An article from the Institute of Middle Eastern Democracy:

A very interesting study here by iKibbitz on the nature of the HRC’s vote last Thursday based on the evidence provided in the Goldstone report. The article looks at the Freedom Index scores given to countries that voted for the resolution, against and abstained.

Although this is never an outright reason to dismiss a democratic vote on a resolution, given the enormous amount of criticism of Goldstone and his study – this now paired with this examination of the Freedom Index scores given to the countries that voted for the resolution – certainly provides a strong basis to levy further examination and criticism of the report’s relevance and usefulness.

Another interesting article that has to come light is…read on

A ship named the Francop, carrying cargo from Iran to Syria, was intercepted and searched Tuesday near Cyprus by the Israeli navy. Hundreds of tons of weaponry were found on it, including some 3,000 rockets almost certainly destined for Hizbullah.

The president of the United States seems not to regard this as being of any importance. We cannot find that he has said anything about it.

He issued a statement to commemorate the taking of 66 American hostages in Tehran on November 4, 1979, in which he had nothing to say about the continuing mass demonstrations inside Iran against the regime, or the violent treatment to which the demonstrators are being subjected.

He said:

Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November 4, 1979 deeply affected the lives of courageous Americans who were unjustly held hostage, and we owe these Americans and their families our gratitude for their extraordinary service and sacrifice.

This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust, and confrontation. I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.

Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history. The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice, and their courageous pursuit of universal rights. It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.

Michael Ledeen reports and comments at PajamasMedia:

Big demonstrations still going on all over the country: Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Zahedan, Arak, Mazandaran, Tabriz, Rasht confirmed so far, and no doubt we will hear of others in the next hours and days.

The regime has failed to intimidate the people; the effect of the violence, the brutal savagery, the mass rapes, executions, and torture is to intensify their contempt (they trampled pictures of Supreme Leader Khamenei). …

Alas, their contempt is not limited to their own tyrants. It extends to President Obama, who today issued a masterpiece of appeasement and all but groveled in begging the leaders of the Islamic Republic to make a deal. …

He could not spare a single word for the plight of the people of Iran, who were being beaten, clubbed, stabbed and shot as he issued his statement.

This is Jimmy Carter all over again, and just as Carter’s appeasement of the Islamic Republic led to the death of countless innocents, in Iran and around the world, so Obama’s appeasement will do the same. He, and his administration, are accomplices to evil.

It’s a metaphor from the German-speaking world: a bicyclist – one who treads down hard (as when pedaling) on those he despises while he bows (as over handlebars) to those he respects.

*

Ben Rhodes, who is Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications and the writer of many of his foreign policy speeches (now you know the name of the culprit), said, according to The Washington Post:

“Our interests are the same with our allies and our adversaries. We’re saying the same thing to everybody. Our interests are the same no matter what country we’re talking to.”

If this were really the Weltanschauung shaping Obama’s foreign policy, it would be not merely misconceived, not just naive, not even simply stupid – it would be lunatic.

But in fact he doesn’t treat friends and foes alike.

Bowing to America’s ‘adversaries’, he  –

Gently propitiates the Mullahcracy of Iran and lets it become a nuclear power. Ditto the Despotism of North Korea. Kindly lets Iranian and al-Qaeda terrorists roar back into Iraq. Cozies up to Dictator Hugo Chavez. Literally bows to Saudi Arabia’s tyrant-in-chief who is spreading ‘soft’ jihad throughout America and the whole Western world. Lends a sympathetic hand to the flesh-eating Molloch of the Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, to help him evade trial. Yields graciously to rapacious Russia. Implores the barbaric Taliban to grant him a face-saving peace in Afghanistan [see the post immediately below]. Creeps cap-in-hand to Communist China. Plays nice with the slave-keepers of Cuba.

Stamping on America’s friends, he –

Snaps his fingers at Britain. Bullies Honduras. Cold-shoulders Colombia. Alienates Israel. Refuses to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Looks the other way while Georgia is invaded and partially occupied by Russia. Breaks US promises of defense shields to Poland and the Czech Republic and, as an afterthought, lets them know his irrevocable decision with a casual midnight phone call – or does he get Hillary to text them the message?

Far from stopping Iran from making nuclear weapons, the Obama administration has legitimized its efforts and given it yet more time to advance its project.

From Investors.com (Investor’s Business Daily):

The mullahs ruling Islamofascist Iran are having a fine laugh at the easily beguiled infidels running U.S. foreign policy. First they agree to a nuclear “diplomatic breakthrough.” Then they say no.

