ISSUES & INSIGHTS – IBD 13 July 2009
11 September 2001
Congress Needs A Read-The-Bill Bill
July 13, 2009MAYBE THESE CLOWNS CAN’T READ?
Congress Needs A Read-The-Bill Bill
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 13 July 2009
Honesty: Lawmakers voted on the stimulus and global warming bills without having read either. Eventually they’ll vote on health care legislation that could fund unrelated items. Time to end this systemic fraud.
Related Topics: General Politics
The stimulus bill, signed into law less than a month after Barack Obama took office, reached 1,434 pages and will eventually cost the nation more than $1 trillion.
Waxman-Markey, the global warming bill, passed the House last month after Democrats added a 309-page amendment at 3 a.m. the morning before the vote, bringing that package of nonsense up to 1,200 or so pages.
The next piece of deception up for legislative consideration is the $1.6 trillion health care bill, a Washington lightweight at a mere 615 pages. The Boston Globe reports that it contains a provision for funding walking paths, bike paths, streetlights, gym equipment and farmers’ markets.
We’d like to say the dishonesty of fixing those items to a health care bill is staggering. But we’ve become accustomed to Congress operating in secret and obscuring its activities.
Before it votes on health care, we have in mind another bill that Congress should take up. This one should be short, just a few words. It would be far more important to the future of the republic than fevered legislation establishing a public option for health care coverage or vainly trying to manipulate the climate.
This humble bill would simply require each member of Congress to sign a document saying he or she had read the legislation in full before they could vote for it.
Lawmakers should never vote for a bill they haven’t read in its entirety. If a bill cannot be read and thoroughly understood in one sitting, it’s too long. It shouldn’t take much longer to read a bill that enacts statutory law than it does to read this editorial.
Convincing our current elected officials to make law more honestly is likely to be an almost hopeless job. They’ll insist that minding the people’s business is a complicated affair that requires extensive policy craft. But good law that’s brief is not out of the question.
The Declaration of Independence, the grand document that founded our country, was written in only 1,337 words.
The Constitution, which set up the federal government and laid down its parameters, is, without the amendments and signatures, roughly 4,440 words. It is the shortest constitution in the world.
The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution that established personal liberties that the government cannot quash, was composed in fewer than 600 words.
Part of the beauty of these documents is that the founders didn’t need to write lengthy diatribes to distill large concepts, and to show remarkable measures of wisdom, prescience and courage. The words are clear, their meanings unambiguous.
Yet today’s lawmakers write and pass 1,200- and 1,400-page bills filled with ponderous language and laden with re-election pork. What they don’t have is the backbone to make policy openly. They bury what they don’t want voters to know about inside massive volumes that they don’t even bother to read. Today’s Congress makes a mockery of our founders’ genius and of our founding in general.
Any bill that requires lawmakers to read legislation and to swear they’ve done so before voting for it should also include a provision that says the bills have to be available online for the public to read before they’re brought to the floor for a vote.
A group called Let Freedom Ring is asking lawmakers to pledge they’ll read legislation before voting on it. It believes a bill should be publicly accessible 72 hours before a vote.
We’d prefer a slightly larger window, but getting just three days of light on proposed law would be an achievement. Congress knows that the longer the public has to think about what’s in a bill, the harder it is to ram through. That’s why the Democrats are in such a hurry to move cap-and-trade and health care legislation.
This topic reminds us of the premise that the only legitimate government is one so limited that it can hardly be considered a government at all. It should be roughly the same for lawmaking: Any bill that goes beyond the basics should never be considered legislation. That would bring needed sunshine to a murky federal process. Only politicians and those who feed off of them wouldn’t be better off.
Why the sun is setting on England
July 13, 2009Nothing new for our readers – but this article reinforces our concern for the United States of America.
Why the sun is setting on England
by Bill Muehlenberg
Posted: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 10:56 (BST)
In its heyday it was said of the British Empire that the sun never set on it. Because so many lands across the globe bore the English flag, it was once the world’s great superpower. Of course today that grand empire is no more. And for that matter, England itself is almost no more.
As has been documented here on numerous occasions, the UK is on the verge of giving it all away, renouncing everything that once made it great. Like so much of the rest of the West, it is committed to abandoning its Judeo-Christian heritage, and with it, all that makes for national greatness.
Three more links in a massive chain dragging the UK to its doom can be mentioned here. Each link in itself is not enough to destroy a nation, but when hundreds of such links are joined together, the heaviness of the chain around a nation’s neck is almost impossible to carry.
The three episodes all occurred in the past few days, and simply add to the oppressive burden of national self-destruction. The first concerns the ever widening grip of Islamic fundamentalism. A recent news item has noted that Britain now has 85 sharia law courts. One press report says this:
“At least 85 Islamic sharia courts are operating in Britain, a study claimed yesterday. The astonishing figure is 17 times higher than previously accepted. The tribunals, working mainly from mosques, settle financial and family disputes according to religious principles. They lay down judgments which can be given full legal status if approved in national law courts. However, they operate behind doors that are closed to independent observers and their decisions are likely to be unfair to women and backed by intimidation, a report by independent think-tank Civitas said.”
It is difficult for any nation to maintain any sort of social cohesion when it effectively has two different law systems in operation. Yet that is what we seem to find here. One Conservative MP, Philip Davies, expressed his concerns:
“Everyone should be deeply concerned about the extent of these courts. They do entrench division in society, and do nothing to entrench integration or community cohesion. It leads to a segregated society. There should be one law, and that should be British law. We can’t have a situation where people can choose which system of law they follow and which they do not. We can’t have a situation where people choose the system of law which they feel gives them the best outcome. Everyone should equal under one law.”
While it is good to hear the Opposition speaking out on this, things in fact get worse. The second episode I wish to highlight in fact concerns the Tory leader in the UK, David Cameron. He has just recently spoken at a major homosexual pride event, and he has been bending over backwards to win homosexuals over to the conservative side of politics.
He apologised for a 1988 law passed under Margaret Thatcher, Section 28, which banned local authorities from portraying homosexuality in a positive light. Cameron said that one of his “proudest” moments as leader of the Conservatives was when he told a party conference in 2006 that they had a duty to support a “commitment to marriage” among men and women, between a “man and a man, and a woman and a woman”.
The real question is, with leaders like this, just how conservative is the Tory opposition going to be? In trying to woo the homosexual vote, he is making the Tories indistinguishable from the Labour Party, and doing his own bit to finally destroy marriage and family in England.
A third episode which also speaks to the decline of Christianity in England is the advent of atheist summer camps. Yes, you heard me right. Concerned atheists are setting up summer camps to help make sure that little Johnny or little Sarah do not get to close to any of that nasty religious stuff.
Here is how one news report describes the story: “Now, an atheist summer camp for children set up in the United Kingdom is to offer a ‘godless alternative’ to religious camps. The 24 places on Camp Quest UK (CQUK), which will be held next month near Bath, Somerset, in England’s West Country, have already been booked up, according to organisers. Organisers said the purpose of the camp was ‘to encourage critical thinking and provide children with a summer camp free of religious dogma.’ The camp, supported by scientist Richard Dawkins, plans to expand after receiving hundreds of inquiries.”
The camp organiser said, “We want to encourage children to think for themselves and to evaluate the world critically and thus draw their own conclusions. However, parents should be aware that we adopt a critical, scientific approach as opposed to a ‘faith-based’ approach. At Camp Quest, children aren’t taught that ‘There is no god,’ Instead, they are taught to come to their own conclusions, but more importantly, that ‘It’s OK not to believe in a god.’”
Hmmm, really? What if, upon examining the evidence (and it all depends on what evidence the kiddies are actually allowed to examine), they come up with the conclusion that God in fact does exist? Will they then say, ‘It’s OK to believe in a god’? Somehow I just don’t think so.
But you have you hand it to our atheist buddies – they are always good for a laugh. They are absolutely sure that God does not exist, yet they are working overtime making sure they can convince everyone of this. Maybe they aren’t so sure after all.
