Islamic charity indicted

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/007009.htm

How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam

From The Times

March 07, 2007

Is it racist to condemn fanaticism?

Phyllis Chesler

Once I was held captive in Kabul. I was the bride of a charming, seductive and Westernised Afghan Muslim whom I met at an American college. The purdah I experienced was relatively posh but the sequestered all-female life was not my cup of chai — nor was the male hostility to veiled, partly veiled and unveiled women in public.

When we landed in Kabul, an airport official smoothly confiscated my US passport. “Don’t worry, it’s just a formality,” my husband assured me. I never saw that passport again. I later learnt that this was routinely done to foreign wives — perhaps to make it impossible for them to leave. Overnight, my husband became a stranger. The man with whom I had discussed Camus, Dostoevsky, Tennessee Williams and the Italian cinema became a stranger. He treated me the same way his father and elder brother treated their wives: distantly, with a hint of disdain and embarrassment.

In our two years together, my future husband had never once mentioned that his father had three wives and 21 children. Nor did he tell me that I would be expected to live as if I had been reared as an Afghan woman. I was supposed to lead a largely indoor life among women, to go out only with a male escort and to spend my days waiting for my husband to return or visiting female relatives, or having new (and very fashionable) clothes made.

In America, my husband was proud that I was a natural-born rebel and free thinker. In Afghanistan, my criticism of the treatment of women and of the poor rendered him suspect, vulnerable. He mocked my horrified reactions. But I knew what my eyes and ears told me. I saw how poor women in chadaris were forced to sit at the back of the bus and had to keep yielding their place on line in the bazaar to any man.

function pictureGalleryPopup(pubUrl,articleId) { var newWin = window.open(pubUrl+’template/2.0-0/element/pictureGalleryPopup.jsp?id=’+articleId+’&&offset=0&&sectionName=ColumnistsGuestContributors’,'mywindow’,'menubar=0,resizable=0,width=615,height=655′); }

Background

• Shot dead: female VJ who angered mullahs

• Minister killed for ‘breaking Islamic dress code’

• Cherie chides Muslims over women’s rights

• The Iraqi women who fear that democracy will crush freedom

• Men in black terrorise Iraq’s women

I saw how polygamous, arranged marriages and child brides led to chronic female suffering and to rivalry between co-wives and half-brothers; how the subordination and sequestration of women led to a profound estrangement between the sexes — one that led to wife-beating, marital rape and to a rampant but hotly denied male “prison”-like homosexuality and pederasty; how frustrated, neglected and uneducated women tormented their daughter-in-laws and female servants; how women were not allowed to pray in mosques or visit male doctors (their husbands described the symptoms in their absence).

Individual Afghans were enchantingly courteous — but the Afghanistan I knew was a bastion of illiteracy, poverty, treachery and preventable diseases. It was also a police state, a feudal monarchy and a theocracy, rank with fear and paranoia. Afghanistan had never been colonised. My relatives said: “Not even the British could occupy us.” Thus I was forced to conclude that Afghan barbarism was of their own making and could not be attributed to Western imperialism.

Long before the rise of the Taleban, I learnt not to romanticise Third World countries or to confuse their hideous tyrants with liberators. I also learnt that sexual and religious apartheid in Muslim countries is indigenous and not the result of Western crimes — and that such “colourful tribal customs” are absolutely, not relatively, evil. Long before al-Qaeda beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and Nicholas Berg in Iraq, I understood that it was dangerous for a Westerner, especially a woman, to live in a Muslim country. In retrospect, I believe my so-called Western feminism was forged in that most beautiful and treacherous of Eastern countries.

Nevertheless, Western intellectual-ideologues, including feminists, have demonised me as a reactionary and racist “Islamophobe” for arguing that Islam, not Israel, is the largest practitioner of both sexual and religious apartheid in the world and that if Westerners do not stand up to this apartheid, morally, economically and militarily, we will not only have the blood of innocents on our hands; we will also be overrun by Sharia in the West. I have been heckled, menaced, never-invited, or disinvited for such heretical ideas — and for denouncing the epidemic of Muslim-on-Muslim violence for which tiny Israel is routinely, unbelievably scapegoated.

