Useful Idiots for Palestine

Pat Condell does it again:

Occupy Wall Street: Protester Wants College Paid For Because That's What He Wants

Here is an interesting video of one of the occupiers of Wall Street. I know that one can be accused of selective postings, but the fact is that this protester and his demands are similar to the many others posted on YouTube.

In this particular example, the incoherent protestor wants his tuition paid because...well, thats what he wants. Based on his responses he must be a political science, ethnic studies or anthropology major.

As a Conservative, I hope that OWS continues till November 2012. They are the best thing to happen to the Republican Party.

The agony of inflation, made simple enough for economists to understand

Behind the scenes of photojournalism in the Middle East

Here we have a video posted by a young Italian journalist who took it upon himself to provide us with the images behind the cameras in the "spontaneous" demonstrations that take place in the Palestinian territories  and throughout the Middle East.  Many of these photographers are Arabs, Palestinians and religious Muslims who work as free lancers for major news services.  Expecting fair reporting from them is unrealistic.  Many of the international press are just as unfair, although for political or professional reasons.

The Great Social Security Debate

By Charles Krauthammer

Of course it's a Ponzi scheme

Proposition 1: In a Ponzi scheme, the people who invest early get their money out with dividends. But these dividends don’t come from any profitable or productive activity — they consist entirely of money paid in by later participants.

This cannot go on forever because at some point there just aren’t enough new investors to support the earlier entrants. Word gets around that there are no profits, just money transferred from new to old. The merry-go-round stops, the scheme collapses, and the remaining investors lose everything.

Now, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program. A current beneficiary isn’t receiving the money she paid in years ago. That money is gone. It went to her parents’ Social Security check. The money in her check is coming from her son’s FICA tax today — i.e., her “investment” was paid out years ago to earlier entrants in the system and her current benefits are coming from the “investment” of the new entrants into the system. Pay-as-you-go is the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

So what’s the difference? Ponzi schemes are illegal, suggested one of my colleagues on Inside Washington.

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Malmö police to learn 'polite' Arabic

Those of us who follow the Islamization of Europe. are not surprised to read this news report about the Malmö police getting ready to learn polite Arabic to help them better understand and communicate with local residents in the predominantly immigrant area.

Muslim thugs attack the police in Malmo

Malmo, which used to be a typical Swedish town, has become a third world outpost in the heart of Sweden.  Most of the Jewish population left because of the many violent antisemitic attacks.

The police department program of teaching Arabic conveys the message that the criminal behavior of the population of Malmo is simply the result of cultural misunderstandings between them and the Arab population.

What will be the next steps when the honor killings, rapes and attacks on the few Jews left continue?  Teach policemen to cook shish kebab? 

Nabil Shaat: "We Will Never Accept a Two State Solution"

Nabil Shaath, Fatah's Head of Foreign Relations: We Will Never Accept the "Two-States for Two Peoples" Solution to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.

The interesting thing is that Nabil Shaat is portrayed by the mainstream media as a moderate. As soon as Arab leaders talk to the Arab mob in Arabic, one can hear their true feelings.





Thanks MEMRI for the Translation

Understanding UN Bias Against Israel -- Invite to Durban 3 Protest, NYC, Sept 21

Images the Media Fails to Report

While reports from Israel seem more and more designed to vilify Israel, images such as the ones in this video are rarely shown by the mainstream media.

Last month, a group of sick Palestinian children from the West Bank along with their parents traveled to the Jerusalem Zoo for a day. Their trip was organized by the Civil Administration and Hadassah where the children are receiving medical treatment.

Talking Points, Talking Points, Talking Points...

The following video represents a clear example of what politicians have become today. Zombies manipulated by political consultants, with calculated talking points and unable to answer a simple question.

The person interviewed is Ed Miliband, leader of the Labor Party in Great Britain, discussing the strikes taking place in his country.

Obama's Pastor: All Whites are Liars

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION PUTS ISRAEL ON LIST OF COUNTRIES THAT SUPPORT OR PROMOTE TERRORISM

The Obama administration has added Israel to a list of 36 ‘specially designated’ countries that have ‘shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members.

The ‘specially designated country’ list is used by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to screen detained foreigners with an extra step, called a “Third Agency Check.” Overall, the countries on the list are unsurprising, with two exceptions this year. Israel was not on the list in 2008, but now in 2011, it has been added. North Korea, on the other hand, was dropped from the list this year but was on it in 2008.

The Department of Homeland Security published the list of “specially designated countries” as an appendix to a publicly released report on May 11 report entitled “Supervision of Aliens Commensurate With Risk.”

As reported by CNS News, ICE Spokeswoman Gillian Christensen claims the creation of the list began at least seven years ago during the Bush administration, and ICE was not responsible for creating it. According to a written statement by Christensen:

“The U.S. does not and never has considered Israel to have links to terrorism, but rather they are a partner in our efforts to combat global terrorism. Countries may have been included on the list because of the backgrounds of arrestees, not because of the country’s government itself.”

There are only five countries on the list that do not have majority Muslim populations, and those countries have had serious internal problems with radical Muslim terrorist groups or insurgencies.

Here is the list posted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE):

Afghanistan

West Bank

Algeria

Bahrain

Oman

Bangladesh

Pakistan

Philippines

Egypt

Qatar

Saudi Arabia

Indonesia

Somalia

Iran

Sudan

Iraq

Syria

Israel

The Obama Plan v. The Ryan Plan

Andrew Klavan's One State Solution

Words Have Meanings

An item caught my eye while reading about the affaire Schwarzenegger and the child he fathered with a maid at his employ.  The article euphemistically refers to the fruit of this sexual encounter between a narcissistic bodybuilder and an ugly maid as the “love child.”  How does the infant terminator qualify for this sweet title that implies a loving couple dreaming of a life together with their progeny?

If we call the outcome of a quickie with a maid a love child” shouldn’t we call Weiner’s picture of bulging underwear a “love message?”

Words have meanings and manipulating and changing these meanings is paving the road to an Orwellian world where manipulation, propaganda and lies are used to transform reality.  In this world we suddenly have sanitation engineers, little people, undocumented immigrants and revenue enhancement.  Thus, we confer on a guy who picks up garbage the title of engineer, implying that he spent long hours in a lab at MIT calculating the impact of gravitational pull on a garbage can, when the reality is that this garbage collector probably finished high school as a result of grade inflation and principals pushing for higher percentages of graduates.

 Hey, little people are midgets.  You can call them whatever you want.  Their height is still measured in inches. 

 And if you entered the country without a visa, or with a tourist visa that you allowed to expire you are an illegal alien.  And yes, you broke the law.  And if caught you will be deported.

And when politician don’t raise my taxes but implement revenue enhancement measures, I still end up writing a check on April 15.

