American Federation of the Totally Clueless

American Federation of the Totally Clueless
By Malcolm A. Kline
CampusReportOnline.net | October 31, 2006

Recently, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) took sideswipes at two friends of mine—Candace de Russy and David Horowitz. What AFT editor Barbara McKenna did was to set up a quote from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and then ask whether it was said by Candace, David or Mahmoud. “A) is a good guess, since conservative reformer de Russy has been on a two-year tear to implement an academic bill of rights at [the State University of New York] SUNY, as Free Exchange on Campus has reported” McKenna writes. She should have checked this with a more primary source. “And remember,” Candace wrote in an e-mail to me, “my final and repeated public stand on the issue has been that SUNY and other institutions adopt the rights statement put out in summer ‘05 (I believe) by the Council on American Education and 29 other higher education organizations, so she didn’t even get that right but keeps saying I’m backing ABOR per se.”

As to McKenna’s other target, she does not fare much better in the accuracy of her assault on him either. “An answer of B) is not far off the mark, since Horowitz, a well-known right-wing instigator, routinely urges his followers to challenge their ‘dangerous’ professors,” McKenna writes. “On Sept. 11, the lead story of his Web-based magazine, FrontPagemag.com, was ‘Revolution: A Back to School Guide.’”

“It begins: ‘Conservatives, welcome back to campus, that bastion of hostility toward your faith, politics and lifestyle, where Marx is revered, common sense eschewed, and multiculturalism matters more than mathematics.’” The problem is, Horowitz never wrote this.

“Revolution” is a book review by Julia A. Seymour, then a staff writer with Accuracy in Academia. The editors at Frontpage.com posted the review on their site.

Note to Barbara: Since, like me, she is a web editor, she should know that the middle column of the home page is usually where lead stories go. The margins, where Julia’s piece appeared on Frontpage.com, are normally reserved for links and logos.

At any rate, a couple of clicks of the old mouse would have clued Barbara in. If she cannot do such rudimentary fact-checking, perhaps she is not ready to tackle more complicated research.

As to the Ahmadinejad quote itself, it reads, “Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities.” I pointed out to Ms. McKenna that in all my years of reading and listening to de Russy and Horowitz, I never ran across a quote that even vaguely resembled the one that she showcased.

“It was the gist of what they said,” she explained to me. “It was the bulk of what they said. It was the spirit of what they said.” It turns out that McKenna never actually heard or read anything either of them said. This fresh approach to exposition turns out to be a hallmark of McKenna’s work.

She also refuses to believe there is a problem of left-wing dominance on campus, demanding evidence of same even when it is summarized for her. I challenged her to name one liberal professor fired for his or her political views, the danger her group claims is implicit in the academic bill of rights.

“I don’t think that any professor, liberal or conservative, has been fired for their political views,” she said. I then gave her about a half a dozen examples of conservative professors who were fired or otherwise punished for their views and noted that those perspectives were expressed outside of the classroom as opposed to the in-house liberal homilies that AIA documents.

She went on to talk about how her organization supports a marketplace of ideas and does not want pedagogues punished for their political stances and wants students to have access to all philosophies. I told her that she sounded like she was quoting from the academic bill of rights.

That’s when I discovered that she hadn’t read it either. Maybe it’s an institutional thing. Here at Accuracy in Academia, before we write about something that someone has written, we read it first.

Apparently, this is a novel approach in McKenna’s world. I noticed another divergence as well; where I rely heavily on the words “know” and “show,” Ms. McKenna favors “think,” “believe,” and, most frequently, “feel.”

The former is useful in setting up information to be transmitted. The latter set of verbs, most often these days, presage interpretations and speculation, increasingly, without supporting documentation.

Pretty clearly, mistakes were made over at the AFT. When we err, we post corrections. Is it to much to ask to expect the nation’s second largest teachers’ union to do the same?

And with that admission, could the powers-that-be at the brotherhood and sisterhood of the AFT apologize to Ms. McKenna’s American targets, at least until they have read their work?

