As everyone in the Western world ought to know by now, Islam is using stealth, as well as violent jihad, to Islamize the non-Muslim world.

Muslims have been admitted into Western countries in large numbers. European states invited them in. They are transforming the host nations into Islamic societies, and the host nations are helping them do it.

Dr Nicolai Sennels at Gates of Vienna sets out how the stealth method is conducted, “by three roads”. His information is not new, but it’s a useful reminder.

The word “Islamizaton” was originally coined by Muslims to describe the conversion of a kufr (infidel) society to an “enlightened” (Islamic) society. Islamization is a phenomenon that has existed since the Muslim prophet Mohammed lived 1,400 years ago. Islamization has been effective, since it is now the main religion in 57 countries. The association of Islamic countries, OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference], is the world’s largest supra-national organization, surpassed only by the UN.

One road to Islamization is to remove non-Islamic traditions and symbols. This is to avoid offending Muslims or expose Muslims to proselytizing by other faiths. It also aims to reduce competition from the country’s original religion and culture in order to improve the possibilities for further Islamization. An example is the Red Cross’ refusal to decorate for Christmas in their stores, or when banks no longer hands out piggy banks to their customers’ kids (because pigs are unclean in Islam) — in both situations in order not to offend Muslims and lose Muslim customers.

Another way Islamization is accomplished is by making Islamic traditions and rules part of non-Islamic societies. Examples are reconstruction of public sports facilities to cater for Muslims’ inhibited views on nudity and contact between the sexes, or the imposition of leave on Islamic holidays.

A third way Islamization achieved happens when certain areas or neighborhoods acquire such a high a proportion of Muslims that the country’s indigenous culture and people are pushed out. One example is when non-Islamic authorities such as police and fire departments meet with disrespect and sometimes even threats and violence, while imams, patrolling police-style Muslim fathers’ groups, homemade Sharia Courts, and Islamic mediation meetings are free to exercise their power. Another example is when Jews can not wear yarmulke or girls can not wear miniskirts in Muslim-dominated areas, because they risk being attacked.

Islamization thus occurs through elimination of the indigenous culture, introduction of Islamic traditions and through immigration and the building of Muslim parallel societies. …

He gives examples of how Islamization is forced on Western societies in practice:

It is Islamization of our cities when entire neighborhoods are dominated so strongly by the Muslim culture, Islamic values, and Muslim racism that the country’s culture and the indigenous population no longer feel at home and safe in the area. We should feel at home and welcome everywhere in our own country.

It is Islamization [when we buy halal food]… [By doing so] we contribute to Islamic “charity”, which helps fund terrorists, and support Muslim jobs at the expense of non-Muslims and food prices — for halal slaughter requires a Muslim to assist with the slaughter, and Muslim organizations are paid to approve the procedure. …

It is Islamization of children’s schooling when the state allows and supports Islamic schools and madrassas. Primary schools are our society’s most important cultural carrier and are intended to inform schoolchildren of the country’s indigenous culture and values.

It is Islamization of our urban design and architectural culture when municipalities and the state permit the construction of large mosques and minarets. Arabic architecture does not belong in Western cities — and certainly not at very central, historical or visible locations.

It is Islamization of our country when mosques are permitted. The mosques enforce and increase Islamic values among the area’s Muslims and often function as a springboard for political activity that works for the Islamization of the country.

It is Islamization of our way of being together and of women when we allow burqas and the niqab in public spaces. In a democratic society, we should see each other’s faces, and women and men are equal and free to dress as they like.

It is Islamization of our public sports facilities when swimming pools and locker rooms are closed or reconstructed so that Muslims can use them. It should a person’s personal choice of what religion and what view of nudity he allows. Personal choices should not restrict the citizens’ access to public taxpayer-funded facilities.

It is Islamization of our schools, institutions, workplaces and the rhythm of the year when we create Muslim holidays and when municipalities and unions print Muslim holidays in our calendars. … The yearly rhythm is closely associated with a country’s history, traditions, and culture and plays an important role to our experience of holidays and seasons. This very basic rhythm of life should be experienced as being related to our own history and culture, and not be Islamized.

It is Islamization of our schools when Muslims are excused from physical education … for religious reasons.

It is Islamization of the stores when they choose not to use Christian, cultural or national symbols in order not to offend Muslims or losing Muslim customers. Shop decorations are part of our culture and our cities’ street scene, and help to mark the seasons with Christmas ornaments, Easter eggs, carnival decorations, etc. …

It is Islamization of our public institutions and workplaces when halal foods are included on the menu. Special diets due solely to personal choices of religion should not be funded by the state. …

It is Islamization when we ignore the fact that a specific ethnic group of women in our own country are deprived of basic human rights on religious grounds…. It is important that [im]migrant women know their rights to women’s shelters, divorce and repatriation.

It is Islamization … when public sector workplaces have prayer rooms. Public workers are public servants, and thus taxpayers’ money should not be used for religious practices.

It is the Islamization of our jurisprudence when we do not effectively stop homemade Sharia Courts and Islamic mediation meetings….  Such things are … a direct assault on the foundations of our social structure and sense of justice …

It is Islamization of the justice system when police ignore Muslims’ scorn, threats, and violence, and when the police invite Muslim fathers’ groups to help stop Muslim riots and gangs. It is harmful to the sense of justice in the country and undermines police authority.