The week before last, when Iran’s negotiators agreed to send most of its enriched uranium out of the country, diplomats in the U.S. and Europe were popping the champagne corks.

But last week Iranian officials backtracked on the agreement reached in Vienna to send three-quarters of its nuclear material to Russia for processing, after which it would be returned. Some 2,600 pounds of uranium was to be shipped by mid-January.

The pact was supposed to give the U.S. a year of extra time to work its negotiating magic on the Islamist terror state, as well as hold off an attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities. …

Iran now wants to keep its uranium until it gets fuel from the West. And this change of mind comes right after dubiously re-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared: “We welcome cooperation on nuclear fuel, power plants and technology, and we are ready to cooperate.” …

Even if the Vienna deal had stuck, it makes a mockery of three U.N. Security Council declarations by legitimizing Tehran’s violations of the U.N. and allowing this fanatical, terrorist-supporting regime to continue its “peaceful” nuclear program. …

How can a theocratic government with a stone-age worldview take the most sophisticated, modern, industrialized nation in the world for a ride, as if we just fell off the turnip truck?

Because those who run Iran realize they are engaged in a global war. Those who now run American foreign policy, on the other hand, think “war on terror” is passe. Peace must be given a chance first, they think. And “yes, we can” make it work, without firing a shot. Hope will triumph. …

Think? Those who now run American foreign policy think?

Does this burble (from The Times of India) by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – delivered in Pakistan on Friday  when Iran said  ‘no’ – sound like thinking?

“We are working to determine exactly what they are willing to do, whether this was an initial response that is an end response or the beginning of getting to where we expect them to end up,” Clinton said.

The person so strangely elected president of the United States ‘dreams’ – as the president of France says –  of a world without nuclear arms. Or at least of an America without  nuclear arms. Obviously the dreamer does not care if Iran and North Korea have them.

Paul Greenberg writes:

Since the United States now has joined Europe in endorsing the mullahs’ right to develop nuclear power for ever so peaceful purposes, does it really matter whether this site [near Qom] or the next oh-so-secret installation has started producing nuclear weapons yet? The switch from nuclear power to nuclear weapons is less a scientific than a political decision for the Iranians at this point. And it can be made — and carried out — quickly.

Does anybody …  believe that Iran’s little fuehrer isn’t bent on producing a nuke of his own, and that his rocket scientists aren’t working feverishly on a way to deliver it?

It’s also an open secret (much like Iran’s nuclear processing plants) that, whatever his forceful statements about how Iran won’t be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, Barack Obama isn’t really going to do anything to prevent it. Any more than the United Nations is. Any more than the Clinton and Bush administrations prevented North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il from acquiring a nuke of his own.

Just as he’s slipsliding when it comes to the war in Afghanistan despite all his tough talk about having to win it, it becomes clearer that this president is willing to accept a nuclear-armed Iran. You can tell because he’s been so emphatic about never accepting such an outcome. …

We’ve come to a not so pretty pass when Americans have to rely on the president of France — France! — to face the truth and tell it to the world. After the American president had delivered one of his sweetness-and-light nuclear-disarmament lectures at the United Nations, it was left to Nicolas Sarkozy to tell it with the bark off the next day at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh:

“President Obama himself has said that he dreams of a world without nuclear weapons. Before our very eyes, two countries (North Korea and Iran) are doing exactly the opposite at this very moment. Since 2005, Iran has violated five Security Council resolutions. … I support America’s ‘extended hand.’ But what have these proposals for dialogue produced for the international community? Nothing but more enriched uranium and more centrifuges. And, last but not least, it has resulted in a statement by Iranian leaders calling for wiping off the map a member of the United Nations (Israel, of course). What are we to do? What conclusions are we to draw? At a certain moment hard facts will force us to make decisions.”

Not necessarily. Not as long as the president of the United States continues to consult, consult and consult. And then temporize, temporize and temporize. Until one day Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has his nuke. …

John Bolton … pretty much summed up the fine mess brewing in Iran:

“The more sophisticated Iran’s nuclear skills become, the more paths it has to manufacture nuclear weapons. The research-reactor bait-and-switch demonstrates convincingly why it cannot be trusted with fissile material under any peaceful guise. Proceeding otherwise would be winking at two decades of Iranian deception, which, unfortunately, Mr. Obama seems perfectly prepared to do.”