However, my views have found favour with the bravest and most enlightened people alive. Leading secular Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents — from Egypt, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Syria and exiles from Europe and North America — assembled for the landmark Islamic Summit Conference in Florida and invited me to chair the opening panel on Monday.

According to the chair of the meeting, Ibn Warraq: “What we need now is an age of enlightenment in the Islamic world. Without critical examination of Islam, it will remain dogmatic, fanatical and intolerant and will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality and truth.” The conference issued a declaration calling for such a new “Enlightenment”. The declaration views “Islamophobia” as a false allegation, sees a “noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine” and “demands the release of Islam from its captivity to the ambitions of power-hungry men”.

Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.

Ibn Warraq has written a devastating work that will be out by the summer. It is entitled Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Will Western intellectuals also dare to defend the West?

Phyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the City University of New York

Democrats Say We’re too Patriotic!

By Christopher Chantrill

Among the numerous issues on which Democrats are hypersensitive to criticism — or as you and I might say, critique — is  patriotism.  Do not dare question a Democrat’s patriotism, at least not like Vice-President Cheney:

“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the Al Qaeda strategy,” the vice president told ABC News. “The Al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people … try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.”

Speaker Pelosi was having none of that:

“You cannot say as the president of the United States, ‘I welcome disagreement in a time of war,’ and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country,” Pelosi said.

That is odd, because a real Democrat ought to be proud of dissenting from the president’s  policy, like Howard Zinn, who said back in 2002:

“While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. In fact, if patriotism means being true to the principles for which your country is supposed to stand, then certainly the right to dissent is one of those principles. And if we’re exercising that right to dissent, it’s a patriotic act.”

So why didn’t Speaker Pelosi come right out and say it: “I am dissenting from the president’s policy and that is the highest form of patriotism?”

We know why she didn’t.  Whatever the people’s historian Howard Zinn says, Democrats aren’t patriots.  They don’t like patriots and they don’t believe in patriotism.  They quote Dr. Johnson out of context: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”  They inveigh against “aggressive nationalism,” and its inevitable wars, just as they inveigh against religion and religious wars.  They believe in supranational institutions like the European Community and the United Nations, run by “people like us.”
But Democrats know that Americans are patriotic, certainly Republicans and independent voters.  They know that they cannot afford to be seen as unpatriotic.  That is why the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in 2004, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), opened his acceptance speech with a military salute and the words: “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.”

The whole thing was as phony as a three dollar bill.  Democrats hate having to do stuff like that, but they know that they must, for they cannot afford to concede the patriotism thing to the Republicans.
Democrats are wrong about patriotism and the nation state, as they are wrong about many things.  The nation state is not something to be ashamed of.  It is a remarkable achievement.  It is the largest successful attempt at human community that transcends blood kinship.

The stunning achievement of the nation state is to draw the boundaries of trust not with blood but with language, and then to pretend that we are all related by blood.  We still use the language of blood kinship when we talk about the nation: mother country, spilling American blood, our American family, patriotism (from the Latin: pater, father).
Not only do Democrats not believe in patriotism, they also don’t believe in dissent. 
Whatever Howard Zinn may say to his pals at TomPaine.com, don’t try to practice dissent any time soon, at least not around Democrats.
Try to suggest that we should reform Social Security and see where it gets you.
Try to suggest that we should give parents the right to send their children to the schools of their choice and see where it gets you.
Try to suggest that maybe the best place for a child is with its married biological mother and father and see where it gets you.
If Democrats don’t believe in patriotism and they don’t believe in dissent, what do they believe in?
Oh yes.  Equality.

Now there is a curious thing about equality.  You could line up all the people in the world, share out all the goods in the world, and make everyone equal.  But the next morning the world would be unequal again.  Some of the people would have used their goods to start a business, and others would have blown it on a great big party.  It is impossible to obtain human equality without the micromanaging power of government.
That’s the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  Republicans want to use the power of government to control Al Qaeda.  Democrats want to use the power of government to control Americans.
Which is more patriotic?  You make the call.
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker, and blogs here. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming

Al Gore: the hypocrisy grows and grows

Thomas Lifson
Kudos to Dan Riehl for his continuing stream of excellent work on Al Gore. His latest: “Al Gore: an inconvenient tax scam“

From taxation web UK – looks like something of a tax dodge.

