We repeat it often: The UN must be destroyed.

If the US stopped funding it, that atrocious institution would collapse like a pricked balloon.

And now there’s a chance it could happen.

On the “unilateral campaign by Palestinian leaders to secure recognition from individual foreign governments and from the United Nations for a self-declared Palestinian state”, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, writes in the Miami Herald:

If the U.N. were to act in support of this unilateral Palestinian scheme, it would deal a blow not only to Israel and to the cause of peace, but to the U.N. itself. The U.N.’s obsession with castigating Israel — from the Human Rights Council and the Goldstone Report and the Durban conferences to the multitude of U.N. bodies created for the sole purpose of condemning Israel — has eliminated the U.N.’s credibility to aid in achieving peace and security in the Middle East. …

Next month, if the U.N. again sides with Palestinian rejectionism and against Israel and peace, it will be “Zionism is racism” all over again. The U.N., not Israel, will lose whatever remaining legitimacy it holds, and it may never be able to recover.

Fortunately, we are not helpless in the face of this dangerous challenge. There is a historical precedent for how to stop it.

In 1989, Yasser Arafat’s PLO also pushed for membership for a “Palestinian state” in UN entities. The PLO’s strategy looked unstoppable until the George H.W. Bush administration made clear that the U.S. would cut off funding to any UN entity that upgraded the status of the Palestinian observer mission in any way. The UN was forced to choose between isolating Israel and receiving U.S. contributions, and they chose the latter. The PLO’s unilateral campaign was stopped in its tracks. …

With Arafat’s successors up to the same tricks today, the U.S. response must be as strong. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has consistently refused to use our strongest leverage — our financial contributions — to advance U.S. interests at the UN.

Of course Obama hasn’t said or done anything to challenge the UN and its evil practices. He likes it – no, that’s an understatement, he loves it. He wants it to become the most powerful institution on earth, to develop into nothing less than the Government of the World, in which a majority (or even better all) of the states are Islamic and the universal system of law is sharia, and has as its head no less a personage than – himself.

But Ros-Lehtinen hopes to circumvent the administration.

If the executive branch will not demonstrate leadership on this issue, Congress must fill the void.

I will soon introduce the United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act, which will reflect the executive branch’s previous successful policies by cutting off U.S. contributions to any UN entity that grants membership or any other upgraded status to the Palestinian observer mission. This legislation will also leverage U.S. taxpayer dollars to make sure they do not fund biased or wasteful UN activities, and to achieve other much-needed reforms that will make the UN more transparent, accountable, objective, and effective.

It is time to use all our leverage to stop this unilateral Palestinian scheme — for the sake of our ally Israel and all free democracies, for the sake of peace and security, and for the sake of achieving a UN that upholds its founding principles.

Of course it would be best if the US simply cut off all funding to the UN immediately, expelled it from Turtle Bay, and breathed a national sigh of relief as the ghastly thing died.

But politicians have to act cautiously, taking one step at a time, and what Rep. Ros-Lehtinen is proposing could be a first step towards the total destruction of the malignant monster.

We think she knows as well as we do that the UN can never become “transparent, accountable, objective, and effective”. Insisting that it should so transform itself, and that if it doesn’t it cannot be allowed to go on, could compel its demise.

Even if it were to start functioning according to its “founding principles”, it would still be a menace. Its declared aim was for nations “to work together to help people live better lives, to eliminate poverty, disease and illiteracy in the world, to stop environmental destruction and to encourage respect for each other’s rights and freedoms.” Very pretty. Wholly unrealistic. The idea that nation-states should consider anything but their own self-interest is romantic. To set unrealistic objectives is to invite lying and cheating, hypocrisy, and every form of corruption – as is proved beyond doubt by the histories of the League of Nations and the United Nations Organization. The experiment has been devastatingly destructive of human life and happiness, and needs to be abandoned.

The idea of uniting the nations of the world was always foolish, has proved to be bad, and must be given up, never to be tried again.

We have often wondered why it is that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), regularly named as an “unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case”, remains unindicted.

In April this year, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who is holding hearings on the radicalization of Muslims in the US, wrote  to Attorney General Eric Holder to ask him why.

Here’s Peter King’s letter, from the website of the Committee on Homeland Security (of which he is chairman):

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I write to inquire about your decision not to prosecute the 246 individuals and organizations, named as unindicted co-conspirators in a Hamas terror finance case, United States v. Holy Land Foundation.

I have been reliably informed that the decision not to seek indictments of the Council on American Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) and its co-founder Omar Ahmad, the Islamic Society of North America (“ISNA”), and the North American Islamic Trust (“NAIT”), was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case. Their opposition to this decision raises serious doubt that the decision not to prosecute was a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

I request that you provide answers to the following questions:

What are the reasons for the Department’s decisions not to prosecute CAIR, ISNA, NAIT and Mr. Ahmad, who is a CAIR co-founder and former head of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States?

Who made the final decision not to prosecute? Who, if anyone, from the Executive Office of the President, consulted with, advised, or otherwise communicated with the Department of Justice, in electronic, oral or written form, regarding the Department’s decision to not seek indictments of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT and Mr. Ahmad?

How does and will the Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation address the potential for CAIR, ISNA, or NAIT to engage in terrorism financing? What policies with regard to those organizations have you implemented to address that threat?

