What's the Difference Between Republicans and Democrats?

Ann Coulter explains on JWR the differences between Republicans and Democrats. Sweet!

The common wisdom holds that "both parties" have to appeal to the extremes during the primary and then move to the center for the general election. To the contrary, both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.

QOTD: 12/02/03

QOTD: Thomas L. Friedman, www.nytimes.com, November 30, 2003
The Chant Not Heard

Sorry, but there is something morally obtuse about holding an antiwar rally on a day when your own people have been murdered and not even mentioning it or those who perpetrated it.

He also added this.

[T]his war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. The primary focus of U.S. forces in Iraq today is erecting a decent, legitimate, tolerant, pluralistic representative government from the ground up. I don't know if we can pull this off. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start. But it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot.

World's First Automotive Easter Egg

The M3 has an easter egg to rev the engine to 5K rpm and pop the clutch. Cool!

EU Anti-Semitism Reporting

As usual, Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head.

[T]he European Union's Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has decided to shelve its report on the rise of anti-Semitism on the Continent. The problem, as reported in The Telegraph, is that the survey had found that "many anti-Semitic incidents were carried out by Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups", and so a "political decision" was taken not to publish it because of "fears that it would increase hostility towards Muslims".

Let's go back over that slowly and try not to get a headache: the EU's main concern about an actual epidemic of hate crimes against Jews is that it could provoke a hypothetical epidemic of hate crimes against Muslims. You couldn't ask for a better illustration of the uselessness of these thought-police bodies: they're fine for chastising insufficiently guilt-ridden whites in an ongoing reverse-minstrel show of cultural self-abasement, but they don't have the stomach for confronting real racism. A tolerant society is so reluctant to appear intolerant, it would rather tolerate intolerance.

Statistic of the Day

SOTD: Amir Taheri in JPost:

The Muslim world accounts for some 80 percent of political prisoners in the world...Today, there are an estimated 30,000 political prisoners in Iran [alone].

Koch for Bush

Amazingly, Democratic former mayor of New York City Ed Koch comes out for Bush over the Democrats in the area of foreign policy and defense.

* I believe the Bush doctrine of "mak[ing] no distinction between the terrorists who committed [the September 11] acts and those who harbor them," rivals in importance and impact the Monroe and Truman doctrines.

* ...President Bush also was correct in refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol...The Senate was right to oppose the Protocol...

* ...President Bush's opposition to the International Court of Justice is also well grounded.

* ...President Bush also was right to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

* ...President Bush, whom I do not agree with on a single domestic issue, has distinguished himself by his willingness to take on international terrorism. Most of his Democratic opponents who are running for president do not have the stomach to stand up to the bin Ladens and Saddam Husseins of the world.

He sums up the Democratic problem in a nutshell.

Appeasement never works. It simply whets the appetite of aggressors, causing them to demand even more from the victim.

We're Out to Get You

Let's see...The Jews are going to buy the country and run it with the Americans and the Masons...Divide the Muslims...Pose as Al Qaeda to bomb Jordan...Worse than Saddam...Caesar was Jewish...The Romans were Jewish...The Americans are Jewish...Using the Coca-Cola logo to destroy Islamic culture...Rule the World...Provoke war among the nations of the world...Build brothels to look like mosques...

Wow! All in a day's work...

Three State Solution for Iraq

LESLIE H. GELB in the NYT proposes that one solution for Iraq may be to break up the country into 3 separate entities, a Kurdish north, a Shiite south, and a Sunni middle. The Sunnis would be left without the oil. Seems fitting.

Almost immediately, this would allow America to put most of its money and troops where they would do the most good quickly — with the Kurds and Shiites. The United States could extricate most of its forces from the so-called Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, largely freeing American forces from fighting a costly war they might not win. American officials could then wait for the troublesome and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues, to moderate their ambitions or suffer the consequences.

QOTD: GWB

QOTD: Thanks to RCP

Those in authority, however, are not judged only by good motivations. The people have given us the duty to defend them. And that duty sometimes requires the violent restraint of violent men. In some cases, the measured use of force is all that protects us from a chaotic world ruled by force.
-- President George Bush - London, England

Waking up to the Age of Terror

The Telegraph carries an editorial on what the Western World is facing in the Islamofascist terrorists.

In a commentary on the destruction of the synagogues, the British-based radical group al-Muhajiroun referred to the abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1924 and the supposed evils that had flowed from it. The goal of Osama bin Laden and his sympathisers is the re-establishment of the caliphate in the Middle East and the eradication of Western secular influence. This vision looks back to what is seen as a golden age of Islam in the centuries following the Prophet's death. And it seeks revenge for the perceived humiliation of Muslims in the Crusades, in Napoleon's defeat of the Mameluks in 1798, in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and in continuing Western influence in the oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Gulf.

It is a vision inspired by a deep-seated hatred of the fruit of the European Enlightenment – a belief in progress and the power of reason, and the separation of secular and religious power. In their reaction to this mode of thinking, the Islamists would take us back in time; in extreme cases, a flight to the supposed theocratic purity of the desert in the age of Mohammed. And their ultimate weapon is the suicide bomber - today armed with explosives, tomorrow, if the opportunity arises, with much more deadly nuclear, chemical or biological devices.

Once more, President Bush steps into the breach with a straight-to-the-heart-of-the-problem speech.

The President [George W. Bush] talked of great responsibilities falling once again, as during the Second World War and the Cold War, to the great democracies. Their task was to rescue failing states and curb weapons proliferation; in the last resort to restrain aggression and evil by force; and to commit themselves to the global expansion of democracy, a form of government in which the Middle East is notably deficient.

The President expounded at greater length on the last point in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington earlier this month. Dismissing the "cultural condescension" which assumes that Islamic traditions are incompatible with representative government, he referred to Muslims living in democratic societies in Turkey, Indonesia, Senegal, Albania, Niger, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, India, South Africa, the nations of Western Europe and the United States. "More than half of all Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments," he said. "They succeed in democratic societies, not in spite of their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability, and encourages the encounter of an individual with God, is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government."

In the Banqueting House, Mr Bush challenged those in the West who would appease the Islamists in the hope of avoiding further retribution, a step which would simply confirm to the likes of bin Laden that the secular democracies were ripe for the plucking.

Israel Is Not An Apartheid State

Phyllis Chesler responds to a question about Palestinian women at a feminists' convention.

I took the question head-on. "If you're really asking about apartheid, let me talk about it. Contrary to myth and propaganda, Israel is not an apartheid state. The largest practioner of apartheid in the world is Islam which practices both gender and religious apartheid. In terms of gender apartheid, Palestinian women--and all women who live under Islam--are oppressed by "honor" killings, in which girls and women who are raped are then killed by family members for the sake of restoring the family "honor;" forced veiling, segregation, stonings to death for alleged adultery, seclusion/sequestration, female genital mutilation, polygamy, outright slavery, sexual slavery. Women have few civil, legal, or human rights under Islam."

I continued; "Islam also specializes in religious apartheid as well. All non-Muslims (Christians, including Maronites and Melkites, Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, Jews, Assyrians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, animists) have historically been viewed and treated as subhumans who must either convert to Islam or be mercilessly taxed, beaten, jailed, murdered, or exiled. The latest al-Queda attack in Saudi Arabia was primarily directed against Lebanese Christians and Americans."

I continued. "Today, the entire Middle East is judenrein, there are no Jews left in 22 Arab countries. And, the Arab leadership has backed the PLO strategy in which the 23rd state remains under constant and perilous siege. Historically in general, but specifically since 1948-1956, Arab Jews were forced to flee Arab Islamic lands. Most are living in Israel, the only Middle Eastern state in which Jews are allowed to live. Jews cannot become citizens of Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, for example and yet no one accuses those nations of apartheid."

It Takes Two to Partition

Summary curtesy of the newsletter of the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations (or whatever they're called).

It Takes Two to Partition - Yossi Klein Halevi (Jerusalem Post)

What we've learned about the conflict over this last bitter decade is that the Oslo-era notion of a comprehensive peace needs to be wiped from our lexicon. Instead, we should conceive not of resolving the conflict but of managing its intensity. A hudna isn't merely a means to an end but - at least for the foreseeable future, and possibly for this generation - the end itself.

One compelling reason why a comprehensive peace is now unattainable is the near-total absence, among mainstream Palestinians and the Arab world generally, of the notion that Jewish sovereignty over any part of this land is legitimate. In numerous conversations I've had with Palestinians from all levels of society, the consensus is that Israel isn't the expression of a people returning home but of a colonialist intrusion in the Middle East. The problem isn't Israel's policies but its existence.

Consider Gen. Nasser Youssef, arguably the most moderate figure in the Palestinian security apparatus, who recently lost a power struggle with Yasser Arafat. In the late 1990s, I participated in several long conversations between the general and several Israelis in his office in Gaza City. When we asked how he conceived of peace, Youssef replied that the Jewish people would be absorbed into the Arab nation to which it naturally belongs.