From Politico:

It’s the biggest mystery in global finance right now: Who conducted a sneak attack on the U.S. dollar this week?

It began with a thinly sourced but highly explosive report Monday in a British newspaper: Arab oil sheiks are conspiring with the Russians and Chinese to quit using the dollar to set the value of oil trades — a direct threat to the global supremacy of the greenback.

Is it true? Everyone from the head of the Saudi central bank to U.S. officials scrambled to undercut the story, but no matter.

With the U.S. economy on the ropes and America by far the world’s biggest debtor, investors aren’t feeling as secure about the dollar as they used to. And the notion of second-tier economies ganging up on Uncle Sam didn’t sound so far-fetched.

For American officials, the possibility of the dollar losing its long-term dominance in global commerce is a nightmare scenario because it would likely mean sharply higher interest rates at home and a declining ability to finance the U.S. debt. No one believes it could really happen right now, but stories like the British report this week make it seem incrementally more likely.

So the piece by Robert Fisk of the Independent shocked currency traders around the world and almost instantly sent the value of the U.S. dollar spiraling downward and the price of gold skyrocketing to an all-time high, as a hedge against a weakened dollar.

The website drudgereport.com quickly amplified the impact of the story with a headline atop the site: ARAB STATES LAUNCH SECRET MOVES WITH CHINA, RUSSIA, FRANCE TO STOP USING DOLLAR FOR OIL TRADING …

“You read that story, and you do two things: You sell the hell out of dollars and you buy gold,” said Les Alperstein, president of the financial research firm Washington Analysis. “The story has a lot of credibility, with some caveats.”

So who wanted dollars diving and gold rising? In other words, who is Fisk’s source, and why did he or she want to tank the dollar? It’s the global currency version of the old Washington parlor game of speculating on the real identity of Deep Throat.

No one knows. …

But what we do know is that Robert Fisk is the toadie of Arab despots, the propagandist of  terrorists, the hater and calumniator of Israel, the denigrator of America, and above all the veteran inventor of ‘news’. His reports of Middle Eastern wars have notoriously been full of vicious fabrications, designed to denigrate and impugn Israel. He does not need a Deep Throat – he is his own source. And he has not been ineffective. We grant him that. There can be little doubt he has contributed significantly to the continuing misery of the Palestinian people and the intensity of European anti-Semitism. Now he has had his biggest effect yet. There may be very little truth in his story, but such a tale told at such a time was sure to have a dramatic and dire effect.

This is a triumphant moment for a villain, the consummation of a career in bearing false witness.

At the Geneva talks, Iran has achieved a diplomatic victory, and at the same time full legitimacy for its program of nuclear enrichment. Furthermore, it could be helped, probably by Russia, to attain a higher grade of enrichment, raised from the present 5% to 19.75% – just .25% under weapons-grade. This tiny margin would allow Iran and its apologists – including the US administration – to maintain the fiction that Iran wants nuclear power for ‘civilian uses only’.  In fact, this help with the enrichment process would make it easy for Iran to produce a nuclear bomb in a few weeks.

And the Obama administration is happy with this outcome.

The Israeli government has released 20 Palestinian prisoners – the majority of them members of terror groups – in return for a video that verifies the health of captured solider Gilad Shalit.

In the video, Gilad speaks to the camera:

“Hello, I am Gilad, son of Noam and Aviva Schalit, brother of Hadas and Yoel, who lives in Mitzpe Hila. My ID number is 300097029.

“As you see I am holding in my hands the Palestine newspaper of September 14, 2009, published in Gaza. I am reading the paper in order to find information regarding myself, hoping to find some information from which I would learn of my release and upcoming return home. I have been hoping and waiting for the day of my release for a long time. I hope the current government under Binyamin Netanyahu will not waste the chance to finalize a deal, and I will therefore be able to finally have my dream come true and be released.

“I wish to send regards to my family and say to them that I love and miss them and yearn for the day in which I will see them again.

“Dad, Yoel and Hadas, do you remember the day when you visited my base on the Golan Heights on December 31st, 2005, that if I am not mistaken was called Revaya B. We walked around the base and you took photos of me on the Merkava tank and on one of the old tanks at the entrance to the base. We then went to a restaurant in one of the Druse villages and on the way we took photos on the side of the road with the snow-capped Mount Hermon in the background.

“I wish to say to you that I feel good, health-wise, and the Mujahadeen of the Izzadien al-Qassam Brigades are treating me very well. Thank you and goodbye.”