Addicts and alcoholics are taught the first step in the way to recovery is to recognize the problem.  Imagine an alcoholic standing up during his first AA meeting and stating his name and instead of declaring that he is an alcoholic, he declares that he is a wine connoisseur.  It sure sounds better and is a lot less stigmatizing.  But the character is still a drunken bum.

The child that is born as a a result of a horny and powerful man mating with an ugly maid will grow up knowing that he is as much a love child as the children produced by white planters with black slaves.

Let’s stop this game of changing words to make them more palatable.  

Can anyone tell me now the term used for the progeny of two pigs?

GM Admits that Dealerships are Taking Chevy Volt Tax Credits

Here is another fascinating story that I have not seen reported by the mainstream media. Car dealerships are buying Chevy Volt cars, pocketing the $7,500 in tax credits for electric cars and turning around and reselling the Volts as used cars. 

Read the complete story and see another example of governmental inefficiency in writing tax policy.

Click here to read the story

An Anti-Israel President, by Bret Stephens

Say what you will about President Obama's approach to Israel—or of his relationship with American Jews—he sure has mastered the concept of chutzpah.

On Thursday at the State Department, the president gave his big speech on the Middle East, in which he invoked the claims of friendship to tell Israelis "the truth," which to his mind was that "the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace." On Friday in the Oval Office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his version of the truth, which was that the 1967 border proposed by Mr. Obama as a basis for negotiating the outlines of a Palestinian state was a nonstarter.

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Must Read! May 23, 2011

I don’t know what strategic purpose Obama had in mind for addressing the Middle East impasse when last Thursday he made the first of a series of speeches on the subject. Whatever this may have been, that speech produced one satisfactory result. The Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for once started to tell the west a few home truths about what it was doing.

Click here to read the article

Imagine if every year on the 7th of May, Germans held an annual commemoration of the defeat of the Nazi state, complete with Swastikas, anti-Jewish chants and slogans, and a historical narrative claiming that the Volksdeutsche expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the real victims of WW2. That disgusting spectacle is exactly what takes place on May 15th as Arab Muslims chant and riot to protest their unsuccessful genocide of a regional minority.

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Must Read!

Mark Steyn: The unzippered princeling and the serving wench

Back when he was still the officially designated Next President of France and not an accused rapist, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was glimpsed at the annual IMF soccer tournament wearing a T-shirt emblazoned "YES, WE KAHN!" (Monsieur le directeur was not participating in the game: The field he likes to play requires more horizontal exertions, as even the deferential and protective French media have begun belatedly to acknowledge.) In consciously mimicking the slogan of another and very successful presidential candidate, the IMF boss and Socialist Party candidate improved upon it – or, at any rate, made it more accurate. "Yes, We Can"? Er, no, actually, you can't. But yes, he Kahn!

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Thomas Friedman is one of journalism’s greatest celebrities, the single most famous US interpreter of the Middle East and the liberal columnist who has the most influence on the way Americans understand Israel. His 1989 book “From Beirut to Jerusalem” has been a best-seller, as was “The world is flat.”

Friedman also plays a major role in shaping Obama’s rhetoric about Israel’s return to the pre-1967 armistice line, which the late Abba Eban dubbed the “Auschwitz borders.”

For the first time now, the four digits (1967) have become formal American policy. It was also a Friedman victory. It was he, after all, who invented the so-called “Saudi plan for peace in the Middle East.” And it was Friedman who wrote that the White House is “disgusted” with Israeli interlocutors.

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A Tale of Two Betrayals, by Steve McCann in The American Thinker

The President of the United States has willingly and with forethought placed our long term ally, Israel, whose existence America has guaranteed since 1948, in an untenable situation by his attempt to impose a course of action that, if not followed by Israel, will further inflame the Muslim world and cause international sentiment to turn against Israel.

President Obama is attempting to force a settlement on terms dictated by the Arabs in the Middle East. By setting as a pre-condition the surrender of territory commensurate with the pre-1967 boundaries in any negotiations with the Palestinians, he has instead guaranteed further conflict.

Mr. Obama, the smartest and ablest person to ever occupy the Oval Office (as confirmed by his demeanor and sycophants in the media), either is naive and overweening (synonymous with the Left) or unaware of the failures throughout history caused by intimidating one's ally into giving up land in exchange for peace with someone bent on their destruction.

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Must Read! May 21, 2011

Former ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, explains in the Wall Street Journal  why the 1967 borders are indefensible.

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Must Read for May 20, 2011

Charles Krauthammer.  Brilliant as ever, he discusses Obama's Middle East speech. 

Click here to read the article

Caroline Glick gives us the best analysis of Obama's speech on the Middle East and what it signifies not only for Israel, but for the United States.

Click here to read the article

Raymond Ibrahim on Obama's Middle East speech.

Click here to read the article

Efraim Karsh responds to Abbas's fable in a New York Times op-ed.

Click here to read the article.

Robert Satloff looks at Obama's departure from positions of previous administrations concerning Israel and peace negociations.

Click here to read the article

A come-to-Moses moment at hand, by Wesley Pruden

The State Department, which has never been particularly friendly to Jews, is getting a little cover for its unrelenting deference to the enemies of Israel. The Jews eager to cover for the diplomats are the weak, the naive and, alas, the familiar.

They’re the liberal, mostly Democratic, Jews offended by the “aggressive” Israelis who understand what’s at stake in the Middle East. They’re embarrassed by and resentful of the “righteous Gentiles” eager to help Israel prevent a second Holocaust, this one in the Middle East, rather than to contribute to building another Holocaust museum later. Israel once united the contentious factions of American Jews, but now the mere existence of Israel exacerbates tension between the realists and the deaf, blind dreamers.

Nevertheless, a “come-to-Moses” moment is approaching. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, fresh from his kiss-and-make up session with the terrorists of Hamas, is coming to New York City in September to press the United Nations to recognize an independent Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be in Washington next week to address a joint session of Congress and to meet President Barack Obama. Maybe they’ll talk about that. The occasion will give Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu, in diplo-speak, “an opportunity for the United States and Israel to review the full range of issues, from Iran to the regional change to the peace process.”

If the past is the usual reliable guide, the White House and the State Department will actually see this as an opportunity to pressure Israel to submit to further accommodation to those who want to “wipe Israel off the map,” in the vow of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran and the chief enabler of Hamas. Mr. Obama himself is all aquiver working on his speech, probably to be delivered next week, eager to speak softly and carry small convictions made of strawberry Jell-O. The Wall Street Journal reports that he will urge Muslims to “reject Islamic militancy in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and embrace a new era of relations with the United States.” Ah, if only.

But it’s not just the Jews who get the back of his hand. There hasn’t been a peep out of the White House since a dozen Egyptian Christians were killed and scores injured by violent Muslims last weekend. Christian homes and businesses were trashed and burned. The pope condemned it; Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper condemned it. Nothing from the president, though there’s White House precedent for condemning burning churches. (Bill Clinton once condemned the burning of black churches in Arkansas even when nobody had burned any churches in Arkansas.)

