http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3404/anti-semitism-france-sweden In France and Sweden – and in the UN – authorities fail to acknowledge that Europe’s Jewish communities are under attack by Muslims who have formed insular, radical and often criminal enclaves. They are attacked NOT because of what they do or do not do; NOT because of what Israel does or does not […]
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/10/18/its-not-just-obamas-lies-its-the-premise-of-obamas-lies/
With CNN’s Candy Crowley shamelessly throwing President Obama a Libya life-preserver at Tuesday night’s debate, the so-called Mohammed video is back in the news. That ought to offend sensible people – and not just because the president, aided and abetted by Ms. Crowley, is lying when he now claims, despite weeks of denials, to have regarded the Benghazi massacre from the first as a pre-planned terrorist attack.
For weeks, Obama and his minions attempted to hoodwink the country into believing that the murders of our ambassador and three other Americans were triggered by when Muslim protests over a “movie” virtually no one has seen spontaneously erupted into rioting. In fact, these Americans were killed precisely because Obama’s high-priority policy of embracing Islamists, in Libya and elsewhere, has empowered al Qaeda and other Muslim militants. The policy’s current implosion, in the presidential campaign’s final days, has made a mockery of Obama’s pretensions about having decimated al Qaeda – the only part of his record that the president thought it was safe to run on.
The video was the heart of the administration’s initial lie and subsequent cover-up. The assertion that it caused the latest atrocity was always untenable. Now that this causation claim has been blown out of the water, you might think that the video’s relevance has been destroyed along with it. But in a significant way, it has not.
Obama’s emphasis on the video as causation was so demonstratively false that detractors have focused myopically on the lying. This serves short-term political objectives: a president who richly deserves to lose is reeling with the election just 19 days away.
Nevertheless, long-term societal needs are being disserved. Focus on the administration’s serial lies has left unrefuted the obnoxious premise of these lies. It is as though we have conceded that, if the movie had actually triggered protests that led to violence (as Islamist protests are wont to do), responsibility for that violence would lie with the filmmakers. The culprit would be our culture of liberty and reason, not the anti-democratic culture of the Muslim Middle East. That is dangerous nonsense.
Constitutionally protected speech can never be legitimized as a cause of violence. Period.
The administration has attempted to walk a disgraceful line on this. First, it has worked closely with Islamist governments for four years, endeavoring to carve out of the First Amendment’s carapace the protection of speech that criticizes Islam. Clearly aware that this is a rogue effort, Obama and his minions further suggest that the Constitution limits only what laws government may enact, not any extra-legal methods – what Secretary of State Clinton euphemistically calls, “shaming” – by which government pursues ends the Constitution forbids.
We see this raw, bullying power in the speeches and nauseating Pakistani-television commercials Obama and Clinton produced to reprove the video at taxpayer expense. These fundamentally betray the federal government’s principal duty to safeguard American liberties against foreign threats. We also see it in the Kafkaesque prosecution and detention of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, alleged producer of the video, on a mere probation violation. “Violations of supervised release,” as they are called in the biz, are numbingly routine. Convicts are rarely re-imprisoned over them absent a truly severe infraction. And even when such infractions occur, there is almost never any rush to adjudicate them – generally, the probationer is given a summons with notice to appear in court on his own recognizance with counsel; he is not arrested in his home by armed police in the middle of the night, as Nakoula was, as if he were a terrorist or a drug lord. That is not responsible law-enforcement; it is abuse of power.
Finally, while the administration winks at the Muslim Brotherhood and prostrates itself before Islamist audiences, Obama lamely claims that his detractors are wrong: No, he maintains, he is not really saying that speech critical of Islam justifies violence; just that such speech is wrong and somehow blameworthy. But while there is never a whisper of complaint about the savagery of Islamists who kill – who brazenly declare the right to kill – over trivial slights, the president spares no indignant syllable in condemning free expression. The contrast is stark. Its inevitable effect is to immunize the marauders. This only intensifies the danger to Nakoula (whose movie no one would ever have heard of absent Obama’s promotional campaign) and to Americans who lawfully grapple with a threat over which the administration prefers to slobber – the ideology, rooted in Islamic scripture, that has led to the killings of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of people (many of them Muslims) worldwide.
Put aside, if you can, the administration’s banana-republic repression tactics. To accept the premise that a video, rather than the malevolent culture of Islamic supremacism, could possibly have caused the murderous attacks in Benghazi is not only to accept sharia’s suffocating blasphemy standards. It is to instill in our culture classical sharia’s noxious caste system, in which Muslims, and only Muslims, are licensed to respond violently to criticism of their beliefs and icons. It is to eviscerate our constitutional commitment to equal protection under the law.
