The World is Having a Nervous Breakdown

The World is Having a Nervous Breakdown

By Alan Caruba

If one has been in the habit of reading history then the events of the past and of the present inform each other. For this reason, it occurred to me that the world is once again having a nervous breakdown.

It’s not just about money, though surely the nations of Europe along with the U.S. have spent themselves into the poorhouse in ways that defy the imagination. If it weren’t so serious, it would be comical to see the desperation that has led our Federal Reserve to print money backed by nothing and to watch the central bankers of Europe move gobs of euros around between the new mother church, Germany, and the banks of Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Italy so that they can pay their bills.

They’re all broke. We have individual States that have a higher GDP than Greece that have balanced their budgets. Those are usually the States whose constitutions require they balance their budget. The rest are run by governors torn between taking the federal largess intended to deprive them of more sovereignty and hoping that the next natural disaster hits the State above or below them instead.

Few arrive at a nervous breakdown overnight. It takes time and a variety of bad decisions or bad luck or both. After blaming George W. Bush and Republicans for his problems, Obama has taken to blaming bad luck. Does he even know that people have concluded the economy is now officially and completely his fault?

When he proposed Obamacare, a million Americans

Obama cannot explain away having increased government spending by 50% between 2008 and 2010 while calling for higher taxes on everyone at the same time there are an estimated 14 million Americans out of work, stopped looking for work, or can’t get a job because Obamacare has so screwed up the near future that businesses are reluctant to hire anyone.

The 2008 financial crisis was 100% a government creation dating back to the establishment of Fannie Mae in 1938 to purchase mortgages from banks in order to encourage more lending, more home building, more home ownership. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it ignored the timeless role of greed in banking.

Rule Number One: Almost everything the government touches, it ruins in some fashion. At the very least, it increases its cost of operation.

Rule Number Two: The government’s primary function is the defense of the nation against attack. As Ronald Reagan said, “Nobody ever started a war with us because we were too strong.”

Rule Number Three: Government exists due to its ability to tax and spend other people’s money. Spending always needs to be restrained.

Rule Number Four. Government will always produce more laws and regulations than are needed. It should be restrained. (See the U.S. Constitution).

Globally, we are just emerging from a bout of total insanity called “global warming.” This was a theory that said that something that represented 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere was trapping all the heat and would kill us unless massively reduced. That “something” is carbon dioxide, a gas on which—along with oxygen—all life depends. It is plant food; the less carbon dioxide, the less vegetation. Herbivores eat vegetation and carnivores eat herbivores. Humans, being omnivores, eat both.

The other craziness afflicting the planet is “radical” Islam. The truth is that it has been just plain old Islam for about 1400 years. There are a billion Muslims, most located in the Middle East, Africa, India, and Indonesia. Wherever they are, their non-Muslim neighbors cordially hate them because Islam teaches that all other religions are false and that those who believe them—infidels—can be killed for not being Muslims. The strange part of this is, depending on whether you’re a Shiite or Sunni, it is perfectly okay to kill other Muslims, too. Christianity went through this during the Reformation, 1517 to 1648.

When I was a child, the world went crazy and held a great big war. It involved Germany, Japan, and Italy as the “Axis” powers and just about everyone else did their best to destroy their military in every way possible. The Axis was defeated first and then, still holding out, the Empire of Japan had not one, but two, atomic bombs dropped on them before they quit. showed up in Washington, D.C. to tell them not to do it. He should have listened to them. Now we call them the Tea Party.

World War Two was the direct result of Europe’s World War One. The surrender terms were so awful the Germans embraced a lunatic called Hitler and the Italians fell in love with Mussolini.

The Soviet Union came out of World War One when the Germans permitted Vladimir Lenin, a Communist, into Russia. He started a revolution and the Russians swapped a czar for a new dictator. Stalin took over from Lenin, but because communism has never worked anywhere it was tried, the Soviet Union eventually fell apart in 1991. Now a republic, the new dictator is named Vladimir Putin.

As the French say, “Plus les choses changent, ils plus elles restent les memes.” The more things change, they more they stay the same.

The world is having a nervous breakdown because institutions, religions, and political ideologies are having difficulty adjusting to the migration and growth of populations. Modern communications technologies are playing a role as well.

The chimera haunting everyone is the military capacity to inflict massive devastation and death has increased beyond the confidence of governments and people that it can be controlled without having to kill a lot of people, i.e., Iranians, in the process..

Capitalism, despite an abundance of communism still around, has triumphed, but like any system, has been subjected to a great deal of abuse, rocking the economies of the U.S., Europe, and making most other nations nervous, too.

And, finally, there are six-going-on-seven billion people on a planet that is probably not intended to have that many. It puts intense strain on everything from water to food to the sources of energy that fuel modern and developing nations.

So everyone’s on edge. Nations and continents are on edge. The world is having a nervous breakdown.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit. 

The Swirl of Conspiracy Theories ... Alan Caruba

 The Swirl of Conspiracy Theories

By Alan Caruba

It is testimony to how little Barack Hussein Obama and the government he heads is trusted when one considers the swirl of conspiracy theories that filled the forums on the Internet, the comments attached to articles analyzing the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the general discourse of the chatteratti on radio and television.

Soon enough, photographic evidence will be offered as proof and, even then, the conspiracy theories will question them.

This occurred to me as I searched foreign news websites for information that was not directly generated by the White House. To my surprise, Al Jazeera had a remarkably comprehensive round-up of statements and quotes by leaders from around the world, all welcoming news of Osama’s death.

It also struck me that many commentators took note of the fact that Obama had actually fulfilled former President G.W. Bush’s promise to find Osama and bring him to justice “dead or alive.” The fact that Obama has been, willingly or not, pursuing the objectives of his predecessor did not go unnoticed. In the end, Obama may not get all the credit he craves from the event.

The same Internet that invented and elevated Obama to the Oval Office has been dissecting and disputing virtually everything he has had to say, officially or not, over the past two years or so. He has not come off well.

While all presidents have had to circumvent the truth from time to time, Obama quickly earned a reputation as a serial liar, a 24/7 dissembler, and a thoroughly unreliable source for information about everything from his birth certificate, his two memoirs, and other pronouncements.