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Hillary Clinton and socialism’s “common good” path to communism in America

Hillary Clinton and socialism’s “common good” path to communism in America Jan Ireland July 6, 2004 The Bush tax cuts enabled America to climb out of the Clinton recession despite the financial devastations of 9/11 and stock market downturns. Ten straight months of economic progress and job creation have made the economy robust.So it is incongruous that Hillary Clinton would tell a San Francisco audience recently that Democrats will rescind the Bush tax cuts for the “common good.” Mrs. Clinton’s plan is not only wrong, it’s socialist. Ronald Reagan defeated communism, but we are still being leeched by creeping socialism. The 45 communist goals read into the Congressional Record in 1963 linger, and they were supposed to be for the “common good” also. The phrase itself a few decades ago was anathema. It does not appear in the 1945 United Nations charter, though that institution is about nothing if not socialism. Mrs. Clinton’s rarely-mentioned very radical mentor, Saul Alinsky, revered it. “The radical is that unique person to whom the common good is the greatest personal value.” The inscription on the Liberty Bell exhorts “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” And Ronald Reagan reminded “…the guiding hand of Providence did not create this new nation of America for ourselves alone, but for a higher cause: the preservation and extension of the sacred fire of human liberty.” In the coming presidential election America has a clear choice: Mrs. Clinton and universal socialism versus Ronald Reagan and universal freedom. George Bush has Ronald Reagan’s fire of freedom. John Kerry must bow to the Clintons, though his personal record certainly is socialist. The rapacious Mrs. Clinton wants to empower the government to take what it wants. We see her proclivities in the monstrous HillaryCare attempt (“It’s time to put the common good, the national interest, ahead of individuals”), in the idea that the “village” (state) should raise the child, in the greedy timing of the eight million dollar book advance, in the shrill escalating rant similar to Dean’s and Gore’s. (Socialists always exempt themselves from the restrictions they place on others.) Founder James Wilson wrote “Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression.” It is irrefutable. Government taking from one group to give to another approved group is socialism, Marxism, and/or communism. The words “common good” are not of themselves evil of course. A group called Common Good works to reform the lawsuit culture in America. Bayer relaxed its Cipro patent during the anthrax scare for the “common good.” But a religious group wants “…to develop religiously and politically informed advocates for the common good.” Another has a vote litany. Libertarian Socialist Noam Chomsky wrote about The Common Good. The European Union demands to manage markets for the “common good” despite the incomparable success of America’s capitalism and the obvious decline of socialist and communist systems in recent decades. Right under our noses in Congress is the Progressive Caucus, a group of about 50 legislators who are openly socialist. Libertarian Ilana Mercer writes “The common good piety should raise as much suspicion as Hillary Clinton’s reference to ‘our children’ ought to. What is paraded by government and its lapdogs as the common good very often conceals an intention to override individual rights and interests.” Objectivist Ayn Rand said “America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices for ‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men …” Socialism reaches into our pocketbooks and lives incrementally, always cloaked in some “common good” guise exhorting us to make America better, fairer, more equal. Life is not fair and equal. Socialism takes from producers what it cannot and will not produce itself. George Washington warned “Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” Mrs. Clinton courts socialism. We’ve defeated communism once in our lifetime, but “common good” socialism could revive the scourge. Patriotic Americans must actively reject the shill — at the ballot box this November. For the real common good. Suggested Further Reading: Albert Herlong, Jr., 45 Communist Goals read in to Congressional Record, 1963 Protestants for the Common Good Baptist Editorial, “Support Common Good, but Keep State Out of Church” BFW, “A Litany for an Election” Noam Chomsky, “The Common Good” Eliot Van Buskirk, “MP3 Insider: Preserving the common good to accelerate progress” John Blundell, “Friend or Foe? What Americans should know about European Union” Thomas Lenz, “Building a Force for the Common Good” Ronald Reagan, 1991 Rush Limbaugh, June 29 Saul Alinsky, “Reveille for Radicals” Barbara Olson, “Hell to Pay” Common Good Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” Ilana Mercer, “Business Has its Hand out to Government, Too” www.newswithviews.com www.conservativeforum.org www.stophillarypac.com Americans for Tax Reform www.un.org

The Defeatocrat Agenda

The Defeatocrat Agenda
By Peter Brookes
New York Post | October 31, 2006

If the “Defeatocrats,” er, Democrats, triumph next week, taking the majority in Congress, expect U.S. foreign and defense policy to veer sharply left, with little guiding philosophy beyond ABB – Anything But Bush. For many Democrats and liberals, this vengeful approach may provide much-needed therapy after 12 bitter years in the minority. But it’s no basis for a defense or foreign policy.

