The presidency – not reserved for Christians 124
Cal Thomas writes with good sense at Townhall:
The Constitution is specific when it prohibits a “religious test” for “any office or public trust” — Article VI, Paragraph III.
That doesn’t mean that voters are prohibited from taking a person’s faith (or lack thereof) into account when deciding for whom they will vote. No law could stop them.
Past elections have been decided when some Catholics voted for a Catholic politician because of their shared religion and Protestants voted against a Catholic because they did not share that faith.
Now come two Mormons — Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman — and two evangelical Christians — Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann. There is confusion and division within once nearly solid evangelical ranks over what to do. …
Does it really matter what faith a president or presidential candidate has, or should everyone, regardless of their religious background, focus on their competence to do the job?
Shouldn’t the question answer itself?
I would vote for a competent atheist who believed in issues I care about over the most conservative Christian or Orthodox Jew who lacks the experience, knowledge and vision to do a good job as president.
Orthodox Jew? There has never been a Jewish candidate for the presidency, orthodox or anything else. Which means that a fund of ability has gone untapped for the job. It would be interesting to see what would happen if, say, a secular Jew with widely popular political views were to stand. What might operate against him? Anti-semitism – ie the fact that he is a Jew even though not religious – or anti-atheism, or both?
Religion can and has been used as a distraction to dupe voters. Jimmy Carter made “born again” mainstream during the 1976 presidential campaign and many evangelicals voted for him on the basis of his declared faith. Yet Carter later revealed himself to be a standard liberal Democrat in virtually every category that mattered, from abortion and civil unions, to the economy, to weakening America’s defenses and image worldwide.
What about Barack Obama’s self-declared Christian faith? He attended the Chicago church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons frequently condemned America and contained what some took to be racial slurs [they were racial slurs – JB]. The president’s faith has not distinguished his positions on any issue that matters from that of a standard liberal Democratic secularist. If a candidate says faith is important, shouldn’t that faith take the person on a different path than what someone of little or no faith would propose? If not, what difference does faith make and why should it be of concern to voters? …
It shouldn’t matter whether Mormons believe in baptizing the dead, what undergarments they wear, or that they believe God was once a man like us. Neither should it matter that an evangelical Christian believes in Armageddon, unless, of course, he (or she) wants to advance that day by dropping a nuclear bomb on our enemies, as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to do to the West. Now THERE is someone who combines his religion with political power, which should scare us all.
The Bible, the guidebook for evangelicals, teaches that there are two kingdoms. Presidential candidates are running to head up a part of the earthly kingdom known as America. The job as head of the other Kingdom is taken. The duties and responsibilities of each should be kept separate.
The writer doesn’t speculate whether a self-declared atheist might stand a chance of even being nominated. To us, that is a most interesting question.
The Greens spread misery around the world – and smile. 106
You have seen them at street corners in towns all over America, men and women with clipboards, always smiling, asking you in a friendly tone to sign something that promotes the objectives of the environmental movement. They often set out stalls, or wear T-shirts, with signs announcing that they serve Greenpeace. That smile of theirs is the smug smirk of those who believe they have seen the light and feel nothing but pity for the rest of us who haven’t. Christians of all stripes wear it; as does the Dalai Lama and a multitude of others who manage to combine God-bothering with Marxism; and Democratic Party spokesmen on television news; and Al Gore.
We have posted many articles about the harm that the environmental movement does. See, for instance, The evil that Greenpeace does, January16, 2010; The vast left-wing conspiracy, January 18, 2010; The blind cruelty of Greenpeace, January 20, 2010; and Green roots: the origins of ecology, January 22, 2010.
It is a message that needs repeating.
Daniel Greenfield writes, at his website Sultan Knish, on How Environmentalists Cause War and Repression. Here’s part of what he says:
No other group has done as much to keep America dependent on foreign oil as the environmentalists have. After leading successful campaigns against nuclear power and domestic drilling, the green movement may lecture on “oil wars”, but it is responsible for most of them.
The math of it is very simple. Resource shortages are a major cause of conflict. And environmentalists have dedicated themselves to creating resource shortages in prosperous nations. Their campaigns against nuclear, domestic oil and coal production have been big on self-righteousness and short on consequences. And the consequences are that their scaremongering has not only cost millions of American jobs, it has forced us to keep sending money to Muslim oil states who use that money for domestic repression and international terrorism.
The environmentalists have done the same thing in Europe and Asia, turning formerly moribund Communist powers, Russia and China, into energy and manufacturing superpowers. By making it more expensive and in some cases impossible to conduct manufacturing and energy production at home, they exported Western industries to the East, and enabled the transformation of struggling tyrannies into international superpowers. …
When the question arises, who killed the pro-democracy movement in China– it wasn’t the tanks, but their enablers, the liberals whose regulation and exploitation had made America into an uncomfortable place to do business. Those companies went elsewhere and the money they brought, propped up the Chinese Communist party. …
In Germany, the Greens have succeeded in their campaign against the domestic nuclear industry. What is the net result of this? It further degrades Europe’s energy capabilities and moves it into Putin’s orbit. That empowers Russia to begin another campaign of conquest aimed at its former republics. That is what a “Green” victory really looks like. People freezing in their homes while a dictatorship sends its tanks and infantry on a new campaign of terror. …
The environmental movement is not interested in cheap energy. If solar power provided energy cheaply, the greens would be marching against it. Any technology that provides cheap power is their enemy.