It is the Islamization of our legal system when we allow Sharia courts or give reduced sentences to perpetrators who have committed a crime for religious or cultural reasons (honor crimes).

It is Islamization of our population, electorate, and country when we allow immigration from Muslim countries …

In Europe and in some states of the US, a few politicians are at last taking notice of stealth jihad and see it as a threat.

The Obama administration, however, does what it can to aid its advance. (See, for instance, our post The name of the change, April 14, 2011.)

Did Iran order a massacre in Iraq, and did America let it happen?

Earlier this month, on April 8, Iraqi forces raided an Iranian refugee camp. Thirty-four Iranians were killed and some 325 were wounded.

It was done under orders from Prime Minister Maliki.

Prime Minister Maliki was acting under orders from the Iranian regime.

And it looks as if the US government was complicit in the atrocity.

But surely not! Let’s recall what Obama said at a joint press conference with Maliki in the Rose Garden on July 22, 2009:

Prime Minister Maliki and I have no doubt that there will be some tough days ahead. There will be attacks on Iraqi security forces and the American troops supporting them. There are still those in Iraq who would murder innocent men, women and children…. But make no mistake: Those efforts will fail. …

American troops have the capability, the support and flexibility they need to stand with our Iraqi partners on behalf of a sovereign, secure, and self-reliant Iraq. Because we believe that the future does not belong to those who would destroy — it belongs to those who would build.

What happened at Camp Ashraf?

The April 8 raid targeted the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which seeks to overthrow Iran’s clerical leaders. The group won refuge at Camp Ashraf years ago during the regime of Saddam Hussein, who saw them as a convenient ally against Iran. But since then, the exiles have become an irritant to Iraq’s new Shiite-led government, which is trying to bolster ties with Iran. …

A team of U.N. observers saw 28 bodies still at the camp during a Wednesday visit to the compound in eastern Diyala province. Most of the bodies appeared to have been shot and some were women, he said. Three of the bodies appeared to have been crushed to death, a Western diplomat in Baghdad said — likely from being run over by a car. …

After Saddam fell, U.S. troops took control of Camp Ashraf, disarmed its fighters and confined the resident to their 30-square-mile camp. In return, the military signed an agreement with the camp’s 3,400 residents giving them protected status under the Geneva Conventions. …

Where was the US military while the massacre was being perpetrated?

The U.S. military says Ashraf residents’ protected status expired in late 2008 when Baghdad and Washington signed a security agreement that limited U.S. authority in Iraq.

The Ashraf residents and their lawyers in Washington dispute that, and demand that the American military continue to protect them and intervene on their behalf with the Iraqi government.

What about other protections for refugees under the Geneva Conventions? Has the Red Cross anything to say about the massacre?

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, which oversees whether nations are complying with the Geneva treaties, has declined to make a public pronouncement on the issue.

Melanie Phillips writes at the Spectator:

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iraqi Army used 2,500 troops equipped with armoured vehicles to attack Ashraf in tandem with the feared al Qods force of Iran.  … The terrorist Qods Force … was involved at its highest level in the planning and the execution of this assault. In particular, Brigadier General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force, personally supervised the planning of this attack on Ashraf…. Some of the officers of the Qods Force were present at the scene of the attack in Ashraf and took part in the killing of Ashraf residents. …

There are strong fears that the Iraqis are preparing to inflict further violence on the residents of Ashraf — and no less disturbing, claims that both the Iraqis and the Americans have been either actively preventing or doing nothing to provide medical aid for those injured in the attack. …

The actions of Nouri Al-Maliki, who has long made clear his allegiances to Iran’s theocratic leadership, should have surprised few. What is so shocking is the relative silence of the US government. It is hard to believe that they did not know what was about to happen at Ashraf. They did nothing to try to stop it happening. Worst of all, their silence and inaction has made it almost certain that it will happen again. It can be no coincidence that US forces stationed within the Camp withdrew just hours before the Iraqi onslaught began.

Furthermore, top US government official Robert Gates was in Baghdad and met Al-Maliki hours before the attack began, just as he was in Iraq in July 2009 when the other major offensive was conducted against Ashraf by the Iraqi forces. Mr Gates should be brought to account, and tell us what his knowledge was of the recent outrage, and how he proposes to deal with what occurred.

In addition, he should give a truthful account of why US medical aid, which was readily available, was not in Ashraf within minutes of the Iraqi attack, despite requests.

Simply put, the US forces if they so wished and were so ordered to do from their command in Washington and Baghdad could at the flick of a switch airlift all the wounded to the US military hospital situated in the vicinity of the Camp. This now is the minimum that the US authorities must do. However, such assistance will not suffice in circumstances where the Iraqi authorities have made clear their intention to destroy the Camp and if necessary kill all the residents. …

There has been no official condemnation of the raid from either the British or American Governments. Melanie Phillips asks:

Could this be because the last thing the British and Americans want to acknowledge is that the Iraqi government of Nuri al Maliki – the country in which so much British and American blood and treasure has been so painfully spent in the cause of making it safe for the West — has merely become a puppet of the Iranians, the West’s most lethal foe?

