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Sunday, November 30, 2008

Islam Has NEVER Been THE RELIGION OF PEACE

One of the biggest falsities in the political dialogue today is Islam is a religion of Peace. Islam was started by Muhammad who spread his religion through military power and masscres of the innocents.

For example in the case of the Khaybar Jews, Muhammad had the male leadership killed, and plundered their riches. The terrorized Khaybar survivors—industrious Jewish farmers—became prototype subjugated dhimmis whose productivity was extracted by the Muslims as a form of permanent booty. (And according to the Muslim sources, even this tenuous vassalage was arbitrarily terminated within a decade of Muhammad’s death when Caliph Umar expelled the Jews of Khaybar.) Source.

Throughout history and through today, Islam has believed in spreading its influence vial terror and violence:

Muhammad and Mumbia By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com | 12/1/2008

Islam was born as a religion spread through violence. There is a direct line from the prophet Muhammad to today’s Islamic terrorists, whose latest deadly attacks wreaked havoc in Mumbai, India. The ongoing effort in the United Nations and the politically correct media to disassociate Islam from terrorism is a sham.

Just days before the Mumbai attack, a United Nations Committee passed a resolution entitled “Combating Defamation of Religions”, which will be going to the General Assembly for approval in mid-December. It is one in a series of such resolutions pushed by the Organization of Islamic Conference. While ostensibly applying to all religions, it refers only to Islam by name. The text “expresses deep concern … that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”

The New York Times’ lead news stories in the aftermath of the Mumbai massacre played right into the Organization of Islamic Conference’s campaign of obfuscation. It omitted the central fact that the terrorists who murdered more than 170 innocent people were fanatical Islamists. The Times referred to them simply in generic terms as “gunmen”, “attackers”, and “militants”.

The only hint of a Muslim connection to the terrorist acts reported in the New York Times’ lead article on November 28, 2008 was the recounting of a complaint from two of the attackers to local television stations about the treatment of Muslims in India and about hostilities in the disputed territory of Kashmir. The Times actually quoted one of these cold-hearted terrorists, who tried to play victim in justifying the carnage.

Islamic terrorists always have some kind of excuse for their wanton killings. Usually it starts with the Jews, whom the religious fanatics believe are responsible for every ill befalling Muslims everywhere and thus deserve to die. It was no surprise that a Jewish center in Mumbai was among the prime terrorist targets, with deadly consequences to a rabbi, his wife and other Jews.

Westerners also must be punished for keeping the Muslim people down, so the Islamists’ rationalization for murder goes. American and British citizens in particular were targeted at hotels and other locations in Mumbai where they were likely to congregate. However, the slaughter soon became indiscriminate. In fact, most of the dead appeared to be Indians and tourists of other nationalities caught in the midst of the terrorists’ mayhem. Indian commandos involved in an operation to end the siege described the terrorists as "showing no remorse, firing at anyone who moves".

The truth makes no difference to the politically correct crowd at the New York Times and other left-wing media in the West, not to mention at the United Nations. They refuse to acknowledge the centrality of Islamic religious dogma to the scourge of terrorism we are witnessing all over the world. Shortly after 9/11 al Qaeda attack on our homeland , for example, a regular columnist for the New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof, wrote a piece entitled Terrorism Beyond Islam. He opined that the “defiant and violent antagonism to the West that we now associate with Islamists was for centuries linked instead to places like Japan, Korea and China.” Such violence, he said, was not inherent to Islam as a religion but rather was caused by “frustration at the humiliating choice faced by once-great civilizations heartsick at the pressure to discard bits of their own cultures to catch up with the nouveaux riches in the West.”

How many more Islam-inspired massacres of the likes we have witnessed in Western and non-Western countries all over the world – from New York City, Washington D.C., London, and Madrid to Jerusalem, Casablanca, Algiers, Bali, Manila, Beirut and Istanbul - must happen before Kristof and his colleagues at the New York Times and other media are willing to say that the Islam religion is correctly associated with terrorism?

The Koran’s central tenet is that Islam is the only true religion, which must be spread by force throughout the world. While Jews revere Moses as a lawgiver and Christians revere Jesus Christ’s selfless sacrifice for our sins, Muhammad is revered by Muslims as a warrior prophet. His ideology of establishing Islam’s supremacy through holy war (jihad) and martyrdom (shahada) is reflected in the Koran, which Muslims believe contain Muhammad’s revelations and is the infallible word of Allah:

“Kill the Mushrikun [pagans] wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush.” (Koran 9:5).

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Christians and Jews], until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” (Koran 9:29)

Muslims are directed to follow their prophet’s example with literal exactitude. “Ye have indeed in the messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern [of conduct] for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the final day, and who engages much in the praise of Allah”. (Koran 33:21)

The deadly example that Muhammad set for his loyal followers is expressed in his own words: “I have been ordered by Allah to fight and kill all people [non-Muslims] until they say, ‘No God except Allah.’”

After uniting warring Arab tribes under his banner, Muhammad’s armies expelled long-time Jewish residents from the Arabian Peninsula. They then fanned out to conquer Christian lands in the Holy Roman Empire after the Christian Roman emperor in Constantinople rejected Muhammad’s demand to embrace Islam. His followers waged wars of aggression against Christians in Western Europe, who were in no position to fight back successfully until centuries later. They spread out into Persia, North Africa and the Far East. Islam’s humiliation came about only when its warriors were finally turned back and failed to achieve Muhammad’s vision of total victory for his religion’s supremacy.

The blood of ‘infidels’ then and now is spilt by Muslims as a religious duty commanded by the Koran and in accordance with the example set by their prophet Muhammad himself. Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups are the reincarnation of Muhammad’s armies in the service of Allah. They are not aberrations from true Islam, but rather are returning Islam to its warlike origins.

We will continue to reap the tragedies that they are sowing so long as we are lulled by their propagandists and the obliging left-wing media into whitewashing the truth about the core terrorist nature of Islam.

British Green Party Leader Blames Mumbai on Israel

Caroline Lucas Head of the Green Party in Great Britain has a theory, the terror attacks, its all Israel's fault.
I think what we should be doing is looking at some of the root causes of some of the terrorist acts we see - not to condone it but I do think that we have to try to understand it, and I think that the situation in Palestine for example, with the ongoing Israeli occupation with the absolute strangulation of Gaza with this siege on Gaza - essentially this economic blockade - is really feeding so much anger right across the world and it means that there is more of a fertile breeding ground then for extremists to flourish.
I guess the green party likes to pick its leaders from the bottom of the barrel. Of course we are talking about a lady who once said:
“Financial and moral support from the United States means that Israel has been able to act with relative immunity, hiding behind its incendiary claim that all who criticise its policies are anti Semitic. This does a great disservice to the many Jewish people who support the principle of universal human rights, and who oppose the current policies of the Israeli state.” -Source Greens Against the Boycott
Read on to see what else this nutjob said:


Mumbai was Israel's fault - Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green PartyOn BBC radio's Any Questions, Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party was asked the following question (about four minutes in to the programme):
"We've just seen over the past two days on the news about the terrorist attacks in India. This follows the terrorist attacks of 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid bombings, Bali bombings and many others. Can extremist ever be defeated."
Here is her answer:
"Let me first say in response to the situation in Mumbai that it's clearly a terrible act of terror, our thoughts are very much with the families there. It's a criminal act and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. In terms of whether there is a way of defeating extremism, my answer very clearly would be not by military means. I think all the evidence we've seen from Iraq and Afghanistan right across the board that you don't bring peace through the barrel of a gun. I think that when you see many people seeing that the war on terror hasn't made us safer - it's been interpreted by many as a war on Muslims and I think that's enormously damaging. I think what we should be doing is looking at some of the root causes of some of the terrorist acts we see - not to condone it but I do think that we have to try to understand it, and I think that the situation in Palestine for example, with the ongoing Israeli occupation with the absolute strangulation of Gaza with this siege on Gaza - essentially this economic blockade - is really feeding so much anger right across the world and it means that there is more of a fertile breeding ground then for extremists to flourish. So I think that if we are to defeat extremism then we have to go to the root causes of it - we have to look in particular at how marginalised communities are being treated, we have to look in particular about countries like Palestine."
Caroline Lucas says we need to "understand" but she doesn't, herself, show any evidence of understanding. In the past, Lucas has claimed that Israel hides behind a bad faith accusation of antisemitism which it throws at "all who criticise its policies". Now, Lucas is responding to a number of terrorist murders which include the antisemitic murder of Jews, targetted as Jews, with reference to what she calls the "strangulation of Gaza".

This is a serious misrepresentation. Not primarily because "strangulation" is an inadequate description of what is going on in Gaza. But because even if it wasn't, it would not explain why anger at Israeli policy was mystified into a racist anger against Jews.

Usually we hold racists and other bigots responsible for their hateful propaganda and their hateful actions. We understand racism as being a grossly unfair and unreasonable response to things that happen in the real world.

We don't "understand" a woman wearing a short skirt as being one of the causes of her rape.

We don't "understand" black kids' involvement in street crime as being one of the causes of racism against black people.

And we don't "understand" Israeli policy as being one of the causes of racism against Jews.

Caroline Lucas is right to want to try to "understand". But she isn't going to understand racism so long as she believes that racism against Jews is a trick, played by Israel against the world with the intention of covering their evil Jewish crimes.

Usually antiracists have little difficulty in condemning racism as being wholly wrong-headed and morally vile. Usually we don't accept the reasons given by the racists for their hatred as being worthy of much serious consideration or "understanding". Antisemitism should be no different. So why is it different for some antiracists?

Obama's UN Disaster-->Susan Rice The Woman Who Kept Bin Laden Free

As Part of his unveiling of the National Security Staff, President-Elect Obama is expected to announce Susan Rice as his UN Ambassador and that the position will be elevated to a Cabinet Level job. For those of you who don't remember Ms. Rice, she was John Kerry’s chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. One of the major steps Kerry suggested for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint James " F**K The Jews" Baker and Jimmy "Israel is an Apartheid State" Carter as negotiators. When furor erupted at the prospect of two of the most ardent foes of Israel being suggested to basically beat up Israel, Kerry backtracked and blamed his staff for the idea. That staff was Susan Rice.

Oh But there is more about Ms Rice. Back in 2004 Newsmax ran this article about how she screwed up the US efforts to "get" Bin Laden during the Clinton administration:

Another ex-Clinton official who played a leading role in bungling efforts to capture and/or neutralize Osama bin Laden has turned up in a key advisory position with the Kerry campaign.

Susan Rice, who served as President Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, had earlier been tapped by Gov. Howard Dean's anti-war campaign.

This week, however, Rice emerged as a foreign policy advisor to the Kerry Edwards campaign, which is still reeling from revelations that another key advisor, former Clinton national security chief Sandy Berger, had stolen national security secrets.

Rice is also acting as the campaign's designated apologist for former ambassador Joe Wilson, the Kerry advisor whose claims that "Bush lied" about Iraq uranium were exposed as bogus by the Senate Intelligence Committee two weeks ago.

"As far as I know, we have no reason to believe that Mr. Wilson's words and deeds were not as he spoke them," Rice told reporters this week. "I have great respect for his integrity."

The same can't be said of Rice, however, at least according to several of her former colleagues, who say she deserves a hefty portion of blame for the fact that Osama bin Laden wasn't neutralized during the 1990s.
"The FBI, in 1996 and 1997, had their efforts to look at terrorism data and deal with the bin Laden issue overruled every single time by the State Department, by Susan Rice and her cronies, who were hell-bent on destroying the Sudan," one-time Clinton diplomatic troubleshooter Mansoor Ijaz told radio host Sean Hannity in 2002.

Richard Miniter, author of the book "Losing bin Laden," concurred, saying Rice played a key role in scuttling the deal that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

In November 2003, Miniter told World Magazine that while Sudan was anxious to turn bin Laden over to the U.S., Rice - then a member of Clinton's National Security Council - questioned Khartoum's credibility.
"Rice [cited] the suffering of Christians [in Sudan] as one reason that she doubted the integrity of the Sudanese offers," said Miniter. "But her analysis largely overlooked the view of U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Tim Carney, who argued for calling Khartoum's bluff."

According to Miniter, Carney argued that the Clinton White House should "accept their offer of Mr. bin Laden and see if the National Islamic Front actually hands him over."

If Sudan complied, "we would have taken a major terrorist off the streets," he said. If they didn't, "the civilized world will see that, once again, Sudan's critics are proven right."

In a 2002 Washington Post op-ed piece co-authored with Ijaz, former ambassador Carney described Sen. Kerry's new adviser as a major obstacle to accepting offers from Sudan to share intelligence on bin Laden's terrorist network.

In April 1997, they said, Sudan dropped its demand that Washington lift sanctions in exchange for terrorism cooperation.

"Sudan's policy shift sparked a debate at the State Department, where foreign service officers believed the United States should reengage Khartoum. By the end of summer 1997, [those officers] persuaded incoming Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to let at least some diplomatic staff return to Sudan to press for a resolution of the civil war and pursue offers to cooperate on terrorism.

"Two individuals, however, disagreed. NSC terrorism specialist Richard Clarke and NSC Africa specialist Susan Rice, who was about to become assistant secretary of State for African affairs."

Rice and Clarke persuaded Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger to overrule Albright on the Sudanese terrorism overtures, said Ijaz and Carney.

Still, Sudan made yet another attempt to share intelligence on bin Laden and al-Qaida with the White House, repeating the unconditional offer to hand over terrorism data to the FBI in a February 1998 letter addressed directly to Middle East and North Africa special agent-in-charge David Williams.

"But the White House and Susan Rice objected," wrote Ijaz and Carney. "On June 24, 1998, Williams wrote to Mahdi, saying he was 'not in a position to accept your kind offer.'"

U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were destroyed by bin Laden six weeks later, in a suicide bombing attack that killed 253.

Columbus Police Use Terrorist-Connected Organization For Diversity Training

This gets filed under "Just What the Hell are these people thinking?" The Police department in Columbus Ohio are doing some diversity training called “Islam and Muslims: What Law Enforcement Personnel Should Know” Even if you believe that is a noble gesture, who they used to TEACH the course is just DUMB. The Columbus Police is using CAIR.

CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Terror trial case and one key piece of evidence was the Wiretap evidence heard in the case put CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, at a Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders secretly recorded by the FBI. Participants hatched a plot to deceive Americans and disguise payments to Hamas as it launched a campaign of terror attacks. CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad joined Hamas big shots at the summit. In other words, THEY BROKE THE THE LAW. Why is the Columbus Police using unrepentant lawbreakers, who are co-conspiritors with terrorists to train their officers?