The mandate of the environmental movement is artificial scarcity. But artificial scarcity doesn’t exist in a global economy. If you raise the price of energy production, resource mining or manufacturing, it will move abroad to less regulated countries. The price will still go up and there will be other long term consequences, but people will still find a way to get what they need. Like the rest of the left, the green movement has never learned that people will act in their own interests, rather than in thrall to their dogma. That if they can’t get it legally, they will get it illegally. …
The left has created … the slave labor that makes the products which they deplore. It is responsible for all of it and it should take ownership of it. …
The environmental movement’s manifest hypocrisy is that it causes the very things that it deplores. Its campaign against the nuclear industry has sent billions overseas to countries which are developing their own nuclear weapons and intend to use them. By shutting down nuclear plants in America, [the movement] has made it much more likely that nuclear bombs will be detonated in America.
It destroyed American industry in the name of worker protection and pollution, and sent the factories to countries where workers have no rights and the pollution looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. And reduced those former workers to the point where they have no choice but to buy those same slave labor products at a non-union store with the profits going to China’s war machine. …
These are all victories for the environmental movements and defeats for anyone with any sanity or sense. But the environmental movement refuses to acknowledge the consequences of its actions. Instead it champions further domestic and international repression. Like every tyrannical ideology it knows only one solution to every problem, more laws, more chains, more investigations and prison cells for anyone who disobeys.
Repression and propaganda is the environmental movement’s solution to everything. Its imperative is to destroy, impoverish, oppress and intimidate. It spreads hopeless misery around the world, with a smile. The countless victims of Rachel Carson’s malaria [hers because she got DDT banned – JB] or the prisoners of the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] go unnoticed as the latest children’s propaganda cartoon is rolled out. Its implicit message is always that there is a war on between the environmentalists and the people who just want to live their own lives.
The religious observance of stoning 110
July 11 was International Day Against Stoning.
Will it persuade Iran to give up the practise?
Skeptics that we are, we doubt it.
Iran follows sharia law which prescribes that persons found guilty of committing adultery must be stoned to death.
Executioners carry it out religiously.
Instructions for how it must be done are precise.
Notice that a man is planted in the earth up to his hips, a woman up to her chest.
From Creeping Sharia:
Anthem of the Syrian Revolution 7
Find information about the song here.
It includes this:
The story of the song’s author – Ibrahim Kashoush – took a sad turn with news that he may have been killed in a protest last Friday in Hama. Reporting out of Syria is hard to verify these days, but one Lebanese news site said his body was reportedly dumped in a nearby river Wednesday morning.
“The song has rallied people,” said U.S.-based Syrian activist Ammar Abdulhamid. “It hit a nerve because it’s clearly and simply designed to tell Assad to leave. It’s very straightforward. And it uses some profane language.”
Note the anti-Americanism in it.
Liberalism, religion and the Enlightenment 183
In which Peter Wehner argues with Todd Akin, and we argue with both.
We often read Peter Wehner with pleasure, and often agree with his opinions. Here our agreement with his argument in an article at Commentary is only partial.
His title is Liberalism, Religion and the Enlightenment.
Representative Todd Akin, a Republican from Missouri, was recently asked about NBC’s removal of the words “under God” from a clip of the Pledge of Allegiance during coverage of the U.S. Open. “Well, I think NBC has a long record of being very liberal, and at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God and a belief that government should replace God,” Akin told radio host Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. “This is a systematic effort to try to separate our faith and God, which is a source in our belief in individual liberties, from our country. And when you do that you tear the heart out of our country.”
There may be people who “hate God”, but they are not atheists. One doesn’t hate what doesn’t exist.
Liberals may believe that “government should replace God” in being, presumably, the Power over the people. But we believe in the need to limit the power of government; and that government should be as small as possible, no larger than is absolutely necessary to fulfill its only legitimate function: the protection of the people’s liberty, nationally and individually.
“Our faith and God which is a source in our belief in individual liberties”. Not the only source in Akin’s view then, but only “a source”. Even so, he’s mistaken. There is no way that a fictitious being can be the source of anything. Does “the heart of our country” depend on an illusion to keep beating?
Apparently what Akin said gave offense to some liberals – an emotional reaction. Akin felt constrained to apologize.
Akin, who is running in the GOP primary for Missouri’s Senate seat, initially told a radio station, “I don’t think there’s anything to apologize for. I’m not going to apologize for what I see liberalism doing.” But he then released a statement saying he and his family would never “question the sincerity of anyone’s personal relationship with God. My statement during my radio interview was directed at the political movement, liberalism, not at any specific individual. If my statement gave a different impression, I offer my apologies.”
There are several things to sort through in all this, starting with this: NBC’s intentional deletion of the words “under God” revealed a ridiculous discomfort and animus toward even the most common and generic reference to God, one millions of schoolchildren use every day. What NBC did was stupid; it deserved to be roundly criticized.