We were for the war on Iraq, though we never thought that Iraq or any Arab state could be transformed into a true democracy.

But who could have foretold such an outcome of the intervention as an Iraq subservient to the evil Iranian regime?

If that is how it is, it means that Americans fought and died only to extend the power of their worst enemy.

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.

This past weekend there has been, and there continues to be, a blood-bath in Syria, as its Alawite dictator, Bashar Assad, slaughters the people his family has been oppressing for decades.

There is little about it in the news media in America.

This is what’s happening there:

Bashar Assad has launched all-out war on his people. Tanks firing artillery, APCs [Armored Personnel Carriers], infantry units, commandoes and snipers were deployed for the first time at daybreak Monday, April 25 in cities across Syria for the most brutal assault on any Arab anti-government protest in the four-month uprising.

In the first few hours, hundreds are estimated to have been massacred (over and above the 350 shot dead in the last three days) and thousands injured. Denied medical attention, they are left in the streets to die. …

Cities with populations of 2-3 million have been stormed by Syrian troops backed by tanks firing automatic 120-mm guns at random, commandoes dropped by helicopter and snipers.

The military offensive to break the back of the uprising is led by [dictator Bashar Assad’s] younger brother Maher Assad at the head of the Republican Guard and the 4th Division which is made up mostly of the Assad’s Alawite clan. Its first target Sunday night was the southern town of Deraa where the protest movement began and the Mediterranean coastal town of Jableh.

Monday, Syria shut its land borders to Jordan to conceal the scale of the carnage inflicted on the border town of Deraa from outside eyes. Foreign correspondents have been banned from the country since the uprising began.

Monday, indiscriminate fire was also reported in Duma, a dissident suburb of the capital Damascus. By Monday afternoon, thousands of soldiers had spread out across the North, South and Center of the country, apparently preparing to storm the large cities and protest centers of Hama, Homs, Latakiya and the Kurdish north. …

April 23 saw the constantly mounting uprising against the Assad regime finally reaching the Syrian capital Damascus where  300,000 – 15 percent of the city’s dwellers – took the streets shouting: “Bashar Assad you are a traitor!” That day too the Syrian ruler unleashed his security forces for the harshest crackdown yet in order to break the back of the five-week civil uprising. The result: 350 dead, tripling the number of Friday’s bloodbath and thousands of injured.

Early Sunday, secret service thugs hauled thousands of protesters out of their homes. They broke down doors in the Harasta and Ghouta districts of Damascus, dragged their victims out and dumped them on covered trucks which drove off to unknown destinations. ….

The growing number of injured are condemned to being treated privately or not at all. The authorities have commandeered ambulances to prevent them reaching hospital and hospital wards are raided by security agents who either kill the wounded or arrest them.

PajamasMedia has videos of the protests and the killing. SEE THEM HERE.

Roger L. Simon comments:

In more proof, if any were needed, that liberals are the reactionaries of our time, it was only weeks ago that Hillary Clinton was calling Bashar al-Assad a “reformer” and Vogue magazine was proclaiming his wife a “rose in the desert.”

As we know, and the horrific videos from Syria on PJM show conclusively …  the ophthalmologist is as much a reformer as Josef Mengele and Asma as much a rose as Eva Braun.

Since his father Hafez brutally imposed his will over Syria in the Hama massacre, the Assads have been a family of secular fascist torturers and murderers in league with religious fascist torturers and murderers in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas), and Iran (the mullahs) … They assassinate democratically elected foreign leaders (Hariri), encourage and facilitate global terrorism, and shoot as many of their own people as necessary to maintain power while exploiting the best of their country’s resources for personal gain. In other words, pure evil.

Nothing new there — yet, for some reason, our liberal leadership and their media allies were never able to acknowledge fully something so obvious. Always — as Obama did with Ahmadinejad while the Iranian democracy demonstrators were being shot in their streets and tortured in prison cells — they sought to reason with despotism. Or, more likely, pretended to do so because it was all game for the aggrandizement of the self, for image. The policy itself never made sense.

When the Middle East street started to rebel, our government had no plan. They didn’t know what to do about Egypt and then went into Libya willy-nilly when things started to look bad. So now we are left with the odd situation where Gaddafi — clearly also a murderous sociopathic dictator — is despot number one, with NATO intervening and the U.S. providing Predators, while Assad, demonstrably a much more active and dangerous enemy of the U.S. and its allies, is merely verbally chastised by our president and secretary of State. …

Because of the moral confusion at the heart of our administration, the USA and by extension the West have their priorities screwed up. The downfall of Assad would mean big trouble for the mullahs, Hezbollah, and Hamas — good things for the region and the world. The downfall of Gaddafi would mean what exactly? Nobody knows. An al-Qaeda regime? The Muslim Brotherhood? Some oil contracts for the French? …

But during all this, there is no question that the foreign policy of the United States is simply ad hoc. It doesn’t exist. The secretary of State was in cloud-cuckoo-land when she called Assad a reformer, the same totalitarian-loving cloud she inhabited when she bussed Suha Arafat.