Little wonder that spinners of conspiracy theories immediately seized on the news of Osama’s death to wonder out loud about its timing. Was that intended to disrupt the airing of Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice”? Why was Osama buried at sea? Why was he living in a private compound just outside of Islamabad, Pakistan near a military facility? Et cetera!

I was reminded of Occam’s Razor. “The 14th century philosopher William of Occam had a keen eye for plausibility. We know his approach to problem solving by the label "Occam's Razor," an axiom often stated in shorthand as, "The simplest explanation is usually the best."


And then I thought of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Theory. The more closely you study the subject, the less clearly defined it becomes.

There are useful lessons to be drawn from both. The first is that the basic facts that have been released by the White House and reported widely are probably true. A Navy Seal Team, acting on intelligence gathered by the CIA, Pentagon, and other U.S. sources, identified where Osama was staying and killed him. This is the simplest explanation.

Beyond that, the speculation regarding the event only serves to obscure it.

Writing at the Middle East Forum, Raymond Ibrahim offered a very useful reminder.

“Years ago, Ayman al-Zawahiri, now al-Qaeda's undisputed leader, placed it all in context. After he was asked about the status of bin Laden and the Taliban's Mullah Omar, he confidently replied:

‘Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time.’”

Jihad does transcend time. In a dispatch published in The New York Times on May 20, 1876, “The Disturbances in Constantinople”, the reporter noted that “Our readers, not familiar with Oriental countries can hardly appreciate the passion of fanaticism which at times burns in the breast of the lower classes among the Mohammedans. The majority of these have no idea of the progress made by the Western races, or of the inferiority of their country to other modern states.”

Given 9/11 and modern communications, those in the West do better understand the fanaticism of Islam. Constantinople is now called Istanbul. And Turkey, a bridge between the East and West, has been sliding back into the fantasies and fanaticism of the past.

America, the apotheosis of the modern world, reached out to kill its avowed enemy. That is what great powers have always done and must always do.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Islam: A Battle Plan to Conquer the World ... Alan Caruba

Islam: A Battle Plan to Conquer the World

By Alan Caruba

As Christians around the world celebrate Good Friday and then Easter, it behooves them to understand what the Koran, the book held sacred as the word of God (Allah), says about Christianity, Judaism and all other faiths.

This is particularly pertinent in an era in which Islam, the religion of more than a billion people throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and in increasing numbers, Europe, has entered upon a period of terrorism and warfare to advance its domination of the peoples of the Earth. Suffice to say Islam is not about tolerance.

In 2001, Diane Drew wrote a comparison of Christian scriptures with the teachings of Muhammad as found in the Koran, as well as a collection of his sayings, the Hadith. Ms. Drew makes no claims to being anything other than a Christian. She knows her Old and New Testament, and the Koran. Her website provides a clarity that is a gift to Christians who should make the effort to understand a religion that divides humanity between Dar es Islam and Dar es Harb, the world of Islam and the world of War.

I have taken the liberty of quoting from her exegesis—interpretation—that reveals not just the deep differences between Christianity and Islam, but the threat it poses to Christians, Jews, and all other “infidels”.

“Islam rejects the concept of the Trinity. The Koran misrepresents the teaching of Christianity regarding the Godhead, claiming Christians believe in ‘three gods’—Father, Mother, and Son.” (Sura 5:116, 5:73-75;cp. – Koran 5:114)

“Islam regards Jesus a prophet just like Moses, Abraham, and Noah” whereas, at the heart of Christianity is the belief that “Jesus was more than a prophet. He is God.” (Matthew 17.5; Mark 1:1; Luke 1:35; Philippians 2.6; Hebrews 1:8; 1 John 4:15). “Islam rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ.” Other religions share this view, but they do not call for the death for those who refuse conversation or death for Muslims that convert to other faiths.

“Islam rejects the doctrine of original sin” citing Muhammad’s assertion that “Every human being is born in a state of a pure nature; but through the influence of his parents, he may become non-Muslim.”

Islam denies the crucifixion of Jesus. “They denied the truth and uttered a monstrous falsehood against Mary. They declared ‘We have put to death the Messiah Jesus the son of Mary the apostle of Allah. They did not crucify him, but they thought they did…They have no knowledge thereof but the pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain, but God took him up to Himself.” (Koran 4:154-158).

Of particular concern for Christians and Jews is the way that “Islam both allows and forbids murder and violence, depending on who is the recipient of the act,” says Dew, noting that the Koran calls on Muslims to “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion (Islam) reigns supreme, (Koran 8:37)

“The Koran instructs not to make friendship with Jews and Christians (Koran 5:51), but to war against them: ‘When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.” (Koran 4:5)

More to the point, the Koran instructs Muslims to “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (Koran 2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (Koran 9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (Koran 8:12, cp. 8:60).

What Ms. Dew’s scholarly comparison of the texts of the Old and New Testament with the Koran reveals is less a religion than a battle plan for the conquest of the world. It is not the religion of love that Christianity professes, but of hatred for the unbeliever (the infidel) who must either convert or be killed.

Islam’s holy scriptures are regarded by Muslims as the word of God (Allah) and Islam regards Muhammad’s life as a guide to the practice of Islam.

I can make no claim to any great knowledge of Judaism, Christianity or Islam, but like anyone else, I can read and compare their holy scriptures. You can, too.

Islam is a religion divided by two sects, Sunni and Shiite, the members of which do not hesitate to kill each other, attacking each other’s mosques, murdering those attending funerals.

No one, not Jew, nor Christian, nor Buddhist, nor Hindu, nor atheist, is safe from Islam.

Americans and others around the world learned that afresh on 9/11. As Christians gather for Good Friday and for Easter, they must absorb, understand, and gird themselves against this harsh and dangerous reality.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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 Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

The Peace of Israel ... Alan Caruba

The Peace of Israel
By Alan Caruba

There is one nation in the Middle East that is not roiling in anarchy, rioting, and internal warfare. It does so without oppressing its citizens. It encourages and protects the practice of all religions. That nation is Israel.

The other Middle Eastern and North African nations, all predominantly Islamic, have discovered that Islam, despite its grip on the minds and souls of Muslims, does not preclude the universal human desire for freedom, for hope of a better life.

It seems that no one lacks for a reason to hate Jews, but if one steps back from the shouting and the insane claims that Jews and Zionism are responsible for everything and control everything, Israel seems to have made multiculturalism actually work.

