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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203391104577124480046463576.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
Deepening Crisis Over Euro Pits Leader Against Leader
By MARCUS WALKER in Berlin, CHARLES FORELLE in Brussels and STACY MEICHTRY in Rome

BERLIN—On a chilly October evening in her austere chancellery, Angela Merkel placed a confidential call to Rome to help save the euro.

Two years after the European debt crisis erupted in little Greece, the unthinkable had happened: Investors were fleeing the government debt of Italy—one of the world’s biggest economies. If the selloff couldn’t be stopped, Italy would go down, taking with it Europe’s shared currency.

Her phone call that night to the 16th-century Quirinale Palace, once a residence of popes, now home to Italy’s octogenarian head of state, President Giorgio Napolitano, trod on delicate ground for a German chancellor. Europe’s leaders have an unwritten rule not to intervene in one another’s domestic politics. But Ms. Merkel was gently prodding Italy to change its prime minister, if the incumbent—Silvio Berlusconi—couldn’t change Italy.
Details of Ms. Merkel’s diplomatic channel to Rome haven’t previously been reported.

Her impatience shows the extent to which Italy’s woes undid Europe’s strategy to fight the crisis. Until then, Europe had followed a simple formula to preserve the euro: The financially strong would save the weak. But Italy, with nearly €2 trillion, or about $2.6 trillion, in national debt, was simply too big to save.

This Wall Street Journal reconstruction, based on interviews with more than two dozen policy makers, including many leading actors, as well as examinations of key documents, reveals how Germany responded to the dangers in Italy by imposing its power on a divided euro zone. Ms. Merkel, widely criticized for not dealing forcefully with the crisis in its early phase, was at the center of the action, grappling with personal tensions and Byzantine politics among the 17 euro nations.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/30/five-easy-steps-to-end-islamophobia/

Five Easy Steps to End ‘Islamophobia’ Posted By Robert Spencer

No comedy show, no matter how clever or winning, is going to eradicate the suspicion that many Americans have of Muslims. This is because Americans are concerned about Islam not because of the work of greasy Islamophobes, but because of Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; and Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; and Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; and Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; and Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; and Naveed Haq, the jihad mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; and Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a jihad plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; and many others like them who have plotted and/or committed mass murder in the name of Islam and motivated by its texts and teachings — all in the U.S. in the last couple of years.

The fact that there are other Muslims not fighting jihad is just great, but it doesn’t mean that the jihad isn’t happening. This comedy show simply doesn’t address the problem of jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism.

Israel Stands Up to Gender Extremists Posted By P. David Hornik URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/30/israel-stands-up-to-gender-extremists/ “Man spits at eight-year-old girl.” Add “in Israel” to that and you have another international media circus. No doubt, the phenomenon—ultra-Orthodox Jewish men harassing girls on their way to school for supposedly “immodest” dress—is appalling enough. And well over 99 […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/30/new-york-times-ridicules-gingrich-on-sharia/

New York Times Ridicules Gingrich on ShariaPosted By Ryan Mauro

THE CONSERVATIVE MAINSTREAM MEDIA….FOX AND FOOLS IS SO IN THE TANK FOR ROMNEY…IT IS DISGUSTING….RSK

On December 21, the New York Times published an article by reporter Scott Shane titled “In Islamic Law, Gingrich Sees Mortal Threat to U.S.” The article tried to subtlety discredit Gingrich and others talking about the Islamist agenda in the U.S., twice stating that “many scholars” feel the threat is being overblown and it is “roundly rejected” by most experts.

The Times opens up with some of Gingrich’s quotes, such as when he called Sharia a “mortal threat.”

“Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence. But in fact they’re both engaged in jihad, and they’re both seeking to impose the same end state, which is to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of Shariah,” Gingrich says.

Gingrich’s warning is then characterized as a “much-disputed thesis in vogue with some conservative thinkers but roundly rejected by many American Muslims, scholars of Islam and counterterrorism officials.” Those warning about the Islamist threat within the U.S. are thus depicted as being part of a political fringe without credibility.

The Center for American Progress’ Jihad Against the Free World Posted By Daniel Greenfield
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/30/the-center-for-american-progress%e2%80%99-jihad-against-the-free-world/

The colors of the American flag are red, white and blue, but the colors of the Center for American Progress are red, white and green. Red for the left and green for Islam.

