Barry Rubin’s Review of the Revolt in Egypt and the Delicacy of U.S. Policy

Scott W. Johnson from PowerLine brings the Rubin review to us throught his artilc of the same subject:

Barry Rubin has filed a special report on “The revolt in Egypt and U.S. policy.” It begins:

There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt but the Obama Administration may be adopting something close to the worst option. This is its first real international crisis. And it seems to be adopting a policy that, while somewhat balanced, is pushing the Egyptian regime out of power. The situation could not be more dangerous and might be the biggest disaster for the region and Western interests since the Iranian revolution three decades ago.

Experts and news media seem to be overwhelmingly optimistic, just as they generally were in Iran’s case. Wishful thinking is to some extent replacing serious analysis. Indeed, the alternative outcome is barely presented: This could lead to an Islamist Egypt, if not now in several years.

What’s puzzling here is that a lot of the enthusiasm is based on points like saying that the demonstrators are leaderless and spontaneous. But that’s precisely the situation where someone who does have leaders, is well organized, and knows precisely what they want takes over. . . .

Rubin captures the alternatives and the likely outcomes in a way I find sorely lacking today. It’s a long piece, but it is worth reading in its entirety.

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The Congressional “Racially Segregated” Set Up Own Debt Panel Using Race Card

 However, the folks at the “Hill” gave the title, “Black Caucus Sets up Own Debt Panel” to the article below written by Bernie Becker.   The “Black Caucus” is a racially segregated (by choice), often racist in rhetoric and politics organization of the Democrat Party in Congress.  It makes noise and otherwise intimidates looking for every larger pandering policies and dollars.   People like Maxine Waters from California and Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri belong to the group

The Becker article begins with:  “The Congressional Black Caucus, not totally satisfied with recent commissions focused on reducing the national debt, has set up one of their own.

 The newly formed commission had its first – and, at this time, only scheduled – meeting on Friday, where it discussed how proposals from groups like the president’s bipartisan fiscal commission would have an impact on minority communities. 

“A glaring omission from various debt reports is a thoughtful analysis of how their recommendations will affect the nation’s most economically vulnerable populations,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), the chairman of the CBC, said at Friday’s gathering. ”

Comment:  Representative Cleaver shows his racism here.    This is a racially segregated  caucus solely  interested in what we call these day “African-Americans.   To use Rep. Cleaver’s words and knowing the goals of his racially driven caucus, he implies by his above statement that “the natiion’s most economically vulnerable populations” are blacks.

This is a racist statement if for no other reason it is a statement dividing the poor by race.   For, it is the poor, I believe the non-racist Americans would agree,  who are “the nation’s most economically vulnerable populations”.

Mr. Cleaver’s honesty (see backpedalling below) was accurately challenged this past spring when he made false charges of racism against Tea Party Americans, a non-segregated group, which gathered in the nation’s capital to protest the  ObamaCare coup takeover of the American health industry. 

As you continue reading this article, ask yourselves why does the Congress  of the United States of America condone a racist, racially motivated caucus to conduct its racist business in its midst?

Mr. Becker continues:   “Stephanie Young, a spokeswoman for the caucus, said its commission would submit a report and recommendations to Congress and the Obama administration before the president releases his budget, which is scheduled to happen in mid-February. Young also indicated that the caucus did not reach out to either the White House or congressional leaders before forming their group. 

The caucus’ debt commission comes as officials in Washington are discussing a variety of deficit reduction ideas. In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a five-year freeze of non-security discretionary spending.

Groups of Republicans, meanwhile, have called for setting spending at 2006 or 2008 levels. And on the Senate side, Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) have have talked up legislation modeled after the recommendations from the president’s debt commission. 

On Friday, some panelists at the CBC commission meeting – which included officials from the Urban Institute and the Aspen Institute and academics from Duke and Johns Hopkins – appeared skeptical of deficit reduction plans that would roll back spending and investment aimed at creating jobs. 

“We know that the recession has had a disparate impact on people of color, African- Americans especially,” said Maya Rockeymoore, the director of Leadership for Healthy Communities. ”We have higher unemployment, we have higher rates of foreclosure, we have higher poverty levels.”

In her prepared remarks for Friday’s meeting, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) also called it regrettable that the current belt-tightening talk did not seem to apply to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan or to the compromise last year that extended the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and installed new estate tax provisions.  

