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THE AMERICAN AYATOLLAHS: PART ONE (OF FOUR)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 17, 2015 at 4:16 pm

Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old columnist in Saudi Arabia, decided to celebrate the birthday of the Islamic prophet Muhammed in a truly unique way.

Hamza Kashgar

In early February, 2012, he posted on Twitter a series of mock conversations between himself and Muhammad:

“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.”

“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.”

“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.”

“No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice.”

The tweets sparked some 30,000 infuriated responses. Many Islamic clerics demanded that he face execution for blasphemy.

Kashgari posted an apology tweet: “I deleted my previous tweets because…I realized that they may have been offensive to the Prophet and I don’t want anyone to misunderstand.”

Soon afterward, King Abdullah ordered his arrest.

Saudi King King Abdullah 

Kashgari fled to Malaysia, another majority-Muslim country. He was quickly arrested by police as he passed through Kuala Lumpur international airport. Three days later, he was deported to Saudi Arabia.

Human rights groups feared that he would be executed for blasphemy, a capitol offense in Saudi Arabia.

After nearly two years in prison, Kashgari was freed on October 29, 2013. Kashgari used Twitter to inform his supporters of his release.

Outrageous? By Western standards, absolutely.

Clearly there is no tolerence in Saudi Arabia for the freedoms of thought and expression that Americans take for granted.

But before you say, “Religious oppression like that could never happen in the United States,” think again.

Right-wing American ayatollahs are now working overtime to create just that sort of society–where theocratic despotism rules the most intimate aspects of our lives.

One of these is the former GOP Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. In early January, 2012, he said that states should have the right to outlaw birth control without the interference of the Supreme Court.

Rick Santorum

In an interview with ABC News, Santorum said he opposed the Supreme Court’s ruling that made birth control legal:

“The state has a right to do that [ban contraception]. I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a Constitutional right. The state has the right to pass whatever statutes they have.

“That’s the thing I have said about the activism of the Supreme Court–they are creating rights, and it should be left up to the people to decide.”

In the landmark 1965 decision, Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court struck down a law that made it a crime to sell contraceptives to married couples. The Constitution, ruled the Justices, protected a right to privacy.

Two years later, in Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Court extended Griswold by striking down a law banning the sale of contraceptives to unmarried couples.

Santorum has left no doubt as to where he stands on contraception. On October 19, 2011, he said:

“One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘“Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.’

“It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also…procreative.

“That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act….And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure.”

“How things are supposed to be”–according to Right-wing fanatics like Santorum and the evangelicals who support them.

Like the Saudi religious religious zealots who demand the death of a “blasphemer,” they demand that their religious views should govern everyone. Both groups have far more in common than they want to admit.

The important difference–for Americans who value their freedom–is this:

The United States has a Supreme Court that can–and does–overturn laws that threaten civil liberties. Laws that GOP Presidential candidates clearly want to revive and force on those who don’t share their peculiar religious views.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

The same holds true–in a democracy–for candidates who seek dictatorial power over their fellow citizens. Don’t give them your consent.

TWO TALIBANS: THEIRS AND OURS

In History, Politics, Social commentary on January 16, 2015 at 12:03 am

Malala Yousafzai is the 17-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head and neck by a Pakistani Taliban gunman.

Her “crime”?  Campaigning for the right of girls and women to pursue an education in Pakistan.

Malala Yousafzai

The attack came on October 9, 2012, when a Taliban gunman forced his way into a van full of schoolgirls, asked for her by name, and opened fire.

The assault provoked unprecedented levels of public outrage, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan—even among people who have in the past sympathized with the militants.

But the Taliban had a different outlook on it.

“For days and days, coverage of the Malala case has shown clearly that the Pakistani and international media are biased,” said a Pakistani Taliban commander in South Waziristan. “The Taliban cannot tolerate biased media.”

The commander, who called himself Jihad Yar, argued that death threats against the press are justified.  “Ninety-nine percent” of the reporters on the story, he claimed, were only using the shooting as an excuse to attack the Taliban.

Leaders of the Islamic Taliban

Yar did not apologize for the attempt to assassinate the girl, who passionately opposed the Taliban’s efforts to close girls’ schools.

“We have no regrets about what happened to Malala,” he said. “She was going to become a symbol of Western ideas, and the decision to eliminate her was correct.  If she was not important for the West’s agenda, why would a U.S. ambassador meet her?”

According to unnamed sources, the Taliban dispatched 12 suicide bombers against the news media.  And it is particularly eager to target female journalists.  Said Yar:

“They were at the U.S. Embassy party with wine glasses in their hands and wearing un-Islamic dress with Americans.”

But the Pakistani Taliban have no monopoly on hatred of women’s rights.

On February 4, 2013, two North Carolina state representatives introduced a bill to “clarify” state law to specifically prohibit the baring of women’s breasts.

The proposed legislation, House Bill 34, would make it a Class H felony to expose “external organs of sex and of excretion, including the nipple, or any portion of the areola, of the human female breast.”

North Carolina law already forbids “indecent exposure,” but doesn’t specifically define breasts as “private parts.”

Accused violators could face one to six months in prison.