One thing can be said with certainty: they are certainly evangelistic for their cause, on a holy mission to spread the good word. They seem to be one of the more active missionary religions around at the moment. Onward atheist soldiers, marching as to war….
These three recent episodes speak to the slow but steady decline of the UK. By themselves they may seem minor. But when considered with the many other examples produced here and elsewhere, the cumulative case for a nation of the brink is easily made. One simply has to ask how many more links must be added to the chain before the whole nations is dragged down into the abyss.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196165/Britain-85-sharia-courts-The-astonishing-spread-Islamic-justice-closed-doors.html
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/david-cameron/5710650/David-Cameron-says-sorry-over-Section-28-gay-law.html
www.assistnews.net/Stories/2009/s09060171.htm
About Bill Muehlenberg:
Bill Muehlenberg is an Australian apologist and ethicist, and head of ministry CultureWatch. He comments regularly on issues of the day from the Christian perspective on his website www.billmuehlenberg.com
Economics Professor
July 10, 2009
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Could it be any simpler than that?
A Double Agent At The CIA?
July 10, 2009A Double Agent At The CIA?
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 10 July 2009
National Security: If CIA Director Leon Panetta really has claimed to his old friends in Congress that the agency was lying to them, the impact will be unprecedented. Do we have a mole running Langley?
Related Topics: General Politics
Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee on June 26 fired off a nasty letter to CIA head and former high-ranking Democratic Rep. Leon Panetta. The thrust was that their former House Democratic colleague is a liar.
Signed by Reps. Anna Eshoo, Alcee Hastings, Rush Holt, Jan Schakowsky, Adam Smith, Mike Thompson and John Tierney, the curt message said:
“Recently you have testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week. This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods.”
The Democrats’ letter went on to ask Panetta to “correct” publicly a May 15 statement to CIA employees that it was against agency policy and practice, and “against our laws and values,” to mislead Congress.
Could it be any clearer that these members of a congressional panel in charge of intelligence matters — more than half of the House Intelligence Committee’s Democrats, including the three top-ranking majority members under the chairman — consider the intelligence community to be the enemy?
The letter reads not like the national security concerns of the elected representatives of the people, but rather like an ACLU cease-and-desist threat.
It would be a mistake, however, to view Panetta as an aggrieved party. CIA spokesman George Little was quick to try to douse the flames stirred up by the Democrats’ letter, telling the Washington Independent shortly after the communication was made public late Wednesday that their claim that Panetta said the CIA misled Congress is “completely wrong” and that Panetta “stands by his May 15 statement.”
But clearly Panetta testified to something big in closed session that Democrats are now using to clobber our spies.
Another letter, from House Intelligence Committee chief Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, to the panel’s ranking Republican, Peter Hoekstra, charged that Panetta’s secret testimony suggested the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”
Reyes and other Democrats on the committee won’t tell the public what exactly the so-called “significant actions” concealed from Congress were, or what the “affirmative lie” was.
Ironically, they’re hiding behind a smoke screen of governmental secrecy, with one House aide telling Politico that “the details behind the letter are apparently at very high levels of classification.”
As Republicans have already surmised, it smells more like a very low level of politicization. The goal of this seems to be to immunize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from accusations that she lied about what the CIA told her regarding enhanced interrogations during the Bush administration’s first term.
As Hoekstra told CBS on Thursday, “it looks like they’re working on the political equation” rather than “trying to foster a bipartisan consensus on national security.”
Hoekstra went on to call Reyes’ letter “one of the most bizarre episodes in politics that I’ve seen in my time here in Washington.” That’s saying a lot. But it’s even worse than that.
According to Reyes, Panetta’s closed testimony “may well lead to a full committee investigation” of the CIA. Will there be a new Church Committee-style witch hunt, which crippled our spies’ abilities and destroyed their morale in the 1970s?
All of this comes as debate nears on the Intelligence Authorization Bill. As part of the debate, Democrats intend to require that details of covert actions be revealed to the entire membership of the Senate and House intelligence committees, not just the eight leaders of both parties from the leadership and intelligence panels.
With the unfolding terrorist threats the U.S. faces in coming years, the last thing we need are preemptive congressional assaults from Congress against our spies — especially if their ammunition comes from the CIA director himself.
The G-8 Economic Suicide Pact
July 10, 2009FIRST OF ALL – move those measuring devices away from a hot roof and a big blacktop parking lot!
Those “scientists” either don’t get it or they have an agenda.
Don
The G-8 Economic Suicide Pact
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 10 July 2009
Climate Change: Channeling King Canute, G-8 leaders agree to wreck the world’s economy, and ours, by pledging to prevent temperatures from rising more than 4 degrees by 2050. What if the Earth has other plans?
Related Topics: Global Warming
Canute was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. He was The One of his time. He once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. As the story goes, he was exercising his ego when in fact he was giving his followers a dose of reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential.
We were reminded of this as members of the G-8 met in Italy on Wednesday to agree in principle to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. The aim is to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. In December, the U.N. is convening a meeting in Copenhagen to forge a binding consensus on reduction targets.
The announced goal, which President Obama has signed on to, is to keep the earth’s average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). That should not be a problem. While the warm-mongers tout 1998 as a record warm year, no year since has been as warm as the earth has, in fact, cooled during an unusually quiet solar cycle.
Last August was the first month in nearly a century in which the sun was completely devoid of sunspots, an indicator of solar activity. While the earth’s temperature charts nicely with the solar cycles over time, it correlates not at all with rising CO2 levels. In fact, the earth has been cooling even as these levels rise, and the earth is no warmer than it was in 1979.
Since Al Gore released his feature-length cartoon “An Inconvenient Truth” in October 2006, the Earth has cooled about 0.74 F, almost the same amount that the U.N.’s climate panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claims was gained in the entire 20th century.
Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute has actually sat down and crunched the numbers to find out what an 80% reduction actually means. An 80% reduction from 1990 levels means that in 2050 we cannot emit more than 1 billion tons of CO2. The last time U.S. emissions were that low, Hayward estimates from historical energy data, was in 1910.
We have pointed out that Kyoto-like accords are recipes for global poverty and that capping emissions is capping economic growth. An analysis of the more modest Waxman-Markey bill by the Heritage Foundation projects that by 2035 it would reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million.
According to an analysis by Chip Knappenberger, administrator of the World Climate Report, the reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions to 80% below 2005 levels by 2050 — the goal of Waxman-Markey — would reduce global temperature in 2050 by an insignificant 0.05 C.
EPA climate analyst Alan Carlin, who will not be invited to Copenhagen, recently had his study exposing warming as an over-hyped fraud ignoring actual data suppressed. He was told his conclusions would have “a very negative impact on our office.” The truth hurts.
China and India quite sensibly are refusing to participate in this nonsense. “Without participation from China and India, anything we do here at home would impose burdensome costs on consumers in the form of higher electricity, gas and food prices, all for no climate gain,” says Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe.
It is wise for these guys to meet in Copenhagen in December. That way they won’t be embarrassed as was the British House of Commons when it debated a climate change bill last fall that pledged the U.K. to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 amidst the first October snow since 1922 hit London.
King Canute, call your office.
HONDURAS: Obama’s Doubletalk
July 10, 2009Obama and Hillary should read and learn before they go off and step in it.
This Administration is exposing it’s stupidity to the world.
The people of Honduras need an honest broker to explain to “the free(?) world” what a Constitution means. We should congratulate the Honduran people. Instead this American Administration is taking the side of the tyrants, Chavez, Castro and Ortega. They think our Constitution should be a flexible, moving, ever-changing “document”. Americans believe that our Constitution carefully outlines how changes are made by Amendment.
Don
DOUBLE TALK. Trying to make Obama presentable even though he blew it.
Obama, Clinton And Realpolitik In Honduras
ON THE LEFT | By EDWARD SCHUMACHER-MATOS | IBD 10 July 2009
Sometimes you have to give political leaders credit. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are on the verge of achieving their own coup in Honduras, and advancing American interests with a deftness not seen from Washington in many years.
