Obama does not make war. Definitely not. So what’s the US doing firing Tomahawk subsonic cruise missiles at Libyan targets?

According to official spokesmen, it is taking “kinetic military action”. And that only to protect civilians.

Let us, in this stifling atmosphere of pacifism and sentimentality, consider some information (from Wikipedia) that raises questions in an enquiring mind:

The numbers of US military personnel in foreign lands “as of March 31, 2008”, though it must be remembered that  numbers change due to the recall and deployment of units, show that there are more US military personnel in Germany, 52,440, than in Iraq, 50,000.

Why are they in Germany?

9,660 in Italy and 9,015 in Britain.

What for?

28,500 in South Korea (good);  71,000 in Afghanistan (we know what for) and about half as many, 35,688, in Japan.

Why are they in Japan?

Altogether, 77,917 military personnel are located in Europe [more than in Afghanistan], 141 in the former Soviet Union …

What are the 141 doing in “the former Soviet union”?

47,236 in East Asia and the Pacific,  3,362 in North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia, 1,355 are in sub-Saharan Africa with 1,941 in the Western Hemisphere excepting the United States itself …

Within the United States, including U.S. territories and ships afloat within territorial waters –

As of 31 December 2009, a total of 1,137,568 personnel are on active duty within the United States and its territories (including 84,461 afloat). The vast majority, 941,629 of them, were stationed at various bases within the Contiguous United States [the 48 U.S. states on the continent of North America that are south of Canada, plus the District of Columbia, not the states of Alaska and Hawaii, or off-shore U.S. territories and possessions, such as Puerto Rico]. There were an additional 37,245 in Hawaii and 20,450 in Alaska. 84,461 were at sea, 2,972 in Guam, and 179 in Puerto Rico.

What of the US navy?

The United States Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S. Navy also has the world’s largest carrier fleet, with 11 in service, three under construction, and one in reserve. The service had 328,516 personnel on active duty and 101,689 in the Navy Reserve in January 2011. It operates 286 ships in active service and more than 3,700 aircraft.

The 21st century United States Navy maintains a sizable global presence, deploying in such areas as East Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. It is a blue-water navy with the ability to project force onto the littoral regions of the world, engage in forward areas during peacetime, and rapidly respond to regional crises, making it an active player in U.S. foreign and defense policy.

See a list of US Navy ships here.

The air force?

As of 2009 the USAF operates 5,573 manned aircraft in service (3,990 USAF; 1,213 Air National Guard; and 370 Air Force Reserve); approximately 180 unmanned combat air vehicles, 2,130 air-launched cruise missiles, and 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The USAF has 330,159 personnel on active duty, 68,872 in the Selected and Individual Ready Reserves, and 94,753 in the Air National Guard as of September 2008. In addition, the USAF employs 151,360 civilian personnel, and has over 60,000 auxiliary members in the Civil Air Patrol,making it the largest air force in the world.

See the list and the pictures of the military aircraft here.

Weaponry – here. And a quotation:

We have achieved a level of technology in military weapons and equipment that no other nation on earth comes close to.

What of US nuclear armament? The US maintains an arsenal of 5,113 warheads.

Space dominance? The question of weapons in space has been much discussed and is not settled. Not wanted by Obama.

What conclusions can be drawn from these facts and figures?

The Cold War is not over?

China is a menace?

The US is still the Watch of the World? Patrolling, protecting, ready to defend? Defend what, specifically?

One thing is certain. The United States of America is a military colossus.

Its military might is a hard – and surely very comforting – fact.

The fact alone should be enough to deter impudent adventurer states, like Russia and Iran, and make tyrannical chieftains who think of plotting massacre, like Gaddafi, think again – unless a silly leader like Obama announces that America will not go to war.

America must not be humble. Far better that it be feared than loved.

America must remain strong. Its ineluctable duty is to awe the world.

Here’s a picture of what is and is not happening on the Libyan warfront that you won’t find anywhere else. It’s a picture of a mess.

DebkFile from which the report comes is known not to be entirely reliable, but in this case we have no information from anywhere else t0 contradict it, and there’s nothing in it that seems improbable.

Four days after the Western-Arab coalition decided Saturday, March 19 to enforce a no fly zone over Libya, only six Western warplanes – American, British, Canadian and French – are in the sky at any one time … This is just enough to enforce the no-fly zone over Benghazi – not the rest of Libya. It is also wholly inadequate for collecting the basic intelligence over Tripoli and other parts of Libya for launching an offensive against Muammar Qaddafi’s forces.

