By David Horowitz:

The traitor class is easily defined as people who can’t identify a self-declared enemy of the United States even after he has killed 3,000 innocent people in an act of self-described holy war and is prepared to provide his talents and services gratis to help the enemy combatant attack this own country.

Scott Fenstermaker is an attorney for Covington Burling, a white shoe law firm which has provided millions of dollars in pro bono legal work to Gitmo terrorists. A Covington partner is the brother of Weather terrorist Kathy Boudin, and the lawyer organizing the Gitmo pro bono defense team is family friend and political comrade Michael Ratner, head of the terrorist-supporting Center for Constitutional Rights, who has spent his life defending America’s enemies and serving anti-American causes.

If you can’t describe the 3000 innocent victims of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as “murdered” and your first move is to describe your own government’s case as propaganda, and you are devising a case to “justify” the evil deed your client has committed and won’t say that you would be upset if your country were to lose the case, and also if you’re a Jew and don’t have any problem defending an Islamic Nazi who beheaded Daniel Pearl after forcing him to say “I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew” — there can be only one explanation. You believe in the justification defense you are preparing, you think America and the Jews are guilty and deserve what they get, and you are a traitor. And much worse — only words are inadequate to describe just how low on the human scale you have sunk.

Yes. And who else belongs in the traitor class?

Doesn’t Attorney-General Eric Holder, who is giving the terrorists this golden opportunity to hurt Americans again, also belong in it? He was a senior partner in the Covington & Burling law firm.

And Barack Obama who approved the scheme?

And the media men and women who praise it?

And all those who falsely accuse Israel of deliberately harming civilians in Gaza, but have not an audible word to say against the Muslim terrorists who deliberately murdered 3,000 civilians in America?  Are they not all traitors to civilization, and to humanity?

The Obama administration is trying to stop restitution being paid out of Iranian assets in the US to  families of marines killed in the 1983 Beirut bombing.

Via the Daily Alert section of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, this news from the Boston Globe.

241 U.S. servicemen were killed in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, in what many consider the first major terrorist attack against the U.S. In 2007, a federal judge ruled that Iran was liable for $2.65 billion in damages to be shared by 150 families seeking restitution. But now, the Obama administration is going to court to try to block payments from Iranian assets that the families’ lawyers want seized, contending that it would jeopardize sensitive negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Despite legislation passed by Congress to make it possible to sue foreign governments that sponsor terrorism, in a filing in federal court, the Justice Department is arguing that giving the money to the victims “can have significant, detrimental impact on our foreign relations, as well as the reciprocal treatment of the United States and its extensive overseas property holdings.” Over the years, Iran, which since 1984 has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. government, has been found liable for nearly $10 billion in damages for attacks on Americans attributed to the Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian terror groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad that the U.S. says are financed and trained by Iran.

Anti-Jewish feeling, speech, and action is intensifying in Britain.

It’s understandable, of course, after what Jews have been doing in that country: killing and maiming with bombs in London underground trains and a bus, leaving a car with a bomb in it on a busy street in the middle of the capital, driving a van full of explosive into an airport – doctors doing this, mark you, people ostensibly dedicated to saving lives! Oh, and much more: terrorist conspiracies; raping, beating up, murdering on the streets; evading deportation and becoming a huge drain on the tax-payer; demanding that their own religious law replace the law of the land; insisting that their polygamous marriages be recognized; building their houses of worship in every town and city and broadcasting their calls to prayer every few hours; setting up religious schools that teach hatred of Christians and sedition against their host country; establishing academic departments and even whole colleges in the great universities in order to promote their never-ending campaign to convert the whole world to their religion; turning areas of London and other cities into no-go areas within which they carry out the traditional honor killings of their wives and daughters without fear of interference from the British police —

The list could go on and on …

A noisy, demanding, aggressive, cruel, useless, ungrateful, parasitical lot, those British Jews!

What did you say? It’s not the Jews doing all that? Oh, who is it then?

The Muslims? Really?

Then why are the Jews being reviled?

The following is from an article in the Wall Street Journal, by Robin Shepherd (who was dismissed from his job at the Royal Institute of International Affairs – Chatham House, as it’s called – for being pro-Israel):

Here is a small selection of events that have taken place in Britain since the end of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.

The government has imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel and failed to vote against the Goldstone report in the U.N . The charities War on Want and Amnesty International U.K. have both promoted a book by the anti-Israeli firebrand Ben White, tellingly called “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.” The Trades Union Congress at its annual conference has called for boycotts of Israeli products as well as a total arms embargo.