Other than attacking what the Bush administration is doing, Democrats have done little to articulate foreign and national-security policies of their own. But here are some of the possible outcomes if the majority changes hands on Capitol Hill:

On Iraq, many Democrats – led by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) – have said they’d push for an immediate “redeployment” (i.e., withdrawal) of U.S. troops, leaving who-knows-what kind of nightmare behind.

A premature withdrawal would cause unimaginable instability in the Middle East. And there’s no doubt that jihadists would chalk up Iraq as proof positive that terrorism works – adding it to other “successes” in Lebanon (1983) and Somalia (1993).

Worse, an ignominious U.S. retreat would prove to countless other troublemakers that America is nothing more than a paper tiger.

A liberal majority would also drastically change course on North Korea, pushing for direct U.S. talks with dictator Kim Jong Il – despite his recent missile tests and nuclear blast. Caving in to Pyongyang’s demands for one-on-one negotiations would reward its nuclear brinkmanship and blackmail. The lesson wouldn’t be lost on its nuclear kindred spirit, Iran.

Speaking of Iran, it’s not clear what a liberal congressional leadership would do. They don’t seem to say much about it – other than carp about the White House’s multilateral efforts to curb the mullahs’ nuclear ambitions.

But you could clearly forget about missile defenses to protect the homeland and troops deployed overseas. Liberals see such defenses as provocative. (In fact, leaving ourselves deliberately vulnerable to ballistic missiles is truly provocative – and foolhardy.)

What would a liberal Congress propose regarding the terrorists/terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay? Some of these prisoners are so dangerous even their own countries won’t take them back. What of the Patriot Act, Terrorist Surveillance Program or the terrorism-financing surveillance efforts that have been so successful in preventing another attack on the homeland for more than five years?

Here’s a clue: 90 percent of House Democrats voted against the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program; 80 percent voted against the terrorist interrogation bill. All these counterterror programs are at risk if House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gets the speaker’s gavel next year . . .

OK, some will say: Don’t worry about Congress. The president holds the real power in foreign affairs and national security. Sure, the prez controls the State Department, Pentagon and intelligence community – the key tools of national security. But don’t constitutional checks and balances give Congress the almighty “power of the purse?”

Through the appropriation process, Congress can fund – or defund – our foreign-policy and national-security efforts, including wars, law enforcement, intelligence, defense and other counterterrorism programs.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem), who’d become chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, gave us a sneak preview of what the Dems might do: “You’ve got to be able to pay for the war, don’t you?” You get the picture: No money – no war.

Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman hit the nail on the head: “America faces a critical question, will it elect leaders who recognize we’re at war and want to use every tool to win it, or politicians who would surrender important tools we need to win?”

The Liberals’ plan for our foreign affairs and national security has been to have no real plan at all, other than categorically opposing whatever the administration is doing to protect us. But having no strategy or policy for conducting our international affairs is certainly no way to keep us safe at home – or advance and protect our interests abroad.

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Sen. John Kerry: ‘I Apologize to No One’

 Sen. John Kerry: ‘I Apologize to No One’

NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006 4:08 p.m. EST

Sen. John Kerry has refused to apologize for his remarks suggesting that U.S. troops in Iraq are uneducated and not “smart,” instead charging that the White House has deliberately misconstrued his comments.

At a Tuesday afternoon press conference in Seattle, Kerry said “I apologize to no one” for what he categorized as criticism of the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy.

Kerry touched off a storm of protest when he told a college audience on Monday that “if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

The comments drew demands for an apology from Sen. John McCain, the National Commander of The American Legion, and others. White House press secretary Tony Snow called Kerry’s statement “an absolute insult.”

But at his press conference, Kerry tried to give his remarks a tortuous spin, saying in effect that what he meant was if you’re like President Bush and you don’t do your homework – listen to advice from others – before committing American troops, “you end up in Iraq.”

