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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; indonesia</title>
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		<title>Progressive Insanity and the Global Warming Cult</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/progressive-insanity-and-the-global-warming-cult/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=progressive-insanity-and-the-global-warming-cult</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/progressive-insanity-and-the-global-warming-cult/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Feb 2014 05:53:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weapon of mass destruction]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219356</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What explains the Left escalating its outlandish claims and scaremongering? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/140216191222-kerry-jakarta-story-top.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-219358" alt="140216191222-kerry-jakarta-story-top" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/140216191222-kerry-jakarta-story-top-440x350.jpg" width="264" height="210" /></a>Progressives will do virtually anything to advance their agenda. In the arena of global warming, they have resorted to hysteria and angry denunciation of those who dare to question their infallible “wisdom.” And as it is with every aspect of their agenda, such wisdom must be imposed at the expense of liberty.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Leading the charge is Secretary of State John Kerry, who </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/indonesia-kerry-urges-action-climate-change-22537484">epitomized</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the above approach in a speech to Indonesian students, civic leaders and government officials in Jakarta, Indonesia. First he laced into one the left&#8217;s favorite punching bags, namely the coal and oil industries he accused of &#8220;hijacking&#8221; the conversation. &#8220;We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts,&#8221; he declared. &#8220;Nor should we allow any room for those who think that the costs associated with doing the right thing outweigh the benefits. The science is unequivocal, and those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand. We don&#8217;t have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Possibly suspecting that his presentation might be insufficient to galvanize the unwashed masses, Kerry added a dash of fear to the mix. &#8220;This city, this country, this region, is really on the front lines of climate change,&#8221; Kerry warned. &#8220;It&#8217;s not an exaggeration to say that your entire way of life here is at risk. In a sense, climate change can now be considered the world&#8217;s largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even, the world&#8217;s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction,&#8221; he added.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Kerry is taking his cues from President Obama, who went to California, where he promptly </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/17659-obama-ludicrously-links-california-drought-to-climate-change">explained</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that state&#8217;s worst drought in a century is linked to global climate change and greenhouse gases. &#8220;We have to be clear. A changing climate means that weather-related disasters like droughts, wildfires, storms [and] floods are potentially going to be costlier and they’re going to be harsher,&#8221; he explained.</span></p>
<p>That was apparently too much even for the <i>New York Times</i>, who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/science/some-scientists-disagree-with-presidents-linking-drought-to-warming.html?ref=politics&amp;_r=0">contended</a> that the president and his aides &#8220;were pushing at the boundaries of scientific knowledge about the relationship between climate change and drought.&#8221; Even worse, the so-called paper of record was forced to admit that the much-vaunted computer models the &#8220;consensus&#8221; scientists having been using to promote their global warming agenda &#8220;suggest that as the world warms, California should get wetter, not drier, in the winter, when the state gets the bulk of its precipitation. That has prompted some of the leading experts to suggest that climate change most likely had little role in causing the drought.&#8221; That included an assessment by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which noted that the drought “resulted mostly from natural variations in weather.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">White House science adviser John P. Holdren, who co-authored a book describing government forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water as legitimate population control measures, rode to the president&#8217;s rescue. While agreeing that no single episode of extreme weather can be linked to climate change, &#8220;the global climate has now been so extensively impacted by the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases that weather practically everywhere is being influenced by climate change.”</span></p>
<p>The <i>Los Angeles Times</i> brought another angle to the mix, one that <a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-climate-change-crime-20140219,0,2765136.story#axzz2tsG4mML8">plumbs</a> the depths of climate change hysteria. It cites a study by Matthew Ranson of Abt Associates, a Massachusetts research and consulting firm, that contends climate change &#8220;can be expected to cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft,&#8221; between 2010 and 2099.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Wall Street Journal</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> article, authors Richard McNider and John Christy </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303945704579391611041331266">underscored</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the irony of Kerry comparing global warming skeptics to flat-earthers of ancient times. It was the flat-earthers who maintained something similar to the 97 percent &#8220;consensus&#8221; Kerry used to justify his rant. It was a tiny minority of scientists who posited that the earth was round. With regard to the actual science leftists accuse skeptics of ignoring, the McNider and Christy acknowledge that &#8220;carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased due to the burning of fossil fuels, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat before it can escape into space.&#8221; Yet what remains unknown is the level of warming that will occur. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They then address the aforementioned computer models, rightly noting that those created to explain the phenomenon were built &#8220;almost entirely&#8221; by scientists heavily invested in the idea of &#8220;catastrophic&#8221; global warming. Unsurprisingly, those investments have tainted the science behind them, which explains why many of the dire predictions they engendered have turned out to be &#8220;spectacularly wrong.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That wrongness is invariably followed by a litany of excuses. One was the idea that an increased use of aerosols by human beings that ostensibly &#8220;skewed&#8221; the results. Moreover, the &#8220;consensus&#8221; scientists continue to ignore data that does not accrue to their political convictions.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Far more devastating, climate change promoters virtually ignore the disastrous economic effects their policies would engender. As Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a nonprofit group focused on cost-effective solutions to global problems </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/opinion/the-poor-need-cheap-fossil-fuels.html">explains</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, 81 percent of the world&#8217;s energy needs are provided by fossil fuels, with billions of people depending on them for </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">survival.</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> &#8220;For many parts of the world, fossil fuels are still vital and will be for the next few decades, because they are the only means to lift people out of the smoke and darkness of energy poverty,&#8221; he writes. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That necessity explains much of the developing world&#8217;s resistance to the Obama administration&#8217;s initiatives. At this moment in time, they prefer </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-kerry-indonesia-climate-20140216,0,3657404.story#axzz2tsG4mML8">raising</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> their citizens out of poverty than kowtowing to an agenda they see as a First World problem created by wealthier countries that use the most energy. Despite this reality, the president quietly </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/27/the-u-s-will-stop-subsidizing-coal-plants-overseas-is-the-world-bank-next/">announced</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a major policy shift last June, whereby the U.S. would place severe restrictions on federal financing of coal plants in foreign countries. &#8220;This new policy sends a message that coal is not an acceptable fuel source for the 21st century,&#8221; said Justin Guay, international climate and energy representative of the Sierra Club at the time.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That such a message condemns billions of people around the world to a life of subsistence survival &#8212; when they survive at all &#8212; is of little consequence. Apparently for progressives, &#8220;saving the planet&#8221; has little to do with saving the people who inhabit it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While such an agenda has fewer life and death consequences in the United States, the administration is determined to pursue the same economy-ravaging policies here. And once again a president who has made a mockery of the rule of law and the constitutionally-mandated separation of power is determined to advance those policies &#8220;with our without&#8221; Congress.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Whether he can actually do so remains to be seen. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court is </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/us/politics/in-emissions-case-supreme-court-to-consider-the-limits-of-obamas-authority.html">scheduled</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to hear a case on greenhouse gas emissions that could determine if Obama has so broadly interpreted the parameters of the Clean Air Act that he has rendered Congress irrelevant. Briefs filed by business groups and Republicans paint the president&#8217;s effort as another overreach by the Executive branch. A </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/supreme_court_preview/briefs-v3/12-1268_pet_slf.authcheckdam.pdf">brief</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> filed by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) contends the president is attempting “an intolerable invasion of Congress’s domain that threatens to obliterate the line dividing executive from legislative power,” and that regulation imposed under the auspices of the EPA were “perhaps the most audacious seizure of pure legislative power over domestic economic matters attempted by the executive branch” since President Truman&#8217;s attempt to nationalize America&#8217;s steel mills during the Korean War. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. countered with the administration’s argument. “The E.P.A. determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare in ways that may prove to be more widespread, longer lasting and graver than the effects of any other pollutant regulated under the act,” he wrote in his brief. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The case is a challenge to a 5-4 decision made in 2007, when the Supreme Court required the EPA to regulate the emission of greenhouse gasses from motor vehicles if they endangered the public&#8217;s health and welfare. The administration wants to extend that decision to cover stationary power plants, as well as all sources that can annually emit 100 or 250 tons of relevant pollutants. That would give them the potential to regulate millions of pollution sources absent congressional authority to do so. Obama used the same rationale when he </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/us/politics/obama-to-request-new-rules-for-cutting-truck-pollution.html?hp">ordered</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the development of new standards for the nation&#8217;s heavy-duty trucks earlier this week.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Amanda C. Leiter, a law professor at American University believes a loss by the administration would not have a great impact, since they have other regulatory tools at their disposal. But the political damage could be significant because “it would be painted as another situation in which the Obama administration has overreached against the public will.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Regardless of the decision, the administration will undoubtedly continue to overreach, aided an abetted by what authors David Horowitz and Jacob Laskin term the &#8220;New Leviathan.&#8221; They are progressive moneyed interests whose contributions dwarf those of their conservative counterparts, and who are determined to impose their agenda on the nation, regardless of the consequences. In the environmental arena, they are being </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/us/politics/financier-plans-big-ad-campaign-on-environment.html?hpw&amp;rref=us&amp;_r=1">led</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, whose political organization, NextGen Climate Action, aims to raise $100 million to support politicians who champion the man-made climate change agenda. Like so many leftist elitists, he is against the Keystone pipeline that would go a long way towards creating jobs and putting the nation further down the road towards energy independence. He considers climate change the &#8220;generational challenge of the world.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The real generational challenge, in America at least, is figuring out how to prevent progressives in general, and the Obama administration in particular, from fundamentally transforming the United States into a nation where liberty, freedom and free-market capitalism are regulated out of existence. Make no mistake: those who would employ questionable science to impose what amounts to a death penalty on millions of Third-World residents struggling for their very existence don&#8217;t think twice about imposing untold economic hardship on their fellow Americans, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency-savings/index.html">76 percent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of whom live &#8220;paycheck to paycheck,&#8221; for the same reason. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And its not about the environment. As a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/state_by_state.pdf">study</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by the Science and Public Policy Institute reveals, if Americans </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">completely stopped</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> emitting all carbon immediately &#8212; stopped driving, stopped cooling and heating our homes, shut down all the power plants, and even stopped </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">talking </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8211; the global temperature would decrease by only 0.17 degrees Celsius by 2100.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As Bjorn Lomborg explains, the United States is already &#8220;showing the way&#8221; towards a future with cleaner fuel sources. That the Obama administration would sacrifice the well-being of millions of Americans and billions of impoverished people to force-feed that future is precisely what they did to the nation when they force-fed it ObamaCare based on the same litany of hysteria, lies and smears they are using here. One can only wonder when Americans will tire of the progressive lust for power wrapping itself as noble intentions.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>President of Indonesia Claims Allah Saved Him from Assassination by Black Cloud</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/president-of-indonesia-claims-allah-saved-him-from-assassination-by-black-cloud/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=president-of-indonesia-claims-allah-saved-him-from-assassination-by-black-cloud</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/president-of-indonesia-claims-allah-saved-him-from-assassination-by-black-cloud/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Jan 2014 14:28:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[third world]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216880</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["There was this dark cloud trying to enter my bedroom,”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Obama-420x0.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-216885" alt="Obama-420x0" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Obama-420x0-387x350.jpg" width="387" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t a metaphorical dark cloud either. We&#8217;re <a href="http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2014/01/indonesia-president-susilo-bambang.html">talking an actual black cloud</a>. The indoor variety apparently.</p>
<blockquote><p>In the book, There is Always a Choice, Yudhoyono tells the story of how he and First Lady Ani Yudhoyono had to fight dark clouds hovering inside their house in Cikeas, Bogor, West Java.</p>
<p>Yudhoyono wrote that during one Sunday morning prior to the 2009 election, his wife was reading a magazine in the living room while he was busy in the library.</p>
<p>“Suddenly, my wife screamed and called to me. I ran into the room to find out what happened. It turned out that there was this thick dark cloud hovering beneath the ceiling, trying to enter my bedroom,” wrote Yudhoyono.</p>
<p>“I then asked everybody to pray to seek Allah&#8217;s help. I closed the door to my room but left others wide open. The revolving clouds eventually headed out of my house.”</p>
<p>“Alhamdulillah, my family was safe. The incident was like footage in a typical horror movie. But this really was happening. It was real,” he said in a chapter titled “Threat to the President can reach the level of assassination.”</p>
<p>Yudhoyono said that there were other incidents that he believed could not be explained logically, but he preferred to keep them closed to the public.</p></blockquote>
<p>So I guess we&#8217;ll never hear about the time that the rabbit attacked him just like Jimmy Carter.</p>
<p>All this is a little reminder that just because a country has the vestiges of modernity imposed on it through colonialism and contact with the modern world, doesn&#8217;t mean that it is modern.</p>
<p>And that has implications for more than just dark cloud stories. It&#8217;s about how people from that country think and act when they come into contact with the modern world, even when they&#8217;re wearing modern clothes, toting smartphones and graduating from modern schools.</p>
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		<title>Moderate Muslim Indonesia Debates Virginity Tests for Female High School Students</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/moderate-muslim-indonesia-debates-virginity-tests-for-female-high-school-students/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=moderate-muslim-indonesia-debates-virginity-tests-for-female-high-school-students</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/moderate-muslim-indonesia-debates-virginity-tests-for-female-high-school-students/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Aug 2013 13:55:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim Feminism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=201416</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Rasyid defended his decision. He believes that the proposal will result in prevention of prostitution and free sex.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/0957136muryono780x390.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-201419" alt="0957136muryono780x390" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/0957136muryono780x390-450x224.jpg" width="450" height="224" /></a></p>
<p>I guess this is supposed to <a href="http://www.halalporkshop.blogspot.com/2013/08/to-discourage-pre-marital-sex-and.html">take the guesswork out of honor killings</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>In an attempt to discourage pre-marital sex and prostitution, Indonesian officials have proposed virginity test on females of senior high school.</p>
<p>Muhammad Rasyid, head of education South Sumatra&#8217;s district, believes that the test would be started next year.</p>
<p>He has even earmarked a budget for the project.</p>
<p>Some termed the move as &#8216;excessive and reasoned that loss of virginity is not merely because of sexual intercourse, but may arise due to variety of different reasons, like exercise and sports.</p>
<p>However, Rasyid defended his decision. He believes that the proposal will result in prevention of prostitution and free sex.</p>
<p>This is not the first time that such a proposal has been passed by Sumatran administration. In 2010, a similar plan was shelved after it received widespread criticism.</p></blockquote>
<p>However according to the<a href="http://regional.kompas.com/read/2013/08/20/1430489/Tes.Urine.Lebih.Mendesak.daripada.Tes.Keperawanan"> vice chairman of some commission</a>, urine tests are far more important to catch students who use drugs.</p>
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		<title>Indonesian Gov Demands Shiite Refugees Convert to Sunni Islam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/indonesian-gov-demands-shiite-refugees-convert-to-sunni-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=indonesian-gov-demands-shiite-refugees-convert-to-sunni-islam</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/indonesian-gov-demands-shiite-refugees-convert-to-sunni-islam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Aug 2013 13:20:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesian muslims]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim religious tolerance]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=199343</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“In the meeting it was agreed that the reconciliation would be based on the enlightenment of the refugees, so that there’s a confluence of perception with regard to their religion,” the minister said.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Indonesian-Islamist-demonstrators.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-199344" alt="Indonesian-Islamist-demonstrators" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Indonesian-Islamist-demonstrators-450x261.jpg" width="450" height="261" /></a></p>
<p>This story ordinarily wouldn&#8217;t be worth highlighting. It&#8217;s just another example of the typical Islamic intolerance of Obama&#8217;s hometown. But lately the media has gone into a feeding frenzy over the migrant Rohyniga Muslims in Burma.</p>
<p>The media has claimed that the violence between Burma&#8217;s Buddhist natives and the Rohyniga Muslim refugees is genocide. Time put a Buddhist cleric on its cover calling him the face of Buddhist hate.</p>
<p><a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/08/02/indonesian-leader-says-shiite-muslims-need-to-convert-to-sunni-islam-before-returning-to-their-homes/">Meanwhile ordinary Muslim bigotry and persecution</a>&#8230; even of fellow Muslims, in a country that Obama has repeatedly held up as an example, gets no notice.</p>
<blockquote><p>The government says it is nearing a solution to repatriate Shiite Muslim families driven from their homes by Sunni hard-liners in Sampang district on Madura Island, following a meeting late on Thursday between the president and local clerics.</p>
<p>Suryadharma Ali, the minister for religious affairs, said on Friday that the meeting in Surabaya, hosted by the East Java governor, was positive and that a reconciliation between the two groups was in sight.</p>
<p>However, he stressed that any meaningful peace would only be obtained with the “enlightenment” of the around 200 Shiites currently living in tenement blocks in Sidoarjo, on the East Java mainland — a term largely understood to mean conversion to mainstream Sunni Islam, but which Suryadharma and other government officials have doggedly refused to clarify.</p>
<p>“In the meeting it was agreed that the reconciliation would be based on the enlightenment of the refugees, so that there’s a confluence of perception with regard to their religion,” the minister said.</p>
<p>“This enlightenment process will be carried out where they are currently staying in Sidoarjo.”</p>
<p>He declined to confirm whether this meant they would have to publicly renounce their faith, and refused to give any details about what the enlightenment process would entail, saying only that it was the main condition laid down by the Sunni clerics for allowing the Shiite families to return home.</p>
<p>The Shiite community was the target of an attack by a Sunni mob in August last year that stemmed from a family dispute between its leader, Tajul Muluk, and his brother, local Sunni cleric Rois Al Hukuma.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p></blockquote>
<p>If only Indonesia were a Buddhist country, then maybe the fake human rights activists denouncing Burma might care.</p>
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		<title>Next to Last Synagogue in Obama&#8217;s &#8220;Moderate Muslim&#8221; Indonesia Torn Down</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/next-to-last-synagogue-in-obamas-moderate-muslim-indonesia-torn-down/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=next-to-last-synagogue-in-obamas-moderate-muslim-indonesia-torn-down</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:31:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim anti-semitism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=193381</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In January 2009, Muslim demonstrators sealed off Beth Shalom and burned an Israeli flag]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/freedom-flotilla856.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-193382" alt="Indonesia Israel Protest" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/freedom-flotilla856.jpg" width="400" height="280" /></a></p>
<p>It&#8217;s not exactly a great surprise, considering that Indonesia&#8217;s recent history includes genocide against Christians in East Timor and the mass rapes of Chinese women.</p>
<p>Still Indonesia is one of those Muslim countries that politicians like to pretend is moderate and a good example. By comparison to Saudi Arabia, it might be. <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2013/06/615-links-israeli-doctors-save-syrian.html">By comparison to even the </a>most<a href="http://rossrightangle.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/synagogue-sealed-now-destroyed-islamonazis-satisfied-now/"> elementary standards of human rights </a>and <a href="http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/javas-last-synagogue-torn-down/">religious tolerance&#8230; not so much</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The last vestige of one Indonesia’s oldest and largest Jewish communities is now just a pile of rubble. Beth Shalom in Surabaya — Java’s one and only synagogue — was demolished in May after being sealed off by Islamic hard-liners in 2009.</p>
<p>A small, Dutch-style building located on a 2,000 square meter plot of land in the middle of Surabaya’s business district, Beth Shalom looked like an ordinary house in the neighborhood. The only features that distinguished it as a synagogue were its mezuzah (Torah scrolls fastened to an entrance way) and the two Star of David carvings on its door.</p>
<p>“There were many artifacts inside the building which can’t be found in other heritage sites,” Freddy said.</p>
<p>In January 2009, Muslim demonstrators sealed off Beth Shalom and burned an Israeli flag to protest the country’s attacks on the Gaza Strip at the time.</p>
<p>Soemarsono, the head of the National Unity and Society Protection Agency of Surabaya, claimed that the synagogue was an illegal structure because it did not possess proper building permits.</p>
<p>Soemarsono, the head of the National Unity and Society Protection Agency of Surabaya, claimed that the synagogue was an illegal structure because it did not possess proper building permits.</p>
<p>Sachiroel noted, though, that most of Indonesia’s oldest buildings don’t have building permits since such a requirement was only introduced during the Suharto era.</p>
<p>“The synagogue was built before Indonesia declared its independence,” he said. “How could it have a building permit?”</p>
<p>Rivka Sayers, a Jewish woman of Iraqi descent, reportedly lived in the synagogue’s compound since 1970. She said that only three families regularly visited the synagogue to celebrate the Sabbath and holidays such as Passover and Rosh Hashanah.</p>
<p>Indonesia’s last surviving synagogue is located in Manado, Sulawesi.</p></blockquote>
<p>From the Islamic point of view, that&#8217;s one down and one to go.</p>
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		<title>Indonesia Frees Muslim Terrorist Who Beheaded 3 Christian Girls as &#8220;Ramadan Present&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/indonesia-frees-muslim-terrorist-who-beheaded-3-christian-girls-as-ramadan-present/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=indonesia-frees-muslim-terrorist-who-beheaded-3-christian-girls-as-ramadan-present</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:38:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslimpersecutionofchristians]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=187257</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Basri joked and laughed as he described how it took two swipes of his machete to lop the head off one of the girls.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_187258" style="width: 437px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/us-president-barack-obama-427sv1-1109101.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-187258" alt="us-president-barack-obama-427sv1-1109101" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/us-president-barack-obama-427sv1-1109101.jpg" width="427" height="255" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Obama back in Indonesia</p></div>
<p>Technically <a href="http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2013/04/muslim-serving-19-yr-sentence-for.html">Basri wasn&#8217;t freed.</a> He was allowed to go home to visit his &#8220;sick wife&#8221; and then left unguarded for hours. In a completely inexplicable set of circumstances that the authorities could<a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/convicted-militant-escapes-indonesia-jail"> not have possibly imagined would occur</a>&#8230; he escaped.</p>
<p>Basri should have received the death penalty for the murder of 3 Christian schoolgirls. The three girls, Theresia Morangke and Yarni Sambue, both 15, and 17-year-old Alfita Poliwo, had their heads cut off. One of the heads was placed in a bag along on the steps of a church along with a note reading, &#8220;We will murder 100 more Christian teenagers and their heads will be presented as presents.&#8221;</p>
<p>What did he mean by presents? Basri and his fellow Muslims were <a href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_email.cfm/blog_id/5665">celebrating the end of the Islamic Ramadan</a>. It&#8217;s an event that Obama annually commemorates at the White House, but Basri really got into the spirit of the season.</p>
<blockquote><p>Basri said he and two others killed the girls and took their heads to the group&#8217;s headquarters as a &#8220;gift&#8221; to mark the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.</p>
<p>The bodies, dressed in school uniform, were left by the roadside near the execution site, but the heads were carried in a backpack.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rickross.com/reference/alqaeda/alqaeda79.html">Basri claimed he</a> was sorry &#8220;not just from my mouth but from deep in my heart.&#8221; But he nevertheless joked and laughed as he described how it took two swipes of his machete to lop the head off one of the girls.</p></blockquote>
<p>Basri, whom the Indonesian authorities for all intents and purposes set free, received weapons training from Al Qaeda&#8217;s affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah. And he had confessed to beheading one of the girls personally.</p>
<p>Despite all this Basri only received a comparatively short jail term. It&#8217;s not that Indonesia doesn&#8217;t have the death penalty or doesn&#8217;t use it as casually as most Muslim countries do. A 56-year-old woman from the UK is facing the death penalty for drug smuggling. And since she isn&#8217;t a Muslim, s<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/08/world/asia/indonesia-uk-death-penalty">he has something to worry about</a>. It&#8217;s safe to say that no one will be taking her to visit any sick relatives while leaving her unguarded.</p>
<p>If you want to understand the difference between Islam and every other religion on earth, you could do worse <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/beheaded-girls-were-ramadan-trophies/story-e6frg6so-1111112492769">than read this single paragraph</a> describing how the spiritual musings of the mastermind of these atrocities.</p>
<blockquote><p>Hasanuddin allegedly returned from a visit to members of Philippines Islamist group the Moro Islamic Liberation Front with tales of how that organisation regularly staged bombings to coincide with Lebaran, the festival that ends the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. However, after further discussion with friends, he decided that <strong>beheading Christians could qualify as an act of Muslim charity</strong>.</p></blockquote>
<p>Muslim charity.</p>
<div id="attachment_187259" style="width: 215px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/noviana.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-187259" alt="noviana" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/noviana.jpg" width="205" height="154" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">A survivor of Muslim charity</p></div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>How Obama&#8217;s Moderate Muslim Indonesia is Ruining Christmas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/how-obamas-moderate-muslim-indonesia-is-ruining-christmas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-obamas-moderate-muslim-indonesia-is-ruining-christmas</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/how-obamas-moderate-muslim-indonesia-is-ruining-christmas/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 23 Dec 2012 16:14:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170649</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Muslims are entitled to build a mosque at Ground Zero, but Christians in even "moderate" Muslim countries are not entitled to just being able to build a church or use it once it has been built.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_170650" style="width: 370px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/how-obamas-moderate-muslim-indonesia-is-ruining-christmas/indonesia-obama-visit-2010-11-09/" rel="attachment wp-att-170650"><img class="size-full wp-image-170650" title="Indonesia-Obama-visit-2010-11-09" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Indonesia-Obama-visit-2010-11-09.jpg" alt="" width="360" height="240" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">&#8220;Is that where you murdered 100,000 Christians?&#8221;</p></div>
<p>If you want to understand Obama, skip the memoirs and head straight for his homeland in Indonesia, the place where he grew up, its history of Christian genocide in East Timor and its treatment of Christians at home who make up 10 percent of the population but have very few civil rights.</p>
<p>Building churches in <a href="http://www.religiontoday.com/news/mob-indonesia-churches-anti-christian-sentiment-grows.html">Indonesia requires dealing with angry Muslim </a>mobs and <a href="http://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/english/country/indonesia/article_116175.html">even angrier Muslim politicians</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>A mayor in West Java who disregarded a Supreme Court ruling to reinstate the building permit of a church in Bogor has now dismissed a recommendation by the National Ombudsman Institute to do so.</p>
<p>Bogor Mayor Diani Budiarto rejected the recommendation to reinstate the permit for the Indonesian Christian Church (Gereja Kristen Indonesia, or GKI) Yasmin Bogor Church last month, leaving the congregation to worship on a small strip of land as 15 to 20 Muslim demonstrators taunt them.</p></blockquote>
<p>And now two congregations <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/12/modern-moderate-indonesia-islamic-supremacists-seal-off-churches-prevent-christmas-prayers.html">are locked out of their churches for Christmas</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>For the Rev. Palti Panjaitan of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) Filadelfia congregation in Bekasi, the lack of a Christmas tree is the least of his worries.</p>
<p>“How can we think about Christmas decorations or a Christmas tree when our church is still sealed off from us?” he said on Thursday.</p>
<p>“Our focus now is just to be able to hold Christmas prayers in our own church.”</p>
<p>The congregation of around 600 has since 2007 been forced to worship on the street outside its church or in members’ homes as the Bogor district administration continues to deny it a permit.</p>
<p>The congregation has taken the matter to the West Java State Administrative Court and the Supreme Court, both of which ordered the district to issue the permit and reopen the church. But the district has refused to comply, citing residents’ opposition to the presence of the church in their midst.</p></blockquote>
<p>Remember, Muslims are entitled to build a mosque at Ground Zero, but Christians in even &#8220;moderate&#8221; Muslim countries are not entitled to just being able to build a church or use it once it has been built.</p>
<p>Outrage from Obama over this in 3-2-1-never. But his State Department is &#8220;deeply disappointed&#8221; because Israel is building houses in Jerusalem. There may even be a synagogue or two there.</p>
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		<title>Islamic Foundation Pays Indonesian Parents 9 Dollars to Mutilate their Daughters&#8217; Genitals</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/islamic-foundation-pays-indonesian-parents-9-dollars-to-mutilate-their-daughters-genitals/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamic-foundation-pays-indonesian-parents-9-dollars-to-mutilate-their-daughters-genitals</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 25 Nov 2012 03:15:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FGM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=166540</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut. From their sun-lined faces and battered sandals, some of the mothers looked quite poor – poor enough, possibly, to make the foundation's 80,000 rupiah cash handout as much of an enticement]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/islamic-foundation-pays-indonesian-parents-9-dollars-to-mutilate-their-daughters-genitals/fgm-young-girl1/" rel="attachment wp-att-166541"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-166541" title="FGM-young-girl1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/FGM-young-girl1-450x300.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>What would be considered a horrifying atrocity outside much of the Muslim world is something that Indonesian parents will agree to have done to their daughters in exchange for 9 dollars. That&#8217;s <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/18/female-genital-mutilation-circumcision-indonesia">one of the revelations</a> in this Guardian first-hand account.</p>
<blockquote><p>a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or &#8220;female circumcision&#8221; that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and several schools. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad&#8217;s birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.</p></blockquote>
<p>Mohammed did hate women, so I suppose mutilating thousands of girls on his birthday would be the sort of present that he would have appreciated.</p>
<p>80,000 rupiah is a pretty decent sum by Indonesian standards, but it&#8217;s not &#8216;sell your child&#8217; money. It&#8217;s anywhere from 6 to 15 percent of a monthly salary over there.</p>
<blockquote><p>Twelve-year-old Suminah is not. She looks like she wants to punch somebody. Under her white hijab, which she has yanked down over her brow like a hoodie, her eyes have the livid, bewildered expression of a child who has been wronged by people she trusted. She sits on a plastic chair, swatting away her mother&#8217;s efforts to placate her with a party cup of milk and a biscuit. Suminah is in severe pain. An hour earlier, her genitals were mutilated with scissors as she lay on a school desk.</p>
<p>Suminah said she didn&#8217;t want to come. &#8220;I was shaking and crying last night. I was so scared I couldn&#8217;t sleep.&#8221; It was a &#8220;very bad, sharp pain&#8221; when she was cut, she said, and she still felt sore and angry.</p></blockquote>
<p>At least Suminah could have gotten a share of that 80,000 rupiah.</p>
<blockquote><p>From their sun-lined faces and battered sandals, some of the mothers looked quite poor – poor enough, possibly, to make the foundation&#8217;s 80,000 rupiah cash handout as much of an enticement as the promise of spiritual purity.</p>
<p>The room filled up with noise and people. Girls started to cry and protest as soon as their mothers hustled them inside. Rapidly, the mood turned business-like. &#8220;We have many girls to circumcise this morning, about 300,&#8221; Hdjella shouted above the escalating din. As children were hoisted on to desks I realised with a jolt: this is an assembly line.</p>
<p>In the dingy, crowded room, her cries merged with the sobs and screeches of other girls lying on desks, the grating sing-song clucking of the midwives, the surreally casual conversational hum of waiting mothers. There was no air.</p>
<p>Ety, 40, was elated. She had brought her two daughters, aged seven and three, to be cut. &#8220;I want them to be teachers. Being circumcised will bring them good luck,&#8221; she said. Ety was a farmer who came from a village outside Bandung. &#8220;Daughters should be pure and obey their parents.&#8221;</p>
<p>At the mass ceremony, I ask the foundation&#8217;s social welfare secretary, Lukman Hakim, why they do it. His answer not only predates the dawn of religion, it predates human evolution: &#8220;It is necessary to control women&#8217;s sexual urges,&#8221; says Hakim, a stern, bespectacled man in a fez. &#8220;They must be chaste to preserve their beauty.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>And nothing says chastity like genital mutilation. It&#8217;s either that or honor killing.</p>
<blockquote><p>It is impossible to second-guess what kind of place holds mass ceremonies to mutilate girl children, with the aim of forever curbing their sexual pleasure.</p></blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;m going to go ahead and guess a Muslim place&#8230; which predates human evolution.</p>
<blockquote><p>Indonesia&#8217;s largest Muslim organisation, the Nahdlatul Ulama, also issued an edict telling its 30 million followers that it approved of female genital cutting, but that doctors &#8220;should not cut too much&#8221;.</p></blockquote>
<p>Evolution. It&#8217;s a really slow process.</p>
<blockquote><p>the chairman of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, the nation&#8217;s most powerful council of Islamic leaders, issued this statement: &#8220;Circumcision is a requirement for every Muslim woman,&#8221; said Amidhan, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name. &#8220;It not only cleans the filth from her genitals, it also contributes to a girl&#8217;s growth.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Really slow process.</p>
<blockquote><p>In the dingy, crowded room, her cries merged with the sobs and screeches of other girls lying on desks, the grating sing-song clucking of the midwives, the surreally casual conversational hum of waiting mothers. There was no air.</p>
<p>Ety, 40, was elated. She had brought her two daughters, aged seven and three, to be cut. &#8220;I want them to be teachers. Being circumcised will bring them good luck,&#8221; she said. Ety was a farmer who came from a village outside Bandung. &#8220;Daughters should be pure and obey their parents.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
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		<title>Lessons From Lady Gaga</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/lloyd-billingsley/lessons-from-lady-gaga/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=lessons-from-lady-gaga</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Jun 2012 04:31:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancelled]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[concert]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lady gaga]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=133928</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A concert cancelation reveals a cultural pathology that is only getting worse.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Picture-8.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-134093" title="Picture-8" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Picture-8.gif" alt="" width="375" height="242" /></a>Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, an American <em>chanteuse</em> also known as Lady Gaga, has been touring Asia to packed houses. She was to have performed in Jakarta, Indonesia, last Sunday, June 3, but had to cancel. So no show for Indonesia but perhaps a lesson or two in tolerance.</p>
<p>Lady Gaga opted to play Indonesia because she has fans there. According to news reports, more than 50,000 tickets had been sold, and that did not sit well with Muslim hardliners. They called her a messenger of the devil and issued threats of violence should the concert go forward.</p>
<p>Indonesia has more Muslims than any other nation, some 86 percent of a population of more than 248 million. Protestants and Catholics make up less than 10 percent of Indonesians, who are ethnically diverse. For some observers Indonesia is the model for how an Islam can be compatible with democracy and tolerance, but the Lady Gaga incident is troubling.</p>
<p>Her show is indeed sexually and religiously provocative, in the aggressive style of Madonna. Christians in the Philippines and Korea had protested her act, which some considered blasphemous, but Lady Gaga’s show went on in those nations. Her fans attended and those who didn’t like her saved their money and found other things to do.</p>
<p>In Indonesia, a hardline group called the Islamic Defenders Front threatened to prevent Lady Gaga from getting off the plane. Following threats of violence, the police refused to issue a permit for her show, prompting the singer to cancel. So the Islamic Defenders Front got what they wanted.</p>
<p>They were not content to let their fellow Indonesians decide for themselves.</p>
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		<title>Indonesian Christians&#8217; Plight Escalates</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/indonesian-christians-plight-escalates/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=indonesian-christians-plight-escalates</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/indonesian-christians-plight-escalates/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Jun 2012 04:15:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=133665</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Heinous attacks against infidels, including Muslim minorities, skyrockets. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/indonesian-christians-cover-their-mouths-during-a-protest-against-attacks-on-churches-in-jakarta-on-august-15-2010.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-133673" title="indonesian-christians-cover-their-mouths-during-a-protest-against-attacks-on-churches-in-jakarta-on-august-15-2010" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/indonesian-christians-cover-their-mouths-during-a-protest-against-attacks-on-churches-in-jakarta-on-august-15-2010.gif" alt="" width="375" height="246" /></a>Bags of <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/18/indonesia-angry-mob-hurls-bags-of-urine-at-christians/">urine</a> hurled by a mob of 600 Muslims at Christians attempting to attend church service is the latest in a series of disgusting acts of degradation and violence perpetrated by Indonesia’s growing Islamist movement.</p>
<p>The Muslim mob was led by members of Indonesia’s Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a militant Islamist group that has been directly involved in 34 of the 54 documented <a href="http://au.christiantoday.com/article/islamist-mob-throws-urine-at-church-in-indonesia-issues-death-threat-no-arrests-so-far/13381.htm">acts</a> of violence and destruction against Christians and Church property since 2012.</p>
<p>In an increasingly violent campaign launched against Indonesia’s religious minorities, the 30,000-strong FPI spearheads a growing cadre of militant Islamist groups whose ranks include the Islamic Defenders Legion (LPI), an FPI affiliate; the Indonesian Mujahideen Council (MMI); and Kokam, the youth wing of Muhammadiyah.</p>
<p>The victims of the latest Islamist assault &#8212; which also included a barrage of rotten eggs, ditchwater and stones &#8212; were over 100 congregants of the Filadelfia Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) in the city of Bekasi, located outside the capital of Jakarta.</p>
<p>It should be noted that the “church” at which the HKBP congregants were headed to pray when attacked is in actuality an empty parking lot, a venue of worship necessitated by the local Bekasi government’s refusal since 2009 to allow HKBP members to build and occupy an actual church.</p>
<p>Yet, despite a ruling in July 2011 by Indonesia’s Supreme Court to overturn the Bekasi government’s action, local authorities have refused to carry out the court’s rulings, instead relying on Islamist-led mobs to enforce its dictates.</p>
<p>Building houses of worship in Indonesia, unfortunately, has become increasingly problematic given the enactment of a 2006 Indonesian ministerial <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Joint_Ministerial_Decrees_on_Construction_of_Houses_of_Worship">decree</a> that tightened criteria for building churches. While ostensibly intended for “maintaining religious harmony,” in practice the decree is only enforced on religious minorities.</p>
<p>That enforcement comes either in the form of Islamist pressure on local officials to not authorize the construction of Christian churches or, failing that, mob harassment of Christian worshippers, pressure which has led to the closure of more than 400 Christian churches.</p>
<p>So, given all that, it wasn’t too surprising that Bekasi police reportedly looked the other way when the urine-toting Islamist mob, which included the chairman of the Bekasi chapter of the FPI, launched its recent assault on the HKBP worshippers.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Islamist violence is being abetted with a wink-and-nod by the Indonesian government, led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who despite his public appeals for tolerance has been reluctant to expend political capital to rein in the Islamists.</p>
<p>For example, like the HKBP, the Gereja Kristen Indonesia Church (GKI-Yasmin Church) in nearby Bogor, has also been <a href="http://au.christiantoday.com/article/islamist-mob-throws-urine-at-church-in-indonesia-issues-death-threat-no-arrests-so-far/13381.htm">denied</a> permission to meet for worship on its property, despite a similarly favorable Supreme Court ruling upholding its legality. Yet, in both cases, Yudhoyono has claimed he has no authority to intervene.</p>
<p>Yudhoyono’s reluctance to uphold Indonesian law may stem in part because his Democratic Party rules a coalition government that includes a number of hard line Islamist political parties, such as the Islamic-based United Development Party (PPP) and the Nation Awakening Party (PKB).</p>
<p>As one Indonesian Human Rights official said, “Senior government officials have shown quite openly that they protect groups like the Islamic Defenders Front. They’re very powerful, they’re very influential, and people don’t really want to be seen as working against them.”</p>
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		<title>The Most Dangerous Place to be an Atheist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/the-most-dangerous-place-to-be-an-atheist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-most-dangerous-place-to-be-an-atheist</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/the-most-dangerous-place-to-be-an-atheist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:21:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Atheism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blasphemy laws]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indonesia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=120082</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But the real question is: where do its boundaries end? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/LondonProtest03.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-120085" title="LondonProtest03" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/LondonProtest03.gif" alt="" width="375" height="258" /></a></p>
<p>Alexander Aan was just another bureaucrat holding down a desk at the Department of Planning until his Facebook Atheism page came to the notice of Indonesian authorities in Obama’s old stomping grounds. Now Aan is facing a five year jail sentence for using social media to spread the message that Allah does not exist.</p>
<p>Alexander is being charged with “defiling” Islam by using passages from the Koran to challenge the Islamic religion. And while the State Department and the media routinely go on the attack against any manifestation of what they call “Islamophobia,” it isn’t likely that they will be rushing to Aan’s defense. This isn’t exactly the first time that atheists have run afoul of the Islamic codes under which the Muslim world operates.</p>
<p>Two years ago, the Palestinian Authority arrested Waleed Hasayin on similar charges of blaspheming against Islam on Facebook. Waleed Hasayin had written that, “Muhammad was no different than barbaric thugs who slaughtered, robbed and raped women” and that “Islam has legitimized slavery, reinforced the gap between social classes and allowed stealing from the infidels, taking women in captivity during wars and sexual abuse of women slaves.”</p>
<p>For these and other truthful statements, he was arrested and his family demanded that he be sentenced to life in prison. He has since written a letter of apology in hopes of being released.</p>
<p>The regimes imprisoning Aan and Hasayin are funded by the United States. Indonesia is on the list of the top twenty countries benefiting from USAID funding and the Palestinian Authority, including its security forces and prisons, is mostly subsidized by American taxpayers. The arrests were accompanied by mob protests and violence reflecting populist Muslim hostility toward non-Muslims.</p>
<p>Underlying these individual incidents is a legal code that goes to the very definition of what it means to be a citizen of a Muslim country. Muslim countries recognize a limited set of legal religions. Non-Muslims who are members of legal religions have fewer rights and run the usual risks that come with being a minority group. Non-Muslims who are not members of official religions do not. This includes Muslim sects that the Islamic system does not recognize as legitimate. It includes Muslims who wish to convert to another religion, and it includes atheists who are not a recognized religious group.</p>
<p>Religious identity is linked to civic participation in public life in a way that most Americans are not aware of. It appears on identity cards, it is a basic requirement for doing anything from attending a university to getting married. Without membership in an officially recognized religious group, the atheist is a non-person.</p>
<p>But atheists no longer have to live in the Muslim world in order to be subject to Islamic rules. At Queen Mary, University of London, a public research university with roots going back nearly a thousand years, the Atheism, Secularism and Humanism Society attempted to hold a discussion on “Sharia Law and Human Rights.” The discussion came to an abrupt end when a man entered the room and warned that they would be murdered if they said anything critical about Mohammed.</p>
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		<title>The Appeaser</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/william-r-hawkins/the-appeaser/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-appeaser</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/william-r-hawkins/the-appeaser/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:01:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[William R. Hawkins]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61660</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The troubling unwillingness of Obama to confront our enemies and protect our friends. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/obamam.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61696" title="obamam" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/obamam.gif" alt="" width="400" height="319" /></a></p>
<p>The National Security Strategy (NSS) released by the Barack Obama administration on May 27 is not so much a look forward as a look back. It is an attempt to return to the optimistic days following the end of the Cold War when it seemed a peaceful new world order was possible. In 1999, President Bill Clinton claimed “perhaps for the first time in history, the world’s leading nations are not engaged in a struggle with each other for security or territory. The world clearly is coming together.” President Obama says essentially the same thing in the opening paragraph of his cover letter to the NSS when he notes that “globalization”—the buzz word of the post-Cold War era &#8212; has “made peace possible among the major powers.” The dangers that remain are of a different sort, “from international terrorism and the spread of deadly technologies, to economic upheaval and a changing climate.”</p>
<p>That the world looked like the classical liberal model expounded by Clinton in 1999 was doubtful even then. A decade later, the cracks are even larger. Five months before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, a Chinese fighter rammed a U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea, an area Beijing has been trying to claim as sovereign territory. The rise of China and the emergence of other ambitious powers herald not a new world but a new cycle in the old world of international rivalry. The NSS explicitly rejects the “world as it is” in its attempt to fashion “the world we seek.” But the NSS does not lay out a path between worlds; it simply assumes the new world already exists.</p>
<p>There are still a few odds and ends to be cleaned up from the Bush administration, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The NSS pledges “a focus on defeating al-Qa’ida and its affiliates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the globe” but sees no real dangers after that which would require a military effort. Though the NSS identifies the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear and biological) as problems, the two most menacing rogue states, North Korea and Iran, are to be dealt with through diplomacy. As the NSS states on page 23, “If North Korea eliminates its nuclear weapons program, and Iran meets its international obligations on its nuclear program, they will be able to proceed on a path to greater political and economic integration with the international community. If they ignore their international obligations, we will pursue multiple means to increase their isolation and bring them into compliance with international nonproliferation norms.” This is at best a containment policy.</p>
<p>But how can Pyongyang or Tehran be contained, let alone “isolated” when they have friends among the other major powers? The NSS depends on there being a consensus among the powers on issues like non-proliferation within a general spirit of cooperation. That is not how world politics is evolving.</p>
<p>According to the NSS, “The European Union has deepened its integration. Russia has reemerged in the international arena as a strong voice. China and India—the world’s two most populous nations—are becoming more engaged globally. From Latin America to Africa to the Pacific, new and emerging powers hold out opportunities for partnership, even as a handful of states endanger regional and global security by flouting international norms.” Under the Obama policy, “We are working to build deeper and more effective partnerships with other key centers of influence—including China, India, and Russia, as well as increasingly influential nations such as Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia—so that we can cooperate on issues of bilateral and global concern, with the recognition that power, in an interconnected world, is no longer a zero sum game.”</p>
<p>The integration of the EU is being called into question by the sovereign debt crisis that has ripped through Greece and has threatened to spread to Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. The single euro currency, once thought to be an alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, is in free fall. Euro skeptics in England, France, Holland and Germany are balking at “saving” the Mediterranean and Eastern members of the bloc.</p>
<p>The NSS singles out Brazil for special praise saying, “We welcome Brazil’s leadership and seek to move beyond dated North-South divisions to pursue progress on bilateral, hemispheric, and global issues.” Yet, Brazil just brokered a deal with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program meant to shield it from a new round of UN sanctions being pushed by the U.S. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had told President Obama personally at the Nuclear Security Summit that he would not back additional sanctions on Iran, and repeated this stance when meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Brasilia immediately after the two leaders left Washington. The Hu-Lula meeting took place within the larger context of a BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) summit where the emerging powers coordinate policies formulated primarily against the positions of the United States and EU.</p>
<p>South Africa joins the mix in BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China), a coalition at the UN that opposes the American and European demand for mandated limits on green house gas emissions to fight alleged global warming. Supported by Russia and the group of 77 developing nations, BASIC represents the world’s rejection of President Obama’s obsession about climate change that appears repeatedly in the NSS as a priority global threat.</p>
<p>The core value of BASIC and its allies is unrestricted economic growth, which means intensified competition in domestic and world markets. For some time, American officials have made it clear that unless China, India and Brazil provide substantial market access to U.S. exports commensurate with their high economic growth rates, there can be no conclusion to the Doha Round of trade talks. These negotiations have been stalled virtually from their inception in 2001 due to a fundamental clash of national interests.</p>
<p>The Obama administration has hailed China and Russia for supporting a draft sanctions proposal against Iran at the UN. Yet, Beijing and Moscow watered down the resolution to prevent it from crippling the Tehran regime. Most importantly, Russia and China will be allowed to continue investing in Iran’s energy sector, which will boost the country’s revenues which the mullah’s use to finance their aggressive foreign policy as well as nuclear development. To improve relations, the Obama administration dropped sanctions against Moscow’s state arms export agency and three Russian entities previously found to have transferred technology or weapons to Iran. The UN sanctions proposal would also allow the Russians to sell S-300 air defense missiles (which have an anti-missile capability) to Tehran. So even if the UN Security Council adopts the resolution, it will not “isolate” Iran from its main international backers.</p>
<p>Nor is international rivalry confined to economics and rogue states. China’s massive military modernization program, led by new weapon systems designed to attack U.S. and allied forces across Asia, is not mentioned in the NSS. To do so would have undermined the fanciful vision of a peaceful, cooperative world. It would also have called into question why the Obama Pentagon is cutting back on the high-end conventional forces, from armored units and air superiority fighters to missile defense and naval shipbuilding, that would be needed to not only counter rising “peer” competitors like China but to defeat major regional powers like North Korea and Iran.</p>
<p>The NSS attempts to conjure up a world in which an NSS is not needed, but the Obama administration does not have the power to change the true, dangerous nature of global politics. What the NSS reveals is the unwillingness of President Obama to deal with the world as it is. Thus, America will remain vulnerable, as its leaders are continually blindsided by the strategies of adversaries they cannot bring themselves to think about.</p>
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		<title>The Wrong Way to Fight Jihad</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/the-wrong-way-to-stand-against-jihad/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-wrong-way-to-stand-against-jihad</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/the-wrong-way-to-stand-against-jihad/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:04:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55974</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Vijay Kumar, a native of India, gives a stern warning to the West about failed approaches in confronting Radical Islam. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kumar.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55984" title="kumar" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kumar.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="460" /></a></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview&#8217;s guest today is Vijay Kumar, who is currently running for the U.S. Congress as a Republican candidate for Tennessee 5th Congressional District. The Primary vote comes on August 5 of this year, and the General Election is on November 4. When he ran before, in 2008, he received about 30% of the vote in Republican Primary. His website is <a href="http://kumarforcongress.com/" target="_blank">kumarforcongress.com</a>. Visit his blog at <a href="http://kumarforcongress.net/" target="_blank">kumarforcongress.net</a>.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Vijay Kumar, welcome to Frontpage Interview.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong>You are one of the rare individuals running for office in America who is actually making the issue of Islamic Jihad a significant part of your campaign. Tell us your view of Islamic Jihad and the background you have to make you see it the way you do.</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> I am a native of Hyderabad, India, which is where I first encountered the Muslim culture. We have a substantial number of Muslims there, a higher percentage than most other parts of India, and I began to observe things that troubled me. Later, I traveled a number of Islamic nations, and I lived in Iran from 1976 to 1979, during the Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini. I immigrated to the United States in 1979. All my life, I have been interested in political thought. During my travels, I came to realize that Islam is unlike any of the other world religions for a variety of reasons, and they summate to the Islamic ideology behind Jihad.</p>
<p>First, Islam was conceived as a world empire to govern all mankind. It teaches that all the world, and everyone and everything in it, already belongs to Islam&#8211;some people just haven&#8217;t been made to understand that. Until they have, according to Islam, they are considered &#8220;infidels&#8221; and inferiors. Put another way, the Islamic view is that all of us in the world are subjects of the Islamic Empire, and those of us who do not acknowledge our subjugation to it must be overcome and brought to submission, through conversion or force. No other religion in the world has such a purpose of world conquest and domination.</p>
<p>Second, Islam does not allow any introspection or self-criticism. It calls for total acceptance, total submission. The very word &#8220;Islam&#8221; means &#8220;submission,&#8221; and the word &#8220;Muslim&#8221; means &#8220;one who submits.&#8221; The other side of submission, of course, is domination. Islam seeks to dominate every individual and every nation into submission. In that, it shares a key element of slavery, which the civilized world has properly decried and abolished. Such submission is a political act. I am a freeman, and I refuse to submit to Islamic hegemony.</p>
<p>Third, Islam does not have any exit policy for its believers. The act of submission required to become a Muslim is held to be final, irrevocable, and permanent. So criticizing or questioning Islam or its teachings or leaders, or attempting to leave Islam, all are considered severe crimes against Islam, punishable by death.</p>
<p>In contrast, non-Islamic religions allow for dissenting views, introspection, and reasoned debate. In non-Islamic religions, if you so choose, you can leave the faith you were born into without being threatened with physical violence or death. In Islam, both criticism of the faith and apostasy are capital offenses.</p>
<p>All of that is what drives Jihad: Jihad is a permanent war against the unbeliever and his land to bring about his submission. It has been going on for fourteen centuries all over the world, which is why I coined the term &#8220;Universal Jihad.&#8221; Islam&#8217;s Universal Jihad is the single greatest threat to Western civilization and to the entire non-Islamic world in general. It is more dangerous than Nazism and Communism combined.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> More dangerous than Nazism and Communism combined? Please explain this perspective.</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> Nazism was in power for 15 years or so. Communism was in power for about 70 years. Today, Germany, Japan, and Russia, our former adversaries, are now our allies. Also, they are liberal democracies.</p>
<p>Nazism, Communism, and Islam are all three totalitarian ideologies. Communism and Nazism, though, lack a system of transcendental metaphysics, which Islam has. Nazism and Communism do not claim to be religions, and there is no threat of hell-fire to hold over its adherents. By contrast, Islam is a totalitarian form of governance that also claims to be a religion, and so has proved to be far more sustainable than any other form of aggressive totalitarianism.</p>
<p>The doctrine and politics of Universal Jihad have been assaulting the world for 1,400 years. It is exactly what launched the Christian Crusades, which were an attempt to save European civilization from the relentless onslaught and wholesale murder of invading Muslim forces.</p>
<p>Under Universal Jihad, non-Muslim civilizations have been annihilated. To mention just a few examples: Turkey was Christian; Iran was Zoroastrian; North Africa and the Middle East were predominantly Christian; Afghanistan and Central Asia were Buddhist; Pakistan was Hindu; Egypt was Coptic, orthodox Christian. All have fallen prey to invasion by Islam.</p>
<p>Today, Universal Jihad has been brought to the West&#8211;not just by overt violence, but through every strategy and tactic conceivable. Islam is not just the faith of another immigrant group; it is a complete political and paramilitary ideology. Political Islam is here to Islamize the Western nations, and that includes the United States.</p>
<p>So Universal Jihad is a permanent form of warfare against the infidels, their nation-states, and every non-Islamic form of government in the world. It has been Islam&#8217;s mandate for 1,400 years that other cultures must submit to it. Islam is devoted to an eternally-unchanging doctrine: it is obligated to conquer entire world.</p>
<p>No one needs to take my word for it. Syed Abul A&#8217;ala Maududi, a Pakistani, was arguably the most influential Muslim theologian and thinker of the 20th Century. He said the following point-blank:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the  earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and program . . . [T]he objective of Islamic Jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of State rule. Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single State or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Any Muslim or apologist who claims otherwise, or who insists that Islam is just &#8220;a religion of peace&#8221; is not arguing against me: they are arguing against their own most revered leaders and experts on Islam and its true purpose. They are spreading Islamic propaganda that has no other purpose than to lull the infidel into a false sense of  friendship and security.</p>
<p>Such propaganda is a primary and vitally important tool of Islam&#8217;s psychological warfare. Syed Abul A&#8217;ala Maududi also spelled out clearly how many different ways Universal Jihad is to be waged against &#8220;the infidels&#8221;:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;In the jihad in the way of Allah, active combat is not always the role on the battlefield, nor can everyone fight in the front line. Just for one single battle preparations have often to be made for decades on end and the plans deeply laid, and while only some thousands fight in the front line there are behind them millions engaged in various tasks which, though small themselves, contribute directly to the supreme effort.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Unlike any other religion anywhere in the world, Islam&#8217;s clear, inarguable overarching purpose is Universal Jihad and global conquest, using any means. It is not waged just through terrorism and violent conflict. That is an extraordinarily naive view. Islam also uses psychological warfare, propaganda, covert operations, infiltration, and demographic saturation.</p>
<p>Universal Jihad exists and no amount liberal &#8220;political correctness&#8221; is going to wish it away. It is here on the soil of the United States right this minute. Its openly-declared goal is to destroy the United States as a system of government, to tear up our Constitution, and subject us all to Islamic totalitarianism under Sharia law.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Let me ask you this: World War I was won in four years, World War II was won in six years. But the Israel/Palestine and the India/Pakistan conflicts have not resolved after 62 years. Why do you think?<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<strong>Kumar:</strong> It&#8217;s simple: Muslims do not want peace, they want conquest. When they enter into an alleged &#8220;peace accord,&#8221; it is only a ploy to buy time to build their position for ultimate conquest. This is by their own creed: in Islam&#8217;s system of &#8220;ethics,&#8221; it is perfectly acceptable to lie to mere infidels.</p>
<p>In the case of Israel, the West has never been 100% behind Israeli sovereignty. Both the West and Israel have always only wanted to buy truce with the Islamic nations&#8211;never peace. It is an endless case of appeasement that puts Neville Chamberlain to shame.</p>
<p>As I have said before, and as history proves conclusively and invariably, Islam does not recognize pluralism, and Islam never wants a lasting peace with any non-Islamic people or states. When Muslims are in a relatively weak position they may offer truce&#8211;a temporary agreement&#8211;but never lasting peace. Even a cursory study of the treaties made by Muhammad proves at once that every Islamic treaty is merely another tactic toward ultimate conquest and domination. He set the standard for using treaties as a path to conquest.</p>
<p>Since then, Islam has been waging a relentless war for the past 1,400 years against every non-Muslim within their reach. In the last century, technological advances have extended the reach of the Muslim world considerably. Anybody who believes that it&#8217;s suddenly going to change&#8211;for any reason, through any amount of &#8220;diplomacy&#8221;&#8211;is either grossly uninformed or delusional.</p>
<p>Islamic imperialists have no desire at all for peaceful coexistence with Israel. They want to annihilate the &#8220;Zionist Entity.&#8221; By the way, during the last 60 years, Israel has absorbed more than a million Sephardic Jews from Arab countries. The Arab nations, on the other hand, refuse to absorb two million Palestinians. It&#8217;s a sad irony that two million Palestinians are considered so important while at the same time the suffering inflicted upon 50 million Kurdish people by Muslim nations goes almost unnoticed, unremarked.</p>
<p>Muslims do not recognize the right to existence of either Israel or India. They simply consider them roadblocks to world conquest that need to be removed, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes. Universal Jihad is infinite, endless war against the infidel. It has been formally, blatantly declared. To the Muslim, Jewish Israel and Hindu India are nothing more than inferior infidel nation-states that must be torn down and brought under Islamic control.</p>
<p>Remember this: Kashmir was a Hindu land continuously for 5,000 years. That&#8217;s over twice as long as the time that has passed since the birth of Christ. Islam went there as an imperial force, subjugated the local people, and conquered them, both politically and demographically, after 5,000 years of Hindu peace and civilization. Hence, today the Kashmiri Hindus are refugees in their own land. They have been reduced to a minority.</p>
<p>It is not Kashmir alone. Now Muslims of India wants Mughalstan, the Land of Mugal empire. They want to build an Islamic state from Pakistan to Bangladesh that includes the entirety of north India.</p>
<p>Every year, we are paying Islamic tribute to Pakistan, Egypt, and Palestinians in hopes of maintaining a tenuous truce. We are not really giving them &#8220;aid.&#8221; It is nothing but Islamic tribute to keep them at bay.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s really too simple for anyone to try to complicate it: Islam wants the entire world to submit. India and Israel are simply two obstacles or roadblocks to that goal. If they can get Israel and India to disappear from the face of earth, Islamic Umma&#8211;community, or &#8220;nation&#8221; in the larger sense&#8211;would be one unified imperialism from Morocco to Indonesia. Then it would be Europe&#8217;s turn to be annihilated.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>How do we best win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in your opinion?</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> It can&#8217;t be overstated or said too many times that these are merely the current fronts of open conflict in Universal Jihad. In fact, it plays into the purposes of Universal Jihadists for the Western world to be fixated on isolated actions in various geographical locations, and thereby never see the bigger picture.</p>
<p>Universal Jihad is an ideology, a doctrine, that is fixed and unchanging. Waging battles of force and military action alone&#8211; especially on Islam&#8217;s home turf&#8211;and continuing to send troops out as reaction to the latest flare-ups or hot-spots in Islam&#8217;s endless war will never succeed. Never.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s also why the idea of a &#8220;War on Terror&#8221; is absurd. Terrorism is nothing more than one of the many technique and tactics used to advance Islam&#8217;s political ideology. On this subject of terrorism, groups like the Taliban are a bunch of obedient foot soldiers. They are what Karl Marx called the &#8220;lumpen-proletariat.&#8221; Allow me to direct your attention to the fact that we never see Islamic Imams&#8211;religious leaders&#8211;blowing themselves up. If martyrdom is such a high holy act, as Islam&#8217;s leaders preach, why aren&#8217;t they the ones strapping on the explosives? It&#8217;s a curious case of &#8220;do as I say, not as I do.&#8221;</p>
<p>Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan form the Axis of Universal Jihad. Unless and until we address the leaders of this Axis of Jihad, and the militaristic ideology of world domination that is their chief export, there is no possibility for peace in the future for humanity.</p>
<p>The real power behind Universal Jihad, in all of its manifestations, lies with the Pakistani ISI&#8211;the intelligence services of Pakistan&#8211;along with the Pakistani military, the Pakistani feudal elite, and the Islamic theological leaders. As a nation-state, Pakistan exists for two reasons: its pathological hatred of India and Hindus, and its parasitic dependence on American aid. Their leaders&#8217; battle cry is always &#8220;Islam in danger&#8221; when they want to stoke the fires of Jihad, and of course Muslims are commanded by the Quran to go forth immediately when called to fight by their Islamic leaders.</p>
<p>Make no mistake: you can only solve the problem of Afghanistan when you address the problem of Pakistan, because Afghanistan is a client state of Pakistan. And you can only solve the problem of Pakistan when you address the problem of Saudi Arabia, because Pakistan is a client state of Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>The Pakistanis are being sponsored by the hedonistic rulers of Saudi Arabia. Saudi rulers are materialistic hedonists in their practice, but preach Wahabi Islamic fundamentalist doctrine to the world.</p>
<p>The bottom-line is this: The hedonist Saudi ruling elite form the epicenter for global terrorism, because it is they who fund all mosques and madrasas around the world&#8211;and that includes the United States.</p>
<p>They export oil and worldwide Islamic fundamentalist revolution.</p>
<p>That fundamentalist revolution is Universal Jihad, and its entire force comes solely from its ideology, an ideology that was born right in the deserts of Saudi   Arabia. Therefore, the only real war, and the war that is winnable, is against the ideology that is the doctrine of Universal Jihad.</p>
<p>All three of these nations that make up the Axis of Jihad are ready for internal revolutions. We, the West, are not taking advantage of that situation.</p>
<p>In Iran, for example, a majority of the Iranian population is under 25 years old. They were born after the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. All of those young men and women are ready to be liberated from the totalitarianism that prevails at the hands of the Ayatollahs. We must appeal to their reason and their own human desire for freedom, liberty, and the right to free will.</p>
<p>Similarly, the Saudi regime is ready to collapse because of its own corrupt system. It is beginning to come under assault from Islamic fundamentalists for its hedonistic life style. Instead of kowtowing to the Saudis, we should be shining a bright light on the rampant hypocrisy.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What do we do then to confront Jihad effectively?</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> To reach a lasting solution to Universal Jihad, and to all the violence and terror and misery it causes throughout the world, the goal of the Western world should be to demilitarize, secularize, and democratize the Axis of Jihad. Anything short of that goal is like putting a band-aid on leprosy. For starters, we should do the following things:</p>
<p>1. Stop all immigration from the Axis of Jihad nations.</p>
<p>2. Stop paying Islamic tribute&#8211;so-called &#8220;aid&#8221;&#8211;to Pakistan, Egypt and the Palestinians.</p>
<p>3. Support those moderate, secular, Muslims&#8211;there are many—against theological fundamentalists.</p>
<p>4. Build a United Front of Victims of Jihad. That is where Jew and Gentile, Saxon and Slav, Hindu and Buddhist, Norwegian and Nigerian, Catholic and Protestant, Evangelical and Orthodox, have common ground. All can unite to contain the extremist ideology, because all historically have been victims of Universal Jihad.</p>
<p>The United   States and Israel have many allies and friends in this cause. All we have to do is look around.</p>
<p>Together, there are many ways we can fight the ideological war and win it with reason, and with appeal to the human quest for freedom. That is our strongest ally.</p>
<p>The first ideological hurdle to overcome is a clear recognition by our own leaders that the only real enemy is Universal Jihad and the three seats of its power: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. It is an existential crisis for all non-Muslim nations, and for all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world. This transcends all ethnic, cultural, religious, and political boundaries. Islamic imperialism draws no distinctions between &#8220;infidels.&#8221; Until we win this war, we are all targets for takeover.<br />
<strong><br />
FP: </strong>You mention immigration. Expand on your<strong> </strong>thoughts on demographics when it comes to Islam.<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<strong>Kumar:</strong> Demographic conquest is the most permanent form of Islamic conquest. Before the expansionism of Islam, by force and infusion, Egypt, North Africa, and the southern coast of the Mediterranean were Christian. There was a Buddhist monastery in Alexandria, Egypt. Turkey was Buddhist and Christian. Persia&#8211;now Iran&#8211;was Zoroastrian. The Hindu culture covered an area of the world twice as large as it is now.</p>
<p>The fatal flaw of every one of these nations that has fallen before Islamic invasion has been to open its arms to Islam, only to be stabbed in the back.</p>
<p>Islam primarily is a political and military doctrine, dedicated to world conquest, that wears the cloak of religion. The religious cloak is the Trojan Horse it uses to infiltrate the cultures and nations and civilizations it seeks to destroy and replace with Islamic totalitarianism.</p>
<p>Liberals and progressives in those target nation-states become the water-carriers for Islam&#8217;s demographic tactics, demanding that immigrant Muslims be granted all the &#8220;rights&#8221; they need to kill off the host country and take over. The irony is that the liberals who tout the Islamic cause are the first victims when Sharia takes its grip around the throat of a nation. But this appeal to liberals for sympathy and support is a key part of Islam&#8217;s ideological war.</p>
<p>Unrestrained legal and illegal immigration is tearing apart the very fabric of Europe and the United States and Canada. To survive, the West must ban immigration from all Muslim nations where Sharia is the law of the land. The only exceptions should be apostates and refugees from Islam. We must pass laws to denaturalize and deport all those advocates of Sharia from the West. Europe is already becoming Eurabia, and in Europe multiculturalism means submitting to Islamic supremacy.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Your perspective on Islam&#8217;s dualistic ethics?</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> The Quran, the Islamic holy book, has two sets of ethics. One set of ethics is for believers, the other set of ethics for the Kaffirs&#8211;their name for infidels, non-Muslims. The Quran has no good news for the infidel.</p>
<p>In Islam ethics are based upon a simple formula: &#8220;good&#8221; is whatever advances the cause of Islam, and &#8220;evil&#8221; is whatever resists the cause of Islam.</p>
<p>In Islam, all Muslims are brothers who should be kind and honest to each other. But Allah hates the infidel; Allah plots against the infidel, so Muslims should, too. Over 60% of the Quran is devoted to the Kaffir, and every mention is negative, demeaning, insulting, or hateful. It teaches war in the name of peace, hate in the name of love.</p>
<p>&#8220;Ethics&#8221; in Islam is an ideology of double standards, internally warring dichotomies, and endless contradictions. Even its own Imams war among themselves on what is correct &#8220;interpretation.&#8221; That is why it can be fought with reason and overcome.<br />
<strong><br />
FP</strong>: Let’s finish up by talking some more about what can be done. Expand on<strong> </strong>the best way that free peoples who want to remain free can defend themselves against Sharia and Islamic Jihad. What is the wrong way to do it? What are the consequences?</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> The wrong way to do it is for the liberal media and politicians to keep inhaling the opiate of Islamic propaganda about &#8220;peace, peace, peace, peace be upon you,&#8221; and blowing that toxic smoke all over the world. If we don&#8217;t shake them out of their narcoleptic slumber, their own children, or their children&#8217;s children&#8211;and ours as well&#8211;are going to be bowing in submission before the tyranny of Islamic domination and Sharia law on our own soil.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s how the liberals and progressives can help: they should start an organization like the Peace Corps, called Free Americans for Islamic Rehabilitation&#8211;F.A.I.R.&#8211;that sends volunteers to all Islamic nations to demand tolerance and equal rights in those nations for all other religions, for women, for minorities, and for homosexuals. Now there would be true liberalism in action. We&#8217;ll see how far they get putting their money where their mouth is in an Islamic nation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, those of us who are already awake have got to energetically build a coalition of free nations and people around the globe, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, politics, or religion, and begin an information campaign that is more relentless and eternal than Universal Jihad. That sums up why I am running for Congress. I want to help build that coalition and help raise people&#8217;s awareness.</p>
<p>Our leaders have to come to grips with the fact that the seats of power of Universal Jihad are Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. These are the command centers. They are openly declared enemies of every principle our nation was founded upon. We must treat them as such, or Universal Jihad will continue unabated around the world, flaring up endlessly as we pour more money and innocent blood down the drain.</p>
<p>We can win this war, and we can win it decisively, but we have got to recognize and name the true enemies of mankind and freedom, and take effective action in combating the ideology that drives them. Right now, our own State Department and government agencies are spending enormous amounts of dollars and energy defending the very ideology that wants to wipe them and our whole form of government from the face of the earth!</p>
<p>This is why I say repeatedly, as a central part of my campaign, and why I fully believe that war against Universal Jihadists can be won globally in less than five years, that it can be won for less than one billion dollars, and that can be won without any more loss of American or Western lives.<em><br />
</em></p>
<p>There are two great forces at work in this war. One is the totalitarian ideology of Islamic theocracy, which permits of no separation of church and state, no true freedom of thought, freedom of speech, or equal rights under the law. The other is our own  Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, which proclaim and guarantee human freedom, sovereignty, dignity, and basic inalienable human rights.</p>
<p>These two ideologies are diametrically and irrevocably and irreconcilably opposed. It is a war of ideas. It is a war of philosophies. They are mutually exclusive. One of them is going to win over the other.</p>
<p>Which will it be?</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Vijay Kumar, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
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		<title>Jihad Against the West: Our Fault?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/jihad-against-the-west-our-fault/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jihad-against-the-west-our-fault</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/jihad-against-the-west-our-fault/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:06:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[U.S. government radio endorses Islamist narrative.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/jihad.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55360" title="jihad" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/jihad.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="307" /></a></p>
<p>VOA News last Thursday published a ridiculous article that, unfortunately, reflects all-too-common assumptions: “<a href="http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/religion/President-Obama-Seeks-to-Bridge-Differences-with-Islam-88480137.html">President Obama Seeks to Bridge Differences with Islam</a>,” by Jerome Socolovsky. It begins:</p>
<blockquote><p>U.S. President Barack Obama has again postponed his trip to Indonesia because of pressing issues in the U.S. The trip is part of his ongoing effort to reach out to Muslims worldwide. Last year, he gave a speech in Cairo that was considered a landmark in the effort to bridge differences between Islam and the West. Many Muslims believe he should do more [sic]</p></blockquote>
<p>No one seems to think that Muslims have any responsibility to “bridge differences between Islam and the West.” No, everyone, from Barack Obama to Jerome Socolovsky, and everyone in between, knows that the conflict is all the West’s fault. Note how Jerome Socolovsky frames the conflict:</p>
<blockquote><p>Frictions between Islam and the West often flare up &#8211; like when when a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed &#8211; or when Muslim girls in Europe went to school wearing veils, or new minarets in Switzerland were banned.</p></blockquote>
<p>Note that he mentions nothing about, say, “frictions” “flaring up” when Muslims, acting in the name of Islam and jihad, <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/02/army-ignored-warning-signs-from-fort-hood-jihadist-because-it-valued-the-diversity-of-having-a-musli.html">murder thirteen Americans in cold blood at Fort Hood</a>, or <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/01/little-rock-shooter-attack-was-justified-according-to-islamic-laws-and-the-islamic-religion-jihad---.html">murder two American soldiers in Little Rock, Arkansas</a>, or <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/12/soldier-of-islam-guilty-in-seattle-jihad-murders.html">murder one and wound five in a Jewish Community Center in Seattle</a>, or <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/05/letters-from-a-mujahid.html">plow into a crowd of students, trying to murder as many as possible, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina</a>. Etc.</p>
<p>No, none of that makes “frictions” “flare up.” Instead, “frictions” only “flare up” when a Danish newspaper has the temerity to publish cartoons of the “Prophet Mohammed” &#8212; as the mainstream media universally designates him these days, as if we’re all Muslims now. Jerome Socolovsky gives no hint that he, or any reasonable person, may think that it’s sheer madness or worse to go around murdering innocent people, or even demanding free speech restrictions, because of a few cartoons. As far as he is concerned, the cartoons &#8212; not Islamic jihad mass murders &#8212; make “frictions” “flare up.”</p>
<p>And as if cartoons of Muhammad weren’t bad enough, Europeans &#8212; xenophobic and benighted as ever &#8212; get angry when “Muslim girls in Europe went to school wearing veils.” See how Jerome Socolovsky loads the dice? No mention of jihad terror attacks &#8212; oh, no. Instead, “frictions” only “flare up” when poor little Muslim girls in Europe simply want to live according to the tenets of their own culture. How cruel and ethnocentric those Europeans are! They even banned “new minarets in Switzerland” &#8212; no mention, of course, of how much more severely restricted is non-Islamic religious practice all over the Islamic world.</p>
<p>And then there comes this sage observation:</p>
<blockquote><p>The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have also complicated America’s relationship with the Islamic world.</p></blockquote>
<p>As longtime Jihad Watch readers know, I have never favored the foredoomed democracy projects-cum-social work exercises in Iraq or Afghanistan, but Jerome Socolovsky’s assumption here seems to be that the adventures in both countries were some kind of unprovoked provocation. He makes no mention of 9/11, or of the Taliban’s depredations, or of Saddam Hussein’s reckless belligerence.</p>
<blockquote><p>Last year, President Obama went to Cairo hoping to change that. He extended the traditional Muslim greeting, and said while he is a Christian, his father’s family includes generations of Muslims. “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning, between the United States and Muslims around the world,” he said.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>He declared that the U.S. is not at war with Islam, but is against violent extremists who exploit the tensions between Islam and the West.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Those tensions go all the way back to the Crusades &#8211; when Christian armies invaded the Holy Land.</p></blockquote>
<p>True to form, Jerome Socolovsky makes no mention of the 450 years of jihad attacks that had conquered and Islamized over half of Christendom long before the first Crusade was even called, and to which the Crusades were a late and small-scale defensive reaction.</p>
<blockquote><p>But there have also been times of harmony like in medieval Spain&#8230;.</p></blockquote>
<p>Even Maria Rosa Menocal, in her hagiographical book <em>The Ornament of the World</em>, admits that “times of harmony” went only so far in Muslim Spain, which institutionalized discrimination against Jewish and Christian dhimmis: “The dhimmi, as these covenanted peoples were called, were granted religious freedom, not forced to convert to Islam. They could continue to be Jews and Christians, and, as it turned out, they could share in much of Muslim social and economic life. In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax &#8212; no Muslims paid taxes and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals.” (Pp. 72-3)</p>
<p>So much for a paradise of tolerance and multiculturalism. Historian Kenneth Baxter Wolf observes that “much of this new legislation aimed at limiting those aspects of the Christian cult which seemed to compromise the dominant position of Islam.” After enumerating a list of laws much like Menocal’s, he adds: “Aside from such cultic restrictions most of the laws were simply designed to underscore the position of the dimmîs as second-class citizens.”</p>
<p>But Jerome Socolovsky, ignorant of all this, goes on to say that Obama needs to hop to it, abandoning Israel and stopping defending ourselves against the global jihad:</p>
<blockquote><p>Professor Ahmad El Tayeb of Al Azhar University in Cairo said the President’s speech there was a landmark. “I was there, and I admired that speech very much. But we are still waiting to see practical results,” he said.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>He says the U.S. shouldn’t side with Israel or fight wars in Muslim countries&#8230;.</p></blockquote>
<p>Yeah, that’ll fix it.</p>
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		<title>Newsweek Declares the End of War on Terror</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/liz-blaine/newsweek-declares-the-end-of-war-on-terror/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=newsweek-declares-the-end-of-war-on-terror</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/liz-blaine/newsweek-declares-the-end-of-war-on-terror/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Liz Blaine]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Welcome to the distorted world of Newsweek editor and CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/fareed.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-53533" title="fareed" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/fareed.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="338" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/">Newsreal</a></strong></p>
<p>Is the War on Terror over? According to “post-American” progressive, Newsweek editor and CNN commentator <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/search/?cx=013255222075609514560%3Avfcebs4vcuo&amp;q=Fareed+Zakaria&amp;cof=FORID%3A11&amp;cx=013255222075609514560%3Avfcebs4vcuo#998">Fareed Zakaria</a>, it is. After telling Americans last year to “<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093" target="_blank">learn to live with radical Islam</a>,”he now declares <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=107&amp;type=issue">Islamist extremism</a> to be defeated, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/233607/page/1" target="_blank">proclaiming</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“The enemy is not vast; the swamp is being drained. <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6211">Al Qaeda</a> has already lost in the realm of ideology. What remains is the battle to defeat it in the nooks, crannies, and crevices of the real world.”</p>
<p>“The focus of our concern now is not a broad political movement but a handful of fanatics scattered across the globe.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Indeed the changing composition of Islamic extremism does present  individuals not clearly affiliated with any established group, most notably <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2433">Nidal Malik Hasan</a>, the Fort Hood shooter, and <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/No%20Civilian%20Trials%20for%20Terrorists.html">Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab</a>, the Christmas day bomber. But despite the existence of independent radicals, Zakaria’s feint of immateriality belies the inherent risks of the continued existence of groups with extreme and violent ideology.</p>
<p>In his article, subtitled, &#8220;<em><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/233607/page/1">How moderate Muslim leaders waged war on extremists – and won</a></em>,&#8221; Zakaria reduces the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=91&amp;type=issue">War on Terror</a> to “good foreign policy” in need of “politics, diplomacy, and development” exemplifying the September 10th mentality that  viewed <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=220">terrorism</a> strictly as an international and foreign policy issue.</p>
<p>Post <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=146&amp;type=issue">9/11</a>, we recognize that terrorism is more than a foreign policy issue, it’s a foreign<em> </em>and domestic <em>security</em> <em>threat</em>. Since 9/11, there have been 14,942 deadly Islamist attacks worldwide (<a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks-2001-2003.htm">2001-2003</a>, <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks-2004.htm">2004</a>, <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks-2005.htm">2005</a>, <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks-2006.htm">2006</a>, <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks-2007.htm">2007</a>, <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks-2008.htm">2008</a>, <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks-2009.htm">2009</a>, <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/">2010</a>.) Zakaria’s suggestion that a change in tone, attitude, and openness will eliminate any remaining Islamist terrorists ignores the reality that if they are willing to kill their<em> own</em> children by letting them detonate suicide bombs, then they will also be willing to kill <em>our</em> children for their misguided cause. In the words of <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/1799/the-war-of-ideas-ends-in-bizarro-world">IPT News</a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>“For such a highly influential commentator to foster this sense of complacency is irresponsible and negligent.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The fact that radical Islamists <em>do</em> send their children to blow themselves up in the name of Islam is so at odds with the following statement Zakaria makes that one has to wonder <em>why</em> he would assert,</p>
<blockquote><p>“The most important moderates to denounce militants have been the families of radicals. In the case of both the five young American Muslims from Virginia arrested in Pakistan last year and Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, parents were the ones to report their worries about their own children to the U.S. government.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Unless it’s part of a calculated distraction, someone of Fareed Zakaria’s  intelligence should be loath to cite<em> two</em> examples of parents turning in their children to authorities as <em>proof</em> of moderate Muslims defeating Islamist extremists. The only Islamic states he cites proving his thesis are Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Iraq, all hotbeds of radical extremists who despite overt declarations of opposition to extremism may very well be covertly  provisioning weapons, financing, or logistical support to them. But Zakaria’s article is not written to support his thesis, but rather his political ideology. And here’s where we find the money quote. Zakaria stealthily injects the true reason we <em>believe</em> Islamist jihadism is widespread,</p>
<blockquote><p>“Republicans have clearly decided that fanning the public’s fears of rampant <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=124&amp;type=issue">jihadism</a> continues to be a winning strategy.”</p></blockquote>
<p>How Republicans manage to be introduced into an article focused on the defeat of radical Islamists by moderate Muslims is almost inconceivable. But Zakaria’s point was never to support his thesis, but to insinuate that radical jihadism only exists out of fear and that fear is spread by Republicans. In Zakaria’s ideology, 19 terrorists crashing airplanes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA in no way demonstrates radical Islamist extremism. But his obtuse logic is defied by the facts, and the War on Terror goes on.</p>
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		<title>Blinded by Hate</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/blinded-by-hate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=blinded-by-hate</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:05:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Palestinians' support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda explains much about the failures of the "peace process."
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PalestinianProtest.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49411" title="PalestinianProtest" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PalestinianProtest-300x239.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="239" /></a></p>
<p>For anyone wishing to understand the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process,” as well as the persistence of extremist and anti-Semitic views in that part of the world, the latest Pew Research Center report on attitudes in the Arab and Muslim world makes for must-reading. (A <a href="http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1486/survey-muslim-nations-middle-east-political-leaders-hamas-hezbollah?src=prc-latest&amp;proj=peoplepress">summary</a> of the report can be found here and the full report <a href="http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/268.pdf">here</a>.)</p>
<p>The report is based on a survey that the Pew Center’s Global Attitudes Project conducted from May 18 to June 16 last year. It begins by saying that “across predominantly Muslim nations, there is little enthusiasm for the extremist Islamic organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, although there are pockets of support for both groups, especially in the Middle East.” What the Pew Center calls “little enthusiasm,” however, is in most cases quite considerable enthusiasm.</p>
<p>True, in Turkey Hamas gets only a 5% “favorable” rating and Hezbollah only 3%. But the next-lowest ratings are in Lebanon, where 30% approve of Hamas and 35% of Hezbollah—substantial proportions considering that both are terrorist organizations. And regarding Hezbollah, Lebanese Shiites and Sunnis are, not surprisingly, sharply split, with 97% of Shiites seeing the Shiite terror group favorably and only 2% of Sunnis.</p>
<p>As for the Palestinians, when it comes to the most extreme organizations and leaders, only in the case of Hamas—paradoxically—do they trail behind some other nationalities. Some 44% of Palestinians view Hamas favorably; the group does better both in Jordan (56%) and Egypt (52%). That this has something to do with Palestinians’ direct experience of Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, is suggested by the fact that Hamas actually came in less popular in Gaza (37%) than in the West Bank (47%).</p>
<p>When it comes to Hezbollah, though, the overwhelmingly Sunni Palestinians are ahead of the pack with a 61% approval rating for this Shiite outfit; the next highest are in Jordan (51%) and Egypt (43%). It is no secret that Hezbollah has many admirers, cutting across Sunni-Shiite divides, for its perceived military successes against Israel; that its cachet is particularly strong for the Palestinians, though, is consistent with other findings of the survey.</p>
<p>The survey not only gauged attitudes toward organizations but also toward various leaders, including six Arab and Muslim leaders among whom the most extreme were Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Osama bin Laden. Nasrallah – who has said that “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide” – scored highest among the Palestinians with 65% expressing confidence in him; next came the Jordanians (a majority of whom, it should be noted, are also Palestinians) at 56%, with Nasrallah’s own Lebanese compatriots a fairly distant third at 37%.</p>
<p>As for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president who has said Israel “must be wiped off the map,” he, too, did best among the Palestinians at 45%, edging out Indonesia at 43%, with the next highest scores in Arab countries being Jordan and Lebanon both at 32%.</p>
<p>And as for Osama bin Laden himself, here the Palestinians were almost his greatest fans at 51%, far ahead of the next group—again the Jordanians—at 28%; only among Nigerian Muslims (excluding Nigerian Christians) did the Al Qaeda leader do a bit better at 54%.</p>
<p>The survey also gauged Muslims’ attitude toward religious groups, including Jews. Here, at least, the Palestinians can’t be accused of being ahead of the rest. Ninety-five percent of Egyptians, 97% of Jordanians, 98% of Lebanese, and 97% of Palestinians registered an unfavorable view of Jews; among non-Arab Muslims—Turkey 73%, Indonesia 74%, Pakistan 78%—the rates were only somewhat lower.</p>
<p>Although the findings on Palestinian attitudes and general Arab anti-Semitism are not much different from previous Pew Center surveys, perhaps it is time to take more note of them—especially as hands are being wrung about the hiatus in the “peace process” with the Palestinians. In that connection Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, is <a href="http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=168068">quoted</a> as saying that “Since there are no prospects of talks on the horizon, and in many ways what their efforts wrought was a wasted year without any negotiations, I believe the [U.S.] administration deserves an ‘F’ for failure to deliver on results.”</p>
<p>It is odd that Foxman, head of an organization devoted to fighting anti-Jewish and other forms of bigotry, apparently sees “peace with the Palestinians” as such a feasible goal. But there is no need to single Foxman out, as his fallacy is widespread.</p>
<p>It is true that Israel has a limited but valuable peace with Egypt and Jordan, no less monolithically anti-Semitic than the Palestinians. That the Palestinians, however, show such high enthusiasm for the likes of Hezbollah, Nasrallah, Ahmadinejad, and Bin Laden gives a better clue as to why “peace” keeps running aground than all the anguished analyses of supposedly failed diplomacy.</p>
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		<title>How a “Nice American Girl” Became a Jihadist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/phyllis-chesler/how-a-%e2%80%9cnice-american-girl%e2%80%9d-became-a-jihadist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-a-%25e2%2580%259cnice-american-girl%25e2%2580%259d-became-a-jihadist</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:04:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Phyllis Chesler]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Dr. Aafia Siddiqui learned to hate America, hate Jews, and hate Israel right here in liberal America.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/aafia-siddiqui1.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48882" title="aafia-siddiqui1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/aafia-siddiqui1-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/">Pajamas</a></strong></p>
<p>She studied at MIT and at Brandeis where she received a Ph.D in Neuroscience. Thus, she was both an educated and in some sense, a westernized woman. Both her Pakistani-born father and Pakistani husband are physicians who trained in the West, in England and America, respectively; her brother and sister are also highly trained professionals. Nevertheless, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui learned to hate America, hate Jews, and hate Israel right here in liberal America.</p>
<p>Like a small but increasing number of “westernized” Muslim women, Aafia Siddiqui joined her local mosque (in her case, the <a href="http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/whos_afraid_of_aafia_siddiqui/">Roxbury, MA mosque</a>) and started to veil, and as she did, her ambitions became aggressively jihadic. This is not a contradiction. Obediently veiled Muslim women can be very aggressive, murderously so. They certainly police other women in savage and self-righteous ways in Iran and Indonesia. In Iraq, veiled Muslim women have <a href="http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/female-suicide-bombers-kill-47-in-iraq-fourth-lead_10077011.html">blown up other Muslim female religious pilgrims</a>. And, Muslim women who were normatively spurned by their mothers were manipulated by Samira Jassim, an attentive, “loving” Iraqi mother-figure, who carefully <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/female_suicide_bombe_1.php">turned them into suicide killers</a>.</p>
<p>Women are very aggressive—but usually towards other women. I have written about this in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556529465/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&amp;pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&amp;pf_rd_t=201&amp;pf_rd_i=1560253517&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_r=0YH8ZZFRJ6ES9NP6JBDX">Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman</a></em>. Traditionally, women do not go up against men whom they view as their potential protectors and as more powerful than they are. Ironically, Islamic jihad wishes to reverse, upend, both Nature and human evolutionary history. Just as normatively degraded mothers are “turned” into hero-mothers who publicly praise their suicide killer sons—just so, are normatively self-hating women “turned” into Al-Qaeda heroines who not only directly attack men, but who directly attack infidel male <em>soldiers</em>.</p>
<p><strong>To continue reading this article, <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2010/02/04/how-a-%E2%80%9Cnice-american-girl%E2%80%9D-became-a-jihadist-dr-siddiqui-found-guilty/">click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Mark Steyn: Obama is talking the talk &#8211; Washington Times</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/mark-steyn-obama-is-talking-the-talk-washington-times/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mark-steyn-obama-is-talking-the-talk-washington-times</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:24:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48407</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The world turns. In Indonesia, the principal of a Muslim boarding school in Tangerang who is accused of impregnating a 15-year-old student says the DNA test will prove that a malevolent genie is the real father. In New Zealand, a German tourist, Hans Kurt Kubus, has been jailed for attempting to board a plane at [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The world turns. In Indonesia, the principal of a Muslim boarding school in Tangerang who is accused of impregnating a 15-year-old student says the DNA test will prove that a malevolent genie is the real father.</p>
<p>In New Zealand, a German tourist, Hans Kurt Kubus, has been jailed for attempting to board a plane at Christchurch with 44 live lizards in his underpants.</p>
<p>In Britain, a research team at King&#8217;s College, London, has declared that the female &#8220;G-spot&#8221; doesn&#8217;t exist.</p>
<p>In France, a group of top gynecologists dismissed the findings, asking, &#8220;What do you expect if you ask Englishmen to find a woman&#8217;s erogenous zone?&#8221;</p>
<p>But in America, Barack Obama is talking.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/29/talking-the-talk/">STEYN: Talking the talk &#8211; Washington Times</a>.</p>
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		<title>Brown’s National Security Victory</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/brown%e2%80%99s-national-security-victory/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=brown%25e2%2580%2599s-national-security-victory</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:27:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Massachusetts voters reject treating our terrorist enemies like common criminals. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47474" title="Democrats' Bad Week" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/brown1.jpg" alt="Democrats' Bad Week" width="450" height="323" /></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a columnist for <em>National Review</em>. His book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Willful-Blindness-Andrew-C-Mccarthy/dp/1594032653/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1262125302&amp;sr=8-4">Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad</a> </em>(Encounter Books, 2008), has just been released in paperback with a new preface. Check out <a href="http://www.encounterbooks.com/">a description</a> from Encounter Books.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47525" title="andymccarthy" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/andymccarthy.jpg" alt="andymccarthy" width="320" height="240" /></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Andy McCarthy, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>I would like to talk to you today about Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts and how it was the issue of national-security that put Brown over Coakley.</p>
<p>Can you talk a bit about that? The people seemed to have cared about terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants, yes?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>McCarthy:</strong> Jamie, great to be here as always.  And you’re right.  The Brown campaign’s internal polling told them something very interesting.  While it’s true that healthcare is what nationalized the election and riveted everyone’s attention to it, it was the national security issues that put real distance between the two candidates in the mind of the electorate—in blue Massachusetts of all places.  Sen.-elect Brown was able to speak forcefully and convincingly on issues like treating our jihadist enemies as combatants rather than mere defendants, about killing terrorists and preventing terrorism rather than contenting ourselves with prosecutions after Americans have been killed, about tough interrogation when necessary to save innocent lives.  Martha Coakley, by contrast, had to try to defend the indefensible, which is Obama-style counterterrorism.  It evidently made a huge difference to voters.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What do you think of how Bush was treated on this whole issue?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>As many of us predicted during the Bush years when the president was being hammered by the Left and the press, history is treating him much more kindly on the national security front.  His movement of the country to a war-footing rather than treating international terrorism as a criminal justice matter was common sense, but common sense cuts against the Washington grain so it took a strong president to do it.  Now, on issue after issue, he is being vindicated—he and Vice President Cheney, who has become the country’s leading voice on national security, after spending years being vilified.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What role did McCain play?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy:</strong> Sen. McCain is, as ever, a mixed bag.  He’s recently been very good on the need to treat the enemy as an enemy, not as a defendant. So that was helpful to Brown. But it can’t be forgotten that McCain was the force behind the libel of Bush as a torture monger and the consequent ruination of our interrogation policy.  And it was the “McCain Amendment” that gave us, as a matter of law, the extension of Fifth Amendment rights to our enemies overseas, which has had awful ramifications even outside the issue of interrogation practices. McCain is responsible for a lot of the fodder that made Obama possible.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What lessons should Republicans take from Brown’s success?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>McCarthy:</strong> These national security positions resonate with voters.  Healthcare, TARP, and the economic issues in general are very important, but they’re complex and make people’s eyes glaze over sometimes.  The national defense issues, besides being the most important ones confronted by a political community, are comparatively easy to wrap your brain around.  And strong, unapologetic national defense in a time of terrorist threat is appealing to voters.  So we should be arguing these issues forcefully, and not worry about the fact that the left-wing legacy media will say nasty things about us.  Their instinctive America-bashing is why they are speaking to—or, better, speaking <em>at</em>—a steadily decreasing audience.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> The Left pretends that its positions in how to confront terror (or not to) are somehow founded on the Constitution. What’s the mindset here?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy:</strong> Yes, because they reject the foundational fact that the Constitution is a compact between the <em>American people</em> and the government they created.  They think every person on planet earth is an American waiting to happen, born with the full panoply of American constitutional rights that can be asserted against the American people.  And they think the courts, rather than being a peer branch of our government, stand over and above our government:  a forum where the rest of the world, including enemies of the United States, is invited to make its case against the United States.  That’s a warped understanding of the Constitution.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What hope does Brown’s victory give? What do you think Obama, Holder and Napolitano are thinking – or not thinking?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>Well, I think it’s Brown combined with what’s happened in New Jersey and Virginia, with Obama’s plunging numbers, the unpopularity of the Democrats’ healthcare, employment and national-security policies, and the disgusting wheeling-and-dealing the supposedly “transparent” Left is doing behind close doors (i.e., not on C-SPAN). All these things give hope that freedom is on the march, that people are broadly rejecting statism.  But I don’t think Obama is a normal politician and that his administration is a conventional “let’s modulate to remain viable” administration.</p>
<p>Enacting their agenda is more important to them than being reelected, and they are not to be underestimated.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Why do you think that when I see or think about Janet Napolitano I am engulfed with a profound sense of doom and despair?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy:</strong> Well, if I have this right, she is an official who is in charge of securing the homeland but &#8212; after ballyhooed, years-long investigations, including by the 9/11 Commissions &#8212; she didn&#8217;t know how the 9/11 hijackers got here, thought they snuck in from Canada, and believes that what they did when they got here was a &#8220;man-caused disaster&#8221; that had nothing to do with jihadist ideology (indeed, she thinks that saying &#8220;jihadist&#8221; is problematic). She does see ideology as a problem, of course, but only if it is &#8230; <em>conservative</em> ideology.  That is, she thinks the <em>real </em>terror threat comes from people with radical ideas like limited government, the sanctity of life, and the Second Amendment &#8212; especially if they&#8217;re military vets who&#8217;ve served in George Bush&#8217;s wars of aggression. And she is in charge of enforcing the immigration laws but wasn&#8217;t aware that entering the country illegally is a criminal offense.</p>
<p>I can&#8217;t imagine why you&#8217;d have a problem with any of that, Jamie.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Who needs horror movies or a tragic film to make you cry when you have things like this to think about?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Well, let’s move on:</p>
<p>What was this whole thing about Brown’s pick-up truck and Obama making fun of it? I thought Obama represented the common man?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>McCarthy:</strong> This president has lived a very different kind of life from most Americans.  He lived his early, formative years in Indonesia, a majority-Muslim police state. After he returned to America at age ten or so, he dove into the fever-swamps of the Left and was steeped in the cynicism and nihilism of Saul Alinsky. For years, he&#8217;s surrounded himself with fawning sycophants who&#8217;ve told him he&#8217;s &#8220;The One.&#8221; And he&#8217;s extremely insulated from the real world of everyday Americans.  I don&#8217;t think the sudden burst of Obama-style populism is going to fly &#8212; and going after Brown&#8217;s pick-up is a good indication of why.  He thinks people who like their pick-up trucks are bitter-clingers.  Actually, they&#8217;re Americans.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Brown vs. Obama, 2012?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>I don’t think we should get ahead of ourselves.  Brown’s an impressive, talented guy, but he’s also someone no one outside of Massachusetts had heard of until a few short weeks ago.  But this does underscore something I’ve been saying for a long time.  As late as 1991, few people really knew who Bill and Hillary Clinton were, and yet they’ve towered over our politics from 1992 forward.  The world changed on a dime on 9/11.</p>
<p>A year ago today, with Pres. Obama just inaugurated and with the Democrats having wide margins in Congress, the Republican party seemed dead and even conservative intellectuals were telling us we had to abandon Reagan conservatism—the conservatism that’s leading us out of the woods.  This is all a long-winded way of saying:  We may not yet know, even today, who the leaders will be when 2012 rolls around.  We’ve got a ton on our plate right now, and the unknown tomorrow.  You know the old saw, “You want to make God laugh—tell Him about your plans.”  Right now, I’m worried about today, and content to figure 2012 will take care of itself.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Well before we say goodbye for now, what is on your mind the most right now? What can you tell our readers that will give us all some hope that America, despite its current leadership, can prevail against the threats it faces?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>After slumbering for too long, the public &#8212; the great swath of Americans that is basically conservative, patriotic, and thinks the country is the best the world has ever known, not in dire need of transformative &#8220;change&#8221; &#8212; has asserted itself.  But even if he&#8217;s held to one term, Obama will leave us in a deep hole.  The reckless borrowing and spending would take decades to dig out of even if we stopped it tomorrow. There is a lot of mischief a sprawling executive bureaucracy can do in four years, and Obama is likely to stock the federal courts with very left-wing judges who will try to impose transnational progressivism by fiat if the Republicans don&#8217;t have the gumption to stop the president from appointing them.  And that last point is what I think about most.</p>
<p>The challenge for Republicans is not to win the next elections.  The smart Democrats have already factored elections in.  Obama Leftists are not conventional politicians. They are true-believers. Of course they hope their friends at ACORN and similar outfits will soften the blow come November.  But if not, they are willing to endure electoral losses for what they see as the greater good of using this one-time opportunity they have to transform this country radically.</p>
<p>Republicans don&#8217;t so much need a plan to win elections &#8212; the Democrats&#8217; statist policies and their irresponsible positions on national security will take care of that.  Stopping bad government is not enough. Republicans need a plan, after they win elections, to roll back what the Left has done and is doing.  That will require courage and skill.  I hope we have it, but I confess to worrying about whether we do.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Andy McCarthy, thank you, and a pleasure and honor as always to speak with you.</p>
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		<title>The Haze of Copenhagen &#8211; by Michael Reagan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/michael-reagan/the-haze-of-copenhagen-by-michael-reagan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-haze-of-copenhagen-by-michael-reagan</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:03:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Reagan]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the global climate conference is not in America’s interest. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42319" title="Protestors-carry-a-banner-010" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Protestors-carry-a-banner-010.jpg" alt="Protestors-carry-a-banner-010" width="481" height="312" /></p>
<p>Thousands are now gathered in Copenhagen to embark on an aggressive plan to reach a framework for reducing carbon emissions, with the goal of instituting a more formalized, binding agreement within six months.</p>
<p>Now, many others have rightly criticized and written on the faulty research used to support the panic of “global warming” and supposedly retreating icebergs. In the past two weeks, this justified skepticism has gained significant traction in light of the recently released “ClimateGate” e-mails, wherein researchers and peers of the notable Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University appear to concede that climate change is due to natural, not human, activity.</p>
<p>However, in this week’s column I want to pivot around that important debate for a minute to talk about the politics and economics of this week’s climate gathering.</p>
<p>Predictably, the United States is the main target of the thousands of protesters, media and conference participants &#8212; all more than willing to wave the finger of blame on our nation for all the world’s perceived climate ills. You see, folks in Beijing, Bandung and Bangalore all want the United States to accept stringent restrictions on her own industries without accepting even less stringent restrictions on their own countries.</p>
<p>In one of many possible examples, just Wednesday India reiterated its refusal to accept any sort of binding restrictions limiting carbon emissions for their country &#8212; while at the same time demanding an increase in proposed cutbacks for our country!</p>
<p>It seems as though negotiators are utterly ignoring the official projections from the Indian government which indicate that Indian emissions will triple or quadruple in the next 20 years, even as American emissions are projected to drop. Yet we&#8217;re not even asking for cuts in Indian emissions, just a slower rate of growth. In a similar position, Chinese leaders have been equally antagonistic to the United States.</p>
<p>Beyond even projections, this idea of the United States as the Great Polluter is increasingly less justified. In recent years, China has risen to become the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases. According to the World Bank, Indonesia clocks in at third, with India, Russia, and Japan also sitting at the top. The U.S. still ranks second, but is the only top-ranked country which has been curbing, rather than increasing, emissions of greenhouse gases.</p>
<p>At the same time, these nations expect astronomical levels of financial assistance from the same countries they claim are not doing enough. Developed, Western nations have proffered a significant $10 billion annually to aid new technologies and industrial developments in developing nations to help them implement emissions changes without severely damaging their economies. But these poorer nations insist that price tag is absurdly low &#8212; never mind the global economic recession which has hit Western nations the hardest.</p>
<p>I wonder if any of the 10 percent of Americans looking for jobs today or the millions of others simply trying to make ends meet really want their tax dollars to be directed to ensure that China, Indonesia or India’s economies remain stable while they implement tougher carbon restrictions based on faulty science.</p>
<p>Even if we were to accept the dubious scientific and environmental arguments which have sparked these Copenhagen negotiations, the idea that America should sign a binding legal treaty when other nations are given a free pass is absurd. Not only it is a blatant disregard of our sovereignty, but it would also only lead to the exporting of dirty jobs and industries to China and other privileged-status nations, boosting their economy at the expense of ours and doing nothing to accomplish the treaty’s environmental goals.</p>
<p>The United States must never allow other nations to dictate our interests and objectives. We can, and should, partner with the world in friendship, but all friendships have limits. If the developing nations of the world expect our help, they will have to do their part.</p>
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