In the media, the Guardian newspaper has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the extent that the paper’s flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day. The BBC continues to use its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group’s virulent hatred of Jews or its adherence to a “Protocols of Zion”-style belief in world-wide Jewish conspiracies.

Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished critical opinions of Israel from the public domain.

Such charges have been aired to mass critical acclaim this week in a landmark documentary, “Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby,” on Channel 4—the same outlet that offered Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an uninterrupted, seven-minute propaganda slot on Christmas Day last year.

The makers of the documentary—top Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne and TV journalist James Jones—have also written about their program in the Guardian. Both furiously deny that they are peddling conspiracy theories. But the mindset we are dealing with was neatly exposed by the authors’ own explanation on how their suspicions were aroused that something sinister is at work in the corridors of British power.

It all transpired, they told readers ominously, during an address earlier this year by Conservative Party leader David Cameron at a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Israel.

“The dominant event of the previous 12 months had been the Israeli invasion of Gaza,” they wrote. “We were shocked Cameron made no reference in his speech to the massive destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that resulted, or for that matter the invasion itself. Indeed, our likely future prime minister went out of his way to praise Israel because it ‘strives to protect innocent life.’ This remark was not intended satirically.”

Since it is inconceivable, the authors obviously believe, that anyone could honestly credit Israel with anything other than the most damnable motives it must therefore follow that those who do in fact praise the Jewish state must be being paid or bullied into doing so.

If you think this all sounds familiar, you’d be right. Messrs. Oborne and Jones produced an extensive pamphlet accompanying the documentary, which openly claimed inspiration from none other than John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”—another conspiracy theory alleging malign Zionist influence in the United States.

But if Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt at least felt the need to dress up their polemic in pseudo-academic wrapping paper, the sheer amateurishness of the British documentary they inspired is breathtaking. There was the endless superimposition of the Israeli Star of David on to the British flag, which, along with some absurdly melancholic background music, was presumably designed to prepare viewers for an astonishing series of revelations. But of course such revelations actually never materialized.

It turns out from the documentary itself that the allegedly secretive Jewish donors have been quite open in declaring their interests in accordance with the law. …

Much is also made of the influence of Friends of Israel groupings in the British Parliament. Such allegations are, of course, rendered ridiculous with a moment’s reflection on the countervailing influence of vast amounts of Arab oil money, not to mention the fact that membership in such groups for many parliamentarians is either purely formal or outright meaningless. Michael Ancram, for example, a former Northern Ireland minister and a member of Conservative Friends of Israel for more than 30 years, is famous for calling for talks with Hamas.

Given the paucity of the arguments, it would be tempting to dismiss the whole thing as unimportant. Would that we could. The documentary has already provoked a torrent of abuse against British Jews, not least on Channel 4’s widely read Web site, whose moderators have seen fit to approve dozens of postings about the Zionist lobby’s “seditious behavior,” its “disgusting attack on British democracy,” “the hand of global Zionism at work,” and several along the lines of the following, which said flatly: “We want our country back. The agents of a foreign power embedded at all levels of our government and politics need flushing out.”

If this sort of language takes hold, a bad situation in Britain may be about to get a whole lot worse.

Jewish leadership organizations have long feared accusations of divided loyalty between Britain and Israel and, ironically given the charges now being made against them, are frequently criticized in their own communities for failing to be sufficiently robust in Israel’s defense. The risk is that some may now be panicked into silence.

Non-Jews who call for a more reasoned discussion of Israel—already a small and diminishing group in Britain—will likely face additional slanders against their integrity: Since there is supposedly no reasonable case to be made in favor of the Jewish state, we must have sold out to the “Lobby.”

Such calumnies cannot be allowed to stand. Now more than ever, the forces of reason and decency must continue the fight to be heard.

In fact, the Jews of Britain, as a group, are a rather flaccid lot. They seldom protest when they have every reason to do so, and if they raise objections to anything they do it as timidly as mice. They don’t firmly contradict the lies put out constantly and insistently about Israel by the BBC and big daily newspapers such as the Guardian and the Independent. Their community activity consists of quietly raising money for charities, not all of them exclusively Jewish. They are anxious to show that they are loyal subjects of Her Majesty, and Israel is their lesser concern. Some stupid British Jews have been so anxious to show that Israel means nothing to them – or how much they intensely hate it –  that they have striven to bring about academic and commercial boycotts of that small beleaguered land.