Rep. Rayne Brown, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill, said, to some people, the issue might seem frivolous.  But “there are communities across this state, there’s local governments across this state, and also local law enforcement for whom this issue is really not a laughing matter.”

Rep. Rayne Brown

Brown said that she was prompted, in part, by the second annual topless protest and women’s rally in Asheville in August, 2012.  Asheville is about 130 miles from Brown’s own district.

Rep. Annie Mobley, D-Ahoskie, voiced concerns that the bill could affect people wearing “questionable fashions.”

“All we are doing is codifying the Supreme Court definition of ‘private parts,’” said House Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Rep. Sarah Stevens, R-Surry. “That’s it. “

Stevens said using pasties or other nipple coverings would protect women against prosecution. “They’d be good to go.”

For Rep. Tim Moore, R-Cleaveland, the issue was a laughing matter: “You know what they say–duct tape fixes everything.”

So far, the bill seems to be stalled in the legislature.

And, not to be outdone, the Wisconsin state legislature enacted a budget for 2011-2013 that eliminated funding to family planning clinics that provide abortions or refer women to a clinic that performs the procedure.

In a press conference, Nicole Safar, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said that some 2,000 low-income women who rely on the clinics for cancer screening, breast exams, pregnancy testing, and other services would now be left out in the cold.

“They are small centers in small communities and they needed the state funding to make them financially viable,” said Planned Parenthood spokesperson Teri Huyck.

“It’s terribly unfortunate for the women who live in these areas. Without the state support, we didn’t have a choice.

“None of these centers provided abortion services.  There is nowhere else for low-income women to get these services. These centers focused on preventing unplanned pregnancies and reducing the need for abortions,” said Safar.

Due to the loss of $1.1 million in state funding, Planned Parenthood closed facilities in Beaver Dam, Johnson Creek, Chippewa Falls and Shawano between April and July.

For those who believe women should control their own lives, the message should be clear: This will never be possible in some parts of the world.

And these include Islamic countries and those states controlled by Rightist Republicans.

It is pointless to expect those who believe they are God’s anointed to renounce their absolutist beliefs.  Or to cease trying to gain absolute power over others–especially women.

In Afghanistan, the United States is waging a losing battle to eliminate the freedom-hating Islamic Taliban.

It would do better to start waging war against the freedom-hating Rightist Taliban within its own borders.

NO SENSE OF DECENCY

In History, Politics, Social commentary on January 15, 2015 at 12:56 am

“Senator, may we not drop this?….You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

The speaker was Joseph N. Welch, chief counsel for the United States Army–then under investigation by Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Submittee on Investigations for alleged Communist activities.

It was June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the Army-McCarthy hearings.

And it was the pivotal moment that finally destroyed the career of the Wisconsin Senator whose repeated slanders of Communist subversion had bullied and frightened Americans for four years.

Joseph McCarthy

When the Senate gallery erupted in applause, McCarthy–totally surprised at his sudden reverse of fortune–was finished.

Today, however, other Americans could stand to remember the question asked by Welch: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Americans like Herman Cain.

Herman Cain

On January 28, 2012, he threw whatever support he might still have among the radical right to GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingrich

Appearing with Gingrich at a Republican fundraiser, Cain said: “Speaker Gingrich is a patriot. Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas.

“I don’t care about where he stands in the polls.  And whether my endorsement helps him or not, that’s not the point. It’s to let my supporters know that he is the closest to what I represented when I was still a candidate.”

The closest to what I represented when I was still a candidate“?  That’s hardly a compliment.

Cain withdrew from the race in December, 2011–after four women charged him with sexual harassment during his tenure as CEO of the National Restaurant Association.

Gingrich, a notorious serial adulterer, twice began affairs and issued marriage proposals while he was still married to his first and second wives.

Then there’s Donald Trump.

Donald Trump

On April 17, 2011, toying with the idea of entering the Presidential race himself, he said this about Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and GOP candidate:

“He’d buy companies. He’d close companies. He’d get rid of jobs.  I’ve built a great company.  I’m a much bigger businessman and have a much, much bigger net worth. I mean my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney.

“Mitt Romney is a basically small-business guy, if you really think about  it. He was a hedge fund. He was a funds guy. He walked away with some money from a very good company that he didn’t create. He worked there. He didn’t create it.”

Trump added that Bain Capital, the hedge fund where Romney made millions of dollars before running for governor, didn’t create any jobs.  Whereas Trump claimed that he–Trump–had created “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

So at least some observers must have been puzzled when Trump announced, on February 2, 2012: “It’s my honor, real honor, and privilege to endorse Mitt Romney” for President.

“Mitt is tough, he’s smart, he’s sharp, he’s not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country that we all love. So, Governor Romney, go out and get ‘em. You can do it,” said Trump.

Mitt Romney

And Romney, in turn, had his own swooning-girl moment: “I’m so honored to have his endorsement. There are some things that you just can’t imagine in your life. This is one of them.”

Clearly, the word “hypocrisy” means nothing to Cain, Gingrich, Trump and Romney–all of whom still harbor Presidential ambitions.  But it should mean something to the rest of us.