The president himself has no real values, only vague notions received from lamebrain post-modernist professors …

We don’t think that America should intervene in Syria. We also don’t think that America should have diplomatic relations with tyrannies like Assad’s, and we’d like to see the ambassador whom Obama foolishly sent there withdrawn. We don’t think America should interfere in an Arab country whether to give it money, or “protect” its civilians, or unseat its tyrants. We’d rather America was drilling for its own oil than buying it from Arab countries. We’re not dismayed by rebellion, civil war, or revolution in the Arab or wider Islamic world – whichever side wins in any Islamic state, the victory will go to Islam. But we observe the inconsistencies and sheer incoherence of Obama’s foreign policy with trepidation. How long will it take for America to recover its leadership role in the world after Obama is gone? American hegemony, which Obama has deliberately sabotaged, is essential. The world needs a power that stands for liberty and has the military might to support it. By forcing America to abdicate its responsibility as the world’s only superpower, Obama – far from causing rising seas to subside, as he claimed he could and would – has stirred up tumult in the oceans of human discontent. The result is a manmade disaster as the heat of war and blood spreads over the earth.

A lone brave woman protests against radical Muslims rallying in Frankfurt:

Obama, under the spell of the three witches, Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice (see our post, Round about the cauldron go, April 18, 2011), cannot weep enough crocodile tears for the “civilians” that America has the “responsibility to protect” in Libya, or drop enough alms into their outstretched hands. But circumspectly, adhering strictly to politically correct rules.

From Yahoo! News:

The Obama administration plans to give the Libyan opposition $25 million in non-lethal assistance in the first direct U.S. aid to the rebels after weeks of assessing their capabilities and intentions, officials said Wednesday.

Amid a debate over whether to offer the rebels broader assistance, including cash and possibly weapons and ammunition, the administration has informed Congress that President Barack Obama intends to use his so-called drawdown authority to give the opposition, led by the Transitional National Council in Benghazi, up to $25 million in surplus American goods to help protect civilians in rebel-held areas threatened by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who recommended that Obama authorize the assistance, said the aid would go to support the council and “our efforts to protect civilians and the civilian populated areas that are under threat of attack from their own government in Libya.” She said the aid “will be drawn down from items already in government stocks that correspond with the needs that we have heard from the Transitional National Council.”

The list is still being revised but now covers items such as medical supplies, uniforms, boots, tents, personal protective gear, radios and Halal meals … Most of the items are expected to come from Pentagon stocks …

Initially, the administration had proposed supplying the rebels with vehicles and portable fuel storage tanks but those items were dropped from the list of potential aid on Wednesday after concerns were expressed that those could be converted into offensive military assets. …

Hillary must be awfully careful not to go against the pacifist sentiments of the Democratic Party, while yet satisfying its goodie-goodie need to give cast-offs to those vulnerable “civilians”. Or “rebels”.

“This is not a blank check,” Clinton told reporters, adding that the move was consistent with the U.N. mandate that authorized international action to protect Libyan civilians and acknowledging that the opposition is in dire need of help.

Wouldn’t do a damned thing the UN didn’t approve of!

“This opposition, which has held its own against a brutal assault by the Gadhafi forces was not an organized militia,” she said. “It was not a group that had been planning to oppose the rule of Gadhafi for years. It was a spontaneous response within the context of the broader Arab spring. These are mostly business people, students, lawyers, doctors, professors who have very bravely moved to defend their communities and to call for an end to the regime in Libya.”

Oh, yes. She’s sure of that. Respectable, professional people, those civilians in dire need. Not an organized militia. Perfectly harmless, innocent. Give them the cast-offs, for the sake of Jesus!

“The Europeans” – namely Britain, France and Italy – are sending “military advisers”.

Because the military intervention by the US and Nato didn’t stop Gaddafi’s army.

From the Washington Post:

The arrival of European military advisers and U.S. uniforms is unlikely to rapidly change the trajectory of the conflict … and NATO and its Arab partners in the Libya operation continue to count on their economic and diplomatic war of attrition against Gaddafi paying off in the end.

“We are dealing with a set of imperfect options,” a senior administration official said, noting that the measure of success is not “where things stand” but “where they would have stood had we done nothing.” The NATO airstrikes and a no-fly zone enforced by NATO and Arab countries “have essentially frozen the battle space in terms of the advance of Gaddafi’s forces,” he said, and “if you work all the other levers, you can make time work against Gaddafi.”

Ah, Time. The West’s last, best weapon.

The official emphasized that Obama has no intention of sending U.S. ground forces — including noncombat military advisers — to Libya. But the administration’s attempts to firmly limit its involvement have also contributed to an image of disarray within NATO.

Only the image of disarray? Inside NATO all is harmony and sweet accord?

A senior European official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the Americans, said that Obama’s eagerness to turn over command of the Libyan air operation to NATO late last month, and the withdrawal of U.S. fighter planes from ground-strike missions, had undermined the strength of their united front against Gaddafi. …

The brilliant, well-informed Vice-President of the United States had an answer to that:

In a feisty response to any suggestion that the U.S. move to the back seat had undermined the NATO campaign, Vice President Biden said the alliance was perfectly capable of handling the air attack mission itself.