England was the first country in Europe to expel all its Jews in 1290. A few hundred were allowed back by Oliver Cromwell after 1656, and some thousands more after the restoration of the monarchy. In the late 1930s King George VI – the present queen’s father – objected to allowing Jewish refugees from Germany into Britain, calling them the scum of the earth.

Needlesss to say, Jews have made an enormous contribution to Britain, most notably in science, medicine, commerce, literature, and even occasionally in sport (as demonstrated in the film Chariots of Fire). In return Britain has not officially persecuted them in the last four hundred years or so as other European countries have done in the name of Christian love.

But now there is such a rising tide of hatred against them in Britain that they would be best advised to leave. They should emulate the Jews of France, who are emigrating in their thousands. They should not linger anywhere in Eurabia.

Better to risk another genocidal attempt against them, this time by Iranian nuclear attack, in Israel, the one country where they can defend themselves – which is precisely why most of the world wants to destroy it, of course.

Lynne Stewart is to go to prison for 28 months.

A Clinton-appointed liberal judge considers that sufficient punishment for her crime, which was, in simple truth, treason against the United States of America.

Many on the left admire her. (It is the patriot Sarah Palin whom they hate and scorn.)

The following, from the Norfolk Crime Examiner, San Francisco, provides some details of the case and a profile of this despicable woman:

On Tuesday, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ordered convicted criminal defense attorney Lynne Stewart to begin her prison sentence, as the court upheld her 2005 conviction for aiding imprisoned terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman.

Despite the conviction for such a serious crime, Stewart had been allowed to remain free for the last four years, while her appeal was pending. During that time, she made speeches and numerous public appearances in which she often thumbed her nose at the country she betrayed, while describing terrorists as “liberationists.“

On February 10, 2005, Lynne Stewart was found guilty of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists and defrauding the federal government. Stewart was contacting al-Gamma’a al-Islamiyya (The Islamic Group) on behalf of Abdel-Rahman. In addition to master-minding the 1993 plot to bomb the World Trade Center which killed six people and left more than 1,000 injured, the blind sheik was convicted of planning to destroy other New York City targets including the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the United Nations building, and the George Washington bridge. The Islamic Group dubbed the multiple target attack plan “The Day of Terror.” …

Lynne Stewart knowingly aided a convicted terrorist and avowed enemy of the United States during a time of war and deserves to be executed for her crimes. …

Lynne Stewart aided Rahman’s communications with his followers and even personally issued decries on his behalf. Stewart had defended Rahman in his 1995 trial and continued to visit Rahman in prison. Apparently at some point, Stewart ended her role as his lawyer and began one as his co-conspirator. …

Under the guise of giving legal counsel, Stewart helped pass along a fatwah from Rahman to his followers which commanded: “brother scholars everywhere in the Muslim world to do their part and issue a unanimous fatwah that urges the Muslim nations to fight the Jews and to kill them wherever they are.” …

In Rahman’s 1995 trial, Stewart argued that issuing the order to destroy the World Trade Center was merely a necessary part of his religious duties as a Muslim leader. After Rahman was sentenced to life in prison plus an additional 65 years, Stewart was seen weeping uncontrollably inside the courtroom.

Federal prosecutors filed court papers which said Stewart’s crime was in fact, “egregious, flagrant abuse of her profession, abuse that amounted to material support to a terrorist group, which deserves to be severely punished.”

Amazingly, while U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl said Stewart’s actions could have had “potentially lethal consequences” and represented “extraordinarily severe criminal conduct,” the Clinton-appointed judge waited until October 2006 to sentence Stewart…A full 20 months after her conviction.

Though Stewart could have received a 30 year sentence under federal guidelines (which the prosecution sought), Judge Koeltl only sentenced her to 28 months. In an insulting move to the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he has even allowed her to remain free while her appeal is pending. …

Lynne Stewart seems to have a particular affinity for murderers and enemies of the state. Over her career, she has defended Black Panther Willie Holder, Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin, Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, and mafia hit-man Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. Stewart has even expressed a desire to defend Osama bin Laden.

In a 2003 speech to the National Lawyers Guild, Stewart listed Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Mao Tse Tung as “heroes.”

In 2002, Stewart told reporter Susie Day of Monthly Review: “I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution.”