In samurai Japan, officials who publicly disgraced themselves knew what to do.  The samurai code of seppeku told them when they had crossed the line into eternal disgrace.

And it gave them a way to redeem their lost honor: With a small “belly-cutting” knife and the help of a trusted assistant who sliced off their head to spare them the agonizing pain of disembowelment.

In the armies of America and Europe, the method was slightly different: A pistol in a private room.

Considering the ready availability of firearms among right-wing Republicans, redeeming lost honor shouldn’t be a problem for any of these men.

But of course it will be.  It takes more than a trigger-pull to “do the right thing.”  It takes insight to recognize that you’ve “done the wrong thing.”   And it takes courage to act on that insight.

In men who live only for their own egos and wallets, such insight and courage will be forever missing.   They are beyond redemption.

Their lives give proof to the warning offered in Matthew 7: 17-20:

“Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.  A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

“Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

JAMES BOND GONE WRONG

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 12, 2015 at 12:23 am

James Bond, the legendary creation of novelist Ian Fleming, routinely bedded femme fatales–and sometimes killed them. But he never faced indictment for romancing them.

That’s the difference between Bond and David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Movie poster for Thunderball (1965)

The Justice Department is deciding whether to bring criminal charges against Petraeus.  The FBI  alleges that, as CIA director, he shared classified information with his then-mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.

FBI agents found classified information on a personal computer Broadwell used–and determined that Petraeus had supplied it.

As an Army General, Petraeus had successfully led U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and was thought to be a potential candidate for president.

In 2011, he won appointment to CIA director–which ended abruptly in 2012 with the revelation of his extramarital affair with Broadwell.

Petraeus is one of the most highly educated men in the United States:

  • Alumnus of the United States Military Academy at West Point–graduating among the top 5% of his 1974 class.
  • General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College class of 1983.
  • Earned an M.P.A. in 1985 and a Ph.D. in International Relations in 1987 from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
  • Served as Assistant Professor of International Relations at the United States Military Academy

David Petraeus

And Paula Broadwell is one of the most highly educated women in the United States:

  • Graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1995, majoring in political geography.
  • Earned a master’s degree in international security from the University of Denver’s Joseph Korbel School of International Studies in 2006.
  • Earned a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2008.
  • A Research Associate in the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership Fellows.

In addition, Petraeus, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, knew the importance of secrecy in keeping clandestine affairs (military and personal) out of sight.

Paula Broadwell

So did Broadwell, having earned a reputation as an expert on counterterrorism.

Yet they both violated the most basic rules of security.

They exchanged emails using a cyber trick known to both terrorists and teenagers: Sharing a private email account, or “dropbox.”

In this they composed drafts to each other in order not to directly transmit messages to one another.  Each could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there.

By doing so, they flagrantly left a cyber-trail of their infidelities. (Broadwell was also married.)

It was Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of political science, who warned: If you don’t want it known, don’t write it down.

More than 500 years ago, in his masterwork, The Discourses, he warned:

Niccolo Machiavelli

I have heard many wise men say that you may talk freely with any one man about everything, for unless you have committed yourself in writing, the “Yes” of one man is worth as much as the “No” of another. 

And therefore one should guard most carefully against writing, as against a dangerous rock, for nothing will convict you quicker than your own handwriting….

You may escape, then, from the accusation of a single individual, unless you are convicted by some writing or other pledge, which you should be careful never to give.

Nor were Petraeus and Broadwell the only ones guilty of thumbing their noses at this most basic of precautions.

General John Allen, the top American commander in Afghanistan, exchanged thousands of emails  with Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite.

Although charged with directing American military efforts against the Taliban, Allen found time to exchange 20,000 to 30,000 pages’ worth of emails with Kelley between 2010 and 2012.

The scandal began when Kelley began receiving harassing emails from an unidentified woman.  So she complained to the FBI.

The emails allegedly came from Broadwell, who thought that Kelley was trying to move in on “her man”–Petraeus.  Apparently, Broadwell didn’t feel similarly threatened by Holly, Petraeus’ wife.)

The FBI investigation ultimately led to the discovery of the Petraeus/Broadwell affair.

There are several lessons to be learned from this behavior by Petraeus, Broadwell, Allen and Kelley:

  • They believed they were so privileged–by education, status and/or wealth–that conventional rules of morality didn’t apply to them.
  • They believed they were so clever they could violate the most basic rule of security and common sense–and get away with  it.
  • They were so caught up in their illicit passions that they threw caution to the winds.
  • David Petraeus, a highly disciplined man, clearly expected Paula Broadwell to behave in a similarly disciplined manner–and do nothing to compromise their lives.
  • Petraeus felt so confident about the secrecy of his affair he had his wife and mistress present when he appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2011 to become CIA director.

General David Petraeus’ CIA confirmation hearings. His wife, Holly (in white) and mistress, Paula Broadwell (in black).

  • Petraeus didn’t imagine that Broadwell suspected another of his admirers–Jill Kelley–of having romantic designs on him.
  • And he was utterly surprised when her harassing emails to Kelley led the FBI to uncover his illicit relationship.

Thus does hubris meet its punishment in Nemesis.

