DIANA WEST: THE JIHAD AND CHRISTOPHER STEVENS PART 3 http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2297/The-Jihad-and-Christopher-Stevens-Pt-3.aspx In the last installment, I examined cables written by Christopher Stevens in 2008 (and available courtesy Wikileaks) that seem to capture a significant trend in his thinking, and, perhaps the thinking of others in the US government, which may have helped drive the evolution of […]
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gallup-obamas-job-approval-drops-7-points-3-days
CNSNews.com) – In the most precipitous decline it has seen in more than a year, President Barack Obama’s job approval rating has dropped 7 points in three days, according to Gallup.
n the three-day period ending on Oct. 23, says Gallup, 53 percent said they approved of the job Obama was doing and 42 percent said they did not.
On Oct. 24, that dropped to 51 percent who said they approved and 44 percent who said they do not.
On Oct. 25, it dropped again to 48 percent who said they approved and 47 percent who said they do not.
On Oct. 26, it dropped yet again to 46 percent who said they approved and 49 percent who said they did not
www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
In the 28th October 2012 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
· An Israeli university has produced the first atlas of the human brain
· An Israeli paramedic rushes from synagogue on his wedding Sabbath to save 97-year-old man
· An Arab woman has become commander of an Israeli combat unit.
· Read about ALEH Negev – a lifelong facility for severely disabled children and adults.
· Israeli technology goes to work on the Red Planet.
· Momentous trade agreement signed to bring vital Israeli medication to Europe
· Tel Aviv is one of the three finalists of the “World’s Most Innovative City” contest. Please vote.
· Last week’s JPost Israel Good News descriptive summary
Click here for “The Innovation Nation”
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/10/27/guide-for-the-perplexed/?print=1
Do you wonder what the hell happened in Libya? Right after our ambassador and three other Americans were murdered by that “spontaneous” uprising in Benghazi by people who just happened to be armed with RPGs, know the layout of our safe house, and who congregated on — let’s see, oh, right, it was on September 11, what do you know! — right after that, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed surprise [1]: after all, hadn’t we helped “liberate” the Libyans from the monster Gaddafi and made way for . . . for what? Oh, right, for the “Arab Spring”!
I think that the administration’s response to the crisis in Libya might be the coup de grace for Obama’s reelection bid. In my view, Romney would have won anyway. I’ve been saying that for months. The president’s record on the economy is just too catastrophic to win him another term. And this, remember, is the first time in his life that this president has had to run on his record, on what he has actually accomplished, as distinct from his “charisma.” But what happened in Libya — and, more to the point, how the administration has twisted, turned, equivocated, and lied about what happened and what its initial response to the crisis was — that is likely to put the final nail in the coffin of Obama’s reelection bid. As Mark Steyn pointed out [2] in a devastating column:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/has_general_ham_been_fired.html
Has General Carter F. Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, been fired for defying Leon Panetta on Benghazi?
Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, ran a piece Saturday afternoon titled “Interesting Rumor Concerning General Carter Ham and Stand Down Order.” This piece is presented as a rumor. It suggests that General Ham was told to stand down from sending aid to Benghazi, that General Ham on his own decided to proceed, and that he was then relieved of his command. Remember, all rumor at this point.
On 18 October 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta participated in a “DOD News Briefing on Efforts to Enhance the Financial Health of the Force.” In his introductory remarks, Mr. Panetta said: “Today I am very pleased to announce that President Obama will nominate General David Rodriguez to succeed General Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command . . .”
I’ll have a lot more to say about General Carter Ham’s service in the months ahead, but let me say this. Under his leadership, AFRICOM has played a very central role in some very important missions, from the NATO campaign in Libya that led to the fall of Gadhafi; to successful counterterrorism efforts in Somalia and Yemen; to efforts that we are now involved in, in Nigeria, Mali and elsewhere. General Ham has really brought AFRICOM into a very pivotal role in that challenging region. Myself and the nation are deeply grateful for his outstanding service. This is not a rumor, but it also does not provide a reason for the change. Note that Mr. Panetta gives no insight into General Ham’s future. General Ham is not quite 61 years old and so has three years left before mandatory retirement age of 64. General Ham has been commissioned for 36 years but did serve as an enlisted man prior to gaining his commission, so he might have the mandatory retirement 40 years of service.
