Month: February 2009

UK Parliment Surrenders To Muslims

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Here’s an article in David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine about a disturbing thing going on in the UK right now. Read the full article here… excerpts below…

British Parliament Surrenders

By Stephen Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, February 06, 2009

The place where Winston Churchill once so eloquently and forcefully rallied the British people to defeat the Nazi threat is now under siege from a new tyranny.

Islamic intimidation achieved a new high last week when it forced the British Parliament, one of Western civilization’s most venerable institutions, to quietly surrender its most basic of freedoms.

Almost unreported in the Western media, including Britain’s, a Muslim member of the House of Lords, Nazir Ahmed, showed the advanced state of Britain’s dhimmitude [the Islamic system of governing populations conquered by jihad wars] when he threatened to mobilize 10,000 fellow Muslims to block Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker, Geert Wilders, from entering Westminster. Wilders had been invited by another House of Lords member to show his controversial film, Fitna, last Thursday in a Westminster conference room. Invitations had been sent to all House members to attend the screening that was to be followed “by discussion and debate in true parliamentary fashion.”

But Baron Ahmed, who was born in Pakistan and raised in Britain, forgetting he is part of a liberal democratic system that cherishes freedom of expression and association, reacted with familiar jihadi-style tactics to Wilders’ announced appearance. Along with his threat to mobilize 10,000 demonstrators to block Wilders’ path, it was reported Ahmed also intended to sue the House of Lords member who had invited the Dutch politician.

However, that all proved unnecessary.

After Ahmed and representatives of several British Muslim organizations met with the leader of the House of Lords and its chief whip, the Wilders visit was cancelled and British democracy suffered a crushing defeat. And while the British elites and media may have wanted to keep the British people in the dark regarding the scale of this debacle, Ahmed had no qualms about publicising it. Labelling it what it truly is, Ahmed told Pakistani media outlets that the British parliament’s retreat was “a victory for the Muslim community.”

…Regarded as a “moderate” Muslim, Ahmed led the first British government-sponsored delegation on a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. He has opposed international terrorism, women wearing the veil and forced marriages in Britain. Risking his personal safety, Ahmed has also supported the expulsion of violent Islamic radicals from Great Britain.

But there is another, more disturbing side to Ahmed’s political character. He opposed Salman Rushdie’s receiving a knighthood, because Rushdie had “blood on his hands.” In 2005, Ahmed also hosted a book launch of a Swedish anti-Semite, Joeran Jermas, in the House of Lords. Jermas’s speech, titled ‘The Jews and Empire’, as reported in The Times, contained such niceties as “Your newspapers belong to the Zionists…”; “The Jews like an empire…”; and “This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance…”

And while Jermas said the “Jewish supremacy drive” is the only reason for “wars, terror and trouble” in the Middle East, his next statement probably accounts for Ahmed’s inviting this extreme racist to use the House of Lords to spread his repulsive message of hate.

“Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England…they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important to turn the tide.”

Well, there you have it. While Wilders, a democrat who wanted to warn Britain about the anti-civilizational hatred spreading within its borders and across Europe, was denied access to the House of Lords, the doors were opened wide to a neo-Nazi ally of that hatred.

Disgracefully, the representatives of the democracy that gave the world “the most powerful pro-liberty culture within the Western tradition” did nothing. As one observer commented: “There were no meetings with whips or leaders. There were no demonstrations. The meeting was not cancelled.”

Contrast this with the Labour government’s energetic reaction in the Damian Green case that has been described as authoritarian. Green, a Conservative Member of Parliament, was arrested by anti-terror police last month for leaking information to the press that, according to one report, “exposed government incompetence.” He was held nine hours while his home and office were searched, the latter without a warrant. As it turns out, Green will not face an anti-terror charge, but rather a more ambiguous one concerning his having conspired “to commit misconduct in a public office.”

It is obvious that Ahmed intends to set himself up as the arbiter of all things Islamic regarding the British parliament. His control of free speech, stifling of debate and threatening of parliament if one does not conform to his views is the antithesis of the British democratic tradition. It makes one fear for its future if more Muslim politicians of Ahmed’s ilk are elected or appointed to Westminster.

Just as worrying is the fact that the government did not disown Ahmed and let him get away with his intimidation tactics. Even worse, it may have set a precedent for submissiveness that will leave it open to future, Islamic blackmail attempts.

Ahmed’s fellow politicians also did not express any outrage or mount a counter-offensive to protect their ancient rights and privileges. Which, in the end, is the saddest statement regarding the state of Churchill’s cherished British democracy today.

By way of continuation, read this subsequent article on how they sent Wilders back to Holland. Unbelieveable.

The Fierce Urgency of Pork, By Charles Krauthammer

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There’s a brilliant column by By Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post today…


Friday, February 6, 2009; A17

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.”

— President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn’t understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn’t what’s illegal, but what’s legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He’d been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he’s not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don’t get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal’s private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he’d come to Washington to upend.

And yet more damaging to Obama’s image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama’s name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It’s not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It’s not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It’s the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus — and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress’s own budget office says won’t be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Not just to abolish but to create something new — a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the “fierce urgency of now” includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting “planted” for “ready to market” would mean a windfall garnered from a new “bonus depreciation” incentive.

After Obama’s miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell — and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

Liberalism and Socialism

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“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

– Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate, 1940, 1944 and 1948

Graham: Obama is AWOL on Democrat Spending Bill

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In a FoxNews interview, Lindsay Graham pointed out Obama’s penchant for avoiding real work and instead performing for the press in the so-far lucrative public opinion venue he relies on so much. Lacking leadership isn’t a new thing from what I can tell, but now that he’s got the job, you’d think he’d want to at least appear presidential.