AS MUSLIM POPULATION RATES RISE….

In History, Politics, Social commentary on January 7, 2015 at 11:59 pm

Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the crew of the USS Enterprise to a new, chilling adversary: The Borg.

A half-organic, half-machine race of ruthless conquerors, the Borg travel through space seeking new peoples to assimilate–or destroy.

Their words of “greeting” to the Enterprise crew have since become a part of sci-fi lore: “We are the Borg. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

The Borg

The same mindset can be found in such Islamic would-be conquerors as Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

But this mindset is not confined to only these terror-organizations.  It appears to govern the behavior of Islamics generally.

This is starkly outlined in the 2009 book, Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat, by Dr. Peter Hammond.

Hammond explores the impact of an increasing Muslim population on non-Muslim society–and the changes that can be expected to occur within that society.

Image of Dr. Peter Hammond

Dr. Peter Hammond

According to Hammond:

Islam is not a religion nor a cult.  It’s a complete system of religious, legal, political, economic and military components.  The religious component encompasses all the others.

“Islamization” occurs when there are enough Muslims in a country to agitate for their “religious rights.”

Here’s how it works (percentages come from CIA: The World Fact Book, 2007):

So long as the Muslim population remains at or under 2%, they will act as a peaceful minority and pose no threat to non-Muslims.  As in:

United States – Muslims 0.6%

Australia – Muslim 1.5%

Canada — Muslim 1.9%

China — Muslim 1.8%

Italy — Muslim 1.5%

Norway — Muslim 1.8%

At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs.  This is happening in:

Denmark — Muslim 2%

Germany — Muslim 3.7%

United Kingdom — Muslim 2.7%

Spain — Muslim 4%

Thailand — Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims.

They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in:

France — Muslim 8%

(On January 7, 2015, the worst terrorist act in France since World War II occurred when three Islamics slaughtered 12 people at a satirical magazine that had published cartoons about the Prophet Muhammed.)

Philippines — 5%

Sweden — Muslim 5%

Switzerland — Muslim 4.3%

The Netherlands — Muslim 5.5%

Trinidad & Tobago — Muslim 5.8%

At 5%, they work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia (Islamic law). The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world–enforcing it on Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions.

Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam, with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in such Muslim countries as:

Guyana — Muslim 10%

India — Muslim 13.4%

Israel — Muslim 16%

Kenya — Muslim 10%

Russia — Muslim 15%

After Muslims reach 20%, of the population, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, formations of jihad militias, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:

Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%

At 40% of the population, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:

Bosnia — Muslim 40%

Chad — Muslim 53.1%

Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%

From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:

Albania — Muslim 70%

Malaysia — Muslim 60.4%

Qatar — Muslim 77.5%

Sudan — Muslim 70%

After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some state-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in:

Bangladesh — Muslim 83%

Egypt — Muslim 90%

Gaza — Muslim 98.7%

Indonesia — Muslim 86.1%

Iran — Muslim 98%

Iraq — Muslim 97%

Jordan — Muslim 92%

Morocco — Muslim 98.7%

Pakistan — Muslim 97%

Palestine — Muslim 99%

Syria — Muslim 90%

Tajikistan — Muslim 90%

Turkey — Muslim 99.8%

United Arab Emirates — Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of “Dar-es-Salaam” — the Islamic House of Peace.  Peace has supposedly been achieved, because everybody is a Muslim, the Madrasses are the only schools, and the Koran is the only word, such as in:

Afghanistan — Muslim 100%

Saudi Arabia — Muslim 100%

Somalia — Muslim 100%

Yemen — Muslim 100%

Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, since the most radical Muslims states wage war on less radical members.

Among the reasons for this: The age-old ethnic conflicts between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims, which are now on lethal display in Iraq and Syria.

* * * * *

In assessing the dangers the United States faces as it plunges into yet further warfare against Iraq and now Syria, there is a warning that should be kept foremost in mind.

It comes from the late political scientist, Samuel Huntington, in his bestselling 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order:

Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”

TERRORISTS AS VICTIMS

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 7, 2015 at 12:02 am

On December 30, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that Palestinians had joined the International Criminal Court to pursue war crimes charges against Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas 

“We want to complain. There’s aggression against us, against our land. The Security Council disappointed us,” Abbas said at a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.

Abbas has plenty to complain about.  The Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas, opened hostilities with Israel on July 7–and promptly lost the war.

In June, 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered.  Israeli authorities suspected the culprits were members of Hamas, the terrorist organization that’s long called for Israel’s destruction.

In a desperate search for the missing teens, Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and arrested 500 to 600 others.

Hamas, in turn, began launching rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, which it has controlled since June, 2007.  By July 7, 100 rockets had been fired at Israel.

Israeli planes retaliated by attacking 50 targets in Gaza.

On July 8, during a 24-hour period, Hamas fired more than 140 rockets into Israel from Gaza.  Saboteurs also tried to infiltrate Israel from the sea, but were intercepted.

A Hamas rocket streaks toward Israel

That same day–July 8, 2014–Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, a full-scale military attack on Gaza.

Hamas then announced that it considered “all Israelis”–including women, children, the elderly and disabled–to be legitimate targets.