Even Gen. Youssef, then, is merely a tactical moderate, offering Jews protected minority status under a benign Muslim Arab majority rule. At best, the Palestinian leadership sees a two-state solution as an interim stage.

At every level of society in the Arab world generally, a "culture of denial" has taken root which denies the most minimal truths of Jewish history, from the existence of the Temple to the existence of gas chambers. In fact, only in the Arab world has Holocaust denial become part of mainstream discourse.

The strategic implications of that culture of denial is that Israel cannot, at this stage, contract itself into the vulnerable 1967 borders. An approximate return to the "green line" is conceivable only in a Middle East that has renounced its longing to eliminate Israel. And that is possible only if Israel receives recognition of its legitimacy - for now, inconceivable.

Centrist Israelis like myself are convinced that no concession will bring us peace, because the issue isn't discovering the precise point on the map that will satisfy Arab claims but the Arab rejection of any place on the map for a Jewish state.

QOTD: November 20, 2003

QOTD: Thanks to BOTW for this quote.

London's Guardian yesterday published a series of open letters to the president from various Englishmen and Americans. Many were hostile--the Guardian is a left-wing paper--but we like this one from novelist Frederick Forsyth (ellipsis in original):

"You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il . . . and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time."

Who Are the Anti-Bush Forces Protesting in England

Amir Taheri lays out clearly who opposes America's war on Islamo-fascists and other terrorists, currently protesting Bush's visit to Britain.

The demonstration is organized by a shadowy group called "Stop the War Coalition," part of the Hate-America-International, which has orchestrated a number of street "events" in support of the Taliban and the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein since 2001.

Is this just an anti-war group? Let's hear their answer.

When I called the coalition to ask whether the idea was to stop all wars, a spokeswoman assured me that this was not the case.

She referred me to the first article of the coalition's charter that states: "The aim of the coalition is simple: to stop the war currently declared by the United States and its allies against 'terrorism.'"

"We really want to stop Bush and Blair from going around killing babies," she said. "Our objective is to force the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan."

But what if a U.S. withdrawal means the return of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein?

"Anything would be better than American Imperialist rule," she snapped back.

Ahh, nostalgia for the Saddams of the world. But who, then, are they really?

The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard left groups: Communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castrists. Three others belong to the radical wing of the Labour party. There are also eight radical Islamists. The remaining four are leftist ecologists known as "Watermelons" (Green outside, red inside). [emphasis mine]

Love that watermelon term!

He continues...

But why are these people taking to the streets?

One reason is that the parties, groups, and individuals involved have consistently failed to find a place in the normal institutions of British democracy.

The 60 or so leftist and Islamist groups involved in this odd enterprise have never managed to win more than one half of one percent of the votes in any British general election. Nor have they succeeded in winning a single seat in parliament or a majority in a single municipal council.

Those who can never win elections, always take to the streets. Street politics enables them to escape debate on complex issues that cannot be reduced to a few simplistic slogans.

Britain's participation in the war against terrorism was the subject of four exhaustive debates in the House of Commons in 2001 and 2002, each followed by a vote that Prime Minister Tony Blair won.

Street politics is for those who wish to abolish individual political judgment, the cornerstone of democratic life. Street politics encourages the irrational tendencies of crowds that could turn into hunting packs or lynch mobs. Power won in the streets produces only ochlocracy (rule by the worst).

An anti-democratic, pro-fascist crowd?

To make sure that no discordant voice is heard, the organizers of the demonstrations have announced that only "authorized" t-shirts, hats and other paraphernalia will be allowed. Only four slogans are permitted: "Stop Bush," "Stop Blair," " U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan," and " Bush Go Home!"

The demonstration's security force, made up of muscular Marxists and Islamists, has instructions to prevent any sign of pro-American sentiments. A group that has said it wants to take part in the demonstrations with t-shirts saying "Bush-Cheney: Four More Years!" has been warned of "dire consequences."

The London demonstration is planned and will be supervised in the best Stalinist traditions still in force in North Korea.

In countries that suffer under despotism, the street is, at times, the only space available to the opposition. This is why we hear so much about the so-called "Arab street." But do we need a "British street" that disdains the institutions of democracy, including mainstream political parties, and the parliament?

Christopher Hitchens knocks the craven Fiachra Gibbons on her ass concerning her article on the causes of the bombing of two synagogues in Turkey.

[T]he presses of the London Guardian were churning out the following paragraph, from someone named Fiachra Gibbons:

So when six die, as they did on Saturday morning when their blood mingled with that of their Muslim neighbors blown to bits by a suicide bomber outside the Neve Shalom synagogue, the heart should miss a beat and the world weep. For we are mourning the loss of souls who had learned to span a supposedly unbridgeable gulf that is being daily widened by George Bush and our own dear, deluded leader.

In a way, this effort doesn't quite meet the standard of moral cretinism that I had suggested. It actually fails to make any link at all between the actions of the murderers and the policy of Bush and Blair. Rather, it simply assumes that the victims are to have their deaths attributed in this fashion. The prevalence of this assumption, along with its facile appearance in the pages of a great liberal newspaper, is something worth noting. [bold emphasis mine]

As the author undoubtedly knows—she elsewhere demonstrates some knowledge of Turkish Jewry—and as I reminded readers yesterday, the Neve Shalom synagogue has been lethally attacked before. The last occasion was in the late 1980s. At that time, the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher governments had for some years taken a pro-Saddam Hussein "tilt" in the Iran-Iraq war. I can't remember what the excuse of the Jew-killers was on that previous occasion, but it most certainly wasn't their hatred for regime change. Maybe they didn't come up with an excuse, imagining that the action spoke for itself. Anyway, why bother with a justification when there are so many peace-loving and progressive types willing to volunteer to make the excuses for you?

Battle of the Liebermans

How ironic, a husband and wife named Joseph and Hadassah Lieberman write a book slamming the other more famous couple by that name.

Scary World

Jeff Dunetz scarily summarizes why its tough road ahead for world Jewry.

friend once told me that all Jewish holidays are based on the same premise, "they tried to kill us — we won — lets eat!" It is partially true, some very joyous holidays fit into that category such as Purim and Chanukah…. Then there are the others based on a totally different idea: They tried to kill us THEY won, and few of us survived by the grace of G-d. You know, observances such as Tisha B'Av and the secular Yom HaShoah.

Call me an alarmist but I am scared! Every time I open a newspaper or turn on the TV is becoming increasingly clear to me that we may be facing the early stages of one of those "They tried to kill us" periods.

A Woman's Choice

Emuna Braverman on Aish.com.

...the women's movement was inaptly named. It wasn't really feminism; it was careerism. It wasn't a recognition and celebration of the uniquely female contributions to society; it was a glorification of the job market.

Ignorance About Energy

Alan Caruba has another excellent article on the state of the energy industry and American energy policy.

...all kinds of Green snake oil salesmen will leap in to tell you that the US should be developing wind or solar power alternatives. Neither of these is viable, nor make the slightest sense at all, either in terms of the minuscule amount of energy they can produce, nor the costs involved. Both are largely sustained by government grants of one sort or another. Forget about hydrogen power, it is a myth.

We need to understand that we cannot "conserve" our way to energy use. Untapped energy resources is energy wasted. If this nation needs oil, it must encourage access to it. If this nation needs coal, it must encourage access to it. If we need natural gas, we need to encourage access to it. We are not doing this. Instead, a vast matrix of "environmental" laws make it difficult, costly, and often impossible to do this. What´s left? Hydroelectric power and the Greens are trying to shut that down as well!

Yes, there are ways to reduce energy consumption, but the issue is not consumption so much as it is being able to have energy when you need it! Energy literally fuels the engine of the American economy. And your home or apartment. Your workplace. And your car. Et cetera.

The United States of America, however, has enough coal for the next 250 years and, by some estimates, a 100-year supply of oil and natural gas. Around the world, new reserves are found every year.

If you remain ignorant about how energy is generated, you risk finding yourself without any. And most Americans are totally ignorant on the subject.

Required reading!

To Hell With Sympathy

Charles Krauthammer reveals the search for sympathy for the US to be false god that liberals worship to our country's regret.

It is pure fiction that... pro-American sentiment was either squandered after Sept. 11 or lost under the Bush Administration. It never existed. Envy for America, resentment of our power, hatred of our success has been a staple for decades, but most particularly since victory in the cold war left us the only superpower.

Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist President one can imagine, and yet we know that al-Qaeda began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency. Clinton made humility his vocation, apologizing variously for African slavery, for internment of Japanese Americans, for not saving Rwanda. He even decided that Britain should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. A lot of good that did us. Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War on America in 1996--at the height of the Clinton Administration's hyperapologetic, good-citizen internationalism.

