israel's war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.

Let's first review what we know does not and cannot work:

Israeli control. Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically, and politically different and hostile.
A Palestinian state. The 1993 Oslo Accords began this process but a toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, antisemitism, jihadism, and warlordism led to complete Palestinian failure.
A binational state: Given the two populations' mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine (what Muammar al-Qaddafi calls "Israstine") is as absurd as it seems.

Excluding these three prospects leaves only one practical approach, that which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67:

Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule: Amman rules the West Bank and Cairo runs Gaza.

To be sure, this back-to-the-future approach inspires little enthusiasm. Not only was Jordanian-Egyptian rule undistinguished but resurrecting this arrangement will frustrate Palestinian impulses, be they nationalist or Islamist. Further, CairoGaza and has vehemently rejected its return. Accordingly, one academic analyst dismisses this idea "an elusive fantasy that can only obscure real and difficult choices." never wanted

It is not. The failures of Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian Authority and the "peace process," have prompted rethinking in Amman and Jerusalem. Indeed, the Christian Science Monitor's Ilene R. Prusher found already in 2007 that the idea of a West Bank-Jordan confederation "seems to be gaining traction on both sides of the Jordan River."

The Jordanian government, which enthusiastically annexed the West Bank in 1950 and abandoned its claims only under duress in 1988, shows signs of wanting to return. Dan Diker and Pinchas Inbari documented for the Middle East Quarterly in 2006 how the PA's "failure to assert control and become a politically viable entity has caused Amman to reconsider whether a hands-off strategy toward the West Bank is in its best interests." Israeli officialdom has also showed itself open to this idea, occasionally calling for Jordanian troops to enter the West Bank.

Despairing of self-rule, some Palestinians welcome the Jordanian option. An unnamed senior PA official told Diker and Inbari that that a form of federation or confederation with Jordan offers "the only reasonable, stable, long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." Hanna Seniora opined that "The current weakened prospects for a two-state solution forces us to revisit the possibility of a confederation with Jordan." The New York Times' Hassan M. Fattah quotes a Palestinian in Jordan: "Everything has been ruined for us - we've been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left. It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank."

Nor is this just talk: Diker and Inbari report that back-channel PA-Jordan negotiations in 2003-04 "resulted in an agreement in principle to send 30,000 Badr Force members," to the West Bank.

And while Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak announced a year ago that "Gaza is not part of Egypt, nor will it ever be," his is hardly the last word. First, Mubarak notwithstanding, Egyptians overwhelmingly want a strong tie to Gaza; Hamas concurs and Israeli leaders sometimes agree. So the basis for an overhaul in policy exists. concurs; and

Secondly, Gaza is arguably more a part of Egypt than of "Palestine." During most of the Islamic period, it was either controlled by Cairo or part of EgyptGaza has most connections to Egypt. Hamas itself derives from the Muslim Brethren, an Egyptian organization. Is it time to think of Gazans as Egyptians? administratively. Gazan colloquial Arabic is identical to what Egyptians living in Sinai speak. Economically,

Thirdly, Jerusalem could out-maneuver Mubarak. Were it to announce a date when it ends the provisioning of all water, electricity, food, medicine, and other trade, plus accept enhanced Egyptian security in Gaza, Cairo would have to take responsibility for Gaza. Among other advantages, this would make it accountable for Gazan security, finally putting an end to the thousands of Hamas rocket and mortar assaults.

The Jordan-Egypt option quickens no pulse, but that may be its value. It offers a uniquely sober way to solve the "Palestinian problem."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jan. 7, 2009 update: The National Post cleverly dubs my plan (in its title to this article) the "back-to-the-future option," but I like best the name bestowed on it by blogger Mary P. Madigan: "the no-state solution." Perfect.

For an extended discussion of this topic, see my weblog begun in 2005, "The West Bank to Jordan, Gaza to Egypt."

Jan. 8, 2009 update: Some readers interpret this column as an endorsement of Jordan-is-Palestine - the idea that Palestinians can have Jordan as their state. Two responses:

I argued at length against Jordan-is-Palestine back when that was a live issue. See my full-scale article on this issue from 1988 at "Is Jordan Palestine?" and a shorter one from two years later at "President Arafat? [and the Jordan-Is-Palestine Issue]." My views have not changed in the interim decades - I remain opposed to this gambit for all the reasons expressed there.
My idea in the above column is that Jordan - the Hashemites in particular - rule the Palestinians, not the reverse. And the same goes for Egypt, obviously. Call it, if you will, Palestine-is-Jordan.

Other readers have asked what implications the Jordan-Egypt scenario has for Israeilis living on the West Bank - specifically, does it mean their forced evacuation as happened to their counterparts in Gaza? No, and again two points:

The boundaries between Israel and the West Bank are more fluid than those between Israel and Gaza. I assume they would not return to those that existed in 1967.
My idea concerns the Israeli government not ruling the Palestinian population; it says nothing about control of territory.

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The Predictable Palestinian Propaganda Ploy

2009-01-19T16:49:00.000-08:00

The successful lies of Dr. Hanan Ashwari epitomize the (most recent) Palestinian victory in the Gaza propaganda sweepstakes. Fox News uses her regularly to provide the Palestinian side of “fair and balanced.” This longtime PLO spokeswoman, of course, is anything but. She harangues the audience with emotional and outrageous untruths, with nary a criticism. The interviewers, it seems, go mute in the face of such passionate, well-spoken English from the West Bank.

Fox’s Geraldo Rivera has little capacity for critical thinking or maintaining control of his interview. He does, however show maximal respect for any and all positions expounded, no matter how fanatical or obnoxious. Thus, when Ashwari claims dismissively that Hamas has sent over to Israel only some 400 handmade pipes without explosive heads (and not a single rocket, apparently), Geraldo sits gaping at her clear intellectual superiority. He does not mention the over 5,000 rockets launched over the last three years, nor the more advanced long-range Grad missiles from Syria and Iran that can reach over 800,000 of Israel’s southern population.

When Ashwari goes on to claim, with a perfectly straight face, that Israel, in the first 60 seconds of its attacks on Hamas, laid down 400 bombs on Gaza – hyperbole that only mental gymnasts of Ashwari’s caliber can achieve – Geraldo’s face remains just as straight. How could a few pipes compare to the bombs of the fourth most powerful army in the world? Geraldo has no answer.

When Geraldo does gamely suggest that Hamas locates its rockets and armaments in civilian areas, Ashwari dismissively claims her host is talking nonsense. That’s old Israeli propaganda, of course. Never mind the secondary explosions continually evident in Israeli Air Force videos. Hamas and Hezbollah have long used this technique to both hide weapons and dissuade Israeli attacks. Ashwari knows this as well as any military analyst who has ever dealt with the Middle East. (Even an Iranian newspaper reported on this habit.) 1

A series of other lies go unchallenged. Ashwari claims that 30% of the casualties in Gaza are children, a figure that contradicts even Hamas’ exaggerated claims. She argues that the Israelis’ pinpoint bombing is unconscionable when compared with Hamas’ launching of ‘blind’ rockets into civilian areas. She rails against the number of Palestinian casualties. Again, there is no mention of the fact that Hamas makes no provision for civilian bomb shelters (though they devote many resources to digging tunnels), in the barbaric hope that collateral civilian casualties will ensure continued propaganda victories.

By contrast, Gregg Jarrett of Fox News shows how good interview journalism is done. In his recent interview with a representative of the “Arab Side,” he was forced to continually interrupt his guest to show untrue, fallacious and incorrect were her claims. When the guest accused Jarrett of knowing nothing about Gaza, since he had obviously never been there, Jarrett quietly reminds his presumptuous interviewee that he had indeed spent time in Gaza, and knew it well. Kudos to Jarrett – there is no moral or journalistic reason to allow unadulterated propaganda to abuse our television channels. Geraldo could learn something from his colleague.2

1 Hamas Hiding Forces in Nurseries and Hospitals

2 Eye on The World: Video: Gregg Jarrett cuts off Palestinian mouthpiece Diana Buttu

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Published in Muslim World Today (Jan. 30, 2009)

Fortuitous?

2009-01-15T13:09:00.000-08:00

Is it possible there is a reason why Israel put-off hitting back at Hamas—and their firing of 5,000 rockets and mortars into southern Israel—until recently?

Certainly, Israel’s ongoing and unambiguous destruction of the Hamas threat has put Hezbollah rocketeers to the north, still crowing about the inconclusive 2006 Lebanon War, on notice. If they step out of line again, they too will be eliminated.

As a fortuitous addition to this demonstrable deterrence, might Israel choose the coming days before President-elect Obama’s forthcoming inauguration to settle the Iranian question?

Perhaps, conveniently-leaked news of President Bush’s refusal to supply Israel with crucial bunker-buster bombs may just be the kind of calming diversion the Iranians need to dumb down their defenses.

Before an unknown Obama arises, and in the last few days of a uniquely supportive (but waning) Bush, perhaps fate has Iran’s nuclear facilities in her crosshair.

It will not be long before we will know whether history is indeed in the making.

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The Exquisite Irrelevance of Proportionality

2009-01-06T17:32:00.000-08:00

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and assorted other world leaders have roundly condemned Israel’s ‘disproportionate’ use of force in Gaza. Pandering to those who elevate Hamas’ unprovoked civilian targeting to a higher moral plane than Israel’s defensive response, blaming Israel seems (once again) to be the politics du jour on the Continent.

Since Hamas took power in January 2006, more than 5,000 rockets (as well as mortars) have been fired at exclusively civilian areas in southern Israel, home to more than 800,000 people. This bombardment followed Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and settlers from all of the territory.

Should Israel thus be justified in sending the equivalent of 5,000 rockets into Gaza’s civilian areas? If so, should Israel be condemned if its reciprocity happens to be more accurate and lethal? Surely far more casualties would have resulted from such a reciprocal approach than from Israel’s pinpoint and selective strikes against overwhelmingly military targets. Is it in anyway rational or objective to blame Israel for Hamas’ perverse penchant for locating its ammunition dumps, rocket factories and military installations in mosques, schools, hospitals and apartment buildings?

By Algerian estimates, up to 700,000 civilians were killed during the eight year French-Algerian War, a war fought over exclusively North African land (18,000 French are also believed to have died). Russia decimated Chechnya during that republic’s attempt to break away from Mother Russia, resulting in between 100,000 to 200,000 civilian fatalities in three years (Russian casualties were reported to be 5,500). In the early 1950’s the British Army put down the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya – over 10,000 were killed, with few British casualties.

During the Second World War, Germany hit Britain with a barrage of rockets (similar, as Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has recently pointed out, to the “blind” and erratic rockets of Hamas). In response, the British bombed the baroque city of Dresden to smithereens; the ensuing firestorm caused between 25,000 to 45,000 (mostly civilian) casualties in two nights. Was this more ‘proportional’ than Israel’s response? Is Hamas any less intent on destroying Israel than Hitler was England?

Our history books are replete with contemporary examples of extravagant disproportionality in response to terrorism and acts of war. When it is not Israel that is doing the responding, the latitude granted is comparatively unlimited.

Certainly, Israel firing a proportional 5,000 rockets into Gaza’s urban areas could result in tens of thousands of civilian deaths (a far cry from the current few-hundred, mainly military casualties). Alternatively, in exchange for fewer casualties, perhaps Israel’s critics would prefer the air force to drop 5,000 bombs on power plants, waterworks, bridges, factories and offices? Gaza would in that event descend into chaos and barbaric destruction. Is it so reprehensible for Israel to concentrate – and to do so successfully – on military installations, arms caches, smuggling tunnels and terrorist operatives and rocketeers? Does not the reprehensibility lie with Hamas, who cynically ensures and exploits civilian casualties to further their own eliminationist ends?

What’s more – as Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz has recently pointed out – Israel’s actions (unlike those of the French, the Russians, and the British above) do not even violate the ‘proportionality’ standard trumpeted by Israel’s critics. According to Dershowitz:

“First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian. Second, proportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk of civilian death and the intentions of those targeting civilians…”

Imagine Paris, London, or Moscow being bombarded with hundreds of missiles, and their leaders taking over six months to respond. If anything, by historical standards, Israel’s leaders have been tardy, negligent and far too dependent on the soft power of negotiation. If anything, Israel is too proportionate in its application of its vastly superior fire-power.

Where were the concerned world’s calls for proportionality during the bombardment of southern Israel with 5,000 Gazan rockets? I don’t recall demonstrations in conscience-stricken European capitals demanding a quid pro quo. Where are the protests condemning the seemingly endless Muslim-on-Muslim violence we have witnessed on nearly every continent? If the charter of Hamas – who rules by both fear and, perhaps more sadly, admiration – explicitly calls for the elimination of Israel, is it expedient to validate those goals by playing politics, ala Jimmy Carter? When Hamas ignores all criticism and all calls for moderation, sympathetic expressions from the international press seem not to be in any way muted.

Perhaps the current barrage of calls to “stop the war” is a little too late, a little too selective. Perhaps the callers should have been (even minimally) active over the last three years, during the 5,000 rocket attacks. Clearly, they were otherwise occupied.

There is an infinitely simplistic solution to this conflict. Hamas must permanently ensure no rocket attacks on or suicide bombings in Israel; release the kidnapped Gilad Shalit; and destroy all Gaza’s smuggling tunnels. In return, Israel must open the territory’s borders to all and everything except armaments and known terrorists, monitored jointly by Israel and impartial international parties. Then, both countries can go about the peaceful business of enhancing the lives of their respective citizens, rather than the destruction of the others’.

Of course, this solution is far too obvious, transparent and peaceful for Hamas, committed as it is to the ongoing Jihadist destruction of Israel above all else. It is far too pragmatic and balanced for Israel’s agenda-driven detractors in Europe. And it is far too risky and modern for current Middle Eastern governments, schooled as they are in propaganda and scape-goating.

As a result, we have war. As I understand it, no war ends until one side convincingly wins or loses. Until Hamas is unambiguously persuaded that its holding of Gaza hostage is counterproductive, that its choice of war rather than civil advancement is going to be its death knell, no cease fire, no calls for proportionality, are going to accomplish anything. Except, of course, satisfying the insatiable hypocrisy of the zealots of ‘proportionality.’

Disproportionate Israeli Humanitarian Aid to Gaza (Andy McCarthy)

Israel’s Policy is Perfectly ‘Proportionate’ (Alan M. Dershowitz)

The Three-State Option (John R. Bolton)

Gaza Solution is in the hands of Palestinians (Tawfik Hamid)

What Hamas Wants (Clifford D. May)

http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/israel_s_actions_are_lawful

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123128827234659279.html

"War is Hell."1

Let Hamas terrorists who choose the path of war bear full responsibility for the hell that follows.

"No legal right shall spring from a wrong."2

"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children... We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."3

¹General Sherman, June 19, 1879.
²Judge Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, "Justice in International Law," 1994.
³Golda Meir, former Israeli Prime Minister, 1972.

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Now, About That "Proportionality" by Ruth R. Wisse

"Moral Clarity in Gaza" by Charles Krauthammer

2009-01-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

We have all been presented, by the various media, with articles and discussions concerning proportionality, morality and blame, even if no solutions are usually forthcoming.

Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer, a doyen of Washington and New York columnists and commentators, is erudite, objective and clear and had written a short yet most relevant and appropriate review of the current war in Gaza.

Moral Clarity in Gaza
By Charles Krauthammer January 2, 2009

Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.-- Associated Press, Dec. 27

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage -- or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb -- will kill large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.

For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. The religion of Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous. And deeply perverse, such as the Hamas TV children's program in which an adorable live-action Palestinian Mickey Mouse is beaten to death by an Israeli (then replaced by his more militant cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who vows to continue on Mickey's path to martyrdom).

At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible -- also on both sides. It's a recurring theme. Israel gave similar warnings to Southern Lebanese villagers before attacking Hezbollah in the Lebanon war of 2006. The Israelis did this knowing it would lose for them the element of surprise and cost the lives of their own soldiers.

That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal clarity regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective in Gaza -- peace: the calm, open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005. Doing something never done by the Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers of Palestine, the Israelis gave the Palestinians their first sovereign territory ever in Gaza.

What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin building the state that is supposedly their great national aim? No. No roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at all. The flourishing greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and abandoned. Instead, Gaza's Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their resources to turning it into a terror base -- importing weapons, training terrorists, building tunnels with which to kidnap Israelis on the other side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.

The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There's only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel's very existence.

Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the inevitable civilian casualties. Bring down the world's opprobrium on Israel. Force it into an untenable cease-fire -- exactly as happened in Lebanon. Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next round. Perpetual war. Since its raison d'etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.

Israel's only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza withdrawal. The unpardonable strategic error of its architect, Ariel Sharon, was not the withdrawal itself but the failure to immediately establish a deterrence regime under which no violence would be tolerated after the removal of any and all Israeli presence -- the ostensible justification for previous Palestinian attacks. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire, implicitly acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.

Hamas's rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire (during which the rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave Israel a rare opportunity to establish the norm it should have insisted upon three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping, no acts of war. As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring cease-fire. If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost yet another war. The question is whether Israel still retains the nerve -- and the moral self-assurance -- to win.

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"Moral Clarity in Gaza" by Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post)

Gilad Shalit: 900 days in a Gaza Prison

2008-12-30T15:46:00.000-08:00

A series of boats, stocked with reporters and (on second thought) presumed medical and food supplies have plied the waters of the Gaza coast, hoping to provoke a strong Israeli reaction. The ongoing blockade by Israel’s small but efficient navy prevents shipments of TNT, rockets, bombs, guns, ammunition and assorted other war/terrorism materials from reaching Hamas and their full time Jihadists. Israel’s detractors call Gaza a “jail” in turn.

Whether these boats are stopped or allowed through, their wake of publicity churns through the world’s media at such a rate that coverage of the ongoing tragedies in Congo and Darfur, among others, appear as mere oversights, as footnotes to the real story: namely, the Palestinian victims of Israel’s brutish hand.

Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped on June 25, 2006 by Hamas gunmen inside Israel. He has been a pawn ever since: Hamas demands the release of over 1,400 murderers, terrorists and the like for Shalit’s return, a price that is clearly too dear for (even) Israel to pragmatically consider.

Shalit’s family should take a page from Hamas’ propaganda machine, which—along with those of Hezbollah and the PLO under the deceased Yasir Arafat—have been the world’s most effective propaganda worldwide since the end of the KGB (indeed, the KGB taught Arafat his most effective propaganda tools). The Shalits should charter a boat and sail into Gaza, with a similar horde of journalists and videographers, to demand the release of Gilad. They should call loudly to meet with Hamas, with the UN representatives in Gaza, as well as with all the various Gaza clan leaders. Whether ignored or imprisoned, they would inspire the world’s sympathy—no jail could long hold the pleading parents of young Gilad Shalit. Either way, a propaganda coup.

Well worthy of consideration, no?

Hamas parades mock Gilad Shalit before crowd of thousands in Gaza:

'Gaza-bound Iranian ship has hidden agenda' (Jerusalem Post)

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Green Christmas Gifts

2008-12-24T11:04:00.000-08:00

What if President Bush had the opportunity to grant the free world a final Christmas gift: 10 cruise missiles for the world’s 10 worst dictators, terrorists and/or murderers?

I would imagine Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea’s maniacal Kim Jong-il, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal (currently ensconced in Damascus), Sudan’s Omar Hasan al-Bashir, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and even Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, along with assorted others, would all fit the bill snuggly.

Not that I’m suggesting he do so – G-d forbid, that would be oh so politically incorrect. Imagine the embarrassment! How our State Department would squirm under reprimand by Putin and Hu Jintao, et al.

The appalling impossibility of ethical preemption: Bush would never get credit for all the murder and tyranny that would not arise due to his generous gift. Only the blame, and he certainly has enough of that – a little more won’t hurt, I’m sure.

Indeed, the opportunity is precious. By cleaning up some toxic waste the world would not miss, Bush would take all the blame; we’ll call it misguided Texan chivalry or naïve impetuousness. President-elect Obama could then thoroughly denounce such dastardly actions: a new president and government in January could credibly relinquish responsibility for these modest indiscretions and refresh our pledges to keep every genocidal dictator and murdering terrorist leader safe and warm in bed at night. Don’t worry: the demands of our new UN-style multicultural morality and our ACLU-inspired legal equalities will still be met!

Good cop, bad cop: it may just work, and what perfect timing to have a go at it. No one would (or could) blame Barack Hussein Obama, the vote and hope of the Third World. With the above tumors excised, 2009 would be a very good year, as Sinatra sings.

Not that I’m recommending such an outrageous course of action, an overdue bit of quid pro quo. With O.J. behind bars and my need for a rebalancing of the scales of justice temporarily abated, I can pass off my satisfaction with this plan as fantasy, as I’m sure much of the thinking world would as well.

Still, imagine if Bush would indulge us a little more – one last time.

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10 Rules for the Future: An Obama Suggestive

2008-12-17T16:39:00.000-08:00

Cap tax-deductible CEO remuneration at a maximum of 30 times the salary of that public company’s lowest paid worker. Thereabove, salaries will not be tax deductible as an operating expense for an employer. In addition, no bonuses (in cash or shares) for top management of a public company will be tax deductible if the company suffered losses by the end of the relevant year.
Limit the amount of airtime (on both public television and radio) eligible for advertiser tax deductions, to about 90 percent of the current level. Any advertising time above this level will not be tax deductible, reducing the cost-effectiveness of additional advertisements and helping to stem our country’s advertising epidemic.

By way of both suggestions 1 and 2, companies can allocate resources exactly as they wish. However, the government will cease to incentivize obviously counterproductive decisions.
Tax all raw materials, particularly oil and other energy products, according to a formula that factors in all of their indirect costs, including recycling, pollution and security impacts. The tax on oil, for example, will take into account global warming, other pollution, the use of the American military to provide a protective shield in the Middle East, and so on. Use the revenues from these taxes to tackle the country’s most urgent needs: reducing alternative energy costs, improving and extending incentive-based education, and reducing our national deficit.
Re-define the tax code: tax all workers at a flat 8 percent, bumping the rate to 18 percent and 28 percent for earnings over $80,000 and over $250,000, respectively (including capital gains). Create a standardized national sales tax of 8.8%. Abolish the inheritance tax, loopholes and all.

This simplified tax code will save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars by removing unnecessary accounting, audit, and tax collection fees, as well as reducing the costs of maintaining a large tax bureaucracy. In addition, it will ensure that all Americans, irrespective of income, contribute to the country and have a stake in its well-being.
Eliminate pork—and this is not a halal or kosher issue. Ban all unrelated and irrelevant earmarks in any budget vote. Establish Congressional sub-committees to vote on minor expenditures individually, ensuring that every line item is voted on and not advanced circumstantially by inclusion in larger, otherwise unrelated bills.
Implement a ‘Bare Bones’ universal healthcare program, fully covering only workers’ compensation and emergency healthcare, and including sensible co-pays for all other services. Allow private insurance plans to cover these additional and premium services as well. This “Bare Bones’ program (to be named in a more euphemistic manner) must be freely transferable from job to job and from state to state.
Require all penitentiaries to have two “tracks” for inmates: ‘bones only’ and ‘full service.’ All inmates are guaranteed only the minimum, ‘bones only’ services, rights, and opportunities—a basic, “one star” jail experience. If inmates want better food, recreation, education and facilities they must work in some manner to earn those rights and help re-pay the penal system for these additional luxuries. No better way exists for rehabilitation than this kind of incentive-based, pay-as-you-go system. As an added bonus, local manufacturers will be allowed to set up cost-effective, low-wage satellite factories in (or attached to) low security prisons.
Implement tort reform—finally. Allow judges and juries to charge a plaintiff (i.e., the initiator of a legal action) with all costs when they deem the action to be frivolous or based on avarice. Include a ‘three strikes’ approach to lawyers’ pursuit of frivolous lawsuits, after which one’s license to practice law is put on ice for a significant period.
Require naturalized citizens to pledge an unequivocal, demonstrable and written commitment to integrate into our broad society, accept the primacy of our laws and our Bill of Rights and Constitution, and agree to learn a minimum functioning quotient of the English language. Similarly, define more pragmatically the invitation to citizenship for individuals born in the USA to two non-citizen parents, and as well as those with familial relationships, to reduce abuse.
Include in the definition of “tolerance” the preventing of a vociferous minority from imposing its will on the majority; do not define our universal religion as political correctness and appeasing multiculturalism. Respect those “antediluvian” citizens who prefer to remain patriotic, religious, strong, independent, conservative, heterosexual and/or free.

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Mumbai Media Machinations

2008-12-01T13:02:00.000-08:00

Hypocrisy drips heavy from the broadcast towers of the Western media.

The tragedies in Mumbai set in stark relief the variation in media labels for those that kill Jews in Israel and those that kill innocents of other creeds in other places.

You will note that “militants” hardly exist in this horror, but “terrorists” abound. [1]

Will someone please stand up and explain to me the difference between a “militant” suicide bomber who incinerates a bus full of women and children in Jerusalem, and the Mumbai “terrorists?”

Why it is ‘militants’ who blow up schools and study centers in Israel and execute its students, while ‘terrorists’ are those who attack hotels in India? (Terrorists Paralyze India’s Business Capital)

My powers of discernment are clearly lacking—will the media please clarify for me whether Israeli victims are different, are less innocent, than the victims in India? If “terrorists” are those who intentionally seek out the murder of civilians, is there something less ‘civil’ about Israelis riding a bus to work, or studying at a school, or eating at a street-side restaurant?

Even when some of the victims are Jews, whether in Israel or Mumbai, the distinction emerges. Why are terrorists called terrorists in India, Beslan, Madrid, London and Bali — and not in Israel?

Perhaps the difference has nothing to do with the victims, but concerns the perpetrators instead. Are the ‘terrorists’ less sincere or less passionate than the ‘militants’— or vice versa? And yet, strikingly, all of these perpetrators are extremist Muslim Jihadists.

Interestingly, now that the rampage in Mumbai is receding from the media’s spotlight, attributions of blame are emerging. The “terrorists” are no longer amorphous, anonymous murderers; shocking no-one, they are now being identified as Pakistani and/or Muslim militants.

I have not yet seen a cogent differentiation between what constitutes a “militant” and what constitutes a “terrorist.” Is it only I who remains confused? Or is it possible that this double standard thrives on sympathies, not fact; arises out of prejudice, not truth; that it is the product of agenda driven politics and less than honest journalism?

Hide the Jews

“Americans, Britons and Israelis are being targeted by the terrorists” according to a proliferation of news reports (see also The Hunted)

You may (sadly) note that Jews are not anywhere noted as specifically “being targeted” in the news headlines. Yet it was the Jewish Chabad House — a religious center and community group set-up for all varieties of Jewish visitors — that was targeted. There are in fact more than 3300 such Chabad-Lubavitch institutions around the world. The center is apolitical with no formal association with Israel.

Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Bahai and Buddhist centers were not targeted.

The victims executed at the Chabad House were Jews, including Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka. What did their Jewish-ness have to do with Kashmir, with India-Pakistan relations, or with Muslim separatist ambitions? Or even, for that matter, with the “liberation of Palestine?” Jews were the target, not the Israeli Consulate. [2]

The answer remains chilling: nothing. The fact is that the Jews are the only ethnic or religious group that is consistently targeted by terrorists worldwide, irrespective of where they live, how religious or irreligious they are, or how patriotic or apolitical they may be. Whether they are children or elderly, Jews remain the world’s most sought-after terrorist trophies because they happen to share the same invisible genetic source, the same historical inheritance.

Yet the media chooses to ignore what these brainwashed terrorists are making clear and evident in their every action — that it is the Jews who are the preferred target.[3] The Mumbai terrorists’ separation of Jews (or Americans or Britons, for that matter) from the rest of the hostages for execution is a grim reminder of the Holocaust, of the Entebbe hijacking, and the Munich Olympic massacre. And such reminders are not to be ignored.

The Importance of Getting It Right

The media’s coverage of these horrors need not be suffused with appeasement. Victims should not be confused with perpetrators: all the murders are all needless tragedies. All those who did the killing are equally indefensible. Only when the media (and Western societies in general) see—starkly—that difference, will we be able to successfully protect our freedom and our liberty.[4]

Obfuscating the truth may be politically correct or simply incompetent reporting, but it does little to explain the mindset of these killers or the intentions of their handlers. And until we understand this, the immovable intentions of these Islamic radicals, our answer to their challenge will remain tenuous and out of reach.

Footnotes:

1. A particularly telling example comes from the UK’s Independent, perhaps the most anti-Israel major newspaper in the West.

2. In 2007, the FBI released its annual 2007 hate crime reports. Of the total 1,628 victims of anti-religious hate crimes, 69.2% were Jewish and 8.7% were Muslim. There were at least 40 times more stories last year about Islamophobia than about anti-Semitism. Investigative Project on Terrorism "They're Winning" by Steve Emerson:

3. Indian Doctors Shocked at Hostages' Torture:

4."It's all very well for us to say Islam has nothing to do with extremism and terrorism. We can go on deluding ourselves these psychopaths do not represent us...""The great religion that preaches and celebrates universal brotherhood, equality of men and peace and justice for all has been hijacked by a demented, miniscule minority. And, as my friend says, only Muslims can solve this problem. Only Muslims can confront these anarchists in their midst...""Only they can get their faith freed from the clutches of extremism. This is no time to hide. It's time to stand up and speak out. For the terrorists will continue to speak on our behalf" unless we do speak up. "This is no time for silence. Enough is enough!" "No Time to Hide for Muslims" by Aijaz Zaka Syed:

Links to Related Articles:
"Mumbai and the Chabad Movement" by Lucette Lagnado (WSJ, Dec. 4, 2008)
"If this isn't terrorism, what is?" by Tom Gross (WSJ, Dec. 2, 2008)
"For most of the Mumbai siege, the BBC went out of its way to avoid reporting that the Jewish community center was one of the seven targets. At one point viewers were told that "an office building" had been targeted (referring to the Jewish center as such). Meanwhile - perhaps even more disgracefully - a New York Times report on the last day of the siege stated: "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."
Background: A Rich history now stained with blood" by Shalva Weil (The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 30, 2008)

Breath of the Beast

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"The Jihadi as Nazi, from 9/11 to Mumbai" by Bradley Burston (Ha'aretz, Dec. 3, 2008)

Targeting Jews - Again by David A. Harris (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 8, 2008)

Pirates’ Heaven

2008-11-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

Off Somalia’s vast Indian Ocean coastline, a set of entrepreneurial Somalis have found gainful employment in one of the world’s most impoverished settings. The Horn of Africa is the setting for a latter day “Barbary Pirates,” where ragtag groups equipped with GPS devices, rocket-propelled grenades and assorted machine guns roam at will, boarding supertankers and cargo vessels at a rate of about two per week. As a result, some 15 dormant ships are now berthed in lawless yet booming Somali ports.

Perhaps oil-thirsty America can bid for some of those oil-filled supertankers on the cheap and quietly fill our strategic oil reserve. Call it pragmatic politics if you will – an attempt to counter-balance the oil-slicked Saudi and Iranian financing of Hamas, Hezbollah and Tablighi Jamaat, the group at the forefront of the Islamic missionary and revival movement.

I write in all seriousness. Media reports about the globe’s latest pirates’ haven outline the infuriating helplessness of international authorities. In 1805, the U.S. Marines decimated the slew of pirate havens along "the shores of Tripoli,” as the famous song goes. Why not take direction from a 200 year old success?

This is not a scenario that lends itself to Obama-like negotiation – let’s keep that delicacy for our irascible friends Putin, Ahmadinejad and Chavez, etc. Instead, a NATO Navy assemblage supplemented by our Asian allies could implement some effective 19th century policies. All suspicious boats in the Horn of Africa area will be boarded and searched for weapons; those offering resistance will be ignominiously sent to Davy Jones’ locker. Other boats found with weapons will preferably be destroyed, with pirates summarily turned over to the authorities in the semi-autonomous Puntland region – the only effective government in the country – for long term imprisonment. To ensure compliance – after all, it seems some local officials have been taking a cut of pirate ransoms – NATO members could tangle the prospect of recognition before the leaders of this breakaway territory. What’s more, the shipping and insurance industries relevant to the area could be taxed modestly to cover a prison fee, say $100 per month per prisoner. This sorely needed foreign exchange will ensure the Puntland authorities willing compliance in keeping the pirates under lock-and-key as a permanent disincentive to budding bandits.

It should not be long before these remaining entrepreneurs of the sea find alternative employment.

Problem solved.

Now back to the cheap oil tankers?

“Pirates’ Delight” Wall Street Journal (Nov. 19, 2008)
“Pirates Exploit Confusion About International Law” Wall Street Journal (Nov. 19, 2008)
“Somali pirates turn villages into boomtowns” The Associated Press (Nov. 19, 2008)
Somali Islamists 'hunt pirates' BBC News (Nov. 21, 2008)
"How To Deal With Pirates" by Michael B. Oren Wall Street Journal (Nov.22-23, 2008)

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Thomas L. Friedman (of The New York Times) on Energy

2008-11-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

Friedman writes eloquently of a seemingly radical yet eminently sensible and largely ignored concept that could potentialize the most important issues of our day:

- immediate energy conservation (oil)
- sizable development of alternative sources
- reduce oil funding to Jihadist/terrorism supporting countries
- directly reduce funding thereby for terrorist organizations
- reduction of our national debt and our negative balance of payments
- reduction of targeted taxes for all of America’s citizens
- ultimate reduction in the price of gasoline at the pump

Below Friedman’s recent article I provide a link to a related article I wrote some time ago on the same crucial solution for our time. Enjoy.

“Coulda, woulda, shoulda” by Thomas L. Friedman The New York Times: November 14, 2007

“Forcing the Oil Price Lower” by Leslie J. Sacks August 25, 2008

“The world is still flat” by Ben Naparstek The International Jerusalem Post: October 24-30, 2008, a review of Friedman’s latest book:

Leaving Chicago

2008-11-03T11:34:00.001-08:00

A most interesting report from CBS2Chicago.com informs us that during the recent summer months (May 26th - September 1st, 2008), more Americans were shot and killed in Chicago (an estimate of 125) than in the whole of war-torn Iraq (65 U.S. soldiers). This astounding statistic begs the question:

When will we hear a strident call emerging from the bowels of the anti-war machine of Harry Reid and his Democrat minions for America to immediately withdraw from Obama's hometown of Chicago? We (of course) just can't abide the wasted lives, the unnecessary deaths – just as we cannot in Iraq.

Harry Reid, you showed your mettle with Iraq; now show us the way out of Chicago. Then, perhaps, we could review our continuing occupation of Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, New Orleans, St. Louis...

Let's withdraw while we can.

Obama "Heavy"

2008-10-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

Obama "lite" was all about messianic change - equality, fraternity and perpetual hope for all of America's citizens and non-citizens.

Now - courtesy of the financial crisis - we are getting a large dose of Obama "heavy:" bigger government and increased taxes for the wealthy. A perfect ploy to rustle up votes amongst the masses. Could Obama have been (re-)skimming through Karl Marx on his sojourn from sunny Hawaii to Chicago's South Side?

Obama seems to sincerely want to improve the lot of America's poor and its middle class. In doing so, he will not be able to prevent spreading the government's largesse to those who prefer laziness or stasis to hard work and dynamism, who prefer handouts to sweating up the success ladder like the many immigrant minorities that pass by America's poor with remarkable speed. What's more, he cannot prevent illegal immigrants and incarcerated criminals from sharing in the booty as well.