“It is bizarre to suggest that NATO and the rest of the world lacks the capacity to deal with Libya — it does not,” Biden said in an interview with the Financial Times.

“Occasionally other countries lack the will,” he said, “but this is not about capacity.”

Biden said U.S. resources were better spent trying to guide Egypt’s transition toward democracy. He denied that U.S. public reluctance to become deeply involved in another conflict in the Muslim world had anything to do with Obama’s decisions.

“This is about our strategic interest and it is not based upon a situation of what can the traffic bear politically at home,” Biden said. “The traffic can bear politically more in Libya,” he said, because “everybody knows [Gaddafi] is a bad guy.”

But it’s better not to risk it, hey Joe?

But as the situation in Libya has continued without resolution, popular disapproval of the president’s handling of the situation has shot up 15 percentage points, from 34 to 49, since mid-March, shining a light on the political risks Obama faces on the issue amid a host of domestic problems, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Among political independents, disapproval jumped to 51 percent. …

Those sending advisers or other assistance to the rebel forces are doing so as individual nations, in coordination with but outside the NATO command structure.

Why would that be? Don’t tell us that NATO as a whole would not approve!

No, no, it’s not that. God or someone forbid!  It’s because, you see, the “rebels” – not to be confused with the “civilians” please – don’t want the Western help they asked for to be too obvious:

“The rebels themselves are afraid of being accused by other Arab countries of having allowed ‘crusaders’ on their land,” said an Italian official who was not authorized to discuss the issue on the record.

Turns out the US administration didn’t feel too comfortable with the “rebels” at first, but it’s okay now:

Obama administration officials said their comfort level with the rebel council had grown in recent weeks, after high-level meetings with its leaders and direct contact by a U.S. diplomatic mission sent to Benghazi.

Still, you’ve gotta keep an eye on the bastards. Though God or whoever knows what we’d do if we saw something happening that made us uncomfortable again:

“Whether there are people in Libya who may have more extremist or nefarious agendas, that is something we watch very carefully,” the senior administration official said in reference to suggestions of possible al-Qaeda involvement. “We don’t believe that the organized opposition, represented by the TNC, reflects that agenda.”

So who has a bad agenda? Who are the “rebels”? Who are the needy “civilians”?

From PajamasMedia:

While the International Criminal Court has announced that it is investigating charges of war crimes against Muammar al-Gaddafi and other members of the Libyan regime, harrowing video evidence has emerged that appears to show atrocities committed by anti-Gaddafi rebels. Among other things, the footage depicts summary executions, a prisoner being lynched, the desecration of corpses, and even a beheading. The targets of the most serious abuse are frequently black African prisoners. The ultimate source of the footage appears to be rebel forces or sympathizers themselves.

(Warning: Due to the graphic nature of the videos linked below, viewer discretion is advised.)

What is probably the most harrowing of the clips depicts a public beheading. A man with a long knife can be seen alternately sawing and hacking at the neck of a man who has been suspended upside-down. The victim’s inert body is soaked in blood. The beheading takes place in front of a burnt-out building in … the main square of the rebel capital of Benghazi.

A crowd numbering at least in the hundreds cheers on the assailants. At one point, a man begins chanting “Libya Hurra!”: “Free Libya!” According to the NOS translation, someone can be heard saying, “He looks like an African.” As the principal assailant begins to saw at the victim’s neck, members of the crowd yell “Allahu Akbar!” Dozens of members of the crowd can be seen filming the proceedings with digital cameras or cell phones.

SEE THE VIDEO CLIP here. A raging mob yells for the utmost agony to be inflicted on the victim. (We loathe this savagery, but we do not for a moment imagine that the victim would not do the same to any member of the raging mob if he had the opportunity.)

A second clip depicts a black African prisoner being aggressively questioned and beaten. The man is alleged to be a pro-Gaddafi mercenary. Extracts from the footage have been broadcast on both the Libyan state television Al-Libya and on Al-Jazeera. More complete “raw footage,” which is available on YouTube, shows the beating continuing even after the man is lying face down on the ground, the surrounding concrete splattered with his blood. By way of photographs and identity papers, a video from an unknown source on YouTube identifies the victim as a Libyan citizen and a regular member of the Libyan army. [Link provided – go to the article to see it, and descriptions, with links to more video clips, of more horrors.]

Similar footage of rebels demanding a confession from an alleged black African mercenary has also been shown on Western television. It should be noted that even just the mere exposure of a prisoner to “public curiosity” constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions – to say nothing of acts of intimidation and abuse or the outright lynching that appears to be documented in the above clip. …

At first glance, it might seem odd that the rebels would document their own atrocities. But given all the indications that the eastern Libyan heartland of the rebellion is a bastion of jihadist militancy, it is in fact not so odd. It is standard jihadist procedure to film beheadings and other sorts of atrocities committed against captured enemy soldiers and hostages.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi’s capability is swelling with mercenaries and materiel not only from Africa but also from China, Russia, and Europe.