The assault therefore ran out of steam after the first barrage of 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the sea. Monday, a dozen Tomahawks were fired – and only at Qaddafi’s coastal compounds for lack of intelligence about the rest of the thirty-one targets first postulated.

The military momentum was slowed substantially also by the haziness of the directives coming down from the coalition members’ governments about the offensive’s objectives. As the political leaders in Washington, London and Paris stumbled about and contradicted each other, the military commanders responded by confining their mission to the letter of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 of Friday, March 18.

The disagreements between Washington, London and Paris over the essential nature of the operation and its goals brought to light the uncomfortable fact that neither the UK nor France, alone or together, possesses the air power or crews for maintaining the no fly zone.

Unless the US expands its aerial participation, most of Libyan air space will remain wide open for Qaddafi’s air force to resume operations. By Tuesday, March 22, there was no sign that Washington was willing to deliver – just the reverse. The Obama administration made it clear that its participation would be confined to support functions, such as advanced electronic surveillance craft – no more warplanes.

The US Africa commander Gen. Carter Ham announced from his base in Stuttgart, Germany, that Qaddafi and his regime were not part of “our mission.” …

In London, the British government insisted that Muammar Qaddafi as head of his armed forces was a legitimate target of the coalition offensive. Both UK premier David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who spearheaded the coalition assault on Libya, have pinned their political hopes on their success in removing Qaddafi from power. …

The Obama administration, for its part, has worked itself into a jam: an acerbic argument has developed in the United States over the Libya operation’s immediate and final goals.

In his latest comment, President Barack Obama Monday, March 21, stood by this opaque definition: “The goal of the United Nations-sanctioned military action in Libya is to protect citizens, not regime change – but the goal of US policy is that Muammar Qaddafi has to go.” …

Obama contradicts himself because he has no idea what to do. The commander-in-chief of America’s military might and leader of the world’s only super-power wants not to be responsible for whatever happens:

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the US will hand over control and command of the Libya operation “within days.”

But who would pick up the ball? Neither France nor Britain has the military or logistical resources for taking a lead role in the coalition offensive …

The rebels cannot win by themselves:

[The rebels’] wild talk about retaking Adjabiya on the road to Benghazi referred to a single government A-Saiqa commando platoon, which defected in Benghazi in the early stages of the anti-Qaddafi uprising last month, and was able to drive just 50 kilometers southwest of the town before halting in the desert at a loss where to go next.

That platoon is the only organized force the rebels command.

Therefore, to have any chance of their revolt against Qaddafi succeeding, these insurgents would have to rely on American, British and French ground troops fighting government forces on their behalf. That is not going to happen. The US has made it perfectly clear that no American ground forces will be used in Libya, and all Britain and France can command are small commando units.

Obama made much of the Arab League’s Secretary saying it wanted help for the rebellion to succeed. But it’s unclear how many Arab leaders he was speaking for. Now the Arab League is against the intervention. Only one Arab state is willing to act – with a token of support.

The Arab component of the Western-Arab anti-Qaddafi coalition, the pre-condition for NATO participation, has faded away since the Arab League’s Secretary Amr Moussa developed cold feet after his initial wholehearted support for the operation.

In any case, only one Arab country, Qatar, was willing to put up four warplanes for the no-fly zone. Based in Italy, the Qatari pilots have since been directed by Emir Sheikh Al-Thani to cross the Mediterranean only up to the point where the Libyan coast is visible – not an inch further. The United Arab Emirates, initially reported as offering to take part in the Libya mission, has not sent a single plane.

If Gaddafi survives, the US will have lost to a third world dictator. If he goes, he is likely to be replaced by something even worse. Because it was Gaddafi saying that the rebels were linked to al-Qaeda, nobody seems to have believed it. But it may be true – see here and here.

This war is a rash enterprise, far more rash than President Bush’s invasion of Iraq can be said to have been even by his severest critics.

Dark dark dark. Are we all going into the dark?

An unnecessary shortage of energy is being imposed on the industrially developed world.

Paul Driessen writes at Townhall:

As Britain suffered through its coldest December in a century, families were forced to choose between keeping homes warm and feeding their children nourishing meals – thanks to climate policies that have forced extensive reliance on wind power and deliberately driven energy prices skyward.

Barely two months later, the UK’s power grid CEO informed the country that its days of reliable electricity are numbered. Families, schools, offices, shops, hospitals and factories will just have to “get used to” consuming electricity “when it’s available,” not necessarily when they want it or need it. A new “smart grid” will be used to allocate decreasing electricity supplies, on a rolling basis or according to bureaucratic determinations as to which consumers most need available power – mostly from wind turbines that provided a pitiful 0.04% of Britain’s electricity during its coldest days last December.