The answers to these questions should provide some explanation for declining a prosecution that is strongly supported by the record from the Holy Land Foundation trial. As you are aware, in a previously sealed Memorandum Opinion Order of July 1, 2009, United States District Judge Jorge A. Solis declined CAIR, ISNA and NAIT’s August 14, 2007 and June 18, 2008 requests to strike their names from the United States Attorney’s list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case. Judge Solis found that the “Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with [the Holy Land Foundation, “HLF”], the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas.” The Court found that the evidence was “sufficient to show the association of these entities with HLF, IAP, and Hamas. Thus, maintaining the names of the entities on the List is appropriate in light of the evidence proffered by the Government” ..  At minimum, FBI testimony established that Mr. Ahmad attended a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in which participants discussed how they could support Hamas, including by raising funds for this terrorist group. NAIT was similarly unsuccessful in its subsequent request to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to have its name removed from the list of co-conspirators.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the Department of State since October 9, 1997, and its status was reconfirmed by the most recent annual report of the National Counterterrorism Center, issued April 30, 2010. Hamas shamefully conducts cowardly suicide bombings against civilian targets inside Israel. Hamas also, between 2008 and 2009, conducted 2,614 indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks upon residential areas in that country, an ally of the United States. According to the State Department, Hamas finances its terrorist activities “through state sponsors of terrorism Iran and Syria, and fundraising networks in the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, the Middle East, [and] the United States”.. It raises the most serious question for the Justice Department to decline to even attempt to prosecute individuals and organizations, accused by a US Attorney and found by a federal judge, to have a nexus with fundraising for an organization which conducts terror attacks upon civilians.

I believe that in order to maintain the credibility of the Department, there should be full transparency into the Department’s decision. Please respond to this letter by April 25, 2011..

Sincerely,

PETER T. KING

Chairman

We don’t know if Eric Holder replied, and if he did what he said. But we do know there have been no prosecutions of the terrorist-supporters named  in Peter King’s letter. And we don’t think there will be any as long as the infamous Eric Holder heads the Department of Justice.

We have written often and at length about the futility of continuing the US engagement in Afghanistan. (Put “Afghanistan” or “Taliban” into our search slot to find our numerous posts on the subject.)

AP now reports that hundreds of millions of US dollars have found their way into the hands of the Taliban.

After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.

The losses underscore the challenges the U.S. and its international partners face in overcoming corruption in Afghanistan. A central part of the Obama administration’s strategy has been to award U.S.-financed contracts to Afghan businesses to help improve quality of life and stoke the country’s economy.

A nice clear demonstration of its political naivety.

But until a special task force assembled by Gen. David Petraeus began its investigation last year, the coalition had little insight into the connections many Afghan companies and their vast network of subcontractors had with insurgents and criminals – groups military officials call “malign actors.”

In a murky process known as “reverse money laundering,” payments from the U.S. pass through companies hired by the military for transportation, construction, power projects, fuel and other services to businesses and individuals with ties to the insurgency or criminal networks …

“Funds begin as clean monies,” according to one document, then “either through direct payments or through the flow of funds in the subcontractor network, the monies become tainted.”

The conclusions by Task Force 2010 represent the most definitive assessment of how U.S. military spending and aid to Afghanistan has been diverted to the enemy or stolen. …

Has it learnt its lesson from the discovery and grown wiser? No.

The Defense Department announced Monday that it had selected 20 separate contractors for a new transportation contract potentially worth $983.5 million … Officials said the new arrangement will reduce the reliance on subcontractors and diminish the risk of money being lost. Under the new National Afghan Trucking Services contract, the military will be able to choose from a deeper pool of companies competing against one another to offer the best price to move supplies. The new arrangement also gives the U.S. more flexibility in determining –

To determine something it is not flexibility that is required, just determination –

whether security is needed for supply convoys and who should provide it …

Security? How about American armed guards keeping cold eyes fixed on every one of the bastards?

And the Pentagon’s wondering who – if they decide for it – should provide it?  Does that mean they’re considering getting Afghans to do it? Oh yes!

The Pentagon did not provide the names of the 20 companies picked due to worries that larger contractors who weren’t selected might try to coerce them into a takeover, the senior defense official said.

Ah, canny, canny!

But about those security providers. Among a bunch of them named in the report, here’s one who is so surprisingly discovered to have been cheating:

In 2009 and 2010, [a] subcontractor identified in the document only as “Rohullah” received $1.7 million in payments. A congressional report issued last year said Rohullah is a warlord who controlled the convoy security business along the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the two largest cities in Afghanistan. …

Rohullah’s hundreds of heavily armed guards operated a protection racket, charging contractors moving U.S. military supplies along the highway as much as $1,500 a vehicle. Failure to pay virtually guaranteed a convoy would be attacked by Rohullah’s forces … Rohullah’s guards regularly fought with the Taliban, but investigators believe Rohullah moved money to the Taliban when it was in his interest to do so. …

U.S. authorities in Afghanistan are screening contractors more carefully to be sure they can handle the work and also are trustworthy, the senior military official said. Authorities also are being more aggressive in barring companies if they violate contract terms or are found to be involved in illicit activities. Since the task force was created last year, the number of debarred Afghan, U.S. and international companies and individuals associated with contracting in Afghanistan has more than doubled – from 31 to 78, the official said.

And those not on the list may be presumed trustworthy?

Just how dumbly trusting and incurably naive the Western directors of the Afghan campaign are, here’s a reminder of how easily they were deceived by the Taliban last year. We quote from our post The Sting of Nov. 23 , 2010, concerning “a perfectly performed con-trick by which an imposter extracted a mountain of moola from craven double-dealing presidents, diplomats, and generals involved in The Endless War of Waste and Futility.”