Moreover, it is unseemly, even pathetic, for the would-be leaders of a great power to pine for the pity gleaned on the day America lay bleeding and wounded. This is to carry into foreign policy a pathology of our domestic politics — the glorification of victimhood and the lust for its privileges, such as they are. It is not surprising that having set up at home a spoils system that encourages every ethnic group to claim even greater victimization than the next, the Democrats should lament the fact that we did not seize and institutionalize our collective victimhood of Sept. 11.

The world apparently likes the U.S. when it is on its knees. From that the Democrats deduce a foreign policy — remain on our knees, humble and supplicant, and enjoy the applause and "support" of the world.

This is not just degrading. It is a fool's bargain--3,000 dead for a day's worth of nice words and a few empty U.N. resolutions. The Democrats would forfeit American freedom of action and initiative in order to get back — what? Another nice French editorial? To be retracted as soon as the U.S. stops playing victim?

Sympathy is fine. But if we "squander" it when we go to war to avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead, then to hell with sympathy.[Emphasis mine] The fact is that the world hates us for our wealth, our success, our power. They hate us into incoherence. The Europeans, Ajami astutely observes, disdain us for our excessive religiosity (manifest, they imagine, by evolution being expelled from schools while prayer is ushered back in)--while the Arab world despises us as purveyors of secularism. We cannot win for losing. We are widely reviled as enemies of Islam, yet in the 1990s we engaged three times in combat — in the Persian Gulf and in the Balkans — to rescue Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, Muslim peoples all. And in the last two cases, there was nothing in it for the U.S.; it was humanitarianism and good international citizenship of the highest order.

The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots are envy and self-loathing — by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having failed at it, find their one satisfaction in despising modernity's great exemplar.

What Really Happened With the Sandinistas

Jeff Jacoby describes what happened after the Sandinistas seized power in Nicaragua.

After seizing power in 1979, the Sandinistas had quickly moved to take over Nicaragua's radio and TV stations, and to impose strict censorship on La Prensa, the leading newspaper. It arrested and tortured independent labor leaders. It vilified the Catholic church, persecuted the small Jewish community, and treated evangelical Protestants with particular viciousness. It expelled thousands of Miskito Indians from their homes, forcibly relocating them to government camps. With Cuban and Soviet aid, it launched a massive military buildup.

Like all communists, the Sandinistas were ruthless toward dissenters; by 1983, their prisons held more political prisoners than those of any Western Hemisphere nation except Cuba. The Sandinistas also produced what every communist regime produces: a flood of refugees. It was estimated in 1986 that one-10th of Nicaragua's population had fled from Sandinista repression.

The "Arab Street's" Concept of Freedom

Cal Thomas wonders if our attempts to persuade Arab countries to become democracies is doomed to failure.

[A]s former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher noted at a U.N. disarmament conference more than two decades ago, we in the West make a mistake when we "transpose" our morality on those who don't share it.

President Bush asked, "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty?" It depends on the meaning of liberty. What if the Islamic nations of the region define liberty differently from us? Suppose they see our liberty as something corrupting to faith and morals and our culture as something they do not wish to import, but oppose as inimical to a healthy life on Earth and an impediment to an afterlife?

...

Secular societies, even those presided over by an openly Christian leader like President Bush, risk lulling their people into complacency when they offer bromides instead of calls to civil defense and appropriate responses during war. As Giuseppe De Rosa, S.I. writes in the Italian publication La Civilta Cattolica: "all of Islamic history is dominated by the idea of the conquest of the Christian lands of Western E urope and of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. Thus, through many centuries, Islam and Christianity faced each other in terrible battles, which led on one side to the conquest of Constantinople (1453), Bulgaria and Greece, and on the other, to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the naval battle of Lepanto (1571)."


That warrior spirit, or jihad, continues today. The president said there is "democratic progress in many predominately Muslim countries," such as Niger. He also said Muslim men and women are "good citizens" of a number of other nations, including South Africa, Western Europe and the United States. Would it be indelicate to note that Muslims do not (yet) direct the political destiny in those nations?


The president left out Nigeria, which borders Niger. Many regions in Nigeria have introduced Sharia as state law, which has been used to persecute thousands of Christians. Major attacks against Christians have occurred in the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, Java, East Timor and the Moluccas. In the northern Arab and Muslim portion of Sudan, genocidal war continues against the black and mostly Christian south.


To fundamentalist Muslims, liberty is not found in democracy. It is found in Allah and actions they believe please their god. The most extreme of them, who seem to be growing in number and influence, plant the idea in the minds of children (see a number of Palestinian videos and textbooks) that this life is nothing and that they should "seek Shahada" (martyrdom) and "ask for death," which they teach is true liberty.

...

In their sermons, in editorials in their state-owned newspapers and on television and in the actions of the most radical among them, their objective is clear — to defeat and subjugate all nations and all thinking to their religion and their way. To them, it is we who live in bondage and they who are ultimately free.

Arab Slavery A-OK?

Saudi Information Agency reports on leading Saudi cleric in favor of slavery.

The main author of the Saudi religious curriculum expressed his unequivocal support for the legalization of slavery in one of his lectures recorded on a cassette and obtained exclusively by SIA news.

Leading government cleric Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan is the author of the religious books currently used to teach 5 million Saudi students, both within the and in Saudi schools aboard – including those in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

"Slavery is a part of Islam," he says in the tape, adding: "Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam."

Government spokesman Adel Al-Jubeir and other officials have repeatedly claimed religious curriculums are being reformed, but Al-Fawzan’s books continued to be used according to the minister of education’s statements published by Al-Watan daily September 14th, 2003.


Al-Fawzan is member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, a member of the Council of Religious Edicts and Research, the Imam of Prince Mitaeb Mosque in Riyadh, and a professor at Imam Mohamed Bin Saud Islamic University, the main Wahhabi center of learning in the country.

Al-Fawzan refuted the mainstream Muslim interpretation that Islam worked to abolish slavery by introducing equality between the races.

"They are ignorant, not scholars," he said of people who express such opinions. "They are merely writers. Whoever says such things is an infidel."

Al-Fawzan’s most famous book, "Al-Tawheed – Monotheism", is taught to Saudi high school students. In it, he says that most Muslims are polytheists, and their blood and money are therefore free for the taking by "true Muslims."

The Arab World Is Not Ready To Accept Israel After All

Former Iranian (yes, not actually an Arab country) foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, now a top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader recently was quoted as saying the following.

"One of the elements of progress in a country is regional cooperation. Israel was created to prevent unity and cooperation between Islamic countries, that is why the existence of Israel is in contradiction with the national interests of Iran."

Let's Hear It for the Czechs

The Czech's understand the present situation in the Middle East better than anyone in Europe. Why?

Exactly two thirds of a century ago the British and French governments forced Czechoslovakia to give up territory that Germany considered to be "occupied." A few months later, Germany wiped Czechoslovakia entirely off the map.

British and French leaders thought appeasement would protect them from Germany's wrath, saving them from having to fight a terrorist state. Once he got this Czech territory, German leader Adolf Hitler explained, he would have no more demands and would get along just fine with the British and French. They believed him. They were wrong.

But they also justified their behavior in terms of human rights and charity to the weaker side. After all, the land Czechoslovakia was forced to yield was inhabited by ethnic Germans. Berlin's demand to rule those citizens could be portrayed as reasonable. Also, Germany had been humiliated a few years before, in World War I, so it was only trying to regain national pride and reacting against its mistreatment by the victors.

Obviously, the analogy with the current situation can be easily overdone and I certainly don't believe the outcome will be the same. Still, it might be useful if people thought through this comparison. Certainly, the Czechs have done so.

That is why the Czech Republic can be considered Europe's most pro-Israel state. After a half-century experience of Nazi and communist rule, Czechs don't evince romanticism toward radical ideologies, respect dictators, tolerate propaganda, or suffer from illusions about rationalizing terrorism.

They can tell the difference between a fence to stop terrorists and the Iron Curtain wall that not long ago crossed their own country where those trying to flee were shot down. They also know the consequences of inciting against Jews, no matter how such accusations are falsely glorified as progressive or dishonestly rationalized as deserved.

Their own capital, Prague, is more crowded than any in Europe with Jewish ghosts in its old, little-changed Jewish Quarter. They know, too, their country's best-known writer, Franz Kafka, was a remarkable voice for that people's unique situation. If you talk to a Czech about ignorant, craven leaders trading off the rights of a far-off land of which they know little, he recognizes this as a paraphrase of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's remark about their country when he was selling it out.

With Allies Like These Who Needs Enemies?

These are still allies? WP via Stone.

Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council. Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after private talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would probably wage a long air war first, as it had done in previous conflicts. By hunkering down and putting up a stiff defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by Paris and Moscow. [Emphasis mine]

Conservative Judaism Head Rabbi Calls Sabbath-Driving Rule a "Mistake"

The Forward reports on a remarkable admission by the head of Conservative Judaism's leading seminary.