He also claimed that the White House understood what he was trying to say yet sought to “distort” his comments.

As NewsMax reported earlier, 99.9 percent of the enlisted forces have at least a high school education, and 73.3 percent have been to college.

Among commanders:

Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, has an MBA from George Washington University and has taken courses at Harvard.

Gen. John Abizaid, Commander of U.S. Central Command, has a master’s degree from Harvard.

Gen. George Casey, Vice Chief of Staff in the U.S. Army, has a master’s degree from the University of Denver.

Brigadier Gen. Mark T. Kimmitt, U.S. Central Command’s deputy director for strategy and plans, has earned degrees from the United States Military Academy, Harvard, the National Defense University, and the United States Army Command and General Staff College.It bears noting that our commander in chief, President George W. Bush, who has earned degrees from Yale University and Harvard University, is the only U.S. president to have earned an MBA. He’s also proved himself “smart enough” to defeat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

Did imam’s sermon incite Theo Van Gogh murder?

Did imam’s sermon incite Van Gogh murder?

The mosques have to be monitored. What is being preached in the sermons has to be known. The alternative? Many, many more murders and terror attacks. A provocative story by Barry Thorne and Claire Cavanagh for Radio Netherlands (thanks to Ana):

Mohammed Bouyeri, the man who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh almost exactly two years ago is serving a life prison sentence, but now questions are being asked about whether the sermon of a Muslim cleric played a role in the crime.During the ongoing trial of another Dutch terrorism suspect, Samir Azzouz, it’s emerged that Imam Fawaz of the as-Sunnah mosque in The Hague gave a sermon condemning Theo van Gogh just a few weeks before his murder. A recording of the sermon exists and in it the imam is heard uttering a curse against the Dutch director for his film Submission, which is critical of Islam. The film had been shown on television shortly before the sermon.

Criminal bastard

In the recording of the sermon, Imam Fawaz calls Theo van Gogh a ‘criminal bastard’ and beseeches Allah to visit an incurable disease upon the filmmaker. He also condemns former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali who was involved in writing the script for Submission. The imam asks Allah to make Ms Hirsi Ali go blind and give her cancer of the tongue and brain.

What inspiring, moving, loving prayers. Nevertheless, they aren’t enough in themselves:

Despite the claims in the recording, Ruud Peters, a professor of Islamic Law doesn’t believe the imam’s words are incitement to commit murder:”I have a couple of arguments for that – the most important is that he [Imam Fawaz] says, ‘the people who have insulted the Prophet Muhammad should die through the hands of God’ – he was very specific in that… he says, ‘leave it to God’.”

Key witness

Professor Peters was a key expert witness at the trial of Mohammed Bouyeri and was asked to study Bouyeri’s writing up until he carried out the murder of Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004 in Amsterdam.

“I found no clue that [Imam] Fawaz had had any impact on him. On the contrary, we know that already more than a year before he killed Van Gogh, that he… deliberately turned away from the mosques, the […] mosques which are considered to be radical.”

The wise, knowledgeable and perceptive Hans Jansen, however, disagrees:

RhetoricHowever, another writer and academic on Islam from Utrecht University, Hans Jansen, believes the sermon went much further than the usual rhetoric heard in Dutch mosques,

“It is simply incitement to violence. I can’t judge the legal angles, but somebody who hears this sermon would get very excited and would want to do anything in the cause of Islam.”

“I’ve heard fire and brimstone sermons before, one long speech which builds up tension and when you leave the mosque after having heard such a sermon, especially when you’re young, you’ll be very excited, almost ready to do anything.”

“This sermon is much worse than anything in mosques, certainly worse than anything presented in mosques in the Middle East.”

Well, that’s debatable. But it is bad.

Young Muslims’ Secret Camp — read this in detail – follow the links – Frightening

Young Muslims’ Secret Camp
By Joe Kaufman
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 1, 2006

The Young Muslims are in hiding.  They are hiding the location of their August 2^nd youth camp, and the public has a right to know why.The Young Muslims (YM) was founded well over a decade ago, as a subsidiary of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), an organization that was created specifically to emulate the violent Muslim Brotherhood of Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami.  Through ICNA, YM holds events that feature as speakers some of the most radical individuals in the Islamic community.  These events include youth camps, which, prior to the attacks on 9/11, were referred to as “jihad camps.”