At least CAIR is happy about it...below is their press release bragging about their Role in Columbus Ohio (H/T Dhimmi Watch):
(COLUMBUS, OH, 11/24/08) – Representatives of the Columbus chapter of CAIR-Ohio, along with a Muslim law enforcement officer, recently conducted diversity training on “Islam and
Muslims: What Law Enforcement Personnel Should Know” at the Columbus Police Training Academy.
Topics covered included the basic beliefs and practices of Islam, practical advice to help future law enforcement personnel develop cultural competency when interacting with the Muslim community, and a section on cultural awareness about the Somali community, as Columbus is home to one of the largest populations of Somali refugees in the United States. This is the 5th year that CAIR-Ohio has conducted the training.
“We welcome the opportunity to improve understanding and cooperation between Law Enforcement officials and the Muslim community,” said Dr. Asma Mobin-Uddin, president of CAIR-Ohio. “Educational sessions like the ones we have been participating in for the past five years help law enforcement personnel appreciate the needs and concerns of the members of the diverse communities they serve.”
CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 35 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

RAW AND UNEDITED-Report From A Friend Who Escaped The Slaughter in Mumbai

I Just Received this from my friend Judgee who is in India Planning the wedding of his Son which will take place in just a few weeks:

Subject: Fwd: first person report

Here's a letter sent to me by Jonathan Ehrlich, a Jewish New Yorker, who escaped the slaughter in Bombay.

Hey guys:

Got all your notes. Thank you. I'm ok. A little shaky to be honest but really just happy to be here. I can't thank you enough for your notes. You have no idea what means to me. Hope to see and speak to you all soon.

I wrote the following on the plane.


It's 3.33 am Thursday, Nov 27th. And I am writing this from Jet Airways
  • flight 0227, First leg of the Mumbai – Brussels - Toronto – Vancouver journey .
It is a ' stream of adrenaline' piece. I apologize in advance for the grammatical errors. But I wanted it raw and unedited.

First, some context.

I have always been truly blessed. Lucky to be born to the most love a child could ever wish for. Luck to be born into a family that prided itself on
teaching me how to be a man. Lucky to have been protected and sheltered by three strong, decent brothers. Lucky to have found and married the kindest heart on the face of the earth. Lucky to be blessed beyond blessed with four healthy, beautiful children. Lucky to have wonderful friends who tolerate my idiosyncrasies.

Tonight, these blessings, these gifts of love and life bestowed upon me, this incredible good fortune, saved my life. And I honestly don't know why.

The details-

I was in Mumbai on business. I stayed at the Trident hotel. Its sister hotel, the Oberoi, is right next door and attached by a small walkway.

I had dinner by myself in the Oberoi lobby after some late meetings.

I retired upstairs to my room. About 10min later my colleague, Alex Chamberlin, texted asking me to join him and his friend in the Oberoi lounge for a drink. I started to make my way out the door but decided that I was really too tired. I had a 7am flight, and needed to be up at 5. Rest beckoned. I closed the light, got into bed and quickly fell asleep. Lucky life-saving decision number 1.

About 1hr later there was a knock at my door. A few seconds later, the doorbell rang (they have doorbells for hotel rooms here – who'da thunk?). I thought – who the hell is knocking at my door? Turn down service? This late? Forget it. So I just lay there and hoped they would go away. Lucky life-saving decision number 2.

Five minutes later I heard and felt a huge bang. I got up and went to look out the window. A huge cloud of grey smoke billowed up from the road below. I thought. Fireworks? I didn't see anyone milling about so knew something wasn't right. I started to walk to the light switch when - BANG – another huge explosion shook the entire hotel.

Oh fuck, I thought. Is that what I think this is? I opened the door to the
hallway. A few people were already outside. I heard the word "bomb".

Oh shit. Oh shit I thought.

I'd like to tell you that I calmly collected my myself and my things and
proceeded to the exits. I didn't. An adrenaline explosion erupted inside me and almost lifted me off the floor. And I began to move. Really move.

I went back inside, quickly packed my stuff and went back into the hall.

I ran to the emergency exit and started making my way down the stairs (I was on the 18th floor).

There were a few people in the stairwell. I was flying by them. I swear I
could have run a marathon in 2hrs. I felt like pure energy. About halfway down, I called my friend Mark, told him what had happened and asked him to get me a flight – any flight – the hell out of Mumbai.

I got to the lobby level. There was a crowd of people in the corridor. No one moving. No one doing anything. No hotel staff. No security people. Shit. I thought. We are sitting ducks.

I decided to get out of there. First, into the lobby.

I stepped through the door into the silent lobby. My first sight was a blood
soaked plastic bag and bloody footsteps leading into the reception area. I
proceeded forward. The windows were shattered and glass was everywhere.
There wasn't a soul around.

Bad decision, I thought. I quickly retreated to the corridor. The crowd of
people had grown.

We've got to get out of here I yelled. Let's go.

I looked around for the emergency exit and started running towards it.

I made my way through the bowels of the hotel and out into a dark alley. It was empty and silent. I looked to my left and about 100m away saw a few
security guards milling about.

Run they screamed. I began to move toward them.

I reached the main street and was immediately swept up into the Indian
throngs (for those who have been to Mumbai, you must know what I mean). People, people everywhere. But they were all eerily quiet. No one was talking. No car horns. Nothing.

I started yelling "airport airport".

Someone (a hotel cook, I believe) grabbed me and my bag and threw me into a rusty mini-cab.

As I sped away, I didn't see a single police car nor hear a single siren. Just the sound of this shit-box car speeding down the deserted road. Traffic was stop and go. I made it to the airport in about 1hr, cleared customs and buried myself in a corner of a packed departure lounge, called my wife, called my parents and brothers and started emailing those friends who knew I was in Mumbai.

Sadly, Alex – my American colleague who texted me for a drink – and
his friend were not so lucky. The terrorists stormed into the lobby bar and killed several people. They took Alex and his friend hostage and started to march them up to the roof of the hotel.

About half way up, Alex managed to escape (he ducked through an open door and hid) but his friend was caught. And as I write this, that poor man is still on the roof of the Oberoi.

Alex is safe but as expected, extremely worried about his friend.

I'm telling you right now. If I decided to meet Alex for that drink tonight I'd either be dead, a hostage on the roof of a building 30 hours away from everyone I love, or - if I had the balls of Alex – a stupid-but-lucky to-be-alive jerk.

And remember that knock/ring at my door? Well, I subsequently learned that the first thing the terrorists did was get the names and room numbers of western guests. They then went to the rooms to find them. Ehrlich, with an E, room 1820. I'll bet my entire life savings that they were that knock at my door.


Thank god for jet lag. Thank god for "cranky tired Johnny" (as many of my friends and family know so well) that compelled to get into and stay in bed.
Thank god for being on the 18th floor. Thank god for the kind, wonderfully kind people of Mumbai who helped me tonight. The wonderfully kind hotel staff. That cook. My cab driver who constantly said "relaxation" "relaxation" deep breath sahib", "I help" and who kept me in the cab when we hit a particularly gnarly traffic jam and I just wanted to get out and walk. And for
other people in traffic who, upon hearing from my own cab driver that I was one from the Oberoi, literally risked life and limb to stop traffic to let us get by (as again, only those who have been to Mumbai can truly appreciate).

Mumbai is a tragically beautiful place. But oh, so incredibly sad. That cloud of despair and dread and heavy depression.