We agree up to a point. Saying “under God” when reciting a well-known quotation need have no more significance than a chorus of “la la la”. But we wouldn’t criticize its omission too roundly.
But not in the way that Representative Akin did. After all, there are countless liberals – from Dorothy Day, to Martin Luther King Jr., to Mario Cuomo, to Tony Campolo – who did not/do not harbor a “hatred for God.” Nor is modern liberalism synonymous with militant atheism, even though there are some liberals who are militant atheists (just as there are a few conservatives who are as well).
Right. Only most of us aren’t “militant” about not believing in the supernatural. We just don’t, and question why anyone does.
That said, there is no question that liberalism has manifested an aversion toward, and concern about, religion – an aversion and concern rooted in part in the Enlightenment.
Liberalism as such? Is there something about liberalism that needs to involve an aversion to religion to be consistent? Classical liberalism – laissez-faire economics – does not require either belief or non-belief. But in America today “liberalism” is a misnomer for the politics of the Left. Far from being concerned with upholding Adam Smith’s “natural order of liberty” (the free market), it is a collectivist creed of the egalitarian kind. Marx, its chief prophet, preached against religion. There are other collectivist creeds that are not egalitarian and owe nothing to Marx, such as Islam. (Though there are now some weird cults that mix Islam and Marxism – more an emulsion than a solution, we guess.)
“Rooted … in the Enlightenment”. If he means that the Enlightenment made atheism intellectually respectable again after a thousand years and more of Christian thought-policing, fair enough.
Wehner goes on:
The Enlightenment, it’s important to recall, was [inter alia] a response to religious wars and religious persecution that dominated the European continent. In response, the Enlightenment emphasized man’s use of reason and the empirical sciences as the means by which he was able to achieve freedom and prosperity, happiness and knowledge. It did great good.
We heartily agree and roundly applaud.
At the same time, many of the Enlightenment’s leading figures — Descartes, Bacon, Voltaire, Hobbes, Newton, Paine, and Locke — tried, in varying degrees, to replace God with science, to make man the center of all things, to replace religion with reason, “man’s only star and compass,” in the words of Locke.
He should not leave out Spinoza, for whom God was nature, or nature’s laws.
Science should “replace” God. We find it inexplicable that some – albeit a small majority – of scientists are religious.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his famous Harvard commencement address in which he attacked modern Western societies, declared that “anthropocentricity” — man as the center of all things — was the legacy of the Enlightenment. And that, in turn, led to what he called the “spiritual exhaustion” of the West.
A meaningless phrase, “spiritual exhaustion”. What spirit? How exhausted?
There is something –
What exactly?
to the warning issued by Solzhenitsyn. And in our time liberalism has shown if not an outright hatred for God, then a deep concern about religion as a source of intolerance, as fostering social conflict, and as threatening public peace.
You don’t have to be a liberal to notice that the religious are intolerant, and that intolerance fosters social conflict and threatens public peace. Wars are still being fought over religious differences.
Many liberals — not all, but many — want to keep the public square free of religious influences or language (see NBC’s decision). Religious beliefs are fine, so long as they are kept private.
We can agree with that view.
Wehner sees some of the danger in religion:
It is not as if liberalism’s concerns about religion are completely illegitimate or detached from historical events; religious faith has led to fanaticism and a prosecutorial zeal.
However, he continues –
But that is certainly not the whole story. And religion, rightly understood, is a friend of a liberal, decent society.
What religion is a friend to a decent society (leaving aside the word liberal for the moment, since it can mean opposite things)? Is Islam which prohibits critical examination, subjugates women, and is so intolerant that it kills dissenters when it can, a friend to decent society? Is any religion an aid to the discovery of truth when it depends on irrational belief?
And what does “rightly understood” mean? A “right understanding” of Christianity, for instance, has never been agreed upon by all Christians.
He tries to seal this point by alluding to the Founders.
That is something virtually all of America’s founders understood. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” is how George Washington put it in his Farewell Address. “And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.”
We agree of course on the need for morality. We know that there are a couple of religions which preach morality, and that some people try to obey the preaching. But we cannot see how religion as such maintains morality. We have observed that appallingly immoral acts have been, and are, carried out in the name of religions, including those that preach morality.
None of them [the Founders] would object to the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Probably not. But whether some of them would reserve a skepticism about their meaning, no one can be certain.
On this point, we quote one of our readers, Keith, commenting interestingly on our post Atheists: proud, scared, combative, victimized? (July 2, 2011):
Recently there was the big stink about NBC omitting “under god” from the pledge. At work the discussion raged that “they” were attacking religion again. I pointed out that I had seen a segment on FOX regarding the pledge, about how it was written by a socialist to sell flags, about how he also created a raised straight arm salute to go with his pledge and about how our founding fathers would have been against the idea of forcing anyone to pledge allegiance to anything. They also didn’t know that “under god” was added during the Eisenhower administration meaning that for 60 years prior people pledged without god.
Too dreadful to contemplate 0
Now he’s wooing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the chief Islamic organizations driving the jihad against America and the rest of the non-Muslim world. It is not “moderate” or “secular” as Obama and his henchmen say it is. It’s agenda is to destroy the United States, establish a world-ruling caliphate, impose sharia law, force Christians to pay for being allowed to live, wipe out the Jews, and keep women subservient to men.