Officials who have been pushing deficit reduction have said their proposals would include ideas that upset some people or groups. 

Warner, for instance, told a Virginia news outlet that part of the appeal of his proposal with Chambliss was that it was a plan “where everybody can say, ‘I don’t like a lot of it, but the sum of the good it does is worth the pain it will cost.’” 

With all that in mind, one member of Obama’s deficit commission has applauded the CBC’s move to add to that discussion. 

“The president’s fiscal commission established one very important principle: everything must be on the table when it comes to planning a prudent course for our nation’s economic future,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), who ended up voting to not move the commission’s recommendations forward, said in a statement. “I commend the Congressional Black Caucus for working to lay before us another credible option to achieve our fiscal goals.”

Further comment:   Shouldn’t the MAIN lesson from this article be that this is a good time FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DEMAND AN END TO RACIST ORGANIZATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS?

If you agree, please write to your representatives TODAY to help put an end to RACISM in America.

(A special thanks goes to Cole in California for alerting me to this issue.)

*backpedaling…Rep. Cleaver set off a tsunami wave  out of the main stream media when he claimed people spat upon him and called out nigger as Democrat Party black Representatives walked through a large group of Tea Party activists near  the nation’s capitol, last March protesting  Obama’s signing the controversial ObamaCare bill.

Leftists everywhere had a Bonanza Party spreading the rumor which was a complete LIE.   Fortunately, modern technology, that is,  countless protestors recorded the event and not a one could back up Representative’s claim.  No racial slurs of anykind were heard by anyone.

In addition a $10,000 reward was offered to anyone who could come up with evidence that a slur was shouted by anyone in the large group.

No one came forward.   A few days later came the following:

…http://republicanheretic.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/emanuel-cleaver-backpedals-on-tea-party-spit-claim/

“Who Is Charles Krauthammer,” by David Solway at Pajamas…..

…..at Pajamas Media, that is.  

I am amazed that I agree with David Solway’s criticisms of Charles Krauthammer’s recommendations….all of them, I think.   Yet, I seek him out wherever I see his name and read him for my reactions…..my political gyroscope, perhaps.

He is the best in the business!   

“Who Is Charles Krauthammer?” David Solway asks and, below, read his answer:

“Charles Krauthammer has long been recognized as one of America’s most astute and authoritative political columnists, acknowledged as a cut above the majority of his scrivening colleagues. And yet there is something cryptic and elusive about him, like the coy Waldo in the famous puzzle. Perhaps he resents being put in boxes and wishes to preserve his independence of judgment, or his unpredictability. Still, one detects a growing tendency to pronounce upon critical affairs without sufficient grounding in the penetralia of things along with a positional inconsistency that renders him at times maddeningly unlocatable, like a slippery electron in a split-screen experiment.

In other words, it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine where he can be reliably found on the ideological scale. Is he a conservative, a centrist, a “situational libertarian,” or all of these at different times? Is he a fiscal conservative like Terry Corcoran and, simultaneously, a social liberal like Alan Dershowitz? He is certainly far to the right of the New York Times, as any thinking person must be, but then he writes for the ultra-liberal Washington Post. Does he share a secret sympathy with choice portions of its editorial line or is he the paper’s resident conservative, whose purpose is to impart a semblance of impartiality?

Despite his apparent conservative credentials, Krauthammer had already become somewhat problematic after his stunning denunciation of the intrepid Geert Wilders at National Review Online. This is a great enigma since, extrapolating from his earlier track record as a sober and insightful observer of the world’s combustible transactions, Krauthammer might have been expected to give the Dutch parliamentarian his seal of approval. But to slander Wilders — a vigorous critic of political correctness, a courageous defender of democratic rights, and a man dedicated to resisting the Islamic cannibalizing of Western civilization — as “extreme, radical and wrong” is clearly beyond the pale. So gratuitous a condemnation seems especially mean-spirited when one recalls that Wilders is living under an Islamic death fatwa for speaking his mind. The stigma lies more with the American journalist than the Dutch politician.