Meanwhile, the EU’s Energy Commissioner warned that German electricity prices are already at “the upper edge” of what society can accept and businesses can tolerate. Taxes, levies and regulations imposed in the name of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and global warming are forcing companies to relocate to other countries and causing “a gradual process of de-industrialization” across Germany. …

Welcome to the Third World, Europeans, where costly electricity is available only from time to time, at unexpected hours, depending on bureaucratic whims and how much power wind turbines and other “environment-friendly” generators can muster.

Is the USA next in line? …

America depends on abundant, reliable, affordable energy – 85% of it hydrocarbons. Coal generates half of all US electricity, and up to 90% in its manufacturing heartland – versus 1% from wind and solar. …

Unlocking America’s still abundant hydrocarbon resources and unleashing our innovative, hard-driving free enterprise system would generate hundreds of billions of dollars in leasing, royalty and tax revenues for federal, state and local governments. It would put millions back to work … help stanch the flow of red ink … keep tens of billions of crude oil spending and investment in America … and create enormous new wealth …

American technology powered by capitalism continues to invent ever better ways of providing energy and making all our lives easier and more productive:

Just consider the incredible revolution that the genius of American capitalists has presented the world: hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” to tap previously inaccessible oil and gas deposits. This technology has turned “depletion” and “sustainability” claims upside down. It has already doubled US natural gas reserves and given North America over a century of recoverable gas, at current consumption rates.

It is also unlocking oil wealth in the vast Bakken shale formation of Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan. Oil production there has already soared from 3,000 barrels a day five years ago to over 225,000 today. The US Energy Information Administration says it could reach 350,000 barrels a day by 2035; industry sources say it could top a million barrels by 2020. Related oilfield employment has soared from 5,000 to over 18,000 in the same five-year period, and could eventually reach 100,000 jobs. At $100 a barrel, even 350,000 barrels a day could mean $1.6 billion in annual royalties, from Bakken oil alone. …

It is a technologically possible and economically affordable solution that [could generate] bountiful jobs and revenues – as opposed to pixie dust solutions that require perpetual subsidies and address speculative problems. Offshore and ANWR drilling could do likewise.

But the Obama administration is enforcing its impoverishing energy policy:

Unfortunately, the White House, Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department, and too many in Congress, courts and state legislatures are determined to restrict and obstruct this hydrocarbon revolution. They want to … force America to convert to expensive, subsidized, unreliable, land-intensive wind, solar and ethanol power – and tell people how much energy they can have, and when.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is using groundless claims about possible groundwater contamination to delay fracking operations. Because Congress rejected cap-tax-and-trade, she has rewritten the Clean Air Act to label plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide a “pollutant” and restrict CO2 emissions from power plants, refineries and other facilities. …

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has shut down leasing and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, put tens of thousands out of work, ignored court orders to end his moratorium, and issued decrees that make millions of additional onshore and offshore acres off limits to drilling. He has blocked exploration in ANWR because [ie. on the pretext that – JB] its oil riches won’t make us energy independent (as though even massive wind, solar, ethanol and electric car programs would do so).

President Obama wants oil, gas, coal and electricity prices to “skyrocket,” to make “green” energy appear more attractive. Energy Secretary Steven Chu wants to “boost the price of gasoline to levels in Europe” – over $8 per gallon! …

Why?

In an article in the Telegraph, Niles Gardiner reveals that the (undemocratic, left-leaning) European Union is actively interfering in US affairs. It is shelling out taxpayers’  money to groups in America that oppose the death penalty.

Here is a large part of what he writes:

Why on earth are British taxpayers being forced to fund European Union lobbying for policy campaigns in the United States? Furthermore, why is the EU directly interfering in domestic political debates in America, and so far without Congressional oversight? As the research detailed below demonstrates, the EU’s European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) is spending millions of Euros on US-based campaigns against the death penalty. An extraordinary development. …

This extremely unusual funding for US groups – by a taxpayer-funded foreign entity to advance a political cause – deserves to attract a great deal of public attention, including Congressional scrutiny in Washington and parliamentary scrutiny in London. …

Here is a list of US recipients of EU EIDHR aid in 2009, which amounted to €2,624,395 ($3,643,951). The recipients of EU aid include the rather wealthy American Bar Association, whose annual budget approached $150 million in 2008.

American Bar Association Fund for Justice and Education: EU grant: €708,162 ($983, 277)

Project: The Death Penalty Assessments Project: Toward a Nationwide Moratorium on Executions

Death Penalty Information Center: EU grant: €193,443 ($268,585)

Project: Changing the Course of the Death Penalty Debate. A proposal for public opinion research, message development, and communications of capital punishment in the US.

