Year: 2010

Canada lashes out at Tehran

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From TheStar.com

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has lashed out at Iran, condemning the country for ignoring the world’s pleas not to develop nuclear weapons and accusing it of stifling democracy with brute force.

“This regime continues to blatantly ignore its global obligation and it threatens as well global security,” Cannon said after a meeting with Finnish Foreign Minister Cai-Goran Alexander Stubb in Ottawa on Thursday.

Both men suggested the only message Iran may understand is serious UN economic sanctions over and above some measures Canada has already taken, including a ban on active trade promotion.

“Canada will continue to work with our allies to find strong and viable solutions, including sanctions, to hold Iran to account,” Cannon said.

He would not answer a question on whether Canada would support military action against Iran by the United States or Israel. Continue Reading →

Bolton: Obama ‘Crippled’ By Desire to Negotiate With Iran

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From Fox News

This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” February 11, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Today was the day that Iran said it would punch the west in a way that would leave it stunned.

And earlier, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution by announcing to the world that his country is now a, quote, nuclear state. Now, he said Iran has already produced a significant amount of enriched uranium, which is the material that could be used to manufacture a bomb.

Now meanwhile, violence broke out on the streets of Tehran as protesters also marked today’s anniversary, and there are even reports that the wife of the opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was brutally beaten during one of the demonstrations.

So after more than a year in office has the Obama administration’s so-called smart power approach to diplomacy made us any safer? And what about our allies in Israel?

Joining me now with reaction to the latest threat from Iran is the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

Ambassador, good to see you. Thanks for being with us.

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: Good to be here.

HANNITY: Once again, we’ve got people on the streets of Tehran, freedom fighters. I’ve yet to hear the administration speak out on their behalf. Is that a big mistake?

BOLTON: Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, either. I think what we see today is Ahmadinejad very confident, very determined, making his message about the Iranian nuclear weapons program clear.

And also, by his control over the streets of Tehran and other major cities, making clear this regime intends to stay in power.

I think Obama is crippled by his desire to negotiate with Iran. He doesn’t want to do or say anything that gets in the way of that, and that leaves the demonstrators, who are very powerfully opposed to the regime in Tehran, essentially without any outside help… Read More.

Haaretz: Think tank: Israel faces global delegitimization campaign

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H/T Tundra Tabloids

Haaretz

Jordanian protesters burning an Israeli flag at an anti-Israel protest in Amman last year.
(Reuters)

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Last update – 07:13 12/02/2010

Think tank: Israel faces global delegitimization campaign

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

Israel is facing a global campaign of delegitimization, according to a report by the Reut Institute, made available to the cabinet on Thursday. The Tel Aviv-based security and socioeconomic think tank called on ministers to treat the matter as a strategic threat.

The report cites anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli athletes compete abroad, moves in Europe to boycott Israeli products, and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London.

Reut says the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology – portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist.

Reut lists the network’s major hubs – London, Brussels, Madrid, Toronto, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. The network’s activists – “delegitimizers” the report dubs them – are relatively marginal: young people, anarchists, migrants and radical political activists. Although they are not many, they raise their profile using public campaigns and media coverage, the report says.

The “delegitimizers” cooperate with organizations engaging in legitimate criticism of Israel’s policy in the territories such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, blurring the line between legitimate censure and delegitimization. They also promote pro-Palestinian activities in Europe as “trendy,” the report says.

The network’s activists are not mostly Palestinian, Arab or Muslim. Many of them are European and North American left-wing activists. The Western left has changed its approach to Israel and now sees it as an occupation state, the report says. To those left-wing groups, if in the 1960s Israel was seen as a model for an egalitarian, socialist society, today it epitomizes Western evil.

The delegitimization network sees the fight against the former regime in South Africa as a success model. It believes that like the apartheid regime, the Zionist-Israeli model can be toppled and a one-state model can be established.

The Reut team says the network’s groups share symbols and heroes such as the Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura, American peace activist Rachel Corrie and joint events like the Durban Conference.