Israel, whose official languages are Hebrew and Arabic, is home to more than seven million people, 76% if whom are Jewish and 24% are mostly Muslim, but include Christians, Bahai, and probably every other faith known to God and man.

The latest news, according to a report in the March 4th Wall Street Journal, is that Israel is weighing a new plan for a provisional Palestinian state, an offer of temporary borders within which the Palestinians could establish a nation of their own.

The problem, of course, is that the Palestinians have rejected this obvious solution for more than sixty years and are, themselves, divided between the Palestinian Authority and the radical Hamas that only wants to utterly destroy Israel and its Jewish citizens.

The French have France, the Greeks have Greece, the Turks have Turkey and all manner of self-identifying groups have their own nations, but for many worldwide the Jews are not supposed to have their own nation or to live in the land in which their ancestors have lived for 3,500 years ago.

When Muhammad began to piece together Islam, naming himself as a new prophet, he instructed the first Muslims to face Jerusalem when they prayed. After Arabian tribes of Jews refused to convert, he slaughtered their men, sold their women and children into slavery, and ordered Muslims to face Mecca instead.

The Jews, however, have some good news to celebrate because on March 3rd there was a report of Pope Benedict XVI’s new book, “Jesus of Nazareth—Part II” in which he asserts “a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ.” Given Jesus’ paternity, faith, and apostles, all Jewish, that is surely welcome news.

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council document, “Nostra Aetate”, initially affirmed that Jesus’ death could not be blamed on the Jews as a whole at that time or today. Pope Benedict’s reaffirmation of that Catholic truth should be bigger news.

In a world in which more than a billion Muslims are eager to establish a universal caliphate, mostly by the use of terror on the Earth’s other five billion inhabitants, the Pope’s book is a candle of sanity in the darkness.

Pope Benedict, forced to join the Hitler Youth, witness to the Holocaust, has made improving the Church’s relations with Jews a priority of his pontificate. He has visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland and Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial where he prayed for the souls of those killed for the “crime” of being Jewish.

In contrast, Islam makes death the punishment for the “crime” of converting to any other faith. That is surely a measure of how thoroughly evil it is. In Pakistan a Christian government minister was murdered this week. In Germany, a Muslim convert killed U.S. service members, and every day mullahs tell Muslims that suicide/homicide killing is a holy act. In America, the current regime refuses to use words like “terrorism” or “jihad.”

It takes clarity and courage for non-Muslims to identify the threat to their faith and their lives. Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul, was instrumental in shining a light on a comparable threat, Communism, aiding in the downfall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. An earlier Pope, Pius XII, used his powers to resist the rise and reign of Nazism.

It is a good thing to be a Catholic. It is a good thing to be a Christian. It is a good thing to be a Hindu or a Buddhist. It is a good thing to be a Jew.

The same cannot be said of those who embrace terror, murder, and death as their path to paradise.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

ISRAEL PREPARES FOR – ANYTHING!

ISRAEL PREPARES FOR – ANYTHING!
Nuclear Holocaust in the Middle East?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Is it just me – or does Gaddafi, of Libya, strike anyone else as a living, breathing, cartoon character?

The guy is LOONIE! Or, perhaps, he just WANTS us to THINK he is a NUT! Well, he convinced me rather a long time ago.

When Ronald Reagan sent him a message, via a bomb dropped in the front yard of his tent, Gaddafi suddenly quieted down, at least for a while.

Now, however, he seems intent on rattling cages in the Middle East, Europe, and at the Obama White House.

Do you honestly think that if Reagan, or George Bush, were still in the White House Gaddafi would be shooting off his mouth and egging on the Palestinians to revolt against Israel? Not hardly!

Dear readers, it is called R E S P E C T! It is that thing Mr. Obama is not accorded by the “Middle Eastern Madmen.” They don’t respect him -- and they do not fear him.

Just look at Gaddafi’s ill-advised suggestion to the so-called “Palestinians.”

He reportedly said: “"We need to create a problem for the world.” (SOURCE) Gaddafi was suggesting that “Palestinian refugees should capitalize on the wave of popular revolts in the Middle East by massing peacefully on the borders of Israel until it gives in to their demands, …” (SOURCE)

In an article by Reuters, Gaddafi is quoted as having said: "All Arab states which have relations with Israel are cowardly regimes." (SOURCE) He went on to issue a call to Muslim countries to join forces against Western powers.

Now, ordinarily, this would not trouble me a great deal. But, I must tell you, with Obama in the White House, I am convinced the Middle Eastern Madmen feel they have not just an extremely weak, indecisive, leader of the west but, I am also convinced they see Obama as a friend and an ally.

All the while, Israel, the only county in the Middle East the US can actually consider a friend, is being hung out to dry by the Obama Administration. Obama’s conduct towards Israel is shameful.

At the swearing-in ceremony for Israel’s new army chief Major General Benny Gantz, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister said: "An earthquake is shaking the whole Arab world and a large part of the Muslim world and we don't yet know how these things will turn out.” Netanyahu went on to say: "We are ready for all eventualities because we know that the foundation of our existence, and our capacity to convince our neighbors to live in peace with us, is based on the Israeli army," (SOURCE)

Over the past weekend, Egypt’s Defense Minister, Hussein Tantawi, acting as the head of the Egyptian government, spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Tantawi reportedly told Barak that Egypt remained committed to their bilateral peace agreement. Israeli officials reported this. They said it was the first high-level contact between Israel's government and Egypt's new rulers. (SOURCE)

If true, that would take SOME pressure off Israel’s southern border.

Look. Everyone in Israel understands that once the bloodlust of their Muslim enemies is whipped up sufficiently, Israel is going to be attacked. They might not know when, exactly, the attack is coming, but they KNOW it IS coming.

The three AM phone call to the White House has come – and nobody answered!

The Obama Regime is so far behind the curve on this entire Middle Eastern conflagration that, well, honestly, as an American, I am embarrassed. Obama’s ineptitude in managing foreign affairs is on a par with his ability to manage domestic affairs – and we all know he has failed, utterly, on the home front.

And so, our only friend in the region, Israel, is on her own. The US no longer has Israel’s back. She is exposed to those who have vowed to wipe Israel from the map.

How serious is this? Most Americans cannot even imagine the magnitude of what may happen if the Islamic thug nations gang up on Israel and Israel cannot count on the US for support. Let me spell it out for you: ATOMIC WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST!