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty: EU grant: €305,974 ($424,829)

Project: National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Intensive Assistance Program

Reprieve LBG: EU grant: €526,816 ($731,591) (some of these funds also went to “European countries”) Project: Engaging Europe in the fight for US abolition

Murder Victim’s Families for Human Rights Non-Profit Corporation: EU grant: €495,000 ($686,608) (some of these funds also went to other countries, including Japan and Taiwan). Project: Voices of Victims Against the Death Penalty

Witness to Innocence Protection: EU grant: €395,000 ($548,538)

Project: American DREAM Campaign [Note that this is a far left project – JB.]

MPs reading this should be asking questions why British taxpayers’ money is being used by the European Union to fund campaigns against the death penalty in the United States, without the consent of the British people. (Not least when 51 per cent of the British public support the reintroduction of capital punishment for murder, with just 37 per cent opposing it, in a recent YouGov poll.)

This is also an extraordinary intervention in a highly charged, intensely political domestic debate in the United States over the death penalty, the use of which has been ruled Constitutional by the US Supreme Court on several occasions, and is backed by 64 percent of Americans according to Gallup, with just 29 percent opposing. Can you imagine the outcry in Brussels if the US government funded policy groups in the EU, and the charges of “American imperialism” that would inevitably follow?

It is bad enough that Brussels consistently interferes with the internal affairs of EU member states, but it is surely a bridge too far when it tries to intervene in the affairs of one of the world’s greatest democracies that isn’t even part of the EU. This is hugely insulting to the US. …

Evidently, unelected bureaucrats sitting in the European Commission feel they have a divine right to lecture the United States and its citizens on how they should decide their own policies. This demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect for US national sovereignty, and a sneering condescension towards the American people. But perhaps this should come as no surprise. A supranational entity like the EU that has no respect for the democratic rights of hundreds of millions of Europeans can barely be expected to respect freedom and democracy outside its own borders.

The interference is wrong, and the cause is wrong.

We are for the death penalty.

To remove the death penalty is to permit murder.

The strange inclination some have to pity a murderer facing execution more than his or her victim is the sheerest sentimentality.

Some argue that mistakes can be made, and if someone is executed and later proved not guilty of the crime, there can be no redress. This implies that there can never be certainty; but there can be and there should be, and the law allows for ample (it could be argued too much) opportunity for arriving at it.

Some say the death penalty is not a deterrent. Sociologists and others of that kidney have toiled to show statistically that states with the death penalty have higher rates of murder than states without it. What the statistics cannot show is how many more murders there would have been in the death-penalty states if they did not have it.

We apply a simpler test of the efficacy of the death sentence as a deterrent: does it deter us? And our answer is yes: we’re absolutely sure that it would deter us if ever we thought of killing (and we can’t say the thought has never crossed our mind).

The only argument against it we think has some merit is that a lifetime in prison may be worse for a murderer to endure than execution. But it doesn’t persuade us. Prison these days – for those who don’t feel the lack of freedom to be the worst thing about it – is not unpleasant. Nowhere near dreadful enough to be fitting punishment for murder.

We would also favor the death penalty for treason, a crime that seems to have been removed from the book.

Justice is the prime responsibility of everyone all the time. It may be hard, even impossible, to achieve perfectly. But it has to be attempted constantly, unremittingly. It is what the law is for. Without law and the hope of  justice there is no civilization.

Be judgmental. Without personal judgment there is no morality.

President Bush tried to democratize the Arab Middle East. It was an effort worth making. But did he understand what he was up against?

In his World Economic Forum Address, delivered at Sharm el Sheikh International Congress Center, Egypt, on May 18, 2008, he said:

“Democracies do not take the same shape; they develop at different speeds and in different ways, and they reflect the unique cultures and traditions of their people.”

This is typical waffle of Western statesmen trying to accommodate multicultural “values” when speaking of dysfunctional polities.

There is some variety among national democracies, differences in types of representation and electoral process – administrative differences – which may reflect local mores and preferences, but these are superficial. True democracies, the ones which allow for change of government and limits upon government, do not reflect the “unique cultures and traditions” of their people: they reflect a core Western (British) cultural development, a tradition of limiting absolute power constitutionally. This political principle – like the zero in mathematics – may have originated within one culture, but it is of benefit to all mankind in the establishment of national political institutions. It is through these institutions that we know freedom (civil rights, the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, the individual protected from the predations of power). Democracy is a superior idea, and the West should continue to offer it – insist on it – to nations which have inferior arrangements. Diluting the idea by allowing for local versions of power-sharing to substitute for it is foolish. For example, I do not count the loya jirga, the traditional tribal forum for dispute arbitration, as a cultural equivalent of democratic government, nor can I see how it could form the institutional basis for a national democracy as it enshrines tribal power. Societies which borrow the trappings of democracy – elections – without the civil institutions that sustain the core principle are parodies of democracy (one-party communist states, kleptocracies, oligarchies, autocracies, theocracies). There is a distinct element of parody in setting up national arrangements which submit to local traditions by enshrining sectarian power, by having individuals of different sects take up different political offices (as in Lebanon).