The Center for American Progress is not just any organization. Headed up by John Podesta, a co-chairman of Obama’s transition team and backed by a 38 million dollar annual budget, it is George Soros’ most ambitious attempt to turn his Shadow Party into a shadow government. CAP is the organization with the single greatest influence on the Obama White House and its foreign and domestic policy.

CAP is more than just another think tank; it’s a lever for shifting the Democratic Party further to the left, bought and paid for by George Soros and a roster of secret donors whose names are not made public by the secretive and powerful organization. Those who buy influence with it also get anonymity as part of the package.

But the Center is more than a rogue billionaire’s brand of progressivism turned into talking-point groupthink by Washington insiders. It is a link between the American left and the Muslim right, articulating the Islamist agenda as a vehicle for the foreign policy of the post-American left. It’s where Ali Gharib can run pieces whitewashing the Muslim Brotherhood while Zaid Jiliani attempts to justify the ambassador to Belgium’s comments denying the existence of Muslim anti-Semitism.

A CAP report co-authored by Wajahat Ali, a defender of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, and a board member of the Muslim Students Association, a Muslim Brotherhood front group, claimed that counterterrorism analysts were misrepresenting the threat of Sharia law and that Sharia was “overwhelmingly concerned with personal religious observance such as prayer and fasting, and not with national laws.” That particular revelation might come as a shock to raped women in Pakistan and gay men in Iran.

So, What Actually Came of the ‘Shellacking’ of 2010? By Frank Salvato
BasicsProject.org

We were so full of “hope” for “change.” No, I am not talking about the election of Barack Obama, one of the most effective Progressive presidents in American history. I am speaking of the excitement felt within the Conservative, Libertarian and Center Right and Left political communities after the 2010 election delivered the House and a non-filibuster proof Senate to the American people. Finally, most of us thought, some balance in the federal government. Maybe, just maybe, the Progressives and Liberal Democrats in federal government would be forced to the ingenuous table of true and honest compromise; compromise fitting of a truly free people. But, as we look back over the year, what did we really get for all that so-called “compromise?”

markdurie.com blog This past week, as I read the grim news of Christmas killings in Nigeria, there came back to me the words of Shaikh Khalid Yasin, an African-American convert to Islam and globe trotting preacher, who visited Australia back in 2003.  The context was an interview on ABC radio with John Cleary.  Cleary asked […]

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/30/2011-the-year-the-wheels-fell The good news is that 2011 is finally over. The bad news is that 2012 is upon us. The coming year will not give us a break from the steady stream of political knavery, green graft and governmental stupidity that 2011 delivered, though it will surely provide a flood of politically-induced comedy. JANUARY: An […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11133/pub_detail.asp
A week before Christmas, an event occurred in Egypt that is only now being acknowledged as a cultural disaster, a tragedy for Egypt and for the world. The Egyptian Institute, or Institut d’Egypte, which lay in the Qasr el-Aini Street beside Tahrir Square in Cairo, became another casualty of Arab Spring politics. On Saturday, December 17th, the building was firebombed.

The Institute of Egypt was founded in 1798 by Napoleon Bonaparte as a research center. It was his intention to collate scientific data on Egypt,as well as to assemble for the purposes of study, papyri and historic information gathered during his conquest of Egypt. This institution would utilize this data to form a new science of learning that would establish the foundations of Egyptology. The institute published its own journals and a newspaper, and when the French were officially driven out in 1801 the scholars of the institute spent twenty years compiling their data into a massive work called “The Description of Egypt.” This was issued in 23 volumes between 1809 and 1821. An original handwritten version of the Description was housed in the Institute when it was burned on December 17th, 2011. The unique edition – whose massive maps were once exhibited in the Louvre – is believed to have been burned beyond repair.

http://bigpeace.com/jbernard/2011/12/29/the-united-states-government-is-being-willfuly-ignorant-in-the-current-middle-eastern-war/

Herschel Smith and I have had some lengthy conversations about this current war, the disposition of the enemy, their relationship with the civilian populations amongst whom they operate, and the substance of the religion they all claim to adhere to.

Fundamentally, we agree. We have had some minor disagreements about strategy selections from time to time but agree that an unintended consequence of “giving the nod” to the “innocent population” in the AO (Area of Operation) is more dead American servicemen. For me, that is intolerable! As far as I am concerned, the number one responsibility of an American administration, American elected “servants”, Sec Def, the Pentagon, and the entirety of upper echelon military circles is to declare the security of the United States, its citizenry, and its Warrior community as primary before choosing which strategy to employ and govern our use of force in the AO.