Ever hear of “The Samson Option?” “The Samson Option is a term used to describe Israel’s alleged deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a “last resort” against nations whose military attacks threaten its existence, and possibly against other targets as well.” (SOURCE)

Israel will have no choice but to loose her “Atomic Arsenal.” No choice ... unless … you consider complete annihilation of Israel some sort of choice.

Make no mistake. Israel will be fighting for her life, for her continued existence as a country. She WILL do whatever it takes to survive. There can be NO Question, whatsoever, that she will use her ultimate weapons to destroy the capital cities of her enemies and, most likely, the holy places of Islam will be caught up in the nuclear holocaust, as well.

I don’t think the Obama White House understands the gravity of the situation in the Middle East. The old hands at the CIA, the NSA, and the other intelligence agencies do, I believe. But their bosses, Obama’s handpicked political hacks from the left, have the screws on tight.

The Middle Eastern powder keg, we have so often warned about in the past, now has a lighted fuse. If that fuse is not snuffed, and snuffed soon, it is going to blow.

It has become abundantly clear that Obama is simply not up to the task of dealing with anything more serious than a teleprompter with a blown fuse. As I said above, I am embarrassed that my fellow Americans could have been so blinded by political correctness that we insisted on electing such an awesomely unqualified person to lead our country.

Obama is leading America to economic disaster, while allowing Israel, our friend, to face annihilation … alone.

J. D. Longstreet

No Peace for the Israelis ... Alan Caruba

No Peace for the Israelis
By Alan Caruba

Writing in the Jerusalem Post recently, Daniel Gordis wrote “Life in our region has taught us that the first necessary step to defending yourself is acknowledging that someone else is out to destroy you.”

The peace talks the White House is sponsoring, much as previous administrations going back to Jimmy Carter have done, are doomed to failure. Just prior to the talks, four Israelis, one of whom was pregnant, were murdered and Hamas took credit for it. In Gaza, 3,000 turned out to celebrate the killings.

The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, is a fiction. It exists so that Israel can maintain to the world that it is willing to negotiate a settlement to the issue of territorial issues, but those issues have been settled by a series of wars against Israel going back to the day it was founded in 1948.

For Muslims, there can never been a settlement because Islam maintains that any land it formerly conquered remains theirs even if they no longer control it. That is why the proposed Ground Zero mosque was named Cardoba after the occupation of Spain from the eighth to the fifteenth century.

Ted Belman, writing on the topic of “the occupation”, cited international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention, regarding the West Bank and Gaza. Described as the occupied Palestinian territories, Belman pointed out that “Not only are they not occupied in a legal sense, but also they are not ‘Palestinian’ lands in a sovereign sense.”

“Prior to 1967, Jordon was in occupation of these territories, just as Israel is currently in occupation. It must be clearly understood that Israel’s occupation is not illegal and the UN has never claimed it to be. In fact, Resolution 242 permits Israel to remain inoccupation until they have an agreement on ‘secure and recognized borders.’” Thus, authority over the disputed territories was transferred as the result of the 1967 war against Israel.

Much of the United States today is the direct result of having won territory, largely from Mexico, in wars. A large swath was purchased from France in the Louisiana Purchase and a small section on the southern border was actually purchased from Mexico. We bought Alaska from the Russians.

As Belman pointed out, “The U.S. has traditionally, with the Carter administration being the only exception, refrained from describing the settlements as illegal and instead called them obstacles to peace. In September 2009, Obama went before the United Nations and declared ‘American does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.’ This is closer to Carter’s position, but falls short of declaring them illegal.”

Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said at the time, “This is the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making.”

After insulting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first trip to Washington, backing a UN investigation of the “humanitarian” effort to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza from the sea, and sending mixed signals regarding the debate over a mosque near Ground Zero, there are no doubts which side he’s on in this latest charade.

For this reason alone, neither the President’s, nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, can be seen as mediating the present meetings between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority in good faith. Neither is neutral about Israel or Jews.

Just as Jews cite the Torah and Christians cite the New Testament, Muslims look to their holy book, the Koran, to justify their current actions. To understand today’s turmoil wherever Muslims assert their claims, one must understand that the Koran and the Hadith, prophetic traditions based on it and Muhammad’s life, are filled with hatred for Jews and Christians.

Even with the attacks of 9/11 and others since then, Americans have been slow to grasp that they are locked into a religious war with Islam. A society where religious tolerance is part of its most prized documents cannot understand a religion whose holy book calls for the conquest of all other religions and global political dominance.

There will be no peace for Israel, for the United States, and for the world so long as a religion that celebrates murder and death continues to pursue its mission based on the myths of Muhammad and his followers.

Alan Caruba

© Alan Caruba, 2010

__________________

Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

They Destroyed My Towers! ... Alan Caruba

They Destroyed My Towers!
By Alan Caruba

Whenever I drove into New York via the Lincoln Tunnel, I would join the other cars on the long, graceful curve leading to its entrance and, looking to my left, I could see across the Hudson River. At the tip of Manhattan, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood as symbols of our economic power. On occasion, I had dined in Windows on the World, a restaurant located on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower and marveled at the panorama of New Jersey on one side, the outer boroughs on the other, and the dazzling view of Manhattan.

Whenever I think about September 11, 2001, I have only one emotion and that is a deep, unrelenting anger that a group of murderous, suicidal Islamists destroyed “my towers.”

They killed some 3,000 people when you factor in the attack on the Pentagon along with the passengers of the four commercial airliners used to perpetrate the destruction.

It is a wonder to me that Americans then and since exercised such restraint, such tolerance that the nation’s small population of Muslims not only did not suffer attacks, but today continue to build mosques for worship.

The effort to build one so close to Ground Zero demonstrates how obtuse and out of touch the political leadership is with mainstream Americans. The odious behavior of New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is beyond comprehension. The President tipped his hand at a White House dinner held to celebrate Ramadan, backing away slightly the following day enough to deflect criticism. Those proposing the Ground Zero mosque demonstrate the arrogance and contempt for Americans and for all “unbelievers” that lies at the core of Islam, but American leaders of varying religions have fallen over one another to excuse this exercise in triumphalism.

