Saturday, March 2, 2013

The U.S. and Israel - As Close as Ever



by Dore Gold


A dramatic front-page New York Times story on Jan. 8, 2013 gave readers a rare glimpse into the level of intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and Israel. According to the article, written by two of the newspaper's leading reporters David Sanger and Eric Schmitt, several months earlier senior IDF officers had received satellite intelligence that showed Syrian forces mixing chemical weapons at two sites and filling 227 kilogram bombs. The chemical munitions were loaded onto vehicles near Syrian air bases and, according to assessments, could be deployed within two hours of an order by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

Israel reportedly handed the intelligence it had in its possession over to the Pentagon. After U.S. President Barack Obama was informed, he worked to assemble an international coalition to prevent Assad from employing his chemical weapons against rebel forces in the Syrian civil war. The U.S. reached out to Russia, China, Turkey and even to several Arab states that were undoubtedly concerned with Assad's behavior on the basis of the intelligence originally received from Israel. 

Beyond the details outlined in The New York Times report about the dangers emanating from Syria's continuing uprising, the article also demonstrated how important U.S.-Israel intelligence sharing had become. On the eve of Obama's upcoming visit to Israel it is useful to take stock of the nature of the security ties between the U.S. and Israel that have come to light in open sources, like The New York Times report from January.

This report was certainly not the first time that the extent of the security relationship between the U.S. and Israel came to light. During the Cold War, Israel provided the U.S. with data on the performance of captured Soviet weapons systems that had been in Syrian and Egyptian arsenals. As early as 1966, Israel provided the U.S. with a MiG-21 fighter jet that the Mossad had flown out of Iraq; the MiG-21 was to become the workhorse of the North Vietnamese Air Force.

In the years that followed, Israel supplied Washington with whole Soviet radar systems. In a famous remark, former head of U.S. Air Force Intelligence Maj. Gen. George Keegan Jr. expressed his appreciation for Israel's contribution to U.S. security by stating that the U.S. could not have received the same kind of intelligence "with five CIAs." 

Not everyone shares this kind of enthusiastic view of the U.S.-Israel relationship. There is a small but vocal school of thought led by Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Prof. Stephen Walt of Harvard University who argue that even if Israel was a "valuable ally during the Cold War," this aspect of the relationship ended when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since that time, in their judgment, Israel is not a strategic asset but rather it is a strategic liability and the bilateral relationship is only sustained by pro-Israel lobbying in Washington. Despite its flaws, their 2007 book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" still influences the discourse on Israel within the U.S. 

Yet since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the security relationship between the U.S. and Israel appears actually to be closer than ever. The two countries are collaborating closely in the area of missile defense, as exemplified by the recent testing of the Arrow-3 anti-missile system (tested on Feb. 25). But the new threat of global terrorism has also transformed the defense ties between the two countries. The key to winning the war on terrorism was obtaining accurate intelligence about the organizations and their leaders, who are waging this new war. It has required a scale of intelligence cooperation that many states had been unwilling to undertake in the past, including Israel.

After he left his position as head of the research division of Israeli Military Intelligence, Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser wrote a paper for the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution in 2007 on how Israel was implementing intelligence reforms. One critical area of reform was intelligence cooperation, which had been restricted in the past. In fact, according to Kuperwasser, Israeli military intelligence was not only focusing on Israel's intelligence needs; it also was collecting and analyzing intelligence "whose main beneficiary is the U.S."

In any event, it appears that the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship remains vital in multiple areas for both countries in the 21st century, just as it was during the Cold War. The scale of joint military exercises has also increased, reaching record numbers. Delegations from the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) regularly study Israel's lessons from its recent operations in the West Bank, Southern Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip. 

While the Pentagon has not made public pronouncements on the application of these lessons to U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would not be surprising if one day it is disclosed that some of the tactics used in the 2004 battle of Fallujah in Iraq could be traced back to the battle of Jenin in 2002. 

Signaling the importance of defense ties between the two countries, visits by chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Israel and the Israeli chief of Staff to the U.S. have become far more frequent in recent years. In 2007, the commander of EUCOM, General Bantz Craddock called Israel the U.S.'s "closest ally" in the Middle East in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. In a speech at the Washington Institute in April 2010, Obama's first National Security Adviser General James Jones remarked: "I can say from long experience that our security relationship with Israel is important for America." 

Despite these statements, Israel's critics have a built-in advantage when they debate the value of the U.S.-Israeli defense ties to America. The substance of much of U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation is classified. This is particularly true of the area of intelligence cooperation. So if academics like Mearsheimer and Walt question the value of the defense relationship, what can Israel do? Clearly, it is not worth leaking sensitive information that is classified as "secret" by both countries in order to win a public relations battle. The degree that a strategic partner is perceived as a reliable ally is affected by the extent to which he can be trusted to protect secrets. 

American military experts voiced their concern in the past that if aspects of U.S.-Israeli military cooperation were to become public, it would alienate the Arab leaders from Washington. But at present, given the preoccupation of the Sunni Arab states with the threat of Iran, they are not about to refuse the visit of an American warship because it docked several weeks earlier in Haifa. 

In fact, U.S. diplomatic cables reporting the visits of senior U.S. officers to Arab capitals, that were published by Wikileaks, show that the leaders of the Gulf states do not spend their time talking about Israel but rather about what the U.S. should do to stop Iran. In many of the new conflicts now erupting, Israel and the Arab states are actually on the same side. Those writing commentary about the Middle East must take into account this new reality and not present outdated stereotypes about the Arab world that were probably never accurate to begin with.

Dore Gold

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3569

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

An Interview with Bat Ye'or: Islam in Europe



An Interview with Bat Ye'or


Islamic minorities in Europe are increasingly claiming for more independence to manage their internal affairs. What is, in your opinion, the cause of their discontent toward the legal, political and social accommodation provided by European states?

Muslims immigrants come from countries governed by traditional Islamic rules and belong to a civilization that has fashioned mental attitudes, thought and behavior according to shari’a values and conceptions. Some immigrants have the strength to break away from this mental conditioning but most remain faithful to their tradition.

Shari’a rules create a society that contradicts in almost every domain Western way of life. This does not apply only to gender equality and sexual freedom, but also to politics, religion, education, science. Moreover the Koran and the Hadiths (the sacred religious Muslim scriptures) absolutely forbid Muslims to adopt the ways of Christians and Jews. This prohibition is proclaimed in the Koran’s first surah which must be repeated five times a day at each prayer. For these reasons, the Muslim world has not adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 1948) inspired by universal and not religious European values, but instead has proclaimed the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights (1990) whose articles conform strictly to the religious tenets of shari’a.