And when Krauthammer proceeds to dismiss “Islamism” as merely “an ideology of a small minority,” he loses credibility, revealing a state of denial more plausibly associated with America’s coastal elites, public intellectuals, academic limpets, and media dilettantes like Paul Krugman, Peter Beinart, Thomas Friedman, David Remnick et al. Andrew Bostom takes Krauthammer roundly to task for his “fundamental ignorance of mainstream, classical Islamic Law” and for his “uninformed, incoherent musings on Geert Wilders and Islam.” Diana West, too, in The Death of the Grown-Up, castigates Krauthammer for going “all mushy on us,” passing off as “Islamist” what is plainly part of “Islam as a whole, as a historical continuum, as the theology of what we know as terrorism, as a rationale for dhimmi repression.” How someone as presumably knowledgeable as Krauthammer could become on this matter a charter member of the middlebrow illiterati is troubling.

Then there is Krauthammer’s recent suggestion that the Republican Party should not attempt to defund ObamaCare but let it founder of its own accord, thus depriving the Democrats of the opportunity to blame the other side of the aisle for its demise. Such advice is myopic and self-defeating. As Bryan Preston pointed out here at Pajamas, once massive social policies are implemented, they “take root and create dependencies,” becoming “so entrenched that [they] can’t be killed off without significant pain for the American people.” AllahPundit at Hot Air delivers the same message: “if you want to kill a bad entitlement, kill it quickly before expectations calcify.” This is sound advice which, we might have assumed, would surely have occurred to a supposed “fiscal conservative” like Krauthammer. Though it didn’t take long for Krauthammer to reverse course. Suddenly, we learn that since ObamaCare is “the biggest budget buster in the history of the welfare state” and is based on an array of “phony” numbers, then “everything begins with repeal.” There’s quite a bit of zigzagging going on here. One expects more from the best, or at least, from someone who has built a stellar reputation over the years.

It doesn’t stop there. We also discover that from his viewscape, Barack Obama is the “new comeback kid.” According to Krauthammer in a Washington Post column, following the president’s “shellacking” in the November 2 congressional elections, “Obama fashioned out of thin air his return to relevance, an even more impressive achievement” than Bill Clinton’s adroit triangulating. Admittedly, Krauthammer is justly critical of the Republicans who gave Obama a free pass on hundreds of billions of superfluous spending and sprinkled his path “with rose petals.” And yet when the noted columnist tells us that “Obama’s repositioning to the center was first symbolized by his joint appearance with Clinton,” he does not mention in this context that Obama literally turned his back and left that famous press conference to Clinton’s better management, thus presenting a most unpresidential image of weakness and irresponsibility. Obama’s “repositioning” was not so much toward the center as toward the exit.

Krauthammer believes that “the president is a very smart man,” but one may have to modulate this gesture of cerebral anointment. What Krauthammer is apparently getting at is that Obama is street smart and a canny manipulator. What he does not say is that Obama is neither well educated — he has little knowledge of history or economics and zero understanding of foreign affairs — nor does he seem capable of sustained reflection. Krauthammer is right to target the president’s “vanity” but, unless I am seriously mistaken, he tends to give Obama rather more than his due.

For example, Krauthammer opines that Obama’s “string of lame-duck successes” — Stimulus II, repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and the START treaty — “is a singular political achievement,” and that “the great Republican ascendancy of 2010 lasted less than two months.” But in a subsequent WaPo article, Krauthammer rightly observes that a new spirit of “constitutionalism” is a “promising first step to a conservative future,” which would appear to imply that the Republican ascendancy is not over but has just begun. “Sneering” Democrats are given the back of his hand; yet those he calls “non-suicidal liberals” are still “[d]emeaningly, and somewhat unfairly … having to prove their fealty to the flag.” Since liberals are for the most part affiliated with the Democratic Party, it would make some sense to suggest that the best way to prove their fealty to the flag is to leave the party.

On the whole, the value of Krauthammer’s general deposition is that it serves as a warning to Republicans not to take Obama lightly or to underestimate the conniving shrewdness of the Democratic left. But even in his more balanced columns, a latent current of misplaced respect for a divisive and destructive president willy-nilly tends to emerge. This seems at times like something more than the cautionary esteem of a redoubtable opponent; it smacks of a kind of selective bemusement masked by an aura of Olympian detachment.