When the West allows parodies of democracy to be installed because this shape of democracy “reflects the unique culture and tradition of [a] people”, it is relegating the people to more of the (not so unique) culture and tradition of absolute power: dynastic, tribal, sectarian, ideological powers asserting themselves and oppressing their rivals for as long as they have strength of arms and/or superior numbers (not to be confused with a democratic majority).

Allowing the Muslim Brotherhood power, or Shia equivalents, or communists for that matter, in Egypt would not be an expression of freedom, nor an example of democracy in action. These are not political parties, they are absolute powers waiting to seize office. The West has long established that one may not sell oneself into slavery. That idea is incorporated into the idea of democracy: an electorate may not vote itself out of sovereignty.

Obama is making a very grave error – as have administrations before him – in allowing totalitarians opportunities to take power at all, but to do so under the pretense that their elected accession to power reflects “democratic self-determination” or some collective expression of “freedom” is an appalling betrayal of democratic principles. The Nobel peace prizewinner is guaranteeing that there will be blood …

C.Gee   February 2, 2011

The profession of warrior is as respectable as any other, unless the warrior sells his skill to serve an evil cause.

The government of Somalia considered hiring Saracen International, a South African mercenary firm, to fight pirates and Islamic militants. A disapproving report in the New York Times may have squashed the idea.

Jeff Jacoby writes at Townhall:

That negative publicity may have undone the deal. The Times subsequently reported that Somali authorities “have cooled to the idea” of hiring private militiamen. “We need help,” a government official was quoted as saying, “but we don’t want mercenaries.”

Somalia certainly does need help. It is one of the world’s most unstable and violent countries. … It has been wracked for years by bloody insurgencies, and the central government, what there is of it, is under constant assault by al-Shabab, a lethal jihadist movement closely tied to al-Qaeda. Pirates plying the waters off Somalia’s shores menace international shipping.

The place is a hellhole, and each day that it remains one is another day of death and devastation for more innocent victims. Who is going to help them? The 8,000 peacekeeping troops sent in by the UN are inadequate to the job. “Western militaries have long feared to tread” there, as even the Times acknowledges. So why shouldn’t the Somali government turn to private militias for the help it so desperately needs?

It is fashionable to disparage mercenaries as thugs for hire, but private-sector warriors are as old as combat itself. Americans may dimly remember learning in grade school about the Hessian mercenaries who fought for the British during the American Revolution, but other mercenaries fought for American independence. … Many mercenaries have been heroes of American history. Among them are John Paul Jones, who became an admiral in the Russian Navy; the Pinkerton security firm, which supplied intelligence to the Union and personal protection for Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War; the Lafayette Escadrille, a squadron of American airmen who fought for France in World War I; and the Montagnards, the indigenous tribesmen who fought alongside American soldiers during the war in Vietnam. …

This is not an abstract argument. When Rwanda erupted in mass-murder in 1994, the private military firm Executive Outcomes offered to stop the slaughter for $150 million … The Clinton administration turned down the offer. In the ensuing carnage, some 800,000 Rwandans were killed.

In 1995, by contrast, the government of Sierra Leone hired Executive Outcomes to put down a savage rebellion by the brutal Revolutionary United Front. Within a year, the company had quelled the uprising and driven the rebels out. …

It may not be politically correct to suggest letting mercenaries deal with nightmares like Somalia and Darfur. But political correctness doesn’t save lives. Sending in mercenaries would.

For a state or nation to hire the expertise it lacks is eminently sensible. Somalia should hire mercenary soldiers; Zimbabwe and California should hire mercenary free-market economists; the Palestinians and Pakistanis should hire mercenary brains; the Germans should hire mercenary humorists.

But why stop there?

Many a failed state could turn into a law-and-order polity with a thriving economy if it would hire an administration.

It need not pick the personnel from one country only. It should make up a team consisting of the most competent administrators from a number of countries, most obviously the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland.

And why not hire a judiciary as well – from the same pool of mostly Anglophone lands where commonsense, rationality, learning, fair-mindedness, humane restraint, probity, and the capacity to adjudicate objectively may still be found?