The president’s reference to Honduras during his trip to Moscow reflects how the small Central American country is but a pawn as the administration pushes the reset button globally and in the hemisphere. Justice may not be totally served in Honduras, but the country is likely to end up better off anyway.
“America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country,” Obama said in Russia, “nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country. . . . Even as we meet here today, America supports now the restoration of the democratically elected president of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies.
“We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders.”
The immediate lesson was to teach Russia to stay out of Georgia and Ukraine.
The message, however, also resonated throughout Latin America, undercutting the polarization efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The administration’s joining with the Organization of American States in condemning the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has left Chavez puffing a lot of hot air with no one to fight against.
When three Chavez allies — the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay — sought unsuccessfully to escort Zelaya back to Honduras on Venezuelan planes, they looked irresponsible for setting off violence that resulted in one death.
Bully Gets Wise
Clinton, meanwhile, working quietly with Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and other moderate countries, has brought the two opposing Honduran camps together in a mediation with one of the grand old men of Latin America, Costa Rican Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace laureate. There is now genuine movement toward a peaceful resolution of the crisis.
The U.S., long seen as a bully in the region, is suddenly being seen as respectful and wise. The flummoxed Chavez could only come up with a patently hilarious formula in which the “Yankee empire” was still the villain in Honduras, but Obama may not be responsible because he is “more like a prisoner of the empire.”
More fundamentally, Obama and Clinton, perhaps because neither is particularly experienced in Latin America, have approached the region with fresh eyes and wonder what all the fuss is about. The Moscow speech and their actions in Honduras underline that the Cold War really is over. Chavez is a nuisance, but Washington has no enemies in Latin America. Our major interests are immigration, crime and trade, not ideologies, as much as the extremists on the right and the left there and here may want to make it so.
Lesson Learned?
So, are we sacrificing Honduras? No. Zelaya is the main culprit in this crisis, but what counts is the rule of law. His hand has been slapped very hard. Allowing him to serve out the last six months of his term while not holding the referendum that would have opened the way to succession has a better chance of bringing peace and stability to the country than the current standoff.
The bigger question will be:
What have the rest of us learned?
We have all been pushing Latin Americans to uphold the rule of law, but beyond simply insisting that Zelaya was elected, few in the OAS, the European Union or other critics have been willing to give much credence to Hondurans for trying to do just that.
The Honduran Supreme Court, as it is empowered to do under the constitution, ordered the army to arrest Zelaya after he began to carry out a referendum for a constitutional convention that the court, Congress and his own attorney general said was illegal.
Yet many Latin American and European governments still call it a “military coup” or, as the Associated Press called it several days afterward, a “military power grab.” Clinton and Obama dropped calling it a coup.
There are gray areas having to do with presidential powers and the fact that the Honduran Constitution prohibits extradition of citizens. The army exiled Zelaya in consultation with civilian leaders to avoid precisely the sort of violence seen when Zelaya tried to return. He forced the country and its institutions against the wall, and for that he should take his medicine.
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MORE ON HONDURAS:
VIDEO: Dearborn Arab Festival 2009
July 9, 2009We were at this Arab Festival – and picked up the brochure that is the focus of this video.
VIEW FULL BROCHURE: CLICK HERE
ISNA Convention: Hate Speech and Hezbollah Defense
July 8, 2009“Mainstream” Islamist Convention Features Hate Speech and Hezbollah Defense
IPT News
July 8, 2009
http://www.investigativeproject.org/1085/mainstream-islamist-convention-features-hate
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A top aide to President Barack Obama provided a keynote address at last weekend’s 46th Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) national convention, a gathering that attracted thousands of people and also featured anti-Semitic, homophobic rhetoric and defense of the terrorist group Hezbollah.
In her remarks, Senior Advisor for Public Engagement and International Affairs Valerie Jarrett noted she was the first White House official to address ISNA. She spoke in general terms about interfaith dialogue and cooperation. She praised her hosts for “the diversity of American organizations, and ideas that are represented and will be debated” at the convention.
And she openly invited ISNA President Ingrid Mattson to work on the White House Council on Women and Girls that Jarrett leads.
During her 15-minute remarks Friday, Jarrett briefly echoed the challenge her boss issued in Cairo last month about the changes needed to bring peace between Palestinians and Israelis. “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed,” Obama said in his speech.
“Hamas,” he added, “must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
Jarrett was less specific, saying:
“Lasting peace will require a concerted effort on behalf of the Palestinians as well to end incitement and increase security and by Israel’s Arab neighbors to take steps towards normalizing [relations with] Israel.”
That’s a significant shift since ISNA is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-support conspiracy and maintains significant leadership ties to its foundation 28 years ago by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. A more pointed statement also would have stood as a powerful retort to extremist sentiments offered in other segments of the conference.
While many panels featured criticism of U.S. policy and law enforcement, one stood out for its hate-filled rhetoric, and ISNA officials should have seen it coming a mile away. During a “meet the authors” session, Imam Warith Deen Umar, former head of the New York state prison chaplain program managed to:
- Argue that key Obama aides are “Israeli,” proving Jews “have control of the world.”
- Malign the motives of Jews active in the Civil Rights movement.
- Portray the Holocaust as punishment of Jews for being “serially disobedient to Allah.”
- Insinuate that Hurricane Katrina was a result of tolerance for homosexuality.
Umar’s radicalism is no secret. He previously hailed the 9/11 hijackers as martyrs who were secretly admired by Muslims. He has called for violent jihad. In a January 2004 speech, he urged people:
“Rise up and fight. And fight them until turmoil is no more and strike terror into their hearts.” You think there is no terror in Quran? It’s called [word unclear] read it in the 56th Surah of the Quran. There’s no lack of translation, there’s no mistranslation There’s not one Sheikh says one thing, no, it’s very clear. ‘When you fight, you strike terror into the heart of the disbeliever.’“
He has a website promoting a past book, Judaiology, which features an excerpt describing “the inordinacy of Jewish power.” Jews, he wrote, are “an amazing people who can steal you blind as you watch. If you discover the theft, they can put you to sleep. If you wake up to them, they can put you back to sleep with mind games, tricks of fancy, smoke screens, and magic. Henry Ford almost uncovered them.”
Umar’s ISNA appearance Sunday afternoon promoted his latest book, Jews for Salaam: The Straight Path to Global Peace. In discussing it, Umar first thanked ISNA for inviting him to speak.
He then described a distinction between “holy Jews,” who are devout, apolitical and poor, and “unholy Jews” who are greedy, conniving and all powerful. He looked to the White House for an example (hear the clip here):
“You need to know that Obama, the first man that Obama picked when we were so happy that he was the President, he picked an Israeli – Rahm Emanuel – his number one man. His number two man – [David] Axelrod – another Israeli person. Why do this small number of people have control of the world? You need to go back into your history and find out about France and Germany and England and America got together and offered the Israelites, who became the Israelites, they offered them Ghana, the plains of Ghana. Why don’t you take Ghana since we beat you down so badly? That’s what the Holocaust was all about. You need to read my chapter on the Holocaust and the anti-Holocaust movement. There’s some people in the world says no Holocaust even happened. Some of their leaders say no Holocaust even happened. Well it did happen. These people were punished. They were punished for a reason because they were serially disobedient to Allah.” [Emphasis added]
ISNA described the author’s panel as “an interactive session which provides a wonderful platform to learn, share ideas, and provide literary contributions to society.” Remarkably, ISNA included Umar in that platform despite a very public record of anti-Semitism, advocacy for jihad, and praise for the 9/11 hijackers.
Umar shared the microphone with another author who did not spew out bigotry, but who did cast Hezbollah as an innocent player subject to incessant Israeli onslaught. Cathy Sultan described her book, Tragedy in South Lebanon: The Israeli/Hezbollah War of 2006, as a history of “the tragedy of the repeated incursions and wars in South Lebanon, the complexities of the Lebanese politics.”