The New York Times ran an article by Elisabeth Bumiller titled “Panetta Says Risk Impeded Deployment to Benghazi.” The article refers to the night of 11/12 September and includes the following: As a result, Mr. Panetta said, he and two top commanders “felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.” The commanders are Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Carter F. Ham of Africa Command, which oversees American military operations in Africa, including Libya. You probably have seen similar clips on TV. The impression being given by Mr. Panetta is that the three of them agreed upon the course of action.
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/new-film-exposes-radical-muslim-deception/
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has released a new film exposing the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood inside the United States and how its front groups and sympathizers intimidate the major media and Hollywood.
The Muslim Brotherhood, now in charge of the Egyptian government and making major advances throughout the Middle East, was established in 1928 and is considered by experts to be the parent organization of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and Hamas.
Coming just days before the November 6 presidential election, the film, titled “Jihad in America: The Grand Deception [1],” highlights a problem of subversion in the U.S. that both major political party candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, have not been asked by the media to address.
Investigative Project on Terrorism executive director Steven Emerson, himself the target of death threats because of his work over the course of decades exposing Islamic extremist networks, spoke at a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. on Thursday October 25th that was attended by Accuracy in Media. We also reviewed an advance copy of the film.
Several years in the making, the film describes how Muslim Brotherhood fronts, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have pursued a strategy described in secret documents as the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” of destroying Western civilization from within and making America into an Islamic state.
The film includes FBI wiretaps of Islamists in the U.S. disguising their support of terrorist groups like Hamas and declaring, “Politics, like war, is deception.”
In addition to secret wiretaps and videos of Muslim Brotherhood activities, the film includes newly declassified documents and interviews with law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and journalists.
Although the film suggests the Muslim Brotherhood front groups are operating as illegal agents of a foreign power, there is more at stake than just subversion. The film contends that the Muslim Brotherhood is directly involved in radicalizing American Muslims who then carry out terrorist missions.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/netanyahus_settlement_jungle.html The issue of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, the biblical homeland of the Jewish people, continues to roil Israeli politics. According to worldwide conventional wisdom, settlements built since the Six-Day War on land that previously had been known as Jordan’s West Bank violate fundamental principles of international law. But conventional wisdom, according to […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/obamas_taqqiya_unravels.html I have never entertained the idea that Obama was a Muslim and always believed he was a socialist. But Obama’s behavior over the last four years regarding Islam has convinced me that Obama has a Socialist/Islamic centered worldview — a combination that is not uncommon in many parts of the Muslim world. Having been […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/the_death_of_a_poet.html
Haaretz, the far-leftsit Israeli daily, actually a Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew, has uncovered a new scoop. It claims that the leftist “poet” Shai Mizrachi, who committed suicide a few days ago, a day before his 38th birthday, was in fact the victim of Right-wing political persecution. In fact, it runs this “scoop” under the large banner headline on a flaming yellow background, reading “Hate Crime,” in its October 26, 2012 weekend supplement, and it is spread over 7 full magazine pages.
As it turns out, Mizrachi was in a sense really the victim of political hate, but the criminals responsible for his death were not members of the Israeli Right Wing but rather faculty members in the Department of Politics at Ben Gurion University.
Mizrachi was a mentally unstable far-leftist who saw himself as a poet. He was active in a leftist political movement of poets in Israel that agitated in favor of Palestinian “rights.” He also ran an internet site in Hebrew called “Chaos,” where he posted his “poetry” and political diatribes.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/10/tackling_the_totalitarianism_of_islam.html
As the Arab Spring model implodes in the Middle East, it is even more urgent that the West understand that behind this ongoing violence is the inexorable Muslim adherence to sharia law. Sharia is the unremitting lodestar for their actions.
In his latest magisterial work, entitled Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, Dr. Andrew Bostom adds another enlightening tome to supplement The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (2008).
Honest scholarship in our politically correct world is a hard commodity to find. Thus, a debt is owed to Bostom for his continuing contributions as he give numerous examples to prove that it is the “centrality of Islamic jihadism” (26) that motivates, inspires, instigates, arouses, and stirs its adherents toward the unrelenting goal of a global caliphate. During the recent Ramadan, for example, there were 260 jihad attacks in 23 countries, with 1,209 dead and 1,910 critically injured. The so-called religion of peace is extraordinarily bloody, yet leaders of the free world prevaricate about its violence.
The culture of death, destruction, and deceit that is Islam is painstakingly exposed by Bostom. The deep and abiding anti-Jewish animus in Islam is shown to be integral to Islam. Neither a byproduct of Western anti-Semitism nor a result of alleged Western imperialism, to say nothing of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Muslim-inspired anti-Jewish sentiment actually dates back to before 869 A.D.