This unending appeasement of terror for little gain is something that the Israeli state will regret – every act of weakness will be exploited. How many more murderers and terrorists must be released before the Israeli state still fails to return Gilad to his home?

It is a troubling scenario – Israeli has a duty to its soldiers; but it also has a duty to its people, and will granting Hamas agitprop trophies and imprisoned killers do anything for Israel’s fortunes and survival in the long run?

This move will not spell peace for the Palestinians, it will increase the chances of another Hamas-started war. As long as such a despotic group exists, there can be no liberty or democracy for the people of Gaza.

This exchange is reminiscent of the release of Samir Kuntar. The moment he walked into Lebanon as a free man spelt the end of a hard earned 60 years cultivating the image of Israel as a capable, tough and proud state. Samir Kuntar is one of the most despised villains of Israeli society: a vicious murderer, his crimes included the inhuman beating to death of a three year old Israeli girl in front of horrified witnesses.

My horror at the release of this epitome of evil is not the support for his crimes that is propagated by Middle Eastern fundamentalist media outlets and despotic governments; it is not even shock at the (frankly expected) Western indifference for this monster – instead I am appalled by the virus that goes by the name of appeasement that has risen again to infect the integrity – or lack thereof – manifested by the weak politicians and activists of the liberal West.

The release of Samir Kuntar, four other terrorists and the hundreds of remains of dead Lebanese murderers marked the beginning of the end. Israel, more than any country, should realise that appeasement is a policy that will never work to their advantage.Machiavelli once wrote, “…one should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid a war, for war is not avoided thereby but merely deferred to one’s own disadvantage.”

Kuntar’s relase sent chilling reminders of Chamberlain’s efforts to secure peace; or the IRA murderers given their ill-gotten freedom by Blair’s government; the US government’s protection of Arafat in 1982; the attempted appeasement of Saddam Hussein before the 1990 Gulf War; the encouraged promotion of Islamic culture above all others in Western countries by Western governments; the suggestions of British judges for allowing some form of sharia law in Britain – the last hundred years have shown a frightening propensity for the West to fail to learn from its mistakes and to allow the forces of evil a chance to exist and prosper.

At the time, the release of the five terrorists for two dead Israeli soldiers, met one of Hezbollah’s few demands, another being the return of the Sheba farms to Lebanon. Is it that these unforgettable years of terrorism, torture, murder – the kind of cruelty unimaginable to civilized society – have all just been for the return of a few hundred yards of farm and a child murderer? – appeasement gives terror groups and terror States the time and support to commit even worse atrocities.

After Kuntar’s release, Hamas decided it was no longer going to agree to Israeli terms for the return of Gilad Shalit and was to demand greater returns for the terrorist group. Furthermore, a group of British MPs called for a dialogue with Palestinian terror groups, Hamas included; breaking the policy of no recognition that most Western countries had pursued at the time.

These endless sacrifices for Shalit may all be in vain. It is Israel’s duty to return that soldier home, but in doing so, should it be risking the lives and well-being of her other citizens?

Sam Westrop runs the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy

Israel is to exchange 20 female Palestinian terrorist prisoners for a video of its long-held captured soldier Gilad Shalit, that might prove he is still alive.

The exchange has begun. Read about it here.

On the fourth anniversary of the publication of the Muhammad cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, we consider the question: has terrorism proved itself a successful tactic in the Islamic jihad against the rest of the world?:

In the 20th century, in the era of the Cold War, most of the world’s terrorist groups were ideologically communist, whatever else they were: revolutionary, or national-separatist, or national-liberationist. Most of them were aided and abetted by the Soviet Union. (So were small groups of young, free, prosperous West Europeans who committed acts of terrorism on the pretext of serving selfless causes but primarily to get a thrill out of it, such as the so-called Baader-Meinhof group.) There were no terrorist groups within the Communist Bloc.

In Latin America and Africa some groups gained their objectives, and their success may have been due in part to their use of terrorism; but it cannot be said that terrorism proved a reliably winning tactic wherever it was tried, and it certainly cannot be said that Communism won.