Israel’s diplomats overseas, meanwhile, must counter the attempts to delegitimize the country. “The combination of a large Muslim community, a radical left, influential, English-language media and an international university center make London fertile ground for Israel’s delegitimization,” says Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador in London.

Prosor gives many interviews to the British media and lectures at university campuses throughout the country. Although he says he has encountered anti-Israel demonstrations on almost every campus, Prosor has told his people to increase their campus activity.

“What is now happening in London universities will happen, at most, in five years at all the large universities in the United States,” he says.

The Reut report says Israel is not prepared at all to deal with the threat of delegitimization. The cabinet has not defined the issue as a threat and sees the diplomatic arena as marginal compared to the military one.

“The Foreign Ministry is built for the challenges of the ’60s, not the 2000s,” the report says. “There are no budgets, not enough diplomats and no appropriate diplomatic doctrine.”

Reut recommends setting up a counter-network, in which Israel’s embassies in centers of delegitimization activity would serve as “front positions.”

The report says the intelligence service should monitor the organizations’ activities and study their methods. The cabinet should also confront groups trying to delegitimize Israel but embrace those engaged in legitimate criticism.

The report adds that Israel should not boycott these groups, as Israel’s embassy in Washington does with the left-wing lobby J Street. Boycotting critics merely pushes them toward joining the delegitimizers, Reut says.

SSTRATFOR: Russia: At Least 20 Dead In Gunbattle

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February 12, 2010
Russian security forces said on Feb. 12 that at least 20 insurgents had died in a gunbattle in the North Caucasus region of Ingushetia, reported Reuters, citing Russian news agencies. A search continues for remaining rebels and officials are trying to identify the dead, RIA Novosti reported.

Airport body scanners violate Islamic law, Muslims say

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Vladtepesblog absolutely predicted this:

h/t snaphanen

By Niraj Warikoo
Free Press Staff Writer

Saying that body scanners violate Islamic law, Muslim-American groups are supporting a “fatwa” – a religious ruling – that forbids Muslims from going through the scanners at airports.

The Fiqh Council of North America – a body of Islamic scholars that includes some from Michigan – issued a fatwa this week that says going through the airport scanners would violate Islamic rules on modesty.

“It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women,” reads the fatwa issued Tuesday. “Islam highly emphasizes haya (modesty) and considers it part of faith. The Quran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts.”

The decision could complicate efforts to intensify screening of potential terrorists who are Muslim. After the Christmas Day bombing attempt in Detroit by a Muslim suspect from Nigeria, some have called for the use of body scanners at airports to find explosives and other dangerous materials carried by terrorists. Some airports are now in the process of buying and using the body scanners, which show in graphic detail the outlines of a person’s body.

But Muslim groups say the scanners go against their religion. One option offered to passengers who don’t want to use the scanners would be a pat down by a security guard. The Muslim groups are urging members to undergo those instead.

Two members of the Fiqh Council are from Michigan, Imam Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, and Imam Ali Suleiman Ali of the Canton Mosque. “Fiqh” means Islamic jurisprudence.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has a chapter in Michigan, says it endorses the fatwa.

“We support the Fiqh Council’s statement on full-body scanners and believe that the religious and privacy rights of passengers can
be respected while maintaining safety and security,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of CAIR.

Currently, there are 40 full-body scanners at 19 airports in the U.S., including two of them in Detroit, said spokesman Jim Fotenos of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). There are plans for 450 more body scanners in U.S. airports, he said.

In a statement, the TSA said it is committed to keeping passengers safe and also protecting their privacy.

“TSA’s mission is to keep the traveling public safe. Advanced imaging technologies are an important tool in a multi-layered security system to detect evolving threats such as improvised explosive devices. TSA’s use of these technologies includes strong protections in place to safeguard passenger privacy. Screening images are automatically deleted, and the officer viewing the image will never see the passenger.”