The conman claimed to be Mullah Akhta Muhammad Mansour, “the second highest official in the Taliban movement” after the founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

He and “two other Taliban leaders” were flown to Kabul from Pakistan in a NATO plane, wearing serious beards, and were ceremoniously ushered into the presidential palace, where they proceeded to beard President Karzai in his den, so to speak. Then they were conducted to the city of Kandahar where “Mullah Mansour” and his two merry men hoodwinked government officials, NATO commanders, American diplomats and top-brass.

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

For “little” read “nothing”.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

Doubts about the man’s identity arose after the third session of negotiations. Only then –

A man who had known [the real] Mr. Mansour years ago told Afghan officials that the man at the table did not resemble him.

Even so, they wistfully hoped that whoever he was would come again. They’d paid him to keep the fake peace talks going, and any old talks, with anyone at all, are better than none.

So who was the guy they were negotiating with?

The theory we like best is that he was “a humble shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta”, who simply enlisted the help of two cronies and carried out the sting operation for the most understandable of motives – to get a lot of money. Which they did.

When will they ever learn?

“Both the terrorist attacks and the good life that terrorists enjoy in prison are subsidized by aid money from governments that claim to oppose terrorism. And then go on to subsidize it anyway,” Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page.

He describes the life of convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons:

Six years ago, Saeed Shalalde stabbed an Israeli chocolate manufacturer named Sasson Nuriel to death. Today Shalalde lives the good life in an Israeli prison. There terrorists mingle, throw parties, study for advanced degrees and stay in touch with their adoring fans on Facebook using their 3G mobile smartphones.

For Muslim terrorists in Israeli prisons, life is more like a vacation. Hamas terrorist Haytham Battat, who was responsible for the murder of four Israelis, uses his Facebook page to share Jihadi videos from YouTube. In his recent facebook photos, PFLP terrorist Saeed Omar, who was sentenced to nineteen years in jail, poses with his favorite soccer team’s banner, feasts with other terrorists on a table covered with dozens of dishes supplemented by bottles of Coca Cola, and posts scraps of poetry calling for the destruction of Israel. …

Other terrorists use smartphone video to go shopping with their friends and pick out their own clothes, which are then brought to them in prison, and remotely attend family events. …

And thankfully they’re not forced to watch television programming from the Zionist entity. Instead they enjoy satellite Arab TV channels. Courtesy of the Israeli prison system.

He explains how we are all being forced to fund terrorism:

One of the charges leveled against Saddam Hussein was that he was promoting terrorism by making payments to the families of suicide bombers. But every country that provides aid to the Palestinian Authority is indirectly doing the same thing. The only difference between what Saddam Hussein was doing, and what the EU and the US are doing, is that we have one degree of separation that provides plausible deniability. The Palestinian Authority [PA] acts as our middleman, requesting money for security and then doling it out to terrorists.

The Obama Administration dramatically escalated aid to terrorists. In 2008, it provided 600 million dollars worth of assistance to the Palestinian Authority. In 2009, it pledged 900 million dollars. By 2010, the PA had pulled in almost 4 billion dollars from international donors, including the US. But that hasn’t stopped [PA] Prime Minister Fayyad from denouncing US aid as “extortion”. Foreign aid makes up 60 percent of its Gross National Product. The Palestinian Authority does not have an economy. It has foreign aid.

The Palestinian Authority is run by terrorists. The shortest path to the top is to form your own terrorist cell and begin murdering Israeli civilians. And the reward is a chance to dip into the golden river of foreign aid and divert some of it [your] way. Terrorists who are on the loose enjoy wealth and international respect. And even when they are captured, they receive kid glove treatment in prison.

The tidal wave of human rights accusations leveled at Israel has caused the government to bend over backward to show how well it treats Muslim terrorists. IDF soldiers operate under tightly restricted rules of engagement, similar to those which are causing serious US casualties in Afghanistan. And Israeli prisons turn a blind eye to terrorists posting propaganda on Facebook from inside their own walls.

Do convicted Palestinian terrorists live more comfortably in Israeli prisons than their families do in Gaza? Maybe. But life in Gaza is nowhere near as bad as the BBC, CNN, the Guardian and the New York Times make it out to be.

Human rights activists often describe Gaza as a prison. A prison with free electricity and free water. While Israelis pay premium amounts for water, Hamas supporters in Khan Younis [in Gaza] get it free of charge. Israel provides 40 million cubic meters of water. So much water that while in Israel residents carefully measure how much water they use, in Khan Younis they opened up their own water park. …

The truth is that there are “refugee camps” full of mansions paid for by international aid. The truth is that terrorists in prison are gorging themselves on luxuries paid for by American taxpayers and preening for their admirers on Facebook using smartphones that many American and Israeli families can’t afford. The truth is that terrorism is big business. And we’re the ones picking up the tab. …

Every convicted Muslim terrorist receives a salary from the Palestinian Authority. Even members of Hamas. That money is provided by American and European taxpayers. As much as 10 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s budget is dedicated to paying the salaries of imprisoned terrorists, benefits to their families …

And to the families of dead terrorists who died committing their atrocities. The quickest, easiest way for a Palestinian to have his family provided for is to go out and kill in the name of “the resistance”.

Some “$100 million annually goes to benefits for captured or killed terrorists”. It comes as “aid money from governments that claim to oppose terrorism” yet “subsidize it anyway”.