A lauded political analyst from whom much is anticipated, a man of presumed conservative principles, an eminence by consensus, he now occasionally prattles away in fluent liberalspeak, attacking a patriot like Geert Wilders and, in practical effect, inflating the “achievements” of a schismatic like Barack Obama. This looks a lot like cognitive dissonance or a species of intellectual vagrancy. Who knows, maybe he has started to mellow and is no longer the Critter Gitter he used to be.

Or is he, as I suggested above, simply sui generis — one can never be sure where on the radar screen of current events his columnar blip will next appear. He clearly leans toward the conservative standpoint on the major questions of foreign policy and the Constitution; yet on social issues such as abortion, energy taxes, and stealth jihad he seems sympathetic to the liberal perspective. True, he opposes the Cordoba mosque project as a violation of “hallowed ground”; on the other hand, as we have seen, he trashes Wilders who has spoken passionately against the Cordoba mosque. What gives? The same man who came out strongly in Israel’s defense during the 2006 “Lebanon War,” backed by the conservative right, also supported Ariel Sharon’s disastrous “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005, which was naturally encouraged by the liberal-left.

How does he juggle what resembles a set of incompatibles? To use a metaphor from Bridge, it is as if Krauthammer is playing a tenace hand, holding two nonconsecutive high cards in a suit, but with no intention of “finessing underneath” the missing “honor.” There is no doubt that he plays a powerful game. But regrettably, one misses both the level of consistency one would infer from so formidable a player and the willingness to grapple with the terminal implications of that game.”    Krauthammer has been very misguided about these European Leftwing courts’ attacks on free speech, as in  Holland with Geert Wilders, in Denmark with Lars Hedegaard, and in Austria with Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolff  to appease militant Islam.

Roger Kimball: What Sauce Will Barack Obama Use When He Eats His Words?

Unfortunately the Truth of the matter is Mr. Obama will never be man enough to eat his own words.   Despite this slight slight of reality, Roger Kimball is one of those people I enjoy reading….He reminds me of Christopher Hitchen writings.  But my  enjoyment of reading Roger  is extra because I and Roger Kimball are on the same side of today’s cultural and political battles.  

The “Sauce” title is Roger’s….or the title someone decided would fit Roger’s recipe in the article…..which, by the way, appears at Pajamas Media:

“For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing, if his ministers also he transformed as the ministers of righteousness . . .

—2 Corinthians 11:14-15

Remember when Obama went to Cairo to deplore the “tension between the United States and Muslims around the world”? That tension, he said, was  “exploited” by “violent extremists” in a “small but potent minority of Muslims.” As a result, some Americans had come to view Islam as “inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights.”  And this, he said, “has bred more fear and mistrust.”

Obama went to Cairo to offer “a new beginning,” dispel the fear, cure the mistrust, and end the “cycle of suspicion and discord.” America and Islam, he said, “are not exclusive, and need not be in competition.”

Good news: they “overlap, and share common principles.” More good news: those principles have to do with “justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”  Who knew?

Some proverbial wisdom: be careful about what you wish for — you just might get it.

Keen on democracy, are you? Do you view the pickle that Egyptian bad guy Hosni Mubarak finds himself in with glee? Are those rock-throwing multitudes in Egypt the “voice of democracy”?

Maybe. But who or what is the demos,  the people?

The largest opposition group in Egypt — as in many Arab countries — is the Muslim Brotherhood. Officially, the group, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna (the  grandfather of Muslim confidence man Tariq Ramadan), is banned in Egypt. No matter. It is nonetheless the  “world’s most influential Islamist movement.” No one knows exactly how many members it has in Egypt. The number is certainly in the millions.

What is the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood? To make the Koran the “sole reference point for … ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state.”

What is the means by which the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to achieve this goal? Jihad — a “grand jihad,” as one document puts it, which seeks to destroy Western civilization “from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

Particulars? In Egypt, since the Muslim Brotherhood is banned, supporters “run for office as independents.” It preaches “social justice,” “the eradication of poverty and corruption,” “political freedom” — important caveat — “to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam.”

What is happening in Egypt? Joe Biden, whose record for imbecility is unblemished, chalked up another victory a few days ago when he assured us that Hosni Mubarak was “not a dictator.” He looks like  a dictator. He certainly acts like a dictator. Nevertheless, Biden, in what Fox News called “the Obama administration’s most definitive statement to date” (January 28), said that Mubarak should not step down.

