Walid Phares writes:

The so-called Somali pirates are strategically different from their historical predecessors in the Caribbean or from their contemporary colleagues in archipelagoes around the world. They aren’t a vast collection of individual thugs, acting as bands replicating what successful sea gangs have accomplished for centuries before them. There are too many of them, operating from extremely long shores, all using similar methods, and are backed from hinterland forces.

 

They may seem like pirates as they seize ships and negotiate for the ransom. But these water thugs actually belong to a wider chess game. The grand ensemble of the army of little boats is in fact part of a regional Jihadi apparatus being deployed in the horn of Africa and beyond. The Jihadi grand circle building in the region is not limited to the pirates but involves hostile forces from the mid Red Sea to East Africa. The Somali pirates are merely one facet of this grand circle…

 

The end aim is to create a vast zone of insecurity stretching from East Africa to the Red Sea. A closer look allows strategists to easily realize that these are the maritime passages from the Oil rich Gulf to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal and also parts of the East African alternative routes the most economic via Cape Town… This operation is of regional-international dimensions. It is about holding these passages hostage… It is a maritime Jihad striking at the Western/international lifeline on high seas to bring about a change in balance of power…

 

The so-called pirates are being used by land-based forces to drag the enemy [the non-Muslim world] into a wider war in the region …

 

Two months ago, Eritrea and the Iranian regime signed an agreement granting naval facilities to the Khomeinist military ships to use the country’s ports and eventually build a base on the Red Sea. Last month, reports signaled an alignment of military intelligence between the Sudanese and Iranian regimes and Hezbollah’s networks in the region…

 

 Robert Spencer writes:

An Iranian newspaper has reported that four American banks have issued formal requests to the Central Bank of Iran to open branches in Iran. Citibank, Goldman Sachs and two others left unnamed plan, according to the report, to establish temporary branches in an Iranian free trade zone if their requests are approved. The newspaper Jaam-e-Jam quoted an unnamed source explaining: “If they can work according to Iran’s banking law, they will be allowed to open branches in Tehran and other cities.”

Is this where the bailout money is going? 

It is curious that American banks – which probably wouldn’t still be in business but for the taxpayers’ largesse – would want to do business in a country where the government holds military parades featuring banners proclaiming “Death to America” and whose President has declared: “I say accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible.” 

It is just as ominous in the long term that the banks would apparently be willing to “work according to Iran’s banking law.” So in other words, Western banks operating in Islamic countries have to abide by Sharia Finance restrictions. And meanwhile, Western banks operating in Western countries likewise are increasingly accommodating Sharia Finance restrictions.

This is yet another manifestation of a stealth jihad phenomenon that is manifesting itself today in many areas besides finance: in Muslim countries, Muslims demand that Westerners conform to Islamic sensibilities, and likewise in Western countries, Muslims demand that Westerners conform to Islamic sensibilities…  

The most notorious example of accommodation to Islam is the increasing popularity of Sharia Finance, which Western banking institutions are rushing to offer to Muslims in the West even more quickly than they are rushing to open branches in the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

There is, after all, so very much money to be made. Najib Fayyad of Unicorn Capital Turkey explains: “There are Islamic finance institutions operating in over 75 countries and with assets estimated at around US$700 billion, a figure which is growing at a rate of about 15% a year.” Some of the West’s leading financial institutions, including (besides Citibank and Goldman Sachs) Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Dow Jones, HSBC Bank, Lloyd’s, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Standard & Poors, have created “Sharia Advisory Boards,” staffed with Islamic clerics and scholars, in order to help them bring their financial practices into line with Islamic norms.

A benign exercise in multiculturalism? Not quite. Christopher Holton, Vice President of the Center for Security Policy, states that “America is losing the financial war on terror because Wall Street is embracing a subversive enemy ideology on one hand and providing corporate life support to state sponsors of terrorism on the other hand.” …

What’s more, Sharia Finance is another tool of Islamic separatism: instead of assimilating into American society, Muslims are demanding, and receiving, parallel financial institutions that reinforce the idea that they are unique, not subject to the laws and norms to which the rest of us are subject – a privileged class. At the same time, Sharia Finance initiatives are giving Islamic interests increasing control over Western economic life… 

The multiculturalist anxiety to accommodate Muslim principles and practices only makes Westerners even more vulnerable. Yet instead of engaging in careful strategic planning of both domestic and international initiatives, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and two other American financial institutions are working on opening branches in a country that has considered itself at war with the United States for thirty years. 

It is a test of Congressional resolve to regulate financial institutions. Will they allow the banks which American money has just saved to establish branches in a state sponsor of terrorism? 

