http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3579/indonesia-sharia Indonesia, once a country of diversity, is now becoming a place for one-way Islam. Although Indonesia, “the world largest Muslim country” with an 87% Muslim population, was once considered a moderate Muslim country, day by day it has been leaning more and more towards conservative Islam and Sharia laws. Initiated in 2009, bylaws in […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3571/european-union-anti-semitism I was asked to Brussels to address the matter of what the European Union to tackle anti-Semitism. The answer is easy: “Stop funding anti-Semites.” And so it was that I found myself once again in a meeting in the twilight world of Brussels — an ugly city filled with ugly buildings, ugly overpriced food […]
http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2013/02/07/drone-double-standard-n1506749 An unsigned and undated Justice Department white paper, obtained by NBC News, reports The New York Times, “…is the most detailed analysis yet to come into public view regarding the Obama legal team’s views about the lawfulness of killing, without a trial, an American citizen who executive branch officials decide is an operational leader […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/politichick-warrior-unmasks-suhail-khan-on-the-glazov-gang/
Don’t miss this special episode of The Glazov Gang in which Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director of PolitiChicks.tv, Mike Finch, the Chief Operating Officer at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Dwight Schultz, a Hollywood actor who played Murdock on NBC’s The-A-Team, discuss: The Obama-Morsi Dance. The discussion occurred in Part II, during which the Gang tackled why the U.S. president has taken sides with an Islamist Jew-hating tyrant. The discussion included an analysis of Islam’s cannibalism problem and Obama’s immigration reform policy. In Part I, the Gang focused on Ann-Marie’s courageous confrontation with Suhail Khan at CPAC 2012. Watch both segments of the two-part series below:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/lars-hedegaard-escapes-jihadist-assassination-attempt/print/
I arrived in Amsterdam last week for a brief visit, an excited acquaintance informed me of the day’s big news: the highly popular Queen Beatrix, who has been on the throne for more than three decades, had just announced her intention to abdicate in favor of her imperially bland son Willem-Alexander. The first thought that came to mind when I heard the tidings was Her Majesty’s disgraceful conduct after the 2004 jihadist butchering of Theo van Gogh. Refusing to attend the funeral of the accomplished author, journalist, and filmmaker, Beatrix instead rushed off to a Moroccan youth center to assure those present that she was their pal. According to Reuters, Beatrix didn’t want to leave the throne until she was sure “that anti-immigrant, euroskeptic politician Geert Wilders, of whom she disapproved, was in no danger of assuming real political influence….Wilders’ poor showing at the last election and loss of influence in politics, could well have contributed to her decision to abdicate.” Willem-Alexander, whom van Gogh once described as something of a royal dummy, is no Wilders fan either, sneering in 2007, apropos of the politician, that “Speech is silver, silence is golden.” (The dim-bulb prince appeared not to grasp that under the rules of the Netherlands’ constitutional monarchy, it’s his job, not that of an elected official like Wilders, to keep his mouth shut.)
Walking the streets of Amsterdam in recent days, I thought about the sudden, horrible way in which van Gogh had been struck down, shot and stabbed, on an ordinary November morning on one of those very streets. I thought about how many years it’s been since that day. And I thought about the fact that things on that front have been relatively silent lately: it’s been a while since the last high-profile killing, or attempted killing, of an Islam critic. I reflected about the fact that each of these events causes instant shock and consternation, a brief preoccupation on the part of many Europeans with the reality of the domestic Islamic threat, and is followed by a gradual forgetfulness and return to complacency about Islamization. And I found myself thinking that it was only a matter of time until the next such assassination attempt. Where would it be? Who would be the target?
No sooner had I returned home to Scandinavia that the news came. My longtime friend Lars Hedegaard, a fearless critic of Islam, founder of Denmark’s Free Press Society, and defendant in the most disgraceful trial in postwar Danish history, had just escaped being killed by a thug who came to the door of his home in Copenhagen pretending to be a mailman. The incident took place at about 11:00 on Tuesday morning. The would-be perpetrator was wearing a standard mailman’s uniform.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/israel-and-the-ever-elusive-muslim-unity/ It was a momentous occasion: the first visit to Egypt by a President of Iran since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Egypt Tuesday to an enthusiastic welcome from Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi and top Egyptian officials. Yet underneath the kisses and expressions of mutual […]
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/02/05/how-do-you-spell-retaliation/?print=1
I have been thinking about the Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero lately. Like many people of my generation, my first recollection when hearing the name “Cicero” is of interminable Latin sentences where the critical word is parked like a caboose about thirty words later than you would have expected it, and in a gerundive construction suggesting causation or obligation. Or was it a double dative? In any event, in school Cicero was someone to be deciphered rather than understood. He didn’t like Catiline, whoever that was, but what has that to do with the market in ablative absolutes?
Now that I look back to Cicero’s life and work, however, few figures from any age seem as searingly pertinent to our own social and political life.
There is a reason Cicero’s work made such a profound impression on the American Founders. John Adams, reacting to a biography of Cicero, cut to the chase: “I seem to read the history of all ages and nations in every page — and especially the history of our own country for forty years past. Change the names and every anecdote will be applicable to us.”
Consider this passage from Cicero’s On Duties:
Whoever governs a country must first see to it that citizens keep what belongs to them and that the state does not take from individuals what is rightfully theirs. … As for those politicians who pretend they are friends of the common people and try to pass laws redistributing property and drive people out of their homes or champion legislation forgiving loans, I say they are undermining the very foundations of our state. They are destroying social harmony, which cannot exist when you take away money from some to give it to others. They are also destroying fairness, which vanishes when people cannot keep what rightfully belongs to them. For as I have said, it is the proper role of government to guard the right of citizens to control their own property.
It’s hard to believe that was written circa 44 BC, not the day before yesterday.
I intend to come back to Cicero at greater length on another occasion. For now, I simply want to wave the Ciceronian flag a little and suggest that his magnificent attacks on corruption and the abuse of state power have many lessons for Americans at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/a_way_out_of_the_wilderness_for_the_gop.html Republicans hold a weak hand in Washington but a stronger grip in states where voters have entrusted them with power. Performances there can boost not just the Republican image but bring the party back to power in Washington. More importantly, they can show conservative principles work. The “Red State Model” can, in the Wall […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/top_ten_problems_with_that_skeet_shooting_picture.html It was a picture dredged up to prove the assertion the President had made in January to the breezy effect that the President is indeed acquainted with firearms, since, as he stated (roughly paraphrased), We’ve often shot skeet when we’re at Camp David. It took a few days, where conservative media baited the press […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/02/failed_assassination_attempt_against_lars_hedegaard.html The intrepid, erudite journalist/historian Lars Hedegaard, head of the Danish Free Press Society, whose free speech travails I have written about here, miraculously survived an assassination attempt earlier today in a Copenhagen suburb. According to the English version of the Copenhagen Post, police commissioner Lars-Christian Borg, stated A man shot at the victim but […]