I am convinced that its inhabitants are definitely children of some troubled but immensely soulfully distraught god. I'm sitting on the plane now (upgraded to first class….see, told you I'm lucky ☺). Just had the best tasting bowl of corn flakes I've ever had in my life. Hennessey coursing through my veins. Concentration starting to loosen and
sleep beginning to creep onto my horizon.

I still feel a bit numb. But mostly I feel like I've just watched a really,
really bad movie starring me. Because right now, it all doesn't feel real.
Maybe a few hours of CNN will knock me into reality. But the truth is numb
is fine with me for a while. If I do end up thinking about the What If's, I
don't really want to do that until I'm much much closer to home. And I have 30 more hours of travel time to go.

But before I sign off, let me say this.

The people who did this have no souls. They have no hearts. They are simply the living manifestation of evil and they only know killing and murder. We – all of us - need to understand that. Their target tonight was first and foremost Americans. And Jews. The Chabad Jewish Center was carefully targeted.

Why? Because they fear everything that America stands for. They fear hope and change and freedom and peace. Let's make no mistake; they would have shot me and my children point blank tonight with out a moment's hesitation. Most of us sorta know that but sometimes we equivocate. We can't equivocate. Not ever.

I know that I want to go back. Lay some flowers. Wrap my arms around these people. Say thank you. Spend some money on overpriced hotel gifts and tip well. And generally give the bastards who did this the big fuck you and show that I am not – I repeat not – afraid of them.

But first I need to go squeeze my wife. Dry her tears. Then have her dry
mine as I hold my beautiful beautiful babies who will be (thankfully) oblivious to all of this. Because isn't that what life is really about?

I appreciate you taking the time to listen.

With much, much love.

Jonathan

Franken's Last Chance--> The Courts

Just before thanksgiving In a Major blow to Al Franken's strategy of stealing the Minnesota Senate election, the state Canvassing Board, unanimously voted this morning to deny the Franken campaign's request that rejected absentee ballots be included in the recount. He also doesn't get the names of the people who filled out those absentee ballots.

As the recount paused for Thanksgiving the Coleman lead was over 280. His margin large enough to be sustained through the remaining part of the recount, unless of course the Minnesota Secretary of State finds another couple of hundred bogus votes like he did in the first days after the election.

If the rest of the count/recount is done fairly, it looks as if it will come down to the courts and the 5,600+ ballots that have been challenged:

For Franken, a math problem
By PAT DOYLE and GLENN HOWATT, Star Tribune

November 30, 2008

While a tiny margin separates the candidates in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, it is wide enough that Democrat Al Franken faces a daunting task in challenging votes to erase Sen. Norm Coleman's lead.

The two sides have disputed thousands of the other's votes, but many of those challenges are regarded by experts as frivolous.

To win his case before the state Canvassing Board, Franken must prevail on more than 6 percent of his challenges of Coleman votes even if Coleman fails to succeed on any of his challenges, a Star Tribune analysis shows.

If the outcome of past election disputes provides a clue, Franken will have a hard time reversing enough votes to win, said one veteran elections official who has been involved in the Senate recount.

"Based upon the kinds of challenges I've been looking at in the last two weeks, I think that's just not going to happen," said Joe Mansky, Ramsey County elections manager.

Franken's campaign said Friday that the gap between the candidates isn't as wide as it appears and expressed confidence that his challenges would prove generally more meritorious than Coleman's.

But Mansky said earlier that Franken has a better chance of winning by suing to force the counting of absentee ballots that the Democrat contends were mistakenly rejected.

"Franken's best [and perhaps his only] chance will be in court, not with the recount," Mansky said.

The Canvassing Board last week denied a Franken request that it reconsider all rejected absentee ballots, but left open the possibility of taking up some on a case-by-case basis. The board indicated that it expects the issue to wind up in court.

Franken's campaign has indicated that it might sue or take its case to the U.S. Senate, which can decide such disputes and is led by Democrats.

Looking at the gap

Coleman began the recount with a 215-vote lead; it has fluctuated since then and stood at 282 before election officials took a Thanksgiving holiday break from the recount. During the review, the two campaigns have challenged a total of more than 5,600 ballots.

Franken's campaign had a more optimistic view Friday of the gap between the candidates and of his prospects.

"The race right now is at 73 votes," said Marc Elias, Franken's lead recount attorney.

Elias' calculation is based in part on the assumption that challenges are typically not sustained and that therefore Coleman's lead is inflated because his side has filed more challenges than Franken's -- 147 more, according to the Star Tribune analysis.

Moreover, Elias predicts that the gap also will narrow because the recount has so far covered slightly more Republican precincts than Democratic.

"There is more blue left to be counted than there is red left to be counted," he said. About 14 percent of ballots have not been recounted, according to the secretary of state's office.

Coleman's campaign issued a statement Friday saying the outcome of the dispute "isn't about matrices, lawsuits or U.S. Senate intervention. This is about the recounting of ballots legally cast by Minnesotans, and we are confident Senator Coleman will be reelected."

Canceled out

The Star Tribune analysis showed that Franken could win the election by 26 votes by prevailing on 7 percent of his challenges of Coleman votes, provided that Coleman won none of his challenges of Franken votes.

Franken would have to climb a higher hill if Coleman were to win some of his challenges. If the incumbent won as few as 5 percent of his challenges of Franken votes, Franken would need to win more than 11 percent of his.

Mansky said past election disputes demonstrated that rival challenges tend to cancel each other out, or to be too small in number to change the outcome. He also said arbitrators will be very reluctant to nullify a vote if they can discern intent.

In 1986, former state Sen. Collin Peterson, now a Democratic U.S. congressman, lost a U.S. House election to Republican Rep. Arlan Stangeland by 121 votes.

Checks and X's

Peterson's lawyer argued that more than 100 Stangeland ballots should not be counted because they were cast by voters who began voting with a check mark and then tried to make an "X" out of the check. He said the law required that marks be uniform.

But Stangeland's lawyer argued that there was no question about the voter's intent, and a judge ruled for Stangeland, increasing his lead. Peterson conceded shortly afterward.

Similar challenges will likely be made in the Senate race, Mansky said. For instance, he said there have been numerous challenges in Ramsey County of votes cast by people who wrote in a candidate's name rather than filled in the oval next to it.

"Those challenges are going nowhere because you have a right to cast write-in votes," he said.

Yet the challenges hold enough questions to defy easy predictions on who will benefit the most.

One wild card is how many challenges involve votes cast for Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley and how they might effect the outcome.

Questions, and more questions

"The hurdle here is that we know nothing about the challenges," said Prof. Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. "We know that many will be put aside by mutual consent as false challenges by over-eager campaign observers. But [were] Coleman or Franken campaign volunteers more prone to make weak challenges? Do we know anything regarding any initial indication by the election worker?"

He said there is hope for Franken in areas where disputes have a potential to swing in his favor.

Jacobs noted that 356 ballots were challenged in St. Louis County, which tilts Democratic and relies heavily on counting ballots by hand. Hand-counted ballots are particularly vulnerable to mistakes.

"If the hand ballots are a focal point of dispute at the state Canvassing Board, they may tilt in Franken's direction given his 23-point margin of victory in St. Louis County," Jacobs wrote in a report last week.

Still, he added in an e-mail, "It's hard to see how Franken can win without doing better (and actually well) in Hennepin and St. Louis" counties.