And not only in the Middle East are Islamic terrorists subsidized by you and me:

The Israeli example is not unique. Muslim terrorists live on the dole in every Western country. Major newspapers give them flattering profiles and taxpayer money is pumped into their organizations. And still they cry that they are persecuted, tormented, abused and deprived of their rights.

If Muslims think the West is full of suckers, fall guys, pushovers, they are absolutely right. Leftist ideology has deeply sentimentalized our culture. It’s time for America, in the economic crisis the left has brought upon it, to cut off foreign aid, starting with the billions that go to Arab terrorists.

Light breaks where no sun shines, as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote prophetically of the Obama administration’s collective mind when it finally notices the glaring futility of the Afghan campaign.

The Washington Post reports:

The hugely expensive U.S. attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan has had only limited success and may not survive an American withdrawal, according to the findings of a two-year congressional investigation … [It] calls on the administration to rethink urgently its assistance programs as President Obama prepares to begin drawing down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this summer…

The report, prepared by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority staff, comes as Congress and the American public have grown increasingly restive about the human and economic cost of the decade-long war and reflects growing concerns about Obama’s war strategy even among supporters within his party.

[It] describes the use of aid money to stabilize areas the military has cleared of Taliban fighters — a key component of the administration’s counterinsurgency strategy — as a short-term fix … But it says that the enormous cash flows can overwhelm and distort local culture and economies, and that there is little evidence the positive results are sustainable.

Why couldn’t they foresee it? Was there nobody in the White House or the Pentagon or the State Department who could take a long hard look at the Afghans and their “culture” and see how things were and will remain? No economist with six Ivy League degrees who could explain that when poor and primitive people are suddenly showered with money they won’t know what to do with it? –

One example cited in the report is the Performance-Based Governors Fund, which is authorized to distribute up to $100,000 a month in U.S. funds to individual provincial leaders for use on local expenses and development projects. In some provinces, it says, “this amount represents a tidal wave of funding” that local officials are incapable of “spending wisely.” … The fund encourages corruption.

The plan was that the Afghan government would “eventually take over this and other programs” – such as training and making proper use of an army and police force, and spreading literacy, and – Oh, who knows what else – setting up factories to improve and exploit nanotechnology and any number of other cockamamy schemes – but have now discovered to their dismay that the said government “has neither the management capacity nor the funds to do so”. Nor, let it be added, the will and power to change the time-honored custom of corruption.

The report also warns that the Afghan economy could slide into a depression with the inevitable decline of the foreign military and development spending that now provides 97 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

But as the natural state of such an economy is one of depression, that should be nothing for Americans to worry about. True, some Afghans will find to their wonder that they actually miss the Americans and all the military and “development” activity that provided the locals with employment and opportunity for rip-offs and other little treats and luxuries, but they’ll soon get over it as they return to the old ways.

The “single most important step” the Obama administration could take, the report says, is to stop paying Afghans “inflated salaries” — often 10 or more times as much as the going rate — to work for foreign governments and contractors. Such practices, it says, have “drawn otherwise qualified civil servants away from the Afghan government and created a culture of aid dependency.”

Which is something the socialist West has become very good at. And in Afghanistan in particular, the US has outdone itself in lavishing care on the populace regardless of expense, using the military as the care workers.

Even when U.S. development experts determine that a proposed project “lacks achievable goals and needs to be scaled back,” the U.S. military often takes it over and funds it anyway …

The report … calls for “a simple rule: donors should not implement [aid] projects if Afghans cannot sustain them.”

If they were really to follow that rule, it would mean no aid money going there at all. So they won’t follow it.

Next come more surprises which should not be surprising from a Senate committee –

Last week, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan said in a separate report that billions of dollars in U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in both countries could fall into disrepair over the next few years because of inadequate planning to pay for their ongoing operations and maintenance. That report warned that “the United States faces new waves of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Foreign aid expenditures by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in Afghanistan, about $320 million a month, pale beside the overall $10 billion monthly price tag for U.S. military operations. But Afghanistan is the biggest recipient of U.S. aid, with nearly $19 billion spent from 2002 to 2010. Much of that money has been expended in the past two years, most of it in war zones in the south and east of the country as part of the counterinsurgency strategy adopted by Obama just months after he took office.

The strategy, devised by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, calls for pouring U.S. development aid into areas that the military has cleared of Taliban fighters to persuade the population to support the Afghan government.

Evidence of successful aid programs based on “counterinsurgency theories” is limited, the Senate committee report says. “Some research suggests the opposite, and development best practices question the efficacy of using aid as a stabilization tool over the long run. The administration is understandably anxious for immediate results to demonstrate to Afghans and Americans alike that we are making progress. … However, insecurity, abject poverty, weak indigenous capacity, and widespread corruption create challenges for spending money.”

The report is gently but unmistakably critical of the “whole of government” approach implemented by Richard C. Holbrooke, who served as Obama’s special representative for the region until his death in December.

Syrian soldiers plant weapons on protestors they have killed.

From Hot Air:

Syria claims that a number of its security forces have been murdered by “terrorists” in the last few weeks, as uprisings in the country against the Bashar Assad regime may have claimed more than 1200 lives … New video from Syria calls into question the reliability of claims by Assad’s regime of “terrorism,” as CNN reports in this video …

Videos newly posted on YouTube show what Syrian opposition activists say is the gruesome slaughter of civilians in the besieged city of Daraa who had tried to feed people during a recent uprising. …

Throughout the uprising in Syria, the Syrian government has described protesters as “armed criminals” and “terrorists,” at times saying photos prove that the “criminals” were armed when security forces shot them.