On July 8, Hamas–acting as though it were laying down peace terms to an already defeated Israel–issued the following demands:

  1. End all attacks on Gaza;
  2. Release Palestinians arrested during the crackdown on the West Bank;
  3. Lift the blockade on Gaza; and
  4. Return to the cease-fire conditions of 2012.

Only then would Hamas be open to a ceasefire agreement. Egypt offered a cease-fire proposal.  Israel quickly accepted it, temporarily stopping hostilities on July 15.

But Hamas claimed that it had not been consulted and rejected the agreement.

Palestinians continued to blithely launch hundreds of rockets at Israel–but went into ecstasies of grief before television cameras when one of their own was killed by Israeli return fire.

As a result, Israel has come under repeated verbal attacks by Hamas-sympathetic nations. The charge: Israel is being too effective at defending itself, killing more Palestinians than Hamas is able to kill Israelis.

Reuven Berko, a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) recently addressed this charge in a guest column in the online newsletter, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).

A major reason for so many civilian deaths among Palestinians, writes Berko, is that Hamas turns them into human shields by hiding its missiles in heavily-populated centers.

On July 17, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Far East (UNRWA) discovered approximately 20 rockets hidden in a vacant UN school in the Gaza Strip.

“UNRWA strongly condemns the group or groups responsible for placing the weapons in one of its installations,” said the agency in an announcement.

“This is a flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law.” UNRWA claimed that “this incident…is the first of its kind in Gaza.”

But Israel counters that this is just one of many proven instances of Hamas hiding its fighters and munitions among a heavily civilian population.

Click here: UNRWA Strongly Condemns Placement of Rockets in School | UNRWA

At the heart of Berko’s editorial is the subject of “proportionality.”

Writes Berko: “Israel is held to an impossible moral double standard. “Israelis, proportionality advocates seem to believe, should be killed by Hamas rockets instead of following Home Front Command instructions and running to shelters, to say nothing of Israel’s blatant unfairness in protecting its civilians with the Iron Dome aerial defense system….

“Anyone who demands that Israel agree to a life of terror governed by a continuous barrage of rockets and mortar shells on the heads of its women and children in the name of restraint and ‘proportionality’ would never agree to risk the safety of their own families in a similar situation.”

war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”

Berko points out that during World War 11, the Allies didn’t hesitate to retaliate for the Nazi blitz of London.  In February, 1945, British and American planes firebombed Dresden, killing about 25,000 people.

Nor did America feel guilty about dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, killing about 250,000 civilians.

Summing up his argument, Berko writes: “The ridiculous demand for proportionality contradicts every basic principle of warfare.“

According to American strategist Thomas Schelling, you have to strike your enemy hard enough to make it not worthwhile for him to continue…. “

In the Western world, killing someone in self-defense is considered justifiable homicide.”

Click here: Guest Column: The Double Standard of Proportionality: The Investigative Project on Terrorism

Berko could just as easily have ended his column with the words of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose Union forces cut a swath of destruction across the South in his famous “March to the Sea.”

William Tecumseh Sherman

Wrote Sherman: “Those people made war on us, defied and dared us to come south to their country, where they boasted they would kill us and do all manner of horrible things.

“We accepted their challenge, and now for them to whine and complain of the natural and necessary results is beneath contempt.”

A MEXICAN APPROACH TO ILLEGAL ALIENS

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 5, 2015 at 12:25 am

On January 2, thousands of illegal aliens in California flocked to their local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office to do what they had previously been forbidden to do.

Apply for a driver’s license.

California thus became the 10th state–and the largest–to allow illegal aliens to drive legally in the United States.

An estimated 2.6 million illegal aliens–most of them Latino–in California will now be eligible to get a driver’s license under the new law.

Assembly Bill 60, signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2014, allows illegal aliens to get a license without proof of legal United States residency.

“Millions of immigrant families have been looking forward to this day,” said Democratic Assemblyman Luis Alejo, who sponsored the bill.

“It will allow them to go to work, go to school, take their kids to a doctor’s appointment without fear that they are going to have their car taken away from them, or worse, be put into immigration proceedings.”

But many American citizens believe that those violating the immigration laws of the United States should not have the privilege to drive.

“Their vehicles should be impounded and if they don’t like it, they can go home,” said Don Rosenberg. Rosenberg started a website–Unlicensedtokill.org–after his son was killed by an unlicensed and illegal alien in 2010.

Click here: UnlicensedToKill

Two decades ago, California voters tried to bar illegal aliens from public services, including education. But now the state allows college students brought into the United States as children to pay in-state tuition at California public universities to help ease the costs of higher education.

Meanwhile, Mexico takes a far different approach to illegal aliens.

On May 20, 2010, Mexico’s then-President Felipe Calderon addressed a joint session of the United States Congress–and attacked an Arizona law that allowed law enforcement officials to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

Felipe Calderon speaking before Congress

According to Calderon, the law “introduces a terrible idea: using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.”

The hypocrisy of Calderon’s words is staggering.

Racial profiling?  Consider the popular Latino phrase, “La Raza.”