The New Deal Was a BAD Deal

As late as 1938, nine years into the depression, almost one out of five workers remained unemployed. What the government gave with one hand, through increased spending, it took away with the other, through increased taxation, and the increased power of labor. But that was not an even trade-off. As the root cause of a great deal of mismanagement and inefficiency, government was responsible for a lost decade of economic growth.
In a 2004 paper, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, both of UCLA, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis argued that the Depression would have ended in 1936, rather than in 1943, were it not for policies that magnified the power of labor and encouraged the cartelization of industries.
Since this financial crisis hit, in October, the Bush administration's "change strategy daily" method has done little to restore confidence in our financial system. And what is coming Next, what the Obama administration will bring, is sure to DELAY recovery:

New New-Deal 'Jolt' Overestimates Real Impact Of The Old New Deal By GEORGE F. WILL | Posted Friday, November 28, 2008 4:30 PM PT

Early in what became the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes was asked if anything similar had ever happened. "Yes," he replied, "it was called the Dark Ages and it lasted 400 years."

It did take 25 years, until November 1954, for the Dow to return to the peak it reached in September 1929. So caution is sensible concerning calls for a new New Deal. The assumption is that the New Deal vanquished the Depression.

Intelligent, informed people differ about why the Depression lasted so long. But people whose recipe for recovery today is another New Deal should remember that America's biggest industrial collapse occurred in 1937, eight years after the 1929 stock market crash and nearly five years into the New Deal.

In 1939, after a decade of frantic federal spending — President Herbert Hoover increased it more than 50% between 1929 and the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt — unemployment was 17.2%.

"I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started," lamented Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury secretary. Unemployment declined when America began selling materials to nations engaged in a war America would soon join.

In "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations and Bloomberg News argues that government policies, beyond the Federal Reserve's tight money, deepened and prolonged the Depression. The policies included encouraging strong unions and wages higher than lagging productivity justified, on the theory that workers' spending would be stimulative.

Instead, corporate profits — prerequisites for job-creating investments — were excessively drained into labor expenses that left many workers priced out of the market.

In a 2004 paper, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, both of UCLA, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis argued that the Depression would have ended in 1936, rather than in 1943, were it not for policies that magnified the power of labor and encouraged the cartelization of industries.

These policies expressed the New Deal premise that the Depression was caused by excessive competition that first reduced prices and wages, and then employment and consumer demand.

In a forthcoming paper, Ohanian argues that "much of the depth of the Depression" is explained by Hoover's policy — a precursor of the New Deal mentality — of pressuring businesses to keep nominal wages fixed.

Furthermore, Hoover's 1932 increase in the top income tax rate, from 25% to 63%, was unhelpful. And FDR's hyperkinetic New Deal created uncertainties that paralyzed private-sector decision-making. Which sounds familiar.

Bear Stearns? Broker a merger. Lehman Brothers? Death sentence. The $700 billion is for cleaning up toxic assets? Maybe not. Writes Russell Roberts of George Mason University:

"By acting without rhyme or reason, politicians have destroyed the rules of the game. There is no reason to invest, no reason to take risk, no reason to be prudent, no reason to look for buyers if your firm is failing.

"Everything is up in the air and as a result, the only prudent policy is to wait and see what the government will do next. The frenetic efforts of FDR had the same impact: Net investment was negative through much of the 1930s."

Barack Obama says the next stimulus should deliver a "jolt." His adviser Austan Goolsbee says it must be big enough to "startle the thing into submission." Their theory is that the crisis is largely psychological, requiring shock treatment. But shocks from government have been plentiful.

Unfortunately, one thing government can do quickly and efficiently — distribute checks — could fail to stimulate because Americans might do with the money what they have been rightly criticized for not doing nearly enough: save it.

Because individual consumption is 70% of economic activity, St. Augustine's prayer ("Give me chastity and continence, but not yet") is echoed today: Make Americans thrifty, but not now.

Obama's "rescue plan for the middle class" includes a tax credit for businesses "for each new employee they hire" in America over the next two years. The assumption is that businesses will create jobs that would not have been created without the subsidy. If so, the subsidy will suffuse the economy with inefficiencies — labor costs not justified by value added.

Here we go again? A new New Deal would vindicate pessimists who say that history is not one damn thing after another, it is the same damn thing over and over.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Is Obama Folding Under the Pressure? President-elect Has Developed Nervous Tic

He Isn't even president yet and there are reports that the President-Elect is having difficulty handling the pressure. He developed a facial tic during the Campaign which has become much worse since the election.

According to the University Of Maryland:

A facial tic is a repeated spasm, often involving the eyes and muscles of the face.The cause of tics is unknown, but stress appears to make tics more severe.

It seems this may be a case of "be careful what you wish for..." Read the full story below:


Stress takes toll on Obama,develops chronic facial tic
Michelle said to be distraught over spasms under right eye


The strain of the long campaign and a frenetic transition period is beginning to wear on the face of President-elect Barack Obama, who has developed a facial tic under his right eye.

The tic on the lower part of his right orbital bone is clearly visible in his recent interview with ABC's Barbara Walters. Campaign insiders say it first emerged during the primary season and has now become chronic.

A facial tic is a repetitive, spasmodic movement often involving the eyes and facial muscles. The cause of tics is unknown, but stress appears to increase their severity.

"The patients I've treated with tic disorders had one thing in common: They knew that the tics worsened when they were under stress," said Dr. Robert T. London, a psychiatrist with the New York University Medical Center.

Besides the economic crisis, Obama is having to worry about his own security. The Secret Service reportedly is dealing with more threats against him than any other president-elect in history.

"There are a lot of things that keep me up at night," Obama, 47, confided in the ABC interview.

Michelle Obama, who closely monitors her husband's public appearances, is said to be distraught over the facial tic.

In all the stress of the transition, Obama told ABC he's trying to eat healthy food, work out regularly and refrain from smoking, although he has found it difficult to quit cigarettes entirely.

London says studies show that simple tics disappear during sleep, which suggests that a relaxation treatment, such as hypnotherapy, might work better than medication to calm the misfiring nerves during the day.

Politics is a stressful job, and other politicians have succumbed to the nervous twitches. For example, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., developed a severe facial tic that became so chronic he began doing TV interviews with the afflicted side of his face angled away from the camera. Shays, who's served more than 20 years in Congress, was defeated in the November election


Who Attacked Mumbai and Why it DOESN'T Matter

For five days now the media has been speculating just who is behind the horrible attacks in Mumbai whether it was al-Qaeda or a local terrorist group, whether they were targeting Indians, British, Americans, Jews or all of the above. The real truth is, it doesn't really matter. Terrorism like politics is local. And whether the group that caused all of the death in Mumbai is al-Qaeda or just a franchise, the truth is they support an Ideology that hates ALL non-Muslims, and they threaten us all:
Mark Steyn: Mumbai could happen just about anywhere

When terrorists attack, media analysts go into Sherlock Holmes mode, metaphorically prowling the crime scene for footprints, as if the way to solve the mystery is to add up all the clues. The Mumbai gunmen seized British and American tourists. Therefore, it must be an attack on Westerners!

Not so, said Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. If they'd wanted to do that, they'd have hit the Hilton or the Marriott or some other target-rich chain hotel. The Taj and the Oberoi are both Indian-owned, and popular watering holes with wealthy Indians.

OK, how about this group that's claimed responsibility for the attack? The Deccan Mujahideen. As a thousand TV anchors asked Wednesday night, "What do we know about them?"

Er, well, nothing. Because they didn't exist until they issued the press release. "Deccan" is the name of the vast plateau that covers most of the triangular peninsula that forms the lower half of the Indian subcontinent. It comes from the Prakrit word "dakkhin," which means "south." Which means nothing at all. "Deccan Mujahedeen" is like calling yourself the "Continental Shelf Liberation Front."