He might be right.

The “unrest” (a polite word for “riots”) we are seeing in Egypt is certainly “popular” unrest.  We are supposed to be in favor of unrest when it is “popular,” aren’t we?

Again, I would suggest that we take a look at the nature and composition of the populace before offering a definitive opinion about that.  Ponder this headline from The New York Times: “Iran Sees Rise of Islamic Hard-Liners.”

An unhappy truth: in this imperfect world, we are often faced with a choice between something bad and something worse.

If you want to understand what is happening in Egypt, read Andy McCarthy’s book The Grand Jihad. Its chief purpose is to illuminate what is happening in the United States.  But it has a lot of historical background about the origin and evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood.  McCarthy is not as cheery as President Obama. He is, however, a good sight more truthful.”

Comment:  I admit I like reading Roger’s ‘stuff’.   My good friend and fellow Prager fan, artist Steve Levin, introduced me to him years and years ago, when he was just Roger Kimball writing art articles.  It was in New York City.  Roger ate lunch, walked and talked like he writes.   Get the picture by using  your own imagination…. reread Roger’s article above with these pointers in mind.

What I think cuts a good article  has something to do with….accuracy of  fact,  blendings of knowledge, a touch of humor, a bit of edge, and clever referrings showing a little depth and width.  Obama has none of this ability.   For instance, he “name drops” knowledge for the sake of showing off knowledge rather than using knowledge to aid in understanding.  

 Obama  dresses well and appears to wash himself well…..and this shows up often  in his ‘writings’….or alleged writings.  But he is disingenuous, dishonest, mechanical  and a  bore as a writer.   He seldom stops lecturing.

Fouad Ajami on the Fall of the Pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak

  The article below was written by Fouad Ajami  in the Wall Street Journal, titled, “Rebellion in the Land of the Pharaohs:

‘When Ramses II was over eighty he celebrated his rejuvenation at the feast of Set, repeating it yearly until he was ninety and more, and displaying his power of rejuvenation to the Gods above in the Obelisks he regularly erected as a memorial, which the aged Pharaoh decorated with electrum at the top so that their brightness should pour over lands of Egypt when the sun was mirrored in them.”

This is from a classic account of this ancient and ordered land, “The Nile in Egypt,” by Emil Ludwig (1937). Hosni Mubarak, the military officer who became Pharaoh in his own right, is well over 80. His is the third-longest reign since Ramses, who ruled for 67 years. The second-longest had belonged to a remarkable soldier of fortune, Muhammad Ali, an Albanian by birth and the creator of modern Egypt, who conquered the country in the opening years of the 19th century and ruled for five decades. His dynasty was to govern Egypt until the middle years of the 20th century.

In the received image of it, Egypt is the most stable of nations, a place of continuity on the banks of a sanguine river. Egyptians, the chronicles tell us, never killed their pharaohs. Anwar al-Sadat had been the first. But this received image conceals a good deal of tumult. The submission to the will of Gods and rulers has been punctured by ferocious rebellions.

From Ludwig again: “Once the fellahin (the peasants) and the workers of Egypt revolted against their masters; once their resentment burst out: a revolution dispossessed the rich men and the priests of Egypt of their power.” One such revolution at the end of the Old Kingdom raged intermittently for two centuries (2350 B.C. to 2150 B.C.).

In more recent times, in 1952, the Egyptians rose in rebellion and set much of modern Cairo to the torch, which would lead to the fall of the monarchy. The agile Sadat faced a big revolt of his own in 1977 when he attempted to reduce the subsidies on bread and sugar and cooking gas. It is said that he had been ready to quit this country in the face of that upheaval.

It is hard to know with precision when Hosni Mubarak, the son of middle peasantry, lost the warrant of his people. It had started out well for this most cautious of men. He had been there on the reviewing stand on Oct. 6, 1981 when a small band of young men from the army struck down Sadat as the flamboyant ruler was reviewing his troops and celebrating the eighth anniversary of the October War of 1973.”

The new man had risen by grace of his predecessor’s will. He had had no political past. The people of Egypt had not known of him. He was the antidote to two great and ambitious figures—Nasser and Sadat. His promise was modesty. He would tranquilize the realm after three decades of tumult and wars and heartbreaking bids to re-make the country.