From DebkaFile:

Both of Libya’s fighting camps are taking delivery of a surging influx of weapons shipments and military personnel – each hoping to use the extra aid for breaking the military standoff in its own favor …  The British, French and Italian military officers bound for rebel headquarters in Benghazi are part of a package that includes arms and military equipment from the US, Britain, France, Italy and Qatar.

On the other side of the Libyan divide, China, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia are keeping the pro-Qaddafi camp’s arsenals stocked with new hardware along with combat personnel from Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia. …

From mid-March, hundreds of “volunteers” – professional soldiers ranking from colonel down to corporal – have joined the army loyal to Qaddafi. …

One group says it is in Libya for unfinished business with the West, especially the United States, for their role in the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts.

China is helping him with arms, mostly through African neighbors, and intelligence on NATO strikes  …

The NATO bombardment of a large ammunition dump near Tripoli on April 14 aimed at destroying the latest Chinese arms shipments. …

[There are]  four major difficulties still confronting the next, intensified, round of Western coalition operations in Libya:

1. Pushing Qaddafi too hard could split NATO between West and East European members [not to mention Turkey’s angry refusal to participate – JB].

2. The alliance is short of fighter-bombers for blasting the arms convoys destined for government forces in western Libya, and lacks the precision bombs and missiles for these attacks. These shortages have forced NATO to limit its air strikes for now.

3. It is not clear that UN Security Council resolutions provide a mandate for this kind of attack. The Russians criticize the Western alliance almost daily for exceeding its mandate.

4. In view of this criticism, Washington, London, Paris and Rome are careful to label their war aid to Libyan rebels as “non-lethal military aid” and the military personnel helping them “military advisers” – raising memories of the euphemisms used in previous wars.

The trouble is that all the additional military assistance the West is laying on is barely enough … to maintain the current stalemate against the Qaddafi regime’s boosted capabilities – certainly not sufficient to tip the scales of the war.

Qaddafi holds one major advantage: His army can absorb [trained, experienced] foreign assistance [mercenaries] without delay …  whereas Western aid drops into a pit of uncertainty with regard to the rebel groups and their chiefs. The military advisers arriving in Benghazi first need to guide the opposition’s steps in fighting Qaddafi’s forces, then form the rebels into military units and teach them how to use the weapons they are receiving.

It could take months for regular rebel units to take shape under the direction of British, French and Italian military personnel who, too, are not necessarily working in harness.

And we’ve just heard (from Fox news) that Obama will send armed predator drones for use in Libya. So the US is rejoining the armed intervention after all, Joe? What will your pacifist base say to that, Obama and Hillary?

The cauldron bubbles.

George Soros uses his immense wealth to promote evil on a vast scale.

In a recently published booklet titled From Shadow Party to Shadow Government* by David Horowitz and John Perazzo, the authors “distill down” Soros’s agendas to “three overriding themes: the diminution of American power, the subjugation of American sovereignty in favor of one-world government, and the implementation of a socialist redistribution of wealth.”

The booklet describes how Soros has set about achieving his aims. He has come very far.  He had to get a puppet into the presidency of the United States, and he did.

(The authors do not bring Obama’s promotion of Islam into their survey. Islam’s relevance to the grand scheme must be hard for the Shadow Party to determine. How will Global  Communism deal with Islam’s competing ambition to dominate the world? What should be done with it when it is not longer useful as a destructive force? How treat its utterly different system of suppression?)

Here’s the authors’ Conclusion:

If George Soros were a lone billionaire, or if the Shadow Party consisted of a few disgruntled billionaires, these facts and achievements would not be so ominous. But the Shadow Party is far more than a reflection of the prejudices or one special interest or one passing generation. The Shadow Party is the current incarnation of a socialist movement that has been at war with the free market economy and the political system based on liberty and individual rights for more than two hundred years. It is a movement that has learned to conceal its ultimate goal, which is a totalitarian state, in the seductive rhetoric of “progressivism” and “social justice”. But its determination to equalize outcomes, its zeal for state power and for government control as the solution to social problems, and its antagonism to America as a defender of freedom are the tell-tale signs of a radical movement whose agenda is to change fundamentally and unalterably the way Americans have lived.”

In fact, as the authors say in their distillation of themes, the movement aims even further, much further. It aims for a totalitarian world.

The puppet whom Soros got into the White House not only shares that further aim but sees himself as the chief actor in the realization of it – and is not a puppet but one of the conspirators, in the view of Leon de Winter, expressed in an article titled Wake Up, Critics: Here’s Obama’s Grand Plan. Beneath the title de Winter gives a hint: “the White House is a stepping stone”.

He too sees Soros as one of the evil operators in the shadows, but only mentions him in passing. He starts with another – David Axelrod.

[David Axelrod’s] creation of the Obama myth is one of the most impressive marketing and propaganda feats in history, carefully crafted from a simple set of rules and masterfully applied to challenging, shifting circumstances.

Axelrod knew just what he was doing. He created an African American candidate without the ghetto rap. He created an ultimate urban intellectual alternative to George W. Bush — a veritable anti-Bush. He created a pseudo-legend based upon a semi-fictional autobiography.

He created a quasi-evangelical being with the gift to heal the earth.

To create this myth, the Axelrod team had to suppress the dark pages of Obama’s life. Obama’s ideological convictions were simply too far off center, too much the result of a radical leftist ideology.