Islam is the active enemy of the United States. And the president of the United States is on its side.
His heart is with Islam.
But, you might protest, he allowed the execution of Osama bin Laden. Yes, he did – reluctantly, we believe – because he had to seem to be against the most obvious and violent enemy who had plotted the 9/11 massacre of Americans. The order he gave to the Navy SEALs to kill bin Laden provides Obama with cover for his continuing support of the enemy and undermining of the country he was disastrously elected to lead.
An analogy would be if the British had elected Oswald Mosley, the Nazi-sympathizer and friend of Hitler and Goebbels, to lead them through World War Two.
Here is a timeline, from Investor’s Business Daily, which traces the steps Obama has taken towards pleasing and finally embracing the Muslim Brotherhood:
2009: The White House invites [the Islamic Society of North America] ISNA’s president to President Obama’s inauguration ceremonies, even though the Justice Department just two years earlier had blacklisted the Brotherhood affiliate as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial — the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history.
2009: Obama delivers his Cairo speech to Muslims, infuriating the Mubarak regime by inviting Brotherhood leaders to attend.
2009: The White House dispatches top presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett to give the keynote speech at ISNA’s annual convention.
2009: Obama appoints a Brotherhood-tied Islamist — Rashad Hussain — as U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which strongly supports the Brotherhood. [Its name was changed in June this year to The Organization of Islamic Co-operation – JB]
2010: Hussain meets with the Brotherhood’s grand mufti in Egypt.
2010: Obama meets one on one with Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who later remarks on Nile TV: “The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim.”
2011: Riots erupt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Crowds organized by the Brotherhood demand Mubarak’s ouster, storm government buildings. The White House fails to back longtime U.S. ally Mubarak, who flees Cairo.
2011: White House sends intelligence czar James Clapper to Capitol Hill to whitewash the Brotherhood’s extremism. Clapper testifies the group is a moderate, “largely secular” organization.
2011: The Brotherhood’s spiritual leader — Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi — is given a hero’s welcome in Tahrir Square, where he raises the banner of jihad. Qaradawi, exiled from Egypt for 30 years, had been calling for “days of rage” before the rioting in Egypt. Before Obama’s Cairo speech, he wrote an open letter to the president arguing terrorism is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy.
2011: The Brotherhood vows to tear up Egypt’s 30-year peace treaty with Israel. Since Mubarak’s fall, it has worked to formally reestablish Cairo’s ties with Hamas and Hezbollah.
2011: Obama gives Mideast speech demanding Israel relinquish land to Palestinians.
2011: White House security adviser gives friendly speech to Washington-area mosque headed by ISNA’s new president. 2011: Justice Department pulls plug on further prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood front groups identified as collaborators in conspiracy to funnel millions to Hamas. …
Frank Gaffney reports and comments at the Center for Security Policy:
Muslim Brotherhood fronts are routinely cultivated by federal, state and local officials. Representatives of homeland security, Pentagon, intelligence and law enforcement agencies frequently meet with and attend functions sponsored by such groups. … Individuals with family and other ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have actually been given senior government positions. The most recent of these to come to light is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin [wife of the former Congressman Anthony Weiner]. …
The Obama administration’s efforts to “engage” the Muslim Brotherhood are not just reckless. They are wholly incompatible with the President’s oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the similar commitment made by his subordinates.
In Gaffney’s view, it’s a step too far:
These officials’ now-open embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a geo-strategic tipping point … Instead of relying upon – let alone hiring – Muslim Brotherhood operatives and associates, the United States government should be shutting down their fronts, shariah-adherent, jihad-incubating “community centers” and insidious influence operations in America. By recognizing these enterprises for what they are, namely vehicles for fulfilling the seditious goals of the MB’s civilization jihad, they can and must be treated as prosecutable subversive enterprises, not protected religious ones under the U.S. Constitution. …
The policy toward the MB in Egypt will, Gaffney explains, strengthen and encourage the organization in America:
By engaging the Ikhwan [Arabic for the Brotherhood] in its native land, the Obama administration is effectively eliminating any lingering impediment to the operations of its myriad front groups in this country. Even before Secretary Clinton’s announcement, many of them have already been accorded unprecedented access to and influence in the U.S. government. …
The EU is following Obama’s lead in embracing the MB.
Robert Spencer writes at Front Page:
Following quickly after the revelation that the Obama administration had resolved to establish contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, the European Union has announced that it, too, is interested in talking with the group. …
So why is the Western world rushing to talk to this malignant group? Why the determination to ignore and deny what it stands for and says it will do?
If the Western world is to survive the Islamic jihad onslaught, it will only manage to do so by decisively rejecting this fantasy-based policymaking. …
Even commentators like Spencer and Gaffney who see clearly what is happening and what must follow, do not confront the most obvious explanation for Obama’s acting as he does towards this powerful spearhead of Islam, setting an example for others to follow, perhaps because it is “too dreadful to contemplate” as used to be said of nuclear war breaking out between the West and the Soviet Union.
