Doc Talk in Israel

Islam's OIC: The World's Thought Police

2012-01-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

by Mudar Zahran
January 19, 2012

On December 19, 2011, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning the negative stereotyping and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urged member states to take effective measures towards addressing and combating "such incidents." This resolution, based on an initiative from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), was supported by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who hosted a closed-door three-day meeting – apparently one of many in a series called the "Istanbul Process"-- in Washington D.C. with OIC representatives to discuss ways to implement the resolution.

What might sound like a step toward "tolerance," however, is in reality an assault on freedom of speech: a UN-endorsed violation of human rights, co-sponsored by the US, and prompted by the OIC, an organization of 57 Muslim nations, most of which hold the world's worst records on freedom of speech.

The OIC initiative for a UN resolution against "defamation of religion" is not new; the OIC has been promoting it for the last 13 years despite earlier opposition from Western countries. What changed recently was dropping the word "defamation of religion" and stressing "freedom of speech"-- something about which Secretary of State Clinton seems to be enthusiastic.

What resulted, however, from this new "Resolution 16/18," as it is called, is a US-endorsed UN proposal that urges the restriction of freedom of speech by using a vague terms, such as combating "religious profiling" – a term that can be interpreted by anyone any way he likes.

Placing such language into an international legal context forces people to have to think twice before practicing their constitutionally-secured right of free speech – in the US, at least -- when it comes to discussing religion.

What is also alarming, even to me as a practicing Muslim, is the fact that the resolution seems to revolve around just one religion: Islam. But will the OIC countries implement any resolution for themselves, taking measures against their government-sponsored demonization of the Jewish faith and the systematic proliferation of anti-Semitism?

Does Resolution 16/18 mean that Muslims will still be free in their textbooks to call Jews the sons of swine and monkeys -- perhaps on some trumped-up excuse that that a such a remark is not religious but "only" racial?

Will the Palestinians' highest religious authority, the Mufti, Muhammad Hussein, still be able to say, as he did in early January at a Fatah (not Hamas) event to celebrate the 47th anniversary of its founding, that the destiny of Muslims is to kill Jews [sic], and, quoting a Hadith [a saying attributed to the prophet Mohammad] that "The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews… come and kill [them]" – and then have Palestinian TV repeat it?

Will the Egyptian police still run over unarmed Christians with armoured vehicles and burn down churches, as has happened in recent weeks? Or will Resolution 16/18 simply evolve as it has now in Egypt, where the Egyptian courts prosecute only Christians in "contempt of religion" cases, loosely based on Facebook or twitter postings of cartoons deemed to be "insulting to Islam" [AINA: Double Standard in Application of Egyptian Law], but constantly fail to prosecute members of the security services who mow down Christians with armored vehicles or torch churches?

Since the Jews have already been ethnically cleansed from most of these countries, the Christians are next in line. As they say in Arabic, "Saturday's job first, then get to Sunday's job."

Will the Palestinian Authority, an OIC member, remove the signs banning Jews from entering areas under its control that are labeled "Type A-areas" and that read "Israelis [Jews] are not allowed"? Would Jordan stop banning the entry of "visible Jews" with "Jewish prayer items"?

Worse, the resolution, if implemented, would hinder the efforts of those seeking further to understand Islam, or even discuss it in an un-self-censoring way-- including Muslims seeking to bring it out of its often brutal tribal roots. The values of Islam, for example, encourage the military conquest of non-Muslim nations. Although this value is within my religion, as a Muslim, I would like to see it being dropped—Now, is that a defamation of my own religion?

Is Obama's, Clinton's and the US's current message that some religions are "more sacred" than others?

A brief examination of the OIC's history shows the organization is not new to the international proliferation of thought-policing: The OIC is made up of 57 member states (including Russia), with a permanent delegation to the UN. The OIC considers itself the largest international organization outside of the UN; its scope is global.

The OIC has been trying to get this declaration of defamation of religions adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council, a quest described by some as an attempt by the OIC states to bypass the human rights that are protected by the international law, such as the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and thus distort and lower the standards.

The OIC has also established its own Declaration of Human Rights, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam. Although the Cairo Declaration pays lip service to the UN Declaration -- which, as UN member states, these nations are presumably meant to uphold – it is in fact an alternative to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and in all likelihood intended to supplant it. The OIC members have slipped it a small clause, stating that all human rights acknowledged by OIC are "subjective to the Sharia law."

As always with international law the questions become, Who implements it? Do they act in good faith? And if not, what recourse is there?

Already, both Iran and the Palestinian Authority are in gross violation of both the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration Against Genocide, yet no country has even moved to challenge either Iran or the Palestinian Authority for these violations.

At the same time, one other country is continually under attack for what often seems like the slightest perceived infraction; and the words "racist" and "apartheid" refer to one country only, which is neither: Israel -- but does this mean that most Arab countries—which are genuinely both racist and apartheid, in both gender and religion -- are not?

Even without a single prosecution to date for the hundred-billion-dollar oil-for-food-embezzlement, or for the continuing sex-for-food violations of children in Africa, Bosnia, Cambodia and Haiti by "peacekeepers" sent to protect them, it would seem as if the United Nations is sufficiently toxic and unlawful to warrant being closed down, or, at the very least, unfunded.

Unfortunately without ever investigating the United Nations, perhaps the biggest international human rights violator of all, Human Rights Watch, in one of its reports, says that the OIC, at least, has been relentless protecting states that violate human rights from criticism.

Human Rights Watch also states it has concerns over the OIC's definition of terrorism, which includes "imperilling people's honour;" "threatening political unity," which sounds like an enshrinement of "one man, one vote, one time;" and "threatening territorial integrity." Would the OIC label the people of Quebec who want separation from Canada terrorists for threatening Canada's "territorial integrity"? Would the OIC recognize the Tea Party as a terrorist organization for "threatening political unity" in the US?

Funny? Not really. The OIC could easily try to market those definitions of "terrorism" that Human Rights Watch describes as "vague," and label genuinely "peaceful acts of expression" as terrorism.

Revealingly, the OIC excludes all real acts of terrorism – carried out by terrorist organizations, such as Hamas – calling them "legitimate struggle".

Further, the OIC officials enthusiastically keep voicing support for the Palestinian "Intifada" [uprising] against Israel, while at the same time failing to provide any significant support either in kind or in finances to the millions of Palestinians within the OIC member states, or even recognizing the miserable human rights conditions of the people about whom they profess to be so concerned. Is it possible that the OIC is more interested in demonizing and harassing Jews than protecting the welfare of their fellow Muslims, the Palestinians?

The US government and the US Department of State are not ignorant about the true nature of the OIC member states, especially when it comes to religious freedom —a significant aspect of freedom of speech. The US Department of State 2010 International Religious Freedom Report signifies US concern about religious freedom in several OIC countries, including Iraq and Pakistan. Nevertheless, last year, OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu was received by president Obama at the White House where Obama expressed "his appreciation regarding the on-going cooperation and engagement between the US and the OIC, including …"combating intolerance and other issues of political nature".

It is shattering that the Obama Administration has welcomed a UN resolution limiting the freedom of speech about religion, especially as it was initiated by countries known to oppress religious freedoms.

The ostensible big change in Resolution 16/18 was apparently that the words "defamation of religion" were dropped – but with no guarantee that they would not be reintroduced later. More meetings like the closed-door one in Washington -- called the "Istanbul Process" -- are apparently planed to discuss "how to implement Resolution 16/18. Resolution 16/18 does not need implementing; it needs abolishing. Now.

The OIC's triumph at the UN of passing a resolution limiting freedom of speech is alarming in that opens the door for further thought-policing resolutions. Why shouldn't the OIC now have good reason to hope that these will also be endorsed by the UN – and also co-sponsored by the United States?

An Old Egyptian Tradition

2012-01-02T05:34:00.001-08:00

Raymond Ibrahim
January 2, 2012

The myths of a "patriotic" or "altruistic" Egyptian military carefully protecting the "rights" of its citizenry—the narrative of the mainstream media of the January 25 Revolution—are long gone.

Back in January, it was easy to conclude that the Egyptian military was the "savior" of the people, and that their "anti-democratic" President, Hosni Mubarak, embodied all of Egypt's ills. Today, however, far from allowing protesters to stand atop its tanks in triumph, the military has taken to mowing them down with tanks at Maspero, and other barbarities—culminating in the recent massacre of civilians in Tahrir [ironically, "Liberation"] Square.

The military's behavior is hardly inexplicable; Egypt's own history offers countless precedents demonstrating context and continuity. Consider the slave-soldiers known as the Mamluks—the word mamluk simply means "owned"—who usurped power, establishing a slave-dynasty in Egypt from 1258-1517.

Originally non-Muslims who were abducted and enslaved in their youth, indoctrinated in Islam, and trained to become jihadists [holy warriors], the Mamluks were especially ferocious: it was they who first defeated the otherwise unstoppable Mongol hordes at Ayn Jalut. Accordingly, Egypt's Mamluk rulers were oppressive to both Muslims (which is legitimate under Islamic law) and non-Muslims (which is expected).

As James Jankwoski put it:

Ultimately, Mamluk rule rested on force. The chronicles of the period are replete with examples of Mamluk violence against the indigenous population of Egypt... From horseback, they simply terrorized those lesser breeds who crossed their paths. The sudden and arbitrary use of force by the government and its dominant military elite; frequent resort to cruelty to make a point; ingenious methods of torture employed both for exemplary purpose and to extract wealth from others: all these measures were routine in the Mamluk era.

Consider some parallels: the Mamluks ousted their former Ayyubid master and installed their leader, just as the Egyptian military ousted Mubarak and installed their leader, Mohamed Tantawi; Egyptian citizens are once again being killed and brutalized regularly, whether at Maspero or Tahrir Square.

But while the Mamluks were not indigenous, Egypt's military today is made up natives; and while the Mamluks were slaves, today's soldiers are free. These differences make the brutality of today's military that much more objectionable.

In both cases, Egyptian Christians suffer the most, including under the concept of "collective punishment": during the Mamluk era, when Muslims were fighting and defining themselves against the Crusaders, today because the Muslim world defines itself and is increasingly hostile to all things deemed Western, including Christianity.

Reading Adel Guindy's Hikayat al-Ihtilal ["Stories of Occupation"], an Arabic study of the various occupying forces of Egypt since the Arab invasion ca. 640, one comes across centuries of burned churches and persecuted Christians, forced conversions, and exorbitant jizya—taxes imposed on non-Muslims, who were, and evidently still are, treated as sub-human, second-class citizens [see Quran 9:29]. These abuses of non-Muslim "infidels" were everyday features of Mamluk Egypt, so much so that under Mamluk rule the majority of Egypt's Christians sought relief by converting to Islam.

Currently, under military rule, Egypt's Christians are persecuted, calls for jizya, an exorbitant tax imposed upon non-Muslims, who are considered a second-class group of people, are back, and churches are destroyed with regularity.

Hikayat al-Ihtilal describes how, over 500 years ago, Muslims screaming "Allahu Akbar!" ["Allah is the Greatest!"] would destroy and plunder churches while Mamluk rulers sat by and looked on, as usual blaming the Christians. Today's upsurge in church attacks—with officials either looking the other way or even justifying them—is, in fact, what caused Christians to protest at Maspero in the first place, only to be massacred.

At the close of his study concerning the Mamluk era, Guindy makes an especially pertinent observation: with the Mamluks' rise to power, "Egypt entered into a five-and-a-half-century coma, which it did not revive from until the voice of Napoleon was heard knocking on its doors in 1798."

In fact, it was only during the colonial era and into the 20th century—when Egyptians sought to emulate the ways of a then-confident West—that the Mamluk "approach" went dormant.

Today, as both Western appeal and influence fade in the Middle East—in Egypt, starting with Nasser's Free Officers' coup in 1952 and culminating in Tantawi's pure military dictatorship—the threat of Egypt lapsing back into a "coma" becomes all too real, particularly under Muslim Brotherhood and/or Salafist rule, which early elections indicate.

Raymond Ibrahim is an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Is Obama’s US No Longer Israel’s Ally?

2011-12-05T10:08:00.001-08:00

Panetta, Obama’s Sec’y of Defense, Attacks Israel
With Vicious/Ugly Lies and Demands

Leon Panetta, President Obama’s Secretary of Defense, attacked Israel with vicious and ugly lies and absurd demands on Friday, December 2, 2011. In response to a question from Mr. Ken Pollack, who asked, “what steps should Israel take now?,” Panetta answered, “Just get (Israel) to the damn table, just get to the table.”

ZOA President Morton A. Klein said, “But, this promotes the damnable lie that Israel refuses to negotiate – when, in fact, Israel has been pleading and begging Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to negotiate for the last two plus years, to no avail. In fact, only yesterday the Palestinian Authority repeated its opposition to holding direct peace talks with Israel. It’s the Palestinians who not only refuse to come to the ‘damn table,’ they openly circumvent negotiations by going to the UN to unilaterally have a Palestinian state declared, violating their signed Oslo agreements with Israel which states that no unilateral steps of that nature is permitted without Israel’s approval.

“The PA refuses to negotiate even though Prime Minister Netanyahu has openly supported the establishment of a negotiated Palestinian state and even though Prime Minister Netanyahu offered and fulfilled a one-sided 10-month freeze on Jewish construction in Judea-Samaria, while the PA continued to build there.

“Why has Panetta not told the truth about the PA refusing to negotiate while lying that Israel is refusing to negotiate when in fact Israel is pleading to negotiate. And why has Panetta said nothing about the real obstacles to peace. This includes the PA refusing to end incitement to hatred and violence against Israel in their schools, media, speeches and sermons; glorifying Jew-killing terrorists by naming schools, streets, and sports teams after them; glorifying Jew-killing terrorists by holding day-long commemorative ceremonies when they die; refusing to arrest terrorists; and refusing to accept Israel as a Jewish state.

Panetta also said, “It’s in Israel’s interest to strengthen it (the Palestinian Authority)…now is the time for Israel to take bold action…it will involve risks.”

ZOA’s Klein responds: “Panetta acts as though the PA’s not being strong enough is an issue, ignoring the fact that they’ve formed an alliance with Hamas and have received billions of dollars in aid form the USA and Europe – not to mention receiving regular training of its armed forces by the US military. And why is Panetta talking about Israel needing to take bold action. Israel has done so! It has already given the Palestinian Authority all of Gaza, almost half of Judea & Samaria (West Bank), offered 98% of Judea & Samaria, parts of Jerusalem and statehood in return for peace only to be met with rejection, terrorism, murder and missiles. Israel has taken huge risks – yet Panetta punishes Israel by demanding more – while asking nothing of the Palestinians.

“The ZOA is now questioning whether the U.S. can still call itself an ally of Israel, when it’s repeatedly acting as the Palestinian Authority’s and the Islamists’lawyer.”

Panetta also said, “Israel needs to take risks…and has a responsibility to pursue our shared goals to build regional support for Israel and the U.S. security objectives…Israel can reach out and mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability – countless like Turkey and Egypt…This is an important time to be able to develop and restore those key relationships in this critical area…If Israel’s gestures are rebuked, the world will see these rebukes for what they are, that is exactly why Israel should pursue them.”

ZOA’s Klein responds, “Again Panetta only asks Israel to take more risks while the PA has done nothing to show any interest in peace which Panetta ignores. He ignores the fact that the Palestinian Authority’s Abbas in his recent UN speech referred to Israel’s 63-year old occupation, meaning all of Israel belongs to the Palestinians; he ignores the fact that a May 16, 2011 New York Times op-ed by Abbas states that even after the Palestinian Authority achieves a state, the Palestinian Authority attacks against Israel will continue in the UN, human rights bodies, and the International Court of Justice; he ignores the fact every Palestinian Authority map in its government, schools, and media shall shows all of Israel as Palestine. He then asks Israel to build regional support – ignoring the fact that Egypt and Turkey themselves have moved away from Israel and the U.S. by becoming Jew-hating extremist Islamist governments. Where is Panetta’s condemnation of Egypt and Turkey and demands on Egypt and Turkey? Panetta falsely claims Egypt and Turkey want regional stability when all their actions indicate otherwise! Contrary to Panetta’s claims the world has already seen Israel make extraordinary concrete gestures to the Palestinian Authority and the Arab world and Lebanon and Turkey - Israel only came away with increased danger and isolation. The world has given Israel no credit for its bold gestures and only condemned Israel more and isolated Israel more, and demanded more of Israel. Mr. Panetta, that includes the Obama administration.”

“The Obama administration has now made it clearer than ever that they irrationally and even antagonistically believe Israel is the reason there’s no peace. The U.S. does not believe it is not the fault of the Palestinian Arabs and the extremist Islamists in Fatah, Hamas, Turkey, Egypt and Lebanon. The Obama administration even blames Israel for these Islamists becoming more extreme and intransigent. Yet Panetta/Obama foolishly and antagonistically believe that this is the time for Israel to weaken itself by making more concessions to the Fatah/Hamas regime!”

“The U.S. is not holding these regimes accountable and is sending a message that these regimes can continue with their anti-peace, pro-terror actions and policies. This is a bad and dangerous policy for Israel. This is a bad and dangerous policy for American and the West.”

American Citizens and the Drift from First Principles

2011-09-30T04:19:00.000-07:00

September 30, 2011
American Citizens and the Drift from First Principles
By Matthew May

Earlier this month I was present at a public appearance by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who had just finished touring a thriving and growing business on the North Shore. Following his tour, the governor delivered a gracious presentation to an assembly of employees. He invited questions following his remarks. What followed was an explicit demonstration of the corrosion of our political discourse.

It's not what you might think: stark-raving morons did not accuse the governor of hiding Barack Obama's original birth certificate underneath a tree in Boston Common. There were no demands that Patrick quarter state troopers in homes flying the Gadsden flag. All of the questions were politely proffered and, most likely in the minds of those asking, innocently benign.

One questioner mentioned how fortunate she was to enjoy employment inasmuch as she graduated with a degree in English. However, she wondered, what could the governor or the legislature do to encourage companies to actively hire other graduates of the liberal arts who are having difficulty finding jobs?

Another person cited a story on the Huffington Post(!) regarding a situation in which some employers in some industries are requiring that applicants for some positions be currently employed to be considered. What could the government do about this?

To his credit, Patrick deftly and diplomatically answered these inane questions about what the government could do about such nonsense with a gentle version of the correct answer: nothing. He let them down easy. But the unstated premise of the questions was frightening: any problem, no matter how anecdotal, no matter how easily solved privately or personally, no matter how irrelevant, demands a response from government. Looking to the government immediately rather than as the absolute last resort has become the default position of too many Americans.

We have a president who is currently doing everything he can to turn us in to Europe, which has been lounging on this very principle since the end of World War II. Every unoriginal solution Obama offers involves government. The government will give you health care. The government will determine what you may and may not eat. The government will determine what you may and may not drive. The government will determine how much debt your unborn children will be required to pay. In short, our president's promise to "fundamentally change" the United States is about the only promise he has kept. Too many in our midst see nothing wrong with this.

This conditioned begging for the attention of Washington or Boston -- with no thought of the consequences it entails -- is symptomatic of a citizenry that has lost its moorings. It is a misapplication of the basic reasons for and functions of government. It is a perversion of the phrase self-government. The more we expect our problems to be solved by distant central planners, the farther we drift from that which made our nation unique and the reason for its existence.

As Ronald Reagan said in 1964, there comes a time when a man who recognizes what has been sacrificed before and what is being irresponsibly risked for the future must say about those who seek to destroy from within that "there is a point beyond which they will not advance."

That is precisely why citizens who are variously known as Tea Partiers or constitutional conservatives, or who were perhaps previously politically ambivalent, are protesting and remaining silent no longer. It explains the enthusiasm for and curiosity about a politician like Texas governor Rick Perry, whose stated presidential campaign principle is to "make the federal government as inconsequential in your life as possible," or a private citizen like Herman Cain representing the non-political class.

That rhetoric resonates because it is a first principle -- perhaps the first principle -- of this republic. Citizens who defer to the government are either ignorant of or willfully blind to the first principles of our government. They have forgotten -- or were never taught -- that the brilliance of our democratic republic lies in self-reliance and charity. It lies -- or once lay -- in a reliance on local institutions, private organizations, our schools, and our churches. It lies -- or once lay -- in self-control and dignity.