Investors
Investors in Carbon Credits Partnerships are generally likely to be persons with substantial income or capital gains that they wish to shelter from tax – Premiership footballers, investment bankers and directors of the top 100 companies are prime candidates. The potential savings in any example are calculated on the taxpayer being liable at the 40% tax rate.
Partnerships are effectively transparent for UK direct tax purposes, as is a Limited Liability Partnership, in that each partner, or member of the LLP, is usually treated for tax purposes as if he incurred his proportionate share of any partnership trading profit or loss himself. A member of a trading partnership which incurs a loss would usually be able to relieve his share of the trading losses against his income or capital gains.
Expenditure in the first year will almost inevitably give rise to losses which will be, with most partnerships, close to 100% of the investor’s subscription.

I remain convinced that Al Gore will become even more of a laughingstock, and ultimately discredit his cause with the grst majority of Americans.
Hat tip: Larwyn

Bolton Says U.N. “Reform” Has Failed

By Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media

Monday, March 5, 2007

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. received a sustained standing ovation Thursday night, as he told a national conference of conservatives that “reform” of the United Nations had failed and that the U.S. has to assume a radically different approach to funding the world organization. He called for an end to “assessed contributions” to the U.N. and urged a completely voluntary system of paying for the activities of the world body. Bolton’s proposal leaves open the distinct possibility that an objective assessment would determine that it does not deserve one red cent in “voluntary” support from American taxpayers. 

The out-of-control nature of the world organization is reflected in the fact that the U.N. pension fund has grown to a staggering $37 billion, and that John Kerry’s equally liberal sister Peggy still runs non-governmental organization (NGO) affairs at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Technically, Bolton, when he was U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., was her boss. But he couldn’t fire her because she is part of the permanent bureaucracy. Peggy Kerry has held the position of NGO liaison at the U.S. mission during the entire Bush Administration but took time off during the 2004 presidential campaign to solicit votes for her brother.  

The situation is dire. Unknown to most Americans, because the major media treat the U.N. as a sacred cow deserving more money, an international tax on airline travel is being collected, under the guidance of Ira Magaziner of the Clinton Foundation, and a global carbon tax amounting to 35 cents a gallon of gas is coming. Senator James Inhofe has led efforts to withdraw U.S. funding to the world body if it continues advocating global tax schemes on the American people, but Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants to provide even more money for U.N. peacekeeping operations. 

As Bolton pointed out in his remarks Thursday night to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the U.N.’s system of “assessed contributions” on member states already amounts to a tax on the America people. He pointed out that, under this system, a majority of U.N. members, who collectively pay just 0.3 percent of the U.N.’s budget, can order the U.S. to pay 22 percent or more. On top of that, the U.N. is receiving billions from rich liberals such as Ted Turner.  

Most people think the U.S. “contribution” to the U.N. amounts to a couple billion dollars a year. But Senator Tom Coburn has documented that the U.S. funded portion of an annual U.N. budget of $15-$20 billion amounts to between 25 and 30 percent. Under Bush, funding for the U.N. system has grown from $3.1 billion in 2001 to $5.3 billion in 2005.

Free to speak out, since his resignation in the face of the refusal of a hostile Senate to confirm him, Bolton told CPAC that former U.N. chief Kofi Annan was incompetent and should have been fired. Annan was allowed to retire when his second term as U.N. Secretary-General expired. He was replaced by South Korean Ban Ki-moon, a big backer of the international airline tax and other such schemes, usually dubbed “solidarity contributions” for global purposes. 