The too-dreadful-to-contemplate answer is that this is not “fantasy-based policymaking”, but policymaking with a view to achieving the very results that are being achieved: the slow but steady, step-by step conquest of the West by Islam.
We’re saying that Obama wants Islam to succeed.
Melanie Phillips sees Obama’s cozying up to the MB as capitulation. She writes:
The abject capitulation of the Obama administration to the forces waging war on the western world was laid bare a few days ago when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US now wanted to open a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood.
And she asks in bewilderment:
Why does supposedly arch-feminist Hillary want to ‘engage’ with a movement that would promote the mutilation of Egyptian women?
Whether Hillary Clinton and the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton understand what it will mean if Islam achieves its aim of world domination – the universal imposition of sharia law, dhimmification of Christians, annihilation of the Jews, the subjugation of women, a descent into another age of darkness – we don’t know; but we suspect they simply don’t allow themselves to think that those horrors could, let alone will, ensue. For them they would be too dreadful to contemplate.
As, perhaps, would be – for most Americans – the idea that a victorious Islam is the change Obama hopes for.
Kids and doctors in the booming terrorist industry 158
Terrorist organizations are having to meet the rising cost of killing.
Suicide bombers, or their suppliers, have put up their fees.
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Militant groups [ie the Taliban] in Afghanistan and Pakistan are trading the lives of would-be suicide bombers for up to $US90,000 ($83,800), three times what they were paying just two years ago.
The work (so to speak) is likely to attract more applicants when the reward is high:
The Kabul newspaper Daily Outlook Afghanistan said the higher price was a ”terrible trend” with serious consequences for the fight against terrorism.
”The price of a suicide bomber set so high would motivate many others who are disappointed from life due to not having any employment,” the editorial said.
Not all suicide bombers are volunteers:
Pakistani authorities revealed recently that Taliban insurgents had kidnapped a nine-year-old girl and strapped a suicide vest on her in an attempt to blow up a police checkpoint.
Many children are trained to kill-and-die, and the high price of adults raises the demand for child suicide bombers who may be bought for less. So children are being farmed to supply the market.:
The National Directorate of Security in Afghanistan claims that it has more than 100 boys aged between 12 and 17 in custody facing charges of attempting suicide attacks. “Ninety-nine per cent of the children detained on charges of suicide attack have come from Pakistan where they were indoctrinated, trained and equipped in religious schools and other insurgency training camps,” the directorate spokesman, Lutfullah Mashal, said.
The suicide-bombing industry is highly adaptive. In addition to finding ways to ensure ample supplies of young operatives, it is continually inventing new methods of smuggling human-borne explosive devices on to aircraft despite the ever more rigorous search routines:
From the Mirror:
Airports are on high alert for al-Qaeda terrorists plotting to blow up jets using “body bombs” surgically inserted in them.
Attempts are being made to implant explosives into the abdomens, buttocks and breasts of suicide bombers so they can pass undetected through new airport body scanners.
US security experts have warned airlines and airport authorities about the new threat … They fear fanatics could inject a detonating chemical into themselves to trigger the bombs. … Potential bombers would carry a letter from a doctor claiming they have had surgery and need to carry a needle and syringe for medical reasons. It would be sufficient to clear security during check-in for a flight.
Terror experts confirmed small pouches of high explosives such as Pentaerythritol Tetra Nitrate could be implanted into the body. The wounds would be allowed to heal over and the bomb, which would be detonated in mid air by injecting a chemical into the pouch. Just eight ounces of PETN, the weight of a Rubik’s Cube, could bring down a plane …
But are there doctors willing to help the cause by supplying false certificates and performing the surgery?
One security source said there is concern that the US may harbour a significant number of medical students sympathetic to al-Qaeda.He said: “There are a large number of students from Arab countries studying medicine in the US. … All that would be needed is a basic grounding in rudimentary surgery to help implant a small amount of explosive.”
In fact, terrorist doctors, fully qualified in the profession, are not in short supply: a number of Arab doctors have prostituted their skills to serve the Islamic ideology of torture and murder.
Michelle Malkin writes:
Our homeland security officials have sent fresh warnings to foreign governments that “human bombs” may try to board planes with surgically implanted explosives. The ticking terrorists are reportedly getting help from murder-minded Arab Muslim physicians trained in the West. Infidels beware: Dr. Jihad’s version of the health care oath omits the “no” in “Do no harm.”
The death docs may be using their expertise to play “Hide the IED” in body cavities that bomb-detection equipment cannot penetrate. At least one Saudi operative has been nabbed with explosives in his bum, and British intel picked up on Arab website chatter last year about possible breast-bomb inserts. Officials are now said to be on the lookout for physicians’ notes requesting that passengers be allowed to carry syringes — which could carry detonation chemicals. …
There should be no shock at the role of purported healers in these and other hellish plots to destroy masses of innocent lives in the name of Allah. …
Medical charities have long served as front groups for jihad. Palestinian jihadists used ambulances owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) — subsidized with billions in American tax dollars — to ferry explosives and gunmen from attacks. Hezbollah terrorists used ambulances as props in Lebanon to stage anti-Israel propaganda and elicit sympathy from Western media.