The TSA stressed that the body scanners are “optional to all passengers.” Those who turn them down, “will receive equivalent screening that may include a physical pat-down, hand-wanding, and other technologies. Physical pat-downs are performed by Transportation Security Officers of the same sex as the passenger in a private screening area, if the passenger requests.”

Body scanners “do not produce photos,” the agency said. Rather, the images “look like chalk outlines.”

Body scanner images are available at www.tsa.gov.

Contact Niraj Warikoo: nw******@*******ss.com

Fiqh Council advises Muslims on Islamic law

The Fiqh Council is based in Plainfield, Ind., where it is affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and advises Muslims on sharia, or Islamic law.

An earlier version of the group started in the 1960s with the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada. The chairman of the Fiqh Council is Muzammil Siddiqi, religious director of the Islamic Society of Orange County in California and former president of ISNA.

In its fatwa, the council said the use of body scanners “is against the teachings of Islam, natural law.”

h/t Ethan for the video

IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE THAT NAZISM IS A LEFTIST IDEOLOGY: THOSE DAMNED SOCIALISTS

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THEY ALL PROMOTED GENOCIDE
ALONG WITH THEIR BRAND OF SOCIALISM

Special thanks to Henrik Raeder Clausen for this excellent bit of information found at the Calvin College website. When trying to understand the thinking behind political movements, it helps to read what the leaders of those movements say, or have said, about the ideals and agendas of these groups. The meme that Nazism was a Right-wing movement, is so faulty, that it’s surprising that it still has currency with many people today.

The Tundra Tabloids reproduces only a portion of the text written by the Nazi war criminal, Joseph Goebbels, the whole text is available in the link included in the title. The TT also highly reccomends the work of George Watson “The Lost Literature of Socialism“, and Jonah Goldberg’s, Liberal Fascism. KGS

Background: “This widely distributed Nazi pamphlet first appeared in 1929. I am working from a 1932 copy, and have not compared it with the first version, but it does not look as if significant changes were made as it was reissued. The title, loosely translated, is “Those Damned Nazis.” Literally, it translates as something like “those cursed swastika lads,” but that does not really work in English. At least several hundred thousand copies were printed. It is a good summary of the basic lines of Nazi propaganda just before Hitler’s takeover in 1933. The booklet included five cartoons by Mjölnir, Goebbels’ cartoonist, three of which I include here. Mjölnir also produced some of the most familiar Nazi posters.”

by Joseph Goebbels

WHY WE ARE NATIONALISTS

[…] That is how things are today in Germany. Nationalism has turned into bourgeois patriotism and its defenders are battling windmills. One says Germany and means the monarchy. Another proclaims freedom and means Black-White-Red [the colors of the German flag]. Would our situation today be any different if we replaced the republic with a monarchy and flew the black-white-red flag?
[…] Bourgeois patriotism is the privilege of a class. It is the real reason for its decline. When 30 million are for something and 30 million are against it, things balance out and nothing happens. That is how things are with us. We are the world’s Pariah not because we do not have the courage to resist, but rather because out entire national energy is wasted in eternal and unproductive squabbling between the right and the left. Our way only goes downward, and today one can already predict when we will fall into the abyss.
Ok, lets begin with these couple of paragraphs. You will first have to look at the words used by Hitler’s propaganda minister in light of the period in which they were used. The Nazis’ loathing of the capitalist bourgeois class (the merchant and middle class) is apparent, something of which by the way, the Nazis shared with their socialist cousins, the Marxists.

But look closely at the clear destinction Goebbels makes between patriotism and nationalism. The former is depicted as the corrupted product of free market capitalism, while the latter is deemed as something older, and only to be rediscovered under German Nazism. What he’s actually referring to is, the blind nationalism of the aristocracy, which held near absolute power over the rest of society for centuries.