Besides the rejection of Western mores, there are two main other reasons for this refusal to integrate: 1) the traditional religious contempt for Christians whom must be submitted to Islamic supremacy as this was done during 13 centuries and continues till now; and 2) the religious obligation to impose shari’a governance on non-Muslim countries, in order to implement the Islamic system of justice and peace and the rule of Allah over the world.


A growing number of European states are in favour of the adoption of shari'a law, at least in arbitration courts of family law as in the UK. What will this change lead to?


In a democracy justice and law must be the same for all. Different rules according to the diversity of population will break the cohesion of the nation and nurture conflicts. Especially in the case of Muslim immigrants: we are speaking of several millions in most European states and not of a few thousands. In France speculations affirm that they amount to over ten millions, this is like a nation within a nation.

In its spirit and source shari’a jurisdiction—which is based on the uncreated word of the Koran and therefore cannot be discussed, changed or criticized (blasphemy)—contradicts the rational framework of European law and the freedom of speech and scientific research. It also discriminates between women and men, Muslims and non-Muslims, as we can see it currently in modern Muslim countries and even in Europe. Religious separation between populations living in the same country will increase. The shari’a, in its spirit and rulings, represents a systemic total system. If you accept some elements—for instance regarding the school education of girls or their segregation from society—where will you stop?

The adoption of shari’a law in many European countries will undoubtedly accelerate the Islamization of the continent—an evolution that Europeans refuse. In other words, as we import more tenets from Muslim civilization in our countries we will resemble more to Muslim societies. This situation needs serious thinking and public discussions, because it might bring irreversible changes and social conflicts. It cannot be shelved under the carpet.


One of the arguments in favour of the adoption of shari’a asserts that by recognising Islamic law under supervision of states’ civil courts, there will be more chances to advance Western standards and, consequently, internal illiberal practices implemented by shari’a will be more probably abandoned. Do you share this argument?

You cannot base a policy on wishful thinking. This argument affirms the contrary of truth. It reveals the weakness of governments that cannot or fear to impose on Muslims immigrants the law of their countries because they know they oppose it on the grounds that European laws contradict shari’a.


In your books, you define dhimmitude as the submission to Islam and the acceptance of an inferior status in society in order to avoid death or enslavement and contemporary dhimmitude as the subjugation to Islam in order to avoid anti-Western violence. Beyond fear, how does the dhimmitude attitude express itself?

Many motivations induce people, particularly politicians, to accept dhimmitude without even being conscious of their passivity. First let me point out that politicians as well as the large public totally ignore the meaning of dhimmitude. They have a vague notion of the special condition of non-Muslims, usually Christians, in Islamic countries, but they do not have a name for it. They do not see it as resulting from a specific military and theological obligatory legislation that has at its core an inner ideological justification. Being ignorant, they are therefore particularly vulnerable to it.

Furthermore, we are prisoner of a systemic social indoctrination spread throughout the media, books, films, and publicity that continuously and in every way preach multiculturalism, relativity of cultures, deconstruction of Western fundamental cultural criteria, interfaith dialogue, Western guilt, Europe’s scientific and artistic debt to the magnificent Islamic civilization of tolerance and peace. Notions of jihad and dhimmitude are totally rejected and forbidden. European specific identities and history are purposely blurred, dismissed in order to please foreigners who despising them maintain proudly their own traditions and beliefs.

Let me specify that dhimmitude is not only a military, political, legal, social and religious condition; it is also the perverted mental conditioning of a person who justify his own subjugation. Intellectual dhimmitude precedes and facilitates the physical realization of dhimmitude.

Dhimmitude in the West appears in the official and free adoption by the elite of the Islamic narrative of history. I recognize that prejudices being frequent in historical accounts must be suppressed. However the historical structure of data and documents should not be dismissed but preserve being the foundations of learning and civilizations. In schools and universities, we see the permanent clash between Western and Islamic conceptions of history—the latter one suppressing any criticism of jihad since it is a religious sacred command. Jihad is not perceived as an aggressive war but as peaceful Muslim activities to take back from the miscreant occupiers countries that should revert to Islam.


Do you refer to Israel as well?


The Islamic narrative adopted by Europe is particularly shocking regarding Israel, since it refutes Israel’s rights in its own ancestral homeland and submits to jihad strategic and ideological criteria. Obsessed with an anti-Israeli revengeful hatred, Europe together with Arab-Muslim countries, conducts at every level a war to delegitimize and demonize Israel with the final goal of destroying it. I consider this policy a significant sign of dhimmitude. Europe knows very well the history of the people of Israel in its own land because for twenty centuries it remained the base of its spirituality and values. Yet it embraces the jihadist ideology that denies it even if jihad aims at Europe’s destruction as much as Israel. In other words, Europe is complying with Islamist goals toward its own destruction like a vassal continent.

Another sign of dhimmitude is the creation of a whole European industry falsifying Israel history, archeology, and Biblical sites, in order to Palestinize, hence Islamize, them. In museums in Paris and London Palestine and Palestinians are mentioned on items referring to Hebrews two thousand B.C. whereas the Roman Emperor Hadrian named the Jewish country “Palestine” after having defeated its Jewish inhabitants in 135 A.C.!


Then does dhimmitude also affect Europe’s reaction to the mobilisation of Islamic minorities?


Besides its dhimmi subservient policy to the Muslim world regarding Israel, immigration and textbooks, European governments have imposed over their citizens the shari’a law on blasphemy. The EU willful denial of terrorism and insecurity evokes the dhimmi peaceful resignation to his demise. Freedom of speech and thought has disappeared from universities and media. Aggressiveness and intolerance replace them. Those who resist, like Geert Wilders, Magdi Christiano Allam and others, are targeted by murderers. Recently, Lars Hedegaard, the Danish champion of free speech, just escaped from a criminal attempt at his life—although only speculations can be made here, the suspect having not been found. Europe is becoming less European and more Islamized with of course an unconscious habituation to dhimmitude—insecurity, aggressions, and insults—by indigenous non-Muslims.

The trend toward dhimmitude flourishes in a Europe that chose the disaggregation of its foundations and the destruction of the Nation-state.


Radical Islam is an anti-liberal ideology. You argue that European ambivalent attitude, dhimmi attitude, toward radical Islam indirectly supports it. How do you explain that European countries has progressed in science, technology, welfare, culture, societal issues such as minority or gender rights, and simultaneously open the gates to anti-liberal ideologies?

There are many contradictions in politics and history; a multiplicity of trends suppresses coherence and uniformity. Great discoveries and artistic achievements have in the past coexisted with wars and social injustice. Under the Nazis, intellectual and artistic life continued; in occupied France, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as many other great authors and artists, flourished unconcerned by the inhumanity of the period. The progresses in science, technology and other sectors result from the devoted efforts of doctors, scientists, researchers and other individuals, not from politicians.