The latest YM camp, themed ‘Deen and Dunya: Finding the Balance,’ will be held tomorrow, August 2^nd through August 6^th.  The organization has worked hard to keep the location of the destination under wraps.  On the YM website, people are explicitly told not to discuss the matter.

Originally, the event was to be held in
Villanova, Pennsylvania, at the 23-acre Foundation for Islamic Education (FIE), where many YM events are held throughout the year.  [This includes one last April featuring
UK Imam Sheik Riyadh ul-Haq, who, just two months later, was banned from entering
Canada, “because his views could incite terror and hatred.”]  However, the camp was to be a five-day affair – a violation of local zoning regulations – and  after years of infractions perpetrated by FIE, the residents complained and got the Township of Lower Merion, where FIE is located, to threaten an injunction against the group. 

YM had previously held its August 2004 camp at FIE, the theme of which was ‘A Few Good Men.’  Controversy erupted over it, when, shortly before the camp was to begin, one of the invited speakers, Mazen Mokhtar, had his house raided and his computers confiscated by the FBI.  Mokhtar, currently the Youth Director for the
New Jersey chapter of the Muslim American Society (MAS), prior to 9/11, created a mirror (replica) website of a site that raised funds and recruited terror fighters for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.  The site was also used as a portal to the official website of Hamas, a group that Mokhtar has called “heroic.”  He has also said he supports suicide bombings.

Mokhtar was an invitee to lecture at this year’s camp, as well.  The “confirmed” list of speakers are as follows: 

• Siraj Wahhaj, the Imam of the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in
  Brooklyn and an individual listed as a potential co-conspirator to the 1993 bombing of the World
  Trade
  Center, who has stated about the
  United States in a taped sermon, “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing.  And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”
• Abdul Malik, the chaplain of the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority and former Office Manager of CAIR-New York, who likened President George W. Bush to a “slave master” and, in a speech entitled ‘Service to Society: The Key to Reformation,’ stated, “Assalam alaikum [crowd responds: ‘wa alaikum assalam’].  I look forward to hearing that one day in the White House, and then paint it black.”  And “…we don’t want to democratize Islam, we want to Islamize democracy.”
• Faisal Hamouda, who is a leading volunteer for Islamic Relief, a charity that
  Israel has named a front for Hamas.
• Nouman Ali Khan, a former representative of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), who, in February of 2005, gave a speech sponsored by the MSA of Hofstra University, entitled ‘Preparation for Death.’
• Shamsi Ali, the Deputy Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York and Director of the Jamaica Muslim Center, who was the moderator at a February 2006 demonstration against Danish cartoons of Muhammad held outside the Danish Consulate in Manhattan, where a poster was seen being waived which read, “Insult the Prophet, you will pay, Allah’s wrath is on the way.”
• Amin Abdul Latif, the President (Ameer) of Majlis Ashura of NYC in
  Brooklyn, who signed his name to an open letter to President Bush in support of
  Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the Islamist organization responsible for the creation of the terror group, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).

The speakers are not the only problem with the YM camp.  There is also a problem with the campers.  Numerous pictures from previous camps depict the children fighting each other, as their fellow camp-mates stand around watching.  It is not apparent whether or not there is any supervision while this is occurring, but given who their guest speakers are, that probably doesn’t make much of a difference.

One reason why the members of Young Muslims don’t want the location of tomorrow’s camp divulged is because there may be more impediments – zoning or otherwise – with the new locale, which could cause a cancellation.  A further explanation could be because they don’t want what is being said by their guest speakers known to the public.  Yet another reason could be far far worse.  But we won’t know, because they’re not telling.