The hiring state would continue to make its own laws, but would have to be open to the advice of the imported administration and judges as to what laws could and should be enacted if it wasn’t to waste its money.

We float this idea on the ether because it is a good one. We mean it seriously, but would be astonished if it were taken seriously by any failing state. We know that we don’t yet have the clout even of the failing New York Times.

Our view of the upheaval in Egypt, how the new technologies of personal communication have played a vital part in its causes as well as its spontaneous organization, is endorsed by Victor Davis Hanson, who writes in a must-read article at PajamasMedia:

So what’s the matter with Egypt? The same thing that is the matter with most of the modern Middle East: in the post-industrial world, its hundreds of millions now are vicariously exposed to the affluence and freedom of the West via satellite television, cell phones, the Internet, DVDs, and social networks.

And they become angry that, in contrast to what they see and hear from abroad, their own lives are unusually miserable in the most elemental sense. Of course … their corrupt government is in some part a reification of themselves, who in their daily lives see the world in terms of gender apartheid, tribalism, religious intolerance, conspiracies, fundamentalism, and statism that are incompatible with a modern, successful, capitalist democracy. …

Instant global communications have brought the reality home to the miserable of the Middle East in a way state-run newspapers and state-censored television never could even had they wished.

In reaction, amid this volatile new communications revolution, the Saddams, the Mubaraks, the Saudi royals, the North African strongmen, and all the other “kings” and “fathers” and “leaders” found an effective enough antidote: The Jews were behind all sorts of plots to emasculate Arab Muslims. And the United States and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain were stealing precious resources that robbed proud Middle Easterners of their heritage and future. Better yet, there was always a Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, or, for the more high-brow, a Jimmy Carter to offer a useful exegesis of American conspiracy, oil-mongery, or Zionist infiltration into the West Wing that “proved” Middle East misery was most certainly not self-induced. … The more we promised to pressure Israel, the more we could ignore the misery of Cairo, and the more a thieving Mubarak could perpetuate it. …

He concludes for the moment as we do, though with slightly less optimism:

Watch it play out with encouragement for those who oppose both Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood — hoping for the best, expecting the worst.

Even if the Egyptian revolution is aborted now, how long will the despots be able to resist the transformative power of the new technologies?

It’s in the lap-top of the gods, so to speak.

Hanson does not believe, any more than we do, that if America “lets” Mubarak go, an Islamic fanatic will take his place as happened in Iran when Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah and welcomed the Ayatollah Khomeini – with what appalling results to this day we know all too well.  True, the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood strains to take power in Egypt, but has no Khomeini-like figure ready to implement instant oppression. Besides which, the causes in Egypt are different. The world has moved on since the Iranian revolution.

It is this new world which is making the prison-walls of the Arab states crack and crumble.

It may burst the Islamic theocracies too.

It may render all religion obsolete.

Some forty years ago, Europe made the decision that it would open its gates and let in the conquering hordes of Islam. In our post, Europe betrayed, February 11, 2010, we trace (using the research of the great authority, Bat Ye’or) how step by step Islam advanced into Europe with the keen help of Europeans. Who were these Europeans? Many of them were officials in the foreign ministries. But we do not know their names. We hope that in time historians will discover and reveal who they were. It is a huge and terrible drama: la trahison des clercs on a scale unmatched in history; the betrayal of an entire continent to a dark and primitive force by those whose high calling it was to protect their countries. The traitors should be named and blamed at last, but are slippery enough to slither into obscurity and evade personal accusation forever.

In addition to those who actively worked for Islamic infiltration and occupation – for reasons so obscure that perhaps no historian will ever fathom them – there is always a predominance of those dumb sort of politicians who somehow manage not to notice what is happening to their countries. They have welcomed immigration from anywhere as an augmentation of the work force; they have prided themselves on being more tolerant than the next oaf, and have chosen to accept Islam as just another religion – “Oh yes, sir, one of the great monotheistic moral religions, you know” – and could see no reason why they should inform themselves about  the actual beliefs and practices of the immigrants.

But reality goes on accruing its consequences no matter how persistently it is overlooked or falsely discerned. And eventually reality hits the blindest self-deluding know-nothing in the face.

Now even the BBC, which has become a mouthpiece of Islamic propaganda in Britain and wherever else it is heard, has had to notice a flaw or two in its conviction that Islamic immigration is a great blessing to the kingdom.

The shock to “Auntie” (as Brits call the BBC) came when Jack Straw, former Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, remarked recently that “Pakistani heritage” men targeted white girls for sexual abuse.