This literally means “the race” or “the people.” Its meaning varies among Spanish-speaking peoples. In the United States, it’s sometimes used to describe people of Chicano and Mexican descent as well as other Latin American mestizos who share Native American heritage.

It rarely includes entirely European or African descended Hispanic peoples.

So when Latinos say, “The Race,” they’re not talking about “the human race.” They’re talking strictly about their own.

In his lecture, Calderon condemned the United States for doing what Mexico itself has long done: Strictly enforcing control of its borders.

Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:

  • in the country legally;
  • have the means to sustain themselves economically;
  • not destined to be burdens on society;
  • of economic and social benefit to society;
  • of good character and have no criminal records; and
  • contribute to the general well-being of the nation.

The law also ensures that:

  • immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;
  • foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;
  • foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country’s internal politics;
  • foreign visitors who enter under ralse pretenses are imprisoned or deported;
  • foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned are deported;
  • those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.

Calderon also ignored a second well-understood but equally unacknowledged truth:Mexico uses its American border to rid itself of those who might otherwise demand major reforms in the country’s political and economic institutions.

The Mexican Government still remembers the bloody upheaval known as the Mexican Revolution. This lasted ten years (1910-1920) and wiped out an estimated one to two million men, women and children.

Massacres were common on all sides, with men shot by the hundreds in bullrings or hung by the dozen on trees.

A Mexican Revolution firing squad

All of the major leaders of the Revolution–Francisco Madero, Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano Carranza, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, Alvaro Obregon–died in a hail of bullets.

Francisco “Pancho” Villa

Emiliano Zapata

As a result, every successive Mexican Government has lived in the shadow of another such wholesale bloodletting. These officials have thus quietly decided to turn the United States border into a safety valve.

If potential revolutionaries leave Mexico to find a better life in the United States, the Government doesn’t have to fear the rise of another “Pancho” Villa.

If somehow the United States managed to seal its southern border, all those teeming millions of “undocumented workers” who just happened to lack any documents would have to stay in “Mexico lindo.”

They would be forced to live with the rampant corruption and poverty that have forever characterized this failed nation-state. Or they would have to demand substantial reforms.

There is no guarantee that such demands would not lead to a second–and equally bloody–Mexican revolution.

So Felipe Calderon and his successors in power find it easier–and safer–to turn the United States into a dumping ground for the Mexican citizens that the Mexican Government itself doesn’t want.

SPHERES OF INFLUENCE

In History, Law, Military, Politics on January 2, 2015 at 12:43 am

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the American Right has felt dejected.

Accusing Democrats of being “terrorist-lovers” just hasn’t been as profitable as accusing them of being “Communists.”

The torch had barely gone out at the much-ballyhooed Sochi Olympics, in February, 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin began menacing the Ukraine.

Even while the Olympics played out on television, Ukrainians had rioted in Kiev and evicted their corrupt, luxury-loving president, Victor Yanukovych.

And this, of course, didn’t sit well with his “sponsor”–Putin.

Yanukovych had rejected a pending European Union association agreement.  He had chosen instead to pursue a Russian loan bailout and closer ties with Russia.

And that had sat well with Putin.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin had yearned for a reestablishment of the same.  He had called that breakup “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”

So it was almost a certainty that, when his chosen puppet, Yanukovych, was sent packing, Putin would find some way to retaliate.

And since late February, he has done so, gradually moving Russian troops into Ukraine and its autonomous republic, Crimea.

By late March, it was clear that Russia had sufficient forces in both Ukraine and Crimea to wreak any amount of destruction Putin may wish to inflict.

And where there is activity by Russians, there are American Rightists eager–in Shakespeare’s words–to “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”

Rightists such as Mitt Romney, the former Massachussetts governor who lost the 2012 Presidential election by a wide margin to Barack Obama.

“There’s no question but that the president’s naiveté with regards to Russia,” said Romney on March 23.

“And unfortunately, not having anticipated Russia’s intentions, the president wasn’t able to shape the kinds of events that may have been able to prevent the kinds of circumstances that you’re seeing in the Ukraine, as well as the things that you’re seeing in Syria.”

All of which overlooks a number of brutal political truths.

First, all great powers have spheres of interest–and jealously guard them.

For the United States, it’s Latin and Central America, as established by the Monroe Doctrine.

And just what is the Monroe Doctrine?

It’s a statement made by President James Monroe in his 1823 annual message to Congress, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

It has no other legitimacy than the willingness of the United States to use armed force to back it up.  When the United States no longer has the will or resources to enforce the Doctrine, it will cease to have meaning.

For the Soviet Union, its spheres of influence include the Ukraine.  Long known as “the breadbasket of Russia,” in 2011, it was the world’s third-largest grain exporter.

Russia will no more give up access to that breadbasket than the United States would part with the rich farming states of the Midwest.

Second, spheres of influence often prove disastrous to those smaller countries affected.

Throughout Latin and Central America, the United States remains highly unpopular for its brutal use of “gunboat diplomacy” during the 20th century.

Among those countries invaded or controlled by America: Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

The resulting anger has led many Latin and Central Americans to support Communist Cuba, even though its political oppression and economic failure are universally apparent.