Nationalism, according to the socialist antisemite Goebbels, became grotesquely diluted due to the bad influences of the upstart capitalists. They were the ones (Jews coming into importance here) guilty for transforming it into a more gentile, limited form of “patriotism”, and therefore, chiefly responsible for the downfall of the German state. There’s more:

[…] The sin of bourgeois patriotism was to confound a certain economic form with the national. It connected two things that are entirely different. […]

From this understanding, the young nationalism draws its absolute demand. The faith in the nation is a matter for everyone, never a group, a class or an economic clique. The eternal must be distinguished from the temporal. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.

This lays to rest the meme once and for all, that, modern day Right-wing conservatism has an extreme side to itself, and its called fascism. It just isn’t so. In order to believe that, you would have to convince yourself that the National Socialists had no idea about their own ideology, and that they did not hate the middle class and merchants, as well as the Jews, who they wrongly believed were responsible for the creation of capitalism, and responsible for the destruction of the Weimar Republic.

Why Are We Socialists?

We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.

Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class. It promotes the rise of the fourth class and its incorporation in the political organism of our Fatherland, and is inextricably bound to breaking the present slavery and regaining German freedom. Socialism, therefore, is not merely a matter of the oppressed class, but a matter for everyone, for freeing the German people from slavery is the goal of contemporary policy. Socialism gains its true form only through a total fighting brotherhood with the forward-striving energies of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is everything, the future, freedom, the fatherland!

The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions. The sin of Marxism was to degrade socialism into a question of wages and the stomach, putting it in conflict with the state and its national existence. An understanding of both these facts leads us to a new sense of socialism, which sees its nature as nationalistic, state-building, liberating and constructive.

The Marxists believed, as well as did a great number of the aristocracy who filled the leadership of both the Menshiviks and Bolshivik parties (at least 20% for both) that Marxist socialism provided the best counter answer to up-start capitalism. Great numbers of German National Socialists held prior membership, or at least owed their loyalty to, the various Socialist and Marxist parties in the Weimar Republic.

The Marxist dogma of class warfare, which soon lost its luster after WWI (when the European masses, or the proletariat, refused to rise up against the ruling class) was no longer deemed viable. German socialists however, were no longer willing to wait for the Russians to redefine socialism or their movement, action was needed, and Germany would show the way.

This is the only reason why there was friction, loathing and outright utter contempt between these two Leftist, Socialist movements for each other. They were in competition with each other for the hearts and minds of socialist masses. Pure and simple.

The bourgeois (TT: Capitalist) is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. It is beginning to fulfill its political mission. It is involved in a hard and bitter struggle for political power as it seeks to become part of the national organism. The battle began in the economic realm; it will finish in the political. It is not merely a matter of wages, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day — though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform — but it is much more a matter of incorporating a powerful and responsible class in the state, perhaps even to make it the dominant force in the future politics of the fatherland. The bourgeoisie does not want to recognize the strength of the working class. Marxism has forced it into a straitjacket that will ruin it. While the working class gradually disintegrates in the Marxist front, bleeding itself dry, the bourgeoisie and Marxism have agreed on the general lines of capitalism, and see their task now to protect and defend it in various ways, often concealed.

We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces. We have no intention of begging for that right. Incorporating him in the state organism is not only a critical matter for him, but for the whole nation. The question is larger than the eight-hour day. It is a matter of forming a new state consciousness that includes every productive citizen. Since the political powers of the day are neither willing nor able to create such a situation, socialism must be fought for. It is a fighting slogan both inwardly and outwardly. It is aimed domestically at the bourgeois parties and Marxism at the same time, because both are sworn enemies of the coming workers’ state. It is directed abroad at all powers that threaten our national existence and thereby the possibility of the coming socialist national state.

Regardless of the claims held by most Leftists/Communists, that it was the National Socialists who were the ones aligned with business, therefore pro-capitalists, the German National Socialists saw the Marxists in Russia as the ones being in bed with the “loathsome breed”. But this is a classic smear tactic used both sides in order to score points at the other’s expense. In reality, both sides were involved with business, as long as they were needed, and only to be jettisoned when the day of reckoning (the arrival of a true socialist state) was at hand.