 Dr Laurie Roth found out what really happened when Captain Richard Phillips was finally rescued. She writes with some anger in Canada Free Press:

First of all, President Obama wouldn’t authorize the DEVGRU/NSWC SEAL teams to even go to the scene for 36 hours.  This by the way was going against the scene commander’s recommendation.  Of course, Obama, with his vast military experience knew much more!

The first time Capt. Phillips jumped in the water the SEALS had the pirate thugs all sited in but could not fire due to ROE restriction.

Just when your stomach starts turning green it gets worse!

When the navy Rubber boat was fired upon as it approached with supplies, they were not allowed to return fire due to the ROE restrictions.  Can we say mentally ill yet?

President Obama in his vast brilliance with Pirate and military situations denied two rescue plans developed by the Bainbridge CPN and SEAL teams.

Finally, days into this the Bainbridge CPN and SEAL team CDR finally had had enough and decided they had the authority to determine risk to hostage and fire if need be.  4 hours later it was done.  3 Muslim Somali Pirates were dead and 1 pirate,Wali-I-Musi was captured.  Miraculously and 5 days later Capt. Phillips was rescued. 

What is the bottom line?

If Obama had kept his nose out of this and let the SEALS do what they wanted to and could do, this would have been handled and concluded well in a few hours not 5 days!

Notice the media barely mentions that the Somali pirates were young, fundamentalist Muslims on a Jihad mission.  They were all 16-19 years old.  I can just see the media and some in this administration getting their knickers in a twist calling out such rash, violent responses to such young impressionable people. 

The only part in this drama that should have changed, now that we know the Pirates were such young men, was that Obama should have stayed out of this and the Pirate, Islamic thugs should have been killed within the first few hour by the SEALS.

You couldn’t help but notice the huge celebratory response of success from Obama and his administration, marking it as a huge success and victory.  That would be fine if it was true.  There was a great and miraculous victory all right…….in spite of Obama and his politically correct delays.

A final thought to the politically correct morons who apparently want people to die on the high seas…..why can’t all cargo ships, cruise ships and business ships of all sizes be heavily armed if Muslim terrorists are on a roll attacking ships, stealing and killing around the Horn of Africa?

 David Limbaugh writes:

It’s ludicrous to entertain seriously the notion that if we’d just start being nicer, we could improve our international image and make ourselves safer, especially when you consider that being nicer entails lowering our guard and playing into the enemy’s hands on a number of fronts.

But this is precisely the kind of silliness that is driving Obama’s foreign policy. From the get-go, Obama has been apologizing to the world for the "arrogance" and brutality of the United States; bowing before, kissing and warmly accepting America-bashing books from foreign kings and dictators; flirting with nuclear disarmament while rogue nations rush, undeterred, to join the nuclear club; contemplating serious defense budget cuts across the board, which could jeopardize essential weapons systems; insisting that we cashier war terminology by substituting "overseas contingency operations" for "war on terror" and "man-caused disasters" for "terrorist attacks"; and now releasing internal CIA memos detailing enhanced interrogation techniques, which have demonstrably prevented attacks and saved lives.

Obama pretended to agonize over his decision to release the memos over the objections of his own intelligence officials, but there is no excuse for the damage it will do to our national security by neutralizing the future use of these procedures and inviting "the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened our intelligence gathering in the past," in the words of former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden. Making it worse, we got nothing in return except for Obama’s selective nod to "transparency," as if it’s prudent to be transparent with classified intelligence involving our national security.

It is axiomatic that ideas have consequences, a theme being played out by the Obama administration’s turning a blind eye to the magnitude of terrorist evil and seeing a rough moral equivalence between beheadings by terrorists and aggressive American interrogation techniques to extract lifesaving information from terrorists.

Commentators who believe Obama only released the "torture memos" to appease his bloodthirsty, Bush-hating, leftist base, which would be bad enough, are missing the point that  Obama shares his base’s beliefs. Obama is commander in chief, and his guiding foreign policy doctrine is "peace through weakness."

 Thomas Sowell writes:

Reportedly, the FBI and the Defense Department are cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security in investigations of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. That people who have put their lives on the line for this country are made the target of what is called the Vigilant Eagle program suggests that this administration might be more of a threat than the people they are investigating.

All this activity takes on a more sinister aspect against the background of one of the statements of Barack Obama during last year’s election campaign that got remarkably little attention in the media. He suggested the creation of a federal police force, comparable in size to the military.

Why such an organization? For what purpose?

Since there are state and local police forces all across the country, an FBI to investigate federal crimes and a Department of Justice to prosecute those who commit them, as well as a Defense Department with military forces, just what role would a federal police force play?

Maybe it was just one of those bright ideas that gets floated during an election campaign. Yet there was no grassroots demand for any such federal police nor any media clamor for it, so there was not even any political reason to suggest such a thing.