[In the video] one gets [an] idea of the attempt to plant weapons on the corpses, which all appear to have been shot at close range on the rooftop. Note that no soldiers are among the dead, nor do any appear to be wounded; it looks as though the men were crowded together and then executed. This video contains extremely graphic and disturbing images…

This massacre happened in Daraa last month. In the clip, a number of civilians are shot to death while they were trying to get some food to the people Daraa, a city which has been besieged by the regime since the beginning of the revolution. Bashar al-Assad’s Forces cold-bloodedly killed them and then put weapons on the victims to fool the media by giving the impression that the victims were terrorists.

But of course they would never try to fool the media – and the media would never be fooled – by  staged scenes of “unprovoked” Israelis shooting Palestinian protestors trying to cross the border between Syria and Israel.*

The soldiers stop the videographer while they continue to place weapons on the corpses. After the video resumes, the same soldiers then encourage the videographer to film the weapons placed on the bodies. It’s obviously a crude attempt to transform an execution into a defensive engagement. …

So much for Assad the reformer [as Hillary Clinton says he is – JB].

* Go here to read a report that Assad had Palestinians paid to do this.

The revolutions in the Arab states of North Africa have not been a success by any definition. Want is spreading: there could be mass starvation. Refugees are scattering eastward and northward by the hundreds of thousands.

As the disaster deepens, Italy has begun to feel the effect. Turkey is bracing for it.

Years of corruption are bringing their ineluctable results with the devastating force of an economic tornado.

Spengler writes at the Asian Times online:

I’ve been warning for months that Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab oil-importing countries face a total economic meltdown … Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed my warnings.

The IMF, remember, is a socialist institution whose prosperity-destroying work is to redistribute wealth globally.

The leaders of the industrial nations waited until last weekend’s Group of Eight (G-8) summit to respond, and … President Barack Obama proposed what sounds like a massive aid program but probably consists mainly of refurbishing old programs.

The egg has splattered, and all of Obumpty’s horses and men can’t mend it. Even the G-8’s announcement was fumbled; Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to commit new money …

Stephen Harper is one of the very few principled leaders in the world at present.

The numbers thrown out by the IMF are stupefying. “In the current baseline scenario,” wrote the IMF on May 27, “the external financing needs of the region’s oil importers is projected to exceed $160 billion during 2011-13.” That’s almost three years’ worth of Egypt’s total annual imports as of 2010. As of 2010, the combined current account deficit (that is, external financing needs) of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia was about $15 billion a year.

What the IMF says, in effect, is that the oil-poor Arab economies – especially Egypt – are not only broke, but dysfunctional, incapable of earning more than a small fraction of their import bill. The disappearance of tourism is an important part of the problem, but shortages of fuel and other essentials have had cascading effects throughout these economies.

“In the next 18 months,” the IMF added, “a greater part of these financing needs will need to be met from the international community because of more cautious market sentiments during the uncertain transition.”

Translation: private investors aren’t stupid enough to throw money down a Middle Eastern rat-hole, and now that the revolutionary government has decided to make a horrible example of deposed president Hosni Mubarak, anyone who made any money under his regime is cutting and running. At its May 29 auction of treasury bills, Egypt paid about 12% for short-term money, to its own captive banking system. Its budget deficit in the next fiscal year, the government says, will exceed $30 billion.

And the IMF’s $160 billion number is only “external financing”; that is, maintaining imports into a busted economy. It doesn’t do a thing to repair busted economies that import half their caloric intake, as do the oil-poor Arab nations.

Egypt’s economy is in free fall. …

Of course, the IMF’s admission that Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen can’t meet the majority of their import bill without foreign aid does not increase the probability that these countries will obtain financing on that scale. On May 30, the IMF announced that it would lend $3 billion to Egypt – a tenth of its budget deficit – sometime in June. The G-8 offered the grandiose pledge of $20 billion in their own money along with $20 billion from the IMF, World Bank, and so forth, to support the “Arab Spring”, with the dissension of the Canadian prime minister. But it is unclear whether that represents new money, or a shuffling of existing aid commitments, or nothing whatever.

Whatever the Group of Eight actually had in mind, the proposed aid package for the misnomered Arab Spring has already become a punching bag for opposition budget-cutters.

As it must and should.

One American politician asking the right questions is Sarah Palin:

“Should we be borrowing money from China to turn around and give it to the Muslim Brotherhood?” Sarah Palin asked on May 27. “Now, given that Egypt has a history of corruption when it comes to utilizing American aid, it is doubtful that the money will really help needy Egyptian people. Couple that with the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is organized to have a real shot at taking control of Egypt’s government, and one has to ask why we would send money (that we don’t have) into unknown Egyptian hands.” …

Last month, rice disappeared from public storehouses amid press reports that official food distribution organizations were selling the grain by the container on the overseas market. Last week, diesel fuel was the scarce commodity, with 24-hour queues forming around gasoline stations. Foreign tankers were waiting at Port Said on the Suez Canal to pump diesel oil from storage facilities, as government officials sold the scarce commodity for cash. …

Syria is also vulnerable to hunger, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned May 23. “Continuing unrest in Syria will not only affect economic growth but could disrupt food distribution channels leading to severe localized shortages in main markets,” according to the FAO. ”Syria hosts one of the largest urban refugee populations in the world, including nearly one million Iraqis who have become more vulnerable because of rising food and fuel prices.”