A deceased friend of mine, an army general of Mr. Mubarak’s class and generation, spoke of the man with familiarity: He was a civil servant with the rank of president, he said of his fellow officer. Mr. Mubarak put the word out that he would serve two six-year terms and be gone. But the appetite grew with the eating. The humble officer would undergo a transformation. A presidency-for-life announced itself. And in an astounding change, where Nasser and Sadat feared the will and the changing moods of their countrymen, Mr. Mubarak grew imperious and dismissive.

Egypt bent to his will. A country with a vibrant parliamentary tradition in the 1920s and 1930s became a sterile tyranny. A land that had opened onto Europe in the course of the 19th century, that had given rise to professional syndicates and associations, to an independent judiciary, was brought low.

There has always been an Egyptian pride in their country—even as Egypt tried and failed to modernize, even as its Sisyphean struggle broke its heart and engendered a deep sense of disappointment—and Mr. Mubarak came to offend that sense of national pride.

In the annals of Muslim dynasties and kingdoms, wives and children have figured prominently in the undoing of rulers. An ambitious wife, Suzanne, with haughty manners, and a taste for wealth and power (a variation on the hairdresser Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the deposed Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali) and a favored son who, by all indications, was preparing to inherit his father’s power, deepened the estrangement between Mr. Mubarak and his people.

Egypt had been the trendsetter in Arab politics, in its self-image the place where all things modern in Arab life—the cinema, radio, women’s emancipation, parliamentary life, mass politics, forced industrialization—had begun. The sight of Tunisians, hitherto a marginal people in the Arab consciousness, taking to the streets and deposing their tyrant, both shamed and emboldened the Egyptians. They had wearied of the large prison that Mr. Mubarak had constructed for them. A man who places himself at the helm for three decades inevitably, and justly, becomes the target of all the discontents in the realm.

Revolts of this kind are always a gamble on the unknown. At bottom, they are an attempt at self-purification, a society wishes to be done with the stain of submission to a dictator’s transgressions. Amid the tumult, what is so clear today is the hatred felt for the ruler and his immediate family. Reigns like Mr. Mubarak’s devour the green and the dry, as a favored Arab expression has it. The sycophants come to the fore and steal what they can. Those with heart and character and pride are hauled off to prison, or banished to the outer margins of public life.

Mr. Mubarak has been merciless with his critics. For this isolated, aging man of the barracks, dissent is always treason. There remains, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood. It was in Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood was born in the late 1920s. The Brotherhood has been the alibi and the bogeyman with which Hosni Mubarak frightened the middle class at home and the donors abroad in Washington and Europe, who prop his regime out of fear that Egypt would come apart and the zealots would triumph.

In one of the novels by the late Egyptian novelist and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, a pharaoh is told by his lovely mistress Rabudis of rumors of pending rebellion, of popular disaffection. “And they say the priests are a powerful group with control over the hearts and the minds of the people.” But he smiles and answers. “But I am the stronger.” “What of the anger of the people my lord,” she asks? “It will calm down when they see me on my chariot.” We shall see if and how this modern-day pharaoh copes with a people determined to be rid of him.”

Mr. Ajami is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

IMF to US: Better Start Taking Care of Business!! Is Obama Listening or Spending?

(IMF = International Monetary Organization….in case some lefty readers have forgotten.)  The following article was written by Ed Morrissey, a chief honcho at Hot’Air:

“You remember the IMF, right?  It’s the organization that had to partner with the EU in order to rescue Greece from its massive debt and collapsing bond structure — a task accomplished with around $7 billion from the US.  Now the IMF has a warning for the US as well, that our own debt is Greecing the skids to a similar but much more disastrous conclusion in the long term:

U.S. officials must act quickly to control government deficits or face slower growth and even more difficult choices in the future, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday in a report criticizing the tepid U.S. response to its rising public debt.

The IMF warning comes as federal officials grapple with a congressional projection this week that the annual deficit will reach a historic $1.5 trillion this year. This was the latest report to raise concerns about how massive government debts in developed countries could undermine the global economic recovery.

“The U.S. has a lot of credibility. This does not imply their credibility can last forever,” IMF fiscal affairs director Carlo Cottarelli said as he released the IMF study. It concluded that the United States is falling behind on a promise it made to other top economic countries to halve its budget deficit by 2013.