She made no mention of Iranian funding for Hezbollah or Syrian meddling in Lebanese politics or its suspected involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Instead, she lumps Hariri among a list of “docile Arab rulers willing to acquiesce to the West and to Israelis’ demands … provided they eliminate or at least contain and disarm Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Nor did Sultan describe indiscriminate Hezbollah rocket fire toward Israeli civilian communities, or the cross-border attack on an Israeli army base by Hezbollah that left three soldiers dead and two others kidnapped.
In response to a question, Sultan said “Hezbollah still serves a role. I think that Lebanon is still under constant threat from its southern neighbor. And I see nothing wrong, as long as Hezbollah abides by certain rules and regulations; I see no reason why Hezbollah should not remained armed.”
The United States considers Hezbollah to be a terrorist group, and some experts consider it a bigger potential threat to the United States than Al-Qaeda.
The panel did not feature anyone with contrasting viewpoints to challenge Sultan or Umar. The program drew about 50 people, who sat passively during most of the remarks.
Umar’s books were available for purchase at the convention. Government agencies were represented with booths of their own, including the departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security, Commerce, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Before the convention started, ISNA posted a statement for vendors which said “Any literature (fundraising or otherwise) is restricted to the assigned booth and must be pre-approved in writing by ISNA, in ISNA’s sole and absolute discretion. Book selling vendors must complete enclosed form providing inventory of the literature to be sold at ISNA.”
Judaiology devotes two pages to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” allegedly the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders at the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, in which they plotted to take over the world. Researchers have definitively proved that the Protocols were in fact forged in Paris sometime between 1895 and 1899 by an agent of the Russian secret police. This has not kept anti-Semitic groups from believing the validity of this forgery. For example, the Charter of Hamas states:
“For Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there.”
To Umar, however, the Protocols “remain a mystery:”
“Jewish leaders have denied [the Protocols] and called them a forgery, a pact [sic] of lies, absurd and counterintuitive. No Jew, they say, would ever resort to writing down such self-defeating words and plans. However their denials appear ineffective because the Protocols actually explain and reveal what others observe about the real activities and results of Jewish diplomatic, industrial, business, and political involvement among the peoples of the world… What is revealed and clarified is so shocking and stunningly in accord with the behavior and results of world events that involve Jews that it gives credence and importance, relevance and standing to what otherwise would simply be a biased and discredited documents.”
A woman in the audience reminded Umar that Jews marched with Black people during the Civil Rights movement. But, Umar said, that was not motivated by a genuine desire for justice:
“The Jews in America used the black community to advance the Jewish community. In many instances in history, they gained much of what they gained by putting the African Americans out front to get things that were necessary to get through the politics of this country and of the social setting of this country.”
Umar also managed to stray into a reference about same-sex marriage, which he said would prompt God’s wrath:
“It’s against the laws of Allah and against the laws of the Bible for homosexuality. And if you think the Quran talks about harsh punishment from Allah, you should read what the Bible says. I don’t have the time to go into it, but it’s in my book. The Bible is very hard on, he says, Allah says that the land itself is doomed. You wonder why things are happening in America are going to happen? You think that Katrina was just a blow of wind?”
This is the man responsible for the Muslim chaplain program in New York prisons for 20 years. He was forced out of that job after his praise for the 9/11 hijackers became known. This is who ISNA chose to showcase in a “meet the authors” panel and provide an unchallenged platform.
“My conclusion is that there should be more jihad,” he said. “But people don’t want to hear that. They’re scared.”
In Cairo, the President said:
“Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong” and a hindrance to peace. [Emphasis added]
But somehow, partnering with a group that invites the same thing is okay?
BRAND NEW: Roxbury Mosque or Mask?
July 8, 2009You must see this brand new material from our friend Tom Trento:
Roxbury Mosque or Mask?
VISIT:
www.floridasecuritycouncil.org
TO VIEW VIDEO
On June 26, I joined others in protesting the opening of an “ideological” military base, in an African-American neighborhood, in the heart of Boston. Some believe Roxbury is a Mosque…others believe Roxbury is a Mask… for the propagation of a seditious plan, designed ultimately, to replace the US Constitution, with the Qur’an. Here is my 4-part video report entitled, Roxbury – Mosque or Mask?
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PART 1
I leave Florida and head off to join Charles Jacobs and American for Peace and Tolerance to demonstrate at the ribbon cutting of the controversial Roxbury Mosque. Joining the protest are many leaders and groups, including; Frank Gaffney, Act for America, Christian and Jews United for Israel.
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PART 2
I capture fascinating footage showing the confrontation between a male-dominated Middle Eastern mindset and the Western doctrine of free speech. Notice how Muslim “security” tries to get their people to STOP speaking with us! NB: We had a permit to be on our side of the street and the Muslims came over to confront us!
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PART 3
I engage in a riveting debate with a very intelligent (and sarcastic) Muslim leader. In spite of some “contentious” moments, we end up breaking “donuts” together. Listen carefully to the supremacist attitude so typical in Muslim leaders.
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PART 4
If our side is correct and Roxbury is more MASK than MOSQUE…then the closing words of Boston Mayor Menino indicate the demise of a once great city known for its unmitigated allegiance to American Constitutional principles… now bowing to Muslim extremism.
Green Jackets, Brown Shirts
July 8, 2009DO THESE NUTCASES HATE TREES TOO?
Green Jackets, Brown Shirts
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 8 July 2009
Cap And Trade: Al Gore has likened his crusade against global warming to the world’s struggle against Nazis. He said this while speaking in a country that is organizing a team of environmental storm troopers.
Related Topics: Global Warming
Gore didn’t come right out and call global warming skeptics Nazis while addressing an audience at Oxford University in England. But then, he didn’t have to. By simply violating Godwin’s Law — which essentially says that an argument dies the moment someone makes a comparison to Nazis — in the way he did, Gore labeled anyone who opposes his agenda a fascist.
While the former vice president was delivering his sermon, the British were busy creating a para-police squad that will enforce government-imposed carbon dioxide emissions limits. Take a good look, because the formation of this team could well be a preview of what we’ll get if the Democrats’ climate change bill becomes law.
So far, the cap-and-trade global warming legislation — known as the Waxman-Markey bill — has been passed only in the House. The Senate still has to take it up, and then a conference committee would write a version that both chambers would agree to vote on should the Senate approve legislation that has differences.
Any bill passed will of course have to be signed by President Obama. But the only question there is not whether he’ll sign it but whether he’ll turn the event into a circus bigger than Michael Jackson’s memorial.
*What comes next is the legalized extortion of the American people. Some analysts estimate that this scheme to save us from ourselves could by 2030 cost each American family as much $4,300 a year and destroy 2.5 million jobs. That’s even counting the “green” jobs the bill’s supporters claim it will create.
In return for that sacrifice, people living in our world a century from now will experience a global temperature that is projected to be one-tenth to two-tenths of one degree Celsius cooler than it would have been without the legislation.
While the loss of economic liberty is chilling enough, how much more freedom will be lost if Washington follows London’s lead and establishes a cap-and-trade police force?
The United Kingdom’s Carbon Reduction Commitment, which applies to nonenergy-intensive businesses, goes into effect next year. Ahead of that, the government’s Environment Agency is establishing a squad of 50 auditors that will be charged with catching companies that exceed their CO2 emissions limits.
If news reports from Britain are to be believed, this will not be a collegial staff of ordinary green-eyeshade auditors riding desks. This group will be armed with warrants and have the power to search private grounds, snoop through energy bills, carbon-trading records and receipts from suppliers, and seize evidence.
The auditors will be granted the authority to spy on businesses without their knowledge as well as to show up at a company’s doorstep for what is likely to be an intimidating visit if, the London Times reports, the company’s numbers “do not add up.”
It’s not clear if the auditors — who are to wear green jackets — will be able to charge private businesses that overstep their carbon output allocations with criminal offenses. But no one should be surprised if they do.
This sort of crackpot scheme is yet another case of foolishness that makes it seem like the world has gone mad. It hasn’t. Still, enough pockets of hysteria and second-rate thinking are out there, especially in places of influence, to cause us concern.
When we see benign behavior, such as emitting CO2, become an offense worthy of the attention of a national government, we know we are in a dangerous era. We hope enough rationality remains in the Senate to keep this madness from spreading to the U.S.