OK. So does that mean this operation was linked to al-Qaida? Well, no. Not if by "linked to" you mean a wholly owned subsidiary coordinating its activities with the corporate head office.
It's not an either/or scenario, it's all of the above. Yes, the terrorists targeted locally owned hotels. But they singled out Britons and Americans as hostages. Yes, they attacked prestige city landmarks like the Victoria Terminus, one of the most splendid and historic railway stations in the world. But they also attacked an obscure Jewish community center. The Islamic imperialist project is a totalitarian ideology: It is at war with Hindus, Jews, Americans, Britons, everything that is other.

In the 10 months before this atrocity, Muslim terrorists killed more than 200 people in India, and no one paid much attention. Just business as usual, alas. In Mumbai the perpetrators were cannier. They launched a multiple indiscriminate assault on soft targets, and then in the confusion began singling out A-list prey: Not just wealthy Western tourists, but local orthodox Jews, and municipal law enforcement. They drew prominent officials to selected sites, and then gunned down the head of the antiterrorism squad and two of his most senior lieutenants. They attacked a hospital, the place you're supposed to take the victims to, thereby destabilizing the city's emergency-response system.

And, aside from dozens of corpses, they were rewarded with instant, tangible, economic damage to India: the Bombay Stock Exchange was still closed Friday, and the England cricket team canceled their tour (a shameful act).

What's relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets, and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events. Try it in, say, Mayor Nagin's New Orleans. All you need is the manpower. Given the numbers of gunmen, clearly there was a significant local component. On the other hand, whether or not Pakistan's deeply sinister ISI had their fingerprints all over it, it would seem unlikely that there was no external involvement. After all, if you look at every jihad front from the London Tube bombings to the Iraqi insurgency, you'll find local lads and wily outsiders: That's pretty much a given.

But we're in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It's the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt or (rather more promising as a long-term career) at least grab an AK-47 and shoot up a hotel lobby. Or, if active terrorists are a bit thin on the ground, whether you can count at least on some degree of broader support on the ground. You're sitting in some distant foreign capital but you're of a mind to pull off a Mumbai-style operation in, say, Amsterdam or Manchester or Toronto. Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological front organizations. You've already made landfall.

It's missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the "Deccan Mujahideen" or the ISI or al-Qaida or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That's a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways. It's not the Cold War, with a small network of deep sleepers being directly controlled by Moscow. There are no membership cards, only an ideology. That's what has radicalized hitherto moderate Muslim communities from Indonesia to the central Asian 'stans to Yorkshire, and co-opted what started out as more or less conventional nationalist struggles in the Caucasus and the Balkans into mere tentacles of the global jihad.
Many of us, including the incoming Obama administration, look at this as a law-enforcement matter. Mumbai is a crime scene, so let's surround the perimeter with yellow police tape, send in the forensics squad, and then wait for the D.A. to file charges.

There was a photograph that appeared in many of the British papers, taken by a Reuters man and captioned by the news agency as follows: "A suspected gunman walks outside the premises of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or Victoria Terminus railway station." The photo of the "suspected gunman" showed a man holding a gun. We don't know much about him – he might be Muslim or Episcopalian, he might be an impoverished uneducated victim of Western colonialist economic oppression or a former vice-president of Lehman Brothers embarking on an exciting midlife career change – but one thing we ought to be able to say for certain is that a man pointing a gun is not a "suspected gunman" but a gunman. "This kind of silly political correctness infects reporters and news services worldwide," wrote John Hinderaker of Powerline. "They think they're being scrupulous – the man hasn't been convicted of being a gunman yet! – when, in fact, they're just being foolish. But the irrational conviction that nothing can be known unless it has been determined by a court and jury isn't just silly, it's dangerous."

Just so. This isn't law enforcement but an ideological assault – and we're fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too. Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology's advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population's demographic advance among everybody else.

So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don't seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet held talks without preconditions with. This isn't about repudiating the Bush years, or withdrawing from Iraq, or even liquidating Israel. It's bigger than that. And if you don't have a strategy for beating back the ideology, you'll lose.

Whoops, my apologies. I mean "suspected ideology."

India Had intelligence About Mumbai Attack a Week Before it Happened

On November 19th Six days before the terrorist attack on Mumbai India had advance intelligence that it was coming. The intelligence foresaw an attack on the city that would be launched from a fishing trawler. But amazingly the report was analysed, kept and dismissed as routine by police and Coast Guard who are tired of being flooded with such inputs. Several such inputs do turn out to be inaccurate, but it only takes one dismissed REAL report, to create a Giant Blunder, this report was that one. Read the story below:


Mumbai sea attack alert came Nov 19
Pranab Dhal Samanta Posted online: Nov 30, 2008

New Delhi : The most brazen and longest terror attack on India has left several red faces in the government with facts emerging that not only was there advance intelligence about this attack but even the time to have possibly thwarted it. But what happened, instead, was a case of competitive mistrust in the entire security establishment leading to a catastrophic misjudgement.

The Sunday Express has learnt that on November 19, just about a week before the attack, one of the intelligence agencies had circulated “top secret” information on the basis of an intercept the previous day that an attack had been planned from sea on Mumbai and would be effected very soon. While November 26 was not mentioned as a precise date, sources said, another date before the day of the attack was specified. It also said the terrorists could probably come by an Indian fishing trawler.

This input was passed on for further analysis to the National Security Council Secretariat and Joint Intelligence Council. Subsequently, this was shared with the Navy and the Coast Guard. Also, it was sent in the form of an advisory to Maharashtra. However, somewhere through the entire process, the seriousness and authenticity of the input were interpreted differently by different agencies. State agencies now claim such alerts had become a regular feature in recent months which, too, is arguably correct in many respects. Some have argued that the input was not specific enough and only mentioned the “possibility” of a trawler being used.

If this was not enough, preliminary investigations have revealed that the terrorists stayed on the Kuber for a few days and were in Indian territorial waters for at least 72 hours. While this is being verified, it has now been established that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai had left from the Azizabad area of Karachi on November 22-23.

Contrary to initial suspicion that they had “compromised” the Ukrainian crew of a merchant ship to enter Indian waters, it is now believed that the terrorists boarded a Pakistani vessel Al-Hussaini to reach close to Indian territorial waters near the Gujarat coast. Here onwards, the details are still hazy though it is certain that Indian trawler Kuber had been under observation for this purpose.

As of now, sources said, the assumption is that Kuber was hijacked possibly in Pakistani waters as the boat seemed to have been making short forays across possibly in search of better catch or some other purpose ¿ a regular Indo-Pak feature that has led to arrests of many fishermen off the Gujarat coast. Having noted this, the terrorists went for the trawler, hijacked it and apparently moved four members of the crew into the Al Hussaini and killed them there.

One member of the Indian crew, Amarsinh Solanki, was held hostage by the terrorists as a cover to avoid detection by Indian ships. He was later decapitated, as reported by The Indian Express today. Thereafter, the terrorists stayed in the trawler until the evening of November 26, moving along the Porbandar coast towards Mumbai. This period, perhaps, saw limited or no communication between handlers and associates already present in Mumbai.