The Crusades from 1095 to 1291 were an effort to recapture the Judeo-Christian holy land from Muslim conquest. Having invaded Spain in 711, Muslims would rule for seven centuries until driven out of their last stronghold, Grenada, in 1492. In 1683, Muslims were decisively defeated near Vienna. How different Europe would have otherwise been.

Islam is a religion of the sword despite its widespread acceptance. Its barbarity is on display on a daily basis whether killing Christian missionaries in Afghanistan or Israeli civilians, a pregnant mother, her husband and their two children a week ago.

A sane society would have cleared away the rubble of 9/11 and rebuilt the Twin Towers, but Ground Zero, in terms of new structures nine years after the attack, remains barely begun.

Al Qaeda and all those who subscribe to its intent to destroy the West, the civilization developed in the West, and the freedoms championed by the West, remain to be defeated, while they continue to threaten India and even Europe once again.

The further we get from 9/11, the dimmer the embers of anger become for those with short memories or no grasp of history. The irony is that 9/11 reflects the long memories of many Islamists whose religion demands that all lands formerly conquered in the name of Islam be regained and that all people who follow a faith other than Islam be reduced to dhimmi, second-class citizens ruled by Muslims.

The World Trade Center belonged to the world. They were my towers and your towers. They represented a world bound together in trade, a world that set a value on all manner of goods and commodities, a world in which jobs and wealth were being created.

The World Trade Center represented a rational world. Today, nine years later, the dispatches from the Middle East, from Afghanistan, the Palestinian enclaves, from Pakistan, from Yemen, and from an Iran bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, are filled with news of an irrational, dysfunctional society; an Islamist rat’s nest, still seeking to destroy Israel, and still testing our borders and defenses in order to destroy America.

It is a good day to get angry once more, to resolve that we and the West shall not be defeated.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Why America MUST Remember 9/11

Why America MUST Remember 9/11
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Brigitte Gabriel's speech delivered at the Intelligence Summit in Washington DC

LINK: (Navy Seals.Com)

Source: Brigitte Gabriel
Below are selected excerpts from Brigitte Gabriel's speech delivered at the Intelligence Summit in Washington DC

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We gather here today to share information and knowledge. Intelligence is not merely cold hard data about numerical strength or armament or disposition of military forces. The most important element of intelligence has to be understanding the mindset and intention of the enemy. The West has been wallowing in a state of ignorance and denial for thirty years as Muslim extremist perpetrated evil against innocent victims in the name of Allah.

I was ten years old when my home exploded around me, burying me under the rubble and leaving me to drink my blood to survive, as the perpetrators shouted, "Allah Akbar!" My only crime was that I was a Christian living in a Christian town. At 10 years old, I learned the meaning of the word "infidel."

I had a crash course in survival. Not in the Girl Scouts, but in a bomb shelter where I lived for seven years in pitch darkness, freezing cold, drinking stale water and eating grass to live. At the age of 13, I dressed in my burial clothes going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered. By the age of 20, I had buried most of my friends--killed by Muslims. We were not Americans living in New York, or Britons in London . We were Arab Christians living in Lebanon .

As a victim of Islamic terror, I was amazed when I saw Americans waking up on September 12, 2001, and asking themselves "Why do they hate us?" The psychoanalyst experts were coming up with all sort of excuses as to what did we do to offend the Muslim World. But if America and the West were paying attention to the Middle East they would not have had to ask the question. Simply put, they hate us because we are defined in their eyes by one simple word: "infidels."

Under the banner of Islam "la, ilaha illa Allah, muhammad rasoulu Allah," (None is god except Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah) they murdered Jewish children in Israel, massacred Christians in Lebanon, killed Copts in Egypt, Assyrians in Syria, Hindus in India, and expelled almost 900,000 Jews from Muslim lands. We Middle Eastern infidels paid the price then. Now infidels worldwide are paying the price for indifference and shortsightedness.

Tolerating evil is a crime. Appeasing murderers doesn't buy protection. It earns one disrespect and loathing in the enemy's eyes. Yet apathy is the weapon by which the West is committing suicide. Political correctness forms the shackles around our ankles, by which Islamists are leading us to our demise.

America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam. You hear about Wahabbi and Salafi Islam as the only extreme form of Islam. All the other Muslims, supposedly, are wonderful moderates. Closer to the truth are the pictures of the irrational eruption of violence in reaction to the cartoons of Mohammed printed by a Danish newspaper.

From burning embassies, to calls to butcher those who mock Islam, to warnings that the West be prepared for another holocaust, those pictures have given us a glimpse into the real face of the enemy. News pictures and video of these events represent a canvas of hate decorated by different nationalities who share one common ideology of hate, bigotry and intolerance derived from one source: authentic Islam. An Islam that is awakening from centuries of slumber to re-ignite its wrath against the infidel and dominate the world. An Islam which has declared "Intifada" on the West.

America and the West can no longer afford to lay in their lazy state of overweight ignorance. The consequences of this mental disease are starting to attack the body, and if they don't take the necessary steps now to control it, death will be knocking soon. If you want to understand the nature of the enemy we face, visualize a tapestry of snakes. They slither and they hiss, and they would eat each other alive, but they will unite in a hideous mass to achieve their common goal of imposing Islam on the world.

This is the ugly face of the enemy we are fighting. We are fighting a powerful ideology that is capable of altering basic human instincts. An ideology that can turn a mother into a launching pad of death. A perfect example is a recently elected Hamas official in the Palestinian Territories who raves in heavenly joy about s ending her three sons to death and offering the ones who are still alive for the cause. It is an ideology that is capable of offering highly educated individuals such as doctors and lawyers far more joy in attaining death than any respect and stature re, life in society is ever capable of giving them.

The United States has been a prime target for radical Islamic hatred and terror. Every Friday, mosques in the Middle East ring with shrill prayers and monotonous chants calling death, destruction and damnation down on America and its people. The radical Islamist deeds have been as vile as their words. Since the Iran hostage crisis, more than three thousand Americans have died in a terror campaign almost unprecedented in its calculated cruelty along with thousands of other citizens worldwide. Even the Nazis did not turn their own children into human bombs, and then rejoice at their deaths as well the deaths of their victims. This intentional, indiscriminate and wholesale murder of innocent American citizens is justified and glorified in the name of Islam.