Like in totalitarian regimes, opposition to European pro-Islamic policy existed but it is locked. Dissidents are indicted as racists and Nazis by an international media campaign of witch-hunt. They are victims of boycott, discrimination, social and professional ostracism, and suffer material insecurity because they fight against dhimmitude. Not only do their own governments and the state apparatus persecute them, but also jihadists who apply in Europe the shari’a law of blasphemy target them.


Many NGOs, such as One Law for All, advocate against the adoption of shari'a and in favour of the integration of Muslim groups in European societies, preventing radicalisation that stems from separate education, separate legal systems and underground religious-political activities. Do you see in these activities an emerging social movement that counteracts institutional passiveness?

Yes, it is a positive initiative; for Muslims too, because it will avoid conflicts and resentment against them. There are 56 Muslim countries, plus the Gaza Strip, which apply the shari’a. Muslims who want to live under the rule of shari’a must immigrate to these countries not to Western countries.


Contemporary Middle-East countries inherited the Ottoman system of the “millet”, which consisted in self-government of ethno-religious communities, including family law. Israel has adapted this system, by recognising religious courts, including rabbinical and Islamic courts, with extensive power in terms of family law. The supervision of the Supreme Court over religious courts’ decisions has influenced religious jurisprudence, including shari’a judges. In your opinion, could this be a model to be adapted in Europe for the recognition of shari’a courts, as already happened in UK?

The so-called “millet” system was first designed by the Romans. As their Empire expanded by the conquests of numerous peoples and territories, the Roman emperors accepted that their subjects kept their particular national religion, their gods and their own laws. In this context, Judaism, as the religion of a nation allied and friendly with Rome, was recognized religio licita, and guaranteed juridical autonomy. Even after the destruction of Jewish independence by the Roman armies, and the incorporation of their country as a new colony named Palaestina within the Roman Empire (135 c.e.), this autonomous statute remained, but with some changes.

It is the Christianization of the Roman Empire that transformed this “liberal” situation into an obligatory condition of misery and wretchedness for Jews. However, while all pagan cults were prohibited, Judaism was tolerated within legal discriminatory and oppressive rules intended to humiliate and incite hatred. This anti-Jewish legislation was inscribed in the Byzantine legal codes from the fifth century onward. It constituted the Jewish statute, applied throughout Europe until the 18-19th century when it was abolished with the French Revolution; some of its rules were re-enacted in the racist anti-Jewish status proclaimed by the French Vichy government during the Second World War.

When in the seventh century the Arabs invaded Byzantine territories, they adopted this Jewish statute under an Islamized and aggravated form and integrated it into the shari’a books, applying it to Jewish and Christian populations. It is known in the Ottoman Empire as the “millet” system. This is the legal condition that I have studied under the name of dhimmitude, which is still valid today in Islam as it is obvious to everyone who knows it.

Now let me tell you why I object to introduce the millet system in Europe in the 21st century. First, the millet system does not just mean religious and civil autonomy for minorities. It stems from a jihadist conquest and is correlated to jihadist rules. It is linked to territorial conquests, being under its mild Roman form or in the oppressive shari’a legislation against the conquered population of the Islamic Empire. Second, it is inseparable from the whole dehumanizing system of dhimmitude, which, in short, requires:

  • Economic, social, religious, cultural and legal inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims;
  • Collective responsibility of the non-Muslim community;
  • Cultural limitations;
  • Discriminatory legal disabilities;
  • Protection conditional to the submission to an inferior status; and
  • Prohibition to own lands and so forth.
European colonization of Muslim countries and the nationalist Arab governments have abolished it, but its discriminations against non-Muslims, having being integrated into the shari’a are still valid today even in Turkey. It was never established in the Arab peninsula where non-Muslims could not live.

The situations of Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are quite different from the subjected indigenous millets. They are not indigenous European submitted nations but foreigners who chose to immigrate from their free will. I think that lawyers should work out a system that respects their religious requirements in accordance with the national legislation of the host countries.

You describe with great competency the millet system adapted to the Israeli jurisdiction. But this system was imposed by the former British colonizer and was never adopted by any of the people who after centuries of struggle, succeeded to free themselves from Islamic colonization: Spain, Sicily, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Armenia.

European lawyers and politicians should consider three points that relate only to Islam:
  1. The mandatory association of religion and policy;
  2. The uncreated origin—and therefore unchangeable character—of Islamic sacred scriptures;
  3. The religious imperative of a universal jihad.


When we speak of Islam, we also speak of Muslim-Jewish relations and Muslim attitude toward Israel. I dare to ask an apparently naïf question. Why are Jews asked to assimilate into the majority culture of their countries of residence, while Muslims are encouraged to ask for more independence and autonomy under the tenets of minority protection and human rights? Why are Jews considered unrepentant “diverse people” sticking to ancient traditions, while Muslim practices are welcomed as a positive expression of diversity, somehow romanticised?
European relations with Muslims fit into the pattern of dhimmitude. European politicians do not dare to confront the powerful Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is, indeed, the source that dictates to Europe its anti-Israeli policy, its Muslim immigration strategy regarding education, textbooks, non-integration, separate Muslim schools, positive discrimination, promotion of diversity, blasphemy law, shari’a banking and so forth. The European Union and its European leaders are just the conveyor of OIC orders that they impose to their people. The OIC has recruited and paid, in Europe, countless lobbies and collaborators to implement its quiet jihadist strategy.

Israel has no such strategy toward Europe, or such financial power and no leverage over European policy. As for anti-Jewish animosity, it is a combination, in some milieus, of traditional Christian antisemitism but mainly it is the spread of Muslim judeophobia and Palestinism.


Carrying Jewish symbols has become increasingly dangerous in Europe, for both radical Left and Islamic anti-Jewish violence. The anti-Semitic predicament within Islamic groups, mosques and Muslim schools is well known. What is the reason of the disinterest that authority shows toward this phenomenon?

I do not know if we can speak any more of authority. Thanks to the European Union and the OIC, European states are in a condition of delinquency, incapable of imposing order and security on their own territories, which constitutes the first duty toward their citizens. Now they plan to abolish borders and reject the constraints of the nation-state, opting for welcoming massive immigration—hence, the necessity of promoting multiculturalism and the relativism of values. The economic crisis will worsen the situation.

Regarding antisemitism, it was promoted by the European Commission from 1999 in order to frighten the small Jewish communities that survived the Shoah. The aim was to force them to denounce Israel and increase the isolation of the Jewish state. The BDS campaign, the economic boycott, the apartheid and “occupation” accusations thrown at Israel, which trigger antisemitism, emanates from the EU, the OIC and its European collaborators, as well as from the Palestinian dhimmi Churches.

Political Europe has always been hostile to the Jewish National Liberation movement. Except for some individuals and isolated politicians, governments collaborated in a way or another to the Shoah. European exoneration of radical Islam is integrated in its support for Palestinism, which ideology impregnates its deceitful war against Israel.


Hezbollah has organized a terrorist attack against Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. Previously, Arafat's PLO has repeatedly attacked Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe backed by radical left terrorist organizations. The EU and other member states refuse to enlist Hezbollah in the terrorist list organization. Is that an example of dhimmitude?

Sure. Dhimmis fear of terrorist retaliations in Europe or other countries. This example illustrates how ludicrous is the mask of human rights’ champion the EU pretends to wear. France, the great enemy of Israel’s self-defense policy declared in a grandiloquent way that in Mali terrorists must be eradicated. And why not in Gaza?


Radical left and Islamic groups converge on another issue: the delegitimisation and demonisation of Israel. What are the reasons of this ideological commonality? In the end, the two groups are indeed different in terms of consideration for religion, conception of gender rights and politics.

Virulent antisemitism always existed in Leftist parties. Communist states supported Arafat, the Palestinians and Third-Worldism in a big coalition against democracies. Now the moribund radical Left survives by recruiting its adherents among Muslim immigrants and by anti-Israel campaigns well-paid in petro-dollars.


One last question: how do you see the future of Europe? What has to be done to stop dhimmitude?

It is difficult to foresee Europe’s future, since it is in a transitional state having lost its references by its deliberate choice to destroy itself by renouncing to territorial stability, history and cultural roots. But a civilization who denies its values, its history and culture is a civilization without soul and a prey to be devoured by others. Changes and adaptation to evolving situations are necessary, but Europe’s survival requires preserving its fundamental Judeo-Christian and humanist values.

In order to stop dhimmitude, which endorses the suppression of human freedoms and dignity, we must first be able to recognize it. You cannot fight against something you don’t see nor understand. We have to overcome the policy of ideological denial imposed by the EU elite, and the Fascist control of culture and opinion aiming to mould them within the politically correct discourse. We must support the politicians, writers, journalists and common people who put their life in danger and accept sacrifices to preserve fundamental democratic values.
An Interview with Bat Ye'or

Source: http://www.informazionecorretta.com/dossier.php?l=en&d=10#parag_2

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel Apartheid Week: A Tale of Two Brothers



by David Solway


 

Driving past the University of Toronto recently, I noticed a lone protestor on the perimeter of the campus carrying a sign objecting to Israel Apartheid Week. I was reminded that the University of Toronto was the first academic institution to host and promote the scandal of this event. Beginning in 2004 under the interim presidency of Frank Iacobucci, who does not seem to have realized the ignominy he had countenanced, the contagion spread to many other academic cesspools across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. The University of Toronto, however, is the revered patriarch of the movement. Iacobucci was succeeded in November 2005 by the current president, David Naylor, under whose administration this academic canard has persisted into the present moment—the festival of anti-Semitic hatred and anti-Zionist calumny will unfurl the Palestinian flag and welcome a contingent of bigoted speakers on March 4.

When questioned by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies about his university’s compliance with so evidently corrupt and defamatory a spectacle, Naylor declared that “We do, in fact, recognize that the term Israeli Apartheid is upsetting to many people, [but] we also recognize that, in every society, universities have a unique role to provide a safe venue for highly charged discourse.” Naylor’s recognition that the term is “upsetting” is entirely frivolous, unbefitting a university president. The fact is that the term is totally false—a given that appears to have escaped Naylor’s attention rather conveniently, thus sparing him the moral duty to confront so spurious a conviction. Further, universities are not always—or even primarily—known for furnishing such “safe venues,” especially when the speakers are unpopular conservative figures.

A few typical episodes will suffice to corroborate the point. A riot incited by pro-Palestinian activists erupted when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to speak at Concordia University in Montreal, causing extensive damage and injury and forcing cancelation of the event. Jewish students at York University in Toronto required police protection when threatened by a swarm of Muslim students. Ann Coulter’s talk at the University of Ottawa was shut down by a horde of howling students and a craven administration. Author Warren Farrell’s address on behalf of a men’s rights organization, the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), held at Naylor’s own university, proceeded amidst obscene verbal abuse and palpable menace while police stood idly around. Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, was disrupted and shouted down by unruly Muslim and left-wing students at the University of California at Irvine. David Horowitz, founder of the Freedom Center, is accompanied by a bodyguard when he lectures at American universities.  The beat—and the beating—goes on.

The disingenuousness of Naylor’s claim regarding “every society” is revealed if we glance at the Arab world, where no “safe venue” is remotely in evidence. Consider inviting a politically controversial or Jewish speaker to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, or Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, or the Islamic University of Lebanon where the Academy’s  “unique role to provide a safe venue for highly charged discourse” is about as viable as, well, a Canadian or American university president showing a sliver of moral courage or cerebral acuity.

One does not like to cast disparaging phrases and sentiments around indiscriminately, but I cannot refrain from viewing David Naylor (no differently from his likeminded peers, as it should go without saying) as a disgrace to his calling. Nor can I help speculating that the refusal to intervene, or what amounts to the de facto advocacy we remark in the U of T president, runs in the family. His brother, R.T. Naylor, a professor at McGill University in Montreal, is the former director of the piquantly named American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the author of many tendentious books on political and economic subjects. The Naylors’ partiality to Islamic causes may be fractionally explained by a Middle Eastern genealogy, as M.J. Stone implies in a favorable review of the Montreal Naylor’s work in the pro-Nazi Vanguard News Network Forum, in which he does not fail to mention the Naylor “family roots in Lebanon.”

R. T. Naylor intrigues me not least because we shared a publisher for a time, McGill-Queen’s University Press, for which I no longer write. Naylor, I must confess, is one of the most turgid and clottingly indigestible writers I have ever suffered reading, but one book in particular merits investigating for the kind of anti-American, anti-Israeli, pro-Muslim bafflegab littering the Left/Islamic scene today, an illustration of what David Horowitz has aptly called “the unholy alliance” busy at its insidious work. I refer to Naylor’s Satanic Purses, a screed filled with reams of presumably hard economic data arguing that the war on terror is largely deceptive and feeds off a hoodwinked public in order to advance various entrenched interests. The atrocious titular pun on Salman Rushdie’s major novel, The Satanic Verses, is enough to extradite the author’s intellectual repute. Not only does the title betoken an adolescent attempt to seem clever and with-it, but ironically also recalls the fatwa on Rushdie issuing from the very Islamic world that Naylor extols and justifies.
Once inured to the battery of putative “information,” it requires only a few pages for the reader to recognize that the writing is vitiated by a sophomoric snideness, operating in the vein of pseudo-mockery and alluding tongue-in-cheek, to take just a couple of examples, to the presumed “regime of brooding Islamic fanatics” in Sudan or the “gang of misanthropic miscreants” in Taliban Afghanistan. These groups are meant to be understood as the inventions of unscrupulous neoconservative agents like George W. Bush and his Republican backers or of the “machinations of the pro-Israel lobby.” It is the latter, we are given to understand, who comprise the brooding fanatics and misanthropic miscreants.

But when Naylor goes on to define al-Qaeda as “largely a law-enforcement fable akin to the Mafia myth,” we know we are witnessing a slick polemical shell game, for the Mafia is no myth and its global reach has been amply documented. For Naylor, the United States is the real Evil Empire, Israel and its American-Jewish supporters are the devil’s deputies, Hamas is a world-class charity, the Oslo Accords were sabotaged by the Israelis, radical Islam is basically innocent and is only reacting to “Western meddling in the Islamic world,” jihad does not mean Holy War (shades of John Brennan), the American government seeks “to demonize Muslims worldwide,” (utter nonsense under Obama, but also under Bush), the international banking infrastructure is “a global espionage apparatus,” and so on ad vomitatum.

When, in an interview with Counterpunch, Naylor speaks of Jewish fundamentalist “charities” sponsoring terrorist groups and of Christian fundamentalist proselytizing which “may well provoke further acts of terrorism,” asserts that Israel is engaged in a “policy of mass murder,” torture and theft, and contends that the main resource of Middle Eastern countries “is not oil [but] their émigré population, well-educated and for the most part anxious to go home,” there can be little doubt that we are observing a polemical farce of histrionic proportions, turning reality upside-down, accusing a straw man of the crimes and transgressions committed by one’s own fraternal constituency, and whitewashing a frankly violent, parasitic and Caliphate-aspiring Islamic world.

As Stone put it in the above-cited puff job, “A culmination of thirty years’ work as a historian, criminologist and expert in international political economy, Naylor described Satanic Purses as counterpoint to post 9/11 propaganda. ‘It brings together my expertise in finance, politics, and both Middle Eastern and North American history as it relates to the deeply embedded prejudices against Muslims and Arabs that have existed in the West since the time of the crusades.’” Shades of the increasingly discredited Edward Said. Naylor then goes to bat for Hamas and Hezbollah, describing both terrorist organizations, according to Stone, as “having important social and humanitarian mandates” and being compelled to react “to Israeli atrocities.”

Candidly speaking, it isn’t far from one Naylor’s approval of Hamas and Hezbollah and condemnation of (fictive) Israeli iniquities to another Naylor’s seemingly serene acquiescence in eight years’ worth, now, of Israel Apartheid Week hate fests on the campus he oversees. There is nothing unique about the brothers’ species of advocacy, whether passive like the Toronto Naylor’s or aggressive like the Montreal Naylor’s. Together they offer a paradigm for the migration and sedimenting of radical ideas, via a composite passive-aggressive mentality indicated by a sibling dynamic of permission and attack. There is a symbiotic relation in play here, as one approach lends institutional respectability to the hypothetical scholarship of the other—and vice versa.

The brothers are therefore influential in different but kindred fashions, one through the latent concession of misconstrued authority and the other through the manifest thrust of false argumentation. Moreover, it clearly signals how academic elitism and ostensible intellectual sophistication have succeeded in skewing the genuine terms of debate and have reconditioned violent aggressors as plaintive belligerents. There is not much to choose between wrong thinking and abject pusillanimity.

The placard borne by the lone protestor on the University of Toronto campus read: Israeli Jihad Apartheid Week. No balls to flog. The second statement may be a trifle bizarre and ambiguous, but it is more easily understandable than the pliant and accommodationist positions adopted by the representative Naylors.


David Solway

Source:http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-solway/israel-apartheid-week-a-tale-of-two-brothers/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Mutt and Jeff of the Obama Administration



by Melanie Phillips


Is the United States about to become a laughing-stock to the rest of the world? It seems to have accrued a Defence Secretary who is the toast of Iran, and a Secretary of State who is a blithering idiot.

It was hard to imagine that the new guy at State, John Kerry, could make himself look even more stupid than he has done by his science-denying belief that the planet is about to fry through man-made climate change. Well, he has indeed now exceeded such expectations.

First, he invented a new country. In trying to praise diplomats who were working on behalf of the United States in the Central Asian region, he thanked them for their work in ‘Kyrzakhstan,’ according to various media reports, and credited their efforts in ‘support [of] democratic institutions in Kyrzakhstan and Georgia’ – apparently muddling up America’s major ally in the war on terrorism, Kyrgyzstan with its neighbor to the north, Kazakhstan. 

Oh dear. Well it could happen to anyone. But a US Secretary of State?

Then in Berlin, he bragged to students that in America, freedom of speech was such an absolute that

‘you have a right to be stupid if you want to be.’

Never a truer word, you might think – especially when you consider that he also said this:

‘People have sometimes wondered about why our Supreme Court allows one group or another to march in a parade even though it’s the most provocative thing in the world and they carry signs that are an insult to one group or another’, 

and where he said it – in Germany, where neo-Nazi expressions are banned and with very good reason. We now look forward to Mr Kerry’s denunciations of those in America (such as his predecessor, Hillary Clinton) who protest that disobliging references to Islam should be suppressed as ‘Islamophobia’.   

Then there’s Chuck Hagel, now confirmed as Secretary for Defence thanks to brain-dead or spineless Republicans who failed to block his appointment. This despite Hagel’s opposition to sanctions against Iran; his refusal to call Iran’s Republican Guards or Hezbollah terrorist organisations; his animus towards Israel and his claim that the ‘Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here’; his questionable comments about homosexuals ;and his stunningly inept and incompetent performance at his confirmation hearing, where he first said

‘I support the president’s strong position on containment’
and then, after being handed a note, wittered:  

‘If I said that, I meant to say that obviously, his position on containment, we don’t have a position on containment.’

Would you even give a job reading the weather forecast to such a person?

Now it turns out that Hagel has also upset India by having suggested, in a previously unreleased 2011 speech, that India has ‘for many years’ sponsored terrorist activities against Pakistan in Afghanistan. 

No wonder the Indians have responded in fury that his remarks were not grounded in reality, ‘paranoid’ and ‘over the top’. 

Not so much a Defence Secretary, then, as an Offence Secretary – upsetting America’s allies and sucking up to its mortal enemies. 

Kerry and Hagel – the Mutt and Jeff of the Obama administration. 

And Iran, not surprisingly, is beating its chest in delight and racing towards building its genocide bomb.


Melanie Phillips

Source: http://melaniephillips.com/the-mutt-and-jeff-of-the-obama-administration

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Egyptian Playwright Ali Salem Defends Peace Treaty: "Egypt Does Not Face Any Danger from Israel"



by MEMRI

[Editor: Although the Egyptian TV channel that broadcast this interview apparently feels that Ali Salem's opinions are wrong and dangerous, this blogger thinks he's got it right, and wishes that many more Arabs in the Middle East shared his opinions. Israel is only "dangerous" to those who pose a danger to her.]





MEMRI

Source: http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3752.htm

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

What the French and Saudis Understand but Obama Doesn’t



by Michael Rubin


The Almaty talks between Iran and the G5+1 have come and gone. And, despite statements to the contrary by American officials, there is no reason for optimism.

(In one chapter in my forthcoming book, Dancing with the Devil, a history of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes which Encounter will publish next year, I compare all the State Department statements evaluating its high stakes diplomacy with Iran, North Korea, and the PLO with declassified contemporaneous accounts and find that in most cases, the State Department spokesman simply lied in order to suggest momentum for future talks).

The United States offered concessions, which Iranian negotiators pocketed before walking away. While Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s swatting down of Vice President Biden’s offer of negotiations made brief headlines, neither the New York Times nor Washington Post had the institutional memory to recall that, in the wake of President Obama’s outstretched hand, Khamenei had used a speech on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. embassy seizure to say much the same thing and to issue the demand that the United States withdraw its forces from the Persian Gulf as a precondition to talks.

Secretary of State John Kerry considers himself an internationalist, and President Obama believes strongly in listening to the will of America’s international partners. Perhaps, then, they might want to consider Saudi and French assessments of the talks in Kazakhstan.

Take this February 27 editorial from Al-Madinah, a paper published out of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a translation from the Arabic provided by the Open Source Center:

What Iran wants to get from these talks is to waste more time that would allow it to complete its nuclear program, i.e. reaching the capability to produce nuclear bombs. This does not provide much optimism that the new talks would achieve any breakthroughs toward reaching an agreement between the two parties in which Iran would stop proceeding with uranium enrichment beyond 20%.  In view of this reality, the superpowers should by now realize very well that Iran has no intention whatsoever to change its position, especially since the new talks take place a few months before the Iranian presidential elections, making it difficult to imagine that Tehran would offer any concessions.

Or this recent column from Paris’ Le Figaro:

…While maintaining a steadfast posture on the ground, Tehran has not softened its position on the diplomatic front either.  Just two days before the meeting in Kazakhstan, the Iranian authorities warned that they did not intend to make any concessions on their positions.  They set the same two preconditions for starting discussions on their nuclear program — the immediate lifting of the sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council and recognition of their “nuclear rights.”  The authorities are resolved to approach the Almaty talks from a “position of strength.”  In Kazakhstan, the major powers will have to take care “not to repeat past errors,” Said Jalili said, criticizing the sanctions introduced by the international community against his country. At the beginning of the month, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also rejected the proposal made by American Vice President Joe Biden of engaging in bilateral negotiations….

There is a pattern to American diplomacy in which keeping adversaries at the table trumps the cost of doing so. In this case, Obama and Kerry are so determined to pursue a diplomatic path with Iran that they have failed to realize that previous incentives have retrenched Iranian behavior rather than resolved it. Iran can, at any time, resolve the crisis by fulfilling its commitments. The issue really is that simple. How ironic it is that France and Saudi Arabia recognize this, but Obama refuses to recognize any observations or arguments that contradict an ill-thought-out strategy. Not only is he empowering Iran, but he is antagonizing American allies. There was certainly tension between Europe and America’s Arab allies during the Bush years, but whatever the arguments at the time, they recognized that when push came to shove, the United States had their back. No longer.
 
Michael Rubin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/03/01/what-the-french-and-saudis-understand-but-obama-doesnt/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Hijacking of America



by John Ozanich


The nature of government is control and the nature of control is to ever increasingly improve its ability to maintain and exercise itself. Left unchecked, any power will expand to every breadth, width and niche in which it is not opposed. As average, everyday Americans went about their daily routines, politicians and legal scholars used sophisticated politicizing and unabashed legal maneuvering to ensure the security of their ability to control and implement their personal philosophies on the American people. In his essay, "Two Logical Errors in Constitutional Jurisprudence," Friesian philosopher Kelly Ross elaborates on two critical government maneuvers which doomed the American citizenry to ever increasing governmental control.

Undermining the wisdom of the Founders began quickly with one of their peers. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, appointed by John Adams, laid the foundation of current constitutional law. He also set the precedence whereby judges can overrule the people under broad powers not actually granted the judiciary under the Constitution. In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the issue at hand, and the first death-blow to our republic, was the meaning of the "necessary and proper" clause,

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. [Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 18]

In his ruling, Marshall either through calculated federalism or a serious error in logic, defined the meaning of "necessary" as,

[t]o employ the means necessary to an end, is generally understood as employing any means calculated to produce the end, and not as being confined to those single means, without which the end would be entirely unattainable. ~ McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

Marshall argued that Congress had the "implied" powers to make laws that supported their "expressed" powers listed in the Constitution. The result of this is staggering in its effect. Instead of defining "necessary" as only those actions necessary for the government to achieve a stated goal of the People while limited by the power of the States, or the People, Marshall gave the federal government legal carte blanche to use "any" means to achieve any goal they choose to set. In other words, the ends justify the means in all federal government activity. Now the federal government had both the power to define the goals, and the power to use any means they deemed necessary to achieve them -- including stripping power from the States and the people where convenient. Obviously, this ran completely contrary to the intent of the Founders to empower the People as ultimate authority over themselves. Specifically, the decision nearly completely nullifies any limitations of Article I placed on Congress. It is an outrageous conclusion, which has played a key role in several critical federal actions to date. In fact, the Clinton Administration spelled out their belief that the federal government had plenary powers (absolute final authority) before the Supreme Court and there has only been one Supreme Court decision since the New Deal in all their decisions relating to the ruling limiting federal powers (Lopez v. the United States).

Once this crack in our constitutional logic was opened, political powers were not long to take advantage. Ross notes some governmental restraint in the example of Grover Cleveland vetoing a funding bill for the relief of California dust bowl victims where Cleveland cited that the government had no authority to exercise its power merely for "objects of benevolence". With the best of intentions, Congress was attempting to establish a politically popular goal of helping California victims by using its legal authority to use "any" means to achieve the goal even by robbing taxpayer's funds without taxpayer approval to do it with. Such federal assistance programs now run amok. The average American has no idea where the money taken from them may be headed, including completely out of the country under the guise of one form of assistance or the other.

The New Deal Supreme Court in coordination with democrats used these new powers to greatest effect in United States v. Butler (1936). In their decision, the court ruled that it was within the power of the federal government to "lay and collect taxes" for the "common Defense and general Welfare of the United States". Since "general welfare" can mean absolutely anything, the Supreme Court again issued the federal government another carte blanche. But this time, it gave them a blank check to do it with. Now the federal government not only had carte blanche power of law over the States and the People, it had the power and influence of money to achieve the goals of those in power at any given time. Thomas Jefferson feared the coming of this situation,

With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money. Nor should our assembly be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. [Notes on Virginia, 1784]

The Roosevelt Administration anxiously took advantage of its new powers and proceeded to buy off the electorate with Social Security. The Johnson Administration followed with Medicare. Caesar now had money and was getting men (voters) with it.

The second juridical nail in our coffin came in the form of the Supreme Court decision United States v. Darby (1941). In its decision defending the federal government's authority to impose labor laws, the Court destroyed the 10th Amendment by declaring it a mere 'declaration', a tautology, a meaningless fact describing the structure of our government and not an actual legal restriction placed upon the government that needs obeyed by them under law,

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. ~ 10th Amendment

In its decision, the Supreme Court stated that the 10th merely,

"...states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered." United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941)

This is the height of chicanery. Through slick legalisms, the Court effectively reversed the intent of the 10th Amendment. By careful use of the word "surrendered", the Court now says that powers only default to the States or the People when the federal government expressly surrenders the issue to them instead of them being "reserved to the States respectively, or to the People" by default. Thus, if the issue is your right to chew gum in public, and since it is not clearly addressed in the Constitution, the power to decide is no longer yours by default. Instead it is only your decision if the Supreme Court or Congress decides that they don't care, and thus, "surrender" the decision to you. This is a complete flip of the founding principles of this nation where the People were the intended ultimate authority with a limited government having to justify its involvement in our lives through strict, restricted legal processes. The tiresome argument continuously offered in defense of this approach to definition of powers is that of slavery and the belief that without plenary powers, the federal government would have been unable to stop state laws allowing it. However, this is a woeful flaw in logic. It was never an expansion of federal powers that was necessary to resolve the issue of slavery but rather an implementation of existing laws and powers. The federal government willingly turned away from the issue of slavery at a time when it was too weak to hold the country together in battling over the issue until 1861, anyway. Attempting to use the failure of actually implementing past federal law as an excuse to increase the power of federal law now is completely disingenuous. As Ross notes, as a consequence, the average American now cowers under the authority of a range of federal agencies; IRS, DEA, OSHA, USDA, FDA, BATF, EPA, FEMA and others.

While members of the Supreme Court enjoy special protections, only being subject to impeachment for "high crimes and misdemeanors", they continue to rule the nation by assuming any powers they deem necessary to achieve their goals. If we are to turn around our slide into socialism, an arduous reworking of the Constitution and reconsideration of powers of the Supreme Court are going to be required.

Recently, democratic Congressman Pete Stark (D, CA) summed up the reality of the situation,

I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life. The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country. ~ July 24h, 2010. Hayward, CA townhall.

That is where we stand, according to the individuals actually responsible for making and executing our laws. Whether there is any road back is anyone's guess.

Still one thing more, fellow citizens -- a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.~ Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

John Ozanich

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/the_hijacking_of_america.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Dangerous Times: How Euro-socialism Set off a Fascist Bomb



by James Lewis and Justine Aristea


In the terrible economic crisis of 1922 Benito Mussolini got 25% of the vote in Italy. Two years later he had more than a majority.

You know the rest.

In the economic crisis of 2013, Beppe Grillo received 24% of the vote (see last week's analysis of Grillo's political beliefs). This week he blocked a government from forming. Grillo now controls the Senate, but he is going for a majority in both houses in the upcoming vote in June.

That's in Italy, but in Greece the Golden Dawn party is following the same path. So is the new Hungarian fascist resurgence. In Germany it's called the "Pirate Party."

 Europe's political class is shocked and panicked. They are pretending Grillo is just a "populist" and a "reformer" -- but he also wants to "process" all the Jews in the world, who are responsible for all the evil. Grillo wants to nationalize the banks and abolish interest rates, "just like the Islamic Development Bank."

To understand the new upsurge of European fascism, you have to imagine what it's like to live in Rome.

Imagine the US government being sunk in red ink. The United Nations suspends the US Constitution and compels us to adopt a new UN currency called the UNO, designed to favor other countries. The United States no longer runs its own currency. Our economy tanks and our deficit keeps getting worse.

Therefore the UN unilaterally appoints a caretaker president for the US named Monti, who imposes radical budget cuts on our dependent welfare state.

1. Social Security is cut by half. People have to live on 700 euros per month.

2. ObamaCare is cut by half. Two hospitals in Rome do not pay their medical staffs for six months.
3. Taxes on income and sales are raised to an average of 50%.

4. Small business taxes are increased -- but big businesses taxes are lowered, "because big business is more efficient." (Meaning it has bigger unions).

5. Politicians and bureaucrats get major pay raises. The figurehead President of the US doubles his salary.

Government at all levels is corrupt. It's the only way people can survive. Everybody is playing double games. People are doing two jobs and running their own businesses out of government offices. Everybody cheats on taxes. The mafia controls half the country. Survival depends on the black market, the black economy. The currency is kept artificially high, so exports crash.

It's happened to Italy under the European Union. Don't think it can't happen here. Obama is a Euro socialist, representing faculty lounge socialism in America, so completely arrogant and cocksure that Paul Krugman just knows how to run the trillion-dollar US economy. Nobody else can figure it out, but Krugman knows that he knows. Our new rulers are control freaks, just as free market economists have said since Adam Smith. They are six year olds steering the family car and thinking they are in control until...

... until it all blows up.

This week Europe blew up. The media haven't caught up yet, because they are what they are. But the markets are catching up fast.

This is a huge event for the United States, because our political elite is bound and determined to turn us into Europe. Hasn't the EU found the answer to war and peace and prosperity forever?

Our Democrats believe it. Europe is their model. Every batty new idea they have is copied from the glorious European Union. Twenty years ago they still celebrated the Soviet Union, until that house of cards crumbled. Now they have shifted their fantasy paradise to Europe.

Over there, fifty years of increasingly centralized control have made it impossible for voters to be heard. The political parties are stuck in GroupThink. Only the fascist "protest" parties agitate for reform. The ruling class doesn't listen. They don't have to -- they don't have to run for election.

So European voters fled to the fascists to express their rage and despair. Imagine one out of four US voters going for Lincoln Rockwell, and you get the idea.

In Italy, Beppe Grillo the Clown just received 24% of the vote, the biggest percentage a single party has received since Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, in 1922, another economic crisis year.

 The Italian vote gives the Clown control of the Senate, and the biggest voice in the lower house. The Grillini now speak for the capital city of Rome. Since fascism is illegal in Italy, the Five Star Party pretends not to be fascist; but scratch the surface and that old grinning ghost stares back at you.)

The EU and US media are still in denial, but Italian party politicians instantly flew to Berlin to talk with Angela Merkel, and came back to build a common front against Grillo the Clown. But the Joker refused to play. He wants another election in June.

Currency markets are signaling panic. Don't believe the media. Believe the markets.

Europe is our future. It's Obama style of Chicago "governance," and as long as the people were inundated by EU propaganda they believed that Europe had discovered the secret of peace and welfare forever. Talk to any European and that's what you hear. They keep wondering why we don't follow them to Never-Neverland. If you tell question them they turn a deaf ear. They're mentally stuck.

As long as America defends Europe, they will keep hating us and pretending they are running the ocean liner, like kids with plastic steering wheels.

 The key to the whole farce is Europe's "democracy deficit," which means that the people can vote for the European Parliament -- but it has no legislative powers at all. The Parliament is a Potemkin front. It has no power to pass binding laws.

On the other hand, the unelected ruling class has centralized more and more power in "Commissions" -- which is what the word "Soviets" used to mean. But the EU has no electoral legitimacy. Nobody votes for the people who really run the place. That means the EU receives no feedback about the impact of its cult-like policy fantasies. When the people wanted a public referendum on the EU, the political class arrogantly told them to go... yes.

 In France, the Grand Corps of the State ("Enarques") run the government. Germany and Britain are similar. Together they appoint the European ruling elite. This is the EU socialist Apparat, the Political Machine that controls everything. And yes, there are capitalists, but they work hand-in-glove with the Apparat. It's Crony Social Capitalism (technically the same as fascism).

As a result normal people feel totally powerless. As long as the Ponzi scheme lasts, the victims loved it. The media churned out neo-imperialist propaganda about how Europe had finally discovered peace and welfare forever, and everybody wanted to believe.

Today, southern and eastern Europe are running into a brick wall, designed by Europe's ruling class in its delusional way. The north blames the south, and vice versa. Nobody can stop the ruling class from its mad rush to destruction, so we are seeing a 'protest vote" in Germany, Poland, eastern Europe, and the PIIGS -- the Mediterranean coastal countries plus Ireland.

The only protest party people can vote for are barely disguised fascists: The Five Star party in Italy, Golden Dawn in Greece, Pirate Party in Germany, and fascist insurgents in Hungary.

Here's how it's done. In Italy Beppe Grillo ran as a sly comedian, spinning off conspiracy theories about 'chemtrails" (jet contrails) that poison the Italian people, the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and Illuminati who run the world to oppress the poor, and all the usual paranoid fantasies. But he also attacked massive corruption (which is true) and self-serving politicians (also true), and the euro currency that killed Italian exports (also true). Grillo voiced criticisms that other politicians avoided. Everybody knows about massive corruption, for example. Grillo said it.

Now the Clown has his own sources of money and ideology, which lead straight to Tehran, as we have pointed out. The Clown hates the Jews, and his website mentions "Jews" 2,500 times, and "Iran" 2,500 times. The Islamic Development Bank doesn't charge interest, the Clown tells us. This is pure Islamic fascist propaganda. Banks that loan free money don't exist in the real world, because they can't survive. But demagogues tell sucker lies, and this is a good one. Beppe tells his followers that he will nationalize the banks (like Il Duce) and give away free loans. It's like Obama phones, straight from Obama's stash. The suckers love it.

The Jews run the world by charging "usury" (this is an old, old story in Europe). In Beppe's Fantasyland money comes free, exactly what Islamist propaganda says. Beppe tells the world that "Everything I know about the Middle East I've learned from my father-in-law" Parvin Tajik, who runs a major construction business in Tehran, and therefore has to be in cahoots with the super-corrupt mullahs.

Guess who plays the scapegoat in this age-old drama? Yup.

People laughed at old Beppe the Clown for fifteen years.

Today the joke's on them.


James Lewis and Justine Aristea

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/how_euro-socialism_set_off_a_fascist_bomb.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Palestinians to Hagel Report: "We Don't Need U.S. Troops Here"



by Khaled Abu Toameh


Any Arab leader who agrees to join a U.S. or NATO force will be denounced by his people as a traitor and puppet in the hands of Zionists and Americans. Any foreign troops will become a target for terror attacks, as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Palestinians repeated this week their opposition to the new-old idea of deploying a U.S.-led international force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We will not agree to the presence of any foreign forces in our territories," spokesman for various Palestinian groups said. "Such forces, especially if they are led by the U.S., would be viewed as an occupying power."

Those who are opposed to the deployment of foreign troops in the Palestinian territories say that they would never accept a situation "where Israeli occupation is replaced with another occupation."

The Palestinians were commenting on a 2009 report that resurfaced this week, entitled, "A Last Chance For A Two State Israel-Palestine Agreement."

The report was co-authored by then-Senator Chuck Hagel, who was confirmed this week as US Secretary of Defense. It talks about deploying a "US-led multinational force" which would "feature American leadership of a NATO force supplemented by Jordanians, Egyptians and Israelis."

Commenting on the idea, a senior Palestinian Authority official in Ramallah said, "We don't need U.S. troops here. Instead of sending us the Marines, why doesn't [President Barack] Obama just put pressure on Israel to withdraw from out lands?"

The official warned that Palestinians were not enthusiastic about the presence of U.S. or any foreign troops in their territories. "We already have our own security forces," he stressed.

However, the Palestinian official pointed out that the Palestinian Authority leadership was not opposed to the idea of temporarily deploying an international peace-keeping force along the border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. But this arrangement would be unacceptable to Israel: terrorists would strike inside Israel, then the foreign forces would effectively prevent Israel from exercising its right of "hot pursuit" to follow and apprehend the perpetrators.

There is also no guarantee that Egypt, Jordan or any Arab country would be prepared to join a US-led force in wake of the current events in the Arab world.

Many Arabs and Muslims continue to view the US as an enemy, especially because of Washington's support for Israel. Any Arab leader who agrees to join a U.S. or NATO force will be denounced by his people as a traitor and puppet in the hands of Americans and Zionists.

Besides, who said that the Arab countries are keen on sending troops to patrol the streets of Palestinian cities?

Does anyone seriously think that Jordan's King Abdullah would ever send Jordanian soldiers to Palestinian cities? Hasn't Jordan's policy over the past two decades been to distance itself as much as possible from the Palestinians?

And does Hagel or anyone else in the US Administration really believe that the Egyptians would be happy to deploy their troops in the West Bank or Gaza Strip? Don't the Egyptians already have enough problems at home?

Even if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas were to accept such an idea -- either under U.S. pressure or by being offered financial aid -- it is certain that he would never be able to convince his people to accept the presence of any foreign troops in their cities.

Hamas and other radical Palestinian groups have openly stated that any foreign troops will become a target for terror attacks.

Any foreign military intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only complicate matters and pave the way for Muslim fundamentalists from all around the world to make an effort to also get involved. Al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups will start sending their men to the Palestinian territories to fight against the American "infidels" and their Arab "collaborators," as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Muslim fundamentalists were dispatched to launch jihad against the U.S. and other Western forces.


Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3607/palestinians-hagel-report

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.