Law enforcement needs to find out — now.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

The MSM is AWOL — The main stream media shows its democratic bias once again

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006239.htm

Confronting the North Korean Threat

Confronting the North Korean Threat
By Yuri Yarim-Agaev
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 31, 2006

The recent nuclear test by North Korea has once again underscored how little progress has been made to curb that country’s bid for a nuclear program. Six-party negotiations and even a U.N. resolution unanimously passed by the Security Council have all proven failures. The main problem with North Korea, however, is not its nuclear missiles, but its communist system. A democratic Korea, even with nuclear weapons, would hardly pose a threat. By contrast, Communist Korea, even bound by agreements and promises, remains a serious danger. From this premise it follows that the most realistic solution to the rogue state’s provocations is not to prevent that regime from producing weapons of mass destruction. It is to facilitate the rapid change of the regime.

The history of fruitless attempts to end the arms race with the Soviet Union shows us that no negotiations or agreements with a totalitarian state can stop it from pursuing a military buildup. Andrei Sakharov and other Russian human-rights activists realized very early that the only way to tame Soviet aggression was to influence public opinion in the West by exposing the system’s injustices to the outside world.

This was the goal that brought me into the ranks of the dissidents. Our position was supported most prominently by President Reagan. Uninterested in signing new accords with the Soviets, Reagan took a strong position against communism. This helped to open up the Soviet Union and to spur the development of the democratic movement. As a result, Soviet authorities were forced to make concessions in their arms programs that would have been unthinkable to Reagan’s predecessors.

The North Korean totalitarian state is a replica of the Soviet system. As it was with the Soviet Union, North Korea’s nuclear threat will end only with the end of the communist regime. How and when that regime goes may depend on us. Will North Korea’s leaders have enough time and resources to develop nuclear weapons and the will to use them, or will they depart before that with little resolve for resistance? Herein is the essence of the North Korean threat. This should determine America’s North Korea policy: Its goal should be to help weaken the Korean communist regime, thereby hastening its ultimate end.

Attempting to force out the ruling power through negotiations is not very realistic. Sanctions alone will not do the job, either. Trying to topple the communist dictatorship by military intervention is not only highly risky, but also hardly justifiable, morally or politically, as long as there are any alternatives to that approach.

In the case of North Korea, such an alternative exists. It lies in liberalizing and opening up North Korean society. Our goal should be to make the communist regime give in to the demands of its own people and international public opinion, and to leave peacefully, as happened in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe.

Such a policy will certainly meet with resistance from the communist government. Nevertheless, the suggested strategy is feasible, because the North Korean communist system has weakened significantly and lost the totality of its control over the country. Consider that North Korea’s border has become porous and now allows more people to defect and more contraband, including modern electronics, to be smuggled in. The government has begun to lose its hold on information. Many people have mobile phones operated by Chinese companies. Information about goings on inside the country has also become more available. CNN recently broadcast a video shot by hidden cameras in North Korea, including some episodes inside a labor camp.

The increasing weakness of the communist regime is also evidenced by the very adventurous behavior of its leaders. Their nuclear program is suspiciously demonstrative. It looks as if its major goal is not to prepare for aggressive war or to defend the country, but rather to blackmail the United States and its allies into providing the regime with the economic and political assistance it desperately needs to maintain power.

Unfortunately, the blackmail has been working, since the current policy of the allies has helped Kim Jung Il to procure the many things that he needs: He receives ongoing threats from a powerful enemy, which helps him treat any dissent inside the country as treason; he attains legitimization of his fading system by sitting at six-party negotiations with the major world powers; and he secures economic assistance, which provides resources for that same nuclear program.

The irony of the situation is that the West is helping to prolong and embolden the North Korean communist regime, while it is in our best interest to do just the opposite. Instead of propping up the regime, the West should support the liberalization of Korean society through direct interaction with the Korean people against the wishes of their communist rulers. Three measures in particular should be implemented.

1. Information and technology should be provided to the North Korean people. Flooding North Korea with portable TV sets and computers, launching direct satellites, and expanding television and radio broadcasting in the country will help to break the regime’s uncontested hold on the flow of information.
2. Ideas of freedom and democracy should be vigorously promoted inside the country. Propaganda is one of the regime’s most useful weapons and undermining its influence is an essential first step toward loosening its grip on power.
3. Maximum support should be given to North Korea’s dissidents. Establishing direct lines of communication will make it clear to the regime’s opponents that they are not alone in their struggle.