She went on to talk about her client Abdel-Rahman, by saying: “Now, certainly somebody like Sheikh Omar, who was a world figure, someone who was listened to by the entire Muslim population for being a very learned scholar, deserved to have a platform, deserved not to be entombed in the middle of America and not able to speak. They said the Sheikh was responsible for, I dunno, everything except flat feet. They made it sound like a worldwide conspiracy… He’s a blind, elderly, sick man. He may be a spiritual head …  But he’s certainly not a combatant in any sense whatsoever.” …

Though she has been disbarred, Stewart has become a regular speaker at several law schools. In 2003, one such event at Oregon’s Portland State University Law School was billed as “Lynne Stewart vs. John Ashcroft.” Another engagement at the Arizona State University School of Law was entitled “Emphatically Not Guilty.” A Stanford University speech was canceled by Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan, when she learned of Stewart’s advocacy of violence.

Stewart is certainly not without her admirers. According to the IRS, left-wing activist George Soros gave Stewart a $20,000 donation for her legal defense. In addition to money, Stewart also receives honors. In 2003, the law students at City University of New York voted to honor her with that school’s Public Interest Lawyer of the Year award. However, once news of the award was picked up by the press, the dean thought better of it and rescinded the offer.

Stewart has remained defiant and filled with hatred for the United States. Stewart’s official website (www.LynneStewart.org) states that her prosecution is “an obvious attempt by the U.S. government to silence dissent, curtail vigorous defense lawyers and instill fear in those who would fight against the U.S. government’s racism.”…

Stewart is as hypocritical as she is unrepentant. She has said that she approves of Fidel Castro “locking up” dissidents, but complains that the U.S. government has prosecuted her to “silence dissent.” Apparently, imprisonment is fine when communists use it against those who speak out for their freedom, but somehow wrong when it is used by a democratic republic against their enemies.

However, while Stewart seems to relish the role of dissident martyr, she is neither a dissident, nor is she a martyr. She is in fact, a convicted felon who has aided and abetted a terrorist leader and his organization. Period.

It is more than outrageous that Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean who sat in prison for two years, for shooting a drug smuggler, were not allowed to remain free while their appeals were pending (as is customary for law enforcement officers charged with crimes relating to the performance of their job), though Lynne Stewart who knowingly and willfully gave aid to a terrorist was given that courtesy.

While a lengthy sentence for someone who has colluded with the enemy during a time of war is of course not without precedence, it is also not without precedence that one could be put to death for this crime. Had Lynne Stewart committed her crime during World War II or even the early days of the Cold War, she would have undoubtedly been hanged for her actions.

Stewart however, has been the beneficiary of a federal bench heavy with left-leaning judges and a political climate which now has a great tolerance for what our parents and grandparents knew to be treason.

Every single day which Lynne Stewart was allowed to give speeches, talk to magazines, attend swanky dinners for some leftist cause, and sign autographs for adoring college students was a terrible affront not only to those who were killed and maimed in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, but to every man and woman who has ever fought and died for this country. 

A child of Islam

From the Religion of Peace

Thomas Sowell writes about the Obama administration’s decision to try 9/11 terrorists in a federal court in New York. Read the whole article here.

This is how he concludes:

The mindset of the left … was spelled out in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, which said that “Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way — the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation’s adherence to the rule of law.”

This is not the rule of law but the application of laws to situations for which they were not designed.

How many Americans may pay with their lives for the intelligence secrets and methods that can forced to be disclosed to Al Qaeda was not mentioned. Nor was there mention of how many foreign nations and individuals whose cooperation with us in the war on terror have been involved in countering Al Qaeda — nor how many foreign nations and individuals will have to think twice now, before cooperating with us again, when their role can be revealed in court to our enemies, who can exact revenge on them.

Behind this decision and others is the notion that we have to demonstrate our good faith to other nations, sometimes called “world opinion.” Just who are these saintly nations whose favor we must curry, at the risk of American lives and the national security of the United States? 

Internationally, the law of the jungle ultimately prevails, despite pious talk about “the international community” and “world opinion,” or the pompous and corrupt farce of the United Nations. Yet this is the gallery to which Barack Obama has been playing, both before and after becoming President of the United States. 

In the wake of the obscenity of a trial of terrorists in federal court for an act of war — and the worldwide propaganda platform it will give them — it may seem to be a small thing that President Obama has been photographed yet again bowing deeply to a foreign ruler. But how large or small an act is depends on its actual consequences, not on whether the politically correct intelligentsia think it is no big deal.

As a private citizen, Barack Obama has a right to make as big a jackass of himself as he wants to. But, as President of the United States, his actions not only denigrate a nation that other nations rely on for survival, but raise questions about how reliable our judgment and resolve are — which in turn raises questions about whether those nations will consider themselves better off to make the best deal they can with our enemies.