Governance in America too was once primarily a local matter. As the late political philosopher Russell Kirk wrote of the way government once functioned in New England, "[g]overnment, in its simplicity, was of direct and immediate concern to most elements in the commonwealth; and since social conscience operates most rigorously when social proximity is the rule, this was, buy and large, a just society: corruption and negligence would have been too conspicuous to pervade for any length of time[.] ... Man had to look man in the eye, conscience spoke to conscience."

Or as the great observer of American life Alexis de Tocqueville put it, "[i]t is in the township that the strength of free peoples resides. Municipal institutions are for liberty what primary schools are for science; they place it within reach of the people[.] ... Without municipal institutions, a nation is able to give itself a free government, but it lacks the spirit of liberty."

It is in the spirit of liberty that there is indeed a cry for fundamental change all over the country. But that sort of fundamental change is alien to President Obama and his enablers because it is a change back to fundamentals that they flatly reject by word and deed every day. They will soon find themselves rejected.
Matthew May welcomes comments at matthewtmay@yahoo.com.

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Take your secret Saudi threats and shove ‘em

2011-09-21T02:50:00.000-07:00

By Ezra Levant, QMI Agency, Toronto Sun

Saudi Arabia has hired lawyers to threaten Canadian broadcasters who dare to run a TV ad critical of Saudi conflict oil.

I know this because I am the volunteer chairman of EthicalOil.org, the non-profit website that promotes Canada’s oilsands as an ethical alternative to the conflict oil of Saudi Arabia and other OPEC dictatorships.

Alykhan Velshi, who runs EthicalOil.org, produced a 30-second TV ad comparing the treatment of women in Canada with the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. That’s a place where women can’t drive, can’t vote and can’t even get medical care without the permission of their husbands/owners.

Compare that to Canada, where the mayor of the oilsands capital, Fort McMurray, is a young woman named Melissa Blake.

Saudi Arabia doesn’t like criticism like that, though. They are a fascist state without a free press or any opposition political parties. And now they’ve hired one of the world’s largest law firms, a 2,600-lawyer monstrosity called Norton Rose, to threaten Canada’s media into silence, too.

Rahool Agarwal, one of the lawyers at Norton Rose, has been contacting broadcasters across Canada, threatening them if they air the ad. Already two networks have capitulated in the face of such threats, including CTV, Canada’s biggest private broadcaster. Agarwal has also threatened EthicalOil.org with a lawsuit, too. He won’t say for what he clearly has no legal case. But the point is silencing dissent. And it’s working.

The only way we heard about this campaign of threats was when one concerned Canadian who received a threat tipped us off. When our lawyer contacted Agarwal, he sounded genuinely surprised that he was caught. The Saudis prefer to operate under the radar.

Saudi Arabia is an enemy of Canada. They’re an enemy of the West. They’re an enemy of freedom. This is not a new revelation. Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden was from a prominent Saudi family. Saudi Arabia continues to finance terrorism around the world.

Normally, Islamic extremists focus their hatred on the Great Satan the United States. But Canada is now an enemy of the Saudis, too. Because we’re competitors to them for oil. Within ten years, the oilsands could totally replace Saudi exports to the U.S.

Recently, Saudi billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal said it was in his country’s interest not to let the price of oil get too high, lest alternative sources of oil become practical. Well, the largest unconventional oil reserves in the world are in the oilsands. He didn’t use the word, but he clearly meant it.

Like Greenpeace, the Saudis hate our oilsands. They’re usually content to let Greenpeace do the heavy lifting. But this time, the Saudis were caught red-handed.

The oilsands can take care of themselves. But what about Canada?s media? At least two broadcasters have already caved to this Saudi legal pressure. The Saudis are destroying our culture of freedom and replacing it with their sharia culture of tyranny and bullying.

Foreign Minister John Baird must summon the Saudi ambassador at once. If their foreign meddling and bullying doesn’t cease immediately, he should be expelled.

Canada is free, and our media should be free no matter what some dictatorship wants, and what that dictatorship’s well-paid lawyers threaten in secret.

Distrusting The Common Man

2011-09-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

Herbert I. London
September 16, 2011

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2428/distrusting-the-common-man

If there was one overarching goal of the Marxist project, it was refashioning human nature. Whether in religion or politics, the Marxists argued that an obsession with God and a belief in national identity had to be challenged and defeated.

His beliefs had little confidence in the common man.. Marxists maintained they were endowed with an understanding others did not possess. While Marxism is dead, this distaste for the opinion of the common man persists.

Instead of Marxism, this belief now takes the form of "Expert Opinion," or the "Fraternity of Experts," who are eager to regulate human behavior. These are the new progressives, many of them former Marxists, and many who believe that American patriotism should be subordinated to transnational loyalty. Some call these people "Liberal Internationalists." who rely on U.N. prerogatives and other international bodies -- often under the sway of totalitarian governments with not the slightest interest in civil liberties or human rights for guidance.

On the home front, this "Fraternity of Experts" has answers for everything that ails us. If health care is a problem, the experts contend a government engineered system must be put in place, rather than rely on the the marketplace.

If global warming is a problem – a somewhat contentious point – government regulations should be imposed through a "limited carbon footprint" rather than through educating people to deliver restraint. The "Expert" always believes public choices are ignorant and therefore decisions [his) must be imposed.

Another example is the government-imposed minimum wage. Although exploitation and sweatshops are not an acceptable answer, is it not enough to argue that the market, which is primarily based on the combined needs of the producer, the worker and the consumer, is sufficient to determine wages? The experts know better; they actually think they can determine the point at which wages meet labor needs.

Of course the United States is not alone in producing members of the "Fraternity of Experts." If the French are expert at self-proclaimed experts, the European Union is the exemplar of Expert Opinion so confident in its assertions that it seeks to regulate everything from truck tonnage to the size of lawn mowers. Moreover, the EU intends to eliminate national loyalty through the imposition of a transnational entity which not only fails to represent the will of the people, but which fails to note how these "Experts" (read: bureaucrats) in Brussels might be removed should they fail to succeed in their work.

From the ashes of Marxism has emerged a class of elitists not unlike the former members of the Soviet Communist party. They claimed to know what was best for the citizens of Russia; the "Fraternity of Experts" knows what is best for us.

Former Democratic candidate for president John Edwards liked to lecture about two Americas: the privileged and the poor. But this quasi-Marxist theme does not describe the real two Americas: one, managed by "Experts," who believe they possess superior knowledge that translates into engineered regulations; and the other, common sense embodied by the common man.

How can elites demonstrate their "superior" wisdom if they are restrained? How can experts flaunt their expertise if their plans for us are rejected?

The very fact that the "Fraternity of Experts" distrusts the common man should be cause to distrust it. So when the new big idea emerges from the tombs of government, beware. The expert who wants to regulate you distrusts you and your ability to decide anything for yourself.

Herbert London is president emeritus of Hudson Institute, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book Decline and Revival in Higher Education (Transaction Books).

A Plan B for Jordan?

2011-09-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

Mudar Zahran
September 16, 2011

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2429/jordan-plan-b

The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, delivered a speech on September 11, in which he mentioned the Jordanian civil war of 1970 for the first time ever: "There are not any issues we are too embarrassed to discuss, even if there is someone who wants to discuss the incidents of 1970, this is a part of history; let us think of the future and not the past."

Commenting on the fear of Jordan's Bedouin minority -- who make up the king's military and are the protected class -- that Jordan might become the Palestinian majority's homeland -- a plan dubbed "the alternative homeland" by the local media -- the king said: "I would like to assure everyone that Jordan will not be an alternative country to anyone. Is it even logical that Jordan will become an alternative to anyone while we sit there and do nothing? We have an army and we are willing to fight for our country and for the future of Jordan, and we must speak vigorously and not ever allow this idea to remain in the minds of some of us….We have fought Israel before many times."

"Jordan and the future of Palestine," he added, "are much stronger than Israel today; the Israeli is the one who is afraid….When I was in the United States, I spoke to an Israeli intellectual; he told me that what was happening in Arab countries today is in the interests of Israel. I told him, 'I think it is the opposite: your situation today is much harder than before.'"

King Abdullah also mentioned the need to address the issue of "national identity" in Jordan -- a phrase associated with isolating the Palestinians, who make up 80% of the population, in favor of the Beduin minority, for whom he would establish Jordan as a purely Bedouin state: "We must speak with a loud voice about the Jordanian identity," he said, "yet national unity is a red line." In other words, the king openly supports talk about imposing a Jordanian Bedouin identity on the country, while at the same time prohibiting any "unity" with the Palestinians -- a notion he had previously denounced.

The king, in his speech, was using a common Arab political trick of saying an undesired thing to the public -- reminding the Palestinians of the civil war in which they were slaughtered -- and then, in the same sentence, ostensibly defusing the threat of another slaughter by adding that he would spare the Palestinians so long as they accept the situation as is, where they are citizens, but still treated as refugees and outsiders in every way.

Although it is common for Arab regimes that are pro-Western to talk tough about the US and Israel every now and then -- to rally their people behind them by threatening these cost-free targets, and thereby divert anger away from their own repressive regimes onto other countries -- this time the context was different: The King's speech, aired on Jordanian national television, came two days after Wikileaks released several US Embassy, Amman, cables that described the testimonies of some Jordanian Palestinians officials who were complaining to Embassy officers about the discrimination against the Palestinians in Jordan. One cable, entitled, "The Grand Bargain," mentioned a Palestinian political leader's belief that the "right of return" was unfeasible - signifying the Palestinians' willingness to accept a permanent home in Jordan --rather than in hoping to return to Israel, as the refugees and five generations of descendants are continually being promised -- in exchange for finally attaining civil rights in Jordan.

The government-controlled Jordanian media expressed anger at the US Embassy -- to the point of issuing calls for a protest against both the American and Israeli embassies in Amman, which they called "the espionage beehive."

The King's talk sounded provocative and terrorizing to the Jordanian Palestinians, who are already discriminated against and disenfranchised politically by the Hashemite regime. The Bedouin-dominated town of Kerak in Southern Jordan, for example, has ten parliamentary seats for fewer than 150,000 voters, while the Palestinian-dominated Amman has barely twenty parliamentary seats for three million voters.

What made matters especially threatening was the way Jordan's Bedouins seem to have understood the King's remarks. The King's statement, for instance, that he would "not feel embarrassed to address any issue including the civil war," seems to have been understood by the Bedouin military as permission to go out and target the Palestinians. Comments on Jordanian social websites, such as Facebook, appeared, with disturbing messages of incitement: Jordanian Bedouins began calling for violence against both Israel and the Palestinian majority. One of commentators said on Facebook: "We shall give the Palestinians another Black September," said one, "only this time we will make it red." Another said: "Those Palestinians are worse than Jews. I could never make out the difference. We will march to kick [the Palestinian] out [of Jordan] and we will knock down the Israeli embassy." Still another said, "You do the killing, guys, just leave the hot Palestinian chicks for me; I will rape their little girls." While this anti-Palestinian sentiment is not new in Jordan, after the King's speech it reached a new extreme.

It seemed as if the king was threatening Israel with a war, and the Palestinians in Jordan with a civil war. This perceived threat translated into protests: one against the American Embassy in Amman on September 15th, and one against the Israeli Embassy for Friday, September 16th. Both protests were called for and organized by Nahid Hattar, a Christian Bedouin writer, who has been calling for ousting the Palestinians from Jordan, and who has openly admitted his direct one-on-one connection to the former chief of the Jordanian Intelligence Department while the latter was in office.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs withdrew its ambassador and staff from the Embassy following the call for the protest. Several leaders of Palestinian refugee camps claimed they issued orders for their youngsters not to participate in protests against both embassies; eventually, the turnout rate at both events was low. Al-Jazeera TV reported tens of Muslim Brotherhood protesters opposite the American embassy on September 15th, while the Washington Post reported only around 200 protestors are expected against the Israeli embassy for September 16th. If this is a sign the Palestinians in Jordan's refugee camps have matured in their view of Israel, it is too early to tell.

The author has been receiving reports from Palestinian refugee camps' leaders, claiming that the government was arming the Bedouin Jordanian tribes, and handing out machine-guns to them -- allegedly along with anti-Palestinian incitement. These reports, whether true or not, indicate how fragile the situation is. The same fragility was also noted by Israeli officials, who reported that "Jordan is in an extremely precarious state and effectively hanging by a thread."

King Abdullah's threats of using his military to confront Israel are most likely hollow. Although he surely realizes he could not overpower Israel by force, as his grandfather and father tried to in 1947 and 1967, it is possible he believes he is in a stronger position than a few months ago, since Israel has lost significant allies in Egypt and Turkey, and therefore might feel more isolated, or regard its friendship with Jordan as more precious than ever. Or perhaps the king believes he has a Palestinian demographic card to play against Israel in his repeated emphasis on the "right of return" for his Palestinians, as he revealed in an interview on Israel's Channel 2, when he said Israel would have no clear future because of the demographic "challenge."

King Abdullah has also been placing demographic pressure on Israel, threatening to overrun it with Arabs, by stripping his Palestinians of their citizenships and ordering them to go "home to Palestine," meaning Israel, in what Human Rights Watch has described as a random and irregular manner. Human Rights Watch described stripping Palestinians in Jordan of their nationalities as "Jordan playing politics with its citizens' basic rights." The list of victims of this anti-Palestinian policy includes surgeons, academics, schoolchildren, and housewives. According to two reports by Human Rights Watch, Palestinians who have never been to Israel have found themselves with no Jordanian nationality, and often no nationality of any kind.

King Abdullah's situation should serve as a reminder that the status quo of Jordan is not necessarily sustainable. Although some might not like it, and others might wish it to remain forever, with the Arab Spring sweeping away much stronger regimes, such as that of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, it could be wishful thinking to assume that Jordan will stay the way it is.

It is not certain that King Abdullah's regime will be able to survive a revolt from the frustrated and angry Palestinian majority should one take place; or possibly even a revolt from the heavily-armed Bedouins who recently seem to have been acquiring a dislike for the Westernized king, and issuing public statements against him for over a year.

Should Abdullah be toppled tomorrow, does the United States have anyone prepared to speak with Jordan's non-Islamist Palestinians, who have been dominating the pro-reform protests, such as March 24th Movement? Or will the United States just accept anti-American Bedouins and Palestinians taking over Jordan?

It might be time to start at least considering a Plan B for Jordan -- just in case.

The Tipping Point: Embracing the Muslim Brotherhood

2011-07-03T01:25:00.000-07:00

Frank J. Gaffney, jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phase One: Discreet and secret establishment of leadership.
Phase Two: Phase of gradual appearance on the public scene and exercising and utilizing various public activities. It greatly succeeded in implementing this stage. It also succeeded in achieving a great deal of its important goals, such as infiltrating various sectors of the Government.
Phase Three: Escalation phase, prior to conflict and confrontation with the rulers, through utilizing mass media. Currently in progress.
Phase Four: Open public confrontation with the Government through exercising the political pressure approach. It is aggressively implementing the above-mentioned approach. Training on the use of weapons domestically and overseas in anticipation of zero-hour. It has noticeable activities in this regard.
Phase Five: Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation under which all parties and Islamic groups are united. (Source: Undated Muslim Brotherhood Paper entitled, "Phases of the World Underground Movement Plan." Archived at Shariah: The Threat to America.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let the debate begin.

This article can be found here:
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p18757.xml

The Muslim Brotherhood Marches On...

2011-05-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

May 20, 2011

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report

Islamic Development Bank Awards Prize to U.K. Islamic Foundation

Arab News has reported that Islamic Development Bank (IDB) announced Wednesday that the Islamic Foundation, UK, is the winner of the IDB Prize in Islamic Economics for the year 2011. According to the report:

JEDDAH: The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) announced Wednesday that the Islamic Foundation, UK, is declared the winner of the IDB Prize in Islamic Economics for the year 2011 in recognition of its substantial contribution to the promotion of Islamic economics. The Prize will be awarded to the winner during the 36th IDB BOG Annual Meeting in Jeddah, to be held on June 29-30. Ahmad Muhammad Ali, president of the Islamic Development Bank Group, in a statement congratulated the laureate on its notable accomplishment. He commended its officers in-charge for the valuable contribution to Islamic economics and wished them greater success in all their endeavors. He also congratulated the British diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia for the achievement of this British Islamic institution in the service of Islamic economics. The IDB Prize Selection Committee, chaired by Professor Hatem Karanshawy, dean of the faculty of Islamic studies at Qatar Foundation and composed of eminent scholars and experts from outside and inside the bank, met at the IDB headquarters on May 15 and decided unanimously to award the IDB Prize in Islamic Economics for the year 1432H to the Islamic Foundation, UK by issuing the following statement: The IDB Prize Selection Committee unanimously decides to award the IDB Prize in Islamic Economics for the year 1432H to The Islamic Foundation, UK.

Read the rest here.

The Islamic Foundation is close to both the Pakistani Islamist group known as the Jama’at-e-Islami as well as to the Global Muslim Brotherhood .

In an article on “financial jihad”, authors Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen provide some useful information about the role of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), known to have funded many global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas-related projects:

In 1969, the Saudis convened Arab and Muslim states to unify the “struggle for Islam,” and have ever since been the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s (OIC’s) major sponsor. The 56 OIC members include Iran, Sudan, and Syria. The Jidda-based, “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” OIC’s charter mandates and coordinates “support [of] the struggle of the Palestinian people, . . . recovering their rights and liberating their occupied territories.” The OIC charter includes all the MB principles. Its first international undertaking in 1973 was to establish the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) “in accordance with the principles of the shariah,”as prescribed by the MB—and to launch the fast-growing petrodollar-based Islamic financing market. The IDB, more a development than commercial bank, was established largely “to promote Islamic banking worldwide.” “[A]n Islamic organization must serve God… and ultimately sustain …the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life,” writes Nasser M. Suleiman in “Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking.” And the IDB has done just that. Between 1975 to 2005, the IDB approved over $50 billion in funding to Muslim countries, ostensibly to develop their economic and educational infrastructures, but effected little regional economic impact. Its educational efforts, however, paid huge yields—via the rapid and significant spread of radical Islam worldwide. Moreover, in 2001 alone, the IDB transferred $538 million23 raised publicly by Saudi and Gulf royal telethons to support the Palestinian intifada and families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IDB has also channeled UN funds to Hamas, as documented by bank records discovered in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, the IDB received UN observer status in 2007. According to a 1991 U.S. Library of Congress report on Sudan, the IDB also supported Faisal Islamic Bank, established in 1977 under Sudan’s Faisal Islamic Bank Act by Saudi prince Muhammad ibn Faisal Al Saud and managed by local Muslim Brotherhood members and their party, the National Islamic Front. Soon other political groups and parties formed their own Islamic banks. Together, Sudanese Islamic banks then acquired 20 percent of the country’s deposits “providing the financial basis to turn Sudan into an Islamic state in 1983, and promoting the Islamic governmental policies to date.” Sudan Islamized its banking in 1989. However, Pakistan was the first country to officially Islamize its banking practices, in 1979.

Previous posts have discussed the role of the IDB in funding a project of a Ukrainian Brotherhood organization, in financing the projects related to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and sponsoring a philanthropic conference held by an organization with Brotherhood ties. Another post noted that IDB representatives were in attendance at a Saudi charity seminar attended by Wael Julaidan, possibly the known founder and financier of Al Qaeda. Another earlier post noted that former ISNA President Ingrid Mattson attended a 2010 meeting of the Islamic Development Bank to select members for the bank’s Women’s Advisory Panel.