Putin’s Patsy?
July 8, 2009NAIF OBAMA
Putin’s Patsy?
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 8 July 2009
Diplomacy: Russia’s nondemocratic rulers over the years have shown an uncanny knack for detecting weakness in their foes. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is continuing the tradition.
Related Topics: Europe & Central Asia
President Obama no doubt believes he was dealing with honest brokers when he agreed with Russia’s leaders to cut U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads to about 1,600 each. For the U.S., that’s a cut of about a third.
But please read the fine print. This is a “preliminary” agreement. In order for it to go into effect, Russian leaders say they want the U.S. to give up its plans for a missile defense system.
[THAT MEANS WE DIS-ARM - THEY DON'T - WILL SOME BODY WAKE UP?!?!]
To do so would, in effect, be a unilateral disarmament by the U.S. against the most feared weapons on earth — nuclear missiles. It’s an abandonment of our allies, including Poland and the Czech Republic. It’s not an acceptable bargaining chip.
It’s reminiscent of the time in 1961 when President Kennedy — like Obama, youthful, attractive, intelligent, well-spoken — met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. During that meeting, Khrushchev quickly sized up Kennedy as a foreign-policy lightweight.
Within months, he tested Kennedy’s mettle — erecting the Berlin Wall, and, the following year, sending missiles to Cuba to challenge the U.S. just 90 miles off its own coast.
In public, Kennedy stood up to Khrushchev; behind the scenes, he caved, trading our missiles in Turkey for the ones in Cuba. Kennedy, in interviews, later regretted his own callowness.
Compare that with President Reagan’s 1986 showdown with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. That came on the heels of a U.S. deployment of missiles in Europe, Reagan’s refusal to sign a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and his 1983 “Star Wars” speech. He was negotiating from strength — the only thing Russians get.
In 1985, Reagan had told Gorbachev bluntly during Geneva arms talks: “We won’t stand by and let you maintain weapon superiority over us. We can agree to reduce arms, or we can continue the arms race, which I think you know you can’t win.”
In Reykjavik, with the world’s media egging him on to make a deal, any deal, on nuclear arms with the USSR, Reagan said, “Nyet.” Why? He wouldn’t give up U.S. missile defense. With that stand, the Soviet Union’s demise was assured.
By contrast, Obama on Tuesday called Russia, a country that’s falling apart, a “great power” and reassured the nondemocratic Putin he’ll keep Russia’s interests in mind while crafting U.S. policy.
“As I said in Cairo,” the president said, “given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. That is why I have called for a ‘reset’ in relations between the United States and Russia.”
This implies an equivalency between Russia and the U.S. that simply doesn’t exist. Russia comes up short on any measure of civilizational success you might want to use. Indeed, we have elevated a country that has invaded a neighbor, uses energy as a weapon against our democratic allies and refuses to help in our effort to halt Iran’s dangerous nuclear program.
Russia is not a “great” power. It’s a Third World nation with First World nuclear weapons. It’s in a downward spiral due to its collapsing population, shortening life-spans and shrinking economy. It might not even survive this century as a nation.
This has been the U.S.’ biggest mistake: to give Russia respect it hasn’t really earned. Maybe, as it turns out, Putin, a former top KGB operative, is more clever than Gorbachev. He knows our president needs a foreign affairs success.
Before President Obama signs off on anything, he’d do well to review the presidential history of dealings with the Soviets. He can learn from both Kennedy and Reagan.
China Riots Signal Democratic Deficit
July 8, 2009REMEMBER THE GUYS OBAMA SENT TO BERMUDA? They were UIGHUR (terrorists?) who want to open a restaurant!
China Riots Signal Democratic Deficit
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 8 July 2009
Democracy: Riots exploded in China’s western Xinjiang province this week, in what authorities alternatively call criminal acts or global terrorism. In reality, it’s neither: it’s the pent-up fury of people who live without freedom.
Related Topics: East Asia & Pacific
Sunday’s riot in Urumqi, where ethnic Uighurs battled Chinese police, ended with 159 dead, 1,000 injured and 1,400 arrested, according to official sources. Unofficially, the death toll has been estimated as high as 400.
International response has been muted, but shouldn’t be. The scale of deaths and the increasing frequency of such upheavals across the country raises red flags about China’s prized “stability.”
It’s curious, but places that justify repression in the name of stability always seem to end in turmoil. Official Chinese sources offer two explanations, each containing a bit of truth, but all skirting the real issue, which is China’s growing need for democratic accountability.
Uighur women protest China’s detention of 1,400 men in Urumqi on Tuesday after Sunday’s riot. Uighurs also held sympathy protests globally.State media claimed the riots were a law-enforcement matter, describing Uighur ruffians coming armed and ready to rumble at last weekend’s demonstration in Urumqi. But that doesn’t quite work.
China’s other version of events contradicts the law-enforcement thesis and called it essentially the work of outside agitators.
The riots were also said to be an orchestrated effort from abroad to break up the country with terrorism. One official version holds that Uighur rioters are al-Qaida-inspired troublemakers.
There’s some truth to this, given rising Islamic fundamentalism in Xinjiang. Other versions insist the unrest was masterminded from America by exile leader Rebiya Khadeer, a 62-year-old businesswoman who leads the Uighur National Congress. Khadeer denies this, and it’s impossible to see how much influence she has, anyway.
All these explanations ignore that these riots and demonstrations are getting bigger, more frequent, and more lethal.
They’re not just in Urumqi, but in Lhasa, Tibet, and in China’s central industrial cities, with some sources estimating them at 80,000 per year now.
That signals this isn’t about the extremes of crime or terrorism, but rather the absence of democracy and accountability.
China remains a communist country, with most freedoms absent. Citizens cannot express themselves to government, or even get their attention through civil means. Writing a letter to a congressman and getting a result is out of the question in China.
Redress for grievances doesn’t happen, and booting corrupt officials is out of the question. For minorities, it’s especially tough: “Uighurs get two choices: They are terrorists if they voice concerns or else good Uighurs if they assimilate,” said Alim Seytoff, spokesman for the World Uighur Congress in Washington.
That leaves the only outlet for pent-up anger in demonstrations and riots. It’s human nature, and likely to grow unless Beijing gets serious about giving citizens a voice.
The democratic deficit is growing increasingly obvious as China’s cities — even remote Urumqi — grow more prosperous and Internet communication, including Facebook and Twitter, expand.
Xinjiang is remote, but it’s no backwater. It’s part of China’s economic success story, with its vast oil and mineral resources.
All that economic prosperity logically leads to one place: Democracy. Right now, what’s happening in Urumqi is a hunger for freedom.
IMPORTANT: Whispered Worries About Obama
July 7, 2009
IMPORTANT:
The article below, from the extremely liberal Jewish Week, should send chills down the spines of Jewish Congresspeople who will be coming up for election in 2010. The likes of Wexler and Klein who owe their seats in congress to a Jewish electorate have backed to the hilt Obama who has shown unabashed support for the Palestinian terrorists while threatening Israel to accommodate their demands, “or else!” It is our responsibility to confront these representatives at each stop they make in the local condos and communities to let them know we will not forget their traitorous support of the Obama campaign to bring Israel to its knees.
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Whispered Worries About Obama
07/01/2009
by Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Accustomed as he is to public speaking here and around the country, David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, can read an audience as well as anyone. Lately, he says, he is “hearing a growing number of questions and concerns about the U.S.-Israel relationship, and a sense that the Obama administration’s response to the Iran crisis was slower than it should have been.”
Harris is not alone. Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, says the normal anxiety level among American Jews when a new administration takes shape has been heightened to new levels because President Obama “champions change, and American Jews tend to approve of U.S. policy toward Israel and don’t necessarily welcome change” on that front.
Leaders of American Jewish organizations note an unease among mainstream supporters of Israel and Jewish causes — we’re not talking about marginal “Obama is a Muslim” critics here — who say they voted for and admire Barack Obama and support many of his policies, but feel he is being overly critical of Israel and too soft on the Palestinians and on an Iranian regime bent on developing nuclear weapons that could end up aimed at the Jewish state.