Obama in China, at a ‘press conference’ where no one was allowed to ask questions, read a statement in which he said:

We [himself and President Hu] agreed that the Islamic Republic of Iran must provide assurances to the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful and transparent. Iran has an opportunity to present and demonstrate its peaceful intentions but if it fails to take this opportunity, there will be consequences.

Tremble! What might they be?

Again extending the time Iran has been given to change its policy while yet more diplomatic efforts are made to dissuade the mullahs from developing nuclear weapons.

Gosh! But if they still go on developing them?

Well then … there will be consequences.

As the powerless King Lear threatens:

I will do such things —

What they are yet I know not, but they shall be

The terrors of the earth!

Knock ’em down here, they pop up there! There is no way the ‘coalition forces’ – ie the US and Britain – can win the war in Afghanistan, or make the Afghans peaceful and democratic, or bring relief to their appallingly maltreated women and girls.

The war long since ceased to be for the cause of revenge and punishment. Those aims were accomplished early on. It has become a war of philanthropy. But it is not the business of nations to make other nations happy and good.

Having to accept that others ‘do it all wrong’ and there’s nothing you can do to put them right may be hard, but it’s an essential lesson that the well-meaning have to learn.

Christopher Booker writes in the Telegraph:

As both Britain and America are plunged into an orgy of tortured introspection over what we are doing in Afghanistan, a further very important factor needs to be fed into the discussion, because it helps to explain not only why we have got into such a tragic mess but also why our armed intervention in that unhappy country is doomed.

What we are hardly ever told about Afghanistan is that it has been for 300 years the scene of a bitter civil war, between two tribal groups of Pashtuns (formerly known as Pathans). On one side are the Durranis – most of the settled population, farmers, traders, the professional middle class. On the other are the Ghilzai, traditionally nomadic, fiercely fundamentalist in religion, whose tribal homelands stretch across into Pakistan as far as Kashmir.

Ever since Afghanistan emerged as an independent nation in 1709, when the Ghilzai kicked out the Persians, its history has been written in the ancient hatred between these two groups. During most of that time, the country has been ruled by Durrani, who in 1775 moved its capital from the Ghilzai stronghold of Kandahar up to Kabul in the north. Nothing has more fired Ghilzai enmity than the many occasions when the Durrani have attempted to impose their rule from Kabul with the aid of “foreigners”, either Tajiks from the north or outsiders such as the British, who invaded Afghanistan three times between 1838 and 1919 in a bid to secure the North-west Frontier of their Indian empire against the rebellious Ghilzai.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, after years of Durrani rule, it was to support a revolutionary Ghilzai government. But this new foreign presence inspired general Afghan resistance which was why, by the late 1980s, the Americans were supporting the almost entirely Ghilzai-run Taleban and their ally Osama bin Laden. In 1996 the Taleban-Ghilzai got their revenge, imposing their theocratic rule over almost the whole country. In 2001, we invaded to topple the Taleban, again imposing Durrani rule, now under the Durrani President Karzai.

As so often before, the Ghilzai have seen their country hijacked by a Durrani regime, supported by a largely Tajik army and by hated outsiders from the West. One reason why we find it so hard to win “hearts and minds” in Helmand is that we are up against a sullenly resentful population, fired by a timeless hatred and able to call on unlimited support, in men and materiel, from their Ghilzai brothers across the border in Pakistan.

Only in towns such as Sanguin and Garmsir are there islands of Durrani, willing to support the Durrani government in distant Kabul. No sooner have our forces “secured” a village from the Taleban, than their fighters re-emerge from the surrounding countryside to reclaim it for the Ghilzai cause. Without recognising this, and that what the Ghilzai really want is an independent “Pashtunistan” stretching across the border, we shall never properly understand why, like so many foreigners who have become embroiled in Afghanistan before, we have stumbled into a war we can never hope to win.

The Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in World War I, and was broken up by the victorious allies. Parts of it became Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel.

Mustafa Kemal, later known as Kemal Atatürk, was the president of the first Turkish republic brought into existence by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

The Turkish sultan had borne the title of Caliph. Under Atatürk the caliphate was abolished in 1924. Turkey became a constitutionally democratic state with an elected parliament. Even women were enfranchised in 1934.

From 1928, Islam ceased to be the state religion. Men were forbidden to grow beards. If they did, Atatürk had them forcibly shaved. He forbade polygamy. Women threw off the veil. In fact, despite the institutions and procedures of democracy, Atatürk wielded dictatorial powers, but he used them to modernize his country.