What would be different about a new federal police force, as compared to existing law enforcement and military forces? It would be a creation of the Obama administration, run by people appointed from top to bottom by that administration – and without the conflicting loyalties of those steeped in existing military traditions and law enforcement traditions.

In short, a federal police force could become President Obama’s personal domestic political army, his own storm troopers.

Perhaps there will never be such a federal police force. But the targeting of individuals and groups who believe in some of the fundamental values on which this country was founded, and people who have demonstrated their patriotism by volunteering for military service, suggests that this potential for political abuse is worth watching, as Obama tries to remake America to fit his vision.

From The New Republic:

 Geneva, Switzerland

Libya was chosen in 2007 to chair the preparatory committee for the UN Durban Review Conference–notwithstanding the irony of an egregious human-rights violator chairing a human rights conference. For the past three days, the committee has been holding sessions to finalize the conference’s draft statement, upon which many countries will base their decision whether to attend the conference this week. On Friday, the last day, NGOs were given 30 minutes to weigh in. 

Amidst the anti-Israel rants from all the usual NGOs, Libyan ambassador Najjat Al-Hajjaji (who was chairing the meeting) gave the floor to UN Watch, an organization affiliated with the American Jewish Committee that "monitors the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter." But sitting in their chair was not Hillel Neuer, the group’s executive director and usual mouthpiece, but Ashraf El Hagog, the Palestinian doctor who was falsely accused of and sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV (along with five Bulgarian nurses). El Hagog and the nurses were held in Libya on death row for nine years, mistreated and tortured, until their release was negotiated by France last year. 

"Madame Chairman," El Hagog began, staring steely eyed at the Libyan ambassador. "I don’t know if you recognize me. I am the Palestinian medical intern who was scapegoated by your country, Libya, in the HIV case in the Benghazi hospital, together with the five Bulgarian nurses."

Al-Hajjaji immediately started banging her gavel. "Stop… stop…. I ask you to stop," she yelled, first looking miffed, then exasperated. "You are, you are not addressing the agenda item… I will allow you to resume only if you address the agenda item we are discussing." The room immediately fell silent.

El Hagog, being coached by Neuer sitting next to him, tried to introduce some amendments to the statement "based on my own suffering," and was again interrupted by Al-Hajjaji banging her gavel. But he continued recounting the story of his torture, then said, "All of this, which lasted for nearly a decade, was for only one reason: because the Libyan government was looking to scapegoat foreigners. Madame Chair, if that is not discrimination, then what is?" After listing the amendments, he concluded: "Madame Chair, Libya told this conference that it practices no inequality or discrimination. But then how do you account for what was done to me, to my colleagues, and to my family…?" (Click here for a full transcript of his testimony.)

At this point, Hajjaji recognized a point of order from … the Libyan delegation, who said that El Hagog was not speaking on the correct agenda item. Hajjaji used the objection as an excuse to move on to the next speaker. 

Why are demographic statistics  left out of political calculation? We find them fascinating in themselves. (Fact: The ‘country’ that has the lowest fertility rate in the world also has the highest life expectancy in the world. It is  Macao, the peninsula city. Fertility rate: 0.9. Life expectancy: 84.3 years. That’s a very old population.)

If demographic trends were taken into account by American policy-makers, foreign policies would probably be very different.

For example – George Will writes:

Today, in a world bristling with new threats, the president suggests addressing an old one – Russia’s nuclear arsenal. It remains potentially dangerous, particularly if a portion of it falls into nonstate hands. But what is the future of the backward and backsliding kleptocratic thugocracy that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia?  Putin must be amazed and amused that America’s president wants to treat Russia as a great power. Obama should instead study pertinent demographic trends.

Russia, he goes on to explain, is rapidly becoming depopulated.  It certainly is. While a country needs a fertility rate of 2.1 minimum for stabilization, Russia’s is 1.4. Its life expectancy is a mere 65.87. For a male it is as low as 59.12, for a female 73.03. Compare that to the American rates: fertility, 2.1, life expectancy 78.06: for a male, 75.15, a female 80.97.

The Russians are an extreme example of a dying nation.  But every European country has a shrinking population.  The fertility rate of the European Union as a whole is 1.5.   (Mark Steyn discusses the implications of all this at length in his important book America Alone .)

Compared to European countries, ‘which face demographic catastrophe, America’s position seems relatively strong,’ writes David P Goldman at First Things.  Read the whole article here.

But, he goes on to say, ‘the declining demographics of the traditional American family’ is a serious threat to future prosperity.