As one leader put it: “Moderate people come up to me and ask, ‘Should I be worried?’ ”
It’s a good question, though it’s being whispered more than spoken these days.
Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the umbrella group on policy issues supporting Israel, was quoted recently in an interview as saying Jewish leaders “are expressing concern” over Obama’s June 4 Cairo speech, particularly its comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He later said his remarks were taken out of context[?], but he told me the other day that “judging from phone calls” he has received, and other responses, “there is an increasing unease” about a number of the Obama administration’s recent statements and actions.
Those include the president’s reference in his Cairo speech to 7 million American Muslims, when in fact most studies believe the number to be closer to 2.5 million; the narrative suggesting that Israel’s roots go back only as far as the Holocaust rather than to the Bible; the public pressure on Israel to halt settlements — as if they represented the key to peace rather than the Palestinians’ consistent refusal to recognize a Jewish state in the region — and the lack of specific demands on the Palestinians; and the concern that the president is still determined to engage in dialogue with Iran, despite the regime’s brutal behavior following national elections last month.
Is it possible that the “unbreakable bonds” between Israel and the U.S. that the president referred to in his Cairo speech are on shaky grounds? And is the gap growing between leaders of mainstream Jewish organizations and the majority of American Jews, more than three-quarters of whom voted for Obama, support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis and may well agree that settlements are a hindrance to peace?
Several of those leaders, speaking off the record, account for the gap by pointing out that they are more knowledgeable than most people about the complexities of U.S.-Israeli policy, following it every day on a high level. They note, for example, that on the topic of settlements, most American Jews (and most Israelis, for that matter), do not distinguish between large, established suburbs of Jerusalem, like Ma’ale Adumim, with a population of 35,000, and hilltop outposts led by a handful of religious zealots attracting media attention.
Not all settlements are equal, and virtually every peace proposal under serious discussion calls for those settlements in the vicinity of Jerusalem, containing the majority of the West Bank Jewish population, to end up as part of Israel. President George W. Bush acknowledged in his 2004 letter to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that “in light of the new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.”
But the Obama administration has a different take, and its seemingly willful refusal to recognize past U.S. commitments makes Israeli leaders worry about the trustworthiness of guarantees in the future.
Several weeks ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted that President Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” Such a blunt, public statement about a close strategic ally caused a ripple of worry among Jewish leaders, one of whom told me the only conclusion he could reach was that the administration wanted to bring down the Netanyahu government, hoping it would be replaced by a more moderate one.
But both Israeli and American Jewish leaders are well aware of the widespread popularity of President Obama and are reluctant to take him on. There is a debate going on among Foreign Ministry officials in Jerusalem; some are describing the administration as unfriendly while others are urging caution and a more nuanced response.
Hoenlein says the point is to “deal honestly on the issues themselves, not the personalities. You deal with substance, and with sensitivity — not always in the media. These issues are of such consequence that we dare not avoid confronting them forthrightly, and we are respected when we do that. You don’t whitewash issues that are troubling.”
Complicating the problem further is that this administration is relying less on American Jewish leaders for input because two of the most powerful men in government, with daily access to the president, are high-profile Jews: senior adviser David Axelrod and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
When one Jewish organizational leader questioned a White House aide as to why the president only sought advice from American Muslim leaders prior to the Cairo speech, he said he was told: “Why should we invite Jews in? We have so many here.”
The ADL’s Foxman says, “What troubles me most is a lack of consultation and the need [for the administration] to do things publicly. There’s a [U.S.-Israel] relationship of 60 years and all of a sudden they’re treating Israel like everyone else. I find that disturbing.”
At this point it is difficult to tell how much of the backdoor complaining from some Jewish leaders is about serious policy concerns and how much is sour grapes over reduced access. What is clear is that there is worry that this administration, with its emphasis on change, appears convinced it can resolve the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict within two years, and seems bent on extracting concessions from Israel before getting tough with the Palestinians. And there are worries that after pledging dialogue with increasingly intractable enemies like Iran, Obama has no substantive Plan B.
None of the leaders I spoke with think this administration wants to endanger Israel in any way. Far from it. But some question whether focusing on settlements was an attempt to weaken Netanyahu and split the American Jewish community.
For now, it’s important for supporters of Israel to make their voices heard, pointing out the nuances and critical distinctions in discussing “the settlements”; emphasizing that the crux of the problem is and has always been Palestinian intransigence, terrorism and refusal to accept a Jewish state; and pressing Washington for a clear policy on dealing with Iran, and the Palestinians, beyond diplomacy.
In the end, speaking truth to power is always good policy, no matter who is in the White House.
E-mail:http://gary@jewishweek.org
Movie: The Stoning of Soraya M.
July 7, 2009NOTE: Visit http://www.thestoning.com/ – to view the movie official site and theater locations.
Soraya’s Warning to the Mullahs
The Stoning of Soraya M. is more than a movie about a wronged Iranian woman. The film’s timing, writes Steven Emerson, can help a nation rally against its iron-fisted Islamic rulers.
by Steven Emerson
Written for The Daily Beast
July 6, 2009
Director Cyrus Nowrasteh’s new release, The Stoning of Soraya M. written by Cyrus and his wife Elizabeth, is one of the most compelling, stirring, and riveting films I have ever seen. Inspired by French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam’s international bestseller of the same name, this compelling story sheds light on Islamist mob rule and the horrific honor killings associated with countries that follow Sharia law.
Most importantly, the timing of the film’s release—amid the largest popular Iranian uprising against the Islamo-fascist mullahs since they took over in 1979—makes it one of the most relevant and important of our time. It, quite simply, serves as a brilliant exposition on the fanatics who control Iran and their willingness to kill their own people to maintain religious political power.
This film should be required viewing not only for every American—nay, every citizen of the world—but for every Obama administration official and member of Congress, if they want to understand what is truly going on Iran and the need to firmly, unequivocally, and unambiguously confront the Islamist thugs, whether they be in Tehran, Gaza, or Lebanon.
Indeed, the unwillingness of the president to aggressively confront, let alone condemn, the existence of “radical Islam” or specifically condemn the anti-human-rights fascism of the Sharia (the system of laws based on the Koran)—and which underlies the evil dramatically exposed in this extraordinary film—may yet earn him recognition as the man who has most endangered the security of West.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is one of those rare films in American cinema history that truly has the potential of eliciting popular demands for changes in our foreign policy by the American public, even by the world public; its power is undeniable.
The film is a story of a courageous Islamic woman fighting a losing battle against a radical religious system rigged against women. The simple premise of the film will anger, enrage, and yet ultimately inspire and mobilize anyone who sees it.
Set in a small Iranian village in the mid-1980s, an innocent woman, Soraya, is caught in a scheme by her cruel husband who conspires against her with trumped-up charges of infidelity. He enlists the local mullah and fellow villagers to conduct an all-male tribunal that declares her guilty. Her sentence is death by public stoning, still employed in Iran and other radical Islamic countries.
This is not a singing-dancing-happy-ending stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster, yet it deserves every Academy Award possible. The tale is told with crisp cinematography and includes mesmerizing performances by Academy Award nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog) and Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ).
“At its heart, this movie is a human drama filled with tension, peril, and hope,” Nowrasteh says, “but it is also a true story that I felt strongly had to be told, a story the whole world needs to know.” It’s astonishing true story of Zahra, the fearless aunt of Soraya who happens to spot a war correspondent passing through town to get his car fixed as he heads to the border. Soraya had been executed the day before, and her aunt’s raw outrage gives her the courage to demand that the reporter tape-record her story.
The film is so suspenseful, to the point that the viewer might—for just a moment—hope that Soraya might be able to escape before her sentence can be carried out. There is no escape, however, and at the end, tragically, it comes as no surprise.