President Obama has been “AWOL” in negotiations over the economic stimulus package, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday in a scathing rebuke of the new president.

The South Carolina Republican told FOX News that Obama has not been providing leadership, and he criticized the president for giving TV interviews and writing an editorial touting the package, rather than addressing the complaints of lawmakers.

“This process stinks,” Graham told FOX News, before repeating a lot of his criticisms on the Senate floor. “We’re making this up as we go and it is a waste of money. It is a broken process, and the president, as far as I’m concerned, has been AWOL on providing leadership on something as important as this.”

Republican senators and congressmen have been reluctant to direct any criticism at the president since his inauguration. They mostly have fired shots at Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, saying they have obstructed the bipartisan process Obama sought.

But Graham broke that practice after Obama granted a round of interviews defending his plan Tuesday and wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post Thursday in which he warned of disastrous consequences if Congress does not pass the stimulus bill.

“Scaring people is not leadership. Writing an editorial that if you don’t pass this bad bill we’re going to have disaster — we’ve had enough presidents trying to scare people to make bad decisions,” Graham said.

“I like President Obama, but he is not leading. Having lunch is not leading … and doing TV interviews is not leading.”

Obama renewed his plea for the bill at the Energy Department Thursday, shortly after Graham spoke.

“The time for talk is over. The time for action is now,” Obama said.

Obama, in his op-ed, wrote that inaction could lead the economy into an irreversible decline.

“Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes,” he wrote. “And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

It’s really telling that a sitting president actually thinks that the economy “may not be able to reverse”. That just shows shocking misunderstanding for economy in general. Does he think we’re all going to lay down and die? It’s embarassing that he’s so naive. Four long years to go, dealing with a beginner.

Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil

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Article in the WSJ by Judea Pearl, father Daniel Pearl the reporter who was murdered by islamic cowards in 2002.

By JUDEA PEARL

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today’s world emerged after his tragedy?

[Commentary] Reuters/Corbis

Jimmy Carter.

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of “the resistance.” Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny’s murder would be a turning point in the history of man’s inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of “resistance,” has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words “war on terror” cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism — the ideological license to elevate one’s grievances above the norms of civilized society — was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable “tactical” considerations.

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man’s second nature. “In an unfair balance, that’s what people use,” explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. “It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel.” Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

Mr. Carter’s logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas’s rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: “They should end the occupation.” In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society’s role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera’s management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn’t seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a “resistance” movement, together with honorary membership in PBS’s imaginary “cycle of violence.” In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that “each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man’s terrorism becomes another’s resistance to oppression.” He then stated — without blushing — that for readers of the Hebrew Bible “God-soaked violence became genetically coded.” The “cycle of violence” platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror’s victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas — the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains — to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, “Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza,” to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph — another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

Danny’s picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding.

We’ve let the liberals/democrats have a say in the world. That’s what we’ve done that brought us to this. Funny, Jimmy Carter was nearly the worst president we’ve ever had, and he’s most similar in intellect and goals to Obama. God help us.

Karl Rove Quotes Obama’s Larry Summers on Spending Bill

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This is from an interview Karl Rove gave to Greta Van Sustern. The transcript is on the website:

You know, I was reading something, rereading Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council in the Obama White House, some remarks that he made earlier in this process, I believe it was in December. He said, As with any potent medicine, stimulus if mis-administered could do more harm than good by increasing instability and creating long-term programs. A stimulus program should be timely, targeted and temporary.

Timely — we now know that more money in both the House and Senate versions is going to be spent in the years 2011 and beyond than in 2009. Think about that. We’re going to be spending more of this so-called stimulus money in 2011 and to 2019 than we’re spending in 2009.

Targeted — I mean, how targeted is it? You know, we’re losing jobs in manufacturing, and what we’re doing here is just throwing every dollar we can against the wall. It’s sort of like trickle-down Democratic economics. Give $2 billion to the National Institutes of Health. What is that going to do to employ somebody in a manufacturing plant?

And temporary? This is not going to be temporary spending. This is going to be the largest increase in discretionary non-security spending in the history of the United States. It will be an 80 percent increase over this year’s budget. This year’s budget is roughly $393 billion in discretionary non-security spending. This will add $307 billion into the budget this year.

Who thinks that next year, Congress is going to come in and say, You know, what? That $40 billion we added to education in 2009, for the FY 2009 budget, oh, that was just a one-year thing. How many people are going to say, That’s built into the baseline of the budget and we’ve got to start from that point for the 2010 budget? I mean, this is ridiculous, what we’re looking at here. It is the biggest expansion of government all in the name of the stimulus, and it’s not going to end up creating jobs.

Tim Kring, Added To The Naughty List

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Tim Kring – The creator/writer of the NBC series Heroes and has chosen the easy path in taking up the New York/Hollywood cause of uneducated, misdirected, bigoted, and boring attacks on religion with his latest entry in the convoluted world of wish-washy characters and time-travel as plot patch. Season 3, Episode 14 – “A Clear And Present Danger” tries hard, but embarrassingly fails, to paint an abstract called “religion” as the source of evil. Certainly just as all Hollywood liberals can’t be 100% stupid and self-loathing, though their lives reflect it, all religion is certainly not evil. He’s right about one thing though, Obama’s fiasco has brought with it a greater sense of safety for those who have no moral compass.

Read the Full List