America cannot effectively defend itself in this war unless and until the American people understand the nature of the enemy that we face. Even after 9/11 there are those who say that we must engage our terrorist enemies, that we must address their grievances. Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our freedom of speech. Their grievance is our democratic process where the rule of law comes from the voices of many not that of just one prophet. It is the respect we instill in our children towards all religions. It is the equality we grant each other as human beings sharing a planet and striving to make the world a better place for all humanity. Their grievance is the kindness and respect a man shows a woman, the justice we practice as equals under the law, and the mercy we grant our enemy. Their grievance cannot be answered by an apology for who or what we are.

Our mediocre attitude of not confronting Islamic forces of bigotry and hatred wherever they raised their ugly head in the last 30 years, has empowered and strengthened our enemy to launch a full scale attack on the very freedoms we cherish in their effort to impose their values and way of life on our civilization.

If we don't wake up and challenge our Muslim community to take action against the terrorists within it, if we don't believe in ourselves as Americans and in the standards we should hold every patriotic American to, we are going to pay a price for our delusion. For the sake of our children and our country, we must wake up and take action. In the face of a torrent of hateful invective and terrorist murder, America's learning curve since the Iran hostage crisis is so shallow that it is almost flat. The longer we lay supine, the more difficult it will be to stand erect.

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Brigitte Gabriel is an expert on the Middle East conflict and lectures nationally and internationally on the subject. She's the former news anchor of World News for Middle East television and the founder of AmericanCongressforTruth.com. More bio info (HERE)

Obama Supports Mosque At Ground Zero!

Obama Supports Mosque At Ground Zero!
Published here with permission from TYSK NEWS. tyskeditor@tysknews.com
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Today is V-J Day, Victory over Japan in WWII.
More here: http://tinyurl.com/2d6xlyf

Yet this historic morning, I awakened to this news story:

Barack Hussein Obama Comes out in Support of the World Trade Center Mosque

WASHINGTON (AP) — After skirting the controversy for weeks, President Barack Obama is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying a nation built on religious freedom must allow it.

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he said. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

The White House had not previously taken a stand on the mosque, which would be part of a $100 million Islamic community center two blocks from where nearly 3,000 people perished when hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Press secretary Robert Gibbs had insisted it was a local matter.

It was already much more than that, sparking debate around the country as top Republicans including Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich announced their opposition. So did the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group.

Obama elevated it to a presidential issue Friday without equivocation.

While insisting that the place where the twin towers once stood was indeed "hallowed ground," Obama said that the proper way to honor it was to apply American values.

Full article here: http://tinyurl.com/25ehvwl

And a disturbing article was published Friday by Pajamas Media,

An Iranian Connection to the Cordoba House Ground Zero Mosque?
Read it here: http://tinyurl.com/2477kms

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TYSK NEWS Established January 1999

NASA's Mission to the Muslims ... Alan Caruba

NASA's Mission to the Muslims
By Alan Caruba

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I felt like this back in the days when the Watergate scandal slowly, painfully unraveled, revealing the most appalling stupidity and criminality emanating from the Oval Office. From the night when the burglars were arrested in the Democrat Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972 to the day Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, Americans were forced to witness and endure something unthinkable.

The news that NASA administrator, John Bolden, had been dispatched to the Middle East to fulfill what he said was its “foremost” mission, “to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science…and math and engineering” was so appallingly stupid that it defied any legitimate reason for NASA to exist.

The other mission objectives Barack Obama charged Bolden with were to “re-inspire children to want to get into science and math” and to “expand our international relationships.”

You need a bit of history to lend some clarity to this. NASA was the direct result of the Cold War scare when the Russians put Sputnik into orbit over the Earth in October 1957, thereby demonstrating they had missiles powerful enough to launch a nuclear attack on the nation. It galvanized the U.S. government into passing the National Defense Education Act in order to get more young Americans to go into the fields of science and math, and it prompted the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the purpose of demonstrating American scientists and engineers could create bigger and better missiles.

Muslims had nothing to do with it then and nothing to do with it now.

In February, President Obama proposed that NASA abandon its Constellation program. As the New York Times reported at the time, it would involve abandoning “the rockets and spacecraft that NASA has been working on for the past four years to replace space shuttles.” It would impose a mandate “that any future exploration program will be an international collaboration”, not an American one.

NASA made news again in mid-June when it was announced that Obama’s amended budget request would slash $100 million from its operating funds in order to “spur economic growth and job creation along Florida’s Space Coast and other affected regions.” According to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this somehow “revitalizes NASA and transitions to new opportunities in the space industry and beyond.” How many NASA engineers and scientists will now transition to jobs at Disneyworld?

Islam has not been “hijacked” by the likes of Osama bin Laden. Islam has always been about the conquest of the world and its greatest “scientific” breakthroughs since the 1980s have been the development of truck bombs and suicide bombers who have attacked targets from Bali to London, Madrid to Manhattan.

Obama’s Cairo speech on June 4, 2009 was filled with the kind of lies that portray Islam as a peaceful religion and one responsible for all manner of scientific breakthroughs from the invention of the magnetic compass to the printing of books.

Neither is true. What is true is that the Chinese had developed the compass and Islam had resisted printing books for a thousand years following its rise after 632AD. Those under the oppression of Islam did not contribute to or experience the rise of science and the arts as both were rejected as un-Islamic. Many forms of music, for example, were banned in Islam. While the West was producing Galileo, Isaac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus, Aristotle, Rene Descartes and Albert Einstein, not one single scholar of comparable stature was produced in the Islamic world.

Contrary to Obama’s mission to reach out to Muslims, they "reached out" to the West and, in America on September 11, 2001, destroyed the Twin Towers and attacked the Pentagon, killing some 3,000 victims. Typical of the arrogance of Islam is the proposal to build a mosque within a block of ground zero in New York City! Building mosques over sites held sacred to non-Muslims is an long tradition of Islam, from the mosque built over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, to the countless other mosques in converted Christian churches, Buddhist and Hindu temples, as a demonstration of their intention to replace Western and Asian religions.

Permitting the building of the proposed New York mosque would signal submission to Islam. Perverting and defunding NASA’s mission is evidence of Obama’s commitment to Islam.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Sending Israel the Usual Mixed Signals

Sending Israel the Usual Mixed Signals

By Alan Caruba

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President Obama is discovering what presidents going back to Eisenhower in the modern era and Jefferson in the earliest days of the nation learned. The Middle East responds best to the point of a bayonet because its primary faith, Islam, was spread by the sword and its holy book is essentially a battle plan to conquer the entire world.