Nearly 700,000 Libyan refugees have reached Egypt, fleeing their country’s civil war. At least 30,000 Tunisian refugees (and likely many more) have overwhelmed camps in Italy, and perhaps a tenth of that number have drowned in the attempt to reach Europe. A large but unknown number of Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon and Turkey. …

Turkey fears a mass influx of Syrian Kurdish refugees, so that “Turkish generals have thus prepared an operation that would send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria itself to carve out a ‘safe area’ for Syrian refugees inside Assad’s caliphate.” The borders of the affected nations have begun to dissolve along with their economies.

It will get worse fast.

Europe has capitulated to Islam.

The Jews of Europe, what’s left of them, are being harried out, mostly by the Muslims, but also by the media (such as, and especially, the BBC and the Guardian newspaper), and lickspittle dhimmi politicians and judges who are keeping the seats of power warm for their incoming Muslim overlords.

From the American Thinker:

An ugly, uni-directional pattern of bigoted violence is once again clearly on display in Western Europe. European Muslims have attacked individual Jews, synagogues, and Jewish or Israeli institutions, in Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium, Spain, Greece, and Britain. …

Scant attention (or none at all) is being paid to the unequivocal, virulent incitement for these Antisemitic attacks emanating from the Muslim world … Hamas, for example, on its official website (posted December 31, 2008 at the site hosted by Emirnet, United Arab Emirates) urged Muslims to attack Jews across the world … Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar … advocated the murder of Jewish children, globally, claiming Israel had “legitimized the killing of their people all over the world.” …

Murderous calls for indiscriminate anti-Jewish violence … are also expressed locally, by jihadists within Europe….

On a population percentage basis, Muslims in Europe accounted for roughly 24.0 to 32.3 times the number of Antisemitic incidents as their non-Muslim European counterparts.

Hatred of Jews and recommendations that they should be killed are a large part of the religious teaching of Islam:

The ultimate “inspiration” for such rampant Muslim Jew-hatred within Europe’s Muslim communities can be traced to the sacralized bigotry of Islam’s foundational texts, disseminated by Muslim clerics such as Sheikh Feiz. As documented in a British television investigation broadcast January, 2007, the Jew-annihilationist eschatological theme from the canonical hadith quoted in the Hamas Covenant, article 7, The Prophet, ‘Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him, except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.’ ”  …

So where are the trials of Muslims charged with incitement to racial hatred and violence?

We’ve tried but failed to find them.

However, Europeans who make known such facts as the American Thinker does, are on trial for doing so.

Also from the American Thinker:

[In Brussels] the Vigilance Musulmane (Muslim Vigilance) advocacy group filed a complaint with the Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight Against Racism (CGKR) against professor of sociology Mark Elchardus for statements about Islamic Jew hatred. …

Professor Elchardus’ conclusions are based upon data from a 426 pp. report he co-authored entitled, “Young in Brussels: findings from the JOP monitor Brussels.” Chapter 8 of this study, “Anti-Semitism in Brussels,” devotes some thirty pages to highlighting the problem of rising Jew-hatred in Brussels, particularly amongst young Muslim students. Elchardus provided this overview of the alarming problem to De Morgen:

“Worrying is that half [only half?- JB] of Muslim students can be described as anti-Semitic … Worse, the anti-Jewish feelings have nothing to do with a low educational or social disadvantage, as is the case with racist natives. It is theologically inspired anti-Semitism… Islam’s canonical texts – Koran, hadith, and sira – are redolent with Islamic Jew-hatred …”

The impact of such sacralized, mainstream Islamic Jew hatred on Western Europe’s burgeoning Muslim community is equally apparent. During February of 2008, then European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security [bit of Orwellian Newspeak there! – JB], Franco Frattini, the European Union (EU) official responsible “for combating racism and Antisemitism in Europe,” revealed that Muslims were responsible for fully half (50%) of the documented Antisemitic incidents on the European continent. Demographic data from 2007 indicated that the total number of Europeans is 494.8 million; estimates of the number of Muslims in Europe range from 15-20 million, or some ~3.0-4.0% of the total European population. Thus, on a population percentage basis, Muslims in Europe already accounted for roughly 24.0 to 32.3 times the number of Antisemitic incidents as their non-Muslim European counterparts. …

Rather than being maliciously sued, the Professor should be commended by all decent people for his intellectual honesty and moral courage.

Other Europeans who, like Professor Elchardus, have spoken the truth about Islam and have famously been brought to trial are Elisabeth Sabaditsch–Wolffe (fined for the “denigration of religious teachings of a legally recognized religion in Austria”); Lars Hedegaard (found guilty of hate speech in Denmark), and Geert Wilders.

Today Geert Wilders made his final remarks to the court trying him for “inciting hatred” of Muslims. Here’s part of what he said:

I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology of hatred, of destruction, of conquest. It is my strong conviction that Islam is a threat to Western values, to freedom of speech, to the equality of men and women, of heterosexuals and homosexuals, of believers and unbelievers.

All over the world we can see how freedom is fleeing from Islam. Day by day we see our freedoms dwindle.