Obama clearly thrives on the adulation of the crowd, the endless accolades of the majority. Eva Peron did, as does Chavez - this seems to be the essential commonality among populist power brokers, particularly those of the left.

Obama believes, it seems, that America's capitalistic pot is static in size and structure. Tax the wealthy, spread those riches amongst the poor and voila, equality is born again. And the magician gets roses strewn in his every path for his magnificent sleight of hand.

Except that much of this fungible cash, these gifts from the god(s), will be used for TVs, for consumer items and ephemeral pleasures. They will ultimately end up in the coffers of many Chinese exporters and Asian factories, with governments who compete aggressively with us and - in the case of the Chinese - who wish us ill.

Moreover, the wealthy will transfer much of their remaining wealth to lower tax havens and countries (most of the rest of the world by now); they will be less able or motivated to open factories, invest in new projects and build American enterprises. Jobs will be lost rather than gained; salaries too will be compromised. It is a law of simple economic gravity - reduce the economic pot at the top end and this reduction will flow downwards, in a very democratic fashion.

And so the opportunities of advancement, of increased wages, bonuses and jobs for the poor and the middle classes will be substantially reduced, replaced by big government handouts, given even to those 40% of Americans who do not pay income taxes. [By contrast, it is often thought - in non-socialist circles, at least - that the most effective way to engineer responsible and participatory citizenship of all America's peoples would be to tax these 40 percent by a token amount, from 5 to 7.5%. Increased pensions, unemployment and medical insurance could be the state's side of the quid pro quo.]

Initially, Obama's popularity will soar: most people, like politicians, are short-term actors: they evaluate based only on their next week or month, not their next year or decade. And yet America's culture of entrepreneurship, her hard won individuality and success will suffer. We will become more like Old and Eastern Europe just as they both race to become like the America of old - a place where small government facilitated big individuals, where the welfare state was supplanted by democratic opportunity and capitalistic inventiveness. This was the New World where hard work could win anybody a stake in the American dream.

Obama knows better than anyone how to appeal to the masses, how to promise nirvana, how to spin an enticing web of popularity. He is a political master, a genius in grassroots motivation and organizational base building. He is the ultimate populist.

I fear though, that in spite of his inordinate intelligence, he does not yet get "Economics 101." I fear he denies the inevitable and harsh differences between all of us, including - perhaps most dangerously - the difference between America and those countries and dictators who would love to see the end of our freedoms and the demise of our greatness.

I fear we will become more like Old Europe - passive, socialist, recessive and cowardly. Ironically, large swaths of Old Europe and Eastern Europe are now trying to be more like us. They are reducing taxes, controlling big government, inspiring hard work and entrepreneurship. The Eastern Europeans in particular have learnt well history's harsh lessons of socialism, curtailment of freedoms and economic decay.

They get it; Obama does not.

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Hunter to Hunted

2008-10-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

As Saturday Night Live and Tina Fey have most humorously confirmed, Sarah Palin looked out every morning from her Alaskan home and could see Russia. What they failed to conversely postulate was that Obama likely looked out every morning of his remarkably well planned career and instead saw the White House, clearly illuminated and in perfect focus. Saturday Night Live has thus elucidated for the American voter a simple choice; and one they did not quite intend.

Modern Solution for Ancient Lands – Regeneration of the Biblical Dead Sea

2008-10-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

Amid the constant turmoil and angst boiling over in Israel and the West Bank, at the center of the Middle East, lies the Dead Sea. [3] This salt-laden desert sea is rapidly diminishing in size as its source, the Jordan River, dries up: the Syrians (via the Yarmuk, a source for the Jordan), Israelis and Jordanians all draw an ever-increasing amount of water from this biblical tributary. [1]

We think of the Dead Sea as a tourist haven for spa treatments and beauty products, as a relief for psoriasis sufferers; we know about its amazing buoyancy and the factories mining its esoteric salts (its salt concentration is about 33%, compared to 3% in the Mediterranean).

What we don’t know is that this area of dangerously diminishing returns may very well provide a synergistic solution to the region’s major political, economic and environmental problems. A number of large-scale infrastructure projects - including the construction of a canal and nuclear power and desalinization plants - have the potential to transform this “dead” area into a source of life and an inspiration to all mankind. Though daunting, big problems generally require big solutions.

Cutting a 112 mile-long canal north from the Red Sea - starting at Israel’s and Jordan’s southernmost ports - to the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, has long been cast as a fanciful project, considered either too expensive or too fraught with insurmountable political barriers. Yet it is in reality eminently practical, feasible and cost effective, and there is plenty of private and governmental financing around if the will of decision-makers in both Jordan and Israel can be joined. [2] [5]

Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, formalized the idea of a hydropower canal connecting the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea in his 1920 book The Old New Land (Altneuland), writing already then that the 1300 foot drop would generate critical hydroelectric power. [4]

The Red Sea canal is a decades-old idea that has been recently reinvigorated by one of the world’s richest people, Israeli real estate mogul Yitzhak Tshuva, the current owner of New York’s Plaza Hotel. He describes a strip of blue water flowing 100 miles through the desert, alongside high speed trains, with waterfalls surrounded by parks and luxury hotels, bringing Israelis and Arabs together in a thriving free-trade zone. If built, this “Valley of Peace” will be the most dramatic single change ever made to the landscape of the Holy Land, employing hundreds of thousands on both sides of the border, in the bargain. [7]

The introduction of substantial quantities of (albeit salt) water into this arid area would allow additional water to percolate slowly down into its depleted aquifers, losing much of its salinity in the process. Ground water resources for the West Bank, Jordan and Israel would be crucially replenished, as well as substantial quantities of fresh water for agriculture, a source of much argument and bickering between the parties. What’s more, the diminishing Dead Sea would refill, sustaining its healing powers and its natural bounty.

The height difference between the Red and the Dead Seas could be utilized hydrostatically to further desalinate the incoming seawater as well as creating enough hydroelectric power not only to drive all the pumping stations needed for the project, but also to supply electricity to the surrounding urban and industrial areas.

As an essential complement to this project, nuclear power plants should be built as a joint-venture between Jordan and Israel, including multiple concrete and steel shells sufficiently hardened to withstand any missiles, rockets or targeted bombs. The technology exists to build just such a safe and impermeable facility, which could draw on ample supplies of saltwater for its cooling requirements.

Based far from major population centers, modern nuclear power could safely supply enough electricity to cover much of the power needs of Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel, thereby ensuring the region’s strong and permanent commitment to this project’s enduring success. With such a powerful asset on hand, mutual self-interest would cut through politics and promote the safety, security and longevity of the project. No-one apart from renegade terrorists would attempt to kill the goose that lays these golden eggs. And Israel and Jordan are both well capable of cooperatively securing the area.

Finally, huge desalinization plants for fresh water should be built on the shores of the then-full Dead Sea, drawing on cheap excess electricity (especially at night) from the nuclear power plants. The primary water resources of the region - namely The Sea of Galilee and the Yarmuk and Jordan Rivers - are mostly depleted, and the area is desperately short of water for its growing urban populations, its industries and its agriculture. Fish ponds, recreational areas, luxury hotels and artificial lakes would be developed. With shared Israeli technology, the desert could bloom again, uplifting the whole region and improving dramatically the standard of living for all its peoples, ushering in peace, stability and an economic miracle as all parties develop an irrefutable stake in and support for the success of this project. [8]

This is the glue that will bind these warring and antagonistic parties. This is the stuff our dreams should be made of: water, electricity and tourism will replace suicide bombers and hate-filled propaganda. French President Nicolas Sarkozy lauded this so called “Peace Canal” idea during his recent trip to Israel, as did Saudi Prince bin-Talal. King Abdullah, the leader of Jordan, already supports a different version of the plan. [6]

With peace and common interests thereby initiated, tourism would thrive, from Jordan’s unrivaled ruins of Petra to Bethlehem on the West Bank, from Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa to the church at Capernaum, where Jesus preached and fed his disciples on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. A new renaissance would be ushered in as tens of million of tourists who annually visit the Eiffel Tower and the Coliseum drift eastwards across the Mediterranean to this unique and biblical land, the historical crossroads of the world’s major religions and its divided cultures, and the center, seemingly, of its current problems.

And now also, clearly, at the core of its potential solution.

VALLEY OF PEACE

Footnotes:
[1] In the 1930s the inflow of fresh water from the Jordan River (about 1300 million cubic meters per year) equaled the rate of evaporation. Today the inflow is less than a third of that due to upstream diversion. Dead Sea Canal.

The Friends of the Earth Middle East talk of the Jordan River as becoming “little more than an open sewage channel.” In what seems to be a particular exaggeration they claim only 5% of the Jordan’s flow reaches the Dead Sea. Red Sea Canal plan "threat"

The Dead Sea’s water level has dropped some 82 feet over the past century, reducing its surface area considerably at the same time. Sink holes have started to appear in the area.
Diverting Red Sea to Save Dead Sea Could Create Environmental Crisis.

[2] Earlier this year, the World Bank finished a series of public hearings on a Red Sea Canal plan. The say the cost would be U.S. $5 billion, but are concerned with two threats: first, earthquakes may flood the valley with seawater, thus polluting the groundwater as well; and second, mixing of the Dead and Red Sea waters may produce unknown results. They are projected to be starting a U.S. $15 million feasibility study this month.
Red Sea Canal plan "threat"

Diverting Red Sea to Save Dead Sea Could Create Environmental Crisis
William Allen proposed in 1855 a canal-waterway that would connect the three bodies of water bordering the Holy Land, namely the Mediterranean, the Dead and the Red Seas. He believed at the time that it would be cheaper than the projected Suez Canal.
The Red Sea and the Mediterranean Dead Sea Canals Project

[3] A million years ago or so a major earthquake created the Syrian-African Rift Valley stretching through the Red Sea on into Africa and its lakes in Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi. The Dead Sea sank deep into the valley and was deprived of its natural outflow to the sea. Dead Sea Canal

[4] The 1300-foot drop would also be suitable for reverse osmosis desalination, a process that uses the force of the drop to push seawater through an artificial membrane creating even more fresh water.
Dead Sea Canal

[5] Others have postulated a canal between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Galilee, whereby the “potential difference” in height between these two seas would be converted to energy by means of a hydroelectric station. The energy this produced would be further used to desalinate the seawater. Building the Wrong Canal

[6] Jordan is mulling over a cheaper alternative to the Red Sea – Dead Sea Canal. They are considering building a desalination plant in Aqaba, on the Red Sea shore and pumping the water through pipes to Amman, the capital. An Alternative to the Red-Dead Canal. Furthermore, if the canal were to be realized they prefer it to be located on their side of the border with Israel, which is sure to be a “political football.” Jordan mulling cheaper alternative to Red Sea-Dead Sea canal

[7] Tshuva said he and other leading Israel financiers could foot the entire bill for the canal, desalination plants and hydroelectric installations (he does not talk of nuclear power plants). He talked of a cost of some $3.3 billion, which by some counts seems too conservative. The total project, according to Tshuva, could create as many as 200,000 hotel rooms and a million much needed jobs. Israeli billionaire pushes for Red Sea-Dead Sea canal

http://mideastpeace.meetup.com/33/messages/boards/thread/4726385

[8] An alternative to the Red-Dead Sea Canal has been proposed. Called the “Peace Canal”, this is an international project for conveying water from Turkey via Syria and the Golan Heights, providing fresh water solutions for Syria, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The plan would bring 2-3 billion cubic meters of water per annum, more than that which Israel and the PNA currently use every year. The energy generated by the fall in height down to the northern Jordan River (that feeds into the Sea of Galilee) would be used to transport the water along the 450-mile route. The overflow not needed by the participants would be used to refill the Dead Sea. Apart from reviving the Jordan River, the Israelis would restock the mountain and coastal aquifers underlying both Israel and the PNA. The battle over water resources is one of the main impediments to resolving the Middle East conflict and may now potentially be a primary solution. The economic benefits will also reduce the chances of another failed peace agreement, bringing the intractable Syrians on board as well. Israeli Paper Reports Israel-Syria "Peace Canal" Proposal on Water Issue.

Posted on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/modern-solution-for-ancient-lands-%E2%80%93-regeneration-of-the-biblical-dead-sea-by-leslie-j-sacks/

Posted on NeoConservative Christian Right: http://nccr.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5F8571F504717D9D!2083.entry

Posted on Theta Healing DNA: http://thetahealingdna.com/2008/10/10/modern-solution-for-ancient-lands-%E2%80%93-regeneration-of-the-biblical-dead-sea-by-leslie-j-sacks/

Obama and Palin – A Match (Almost) Made in Heaven

2008-09-23T17:01:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is perfectly suited in the running for president. He has the ability to both energize and grow the grassroots base, to motivate voters with his superb eloquence and confidence. As a result, he has broken for all time the racial glass ceiling on viable presidential candidates, an accomplishment for which America should be grateful. He will, based on many current polls, quite likely succeed in his quest for the presidency.

On the other hand, Obama, according to a good portion of the country, is not yet experienced enough, and does not yet have the depth of judgment, to be president. Either way, perhaps the best argument for a McCain presidency is the (consummately American) end of divided government. Given the Democrats’ control of both houses of Congress, a Republican president will provide a semblance of proportional representation and help ensure the checks and balances that are so central to our vigorous democracy.

Interestingly, Sarah Palin--the focus of much of Obama’s current defensive attention--is an unusual case for America’s feminists. Ms. Palin has singlehandedly, in a matter of weeks, made the feminist movement largely defunct. Before then, much of the feminist movement was rooted in the left-wing: pro-abortion and anti-Republican, often animated by an anti-male, anti-religious fervor.

Palin is the opposite: simple, patriotic, both gun-toting and feminine (horrors!). She is from a small town, an outdoorswoman, with a union-card holding husband. She is committed to religion, family values and independence. She is certainly not the Dolce Gabbana-pants wearing, urbane intellectual from Greenwich Village or San Francisco, steeped in all-is-relative Harvard political correctness.

And yet, she has captured the media’s imagination and broken the (other) glass ceiling more effectively than any other woman to date. She has done so from primitive Alaska, small town Wasilla, with a family of five, happily married with conservative values – in short, she is an anathema to traditional feminists. That is why they hate and despise her. She stands for everything they are not and yet she has achieved everything they could not. And they will never forgive her for making them irrelevant, passé, an odd historical footnote.

Women have arrived – they are equal, they can and may indeed be Vice-President, lipstick and all. And who knows, maybe one day (God willing!) even president.

Posted on SlantRight.com: http://www.slantright.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1398

Posted on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/obama-and-palin-%E2%80%93-a-match-almost-made-in-heaven-by-leslie-j-sacks/

Forcing the Oil Price Lower

2008-08-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

As even American consumers are learning, oil is money; less well known is how this money feeds Saudi Arabia and its worldwide network of Madrasses, those fundamentalist schools propagating Islamic Radicalism. Oil money also underpins the Iranian regime and its active support of terrorism via Hamas and Hezbollah.

Paying five dollars per gallon versus four dollars per gallon channels an extra $100 billion of disposable income to these radical Islamist regimes, keeping them awash in even more petro-dollars for their many nefarious schemes.

Why don’t we pay ourselves that extra dollar, that extra 100 billion?

If we add a $1 tax for every gallon dispensed in the USA, then, counter-intuitively, the ultimate price of gas would in fact be forced to drop: First, the U.S. government would have an extra $150 billion with which to increase alternative energy funding, expand safe and environmentally-friendly oil and gas exploration, as well as nuclear and hydroelectric power stations; all crucial contributors to our vital energy independence. This windfall could further fund Social Security and Medicare and reduce income taxes and our national debt, thus endearing this revolutionary tax to Democrat and Republican consumers alike. Even with a $1 tax hike we would still be paying a third less per gallon than all of Europe. It’s the fairest of all taxes as one pays only for what one uses.

Alternatively, and perhaps more palatably for the American consumer, this gas tax could directly reduce sales or property taxes. Thus we would tax that which is detrimental to the environment and our society and give relief where it counts.

Second - and most importantly - this tax would discourage and depress domestic oil consumption substantially. The shock and size of the tax would likely produce a modest glut of oil worldwide, reducing the price of oil in world markets. This consequential fall in the price of oil would critically reduce by tens (and possibly hundreds) of billions of dollars the blood monies flowing to terrorist-supporting states; American coffers, on the other hand, would be filled instead. Ironically, then, some or all of the tax would effectively be paid by Iran and Saudi Arabia, by Venezuela and the OPEC cartel. The American consumer will thus be actively financing freedom instead of terror.

There has been little public discussion of this eminently rational project, truly an honest and elegant solution to arguably our nation’s most pressing concern. The myriad negative externalities associated with oil consumption, terror financing, higher military spending, environmental degradation, among others, should realistically be factored into the price of a gallon of gasoline. While difficult, it should not be impossible to sell this concept to the American public if the consumer understands that when the cost of terror is applied to the price of oil in the form of a transparent tax, billions of dollars will be removed from terror states and to be reinvested in our economy, our country and our energy independence. We will thereby reduce the ability of our enemies to blackmail us, to influence Washington and peddle their agendas worldwide. Call it a “redemption tax.”

Madrassas and terror organizations will run short of funds. Decreasing gasoline consumption with a concomitant increase in alternative energy production will further depress the price of oil, perhaps back to $3/gallon where we started, or even lower.

When gasoline is burnt it emits pollutants. Higher gas taxes as part of a broader carbon tax are the most direct and honest policy to address our environmental concerns. Moreover, the tax would reduce road congestion, gridlock and the inordinate waste of time most of us spend on the highways, quite possibly now costing us another 50 billion dollars or more in decreased productivity. Substantial reductions in road rage and frustration therapy would, I’m sure, be much appreciated by our psychological fraternity.

Consumption taxes are always better than income taxes; the latter discourage savings and investment. This direct tax, by common consensus, would be more favorable to economic growth, encouraging the search for gasoline substitutes and fuel-efficient cars, and more research and development spending on alternative fuels.

Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has called for higher gas taxes, noting, in one of his more lucid moments, “It’s a national security issue.” The gas tax is an efficient economic policy that is also an effective foreign policy. It will give America more clout as falling gas prices will tilt power and influence back toward the world’s democracies and away from the oil producing autocracies. Higher gas taxes may not be attractive. However, the alternatives are certainly far worse.

Finally we need to set a fixed floor price for gas - perhaps at say $100 per barrel - that guarantees to all gas as well as alternative fuel investors, researchers and developers that this minimum floor price can be relied upon to ensure energy competitiveness over the long term. Any drop in the oil price below that floor level can be taxed to make up the difference, the revenue thus generated perhaps being allocated to reducing our exploding national debt. Many venture capitalists and developers of new oil fields and alternative energy are reticent to invest what it takes to bring vast new energy resources to fruition for fear that a collapsing oil price will destroy their viability. The floor cap does away with all these impediments and guarantees price stability (on the downside) for all levels in the energy cycle.

We need to plan ahead. To phase in the gas tax would be the softer political approach but would dilute the “shock value” which ultimately will cause the price at the pump to drop by more than the tax increase itself. Instead of us subsidizing world terrorism and its associated anti-American hate-fest, this tax will indirectly ensure our energy independence, a brighter economic future, and ultimately the strengthening of our freedoms. Instead of economic collapse driven by ever increasing gas prices (as predicted by our salivating enemies, including Osama bin Laden), we will be initiating our rebirth as a great and independent nation and a light unto the world.

Posted on SlantRight.com

Time to Change our Oil Policy by Bernard Munk

Raise the Gas Tax - N. Gregory Mankiw (WSJ)

Lest We Forget - Bush as the Consummate Democrat!

2008-08-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

Long before Bush Junior was the apple of the Republican Party’s eye, for Bill Clinton and his supporters Saddam Hussein was a priority. They waxed eloquent over both the moral turpitude of this nefarious dictator as well as the international community’s obligation to end his rule and diffuse his threats.

Clinton stated unequivocally in early November 1998 that “Iraqis deserve and desire freedom.” He then signed the Iraq Liberation Act authorizing Saddam’s overthrow. This initiative was supported unanimously in the Senate and by a similarly noteworthy majority of 360 to 38 in the House.

On December 16th, 1998, Clinton--a man liberals revered almost as much as they hate Bush (after all, “Bush lied and our soldiers died”)--presented a powerful plea to the world and the American people. Confirming a four day bombing campaign over Iraq, Clinton argued:

Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons. . . . Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: he has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. . . . I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.

Vice President Al Gore stated during an interview with CNN’s Larry King:

You allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons. How many people is he going to kill with such weapons? . . . We are not going to allow him to succeed

Nor did Democratic opposition to Saddam’s Iraq stop at the White House door. A significant group of U.S. Senators including notable Democrat Carl Levin, Tom Daschle and John Kerry wrote to Clinton pressuring him to “respond effectively” to the “threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its WMD programs.”

The subsequent 4-day Operation Desert Fox failed to dissuade Saddam from his WMD program. Meanwhile, Saddam sized the opportunity to renew his crackdown on any opposition within Iraq. The U.N.’s Oil-for-Food program was also an ongoing failure: Iraqis continued to starve while Saddam built ever more palaces. Saddam skimmed off over 20 billion dollars from the program, much of which found its way into the pockets of his French, German and Russian suppliers. (Small wonder these countries were loathe to confront Saddam in the run-up to the current Iraq War.)

In the mid 1990’s then Joint Chiefs of Staff head Colin Powell developed a plan for a ground invasion of Iraq. In early 1999, the Clinton administration studied a variety of plans to overthrow Saddam’s regime. Saddam’s refusal to re-admit the U.N. weapons inspectors provoked U.N. Resolution 1284, which demanded a new inspection regime and set the U.N. (and, by practical implication, the US and Great Britain) on a collision course with Saddam.

It is often overlooked that when Bush took office in January 2001 the United States had already been at war with Iraq for over 10 years, since the first Gulf War. The United Nations had already approved the military and diplomatic framework to locate and destroy WMD remaining in Iraq, to prevent Saddam from secretly developing further WMD and to protect the Kurds in the North and the Shias in the South from his genocidal dictatorship.

By this time Saddam had killed (by conservative estimates) more than one million of his citizens, brutalizing many more in the process; by using chemical weapons during the horrific Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, he helped cause the death of even more Iranians. He also used chemical weapons against Iraq’s Kurdish population to obliterate any remaining resistance in the north. In the south, Saddam dealt with a restive (and majority) Shia population by diverting tributaries in the estuaries and marshlands of the unique Shatt Al-Arab delta system, devastating the economic life and traditions of the Shia who had lived there for centuries.

Despite Saddam’s well-known crimes, the tipping point for most of America’s political class was September 11, 2001. In an interview with Dan Rather two days after 9/11, Hillary Clinton presented a determined stance:

“Every nation has to be either for us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”

When Bush, strangely slow in rising to the challenge, later repeated Hillary Clinton’s words and sentiments, he was castigated by the world as a warmonger.

Along with Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Saddam’s Iraq had been clearly identified as a Class-A supporter of terrorism. The Clinton administration had often cited Saddam’s ties to terrorist groups, including Hamas, the PLO, Black September, Arafat’s personal guard (Force 17) and Islamic Jihad. For many years, Saddam had provided a substantial reward for every family of a Palestinian suicide bomber. The CIA confirmed in late 2002 (in their report “Iraqi Support for Terrorism”) that:

“Iraq continues to be a safe haven, transit point, or operational node for groups and individuals who direct violence against the United States. Saddam’s intelligence service supported financially Ansar al-Islam whose members were being trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.” (New Yorker, March 2002)

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of al-Qaeda’s top operators found safe harbor in Iraq.

One must remember that over the prior two decades Saddam had not only invaded Iran, but had also occupied the oil rich country of Kuwait, devastating its financial and cultural institutions (not to mention its citizens). Saddam’s reign of terror was the most effective killing machine the Middle East has ever known.

United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) had already detailed Saddam’s extensive biological weapons program in 1995. Thereafter Iraq claimed to have destroyed its substantial stockpile. Yet this was never independently confirmed. The French, German, British and Japanese intelligence services all believed in the high likelihood of remaining WMD stockpiles and mothballed programs that could be re-instigated at will.

We now know these fears were exaggerated, in part by Saddam’s own extensive evasions and bravado, in part by activist Iraqi exiles and opposition leaders. Bush’s inference, it reasonably seems, reflected a consensus of local and international assessments on Iraqi WMD, including numerous Senators and spokespeople from the Democratic Party.

In September of 2002, Democrat Charles Schumer convincingly stated:

“Hussein’s vigorous pursuit of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, and his present and potential future support for terrorist acts and organizations . . . make him a terrible danger to the people of the United States.”

Hillary Clinton too waxed eloquent:

“My position is very clear. The time has come for decisive action to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s.”

So did John Edwards:

“Every day [Saddam] gets closer to his long-term goal of nuclear capability.”

And even the irascible Howard Dean:

“There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the U.S. and our allies.”

A majority of democratic Senators (including John Kerry) and 81 democratic Congressmen authorized Bush “to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.”

Joseph Biden (Democrat) summarized the Party’s consensus at the time when he said,

“Saddam is in material breach. . . . The legitimacy of the Security Council is at stake, (and if) the Security Council does not call for the use of force, I think we have little option but to act with a larger group of willing nations, if possible, and alone if we must.”

Later claims of Bush’s trickery and lies ignore the fact-based position Bush took in reinforcing prior Clintonian affirmations on the subject of Saddam’s threat and the necessity of his removal. In a House debate from October 2002, Nancy Pelosi categorically stated:

“Yes… (Saddam) has chemical weapons. He has biological weapons. He is trying to get nuclear weapons.”

There was really very little that the “warmongers” Bush or Cheney could add.

To remind the Democrats of their pronouncements on the subject of Saddam Hussein would be, to use Al Gore’s inimitable sound bite, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Operation Iraqi Freedom started on March 21, 2003. The WMD stockpiles were nowhere to be found. However, David Kay, the director of the Iraqi Survey Group, confirmed finding dozens of WMD–related program activities and significant amounts of equipment previously concealed from UNSCOM inspectors. There are some who to this day believe some stockpiles were moved to Syria prior to the outbreak of hostilities.

Kay claimed with conviction that “the world is far safer with the….removal of Saddam.” He furthermore concluded that Saddam and his cohorts were willing to sell WMD know-how to the highest bidder once sanctions were removed and that Saddam viewed WMD as the key to his future power.

Those who are bitter about Bush’s decision to remove Saddam do not generally concern themselves with the likely consequences of leaving this brutal dictator in place. All other options had, to that point, failed. One just has to imagine what Saddam’s resources would have become with today’s runaway oil prices. Bush may ultimately have had little alternative than to go to war, considering the groundswell of pressure all around him, including a majority of the Democratic Party.

George Bush said to Bob Woodward in 2004: “My job is to secure America.” President Clinton had stated with appropriate insight six years earlier:

Let’s imagine the future. What if [Saddam] refuses to comply, and we fail to act,...Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal.

It does seem, in conclusion then, that George Bush was merely extending the Clintonian philosophy. And if Bush was not in power, in September 2001, then indeed, most likely, it is reasonable to assume the leading Democrat in power would have gone to war, a war that may or may not have been prosecuted more efficiently. But war it would have been.

Published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/lest-we-forget-bush-as-the-consummate-democrat-by-leslie-j-sacks/

New Yorker article The Great Terror: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/03/25/020325fa_FACT1?printable=true

Incredulous U.N.

2008-08-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

The Human Rights Council at the United Nations has now banned any criticism regarding Sharia Law and human rights in the Islamic World. According to President Doru Romulus Costea - and following the efforts of delegates from Egypt, Pakistan and Iran - the Council will no longer tolerate criticism of either Sharia or specific fatwas in the name of human rights.

In many parts of the Islamic world, it is becomingly increasing clear not only that the Quran (the written record of the original oral transmissions of Muhammad’s life teachings) and the Hadith (the later delineations of those teachings) are considered sacrosanct in their perfection, but also the various implementations of these teachings, known as Sharia Law. No evolution or refinements are required. No matter that nearly every multitudinous Muslim sect or group has a differing interpretation of this God-given Sharia Law. Nor that the stoning to death of women, beheading of men, and all the 6th century niceties of feudal Arabia are still part and parcel of the immovable Islamic tradition. Never mind that Sunni will decimate Shia--and vice versa--over differences of interpretations far more modest than those between (modern) Catholics and Protestants, between Hindus and Buddhists. Islamic sect can war on Islamic sect, Arab can criticize Arab.

Because Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and all other religions are imperfect, they are fair game for any and all attacks. Since Israel, Zionism, America and the Western World were created and developed outside the Islamic World and its divine perfection, they are likewise subject to criticism.

Now, not only has the Islamic God forbidden outside criticism of the Sharia Law, but the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) is its enjoined messenger on earth.

Of course, observers of the HRC should not be surprised. The ostensibly prestigious body has become a revolving door for countries with an ambivalent (or even well nigh invisible) relationship with freedom and democracy. In the two years following its replacement of the equally dictatorship-friendly Human Rights Commission, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia have all been elected to the Council. As a majority of the Council’s resolutions are concerned with Israel, it would effectively cease functioning were it not for its compulsive focus on the Jewish state.

Due to this resolution the Council - and thus, perversely, the UN - is endorsing a worldview in which human interpretation and understanding has been placed beyond the pale of critical thinking and investigation as long as it’s part of Sharia Law or the Islamic tradition. Perhaps we should rename the United Nations and call it the “Nations of Islam - United in Unique and Ineffable Perfection.” Sounds appropriate.

Published on Family Security Matters: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/authors/id.91/author_detail.asp

Published on Stand Up America: http://www.standupamericausa.com/?p=1599

Published on Muslims Against Sharia: http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/08/incredulous-un-bans-criticism-of-islam.html

Published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/incredulous-un-by-leslie-j-sacks/

Published on Europe News: http://europenews.dk/en/node/13092

Wall Street Journal Article "Sounds of Silence": http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121382874218086413.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Posted on Keep Tony Blair blog: http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/islams-war-on-freedom-free-speech-un-hi-jacked/

Posted on Chabad Talk: http://www.chabadtalk.com/forum/showthread.php3?t=9622

Discussed on LorMarie.com: http://lormarie.com/2008/08/19/disturbing-emaili-hope-its-fake/

Of Good and Evil – Solzhenitsyn on Appeasement

2008-08-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

Solzhenitsyn died last Sunday at age 89, the Russian historian who singlehandedly documented the fascist excess of Russian communism and totalitarianism, a dictatorship of terror that caused the deaths of 60 million innocents. His book The Gulag Archipelago (1973) finally buried the West’s infatuation with things socialist, with politics Karl Marxian.

With clairvoyant intuition that would ring today with deafening silence amongst contemporary peaceniks, those “peace at any price” absolutists, those “good and evil are always relative” appeasers, Solzhenitsyn prophetically warned in his acceptance speech for the 1970 Nobel literature prize:

“The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles,” [1]

The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, August 5, 2008 Review & Outlook, pg. A18) pays homage to this great writer, who saw absolute evil triumph when good and evil are indelibly melded, who understood that the West blinds itself to such evil in its zealous discarding of moral criteria. Solzhenitsyn warned of

"an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses," and a "tilt of freedom in the direction of evil . . . evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature." [2]

Unlike our own armchair liberals who wax eloquent on freedom and redemption from their San Francisco penthouse verandas, martini in one hand and The New York Times in the other, Solzhenitsyn’s extended internship in the Siberian prison camps (so eloquently elucidated in his 1968 novel Cancer Ward), exhumed the devastating reality of evil and the undeniable need to confront it.

Solzhenitsyn is a writer for all times, for all the world, whose understanding of man’s proclivity for evil necessitates our readoption of moral courage and a national clarity of vision, particularly in these times of terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Footnotes:
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121789190811311707.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121789190811311707.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

The Wall Street Journal Article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121789190811311707.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

"Solzhenitsyn, Optimist" - The Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121822920626825461.html

Published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/of-good-and-evil-solzhenitsyn-on-appeasement-by-leslie-j-sacks/

Obama - The Talk of the Town

2008-07-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama - the toast of the intelligentsia from Malibu to Hollywood.

I used to find his oratory impressive and commanding, his message of hope persuasive and compelling.

Now I find my attention to his rhetoric wanes with every repetitive exhortation for change. Independents seeking political satisfaction come away frustrated with what they see as "Obama Lite:" the supposed anti-politician pandering to the voters, short on details, flexible on principles.

Why this metamorphosis? Has Obama really gone from being a scintillating intellectual powerhouse to a manipulative rabble-rouser? From being the Messianic harbinger of inspired change to a purveyor of Machiavellian politics as usual, intent on winning at all costs?

With a few Athenian exceptions, human societies have normally been led by controlling minorities that define directions and policies for the whole. One generally finds good and just people on the one hand or authoritarians and extremists on the other, all passionately and actively dictating positive or negative pathways for the passive majority to follow.

Either way the majority at the center gets swayed, whether by persuasion or by fear. Either way those leaders with the requisite charisma to inspire crowds, with enough power to motivate individuals, move the populace to their side, interjecting their beliefs along the way. Whether Kennedy or Hitler, Moses or Mao Tse Tung, Lincoln or Stalin, the psychology of conformity, of adoration, often remains the same.

The middle majority inevitably seeks answers to the unanswerable, to the incomprehensible, to their particularly insecure future. It desires hope and faith with which to fill the void, and in its fear and angst this majority latches on to any and all guarantees that posit positive change, that promise the actualization of their fantasies. It is here in this fertile ground that Obama feels most comfortable, working his genius, hugely negative about the recent past, spreading his limitless optimism for the future.

Our election zeitgeist is one of political immaturity and immediate gratification, one of self-indulgence and needy egocentricity. The limitations imposed by reality, by likely sacrifice and realpolitik, by needed compromise and tough planning for the unknown - these are all anathema to the majority. They all fade into irrelevance besides the soaring rhetoric of promised change, change that Obama assures us he will usher in, come November, at the start of his "Golden Era."

Do we, as the emperor's newly blessed children, follow the allure of Obama's sweet candy floss, his endless toffee apple; or do we visit the ever unpopular dentist? Do we as adults confront our enemies and balance the budget? Do we plan and make the necessary sacrifices, accepting pain now, as Joseph did in biblical Egypt, to survive the future's likely seven lean years?

"Bush's Third Term" - The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121495450490321133.html

Published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/obama-the-talk-of-the-town-by-leslie-j-sacks/

Appeasement Politics - Again

2008-07-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

Negotiating with terrorists and with authoritarian regimes is often in the news these days. Opinions fly fast and wide about the relative merits of sitting down with this or that unsavory character.

Yet we have only to glance at the latest news to receive a litany of reality checks.

Robert Mugabe came to power using the gun some 28 years ago. After a brief period of stability and growth, he has set about destroying Zimbabwe, a country that used to be called the "bread basket" of Africa. He has devastated the economy by recklessly expropriating land and has emasculated the opposition by beating, killing or jailing many of his opponents. With increasing violence, Mugabe has stamped his authoritarian rule throughout the country. The West has recently opened its blind eye whilst the U.N., his trading partners (i.e. China), and Africa tread cautiously. For the latter, it appears as though Mugabe's credentials as a freedom fighter warrant unlimited loyalty, as though his decade's long violence and mayhem will one day transition to tolerance and peace. What is that memorable saying about a leopard and its spots?

As the one-man run-off presidential election held June 27 makes perfectly clear, Mugabe has reconfirmed his disinterest in democracy, freedom and the will of the people. Never mind that Mugabe's opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the first round ballot. According to Mugabe, "We fought for this country, and a lot of blood was shed. We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint [pen] fight with a gun?" [1]

It seems years of accommodation, understanding and negotiation by the West have only hardened the geriatric Mugabe's determination to forcefully hold onto power, to break the back of any and all opposition. Could not the West have foreseen this outcome; were there not enough signs along the way?