Related posts:

Islamic Development Bank Launches Global Media Campaign
Ingrid Mattson Attends Meeting Of Islamic Development Bank In Saudi Arabia
Scottish-Islamic Foundation Tries To Broker Gulf Bid For Scottish Bank
RECOMMENDED READING: “Jihad Economics and Islamic Banking”
Bank CEO Praises Youssef Qaradawi For His Role In Islamic Financing

Turkish Muslim Brotherhood Network Calls Bin Laden Death “American Terrorism”

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center has issued a report detailing statements by key parts of the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood network denouncing the killing of Osama Bin Laden as “American terrorism.” According to the report:

Turkish Islamist organizations at a press conference convened at the ReÅŸadiye Hotel in Istanbul to denounce the killing of Osama bin Laden. An IHH representative denounced ‘American terrorism,’ saying that killing bin Laden was clearly an illegal act (Photo from the verfecr.com website). The banner reads ‘We condemn American terrorism.’ Third from the left is identified as Osman Atalay, the IHH representative who denounced the United States. Overview

The Turkish IHH, which plays a central role in organizing the upcoming flotilla to the Gaza Strip (Freedom Flotilla 2), joined other Turkish Islamist organizations in denouncing the killing of Osama bin Laden by the Americans. On May 5 the organizations convened a press conference at a hotel in an Istanbul suburb and issued a joint statement denouncing the United States. Osman Atalay, the IHH representative (who participated in the Mavi Marmara flotilla) said that killing bin Laden had been clearly illegal, and called for the condemnation of ‘American terrorism.’

Read the rest here.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) has recently published an almost hundred page report titled “Turkey, the Global Muslim Brotherhood, and the Gaza Flotilla” which provides extensive background on the years leading up to the flotilla and that includes profiles on both IHH and an organization known as Mazlum Der, headed by Osman Atalay. The JCPA report abstract states:

There is strong evidence for Turkish governmental involvement in the Gaza flotilla incident, with Turkish government support channeled through the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood network. Since 2006, Turkey has become a new center for the Global Muslim Brotherhood. The IHH was not acting alone but rather was an integral part of a Turkish Muslim Brotherhood network.

With respect to the Global Muslim Brotherhood, report’s second conclusion states:
The Gaza flotilla incident brought into sharp focus an even more significant long- term development: the growing relationship between the Erdogan government and the Global Muslim Brotherhood, which has given rise to some of the most notorious Islamist terrorist groups – from al-Qaeda to Hamas. Since 2006, Turkey has become a new center for the Global Muslim Brotherhood, while the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip acted as the main axis for this activity.

Related posts:

Turkish Government Report Omits Its Role In Gaza Flotilla
Muslim Council Of Britain Calls Bin Laden Death “Assassination”
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Head Leads Delegation To Turkish Celebration
MIDEAST CRISIS: Turkish Diplomat Indicates Talks Between Turkey And Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
ICNA Offers Condolences On Death Of Turkish Islamist Leader

U.K Muslim Brotherhood To Hold Islamophobia Conference

A coalition of U.K. Muslim Brotherhood and far-left political groups have announced a May 21 conference titled “Confronting anti-Muslim hatred in Britain and Europe.” According to the announcement, the following individuals are expected to participate:

John Esposito – Georgtown University, USA, supporter of the Global Muslim Brotherhood

Tony Benn – far left activist

Dr Robert Lambert – European Muslim Research Centre, funded by the UK Muslim Brotherhood

Hiba Aburwein – European Forum on Muslim Women, part of the Federation of Islamic Organizations In Europe (FIOE), the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe

Zad Ali – Islamic Forum of Europe, close to the UK Muslim Brotherhood

Kamal el-Helbawy – Former Muslim Brotherhood spokesman

Dr AbdoolKarim Vakil – Muslim Council of Britain, coalition of UK Muslim groups working closely with the Global Muslim Brotherhood

Lindsey German – Stop the War Coalition, far-left group frequently in coalitions with the UK Muslim Brotherhood

Dr Daud Abdullah – British Muslim Initiative, part of the UK Muslim Brotherhood

Mohammed Ali – Islam Channel, close to the Global Muslim Brotherhood

The conference is being organized by the Organised by the Enough Coalition consisting of the British Muslim Initiative, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, Stop the War Coalition, Islamic Forum of Europe, One Society many Cultures, Muslim Safety Forum. All of these groups are known to be part of or close to the UK Muslim Brotherhood.

Virtually all of the known conferences on Islamophobia have been held by the Global Muslim Brotherhood.

Related posts:

Canadian Muslim Brotherhood To Hold Conference on Islamophobia
U.K. National Association of Muslim Police Holds Conference On Islamophobia
New British Muslim Brotherhood Organization Attends Far-Left Political Conference In London
German Muslim Brotherhood To Hold 29th Annual Conference
U.K. Muslim Brotherhood Launches Anti-Islamaphobia Campaign

Qaradawi Hospitalized Again

Gulf media has reported that Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi has been hopsitalized with unspecified health problems. According to a Gulf Times report:

DOHA: Eminent Islamic cleric Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi is admitted in hospital and has not been able to deliver the Friday sermon at the Omer Bin Khattab Mosque for the past several weeks. According to Al Sharq, circles close to the scholar are not willing to disclose precisely what health problems he is suffering from because he doesn’t want people to visit him in the hospital. The daily said people have been missing the cleric’s Friday sermons, particularly as these are turbulent days for the Arab world and his comments and opinion on the revolution rocking several Arab countries are keenly followed around the world. The scholar spoke freely on political upheavals taking place in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and exhorted the common man to rise against authoritarian regimes. But when the powers that be in places like Yemen and Syria are facing increasing opposition from their people, Qaradawi’s followers are quite eager to listen to his viewpoint.

Previous posts have reported on other of the 85 year old Qaradawi’s illnesses and hospitalizations, the last of which was known to be in 2007.

Qaradawi, a virulent anti-Semite is often referred to here as the most important leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, an acknowledgement of his role as the de facto spiritual leader of the movement. In 2004, Qaradawi turned down the offer to lead the Egyptian Brotherhood after the death of the Supreme Guide. Based in Qatar, Sheikh Qaradawi has reportedly amassed substantial wealth through his role as Shari’ah adviser to many important Islamic banks and funds. He is also considered to be the “spiritual guide” for Hamas and his fatwas in support of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens were instrumental in the development of the phenomenon. A recent post has discussed a video compilation of Qaradawi’s extremist statements.

Reprinted with permission from the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.

The Collapse of Arab Civilization?

2011-02-13T18:41:00.000-08:00

February 13, 2011
The Collapse of Arab Civilization?
By Michael Fraley
Five years ago, Lt. Col James G. Lacey published the article "The Impending Collapse of Arab Civilization" in The Naval Institute: Proceedings." He disputed the conclusions of two books which have particularly influenced recent foreign policy and grand strategy: The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, by Bernard Lewis, and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington.

In his article, he stated:

A more accurate understanding of events leads to the conclusion that Arab, not Muslim, civilization is in a state of collapse, and it just happens that most Arabs are Muslims. In this regard, the fall of the Western Roman Empire was a collapse of Western Europe and not a crisis of Christianity.

His thesis was that while Islam itself continues to grow and thrive around the world (and indeed, is continuing to make swift inroads into Western states), it has been specifically in the Arab world where one has seen the turmoil of civilization in decay.

He has not been alone. Azmi Bishara wrote in 2003, in Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo):

The Arabs ... are in a double state of decay that boggles the minds even of those who expected a hot summer of post-war decadence ... The [Arab] nation will be split between those who dance to the beat of scandal and defeat, and those who blow themselves up in what is turning into a deafening religious ritual.

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami began his article Autocracy and the Decline of the Arabs with this strangely foretelling account:

"It made me feel so jealous," said Abdulmonem Ibrahim, a young Egyptian political activist, of the recent upheaval in Iran. "We are amazed at the organization and speed with which the Iranian movement has been functioning. In Egypt you can count the number of activists on your hand." This degree of "Iran envy" is a telling statement on the stagnation of Arab politics. It is not pretty, Iran's upheaval, but grant the Iranians their due: They have gone out into the streets to contest the writ of the theocrats.

Now, Mubarak has been deposed, but the question we all are asking is this: "In the final analysis, was this indeed victory for the people of Egypt, or a victory for radical Islamists?"

The Collapse of a Civilization?

Recent unrest in the Arab world exposes the discontent among the people that has been building for decades. But is this something larger and more profound than a series of uprisings? Now that the historic seat of Arab culture and power has been upended, does this indicate a renewal or decay of the civilization as a whole? Col. Lacey predicted the upheaval of current days, and made the case for these events being the harbinger for the historical end of the Arab world. This remains a monumental claim, and Lacey recognized the incredulity with which such a claim would be met.

The next question is, how could the world have missed an entire civilization collapsing before its eyes? The simple answer is that no one alive today has ever seen it happen before. Well within living memory we have seen empires collapse and nation-state failure has become a regular occurrence, but no one in the West has witnessed the collapse of a civilization since the Dark Ages. Civilizational collapses take a long time to unfold and are easy to miss in the welter of daily events.

The seeds of such a collapse, if that is what we are seeing take place, might well have been sown 600 years ago, according to Lacey, with the dawning of the Renaissance throughout Western Europe. However, one can make the case that the fate of Arab civilization was set two centuries earlier, with the exile of Ibn Rushd (western name of Averroes).

Different Paths

At a time when western philosophers were actively wrestling with many questions of ontology (what is) and epistemology (how we know), the Arab Caliphs and their chosen scholars handled philosophical disputes as they always had: with charges of infidelity to scripture, and sentences of prison, exile, or death. Ibn Rushd disputed the dominant thinking of Al-Ghazali (1059-1111), and followed more in the tradition of Ibn Sina, an 11th century Persian Islamic philosopher. Yousif Fajr Raslan writes:

Set back by the blind resistance of the Caliph's scholars, Ibn Rushd turned to Greek philosophy where he found his ideal in Aristotle...He applied rational reasoning to theology, an approach that further stirred his colleagues against him and against philosophy as a whole, not to mention their particular hatred of Greek philosophers.

Ibn Rushd was banished, putting an effective end to any hope of philosophical renewal and introduction of historically based rationality into the Arab culture.

Western philosophy traversed the Renaissance and periods of Empiricism and developed the "Scientific Method." Western thinkers, from Thomas Aquinas on, wrestled with the relationship between the metaphysical and the physical, along with issues of authority and the search for truth. Both Christian and secular Enlightenment scholars introduced ideas of "natural law," property rights, and the "social contract."

Arab scholarship, in contrast, went on to hold up Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), born in what is modern Tunisia, as one of their greatest political thinkers. His definition of government as "an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself" still dominates Arab political thought [emphasis added].

Policy Choices

If Lacey was right, and we are truly witnessing the collapse of Arab civilization as a whole, this does not bode well for the western world. The powers able and ready to fill the void are neither friendly toward, nor passive in their attitude toward, the Western states. What happens in Egypt might well presage what happens in the rest of the Arab world. The key question is this: Has western thought been sufficiently infused within Egypt's people so as to lead to legitimate and lasting democracy? If not, then we will likely see a repeat of 1970s Iran; not only in Egypt, but throughout the entire Arab world

Col. Lacey made the case for dealing with a declining Arab civilization through means very similar to the Cold War: specifically, containment. We have largely followed this grand strategy until recently. Sadly, with our administration's bumbling and weak response to the events in Egypt, we might well have lost our most vital ally in the region, and hence, our ability to reverse a tidal wave of radical Islamic power.

Our only options now are to strengthen relationships with friendly powers in the region, give aid to those who seek freedom and democracy, and prop up the truly free states. It becomes even more imperative that we ensure the continued growth and success of Iraq; more critical still that we contain Iran and minimize their meddling within the affairs of Arab nations.

Nothing about this is easy. A proper understanding of the true nature of turmoil in the Arab states should have led to more proactive measures. It must lead to more clarity in our future strategy in the region. Otherwise, we might well see, within our lifetime, the rise of radical Islam and the crumbling of Arab civilization.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/the_collapse_of_arab_civilizat.html at February 13, 2011 - 08:42:10 PM CST

Obama's Middle East disaster

2011-02-13T18:38:00.001-08:00

Thomas Lifson
Barack Obama's Middle East fumbles are clearly explained and placed in context by Niall Ferguson, whose Harvard/Oxford/Stanford credentials are difficult for ruling class elitists to ignore. In essence, Obama is winging it (my term, not Ferguson's), lacking a "grand strategy" (Ferguson's term) for the Middle East, and (my phrasing) caught by surprise by events, just making it up as he goes along, saying whatever sounds good at the moment. Ferguson:

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

Personnel is policy, as the old DC saying goes:

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

Astonishing incompetence, right up there with DNI Clapper's assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood is secular. Why does the President suround himself with fools?

Incompetence leads to a lack of foresight:

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

Newsweek has just added the distinguished professor to its roster of columnists in the wake of its takeover by The Daily Beast, as surprisingly hopeful sign for what had become a reliably moribund leftist leftover. This column deserves a read in its entirety.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/02/obamas_middle_east_disaster.html at February 13, 2011 - 08:37:40 PM CST

Erekat Pulls Wool Over 'Guardian' Readers' Eyes

2010-12-18T11:48:00.001-08:00

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141193#replies

Published: 12/16/10, 8:04 PM / Last Update: 12/16/10, 8:06 PM
Erekat Pulls Wool Over 'Guardian' Readers' Eyes
by Gil Ronen

Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat penned an opinion piece for the British Guardian last Friday in which he defended the PA's insistence on the "Right of Return" - the demand that Israel allow into its borders Arabs who fled Israel in 1948, as well as their descendants, numbered in the millions.. However, Erekat did some rewriting of history in the process.

Erekat opened his article by mentioning Count Folke Bernadotte, the first UN mediator to the Arab-Israeli conflict, who stated: "It would be an offense against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent [Arab] victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine."

Israel's recognition of the Arabs' "refugee rights," Erekat argued, "will lead to a lasting peace – the kind of peace envisaged by Lord Bernadotte and hoped for by Palestinians and Israelis alike."

What Erekat failed to note was that the Arab world bluntly rejected Bernadotte's plan for peace between Jews and Arabs and opted for war against the nascent state of Israel instead. As Syrian officer Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib said at the time, “Most of these mediators are spies for the Jews anyway.”

Bernadotte was appointed mediator by the UN General Assembly on May 20, 1948, and on June 11, succeeded in arranging a 30-day cease-fire. After visiting Cairo, Beirut, Amman and Tel Aviv, he proposed that the UN partition plan for the Land of Israel be scrapped, and proposed instead a plan to unite Arabs and Jews in one state consisting of a very small Jewish entity on the coast and in the Galilee, and an enlarged Transjordan. Jerusalem would be under Arab sovereignty, as would the entire Negev.

The Arabs refused to accept even this plan, however, and the Jews rejected the plan after the Arabs did.

Bernadotte noted in his journal that the "Palestinian" Arabs had little desire for independence.

The Palestinian Arabs had at present no will of their own. Neither have they ever developed any specifically Palestinian nationalism. The demand for a separate Arab state in Palestine is consequently relatively weak. It would seem as though in existing circumstances most of the Palestinian Arabs would be quite content to be incorporated in Transjordan.

Bernadotte was later assassinated by Jewish nationalists from the Lechi group - hated by the British, who named them the "Stern Gang" after their founding leader, Avraham 'Yair' Stern, who was killed by the British occupying forces.

Erekat is presumably aware of British sensitivities and probably chose Bernadotte for a reason. However, as noted - it was the Arab side that was first to reject Bernadotte's generous plan. The Arabs then launched a genocidal war against Israel - and lost it. The result included many more refugees, whom the Arabs now wish to put back into Israeli territory, along with their descendants.

Nothing is Scarier Than Being Quoted

2010-04-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

RubinReports
By Barry Rubin

When you write a sentence, or present an idea, you never know how it is going to be reproduced by someone else. At times, especially nowadays, people may deliberately distort what you write in order to prove you are peddling some outlandish proposal that you are totally against.

Part of my problem is that I also get blamed by confused or careless people for things written by people who have a first or last name similar to mine. [I'm tempted to joke that I'm glad the current president doesn't use the first name "Barry" but I won't.]

There is no experience stranger than being passionately attacked for allegedly believing something when you hold the exact opposite viewpoint.

Recently, a number of places--I think with good intentions--quoted from a Bangladesh newspaper that reprinted a blog article of mine (why they don't go to the blog itself I just don't understand). The quotes were correct but my point misunderstood. Their claims grew out of the idea--theirs, not mine--that Muslims were some sort of monolith (or at least almost completely so), which is a mistake made by both sides in the debate.

The argument being made was over the claim that I somehow said it was naive of President Barack Obama to reach out to Muslims. I would never make such a claim.

Of course, Obama or any U.S. president should reach out to Muslims. That's not the point. What is essential here is:

--Which Muslims? He shouldn't put the emphasis on showing radicals that he means them well--Iran, Syria, Muslim Brotherhoods, the Turkish government--but work with the relatively moderate politically, meaning in the Middle East most Arab regimes and liberal reformers. Yes, I'm aware these last two groups are often at odds.

--In what way can we define the nature of the current conflict? It is not between "Muslims" and "others" but rather between Islamists who want to take over countries in order to transform those societies and those, at home and abroad, who don't want to see that happen. More specifically, within Muslim-majority countries, the conflict is between revolutionary Islamists and their supporters, on one hand, and on the other a large group of conservative-traditionalist Muslims and a much smaller group of liberal ones.

What is critical here is that millions of people whose religion is Islam hold political views that can be defined as patriotic-nationalist, Arab nationalist, communal loyalism, and other categories. This is discussed HERE.

--How should the United States reach out? Show that the United States is a strong ally, protector, and represents desirable things in cultural and economic terms, not by fawning, appeasing, or apologizing. That sends the message: If revolutionary Islamists by scaring and attacking the West are able to get them begging already, what can they achieve by killing a lot more people and seizing power?

The Federalist Papers and Obamacare

2010-03-23T05:56:00.000-07:00

Patrick Jakeway
While publishing the Federalist papers in 1787/1788, two of the major architects of the Constitution, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, made some highly pertinent comments that apply to Obamacare.

James Madison, Federalist Number 14:

“In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. The subordinate governments, which can extend their care to all those objects, which can be separately provided for, will retain their due authority and activity.”

James Madison, Federalist Number 10:

“When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquires are directed.”

Concerning Article 1, Section 8(3) of the Constitution that “Congress shall have the power to regulate Commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes," Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 17:

“The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same state; the supervision of agriculture, and of other concerns of a similar nature; all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction.”

(Note: if a transaction between a doctor and patient is not local and therefore subject to local and not general jurisdiction, like buying produce from a farmer, then I don't know what is. Article I, Section 8 was clearly focused on regulating commerce with foreign nations, eliminating multiple currencies within the states and removing inter-state tariffs in place during the Articles of Confederation. The Founding Fathers are turning in the graves at this massive intrusion into individual liberty.)

Last but not least Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 16 something very profound considering the situation we find ourselves in:

“The success of it [an illegal usurpation of authority] would require not only a factious majority in the legislature, but the concurrence of the courts of justice, and of the body of the people. If the judges were not embarked in a conspiracy with the legislature, they would pronounce the resolutions of such a majority to be contrary to the supreme law of the land, unconstitutional and void. If the people were not tainted with the spirit of their state representatives, they, as the natural guardians of the constitution, would throw their weight into the national scale, and give it a decided preponderancy in the contest.”

The Founding Fathers defined the citizens as the natural guardians of the Constitution. Ultimately, it comes down to us. Remember the immortal motto of Gen. Nathaniel Greene who led his rag-tag militia across the Carolina in 1779-1780, "lost" every battle until providing the Continentals their first major victory at Kings Mountain and cut down Cornwallis' troops from 30,000 to 15,000 before he quit Charleston and headed to Yorktown:

"I fight, I am defeated, I rise and fight again."

It is precisely now that one must not despair. Now is the time for lovers of liberty to throw themselves into the national scale. You are the natural guardians of the Constitution. Now is not the time for Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots; now is the time for the heirs of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Ben Franklin, James Monroe, John Adams, John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Nathaniel Greene and Ethan Allen.