It also comes as no surprise that women around the world continue to be targeted for this type of shocking injustice. Gathering reliable statistics for such punishment is challenging, but reports suggest there have been at least 1,000 women stoned to death over the past 15 years in countries such as Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
In 2008, a 13-year-old Somali girl was stoned by 50 men in a football stadium in front of a crowd of 1,000 spectators. According to BBC reports, the mob buried her up to her shoulders while she begged for her life, pleading “don’t kill me, don’t kill me.” Eleven people in Iran, nine of them women, were waiting to be stoned to death for adultery last year, according to Amnesty International. The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women each year become victims of “honor crimes” in which family members kill a woman who has allegedly brought dishonor on them.
Within the last year, two suspected cases have made headlines in the U.S. In Jonesboro, Georgia, last July, Chaudhry Rashid was accused of killing his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal, because she wanted out of an arranged marriage. In February, Aasiyah Hassan was stabbed multiple times and decapitated at an upstate New York television station. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, is believed to have become enraged because she filed for divorce days earlier. His trial is expected to begin in January.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is the first film drama to expose the torture of public stoning in the Muslim world. It is a credit to the Nowrastehs the execution scene itself avoids the graphic gore better suited for torture fetish films. Make no mistake, it’s a tough scene to watch but not just because of the implied violence. There’s an devastating emotional punch in the way the twisted judgment is delivered. Soraya must face her rock-wielding, divorce-seeking husband (who wants to be rid of her in order to marry a 14-year-old girl), other family members and neighbors she has known and cared for all her life.
“No one has ever shown a stoning on film before, so I felt a real responsibility to make it something the audience will never forget,” says Nowrasteh. He followed Sahebjam’s description in the book and willed himself to look at covert footage of a real stoning. “All I can tell you is that compared to what I saw and read, the scene in the movie is far less graphic than it could have been. Most of all, I wanted to capture the whole ritual design of it and how it affects the crowd.”
It is also remarkable that parallel stories of brave individuals speaking out against the tyrannical government in Iran are making headlines at the exact time this film hits theaters. Millions of voters believe the election was a fraud, but Iranian authorities have ordered international journalists to remain in their offices and refused to allow them to report on the events on the streets. Still, even state media reports nearly 20 protesters—and in fact perhaps up to 100—have been killed in the crackdown.
“Yes, the film is gripping drama,” Nowrasteh says, “but more than that it is a form of bearing witness, much like Zahra does in the movie. It becomes a liberating story about the power of breaking a silence and hopefully will encourage others to add their voices.”
After living in Iran as a young boy, the director’s family was exiled. “I’m not in a position to change any governments or laws in other countries, but one thing I can do is to really make people aware that this is happening wherever women are still treated as second-class citizens. It is hard to conceive of this still going on, but my obligation was to getting the truth out there—again, so the world will know. My biggest hope is that people will fall in love with these women and their courage.”
With the release of this film, the world will know. This story will haunt you. When I first saw the screening of the film, I sat, along with other members of the audience, in silence and in shock for at least 10 minutes after the film was over. I cried for the first time in years. I have now seen the film more than a dozen times and each viewing has given me a different experience.
At the same time, each has inspired me to keep fighting the Islamist mobsters and Islamic radicals that govern hundreds of millions of people in the Muslim world and have established deceptive and totalitarian strangleholds over Muslim populations in the west.
If there is only one film that you watch this year, or just one that you watch for the rest of your life, this should be the one. It will profoundly change your life.
Steve Emerson is executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of five books on terrorism. His most recent book is Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.
Big June Job Losses Heighten Concerns About U.S. Revival
July 6, 2009Big June Job Losses Heighten Concerns About U.S. Revival
IBD: 6 June 2009
UNEMPLOYMENT NOW 9.5%
Layoffs likely to continue even if recession ends, as expected, later in ‘09
Employers cut far more jobs than expected in June and the unemployment rate hit a 26-year high, the Labor Department said Thursday, raising concerns that the coming economic recovery won’t be strong enough to revive hiring.
Companies shed 467,000 workers last month, up from a drop of 322,000 in May. Wall Street expected a loss of 367,000 jobs.
Demands Are Only Growing Bigger
July 6, 2009Demands Are Only Growing Bigger For A Shrinking Base Of Taxpayers
By ERNEST S. CHRISTIAN AND GARY A. ROBBINS | IBD 2 July 2009
The old-fashioned term “taxpayers’ money” has recently resurfaced in Washington — but only to describe some of the TARP funds used in the government takeover of auto companies and financial institutions.
“Taxpayers’ money” is almost never used in Washington to describe any of the other dollars in the $3.5 trillion federal budget. These dollars, divided into familiar categories of entitlement and discretionary spending, are thought of by most Washingtonians as the “government’s money.”
Washington is awash in money — dollars taken by the IRS from the people who earned them and dollars borrowed all around the world.
In Washington, success is measured by how many new federal spending programs get enacted. Washington’s champion spenders — from the president on down — appear to suffer from a delusional psychosis about money. They believe that federal spending is a healing balm. It has magical powers. If applied often enough in large enough quantities, it will cure everything.
Applied in the right places, federal money also enhances their political powers and control. That is the main reason for thousands of spending programs added to the federal budget since 1965. President Obama is now expanding federal spending by a whopping 30%.
Privileged Washingtonians forget that real people have had to work, save and invest, often at great sacrifice, to produce the money that government spends so extravagantly. In pursuit of their careers, federal spenders pretend not to know that the taxpayers of America would have been greatly benefited had they not been forced to send their money to Washington.
Hardworking families could have paid a lot of bills and sent a lot of kids to college with the $300,000 of “taxpayer money” the government spends every week or so to fly Speaker Nancy Pelosi home to San Francisco for a round of political fundraisers and parties.
American taxpayers could do a lot of good for themselves and others with the $400 billion in taxpayer money that Washington spends each year on the 55% of government programs that admittedly fail to accomplish their purposes.
When retained and put to work by the skilled, industrious people who produce it, taxpayers’ money tends to multiply — usually by a factor of 3 to 1, according to a study by distinguished economist Christina Romer (now President Obama’s chief economic adviser).
When government commandeers the taxpayers’ money and spends it, the money tends to shrink. Nearly all modern economic analyses confirm that the “multiplier effect” of government spending is less than 1. Predictably, the highly touted “stimulus” package has not had its hoped-for effect.
Years ago, Milton Friedman told his students that a dollar of government spending produces less than a dollar of economic growth. He was right. The government doesn’t create wealth. It just takes money from people who produce it and moves it around.
More than 85% of the personal income tax is paid by a small, overtaxed band of Americans who in number are less than 25% of eligible voters. The total number of income-tax payers is less than 55% of eligible voters. These people also bear the economic burden of nearly all the income tax collected from corporations.
Taxpayers pay government’s bills — but they have little control over how much of their money government spends or for what.
Obama plans to spend another $1.5 trillion of their tax money in nationalizing health care, even though the taxpayers who will pay 80% to 90% of that are overwhelmingly opposed to socialized medicine. If the president succeeds in forcing it upon them, they will get less health care (at a higher price) and suffer a backbreaking tax increase to boot.
The plight of taxpayers and their money is likely to get even worse after the next election.
Extrapolating from data compiled by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, and taking into account the president’s plan for “credits” that will remove more of his supporters from the income-tax rolls, we estimate that a majority of people who vote in the next election will be nontaxpayers, fully able to tax an oppressed minority with impunity, without themselves paying any income tax at all.
To them, government spending will seem free — and their demand for more of it will be infinite.
Christian is executive director and Robbins the chief economist at the Center For Strategic Tax Reform in Washington, D.C.
California Digging
July 6, 2009ARE THEY CRAZY?!?! YES!
IBD: 2 July 2009
Regulation: Ignoring the first rule of holes, a bankrupt state passing out IOUs welcomes an EPA waiver allowing it to further kill its economy. Too bad the state can’t stop the air pollution imported from a growing China.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday granted California its long-standing request — denied by the Bush administration — for a waiver to allow it to impose even more stringent air pollution rules than currently required by the federal government.