Obama was a lifelong student of Marxist and neo-Marxist thinkers, his life dedicated to a theoretic approach based on the “historical” conflict of opposing classes. Long before he received the Axelrod touch, Obama was planning the long march through the institutions as a student. …

(And if Obama ever had any friends who were not Marxists and America–haters, we have yet to hear of them.)

He has been as much a brilliant strategist and tactician as Axelrod. He has known when to lay low, and when to attack; when to aggrandize, and when to diminish.

Leon de Winter believes, as Horowitz and Perazzo do, that Obama’s intention is to transform America, but he defines the president’s vision for what America must be turned into as something less extreme:

It’s his goal to transform the nation into a European welfare state, which he can only execute when he can work around America’s original ideas as formulated by the founding fathers. The almost boundless liberty of free citizens, he believes, should be limited by a strong federal state which demands a sizeable part of the fruits of the labor of its citizens. Obama is enforcing laws and introducing institutions derived from European socialist concepts of “social justice” …

And without a doubt, it is the long-term vision of president Obama. His economic transformation will enforce a cultural and ideological transformation. Everything he is doing is driven by this vision. It is postmodern revolutionary socialist methodology at work.

His career is proof that Barack Obama can plan far ahead. … I started to understand the fascinating phenomenon of Barack Obama when it suddenly dawned upon me that his present office may not be his final ambition. …

A transformed America will, naturally, lead to a completely different balance of power in the world. Internal change will create external change. The vacuum left behind by a weakened U.S. — a world without a superpower, a globe of equal nations — should be filled by a new transnational body. This is the core dream of every progressive ideologue.

World governments or governances have been part of the Marxist curriculum for decades, driven by anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist ideologies. At the moment, the driving forces are earthism, environmentalism, and fear of manmade global warming. … The future of the globe and the human race is at stake — and in order to suppress global warming, the world needs special taxes and special tools to regulate industries and modify human behavior. Who will control these new controlling mechanisms? …

Does Obama, in word and deed, start to make sense when one starts to understand that he sees his role from a vantage point far above the presidency? Beyond the White House, there is a world for him to gain. What he achieved in Washington he could repeat on a global scale. …

As a smart, suave man, he knew exactly what he was doing when he started to climb the ladder. … Obama had the intuition to pick capable operators for his campaigning and policymaking teams.

Or did they pick him? We think Obama is more the puppet of Horowitz’s and Perazzo’s understanding than the cunning planner of de Winter’s. In our view, de Winter gives Obama far too much brain and skill. But we think it probable that in Obama’s own mind he is the future leader of the world.

De Winter also gives the Left too much by attributing sincerity to it. We do not think the “warmists” give a damn about the climate. They use “manmade global warming” to trump up a crisis and agitate that it can only be “solved” with their remedy – world government by a central Presidium.

His conservative critics dramatically underestimate him. Obama knows precisely what kind of America he envisions. He wants to mold a certain type of America in order to mold a certain type of global governance. For that, he needs another term to reach his goal.

In 2016, he will move on to higher office.

But will Soros and his bat-winged minions want this Obama guy, this upstart whom they made out of nothing, in that supreme role? With that much power? We think not.

The way they see it, we guess, is that Obama did very well for the presidency of the US, to start the destruction of the Republic and the ideals on which it was founded. Millions of people – kept uninformed about him by the complicit media –  would vote for him simply because he was black. But that quality is not necessary to a candidate for the world’s pinnacle of power.

They would drop him. If they let him survive at all, they would cast him in a minor role. Perhaps give him a sinecure with a grandiose title, or perhaps a pension, or perhaps diddly squat. Put him back in his box, the strings lying loose, the lid closed.

Of course the full plan must never be allowed to come to fruition. Not even the intermediary step which Obama fronts: the transformation of America. He must not be re-elected in 2012.

The Shadow Party must be dragged further out into the sunlight, exposed, thwarted, and exterminated.

*From Shadow Party to Shadow Government is published by and available from the Freedom Center, www.frontpagemag.com

Niall Ferguson speaks truth to MSNBC.

Concerning Egypt, Obama’s inexperience and ineptitude, and his “second-rate” Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.

This video is from Answering Muslims.

We are generally against the burning of books. We say read the nasty, immoral, aggressive, often unintelligible, always unintelligent Koran rather than burn it. The more it is read with critical understanding, the more it is likely to be despised. But we can see the point of burning copies of it now, when Islam is waging war on us.

As for the Bible, we think of it as a work of literature. The “Old Testament” in the King James translation is full of great poetry. Its stories have had an effect on our culture for good or ill. There is no point in destroying the Jewish or Christian “scriptures”. But there is also no reason why copies of these books should be treated with any more respect than any other book.

So we’re not posting the video because we think Christianity is superior to Islam. Both are absurd; both have an innate tendency to totalitarianism; both have a history of cruelty.

We are posting it because it demonstrates that Obama’s administration is positively on the side of our enemy, Islam.