You have a choice. What will it be? Acquiescence? Submission? Defeat? Where would we be if all the aforementioned had quit when they faced a little headwind (and, comparatively speaking, this is light breeze next to Valley Forge). Be ashamed; be very ashamed if you choose to go gently into that dark neo-Soviet night. Be assured; a new dawn of American liberty will rise as American Patriots resolve to protect their Constitution and use all of its provisions to protect their liberties.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/03/the_federalist_papers_and_obam.html at March 23, 2010 - 07:56:18 AM CDT

Obama and Reality

2010-01-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

Miguel A. Guanipa
The rather peculiar manner in which our current president reacts to what at face value is perceived as an imminent crisis versus the contrived serenity (some would call it aloofness) with which he confronts what by all accounts can be classified as bona fide disasters raises some important questions about the true character of the man we still know so little about. This is even truer when when in hindsight, many of these so-called crises can be fairly characterized as no more than the overstated prognosis of hurdles that never materialized, while the alluded-to disasters are real, irrevocable tragedies that could have been prevented in the first place.

Consider, for example, the severity of President Obama's rebuke to his detractors at the genesis of his administration, when he cautioned that the world's financial markets would collapse unless everyone indiscriminately supported his drastic measures to address the looming economic downturn. He wielded a similar iron fist in Copenhagen, in tandem with other anxious world leaders, and berated a complacent world for not sharing his sense of urgency to avert the coming global climate Armageddon. Both deliveries were served promptly, vigorously, and with a potent supply of moral exigency. Yet it is fair to say that as far as real scientific consensus is concerned, one of these dire predictions is simply not in the cards for at least another couple of centuries (if at all), while the other is a posthumous economic catastrophe that we were presumably spared from in lieu of virulent remedies which are now posing a greater hardship than the anticipated woes.

Now examine by contrast the president's initial reaction to the news of a dedicated Nigerian terrorist boarding an airliner with a homemade bomb snugly tucked in his underwear. Airport security scanners have yet to encounter a more impenetrable fortress -- but I digress. Shortly after a somewhat disjointed, impromptu spiel (presumably intended to reassure the country that he had been duly made aware of the potentially catastrophic incident), the president was all too eager to resume his snorkeling sessions -- evidently the next vacation activity scheduled after the few rounds of golf that preceded the rather inopportune press conference. He was on vacation, after all.

The president made an even less valiant effort to veil his appalling indifference on the heels of a tragedy that has too quickly faded from the popular consciousness. The latter transpired in Fort Hood, Texas, when a disgruntled jihadist executed fourteen innocent people in cold blood (the unborn baby of a pregnant victim included). In what called for a more solemn disposition in deference to the relatives of the victims of this atrocious attack, the first few minutes of the president's expiatory (but no less phlegmatic) address included some precursory remarks about a Native American relations event he had just attended and a jovial "shout-out" to one of his acquaintances present in the audience. If Obama wanted to convey that terrorism is the least of his concerns in his agenda, he did a superb job at that particular conference.

But from a more charitable point of view, one may surmise that our young president is striving to remain cool, calm, and collected in the wake of what he recognizes are panic-engendering tragedies. At the same time, he wants to appear genuinely concerned about the unavailability of reliable health care and the negative repercussions of a protracted economic slump for millions of the already less fortunate. But this does not satisfactorily explain his initially tepid response to concerns that rank very high on the scale of fears that most Americans live with -- and the ferocious urgency with which he undertakes his own pet issues, one of which is steadily losing support from even some in his own camp.

A more sober assessment would accurately characterize Obama's first response as the intuitive reaction of a reckless, aloof, and shockingly indifferent commander in chief -- one who is disproportionately concerned about things unlikely to happen and supremely disinterested in tragic events that are bound to be repeated if we do not take the necessary precautions. This posture has been labeled as a pre-9/11 mindset.

What is at play here is that Obama is a man for whom all other issues are marginal when compared to his own agenda. Thus he has not yet learned how to respond to crises other than the ones theatrically crafted by him and his minions as vehicles to accomplish this agenda. When it comes to a real crisis like a domestic terror attack, Obama is a man in a perennial holding pattern, waiting for his media-savvy advisers to prod him to address things inimical to the progressive milieu he inhabits. Such crises are to him as background noise, but they unexpectedly register as grave concerns to the populace. And so he displays a curious detachment from reality. He stumbles, as many people feared long ago, upon that which he is ill-prepared to address with the gravitas befitting a president. Yet as unconventional as his responses are, it is a safe bet that President Obama has finally gone past the point of being immune to the stagnating element of predictability.

The great leader has emerged, and he has been found wanting. Except perhaps for the barely-sentient Obama groupie, sooner or later everyone will come to realize that it takes more than just proper diction to be an effective leader. Sure, eloquence may fool some at first. But eventually, the real man behind the words must surface, and what a colossal disappointment -- especially for those who had vested such vain hopes in him -- has Mr. Obama turned out to be in so many respects. How paltry and useless his renowned oratory skills have proven in sparing him from this cruel destiny. The premier lament is, of course, that this decisive epiphany did not dawn upon the faithful prior to his coronation.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/obama_and_reality.html at January 16, 2010 - 04:27:34 PM CST

Israel's settlements are legal

2009-12-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

The British government has no authority to interfere with UN-guaranteed rights

By Geoffrey Alderman, December 17, 2009

What role, if any, does the present UK government see for itself as a peacemaker in the Middle East? Does it see itself as an honest broker, or has it already taken sides? Some developments over the past fortnight — which build on the lesson we must learn from the UK government’s refusal to condemn or even criticise the Goldstone report — do I think enable us to answer these important questions.

At the beginning of the month, feverish diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing in Brussels centred on a Swedish attempt to have EU member states endorse a resolution demanding the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. This proposal was defeated –- thanks to some impressive manoeuvring by Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Instead, on December 8, EU Foreign Ministers announced their agreement that Jerusalem must become a “shared” capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was clearly annoyed that the Swedish draft had been killed off. But the British government was among the backers of the Swedish proposal and, within 48 hours of its defeat, presented Mr Abbas with a consolation prize. On December 10, the department for the environment, food and rural affairs (DEFRA) published new guidance to shops and supermarkets on the labelling of produce sold in the UK that originated from Judea and Samaria. Hitherto, such goods have been labelled as “Produce of the West Bank.” Henceforth, warned DEFRA, they should be branded either as “Palestinian Produce” or “Israeli Settlement Produce.”

A spokesman for UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband wasted no time in explaining that “this is emphatically not about calling for a boycott of Israel. We believe that would do nothing to advance the peace process. We oppose any such boycott of Israel. We believe consumers should be able to choose for themselves what produce they buy.” But, he added ominously: “we have been very clear, both in public and in private, that settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace.” And in an announcement (hilariously labelled “technical advice”) quite separate from its new guidance on labelling, DEFRA’s head, Hilary Benn, warned that UK food outlets would be committing a criminal offence if they labelled produce that originated in Judea and Samaria as “produce of Israel”.

This spiteful policy looks very much like a boycott invitation to me

Although it is being sold as nothing more than an aid to consumer choice, this spiteful policy looks very much like a boycott invitation to me.

My recommendation to the government of Israel is to take appropriate steps to frustrate the intentions of Messrs Miliband and Benn, and to refuse absolutely to label produce from Judea and Samaria other than as originating from Israel. This could perhaps be done by re-routing produce through distribution points within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

But the success or failure of this latest boycott initiative is not my present concern. My present concern is with the assumption — virtually unchallenged in the media — that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal.

In — of all places — the excellent online journal of the Law Society of Scotland (September 14 2009), the distinguished Anglo-Canadian jurist, Professor Gerald Adler, considers this very assumption. In a painstaking analysis of Jewish claims stretching back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 and the Palestine Mandate of 1922, Professor Adler demonstrates that Jews have a right to “close settlement” on the West Bank, and that this right was in fact specifically preserved, and carried forward on the demise of the League of Nations, through the deliberate wording of article 80 of the founding charter of its successor body, the United Nations organisation.

In his “technical advice”, Mr Benn is silent on these matters, preferring to dwell instead on the fourth Geneva Convention (1949), which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its own civilian population into occupied territory. But, quite apart from the fact that Israel has done no such thing (no Israeli is compelled to live in Judea or Samaria), Mr Benn needs to understand that the right to which Professor Adler draws attention pertains to Jews, not Israelis.

This is a right – granted by the League of Nations and guaranteed by the UN at its foundation – with which neither Mr Benn nor Mr Miliband (nor, incidentally, Mr Netanyahu) has the moral or legal authority to interfere.
http://www.thejc.com/comment/columnists/25107/israels-settlements-are-legal

Putting $829 billion into perspective

2009-10-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

October 08, 2009

Grant Ellis
Forgetting inherent inaccuracies and the usual political nonsense, it's reported here that the CBO figures 10 years of the Baucus health care bill (ObamaCare) will cost $829 billion.

In an effort to put $829 billion in perspective, I thought a comparison to NASA's budget might do the trick. Conveniently located here I found every annual NASA budget going back to 1958.

Bottom line: From 1958-2009, NASA has been budgeted $433 billion dollars which equates to $824 billion dollars in constant 2007 (inflation adjusted) dollars.

How's that for perspective? In 51 years, NASA has spent $5 billion less (in 2007 dollars) than the forecasted 10-year cost of ObamaCare (in, I presume, 2009 dollars). Call it a wash.

One other statistic I found interesting: according to the referenced budget schedule, the 1958 budget of $89 million equates to $488 million in 2007 dollars. Think about that. In 49 years, our money has lost almost 82% of its original value. Looking at this in another way, if you hired on with NASA in 1958 at a salary of $8,900 per year and received a raise of 3.54% every year thereafter by 2007 you would be making $48,800 and your purchasing power would not have increased at all. That is what an inflationary monetary policy does. It provides the illusion of wealth while robbing you blind.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/putting_829_billion_into_persp.html at October 08, 2009 - 10:28:41 AM EDT

EPA: The Blob That Ate America

2009-10-05T06:25:00.000-07:00

Alan Caruba

No single government agency has grown so big and fast as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – and no single agency threatens constitutionally guaranteed property rights and nationwide economic growth than the EPA.

It is the Blob that ate America.

Signed into law by Richard M. Nixon in 1970, the EPA has so consistently twisted the truth about the environment that its announcements must be dissected like a cadaver to find any verifiable facts.

This agency of the government is so brazen that it is currently trying to bully Congress, the seat of government, into passing the horrid Cap-and-Trade bill so that it might then regulate stationary sources that emit more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year.

In its endless quest for more and more power over all aspects our lives, the EPA wants to rewrite the 1970 Clean Air Act to include so-called greenhouse gases. That is why its Senate sponsors have obligingly renamed it a “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act."

It is based entirely on the global warming hoax.

The EPA has been the spear point for the global warming hoax, the creation of many worldwide and domestic environmental groups that continue to lie, saying it is caused by humans. There is, however, NO global warming. The Earth has been into a cooling cycle for the past decade. The current cooling is predicted to last for decades to come.

The platform for the global warming hoax has been provided by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The EPA is justifying its latest power grab claiming that the regulation of greenhouse gases will avoid a global warming that is NOT happening.

The EPA has such a disdain for real science that it wants to declare greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), as “pollutants” when in fact CO2 has nothing to do with either warming or cooling.

The simple truth is that water vapor constitutes 95 percent of all so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and CO2 represents an infinitesimal 3.616 percent. Man-made CO2, whether generated by industry or just a backyard barbeque, is an even more miniscule 0.117 percent. CO2 molecules in the atmosphere are so diffuse as to render this gas unable to cause any climate change.

The EPA proposal reflects the effort of environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to thwart the construction of any new plants to generate electricity. This is especially true of coal-fired plants that currently provide half of all the electricity used daily. Costly technology to capture and clean emissions is already in place wherever coal or other fuels are utilized.

All industrial activity is the ultimate target. What the nation’s industrial and manufacturing sector really generates are jobs, profits, stock dividends, and tax revenue.

The climate/energy bill has no basis in scientific fact. Despite a Supreme Court decision, CO2 can in no way be defined as a “pollutant.” CO2 is vital to all vegetation from backyard gardens to wheat fields to forests. Humans and other mammals exhale it. Vegetation absorbs and uses it. More CO2 would, in fact, mean more robust harvests and greater forest growth worldwide.

Simply put, the Clean Air Act was never intended to include greenhouse gases and that is the EPA’s dilemma as it seeks to do what it clearly was never intended to do.

The very idea that humans have any control over the climate is so absurd as to render the forthcoming UN climate conference little more than a gathering of liars and idiots.

The only good news is that Obama’s environmental czar, Carol Browner, now says that the cap-and-trade or pollution control act will not likely come to a vote until December. Then or ever, it would strangle economic growth in America at the same time such growth is taking place in the world’s emerging powers such as China and India.

While the rest of the world is encouraging industry to provide the jobs and revenue needed for their population, the United States President and Congress would hand the Greenhouse Gun to an EPA eager to pull the trigger on our own growth.

© Alan Caruba, October 2009

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Exclusive: Obama Throws America Under the Global Bus

2009-09-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

Pam Meister

During the big UN brouhaha this week, we were treated to the usual nonsense by the usual suspects – Ahmadinejad, Qaddafi, and the standard America-haters. Perhaps the one good thing that came out of it was pointed out by a friend in an e-mail:

I did enjoy [Qaddafi’s] suggestion to move the UN to Beijing or Delhi in order to save him and others jet lag! It is the one thing on which I completely agreed with him. He even justified it by the savings in cost, security and hassles the U.S. would get from it. AND he had the decency to say that they owed the U.S. a "Thank You" for hosting the UN for the last 60 years.

Nice sentiment, but we never get thanks for anything. Still, I’m all for moving the UN out of New York and out of the U.S. Let them go to France or somewhere else where they’ll fit right in. And then, I’m all for getting the U.S. out of the UN. Why do we need to continue to pay the lion’s share of the dues for an organization that never hesitates to flaunt its anti-Americanism and do everything it can to stymie us? See how long that corrupt money pit lasts without us.

But this year, we were also treated to something Extra Special: the spectacle of our own duly elected president doing something that has never – to my knowledge – been done in the history of this nation: throw us under the bus to appease the globalists. Even Bill Clinton, liberal though he is, didn’t dare do something like that. But then, Clinton isn’t as half the ideologue Obama is.

If you thought his World Apology Tour™ was revolting, this speech probably made you reach for the barf bag. And just think: we have more than three more years of such Pepto- Bismol moments ahead of us! You know, Costco, BJ’s and other warehouse stores should consider selling barf bags in bulk – they’d make a mint.

Oh, wait, I’m sorry – capitalism is bad. Isn’t that what’s being taught to children in our schools now?

But back to Obama and his UN love fest. It was chock full of what I, um, lovingly refer to as “obamanations,” including this backhanded slap at George W. Bush:

I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for our collective inaction.

Nice. Bush can’t even enjoy his retirement without The One™ constantly “reminding” us how horrible he was. He continued:
Like all of you, my responsibility is to act in the interest of my nation and my people, and I will never apologize for defending those interests. But it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 - more than at any point in human history – the interests of nations and peoples are shared.

Cue rabid applause from the boobs at the UN. What a disgusting spectacle. And right here at home, too. It’s nice that we no longer have to travel far to hear about how awful we are. Good for the environment, too.

Why is it that everything Obama says has some sort of qualifier? “I will never apologize for defending my nation’s interests, BUT…” The “but” here could well refer to the fact that he’s authorized the State Department to hand over $400,000 to two foundations run by Qaddafi’s children. Andrew McCarthy provides the details:

$200,000 each for daughter Aisha and son Saif. Saif, you may recall, is the son who escorted the Lockerbie terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi home to a hero's welcome in Libya after President Obama sternly "warned" Qaddafi that there was to be no hero's welcome.

[…]

Could somebody please tell this president that this is not just Annenberg Foundation cash he's passing out to his personal terrorist pals like Bill Ayers but American taxpayer dollars he's doling out to the terrorist tyrant behind the murder — in just that one incident — of 270 people, including 189 Americans.

How charitable of him, to share our taxpayer dollars with the children of a terror-supporting nut job! Those poor souls who were murdered over Lockerbie would understand if they could just witness the Hope and Change™ we have today. We’re all just one big, happy international family, aren’t we? Kumbaya, Joy to the World and all that rot.

And how, pray tell, is Obama defending his nation’s interests? By cutting defense spending as a way of trying to fool us that he’s trying to stop the deficit from ballooning even further? By handing Poland and the Czech Republic to Russia on a silver platter and undermining American security at the same time? By cutting Israel off at the knees? By tossing our economy down the garbage disposal and flipping the switch? And after having blathered for years about how Afghanistan is where we needed focus our efforts, that Iraq was just a distraction, now he’s “skeptical” about sending more troops there – at the urging of Gen. McChrystal – to end things there once and for all. Heaven forbid he offend MoveOn.org and their ilk. If I had to guess, I’d say that the only members of the military for whom he has any respect are the ones assigned to protect him.

I could go on, but I’m running out of those planet-polluting barf bags.

As Nile Gardiner noted over at the UK Telegraph:

Was this though Obama’s most naïve speech ever? It is a very strong candidate, but I think there is intense competition for that accolade. The president’s speeches in Cairo, Strasbourg and Prague would all vie for that title. Still, his address today will go down in history as one of the weakest major addresses by a US president on foreign policy in a generation, by a leader who seems embarrassed, even ashamed, by the power and greatness of his own country.

This was an exceedingly dull, poor speech that overwhelmingly failed to advance US interests on the world stage, or project American values and principles onto the rest of the globe. As Barack Obama will eventually discover, soft power will only get you so far when you have to confront and defeat brutal enemies that seek America’s destruction

And Steve Hayes of Fox News’ Special Report, made this observation about Obama’s UN speech:

Just think about the last sentence that we heard in the introduction there, "When you question the cause or character of my country, think about the concrete actions of the last nine months." Basically what President Obama is saying there, think about me when you think about the goodness or the greatness of the United States. I think that is an unbelievably arrogant thing to say, and, sadly, it wasn't the only thing that he said in the speech that was like that. I think the whole speech was filled with that.

Obama wants to see America reduced to mediocrity, but with one shining star: him. We can’t be better than any other nation because that’s just not nice or fair. We have too much, so we have to dial it back so that the other kids on the playground won’t feel left out. Never mind that much of what we have goes toward plenty of international aid. Will we be cutting back on that in this era of reduced expectations? And how about those date nights? Will they also be sacrificed for the good of the collective?

All that is right and good about America is about to be flushed down the toilet, with Obama as the Ty-D-Bol Man in his snazzy captain’s hat, whizzing about in his flashy motorboat, smiling and telling us that it’s “new and improved.”

“Mmm, mmm, mmm, Barack Hussein Obama. He said that we must lend a hand to make this country strong again.” That’s right, children, keep singing. It was plenty strong before, but now that the 98-pound weakling is in charge, all that’s going to change.

Change. Has a catchy ring to it, doesn’t it?

Pam Meister is the editor of FamilySecurityMatters.org.

Obama's Self-Worship

2009-09-25T04:05:00.001-07:00

Mona Charen
Friday, September 25, 2009

President Obama's speech to the United Nations has been called naive and even "post-American." It was something else, as well: the most extravagant excursion into self-worship we have yet seen in an American leader.

Beware of politicians who claim to be "humbled by the responsibility the American people have placed upon me." It's a neon sign flashing the opposite. And sure enough, in almost the next sentence, the president allowed that "I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world." Really? The whole world pulses with hope and expectation because Obama is president? People in Amsterdam, Sao Paulo and Taipei have a spring in their step because an Illinois Democrat won the White House?

Well, yes, he says, but it's not "about me," rather it's a reflection of dissatisfaction with the "status quo that has allowed us to be increasingly defined by our differences and outpaced by our problems." Oh, yes, and everyone around the world was electrified by Obama's campaign slogan because these expectations "are also rooted in hope. The hope that real change is possible and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change."

Obama is, we are told, the smartest man to sit in the Oval in many a year. And yet he is capable of truly flabbergasting fatuities like this: "In this hall, we come from many places, but we share a common future." You don't say? That's right up there with Warren Harding's declaration that "the future lies before us."