One needs only to look at Communist China and see the state more than happy to use the capitalist system reengineer its economy while continuing to prop up its rule. How long that lasts is anyone’s guess. The age old meme of Fascism being a Right-wing political movement, is dead, no longer to be taken seriously by people who know better and are honest about it. Here are a few parting words by Goebbels for those who still have doubts:

Socialism is possible only in a state that is united domestically and free internationally. The bourgeoisie and Marxism are responsible for failing to reach both goals, domestic unity and international freedom. No matter how national and social these two forces present themselves, they are the sworn enemies of a socialist national state.
Spoken like a true believer in National Socialism to me. KGS

Iran: Israel Warned About Military Move

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February 11, 2010 Stratfor

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB stated that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Syrian counterpart that Israel should be resisted and finished off if it launched military action in the region, Reuters reported Feb. 11. Ahmadinejad told Syrian President Bashar al Assad that Iran has reliable information that Israel wants to compensate for its “ridiculous defeats” from the people of Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. During a telephone conversation, Ahmadinejad stated that if Israel “repeats its mistakes” and initiates a military operation, then it must be resisted with full force “to put an end to it once and for all.”

Biden: Al Queda changing tactics

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February 11, 2010
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said al Qaeda was moving toward smaller but “devastatingly frightening” attacks, adding that the chance of another 9/11-style mass assault is unlikely, Reuters reported Feb. 11. Biden also said the situation in Pakistan worried him more than that of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, stating that it is a big country with nuclear weapons and a significant minority of radicalized population. He added that Pakistan does not have a completely functional democracy, making it his greatest concern. Biden said the concern relates to someone just strapping a backpack on them with weapons and blowing up.?

‘Students’ disrupt Israeli embasador

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The “Tolerance” of Radical Islam

by Guy Rodgers, Executive Director

Muslims in America and throughout the world regularly lecture us about how we are not sufficiently “tolerant” of Islam.

Students of the threat of radical Islam know how offensively hypocritical this is. America bends over backwards to be tolerant, so much so that “tolerance” has evolved into a corrosive political correctness which created the climate of military silence that led to the jihadist massacre at Ft. Hood.

Meanwhile, the “tolerance” of Islam is on display in Saudi Arabia, where a Christian can’t publicly carry a Bible and a Jew can’t wear a Star of David.

It’s on display in this video, shot at the University of California/Irvine, where radical Muslims and their sympathizers repeatedly shouted down a speaker at a public event. If you want to see the ugly face of the “tolerance” of radical Islam right here in America, click here.

Brigitte Gabriel knows all about this so-called “tolerance,” and if you’ve read her best-selling book Because They Hate you know her story.

For me, this so-called “tolerance” recently struck very close to home.

That’s when a good friend of our family, a pastor, was arrested in a Muslim-majority African country. (I am not revealing the pastor’s name or the country to protect his identity.)

The pastor was invited to speak at a small home meeting, a group of about 20 people, including children.

During the meeting, over 60 military police descended on this small group that somehow posed such a fearsome “threat” to the peace and well-being of the country!

The pastor’s Bible and personal effects were confiscated. Fortunately for him, his punishment was deportation. It could have been much, much worse.

The militant intolerance of radical Islam that dominates the Muslim world is not a relic of some ancient past. It is the reality of every nation where Muslims enjoy either a majority or a substantial minority of the population. Even countries characterized as more tolerant, such as Turkey, are rife with examples of this intolerance.

This intolerance is taking root in America. The UC/Irvine video is not an isolated case. Perhaps you recall the protestors in January, 2009, shouting at Jews on the streets of Florida “go back to the ovens” and “die, die, die!”

We must win the war against Islamic terrorism. But we must also win the war for the preservation of America’s values of freedom and our cherished right of free speech.

For the tolerance of evil is not tolerance. As Lee Harris notes in his book The Suicide of Reason, the tolerance of militant Islamist intolerance is cultural suicide.