In short, the thrust of the West’s policy toward North Korea should be to shift from traditional diplomacy to public diplomacy. There have been some steps in these directions, but too few to constitute an effective challenge to the communist authorities. The National Endowment for Democracy allocates only a few hundred thousand dollars for all its North Korea programs, while American assistance to the North Korean communist government has exceeded one billion dollars over the last decade. To make the policy work, much more can and should be done.

Destabilizing the regime in this way will not be easy. Even so, the successful realization of a similar approach toward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe suggests that it is possible. When we were planning to send the first copy machine, fax and computer to our fellow dissidents in Russia, few people believed that this would have any meaningful impact on the political situation. Before long, however, our information technology was aiding the cause of the democracy movement in all parts of the Soviet Union. North Korea’s secret police may be even more vicious than their KGB predecessors, but the informational revolution works against them. Even at the peak of the dissident movement, we could not dream of mobile phones or camcorders inside the labor camps.

Technology is a necessary but not sufficient condition for successful regime change. Equally essential is expertise. That expertise is uniquely possessed by those who, in the 1970s and 80s, worked to weaken the Soviet Empire: governmental officials, Russian and East European dissidents, and the groups that supported them. The experiences of Chinese dissidents over the last two decades may also prove invaluable.

Even in the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was regarded by many influential thinkers as a permanent feature on the international landscape. Pyongyang has benefited from similar fatalism. To end the tyranny in North Korea, the West must first reject this conventional wisdom.

Yuri Yarim-Agaev is a former leading Russian dissident and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. Upon arriving in the
United States after his forced exile from the
Soviet Union, he headed the New York-based Center for Democracy in the
USSR.

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‘US Only Answer for Middle East,’ Says Saudi Envoy — (CNSNews.com) – Voicing support for U.S. involvement in Iraq, the Saudi ambassador to the United States said the U.S. has a important role to play in the Middle East, “whether it wants to or not.” “It is of vital interest to us as well as the United States that Iraq would remain a unified country,” said Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Turki al-Faisal.

‘US Only Answer for Middle East,’ Says Saudi Envoy

But is he saying this with anything beyond Saudi interests in mind? A CNSNews.com story by Monisha Bansal (thanks to Mackie):

(CNSNews.com) – Voicing support for U.S. involvement in Iraq, the Saudi ambassador to the United States said the U.S. has a important role to play in the Middle East, “whether it wants to or not.””It is of vital interest to us as well as the United States that Iraq would remain a unified country,” said Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Turki al-Faisal.

If Iraq were to be divided on ethnic or sectarian lines, he warned, problems in the country would increase three-fold, and there would be “ethnic cleansing on a massive scale.”

Faisal talked about the role the U.S. plays in the region at a conference held by the National Council on U.S. Arab Relations in Washington, D.C. on Monday.

“The United States is the only one who can do the right thing for everybody in the Middle East,” Faisal said.

“Not only because of the size and strength of the United States, but because the United States is engaged and enmeshed in our political situation and has been for the last 50 years or so, whether it likes it or not,” he said.

But Faisal added that it was in U.S. interests for “peace to reign, so we can turn to more fruitful endeavors.”

Fear the Terrorists, Not President Bush — On the left, my former party of choice, feels that the biggest issues confronting America are corporate greed, “the culture of corruption” (as if this does not occur on both sides), Wal-Mart, “big business,” churchgoing Christians, global warming and an assault on the civil liberties of us and terrorists. To deny this would be scandalously untrue — The “Drive-by” big city media feels the need to rant about how we “torture” terrorists, keep “secret prisons,” check phone records of suspected terrorists, regress back to Katrina whining, yada, yada and yada. The ACLU, “peace organizations,” the legal world, academia and Hollywood, not surprisingly, fall for this flawed, inane logic too. History has always proved these acrimonious fools wrong, and will again this time… if we’re not killed first by our enemies because of their devious behaviors.

Fear the Terrorists, Not President Bush
October 31st, 2006

Next Tuesday is midterm election day. When you cast your vote – if you choose to partake in this most honorable American tradition – please remember what is at stake.