Obama announced that we no longer "have the luxury of indulging our differences to the exclusion of the work that we must do together. I have carried this message from London to Ankara, from Port of Spain to Moscow, from Accra to Cairo, and it is what I will speak about today." Note the personal pronoun. But what message has this evangelist carried to all these world capitals? That hope and change have been vouchsafed to the fallen world in the person of Barack Obama?

During last year's campaign, Michelle Obama and her defenders insisted that her statement "For the first time in my adult life I'm proud of my country" (for supporting her husband) was unfairly wrenched from its context. Maybe, though she said it more than once.

But Obama's indictment of the United States before the U.N. suggests identical sentiments. "I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust," the president said. And mostly it seems, those views were justified. America had acted "unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others." Addressing himself directly to America's critics, the president declared, "For those who question the character and cause of my nation…"

He could have mentioned the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, the billions spent on fighting AIDS in Africa, tsunami relief, the Green Revolution, defeating Nazism and Communism. Just for starters. But that's not what the president had in mind.

"…I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months. On my first day in office, I prohibited without exception or equivocation the use of torture by the United States of America. I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed." The audience, composed in part of regimes that pluck out the eyeballs of political enemies and hack off the hands of suspected thieves, applauded vigorously.

There are no limits to the good that can be achieved if the world will follow Obama's leadership. "Consider the course that we're on if we fail to confront the status quo: extremists sowing terror in pockets of the world; protracted conflicts that grind on and on; genocide; mass atrocities; more nations with nuclear weapons; melting ice caps and ravaged populations; persistent poverty and pandemic disease." Yes, that's humble all right. All of those evils can be avoided by the right leadership? The hubris is staggering.

Not that the solutions Obama proposes could, even if fully implemented in every detail, prevent those catastrophes. Arguably, his solutions would invite worse. He proposes, for example, not just to fight nuclear proliferation (on which he has so far achieved nothing), but also to rid the world of nuclear weapons. By promising this, he a) ratifies the arguments of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il that it is somehow unjust for some nations to have nuclear weapons and others not; and b) commits the United States to suicidal unilateral disarmament. If the U.S. did give up its nuclear weapons and by some miracle the other nuclear powers did as well, world peace would not dawn. The race to acquire those weapons by lesser powers would intensify, as their relative value would increase immeasurably.

Those are the kinds of cold realities Obama might grapple with, if he weren't so distracted by his looking glass.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

2009-09-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

By TERRY JONES
News Analysis by IBD | Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:30 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=337909690110379

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration's claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.

The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors' positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.

Major findings included:

• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration's claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul.

It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a "majority of physicians want public and private insurance options," and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday's front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline "Doctors Go For Obama's Reform."

Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the "association representing the nation's physicians" and what "many still regard as the country's premier lobbying force" — is "lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama's sweeping plan."

The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA's support of Democrats' proposed health care overhaul.

• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll's finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.

View larger image

• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered "no" when asked if they believed "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better."

This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time.

The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better.

IBD/TIPP's finding that many doctors could leave the business suggests that such rationing could be more severe than even critics believe. Rationing is one of the drawbacks associated with government plans in countries such as Canada and the U.K. Stories about growing waiting lists for badly needed care, horror stories of care gone wrong, babies born on sidewalks, and even people dying as a result of care delayed or denied are rife.

In this country, the number of doctors is already lagging population growth.

From 2003 to 2006, the number of active physicians in the U.S. grew by just 0.8% a year, adding a total of 25,700 doctors.

Recent population growth has been 1% a year. Patients, in short, are already being added faster than physicians, creating a medical bottleneck.

The great concern is that, with increased mandates, lower pay and less freedom to practice, doctors could abandon medicine in droves, as the IBD/TIPP Poll suggests. Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for — an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors. The actual effect could be somewhat less because a significant share of the uninsured already get care.

Even so, the government vows to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care spending to pay for reform, which would encourage a flight from the profession.

The U.S. today has just 2.4 physicians per 1,000 population — below the median of 3.1 for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the official club of wealthy nations.

Adding millions of patients to physicians' caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed.

"It's like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only two buses," Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told the Associated Press.

Hope for a surge in new doctors may be misplaced. A recent study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found steadily declining enrollment in medical schools since 1980.

The study found that, just with current patient demand, the U.S. will have 159,000 fewer doctors than it needs by 2025. Unless corrected, that would make some sort of medical rationing or long waiting lists almost mandatory.

Experiments at the state level show that an overhaul isn't likely to change much.

On Monday came word from the Massachusetts Medical Society — a group representing physicians in a state that has implemented an overhaul similar to that under consideration in Washington — that doctor shortages remain a growing problem.

Its 2009 Physician Workforce Study found that:

• The primary care specialties of family medicine and internal medicine are in short supply for a fourth straight year.

• The percentage of primary care practices closed to new patients is the highest ever recorded.

• Seven of 18 specialties — dermatology, neurology, urology, vascular surgery and (for the first time) obstetrics-gynecology, in addition to family and internal medicine — are in short supply.

• Recruitment and retention of physicians remains difficult, especially at community hospitals and with primary care.

A key reason for the doctor shortages, according to the study, is a "lingering poor practice environment in the state."

In 2006, Massachusetts passed its medical overhaul — minus a public option — similar to what's being proposed on a national scale now. It hasn't worked as expected. Costs are higher, with insurance premiums rising 22% faster than in the U.S. as a whole.

"Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate," according to a recent report from the Urban Institute.

Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.

This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.

In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service.

"A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland" because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted.

British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.

Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country's national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.

Tomorrow: Why most doctors oppose the government's plan — in their own words.

Hijab (The Headscarf)—Yes; The Burqa—No

2009-09-15T07:55:00.000-07:00

By: Phyllis Chesler
Pajamas Media | Tuesday, September 15, 2009

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Banning the burqa in the West might be one way to ban Islamist fundamentalism and the barbaric subordination of girls and women in certain immigrant communities. For this reason, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and French Minister Fadela Amara have again called for this ban. Earlier today, French immigration Minister, Eric Besson, called the burqa “debased.”

I would hope that the French take their argument further. In the past, they have mainly cited security concerns: Burqa wearing women might be “racially” attacked or burqa wearers themselves might be terrorists or criminals who are planning to attack or rob civilians.

I would hope that the French also argue for such a ban on women’s rights/human rights grounds, as I have already proposed. Thus, clothing which completely covers the face and head in a way which muffles speech, hearing, and vision, which limits or prevents all human communication and identification, and which, in effect, functions like an isolation chamber is, by definition, a violation of human rights.

None of this applies to hijab, the Islamic headscarf, which has already been banned in France in school and which is the subject of protest and controversy across Europe.

With all due respect for the good intentions of the French, perhaps Western governments should not automatically or necessarily ban hijab for women; the matter is tricky and complicated for girls as we have seen, as city after city across Europe has discovered. Indeed, this is a complex and challenging matter.

Today, in Holland, in the very country that is putting the sober and very brave parliamentarian,Geert Wilders on trial for exercising his political free speech—another bright Dutch light, Trouw historian Tineke Bennema has called on “women who were born in the Netherlands to voluntarily put on a headscarf ‘out of solidarity’ with the hijab wearers.” You know, like the Danes allegedly once wore the yellow Jewish star.

Bennema: This is not the way to atone for all the Dutch Jews who were so cheerfully handed over to the Nazis.

One can argue that looking “different,” wearing clothing that represents only one religion may, indeed, arouse prejudice and fear and lead to ostracism, especially among children. Visually representing one’s religion in the public square may also interfere with one’s ability to be seen neutrally in a courtroom, (as a judge, a witness, a plaintiff), classroom, hospital, (as a nurse, doctor, or patient), office, etc. For this reason, an American judge told a priest to remove his clerical collar before testifying in a court case.

However, in order to ban hijab in an even-handed way, one would also have to ban the Catholic hijab worn by nuns, the Jewish headscarf worn by ultra-orthodox and Chasidic women, and the various Hindu and Sikh head coverings. Doing so might interfere with the separation of religion and state that many Western governments hold dear.

But there is another reason to consider not banning hijab for adults. I spent last week in Rome, at the International Conference on Violence Against Women, An Initiative of the Italian Presidency of the G 8. I am deeply grateful to the Italian government, specifically to the Italian Minister for Equal Opportunities, the Honorable (and beautiful) Maria Rosaria Carfagna for this opportunity. Here is where I spent time with a dynamic, truly amazing group of religious and secular Muslim feminists. Three wore hijab, two did not, and one wore it sometimes, but not always. Most agreed that headcovering is more of a custom than a religious commandment and that one can be a very good Muslim without it.

My point: They are all modern, eloquent, high achievers; smart, strong, strong-minded, pro-Western, pro-integration, and pro-women’s rights. They have won my heart and I view these Muslim feminists who are fifty years old or younger as the true descendents of Second Wave Western feminism. They, too, believe that women’s rights are universal, not culturally relative: They cannot understand why so many western feminists and academics are willing to sacrifice this principle. And, religious or not, they also believe in the importance of separating religion and state.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the well known author of classic works, including the bestseller Women and Madness (1972) The New Anti-Semitism (2003) and The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (2005). She has just published a new edition of Woman's Inhumanity to Woman (2009). She is an Emerita Professor of psychology and women's studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women's Health Network (1976). Her website is www.phyllis-chesler.com

The Ten Commandments According to Obama

2009-07-18T14:01:00.003-07:00

After observing Obama on the campaign trail and during his first six months in office, we have concluded that our President lives and governs according to his own set of "Ten Commandments." They're certainly NOT the Ten Commandments you learned in Sunday School. In fact, many are the direct opposite! To prove that our conclusions are correct, you will find a link to source documentation for each commandment on the Patriot Update web site.
I. Thou shalt have no God in America, except for me. For we are no longer a Christian nation and, after all, I am the chosen One. (And like God, I do not have a birth certificate.) SOURCE
II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless it is my face carved on Mt. Rushmore. SOURCE
III. Thou shalt not utter my middle name in vain (or in public). Only I can say Barack Hussein Obama. SOURCE
IV. Remember tax day, April 15th, to keep it holy. SOURCE
V. Honour thy father and thy mother until they are too old and sick to care for. They will cost our public-funded health-care system too much money. SOURCE
VI. Thou shalt not kill, unless you have an unwanted, unborn baby. For it would be an abomination to punish your daughter with a baby. SOURCE
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery if you are conservative or a Republican. Liberals and Democrats are hereby forgiven for all of their infidelity and immorality, but the careers of conservatives will be forever destroyed. SOURCE
VIII. Thou shalt not steal, until you've been elected to public office. Only then is it acceptable to take money from hard-working, successful citizens and give it to those who do not work, illegal immigrants, or those who do not have the motivation to better their own lives. SOURCE
IX. Thou shalt not discriminate against thy neighbor unless they are conservative, Caucasian, or Christian. SOURCE
X. Thou shalt not covet because it is simply unnecessary. I will place such a heavy tax burden on those that have achieved the American Dream that, by the end of my term as President, nobody will have any wealth or material goods left for you to covet. SOURCE

Truth In Lending

2009-07-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=332121062189506
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, July 10, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Behind The Meltdown: Many Americans are unaware of the causes of the greatest economic calamity of our lifetime. A new congressional report details how government politicized housing, wrecking the economy.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has released a report that every American should read.

The analysis details how powerful Democrats in Congress insisted that government-subsidized housing be geared to serve the purposes of social justice at the expense of sound lending.

Here are some highlights of Issa's blow-by-blow account:

• With an implicit subsidy to American homeowners in the form of reduced mortgage rates, Fannie Mae and its sister government sponsored enterprise, Freddie Mac, squeezed out their competition and cornered the secondary mortgage market. They took advantage of a $2.25 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury.

• Congress, by statute, allowed them to operate with much lower capital requirements than private-sector competitors. They "used their congressionally-granted advantages to leverage themselves in excess of 70-to-1."

• The two GSEs were the only publicly traded corporations exempt from SEC oversight. All their securities carried an implicit AAA rating regardless of the quality of the mortgages.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development set quotas for GSE investment in affordable housing.

• Encouraged by an inaccurate 1992 Boston Federal Reserve Bank study charging racial discrimination in mortgage lending, the two GSEs were strongly pressured to "lower their underwriting standards, particularly on the size of down payments and the credit quality of borrowers."

• In 1992, Congress directed HUD to establish multiple quotas requiring mortgage quotes for low-income families.

• In 1995, the Clinton administration issued a National Homeownership Strategy, loosening Fannie and Freddie's lending standards and insisting that lenders "work collaboratively to reduce homebuyer downpayment requirements."

• The administration complained that in 1989 only 7% of mortgages had less than a 10% downpayment. By 1994, it wanted that raised to 29%.

• Reduced underwriting standards spread into the entire U.S. mortgage market to those at all income levels.

• A complete decoupling of home prices from Americans' income fed the growth of the housing bubble as borrowers made smaller down payments and took on higher debt.

• Wall Street firms specializing "in packaging and investing in the lowest-quality tranches of mortgage-backed securities, profited hugely from the increased volume that government affordable lending policies sparked."

• Wall Street firms, homebuilders and the GSEs used money, power and influence to block attempts at reform. Between 1998 and 2008, Fannie and Freddie spent over $176 million on lobbyists.

• In 2006, Freddie paid the largest fine in Federal Election Commission history for improperly using corporate resources to hold 85 fundraisers for congressmen, raising a total of $1.7 million.

As the Issa report points out, "the real tragedy of the government's affordable housing policy is the impact on average Americans, particularly those of modest means.

"Millions of these borrowers, who were supposed to have been helped by federal affordable housing policy, have now been forced into delinquency and foreclosure, destroying their asset base, their credit, and in some cases their families."

Over to you, Mr. Abbas

2009-06-15T07:24:00.001-07:00

Jun. 14, 2009
David Horovitz , THE JERUSALEM POST

For the two-and-a-half months since he was sworn in for the second time as prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu has been uncharacteristically quiet, making few speeches of substance and generally eschewing interviews. On Sunday night, at Bar-Ilan University, he reminded a local and international audience of his articulacy, with an address that will have pleased neither the Palestinians and the Arab world, nor the most ardent supporters of the settlement enterprise, nor the firm Israeli Left - but wasn't principally aimed at any of them.

His goal, rather, was simultaneously satisfying the Israeli consensus and the Obama administration, and in that, he is likely to have largely succeeded.

Notably speeding up his delivery when he got to the sections of his speech most unpalatable to the hard Right, he first vaguely committed his government to all previous international agreements, but then emphatically espoused the vision of a Palestinian state living at peace alongside Israel, precisely as the new American president would have wished, and reaffirmed that Israel would build no new settlements and take control of no more West Bank land.

His hawkish critics will accuse him of capitulation and of selling out. Netanyahu, after all, is the man who publicly declared in 2002 that a state for the Palestinians would spell the end of a state for the Jews.

But the speaker of 2009 set out two critical caveats. Israel, he made plain, could countenance Palestinian statehood only if, philosophically, the Palestinians publicly acknowledged Israel's essence as the homeland of the Jewish nation and, practically, if Palestine were demilitarized.

"We don't want missiles on our cities," he said simply. "We want peace."

And therefore, Palestine would have to be denied an army, the right to import arms, air sovereignty and the capacity to sign military treaties with the likes of Iran.

In a sense, this was a classic display of Netanyahu's longstanding insistence on reciprocity. You want Israel to support statehood for the Palestinians? he was saying to the Americans. Well, then, give me the guarantees that their independence will not come at the expense of ours.

The demand can hardly strike Washington as unreasonable, and by prefacing it with that support in principle for Obama's efforts to change our region for the better, Netanyahu at a nuanced stroke lobbed the peacemaking ball back into the Palestinian court. And he moved himself a long way, if not perhaps all the way, from Obama's list of unsavory "obstacles to progress," to the place where Israel need always belong, among the potential "facilitators of progress." Over to you, Mr. Abbas.

The prime minister's refusal to halt natural growth at existing settlements still leaves him in direct conflict with Washington. But Netanyahu will have privately explained to the Americans that meeting that restriction would not merely counter his own outlook, but also doom his government, and his Sunday night mention of the Gaza disengagement served as a timely reminder of Israel's demonstrable willingness to dismantle even entire settlement communities - albeit, in Netanyahu's view, for entirely misconceived reasons.

When Israelis went to the polls in February, many in the mainstream were torn between the conviction that maintaining a Jewish, democratic Israel would require separation from the Palestinians, and the sorry assessment that no such viable separation was possible given abiding Palestinian hostility to the very notion of our sovereign presence here.

Netanyahu's Sunday night address will have resonated with that Israeli middle ground. And it also corrected some of the lacunas in the Middle East vision expressed in the US president's June 4 "new beginning" overture to the Muslim world - most especially regarding Obama's misrepresentation of Israel's legitimacy as stemming from centuries of Jewish persecution culminating in the Holocaust.

A much anticipated speech, then, that probably achieved much of what Netanyahu hoped it would. But, of course, still only a speech. As Obama will doubtless now be saying to both sides, let's see some action.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371096254&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Zvi Hendel rejects blame on Gaza evacuees for pullout woes

2009-06-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

Jun. 14, 2009
Dan Izenberg , THE JERUSALEM POST

"The climate created by the government was to break the Gaza leadership and not to talk to us," former MK Zvi Hendel said Sunday, in testimony before the State Commission of Inquiry on the Handling by the Authorized Authorities of the Evacuees from Gush Katif and Northern Samaria.

Hendel, who served as head of the Gaza Shore Regional Council in the early 1990s and was elected to the Knesset in 1996, was one of the most outspoken foes of the disengagement. He lived in the Gaza Strip settlement of Ganei Tal from 1977 until the unilateral withdrawal in August 2005.

Hendel told the members of the committee, retired Supreme Court Justice Eliahu Mazza, Shimon Ravid and Prof. Yedidya Stern, who have been holding hearings in Jerusalem, that he had asked to appear before the commission because he was stung by accusations leveled by Yonatan Bassi, the first head of the Disengagement Administration (Sela) at a commission hearing.

Bassi had charged that the reason the evacuees' resettlement program was taking so long was because the settler leadership had not known what it wanted and had refused to cooperate with the government before the withdrawal.

Hendel denied the charges.

He said he had regularly attended the meetings of the Knesset Finance Committee as it prepared the Evacuation-Compensation Law to deal with all the issues involved in the disengagement, including compensation for the Gaza residents.

Furthermore, he had been involved in the establishment of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, which supervised the legislative process on behalf of the settlers and participated in Knesset committee meetings dealing with the law.

Hendel charged that prime minister Ariel Sharon, who until then had been on close terms with him, cut off all contact and refused his requests to meet.

In contrast, during government negotiations with the Palestinians over the Gaza-Jericho First agreement ("Oslo I"), Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been very open to Hendel and arranged for the deputy chief of General Staff at the time, Amnon Shahak, to meet with him every Friday for an hour to discuss the negotiations.

Hendel also rejected Bassi's claim that the Gaza leaders did not know what they wanted. He said he had proposed allowing the entire population of Gush Katif to resettle as one community in the sand dunes between Ashkelon and Ashdod.

Hendel said he knew that the only way the settlers could be spared some of the emotional trauma of the withdrawal was by sticking together as a community.

But Bassi opposed the move and those ministers who originally supported it, changed their minds in accordance with the "climate" created by the government.

In the end, the project fell, said Hendel.

"The members of the community would have supported it but because of the government, it was not realized. Had the project been offered to the entire community, it would have worked."

Asked why he had refused to meet with Bassi in the period leading up to the withdrawal, Hendel retorted angrily, "The person who is about to be hanged does not negotiate with the hangman."

Hendel urged the commission to recommend changes in the Evacuation-Compensation Law that would improve the benefits given to the former Gaza residents.

"I would have expected the government to embrace the settlers," he said. "If it had done so, we would not be angry at Sela and the government. [But] the law was not meant to compensate the uprooted but to do the minimum, to finance the recreation of what had been destroyed.

"This is not 'compensation.' Compensation is what is given for the damages caused" to those who were forced to uproot themselves.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371097054&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Not Alarmed?

2006-08-31T04:13:00.000-07:00

Still not alarmed-what will it take?