The last point would be bad enough – in fact, intolerable – even if Islam were only a religion. In that case, we would “only” be excusing violent reactions to negative speech about Islamic spiritual principles – the kind of speech all other religious believers are expected to abide without forcible protest. But, as I explain in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, the predominant Islam of the Middle East aspires to be far more than a religion.
That form of Islam, Islamic supremacism (or what we call “Islamist” ideology), is a thoroughgoing societal system. It dictates behavior in every aspect of life, including economics, finance, military combat, crime and punishment, legal evidence, social relations, hygiene – in short, the plethora of affairs that, in the West, are consigned to the judgment of the body politic, outside the control of any creed. Obama’s “no criticism of Islam” standard would thus render unfit for public discussion not only religious tenets but innumerable matters of great public importance. Naturally, the most urgent of these involve national defense because Islamist ideology fuels the terrorist threat. But it is not just our security that is at stake; it is our capacity to maintain the free-flow of ideas a self-governing people must have in order to flourish.
There is nothing new about crass provocation being passed off as art. What is new, and perilous, is the notion that it has become government’s place to condemn free expression – based not on community standards of decency but on the political tastes of government officials. Government’s only proper role is to protect the right to provoke. When government’s coercive power is put in the service of the heckler’s veto, when it becomes the “ad hoc nullification machine” by which corrupt officials smother constitutional protections that inconvenience their cronies, then that government is no longer legitimate.
It is not enough to reject Obama’s lies. It is essential to reject the premise of his lies. In our society, we get to say unkind things about icons, just as we get to speak vigorously in their defense. It is for us, the sovereign people, to weigh the merits of these competing claims, without government’s meddling thumb on the scale. That is a big part of what makes Western civilization civilized.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
2012.10.17 (Killi Jeo, Pakistan) – Suspected Taliban shoot a medical worker to death as he is trying to vaccinate children.
2012.10.16 (Masani, Indonesia) – Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid murder two investigators of a church bombing by stabbing them in the neck.
2012.10.16 (Quetta, Pakistan) – Four Shia minorities workers at a scrap market bleed to death following a targeted shooting by Sunnis.
2012.10.15 (Mosul, Iraq) – A child is disassembled by Mujahid bombers.
2012.10.15 (Karachi, Pakistan) – Five men are shot to death over ‘religious differences’.
2012.10.15 (Samarrah, Iraq) – A father and two sons are murdered in their own home by al-Qaeda.
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Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz29eo82y5q
Rioters clash with police outside Greek parliament
Reuters
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Breaking_news
Rioters clash with police outside Greek parliament
Greek police fired tear gas to disperse anti-austerity protesters hurling stones and petrol bombs on the day of a general strike that brought much of the near-bankrupt country to a standstill. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz29eoIPpUg
Iran mocks Israel as vulnerable from drone
Ynet News
Thursday, October 18, 2012
News
The infiltration of an Iranian-made drone into Israeli airspace some two weeks ago indicates that Israel would not be able to defend itself in the event of an attack by Iran and its allies, said Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz29eoZxwy2
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/media-abetting-obamas-benghazi-lies/print/ After Candy Crowley’s outrageous intervention on behalf of President Obama during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, the debate moderator appeared on CNN and admitted that GOP challenger Mitt Romney had been right in his criticism of the administration’s dissembling on the Benghazi terrorist attack. Romney was “right in the main,” she said, but “picked the […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/the-real-difference-between-islamic-extremists-and-moderates/print/
ISLAMIC EXTREMIST” NEUROSURGEONS” BELIEVE IN BEHEADING INFIDELS, WHILE THE MODERATES JUST WANT TO KILL THEM IF THEY DON’T CONVERT….AND FOR STARTERS THEY WANT TO DESTROY ISRAEL….JUST ASK THE REAL MODERATES….THE APOSTATES LIKE HIRSI ALI, NONIE DARWISH, WAFA SULTAN, IBN WARRAQ…..RSK
There were eras in human history whose great challenges lay in isolating chemical compounds, unlocking the structures of human genetic material and examining the hearts of dying stars. But the great challenge of our time is telling apart Muslim moderates and Muslim extremists.
Fly to Tripoli International Airport, take the Airport Highway into Tripoli, drive along the coast through all those towns and cities you heard about on the radio when the announcers were excitedly describing battles between the brave Libyan rebels and the despicable forces of the despot; Homs, Misrata, Sirte. Drive through the night while hugging the Mediterranean coastline until you reach Benghazi.
Benghazi is the city on whose behalf we went to war against Gaddafi. The imminent peril to Benghazi was the reason that Obama gave for the conflict. “We struck regime forces approaching Benghazi to save that city and the people within it,” he declared proudly. But the firepower that proved so potent in displacing and dismantling the Gaddafi regime could not protect Ambassador Stevens and the American consulate.