Similarly, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) forced many nations–such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslavakia–to submit to the will of Moscow.

The alternative?  The threat of Soviet invasion–as occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslavakia in 1968.

Third, even “great powers” are not all-powerful.

In 1949, after a long civil war, the forces of Mao Tse-tung defeated the Nationalist armies of Chaing Kai-Shek, who withdrew to Taiwan.

China had never been a territory of the United States.  Nor could the United States have prevented Mao from defeating the corrupt, ineptly-led Nationalist forces.

Even so, Republican Senators and Representatives such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy eagerly blamed President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats for “losing China.”

The fear of being accused of “losing” another country led Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to tragically commit the United States to “roll back” Communism in Cuba and Vietnam.

Now Republicans–who claim the United States can’t afford to provide healthcare for its poorest citizens–want to turn the national budget over to the Pentagon.

They want the United States to “intervene” in Syria–even though this civil war pits Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, two of America’s greatest enemies, against each other.

They want the United States to “intervene” in Ukraine–even though this would mean going to war with the only nuclear power capable of turning America into an atomic graveyard.

Before plunging into conflicts that don’t concern us and where there is absolutely nothing to “win,” Americans would do well to remember the above-stated lessons of history.

And to learn from them.

RELIGION–ISLAM–IS THE NEW FORCE BEHIND TERRORISM

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics on December 31, 2014 at 12:20 am

“In sha Allah a day will come when David Camerons head will be on a spike as he continues to wage war on the awilya of Allah.”

So tweeted a female jihadist from Britain, who goes by the Twitter handle @UmmKhattab, and is based in Raqqa, northeast Syria.

The threat to England’s prime minister, made on September 7, instantly caught the attention of British anti-terrorist authorities.

In August, the Islamic terror threat to Great Britain rose sharply.

Reports had surfaced that British-born female jihadis were running a religious police force that punished women for un-Islamic behaviour in territory controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Female ISIS fighters

British authorities fear that such women could return to the United Kingdom–singly or en masse–and launch terror attacks

As a result, on August 29, Prime Minister David Cameron announced at a press conference that United Kingdom authorities would soon begin revoking the passports of British citizens traveling to Syria.

David Cameron

At his press conference, Cameron repeatedly mouthed all the Politically Correct cliches about Islam being “a religion of peace.”

He blamed the “poisonous Islamist ideology,” not Islam, for the threat posed to Western civilization: “Islam is a religion observed peacefully by over a billion people.  Islamist extremism is a poisonous ideology observed by a minority.”

Meanwhile, in the United States….

“I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State,” wrote Nidal Hasan in an undated letter addressed to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.

Nidal Hassan

In 2009, Hassan fatally shot 13 U.S. Army personnel and injured more than 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas.

The Defense Department, hewing to the Politically Correct line that Islam is “a religion of peace,” has labeled the massacre a case of “workplace violence.”

This despite overwhelming evidence that Hassan was motivated by Islamic religious beliefs to turn a FN Five-seven single-action semiautomatic pistol on his fellow soldiers.

Among that evidence: Hassan had shouted the Islamic battle cry, “Allah Akbar!” (“God is Great!”) before opening fire.

Convicted and sentenced to death, Hassan is incarcerated at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  His case awaits review by appellate courts.

Yet his death row status didn’t prevent him from smuggling out a letter to the leader of ISIS.

“It would be an honor for any believer to be an obedient citizen soldier to a people and its leader who don’t compromise the religion of All-Mighty Allah to get along with the disbelievers.”

The two-page letter was signed “SoA,” for “Soldier of Allah.”

In 1996, Samuel Huntington, then a political science professor at Harvard University, published his groundbreaking book, The Clash of Civilizations.  In this, he noted:

“The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”

Backing up Huntington’s conclusion is a 2014 report on global terrorism by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The institute bills itself as “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress.”  It has offices in Sydney, New York and Oxford.

And, according to its report–“Global Terrorism Index”–religion has replaced politics as the motivator for terrorism among Middle East terrorist groups.

According to the study:

  • Religion as a driving ideology for terrorism has dramatically increased since 2000. Prior to 2000 nationalist separatist agendas were the biggest drivers of terrorist organisations.
  • An estimated 17,958 people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2013, an increase of 61% more than in 2012, when 11,133 were killed.
  • Eighty-two percent of all deaths from terrorist attack occur in just five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.  Every one of these is an Islamic nation.
  • In 2013, terrorism was dominated by four groups: the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIL, and al Qaeda.
  • All four groups are linked in their embrace of extremist Wahhabi Islam.
  • More than 90% of all terrorist attacks occur in countries that have gross human rights violations.
  • Since 2000, there has been over a fivefold increase in the number of people killed by terrorism.
  • In 2013 terrorist activity increased substantially with the total number of deaths rising from 11,133 in 2012 to 17,958 in 2013, a 61 per cent increase.
  • Thirteen countries are at risk of substantial increased terrorist activity from current levels: Angola, Bangladesh, Burundi, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Iran, Israel, Mali, Mexico, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Uganda.
  • To counter the rise of religious extremism, moderate Sunni theologies must be cultivated by credible forces within Islam.