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

August 28,2006

Iran’s leadership has declared that Israel has no right to exist any longer and has warned that it will eliminate the country. Actually, the Iranian leader said that 'God has revealed to him and him alone that the Jews must go'. Wait, this same country has also threatened the USA and Great Britain. We infidels in the West can either convert to Islam, fight or die- these are our realistic choices. Recently we saw Iran test not only Israel but also the entire Western World by fighting a proxy war in Lebanon. While it funded, organized, managed, and supplied weapons for the conflict the world simply watched the daily TV news.

Iran lost nothing; it considered the war a sound investment of a few hundred million of petrol dollars. In return for its investment what did it learn?

In terms of military knowledge Iran learned that Israel was not prepared for the guerrilla strategies employed by Hezbollah.

It acquired information about Israel’s attack strategies, what it does and how it does it.

It learned if and how Israel could adapt on the battlefield.

It realized that its new field communication system could effectively decommission Israel’s ability to listen into their battlefield instructions-the years of technological investment paid dividends when put to the test of battle.

It learned that the coordination between government cabinets and Generals in charge of executing the political decisions was cumbersome, bloated and ineffective. This gave Iran an insight as to how Israeli strategies are implemented and how Iran can abuse this type of political-war-battlefield communication lag to its advantage.

It learned that Israel is held on an international leash and all that Iran must do is survive Israel’s initial bluster and it can come out swinging. This reminded me of a heavy weight fight; one fighter comes out, unloads everything in his arsenal attempting to either knock out his opponent or so intimidate him that he cruises through the next rounds. Survive the first round and you can win.

Iran acquired some very important political information-again, with no cost to itself. It learned that, for the most part, the international media was on Iran's side when it came to reporting the war. Photos were created –staged and distorted - to make the perpetrators of the evil look like the victims. Furthermore media stories were constructed based more upon fiction than fact and sold to the world as truth.

This newly gleaned information will come in handy during the next war that is being planned as I write. Iran has learned that there is no need to invest in any public relations firm, or hire PR strategists, or create a disinformation bureau; no, it has learned the “free press” will do just fine by them. Its newly acquired tactic will be expanded during the next war. Iran was able to encourage Arab countries - remember Iran is not an Arab country - to go directly to the USA Congress and pressure it to begin an investigation regarding the type of weapons Israel used to fight the Hizzbollah. This immediately stopped the USA from sending necessary armaments to Israel. The urgent delivery of munitions desperately needed by Israel to fight the inevitable battle already announced by Iran has been placed on indefinite hold. The enemy of the free world has learned that whining, complaining, and attacking politically it is possible to derail the war strategies of two countries. We can be assured that this lesson will be re-played time and again – not only by Iran but all of the enemies of the free world.

Iran also was able to fight a battle, controlling the war plan timeline while it created political heat using the media, politicians, and special interest groups. Israel was not allowed to win; just as the war was turning, the USA and the West folded their tents, capitulated to the international pressures, to their internal Muslim power groups and called the war done! Then they created and imposed a document that in spite of their bluster was contrived to put Israel in a no-win position. The language of this document actually grants permission for Hizzbollah to re-stock, courtesy of its benefactor Iran. It does not require that this terrorist group stand down, disarm, or return our kidnapped prisoners. Compare the words of Israel, USA, and the West during days one and two to the language of UN 1701 and it is obvious that Iran brought us, not just

Israel -I am talking about the West - to our knees. Iran realizes now that we have lost our moral compass, our integrity and courage to stand up for our own values. We are not what we purport to be, not any longer. This will come back to haunt us.

Iran has learned it can fool all the people all of the time. Implant a proxy army inside “civilian” populations and win by crying 'deliberate massacre'. Win the world’s opinion

even as rockets intentionally fired upon Israeli civilians kill and maim and win even more when “protected” civilians are killed in collateral damage. The awful truth is, the more Lebanese killed, the better it was for Iran; this, too, will be used over and over again until we stand up and say - Stop the madness!

The second awful truth is that the more Lebanese children and civilians maimed or killed by bombs not yet exploded, the better for Iran. Why? Israel is to blame! Question-why are people being allowed back into a war zone before unexploded ordinance has been located and properly discharged? Point of information; here in Israel we also have hundreds of similar ordinance-the difference is we do not allow our citizens back in until we have cleared the area. We care about our people and we will not use or abuse them to gain political support.

Iran has learned that money can be exploited to implement its plans to hold the western world hostage. Not only is this true we are providing them the money to keep us in chains. We pay them, we finance them and we support our own destruction. Look what petrol dollars has bought them:

Ahmadinejad has inaugurated a heavy-water plant that can be used to produce plutonium; the bomb is almost here.
The army successfully test-fired a top speed long-range sub-to-surface missile off the Persian Gulf.
Iran has a missile, called Thaqeb or Jupiter; it was built based on domestic know-how, although outside experts say much of its missile technology originated from other countries such as Russia and China.
Iran already is equipped with the Shahab-3 missile, which means "shooting star" in Farsi, and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
Iran also tested a new land-to-sea missile, the Kowsar, with remote-control and searching systems that cannot be scrambled, as well as a high-speed missile boat that skims above the water and is undetectable by radar
It announced in early 2005 that it had begun production of torpedoes.
Iran has the "Hoot," Farsi for "whale," which was tested for the first time in April, capable of moving at some 223 mph, up to four times faster than a normal torpedo
The progress in naval technology has raised concerns in the West that Iran now has a greater array of weapons that can hit oil shipments in the Gulf

Yes, the West has provided the dollars needed to develop these systems and these are but a few they possess. Iran’s only source of income is oil- it does not even process much of it- it must import over 40% of the automobile gasoline it uses. Thus, we have an enemy who has spent decades gearing up and preparing for war while we have sat back and simply observed. We started raising our voices when we saw that we had underestimated the country. We realized too late, I believe, that Iran was serious about equipping itself with the ultimate weapons of authority and superiority. Iran has every intention of making good on promises previously presented in this document. Iran's actions have been congruent with its intentions and now we are concerned.

Solutions - there are many. Do we have the courage to engage them? This will be the historical question of our time. I do know this, take away the flowers and the bees will die. My solution is simple in concept, difficult to practice. Take away Iran’s source of income- oil. It need not be done in a belligerent fashion-there is a non-violent strategy:

Announce tomorrow that the USA is launching a 5-year plan to reduce its dependency upon oil by 50%.
Identify annual benchmarks of lessening oil dependency over the second five- year period of time.
Gather in Washington the major oil companies, green energy owners and other energy directed leaders. Identify energy as our number one domestic goal and indicate that not only is our national security at stake, but we must face the fact that our very existence is as well. Involve these leaders in the creation of a plan to cope with this urgency. Provide financial incentives to the oil companies and to the green energy companies. Use the business concepts within the market place to motivate and drive early implementation of this plan.

In a subsequent article I will offer specific details for such incentives; the focus of this article is the overall concept of taking away the enemy’s source of income that drives and fuels its unimpugned horror on the Western world. We can do what President Kennedy did back in 1960. Instead of placing a human on the moon or Mars, we can become energy independent, create fuel sources that positively impact our environment and take away our enemy’s ability to wreak havoc upon the world. We can stand up for our values, we can live our lives as we desire and not be ashamed of what we have accomplished. I promise you, merely taking this stand will cause the price of the current oil to drop dramatically; this will have an immediate impact upon Iran. As we move toward goal completion the entire political dynamic will shift toward us. I see no other alternative.

Same Values, Same Rules?

2006-08-31T04:11:00.000-07:00

Basic Assumption-We All Have The Same Values, We All Play Fairly

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

August 20, 2006

Remember when you got together on a playground with a bunch of kids and decided to play ball? First thing we did was to “call the rules”. Yes, we stated the rules of the game we were using that particular day and then we agreed to play by them-those who did not agree went home or watched from the sidelines. I think we could use some of this old fashioned common sense when it comes to today’s world conflicts.

Can we all agree that war does not represent humankind’s better set of actions? “War is an ugly business. For thousands of years, this has remained the case. Finally the Geneva Conventions came along in 1948, and the nations of the world joined hands to transform war from an ugly business into an ugly-business-described-by-solemn-buzzwords-and-unenforceable-guidelines, which allowed countries taking part in war to disavow the ugliness of the business without actually having to conduct the business in any meaningfully different manner. This is what we call "civilization."”(1)

Thus, one of the first things the newly formed U.N. did was sit down in Geneva, Switzerland, and try to find a kinder, gentler way to wage war. In December, 1948, the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide passed the first article of what would be known as the Geneva Conventions. Genocide was defined as murder "committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group." This convention drew up a list of punishable crimes "genocide; conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement to commit genocide; attempt to commit genocide; [and] complicity in genocide." Other articles were added and produced the document we know as the Fourth Geneva Convention. The history of the Geneva documents is well worth studying. One discovers that each new set of guidelines has attempted to appease groups of violated people as well as trying to “civilize” an otherwise uncivil set of human behaviors. (2)

The Geneva Conventions consist of treaties formulated in Geneva, Switzerland that set the standards of international law for humanitarian concerns. The conventions were the results of efforts by Henri Dunant (1862), who was motivated by the horrors of war he witnessed at the Battle of Solferino (1859).

The conventions, their agreements and two added protocols are as follows:

· First Geneva Convention (1864): Treatment of battlefield casualties and creation of International Red Cross

· Second Geneva Convention (1906): Extended the principles from the first convention to apply also to war at sea.

· Third Geneva Convention (1929): Treatment of prisoners of war.

· Fourth Geneva Convention (1949): Treatment relating to the protection of civilians during times of war "in the hands" of an enemy and under any occupation by a foreign power.

· Protocol I (1977): Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts

· Protocol II (1977): Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts

In summary, the first three conventions were revised, a fourth was added, and the entire set was ratified in 1949; the whole is referred to as the "Geneva Conventions of 1949" or simply the "Geneva Conventions". Later conferences (Protocols) added the provisions prohibiting certain methods of warfare and addressing issues of civil wars. (3)

One can notice over time that people attempted to make war less painful and less grotesque by attempting to get the world community to adopt more humane behavior and actions specific to the title of each convention. These became the “rules of the game” and the countries that “signed onto” these accords agreed to wage war accordingly. Herein lies one of many problems with this kind of thinking and implementation. Let us examine the difficulties with no particular hierarchy intended in terms of importance.

The U.S signed and ratified all the Geneva Conventions with the exception of the two protocols of 1977. It is important to note that a signature does not bind a nation to the treaty unless the document has also been ratified by that nation (in the U.S., Congress ratifies such treaties). Generally, these treaties are open for signature for a limited time period after they are written. As of 2005, 192 countries had ratified (thus becoming parties to) all four of the Geneva Conventions. Additional Protocol I had been ratified by 161 states, and 156 countries had ratified Additional Protocol II.(4)
Israel signed the four conventions on 8 December 1949 and ratified them on 6 July 1951. Israel has also stated that it does not regard the Geneva Conventions as applying de jure to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories occupied in 1967 (5). Israel has signed but not ratified the protocols. It has agreed to honor their intentions.(6)
Hizzbollah is not a member of a standing sovereign country’s army, nor does it represent any country. Rather, at best it can be defined as a militia located inside Lebanon. Hizzbollah makes a clear distinction between this militia and its so-called political wing that has members in the Lebanese government. Hizzbollah did NOT sign any of the accords and behaviorally demonstrates its contempt for them. Hizzbollah makes no attempt to accept or operate within international rules-this is a direct reflection of their human value system.

Note With respect to treatment of militias, the White House officials said that President Bush distinguished the Taliban from the al Qaeda network "on the grounds that the nation of Afghanistan was a party to the Geneva Conventions, while Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network never signed the global accords."(7) Some legal authorities argue that the third Geneva accord applies to the current war. I am not a legal authority but to date, Hizzbollah has not been formally identified; we call the organization a terrorist group-the Geneva Convention does not apply to such groups-period.

Israel has established policy and military strategies based upon the rules as

outlined by the Geneva convention. Given Hizzbollah does not honor these rules and has developed and implemented military actions contrary to humanitarian law as agreed to by almost all civilized countries.

In the Middle East, it is safe to say that the nature of war has changed. Israel adheres to values found in the West and Judaism, Hizzbollah follows the Sharia laws found in Islam. Furthermore, Shi'a Muslims adhere to what they consider to be the teachings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the religious guidance of his family whom they refer to as the Ahlul Bayt. Relative to Western beliefs, the current Shia leadership, Nasrallah and company, have called for Israel’s destruction and they believe that homicide bombing is better than life itself. This is the opposite of Western belief structures-hence the “rub” when it comes to military operations. Who can honestly believe that Hizzbollah would even consider honoring the conventions of behavior that dictates Israel’s IDF actions?

It is no wonder then that Hizzbollah cares not that it has trampled upon several Geneva Convention articles-more clearly stated, they have broken many of the operating codes of behavior found in the Convention’s articles. Most notably, they have used human shields as a standard mode of military operation against Israel. Hezbollah is violating Article 58 of Protocol 1, which requires parties to a conflict to "Avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas."

It is also important to further note that Article 51 of Protocol 1, an addition to the Geneva Conventions, 1977, entitled "Protection of the Civilian Population," lays out the rules governing treatment of civilians in wartime-rules not adhered to by Hizzbollah. The relevant section states:

Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:

a. those which are not directed at a specific military objective;

b. those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or

c. those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.

Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:

a. an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and

b. an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

So in support for Israel’s code of conduct and rules of engagement during war-time it is accurate to say that an attack on a military target in which civilians would be killed is permissible so long as the civilian losses would not be excessive "in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Israel’s actual war actions are consistent with the values expressed in the Geneva Convention. It is the media as well as enemies of Israel that intentionally misrepresent what is true.

Thus, Israel is within its rights to pursue Hezbollah in populated areas: Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." Hezbollah (and Palestinian terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad), routinely commit war crimes by locating their command outposts, weapons and ammo storage, and rocket launchers in residential areas.

“Hizbullah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel. This a statement by an organization that is certainly not one of Israel’s friends Human Rights Watch.”

"Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war."(8)

It is quite clear that Hizzbollah operates with a different set of human values. It happens that their values and their actual behavior are in direct opposition to the rest of the world community’s values as demonstrated by non-adherence to the Geneva Convention.

The preceding examples are but some of the violations of the Accords-there are many others. However, this is not my main point-Hizzbollah’s values regarding life, freedom and expression of thought and daily behavior is nearly the exact opposite of Israel’s, the USA and the rest of the Western World.

It is this concept, difficult for so many in the West to accept and for those who now understand it but lack the courage to stand for our own values for fears of being called names or worse yet being harmed in some way. Hizzbollah, proxy of Iran and leaders of the current fascist Islamic movement threatening to submit the world to its horrors is counting this as our weakness. They cannot match up militarily but they believe spiritually they have the will and using terrorist tactics for as long as it takes, they will defeat us. They are counting on using and abusing our Western values of tolerance, compassion, caring and life to crush us. We play by one set of rules, they play by another and they are winning the world opinion. They believe that this will ultimately have us change policies and then to our defeat.

I am calling upon Israel and the entire Western community to seek appendices to the current Geneva Convention. I request the following:

· A redefinition of combatant and civilian

· New rules of engagement regarding combatants hiding among civilian populations

· Making sovereign nations legally responsible for the actions of militias found operating within their soil

· Provide Convention assignees absolution when attacked by foreign militias and not hold them accountable to current Convention language

· Hold any country who signed the Convention legally and financially responsible for damages incurred on both sides if found to have supplied said militias with weapons, munitions and other military aide

If we in the West do not move to change the rules of engagement we are destined to loose within and outside our respective countries. Some will argue that we already have made provisions for the points I just raised-I suggest that not only is this incorrect, it is foolish to continue to think in this manner. Our policies must change with the change “in doing war”. We preach in America that to keep up with the competition we must be willing to change and willing to think and act differently. The same goes for today’s warfare-we step up or we will be stepping down!

Jeanne Sulzer of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said that they are "horrified" by the fact that 17 countries which have ratified the treaty have signed bilateral agreements with the United States to exempt Americans from persecution by the ICC. In addition, the US Congress last year passed legislation, which obligates the US government to protect members of its armed forces from prosecution by the ICC. This law even allows the US to free, by force if necessary, US personnel who have been handed over to the ICC for prosecution http://www.ipsnews.net/fsm2003/28.01.2003/nota3.shtml

End Notes

1. www.rotten.com/library/history/ war-crimes/geneva-conventions.

2. Morris, GS Don, Understanding the Fourth Geneva Convention, March 7, 2005,posted SPME.com and PRIMERct.org sites.

3. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_wa.r

4. http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=762529232&pn=2.

5. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE151082001?open&of=ENG-ISR.

6. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Legal_Arguments_for_Avoiding_the_Jurisdiction_of_the_Geneva_Conventions.

7. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2005/11/justice-at-guantanamo-paradox-of-david.php, University of Pittsburg, School of Law.

8. Hizzbollah committing war crimes, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/

Absurdity

2006-08-31T04:10:00.000-07:00

The Absurdity of All This Discussion

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

August 17, 2006

"The resolution is clear that Hizbullah needs to be removed from the border area, embargoed and dismantled," the official said. "If the resolution is not implemented, we will have to take action to prevent the rearming of Hizbullah. I don't think backtracking will serve any useful purpose. There has to be pressure on Hizbullah to disarm or there will have to be another round." (1)

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is expected to raise the issue when she meets in New York on Wednesday with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“The issue of disarmament is not on the agenda,” senior Hizbullah official Hassan Fadlallah said on Wednesday, jeopardizing the fragile cease-fire in the region. The UN cease-fire resolution clearly states that the area south of the Litani river must be demilitarized.

According to Fadlallah, who spoke with al-Jazeera, Hizbullah will not evacuate its operatives from southern Lebanon since they are the ones who populate the region. "Any such withdrawal means the evacuation of southern Lebanon," he said.

Annan angered Israeli officials when he told Channel 2 on Tuesday that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN," which could only help Lebanon disarm the organization.

The UN has not received any formal offers of troops for UNIFIL, although France, Italy, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia have indicated they would make significant contributions. A dozen other countries have also expressed a willingness to help.(1)

Lots of talk. Israel spends an amazing amount of effort explaining, correcting, teaching everyone about its position relative to UN 1701. The strategy seems to be to make sure we are perfectly clear about what the resolution says and we should also be clear as to who has specific responsibilities to make this resolution work. Each Israeli speaker puts forth a great deal of effort to ensure that we understand not only the intent of the resolution but that we understand each paragraph. In addition, we are expending so much energy on the topic of Olemert and gang’s resignation(s). The angst of it all!

Meanwhile, the Lebanese government has cut a deal with Hizzbollah-they do not have to disarm and in the south as long as they do not publicly display their arms it is OK to have them. What a sound strategy-mandate that their arms be hidden, out of view-so, hide them in the bunkers, in civilians homes, under baby cribs and in mosques. Yes, by the way, this does meet the resolution’s criteria; Israel does not have a leg to stand on-we are being goaded into starting the war again. I direct your attention to OP3 of the resolution: so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of Lebanon. (2) Furthermore in OP 8 additional permissions are granted. The language clearly states that if permission is granted by Lebanon, Hizzbollah can have arms; this is precisely what has occurred.

While the officials spent the last 36 hours talking, explaining and teaching, convoys of arms and renewed supplies have left Syria, actually tracked by Israel and allowed to arrive at their destinations. Hizzbolah fighters/terrorists, as far as I am concerned, have hidden among the returning civilians and are taking up positions among the civilians.Again, please understand the resolution allows this to happen, given a particular interpretation. So, Hizzbollah re-arms, gains more rockets and missiles of death, imports fresh new “soldiers” and Israel keeps on explaining.

Let me take you back to the beginning of this piece-note that Hizzbollah does not mince words: they will not disarm, period! No explanation, no need to teach us what was just said-we understand completely.