Referring to increasing reliance by the Bush Administration on the U.N. to solve the problems in North Korea and Iran, Bolton reminded the audience of President Bush’s comments on stopping rogue states from developing nuclear weapons. Strongly defending the decision to remove Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Bolton suggested that Bush was running the risk of not being taken seriously in foreign affairs by appearing to back away from tough action, including possibly a military response, in regard to the other two members of the Axis of Evil. He said the word of the President was at stake, leaving no doubt as to what he thought the President had to do. Bolton offered no apologies for a strong U.S. foreign policy that targets emerging threats and strikes our enemies before they attack us.

The enthusiastic reception for Bolton demonstrated how the issue of American sovereignty-and U.S. involvement in the U.N.-has emerged as a critical issue for conservatives. On Saturday, I will participate in a CPAC panel with the title of “UN:-Is it Worth Fixing?”            

The answer is no, considering how it continues to serve as a forum for America-bashing. In one of the most recent examples, it was reported that Mexico is drafting a resolution for the United Nations Human Rights Council criticizing the U.S. plan to build a border fence. Before that, Mexico took the United States to the U.N.’s International Court of Justice, complaining about the treatment of Mexican criminals, including convicted killers, by U.S. authorities. The U.N. court ruled against America. Just recently, Mexico’s Congress condemned the United States because workers building a section of fence between the two countries went 10 yards into Mexico. 

At the same time, the United Nations is funding former Clinton advisor and Carter official Robert Pastor’s plan to build a “North American Community,” which strikes some observers as a virtual merger of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. 

The absurdity of Pastor’s plan, which is being implemented by the Bush Administration without the approval or even input of Congress, was demonstrated at his own recent conference on development of a North American legal system. Alberto Sekely, a career Ambassador with the Mexican Foreign Service, described Mexico as “a country where the contravention of the law is the daily rule rather than the exception.” He said the Mexican legal system is characterized by official corruption, including widespread influence peddling, graft, racketeering, bribery, payoffs and kickbacks. He said Mexico is also characterized by systematic police brutality, extrajudicial executions, deplorable incarceration conditions, widespread torture and violation of fundamental human rights. 

When a Mexican in the audience rose during the question-and-answer period to insist that Mexico had signed various human-rights treaties, Sekely smiled and politely pointed out that the rights supposedly guaranteed by those documents did not actually exist within the country. 

With that comment, he succeeded in drawing attention to how the U.N. serves as a fig leaf behind which corrupt governments posture as human-rights defenders. And that is another reason why the U.N. can only be “fixed” when it is dead and gone.

Obamination 2: Wrath of the Obamanoids

 

Obamination 2: Wrath of the Obamanoids

by Erik Rush

 

 

“We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”

                                    – “About Us” Page, Trinity United Church of Christ Website.

On February 20, 2007, a column of mine entitled “Obamination” appeared in the New Media Journal. The piece exposed black separatist doctrines within Trinity United Church of Christ, which Democrat presidential contender Barack Obama and his family attend.

As a result of the column, the issue has “grown legs”, as they say, in several areas. Last week, it resulted in my being invited on several talk radio programs to discuss my views and an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes on February 28.

As Sean Hannity and many people who investigated Trinity United and subsequently wrote to me since February 20 pointed out, their creed and some of their Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s writings smack far more of a black nationalist cult than a Christian Church. Quite a few individuals who’ve been familiar with this church for some time wrote to me asking why it took so long for “you guys to get this out”.

Other of my fellow Americans seem to have been a bit displeased with the column. This is, lest I wax condescending, a gross understatement. Overnight, it seems I’ve become one of the most dangerous people of color – to certain other people of color – in all of America.

As usual, the only ammunition my detractors have is invective; vile racial epithets, the foulest of profanity, personal insults, and other verbal excrement. But then, that’s what the far Left is made of (that’s a double entendre, by the way), and what proves the Right… well, right. No one – not one – has countered with “I disagree with you, and here’s why…”

I can tell you however, why I am now experiencing the Wrath of the Obamanoids (a race that lives on a planet in the same star system as the Pelosians, themselves a rather repugnant lot).