Liberals–and even conservatives like President George W. Bush–have refused to attribute religious motives to Islamic terrorists.

They have repeatedly attributed terrorist acts to the mentally ill.  Or they have said that a minority of “Islamic extremists” are responsible–thus ignoring those passages in the Koran that justify the killing of “kaffirs,” or “unbelievers.”

Steven Emerson, publisher of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which investigates Islamic terrorist  groups, puts it succinctly:

“How can we win the war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”

WHY KIM JONG-UN SHOULD BE AFRAID

In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Military, Politics on December 30, 2014 at 12:02 am

According to an October 29 story on National Public Radio, at least 10 North Korean officials have been executed for watching South Korean soap operas.

If true, this brings to 50 the number of people murdered by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un for committing this “crime”.

Kim Jong-Un and his generals

Kim inherited control of the country after his father, Kim Jong-Il, died in 2011.  Since then, he has ruthlessly eliminated all possible opposition.

“Kim Jong-Un is trying to establish absolute power and strengthen his regime with public punishments,” Yang Moo Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told Bloomberg News. “However, frequent purges can create side effects.”

Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of political science, couldn’t have said it better.

Niccolo Machiavelli

In fact, Machiavelli did say it–in Chapter Eight of The Prince, his famous work on the realities of politics, he warned:

“…In taking a state, the conqueror must arrange to commit all his cruelties at once, so as not to have to recur to them very day, and so as to be able, by not making fresh changes, to reassure people and win them over by benefiting them.  

Whoever acts otherwise, either through timidity or bad counsels, is always obliged to stand with knife in hand, and can never depend on his subjects, because they, owing to continually fresh injuries, are unable to depend upon him.”

Another Communist dictator–Joseph Stalin–may have paid the price for violating this counsel.

Joseph Stalin

Throughout his 30-year reign over the Soviet Union, Stalin was responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million men, women and children.

These deaths resulted from executions, a man-made famine through the forced collectivation of harvests, deportations and imprisonment in Gulag camps.

Robert Payne, the British historian, vividly portrayed the crimes of this murderous tyrant in his brilliant 1965 biography, The Rise and Fall of Stalin.

According to Payne, Stalin–who died on March 5, 1953–was planning yet another purge during the last weeks of his life.  This would be “a holocaust greater than any he had planned before.

“The chistka [purge] had become a ritual like a ceremonial cleansing of a temple performed every three or four years according to ancient laws.

“The first chistka had taken place during the early months of the [Russian] revolution.  It had proved so salutory that periodical bloodbaths were incorporated in the unwritten laws of the state.

“This time there would be a chistka to end all chistkas, a purging of the entire body of the state from top to bottom.  No one, not even the highest officials, was to be spared.

“…The men who had been his closest companions and most willing executioners, would be the first to fall, followed by the leaders of the second rank, then of the third and fourth…until there was no one in the entire country who had not felt the touch of the healing knife.”

Then, on January 13, 1953, the Soviet Union’s two government-controlled newspapers–Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestiya (“News”)–announced that a sinister plot by Jewish doctors had been uncovered.

Its alleged object: No less than the murder of Joseph Stalin himself.

Nine doctors, said Pravda, had so far been arrested.

Stalin’s closest associates–veteran observers of past purges–quickly realized that another was about to descend.  And there could be no doubt who its chief victims would be.

Yet Stalin did nothing to calm their fears. He often summoned his “comrades” to the Kremlin for late-night drinking bouts, where he freely humiliated them.

“What would you do without Stalin?” he asked one night.  “You’d be like blind kittens.”

Then, on March 4, 1953, Moscow Radio announced “the misfortune which has overtaken our Party and the people–the serious illness of Comrade J.V. Stalin.

“During the night of March 1-2, while in his Moscow apartment, Comrade Stalin suffered a cerebral hemorrhage affecting vital areas of the brain.”

Death came to Stalin on March 5.

Officially, the cause was ruled a cerebral hemorrhage.  Stalin was 73 and in poor health from a lifetime of smoking and little exercise.

So it’s possible he died of natural causes.  But it’s equally possible that he died of unnatural ones.

In the 2004 book, Stalin’s Last Crime, Vladimir P. Naumov, a Russian historian, and Jonathan Brent, a Yale University Soviet scholar, assert that he might have been poisoned.

If this happened, the occasion was during a final dinner with four members of the Politburo:

  • Lavrenti P. Beria, chief of the secret police, then known as the MGB (Ministry for State Security);
  • Georgi M. Malenkov, Stalin’s immediate successor;
  • Nikita S. Khrushchev, who eventually rose to the top spot;
  • and Nikolai Bulganin, then Minister of Defense.

The authors believe that, if Stalin was poisoned, the most likely suspect was Beria. And the method: Slipping warfarin, a tasteless and colorless blood thinner also used as a rat killer, into his glass of wine.

Lavrenti P. Peria

In Khrushchev’s 1970 memoirs, he quotes Beria as telling Vyacheslav M. Molotov, another Polituro member, two months after Stalin’s death: “I did him in! I saved all of you.”

Kim Jong-Un had better hope that Communist history doesn’t repeat itself.