On the left, my former party of choice, feels that the biggest issues confronting America are corporate greed, “the culture of corruption” (as if this does not occur on both sides), Wal-Mart, “big business,” churchgoing Christians, global warming and an assault on the civil liberties of us and terrorists. To deny this would be scandalously untrue.

On the right, my current “fearmongering” party of choice feels the biggest issue (singular) is to eliminating and freeing the world of Islamo-fascist Nazis. There is no denying this, and the sooner we, as in all other world wars, are free to do this, the better. My party wants to save the non-Muslim world, America, Israel and especially “liberal values” like sexual and gender freedoms (not just libertinism, but the freedom of women) freedom of religion, speech and of the press.

Unfortunately, aside from Radical Muslims, we have many domestic factors working against us:

The “Drive-by” big city media feels the need to rant about how we “torture” terrorists, keep “secret prisons,” check phone records of suspected terrorists, regress back to Katrina whining, yada, yada and yada. The ACLU, “peace organizations,” the legal world, academia and Hollywood, not surprisingly, fall for this flawed, inane logic too. History has always proved these acrimonious fools wrong, and will again this time… if we’re not killed first by our enemies because of their devious behaviors.

President Bush, sadly as of late, has fallen prey to dangerous political correctness and multi-cultural balderdash as he tries to unite this country. He has attempted to make good on his promise to be the great uniter, and the man has undeniably been more liberal than conservative the past year.

There is no need to do this, Mr. President.

This country was divided long before President Bush took office, and he has done his best to unite it. But many who hypocritically seek “redistribution of wealth” spend their weekends picking up wheatgrass at Whole Foods on their way to Nantucket, do not want to be united with Americans who attend church on Sunday, wave the flag, and enjoy Nascar, Applebee’s and saving money at Wal-Mart. Too bad for them. These arrogant, misguided folks have chosen to regressively look back, to sacrifice their platform to go after Mr. Bush (who is not up for re-election, by the way).

Fatuous liberals like Paul Krugman — who saw nothing wrong with comparing the backlash against the Dixie Chicks to the rise of Nazism — or the countless jabberers who have over the years denounced William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, Sean Hannity et al. as fascists are difficult to respect, much less take seriously. As Jonah Goldberg wrote in September,

“One gets the sense that today’s liberals — beyond their phobia of offending the coalition of the oppressed (in this case, the Muslims of CAIR) — are reluctant to let Bush use “Islamic fascism” because they don’t want to give up their monopoly on the F-word.”

George Bush needs to stop trying so hard to make “peace” with those who despise us within our nation and are more concerned with meaningless impeachment than saving our world. His efforts have never been appreciated, but someday, like Reagan and those before him, perhaps they will. 

Thankfully, by the grace of G-d, the patriotic men and women of the military will save this nation as they always have. They will not get thanks from the coastal elites, but this is expected.

It’s not just that the wrong party could take power, but this party’s leaders, some of those who would be in charge of essential committees like Ways and Means, the Judiciary, Commerce, etc, are variously on record as not supporting Israel (and being proud of it!), raising taxes, ending free trade, drilling in ANWR (animals are more important than people, usually) and naturally, impeaching Bush. That will surely take our attention away from the Islamic Nazis, North Koreans and by October of next year, as opposed to fraudulent filmmakers who dream of Bush being dead, we all could be in severe peril. I’d personally put it at 50/50.

I hope that most Americans will take a deep breath, realize Bush had noble, correct intentions for freeing tens of millions from a madman and then remember that unemployment is the lowest in five years; the Dow is over 12,000 points. Inflation is 2.1 percent, the deficit is being dramatically reduced, and gas prices are falling. Let’s just hope that if the GOP maintains control, we don’t waste time, effort and money on Democrat protests and recounts. Which state this time? Indiana? Missouri? Do I hear Maryland?

Vote accordingly, and consider whether you want to tell your grandchildren you defeated carbon dioxide emissions or Islamo Nazi Fascists who threatened the free world.

Ari Kaufman is a freelance writer in Indianapolis, regularly contributing to the Indianapois Star and the Jewish Post and Opinion. He’s also the co-author of an upcoming book on educational reform. His archived work can be accessed here.

Ari Kaufman