Barack Obama, who is undeniably bright, savvy, articulate (don’t dare start) and handsome, has been handled absolutely brilliantly by his advisors and staff. Although (as the press on both sides have pointed out) he has been pretty noncommittal on many issues, he’s doing what any smart candidate in his position would do right now: Telling people what they want to hear. Consequently, between his carefully-crafted image, charisma, and the shameless adoration of the mainstream press, he is viewed by many as was Bobby Kennedy in the Summer of 1968. He’s the man. He’s going to fix things.

And because he is black, this image has become sacrosanct. Allow me to explain: Many Americans, black and otherwise, are still suffering from the George Jefferson Syndrome. The character of George Jefferson (from leftist Norman Lear’s ‘Seventies sitcom All in the Family) was every bit the bigot as Archie Bunker – but it was OK because he was black, and blacks had been oppressed.

This malignant paradigm his been lent additional potency via the advent of Political Correctness and a complicit media. One simply cannot criticize a person of color for any reason – especially blacks – without the risk of coming under fire from the Left as a racist, or in my case, an Uncle Tom Double-Stuffed Oreo race-traitor.

Another example of how insidiously this dualistic hypocrisy has permeated nearly every aspect of our thought and society: Some of the flames I’ve gotten from blacks as a result of my column and appearance on H&C would, if written by white separatists, likely have resulted in the FBI being parked outside of my home 24/7, and (at the very least) decidedly unpleasant interrogations for the writers thereof.

“Liberation Theology” – A Sham and a Scam

On March 1, 2007, Trinity United’s rockstar pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright appeared on Hannity & Colmes to answer for the assertions I made on the previous night’s show. He wound up proving my point better than I ever could. He was belligerent, incessantly babbling (over his hosts’ questions) vague references to liberation theologians and the vastness of his knowledge base.

Liberation Theology, if you’re interested, began as a theology focusing on Christ as the liberator of the oppressed. In the case of some black militants, it was bastardized into a convenient doctrine by which they could profess the evils of “White America” and still maintain a façade of mainstream Christianity.

“Trinity has narrowed their scope of God to conform to a ‘god’ that fits their segregational paradigm. One cannot help but question the exact nature of said historical education – is it based on truth and fact, or is it based on opinion? Trinity has placed god in a box based on color and ethnicity. That is not the God of Scripture, it is not representative of the Triune God born-again Christians serve.”

- Mychal Massie, Syndicated Columnist, talk radio host and Chairman of Project 21, an initiative of The National Center for Public Policy Research (Quote courtesy of Illinois Review)

Mychal Massie is also black, by the way, in case you happen to be looking for another race traitor to attack…

Wright made references to his congregation and community as “African people” and complained bitterly with regard to blacks having to live in the “United States of White America.” In general, he came off like a loud drunk; going beyond the archetype of the slick, insincere black activist preacher, he displayed an attitude more becoming a bitter, aging militant. Wright might very well have done more to harm his congregant’s campaign than I did by exposing their association. Bear in mind that this man is often referred to as Obama’s “spiritual advisor.”

One thing I’ve always found ironic (as well as disgusting) is how an American junior high dropout can found a billion-dollar company, then make endowments to colleges that proceed to use those funds to crank out far-Left degreed mediocrities who worship intellectualism (and thus, their degrees), and disrespect less educated people who’ve forgotten more about life and the real world than these elites will ever know. They behave as though it gives them a migraine just having to sink to another human being’s level for the purpose of casual conversation; in the end, he intimated that neither Hannity nor Colmes had the credentials to even discuss the issues at hand with him. His histrionic performance left me aghast. He might as well have taken a .44 magnum to Obama’s campaign and pulled the trigger.

Finally, this “Man of God” – who sounded far more Marxist than Christian – found it necessary to go out of his way to insult me over my alleged claims to being some kind of theologian. Of course, anyone who has read my work knows I’ve never made any such assertion; apparently this Pharisee couldn’t come up with anything more quick-witted.

Overall, the bulk of the stated objections to my views (expressed in the column) have been: How dare I? How dare I take shots at a fellow black man? How dare I question Obama’s church? And, as Alan Colmes obsequiously queried: Who am I to question Obama’s faith?

It’s obvious that I’m never going to get anywhere with the socialist progressives and their flock of brainwashed black sheep, but it has become clear that some folks out there require a bit of remedial education in the area of civics and religion.