Islam is opposed to freedom. Renowned scholars of Islam from all parts of the world agree on this. …

The statements for which I am being tried are statements which I made in my function as a politician participating in the public debate in our society. My statements were not aimed at individuals, but at Islam and the process of islamization. …

I am acting within a long tradition which I wish to honour. I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands. Of all our achievements freedom is the most precious and the most vulnerable. Many have given their lives for freedom. …

I do not wish to betray the trust of the 1.5 million voters of my party. I do not wish to betray my country. Inspired by Johan van Oldenbarneveldt and Johan de Witt I wish to be a politician who serves the truth end hence defends the freedom of the Dutch provinces and of the Dutch people. I wish to be honest, I wish to act with honesty and that is why I wish to protect my native land against Islam. Silence is treason.

That is why I have spoken, why I speak and why I shall continue to speak. …

I pay the price every day. Day and night I have to be protected against people who want to kill me. I am not complaining about it; it has been my own decision to speak. However, those who threaten me and other critics of Islam are not being tried here today. I am being tried …

My right to a fair trial has been violated. The order of the Amsterdam Court to prosecute me was not just a decision but a condemning verdict by judges who condemned me even before the actual trial had begun.

Mister President, members of the Court, you must now decide whether freedom still has a home in the Netherlands.

Franz Kafka said: “One sees the sun slowly set, yet one is surprised when it suddenly becomes dark.”

Mister President, members of the Court, do not let the lights go out in the Netherlands. …

Acquit me. Political freedom requires that citizens and their elected representatives are allowed to voice opinions that are held in society.

Acquit me, for if I am convicted, you convict the freedom of opinion and expression of millions of Dutchmen.

Acquit me. I do not incite to hatred. I do not incite to discrimination. But I defend the character, the identity, the culture and the freedom of the Netherlands. That is the truth. That is why I am here. That is why I speak. …

Mister President, members of the Court, though I stand here alone, my voice is the voice of many. This trial is not about me. It is about something much greater. Freedom of expression is the life source of our Western civilisation. …

Mister President, members of the Court, you have a great responsibility. Do not cut freedom in the Netherlands from its roots, our freedom of expression. Acquit me. Choose freedom. …

We ardently hope Wilders will be acquitted. But whether he is or not, Europe has irreversibly condemned itself.

Socialist economics don’t work. The welfare states of Europe are falling into ruin one after another. Greece, Ireland, Portugal have become beggar-nations.

Now Spain.

Soeren Kern writes at PajamasMedia:

Throngs of Spanish youth have gathered in more than 150 cities across Spain to protest skyrocketing unemployment, cutbacks to social welfare benefits, and rampant corruption among Spain’s political elite. …

The Spanish protesters have been inspired [perhaps] by the pro-democracy movements in the Arab world, and are using social media networks to coordinate the demonstrations. …

The largest protests have been in Madrid … Protests are under way in other major Spanish cities, including Barcelona, Bilbao, Granada, Palma de Mallorca, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Valencia, Vigo, and Zaragoza. The protestors have vowed to remain mobilized at least through the May 22 elections …

Up until now, anti-government protests in Spain have been relatively few and far between, partly because of the strong ties that labor unions have with the ruling Socialists. But Spain’s nascent youth democracy movement is a spontaneous grassroots groundswell that is not left versus right but rather young versus old. The youth movement is highly inclusive and its members — who represent all of Spain’s socio-economic classes — have expressed disgust with both the governing Socialists and the main opposition conservative Popular Party. …

Corruption in Spain is endemic and politicians from both major parties have been implicated in scandals in all of Spain’s 48 provinces. …

Spain’s ailing economy too is a symptom of much broader problem, including the inability of the social welfare economic model to create jobs, as well as a highly paternalistic labor market that benefits an older generation seeking to preserve the status quo. Although Spain’s economic crisis has affected workers in all age groups, youth unemployment is more than double the overall jobless rate of 21.2 percent, the highest in the industrialized world. Around half of Spain’s youth are unemployed and the other half that is working often does so under highly exploitative employment conditions. …

Opinion polls forecast devastating losses for the Socialists. … Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced on April 2 that he would not stand for a third term in general elections scheduled for March 2012. …

But all major parties in Europe now are socialist, no matter what they call themselves, and an Opposition coming into power is unlikely to make any difference.

Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the conservative Popular Party, stands to make huge gains in the elections … But after eight years in the opposition and after many months on the campaign trail, he has yet to say how he plans to reverse Spain’s economic fortunes if he finally becomes prime minister …

And Richard Fernandez reports and comments, also at PajamasMedia:

When Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero took power seven years ago, he and his Socialist Workers Party set out to perfect the welfare state in Spain. The goal was to equal— or even surpass — lavish social protections that have long been the rule in Spain’s Western European neighbors.

True to his Socialist principles and riding an economic boom, Zapatero raised the minimum wage and extended health insurance to cover everything from sniffles to sex-changes. He made scholarships available for all. Young adults got rent subsidies called “emancipation” money. Mothers got $3,500 for the birth of a child, toddlers attended free nurseries and the elderly won stipends to finance nursing care. … [But his] main concern in his second term has become hacking away at government spending to preserve Spain’s credit rating. The icon of socialism just concluded a pact with labor unions and business leaders to freeze pensions, push back the retirement age from 65 to 67, trim union bargaining rights, cut civil servants’ pay by 5 percent — including his own — and suspend the childbirth bonus. The alternative, he warned, was bankruptcy. …

Now Zapatero is facing a revolt from his angry left, from the millions of socialist believers and youth — many of whom are unemployed — who were promised something for nothing and now feel betrayed.