If the preceding is not an absurdity I do not know what is. Back to Israel-the TV news and talk shows are spending their time explaining, teaching and assisting us simple civilians to rationalize the events of the past month. We are discussing the incorrect concepts and continuing to lose the PR war that is as critical, in some ways, as is the military war. Yesterday Hizzbollah, made public(1)that it was making its men and money available to the civilian populations in Lebanon to help them rebuild their homes and lives-homes and lives destroyed by the occupier, evil Israelis. The international news, Arab news have made an enormous play on this story. For me this is only another tactic. Of course, Hizzbollah wants to rebuild civilian populations; it needs to hide among them, store arms and missiles among them. How can any thoughtful person believe that these terrorists truly, in a western manner of conscious, care about civilians when they use them as shields and know they will be killed? This demonstrates human love and care? You really find legitimate the excuse Hizzbollah uses when it murders its own citizens and other Arabs when its missiles land incorrectly among these populations? The excuse is that they are shaheeds ; interview the relatives of these murdered individuals, you will discover the dead did not ask to become martyrs.

What should we be concentrating on? We do not have the luxury of playing the blame game; they are developing a new battle plan; we must be doing the same. Never mind fault, identify the mistakes made, take immediate action to correct them. Develop another set of strategies to take out the enemy in order to regain the air of deterrence - one of our best offensive weapons - that has been decimated this past month.

Now for as important strategy as developing a battle plan: take on the conventional wisdom of the Geneva Convention and application of same to what is truly an asymmetrical war. I suggest the following: international countries across the political and ideological spectrum are trumpeting the Geneva Convention accords in a manner that supports their political and PR positions.

The Geneva Conventions consist of treaties formulated in Geneva, Switzerland, that set the standards of international law for humanitarian concerns during time of war. The conventions, their agreements and two added protocols are as follows: First Geneva Convention (1864): Treatment of battlefield casualties and creation of International Red Cross Second Geneva Convention (1906): Extended the principles from the first convention to apply also to war at sea.

Third Geneva Convention (1929): Treatment of Prisoner of war.

Fourth Geneva Convention (1949): Treatment relating to the protection of civilians during times of war "in the hands" of an enemy and under any occupation by a foreign power.

Protocol I ( 1977): Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts Protocol II (1977): Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (3)

All of the preceding conventions occurred after the horror of war had once again dealt its misery upon human beings. One can notice over time that people attempted to make war less painful and less grotesque by attempting to get the world community to adopt more humane behavior and actions specific to the title of each convention.

Sovereign countries voted to participate or not follow these rules. It is time for an appendix. Today we have a sovereign country, Israel, agreeing to follow and apply the rules of war. However, we are not fighting another sovereign country-we are fighting a terrorist militia. They are not beholden to any war agreements-they do not have to and certainly have demonstrated that they could not care less about them. This asymmetrical application of war rules has caused and will continue to cause Israel and the West defeat. Furthermore, a new definition, during time of war, of who is a civilian and/or combatant, what are their responsibilities and what the new rules of engagement are to be-all of this must be re-defined immediately. Israel develops war plans based upon rules of war, Hizzbollah and Iran do not follow any such rules and develop plans accordingly. Time to shift the equation. In the absence of taking on this difficult but mandatory task, our war plans, strategies and ability to defeat this “new enemy” may mean the destruction of our way of life. Trust me, Hizzbollah, Iran and all of the other fascist Islamists are counting on our inability to understand this simple principle. The clock is ticking!

End Notes

Hizbullah: Disarmament not on agenda, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525882124&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle FshowFull, August. 16, 2006
UNSC Resolution 1701, August â€2006
Morris, GS Don, “Understanding The Fourth Geneva Convention”, posted www.PRIMERct.org

Civilian Shields

2006-08-31T04:08:00.000-07:00

The World Has Just Rewarded Civilian Shields

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

August 11, 2006

It is Friday evening here in Israel. Families here, as I am sure is the same in Lebanon, are anxious, worried and confused. It appears that the United Nations has finally put together a resolution designed to stop the death and destruction in both countries. Interesting that the world is in a rush to stop the war and THE answer suddenly appears-it is called a ceasefire resolution. Perhaps this rush to judgment is the result of photos, video, story lines that focus upon primarily the action among the Lebanese people. Perhaps the PR campaign of doctored photos, staged scenes of destruction, and “forced” story lines have lead otherwise intelligent, caring people to fall for the oldest trick in the terrorist book. Emotion nearly always over rides analysis based upon facts. Hezzbllah’s PR campaign has overwhelmed the world. People actually believe the only way out of this situation is with a ceasefire, buffer troop resolution-you bought this hook, line and sinker. The situation I am talking about is the alleged death rate of civilians. The entire motivation for this resolution is based upon a false assumption. You have now rushed to judgment-there are multiple other possibilities for resolving this situation-no one seems to want to discuss them and Israel is displaying its inept public relations.

A great deal of diligent work and effort was expended by hundreds of people in order to finally arrive at this resolution. Many people in the international community will rejoice this evening-I am not one of them.

If this resolution is enacted, Israel and the free West will have been dealt a catastrophic blow for freedom. There are many questions left either asked or unanswered by governments, media types and citizens of the world.

Why a new resolution when the UN had one already in place-UN 1559? As written, if enforced, this war would never have begun; therefore there would be no need for another resolution to stop it.

If you can’t enforce UN 1559, what makes anyone think this “cease-fire” resolution can be successfully implemented? The recent history of UN resolutions being implemented successfully has been comparable the number of times the Red Sox have won the World Series.

“The essence of this new resolution is it would give UN forces in south Lebanon a mandate under Chapter 6 of the UN Charter - which Israel has previously opposed.

The mandate would be modified to make the force stronger than it has been in the 28 years it has been in south Lebanon. The UN force, known by its acronym UNIFIL, would help coordinate the deployment of Lebanese forces to the south, which has been under de facto control of Hizbullah for years. IDF troops that have been operating in the area in more than four weeks of war would then withdraw. “

If I understand this correctly, the UNIFIL troop base will be expanded while assisting the Lebanese army to deploy on the border. Isn’t this the same UNIFIL who has failed repeatedly when a peacekeeping action was needed on the border? Isn’t this the same Lebanese army that has been described as weak and unable to deter in any manner Hezzbollah as reported by the Lebanese PM himself? Isn’t this the same army whose members have been assisting Hezzbollah on the battlefield? What has changed with either to make any of us believe they can produce a ceasefire? The data is that UNIFIL and the Lebanese army are weak, poorly armed and without proper training relative to the Iranian army wing we call Hezzbollah. Both were so ineffective that they allowed the weapons of mass death to be imported into Lebanon, they allowed for over 5 years the country side to be radically change by permitting deep, enforced bunkers to be built. These bunkers were built for munitions, missiles and terrorists-none were built for the Lebanese people.

What country when attacked is told it may not respond in any manner it deems necessary and is then told you have a timeline to complete whatever military action you are going to take? As far as I know this has applied to only Israel. A stopwatch has literally been placed upon a sovereign country-do you not see the injustice of this? You have just rewarded Hezzbollah and Iran. You have also rewarded all other countries and/or terrorist groups who will next engage in battle with countries other than Israel.

Do you realize that you have immediately provided a reward for battles accruing civilian deaths? Do you look the other way when challenged by those of us who realize you have given Hezzbollah, Iran and fascist Islam a new winning strategy? You reward them by not holding Hezzbollah accountable for its actions. You reward Hezzbollah and Iran when you allow them to violate most of the Geneva Convention rules when it comes to combatant rules of war. Hamas has already said it will use these same tactics. Imagine what has occurred and will take place with munitions, nuclear plants and missile launchers in Iran. You have made it profitable to have civilians killed-you have rewarded one of the most despicable human behaviors known to humankind!

Have you given consideration that this resolution has established a precedent when it comes to across border fighting? Was this also your intention? Israel, correctly so I might suggest, has had a policy of not allowing such an action to occur. The 15,000 person group will serve as shields for Hezzbollah. Can you imagine Israel responding to fire from Hezzbollah and returning fire over the heads of this force? What happens when Hezzbollah deliberately fires into this group, kills and maims soldiers and then blames Israel? How will you deal with this and the media jumping on the action to once again denigrate Israel?

What are the rules of engagement for this resolution? How long will these troops be deployed on our border? What is the exit strategy? What are the performance markers used to determine if the group is effective? Without answers to all of these and other questions, this resolution should never see the light of day.

Do you not see that you have given our enemies a new strategy to limit us while strengthening them? One of the outcomes of this kind of resolution is any aggressor can operate freely with the knowledge that in less than 31 days, the international community will step in and rescue it while punishing the victim country. It is precisely this unspoken outcome that begins the death nil for the West. Once again we failed to honor our beliefs and our way of life. We have capitulated to the enemy.

Clear defined beliefs lead to the establishment of precise goals. The goals enable us to make decisions about what we know we have to do as well as dictate what we need to do. It is time to once again state with clarity of vision and precision of thought what we stand for as well as what we believe our way of life should look like. We need to be resolute in our convictions and then develop the goals leading us into action-a nation’s soul depends upon this. We need to have congruity between what we say and what we do. I call this acting within integrity-perhaps we have lost some along the way. We can regain our lost souls as a country and as a nation-let us begin now. By requesting that the UN demonstrate its ability by asking the international community for implementation of 1559 before we attempt another new resolution.

Courage

2006-08-31T04:05:00.000-07:00

Courage is more than a Word

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

Last night I watched Arab television-yes we access it here in Israel. I listened as Hassan Nasrallah’s recorded statement over Hizballah’s Al Manar television, at 20:15 local time, was delivered. There was a brief delay as his talk was translated for me. In summary he said, “Under no circumstances would he accept a multinational force in South Lebanon. He warned the Lebanese prime minister not to give an inch on this issue.” There was lots of other words spoken, none worth repeating thereby providing him a further stage on which to perform. He acknowledged that the resolution and any further resolutions would not be considered-he basically informed the world that diplomacy was a non-starter.

I waited for Lebanon’s PM Siniora –to no one’s surprise he obeyed. This weak administrator of an even weaker government has complied with Hezzbollah-the result is simple to understand-diplomacy is a non-starter.

I turned back to Israeli television and watched intently as our thousands of troops were in their final stages on our northern border. At 10:20 pm, we saw a massive movement of Israeli ground troops and tanks begin to thunder across into Lebanon. The much awaited ground war was beginning. A courageous action was being initiated-the “C” word had returned to Israeli actions.

Yet this was not to be-the Bush administration, stepped back into the operations of a sovereign state and pulled the plug on the ground offensive. Our troops stopped in their tracks, not by our vengeful enemy, but by our number one ally-America. Bush managed to do what no Arab country has ever been able to do, he accomplished something that Nasrallah was not able to do-he forced Israel to retreat behind her borders.

Let us put this into perspective. Let us explain why this was one of the most missed opportunities in our history and it will come back to do great damage to both of our countries. It took courage to develop a large ground offensive, it took even more courage to let it begin. However, no sooner had courage returned, it was abruptly loss or thrown away-people lost their “C” power and today the West lost a huge edge in its battle against radical Islam, i.e., war against terror. True leaders not only possess courage, they actually execute it in the face of unbelievable odds and in the face of growing international complaints. The leaders took the advantage away from Israel by stopping the offensive just as it began. We sarcastically have said time and again that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Good colleagues and friends, add the USA and Israel to that banter.

We had the enemy on the ropes. Intelligence had reported that Hezzbollah’s army was tired, weakened by our attacks. For all intensive purposes we had deprived them of being supplied either with weapons, munitions or new fighters. They spent much of each day under ground. They knew we were coming after them with 40,000 fresh and highly motivated troops. They knew we had learned on the battle field and we had changed our tactics. Worry and concern was finally present. We have been told this by the captured Hezzbollah soldiers.

Furthermore, their leader along with the PM of Lebanon had just told the world that Israel should “bring it on.” OK, these are my words, they did say that diplomacy was a non-started. How many times and by how many enemy leaders do we have to be told this until we finally comprehend what is believed by the other side?

The situation is even more disturbing than what I have written thus far. Here is the rest of the not mentioned, yet to be told, story. Leading up to yesterday, 40,000 Israeli citizens were called suddenly to active duty. We tore them away from their normal daily lives to come fight for their country’s existence-yes existence. The turn out was 102% soldiers answered their country’s call. That’s correct, even those not called showed up for active duty. Men within minutes of receiving the phone call, grabbed their gear and found the way north to join their units. They walked away from their jobs in high tech, medicine, laws, education, agriculture, construction to mention but a few professions. They left their wives, their children-they left their comfort zone, they left everything secure in their world. Most did not even get to say goodbye, share a final hug with their loved ones-they simply had to go.

Let me fast forward to what occurred prior to last night. The men turned in their cell phones yesterday afternoon. When asked by their anxious wives/friend/parents where and when they might go, they could not provide an answer-the army required a blackout. We understand but it is not easy to accept; thus the families and friends were now part of the 40,000 soldiers facing the unknown. Yet not one I know, including friends and families, would say or act in a contrary manner to the assignment the soldiers were soon to embark upon. Those of us left to watch and listen do not even know the number of the unit the men are in; this too, must remain a secret. All we can do is wait, watch and pray for their safety.

These men and their families possess courage and they act in accordance with this courage. The men prepared themselves for battle. They prepped their weapons, they put on full battle gear, their faces took on the camouflage paint and they listened to their instructions. Each soldier prepared psychologically for this in their own way. Some prayed, some sought solitude, others sat and talked about their civilian lives. Each did what was necessary to get ready to go into harm’s way; a nice way to say go into the hell of war. Yet each man did this and the time came to move. The war was about to become real for these reservists and as they began their entry into Lebanon, the word came down to halt the operation.

It was stopped because some people lost their courage. President Bush et al told Olmert to stand down the operation. Olmert and his group lost their courage and stopped the operation. Here is the problem: 40,000 men had psychologically and logistically prepared to fight. Also, 40,000 families had prepared for this fight. Thousands of businesses had made arrangements for this fight. Friends and others in the country were ready to pay an incredible price in order to preserve their country from our enemy committed to wipe us off the face of the planet.

Courage is the state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution with the demonstration of bravery. If you believe your are correct and also right, if you believe that your plan is sound, if you do not falter with your thinking, it only takes courage to execute the battle plan. To be persuaded at the last minute that your thinking was flawed and to second guess yourself or worse yet allow other’s to do the same, is an example of lack of courage. To possess courage means that you are willing to act upon your convictions not knowing, and not having any guarantees that the desired results will materialize. This allows fear to supercede courage. Fear is to be expected and is normal. Our soldiers were not about to let fear stop them or get in their way of doing what they had to do.

Yet, it seems today that our leaders skipped a beat and allowed their courage to be undermined. We had Hezzbollah “on the ropes”. They have been hit hard, they are tired and running low on motivation. We had 40,000 motivated, basically fresh troops ready to take them apart. For once, the West was going to stand up to the enemy, we were going to say to the world, no matter what you yell, no matter how much you cry out, we are going to put a stop to tyranny, brutality and a desire to impose your way of life upon us.

Instead we backed down. We gave Hezzbollah, Syria and Iran another victory. We gave Hezzbollah another strategy to use to stop our Israeli army-it is called supplant courage with fear. We missed an incredible opportunity to make a statement-to draw the “line in the sand.’

The action to stop the operation has occurred. I would now only accept full implementation of UN 1559-nothing else will do. The reality is that Hezzbollah and Iran have said they want Israel gone from the earth. They have further stated that diplomacy is a non-starter. We have had 58 plus years of failed diplomacy. We have Palestinian government leaders telling us that thanks to Oslo, the pride and joy of the diplomatic bunch, was the one event that allowed them to start the latest Intifada. So I ask you leaders a question: if you are attacked, if your citizens are maimed and killed, buildings ruined, an economy now in a desperate situation, would you have us allow the invading enemy to continue their attacks or would you defend yourself? The answer is obvious!

I have but a few remaining questions for Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert: if the operational plan was carefully and thoughtfully developed, if you knew that your enemy’s leaders had indicated that continued diplomacy was over, why did you “bail out” on our troops? Did you even consider that the enemy today can fire missiles down onto to our massed troops at the border? Did you loose your courage along with your moral clarity?

Evening's thoughts

2006-08-31T04:03:00.000-07:00

An Evening's Thoughts

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.
August 9, 2006

I am an American Professor now living in Netanya Israel for most of each year. I work with a local College, delivering lectures, writing research papers, interacting with the youth-Jews and Arabs alike. Together with my mate we also own a successful store, we employ both Jews and Arabs. This Friday evening we are taking 12 of our friends and family to our favorite Arab restaurant where we shall be treated with respect and dignity. The service is the best we have ever experienced, anywhere in the world. I also do volunteer work with the Israeli Defense Forces aka the military. I have been in the sea off Gaza, traveled in Judea and Samaria and I have stood watch at selected checkpoints. I am not Jewish-I have been accepted by this country and its peoples.

I mention all of this to provide some background for my next comments. Today we begin the major escalation of the war that none of us want. We have called up 40,000 reservists and they are in respective staging areas as I write, early Thursday morning. These men are doctors, lawyers, business owners, students working on Ph.D.s, blue collar workers from all types of work, clerks in stores, farmers, energy workers and high tech personnel. This is comparable to calling up 2.2 million American reservists-imagine the impact this would have upon your economy, imagine what it is about to do to ours.

The war has cost us over 1 billion dollars for the last 30 days of fighting-this is the direct cost of running the army. We have had to do this-we did not ask for this war. Thirty two days ago we were all sitting with our families, at the parks, by the sea, in our homes, or even in our favorite coffee cafes. Our economy had turned the corner, our northern border was absolutely quiet, our thoughts were directed to simple daily life concerns such as can I now afford the new television or how about finally upgrading our home computer system? We also had thoughts about the summer holiday we were about to take; the first one in 7 years (last Intifada was over, so we thought).

We were hopeful that the world was beginning to better understand what the turmoil in the Middle East is really all about-we were reading and watching some encouraging news. We sat peacefully 32 days ago-we had a signed agreement, ratified by the United Nations-the border between Lebanon and Israel was legally defined and honored-it has been for over 2 years. Those farms that are making the news today had been properly identified as belonging perhaps to Syria but captured by Israel way back in 1967 and if anything, this would be settled when Syria decided it wanted to make peace with us. Kofi Annan even declared all of the preceding complete-signed, sealed and delivered. He did this over 2 years ago.

We knew that Hezzbollah had spent the last 6 years building under-gound bunkers, storing munitions and rockets (delivered by Syria but provided by Iran)-we did not realize how extensive all this was-for some reason our previous governments did not alarm us. Of course, the rationale/justification for Hezzbollah to exist was to fight Israel and force it out of Lebanese territory-it was developed for this one purpose, so we thought, so we were told. Thus, you can imagine the upset when the reason for their existence no longer existed and they began to kill Israels. For all intensive purposes, they had completed their mission and reason for existing.

If truth be told, some of us tried to tell a different story about the Hezzbollah-it appears now that our stories were accurate but the media, the governments and certain political groups within Israel choose to look away, bury their heads in the sand and to fail to see that the "emperor had no clothes on".

We awoke 30 days ago to the start of a war. We were attacked; the enemy crossed over into sovereign Israel, killed several soldiers, kidnapped two, simultaneously firing hundreds of rockets into our towns and communities in the north. Out of nowhere the rockets rained down killing, maiming and destroying people and buildings. When the first news rang across the Israeli TV and radio stations, I was on my way to my daily walk along the sea expecting to return to have a coffee on my patio. Life changed abruptly for all of us that morning!

You know the rest-we have completed 30 days of war. Over 3 thousand three hundred rockets have been fired on Israel proper. Dozens upon dozens have been killed; thousands have been injured and maimed for life. Travel into Israel is down nearly 17%; tourism is hurt again. Virtually all businesses up north have been closed for over 3 weeks. Thousands of acres of valuable forest have been burned; the animals and vegetation could not be saved. Our North has been ravaged by fire. Trees and plants that many Americans actually helped plant-all are gone, all gone. Over one million of our citizens spend the entire day or parts of days inside safety bunkers and have done so for nearly 4 weeks. Estimated cost to business in Israel is approaching 6 billion dollars. Families across Israel suffer this pain, they do not celebrate anyone's death, especially our enemy.