The way is now clear for implementation of a 2002 state law requiring new cars to increase their fuel economy 40% by 2016. At least a dozen other states are champing at the bit to follow California’s lead.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, captain of a ship seriously listing to port, hailed the decision as a “huge step for our emerging green economy that will create thousands of new jobs and bring Californians the cars they want while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” So far the green economy is withering on the vine.
Californians don’t want clown cars any more than the rest of the country. That’s why they’re driving their real cars out of the state. For four straight years California has suffered a net loss of population to other states. Without illegal immigration, California would be shrinking. For the rest, it’s go east, young man.
California faces a $42 billion deficit. It needs nuclear power plants to generate pollution-free power to attract, not repel, industry and jobs. It needs revenues from the exploitation of its offshore oil resources. Redemption will not come from paving the state with solar panels and hoping the sun shines.
As Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation reports, sulfur from China alone in California, Oregon and Washington state alone reaches 10% to 15% of the EPA’s allowable levels. Estimates are that a third of California’s air pollution and a fifth of Oregon’s comes from China. Sensors in the Sierra Nevada Mountains have identified huge Chinese pollution clouds that traverse the Pacific.
“We’re going to see increased particulate pollution from the expansion of China for the foreseeable future,” says Steven Cliff, a research engineer at the University of California, Davis.
“If they started driving cars and using electricity at the rate in the developed world, the amount of pollution they generate will increase many, many times,” adds Tony Van Curen, a UC Davis researcher who works with Cliff.
In a recent issue of the Journal of Environment Economics and Management, a UC Berkeley research team noted that China had in fact become the world’s biggest polluter and that current computer models substantially underestimate future emissions growth in China. The Berkeley researchers say China’s emissions are now growing at an annual rate of 11%.
“When you look at China’s population growth and industrial growth, it’s hard to imagine how air quality could improve in the near future,” said Ruby Leung, a researcher at the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., which collaborates with Chinese government scientists on atmospheric research.
Every seven to 10 days, as the New York Times reports, a new coal-fired plant big enough to serve every household in San Diego comes on line in China, exporting more pollution to California and the Western United States than Schwarzenegger’s draconian proposals could ever hope to eliminate.
As a “developing” nation, China is exempt from the Kyoto agreement under which industrialized countries are trying to reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases. China burns 2,500 tons of coal and 210,000 gallons of crude oil per minute. It has plans for 2,200 additional coal generators by 2030.
For every “cleaner” car put on California highways, many more regular cars will be added to Chinese roads with their drivers going to businesses that are opening, not closing or moving elsewhere. Guess which way the wind will blow all those greenhouse gases and auto pollution.
Hating Hate Crimes
July 6, 2009Hating Hate Crimes
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 2 July 2009
Law: The Senate is considering an expanded federal hate crimes law. And who wouldn’t be for such a law, given its obvious noble intent? Beware. This new law won’t reduce hate one bit, but it will limit your rights.
Read More: Judges & Courts
Sadly, hate is an ineradicable part of the human condition. But one person’s hate is another’s righteous anger. That’s why passing a law making a state of mind illegal is dangerous.
That won’t stop Democrats in Congress, though. They held hearings last week and soon may bring a bill up for a vote. Anyone who values the rule of law in America should reject it.
As it stands, the bill criminalizes any violent act perpetrated against someone because of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
In doing so, it makes crimes of things that are already crimes. Like murder. Is one person’s murder worse than another’s if the suffering is the same? This only creates special victims out of certain classes of people, a perverse form of reverse discrimination.
Suppose a middle-aged white man gets beaten to a pulp in a mugging. His assailant will be charged with the crime, nothing else. If the same crime is committed against a member of the special victim class, the crime becomes worse — a “hate crime.”
He’ll have a federal case. So, in effect, the justice meted out depends on the victim’s status — not on the severity of the crime.
This violates major swaths of the Constitution. It certainly twists the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause beyond recognition. And it likewise impinges on First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and thought. And subjecting those guilty of state crimes to additional federal prosecution is double jeopardy.
The very idea of a “hate crime” is a sickening echo of the “thoughtcrime” for which people could be tortured or executed in George Orwell’s dystopian classic, “1984.” This is what Hitler and Stalin did — make victims of whole classes of people.
Proponents of tougher hate crime laws like to cite the murders of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was beaten and left to die on the side of a road, and James Byrd, an African-American who was chained to a truck and dragged until little was left of him.
Both ugly, vicious crimes. But both were fully prosecuted under state laws. In Shepard’s case, one perpetrator got two life terms, the other a life sentence — the maximum allowed. Byrd’s murderers got death. Hard to imagine a “hate crimes” law topping that.
Equal treatment under the law is a fundamental principle of American jurisprudence. Hate crimes trample this principle by creating a special class of victims.
Congress might mean well, but this is a bad law that will have bad results and only add to our nation’s growing divisions.
Honduras And Drugs
July 6, 2009Honduras Defiant
IBD – 2 July 2009
Democracy: Nations aren’t usually put to the fearsome test to “live free or die.” But Hondurans are accepting it as the world pressures them to reseat a potential dictator in office. They aren’t bending.
On Tuesday, all 192 members of the U.N. General Assembly voted to condemn Hondurans’ removal of President Mel Zelaya from office. He was ousted this week after brazenly defying a Supreme Court ruling against a reelection referendum. Using the language of the effort’s ringleader, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the U.N. called the constitutional act “a military coup.”
The same day, the Organization of American States gave Honduras three days to reinstall Zelaya as president or its membership would be suspended. The World Bank “paused’ lending until Zelaya is back. The Inter American Development Bank followed suit.
Standard & Poor’s warned of a credit downgrade. Tourists were told by embassies to leave. Three bordering nations cut off trade. Nations pulled ambassadors. Venezuela’s despot, Hugo Chavez, cut off cheap oil. He now bucks for an OAS-led military invasion if his leftist pal Zelaya is not restored to power.
The U.S. has its own bag of potential sanctions for Honduras, although as new facts emerge about Zelaya’s involvement in the drug trade and his mental instability, doesn’t look as though it intends to use them. Still, the Sword of Damocles over Honduras could mean a suspended free trade treaty, a cutoff of its $200 million in aid, and an end to its immigration agreement with the U.S.
As the world follows Chavez’s lead in trying to force Honduras to accept a lawless man as its leader, disasters for Honduras loom.
The tiny country is impoverished. Its seven million people have a per capita income of just $1,635 a year. Its economy has been enfeebled by Zelaya himself. He has fixed prices and wages, and opened the door to drug traffickers, creating a burgeoning narcostate.
It seems impossible that Honduras could withstand new draconian pressure and isolation over taking Zelaya back.
Yet evidence shows that Hondurans consider the latter fate worse. If Zelaya is restored as president, he will resume his dictatorial ambitions while Hondurans lose their future freedoms. Oh, the OAS will tell them “dialogue” will solve it.
But Hondurans know better: If the rule of law won’t dissuade Zelaya from being dictator, why would sweet talk work?
Honduras’ new, constitutionally appointed leader, Robert Micheletti, defied the global blowhards sitting in judgment of Honduras and said he wasn’t leaving.
To Chavez, he said: “You don’t scare me.” He also warned Zelaya that if he flew back to assume office, he’d be arrested. Honduras’ Congress, and its Supreme Court are holding the line, too.
This can only be happening because they are listening to the only people whose opinion matters: Hondurans, some 80% of whom approve of the Court action. “Everyone here is celebrating,” a business leader told Latin Finance.
Tuesday, thousands of these Hondurans peacefully rallied in the streets, in vivid contrast to the 200 pro-Zelaya thugs who trashed fast food joints and burned garbage a day earlier.
Freedom isn’t free, and it looks as though the Hondurans will have to prove it. Accepting a fate as an international pariah state bears a hefty price. But plucky Hondurans have made their choice, valuing freedom over world esteem. If against all odds they win, their choice will strike the biggest blow for democracy since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The chain reaction that ensues may topple the false democracies in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Cuba. Just as Hondurans aided freedom fighters to crush Sandinista communism in the ’80s, they’ll now turn back the tide of false democracies.
If only America could be at their side for the victory this time.