Whatever else you read about the United States and Israel, keep in mind that we have been the closest of allies since it was founded in 1948 and was, of course, immediately attacked by the Arabs from nations around it. As for those “Palestinian” refugees you keep hearing about, most simply fled during the first war against Israel and now several generations later they remain in United Nations refugee “camps” or as the unwelcome guests in the surrounding Arab nations that will not extend citizenship. It remains a mystery to me why American presidents, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, the two Bushes, and now Obama even bother to push for a two-state “solution” when the record shows that Arafat and his successors have fled from any negotiations that would actually accomplish that. The so-called Palestinians only want the annihilation of the Jews as does the rest of the region.

Israel, sacred to Jews and Christians, is a rebuke to their claims of holy hegemony.The United States always looks like an idiot whenever it suggests that Israel (a) give back land won in the various wars against it and (b) should stop building settlements on that land. A look at the map demonstrates that Israel is a very tiny nation and the building of housing and infrastructure for its population is no less essential to them than it is for any other nation. Is there a strategic objective to the settlements? Yes. They say this is our land and we have a right to live here.

Along with other Middle East nations, Israel is among the oldest in history, dating back some 3,500 years. When it builds new housing in Jerusalem, it is doing so in the capital of Israel that was established by King David of biblical times. The Muslim “claim” to Israel as its holy land is based entirely on military conquest in the pre-Crusades era and to the fantasy story that Muhammad journeyed to Heaven on a horse from the site of the Dome of the Rock, built from 688 to 691 AD. The rock, by the way, is one of the most holy sites in Judaism, believed to be the place where Abraham was stayed from the sacrifice of his son, thus biblically prohibiting the sacrifice of one’s child; known as the Temple Mount. Jesus preached there.

There is no record that Muhammad ever stepped foot outside of Arabia though it is known that he originally commanded the early adherents of Islam to face Jerusalem to say their daily prayers. After Jewish tribes in Arabia refused to convert to Islam and declared him a charlatan, he had one tribe slaughtered and its women and children sold into slavery. After that he told early Muslims to face Mecca instead.

In sharp contrast to slaying one’s own children, Muslims cheer when one of theirs commits suicide for the purpose of killing Jews in Israel and, it turns out, fellow Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vice President Biden has recently been to Israel pledging America’s support in one breath and demanding the end to new settlements in the other. This is old stuff to Israelis who are busy continuing to create a modern state in the midst of those still mired in events that occurred a thousand years ago.

For more than six decades, the Israelis have wandered back and forth in a quest for peace with their neighbors, concluding after several wars, the abandonment of a security zone in Lebanon and the entire area of Gaza, that the so-called Palestinians do not want peace. Why American presidents and this current administration even bother to seek negotiations to secure peace is a diplomatic charade they feel compelled to stage to placate the Arab nations.

Meanwhile, the Israelis and their counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and even Egypt meet secretly to discuss the real problem in the Middle East, a nuclear-armed Iran.

The Obama administration sends mixed signals because it is a good way to keep all the parties involved distracted from the reality that Israel is here to stay. Sacred to Jews and Christians, Muslims have slim reason to lay claim to it.

The irony in this, seemingly missed by everyone involved, is that the United States has had a huge military commitment of men and arms in the Middle East ever since 9/11 required that we degrade both al Qaeda and the Taliban movements. We have fought several wars there in the last decade and why we would not join in a new one to put an end to the threat the Iranian regime represents is a mystery. Or a well-kept secret.

If jihad is a holy war that must continue until a global caliphate is established, what is the fuss all about if we assist the Iranian people in their quest to overthrow their oppressive government or, if necessary, to destroy their military threat to the region? Why would we hand off this necessary war to the Israelis? Unless, of course, we don’t want our fingerprints all over it?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The War on Christmas and Christianity Continues in 2009!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

OK, let me make it as clear as I am able -- right up front! I am not interested in “multiculturalism” and I am even less interested in inclusivity.” I am an Isolationist at heart, but a realist… out of practicality.

Having cleared the air, I can get on with these few comments.

It is time for America to celebrate Christmas. For those of the Christian community it is a grand time of celebrating the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ, from whose name the word Christmas, or “Christ Mass,” is derived. I am of this community.

I care nothing for the celebration of anything else. I care that you have the right to celebrate Hanukkah, or that newly invented secular holiday for Afro-centric African Americans, Kwanzaa. You are guaranteed that right by the Constitution, which was, itself, guaranteed by Christians.

I know, I know! I can see the “comments box” filling up even as I write this. That’s OK. Just keep it clean.

In the year 2009 one would have to be a disconnected, isolated, idiot to believe that Christmas is not under attack in the western world, especially in the United States.

If you are a regular reader of my scribbling then you already know that I believe that Christians founded America as a Christian country. As a Christian country we are tolerant of other religions. That does not mean that individual American citizens must approve of any particular religion or practice thereof. In a Christian country a citizen is not compelled to be a Christian or a subscriber to any religion, for that matter. That right was guaranteed all Americans in that aforementioned Constitution. And that, Dear Reader, in my humble opinion, is where we mis-stepped. That “right” we celebrate, and hold so dear, has come back to bite us on our collective “Christian butts.”

Any antagonist, worth his salt, uses his opponent’'s weakness against him. The opponents of Christianity, no slackers they, have learned to use our weakness of tolerance for other religions, or no religion, against the Christians of America, indeed, in much of the world.

Christian symbols are being relegated to the closets, and basements, of public buildings. They are not to be displayed on the walls of, or grounds of, said public buildings such as, for instance, courthouses.

Put up a Crèche scene, in honor of Christmas, in the town square, and you’'d better have a Menorah, a Christmas tree, a Santa Claus, a Kwanzaa something or other, and on and on. The idea is simply to dilute Christmas in a mass of other religious, and secular, celebrations and lessen its influence on the average American. The more timid among us are even afraid to utter that time honored “greeting: "Merry Christmas.”"

No more Christmas Break for our public schools. It’s now the “Winter Break, ” a phrase reminiscent of the pagans of Western Europe. Gone is the Christmas tree in many of those same schools.

Now, I could go on, and on, citing example after example of the battles being waged all across America against Christmas and, collectively, Christians.