In Lebanon, Hizballah has only tightened its stranglehold on the Lebanese government. Its unqualified veto power gives it total control over policy and change whilst shrewdly sidestepping responsibility, as the minority party, for the government's future mistakes. We have known and still know that Hizballah is an unabashed terrorist group with political, educational, and financial wings.

Just a few weeks ago, in a bloody confrontation with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Hizballah took control of the capital, Beirut. In 2006, they provoked a war with Israel through kidnappings and assorted border provocations. They have a more effective fighting force than the Lebanese army and are reported to have 40,000 rockets aimed at Israel. Furthermore, they are responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist group apart from Al Qaeda. And yet Condoleezza Rice has stated that she welcomes the new power-sharing arrangement in Lebanon [2] as if it was reached democratically and peacefully. Apparently, we in the West now (tacitly) allow violent blackmail on a countrywide basis and support terrorist groups in power. Is there no end to our "pragmatism," is there always a deal with the devil worthy of our imprimatur? Even though we surely know that the "pragmatism" of these militants has been and will remain worthless? Is our fear of confrontation, our dislike of going it alone and our need for peace at any cost so deep that we hope where there is no justification for hope? Do we endlessly put off the day of reckoning (ignoring the cost of our freedom, the ultimate price of our peace) at the expense of oppressed peoples everywhere, at the expense of honesty and truth?

In the Middle Ages the church sold "indulgences" to their wealthier sinners who would thereby ensure their key to heaven by greasing the proverbial palm of the local parish. Do we open our myopic eyes a little more and confront the real enemies of our civilization rather than devoting ourselves exclusively, as many in the left are wont to do, to Kyoto and global warming, to whales and moose, to distractions from ensuring our survival?

So now we must negotiate with Iran's President Ahmadinejad, a man who has often stated that he has no interest in Israel's survival, peace with America, or in reaching any accommodation with his internal opposition? Are there no limits to our appeasements, to our self-flagellation, to our ability to fool ourselves?

Many in the world support these anti-Western rogue regimes, terrorist groups, fundamentalists and tin pot dictators. They do so not necessarily because they objectively find an accurate melding of their own views and wishes with those of these bombastic extremists. Rather, they are motivated by a desire to see America cut down to size, its power and dominance reduced, its government (mostly Republican) and its companies (mostly multi-national) humiliated. It's mostly a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." So—as revealed by the (often ornate) signs of protestors from San Francisco to Stuttgart to Seoul--Bush and Hitler are two sides of the same coin. Chavez, to whom most would not trust a second hand Prius at the valet, is now a poster boy for a myriad of causes and receives a standing ovation from the UN General Assembly after an anti-American speech so vitriolic it put Geobbels to shame. And Ahmadinejad, whose rants and insipid insights we would normally attribute to the world of insane asylums, becomes worthy of our understanding, our liberal largess and our Third World sympathies. In the interest of "dialogue," the venerable Council of Foreign Relations has Ahmadinejad over to the Upper East Side for a chat; not to be outdone, Columbia University soon invites him across town.

Being anti-American gets one a free pass, it seems, whether in the lofty towers of the United Nations or from the erudite professorships of our most acclaimed universities.

Without America as whipping boy, the elite's most politically correct scapegoat—without Shakespeare's modern day Shylock—most of these terrorist groups and dictatorships would likely dissipate and implode from a paucity of outside support and attention, their raison d'être dissolved, the transparency of their own viciousness and incompetence exposed. [3]

We seem to have a bizarre predilection for tolerating tyrants at home as well, passionately banning mangers in the park at Christmas time, cartoons of Mohammed, and cost effective and practical yet politically incorrect profiling at airports.

We seem to insist on repeating the mistakes of the past as though history can be rewritten by our fanciful optimism and our dangerous penchant for negotiating even when there is nothing left to negotiate.

The West is war weary and confrontation averse. Most of us prefer to sweeten with gifts those who wish us ill, to mollify tyrants with our endless words of conciliation. Is there ultimately no politically viable path between endless war and interminable accommodation?

[1] (Wall Street Journal 6/17/08 World Watch p. 13)
[2] (Wall Street Journal 6/17/08 World Watch p. 13)
[3] See Jean Francois Ravel's book on the subject entitled "Anti-Americanism" Encounter Books Sept. 25, 2004

"Mugabe Vows to Hold Power" by Roger Bate (Wall Street Journal 6/19/08 Opinion p. 15):
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121383425044786737.html

Military occupation mars Hezbollah reputation:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/13/occupation-mars-hezbollah-reputation/

Original item available at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/724

Posted on Unity Coalition for Israel: http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/article.php?id=3049

Exchange of Prisoners – An Absurd Imbalance

2008-07-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

I read that Israel is giving up five prisoners including Samir Kuntar, the convicted Lebanese terrorist who received a sentence of 542 years in prison for his infamous role in the 1979 infiltration into the quiet coastal town of Nahariya where he butchered a young Israeli father, Danny Haran, in front of his four-year-old daughter, then smashed her skull against a rock with his rifle butt, killing her too. Tragically, her two-year-old sister was accidentally smothered to death while her mother tried to keep her quiet so that Kuntar would not discover them. Kuntar has now claimed that on his release he would return to terrorism.

The only problem is we are now given to understand by Israel's intelligence services that the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Regev and Goldwasser, who are the subject of the exchange, are no longer alive, whether because of their possibly serious wounds at the time of their abduction or because of torture or intentionally deficient medical care by Hezbollah. (Hezbollah has always refused all contact and any information about the two Israelis - apparently, giving comfort or closure to the families concerned is not a pressing priority for Hezbollah.)

The exchange would make both pragmatic, political and moral sense if the Israelis were to ensure that their prisoners were transferred to Hezbollah in the same state and condition as the two Israelis being received. A body for a body, a corpse for a corpse. Perhaps then in future these terrorist regimes might be better tempted to follow the Geneva Convention and take the most rudimentary care of their prisoners.

Posted on Bruce's MidEast Soundbites:
http://brucesmideastsoundbites.blogspot.com/

"Descent From Entebbe" by Bret Stephens July 15, 2008; The Wall Street Journal Pg A17
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121607791452752543.html

The Last Year of the Pig

2008-06-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

We may have seen the Year of the Pig fully celebrated in accordance with the Chinese calendar for the last time. References to pigs were banned in China's television advertising in 2007, the official Year of the Pig, to prevent offending the Muslim population. In Taiwan citizens were put on notice about using 'pig' postage stamps for mailings to Muslim countries or recipients.

Janet Levy in FrontPageMagazine.com writes comprehensively of the multitudinous ways in which today's Muslims are offended and spurred to protest, and how communities around the world are accommodating this veritable plague of Muslim religious demands.

Piggy banks, those charming inducements to fiscally conservative children (or maybe "youth"), are objects many of us remember very fondly. They have now been banned in the United Kingdom as marketing gifts by certain financial institutions. Pig calendars, toys and objects are increasingly disappearing from public offices and institutions. We are on our way to becoming a 'pig free' society, echoing other, far more extreme attempts to cleanse society of offending objects and subjects (see Caesar's burning of the incomparable Royal Library of Alexandria, Hitler's Juden-Rein vision for Europe, Pol Pot's evisceration of Cambodian intellectuals and China's effective decades-long dilution of Tibetan traditions and monasteries).

Target department stores in the United States have, in specific instances, allowed their Muslim check-out employees to excuse themselves when pork products are presented at their counters. Yet these same employees were well aware of Target's product selection when they applied for their jobs.

As I understand it, Jews, Hindus and vegetarians have little interest in pork products: many exclude pork from their daily diet with the same proficiency and commitment as many Muslims. How do they operate checkouts at supermarkets, drive taxis, receive piggy banks as gifts and visit government offices replete with pig paraphernalia without protest? How have they managed for decades at our schools and universities without kosher and meatless cafeterias? Why are they not insulted by the many references to pigs in our multicultural society? Are they any less serious about their religion, any less observant and sincere in their beliefs? Of course not.

It seems, in a kind of reverse idolatry, that the Islamists have imbued the pig, in all its physical and symbolic manifestations, with a kind of mystical evilness, a negative energy of boundless proportions. It's not only the ingestion of the pig that is now taboo - it is also its very existence in any manifestation of this inverse deity from hell.

It is not yet scientifically proven that the solid molecules of pig meat can migrate from inside hermetically sealed packages onto the hands of the employees at the checkout counters. Are Target's Hindu employees unknowingly walking around with contaminated hands - are they irrevocably compromised? Will they forever be impure in the eyes of the Muslim community?

Seemingly, these offended Muslims not only want to distance themselves from pork and other disagreeable pig-issues, they are also refusing to allow non-Muslims their own beliefs, their own preferences. This imposition of personal views onto others is more clearly a (rather fascistic) political statement than a religious one. Indeed, radical Islam is becoming, in its various expressions, a far more political ideology than the private and personal religion that is typical for the average orthodox Jew, Christian or observant Hindu.

The old adage "Live and let live," an eminently civilized tenet of the Western World, is a concept that seems to have no place among the more radical Muslim communities, both inside and outside the West.

Is this because these Islamists believe that only their views have any validity, that only their religion has any value? Is it because only their god inhabits this world, or that their concern is only for their own people, religion, or domination? The Western World is bending over backwards in a multi-cultural orgy of inclusiveness to welcome all people, all sects and all religions. In particular Muslims are to be treated with exceptional sensitivity and understanding in a (vain) attempt to defuse anticipated protests.

It seems however, to be a one-sided love affair. Radical Islamists by contrast want very little to do with our world. They would impose their beliefs on us, forcing ever-increasing changes and accommodations. Yet they prefer to live and keep apart, remaining un-integrated and separate until such time as Islam becomes dominant and all non-Muslims are subverted to the overpowering will of Islam. Where is the reciprocity, the appreciation of a free, modern and democratic society? The Irish, the Vietnamese, Koreans and Russians have all integrated, have all respected us as we now respect them and their traditions. They were aghast at the tragedy of September 11th. We still await however any declarations of sympathy for the victims, any castigations for the perpetrators, from the Radical Islamists and their representatives.

Does it have to remain one-sided? Why is it that our liberal preferences have to be subverted to the will of an illiberal minority? Why does it remain highly problematic for a mini-skirted woman with a Pekinese and a bottle of scotch to hail a taxi, a Muslim taxi, at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport?

The Three Little Pigs, that traditional English story, has now been banned in a primary school in England. Another school in the United Kingdom specifically excluded stories about the talking pig "Babe" and other pig stories. These and other incidents represent, in fact, expressions of potentially self-destructive cultural hypersensitivity on behalf of Muslims. Buddhists are not catered to, neither are Orthodox Jews, Animists, Baha'is, Shintos, Hindus, vegans, nor every other ethnic, cultural or religious minority, many of whom also have strong views and delicate sensibilities. Who decided that Muslim sensitivities were deeper and stronger than all others? Perhaps the vociferousness of the complaints, perhaps the fear emanating from the many media reports of suicide bombers in New York, London and Madrid, has patently colored our motivations, our compromises and our accommodations.

It seems that we are ever more focused on healing the emotional wounds of the angry rather than formulating pragmatic practices to cope with increasingly dangerous "creeping Shariah," Islamic radicals and Jihadist coalitions. Appeasement may be defined - given the actions of many of our politicians listed above - as the rewarding of others for their bad behavior.

It is ironic that the Koran itself is replete with references to pigs, often in a particularly derogatory light where Jews are concerned. For example:

Verse 5:60: "those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil"

The 10th Century commentator Al-Tabari, referencing Verse 5:112-115, says of those who commit blasphemy that they were turned into apes and pigs. [3]

In April 2002, Sheik Tantawi, the highest ranking cleric in the Sunni Muslim world called the Jews "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs." [1]

Sheik Al-Sudayyis, imam at the Al-Haraam mosque, the most important in Mecca, sermonized that "Jews are the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs." [2]

If Jews are pigs, is it inconceivable to imagine a world where stories about Jews and Zionists are banned since they certainly offend much of the Muslim population? Israel already has ceased to exist on many Muslim and Arab world maps and in many of their school textbooks.

Orthodox Jews have never marched for kosher cafeterias. They privately and quietly arrange their dietary habits without voluble demands. In contrast, we in America now know that a youngster in Maine was suspended from school in early 2007 for the 'hate crime' of placing a lunch box with ham in front of Muslim students. It used to be that the label hate crime was reserved for beatings, rapes, murders and the like. No more - ham sandwiches and Danish cartoons rank in the pantheon of hate crimes with lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan and the July 2006 shootings by a Muslim at a Jewish community center in Seattle.

FeedthePig.org is an innovative new website designed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It encourages 40 million Americans age 25-34 to take control of their personal finances through a savings campaign, courtesy of Benjamin Bankes, the website mascot. Is AICPA aware of the provocative insult their website presents to some Muslims; are they prepared for future attempts by Shariah proponents to ban Benjamin from the web?

Will the Quran replace George Orwell's Animal Farm as required reading, as Janet Levy fears? What would the Super Bowl be without pork rinds? As Levy further notes in her FrontPage article, pork products include heart valves and skin grafts for burn victims, never mind $40 billion in contributions to the US GNP. Would these heart patients and burn victims be banned from Muslim communities - would Muslims refuse to do business with them? The implications would be most comedic if they weren't in fact frighteningly realistic. Sharia law or democratic law - the choice remains ours.

Footnotes:
[1] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_
[2] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_
[3] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_

Published on Canada Free Press: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3656
Published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/the-last-year-of-the-pig-by-leslie-j-sacks/
Published on The Investigative Project on Terrorism: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/683

Obama's Latest Gaffe

2008-06-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

If Obama had his way he would replace the incomparably successful cult movie "Star Wars" with "Mary Poppins," a sentiment clearly evinced by his recent video posted on his website http://www.BarackObama.com and by the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o84PE871BE

He seems determined to weaken our military as though that will appease our enemies and convert all to pacifism and universal tolerance. Were it to be so! Obama states that he will "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems" (unlike Russia), that he "will not weaponize space" (unlike the Chinese) and that "unnecessary" spending will be eliminated (unlike with Chavez, Iran and Syria).

Most worrying is his promise to "slow development of future combat systems" (which is exactly what we need to combat more dangerously asymmetrical warfare) putting at risk our modernization and our superiority. Other aspiring nations seek to match our prowess, but so far fortunately without success.

The CFIF cited new satellite technology that "allows us to pinpoint and eliminate the enemy, unmanned drones that promise amazing advances in battlefield safety and effectiveness, bunker-buster weapons that penetrate deep into the caves in which remote terrorists hide and communications systems that allow lightning-quick troop deployment and rescue missions." These technologies "ultimately protect the lives and health of our troops, just as they protect us."

This precision-guided weaponry saved not only American lives but those of all combatants.. Iraq was the least lethal military takeover of a major army and country in living history. In no small part American superiority also helped force Gorbachev's hand and contributed to ending the Cold War.

Obama seems to feel comfortable in leveraging his children's future based on his bucolic fantasies - I don't believe Michelle Obama would do likewise (she may not respect much of America as she pointedly stated but I doubt she'd wager her family's safety) and I certainly would be mightily uncomfortable going forward in this world of nuclear proliferation and increasing terrorism, if I were not able to hedge my bets, if I had to rely on the left's belief in the munificence of Ahmadinejad.

Obama has expressed willingness to meet, without any preconditions whatsoever, the autocratic leaders of Iran, North Korea and Syria, all amongst the world's most reprehensible regimes. Yet he never clarifies what he would do if the talks failed, he never seems motivated to leverage America's unrivaled strength and power to achieve his laudable goals.

Obama has not visited Iraq since January 2006 nor since the all important surge. Neither has he met with General Petraeus who was responsible for the surge, or with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. Yet Democratic Senator Biden and Republican Senator John McCain have been to Iraq 10 and 8 times respectively. Is Obama so dogmatic, so stubborn and confident in his own personal theories, his own isolated judgment that he is astonishingly disinterested in the facts on the ground and in talking to the soldiers, the citizens, the commanders in Iraq? It is these people whose reality must necessarily be a crucial and truthful cog in the wheel that is now post-surge Iraq and is also at the center of America's and Al-Qaeda's primary strategies in the war.

What remains perplexing is Obama's similarity to Jimmy Carter's childlike worldview and his decimation of the military, certainly not a position I imagine the center of America will knowingly support.

Obama has stated that he will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. Will he be so kind as to first wait for Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan and other rogue nations to first disarm (weapons and research) and verify beyond any doubt? Furthermore, according to Harvard national security expert Graham Allison, if the U.S. and other governments just continue to keep doing what they are presently doing today, then more likely than not a nuclear terrorist attack in a major city is going to happen by 2014.

Obama's anti-military passion seems certain to supercede even Jimmy Carter's in undermining our military forces. He seems to be allergic to the possibility that the military may still have a role to play in the 21st Century (see Bret Stephens' incisive view on the subject in his Wall Street Journal article "There is a Military Solution to Terror"):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121244926833339577.html

And what if Al Qaeda or another well financed terrorist group or regime ever develop such nuclear weapons - do we all convert immediately to Islam or do we emigrate to Mars or other more hospitable environments? After all the radical Islamic nations have shown such admirable ability to honor agreements and to tolerate our separate and very different existences.

We would thus do far better to ensure the eternal city of Jerusalem (which literally means "Vision of Peace") remains safe and free than to follow Obama's advice if we ever want to achieve penultimate peace, for it is indeed Jerusalem that is at the center of the world, at the center of the Middle East and not Obama's temporal visions. We will need to stand unusually tall and free, bending to no one, no matter what, if we are to allow our children to inherit the wondrous freedoms and liberties we take so for granted.