In all this while, an intelligence intercept of a conversation on November 18, from Karachi to Mumbai saying “see you” on a date few days from then was circulated, analysed, kept and dismissed as routine by police and Coast Guard who are tired of being flooded with such inputs. Several such inputs do turn out to be inaccurate. So, at some point, the analysis and classification of information went faulty leading to a misinterpretation with the worst ever consequences.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is said to be extremely upset with these developments as he now tries to build international pressure on Pakistan. Today he held a meeting with three Service chiefs where the National Security Advisor briefed them on the situation. The Armed Forces have been told to keep their vigil but at the same time avoid any escalatory situation along the Indo-Pak border.

Washington too is extremely concerned as it has always in its military planning on this region anticipated an incident of this sort to provoke a conflict. Today, US President-elect Barack Obama spoke to Singh on the blasts and discussed the situation while expressing condolences.

Iran Threatens Strait of Hormuz Again

Iran's nuclear weapons program is about more than destroying the "Zionist Entity." Iran wants to be a super power on the scale of the United States. Iraq acts like a super power feeding little satellite countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Nothing makes Iran happier than tweaking at the United States because its President Aym-a-shithead feels that once it develops nuclear weapons Iran will be on par with the evil Satan, the USA.

Back in September, Iranian Elite forces took charge of the Strait of Hormuz. If they close the Strait, they stop 30% of the world's Oil Supply. Now they are holding the Strait hostage to their nuclear program. Just another reason for Congress to get off their arses and let the United States exploit its own Oil Reserves.

Read about Iran's threats below:


Iran warns of blockade

Tehran - Iran has once again warned that it would blockade the oil export route in the Persian Gulf if its nuclear sites were attacked, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

"We are capable of blockading the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and whoever does not believe this should ... see what happens in reality," Navy Commander Admiral Habibollah Sayari told IRNA news agency.

Iran's paramilitary revolutionary guards had several times in the past warned that if Israel carried out its plan to attack the country's nuclear sites, Iran would block the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which an estimated 20% of the world's daily oil supply passes.
Such a blockade could trigger a worldwide energy crisis.

Admiral Sayari further told IRNA any aggressor should not forget that 2 000 kilometres of the Persian Gulf coast belonged to Iran, making the country capable of taking various initiatives.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has in the past also warned that the country would be justified in using all options in the case of an attack, including using controls on oil supplies as a weapon.

Israel and the United States have stated that a military strike against Iran would not be ruled out if the Islamic state did not suspend its controversial nuclear projects.
Both countries believe Tehran is secretly working on an atomic bomb despite Iranian claims of pursuing a solely civil nuclear programme. - Sapa-dpa

Friday, November 28, 2008

OBAMA Rehires Adviser Who Called for Invasion of Israel

Here is a fun little Item from the Jerusalem Post:

State Departmentofficials said Friday that Samantha Power is among foreign policy experts the president-elect's office selected to help the incoming administration prepare for Clinton's anticipated nomination as secretary of state. The Obama transition team's Web site includes Power's name as one of 14 members of the "Agency Review Team" for the State Department. During the Democratic primary campaign, Power called Clinton "a monster" in an interview. She then resigned, calling her remarks inexcusable and contradictory to her admiration for Clinton.

For those 77% of American Jews who voted for Obama, Here is a little bit more about Ms. Power just in case your head is still in the sand:

Over the Jewish Holiday a friend of mine vehemently tried to prove that Senator Obama was a friend of Israel. His statement was,"no matter who wins they can't be worse for Israel than Ehud Olmert" While I agree that Olmert was not good for his homeland, Senator Barack Obama would be a Horror for our number one ally in the middle-east. Look,if you are the type that will vote for the liberal candidate no matter what--go ahead--but please don't give me any more of that load of cow dung that Obama will be good for Israel. That belies the truth. How do I know for Sure? Take a look at his advisers.

Samantha Power, for example is thought to be a key foreign policy adviser in any Obama administration in the video above you can see her accuse Israel of human rights violations and suggest that the US SHOULD SEND IN TROOPS TO IMPOSE A SOLUTION ON ISRAEL. She also hints that the US's foriegn policy is imposed on the country by "one large voting bloc" (the Joowze maybe?)

The Video is from 2002 when she sat for an interview with Harry Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following question:

Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine - Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?

Power respons is her advice to the President would be to 1) “Alienate” the American Jewish community, and indeed all Americans, such as evangelical Christians, who support the state of Israel, because 2) Israeli leaders are “destroying the lives of their own people.” 3) Pour billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money into “the new state of Palestine”; 4) Stage an American ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian territories — what else can she mean by a “mammoth protection force” and a “military presence” that will be “imposed” by “external intervention”? — in order to do the exact same thing that she considers the height of arrogance and foolishness in Iraq: an American campaign to remake an Arab society; 5) and Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat were on the same moral level:

What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Freidman has called “Sharafat.” [Sharon-Arafat; this is actually an Amos Oz construction — NP] I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention.

But it gets better Power is an advocate of the anti-Semitic view of forign policy made famous by professors Walt and Mearsheimer

Power is an advocate of the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the American relationship with Israel. In a recent interview published on the Harvard Kennedy School’s website, Power was asked to explain “long-standing structural and conceptual problems in U.S. foreign policy.” She gave a two-part answer: the first problem, she said, is “the US historic predisposition to go it alone.” A standard reply, of course. The second problem, though, should give us pause:

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the “national interest” as a whole is defined and pursued . . . America’s important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel had something to do with the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003–an appalling slander, and a telling one.

Also of note is a recent opinion piece Power wrote for TIME magazine, titled “Rethinking Iran,” the thrust of which rethinking involves the need to engage diplomatically the mullahs and pretend that the Iranian nuclear program is a figment of the paranoid imagination of the Bush administration. She writes:

The war scare that wasn’t [the recent incident between Iranian speedboats and the U.S. Navy in the Straight of Hormuz] stands as a metaphor for the incoherence of our policy toward Iran: the Bush Administration attempts to gin up international outrage by making a claim of imminent danger, only to be met with international eye rolling when the claim is disproved. Sound familiar? The speedboat episode bore an uncanny resemblance to the Administration’s allegations about the advanced state of Iran’s weapons program–allegations refuted in December by the National Intelligence Estimate.
Does anyone think that if the time comes that Power has President Obama’s ear, she will advise him to do anything other than repudiate America’s greatest ally in the Middle East in favor of appeasing its greatest enemy? And here’s an even better question: Does Barack Obama have a single adviser who would tell him to do anything else?

One day later Pollak followed up with more information:


Note that this wasn’t her response to a question about her personal views of the conflict, or about what she envisions might be a utopian solution to the conflict; it was a response to a question about what she would tell the President of the United States if she was his adviser. Yesterday Barak Obama took a large stride toward the presidency–helped in some small measure by the speeches on behalf of the Obama campaign that Power has delivered–and it is time that someone asked him, while he is still a candidate, what he thinks of the perverse things his many foreign policy advisers have said about Israel and the Middle East.

Martin Kramer points us to an interesting quote from the 2003 book Ethnic Violence and Justice, in which Samantha Power, one of Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers, asks a question of David Rohde, a reporter who covered the intifada for the New York Times. The quote is as follows:

Samantha Power: I have a question for David about working for the New York Times. I was struck by a headline that accompanied a news story on the publication of the Human Rights Watch report. The headline was, I believe: “Human Rights Report Finds Massacre Did Not Occur in Jenin.” The second paragraph said, “Oh, but lots of war crimes did.” Why wouldn’t they make the war crimes the headline and the non-massacre the second paragraph?