The head of Conservative Judaism's flagship institution is arguing that the movement made a "mistake" when it issued a landmark ruling a half-century ago permitting Jews to drive to synagogue on the Sabbath.

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, made his declaration last week in Dallas during a speech at the biennial convention of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. By sanctioning travel on the Sabbath, he said, the Conservative movement "gave up on the desirability of living close to the synagogue and creating a Shabbos community."

And what did others in the movement say?

Schorsch's argument was rejected by several other movement leaders who argued that it failed to take into account the inevitability of Jewish flight to the suburbs and was insensitive to those living outside of Jewish enclaves in the Northeast, such as the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Schorsch's institution is located.

If this is so, how have Orthodox communities outside the Northeast managed to build communities in the suburbs without driving?

Yavan Vs. Shem

QOTD: From the WSJ.

In July this year the newspaper Stochos interviewed the caricaturist Dimitris Kitsikis, who said, "It's a fact that the Jews are the Greeks' great rivals . . . The Jews and the Greeks are competing for who will reign over the planet . . . I'm sure we will beat the Jews."

State of Jews in Britain

Melanie Phillips writes in Ha'Aretz on the Tory selection of Michael Howard says anything positive about the state of anti-semitism in Britain.

The British Conservative party has elected Michael Howard as its first Jewish leader - and potential prime minister - since Benjamin Disraeli led the Tories in the 19th century.

This has occurred when much of the Jewish community in Britain feels besieged by an upsurge of anti-Jewish hatred. So how can a country whose deep vein of prejudice is once again open and flowing be sanguine about the possibility of a Jewish prime minister?

Some Jews see no problem in Britain - quite the reverse. Howard's rise demonstrates, they purr, that Britain has changed, that it has developed a new maturity, that British Jews have finally become truly accepted. From which Panglossian optimism, one can only marvel at the infinite human capacity for self-delusion.[Emphasis mine!]

For Britain is where the veteran Labour MP Tam Dalyell claimed a "cabal" of Jews was controlling Tony Blair and George Bush - and was then promptly excused as a lovable eccentric. Where the following day, the BBC TV current affairs show "Newsnight" concluded that Dalyell had a case, and a "tightly knit" group of Jews really did control U.S. foreign
policy.

Where Israel is repeatedly dehumanised and delegitimised as an apartheid or Nazi state. Where almost two thirds of the public believe it is the biggest threat to world peace. Where attacks on Jews have increased. And where friendships between Jews and non-Jews founder over claims by the latter that the Jews are all-powerful, and that the establishment of Israel was a terrible mistake.

Europeans are worse than cockroaches

Mark Steyn levels the guns and fires with all guns blazing!

There is a Cold War between the US and the EU, says Mark Steyn, and it will
end with the collapse of Old Europe
by Mark Steyn

Here’s a round-up of recent items from the world’s press you may have
missed: Item 1: In the last two weeks, two Toronto-bound El Al flights had to be
diverted to other airports after credible terrorist threats were made about using
surface-to-air missiles against them. The Canadian transport minister, David
Collenette, responded by suggesting that the Israeli airline’s service to
Pearson International Airport might be ended.

Item 2: The Baghdad hotel in which Paul Wolfowitz was staying was blown up.
Several people were killed, though the US deputy defence secretary emerged
unscathed. Much of the death and destruction was caused by French 68mm missiles
‘in pristine condition’, according to one US officer who inspected the rocket
tubes and assembly. In other words, they’re not rusty leftovers Saddam had lying
around from the 1980s. The Baathist dictatorship had acquired these missiles
from the French rather more recently.

Item 3: According to Le Nouvel Observateur, ‘D’après un questionnaire de la
Commission Européenne, 59% des Européens pensent qu’Israël est le pays le plus
menaçant pour la paix dans le monde.’

Item 4: In the Guardian, Tariq Ali ended this week’s column on the mounting
American (and NGO) death toll in Iraq thus: ‘Iraqis have one thing of which
they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an
opposition’.

On 11 September 2001, I wrote that one of the casualties of the day’s events
would be the Western alliance: ‘The US taxpayer’s willingness to pay for the
defence of Canada and Europe has contributed to the decay of America’s
so-called “allies”, freeing them to disband their armed forces, flirt with dictators
and gangster states, and essentially convert themselves to semi-non-aligned.’
‘The West’ was an obsolete concept, because, as I put it later that month,
for everyone but America ‘the free world is mostly a free ride’. [Emphasis mine!]

Two years on, most governments, at least officially, and most commentators,
at least in the mainstream press, still don’t believe the relationship between
America and its ‘allies’ is in a terminal state. But the above quartet of
stories — and you can find equivalent items any week — illustrates why it can’t
be put back together.

One: Mr Collenette’s response to terrorists is to take it out on their
targets. Terrorists are threatening to use SAMs against El Al? No problem, we’ll get
rid of El Al. That’s a great message to send. How soon before similar threats
are phoned in to similarly jelly-spined jurisdictions in Europe? Pretty soon
El Al won’t be flying anywhere. But no matter: Air Canada and Air France and
Lufthansa will still be flying to Tel Aviv — at least until a couple of
anonymous phone calls are made hinting at fresh targets.

The threats against El Al came via phone calls from the Toronto area from
terrorists claiming to have heat-seeking missiles. Police subsequently found a
cache of weapons including a German-made shoulder rocket launcher that was
smuggled into Canada through the ingenious method of dropping it in the mail and
letting the Post Office deliver it. So there are two approaches to this problem:
you can crack down on Toronto-based terrorist cells and try to get government
agencies not to deliver their rocket launchers; or you can ban El Al. Mr
Collenette inclines to the latter. This is a man, by the way, who marked the first
anniversary of 11 September by publicly regretting the fall of the Soviet
Union because now there is nobody to check America’s ‘bullying’.

Lesson: In the war on terror, the United States believes in pre-emption;
Canada, like many other ‘allies’, believes in pre-emptive surrender. These two
strategies are incompatible.

Two: Just suppose that one of those French rockets had killed Paul Wolfowitz.
One of the greatest fictions of the interminable debate on Euro-American
differences over Iraq is that it’s an argument about the means, not the end. If
only Bush had been a little less Texan, less arrogant, less bullying, if only
he’d been less impatient and willing to put in the hours, he could have brought
the French and Germans round. After all, everyone agrees Saddam Hussein is a
very bad man.

Not the French and Germans. There’s too much evidence suggesting the main
reason they were unable to join the Bush side in this war is that they’d already
signed on to the other team and they’d decided, in the sort of ghastly
vernacular the cretinous Yanks would use, to dance with them what brung you. They’re
being admirably consistent about this: at the recent Madrid conference France
and Germany both refused to pony up one single euro to Iraqi reconstruction.
It was never about the means, only the end.

Lesson: America and ‘Old Europe’ have different objectives in Iraq, and
those objectives are incompatible.

Three: 59 per cent of Europeans think Israel is the biggest threat to world
peace. Only 59 per cent? What’s wrong with the rest of you? But, hey, don’t
worry. In Britain, it’s 60 per cent; Germany, 65 per cent; Austria, 69 per cent;
the Netherlands, 74 per cent. The good news is that Israel won’t be a threat
to world peace much longer, at least not if Iran’s nuclear programme carries
on running rings around the International Atomic Energy Agency and the
ayatollahs fulfil their pledge to solve the problem of the Zionist Entity once and for
all.

Let us leave for another day the question of whether Israel is actually a
bigger global menace than North Korea, which has hung a big shingle on the street
saying ‘Nukes? We Got ’Em! And You Won’t Believe Our Prices!’ The fact is
that 11 September bound America to Israel in ways that oblige Washington to
regard European distaste for Jews as more than a mere social faux pas. Given the
rate of Islamic immigration to Europe, those anti-Israeli numbers are heading
in only one direction. At present demographic rates, by 2020 the majority of
children in Holland — i.e., the population under 18 — will be Muslim. What do
you figure that 74 per cent will be up to by then? Eighty-five per cent?
Ninety-six per cent? If Americans think it’s difficult getting the Continentals on
side now, wait another decade. In that sense, the Israelis are the canaries in
the coalmine.

Lesson: America’s and Europe’s world views have diverged significantly, and
those world views are now incompatible.

Four: Tariq Ali may not be the most representative political commentator, but
it’s still quite something to find the house journal of the United Kingdom’s
leftie establishment printing the assertion that Americans and Britons can
only envy the vigour of the Iraqi ‘opposition’. So that’s what Iain Duncan
Smith was doing wrong! He should have been loading up ambulances with rockets and
firing them into hospitals. That’s the way to draw attention to the problems
of the NHS.