Currently, we are in a worldwide war with Islam. Oh, you may argue, we are at war with only the fundamentalist Islamists! I beg to differ. Again, in my opinion -- this is a war between Islam and Christianity. The Muslims know this. Only those of us of the Western Christian countries have deluded ourselves into believing we are in a war with some splinter group of Islam. Hopefully, we will awaken to this fact before it is to late to recover from our mistake and take the battle, for our very existence, to the enemies of Christianity.

Meanwhile, in America, we have our hands full dealing with our own internal enemies. “The War on Christmas” is just a symptom of the greater war on Christianity. Until we recognize that fact, and begin to fight back, we will continue to lose our Christian symbols, our Christian holidays, and eventually our practice of the Christian faith.

I was thinking, as I wrote these words, that there must have been some squinty-eyed old scribe hidden away in a semi-darkened “scriptorium”, somewhere beneath the streets of ancient Rome, scratching out similar words as these while Christians were being gored, and mauled, and torn limb from limb, in the amphitheatres such as the Coliseum above his lowly hovel.

Somehow, every attack against Christians has served to strengthen the Christian Church and insure her survival. One doesn’'t have to be a believer to acknowledge the work of a Supreme Being in the dissemination of what we Christians call “The Good News” or “The Gospel.” And yet, down through the ages, many Christians, like this scribe, feel driven to denounce, in our writings, the evil forces at work against the Christian church.

As one who has studied the scriptures, I know the church will be whittled down until there will be only a remnant of the followers of Christ left upon his return. We witness the “whittling down” process everyday in reports of attacks upon the Christian faith in the news media of the world. And yet, – I feel a force, deep within me, urging me to proclaim to all who read these words that no matter the size of the remaining remnant, the Christian Church WILL survive. No matter the odds, the ultimate force for good in this world will continue to feed the hungry, heal the sick, lift up the fallen, and spread the good news of the birth of a savior in a little Middle Eastern town called Bethlehem, some 2,000 years ago. Since that remarkable night, men and women have been unceasingly spreading the news of His arrival and the message He brought of “"Peace, Good Will Toward Men."”

Men and women of the Christian faith, in the modern world, may again be relegated to “the catacombs” to practice their Christian faith. But just as their ancient counterparts, they WILL keep the faith. In the face of all odds they will not falter and they will not fail.

And so, from my own little scriptorium, as I write in the wee hours of the morning, please allow me to be among the first to wish you, and your family, a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

J. D. Longstreet

Every Day is Groundhog Day in the Middle East ... Alan Caruba

Every Day is Groundhog Day in the Middle East
By Alan Caruba

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In the movie, “Groundhog Day”, the main character wakes up day after day, trapped in the same events, desperately looking for a way out of that living nightmare. It’s a very good metaphor for the Middle East.

Here are some quotes from a book whose title I will reveal in a moment:

“The only truly transcendent law in the Middle East is that of unintended consequences.”

“Nation-building and the redressing of historic wrongs were in the air…”

“His fighters secured control of key rivers, recaptured Kut, and on (date withheld) stormed victoriously into Baghdad. Still undecided was how this famous city—and, indeed, most of Mesopotamia—would now be governed.”

“I suppose we have underestimated the fact that this country is really an inchoate mass of tribes which can’t as yet be reduced to any system. The Turks didn’t govern and we have tried to govern…and failed.”

And finally “Our armies have come into your cities and lands not as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.”

All this and more was said in the 1920s by British imperialists. If it sounds like things being said by Americans, then you must assume that America has been repeating all the mistakes of Great Britain in the exact same places.

The book being quoted is “Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East” by Karl E. Mayer and Shareen Blair Brysac ($18.95, W.W. Norton, softcover) and its five-hundred pages are devoted to the extraordinary personalities of the 1920s who, believing it was Great Britain’s duty was to bring civilization to India, Africa, and the Middle East, devoted themselves to “Pax Britannia”, the rule of distant colonies representing a fourth of the world’s population.

The book is a reminder that whatever passes for modernity in the Middle East has generally been imposed by the process of European colonization in quest of its oil and other riches to fatten the profits of various British, French, and American business enterprises such as the Suez Canal and the oil companies.

Left to themselves the polyglot of tribes would never have experienced anything resembling modernization.

Afghanistan today would look very much the same to the earliest invaders and explorers who passed through it. No roads. No hospitals. Few schools. No jobs except raising poppies for the heroin trade or serving in the army or police. Men raised from youth to fight anyone and everyone. Pushtuns, Tajiks, Hazarus, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Qizilbash.

The Middle East had been ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire for centuries—from Egypt to Persia. Going back even further in history, the region was no stranger to European invasions. The Crusades were a response against the Islamic invaders that at one point had laid siege to Vienna.

As the authors note, “In his history of Jerusalem, the Israeli writer Amos Elon calculates that over four millennia the Holy City has known ‘twenty ruinous sieges, two intervals of total destruction, eighteen recent reconstructions, and at least eleven transitions from one religion to another.” In 1967 visitors could find the remnants of “Roman encampments, Crusader castles, Turkish parapets, and British pillboxes.”

To suggest, for example, that after more than sixty years of Israeli national sovereignty that Arab neighbor nations (and Iran) have the slightest intention of allowing it to exist is to ignore the history of centuries old intolerance directed against both Christian and Jew.

Following World War One, England and France divided the remains of the Ottoman Empire that had chosen to side with Germany. It would have died sooner or later of its own dead weight, but it was Sir Percy Zachariah Cox who would take out “a map and a pencil to draw the boundary between Iraq and the Nejd (now Saudi Arabia). The borders with Syria and Transjordan were defined similarly.”

There were Arab leaders, but they were generally the pawns of the great powers, frequently assassinated or deposed. With some exceptions, the nations of the Middle East continue to be ruled by monarchs and despots.

As the British Empire shrank in the wake of World War Two and American power grew only one thing is clear. Neither of these imperial powers had any clue, nor way of dealing with the Middle East’s regressive Islamic fanaticism that remains a ceaseless threat to Western civilization. And, as in past times, the debates rage about staying in or getting out.

Every day in the Middle East is Groundhog Day.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. A business and science writer, author, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, October 2009

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Conservative+US+Middle-East+Mistake+Afghanistan+Britain+Iran+Iraq+Islam