Some American Jews who are fed up with the passivity, or worse, of well-established advocacy groups are splitting to establish new organizations with an appetite for the red meat that is the diet of everyone else in the Middle East. One particular target is the confederation of local Jewish Federations that, no doubt well-meaning, offer aid and comfort to those who mean Israel nothing but ill. In New York City, writes Jonathan Rosenblum, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and the Hebrew daily Maariv, a Jewish Federation affiliate on the Upper West Side supports organizations promoting boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel. In Washington, the Federation funds an anti-Jewish theater troupe called Theater J, whose recent offerings include a play about Israelis as modern Nazis. A Southern California chapter contributes money to send students to Israel to be treated to scolding lectures by Hamas speakers.

This Jewish cover for anti-Israel initiatives is no doubt welcomed by Arabists in Foggy Bottom, where skepticism of Jews is part of the established old order. In his biography of Harry S Truman, David McCullough tells of the fierce and bitter State Department resistance to recognizing the state of Israel at its founding in 1948. “The striped-pants conspirators,” Mr. Truman called the men just below George C. Marshall, the secretary who the president regarded as something of a saint. “Some White House men . . . believe that a number of positions taken by career men on this matter were based on anti-Semitism, not diplomacy,” wrote one prominent pundit. Men at the State Department accused the president’s men of being more concerned about Israel than American security.

Six decades later, some things have changed, but not all. One thing that has changed is that there’s no one remotely like Harry S Truman, a president fully at ease with the true character of the country he leads, in charge at the White House.

My Favorite Articles -- May 17

Mark Stey on entitlements:
Recently, in the London Telegraph, Liam Halligan bemoaned the way commentators focus on America’s $14 trillion of debt — i.e., the “debt ceiling” debt — without factoring in the entitlement liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That makes America’s real debt some $75 trillion, or five times GDP. Our own Kevin D. Williamson puts the FDR/LBJ entitlement liabilities a little north of $100 trillion. Once you add in state and municipal debt, you need to add a zero to that reassuringly familiar $14 trillion hole. The real hole goes ten times deeper: $140 trillion — or about twice as much as America’s total “worth.”

Click here to read the complete article

Brett Stephens has written an excellent article about the new developments in the Middle East in the aftermath of the border crossings into Israel by Arabs. It's about time we came to the realization that there will never be peace in the region. 
Click here to read the article.

Newt Gingrich throws House GOP under the bus.  Good analysis of the former speaker rejection of Congressman Ryan's Medicare reform.  This article clarifies why my fellow conservatives will vote for the Republican nominee in 2012, but will work very hard to defeat Gingrich in the primaries.

Click here to read the article in The Wall Street Journal

On the subject of Newt Gingrich, here is Krauthammer predicting that Gingrich will not recover from the comments he made.

Bin Laden's Defender: Noam Chomsky by Alan M. Dershowitz

Noam Chomsky has shown his true colors in his recently published "reaction" to the targeted killing of Osama Bin Laden. He apparently thinks Osama Bin Laden is the innocent victim of a cold-blooded murder that is worse than if George W. Bush were to be assassinated in his "compound." He doesn't believe Bin Laden's own admission of complicity in the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11, writing that it is about as credible as Chomsky's "confession that I won the Boston Marathon." Nor does he believe the evidence gathered by the 9/11 Commission, the grand jury that indicted Bin Laden, the numerous confessions and claims of responsibility by Al Qaeda operatives, and the video showing those who flew the planes in the presence of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He believes there is absolutely no "evidence"—"nothing serious"—that Bin Laden played any role in 9/11. He also accuses President Obama of "simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that 'we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda.'" To avoid any appearance of partisanship and to show that he is an equal opportunity despiser of all American presidents, he writes that "uncontraversally" President Bush's "crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's." (Guernica. My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death. Noam Chomsky. May 6, 2011.)

If Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were not responsible for 9/11, who was? The United States? The Zionists? Maybe it never happened at all, as some hard left "intellectuals" have claimed. After all, Chomsky is agnostic with regard to the Nazi Holocaust and believes that Holocaust denial is not anti-Semitic. Writing in defense of the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson's claim that the so-called Holocaust was a fraud perpetrated by the Jewish people, Chomsky assured his readers that "nobody believes there is an anti-Semitic connotation to the denial of the Holocaust . . . whether one believes it took place or not." Chomsky is himself guilty of genocide-denial, having assured his readers (at the height of the Cambodian genocide) that the Khmer Rouge—which he admired—was being falsely accused of mass murder.

The real question is why any reasonable person pays any attention to the ignorant rants of this America-hater, Israel-basher and conspiracy theorist. I can understand why Osama Bin Laden himself was, according to the Wall Street Journal, "a fan of Noam Chomsky." Bin Laden said that "Chomsky was correct when he compared U.S. policies to the Mafia." (See, Bin Laden wasn't an anti-Semite after all, since he liked at least one Jew, though he named one of his daughters Safiyah after Mohammad's aunt, because, he proclaimed, "Safiyah killed Jews.") I can even understand why radical anti-American zealots like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro admire him. But he has been described on his own book jacket as "arguably the most important intellectual alive." He has also been called the most influential academic in the world. What does this say about today's consumers of intellectual and academic wares?

I have debated Chomsky on several occasions and have found that he simply makes up facts and then characterizes them as "uncontroversial." This tactic works with sycophantic college audiences on the hard left, but for anyone who bothers to check "Chomsky facts," as his critics aptly dub them, will find that the source is often conspiratorial websites and hate propaganda. "Chomsky facts" bear little relationship to real facts, except on "Planet Chomsky," where a different reality governs.

The time has come to dump Noam Chomsky into the wastebasket of history. He has been proved wrong—factually, morally, politically and in every other way—by the verdict of history. He was wrong about the Nazi Holocaust, the Communist genocides, the "peaceful" intentions of Hezbollah, and the alleged "war criminality" of every American president in recent memory. Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal correctly characterized Chomsky as "a two-nickel crank" with "paranoid notions of American policy." Christopher Hitchens has called him a charter member of the "paranoid anti-war 'left'" who believes that "America is an incarnation of the third Reich that doesn't even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations."

Chomsky has no credibility among serious people who care about truth. He would be a joke if he were not so influential among the unthinking hard left and the anti-intellectual academics who propagandize their naïve students to move to Planet Chomsky, where they can live their paranoid lives devoid of any contact with the reality of planet earth. Nor would he have any credibility on political issues were he not a famous linguist—famous despite his absurd semantic claim that there is no "anti-Semitic connotation" to denying the Holocaust and calling it a fraud perpetrated on the world by the Jews! Even if his linguistic accomplishments were not controversial, they would not qualify him as a guru on the political, legal and military matters on which he regularly opines.

Chomsky will continue to hurt America and decent values so long as his political rants continue to be taken seriously by some of the intellectual elite who help to manufacture consent and create the illusion of credibility on the part of a hateful crackpot.