They insist on getting “something for nothing”. They want “free “ health care, fat pensions from an early retirement age, rent subsidies, childbirth bonuses, scholarships for all – and full employment. But where will the money come from? To whom can any Spanish government turn? To Germany? Germans feel they’ve given more than enough to failed Eurostates (that shoud never have been allowed to join the Eurozone in the first place). To the International Monetary Fund (an agency that redistributes wealth on a global scale)?

Greece had hopes of getting a hand-out from the IMF. Its erstwhile head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was sympathetic to its importuning. But he is being held under house arrest in New York, charged with sexual assault, and has lost his powerful position, so the Greek government may hold out its trembling hands for alms in vain.

But even had their champion been at liberty to promote a second bailout, there was no guarantee that Greece would not default eventually and descend into social unrest. …

In Athens, home to almost half of Greece’s 11 million-strong population, the signs of austerity – and poverty – are everywhere: in the homeless and hungry who forage through municipal rubbish bins late at night; in the cash-strapped pensioners who pick up rejects at the street markets that sell fruit and vegetables; in the shops now boarded and closed and in the thousands of ordinary Greeks who can no longer afford to take family outings or regularly eat meat.

There were economists who could have told the European politicians that their socialist policies would bankrupt them. Could have and did. But government after government would not heed the warnings. Now they are learning the hard way, to their shock and distress, that what has been proved unworkable in theory doesn’t work in practice.

Is there any point in hoping that the American Left is taking note?

Zapatero’s problems are a preview of the fate which awaits a left-wing politician who promises to lower the level of the oceans and winds up raising the price of gas.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, “the Beeb”, or “Auntie”, has been coasting on its Second World War reputation for telling the truth for some sixty-six subsequent years, during which it has deserved that reputation less and less, and now not at all.

It is supported by a license fee that every household has to pay to watch any television or listen to any radio, even if the owner of the TV or radio set only tunes in to independent broadcasters who support themselves on fees for advertisements. Yet the BBC does not think it is answerable to the public. It hardly ever admits to any fault, however long and loudly it may be accused of it. It is criticized constantly, continually, for persistent bias towards the left and Islam.

Its managers seem without exception to be self-righteous, morally corrupt, smug and shameless. To prove that it is not anti-Israel, the organization commissioned an internal enquiry, with public money of course; but  when the report came in, it refused to publish it, presumably because its findings were not what it wanted them to be.

Now a new scandal has arisen, courtesy of Wikileaks, connecting the Blatantly Biased Corporation to AL-QAEDA. No one should be surprised.

Here’s the story, told by Un:dhimmi:

The BBC could be part of a ‘propaganda media network’ for al-Qaeda, according to U.S. files published by Wikileaks.

A phone number of someone at the BBC was found in phone books and programmed into the mobile phones of a number of militants seized by the Americans. The number is believed to be based at Bush House, the headquarters of the BBC World Service.

The assessment on one of the detainees at the Guantanamo camp, dated 21 April 2007, said: ‘The London, United Kingdom, phone number 0044 207 *** **** was discovered in numerous seized phone books and phones associated with extremist-linked individuals.

‘The number is associated with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).’

The U.S. assessment file said forces had uncovered many ‘extremist links’ to the BBC number – indicating that extremists could have made contacts with employees at the broadcaster who were sympathetic to extremists or had information on ‘ACM’ (anti-Coalition militia) activities. …

The BBC number listed on the file is now dead, but the revelation could further dent the broadcaster’ reputation for impartiality. It has for years faced claims it is biased towards the left. But this is the first time the BBC has been linked to Islamic extremism.

Or the first time there’s been evidence of such a link.

In September 2006, BBC chairman Michael Grade held an ‘impartiality summit’ to assess whether there was a left-wing bias. A leaked account of the meeting showed that executives admitted they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda. They said they would give him a platform to explain his views, if he approached them.

And how many of those executives are Muslims? We know the BBC is stuffed with them.

So what is the BBC’s excuse for the revelation of the phone number? It’s mighty smooooth:

A spokesman for the BBC said: … “The service [as the BBC calls itself] has interviewed representatives of organisations from all sides involved in the Afghan conflict so it would not be surprising that a number believed to relate to the BBC Pashto service was in circulation.’

Un:dhimmi goes on to comment:

The BBC enjoys a solid, but wholly unjustified international reputation for impartiality. In spite of this (and its own propaganda), the British state broadcaster is caught out by the observant time after time; slanting reports, omitting material facts and downplaying the opinions of those holding views which differ from those of its middle class, liberal, multiculturalist and metropolitan caucus. …

One of the standout areas of BBC bias is its promotion of Islam. At times, it seems as if it is selling the Muslim faith to Britons – seeking constantly to feature examples of benign, integrated and, well – middle class and metropolitan – Muslims as if to say ‘Look – these Muslims are just like you (if ‘you’ are a middle class, affluent professional with multicultural, liberal-to-left views and live in London) – and Islam really is a religion of peace!’.

Meanwhile, parts of the country of the kind not inhabited by the kind of affluent liberals who are so overrepresented at Broadcasting House, are coming to resemble Islamabad – mosque-fringed, self-segregating ghettoes, some of which are home to major organised crime, terrorism and benefit fraud. But you’d never know this from al-Beeb’s output.

The BBC will survive this scandal with its usual snooty disdain of any criticism levelled against it.

Far from being a “service”, it is a destructive propaganda machine. Any decent government – which Britain hasn’t had since the day Margaret Thatcher left the Prime Minister’s office – would now get rid of it.