Bostom affirms that this legacy of “Muslim anti-Jewish hatred and violence” is not some aberrant vision of radical Islam, but rather is “rooted in mainstream, orthodox Islamic teachings” (83). Bostom explodes the oft-repeated idea that “Islam’s society’s hostility is non-theological” and “not related to any specific Islamic doctrine” (74). He proves that, a thousand years before any “serious colonial penetration of the region” (38) could influence views about Jews, there is evidence that Jews were hated by the Muslims because they stubbornly denied Muhammad’s message.
In fact, the Jews of the period even “coined their own terms for hatred directed at them by Muslims” (38). Jews used the terms sinuth for Muslim hatred of Jews and sone for the Muslim hater, thus confirming that Islamic anti-Jewish hatred existed a millennium ago.
Another myth central to the discussion of Islam is that Jews and Christians — i.e., dhimmis — were well-treated. Blasting the oft-repeated notion of cordial Muslim relations toward Jewish and Christian subjects in Muslim-dominated Spain, Bostom cites one pogrom after another within the Muslim world, and he underscores that Koran 9:111 “provides an unequivocal, celebratory invocation of martyrdom during jihad” (82).
Repeatedly, Bostom examines the “contract of the jizya” or “dhimma,” which “encompasses … obligatory and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim” (70). In the last thirty years, Europe has not withstood the onslaught of Muslims, who deliberately do not assimilate into society, who demand that the countries in which they reside bend to Islamic will, who hysterically call for sharia-imposed judicial decisions, who have made sharia-controlled zones that even police are afraid to enter, who have relegated women to second-class status, and who intimidate and threaten their host governments with violence.
As Bostom emphasizes, each time that Islam gains ascendancy in an area, such transition to dhimmi status results in enslavement, forcible conversion to Islam, and death to the non-believer.
It is no exaggeration to state that there is an ongoing ideological war against the West. In only thirty years, European support for “common Euro-Arab positions” now finds itself in a perpetual state of “dhimmitude and rabid Judeophobia” (170). For example, Muslims living in Germany believe that the “German Constitution [is] irreconcilable” with the Koran (172). Muslim immigrants who demand European welfare benefits actually view these entitlements as a form of jizya to be paid by dhimmis, aka the host country (188).
Particularly revelatory is the chapter entitled “Sayonara Shari’a: Japanese Lessons, Lost?,” where Bostom relates that after World War II, “under stern American guidance” (440), Japan was forced to delegitimize its state religion of Shintoism. In other words, the state would no longer be able to impose religious belief; nonetheless, the practice of Shintoism as a “private, demilitarized, and depoliticized personal faith” was protected (441). Individual religious liberty was maintained but could not be imposed upon the general populace.
Sadly, this lesson, which produced a vibrant Japanese reconstruction while protecting individual rights, has been entirely ignored following the U.S.-led military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rather than neutralizing the bellicose religious-political-economic creed of Islam, we have actually helped to promote sharia imposition.
How galling it is to learn that there is a tried and true antidote to counter the totalitarianism of state-imposed religion, but that the West ignores it? It is vital to note that there “has never been a sharia state in history that has not discriminated … against the non Muslims (and Muslim women) under its suzerainty” (447).
Islam refuses to reform. Thus, it consigns its followers as well as non-Muslims to an existence where no “freedom of conscience” can occur. The modern-day sermons of jihadists receive their script lines from the ideas of a thousand years ago. Islam, by its very nature, is unyielding.
Freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of speech, assembly, or petition — all of which are cardinal ideas enshrined in the American Bill of Rights — simply do not exist, will never be permitted, and are tantamount to sacrilege within the Islamic world. In fact, dhimmis possess no rights.
Islamic law and American law are antithetical. There can be no conciliation because sharia “compromises the tradition of equality for all under the law.” Sharia consists of draconian punishments such as stoning for adultery and homosexuality, death for apostasy, amputation of hands and feet for highway robbery, and lashing for drinking wine.
Lest one minimize the Koranic influence in the political Islamic world, it should be “noted that Koran 3:112 is featured before the preamble to Hamas’s foundational covenant” (76). This verse is related to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78, which describe the Jews’ transformation into apes and swine (5:60). And at Palestinian Media Watch, one can read about the demonization of Jews through these vicious canards. Furthermore, as Bostom points out, the Iranian theocracy sanctions Jew-hatred through its national teacher training programs (78).