The other day I accidentally referred to Tariq Ali as Tariq Aziz and within
minutes had a little flurry of emails from correspondents sneering that
evidently all these guys sound alike to me. Well, I wouldn’t say that. But Tariq Ali
and Tariq Aziz are sounding very much alike. In fact, T. Ali sounds more
Baathist than T. Aziz these days. When I was in the Sunni Triangle, I met many
Iraqis who were grateful to the Americans; some who wanted a more visible US
presence on the ground, a few who resented the infidel occupier — but not one who
was as gung-ho for the Saddamite holdouts and Syrian and Iranian opportunists
as Tariq Ali. For him, and for Mr Collenette, and for Goran Persson and Nelson
Mandela and many many others, even on 11 September, the issue was never
terrorism; the issue was always America.

Lesson: Washington and Europe do not agree on the problem, so they’re hardly
likely to agree on the solution.

Tariq and co. are right to this extent: in the scheme of things, it’s not
about Islamic terrorism. The Islamist goal is a planet on which their enemies are
either dead or Muslim converts. That’s not going to happen. But Islamism is
sufficiently disruptive to rupture permanently the old ‘Western alliance’. A
lot of things have been said on both sides, but what’s impressive about the
Europeans is the palpable desire for America to fail, and Bush to fall.

I can’t see that happening. On election day next November, the Democrats have
no chance of taking back the House of Representatives and they’re all but
certain to lose seats in the Senate. Bush is likely to be re-elected: with that
7.2 per cent growth in GDP, it’s hard even for the BBC to keep pretending
America’s in the middle of some sort of recession; and whatever happens in Iraq
it’s difficult to see the Democrats, running on a foreign policy of Cut & Run,
being the beneficiaries. But the trouble with a war on terror is that the
victories go unreported — the plotters who get foiled, the bombers who don’t make
it through. All you hear about are the defeats. Let’s say there’s a terrorist
attack in the US in the next 12 months and it kills several hundred people.
On the one hand, you could argue that this shows the soundness of Bush’s
judgment in making terrorism the priority of his administration. On the other, you
could argue that this proves he never learnt the lessons of the failures of 11
September. Knowing the American media, I’d bet on the latter line being the
one they settle on.

But other than that, the arguments over the next few years are going to be
between conservatives — between those who think it is worth pushing on with an
ambitious programme to bring the Middle East within the non-deranged world, and
those who figure that’s doomed to fail and we should settle for something
less. This project is in the national interest of the United States but, in the
end, the fate of the world’s hyperpower does not hinge on it.

Now let’s turn back to Europe. The Telegraph’s Adam Nicolson got irritated
the other day because Denis Boyles of America’s National Review had dismissed
the Europeans as ‘cockroaches’. Boyles is wrong. The Europeans are not
cockroaches. The cockroach is the one creature you can rely on to come crawling out
of the rubble of the nuclear holocaust. Whereas the one thing that can be said
with absolute confidence is that the Europeans will not emerge from under
their own rubble.

Europe is dying. As I’ve pointed out here before, it can’t square rising
welfare costs, a collapsed birthrate and a manpower dependent on the world’s
least skilled, least assimilable immigrants. In 20 years’ time, as those Dutch
Muslim teenagers are entering the voting booths, European countries, unlike parts
of Nigeria, will not be living under Sharia, but they will be reaching their
accommodations with their radicalised Islamic compatriots, who like many
intolerant types are expert at exploiting the ‘tolerance’ of pluralist societies.

How happy what’s left of the ethnic Dutch or French or Danes will be about
this remains to be seen. But the idea of a childless Europe rivalling America
militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500
million Americans, and what’s left in Europe will either be very old or very
Muslim. That’s the Europe that Britain will be binding its fate to. Japan
faces the same problem: in 2006, its population will begin an absolute decline, a
death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an
economic powerhouse if it’s populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Possibly. Will
Germany if it’s populated by Algerians? That’s a trickier proposition.

Last Sunday, recalling the US–Soviet summits that helped ‘ease the tensions
of the Cold War’, the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman proposed we hold
regular US-Franco-German summits. Implicit in that analysis is the assumption that
France and perhaps other Continental countries now exist in a quasi-Cold War
with America. If that’s so, the trick is to manage the relationship until the
Europeans, like the Soviets, collapse. Europe is dying, and it’s only a
question of whether it goes peacefully or through convulsions of violence. On that
point, I bet on form.

The Crux of the Issue

Avi Shafran on abortion:

...the crux of the abortion issue is not "a woman's right to choose" at all, but rather to what extent to value the life of a fetus.

Quote of the Day

QOTD: Jonah Goldberg

America is the only nation out there willing to sacrifice blood and treasure for the sake of world peace. We are the engine for the global economy, we are the chief guarantor of global stability and security, and we are the model for countless nations in countless realms - from law to politics to education. More importantly, America understands - much like the British did in the 19th century - that such delicate machinery needs to be maintained as well as protected from saboteurs.

Israel -- Enemy #1 (According to Europe)

EUbusiness brings us this lovely piece of information from our friends in Europe.

Europeans believe Israel poses the biggest threat to world peace...[according to a] report in the Spanish daily El Pais which cited findings that 59 percent of Europeans rate Israel as the most threatening country, ahead of the United States, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea.

Why won't the Prez stop using ‘fuzzy terrorism’ language?

Zev Chafets on JWR

Bush can insist all day long that America isn't at war with Islam. But that misses the point. In varying degrees, the Islamic world is at war with the U.S., its interests and purposes.

Muslim leaders know that, obviously, and they think Bush must know it, too.

Noah's Ark Today

From JPost

Noah's ark By Emma Kimor

And the Lord spoke to Noah and said, "In one year, I am going to make it rain and cover the whole earth with water until all flesh is destroyed. But I want you to save the righteous people and two of every kind of living thing on the earth. Therefore, I am commanding you to build an ark."

One year later, a fierce storm cloud covered the earth and all the seas of the earth went into a turmoil. Noah was sitting in his front yard weeping. "Noah," the Lord shouted, "Where is the ark?"

"Lord, please forgive me," cried Noah, "I did my best but there were problems: First I had to get a permit for construction and your plans did not comply with the codes. I had to hire an engineering firm and redraw the plans. Then I got into a fight with security over whether or not the ark needed a fire sprinkler system and flotation devices. Big problems arose over getting enough wood for the ark because there is a ban on cutting trees. Then the carpenters' union went on strike and I had to negotiate a settlement with the Histadrut national labor relations board before anyone would pick up a saw or a hammer. (Now I have 16 carpenters on the ark, doing nothing.)

"When I started rounding up the animals, I got sued by an animal rights group for taking only two of each kind aboard. Once this suit was dismissed, I was notified that I could not complete the ark without filing an environmental impact statement on Your proposed flood. Besides, the IDF Engineering Corps demanded a map of the proposed new flood plan. This was settled satisfactorily: I sent them a globe.

"That's not all. Right now the income tax commissioner has seized my assets, claiming that I'm building the ark in preparation to flee the country to avoid paying taxes. I just got notice that I owe the state some kind of 'use' tax and that I was to register the ark as a 'recreational water craft.'

"Finally, there is a court injunction pending against further construction of the ark altogether. Since God is flooding the earth, it claims, it is a religious event and therefore unconstitutional...

"Really, dear God, I don't think I can finish the ark at all!"

Just then the sky began to clear, the sun began to shine, and the seas began to calm. Noah looked up at the rainbow across the sky.

"You mean you are not going to destroy the earth, Lord?"

"No," said the Lord, "I don't have to - the government already has."
- Adapted from an anonymous sermon

MICHAEL DANBY, a member of the Australian House of Representatives for Melbourne Ports, and secretary of the National Security, Foreign Affairs and Defense Policy Committee of the parliamentary Labor Party, writes in the WSJ about Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, head of Malaysia and his comments on the Jews and the West and reveals the anti-semitism and anti-Western attitutude.

If we had to ask which leader of an Islamic country has done the most, in practical terms, to crack down on organizations which support, fund and carry out terrorist attacks, the answer would have to be the prime minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad.

...

Dr. Mahathir is not doing these things, however, to oblige the United States, or Australia, or the West in general. Although Malaysia has a dynamic, if managed, capitalist economy and a reasonably free parliamentary system, Dr. Mahathir has a profoundly un-Western, indeed anti-Western, view of the world.

Dr. Mahathir opposes Islamist terrorism not because it harms the West or kills Westerners, but because he thinks it is un-Islamic and harmful to the Islamic cause. Some tough-minded analysts loathe Dr. Mahathir but judge him to be politically "useful," if aesthetically revolting. The West should, of course, be pleased that Dr. Mahathir is helping to curb terrorism, but it should not be under any illusions about his motives.

...

He is willing to cause serious damage to Malaysia's diplomatic interests by indulging his anti-Semitic and anti-Western fantasies; clearly he believes most of what he says.