“Auntie” set out to prove that Straw was wrong, and to her consternation and distress found that he was right.

From the Telegraph:

Are young men of Pakistani origin really fizzing with testosterone, and do they target young white women for sex because they see them as easy meat, as Jack Straw claimed last week? The Today programme went to Bradford this morning to find out, and you got the distinct impression that no one was more shocked than the BBC to find young Asian men, by and large, confirming what Mr Straw said.

A minority of interviewees sounded a note of caution, said everyone was equal and there was no such thing as an “easy target”. A more typical response, however, was: “It’s the way the white women dress, innit. Miniskirts. Encourages them, innit, to go jack ‘em and that, d’you get me?” (That’s an exact quote, by the way.)

Interpretation: “Innit” is barbarian-speak for “Isn’t it so?”

Or: “A lot of Asian women wouldn’t actually have their body showing, whereas white women you would find them like that.” Or: “White women drink, so when they [are] under the influence of alcohol the Pakistani men probably – the ones from Pakistan that have recently come – probably think they can take advantage, innit.”

It is true, by the way, that a lot of British girls get drunk in public, and dress and behave sluttishly. But none of that is usually accepted as an excuse for their being raped or pressed into prostitution.

Zubeida Malik [the BBC reporter] introduced her report by saying: “Given the huge controversy that Jack Straw’s comments raised, you might be surprised by what you hear.” But were listeners really shocked by what they heard? Over at the BBC they might have been surprised, but no one else the programme interviewed sounded as though the comments were news to them. …

Then Nihal from the Asian Network came on and I can only imagine the hand-wringing among BBC multiculturalists when they heard what he had to say: “We did this story back in November and we asked the question whether there is something in the Pakistani culture that led men to do this. Many people called in my phone-in show and said: ‘Yes we know that this is happening. Our men have this attitude towards white girls.’ [On Monday] a caller said: ‘White girls are easy. Fact.’ That’s what he said and he was unapologetic about that. I told him it wasn’t fact it was an opinion. …

“Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee, on my show this week said that he had never heard anybody say this, that white women were easy or promiscuous. … ” …

Today the BBC took a good look at multicultural Britain – and they didn’t like what they saw.

Interpretation: “Oops! What have we done? They gave out they were good guys, these Muslim immigrants.”

So one small spark of illumination has forced itself under the eyelids of the BBC and the home affairs select committee.

At least for the moment they reluctantly notice one tiny aspect of the vast tragedy of what Britain has become. The harlots have always been there, of course. And men who will exploit them have always been there. But the killing infection of Islam began only some forty years ago.

Here, from the excellent British journal Standpoint, is part of a story, told by the unnamed wife of a Christian clergyman, that illustrates how fatally the infection is working:

I have just returned to London, where I have lived since I was 11. I have been away for four years, living as an ethnic minority in a monocultural part of the world, amassing a host of stories to tell to disbelieving friends. On the whole, I am glad to return. I shan’t miss some locals’ assumptions that, being a white woman, if I was outside after dark, as I occasionally was, usually to walk the few metres between my house and the church, I must be a prostitute eager to give them a blow job. I shan’t miss the abuse my priest husband received: the daubing of “Dirty white dogs” in red paint on the church door, the barrage of stones thrown at him by children shouting “Satan”. He was called a “f***ing white bastard” more than once … I will also not miss the way our garden acted as the local rubbish dump, with items ranging from duvets and TV sets, to rats (dead or twitching) glued to cardboard strips, a popular local method of vermin control to stem the large numbers of them which scuttled between the rubbish piled in gardens and on pavements. Yes, I am very glad to have left Britain’s second city.

For four years, we lived in inner-city Birmingham, in what has been a police no-go area for 20 years. … When we arrived, the population was predominantly Pakistani. Now Somalis are there in equal number. Most of the run-down Irish pubs were turned into mosques during our time. …

One day [my husband] was chatting to a man with a passing resemblance to Lawrence of Arabia, who had just arrived from Antwerp — one of an increasing number of Muslims who are arriving here with EU passports. He asked him why he had come to Birmingham. He was surprised at the question: “Everybody know. Birmingham — best place in Europe to be pure Muslim.” Well, there must be many places in Europe where Muslims are entirely free to practise their faith, but I suspect there are few places in which they can have so little contact with the civic and legal structure of a Western state if they choose. It seems to be particularly easy to “disappear” if that is their intention. A parishioner once described a lorry pulling up outside his house, the side opening to reveal stacked mattresses full of sleepy, and presumably illegal, immigrants, who staggered out into broad Brummie daylight. …