Hypocrisy

"Internationally, we've gone through a Teutonic shift in the Middle East that could have enormous ramifications for years to come."--President Obama, May 10, quoted by USA Today, which reports the White House says he meant "tectonic."

If Bush were president, this sentence would have been used as an example of his stupidity.

In the case of Obama, he just misspoke.

We Must Protect the Children

It never fails. I wake up optimistic and in a great mood, I read the headlines and am transformed into a manic pessimist. Today’s transformation was triggered by news from Baltimore, where two students, members of their high school lacrosse team, were arrested for possession of a two-inch pen knife and a lighter. The school, acting under the zero tolerance policy instituted by liberal politicians, had no choice but to report this incident and the police had to place handcuffs and fingerprint the students. The lighter was described as an “explosive device.”

This is another example of the insanity of the nanny state and cowardly administrators who could have confiscated the knife and the lighter and avoided the stigmatization of two kids who will have a permanent record, and will have to write yes in every employment application that asks if the applicant has ever been arrested.

Let me act now as devil’s advocate. Let’s assume that the two kids were carrying these dangerous weapons for nefarious reasons. The lighter to obviously smoke a cigarette, thus leading to the destruction of our healthcare system and pollution of the planet leading to global warming, and the other carrying a two-inch penknife for the purpose of hurting someone. Should such violent kids be allowed to carry lacrosse sticks? What about a five-inch sharp number two pencil?

And so it goes. Some imbecile politician ( Senator Schumer comes to mind) introduces legislation to “protect the children.” Who would dare to vote against it? The legislation passes and metastasizes into a monstrosity that criminalizes penknives, lighters, aspirin or medication for menstrual cramps, drawing of guns, pointing a finger with the thumb up in imitation of guns, toy guns, plastic soldiers who have a gun, and any other element deemed politically incorrect. Lacrosse sticks, baseball bats, golf clubs, tennis rackets, are okay. After all, no one has ever been hurt by a baseball club, but we all know of the dangers of a lighter. Sorry. Explosive device.

Ubiquitous Explosive Devises

Did you hear that the passenger yelled Allah U Akhbar?

So you are watching or listening to the news provided by the mainstream media (MSM). The reporter mentions that an unruly passenger attempted to open the door of the cockpit and had to be subdued by courageous passengers. So far so good. Another story about a nut in a plane.

What was left out of the story tells us more about the MSM than about the story. Passengers aboard the plane report that the unruly nut was a Yemenite who shouted Allah U Akbar as he attempted to open the cockpit. Almost no one reported this last part. After all it might paint members of the religion of peace in a bad light. Another example of editorializing instead o news reporting.

Watch the following vignettes. Only the first reports about the yelling of Allah U Akbar.

I might disagree with what you say...

"I disagree with what you have to say but will fight to the death to protect your right to say it." Voltaire

I disagre with what you have to say, and I will beat you if you dare say it. The Arabs

Harvard's Niall Ferguson on Obama's Amateurnish Foreign Policy in Egypt

A dissonant voice on MSNBC. Professor Ferguson presents an analytical view of the situation in Egypt, without the romanticism that the Left attaches to anything "revolutionary."

Afghan Savages Burn Cross and Obama's Effigy

Reports of the riots in Afghanistan are being presented with the explanation that they were triggered by the burning of a Q'uran by Reverend Terry Jones. Afghan members of the religion of peace have shown how tolerant they are by decapitations and assassinations. In this video, the headline is that Obama is burned in effigy. Upon watching this video, one can notice that beside Obama's effigy, the savage mob burns a cross. I am sure that the Vatican will react by apologizing about the Crusades.

In the meantime: Terry Jones is bad and intolerant, but Muslim outrage has to be understood. Repugnant!

Andrew Klavan Explains Multculturalism

The Tyrannies Are Doomed:

Barry Weiss discusses the Middle East with Professor Bernard Lewis. Published in the Wall Street Journal.

Princeton, N.J. 'What Went Wrong?" That was the explosive title of a December 2001 book by historian Bernard Lewis about the decline of the Muslim world. Already at the printer when 9/11 struck, the book rocketed the professor to widespread public attention, and its central question gripped Americans for a decade.

Now, all of a sudden, there's a new question on American minds: What Might Go Right?

To find out, I made a pilgrimage to the professor's bungalow in Princeton, N.J., where he's lived since 1974 when he joined Princeton's faculty from London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Two months shy of his 95th birthday, Mr. Lewis has been writing history books since before World War II. By 1950, he was already a leading scholar of the Arab world, and after 9/11, the vice president and the Pentagon's top brass summoned him to Washington for his wisdom.

"I think that the tyrannies are doomed," Mr. Lewis says as we sit by the windows in his library, teeming with thousands of books in the dozen or so languages he's mastered. "The real question is what will come instead."

For Americans who have watched protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Bahrain and now Syria stand up against their regimes, it has been difficult not to be intoxicated by this revolutionary moment. Mr. Lewis is "delighted" by the popular movements and believes that the U.S. should do all it can to bolster them. But he cautions strongly against insisting on Western-style elections in Muslim lands.

"We have a much better chance of establishing—I hesitate to use the word democracy—but some sort of open, tolerant society, if it's done within their systems, according to their traditions. Why should we expect them to adopt a Western system? And why should we expect it to work?" he asks.

Mr. Lewis brings up Germany circa 1918. "After World War I, the victorious Allies tried to impose the parliamentary system on Germany, where they had a rather different political tradition. And the result was that Hitler came to power. Hitler came to power by the manipulation of free and fair elections," recounts Mr. Lewis, who fought the Nazis in the British Army. For a more recent example, consider the 2006 electorial triumph of Hamas in Gaza.

Elections, he argues, should be the culmination—not the beginning—of a gradual political process. Thus "to lay the stress all the time on elections, parliamentary Western-style elections, is a dangerous delusion."

Not because Muslims' cultural DNA is predisposed against it—quite the contrary. "The whole Islamic tradition is very clearly against autocratic and irresponsible rule," says Mr. Lewis. "There is a very strong tradition—both historical and legal, both practical and theoretical—of limited, controlled government."

But Western-style elections have had mixed success even in the West. "Even in France, where they claim to have invented freedom, they're on their fifth republic and who knows how many more there will be before they get settled down," Mr. Lewis laughs. "I don't think we can assume that the Anglo-American system of democracy is a sort of world rule, a world ideal," he says. Instead, Muslims should be "allowed—and indeed helped and encouraged—to develop their own ways of doing things."

In other words: To figure out how to build freer, better societies, Muslims need not look across the ocean. They need only look back into their own history.

Mr. Lewis points me to a letter written by France's ambassador in Istanbul shortly before the French revolution. The French government was frustrated by how long the ambassador was taking to move ahead with some negotiations. So he pushed back: "Here, it is not like it is in France, where the king is sole master and does as he pleases. Here, the sultan has to consult."