Radical Islam’s bloody perversion of the medical profession traces back to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the global terror operation that wooed wealthy young docs and other intellectual elites with cushy union benefits.
- Ayman al-Zawahiri, a surgeon from a family of doctors, was raised in the Muslim Brotherhood; helmed the murderous Islamic Jihad; and masterminded myriad al-Qaida plots before succeeding Osama bin Laden this summer.
- Former Hamas leader Abdel Rantissi, bent on wiping out the children of Israel, was a pediatrician.
- Convicted al-Qaida scientist Aafia Siddiqui studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis.
- Rafiq Abdus Sabir was a Columbia University grad who served as an emergency room physician in Boca Raton, Fla., before his terrorism conviction in 2007 for agreeing to provide medical aid and treatment to wounded al-Qaida fighters so they could return to Iraq to kill American soldiers.
- Rafil Dhafir, an Iraqi-born oncologist, practiced in New York before being convicted in 2004 on 59 criminal counts related to violating Iraqi sanctions and committing large-scale medical charity fraud.
- A den of well-heeled jihadi doctors from around the world was implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings. At least one of the convicted terror MDs worked for Britain’s National Health Service.
- Mahmoud al-Zahar, another bloodthirsty Hamas biggie and medical doctor, described his specialty to a New York Times reporter in 2006 this way: ”’Thyroids: I’m very good at cutting throats,’ Dr. Zahar said, drawing his forefinger across his neck as a rare smile spread across his face.”
And at least one Christian Arab could be added to the list: George Habash, a Palestinian Greek-Orthodox Christian, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), one of the terrorist groups that came together to form the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under Arafat’s leadership. He qualified as a doctor of medicine at the American University of Beirut in 1951.
Michelle Malkin goes on to remind us of the Muslim psychiatrist who carried out the Fort Hood massacre:
Closer to home, Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan starkly diagnosed the ideological fanaticism of every soldier of Allah in a Koranic-inspired PowerPoint presentation that concluded: “We love death more then (sic) you love life!”
Military officials plagued by political correctness ignored Hasan. Thirteen Fort Hood soldiers and civilian personnel, and one unborn child, paid with their lives.
How many more Dr. Jihads are operating in the open, exploiting our borders and tolerance, wielding medical licenses to kill?
Death of an avaricious God 268
God is dead.
He died last April.
He had been incarnated as a man known as Sai Baba. He performed miracles. And he never accepted gifts, but simply couldn’t help becoming very rich on donations for his good works.
From the Telegraph:
A lifetime of claiming to be the incarnation of God had brought him a £5.5 billion fortune and a worldwide following of 50 million people. …
The big draw of Sai Baba was the darshan – a glimpse of the God made incarnate – that came twice a day as the little man with the big hair walked among the faithful, sharing a few words with the lucky ones, before taking his place on the long stage beneath which he is now buried. …
As many as 10,000 people could pack into the gaudy main hall, with its golden lions, pink, blue and white colour scheme and glittering chandeliers dangling overhead, to listen to his message of love and compassion. ..
In his prime, the diminutive holy man with the bright orange robes and huge afro haircut could count kings and presidents among his friends, and the likes of Sarah Ferguson …
There’s glory for you!
… among the admirers of his home-spun, “love all, serve all” philosophy.
And “con all” practice.
The film actress Goldie Hawn has visited his religious centre or ashram at least three times and donated tens of thousands of dollars to his projects … while the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, who gave £40,000 for a statue of the guru, and a myriad of Indian politicians and Bollywood stars claimed inspiration from his message of putting service above self.
Sai Baba’s … non-denominational ashram in the town of Puttaparthi in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh was a beacon for Indians and westerners seeking spiritual enlightenment, no matter what their original religion – which the guru said they could maintain.
Now that he’s dead, the spiritually enlightened are finding out that even a God can have his faults.
After a decent interval, the stone was rolled back from the mouth of his tomb and … No, wait! That was another story. The discovery in Puttaparthi was this:
Members of the Sathya Sai Central Trust, which runs the ashram, a religious centre, decided that speculation about what might be inside the guru’s private chambers was getting out of hand. The rooms had lain apparently untouched since the 84-year-old spiritual leader was taken ill in March.
The Trust decided to open the rooms, but with caution: the police were kept at a distance and the media were locked out. A select group assembled, including the controversial figure of Satyajit, Sai Baba’s carer, apparently the only person who could penetrate the chambers’ elaborate security. They took the lift to the first floor, opened the door and stepped inside.
What they found made even the wildest rumours seem tame: stacked around the room were piles of gold, diamonds and cash. Cashiers with counting machines were summoned …
A procession of cashiers bearing counting machines, hurrying to the treasuries! A movie scene that.
… and reported that the haul included £1.6 million in rupees, 98 kg of gold and 307 kg of silver. (No figure was provided for the diamonds.)
The Trust denied any previous knowledge of the hoard, said it had immediately paid tax on its value, and denied any impropriety.
Well, we don’t see anything too bad there. Why shouldn’t God be rich when he comes to earth?
Thing is, they’re accusing him of deception, of getting money under false pretenses, of being wily and worldly and not sufficiently God-like. What a shock!