It seems that Obama and the substantially left-leaning Democratic Party leaders need very much to learn the lesson outlined by Dean Acheson, that great Democratic Secretary of State who once warned that "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies."

Posted on Doc's Talk: http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2008/06/obamas-latest-gaffe.html
Posted on Weekly Blitz: http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=237

ACLU's Dream Team

2008-06-11T17:46:00.000-07:00

Just in.

The ACLU has recruited a "dream team" of more than 30 lawyers, including powerhouse Janet Reno, Ex-President Clinton's former Attorney General, to protect from conviction and execution all of the alleged 9/11 conspirators incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.

These defendants include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who many view as the mastermind of the attacks that murdered in the most monstrous way 3,000 of America's innocents of all ages, genders and political beliefs. This is the same Sheikh who has boasted of his actions, who has admitted his culpability and who has shown no remorse.

The world, apart from those who may hate or envy the United States, awaits the long-delayed carrying out of justice, the imposition of the military tribunal system and additional closure for the 3,000 families and communities of the victims.

Yet the ACLU is not at all concerned about the rights of the victims. The ACLU is not suing the government for additional protection from terrorist attacks for America’s citizens. They are not suing the Islamic nations that harbor these terrorists or the many charities and organizations in the United States, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere that provide effectively billions of dollars of funding for these Radical Jihadists and their support groups.

The ACLU, however is more concerned about America’s international image (as Ms. Reno states, “the United States need not abandon its principles”) and is committed to ensure the most fair, expert and powerful defense for these 9/11 conspirators. George Soros’ foundations are also considering additional support.

Just why the ACLU does not apply as well its considerable monetary and professional assets to many of America’s and the world’s gross injustices is not anywhere explained.

The genocide in Sudan is entirely ignored. Rampant Black-on-Black violence and rape in our inner cities is sidestepped.

The hostages held by FARC in Colombia’s border jungle are not an issue.

The unrivalled tragedy of hundreds of millions of disenfranchised Muslim women, treated like chattel, third-class citizens with little or no rights, does not prick the interest of the ACLU’s army of attorneys.

Tibet, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea remain more dark spots of ignored human degradation on the world map.

Excessive pollution in China, in Russia, causing epidemics of cancer and other poisonous diseases for millions of unsuspecting citizens, is clearly not the central concern of the ACLU’s laser-like agenda. Neither is the proliferation of child pornography and prostitution now sweeping the modern world, more extensive than even illicit drugs.

All these inequities and the tens of millions of G-d’s children who suffer daily, who live with endemic injustice, without the protection of law, without the basic and inalienable rights we take for granted, do not clearly deserve the delicate moral and surely incontestably ethical focus of America’s upstanding ACLU. This is the same ACLU whose charter provides for the protection of the downtrodden, the weak, the victims of injustice.

Yet the 9/11 conspirators clearly deserve the ACLU’s collective attention. These ‘alleged’ murderers volunteered for this brave and courageous holocaust. They trained and patiently waited for years in order to incinerate what they hoped would be tens of thousands of innocents arriving unsuspectingly at their normal work day in the Twin Towers, towers that included Muslims, Buddhists, African Americans, people in wheelchairs, visitors, janitors - a representation as broad as the United Nations itself.

These are the conspirators for which the ACLU feels their intense and unrivalled legal support will help ensure justice for the world, will protect the rights of the presumed innocents, will send a meaningful and important message to the universally downtrodden and further endear ourselves to all those authoritarian regimes and dictatorships that so comfortably inhabit the United Nations.

And as for the millions of our world’s citizens, still debased and dehumanized – well, they will just have to wait – the ACLU have bigger fish to fry, they have powerful political statements to make and certainly many complex agendas to fulfill.

For the many women incarcerated, often on ‘death row,’ in Pakistani, Afghani and Iranian jails, for the unique crime of insulting Islam by having allowed themselves to be victims of rape; for these female “adulterers” as judged by the “courts” divinely chauvinistic and inventive Shariah laws, we regret to inform them all that the ACLU is exceptionally busy at this time with Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants, and if they could be a little more patient, a little more understanding……………….

Wall Street Journal Article on this topic: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120726400995288065.html

American Civil Rights Union article: http://www.theacru.org/acru/aclu_aiding_americas_enemies_again/

Posted on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/aridavid

Susan Sarandon's Threat

2008-06-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

Actress Susan Sarandon has now said she may leave the country if the chosen Republican candidate John McCain wins the office of the Presidency. My only humble retort is to suggest that if she ends up having the distinctly bad judgment to choose to not leave the country then indeed by her staying in the USA she may in turn motivate myself and others who are not enamored with Sarandon's political acumen to consider leaving ourselves. Either way I wonder how can we possibly help persuade her to convert her tentative threat into a reliable guarantee?

PS: Sarandon claims to be considering moving to Italy. Is she not aware, in her refined activist ivory tower, that the new Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi supports Bush and the war effort?

Alternatively, perhaps Sarandon should consider Nuuk, the fast-growing capital of Greenland which has a history of varied occupation (Viking exploration). The Arctic climate and night skies often lit up by the Aurora Borealis would be better suited to Sarandon's sense of escapist fantasies.

As published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/susan-sarandons-threat-by-leslie-sacks/

Obama - Victim of His Own Success

2008-05-30T13:18:00.001-07:00

Had he, like Bush, Sharon and a host of other world leaders, been unable to express himself in such an inspiring way, Obama mania would not exist and America would not be in the throes of Obama’s particular brand of messianism. For if anything is true, Obama’s genius is effective communication, remarkable rhetoric and the rarest of abilities to turn a phrase in a way that makes his acolytes lightheaded. It is most likely a national census would show evidence of radically more babies being named Obama during this political season plus nine months than at any prior time.

So how Obama presents, verbally, visually and attitudinally sets him apart from every contemporary and past politician except perhaps John F. Kennedy. What also sets him apart in this unique Hollywood-ish specter of self-indulgent adoration is that he is “light” on facts, details and policies, to an extent no other major candidate in living memory has had the temerity to manifest.

Yes, Obama is a willing victim of his own outstanding success. He is so successful with his hype, his consistently articulate presentation, that he has been able to deflect any meaningful focus from his essence. Obama is seemingly so taken with his own verbal adeptness, so infatuated with his own phenomenal persuasiveness, his “swoon” factor, that he really does seem to believe he could persuade the genocidal Ahmadinejad to beat Iran’s nuclear swords into ploughshares, that he could convince arch terrorist group Hamas to live and let live, to accept an olive branch from the Israelis and recycle all the thousands of rockets, missiles and suicide bombs that are always in feverish production in the warrens of Gaza.

Obama is clearly so in love with his interactive prowess and his powers of motivation, so evident with the voters, that he sincerely believes that negotiation and compromise can indeed resolve 100% of international problems, wars and terrorism. No need for the backing of the military, for the incomparable power of our Navy, Army and Air Force – no need to speak softly and wield a big stick, a stick Khrushchev, Khadafy, Hitler and many others were in desperate need of. No – Obama will achieve with his unique vocal chords what other mere mortals and politicians needed hard power realism, toughness and indeed often loss of life to achieve.

Obama has stated that since Iran spends one one-hundredth as much on their military as does the USA, we have nothing to fear from them. Clearly he must be amongst the vast minority of Americans who cannot grasp the horrific existential and mortal danger the USA will be in when and if Iran acquires their anticipated nuclear (or even ‘dirty’) weapons. They now have delivery systems – submarines and long range missiles. They are producing the required weapons grade uranium and they are close to, by all accounts, the final weaponization required. And if Ahmadinejad promises America and Israel a Holocaust who is Obama to guarantee us otherwise?

Obama belongs to the Post-60’s era of leftist elitists suckled on a culture of emotions and feelings: all is negotiable, all is relative, evil is never black and white, war is always wrong. These mantras informed Obama’s every ideal, his every vision. To now conceive of him being a natural commander-in-chief is thus effectively a contradiction in terms. He can no more pretend to be a Churchill, an Eisenhower, a Kennedy, than he is ultimately capable of changing, with gifts and soft talk, with appeasement politics and self-defeating respect, the raison d’être that drives people like the Hamas leaders and Ahmedinejad to send their trusting children to their inglorious deaths as suicide bombers.

Perhaps it is Obama’s vanity, his overarching confidence, his preening successes having played only in the playgrounds of free and democratic America, which will ultimately be his foreign policy dénouement.

For Obama cannot see the world of the radical Islamists, of Ayman Al-Zwahiri, of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, as they indeed see themselves. He cannot contemplate the darkness of their vision, the passion of their hate, their lust for the world to come. He does not understand their vocabulary, their deceit, their comfortability with depravity and their essential differences with the West. These are all realities which do not come easy to Obama, realities seemingly beyond his ken.

Obama’s consequential dislocation is marked, on the one hand by a quintessentially sensitive ability to intuit the needs of the democratic voters and to proffer what they want beyond any practical ability to pay for and deliver those needs; and, in most serious contradiction, on the other hand, the absolute inability to ingest, understand and respond, with non-American style realism and logic, to the essence of the dangerous thoughts, plans, intensions and manipulations of our enemies. Ironically it is our enemies who seem fully adept at understanding our weaknesses as well as our strengths, and they do so with patience and a consistency that is enviable.

Obama never had to survive on the ghetto streets of Chicago, he never had to use his fists, never had to fight or be beaten. Obama learnt the civilized skills of debating whilst McCain was educated in the niceties of human depravity at the Hanoi Hilton. Obama’s outstanding skills uplifted him to the ivory tower of ideals and philosophy, where academic policies are created and lofty goals invented and embellished. International realism, Middle Eastern pragmatism and the cut and thrust of brutal and dangerous foreign policies are not part of Obama’s world, but certainly will be part of his continuing education, should he enter the White House. Obama’s success has brought with it an astounding naiveté, a purity of idealism and ultimately, what will turn out to be, an egocentric irresponsibility that has attracted adoring crowds the likes of which we have never seen. He is now even attracting endorsements from terrorist groups and leaders like vultures waiting for their kill.

And in the end the relevant voters, most of them most likely in the moderate middle, will have to choose between what makes them feel good and what will keep them safe.

Published on Weekly Blitz:
http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=214

Published on The Absurd Report:
http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/obama-victim-of-his-own-success-by-leslie-j-sacks/

Published on FamilySecurityMatters:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.291/pub_detail.asp

Links to articles on this subject matter:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121254834844844045.html

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/05/23/a_gaffe,_an_absurdity,_and_a_policy
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/05/atlas-exclusi-1.html

"The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West" by Lee Harris

2008-05-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

Lee Harris' book The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West and the concise review by Janet Levy summarize the conflict between America's freedoms and the fanaticism of much of Islam. Harris talks of our strengths and weaknesses and postulates that our survival depends on us becoming intolerant (and not appeasing) to the intolerance emanating from Radical Islam, on us becoming fanatical (and not passive and shamed) about our own survival. An important and incisive document.

Read Janet Levy's Review:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=E88A9A17-E3E2-447A-B286-108E99EF27E6

Obama and Hillary – The Whirling Dervishes

2008-05-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

Obama and Hillary, that unlikely duet of dueling dervishes. Each in their own right a formidable opponent for McCain. Yet in tandem these not so democratic “co-religionists“ are highlighting each others weaknesses and blemishes, are exposing each others faults and half-truths to a previously adoring media; a media that is turning on the Clinton Machine with surprising vengeance. A media that is parting the reeds of fantasy and wish fulfillment and viewing the winding river of Obama’s life and his relationships in a more critical and dispassionate light.

Obama and Hillary have educated us anew about positional squirming, reversing tracks and political expediency. First Obama would not possibly disown his Reverend Wright under any circumstances – then, a few weeks later the esteemed pastor was tossed aside like an aging egg salad sandwich. Hillary initially presented her ‘Kumbaya’ visage, sweetness personified – now she is the pre-eminent Rottweiler, dogged, tough and accusative. The entertaining list of reversals is growing.

Had any opponent, Republican or Democrat, competed with Obama in those first heady months of hope and fervor, of everything new and fresh, of all Americans together and cleanly joined, they would have failed to breach either his message or his form. For Obama, on his orator’s pedestal, invoking the perfection of ideas, the fulfillment of our every desire, was well nigh invincible.

In the harsh light of continuing time and repetition, Obama’s gloss tarnishes and our passion moderates. Boredom creeps in and an interest in detail grows. No longer are we satisfied with enticing but bland generalities – we need information, context and solutions. And Obama is found wanting, fixed in his naive hopefulness, his optimistic new world, his unrivalled promises.

Hillary has more details, McCain has the most. Hillary is shining a harsh light on Obama’s confusing relationships (Ayres, Rezzo and Wright, et al.) and his myopic visions, on his bitter wife and his own ambiguous blackness. Yet in doing so Hillary is exposing her own overflowing ambitions, her extraordinary abilities to pander, manipulate and reinvent herself. And McCain watches in the wings as a newly peeving and irritated Obama is knocked off his white collar pedestal whilst a seemingly bloodthirsty Hillary takes no prisoners and gambles all.

It is said Hillary would, if she loses the nomination, prefer a Republican presidency, thus reserving for herself the likely 2012 slot. The Democratic Party seems unable to rally the troops, to find a common core. An astounding proportion of Hillary’s voters say they will support McCain if Obama gets in. Likewise with Obama’s supporters if Hillary is nominated, an event that would also fundamentally sour the intimate relationship of the black community with their preeminent party, the Democratic Party.

It is fascinating to contemplate, in these most unusual and exciting times, that but for these dueling dervishes McCain would likely have no chance. The long and tedious democratic nomination will wear these two democratic candidates to the bone, only to have another long bout of presidential campaigning with which to contend. And the dirty work will be largely done, the warts in full resplendent view, before McCain has to take up the cudgels.

Ordinarily nothing would have persuaded this country, tired of Bush, impatient with the war, desirous of a change, any change, to contemplate another four years of Republican leadership. Yet in the end the Republicans may indeed have Obama and Hillary to thank, that unlikely couple in perpetual mortal combat, for granting them a fair shot at the 2008 elections. An opportunity the Republicans in their disarray seem incapable of building for themselves.

Published on FamilySecurityMatters.org:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.178/pub_detail.asp

Link to article on this subject matter:
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/05/23/a_gaffe,_an_absurdity,_and_a_policy

The Universal War on Terror – A Centrality of Suicide Bombings

2008-04-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

Quite simply, the most effective, attainable and inexpensive way to pop the Jihadist balloon that is the predominant form of Global Terrorism, may not be the obvious solution utilizing military and security means. This war is asymmetrical, where terrorists play by no rules, ignore all laws, all Geneva Conventions. They extend depravity and fear beyond that evidenced by even the Nazis. This Islamic Radicalism is, by its very nature and definition, limiting the efficacy of traditional military responses and is more likely to bankrupt the victims before resolution eventuates.

Suicide bombings - this is the Achilles Heel at the center of the Global Jihadist movement; this is the cancer that can and must be largely eradicated at the core of this growing scourge. Neutralize this disease and you will tear the heart out of the beast that threatens world domination and the destruction of the West and its freedoms. Until then, the Jihadists, with their Sharia law and their political fascism would in particular seek to devolve our female population back beyond the Dark Ages.

Our civilization must harness every effort to demolish this worship of death. Our society must excommunicate especially those educational media and social structures that teach and motivate children to not only deny their natural drive to live and ultimately procreate but to instead commit to these crimes against humanity, blowing themselves up in the process with as many innocents as possible.

These bombings by our impressionable young, still in our care and trust, must rank as the nadir of human depravity, as the insane extension of personal genocide, as the undermining of our history and civilization with all its evolved moralities, values and freedoms.

Dismembering oneself and others one does not and cannot know, is the antithesis of everything godly, everything sublime, all that is essential spiritual. It denies the existence of individual ethics, of a personal god, of each person's sacrosanct rights and humanness as embodied by the Old and the New Testament, by the French and American Revolutions and certainly by our Bill of Rights.

Nations must eradicate all forms of acceptance, no matter how tacit, for this crime against humanity; no matter where found, no matter how expressed. Countries that allow these evils, even passively, must be banished from every civilized community, every gathering of moral and modern nations.

Individuals and groups who submit to these suicidal doctrines, who offer support and financing for these atrocities, must be hounded wherever they hide themselves, whether in the caves of Waziristan or the hollow halls of the United Nations, whether in the warrens of Gaza or in Tehran's Majilis, whether in the Mosques of Bethlehem or the charities of Riyadh.

We, as in Biblical times, must shout out from the hilltops to the very end of our every valley, and proclaim without compromise, without dilution, exactly who these nations are, these individuals are, and enjoin all by every political, economic and social means at our disposal, to eradicate this evil. They must be labeled, they must be 'outed', they must be targeted openly and vigorously along with all their visible supporters, their invisible facilitators.

This cancer, that feeds the nihilistic beast, if denied its bloodlust, its martyrdom, its perverted Jihadist energy, will wilt and with it the heartbeat of Islamic Radicalism. By definition it cannot procreate and survive in its present form without its martyrs, its youthful supplicants desirous of heaven's 72 virgins (as yet we still await clarity on exactly what rewards are reserved for the female suicide bombers). It cannot survive Western norms, civilized limitations, the emancipation of its people, equal rights for its women. Its energy thrives off the death cult, on poisonous propaganda and this dehumanizing solution to all earthly fears, all human pain, all seething anger.

The Spanish Inquisition of 15th Century Iberia similarly thrived on the fear and the power derived from its torture chambers, from its burnings at the stake, the forced martyrdom of innocent victims and thereby the effective control of everyone else.

The civilized world can outlaw this barbarity and its every practitioner, in every nook and cranny worldwide. Every culture, every religion, every political party can ascribe to this really very fundamental advance. This simple concept, this eminently cost-effective necessity, can spark the beginning of the end of this fundamentalist fascism that threatens to keep growing, as cancers do, until we have the vision and the courage to finally inject the vaccine.