In Middle Eastern history "consultation is the magic word. It occurs again and again in classical Islamic texts. It goes back to the time of the Prophet himself," says Mr. Lewis.

What it meant practically was that political leaders had to cut deals with various others—the leaders of the merchant guild, the craft guild, the scribes, the land owners and the like. Each guild chose its own leaders from within. "The rulers," says Mr. Lewis, "even the great Ottoman sultans, had to consult with these different groups in order to get things done."

It's not that Ottoman-era societies were models of Madisonian political wisdom. But power was shared such that rulers at the top were checked, so the Arab and Muslim communities of the vast Ottoman Empire came to include certain practices and expectations of limited government.

Americans often think of limited government in terms of "freedom," but Mr. Lewis says that word doesn't have a precise equivalent in Arabic. "Liberty, freedom, it means not being a slave. . . . Freedom was a legal term and a social term—it was not a political term. And it was not used as a metaphor for political status," he says. The closest Arabic word to our concept of liberty is "justice," or 'adl. "In the Muslim tradition, justice is the standard" of good government. (Yet judging from the crowds gathered at Syria's central Umayyad mosque last week chanting "Freedom, freedom!," the word, if not our precise meaning, has certainly caught on.)

The traditional consultation process was a main casualty of modernization, which helps explain modernization's dubious reputation in parts of the Arab and Muslim world. "Modernization . . . enormously increased the power of the state," Mr. Lewis says. "And it tended to undermine, or even destroy, those various intermediate powers which had previously limited the power of the state." This was enabled by the cunning of the Mubaraks and the Assads, paired with "modern communication, modern weapons and the modern apparatus of surveillance and repression." The result: These autocrats amassed "greater power than even the mightiest of the sultans ever had."

So can today's Middle East recover this tradition and adapt it appropriately? He reminds me that he is a historian: Predictions are not his forte. But the reluctant sage offers some thoughts.

First, Tunisia has real potential for democracy, largely because of the role of women there. "Tunisia, as far as I know, is the only Muslim country that has compulsory education for girls from the beginning right through. And in which women are to be found in all the professions," says Mr. Lewis.

"My own feeling is that the greatest defect of Islam and the main reason they fell behind the West is the treatment of women," he says. He makes the powerful point that repressive homes pave the way for repressive governments. "Think of a child that grows up in a Muslim household where the mother has no rights, where she is downtrodden and subservient. That's preparation for a life of despotism and subservience. It prepares the way for an authoritarian society," he says.

Egypt is a more complicated case, Mr. Lewis says. Already the young, liberal protesters who led the revolution in Tahrir Square are being pushed aside by the military-Muslim Brotherhood complex. Hasty elections, which could come as soon as September, might sweep the Muslim Brotherhood into power. That would be "a very dangerous situation," he warns. "We should have no illusions about the Muslim Brotherhood, who they are and what they want."

And yet Western commentators seem determined to harbor such illusions. Take their treatment of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. The highly popular, charismatic cleric has said that Hitler "managed to put [the Jews] in their place" and that the Holocaust "was divine punishment for them."

Yet following a sermon Sheikh Qaradawi delivered to more than a million in Cairo following Mubarak's ouster, New York Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick wrote that the cleric "struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching." Mr. Kirkpatrick added: "Scholars who have studied his work say Sheik Qaradawi has long argued that Islamic law supports the idea of a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy."

Professor Lewis has been here before. As the Iranian revolution was beginning in the late 1970s, the name of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was starting to appear in the Western press. "I was at Princeton and I must confess I never heard of Khomeini. Who had? So I did what one normally does in this world of mine: I went to the university library and looked up Khomeini and, sure enough, it was there."
'It" was a short book called "Islamic Government"—now known as Khomeini's Mein Kampf—available in Persian and Arabic. Mr. Lewis checked out both copies and began reading. "It became perfectly clear who he was and what his aims were. And that all of this talk at the time about [him] being a step forward and a move toward greater freedom was absolute nonsense," recalls Mr. Lewis.

"I tried to bring this to the attention of people here. The New York Times wouldn't touch it. They said 'We don't think this would interest our readers.' But we got the Washington Post to publish an article quoting this. And they were immediately summoned by the CIA," he says. "Eventually the message got through—thanks to Khomeini."

Now, thanks to Tehran's enduring Khomeinism, the regime is unpopular and under threat. "There is strong opposition to the regime—two oppositions—the opposition within the regime and the opposition against the regime. And I think that sooner or later the regime in Iran will be overthrown and something more open, more democratic, will emerge," Mr. Lewis says. "Most Iranian patriots are against the regime. They feel it is defaming and dishonoring their country. And they're right of course."

Iranians' disdain for the ruling mullahs is the reason Mr. Lewis thinks the U.S. shouldn't take military action there. "It would give the regime a gift that they don't at present enjoy—namely Iranian patriotism," he warns.

By his lights, the correct policy is to elevate the democratic Green movement, and to distinguish the regime from the people. "When President Obama assumed office, he sent a message of greeting to the regime. That is polite and courteous," Mr. Lewis deadpans, "but it would have been much better to send a message to the people of Iran."

Let's hope the Green movement is effective. Because—and this may be hard to square with his policy prescription—Mr. Lewis doesn't think that Iran can be contained if it does go nuclear.

"During the Cold War, both the Soviet Union and the United States had nuclear weapons but both knew that the other was very unlikely to use them. Because of what was known at the time as MAD—mutually assured destruction. MAD meant that each side knew that if it used a nuclear weapon the other would retaliate and both sides would be devastated. And that's why the whole time during the Cold War, even at the worst times, there was not much danger of anyone using a nuclear weapon," says Mr. Lewis.

But the mullahs "are religious fanatics with an apocalyptic mindset. In Islam, as in Christianity and Judaism, there is an end-of-times scenario—and they think it's beginning or has already begun." So "mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent—it's an inducement."

Another key variable in the regional dynamic is Turkey, Mr. Lewis's particular expertise. He was the first Westerner granted access to the Ottoman archives in Istanbul in 1950. Recent developments there alarm him. "In Turkey, the movement is getting more and more toward re-Islamization. The government has that as its intention—and it has been taking over, very skillfully, one part after another of Turkish society. The economy, the business community, the academic community, the media. And now they're taking over the judiciary, which in the past has been the stronghold of the republican regime." Ten years from now, Mr. Lewis thinks, Turkey and Iran could switch places.

So even as he watches young Middle Eastern activists rise up against the tyrannies that have oppressed them, he keeps a wary eye on the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. It is particularly challenging because it has "no political center, no ethnic identity. . . . It's both Arab and Persian and Turkish and everything else. It is religiously defined. And it can command support among people of every nationality once they are convinced. That marks the important difference," he says.

"I think the struggle will continue until they either obtain their objective or renounce it," Mr. Lewis says. "At the moment, both seem equally improbable."