When I recently told a friend how a large Taliban flag fluttered gaily on a house near St Andrew’s football stadium for some months, her cry of “Can’t you tell the police?” made me reflect how far many of our inner cities have been abandoned by our key workers: our doctors and nurses drive in from afar, the police, as mentioned before, have shut down their stations and never venture in unless in extremis — they and ambulance crews have been known to be attacked …

We get stabbings that never make the news, dog- and cock-fighting rings, cars torched as pranks and cars used for peddling heroin. (One of the more amusing moments of our time came when a local lad provided one reason people often gave us stares when we drove past such deals: “Two white people wearing seatbelts — you’ve got to be cops.”) …

If current demographic trends continue over the next few decades [they will – JB], the West Midlands, as well as other parts of the country [actually the entire country – JB], will become a predominantly Muslim area.

Unless …? Even this thoroughly awakened witness prescribes an ineffective cure:

Much more needs to be done to integrate the communities among whom I lived, and we need to be much less negligent of our own values too.

What values would those be, we wonder.

In Britain now there is no law but Human Rights law, and Justice is its victim.

Here’s an illustration of the fact from the MailOnline:

Aso Mohammed Ibrahim knocked down [12-year- old] Amy Houston and left her to ‘die like a dog’ under the wheels of his car. He was driving while disqualified and after the little girl’s death he committed a string of further offences. …

The child lay screaming in pain and terror while her Muslim murderer ran away from the scene.

But yesterday Ibrahim … won his lengthy fight to stay in Britain.

His lawyers argued that “sending him back to Iraq would breach Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which guarantees his right to a private and family life with his children.

Immigration judges ruled that sending him home would breach his right to a ‘private and family life’ as he has now fathered two children in the UK.

So why not pack the whole family off to what is referred to as his “home” – namely Iraq, for the liberation of which much British blood has been shed?

Because they’re protected by the Human Rights Act, a sentimental abomination proceeding from the undemocratic EU, whose laws take precedence over the laws of its constituent nation-states. The Act “guarantees his right to a private and family life with his children”.

Okay, but why in Britain?

Last night Amy’s father said …  ‘This decision shows the Human Rights Act to be nothing more than a charter for thieves, killers, terrorists and illegal immigrants.” …

Mr Houston … said he was ‘absolutely devastated’ by the decision to allow Ibrahim to stay in the country indefinitely.

‘How can he say he’s deprived of his right to a family life? The only person deprived of a family life is me. Amy was my family.’

Amy was Mr Houston’s only child and for medical reasons he is unable to have any more children. …

Ibrahim, now 33, arrived in Britain hidden in the back of a lorry in January 2001. His application for asylum was refused and a subsequent appeal in November 2002 failed, but he was never sent home.

In 2003, while serving a nine-month driving ban for not having insurance or a licence, he ploughed into Amy near her mother’s home in Blackburn.

He ran away, leaving her conscious and trapped beneath the wheels of his black Rover. Six hours later her father had to take the heartbreaking decision to turn off her life-support system.

But despite leaving Amy to die, Ibrahim was jailed for just four months after admitting driving while disqualified and failing to stop after an accident.

Since his release from prison he has accrued a string of further convictions, including more driving offences, harassment and cautions for burglary and theft.

His lawyers did their best to paint him as a good guy, a desirable citizen, by pleading that “he had became a father figure to [his putative wife’s] two children from a previous relationship and was even helping them with their homework.

This account was dismissed as ‘clearly not credible’ after Ibrahim admitted he could barely speak English.

The judge accepted that Ibrahim’s behaviour was ‘abhorrent’ and branded his evidence ‘contradictory and unsatisfactory’. However –

having a big heart, and because he could use the Human Rights Act to justify his using that organ to think with rather than his head –

–  he ruled that [Ibrahim] had developed a ‘significant and substantial’ relationship with the children and was acting as their father.

Yet, according to the UK Border Agency, “there was little evidence that he was living at the same address as his own [and presumably the other two] children.”

Still, the judges remained staunchly deaf to all arguments and blind to justice, because there is no law but human rights law.

So an illegal immigrant with a long criminal record, who has murdered a child by running over her while driving without a licence, must be allowed to stay in the country because he has fathered a couple of children, and because he’s a father figure to other children, none of whom he lives with. It is his human right.

Why are decent Britons not rising in rebellion against the judges, the law-makers, the entire political establishment that is wrecking their civilization? Tens of thousands are demonstrating in the streets against a rise in University fees, but not against the ruination of their country by the policy of multiculturalism – more specifically, Muslim immigration – and the imposition of despotic EU law.

Is it because multicultural Britain no longer gives a damn about justice?