(The article to which Power refers is here, and its headline is: “MIDEAST TURMOIL: INQUIRY; Rights Group Doubts Mass Deaths in Jenin, but Sees Signs of War Crimes.” Obviously, Power has misremembered the headline.)

Here we have another window into the thinking of Power: Israel is accused in sensational press reports of a massacre in Jenin, and is subjected to severe international condemnation; HRW finally gets out a report and says there was no massacre; the NYT reports this as its headline; and Power thinks the headline still should have been: Israel guilty of war crimes!

sources for the above Commentary here and Here



American Muslim Blames US and British Foriegn Policy For India Terror

Yousef al-Khattab operates an Islamofacist hate site that promotes Jihad and celebrates US Soldiers deaths in Iraq. Born Joseph Cohen, al-Khattab is an American-born ex-Jew who converted to Islam after attending an Orthodox Rabbinical school.

Unfortunately Joey Cohen's hosting service Lotosus Hosting probably doesn't have an acceptable use policy, because his hate site is still up.

Whacko Joey's hate side has included:

— The Statue of Liberty, with an ax blade cutting through her side;

— Video mocking the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, entitled "Daniel Pearl I am Happy Your Dead :) ";

— Video of a puppet show lampooning U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq;

— The latest speech from Sheikh Abdullah Faisal, an extremist Muslim cleric convicted in the UK and later deported for soliciting the murder of non-Muslims.

Today on his hate site Joey the hater takes on the horrible terrorist attack in India. He says the attack was Punishment For The USA and Britain's Foreign Policies.


And just as bad, are some of the comments by Muslims who watched the commentary on his website.
  • Keep spreading the hate against Americans...for we are God's children, we will unite with those that you have harmed and enslaved, you will be defeated by GOD AND HIS WORD. Read the Bible find the missing chapters. They have all lied to us. We are smart and have seen that the Lord did provide a plan for us. You must already know your fate and that is why you guard your filfthy souls and secrets and societies from God's people. You have come to the end of the free ride on our backs and lives. Before attacking Americans or any person on God....look up the statistics of how many guns we own or are purchasing by the millions now. We won't have to literally cut off your heads....just knowing what we can do to defend our own and God's people...will stop you in your tracks. Repent now or drown in a lake of fire.
  • It was pleasantly refreshing to hear they targeted Chabad Lubavitch. Allah will destroy His enemies wherever they are in the world. You will know when the Muslims have ignited in an insurrection when there is blood on the streets of London and New York like there is blood on the streets of Fallujah (and Mumbai). There is nowhere they can hide from the wrath of Allah and His soldiers.
  • The crimes of the kuffaar are coming back to haunt them. its chicken come home to roose
  • I can't find any other explanation to it...They have no where to hide from the wrath of Allah for their crimes against humanity in general and against muslims in particular.


Does Murdoch HATE O'Reilly ?

WHATTAYAKNOW ! According to a new book about NewsCorp owner Rupert Murdoch, the real King of All Media (or the owner of most media), is not a big fan of the "no spin zone" Bill O' Reilly. As a matter of fact in Murdoch's most favorite list, O Reilly is near the bottom, right below root canal without anesthesia and above loosing advertising revenue. The Network head, Roger Ailes agrees with his boss. The only thing keeping the Zone spinning is the fact that the show is the highest rated show on Cable News. Read the full report below:

Wolff: Murdoch ‘absolutely despises’ O’Reilly by Michael Calderone

In Michael Wolff’s forthcoming biography of Rupert Murdoch, “The Man Who Owns The News,” the author writes that the media mogul has seemed to turn away lately from his cable news network, and isn’t fond its top-rated personality, Bill O’Reilly.

“It is not just Murdoch (and everybody else at News Corp.’s highest levels) who absolutely despises Bill O’Reilly, the bullying, mean-spirited, and hugely successful evening commentator,” Wolff wrote, “but [Fox News chief executive] Roger Ailes himself who loathes him. Success, however, has cemented everyone to each other."

“The embarrassment can no longer be missed,” Wolff wrote, in another section of the book. “He mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it. He barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.”

Wolff describes Murdoch as not wanting News Corp. to be defined by Fox News. And so last year’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal, he wrote, “was in no small way about wanting to trade the illiberal—the belligerent, the vulgar, the loud, the menacing the unsubtle—for the better-heeled, the more magnanimous, the further nuanced.”

Politico obtained a copy of Wolff’s book, to be released Tuesday, under an agreement not to publish its contents before today. Two excerpts ran in Vanity Fair, and Murdoch already raised objections to the characterization of his relationship with Fox News, according to the NY Times. (Murdoch's son-in-law, the London PR executive Matthew Freud, obtained a copy and passed it along to him).

Murdoch has never strayed from his free-market beliefs, but his exact political views have always been difficult to pin down. Among those politicians he's backed through the years: Thatcher, Reagan, Blair, Koch, and McCain.

Political circumstances, and how Murdoch can wield the most power, typically determine where his papers’ allegiances fall. While Murdoch is best described as conservative, he’s never been a true believer who's willing to forsake business interests for ideology.

Wolff also ponders if Murdoch is becoming more liberal, perhaps as a result of his wife, Wendi, who attended Obama fundraisers, and his daughter Elisabeth, who threw one in London. Generally, Wolff describes the Murdoch children, and heirs to the empire, as “limousine liberals.”

It’s for that reason that some thought Murdoch’s New York Post might endorse Obama in the general election.

Indeed, the Post endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton in the New York primary, and Murdoch wanted the President-elect to know it. Gary Ginsberg, News Corp’s executive VP of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs, “knew Caroline Kennedy was riding in a car with Obama and begged her to show Obama the New York Post’s endorsement,” according to the book.

In the months after the primary endorsement, Murdoch went on to call Obama a “rock star” and publicly spoke of being open to endorsing him. The two men finally met in early summer 2008, at the Waldorf-Astoria. Without telling Obama, Murdoch brought Ailes along, too.
Wolff writes:

Obama lit into Ailes. He said he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign-fearsome—just short of a terrorist.

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had come on the air instead of giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have historical significance, was thereupon agreed.

Despite the truce, Fox and the Obama campaign still battled it out, especially in the campaign’s final weeks. That said, Obama did sit down with O’Reilly, Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” and “Fox & Friends.”

And that Obama endorsement?

Ginsberg — one of the liberals in Murdoch’s inner circle, along with News Corp. number two Peter Chernin — thought the Post might endorse Obama. “He’s going to do it,” Ginsberg told the author.

But then he didn’t. Murdoch, who’s kept the media world off balance for a half century, wouldn't break with the Republican Party after all. Never mind, the public praise or his family’s support of the Democratic nominee.

The Post even jumped out in front of every other major newspaper, enthusiastically endorsing McCain in early September.

Toward the end of the book, Wolff addresses Murdoch’s response to the Vanity Fair excerpts, which indicated he might be moving left.

“Indeed, Murdoch was responding to suggestions about his nascent liberalism — in September I discussed his Obama leanings in Vanity Fair — with grumpiness and contrariness. He wasn’t a liberal! Who said that? He was, stubbornly, what he wanted to be, what he decided he would be.”

Even with Wolff's unprecedented access to the family, and 50 hours of interviews, it's still not easy to pin down Murdoch. But for Murdoch-watchers, the book is a very revealing look at the man and his empire.

Maybe this is all just part of Fox's desire to make nicey nice with the President-elect. Pamela at Atlas Shrugs has more about this disturbing trend HERE