Recently Dr. Mahathir gave the most systematic outline of his view of the world, in his opening address to the Islamic Summit Conference in Kuala Lumpur. This was the speech in which Dr. Mahathir made his widely-reported comment that "today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

This remark drew condemnation from all over the world, and rightly so. But Dr. Mahathir had much more to say. His speech showed that he sees the entire Islamic world engaged in a war against the West, a war which has been going on for centuries. And behind the West, Dr. Mahathir said, stand the real enemy, the Jews.

...

So Dr. Mahathir, elected leader of a nation of 22 million people, has signed on to a full-blown anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that dates back to the publication of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a notorious anti-Semitic forgery published by the Okhrana, the Russian secret police, in 1905. He believes that "socialism, communism, human rights and democracy" were all invented by the Jews, as part of a dark and ancient Jewish plot to rule the world.

This is, of course, not the first time Dr. Mahathir has given vent to his anti-Semitic views. Although he is an intelligent man, with a Western education including a medical degree, he seems willing to swallow the most absurd conspiracy theories if they reinforce his prejudices.

...

In his recent speech, Dr. Mahathir said, in passing; "the Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million." So he does not deny that the Holocaust happened. He just thinks that the Jews are not entitled to any "sympathy" over this unfortunate incident, particularly if that might "tarnish" the reputation of the much-maligned Germans.

Dr. Mahathir accepts the basic thesis of the Protocols and of all anti-Semites since the 19th century: that "the Jews" are a single conspiratorial entity, which acts together in secret to further its objectives.

...

One of the objectives of the Jewish conspiracy, according to Dr. Mahathir, is to weaken and eventually colonize the Muslim world, in order to overthrow the one true religion, Islam. Despite this, Dr. Mahathir is not an Islamist: he vigorously opposes the Islamist PAS party in Malaysia. He also opposes suggested laws which would restrict Malaysan women, or damage Malaysia's attractiveness to Western investment and Western tourism. Dr. Mahathir believes that Muslim countries can only compete with the West by becoming richer and more powerful, not by retreating into virtuous Islamic poverty.

Nor does Dr. Mahathir support Islamist terrorism against the West, or even against the Jews. Speaking of Islamist terrorism in his Kuala Lumpur speech, he asked, "Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people?

"We fight without any objective, without any goal other than to hurt the enemy because they hurt us . . . We sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more massive retaliation."

Dr. Mahathir opposes terrorism, not because it is wrong, but because it is futile. He does not disagree with the Islamist view that the Western world and the Islamic world are fundamental enemies, he merely disagrees with the Islamists on tactics. [emphasis mine]

Some might say that, from the West's point of view it doesn't really matter why Dr. Mahathir opposes terrorism, so long as he does. But the danger in this is that at some point Dr. Mahathir, or his successor, may change his mind and decide that terrorism is not futile. So long as this is the case, Malaysia can never be a fully reliable ally in the war against terrorism.

Only the Naive or the Malicious Would Urge a Binational Israel

Yossi Klein Halevi comments on ideas of a binational state in place of Israel:

Think Yugoslavia, only worse. That's what proponents of a binational, Arab-Jewish state are really offering in their utopian vision of the Middle East. The notion that Palestinians and Jews, who can't even negotiate a two-state solution, could coexist in one happy state is so ludicrous that only the naive or the malicious would fall for it. But despite this, the idea — which periodically surfaced in the 20th century — is again growing fashionable.

The naive have included Jewish intellectuals like Martin Buber, who before Israel was created in 1948 tried to avert war by promoting a binational solution. But the Arab leadership quickly made it clear that its goal was expulsion of the Holy Land's Jews, not coexistence, and the idea was quietly dropped.

The Jewish Future in Britain?

Carol Gould writes about her experiences outside a Marks & Spencer and dealing with the Muslim and non-Muslim anti-Israel protestors.

But the crowning glory was an elegantly-dressed businessman next to me, who seemed normal except for the fury in his eyes. He said, "I love and revere the suicide bombers. Every time I hear of a suicide bomb going off I wish it had been eighty or ninety Jews instead of a pitiful handful."

And the result in her mind?

Does this [current anti-semitism in Britain] mean, as Melanie Phillips has said so often in the British press this year, that Britain is no longer a place where Jews may live without fear? Yes, we think it does...

Sadly, we believe anti-Semitism is endemic in the world at large. We feel that our own spiritual home is the United States (we have given up trying to explain to European Jews why we feel as free and proud as Jews in the USA as we do in Israel), but were we as young as the men at the Israel stall on Thursday we would make aliyah.

NOW.

Very Scary

Very scary assessment of nuclear proliferation.

Today, while our forces are engaged in a major open-ended operation in Iraq, a minor open-ended operation in Afghanistan, and a global war against al Qaeda, we are quietly sliding into the gravest crisis of this kind since Nikita Khrushchev placed nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba. Two crazy states--both charter members of what President Bush has rightly called the "axis of evil," both openly flouting an international treaty to which they are party, both perpetrators of acts of international terrorism, both animated by a blistering hatred for America and the West--are bent on acquiring weapons of unthinkable destructive power. The CIA, as it admits in its own statements, does not know what it needs to know about either country, except that North Korea almost certainly possesses two or more fully operational bombs and could have as many as ten within months, while Iran is at most several years away from acquiring the bomb unless it purchases one or more tomorrow or next week or next month from Pyongyang.

Whatever the constraints on our resources, the challenge is unmistakable and cannot be dodged. The price of action is likely to be high, very high; the price of inaction is likely to be much higher.

This notion that religion is not at the heart of the hatred directed at America from outside and now inside the country qualifies as extreme denial. Throughout the Muslim world, America is condemned not mainly because of its ideas but because Islamists believe we are infidels opposed to G-d.

-- Cal Thomas

Palestinian terror, American blood

Jeff Jacoby mentions that as of the Gaza bombing this month (10/2003), 51 Americans have been killed by Palestinian Arab terrorists just in the last 10 years.

Americans have been dying at the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists for decades, yet the US government and media rarely if ever portray Yasser Arafat and his lieutenants as avowed enemies of the United States. The State Department does not demand the extradition of Palestinian killers of Americans, not even when the killers' identities and whereabouts are known. President Bush has never given the Palestinian Authority the same ultimatum he gave the Taliban in Afghanistan: Hand over the terrorists or be destroyed.

Instead he issues incoherent declarations like the one he made on Wednesday — blasting the Palestinian Authority for refusing "to fight terror in all its forms," while assuring Americans that the US is "working closely with the appropriate officials" — i.e., the selfsame Palestinian Authority — to find and prosecute the terrorists responsible for the latest butchery. As if it isn't those very officials who have been aiding and abetting such butchery all along.

What does the PA really think of this?

A few months ago, Palestinian officials renamed the central square in Jenin after Ali Jafar al-Na'amani, the Iraqi suicide bomber who killed four US Marines at a checkpoint in Najaf on March 29. That is what Arafat and the Palestinian Authority think of spilled American blood.

Yikes

eWeek Quote of the Week 10/6/2003

Ian Murdock, chairman and chief technology officer, Progeny

We view open source as the commoditization of software. It's going to happen.

Temple Mount is more important than peace

Temple Mount is more important than peace by Natan Sharansky

Since the existence of the Geneva initiative was publicly announced on Sunday, there has been much criticism of the process that led to the agreement. Once again the same gang of Oslo blazers - a gang not even elected by an Israeli public, who instead denounced it and kicked it out of government and centers of influence for its "amazing successes" of the past. Once more the same gang is conducting negotiations on its own and committing Israel to far-reaching and irresponsible concessions.

Criticism of the process, although it is correct and justified, is diverting attention from the central and more important contents of the agreement - and primarily from the relinquishing of Jerusalem.

I remember a discussion in the Barak government, even before Camp David, in which Yossi Beilin tried to convince us that if we would only reach "some kind of agreement" on the Temple Mount, and give Palestinians the Christian Quarter of the Old City as well, the longed-for peace would come.

I asked, why the Christian Quarter? What connection do the Palestinians have to the Christian Quarter? Beilin looked at me in surprise and said, what do you care? That's the Christians' problem. We'll achieve peace and let the Christian world worry about freedom of religion and access to its holy places.

At the time I thought that this was a matter of disdain for the values of other nations and cultures. Beilin didn't mind sacrificing Israel's relations with the Christian world and risking the access of millions of Christians to places that are the cradle of their religion, so long as we could achieve the longed-for peace. (That assumed the Palestinians would respect religious freedom the way they respect other human rights).

Today, after Camp David, Taba, and now the relinquishing of Temple Mount in the framework of the Geneva accord, I understand that Beilin's gang are not necessarily contemptuous of the values of other nations, they are contemptuous of all values. Of all, except one that is - peace.

This gang seems to have forgotten, or hasn't yet understood, that as much as we long and hope for peace, it is not a value that stands by itself. It is an essential condition for the existence of a country that wishes to live, but it isn't the goal. It was not for the sake of peace that the State of Israel was established, and it was not because of peace that millions of Jews gathered here.

Nor was it peace for which the Jewish people prayed for thousands of years. The Jewish people prayed for Jerusalem. Because of Jerusalem, the Jewish people returned to Israel from the four corners of the earth, for it they were willing to make all the necessary sacrifices. For that same dream of a thousand generations - "next year in rebuilt Jerusalem."

It should be noted that if we totally relinquish every value for the sake of peace, we won't have peace either. Just as in the past, this time, too, the Palestinians will interpret such a relinquishing of what constitutes our very identity as a tremendous weakness that calls for war.

The values symbolized by Jerusalem are not only religious in nature. One doesn't have to be religious to understand that without our historical connection to Jerusalem, without the link to the past, without the feeling of continuity with the ancient kingdoms of Israel for whom the Temple Mount was the center of existence, we really are foreign invaders and
colonialists in this country.

One doesn't have to be religious in order to understand that relinquishing the Temple Mount is a justification of the Palestinian argument: You have no right to exist in this country, you have no connection to it, get out of here. One
doesn't have to be religious in order to understand that relinquishing the Temple Mount is not only relinquishing the past, it is primarily relinquishing the future. The future of all of us, here.

The members of the Hovevei Zion Zionist movement were not religious - they were secular socialists who considered religion a degenerate and sick product of the exile. Despite that they fought with all their might against the Uganda Plan [a 1903 British offer to let the Jews build a homeland in Uganda]. It was clear to them that without a common past, without roots, the Zionist project had no chance of succeeding.

Even today we must understand that without Jerusalem and without our historical roots the Zionist project will not be able to survive. Without Jerusalem Israel will become just another Jewish community, one of many in the world, like that of New York, London or Toronto - except more dangerous, less wealthy and less comfortable. It will not be the center of the Jewish world, not the focus of its existence - just one more community. And if that's the case, why continue to live in it? For what? In the name of what?

Why There is No Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Summary quoted from The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Daily Alert from the TNR article by Yossi Klein HaLevi.

Why There is No Israeli-Palestinian Peace - Yossi Klein Halevi (The New Republic)

The peace process is over; in fact there never was a peace process, if by that we mean a mutual process of reconciliation. "Land for peace" wasn't an option because recognition of Israel's legitimacy was never being offered. The current war isn't merely a glitch on the way to an inevitable comprehensive peace, but the end of the assumption that a comprehensive peace is possible, perhaps in our generation.

In numerous conversations I've had over the years with Palestinians, from all levels of society, when I'd ask the question, "What will happen after the peace?" the answers almost invariably focused on the next phase of repatriating Palestinian refugees and transforming Israel into a bi-national entity. When the war over Israel as a state ends, the war against Israel as a Jewish state will begin.

Most Israelis agree that renewing the peace process is impossible so long as Arafat controls the PA, a point reinforced by Abu Mazen's downfall. And unilateral withdrawal, however appealing, will only reinforce the message of Israel's Lebanon withdrawal that Israel is on the run - a message which encouraged the current Palestinian terror offensive.

Construction of the fence sends a message to the Palestinians that the absence of a willingness to negotiate a compromise settlement will eventually result in a unilaterally imposed border that will be less advantageous to the Palestinians than the offer they rejected at Camp David.

We've made a mistake in demonizing Arafat because the problem is hardly Arafat alone, but the widespread Palestinian and Arab refusal to grant us genuine recognition. Gambling on Arafat was symptomatic of our refusal to recognize the depth of Arab rejection. The widespread resistance in the Arab world to granting legitimacy to Jewish history, from Holocaust-denial to Temple-denial, isn't a side-effect of the conflict. It is the conflict.

Blaming Sharon, even partly, for not supporting Abu Mazen is to fail to understand that Abu Mazen couldn't be saved, because he was the victim of a political targeted assassination by Arafat.

There is no massive construction going on in the settlements. The latest building, which made front-page news and attracted Collin Powell's concern, involves 600 apartments mostly in the West Bank towns of Maale Adumim and Efrat, both of which will remain within Israel's borders no matter what deal is ultimately negotiated.

Cowardice costs

David Warren in JWR on the Israeli bombing in Syria.

Israel's weekend attack on the Islamic Jihad camp near Damascus was an act of cowardice, properly considered.

...

Prime Minister Sharon chose the Syrian target as an alternative to acting against Yasser Arafat — either by exiling him, or, as was originally proposed, by killing him. Under domestic political pressure, Mr. Sharon was choosing the lesser way to make the point that "Israel will not stand for this anymore" — in response to an horrific suicide bombing in Haifa. He was boxed in, by media-led world opinion. He goes on to hunt Islamic Jihad agents in Jenin and Nablus who, the Israelis sincerely believe, themselves ultimately report back to Arafat' s surrounded compound in Ramallah.

In making his lesser point, Mr. Sharon was providing an ineffective deterrent. He knows Arafat is informed, before the fact, of all organized terror strikes against Israel, and his intelligence services believe, on evidence repeatedly shown to the U.S., that Arafat personally orders most of them. The Haifa bombing was done through Islamic Jihad, instead of through a Fatah branch, or Hamas, to make the greatest possible distance from Arafat's chain of command. For Islamic Jihad has become so closely affiliated with the Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored Hizbollah, as to be practically their "diplomatic representative" within the Israel/Palestine theatre.

Mr. Sharon had implied that the earlier Israeli cabinet authorization to remove Arafat would be acted upon after the next major bombing. He was thus hoping to hold Arafat hostage against new terror incidents. But the tactic risked backfire if there were a major incident, and Arafat remained untouched.

Now this has happened. In effect, Arafat has been able to show his people and the Arab world generally that he can continue the bombings with impunity — that the Israelis will always look elsewhere to settle scores, not having the courage to go for him directly. He has thus, once again, successfully raised the stakes — so that his authority continues to be restored over West Bank and Gaza, and his prestige throughout the region.

Instead, Israel has been compelled, against its immediate interests, to open a second front of contention. Mr. Sharon has triggered border incidents along Israel's northern frontier, and mutual mobilization of Syrian and Israeli armies. He may think there is an advantage to Israel in re-opening the Syrian can of worms which, previously, Israeli governments had gone to lengths to close. Instead he has created a distraction that Arafat can better exploit than can he.

...

World opinion has Israel boxed in, yet paradoxically, as the temperature rises, world opinion will have less and less influence over Israel's defense. The proverb, "As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb," begins to apply here — for it is not as if Israel ever gets praise for its restraint, or any other privilege it could risk losing. The only foreign power that retains real power over the decisions made by Israeli politicians is the United States, because it is in a position to cut substantial military and civil aid. But Egypt gets the same aid, and if Egypt's Hosni Mubarak can't be punished for providing the Syrian regime with its Arab League cover, Ariel Sharon can't be punished for taking potshots at known terrorists.

The cowardly course invariably leads to the bigger catastrophe. If the Israelis shot Arafat, there would be days, even weeks of Arab rage, and international condemnations. But this would most likely be followed by — nothing, except the implosion of the Palestinian Authority, and thus the removal of the political cover it offers to Palestinian terrorists. Whereas, hitting a site in Syrian territory brings, on balance, less rage; and more chance of hostilities across international borders that could spread rapidly through the region.

American Attitudes

Lou Dobbs hits the nail on the head (on JWR) regarding the world's opinion of America.

It's become fashionable of late for news organizations and opinion researchers to fixate on the world's view of the United States. We seem to be confronted weekly with another report, study or survey purporting to demonstrate global distrust or dislike of America and Americans.

A recent opinion survey in the Middle East showed that Arab attitudes towards the United States are at an all time low, and of course we know what the French and Germans think of us.

So how concerned should we be? In my opinion, not very. Unjustified negative opinions of the United States are far from a new phenomenon.

"Such is the destiny of a great power," says Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "We sit astride the world, we protect the world, and the world takes this protection and bemoans the protector."

Ajami says we should consider the possibility that some of the recent polls may have been conducted by people who find it politically advantageous that America is more unpopular now, in the post-Iraq-war era.

Whatever your opinion of weapons of mass destruction or regime change, ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein was a very good thing for Iraqis. And ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban and al-Qaida was a good thing for Afghans.

In addition to ridding those two countries of dictatorial rule, the U.S. government maintains, at some considerable expense to U.S. taxpayers, forces in South Korea, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.

"The United States is the major supporter of international security and peace," says Nicholas Eberstadt, a foreign-aid expert from the American Enterprise Institute. "We do that not through foreign assistance, but through our military budget, which is as large as the military budget of the next dozen or more countries combined."

Not only do we bear the role of global protector, but the generosity of the United States also provides an incredible $11 billion in official government aid each year to developing nations - an amount that is going to increase steadily over the next several years. The United States is also a global leader in fighting the diseases AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. We contribute roughly $550 million a year in UN peacekeeping activities, and the United States is by far the largest contributor to the UN's general fund.