In place of traditional two-parent families with children, America has seen enormous growth in one-parent families and childless families. The number of one-parent families with children has tripled. Dependent children formed half the U.S. population in 1960, and they add up to only 30 percent today. The dependent elderly doubled as a proportion of the population, from 15 percent in 1960 to 30 percent today. If capital markets derive from the cycle of human life, what happens if the cycle goes wrong? … What if there really is something wrong with our future—if the next generation fails to appear in sufficient numbers? The answer is that we get poorer. … Perhaps the world is poorer now because the present generation did not bother to rear a new generation. All else is bookkeeping and ultimately trivial. This unwelcome and unprecedented change underlies the present global economic crisis. We are grayer, and less fecund, and as a result we are poorer, and will get poorer still—no matter what economic policies we put in place…

During the past half century America has changed from a nation in which most households had two parents with young children. We are now a mélange of alternative arrangements in which the nuclear family is merely a niche phenomenon. By 2025, single-person households may outnumber families with children. The collapse of home prices and the knock-on effects on the banking system stem from the shrinking count of families that require houses. It is no accident that the housing market—the economic sector most sensitive to demographics—was the epicenter of the economic crisis… [It is] due to the demographics of diminishing demand…  Our children are our wealth. Too few of them are seated around America’s common table, and it is their absence that makes us poor. Not only the absolute count of children, to be sure, but also the shrinking proportion of children raised with the moral material advantages of two-parent families diminishes our prospects… There are ways to ameliorate the financial crisis, but none of them will replace the lives that should have been part of America and now are missed.

This suggests that nothing economic policy can do will entirely reverse the great wave of wealth destruction… Unless we restore the traditional family to a central position in American life, we cannot expect to return to the kind of wealth accumulation that characterized the 1980s and 1990s… Wealth depends ultimately on the natural order of human life. Failing to rear a new  generation in sufficient numbers to replace the present one violates that order, and it has consequences for wealth, among many other things.

Americans who rejected the mild yoke of family responsibility in pursuit of atavistic enjoyment will find at last that this is not to  be theirs, either…

Today, less than a third of American households constitute a two-parent nuclear family with children. Housing prices are collapsing in part because single-person households are replacing families with children… [By 2025] the demand of Americans will be urban apartments for empty nesters… We are going to be poorer for a generation and perhaps longer. We will drive smaller cars and live in smaller homes, vacation in cabins by the lake rather than at Disney World, and send our children to public universities rather than private liberal-arts colleges. The baby boomers on average will work five or ten years longer before retiring on less income than they had planned, and young people will work for less money at duller jobs than they had hoped…

 He concedes on the lesser things in order to seem ‘fair’  in his judgment, so that he can implement far more devastating policies when the big issues arise. 

Examples:

Yes, shoot the pirates – but  do not even acknowledge that Islamic terrorism is a threat. 

Announce, with regret, that the US will not send a delegation to the ‘Durban II’ conference (which advocates extreme racism against the Jews in the name of anti-racism) – but insist on a ‘two-state solution’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on the Saudi plan which would ensure the annihilation of the State of Israel.  

AP reports:

The Obama administration will boycott "with regret" a U.N. conference on racism next week over objectionable language in the meeting’s final document that could single out Israel for criticism and restrict free speech, the State Department said Saturday.

The decision follows weeks of furious internal debate and will likely please Israel and Jewish groups that lobbied against U.S. participation. But the move upset human rights advocates and some in the African-American community who had hoped that President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, would send an official delegation.

 By permission of our reader Janus, at secularconservative.net, a picture of the Houston tea party. We specially like the banner against Socialism. 

 Nancy Pelosi wants a ‘probe’ of  Wall Street, hoping to put all the blame on it for the economic crisis.

The Investor’s Business Daily comments:

The problem is, what "happened on Wall Street" was a direct result of what happened on Capitol Hill. And we’re not the only ones who believe that, by the way.

"Government policies, especially the Community Reinvestment Act, and the affordable housing mission that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were charged with fulfilling, are to blame for the financial crisis," wrote economist Peter Wallison, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently.

"Regulators also deserve blame for lowering lending standards that then contributed to riskier homeownership and the housing bubble." Exactly correct.

As such, Pelosi’s proposed … commission will be little more than a fig leaf to cover Congress’ own multitude of sins — letting its members, the true creators of this financial mess, bash business leaders as they pose as populist saviors of Main Street from Wall Street predators.

Why do this now? Pelosi and her Democrat colleagues are feeling the heat from Tea Party demonstrations and growing voter anger over the massive waste entailed in the $4 trillion (and rising) stimulus-bailout bonanza. Again, the Democrats created all this spending. Now, as it proves unpopular, they just walk away from it.

On NPR Thursday, a reporter confronted Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, with the fact that his $300 billion "Hope for Homeowners" program, passed with much fanfare last fall, had so far helped just one homeowner. One.

Frank’s response: It was the fault of the "right." And Bush.

Truth is, Frank’s party has been in charge since 2006. And during that time, Democrats have presided over one of the most disgraceful and least accomplished Congresses in history. This financial mess began on their watch, yet they pretend otherwise.