Point One: Barack Obama is seeking the highest office in the land. Any American has the right to question, challenge or confront any aspect of the man we see fit. If Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, or George W. Bush’s born-again Christianity, or Bill Clinton’s libidinous tendencies are game, so is Obama’s affiliation with Trinity United. If Barack Obama holds allegiance to “the mother continent” (that being Africa), things African, or “blackness” itself over his identification as an American (as his membership in this church very strongly indicates), then the last place he belongs is in the Oval Office.

Some of the information I’ve come by since “Obamination” was published has been via feedback I’ve received from Chicago area residents, and from Fran Eaton, an Illinois columnist and editor who has been trying to get the word out about the troublesome aspects of this issue for quite awhile…

“I question his . . . ability to be able to reach out to a lot of people when he is committed to a group of people who are focused on helping a certain group of people.”

- Fran Eaton, Editor, Illinois Review

Point Two: There is actually scriptural basis for my challenging Obama’s faith. Get outta town! No, really…

“Those who sin should be reprimanded in front of the whole church; this will serve as a strong warning to others.”

- 1 Timothy 5, Verse 20, New Living Translation

So if Obama is a brother in Christ following a false doctrine, it’s my duty to call him on it. When I hold up the Gospels alongside the “Black Value System” and the Rev. Wright’s speech and writings, I see a manifestly false doctrine. Sorry if that ticks people off, but I’m just holding to my religious obligations, you see.

And I’m really not sorry if that ticks people off – at all. I was just being polite.

Point Three: There is no lost tribe of “light-skinned black people” they’ve yet to rediscover on the Dark Continent. The majority of black Americans have white, Native American, or the blood of other ethnic groups flowing in their veins. After nearly 300 years of immersion in American society, Afrocentrism as embraced by American blacks is just plain silly.

“Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas. But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records. The records – which had never been addressed publicly by the Illinois senator or his relatives…”

- A New Twist to an Intriguing Family History, by David Nitkin
and Harry Merritt, Baltimore Sun, March 2, 2007

“But you look black,” someone will tell me, or a person with the complexion of, say Vanessa Williams, Louis Farrakhan or Barack Obama. Indeed, some in the media and political arena have discussed the possibility that Obama may not be “black enough” to woo black voters.

Ahh… So am I to understand that we (people of all colors) are consigned to accept others’ preconceptions and definitions of who we are? I wonder what Dr. King would have to say about that. All the more reason I see no profit in Trinity United’s 12-point “Black Value System” and why I believe it is a divisive doctrine, despite their members’ protestations to the contrary.

Finally, I find it very curious that I’ve gotten hate mail from Nation of Islam (Louis Farrakhan’s black Muslim sect) members as well as the black sheep and black defenders of Trinity United, the Rev. Wright and Barack Obama.

Could it be because they share militant, separatist doctrines in common?

Links and references:

Obamination, by Erik Rush, New Media Journal, February 20, 2007
http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/rush/02202007.htm

VIDEO – Erik Rush on Hannity and Colmes Feb. 28, 2007 and
Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s reaction on March 1, 2007. Columns by Fran Eaton – Editor, Illinois Review

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/
illinoisreview/2007/02/obamas_church_t_1.html

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/
illinoisreview/2007/02/obamas_church_t.html

HYPERLINK “http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2007/01/obama_returns_t.html”http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/
illinoisreview/2007/01/obama_returns_t.html “War on Iraq IQ Test”, by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, February 2003
(This one is particularly telling)
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/
Iraq-IQ-Test-Wright23feb03.html

Discuss This Article Erik Rush is a New York-born columnist and author who writes a weekly column of political fare. He is also Acting Associate Editor and Publisher for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. An archive containing links to his writing is at www.ErikRush.com . His new book, “It’s the Devil, Stupid!” is available through most major outlets. His new book, Annexing Mexico, is scheduled for release shortly.

Interesting….

Interesting….

 
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
 
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.”
 
“A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”
 
“From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
 
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.”
 