By the time he died in 1938, the republic was firmly established as a secular state.

In 1952 Turkey became a member of the (then three year old) North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The second Turkish republic, established with a new constitution in 1961, proved itself a firm friend and ally of the United States.

After an outbreak of civil violence in 1980, in which more than 2,000 people died, the army intervened, martial law was declared, General Kenan Evren seized control of the government and restored order. A new constitution of 1982 established the autonomy of the army and gave it extraordinary powers over civilian affairs. The army remained the guarantor of Turkey’s secularism, even after martial law was lifted in 1987.

In 1991, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the US went to war to force his withdrawal, Turkey permitted the American air force to launch strikes against Iraq from its territory.

A woman, Tansu Çiller, became prime minister in 1993 – to the consternation, no doubt, of the Islamic world. A year later a downturn in the economy led to loss of faith in the secular government among some sections of the population, and Islamic fundamentalism began to spread. In elections of 1995 the largest share of the vote went to an Islamist party, which acquired modified power in a coalition government under Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of the Islamist party. This development threatened an end to the secular state.

The army intervened. It forced the resignation of Erbakan and his replacement by a secularist.

In 1991, Turkey took military action to put down an armed rebellion of Kurdish nationalists. The Kurdistan Workers Part (PKK) used terrorist methods, including suicide bombing. In 1999, with the capture of the rebel leader, the conflict died down. In that year Turkey was invited to apply for membership of the European Union (EU).

The invitation did not provide an easy path for Turkey’s accession. First the Brussels bureaucracy objected to Turkey’s ‘human rights’ record. When Turkey made reforms in order to become more acceptable, it was told that the power of the army was an impediment to its joining. Woodenly, the EU decision-makers either didn’t understand or deliberately ignored the fact that the Turkish army was what kept Turkey the sort of country that could co-operate successfully with Western powers, by keeping it from becoming an Islamic state.

Popular support for Islamism grew. Relations between Turkey and the West deteriorated. In 2003 the parliament refused permission to the United States to invade Iraq from US bases in Turkey. At that point Turkey should have been expelled from NATO. It wasn’t, but a rift came between Turkey and the United States. A long-established friendship between Turkey and Israel also began to cool.

Islamism continues to gain popularity in Turkey. An Islamist party is in power. Beards and the veil have made a comeback. The army is losing power. It has not succeeded in opposing a developing alliance between Turkey and Iran. It was almost certainly against the wishes of the army that Turkey recently cancelled joint military exercises with Israel.

On October 28, 2009, the prime minister of Turkey, Tayyep Recep Erdogan, and the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, met for talks. According to Israeli sources (in a report of November 10, 2009), they agreed that Turkey, still a member of NATO, will pass on intelligence to Tehran concerning any preparations Israel makes for a strike on Iran’s nuclear development facilities. Presumably this would mean that intelligence concerning Israel-US military co-operation can fall into Iranian hands.

What seems certain enough is that Turkey is now aligned with the Islamic enemies of the United States, and NATO is harboring a traitor. The US should be taking damage-limiting action. But we don’t expect Obama to be troubled enough by this development to do anything about it. He’s probably in favor of it.

Jillian Becker  November 14, 2009

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday [November 11, 2009] to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.

On the same day, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd  said that he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation’s mosques.

The former Prime Minister, John Howard, famously said in September 2007:

Immigrants, not Australians, must adapt. Take it or leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.

However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the ‘politically correct’ crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others. I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Australia. ‘However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand. This idea of Australia being a multi-cultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. And as Australians, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle.

This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom.

We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society . Learn the language!

Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.’

We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.

If the Southern Cross offends you, or you don’t like ‘A Fair Go’, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don’t care how you did things where you came from. By all means, keep your culture, but do not force it on others.

This is our country, our land, and our lifestyle, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about our flag, our pledge, our  Christian beliefs, or our way of life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, the right to leave.

If you aren’t happy here then leave.  We didn’t force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country you accepted.

We applaud John Howard for his words, and Kevin Rudd for his recent actions. We wish that the political leaders of other Western countries would say and do the same.

But of course Australia has the immense advantage of being an independent democracy, unlike Britain and other European countries which are now ruled undemocratically by an authoritarian oligarchy in Brussels.

PS  We have no objection to the part about God. What Howard said about Australia’s Christianity is true. We like tradition and approve the observance of it. In any case, Christianity has become a comparatively harmless religion.