Rumors spread “of more treasure hidden away around the sprawling building, of false ceilings and further underground hoards”. …
One source within the ashram said: “The police have definite intelligence of the existence of secret vaults, and concealed storage in false ceilings and behind false walls in Sai Baba’s personal living quarters. They strongly believe that the wealth hidden there could be much more than what was actually found, perhaps on a staggering scale.”
Suspicion began to grow that vast sums had already been smuggled out. Three days later, police stopped a car carrying Trust members near the border with a neighbouring state – and found the equivalent of £50,000 in cash inside.
What, those honest Trust members, so quick to pay taxes, stole money and tried to smuggle it out of the country? (But why such a paltry sum once they were doing it?)
The Trust first denied any connection with the money, then claimed it had been donated by devotees to pay for a memorial.
The revelations have tested the faith of even the staunchest devotees, said a former member of Sai Baba’s security and intelligence wing. “News is constantly trickling in from Puttaparthi that Sai Baba devotees have been shaken by the huge haul of wealth as well as big cash seizures in the following days,” he said. “Many Sai Baba devotees I know, real hard-core devotees that is, are not even attempting to defend or deny the gold, cash hauls, and are in a complete state of confusion.
Some blame trust members, while a few are asking, “Why did Swami have to keep so much gold and cash? Didn’t Swami always say he never accepted gifts? Who to believe or what to believe?”
Why indeed? And who and what to believe? The eternal questions.
God’s death is turning out to be bad for business in the area:
The implications have not been lost on the people of Puttaparthi, whose livelihoods depend on a constant stream of pilgrims. It was a tiny village when Sai Baba was born there; as he grew in stature it became a thriving town, but business has slumped since his death.
Mind you, miracle-worker though he was, he’d lost control of his own limbs well before the end came:
In later years a stroke obliged Sai Baba to make his way through the vast hall in a specially converted car before taking his place on the stage in his removable white leather car seat, trimmed with gold painted plastic. Still the faithful came. …
But death is a real bummer. Gods should not let it to happen to them.
India is not short of gurus and the fear in Puttaparthi is that those seeking enlightenment will now turn their attentions to other, more vital, sages.
The commercial empire God acquired remains:
There is still a £5.5 billion empire up for grabs, including 1,200 centres in more than 100 countries and a string of hospitals and schools around the world – and there is no shortage of contenders to take control.
The front-runners include 39-year-old R.J. Ratnakar, the guru’s nephew, who owns a petrol station and a cable television network, and Satyajit, 33, Sai Baba’s closest companion for the last nine years.
But they face a spirited challenge from Isaac Tigrett, the Hard Rock Cafe founder, one of the guru’s earliest and staunchest supporters – so much so that he borrowed Sai Baba’s “love all, serve all” slogan for his restaurant chain to help publicise the guru’s message. Mr Tigrett, who donated £4 million to build a hospital at the ashram and has spent much of the last few years at the compound, claims to be the guru’s “living will”. Sai Baba had, he said, confided in him along his plans for the future of the organisation – and he would reveal all later this year.
That cut no ice with the board members of the Trust, however, who dismissed his claims.
“Even a couple of months ago, what has now happened was still unimaginable,” said Robert Priddy, the Sai Baba organisation’s former Norwegian leader.
Norway is a nation with an exceptional appetite for BS. Norwegians award Peace Prizes to terrorists and community organizers who’ve never achieved a damn thing. So we’re not surprised to learn of a Norwegian branch of the Sai Baba cult. Though Mr Priddy seems to have been given pause before the posthumous revelations broke:
Mr Priddy was once a believer but lost his faith as the allegations of sexual abuse which dogged Sai Baba’s final decades began to mount – though not before himself donating a total of £13,500.
Allegations of sexual abuse? God was lubricious as well as avaricious?
For former devotees like Robert Priddy, all this is simply proof that they were right to walk away when they did. “I feel satisfied that his death 10 years before his own prediction and under such inauspicious circumstances further vindicated my views on the falsity of his claims of omnipotence and divinity,” he said.
Into the most faithful heart a little doubt may creep. But there’s a good chance that the disappointed Mr Priddy, and the kings and presidents, and Sarah Ferguson and Goldie Hawn, and Isaac Tigrett of the Hard Rock Cafe chain, and Sachin Tendulkar, and the politicians and the Bollywood stars will find someone else’s claim to omnipotence, divinity, and complete lack of any care for base material things such as filthy lucre, more lastingly believable. Any day now.
Allies: US, NATO, and the Butcher of Dafur 173
It’s getting ever worse, the mess that Obama and some European leaders have made with their interference in Libya “to protect civilians”.
The “civilians” include al-Qaeda operatives and murderous mobs which use the upheaval of war to hunt down and kill “aliens” in their country whose ethnicity they don’t like.
And now Omar al-Bashir, the mass-murderer tyrant of Sudan, has been let in to help the most powerful military alliance in the world with their failing campaign against the tin-pot dictator of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi.
Stephen Brown writes at Front Page:
While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) says it is protecting civilians in Libya from Muammar Gaddafi, an International Criminal Court (ICC)-indicted fugitive, it has allowed another ICC-wanted criminal to send his army into the country.