Ms. Weiss is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

British Muslims for Israel

What a refreshing voice. In the following video you will hear from Hassan, a British Muslim saying exactly what millions of his coreligionists should be saying. If more Muslims voiced his opinions, a Palestinian state would have been in existence a long time ago.

Melanie Phillips on Calling Arabs Savages

The Fogel Massacre

Although I am not in the habit of putting morbid pictures in my blog, I feel that the pictures below must be seen. These are some of the pictures of the Fogel family who was massacred by Palestinian terrorists. Building a house in East Jerusalem is condemned by the world as an obstacle to peace. Massacring a family of five is totally ignored.  YouTube removed a video showing these pictures.  I guess that they didn't want us to believe that the religion of peace is not so peaceful after all.

Below the pictures, you will be able to read an article by Caroline Glick that summarizes what so many of us feel.

Three of the victims

4 years old Elad

Father and baby daughter, 4 months old Hadas

11 years old Yoav

Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when the Palestinian terrorists pounced on her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed on Friday night in their home in Itamar.

The terrorists stabbed Ruth to death as she came out of the bathroom. With both parents and the newborn dead, they moved on to the other children, going into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi's sons Yoav (11) and Elad (4) were sleeping. They stabbed them through their hearts and slit their throats.

The murderers apparently missed another bedroom where the Fogels' other sons, eight-year-old Ro'i and two-year-old Yishai were asleep because they left them alive. The boys were found by their big sister, 12-year-old Tamar, when she returned home from a friend's house two hours after her family was massacred.

Tamar found Yishai standing over his parents' bodies screaming for them to wake up.

In his eulogy at the family's funeral on Sunday, former chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau told Tamar that her job from now on is to be her surviving brothers' mommy.

In a rare move, the Prime Minister's Office released photos of the Fogel family's blood-drenched corpses.

They are shown as they were found by security forces.

There was Hadas, dead on her parents' bed, next to her dead father Udi.

There was Elad, lying on a small throw rug wearing socks. His little hands were clenched into fists. What was a four-year-old to do against two grown men with knives? He clenched his fists. So did his big brother.

Maybe the Prime Minister's Office thought the pictures would shock the world. Maybe Binyamin Netanyahu thought the massacre of three little children would move someone to rethink their hatred of Israel.

That was the theme of his address to the nation Saturday night.

Netanyahu directed most of his words to the hostile world. He spoke to the leaders who rush to condemn Israel at the UN Security Council every time we assert our right to this land by permitting Jews to build homes. He demanded that they condemn the murder of Jewish children with the same enthusiasm and speed.

He shouldn't have bothered.

The government released the photos on Saturday night. Within hours, the social activism website My Israel posted a short video of the photographs on YouTube along with the names and ages of the victims.

Within two hours YouTube removed the video.

What was Netanyahu thinking? Didn't he get the memo that photos of murdered Jewish children are unacceptable? If they're published, someone might start thinking about the nature of Palestinian society.

Someone might consider the fact that in the Palestinian Authority, anti-Jewish propaganda is so ubiquitous and so murderous that killing the Fogel babies was an act of heroism. The baby killers knew that by murdering Udi, Ruth, Hadas, Yoav and Elad they would enter the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. They can expect to have a sports stadium or school in Ramallah or Hebron built for them by the Palestinian Authority and underwritten by American or European taxpayers.

And indeed, the murder of the Fogel children and their parents was greeted with jubilation in Gaza.

Carnivals were held in the streets as Hamas members handed out sweets.

Obviously YouTube managers are not interested in being held responsible for someone noticing that genocidal Jew hatred defines Palestinian society - and the Arab world as a whole. But they really have no reason to be concerned. Even if they had allowed the video to be posted for more than an hour, it wouldn't have made a difference.

The enlightened peoples of Europe, and growing numbers of Americans, have no interest in hearing or seeing anything that depicts Jews as good people, or even just as regular people. It is not that the cultured, intellectual A-listers in Europe and America share the Palestinians' genocidal hatred of the Jewish people.

The powerful newspaper editors, television commentators, playwrights, fashion designers, filmmakers and professors don't spend time thinking about how to prepare the next slaughter. They don't teach their children from the time they are Hadas and Elad Fogel's ages that they should strive to become mass murderers. They would never dream of doing these things.

They know there is a division of labor in contemporary anti-Semitism.

The job of the intellectual luminaries in Western high society today is to hate Jews the old-fashioned way, the way their greatgrandparents hated Jews back in the days of the early 20th century before that villain Adolf Hitler gave Jew hating a bad name.

Much has been made of the confluence of anti-Semitic bile pouring out of the chattering classes. From Mel Gibson to Julian Assange to Helen Thomas to Charlie Sheen to John Galliano, it seems like a day doesn't go by without some new celebrity exposing himself as a Jew hater.

It isn't that the beautiful people and their followers suddenly decided that Jews are not their cup of tea (or rail of cocaine). It's just that we have reached the point where people no longer feel embarrassed to parade their negative feelings towards Jews in public.

A DECADE ago, the revelation that French ambassador to Britain Daniel Bernard referred to Israel as "that shi**y little country," was shocking. Now it is standard fare. Everyone who is anyone will compare Israel to Nazi Germany without even realizing this is nothing but Holocaust denial.

The post-Holocaust dam reining in anti-Semitism burst in 2002. As Jewish children and parents like the Fogels were being murdered in their beds, on the streets, in discotheques, cafés and supermarkets throughout Israel, fashionable anti-Semites rejoiced at the opportunity to hate Jews in public again.

The collective Jew, Israel was accused of everything from genocide to infanticide to just plain nastiness.

Israel's leaders were caricatured as Fagin, Shylock, Pontius Pilate and Hitler on the front pages of newspapers throughout Europe. IDF soldiers were portrayed as Nazis, and Israeli families were dehumanized.

No longer civilians with an inherent right to live, in universities throughout the US and Europe, Israeli innocents were castigated as "extremist-Zionists" or "settlers" who basically deserved to be killed.

Professors whose "academic" achievements involved publishing sanitized postmodern versions of anti-Jewish Palestinian propaganda were granted tenure and rewarded with lucrative book contracts.

Today, when properly modulated, Jew hatred is a career maker. Take playwright Caryl Churchill's 1,300- word anti-Semitic monologue "Seven Jewish Children."

The script accuses the entire population of Israel of mass murders which were never committed.

For her efforts, Churchill became an international celebrity. The Royal Court Theater produced her anti- Jewish agitprop. The Guardian featured it on its home page. When Jewish groups demanded that The Guardian remove the blood libel from its website, the paper refused. Instead, it left the anti-Semitic propaganda on its homepage, but in a gesture of openmindedness, hosted a debate about whether or not "Seven Jewish Children" is anti-Semitic.

From London, "Seven Jewish Children" went on tour in Europe and the US. In a bid to show how tolerant of dissent they are, Jewish communities in America hosted showings of the play, which portrays Jewish parents as monsters who train their children to become mass murderers.