“This is a problem many years in the making and will take a concerted effort by Democrats and Republicans working together to find a solution,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in answer to a question about the IMF report.

He noted that President Obama called for a freeze on discretionary spending during this week’s State of the Union address. IMF officials have welcomed the step but said that spending cuts in pension and health entitlement programs are also needed.

Offering the discretionary-spending freeze as an answer to the IMF’s legitimate concern is akin to telling your mortgage holder that you’ve started an austerity program by deciding not to buy more pay-per-view porn each month than in the previous few years.  Your lender would probably blink twice while deciding if you were serious, then congratulate you while wondering if someone has to come in each day to cut your food for you.

A freeze in discretionary spending isn’t a reduction; it’s an insistence on spending at the same level that got the country into the position that’s alarming the IMF.  As I wrote earlier this week, the White House is claiming that a freeze on non-security discretionary spending (which amounts to about 12% of the overall federal budget, by the way) will save $400 billion over the next ten years, but that’s simply not true.  It will save $400 billion over the next ten years at the rate the Obama administration wanted to increase spending.  It actually saves nothing at all, and in the absence of other changes, won’t affect the current deficit trajectory one single iota.

Besides, we have a $1.5 trillion deficit in this fiscal year, with deficits over the next decade projected to average over a trillion dollars.  That change would amount on an average annual basis to 4% of the deficits, leaving 96% of the deficits in place.  And since deficits accumulate debt, it gets worse from the IMF’s perspective each year that continues.

For the IMF, this is even more worrisome than the Greek default.  After all, the IMF could rely on the US to help backstop the bailout for Greece and perhaps other EU members on the ragged edge of default.  If the US starts to slide, there won’t be anyone to bail out America — and the IMF will be utterly destroyed in the collapse.  The IMF’s managers want the US to start taking the problem seriously, and they’re not seeing any indication of seriousness from the administration, especially not after the so-called spending freeze offered by Barack Obama this week conditioned on getting a slew of new government spending approved.”

Giving Equal Time to the Young Thinkers Who Oppose Pat Condell’s View That “Not All Cultures Are Equal”

Pat Condell, who claims that all cultures are not equal, has his critics.   In America most come from the victimhood classes who remember their yesterdays  judging  them by today’s AMERICAN JudeoChristian disappearing standards of morality and social decency.  Please click on to the world of critics of  the Pat Condell’s  view, and my view, I admit, that not all cultures are equal….but, please do your own declaring:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y76uMkktX2s&NR=1

(Note.  It should be mentioned that in today’s Islam, it is proscribed that any persons who leave Islam for other thoughts of religious persuasion, should be executed.)

I am a religious non-believer, but by good fortunes, Christian by culture.

I am curious to know if the today’s defenders of militant Islam know what would happen to me  and all other ‘believers’ like me, if  in Teheran, Sana, Tripoli, in Mecca, Riyadh or even in Basra, Suez  or in sections of London,  I or anyone might ask to provide an idea, a thought, an appoach to cultural life in contrast with the Sunni or Shiah imam, mullah and others’ dictates, or merely ask for equal time to challenge  the hate speech  of these  evangelists of this “religion of peace”?

The closest tribes in America to these devoted Islamist intolerant are those devotees leading our Democrat Party today.

Peace!

A Call for American Muslims to Kill the Infidel

“Brian Fairchild at Pajamas Media  wrote  this article about Al-Awlaki’s call for American Muslims to kill the infidels:

    “Al-Qaeda to American Muslims:  KILL THE INFIDEL, Make a Living”

“In the latest issue of Inspire magazine, published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, American al-Qaeda commander Anwar al-Awlaki declares that Sharia law requires American Muslims to commit robbery, embezzlement, and theft, for the purpose of funding jihad attacks, financially supporting groups committed to Salafi-jihadi causes, and covering their living expenses.

Al-Awlaki admits that Islamic law allows legitimate Muslim rulers to enter into binding treaties and covenants with non-Muslim nations, but he quickly dismisses this possibility by stating that there are no legitimate Muslim rulers in the world today because they are all apostates. He adds that — even if there were legitimate Muslim rulers — treaties and covenants could not be made with the U.S. because it is at war with Islam.