The cure is simple – it’s attainable by all. It’s not in hiding – it’s not at all complex. Stop support for suicide bombing, marginalize its adherents, its educators, its handlers; and the Jihadist fervor will dissipate, the martyrs fascination will wilt. It will go the ignoble way of communism and of fascism and of much of the rest of history’s most devastating experiments.

Published on Investigative Project on Terrorism: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/654

Published on StandUpAmerica:
http://www.standupamericausa.com/?p=1388

Islamism is Indeed Fascism (March 31, 2008)

2008-03-31T17:47:00.000-07:00

Islam can be a religion of moderation, of peace.

If the majority of the one billion Muslims were not moderate and supported al-Qaeda, the Western World would be simply overwhelmed in spite of its technological, military and financial superiority. One billion radicals, martyrs, terrorists, Jihadists and their supporters would quickly reduce the world to ashes in their nihilistic violence.

For a clash of religious cultures to be averted, perhaps 10-20% of the Muslims worldwide must be totally reeducated; and this is not a matter of modest slow gradations. The anti-West, anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda taught daily in the kindergartens and schools, universities and mosques and which permeates the media throughout the radicalized Muslim world is so complete, so undifferentiated, so extreme and so rooted in uniform conformity that only a total remake, a redefinition of these institutions, can have any hope of reversing this perversion of truth, this immoderacy, this disinterest in co-existence.

Islamism and Fascism are particularly symbiotic, having many striking similarities.

Just as when we may criticize Nazism, we are not being anti-German.

When we may abhor Radical Islamism, we are not being anti-Islam and certainly not prejudiced against the majority in the Muslim world.

Western civilization allows us varying perspectives, differentiated opinions and the exquisite luxury of viewing any religion, any culture in all their multitudinous colors, values, expressions, qualities and realities.

Both Radical Islamism and Nazism see the world in stark black and white; in particular both have exhibited the deep-seated will to exterminate the Jews. In fact the Islamist's doctrine goes further, believing their redemption and the eagerly awaited end of the world will only arrive when there are no Jews left in the world. Apocalypse and its doomsday are central to the spirituality of Jihadists, the Ahmadinejad's of the world and thereby they express their fascistic purity.

They both discriminate against homosexuals and would exterminate them. They would not live comfortably with others of different beliefs, opposing cultures, varying politics and would consistently attempt to destroy those of difference until a uniformity, a universal commonality was obtained that matched the Sunni Wahhabist or Shiite extremes; with even all less extreme variations of Muslim beliefs, especially those of moderacy, eventually expunged.

Both believe they are the finest community, the superior race, god's perfection and personification on earth - all else pales into insignificance by comparison, all others are of little value except as perhaps the Nazi's Untermenchen, the Islamist's Dhiminis, all third-class citizens with necessarily slave-like mentalities, existing and working only for the common good of the superior ones and those chosen to interpret the exclusive immutable and unchangeable truths of their preeminent beliefs.

Western societies are substantially deficient at fighting this fascism, at combating even more so Islamism which thrives universally with its amorphous and insidious presence on every continent, in most countries.

If the radical leftist, if the liberal (for whom all cultures, all beliefs are equivalent) appeaser, if the current media, all existed in the late 1930's, then perhaps Roosevelt would not have declared war on the Nazis (Germany had at that time not yet attacked America). And even if he had, these opposing forces would have made it impossible to prosecute the war, what with the hundreds of thousands of GI's dead, with the millions of German civilians dead, with the ultimately 50 million victims of WWII. Within the context of modern politics and propaganda, these casualties, especially amongst the non-combatants, would have caused the war effort to be destroyed and with it the ability of the Western World to contain Nazism and eventually defeat it.

There would have been democracy in Europe, no Jews left in those countries and certainly no nascent state of Israel.

America would have probably survived, but in a much reduced and weakened form, beset continually by the expansionist aims of the Nazis and perhaps the USSR, fighting ever since for its isolated survival.

Western societies are not well designed to understand these evils or eradicate them. We are designed to invent Penicillin, the Internet, expand tolerance, peace and prosperity, and extend the beneficence of freedom to all individuals replete with unlimited rights and choices.

We tend to view the world of Islamists through Western lenses with eminently Western rationality. That is why we constantly appease, donating money to the Hamas' university in Gaza, protecting via America's vast military umbrella the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, allowing enormous sums of money to institute and maintain radical Islamic religion and education worldwide including Madrassas and Mosques throughout Western Europe and the USA. That is why, in our rational and reasonable attempt to appease those who hate us, those who would destroy us, we in fact strengthen them. We motivate them further as they cannot be reconciled to our existence, they cannot be appeased by our signs of weakness and conciliation, our inconsistent variabilities.

We institute sanctions not worthy of the definition. We initiated a powerful invasion of Iraq and failed to finish it decisively, failed miserably to follow that miraculous removal of Saddam Hussein with a rebuilding of Iraqi society with all its attendant moderate and democratic judicial, educational and governmental institutions. We failed to ensure the participation of the Iraqi majority from the start and facilitate their ultimate control of their own destiny. We needed to be a proactive facilitator and not an occupying power. The jury as they say, is fortunately still out.

Iran is of course another twist in the story, another mirror the West cannot see, dare not see, lest it lose its freshly minted New World innocence, its hard won naivety.

Martyrdom is exalted in Iran.

They view annihilation of Israel and themselves in return, positively. They will attack Israel as soon as practical and do not take into account the logical eventuality of their own destruction. Their particular heaven awaits all their martyrs. In fact they welcome such retaliation, believing it will draw the Muslim peoples closer to each other, encourage riots in every Arab street, cementing their anti-West views and actions, furthering the interests of the Islamists. They realize Muslims are now too divided and for the necessary war between the Muslim world and the Western world to take place, catalytic events like 9/11 and Iraq are absolutely required. Bin Laden understood well the results of 9/11 and its military insignificance and yet hoped for a strong Western reaction to inspire Jihadists worldwide.

The Islamists enjoy the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq as they see these wars as breeding grounds for their protégés - they calculate that the Western world has not the resilience or the patience to fight wars of attrition and that they will get mired in the media casualties and political swamps of a long, painful and drawn out conflict.

The Islamists understand well the Harry Reids and Barrack Obamas of the world and believe it's only a matter of time when America will leave and the Jihadists will then establish Islamic States in Iraq and Afghanistan; states which will serve as a launch pad, as an historical pretext to initiating terrorist attacks in Europe and the USA on their way to establishing a worldwide Caliphate, which is always and remains central to their everyday preoccupations.

The Marketplace Knows Best (March 28, 2008)

2008-03-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

In Israel the modest town of Sderot is suing the government of Israel.

It's always fascinating how the esteemed experts,
the genius corpus of economists cannot,
in spite of their continual best efforts
at predicting the course of our economy
and our stock markets, get it right.
University students, the Average Joe
in the street and the marketplace
seem on the other hand
to be better predictors
of the future health or illness
of our mercantile future.

Perhaps this is where real democracy works,
as it were,
in the pecuniary belly of the beast
and not in the media,
not in the openly opaque
ivory towers of Wall Street.

Likewise the citizens of Sderot,
the town in Israel one mile from the Gaza border,
are taking their future into their own hands.
Sderot has suffered over 1000 Qassams since January 1st,
those crude but devastatingly debilitating and sometimes lethal
rocket barrages sent over daily by the separate
and self-governing entity known as Gaza.

Gaza got its fervent wishes fulfilled.
First Israel unilaterally withdrew and effectively handed Gaza
its independence in September of 2005;
the citizens of which then promptly elected Hamas
as their chosen government in January of 2006.
It seems finally, that having their own destiny,
to realize or destroy for themselves,
day by day, is just not enough for the independent citizens of Gaza –
they insist on wreaking havoc with Sderot across the border –
there have never been as many rockets as now,
since the separation.
I suppose the old adage applies
"Be careful what you wish for."

The citizens of Gaza have voted for and chosen terrorism,
have thereby inherited devastation and anarchy,
against all international predictions and expert prognostications.

Those citizens of Sderot, a missile’s throw across the border,
have likewise confounded the politicians in Jerusalem.

They are suing for protection, for an end to terrorism,
from a seemingly indifferent government
more concerned with Condoleezza’s demands and
with not compromising the already bankrupt peace process.

For good or bad, citizens across both borders
are taking their future in their own hands –
they are the ones that know best,
that are making their choices,
they are indeed the marketplace –
the media and pundits would be well advised to take note.

FITNA UNVEILED (March 27, 2008)

2008-03-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

The Muslim world that is vocal and vociferous in its demands for censorship in the West is going through a reenergized paroxysm of anger and hate – fatwas for the Fitna producer (Dutch politician Geert Wilders) and its distributors are flying fast and furious.

The Fitna film, supposedly anti-Muslim and anti-Koran, (is it realistic to mandate that 100% of the world’s population must be pro-Koran and pro-Muslim?) is yet to be viewable anywhere - the orgy of condemnation is however already reaching volcanic proportions.

Whether the film has artistic or philosophic merit is not the point. The issue is free speech and reasonable individual rights of expression and critical thinking, the Western World’s invaluable inheritance of 3000 years of civilizing refinement.

Since most Muslim organizations and countries seem so experienced and professional at censorship and the restriction of individual expression, we should ask them firmly yet politely exactly how they so effectively censor the existing hate speech, the rampant anti-Semitic and anti-West propaganda that fill their media, Mosques, schools and universities on an hourly basis, every day, almost without exclusion.

We could then see if their clearly enormous success in this area can be applied to Geert Wilders’ new and controversial film, Fitna.

If this film produces one superb result it will be to unearth and learn from the Muslim World their most closely guarded secret – how indeed they manage to so successfully remove those endless anti-America and anti-Israel caricatures, the films and harangues from their ever present education system and media, how they achieve such unrivaled respect and manifest such unprejudiced consideration for Christianity, Judaism and the rest of the world’s religious cultures and beliefs.

Clearly their unparalleled censorship is not at all applied to anti-government, democratic, moderate or revolutionary speech and actions within their societies. Rather these societies just as clearly nurture multi-culturalism, religious freedom and unqualified personal expression. That is why they reserve the corresponding right to require, as they now petulantly demand, of the Western World the censorship of Fitna and of any and all criticism of Islam or the Koran.

Once they divulge how exactly they miraculously manage to remove all this hate speech against Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, the Baha’i and assorted other religions and groups we will be able to follow their eminently civilized advances and do likewise in our societies so urgently in need of this Middle Eastern censorship, this sensitizing cultural lobotomy.

I await their generous advice with much anticipation.

Link to the Wall Street Journal article "Islam and Free Speech" by Peter Hoekstra:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120649269618764219.html

Danish Pastries (March 26, 2008)

2008-03-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

Denmark, long the liberal, open society that welcomed immigrants, has done an about face. After being the symbolic envy of Universalists, of socialists, of cultural liberalism, Denmark today has the strictest immigration policy in Europe.

The Muslim population in Denmark, constituting a mere 4% of the total, refuses to integrate, consumes 40% of the welfare, constitutes a majority of the country’s convicted rapists. The Danes now acknowledge that their core values of personal liberty, free speech, equality for women and tolerance of other ethnic groups are incompatible with Islam as they know it.

Muslim leaders openly advocate introducing Islamic law in Denmark. Danes at the forefront of advocating free speech and Western values are subject to fatwas and increasingly violent attacks from the Muslim population.

This haven of tolerance and openness has opted for survival and rationality. For citizenship the country now requires of new immigrants:

- 3 years of language classes
- tests on Denmark’s history, culture and language
- 7 years of residency prior to application
- proven job opportunities and commitment to work

New mosques will not be allowed to be built in Copenhagen. Assimilation will be actively promoted. The country that once courageously and righteously saved their 7,000 Jews from the Nazi death camps now is accused of racism.

America is no stranger to accusations of profiling, political incorrectness and racism. Yet Muslims worldwide still beat down our doors to gain immigration status to the USA – they tellingly do not do likewise to the majority of U.N. nations habitually accusing the USA of racism. When last did Cuba or Russia, Syria or even Saudi Arabia, those bastions of tolerance and freedom, receive a deluge of immigrant applications?

So we in the USA spend our time being sued by aggressive Imams testing nervous airlines. Open season has been declared on the West by demanding Islamic organizations hoping to force the government and our municipalities to kowtow into passive submission. We now clearly need footbaths in every university restroom. We also need two taxi lines at every airport – one for those with short skirts, dogs or alcoholic beverages and one for Sharia-compliant Americans.

Yet little spunky Denmark is showing us and everyone the way. They opened their borders and their coffers to welcome Muslims, in a show of remarkable generosity and goodwill. Now, bruised and battered by an unappreciative, increasingly fundamentalist, and sadly uncompromising Muslim community, they are closing their doors and battening down the hatches.

It is only a matter of time before America’s similar generosities and freedoms are likewise pressured. It will not be too long before our remarkable naivety, our exquisitely refined political correctness, are replaced by realistic pragmatism and a strong commitment to our own cultural survival, to uncompromising freedoms and our non-negotiable security and liberty.

A new found taste for Danish pastries perhaps?

Published on these forums:

http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/danish-pastries-by-leslie-sacks/

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.116/pub_detail.asp

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/danish-pastries/

http://europenews.dk/en/node/10160

The True Conservative (March 25, 2008)

2008-03-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

The true conservative
the true democrat
the true independent
is the consummate moderate in all areas
except those of freedom and survival,
eschewing both fascism and socialism
marching to the beat of a
refined mind, a tempered heart
following the morality of ages,
the commandments of Sinai,
faithful to the ethics of our fathers,
of Abraham, Moses, Plato and Lincoln

The authentic conservative
does not have an agenda,
ignores political correctness,
feels the heart but follows the mind

The essential conservative
has lucidity of intelligence
a respect for ideas, for solutions
for values and for truths

The radical leftist, the inflamed Jihadist
both worship the heart, the knowing of
certainty, the passion of perfection.
It’s the mind of the conservative
that lover of freedom,
that directs ones path,
dictates ones decisions and not
the agenda of the crowd
the naivety of feel-goodness,
the one-slogan-fits-all,
the all-is-relative, the
fascism of the hyperbolic left

Obama’s Peak is Past (March 19, 2008)

2008-03-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

Obama’s pastor of 20 years, the fiery Reverend Wright, would have us damn America for the many sins he so energetically and repeatedly points out. He further claimed in 2006 that racist America, run by rich white folk, could never countenance a black president. Now that he has co-opted brown Obama, born of a white mother and Kenyan father, as his great black hope to rearrange America’s soul, he may have, by his increasingly contaminating and close relationship with Obama, both cursed Obama’s presidential chances and given Obama’s supporters pause. Pause to examine the presidential hopeful’s views and his many influences, a primary part of which derives, as Obama himself acknowledges, from Reverend Wright whose anti-White, anti-America, anti-Israel and pro-Farrakhan diatribes are now filling the TV screens across America (mainly Fox News as CNN, NBC and CBS are unsure, it seems, how these revelations fit in with their clearly ambivalent agendas).

The irony is that all those who could not be proud of America, as Michelle Obama has stated, all those like Reverend Wright who present America as hateful, racist, deserving of 9/11, and all those others who present a depressing, negative, paranoid and nasty version of America, by their support of Obama, with his opposing view of positive hopeful America, will indeed bring him down, will damage ultimately his chances by their virulently negative views so clearly in opposition to Obama’s optimism and belief in a great America.

For Obama to bridge the increasingly obvious divide between his source, his influences and that which he is “selling” in his campaign to America, he is playing more and more the politics of victimhood. This is a great shame as he seemed to be the one candidate capable of optimism, of looking forward, of focusing on the positive in America and enhancing it further for the good of all America.

Obama, when confronted with queries surrounding his relationship to Reverend Wright and the Reverend’s inflammatory remarks and strong support of Louis Farrakhan, that notorious provider of anti-Americanism and of anti-Jewish hate speech, has quickly condemned any statements that are anti-American or anti-Semitic. He has however, with worrying consistency, failed to absolutely condemn both Reverend Wright and Farrakhan, as though his relationship to and admiration of both reverse racists can withstand the controversy and protect his clearly deep sense of loyalty and brotherhood; as though the appalling remarks and virulent attitudes of both are not somehow representative of their character, as though these defining core values and political mantras have not been consistently and openly espoused by these hate mongers for the last 20 years and more.

When you condemn a man’s words and not the man himself, you make light of the seriousness of these words, you dilute its significance. Obama claims the impossibility of disowning Reverend Wright, even as he could not his own white grandmother for certain of her racial epithets. If Obama was of Italian ancestry would his all-inclusive relativity prevent him from disowning Mussolini? If Obama as a kid was taken to and initially belonged to the same church that David Duke frequented, would he similarly castigate Duke’s words whilst breaking bread with him?

Most dictators have had their pet charitable projects, have been good to some portions of their citizenry. Both Hezbollah and Hamas, designated by the USA as terrorist organizations, have effective and surely laudable social programs, albeit with strong political agendas. Obama explains, in mitigation, the good work by Reverend Wright in the church, his active social justice, as though Hitler’s sincere commitment to uplift the poor of Germany can wash away his genocide, his Mein Kampf, his evil. Now Wright is obviously no Hitler, however, one can’t help being reminded of the old adage, that if one sleeps with dogs one will undoubtedly arise with fleas.

Obama clearly, as they often say, wants to have his cake and to eat every bountiful portion thereof. He would have America believe in his all-encompassing ideology, his unlimited inclusiveness, his soporific hope and optimism for all of America. Yet the person he is married to, the church he is a member of, the intimate advisors he has cultivated in Wright and others, the people he seems to have respect and loyalty to, all do not share the worldview he is selling the electorate – they all seem clearly to have an abiding animosity to America, a deeply negative animus about its people and its policies.