“During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
 
1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage”
 
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St.Paul, Minnesota,  points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
 
Number of States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29
 
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush:
2,427,000
 
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush: 2.1
 
Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore’s territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare…”
 
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.
 
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal’s and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
 
Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
 

Carbon offset justice for all

Jerry Schmitt
In a “clarification” reported by CNS News here, it now appears that Al Gore receives “offsets” for his enormous “carbon-footprint” as an employee benefit from his London-based company, Generation Investment Management. This revelation brings to mind a couple of questions:

Does Al Gore report this as income?  We don’t know since he is a private citizen who is not required to divulge his tax returns. 
If not, is this an allowable tax-exempt employee benefit akin to employer provide health insurance?
Pondering this matter it occurred to me that such benefits would be distributed unevenly since many American would not benefit from employer-provided Carbon Offsets. Small businesses and the unemployed might not have access to such benefits. Can we live with such an injustice?
Furthermore, the proliferation of Carbon Offset benefit providers will result in inefficiencies and opportunities for excess profits in such private sector plans. Unequal access, plus profiteering by big business ought to upset everyone concerned with Social Justice. Liberals: this means you.
For consistency’s  sake, I think Liberals should at a minimum promote laws to permit all Americans to deduct their carbon-offset expenses on their income tax returns. 
Better yet, why not bypass the messy private sector and legislate a Federal plan for universal carbon-offsets to all Americans with a single-payer system so we all can share the same benefits afforded to Al Gore.
Senators Obama and Clinton: the ball in is your court.

What Hillary Didn’t Do

What Hillary Didn’t Do
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 7, 2007
When pressed about her qualifications for the presidency, Sen. Hillary Clinton falls back on her husband’s domestic-policy record – claiming credit for the good economy, welfare reform and the balanced budget. It’s a very fine record, indeed – but it’s Bill’s, not Hillary’s.

Hillary was the moving force behind the Clinton presidency in 1993 and 1994 – with primary responsibility for the disastrous health-care plan, which helped hand Congress to the Republicans. After that, her husband sent her into a polite exile.

Hillary stopped attending political strategy meetings, traveled extensively and wrote “It Takes a Village.” She was most emphatically not part of the splendid record President Clinton amassed in the 1995-96 period. Bill indirectly confirms this by failing to credit Hillary with much in his memoirs.

She was not part of the negotiations on welfare reform nor was she in most of the talks with the Republicans that led to the balanced-budget deal. Later, after these policies succeeded, she trumpeted her support. But she wasn’t there when they hung in the balance.

The 1998 Lewinsky scandal returned Hillary to her ‘93-94 role of power-behind-the-scenes, directing the response to what she called the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” But nothing happened in those years beyond saving Clinton from impeachment.

Hillary’s embrace of Bill’s record is also selective. She claims to have had nothing to do with the pardons of the FALN Puerto Rican terrorists, for example. And, even though her brothers took hundreds of thousands of dollars in “fees” to lobby the president for pardons for Carlos Vignali, the head of the crack racket in Minneapolis, and others, she professes her ignorance of their activities.

Hillary says she wasn’t involved in her husband’s decision to pardon the leaders of the Hasidic New Square community despite her pre-election visit on site and her post-election White House meeting with them. Coincidentally, this Republican enclave voted almost unanimously for Hillary.

Hillary takes credit for what she didn’t do and avoids responsibility for what she obviously was involved in. Some qualifications.

Assad yells at Ahmadinejad, curses Iranians

Baby, we can work it out

Trouble between the jihadist lovebirds? “Report: Assad flips out at Ahmadinejad,” from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Syrian President Bashar Assad exchanged harsh words with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a phone conversation, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyassah reported on Wednesday.Sources close to the Syrian leader told the newspaper that Assad had initially called the Iranian president to discuss Ahmadinejad’s meeting with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in Riyadh.

However, the conversation reportedly turned ugly when Ahmadinejad voiced support for the establishment of an international tribunal on the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri – a sensitive subject for Syria, which has been suspected of involvement in the Lebanese leader’s death.

The report said that Assad became enraged and launched into an angry tirade, cursing the Iranians at the end of the conversation.