After a lengthy analysis of how the four schools of Sunni Islam view this topic, he concludes that:

In the case of the United States, both the government and private citizens should be targeted. America and Americans are the Imams of kufr in this day and age. The American people who vote for war mongering governments are intent on no good. Anyone who inflicts harm on them in any form is doing a favor to the ummah. … Since jihad around the world is in dire need of financial support, we urge our brothers in the West to take it upon themselves to give this issue a priority in their plans. Rather than the Muslims financing their jihad from their own pockets, they should finance it from the pockets of their enemies.

Many commentators have mistakenly focused on this new statement as a sign of al-Qaeda’s financial weakness, but they widely miss the point.

Al-Qaeda has never hidden the fact that it needs money. For years, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other al-Qaeda leaders have repeatedly cajoled and pleaded for more money from the faithful.

The actual point is that — as of about a year ago — al-Qaeda launched a dynamic new strategic campaign designed to turn American Muslims against their government and transform them into an active and self-sustaining arm of the global jihad. Al-Awlaki’s new declaration simply tells them how they can finance their attacks and make a living at the same time.

Most Americans do not fully comprehend or appreciate the degree to which the al-Qaeda organization has focused its attention on American Muslims. This new focus is a huge departure from al-Qaeda’s past approach, and the fact that its message is tailored for American Muslims in colloquial English written by influential American jihadists such as al-Awlaki, Adam Gadahn, and Samir Khan, delivered via an online magazine with cool graphics and punchy headlines, enables it to engage, influence, and recruit young American Muslims.

Using this tailored mass media approach, al-Qaeda takes American Muslims by the hand and patiently explains to them exactly where they fit into the grand jihad and how, as insiders, they are uniquely positioned to strike a blow against Islam’s fiercest enemy.

It painstakingly explains how Sharia law requires and justifies their attacks on America, it advises them to take six months to a year to plan secure operations, it teaches them how to build bombs and use a variety of weapons to kill Americans, it provides role models for them to emulate, and now it is telling them how to finance their operations.

Unfortunately, al-Qaeda’s creative and sustained campaign is already reaping benefits by winning over American traitors. In Inspire’s letters-to-the-editor section, an American Muslim calling himself Hamza announces:

The release of your majestic magazine brought tears to my eyes, brothers. I cannot convey how excited I am to see such wonderful words pour from the page like the blood from a kafr. The words are blessed by Allah, and will give much strength to the brothers here among the Americans.

Given the fact that al-Awlaki is the rising star of the international jihad movement who has personally motivated dozens of terrorists — including the would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, Nidal Hasan (the Ft. Hood massacre), and underwear bomber Umar Farouk — there is every reason to fear that more American Muslims like Hamza will respond to his new ruling by launching criminal campaigns to finance their jihad against America.

Brian Fairchild served as a career Operations Officer in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Clandestine Service with twenty years of experience operating under official and non-official cover. In 1998, he testified before Congress on counterterrorism issues, and he is currently the Director of Intelligence Operations for the Intrepid Group. Since 9/11, he has taught over ten thousand law enforcement officers, intelligence officials, and military personnel about the Muslim Brotherhood and the global Jihad movement. The Intrepid Group provides video tutorials on these subjects on its website and YouTube channel.

Sharia Law Must Be Understood and Dealt With in Our Free World

 

To help you understand the religious and political problems facing any democratic movements in Muslim states, you must become acquainted with what  sharia law is.

For many who live in the Free World sharia law is an aggressive   cancer lethal to all human freedoms.

Click on below for an informative talk given by Daniel Pipes on this very subject to help you make your own conclusion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPYfGydqpZ4&feature=fvw

Have You Heard Pat Condell’s Message about the Leftwing Attacks on Free Speech, Yet?

 Is today’s  American conservative the last hope  not only for freedom in America but for the future of freedom anywhere on Earth?

There can be no doubt that the world’s Left has united with militant Islam to attack civil liberties we in America  have so dearly valued in our  struggle to achieve   “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for mankind.

In America the Obama Left champions multiculturalism, atheism, and Government Management of People.    His America persecutes and prosecutes Americans who criticize today’s icons of the Left including Islam.

Click below to understand better the struggle for freedom in today’s world threatened by  Obama multiculturalism and militant Islam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEkelAsmcf4