Found on "Workers Liberty Online": Islamism and the New Arab Left

Islamism and the new Arab left: a critique of the SWP

By AWL Created 7 Jul 2009 - 3:15pm
Author: Sacha Ismail

NOTE: All external links added by me - please click them for further edification ~ BZ

On the last day of the SWP's Marxism 2009 event, AWL comrades attended a meeting on 'Islamism and the new Arab left'. The meeting was for the most part about Egypt and its Muslim Brotherhood movement; the speaker was Anne Alexander, one of the SWP's resident experts on the Middle East.

Listening to Alexander speak, you learned a lot of interesting facts. But the overall picture she presented was hopelessly mangled by the SWP's confused theorisation of political Islam. The political conclusions which it suggested - summed up by the phrase "with the Islamists sometimes" - are a variant of those which three decades ago led to catastrophe for the left and the working class in Iran.

Alexander quite explicitly built on the arguments made by Chris Harman in his pamphlet The Prophet and the Proletariat. According to this view, Islamism, as a cross-class, petty bourgeois-led movement, is "contradictory", simultaneously expressing a progressive or partially progressive critique of the brutality and dislocation of capitalist modernisation in the region (she described it as aiming to make modern civilisation "in some respects more human") and unable to genuinely confront imperialism and capitalism because it can never mobilise the working class and poor to 'go all the way'. In this sense it is comparable to other progressive petty bourgeois movements, national liberation movements for instance. While remaining critical and independent of all Islamists, we should distinguish between reformist and more revolutionary strands.

But what is progressive about the Islamist critique of capitalist modernity? Don't the Islamists aim to establish a society and state which, while still capitalist, are in almost all respects - democracy, freedom of speech and thought, the emancipation of women, sexual liberation, the ability of workers to organise - more reactionary and 'less human' than the society which they replace? (Which is quite something, when you consider that they are often in struggle against regimes such as the Shah of Iran or Mubarak's authoritarian pseudo-democracy in Egypt.)

Furthermore, the more radical Islamists, who will go further to confront the existing state, mobilising a mass movement to smash it, are in fact worse - since their 'radicalism' is in the service of reactionary goals, and their mass movement also smashes the working-class movement and the left. The Iranian counter-revolution of 1979 is a clear case in point.

It follows that we cannot relate to Islamist movements as we relate to movements whose basic goals are progressive (eg movements for the liberation of oppressed nations or social groups), let alone to working-class movements under reformist leadership. Rather we must relate to them as a consistently reactionary force which poses a huge threat to the working class and oppressed.

The structure of Anne Alexander's argument rested heavily on two supplementary points, both essentially 'straw men' arguments.

Firstly, she was at great pains to insist that Islamism is not fascist. As a flat statement, this is of course true; fascism arose in a specific context of relatively developed capitalist societies with powerful working-class movements. Alexander claimed that, while Islamists were in many cases hostile to working-class struggle, Islamism's "primary goal is not to smash the working class". I really don't see the value of this distinction, given that Islamism in power and on the ascent to power does destroy the organisations of the labour movement with a fascist-type thoroughness. Moreover, like fascism, it mobilises a mass movement of the poor and dispossessed (the unemployed, the impoverished petty bourgeoisie) to do so. It is fascistic - which is why SWP founder Tony Cliff described Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the main subject of Alexander's talk, as "clerical fascist" in 1946, and why Workers' Liberty makes use of that term.

But, argued Alexander, we need to win over Islamism's base of social support; we have to understand that it gains strength because of the "contradictions" and brutality of capitalist development. These arguments, however, apply equally to fascism.

Secondly, she made great play of the failings of the Stalinist left in the Middle East, which abandoned independent working-class politics to the extent of merging itself into Arab nationalism; in Egypt, for instance, having effectively justified the Nasser regime's execution of striking workers on grounds of 'anti-imperialism', the Communists dissolved themselves into the Nasserite party. They were thus also willing to support the regime's suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, a tradition continued by the Stalinist and Arab nationalist left for decades.

Clearly these 'mistakes' were not so much mistaken as criminal. Clearly we need to refound Marxism on the basis of working-class independence from all bourgeois factions and regimes, no matter how 'progressive' or 'anti-imperialist' they claim to be. But this yardstick, whose measure condemns those 'leftists' who collapsed into Arab nationalism, equally condemns those who abandon the necessary socialist hostility to the reactionary opposition the Islamists represent. Harman's formulation "with the state never, with the Islamists sometimes" is not the opposite of the Stalinists' capitulation to Arab nationalism, but its mirror image.

It is possible to retain independence from regimes such as Mubarak's, oppose the repressive measures which at present are directed in large part against the Islamists and remain sharply hostile to political Islam. Difficult, requiring skill, political sensitivity and tactical flexibility - but not impossible by any means. In the 1930s, after all, the Trotskyists opposed bourgeois repression against the fascists, without anyway imagining that this required a letting up of revolutionary hostility to them.

The SWP clearly believes that it would be progressive if the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt. They are not uncritical; thus Alexander spoke about how the Brotherhood has supported the landlords in tussles over land reform. At the same time, she pointed out, they have supported some strikes against the regime. But again this misses the point. All kinds of reactionary forces are capable of endorsing movements of the exploited aimed againt their most immediate enemies. Thatcher and Reagan 'supported' Solidarnosc as a blow against the Stalinist system; more to the point, the Iranian Islamists supported the workers' uprising against the Shah.

Once the latter had come to power, however, they shattered the workers' movement and imposed an even more anti-working class regime. This is true everywhere that Islamists have come to or near power. Whether the majority of Egyptians workers know it or not, for the Muslim Brothers to replace Mubarak would be a total disaster for their class. In the context of a rising tide of working-class struggle and the emergence of an independent trade union movement in Egypt, clarity on this question could not be more important. We do not want Egypt to be another Iran!

The spectre of the crisis in Iran hovered over the meeting; since we were very determinedly not called to speak, we did not think it would be verbalised. An unaffiliated Tunisian comrade was called, however, and made the necessary point - whatever they say now, the Islamists make use of democratic slogans as a way of reaching the point where they can crush democracy. The left internationally needs to learn this lesson in argument before we learn it in the blood of another Islamist victory.

This Man Will Get Us All Killed Part The Second

and everything I said earlier about him being a threat to national Security and a clear and present danger to the United States, well, yeah that all still stands.

from Her Royal Whyness

Times Online:

Obama to Russia: stop Iranian nuclear weapon and US will scrap missile defence
Tony Halpin in Moscow

President Obama today offered to scrap plans for a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe if Russia helped to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb.

He appealed in Moscow for a new era of partnership between Russia and the United States to fight the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorist groups.

"That is why we should be united in opposing North Korea's efforts to become a nuclear power and preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon," he said.

Russia strongly opposes US plans to site the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, which Washington says is necessary to defend against a surprise attack from Iran. Mr Obama made clear that he was willing to strike a deal with the Kremlin.

"I know Russia opposes the planned configuration for missile defence in Europe . . . I have made it clear that this system is directed at preventing a potential attack from Iran and has nothing to do with Russia," Mr Obama said in a speech to students graduating from Moscow's New Economic School.

"I want us to work together on a missile defence architecture that makes us all safer. But if the threat from Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes is eliminated, the driving force for missile defence in Europe will be eliminated. That is in our mutual interest."

A failure to uphold agreements to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons would turn international law into "the law of the jungle". The US and Russia had learnt to respect a "balance of terror" during the Cold War, but "we have to ask whether 10 or 20 or 50 nuclear-armed nations will protect their arsenals and refrain from using them".

In a speech laced with compliments for Russian culture, and notably light on concerns over democracy and human rights abuses, Mr Obama said that America wanted "a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia".

He paid tribute to the "unimaginable hardship" suffered by the people of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany. Future threats required "global partnership and that partnership will be stronger if Russia occupies its rightful place as a great power".

Mr Obama continued: "In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over.

"Any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. The pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game — progress must be shared. That is why I have called for a 'reset' in relations between the United States and Russia."

Mr Obama stood up for Ukraine and Georgia against Russian efforts to prevent them seeking membership in Nato, saying that states "must have the right to borders that are secure and to their own foreign policies".

"Any system that cedes those rights will lead to anarchy. That is why this principle must apply to all nations – including Georgia and Ukraine," Mr Obama said. He stopped short of criticising Russia for recognising the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states after last August’s war with Georgia.

Mr Obama pulled his punches over the state of Russian democracy and individual freedom, disappointing liberal critics of the Kremlin. He made no direct criticism of Russia but instead declared that America had an interest in "democratic governments that protect the rights of their people".

"The arc of history shows us that governments which serve their own people survive and thrive; governments which serve only their own power do not," he said. "Governments that represent the will of their people are far less likely to descend into failed states, to terrorise their citizens, or to wage war on others."

Mr Obama insisted that America "will not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country". He admitted that the US had "not always done what we should have on that front".

"I will work tirelessly to protect America's security and advance our interests. But no one nation can meet the challenges of the 21st century on its own, nor dictate its terms to the world. That is something that America now understands just as Russia understands," he said.

Earlier, Mr Obama met Vladimir Putin for the first time and praised his "extraordinary work" as president and prime minister. The tone of the meeting at Mr Putin's country residence was in stark contrast to Mr Obama's criticism of him last week as a man with "one foot in the old ways of doing business".

Over a Russian breakfast of smoked Beluga and tea from a samovar, served up by waiters in folk costumes, Mr Putin told his guest: "We associate your name with the hopes of developing our relations."

Mr Obama said that their meeting provided an "excellent opportunity to put US-Russian relations on a much stronger footing". A senior US official later told reporters that the President had changed his view of Mr Putin and was now "convinced the Prime Minister is a man of today".

U.S. warns of multiple al-Qaida plots

h/t Her Royal Whyness

WTOP

U.S. warns of multiple al-Qaida plots
July 7, 2009 - 3:04pm

J.J. Green, wtop.com

WASHINGTON - Last week, German authorities discovered that groups of terrorists may have been dispatched from training bases in Pakistan to launch crippling attacks.

In April, U.S. intelligence officials warned Germany about possible terror attacks. Since that time German security officials have reportedly been preparing for massive, multi-layered attacks for which al-Qaida has become known.

Shortly after the April warning, German Ambassador Klaus Scharioth said in an unrelated interview, "You will understand that I can't go into the details of the terrorist threat, but I can only tell you that we all know that we have to be vigilant and that we have to continue to work very hard on that, but I do not want to go into details."

Intelligence suggests al-Qaida operatives are planning to plant multiple explosive devices in several locations and detonate them either in a simultaneous or sequential fashion.

U.S. and German intelligence sources say that strategy is designed to emulate the ones employed Bali in 2002 and Madrid in 2004. The idea is to draw in first responders to the scene after the first explosion, and then the subsequent explosions are set off in the same location to inflict maximum casualties.

A U.S. intelligence source with knowledge about the situation says "it is a credible threat, which also includes Germans in North Africa."

They say as a minimum of 12 al-Qaida operatives who were trained in the tribal region of Pakistan have left the training camps and are headed back to their home countries. Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Egypt are just some of those countries.

According to the source, the threat levels also were raised for many other Western European countries to include concerns for "Turkish Airlines flying passengers from Istanbul to the U.S., the UK and Israel."

The source says "passengers traveling out-bound from Istanbul to those locations on July Fourth were segregated, screened multiple times, including their bags and told there were concerns for Turkish Airlines flights to these locations."

Another source headed to Chicago from Istanbul said they were told that there was a specific threat against Turkish Airlines flights headed to those places.

In the U.S., Turkish Airlines flies directly to New York and Chicago.

U.S. Intelligence and German media sources indicate the warning came from the U.S. government, but the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) had arrived at the same conclusion after picking up chatter that al-Qaida is planning an attack during the run-up to the Bundestag election to try to force Germany to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Scharioth is well aware of why Germany is a target.

"We are the third biggest troop contributor in Afghanistan, and we are also the fourth biggest contributor of civilian efforts, training and reconstruction and also trying to help the country to redo the education system, give more girls a chance to get an education and all those things - that's one thing," Scharioth says.

The operatives are thought to be skilled in obtaining, assembling and the detonation of explosives that could damage large buildings, disable transit systems and create mass casualties.
This alleged plot is only a part of what concerns Scharioth. A number of rogue nations may be on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and opening the door to al-Qaida to get ahold of them.

"We have to address the problem of nuclear proliferation because we would be very concerned, if say in 15-20 years, you have 20 nuclear weapon countries and of course the more nuclear weapon countries you have, the greater the risk and you also have to protect those nuclear weapons [so they don't fall into the wrong hands]," Scharioth says.

Scharioth says he's grateful that the U.S. and Germany are allies. He praises the cooperative effort given the alternative.

"We believe that the Cold War was dangerous enough. We were very close to a very, very bad situation and everybody who was bearing responsibility can tell you just how close we came," Scharioth says.

The German government is reportedly concerned enough about this new threat that it is contemplating changes to its emergency response measures.

from Her Royal Whyness

China Looks to Undermine U.S. Power, With ‘Assassin’s Mace’

wired/danger room

h/t Michael

China Looks to Undermine U.S. Power, With ‘Assassin’s Mace’
by David Hambling
July 2, 2009

Could China wipe out an American military advantage with a simple black box? Joshua Cooper Ramo’s thought-provoking book The Age of the Unthinkable challenges all kinds of conventional thinking about everything from venture capital to military strategy. One section caught my eye in particular, about how the Chinese might neutralize American air superiority, using a type of weapon known an “Assassin’s Mace.” The specific device in question is an unassuming little case; how worried should we be?

U.S. airpower depends on the ability to overcome surface-to-air missile (SAM) defenses, and one of the key weapons for this role is the AGM-88 High Speed Anti-radiation Missile (HARM), which homes in on radar emissions. (You can see them, under the F/A-18’s wings in the picture, above.) The defenders can either turn off their radar, thus blinding themselves, or have it destroyed. This is where the black box that Ramo found at a military trade show in Zhuhai in 2002 comes in:
“…packed inside were several thousand microtransmitters and when you plugged the device in and turned it on, it broadcast signals - 10,000 of them - on the frequency of a SAM site. From the perspective of an American pilot - or , more precisely, the perspective of his HARM missile looking for a ‘lock’ on a SAM radar signal - this meant an air-to-ground picture that looked like 10,001 SAM signals, only one of which was real…”

Ramo suggests that if defenders have these black boxes then the U.S. aircraft would be helpless against enemy SAMs, and air superiority would be lost at stroke.

This is just one example of Beijing’s “Assassin’s Mace” family of weaponry that’s been much discussed in both Chinese and American military circles. The Pentagon defines the Maces as technologies that might afford an inferior military an advantage in a conflict with a superior power. In this view, an Assassin’s Mace is anything which provides a cheap means of countering an expensive weapon. Other examples might include Chinese anti-satellite weapons, which might instantly knock out U.S. space assets, or a conventional ballistic missile, designed to take out a supercarrier and all its aircraft in one hit. It’s an interesting contrast to the perspective of the American arms industry, which can end up spending vast amounts countering low-tech, low-cost threats like mines and IEDs.

Why “Assassin’s Mace?” A club-type weapon sounds like a rather unsuitable weapon for an assassin. The actual Chinese term is Sha Shou Jian (literally “killing hand club”), which refers to a pair of short wooden or metal rods used as a martial arts weapon. “Jian” normally denotes a long Chinese sword but Sha Shou Jian are blunt and heavy. They could be concealed in the long sleeves of court robes and used to make surprise attacks — hence the association with assassins.

And although some Western commentators like the New Atlantis claim that the meaning of the assassin’s mace “remains elusive, ” it’s no mystery to Mandarin speakers. Sha Shou Jian a popular expression used by sports commentators, businessmen and even in romantic advice columns. Alastair Johnston of Harvard University criticizes the way Washington pundits want to make the Assassin’s Mace “mysterious and exotic”: it’s simply the decisive, winning quality. In sports, the Assassin’s Mace may be the key goal-scorer; in business, it’s any quality that puts you ahead of the competition; in love, it might be the subtle smile that wins over the object of your affections. Johnston suggests that a fairly idiomatic translation would be “silver bullet” and that the concept behind it is less fiendishly oriental than is often supposed.

Ramo (who speaks Mandarin) — is more concerned with the potential threat from these devices. But is the black box intended to stop HARM so dangerous? I was not so sure: Danger Room covered new HARM upgrades a few months back and the makers seemed relaxed about dealing with countermeasures. So I asked Ramo if he really thought the Chinese were ready to take on the Air Force.

“I have to say I did ask some people about U.S. HARM technology and the general answer was that they are pretty confident that the sort of ECM [electronic countermeasure] system on sale at Zhuhai they have now found a solution for – which the Chinese probably know and that’s why they were selling it,” said Ramo. “And I think frankly that the box I saw was probably an early attempt that has now been passed by not only by better anti-HARM spoofs but also by a much more sophisticated integrated air-denial operational plan that includes a wide variety of tactics where ECM is complemented by space weapons, cyber, and other system-level attacks. ”

So the box itself may not be a HARM-killer. However, Ramo sticks very much to his original thesis about the Chinese approach to warfare.

“The point I was trying to make with the box was the way in which asymmetric power does allow cheap things to undo expensive ones — to introduce both the idea of the “Assassin’s Mace”(which I think fits many asymmetric systems) and to lead into some of the technological oscillations behind Offense/Defense balance, which I get into later on…. the best Assassin’s Maces are still secretly guarded and definitely aren’t for sale — at least not yet.”

So the good news is that U.S. air power still rules — and that Iran can’t buy “Assassin’s Mace” technology from China to cancel it out. The bad news is that this situation might change at any time.

[Photo: U.S. Navy]

Relatives of Soldier Killed in Afghanistan Decry Lack of Coverage Amid Jackson Spectacle

Fox News

Relatives of Soldier Killed in Afghanistan Decry Lack of Coverage Amid Jackson Spectacle

By Joshua Rhett Miller

1st Lt. Brian N. Bradshaw

A day before New York Rep. Peter King called Michael Jackson a “pervert” unworthy of nonstop media coverage, the aunt of a U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan on the same day Jackson died asked why her nephew's death went virtually unnoticed while the King of Pop got memorial shrines across the country.

"Mr. Jackson received days of wall-to-wall coverage in the media," Martha Gillis wrote to the Washington Post. "Where was the coverage of my nephew or the other soldiers who died that week?"

Gillis' nephew, Lt. Brian Bradshaw, 24, died in Kheyl, Afganistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Bradshaw, of Steilacoom, Wash., was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division in Fort Richardson, Alaska. He was one of at least 13 U.S. soldiers to die in Afghanistan since Jackson's death on June 25.

Bradshaw's mother, Mary, said she agreed with Gillis, saying the nonstop coverage of Jackson's death has become "totally ridiculous" and laughable.

"I can watch the news many nights and there's no mention of what's going on in Afghanistan or Iraq and there's boys dying over there," Bradshaw told FOXNews.com. "Oh God, I can't talk."

Gillis, of Springfield, Va., could not be reached for comment. In her letter to the Washington Post, she described Bradshaw as a "thoroughly decent person with a wry sense of humor" who loved history, particularly the Civil War.

"He had old-fashioned values and believed that military service was patriotic and that actions counted more than talk," Gillis wrote. "He wasn't much for talking, although he could communicate volumes with a raised eyebrow."

Bradshaw, who graduated from Pacific Lutheran University, was the product of a military family. His father, Paul, is a retired National Guard helicopter pilot, and his mother is a retired Army nurse. Bradshaw was buried Monday following a service at St. John's Bosco Church in Lakewood, Wash.

"He was a search-and-rescue volunteer, an altar boy, a camp counselor," Gillis' letter continued. "He carried the hopes and dreams of his parents willingly on his shoulders. What more than that did Michael Jackson do or represent that earned him memorial 'shrines,' while this soldier's death goes unheralded?"

Gillis said the only media outlets that covered Bradshaw's death were in his hometown of Steilacoom, Wash., and those where he was stationed before his deployment in March.

Gillis' sentiment echoes that of King, the Long Island, N.Y., congressman who called on society to stop "glorifying" Jackson in a YouTube video posted on Monday.

King said Jackson had been excessively praised in the days after his death while society ignored the efforts of teachers, police officers and veterans. In the two-minute video, King called the "day in and day out" coverage of Jackson's death "too politically correct."

"Let's knock out the psychobabble," he said in the video, which was taped outside an American Legion Hall in his district. "He was a pervert, a child molester; he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country? I just think we're too politically correct."

King, who is among the possible Republican contenders to run against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, acknowledged that Jackson "may have been a good singer" and "did some dancing," but he blasted the King of Pop as someone who could not be trusted around children.

"There's nothing good to say about this guy," King continued. "But the bottom line is, would you let your child or grandchild be in the same room as Michael Jackson?"

Amateur Hour

"suspicions about the United States"?

Putin was head of the KGB in Leningrad in his early 30's, unheard of in the Soviet era.

"he is not sentimental"?

What is this a reality show??? We are dealing with the Russian Federation, and by extension 1000 years plus of Russian/Czarist, Slavic imperialism.

By the way, how is that the "Messiah" can not get de jure terms right...or is this another Freudian slip like the one he had in reference to his faith with little Georgie Stephanopoulos?

Either way, we all know who really runs the show in the Kremlin.

Iran: A militaristic state, vested in a clerical robe

The Death of the Republic – Tehran Bureau

The Death of the Republic and the Rise of a Militarized Islamic State in Iran

By RASOOL NAFISI 6 July 2009

[TEHRAN BUREAU] Comment The momentous June presidential election in Iran and its bloody aftermath will probably be remembered as a turning point in the life of this strange republic. The true face of the state, so meticulously hidden beneath a confusing veneer of “Islamic democracy,” surfaced in its true form—something conveniently forgotten after eight years of reformist rule.

Putting aside any pretense to civility or an electoral system, the Islamists adhered to what they know best: brutality. The June 12 aftermath dealt a major blow to the hope for a realignment of Islam and a representative state. In lieu of a hybrid Islamic Republic, a militarized regime emerged in earnest, a regime that had been taking shape since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his mark in the 2005 elections, and which is now embodied by a coalition of actors including Ahmadinejad, supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC).

Many scholars continue to wonder about the nature of the regime. The question is not whether it is some form of indigenous democracy as was purported, but instead, what is the role and influence of the clergy? In other words, is Iran still a clerical state? If not, what is the dosage of clerical power in the mix of this rather militaristic state?

The Islamic Republic has been in a state of metamorphosis over the past four years. In fact the state was never purely clerical. The war with Iraq during the 1980’s changed and twisted it at its onset. Symbolically, the post-revolution clergy carried rifles when leading Friday prayers. The merger of the military/security man and the clergy was intensified when clerics were dispatched to the war fronts, and became ideological commissars of the new regime. They inspired soldiers with recitations of the pain and sufferings of the martyred imams. In the meantime, they spied on officers and tried to convert them to the new politicized Islam. So what happened, in reality, was the conversion of the clergy to a military-security ethos, not the other way around.

Clerics such as Khamenei, Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Hassan Lahooti were among the first cadres put in charge of military personnel and commissioned by Ayatollah Khomeini to create the IRGC, a security apparatus designed to run parallel to the state’s army, navy and air force. Khamenei quickly learned where the center of the state’s gravity rests, and consequently, never left the security forces. Today Khamenei is the consummate security-military cleric. As the commander in chief, Khamenei probably knows more about military and security issues than about traditional Figh and Shi’ite narratives. A militaristic state, vested in a clerical robe, and aided and abetted by uncountable Basij militia, extends its tentacles to all corners of society.

Never mind that the state can rapidly resume its “Islamic” façade whenever the need arises. Clad in burial shroud, scores of Qum seminary students are always ready to parade around vigilantly in order to demonstrate their readiness to fend off the enemies of Islam, while underscoring their belief in the sanctity of the regime at the same time.

The June election and the ensuing bloodbath served the purpose of bringing the regime’s regressive aspect to light. And it does not look good. By conducting more than twenty national elections in the past thirty years, the Islamic republic trained people in the ways of democracy. The June uprising was squarely a national call for more democracy, imbued by two months of real campaigning and six televised debates. To have curtailed the process would help neither the nation nor the state. But it was bound to happen. In all likelihood the new militarized regime will find no benefit in continuing the democracy game and it will in turn rely almost exclusively upon the traditional forms of hereditary republicanism, one that is more similar to the Syrian and North Korean models.

At the same time, it is unlikely that urbanites will place their bets on another election. In fact, it may be the very intent of the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad-IRGC cabal to do away with the un-doable all together, and to assert the “Islamic state” prima facie.

The Islamic state so cherished by the likes of Ayatollah Messbah-Yazdi has now materialized. Messbah-Yazdi’s close follower, Ahmadinejad, celebrated the end of the Islamic Republic with the following words in a meeting with the employees of the Judiciary in late June: “Communism, liberalism and democracy are all dead; it is high time for [the rise of an] Islamic State.” What he did not spell out was this: The Islamic State wears boots and parades in military fatigue.

I take Mir Hossein Mousavi at his word when he announced he was coming out of political isolation because he was alarmed by the events threatening the essence of the Islamic Republic. As a romantic revolutionary still loyal to the outlandish ideals of his master Al Shariati for a “just Islamic government,” he bemoans what he perceives as a total departure from those ideals. Large segments of the clerical establishment apparently felt the same way when they came out against the election results. They are all rightfully anxious about what seems to be the end of clerical hegemony as they know it. The clerical rupture that followed the June events is quite telling. The entire body of the moderate clerics militated against what they felt was a mortal blow to Islamic republicanism.

Sensing the death knell of the clerical state, even hardline Ayatollahs such as Nasser Makarem-Shirazi distanced themselves from the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad-IRGC coalition. Breaking his mysterious silence, the quintessential dealmaker Ayatollah Hashemi-Rafsanjani summarized the worries of those who feel betrayed: ”Today no clear conscience can accept what is going on in the country.”

The republican wing of the Islamic state was clipped on June 12 proper. What ensued were several desperate attempts at rebellion, incited by urbanites who were no longer blind to republican claims of the Islamic state. To lead their cause, they chose anguished clerics and romantic revolutionaries who were equally distraught. The new regime on the other hand pursued the trodden path of dictatorships, past and present, disrupting communications at the national level and raising the level of intimidation by brute force. The Chief of the Judiciary ordered all regions to clamp down on homeowners’ television receptors and internet “abusers.”

Prosecutor General Dorri-Najafabadi promised to teach the demonstrators in detention “a lesson they will never forget.” The lesson was indeed well rehearsed, and well received: It is the end of a great experiment, one intended to mix Islam and representative government. But the Sunday July 5 speech of Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the IRGC summarized the situation rather well. He clearly stated that the Guards are in charge of the country now. And accordingly, this had led to “a revival of the revolution and clarification of the value positions of the establishment at home and abroad.” He went on: “These events put us in a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions.”

To the romantic this is a tragedy, but to a detached observer it is just another romantic tantalization in the line of many in the twentieth century which was doomed to fail from its inception.

rnafisi@rnafisi.com

LATEST SATELLITE INFO PROVES THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING

From Reliapundit, the Astute Blogger:

Latest Global Average Tropospheric Temperatures:

AND NYC HAD IT'S COLDEST JUNE IN 50 YEARS.

SO DID NEW ZEALAND.

YET CO2 HAS STEADILY GONE UP.

THEREFORE, CO2 CANNOT BE A DRIVER OF GLOBAL TEMP.

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE.

THOSE WHO SAY IT IS ARE LYING AND THEIR ARGUMENTS ARE A HOAX.

AGW DUE IS THE BIGGEST SCIENTIFIC HOAX SINCE THE PILTDOWN MAN.

BUT IT'S ACTUALLY WORSE:

IT'S A HOAX DELIBERATELY DRIVEN BY POSTMODERNISTS WHO HAVE LONG DESIRED TO PUT SOCIALIST SHACKLES ON INDUSTRY, THE FREE MARKETPLACE AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.

DON'T BE DUPED.

DISSENT ACCORDINGLY.

And more:

THE TRUTH IS OUT: AGW AND CARBON TAXES ARE REALLY JUST ABOUT CLASS WARFARE

VIA DRUDGE:

REUTERS:

To fairly divide the climate change fight between rich and poor, a new study suggests basing targets for emission cuts on the number of wealthy people, who are also the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, in a country. Since about half the planet's climate-warming emissions come from less than a billion of its people, it makes sense to follow these rich folks when setting national targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the authors wrote on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

... Rich people's lives tend to give off more greenhouse gases because they drive more fossil-fueled vehicles, travel frequently by air and live in big houses that take more fuel to heat and cool. By focusing on rich people everywhere, rather than rich countries and poor ones, the system of setting carbon-cutting targets based on the number of wealthy individuals in various countries would ease developing countries into any new climate change framework, Chakravarty said by telephone.

THE WHOLE ENTIRE AGW/ANTI-CARBON HOAX WAS ACTUALLY DESIGNED FOR THIS; IT WAS REALLY ALWAYS ABOUT ATTACKING CAPITALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM AND THE FREE MARKET.

CO2 TAXES - WHETHER THEY ARE TARGETED AGAINST RICH COUNTRIES OR SPECIFIC INDUSTRIES OR RICH INDIVIDUALS - ARE JUST A TROJAN HORSE FOR SOCIALISM.

July 7 2005 This Is London. . .

What we should be remembering today

"Let's give thanks to them [various Obama critics] for staying on course to bring an end to this false prophet, Obama."

American Spectator

Jon Voight's Profile in Courage

By Jeffrey Lord on 7.7.09 @ 6:08AM

"'There's a group being formed to deal with you,' the unidentified voice said. 'They're going to fix you so you won't ever act again.'" -- Ronald Reagan, writing in his autobiography Where's the Rest of Me of an anonymous phone call he received while fighting Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry in 1949.

The threat was simple.

Either Ronald Reagan stopped speaking out on his views of Communists in the movie business -- or he would have acid tossed in his face, disfiguring him. His main asset as an actor thus destroyed, Reagan would never work again.

It didn't work, of course.

"I took it as a joke," Reagan later recalled of the phone call he had received while working on the film Night Unto Night. The movie, based on a Philip Wylie novel, co-starred Viveca Lindfors and Broderick Crawford. Reagan was filming a beach scene for the movie when he was called to a gas station nearby to take a call.

Warner Brothers, the studio where the film was being shot, was not amused. When he finished the scene and got back to the Warner's lot, "the police were waiting with a license [for Reagan] to carry a gun. I was fitted with a shoulder holster and a loaded .32 Smith and Wesson....What got me to put it on was the arrival that night of a policeman to guard our house. Somehow I didn't think the department tossed policemen around as a practical joke….One thing I do know," the future president mused, is that "the Communists hate."

This incident in Reagan's movie career comes to mind as what amount to veiled threats intended to politically disfigure Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight have made the news. Voight, in addressing the annual House-Senate GOP dinner in Washington in May, had used the phrase "Let's give thanks to them [various Obama critics] for staying on course to bring an end to this false prophet, Obama." With the certainty of the sun rising in the east, left-wing critics pounced.

As reported in the Washington Times, the reaction was as follows:

"I don't want to equate what Jon Voight said as expressing a conservative
opinion on politics. It went way beyond that. He made a threat against the
president of the United States to a crowd at a GOP fundraiser and got a good
response from the Senate minority leader and other powerful people. And that is
scary," said Teresa Albano, editor of the publication. [People's Weekly World, a
magazine once known as the Daily Worker and sympathetic to the Communist
Party.]

Marsha Zakowski, president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, was
alarmed, too.

"Jon Voight is a celebrity. He can influence people. Voight has just been
coming out with this ultraconservative point of view. It is deplorable," she
told the magazine in a separate article.

Got that? For Voight to say thanks to those working "to bring an end to this false prophet, Obama." -- in a political speech to one of the most political dinners in Washington's yearly calendar of highly political dinners -- this is now considered not only hate speech but a threat to kill the president worthy of a Secret Service investigation. Surprise, surprise this comes from the philosophical descendants of those who tried to silence Reagan.

Not to be outdone in all this were columnists Frank Rich and Paul Krugman of the New York Times Op-Ed page, a place where a raw hatred of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was carefully stewed to a rarefied putrid essence for a full eight years. This pair of journalistic Draco Malfoys spend their time hunched over laptops muttering incantations about those they consider to be cultural Mudbloods. Mudblood (the derogatory term for Muggle), of course, is the word Harry Potter's bullying nemesis Malfoy sneeringly applies to wizards who fail to meet the Malfoy wizard racial purity test -- the Pureblood.

"This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic," Rich seethed of Voight, as if he himself had not spent the previous eight years enthusiastically greenlighting the idea of filling the political atmosphere with toxic rhetoric about the Bush White House. So too with his fellow supremacist Krugman , who has now officially designated Mudblood Voight as part of the "lunatic fringe."

What's really going on here is not hard to figure out. A perceived betrayal of the liberal political/cultural elite by anyone presumed for one reason or another to be a member of the group is dealt with severely. The sentinels of Pureblood supremacy will not tolerate the presence of those revealed as Mudbloods.

Political and cultural acid is being tossed at Jon Voight and his career, the latter not coincidentally one of the more distinguished acting careers in American film. This attack is precisely in the same mode as that long-ago phone call to actor Ronald Reagan. In Reagan's case the role of Rich, Krugman, and the rest was played by an anonymous voice on the phone threatening to physically disfigure Reagan "so you won't ever act again.'" Which is to say, the call was designed to shut Reagan up. In Voight's case the objective is the same, the method more sophisticated. This time the target is threatened with political and cultural, not physical, disfigurement. Voight is portrayed as a card-carrying member of an ominous sounding "lunatic fringe," which henceforth signals those in the film world who might wish to hire Mr. Voight that the New York Times is advising them they might want to think twice, if not half a dozen times, before doing so. After all, films must be reviewed by the Times, whether they have Jon Voight in the cast or not. The signal also goes out that it should be a very cold day in hell before Voight ever receives another professional award of any kind from his peers.

In the ultimate irony, in spite of contributing heavily to The Times massive losses -- to the point that the paper is heading perilously towards financial extinction -- the almost rabid insistence on alienating readers with bullying attacks like that on Voight continues. It's almost as if those in charge simply cannot restrain themselves, better judgment having fled entirely.

There is a reason for this kind of bullying vitriol, even if appalling. In the world of things liberal, not unlike the world inhabited by Harry Potter, Mudbloods can be very easily identified and separated out from the Pureblood pack. Those who inhabit various favored liberal categories -- actor, woman, black, Latino, Ivy League graduate to name a few -- are expected to behave politically and culturally in a certain approved fashion. Which is to say that of the Liberal Pureblood.

For those who are in these categories yet have demonstrated other than the approved politics and cultural behavior, well, its Mudblood city. The culture of liberalism cannot be dissented from without cost.

This explains why actors Reagan and Voight -- threats to each delivered sixty years apart -- have drawn some variation of exactly the same reaction. Both men walked off the liberal intellectual plantation where all Hollywood actors were and are expected to dwell. In Reagan's case, walking away meant a threat of acid in the face. In Voight's, speaking out has resulted in attempts to toss not actual acid on his person but cultural and political acid on his career. Both men, Reagan as the recipient of a menacing unidentified phone call and Voight as the quite public target of vitriolic liberal columnists and activists, were perceived by their attackers as political Mudbloods. They certainly haven't been alone, either. The "Mudblood Club" includes others like the female soon-to-be ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (the Hermoine Granger of the GOP), the black Justice Clarence Thomas, filibustered Latino appeals court nominee Miguel Estrada, and, not to be left out, Yale and Harvard's own East Coast scion George W. Bush.

In Reagan's words, the critics of these and other political/cultural Mudbloods really do "hate." They appear to others, although surely not to themselves, as psychologically incapable of serious discussion, irrational to the point of mania. (Just the other day Krugman, giving ironic life to historian Richard Hofstadter's thoughts on the paranoid style in American politics, foamed that anyone who disagrees with global warming is guilty of "treason." Ahhhh…. Okkkkk. Roger that Draco 2. Do they keep nets or straitjackets in the Times newsroom for moments like this? Just asking. If so, who takes theirs off to put on the other guy's?)

In terms of political rhetoric, Voight's language is as politically common as yet another Obama flip-flop. If Teresa Albano's "alert the Secret Service" standard were the rule, Guantanamo would be hosting Keith Olbermann and the entire cast of the Daily Kos, if not Ms. Albano herself. Instead of sitting in the U.S. Senate, Al Franken, he the venomous ex-Air America host, would be the resident comic of a Supermax prison entertaining fellow inmates with names like Rich and Krugman.

Yet there is a reason for this kind of insanity. There is a reason why the Malfoy Twins at the Times foam over Voight's remark applauding those who say we must "bring an end to this false prophet, Obama."

That reason was perhaps best fingered by John Dos Passos, the great American novelist of the Lost Generation who himself walked the path of actors Reagan and Voight, earning the same disdain from his one-time political soul mates on the left. Of the "liberal mentality" Dos Passos said it was nothing more than "the ideological camouflage of the will to power" of a "new ruling class." While he died in 1970, he may already have heard of Jon Voight (who won his fame along with his Oscar in 1969.) One suspects were he here now Dos Passos and Voight, not to mention Reagan, would have much to discuss.

The objective of the acid throwers of today, the Malfoy Twins at the Times and the others, is to do one thing: forcibly exile Jon Voight from the American mainstream and do damage to his career. Why? Because with his credentials (an Oscar for the acclaimed Midnight Cowboy, iconic films of the day like Deliverance or Coming Home -- the latter with Jane Fonda, no less -- and a seamless transfer today to character roles like Tom Cruise's villainous boss in the popular Mission Impossible, to name but a few) Voight…like a Palin, Thomas, Estrada, Bush (or a Reagan of yore)…is well placed to inflict real damage to the "new ruling class" of liberalism. Each in their own way has serious credibility with the American public.

Recall the quote from the activist of the left-wing group quoted above: "Jon Voight is a celebrity. He can influence people. Voight has just been coming out with this ultraconservative point of view. It is deplorable." In other words, it's bad enough that anyone would have Voight's views (say, half the country who voted against Obama) -- but precisely because Voight was esteemed "a celebrity" who "can influence people" he is suddenly -- with these views -- "deplorable." Were he possessed of an "ultraliberal point of view" and said precisely the same words except for the substitution of "Bush" for "Obama," these critics would have no idea there was suddenly a problem with Jon Voight.

The credibility of a Voight or Palin or Thomas as actor/woman/black man in turn makes it the self-assigned job of the haters "to deal with" (in the words of Reagan's caller) whoever is the latest to wear the bull's-eye that identifies a cultural and political Mudblood. Now targeted, understanding his demonization is underway, Jon Voight to his vast credit soldiers on, seemingly unfazed.

Once upon a time, Jon Voight thought of himself as a liberal. Doubtless he assigned certain values -- tolerance, for one -- to this political faith and now realizes like Reagan and a host of ex-liberals his belief was misplaced. Right around the time he won his Oscar and burst into the American consciousness, America was filled with political references to the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. (In a harbinger of things to come on 9/11, RFK was assassinated by a Palestinian Arab who hated Kennedy because of his support for Israel. Yet commentators of the day tried to lay the blame on, yes indeed, American conservatives.) Perhaps somewhere along the way in those days Voight heard this much quoted remark of RFK's:

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of
their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity
than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital
quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to
change."

Make no mistake. Jon Voight is exhibiting precisely those qualities of which Bobby Kennedy once spoke -- and which liberals of the day claimed to admire. In today's world, instead of respect there is a move to ostracize Voight for his moral courage, to punish him, to threaten him, to abruptly smear his image and re-create him as someone far outside the American mainstream. To throw political and cultural acid on a good and courageous American in an attempt to disfigure his life and damage his ability to work, ironically turning Voight into precisely the kind of American both RFK and Ronald Reagan celebrated.

Which, of course, makes the rest of us understand that the spotlight is revealing something quite special in current American political debate. A something Bobby Kennedy's brother JFK once wrote about, a something that certainly describes Jon Voight in a fashion rarely associated with Hollywood.

A profile in courage.

Jeffrey Lord worked on five Supreme Court nominations as a Reagan White House political director, including that of Robert Bork. He is the author of a book on the Senate's judicial confirmation process and writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

Neda Was a Christian? - UPDATED

Banafsheh writes: That's not a cross! That's a FARAVAHAR...the ancient symbol of the Zoroastrians! 

Honestly Folks, this required a little more research before writing up such things. Neda's father is being SERIOUSLY harassed by the regime. WHY make it worse for them by writing such bunkum. With all due respect to your blog which I do like...this was highly thoughtless...not to mention totally unresearched! 

Pastorius comment: Who knows? It looks like a cross to me.

via Atlas



From Pamela Geller --This reproduced picture run across world media, her cross is cropped out. What deceit. 

That Neda was a Christian is ample proof that everyone in Iran who took to the streets was marching for liberty and one man one vote. How vile to imply that millions marched for the inside politicking of Islamic cleric rule. Her religion flies in the face of every cold blooded pundit who has attempted to dismiss this historic movement as simply more sharia in shades of green.Photo hat tip Robert via PI)

Everything We've Been Telling You About Barack, But You Were Afraid To Believe

From Gateway Pundit:

College Paper Shows Obama Was a Raving Anti-American Kook

Well, what do you know?
The state-run media can do research. It only took them 8 months after the election to release this crazy Far Left anti-American article Barack Obama wrote while in college.

Andy McCarthy at The Corner has the story:

Nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its "military-industrial interests," while effusing enthusiasm for the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement.

Moreover, while indicating a preference for the political wisdom of reggae singer Peter Tosh over Ronald Reagan or Scoop Jackson, Obama bewailed the "narrow focus" of anti-militarism activists, worrying that they were targeting the "symptoms" rather than the real "disease," namely, America's underlying economic and political injustice... Student Obama summed up with near incoherent Lefty gobbledygook:

Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part. By adding their energy and effort in order to enhance the possibility of a decent world, they may help deprive us of a spectacular experience — that of war. But then, there are some things we shouldn't have to live through in order to want to avoid the experience.

how long do you suppost the NT Times have been sitting on this piece?

Today, the kook landed in Russia and is going to try to talk the Russians into disarming. It's more likely that he will sell out our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic instead.
It's all part of that hope and change we're getting used to.
Thanks, New York Times.

Meanwhile:

Barack Obama's inner Marie Antoinette is showing 

By TigerHawk at 7/05/2009 09:55:00 PM 

Asked by a Russian reporter what he does not like about himself, Barack Obama offers up his "golf swing." Everybody say at the same time, "can you imagineif George Bush had said that?" Yes, we can. It will be interesting to see whether Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert pick up on this little unguarded "let them eat cake" moment. What about all those unemployed Americans who have had to give up golf because they cannot afford the greens fees, Mr. President?

The question, of course, is whether Barack Obama really dislikes his golf swing more than any other trait, or whether he was deploying the traditional politician's white lie to avoid confessing a substantive shortcoming. If the former, then it is safe to say that our president does not understand himself, or even try to, which is always dangerous. If the latter, then, well, so be it, but let us hear from all the journalists out there who were so eager for George W. Bush to admit his failings.

Watermelon Slim

Mannish Boy

Israel’s A Big Boy Now!

I don’t watch ABC news so I don’t know the details of this interview however, I read on Jerusalem Telegraphic Agency website that Joe Biden said America wouldn’t interfere if Israel attacked Iran because Israel is a sovereign country.

Now there are a couple of things that are a little puzzling to me.

1) Why is Joe Biden saying this and not the oh-so-honorably-awesome-can’t-talk-without-a-teleprompter orator president of the United States? Isn’t Obama supposed to be the Commander in Chief? Why is it that it is his highness himself that placed a call to Mahmoud Abbas? Why was it his highness himself who “outstretched” America’s arm to Iran? Why can’t this president that is bending over backwards for Muslims at least stand side by side with Israel on this issue? Why does he have to convey this message through Joe Biden (half the time I can’t even remember the vice president’s name because he is not that important)? I might be missing something here—I don’t know, I live in the middle of the desert where all I hear is “Israel is evil”, so maybe Obama said something but I missed it, so correct me if I am wrong. I just can’t help but notice that Obama’s middle name is “Hussein”.

2) Second thing that I don’t think was nice of Mr. Biden is the statement he made, “Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else…” Why is the American government alienating itself from Israel? All of a sudden it’s only Israel’s problem? “Israel can attack with a couple of bombs and get into a war but we are just going to sit around and try to sip coffee with Ahmedinejad with our outstretched arm”? Before the Bush administration responded to 9/11 the way it did, America was known as “Paper Tiger” around the Muslim world, Obama administration just sounds like it wants America to attain that title again with full force! I just hope that Biden doesn’t get up tomorrow and goes, “Iran is a sovereign nation, they can have nukes and use them on Israel if they want because that might be in their interest”.

What I don’t know is whether Israelis can actually count on American support now if they have to attack Iran—and they might have to do it sooner or later—or Obama and co just want Israel to start this war so they can still have good relations with their oil rich “friends”. With Obama as president of America, the latter rings truer than the former!

Gotta Love Silvio

Diplomacy beckons:

Faced with the thorny problem of having no "First Lady" to look after the G8 leaders' spouses on their three day trip to Italy, Silvio Berlusconi has come up with a solution in keeping with his reputation.

The Italian prime minister has asked a former topless model turned government minister to stand in for his estranged wife.

The 72-year-old premier has chosen Mara Carfagna – now Italy's equal opportunities minister – to take care of the likes of Michelle Obama and Sarah Brown.

Miss Carfagna, 33, is an ex-glamour girl whose sultry looks and portfolio of lingerie calendars earned her the title of the world's sexiest government minister from men's magazine Maxim.

The one-time Miss Italy contestant will be supported in the role by another attractive young member of the cabinet, education minister Maria Stella Gelmini.

Mr Berlusconi is said to have chosen Miss Carfagna and Miss Gelmini to reward them for being "staunch champions" as he has battled allegations that he slept with a high-class call-girl at his mansion in Rome last November. Together they will guide the G8 wives around Rome and the mountain town of L'Aquila 65 miles away, where the summit is being held from Wednesday to Friday.

But the appointment of the pair has reportedly sparked a "cold war" with two of Mr Berlusconi's other favourites, youth minister Giorgia Meloni and environment minister Stefania Prestigiacomo.

Miss Meloni has been forced to deny she felt snubbed, saying she had other G8 duties to attend to: "I can't see what all the fuss is about."

There had been intense speculation over how Mr Berlusconi would solve the problem of no longer having a First Lady of his own when it came to hosting the G8. (Read entire article)

More and More The MSM Are Turning On Barack Obama

Note Gibbs' reaction is to attempt to laugh it off. How absurd that the press would dare to actually do their job.



Gibbs (attempting to shut Helen Thomas up): We've had this conversation (about White House control of the press) ad nauseum.

Thomas: Of course you would, because you don't have any answers.

This Man Will Get Us All Killed

This is as dangerous as it gets. He is giving away our defense and deterent. Barack Hussein Obama is a clear and present danger, a threat, to the National Security of The United States, the country HE IS SWORN TO PROTECT.

Newsmax:

Obama Agrees to Reduce U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, Holds Firm on Missile Defense
Monday, July 6, 2009 12:14 PM

MOSCOW – President Barack Obama said he and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are countering "a sense of drift" in relations between their nations with preliminary agreement Monday to reduce the world's two largest nuclear stockpiles to as few as 1,500 warheads each.

"We must lead by example, and that's what we are doing here today," Obama said as he and his Russian host pointed their arsenals toward the lowest levels of any U.S.-Russia arms control agreement.

"We resolve to reset U.S.-Russian relations so that we can cooperate more effectively in areas of common interest," Obama said.

The document signed by the two leaders at a Moscow summit, Obama's first in Russia, is meant as a guide for negotiators as the nations work toward a replacement pact for the START arms control agreement that expires in December. The joint understanding completed by Obama and Medvedev, signed after about three hours of talks at the Kremlin, also commits the updated treaty to lower longer-range missiles for delivering nuclear bombs to between 500 and 1,100. The limit for warheads would be no more than 1,675 each.

Medvedev called it a "reasonable compromise."

Under current treaties, each country is allowed a maximum of 2,200 warheads and 1,600 launch vehicles.

A White House statement said the new treaty "will include effective verification measures" and Obama said definitively the new treaty would be completed by the end of the year.

"The new agreement will enhance the security of both the U.S. and Russia, as well as provide predictability and stability in strategic offensive forces," the statement said.

The two leaders appeared together at a news conference in a gilded and columned Kremlin hall, where they and other officials from both countries signed and exchanged documents with great flourish and much handshaking.

Among the deals meant to sweeten Obama's two days of talks here and show progress toward resetting badly damaged U.S.-Russian relations was permission from Moscow for the United States to transport arms across its land and airspace into Afghanistan for the war there. The White House says the deal will save the U.S. $133 million a year, by waiving transit fees and shortening flying time.

They outlined other areas in which they said their countries would work together to help stabilize Afghanistan, including increasing assistance to the Afghan army and police, and training counternarcotics personnel. A joint statement said that they welcomed increased international support for upcoming Afghan elections and that they were prepared to help Afghanistan and Pakistan work together against the "common threats of terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking."

Among other side agreements was the resumption of military cooperation, suspended after Russia invaded neighboring Georgia last August and sent relations into a nosedive.

The White House announced that the two nations plan 20 exchanges and meetings this year. For example, Russian military cadets will come to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The two countries also plan a joint exercise concerning responses to possible plane hijackings.

They also promised fresh cooperation on public health issues and revived a joint commission to try to account for missing service members of both countries dating back to World War II. The commission was first created by the first President Bush and President Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s, but the Russians later downgraded their participation. The U.S. hope is that the Russians will now open some of their more sensitive archives to U.S. researchers seeking details about missing American servicemen.

Yet, the two sides remain stalemated over the U.S. pursuit of a missile-defense system in Europe, pushed hard by Bush and under review by Obama. Both sides hardened their positions ahead of the summit.

The U.S. contends the program is designed to protect U.S. allies in Europe from a potential nuclear attack by Iran. But the Russians see it as a first step toward a system that could weaken their offensive nuclear strike potential.

Obama needs Russia's help chiefly in pressuring Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, but also in tackling terrorism, global warming and the economy. But with Russia's public wary of America and ties frayed over Moscow's war in Georgia and the missile defense plan, Obama's desire to move forward is a huge test of his diplomatic skills.

"The president and I agreed that the relationship between Russia and the United States has suffered from a sense of drift," he said at Medvedev's side. "President Medvedev and I are committed to leaving behind the suspicion and rivalry of the past."

His host expressed similar good will.

"This is the first but very important step in improving full-scale cooperation between our two countries, which would go to the benefit of both states," the Russian leader said.

Parsing Obama

Guest Commentary by Edward Cline:

To grasp the scope of the national debt Obama (and his Republican predecessor) has been ringing up, a comparison should help illustrate the task. Bernard Madoff’s robbery and defrauding investors of some $50 billion can be represented by the diameter of the solar system. The federal government, using the same scamming tactics, is amassing a debt about the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. Madoff’s scheme can be measured in millions of miles. The federal government’s, in almost limitless parsecs. That measurement ought to suffice to dramatize the scale of the hole he is deliberately digging for the country in his role as Community-Organizer-in-Chief.

Since it is only productive work -- whether in a factory making widgets, or in a research lab creating new medicines or computer software -- that gives the dollar bill its value, Obama’s galactic debt will be expected to be funded from taxes paid from the productive, private sector. I make that distinction because the government is non-productive; it produces nothing, not even the paper its one hundred thousand commandments are printed on, not even the pens with which presidents sign legislation into law. That growing, astronomical debt, however, will serve to shrink the productive sector and make it less productive in exponential leaps and bounds -- off a cliff. It must inexorably reach a point that the productive sector can no longer sustain the debt it is expected to pay. Then we will have reached the economic status of, say, Zimbabwe.

The sentencing of Madoff to 150 years in prison for his crime elicited an outpouring of sanctimonious news coverage, complete with quotations from angry victims of his scheme and a sated passion for justice. Of course, Madoff deserved his sentence. Given his age, 71, perhaps he will serve just ten of it before dying in prison.

What clashes with the news media coverage of Madoff’s trial, conviction and sentencing for his crime is the studied obtuseness of the news media for the same crime being committed by the government. Madoff, you see, was “greedy” or “avaricious,” and that, according to the morality of altruism and selflessness, is immoral and antisocial. The government, however, is committing the same crime, but that is in order to “do good.” So its orgy of debt-creation, its extortionate policies of roping all Americans into a “dog-eat-dog” welfare state, and its targeting the most productive and the wealthiest in society for special punishment, are all acceptable and laudable.

Even though the news media has knowledge of this multi-trillion dollar scam, that knowledge elicits not an iota of outrage among the photogenic news anchors and highly paid print pundits. No respectable TV or print journalist even thinks of the scam in terms of a continuing and expanding bilking of Americans from their wealth, investments and taxes. (Except, perhaps, John Stossel of ABC, whose “20/20” report on the cost and dishonesty of the proposed socialist health care program was conveniently cancelled and replaced with a special on the life and death of Michael Jackson -- as though we weren‘t already gagging on the nonstop adulatory and scandal sheet coverage of this very disturbed person.)

"There is no plea agreement,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt said at the hearing, meaning Madoff must plead guilty to 11 counts that he now faces in a criminal information filed today. Madoff is charged with securities fraud, investment advisor fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and theft from an employee benefit plan, Litt said.

No one is calling for the indictments of Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Christopher Dodd, Henry Waxman, and all the usual suspects in Congress and the White House, even though they are all parties to the same crime. Examine the definitions of each of the counts with which Madoff was charged and convicted of, and ask how the actions of the co-conspirators differ any from what Madoff was found guilty of. One fundamental difference between Madoff’s crime and the federal government’s is that Madoff did not employ direct, legalized force to take his victims’ money. Another is that it was not in Madoff’s agenda to make his victims dependent on his benefice. In court, when he faced his victims, he (rather belatedly) apologized to them, and did not say, “But I did it for your sakes.”

The U.S. government gets funds in three ways. It can look for increased revenues (through higher taxes). It can look to cut expenses (through lower spending). Or it can borrow by issuing new Treasury bonds. Replacing old bonds with new bonds is called “rolling over the debt,” and is done every day by households, businesses, and governments.

Which of these ways will the Obama administration adopt to raise revenue? Count out number two. The productive sector of the economy will be expected to fund numbers one and three -- for as long as it survives.

On July 4th, President Barack Obama sent a holiday greeting to his supporters, via the Democratic National Committee. Obama’s presumptuousness, of course, knows no bounds or limits. His July 4th greeting was all about the importance of Independence Day. This commentary will examine the fallacies and fabrications contained in his greeting. At first glance, the message appears vacuous and commonplace. But beneath its blandness is poison.

This weekend, our family will join millions in celebrating America. We will enjoy the glow of fireworks, the taste of barbeque, and the company of good friends. As we all celebrate this weekend, let’s also remember the remarkable story that led to this day.

The story that led to the 4th of July is not merely “remarkable,” it is epochal. It is the story of men who decided that the idea that they owned their own lives, and not a tyrant, must be taken seriously enough to severe all political ties with that tyrant. What is Obama doing today? Taking actions to guarantee that our lives are tied to his whims and wishes, just as they were with Old World tyrants. If he had any valid recollection of that “remarkable story,” he would see that he is the villain.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us are created equal.

No. They pledged themselves to the proposition that men (not politically correct “all of us”) should exist in a state of freedom and not in one of subservience. Here is an instance of how disconnected Obama and his allies in Congress are from not only history, but from reality -- and how indifferent or hostile they are to that history and to reality. It is precisely the lives, fortunes and sacred honor of Americans that they are so busy expropriating, redistributing or destroying. The certain rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and property are to them not unalienable, but disposable and eminently open to violation in the name of the “public good.” It is their operating premise that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the ends of government, that is, to securing individual rights and deriving its limited powers from the consent of the governed, the people have no right to alter or abolish that government, or even to criticize it.

Our country began as a unique experiment in liberty -- a bold, evolving quest to achieve a more perfect union. And in every generation, another courageous group of patriots has taken us one step closer to fully realizing the dream our founders enshrined on that great day.

No, the United States did not begin as a “unique experiment in liberty.” It began as an assertion of that liberty. No, a “more perfect union” was not the end of the Founders, but the establishment of a government that could best guarantee life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. A “more perfect union“ to Obama is all Americans marching in lockstep to an ideal collectivist state. “Quests” do not “evolve,” not unless one is not certain of one’s end. And ever since the Civil War, generations of politicians and political thinkers have been moving away from the end that our Founders sought to achieve. It takes no courage to advocate slavery and servitude to a confused and ignorant citizenry.

Today, all Americans have a hard-fought birthright to a freedom which enables each of us, no matter our views or background, to help set our nation’s course. America’s greatness has always depended on her citizens embracing that freedom -- and fulfilling the duty that comes with it.

It is that “hard-fought birthright” which Obama the constitutional “scholar” is busily cheating us out of with the skill of a shyster lawyer. Ideas set a nation’s course and determine its future or its fate. Freedom and duty are literal antipodes. No one has a duty to sanction his own servitude or slavery, which is what Obama is advocating as the “price” of the freedom he is hurriedly destroying and which he hopes we do not embrace so selfishly that we will not relinquish it to satisfy the democratic mob and to perpetuate the comfort and peace of mind of a corrupt, prostituted Congress.

As a free people, we must each take the challenges and opportunities that face
this nation as our own. As long as some Americans still must struggle, none of
us can be fully content. And as America comes ever closer to achieving the
perfect union our founders dreamed, that triumph -- that pride -- belongs to all
of us.

Obama’s challenges and opportunities to expand federal power are not those of Americans who value their freedom. Americans must always “struggle” to achieve their personal happiness, and can be content with having achieved it without being asked to live for the sake of others. That happiness cannot be achieved if men are chained to each other’s needs.

So today is a day to reflect on our independence, and the sacrifice of our troops standing in harm’s way to preserve and protect it. It is a day to celebrate all that America is. And today is a time to aspire to all we can still become.

With very best wishes, President Barack Obama July 4th, 2009

Yes, many Americans are reflecting upon their independence, not only on that of this country, but on their independence from each other as individuals who own their own lives and pursue their own happiness -- which is not what Obama is asking of either our troops or any Americans. Sacrifice for unselfish, altruist ends is what he promotes -- not the defense of this country, not its prosperity, not its freedom. That reflection by many thoughtful, concerned Americans has been deemed “right wing extremism” by the Department of Homeland Security deserving of surveillance, scrutiny, and police action.

In summary, one must agree in spirit with conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer that is not Obama’s words that one must pay attention to, but what he does. But one must disagree with Krauthammer because collectivism is what he and the Democrats have been quite obviously preaching for the last two years. One merely needs to read between the lines and the lies.

Crossposted at The Dougout