And U.S. foreign aid isn't limited to the official development aid that we provide each year. American foreign aid that includes non-government sources such as corporations, foundations, individuals and other sources totals an astonishing $60 billion a year.

However, United Nations voting records are proof positive that our generosity has never automatically translated into loyalty from other nations. A 1998 study of UN votes found that 74 percent of U.S. foreign aid recipients voted against the United States a majority of the time. India, for example, received more than $143 million in U.S. aid but voted against the United States 81 percent of the time. And Egypt, which received more than $2 billion in foreign aid (the second-highest amount of any nation), voted against the United States 66 percent of the time.

Providing the bulk of the United Nations' budget and giving away billions of dollars in aid each year doesn't require apology from Americans. We should feel pretty good about what this country has achieved and what it is accomplishing in the world.

"I don't think that gratitude has ever been a historical hallmark of international relations," Eberstadt says. "One need look no further than the country of France to understand that. They were rescued twice by the United States in the past century."

If you are still concerned over polls about the United States, consider the poll recently conducted by the Germany weekly Die Zeit, which revealed that one-third of Germans under the age of 30 believe that the United States may have sponsored the attacks of September 11.

So what should the United States do about world opinion? I believe that the best answer is: nothing.

Fouad Ajami says that most of us are asking the wrong question: "We are unloved in foreign lands; what's wrong with us?" When we should be asking: "We are unloved in foreign lands, what's wrong with them?"

On the Palestinian Death Cult

Mark Steyn shows why no peace will come to the Middle East for a long time.

The Palestinian death cult negates all the assumptions of western sentimental pacifism: If only the vengeful old generals got out of the way, there'd be no war.

...

I spent a short time on the West Bank earlier this spring. I would have spent longer, but to be honest it creeped me out, and I was happy to scram across the Allenby Bridge and on through Jordan to Iraq. Say what you like about the Sunni Triangle and RPG Alley, but I never once felt I was in a wholly diseased environment. On the West Bank, almost all the humdrum transactions of daily life take place in a culture that glorifies depravity: you walk down a street named after a suicide bomber to drop your child in a school that celebrates suicide-bombing and then pick up some groceries in a corner store whose walls are plastered with portraits of suicide bombers.

Nothing good grows in toxic soil. You cannot have a real peace with such people; you cannot even have the cold peace that exists between Israel and Jordan, where King Abdullah, host of the Arab-American-Israeli summit at the start of the road map, did not dare display the flag of the Zionist Entity, lest it provoke his subjects.

The problem is not the security fence, but the psychological fence - a chasm really - that separates a sizable proportion of the Palestinian population from all Jews.

AT THE time of that summit, I supported the road map because it seemed to me the best thing to be done was to thrust a state upon the Palestinians as quickly as possible. The present neither-one-thing-nor-the-other Palestinian Authority gives Arafat and company all the advantages of controlling their own territory with none of the responsibilities. Its anomalous status enshrines the Palestinians' victim status and means Israel gets a far worse press internationally than if it were dealing with a sovereign state.

But the main reason for conjuring up a Palestinian state would be to call their bluff. For six decades, nothing the Palestinians have done has made sense if the objective is to secure a state of their own. But, if the objective is to kill Jews, it all makes perfect sense. That's why, in West Bank towns, you see no evidence of nationalist fervor, only of Jew-killing fervor.

They Do Not Want Peace, Plain As Day

David Ignatius in the Washington Post actually asked the leader of Hezbollah about having peace with Israel. His reply was as plain as day as it always has been.

Is there any way to stop the horrifying dance of death between Israel and its enemies? Are there terms under which Islamic militants might agree to halt their suicide bombings?

I put these questions last week to Hasan Nasrallah, the head of the Lebanese Shiite militia known as Hezbollah, in an interview at his heavily guarded offices here. It was a few days before the latest hemorrhage of violence, in which a Palestinian woman blew herself up inside a Haifa restaurant Saturday, killing 19 and wounding 55.

"I can't imagine a situation, based on the nature of the Israeli project and the nature of the Israeli leaders, where the Palestinians would agree to lay down arms," Nasrallah answered. A decade ago, at the time of the Madrid conference and the Oslo accords, he continued, "there was a philosophical debate" about the possibility of a peace settlement. But it is over.

"The road of negotiation did not solve the Palestinian problem," Nasrallah said. "If you have today widespread support [among Palestinians] for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, this is due to the failure of the political option."

The solutions to the "situation" become rather extreme then.

See what happens when you put liberals in charge?

Look at what happens when the Democrats are in charge of a state.

The left got what it wanted because much of that agenda has in fact been implemented in California in the past five years. And today, the voting "lab rats" will let Sacramento know what they think of this grand experiment. They've already rendered a verdict of sorts by inviting the recall, and by showing in every poll before the groping and "Hitler" stories broke that they wanted to throw Mr. Davis and his allies out.

What Californians have witnessed is what the modern liberal coalition looks like in power: a gerrymandered majority dominated by the "progressive" special-interest trinity of trial lawyers, unions (especially of public employees) and environmentalists.

Their priorities are the transfer of wealth from working people to an ever-expanding public sector; more mandates and rules on business that enhance union power but reduce the ability to invest at a profit and create new jobs; and of course legal standards and workers' compensation loopholes that create more openings for trial-lawyer assaults.

Green Day

Alan Caruba is certainly opinionated when it comes to the Greens.

Not a day passes when I don’t receive a book or read a news story filled with Green gobbledygook, the deliberately obscure language Greens use to hide their true agenda. The Green revolution is based on the techniques of the Communist revolution. It infiltrates organizations in order to take them over and it smothers the media with its profusion of lies in order to influence public opinion and policy. The Greens are patient, knowing that a lie told over and over again becomes the "truth" if not debunked over and over again.

He reviews a book called, The Web of Life Imperative: Regenerative Ecopsychology Techniques that Help People Think in Balance with Natural Systems. [That's the real title. No, really, it is.]

What struck me immediately—and no doubt yourself—is the use of verbiage to give the appearance of serious intellectual content, but which reveals only the pure invention of something called "ecopsychology." This is absurd pseudo-science, if in fact, psychology can be considered science despite its use of statistical information and endless "studies."

He debunks many of the good-sounding statements from the book.

This psychobabble book purports to respond to "the dire problems that arise because people in contemporary society live extremely nature-separated lives." This is hogwash! Anyone who has spent any time in the "great outdoors" knows that it is not a friendly place for humans. There are no supermarkets filled with a largesse of food in Nature. There are no places fit for habitation in Nature unless you pitch a tent, build a lean-to or find a cave. Nature does not provide clean water from the tap with a flick of the wrist. Nature offers merciless cold or heat.

The rise of civilization has been man’s triumph over Nature. It was the invention of agriculture, barely five thousand years or so ago, that provided food and permitted the rise of towns and then cities, freeing men to become artisans and craftsmen.

Here's another.

"Like a benighted cancer, we overrun, pollute and destroy natural systems in people and places while fully knowledgeable that these systems are life and support our life. Such behavior is a form of madness." For the record, barely 3% to 5% of the landmass of the United States of America involves cities, towns, highways, railroads and airports. The vast bulk of our population lives within fifty miles of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The Greens regard the human species as a form of "cancer" on the Earth. We are said to be bent on the destruction of the Earth as we go about finding new ways (biotechnology) to abundantly feed the billions who would otherwise starve to death. We have eradicated diseases that threatened millions with needless death. We are threatened by other diseases because the Greens have systematically banned essential and beneficial pesticides to suppress insect and rodent pest populations.

We humans know how to grow and manage forests. We know how to ranch and farm. We know how to build systems to provide clean water to drink and irrigation for our farms. We know how to generate life-enhancing energy to light, heat, cool, and power our homes. We know how to provide medicines to protect and extend our lives. We know how to criss-cross the Earth in hours and days. We can communicate with each other as no previous generation ever could.

Sifting out the hidden agenda...

"In our denial, we learn to offer ‘progress’, ‘God’s will’ and ‘economic growth’ as rationale for our injurious effects."

There it is. The bottom line. Greens hate progress if it means a better life for everyone on Earth. The Greens worship Gaia, the pagan Earth goddess, not the universal God of mankind. And the Greens do everything they can to destroy economic growth and the spread of prosperity anywhere on the face of the Earth.

The real threat to our lives are the Greens. There are other threats, but this evil anti-progress, anti-capitalist, anti-energy, anti-science, anti-God movement is the real cancer that seeks victory through its twisted belief that the only thing that matters is "Nature." Man is part of Nature and what matters most is each new child born today, bringing with them the hope of a better world for future generations.

Amen.

Too Funny

This is just too funny. Thanks to Brian Livingston for pointing it out.