The (unnamed) presenter, however, extracts a different message from it. He thinks the present government of America is protecting Islam not because it likes it and wants to promote it, but because it is “politically correct” – which means stupidly leftist. (It is that too, of course, but we think Obama himself is emotionally pro-Muslim.) “America,” the presenter says, “dies a quiet death under the knife of  political correctness, leaving us with a strange heterogeneous mixture of dwindling greatness and Islamic supremacism.”

An Italian journalist, Vittorio Arrigoni, has been murdered in Gaza.

Passionately pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, he was a member if the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and had been in Gaza since 2008 when he arrived there on a “Free Gaza” boat mission intended to “break the Israeli blockade”.

ISM supports Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules Gaza; and those terrorist friends of President Obama, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, are involved with it.

Discover the Networks says about ISM:

Radical, anti-Israel organization that recruits westerners to travel to Israel to obstruct Israeli security operations.

Justifies Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Though professing  a commitment to nonviolence, ISM members openly advocate the “liberation” of Palestinians “by any means necessary,” including “legitimate armed struggle”.

But the members of ISM consider themselves to be “humanitarian”.

From the (anti-Israel) BBC:

Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was seized on Thursday by a radical group that has been in conflict with Hamas and is seeking the release of its leader.

Police said he was found hanged in a Gaza City house after receiving a tip-off. Two people have been arrested. …

“He came from across the world, left his country and family and his entire life and came here to break the siege, and we kill him? Why?” asked one of his [Palestinian] friends. …

Vittorio Arrigoni was a fierce critic of Israel but it is Palestinians that killed him.

Two members of an al-Qaeda inspired Salafist group have been arrested. Salafists practise an ultra-conservative form of Islam and regard Hamas as too moderate. …

The Salafists had threatened to execute Mr Arrigoni by 1400 GMT on Friday unless several prisoners, including their leader [who was] arrested by Hamas police last month in Gaza City. …

It is not clear why Mr Arrigoni was killed before the given deadline, but the Hamas interior ministry said he had died soon after being abducted.

Ministry spokesman Ehab al-Ghussein said he was killed “in an awful way”. …

He described the killing as a “heinous crime which has nothing to do with our values, our religion, our customs and traditions.” …

Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the ISM, said he was very well known in the territory and had a “dynamic, humanitarian personality”.

“I even thought that whoever has him is going to see his humanity and just let him go, so when I heard what happened to him I was totally shocked.”

Nothing to do with Hamas’s “religion, customs and traditions”?

And a founder of ISM expects Salifists to “see his humanity and just let him go”?

The bitter delight of ironies like those makes the reading of thousands of lines of news and commentary worth while!

News for ISM: the Arab culture is dishonorable and cruel. In the culture of the West, to be honorable, to act honorably, is to do what you know to be right. It is not a matter of what other people expect of you, but of what you expect of yourself: living up to your own principles of decency. It is to do with your probity, not with how you appear to others. You are answerable to your own conscience. Not what you seem to be but what you are, not what you are reputed to do but what you actually do, makes you honorable or dishonorable.

In Arab culture it is what a man seems to be to his fellow Arabs that matters, so the right word for what Arabs call “honor” is “face”. So important is face that if the least breath of unsubstantiated gossip threatens a man with the loss of it, he’ll go to any lengths to recover it. If it touches on the chastity of his wife or daughter or sister, he’ll kill her to recover it. Such an act his fellow Arabs call “restoring his honor”, a man’s face being more important than a woman’s life. Even if she is innocent of any unchaste act or look or thought, if she is being maliciously maligned, or if she is the victim perhaps of violent sexual assault that she resisted by all means, if others say she is defiled his reputation is stained, and he can only cleanse the stain by killing her. Judged by Western standards of morality, such abuse of women is profoundly dishonorable.

As these so-called “honor killings” are carried out in Islamic societies generally, it may be that Islam is the source of the custom. But whatever the origin, this cruelty, this injustice, persists in Arab culture.

We are not speaking of ethnicity. Whatever can be said of a race or a nation, whatever characteristics it is perceived to have, cannot be ascribed to any individual member of it. But a culture is made of religion, custom and tradition. It is what the majority accept, enact, continue, and hand on. And a culture that subjugates women; that beats the Koran into children; that tortures prisoners as a matter of routine; that sends children walking over minefields (as was done in the Iran-Iraq war); that uses children, civilians, hospital patients as human shields, is vicious, uncivilized, and needs to be completely changed.

We do not condone the murder of Vittorio Arrigoni. We are distressed that he was tortured. He was wrong and foolish, he assisted terrorists, and failed to see that the regime he supported was cruel and unjust. Like all his fellow members of ISM, he was blind to the fact that America and Israel, among a minority of countries, genuinely strive for freedom and justice in a dangerous world. He and all those who have lived safely in Western countries and go to places like Gaza to prove their moral superiority, to serve a cause they little understand in societies where quite different ways prevail, seem to expect to be privileged, exempt from the practices they excuse. If they find they are not exempt, that their grand moral gestures are not appreciated, that they are not seen as heroes but as foreign interferers, and are treated in the customary way, they ought to blame themselves. But we don’t think they will.

Is ISM likely to draw the right conclusions from the death of Vittorio Arrigoni, and disband? Probably not. If experience is no cure for foolishness, nothing is.