Which is it? Who is Obama? Is it the origins, the source, the influences of his life or the newly minted fresh and powerfully convincing and inspiring Obama? When will we get detail and substance on his views, philosophy and plans, when will we be privy to what is more reflective of and essential to Obama – his wife’s profoundly negative views, his relationships with dangerously toxic “uncles” (read Reverend Wright), confidants, mentors and advisors or indeed the perfection he so brilliantly is now espousing.

“The Bloody Conundrum of Gaza” The Economist (March 8, 2008)

2008-03-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

The only real conundrum, understood well by both Palestinians and Israelis, yet totally ignored by the Western world with their disingenuous and blinding blinkers, with their agenda-driven hypocrisy remaining in place since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, is indeed the obvious reality that this lethal stalemate would cease the minute the rockets and suicide bombings stop. It’s really as simple as that, in spite of all the convoluted permutations both the Western and Arab worlds deign to project onto this conflict.

The Economist states that the “Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a lethal stalemate, and the Islamists of Hamas refuse to be destroyed.” Should Israel with its overwhelming military superiority be desirous of destroying Hamas and their Gaza Strip, it would in fact take a few bloody days and they would be done with. Yet it is their unrivaled and uncompromised ethical standards that prevents just such a bloody solution and keeps Israel by its own choice on the defensive, hoping for sanity and rationality from a West that is cowered by Oil Power and Jihadists and from an Arab world that is full of self-defeating scapegoating, full of well fed hate and uncompromising fundamentalism.

It was so in 1948 and it remains the same intransigence today. Israel’s existence is for the Arab world the issue – not its borders, not any other painful aspect of Israel’s unfortunate interrelationship with the Palestinian people who are themselves hostage to Hamas and the other myriad assorted terrorist groups. All other problems can be solved, all other compromises are eminently within grasp by all except those who have not and will not accept Israel’s right to exist since 1948.

The Hamas Charter as well as the PLO Charter, in spite of all the spin, still advocate for Israel’s destruction. And it is, to the contrary, not Hamas that refuses to be destroyed, but Israel. Israel has no desire, even though it has the firepower, to destroy Hamas – Israel targets only the terrorists and rocketeers. It is irresponsible of The Economist to suggest any genocidal policy of Israel, and at the same time to ignore Hamas’ stated genocidal intentions and their daily rocketing of innocent civilians. Stop the rockets and the stalemate will evaporate, a situation Hamas refuses to entertain and one which the West and the Arab world refuse to push them into.

There is continuous focus on casualties, disproportionate responses and terrified children crying in streets of improvised devastation. Political claims fly back and forth rife with accusations from all sides. The average Palestinian, the average Israeli remain pawns of regimes, of politicians and media poisoned with indifference for these citizens, rife with self-serving agendas and callous scapegoating.

If the missiles stop, so will the necessary, understandable, and eminently proportional responses.

The Economist further claims that the missile attacks (over 500 so far this year) and Israel’s focused responses are where “cause and effect had merged into a seamless continuum.” To be blind to the cause and report avidly on the effects, especially from Gaza, is to pay homage only to the expert Palestinian propaganda machine originally trained well by the KGB in its time and its long time stooge Arafat; propaganda which with Hamas’ ability to daily terrorize Israeli civilians seems to be the two singular areas in which Gaza excels. Once again the simple is ignored, the case as it were of the blind leading the lame. The cause is and was the terrorism emanating from Gaza, the rockets and suicide bombings.

Stop these and the continuum so incorrectly defined by The Economist will likewise evaporate.

See this article at: http://www2.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10808635

SIX MILLION (March 10, 2008)

2008-03-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

Picture, if you would, the single mother
who births and then nurtures her children
to creative beings and lives of giving

Picture the single doctor, saving lives,
easing those lives of others, often for decades

Picture the single scientist who invents the Internet,
Penicillin, the cell phone or nuclear energy

Picture the Albert Einstein, the Marc Chagall, the George Gershwin,
Arthur Rubinstein, Franz Kafka, Martin Buber, Golda Meir,
Jonas Salk, Groucho Marx, Bob Dylan,

on and on, and then on some more,
then multiply that all by six million possibilities

What valuable people we lost forever in the Holocaust.
What good lives this world lost in that genocide,
and more in that war, on all sides

Imagine all the world could have had, all the world could have been

But you can't imagine; we can only see one at a time - and
that is everything to us, all the time.

MILITANTS?

2008-03-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

8 Killed…by Palestinian MILITANT
(pg 1, LA Times, Mar. 7, 08) http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-jerusalem7mar07,1,103934,full.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

Militants?

Those are marchers in San Francisco shouting anti-Bush slogans
Those are protestors scuffling with police at the G8 Summits in Seattle and Rome.
Those are volunteers of The Minutemen patrolling our southern borders.

However they are certainly not the terrorist who chose a seminary
of unarmed religious youths in the middle of the holy city of Jerusalem
and then proceeded to massacre eight of these students,
apart from the dozen badly wounded, in a library containing mainly bibles,
Old Testament bibles, from whence the Koran ironically sprang.

In Gaza messianic crowds danced and celebrated,
handing out sweets in an orgy of revenge,
the smell of martyrdom already thick amongst the revelers.

Hamas calls the attack “heroic” (pg. 8, LA Times, March 7, 2008).
So the West, including The Los Angeles Times,
calls these coldblooded murderers of young innocents, “militants”,
while the Palestinians revere them as “heroic.”
Can there be any greater perversion of morality, of language,
than this dangerous reversion of truth, of common sense?

So our soldiers in Iraq are killers and yet these by contrast
are just angry, oppressed people desperate for expression.
They could not possibly emigrate to any of the dozens
of surrounding Arab countries and make a life and a mark there –
certainly by any standard these countries have many opportunities.

They could not possibly stay in Gaza and the West Bank
and help spend the billions of dollars of aid
from the US, Europe and the UN on better sewage systems,
on education, medical and judicial facilities,
all clearly in desperate need of an overhaul.

They could also not possibly help increase security,
decrease honor killings, rape, corruption, graft
and political killings amongst themselves.
They could not express disapproval to every newspaper in the world,
they could not protest outside the UN in New York or the Israel Embassy in London.
These brave men could not even choose for their Jihad
an Israeli Army base or police station.
No.
They chose a seminary of unarmed innocents in Jerusalem.
That is their unmatched heroism.
These are the heroes we are informed,
that must be our negotiating partners,
our trusted allies in peace.

According to world media, the ETA Basques are terrorists;
so are the IRA (Ireland), the Baader-Meinhof (Germany), the Red Brigades (Italy),
the Japanese Red Army (Japan), the Tamil Tigers (Sri Lanka), FARC (Colombia),
FLN, (Algeria), ELN (Bolivia), the Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) and the Shining Path (Peru)…all and every one of these multitudinous groups, terrorists.

Yet these killers from Gaza and the West Bank
are by contrast uniquely labeled by our empathic, understanding
and infinitely nonjudgmental press as militants.
These are the militants, however who could teach
all these terrorists a thing or two about depravity,
about blind fanaticism, about a bloodlust for innocents.

As long as our American soldiers are accused
by our politicians and our press – claims of torture,
rape and murder are everywhere evident;
and as long as these Jihadists are, by comparison
in our upside-down world, justified as militants;
we will fail to see and mark the enemy;
we will appease and endlessly negotiate,
in all our ambiguity and confusion, with the devil.

We cannot win the war if we refuse
to acknowledge who we must fight.
If we forgive and offer abject apologies
to those who seek our demise,
those who wish our destruction,
then indeed the enemy is within,
the enemy is ourselves.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.233/pub_detail.asp

Let’s Call Their Bluff (Imposition of a Universal Islamic Blasphemy Law) Mar. 5, 2008

2008-03-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

The 57 Muslim nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) are attempting to impose an “Islamic Blasphemy Law” as the Universal Standard, a law which would promote the death penalty for those who blaspheme against the Prophet Muhammad.

Professor Dr. Ekmeleddin Insanoglu, the Turkish Secretary-General of the OIC (including supposed moderate Turkey), issued the above frightening statement on February 15, 2008, partly in response to the republication of those now infamous Danish cartoons.

Previously, on January 18, 2006 the enormously influential Sheik Yusaf al-Qaradawi had demanded that the United Nations act in accord with purely Islamic, Sharia-based laws and conceptions of blasphemy and punishment. Qaradawi is furthermore spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the European Fatwa Council. Noticeably, his anti-Jewish pro-terrorism fatwas include the re-conquering of Spain and the imposition of Sharia, by all necessary means, on all humanity,

I support and hereby call, together with the OIC, for the United Nation’s adoption of a law against blasphemy and strongly urge all to do likewise. Let us, however, use this golden opportunity to democratically broaden the scope of this law to give it more effect, more bite, more universality.

Let us require this broad all-inclusiveness to be adopted by the United Nations as well as the OIC and all related Muslim groups, councils and governing bodies that support this Blasphemy Law, this Universal Standard. Let us include specifically and irrevocably laws that disallow blasphemy against not only Muslim but also the Christian and Jewish G-ds as well as their prophets, their messengers, holy books and holy places. Let us include the Buddhists, Baha’i and all peoples and sects (some Muslim) who are the subject of terrorism and oppression, hate speech and aberrant education. Let us even include in the wide swath of these laws, Muslim women, those perennial second-class citizens, inhabitants of the invisible World of Burkas.

This is a great deal, a wonderful trade off. No Left-wing, multicultural, pro-Palestinian anti-American believer could not but support this all-inclusive fair and balanced legislation.

I would absolutely support giving up our right to Danish cartoons and discussions of Muhammad (not usually central to most Westerners’ lifestyle in any event) in return for the dismantling or reformation of the majority of the Madrassas, educational forums and media outlets in the Muslim world and beyond.

Imams and teachers, policies and agendas, books and media would naturally have to be replaced as they are all endemically permeated by anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-non-Wahhabist people and ideas. The dynamited Buddhist cliff carvings in Afghanistan, those lost wonders of the ancient world, could certainly be rehabilitated as an initial pilot project by these Imams.

Hundreds of thousand of these professional blasphemers would be without jobs, without an honorable means of support. It is only fair that we offer, as a corollary to this new and ground-breaking United Nations law, job retraining facilities for all these newly unemployed jihadists.

We can ensure Hamas gets to grow pure and spiritual tulips in the empty hothouses of Gaza for Amsterdam’s flower markets; we can send Ahmadinejad and his cohorts to Kyoto to practice the ancient art of the Japanese tea ceremony with its inspiring atmosphere of peace, tranquility and love for all mankind.

The more I think about it, the better I feel. Imagine the hundreds of billions of dollars we could save in reduced Homeland Security and U.S. military expenditure. With the help of the passionate OIC and their Wahhabist brethren we could legislate against hate speech everywhere, all the time, for everyone. And I won’t even miss my Danish cartoons.
—
Note 1: See Andrew Bostom’s Feb 23rd, 2008 article on the “Universal Islamic Blasphemy Law?” http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/02/universal_islamic_blasphemy_la.html
Note 2: See also Ibn Warraq as quoted in Bostom’s above, in a reference on pg 7: “During his recent debate with the cultural jihadist Tariq Ramadan, Ibn Warraq elucidated what is at stake should such Islamic supremacism prevail:

The great ideas of the West -- rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy -- are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing.

...Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.”

Andrew Bostom's article:
http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/02/23/universal-islamic-%e2%80%9cblasphemy%e2%80%9d-law/

Published on Family Security Matters: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.348/pub_detail.asp

America at the Crossroads (Mar. 3, 2008)

2008-03-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

It seems all great empires mature and then dissipate over time, the average span being 200 years. The United States may be moving from success and bountiful wealth to self-indulgent egocentricity and blinding apathy.

The Huns evinced greater energy and focus than did the Romans, hence the latter’s demise.

It seems too much success, too much freedom can be a bad thing. We can get too spoiled and flaccid, losing our perspective and appreciation of the wondrous freedoms and institutions our democracy affords us.

And if we take our unique advantages for granted, if in our apathy we respect only third world cultures, religions and that which we are not, then in our idolatrous decadence, we open the door to infiltration by those who would do us harm, those who work to steal our jewels and destroy the rest. And there are endless faces pressed to our windows, jealous or angry at our smugness, our softness, our presumptuousness, awaiting our fall in grace from our ivory towers.

Perhaps a cheeky god, a wry humorous and far-seeing god, has sent al-Qaeda and Islamic Fundamentalism to try our passions and test our empire in the fires of radicalism.

The British too were tested by the Nazis; fortunately they had Churchill to represent them in those dark times rather than the myriad Chamberlains everywhere hovering, as the latter still do today.

David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s first Prime Minister) wrote to Churchill in 1961 of this historical threshold: “I saw you then not only as the symbol of your people and its greatness, but as the voice of the invincible and uncompromising conscience of the human race at a time of danger to the dignity of man, created in the image of God. It was not only the liberties and the honor of your own people that you saved.”

America likewise is now at the crossroads of civilization and it will rise to the occasion or fall by its strength, determination and preparedness to sacrifice its endless pleasures and comfortabilities to preserve its unsurpassed freedoms.

Jihadist terrorists worldwide mock our evident weaknesses, our open sentimentality and our ambivalence. They by contrast are full of clarity, commitment and a preparedness to sacrifice all for their misbegotten ideals. Unless we evince Churchill’s resolute and undeniable commitment to combat these dark forces and fight for our future, we will stand at the precipice, we stand to lose our empire.

In 1940 Winston Churchill declared: “We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing ground, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

And they never did.

Accountability in Sderot (One for One) Feb. 29, 2008

2008-02-29T18:13:00.000-08:00

Sderot is a modest town in Israel, one mile from the Gaza border. A good many of its citizens are in fact immigrants expelled from the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East.

So far, for just this year from January 1, 2008, Sderot has been bombarded with over 500 Qassam rockets fired indiscriminately from Gaza at its civilian population. Children have been blown apart, with most families remaining in the town who cannot afford to move out of range of this never-ending devastation.

How would San Diego react to missiles from Tijuana? How would Seoul react to missiles from its nearby border with North Korea? No country committed to protecting its citizens would tolerate this inhumane barrage for one day never mind the 2650 days that has been Sderot’s nightmare.

Yet Israel largely bites its lip and bides its time in a macabre exercise of absurd patience and restraint.

WHY? Why indeed.

Because the international community complains of the cycle of violence, whines about disproportional responses, twists the clear evidence and views Israel as the aggressor and Gaza and its Hamas handlers as the victims.

The West threatens sanctions if Israel strongly responds in effective self defense.

So Israel waits, waits for a lessening of the rocket attacks or for more support and understanding from the West, neither of which are forthcoming.

The solution is far simpler than we imagine, than we care to contemplate.

One bomb for one rocket. An inviolate formula. Israel promises to deliver within 24 hours of receiving each Qassam rocket from Gaza, a reply of a single targeted bomb aimed at political (dual use) and military installations of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and their multifarious allies.

One for One – exactly, irrefutably, always.

The Israeli military press office then publishes with worldwide transparency a daily report:

Today Israel was subject to # missiles from Gaza, the times and locations of each being accurately listed.

Furthermore, today Israel responded with exactly # retaliatory bombs, again giving each time and destination thereof in Gaza. This press release reconfirms that the missiles from Gaza were fired indiscriminately at civilian targets. Israel further holds the Hamas government accountable.

The Gazan citizens, the Western and Arab Worlds and the media knowingly or otherwise conflate and obscure the issues. They all insist, disingenuously, that
- it's a continuing cycle of violence
- both Israel and Hamas are equally responsible
- Hamas is the victim and Gaza the downtrodden
- Israel initiates responses disproportionately

One for One

Israel can simply, once and for all, publicly and openly break this cycle, attribute responsibility, invest in clarity, expose the true victimhood and respond proportionately. It can and it must produce, advertise and act according to an inviolate formula, one bomb for one rocket, every day, immediately, always.

They will thereby reeducate the population of Gaza and the world media in a way that has been obfuscated to date. The new reality will be obvious, clear and irrefutable. This will lead inevitably to new linkages, new solutions.

The intended solutions are reasonable negotiations, meaningful agreements.

These can only come about when
- Hamas agrees to Israel’s right to exist, when
- women and children are not specifically targeted and when
- agreements are honored.

Any and all negotiations and agreements without the above three basic preconditions will obviously be irrelevant.

But Hamas won’t and never did entertain any of these three minimal preconditions
- their official charter openly still calls for the destruction of Israel
- they have broken every cease-fire agreement with Israel (and even broken their agreements with the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Abbas).

Hamas therefore simply will not do so until either
- their support in the Western and Arab worlds dries up
- Israel’s response intensifies until the consequences for Hamas exceed their toleration levels or the Gazan population removes them from power.

“One for One” helps accomplish these eventualities until a defensive laser or missile system is fully and successfully implemented. “One for One” is the simplest, most pragmatic and internationally saleable solution Israel could devise.

America seems to be ready for change –

I believe Israel is, too.

Honor Killings - Do We Know? (Feb. 26, 2008)

2008-02-26T12:48:00.000-08:00

Honor Killings - Do We Know?

What are these countries
who are these people that
would stone the abused and
grant freedom to the rapist
What is this religion
who are its protagonists
that would hang the victim
and venerate the victimizer

In what culture do men own
the law, the morality and the women
Where are all the activists, the human rights groups,
the discrimination organizations, the women’s movements
who all ignore the spiritual genocide foisted on Muslim women
who pass by this daily purgatory with nary a whisper of support

Perhaps they are otherwise occupied,
these important people with important issues,
perhaps they have only energy for a concrete wall
between Israel and the West Bank,
for disrespected Korans in Guantanamo

The likely future of the modern world and
certainly the future of the Muslim world
rests in the hands of the enslaved Muslim women
starved of justice, denuded of freedom
They are the ones who will change that world
They are the ones who need our change, Obama’s
celebrated change, far more than we ourselves

We ignore them at our peril

Honor Killings – Do We Care?