However, the pain of public opinion disturbs all of us, left, right, middle, secular and religious. The operative word is disturbs. We do not appreciate a world which acts with hypocrisy towards us; we do not enjoy the false stories and photographs that have been divulged. We do not enjoy the double standard you hold us to let alone the unwillingness to learn. It is not Israel who began this war. We did not provoke it, yet to hear the media, the pundits and most of the world leaders you would think we were the scourges of the planet. We do not take kindly to this response. Explain to us when in the history of the modern world has a country that has been attacked been given a time line to defend herself? Our military "rules of engagement" are the direct opposite of Hezzbollahs: they intentionally target civilians; we are brought up on military charges if we do the same. What gets under our skins is we know that you know this. We know that it is the enemy's strategy to "play the world's opinion" and you are falling for it-again! If there was ever moral clarity between the two warring groups, it is now-Israel stands tall and is acting ethically-not so for Hezzbollah, Syria and Iran.

We are fighting your proxy war against Iran-you know it and we do so because our survival depends upon it. You are able to sleep peacefully tonight, enjoy a coffee at your favorite cafe, watch your sons and daughters participate in youth soccer programs. What annoys me most is the audacious behavior of those who live far away, safe in your own lives because we in Israel are guarding the gate. We do so first for us and second for you. We have identified the real enemy-it is not the Palestinians or even Hezzbollah. This is definitely NOT about occupation. This is not a war on terror. Terror is the tactic the enemy uses with our populous and on the battlefield. It is time to properly identify the enemy so the correct strategies can be developed and implemented. Although disturbed, we are not tired or worn out. Quite the contrary, we are motivated beyond belief. We use the lies, the revisionist history, the doctored photos and stories to energize ourselves. The enemy's PR strategy does not work, on us! It has the opposite impact-we are responding with renewed vigor. I only ask that you gather your courage and stand up for what is right in this world-you know what is, no one has to tell you. The courageous act is to stand up now, acknowledge what we face and what you face. I thank those of you who "get it" and who are standing tall while "protecting our back."

2006-08-31T04:02:00.000-07:00

Our Proxy War-A Test for the West

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

August 4, 2006

“Death to America, death to America-the great Satan”.

“This American administration is an enemy. Our motto, which we are not afraid to repeat year after year, is: 'Death to America.'

So speaks Hassan Nasrallah, Leader of Hizzbollah!(1)

“Israel should be ‘wiped off the map” followed by “Very soon, this stain of disgrace [i.e. Israel] will be purged from the center of the Islamic world – and this is attainable.” Also shouted by Ahmadinejad, Iran’s commander (2).

So Mr.’s Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad are equal opportunity haters of both Israel and the United States. Now these are not new comments to those of us living in the Middle East-we have been hearing this rhetoric and much more for quite some time now. The fact is that this kind of vitriolic speech has also been directed at most other Western countries.

It seems that the relationship between these two men goes back many years and it is playing out on the world stage these last 20 days. Hizzbollah is a terrorist organization that cleverly portrays itself as a social and political advocate for the sovereign state of Lebanon. However, it produces nothing but terror, relies totally upon outside sources for its funding and has declared on multiple occasions that its primary goal is to eradicate another sovereign state-Israel. Furthermore, it has also directed its desire for America to be eliminated as well. Hizzbollah has developed a well-trained militia, funded and supplied by Iran and Syria. It has spent the last 6 years arming itself with rockets, munitions, guns of all types, thermal suits to be worn to disable Israel’s body heat seeking signals and posseses anti-tank RPGs to list but a few of its military assets. An intricate series of underground bunkers together with a sophisticated communication system has been readied for this moment in time. A notable omission is the lack of building any safety rooms or underground safe bunkers for the people of Lebanon.

Iran has declared its hatred for Israel as wells as America. Ahmadinejad minces no words when he indicates his real intentions-a Muslim world with the infidels eliminated. Some individuals dismiss him as unstable-he is an intelligent, wily and cunning man who believes in what he speaks. He is creating a following of people inside his country and beyond who do not fear death, they worship it and are preparing for the day they can execute the plan. Iran has used the West’s petrol dollars to fund an enormous army, develop a powerful military infrastructure, he is close to having THE bomb, and he is so clever he realizes his goals require the use of others. He has spent untold number of dollars developing an army outside his own army-Hizzbollah. It is estimated that Iran funds Hizzbollah to the tune of $100 million a year. Syria has been and is currently used as the management depot and transportation agent on behalf of Iran for Hizzbollah. All three of the aforementioned states and/or groups are literally “connected at the hip.”

Ahmadinejad realized some time ago that he could accomplish several goals by simply funding Hizzbollah. As a military extension or proxy of Iran, Hizzbollah could be used to agitate Israel and goad it into the development of policies that would benefit Iran. Iran could use its proxy to create a significant regional disturbance at a time and choosing of its choice-this has happened some three weeks ago. Some experts suggest that the timing was consistent with the world discussion, G8 meeting, that would have placed the world’s attention on Iran’s nuclear plans. The purpose of the disturbance was to divert the international attention way from this issue-it worked! However, I suggest another possibility for this emerging war.

Iran has international intentions and they fall under the umbrella of terror, control and domination. Ahmadinejad is a clever man, he studies the war as it unfolds. He risks none of his soldiers, his material and personnel investment is his cost; the benefit is the knowledge he is gathering from this war. The prosecution of this war provides valuable military information as he is learning how Israel responds to the emerging Hizzbollah strategies. He would gain incredible information if his staff was also directing some of the battle field actions to see exactly how Israel responds and to see how it adjusts to field experience. He is learning what works and what does not produce the desired results.

I further suggest that as important is his stated dream of Islamic domination he is studying how the Western countries are responding to the events on the ground as well as how other Islamic countries are responding. He is also watching carefully the media, again on both sides of this war. He is learning what PR to present; basically he is learning how to creatively manipulate the media in his favor. He knows that the media is a major tool in controlling world opinion and then world policy.

It is this last concept that we need to attend to immediately. I am not convinced that the West truly “gets it” yet. If we do understand what is unfolding in front of us, then I am not sure we still have the courage or fortitude to do what is necessary. I am encouraged by Tony Blair’s recent assessment of world events (3):

“The crisis in the Lebanon has not changed its thesis. It has brought it into sharp relief. The purpose of the provocation that began the conflict was clear. It was to create chaos, division and bloodshed, to provoke retaliation by Israel that would lead to Arab and Muslim opinion being inflamed, not against those who started the aggression but against those who responded to it… There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region. To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation, that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other. My argument to you today is this: we will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values…”

I have also watched Mr. Blair’s critics in England and around the world attack him for these and other comments he has made recently. It is useful to observe how politically certain Western countries are responding to his comments as well as to events in the Israeli-Lebanese war. It is instructive to witness these and other countries “rush to judgment” by calling for an immediate ceasefire. It is also useful to observe which countries have decided to condemn Israel, the very country who was attacked by a terrorist group called Hizzbollah. It is my contention that Ahmadinejad not only is watching all of this, he is learning and will use this data when he decides to launch his major attack. He will develop new strategies.

The use of his Hizzbollah proxy is a test for the West. We have THE opportunity now to stop the march of fascist Islam. Imagine, joining together as one voice and declaring “no more”. Imagine calling Hizzbollah’s actions and behavior for what they are. We can deal a major blow to what appears to be inevitable. We should stand now and draw the proverbial “line in the sand.” Declaring that the following is no longer going to be tolerated or accepted and holding them accountable for such inhumane behavior as: abusing civilians, surrounding your unidentified army with civilians, holding civilians at gun point and threatening death if they leave. The Western world must take this unique opportunity to stand up against the tyranny of our enemy. This is a test-the worst is yet to come- -it is for us to pass or fail. We can take back control!

End Notes

Editorial, New York Sun, March 11,2005

2. Steve Schippert, “Ahmadinejad Predicts End of Israel: Soon,” Threats Watch, April 14, 2006

3. Tony Blair, Speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, August 1, 2006.

2006-08-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

Ethos Exposed

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

August 3, 2006

Oana II has provided the world the opportunity to see that the emperor “does not have clothes on”. What no longer amazes this writer is the major media, with one or two notable exceptions, would have you believe that the victim in this latest conflict is not Israel, rather it is the Hizzbollah. You are saying, no, the media is clearly demonstrating that the citizens of Lebanon are the victims of Israel’s disproportionate response. After all, what you see on television day after day is bombed out buildings; dead “civilians”, grieving individuals and most of these visual displays come to your living room from Lebanon. Yes, there is the occasional story on the damage to Israelis but have you noticed these are always followed with a piece on the difficulties the Lebanese people are now facing? Note Tom Gross’ comments in an article appearing in the Jerusalem Post (1):

“Large sections of the international media are not only
misreporting the current conflict in Lebanon. They are also
actively fanning the flames.

The BBC World Service has a strong claim to be the
number-one villain. It has come to sound like a virtual
propaganda tool for Hizbullah. And as it desperately
attempts to prove that Israel is guilty of committing "war
crimes" and "crimes against humanity," it has introduced a
new charge - one that I have heard several times on air in
recent days.

The newscaster reads out carefully selected "audience
comments." Among these are invariably contained some version
of the claim that "Israel's attack on Lebanon" will serve as
a "recruitment" drive for al-Qaeda.”

It is also safe to apply the preceding comments to sky News and CNN International. If these were the only news resources available to the general population then you would think that Hizzbollah is being unfairly punished, as are the Lebanese civilians. However, thanks to independent news sources and a couple of media services we are able to confirm what Hizzbollah is all about-its actions are not congruent with the media’s representation of them. Furthermore, it is imperative that the Western international community engage in two actions immediately: one, confront your local news group and demand fair coverage; two, share the truth about Hizzbollah with friends, family and colleagues and ask them to in turn do the same.

The current situation is about more than Israel, Hizzbollah and Lebanon. It transcends the perceived local conflict. As General Ya’alon writes, “It is clear to any objective observer that Hezbollah is using Lebanese civilians as human shields. It builds its headquarters in densely populated areas, embeds its fighters in towns and villages, and deliberately places missiles in private homes, even constructing additions to existing structures specifically to house missile launchers.” (2)

Furthermore, we now know that Hizzbollah’s so-called schools have as a major educational goal the recruitment of future members. It does this by indoctrinating the children, beginning in what would be comparable to a kindergarten and first grade in the USA. They are required to learn songs that encourage homicide bombing as well as hatred for Israel and the “great Satan-America”. The textbooks are right out of the Palestinian playbook-they use revisionist history, intentionally misrepresent history and geography and add to the disinformation regarding Israel, America and the West. It is true that Hizzbollah funds schools and this is promoted by the media as an example supporting the notion that it is not “just a terrorist” organization-along with its hospitals and other public programs Hzzbollah really is a social activist that is Lebanon’s partner and friend. You are led to believe that Hizzbollah cares about its people.

If this is true do you really believe that a caring organization would use its citizens as human shields? Would a caring group build storage bunkers under public buildings containing rockets, munitions, armaments that kill and then force civilians, at gun point, to remain in these buildings as Israel attacks? As General Ya’alon says, “They try to exploit the respect for innocent human life that is the hallmark of any civilized society to place that society in a no-win situation. If it fails to respond to terror attacks, it endangers its own citizens. If it responds, it runs the risk of killing innocents, earning world opprobrium and inviting diplomatic pressure to stand down.” (2)

This group places disabled individuals inside a building housing armaments, rockets and munitions-it is a target for Israel and they know it. They fire rockets from the area and then take cover in this building drawing the attention of Israel-they intentionally keep civilians in a building knowing they will be killed. In their deaths, Hizzbollah counts on the media to pleads its case to the world and unwittingly or I believe with complicity the media obliges them. Seems to me that world is also to blame for reinforcing this behavior by not taking a defiant stand against Hzzbollah’s behavior. Why is there no outrage similar to the world outrage when captured combatants in Iraq were “ridiculed’ by prison guards? I can only conclude that the use of civilians as human shields, an international law transgression of the utmost degree, is valued less than some taunting and does not deserve the world’s condemnation. Are you beginning “to see that the Emperor does not have clothes on”?

Hizzbollah ethos is exposed for the anti-democratic, pro-death group that it really is. The media identified “social and political” components are cleverly disguised support agencies for Hizzbollah’s primary target: the destruction of Israel and then the Satan called America. The assumption not stated is that the rest of the West will then crumble and Hizzbollah’s interpretation of Islam will prevail. An international force, signed agreements, declarations of peace, swapping of prisoners, will not stop this tragedy playing out here in our yard. Until the following occurs, all we can do is protect ourselves and do so without regard to a world’s distorted opinion of us:

“Terrorists are fanatics, but they are not idiots. If the terrorist tactic of using human shields helps them achieve their goals, they will utilize it. If it undermines their goals, they will abandon it.

If we want to live in a world where civilians are never used as human shields, then we must create a world in which employing such measures results in the unequivocal condemnation of terrorists and in forceful action against them by the civilized world.

If the world were now blaming Hezbollah, Syria and Iran for the innocent Lebanese killed, hurt or displaced in this conflict, then it would be sending a powerful message to every terrorist group on the planet: We will not tolerate the use of human shields. Period.”(2)

The evidence is clear, it is not hidden, all is out in the open. It does take courage to stand tall in truth while others bury their heads, look away or feign innocence. We have the power to change perception and thus reality. I can only hope that our grand children will be able to think that we, too, were a great generation.

End Notes

Tom Gross, “The Media Aims its Missiles’, Jerusalem Post, August 3, 2006
Bogie Ya’alon, “The Rules of War,” Washington Post, August 3, 2006

Tactic vs. Enemy

2006-08-31T03:57:00.000-07:00

Tactic vs. Enemy?

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

August 3, 2006

Can we agree that words convey thoughts and feelings and as a result enable people to develop a point of view? We therefore suggest that words do matter. I offer the following suggestion: terrorism is a tactic used by an enemy to cause harm to another group of people. It is intentional and is designed to cause maximum destruction of not only people and tangible items such as buildings, homes and cafes, but also to ultimately destroy a way of life.

It is necessary to be clear what we are facing today. We must correctly identify the enemy and separate this from the tactics used by this enemy. For many reasons, some justified, others unjustified, the Western World has been reluctant to make this necessary distinction. How many times have we heard that this is a different kind of war? It is a war without identifiable enemies or borders, by this we mean that there is no country or countries that we can blame or target. In the past we have fought against sovereign nations whose ideologies were indeed contrary to ours. We were physically attacked and thus it appeared justified for us to respond in kind. There seemed to be some moral and ethical absolution to our fighting the enemy.

For the past several years, world leaders and governments have suggested we are in a war against terrorism. Although politically correct, it did not then and does not now offer the truth. If this “new” war is unlike anything we have experienced in our past, then I suggest some new definitions and agreements are in order. The application of concepts and principles developed to explain previous world events therefore cannot justify what is going on in the world today.

Who is the enemy of the West? I do not need to be told too many times by a group of people that they are our enemy before I understand who the enemy is-do you? We have been told by the Bin Laden’s, Arafat’s, Mazen’s, Narallah’s and so many others that their enemy is the West. We have been told by them that the intention is to defeat all that is Western-from governments to law, to the acceptable behavior of individuals living within the multi-cultures found within the Western countries. I did not say this, they did! Our enemy can be labeled radical Islam, Fascist Islam and tomorrow yet another descriptor will surface. The tactic used against us is TERROR. The enemy is housed, sponsored, funded, supported within and by sovereign nations. In many of these countries the enemy serves in the so-called representative governments. Is it not time to acknowledge this and develop new ways of defining what is moral and ethical in combating this enemy when it strikes us and when it declares publicly its destructive intentions upon the West? Perhaps the truth is already known but being avoided by so many-the time has come to take a stand.

The current events in Lebanon and Israel address these points. Hezzbollah, a major political party within Lebanon’s government, intentionally attacked the sovereign nation of Israel. The attack was unprovoked-any other time in history this would have been a reason to declare war. The President of Lebanon has yesterday and again today taken a side and is flexing his nation’s muscle. He indicated that he respects Hezzbollah and its leader Nasrallah. Furthermore he indicated to turn the Lebanese army against Israel. Does this not make the country of Lebanon complicit with the acts of terrorism perpetrated upon Israel? Is Lebanon not culpable? Does this not mean that the government, thus the country of Lebanon must be held responsible for its own civilian deaths?

Why do I suggest this? My response is simplistic. A political party in the government of Lebanon, with full support of its President-an elected leader and thus representative of the civilians inside of Lebanon, is waging war against Israel. It is a war they started. I have written much about the horror of war in other recent pieces and do not feel compelled to review the angst created for innocents found within warring factions. Currently, Lebanon is up to its eyeballs in responsibility for what is tragically occurring with its citizens and with the citizens of Israel (a story mostly untold in the media).

It is therefore disingenuous on the part of world leaders and most of the media when it presents the concepts of disproportionate actions and collective punishment. Israel, unlike any other country in past or recent history, has sacrificed its own soldiers in order to diminish the collateral damage done to the citizens of Lebanon. By now you should have been told the following truths:

Israel does not intentionally target civilians
Israel warns civilians to leave an area before it strikes with its air power-this alerts the enemy who has time to prepare-the element of surprise is gone
Hezzbollah has spent the last six years imbedding itself within the civilian population
Hezzbollah spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building underground bunkers for storage of rockets, sophisticated communication systems munitions, weapons and for the protection of its leadership
Hezzbollah did not build safety rooms or underground bunkers for the Lebanese citizens it professes to care about
Hezzbollah does not allow civilians to leave an area-we have been told that it holds them at gun point thus ensuring civilian casualties
Hezzbollah is currently firing upon the “safe passage ways” provided by Israel for relief agencies to get necessary food and medicines to the needy
Hezzbollah intentionally misrepresents the situation on the ground by controlling media access-most public acknowledgement of this is by CNN
Hezzbollah is now using the strategy of victim-the strategy out of the Palestinian playbook
Hezzbollah produces nothing, creates nothing-has no mode of income production-it relies upon Iran and other donors for its money-it is an economic leach
Hezzbollah’s “acclaimed” education and social service infrastructure produces anti-Western hate-filled dogma-the purpose is create new recruits who in turn fight against anyone Western-I should say anyone Western brave enough to tell the truth.

All of the preceding presents a side of this war that has been incredibly understated in Europe, the Middle East and in Asia. On the other hand the media seems to be obsessed with body counts and building destruction. The strategy of terror and the naïve, at least I hope it is naïve, gullibility of the media to focus upon these gross outcomes of war allows the Hezzbollah to create the paradigm for analysis of this war. In other words, if you can frame the way people are told to view this action, then you have cleverly performed a magician’s slight of hand action upon the world’s peoples. Instead of attempting to describe the truth behind this war, you can disguise it by presenting the outcome of war-tragic death and destruction. This keeps the focus away from what must happen if peace is to have any possibility. The focus is clearly upon the damage to civilians of one country-Lebanon. This in turn is used by the enemy against Israel and the West, e.g., specifically the USA and Great Britain. Develop sympathy for recipients of the fighting. Lay blame upon Israel. Misrepresent facts of the war, lie to your own people about an entire nation, have all this reinforced in the Arab media and supported in kind in much of the Western media. You have now created a fifth column within the western communities. Here is but one example of this strategy: “civilians” are needed to create the body counts. Our soldiers have reported that they have encountered these “civilians” as enemy combatants. These so-called innocents fire upon the IDF soldiers, direct intelligence to the Hezzbollah, and together with elements of the Lebanese army have been working with these terrorists. Thus, when Israel targets, justifiably so, the Hezzbollah enemy and kills the enemy, the “civilians” are counted as civilians you and I know. The media, eager to add to the growing death count, report to the world-the implication and/or declaration is the evil Israelis are destroying not only innocent people but also a nation. I suggest it is time to re-define civilian in this “new” type of war.

The NGO’s, well intentioned individuals, peace organizations and believe it or not, the Israeli government and IDF all want peace. However, there is no possibility of peace or even cessation of the violence of war, until the world honestly states what is behind this war, who the culprits really are and what every honest peace broker knows must be done. Then and only then will the proper strategies be enacted. The tight rope of political correctness has lead this world to the brink of human disaster. Who is courageous enough to join us in demanding that the paradigm of truth be finally shared and honored?