"Seven Jewish Children's" success was repeated by the Turkish anti-Semitic action film "Valley of the Wolves- Palestine," which premiered on January 28 - International Holocaust Memorial Day. The hero of that film is a Turkish James Bond character who comes to Israel to avenge his brothers, who were killed by IDF forces on the Turkish-Hamas terror ship Mavi Marmara last May.

No doubt owing to the success of "Seven Jewish Children" and "Valley of the Wolves-Palestine" and other such initiatives, anti-Semitic art and entertainment is a growth sector in Europe.

Last month Britain struck again. Channel 4 produced a new piece of anti-Semitic bile - a four-part prime-time miniseries called "The Promise." It presents itself as an historical drama about Israel and the Palestinians, but its relationship with actual history begins and ends with the wardrobes.

In what has become the meme of all European and international left-liberal salons, the only good Jews in the mini-series are the ones who died in the Holocaust. From the show's perspective, every Jew who took up arms to liberate Israel from the British and defend it from the Arabs is a Nazi.

WHAT ALL this shows is that Netanyahu was wasting his time calling on world leaders to condemn the murder of the Fogel family. What does a condemnation mean? France and Britain condemned the massacre, along with the US. Does that exculpate the French and British for their embrace of anti-Semitism? Does it make them friends of the Jewish state?

And say a British playwright sees the YouTube censored photographs. No self-respecting British playwright will write a play called "Three Jewish Children" telling the story of how Palestinian parents do in fact teach their children to become mass murderers of Jews.

And if a playwright were to write such a play, The Royal Court Theater wouldn't produce it. The Guardian wouldn't post it on its website. Liberal Jewish community centers in America wouldn't show it, nor would university student organizations in Europe or America.

No, if someone wanted to use the photographs of Yoav's and Elad's mangled corpses and clenched little fists as inspiration to write a play or feature film about the fact that the Palestinians have no national identity outside their quest to annihilate the Jewish state, he would find no mass market.

The headlines describing the attack make all this clear.

From the BBC to CNN the Fogels were not described as Israelis. They were a "settler family." Their murderers were "alleged terrorists."

As far as the opinion makers of Europe and much of America are concerned, the Yoavs and Hadases and Elads of Israel have no right to live if they live in "a settlement."

So too, they believe that Palestinians have a right to murder Israelis who serve in the IDF and who believe that Jews should be able to live freely wherever we want because this land belongs to us.

Until these genteel Jew haters learn to think otherwise, Israel should neither seek nor care if they condemn this or any other act of Palestinian genocide. We shouldn't care about them at all.

Caroline Glick
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Good News, No Inflation

Can you imagine a doctor saying that other than for pancreatic cancer, the patient is in good health?  Well, the AP is reporting exactly like this.  Here is a quote from their last report:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.

So yesterday I paid $55 dollars to fill my tank with gasoline, and $64 for some groceries, and I have to celebrate that inflation is low?  CD's are paying less than 1%, and half of it goes to taxes.  The time has come to demand that the real rate of inflation be deducted from our taxes.  For those of you ignoratnt of economics, inflation is a hidden tax that benefits the government, but destroys any incentives to save.


Click here for the complete AP report. 

Palestinian Brutally Murders Family in Israel

A family of five, mother father and three children were brutally murdered in Israel. This act of savagery was greeted with celebration in Gaza, where Palestinians distributed candy in celebration. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad condemned the murders with the usual qualifiers noting that he condemns the attacks “just as I have denounced crimes against Palestinians.”

The mainstream media, busy with the Japanese earthquake has barely mentioned this event, and no emergency meeting of the UN Security Council has taken place. The reports keep hammering the fact that the victims were settlers in the West Bank, as if this somehow mitigates the crime. A reminder to all of them; these type of brutality has taken place in settlements and in Israel proper for decades.

Click here to read Reuters report

Teachers Unions Explained

Debunking Krugman

As a former school administrator, I am always fascinated by the use of statistics in order to explain either educational progress or failure. I remember sitting in countless meetings cringing while listening to such manipulations. But we were just amateurs when it came to using data to justify conclusions. For a real master at this game one has to read Paul Krugman at the New York Times.

In his last column, Krugman uses ACT and SAT data to show that Texas students are performing below Wisconsin students. Ergo, Wisconsin students are the beneficiaries of teachers that have a right to collective bargain, while Texas students suffer because their teachers have no such right.

Thank God for the age of the Internet.  In a short period after the publication of the article, Iowahawk published an entry that shows how similar data can be used to demonstrate that students in Texas are performing better than those of Wisconsin when taking into consideration ethnic breakdown and the perorfomance of different ethnic groups on the national level.

Read the article by clicking here: Longhorns 17, Badgers 1

Mark Steyn: Why are we still in Germany?

According to Bismarck's best-known maxim on Europe's most troublesome region, the Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Americans could be forgiven for harboring similar sentiments after the murder of two U.S. airmen in Germany by a Kosovar Muslim.

Remember Kosovo? Me neither. But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the wake of his Monica difficulties: Make war, not love, as the boomers advise. So Clinton did — and without any pesky U.N. resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them.

Instead, he and Tony Blair and even Jacques Chirac just cried "Bombs away!" and got on with it. And the left didn't mind at all — because, for a modern western nation, war is only legitimate if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever war you're waging.

Unlike Iraq and all its supposed "blood for oil," in Kosovo no one remembers why we went in, what the hell the point of it was, or which side were the good guys. (Answer: Neither.) The principal rationale advanced by Clinton and Blair was that there was no rationale. This was what they called "liberal interventionism", which boils down to: The fact that we have no reason to get into it justifies our getting into it.

A decade on, Kosovo is a sorta sovereign state, and in Frankfurt a young airport employee is so grateful for what America did for his people that he guns down U.S. servicemen while yelling "Allahu akbar!"

The strange shrunken spectator who serves as President of the United States, offering what he called "a few words about the tragic event that took place," announced that he was "saddened," and expressed his "gratitude for the service of those who were lost" and would "spare no effort" to "work with the German authorities" but it was a "stark reminder" of the "extraordinary sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are making . . ."

The passivity of these remarks is very telling. Men and women "in uniform" (which it's not clear these airmen were even wearing) understand they may be called upon to make "extraordinary sacrifices" in battle. They do not expect to be "lost" on the shuttle bus at the hands of a civilian employee at a passenger air terminal in an allied nation.

But then I don't suppose their comrades expected to be "lost" at the hands of an army major at Fort Hood, to cite the last "tragic event" that "took place" — which seems to be the president's preferred euphemism for a guy opening fire while screaming "Allahu akbar!"

But relax, this fellow in Frankfurt was most likely a "lone wolf" (as Sen. Chuck Schumer described the Times Square Bomber) or an "isolated extremist" (as the president described the Christmas Day Pantybomber).