In an under-reported event, Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, currently under indictment by the ICC for genocide in Darfur, recently sent troops across the Libyan-Sudanese border into southern Libya to occupy Kufra, a town located in an important oil-producing area. Only last May in his own country, Bashir, who could teach Gaddafi lessons on killing civilians, had used the same army to ethnically cleanse 60,000 Dinka tribesmen with tanks from Abyei, while his air force is currently bombing Nuba civilians indiscriminately in their mountain villages in possible preparation for a new genocide. Indicating that a deal with the devil may have been made prior to the Sudanese army’s cross-border move, NATO, which controls Libyan airspace, did not oppose the occupation.
“Our surveillance shows that they are not moving the oil, so it is not about money in the short term,” one Western official was quoted as saying.
What the Sudanese intervention most likely is about, however, is oil. More specifically, it is about getting it flowing again, a NATO priority. British officials are reported to “have worked closely” with the rebels in Benghazi to this end.
The role of the Sudanese troops in achieving this goal, it seems, is to provide the oil-producing area around Kufra with protection from Gaddafi’s forces. The Libyan leader’s fighters have been attacking oil facilities around Kufra and elsewhere to prevent the rebels from selling the oil and using the proceeds to prosecute the war against him. Without money, the rebels say they are “incapable of battling Gaddafi.” …
The Sudanese army moved into Kufra only days after the last attack by Gaddafi forces on the area’s oil fields on June 12. Prior to the Sudanese arrival, there had been a lot fighting around the town. What Sudan’s government expects to receive for its help in Kufra is unclear. But one can rest assured that Bashir is not helping out for nothing.
If NATO acquiesced or assisted in hiring the army of a war criminal and mass murderer like Bashir for use against a similarly indicted criminal, as appears likely, it throws a hypocritical shadow over the military alliance’s oft stated mission statement of protecting Libyan civilians. Enlisting Bashir proves protecting civilians from a brutal dictator was never NATO’s priority; rather it proves, as has long been suspected, the war is primarily about oil.
In our opinion, oil is a very good reason for going to war. Oil is the lifeblood of our commerce, essential to our civilization. We regret that the US did not take possession of the major Middle East oil-fields long ago – in 1973 at the latest.
It’s a much more respectable reason than “protecting civilians”, even if that were a genuine reason, and not the hypocritical pretext that it is.
What does it say about our culture that a sentimental lie is thought necessary to justify a war that is actually being fought for the vital interest of at least some of the NATO powers (chiefly France)?
One African columnist, Obi Nwakanma, has most likely discerned the true reason for NATO’s involvement in the Libyan civil war. Britain and France, Nwakanma maintains, feared being shut out of the Libyan oil fields in favour of China and India. Libya contains the largest oil reserves in Africa.
“It is no longer a secret that behind this NATO alliance war on Libya, and far beyond the ‘do-good’ face it …wears…as its reason for bombing Libya to smithereens is the quest to control the oil fields of Libya, guarantee Western access to energy sources in the face of growing concern over the rise of China and India and their…emerging gluttony for oil…,” Nwakanma writes.
It would be just like the sadistic Gaddafi to turn around and make oil exploration deals with China and India after Britain and France had suffered humiliation at his hands in expectation of getting such agreements. But NATO is running out of options in bringing a quick end to the bloody mess the Libyan war has become. The rebels are no closer to deposing Gaddafi than they were last February when the rebellion began. Facing a stalemate in eastern Libya, they have also not advanced from Misrata in western Libya despite having the advantage of NATO air support. As an indication of their weakness, and perhaps of their desperation, the rebels’ ruling council in Benghazi has now offered to allow Gaddafi to stay in Libya, if he would only step down. This offer was promptly rejected.
A possible sign of NATO’s desperation occurred when it was revealed last week France had air-dropped arms to anti-Gaddafi Berber rebels in Libya’s western mountains, defying the UN resolution banning the supplying of weapons to either side. The French defended their actions, saying the weapons, “rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles, machine guns and, above all, anti-tank missiles,” were to protect the rebels against Gaddafi’s troops. Frustratingly for NATO, the French weapons have not helped so far. The French-armed Berber rebel force, now positioned 50 miles south of Tripoli, first offensive failed. Fighting on flat plains is not the same as mountain warfare.
Failing is bad enough, but making common cause with a blood-soaked savage like al-Bashir is worse. If they weren’t pretending not to be fighting for oil, the Western powers could send an army in and take it. It’s the sentimental pretense that has landed them in a disgusting alliance with al-Bashir.
And to what further depravities and slaughter is it all leading?
Even if NATO does prevail, one must question what kind of democracy does it expect to appear in Libya after Gaddafi’s downfall? The rebel forces are not very united, except in their desire to get rid of Gaddafi, and some have even been accused of war crimes, especially against black Africans. Made up largely of tribes, the opposition forces may eventually start to fight each other over power and control of oil revenues after Gaddafi’s demise, setting the stage for a never-ending, multi-phase civil war like happened in Afghanistan after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal. If this is the case, NATO may inadvertently have created more candidates for the ICC, against which it will again eventually have to act “to protect Libyan civilians.”