The Benghazi consulate’s own security forces had been stripped down to their bare essentials. Inside the compound, in their own barracks, were members of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade who were tasked with providing security for the consulate. The February 17 Martyrs Brigade is an Islamist militia affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The attackers firing off RPGs into the compound were members of Ansar Al Sharia, a spinoff of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, associated with Al Qaeda.
On diplomatic paper the moderate February 17 Martyrs Brigade and the extremist Ansar Al-Sharia had nothing in common. In reality, the differences between the two militias were mostly cosmetic and the Martyrs Brigade had been contacted ahead of time by an Al Qaeda politician and asked to stand down while the attack took place.
A month later and a thousand miles away, the moderate Free Syrian Army and the extremist Al Nusra Front captured a missile base in Syria. The base was stocked with the rather popular S-75 SAMs which may be a bit dated, but had still managed to shoot down an F-111 over Libya back in 1981 and would make short work of most commercial airliners.
The Free Syrian Army is the force that almost everyone agrees we should be supporting. They are almost certainly the fighters that Obama is conveying weapons and trainers to. And the Treasury Department approved a license to provide direct financial assistance to the FSA. The Al Nusra Front however is linked to Al Qaeda and waves the black flag of the Caliphate. It considers the United States an enemy of Islam.
The rebel spokesman for the local franchise of the Brave Syrian People ™ explained, “We don’t distinguish between the groups Al Nusra and the other militias, as long as everyone is working toward one goal of ousting the regime.” Our beloved moderates were making no distinction between themselves and the extremists. By helping the Free Syrian Army, we were really helping Al Qaeda.
The missile base attack was not the first time that the Free Syrian Army and the Al Nusra Front had worked together. The exploits of the Free Syrian Army were often actually the work of the experienced Jihadi fighters of Al Nusra. When gullible Westerners thought they were applauding the daring acts of freedom fighters, they were actually cheering the fanatical murderous frenzy of their own enemies.
The S-75s of Aleppo won’t pose much of a threat to us because the Syrian Air Force promptly swooped in and blew the missile base to bits, thereby probably saving a few hundred or a few thousand American lives—not that they did it for that reason. The real mission of the FSA and Al Nusra however had been to dismantle Syrian air defenses on its northern border clearing the way for a Turkish invasion of Syria.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/330771/dazed-and-deceptive-libya-roy-blunt Having misled Americans for weeks about the September 11 attacks in Libya, the Obama administration is now attempting to mislead us about how it misled us. The president himself used this tactic during last night’s debate, claiming that he immediately recognized the violence in Benghazi as a planned terrorist attack and that he leveled […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/330809/rich-democrats-deroy-murdock Top Democrats do not just disagree with Republican nominee Mitt Romney. They consider him a loaded, multiple-house-owning son of privilege unfamiliar with the common man. At last week’s running-mates’ debate, Vice President Joe Biden suggested that Romney is “going to continue to focus on taking care of only the very wealthy.” “Mitt Romney just […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/330821 Total annual spending on federal means-tested welfare programs has hit $1 trillion. The Congressional Research Service is out with a new memorandum on spending on these programs. Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee who requested the memo, has crunched the numbers and come up with the astonishing figure of […]
http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/10/17/the-murders-in-libya-the-presidential-debate-and-the-pattern-of-obama-foreign-policy/
While foreign policy did not figure large in the second presidential debate, the Middle East again emerged as the overwhelming international issue.
In the beginning of the debate, President Barack Obama claimed that he put a high priority on energy independence, an assertion well refuted by Governor Mitt Romney. A president who wants energy independence from the unreliability of Middle East supplies has many options: he could easily expand oil drilling on federal land, promote the use of new technology to produce oil and gas, approve a major pipeline from Canada, and continue production and use of coal for generating power. To do none of these things and put his effort into restricting traditional energy sources and pushing hard for untested, long-term, and failed “green energy” schemes subverts energy independence.
But the main emphasis in the debate was on the Benghazi assassinations. Obama said:
So as soon as we found out that the Benghazi consulate was being overrun, I was on the phone with my national security team, and I gave them three instructions. Number one, beef up our security and — and — and procedures not just in Libya but every embassy and consulate in the region. Number two, investigate exactly what happened, regardless of where the facts lead us, to make sure that folks are held accountable and it doesn’t happen again. And number three, we are going to find out who did this, and we are going to hunt them down, because one of the things that I’ve said throughout my presidency is when folks mess with Americans, we go after them.
In other words, Obama said let’s increase security — after the attack was made — and then investigate and find those responsible for the attack. This is all rather obvious and anyone would have done that. But the real questions are different ones: How about investigating why there was such a security breach and the reasons for the attack?
And how about what happened beforehand?