There are so many of these "lone wolves" and "isolated extremists" you may occasionally wonder whether they've all gotten together and joined Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists, but don't worry about it: As any Homeland Security official can tell you, "Allahu akbar" is Arabic for "Nothing to see here."

Bismarck's second best-known maxim on the region is that the Balkans start in the slums of Vienna. The Habsburg imperial capital was a protean "multicultural society" wherein festered the ancient grievances of many diverse peoples.

Today, the Muslim world starts in the suburbs of Frankfurt. Those U.S. airmen were killed by Arid Uka, whose Muslim Albanian parents emigrated from Kosovo decades ago. Young Arid was born and bred in Germany. He is a German citizen who holds a German passport. He is, according to multicultural theory, as German as Fritz and Helmut and Hans. Except he's not. Not when it counts.

Why isn't he a fully functioning citizen of the nation he's spent his entire life in? Well, that's a tricky one.

Okay, why is a Muslim who wants to kill Americans holding down a job at a European airport? That's slightly easier to answer. Almost every problem facing the western world, from self-detonating jihadists to America's own suicide bomb — the multi-trillion dollar debt — has at its root a remorseless demographic arithmetic.

In the U.S., the baby boomers did not have enough children to maintain their mid-20th century social programs. I see that recent polls supposedly show that huge majorities of Americans don't want any modifications to Medicare or Social Security.

So what? It doesn't matter what you "want." The country's broke, and you can vote yourself unsustainable quantities of government lollipops all you like, but all you're doing is ensuring that when, eventually, you're obliged to reacquaint yourself with reality, the shock will be far more devastating and convulsive.

But even with looming bankruptcy America still looks pretty sweet if you're south of the border. Last week, the former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Steve Murdock, told the Houston Chronicle that in Texas "it's basically over for Anglos." He pointed out that two out of every three children are already "non-Anglo", and that this gap will widen even further in the years ahead. Remember the Alamo? Why bother? America won the war, but Mexico won the peace.

In the Lone Star State, Murdock envisions a future in which millions of people with minimal skills will be competing for ever fewer jobs paying less in actual dollars and cents than they would have earned in the year 2000. That doesn't sound a recipe for social tranquility.

What's south of Europe's border? Why, it's even livelier. In Libya, there are presently one million refugees from sub-Saharan Africa whose ambition is to get in a boat to Italy. There isn't a lot to stop them.

Between now and mid-century, Islam and sub-Saharan Africa will be responsible for almost all the world's population growth — and yet, aside from a few thousand layabout Saudi princes whoring in Mayfair, they will enjoy almost none of the world's wealth.

Niger had 10 million people in 2000, and half-a-million of them were starving children. By 2010, they had 15 million, and more children were starving. By 2100, they're predicted to hit 100 million. But they won't — because it would be unreasonable to expect an extra 90 million people to stay in a country that can't feed a population a tenth that size.

So they will look elsewhere — to countries with great infrastructure, generous welfare, and among the aging natives a kind of civilizational wasting disease so advanced that, as a point of moral virtue, they are incapable of enforcing their borders.

The nations that built the modern world decided to outsource their future. In simple economic terms, the arithmetic is stark: In America, the boomers have condemned their shrunken progeny to the certainty of poorer, meaner lives.

In sociocultural terms, the transformation will be even greater. Bismarck, so shrewd and cynical about the backward Balkans, was also the father of the modern welfare state: When he introduced the old age pension, you had to be 65 to collect and Prussian life expectancy was 45.

Now life expectancy has near doubled, you get your pension a decade earlier, and, in a vain attempt to make that deformed math add up, Bismarck's successors moved the old East/West faultline from the Balkans to the main street of every German city.

Americans sometimes wonder why, two decades after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. Army still lives in Germany. The day is approaching when they will move out — if only to avoid any more "tragic events" "taking place."

Rep. Allen West Confronts CAIR

Representative Allen West confronts CAIR executive Nezar Hamze member during a town hall meeting.  West responds to the question/criticism of Hamze with facts and courage.  Too bad so few are willing to prepare themselves with the facts necessary to show that Islam is far from being the religion of peace it purports to be.

Some segments in the video are difficult to understand, but between the firsts part and the last minute, one can get the gist of West's response.

Thank you Javier Majarres from Shark-Tank.net for posting this video.

Our Economy By the Numbers

From Ruth S. King comes a chart which all of us should read and absorb, sobering though it may be:

January                                              2009               Today               % change                           Source
Avg. retail price/gallon gas in U.S.        $1.83                $3.104            69.6%                                     1
Crude oil, European Brent (barrel)          $43.48              $99.02            127.7%                                   2
Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel)           $38.74              $91.38             135.9%                                  2
Gold: London (per troy oz.)                    $853.25            $1,369.            50 60.5%                               2
Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL                  $3.56                $6.33               78.1%                                   2
Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL                      $9.66                $13.75             42.3%                                   2
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. fob              $13.37              $35.39             164.7%                                 2
Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall     7.6%                  9.4%                23.7%                                  3
Unemployment rate, blacks                     12.6%               15.8%               25.4%                                   3
Number of unemployed                          11,616,000        14,485,000       24.7%                                   3
Number of fed. employees, ex. military (curr = 12/10 prelim)
                                                             2,779,000          2,840,000        2.2%                                    3
Real median household income (2008 v 2009)
                                                          $50,112             $49,777              -0.7%                                   4
Number of food stamp recipients (curr = 10/10)
                                                          31,983,716         43,200,878        35.1%                                    5
Number of unemployment benefit recipients (curr = 12/10)
                                                          7,526,598           9,193,838           22.2%                                   6
Number of long-term unemployed      2,600,000           6,400,000           146.2%                                    3
Poverty rate, individuals (2008 v 2009)
                                                         13.2%                 14.3%                  8.3%                                      4
People in poverty in U.S. (2008 v 2009)     
                                                        39,800,000          43,600,000        9.5%                                    4
U.S. rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings        
                                                       5                             9                       n/a                                        10
Present Situation Index (curr = 12/10)
                                                      29.9                         23.5                   -21.4%                              11 
Failed banks (curr = 2010 + 2011 to date)
                                                     140                            164                      17.1%                               12
U.S. dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate
                                                      89.76                        82.03                  -8.6%                                 2
U.S. money supply, M1, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim) 
                                                      1,575.1                    1,865.7                18.4%                               13
U.S. money supply, M2, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim)
                                                      8,310.9                   8,852.3 6.                5%                                 13
National debt, in trillions                 $10.627                 $14.052                     32.2%                            14 

Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history.

Sources:
(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; (2) Wall Street Journal; (3) Bureau of Labor Statistics; (4) Census Bureau; (5) USDA; (6) U.S. Dept. of Labor; (7) FHFA; (8) Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller; (9) RealtyTrac; (10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ; (11) The Conference Board; (12) FDIC; (13) Federal Reserve; (14) U.S. Treasury