In the 21st century, however, terrorism has been highly successful. Almost all terrorist activity since the turn of the century has been perpetrated by Muslims acting in the name of Islam. It can accurately and fairly be called ‘Islamic terrorism’ without implying that every Muslim in the world is a terrorist, any more, it might be said, than ‘Basque terrorism’ taints every citizen of the Basque country. Yet the comparison would be misleading. While it is true enough that every Muslim is not an active terrorist, it is nevertheless the religious duty of every Muslim to help the advance of holy war against the non-Muslim world. Confirmation that Muslim terrorists are intent on fulfilling a religious duty may be found in these unequivocal statements by the 9/11 plotters, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five others, submitted in writing at their trial in December 2008: ‘Our prophet was victorious because of fear… our religion is a religion of fear and terror to the enemies of God: the Jews, Christians, and pagans. With God’s willing, we are terrorists to the bone. So, many thanks to God… We ask to be near to God, we fight you and destroy you and terrorize you. The Jihad in god’s [sic] cause is a great duty in our religion.’

All collectivist ideologies – for glaring examples Nazism and Communism – are intrinsically violent, since the collective obedience of a citizenry can only be sustained by force. Islam is a collectivist ideology and this alone makes it intrinsically violent; but more explicitly, Islam demands of every one of its devotees that he (and she) be a holy warrior against all who remain outside of its collective. It teaches that to die in a violent onslaught against unbelievers is the highest service a Muslim can render to its God, so a ‘martyr’ who kills himself while perpetrating murder will be rewarded by God with instant admission into an eternity of sensual rewards in a leisurely afterlife.

Other collectivist creeds employ torturers and executioners to terrorize their collective into remaining submissive, and employ individuals to deliver their fellow citizens into the hands of the torturers and executioners; but Islam goes further and lays on every one of its votaries a God-ordered duty to kill for the cause of conquest, or at the very least to assist a fellow Muslim to kill. Since they do not fear death, nothing can stop Islam’s holy warriors. Their willingness, their positive eagerness to die for their cause, powerfully promotes success.

No wonder then that Islamic terrorism has succeeded. The ‘Muhammad cartoon’ episode alone demonstrates its triumph. When, four years ago today, a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Islam’s prophet, Muslims reacted by threatening civil disorder throughout Europe, killing Christians in the Middle East, and so intimidating the editors of almost all other newspapers in the world that very few dared to reproduce the cartoons. European governments cringed, apologized, and groveled. Even in America, a book about the cartoons omits the cartoons themselves, because the publishers, Yale University, fear Muslim reprisals.

Fear of Islam has become a fact of life in Europe. All EU governments rush to gratify the demands of their growing and incendiary Muslim minorities. Police are reluctant to enforce the law in ‘Muslim areas’. Judges hesitate or refuse to impose harsh sentences on Muslims who incite and plot violence, or to deport them. The indigenous populations are effectively ‘dhimmified’: rendered subservient to the will of the Muslim immigrants. There, by the use of terrorism, Islam has won.

In America, as this is being written, Muslims have been charged with plotting or attempting to carry out violent attacks with weapons of mass destruction in New York, Chicago, Dallas, and a Marine Corps base in New Mexico. An organizer of the Muslim march on Washington, D.C. on September 25th wrote on his Facebook site: ‘We don’t want to democratize Islam, we want to Islamize democracy.’

The dhimmification of America with its much larger population will take longer than it did in Europe, but day after day, step by step, Islam is making its gains. Governments, editors, police, judges, citizens already hesitate to use their constitutional right to speak freely if what they say might offend Muslims.

Since the mass murder of some 3,000 Americans by nineteen Muslims in 2001, there have been more than 14,000 Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The al-Qaeda organization, probably now headquartered in Pakistan, inspires and trains terrorists from Europe and America to carry out acts of mass murder in Western cities. The Islamic state of Iran sponsors Hizbullah, the terrorist organization that has battened on to Lebanon and threatens Israel; sends arms and equipment through Syria to terrorists in Iraq; supplies the Hamas terrorists with materiel so it can continue to wage perpetual rocket war against Israel from Gaza; and directly threatens Israel with annihilation by nuclear attack.

Against all this the United Nations, sentimentally established after the Second World War to be a peace maker, proves itself worse than useless, having long ago become an agency of the Islamic states, continually manipulated by them to lie and propagandize, and actively enable anti-Western violence.

How can civilization fend off this enemy whose power lies in its invulnerability to physical damage? What strategy can it plan – short of annihilation, which is hardly possible even if it were to be unconscionably contemplated, there being over a billion Muslims in the world? Legislatures cannot do it. Police forces cannot do it. Armies cannot do it.

An optimistic view is that prosperity could do it. Encourage immigration into Western countries and grant massive economic aid to Islamic states. The reasoning goes that as people become more prosperous they become better educated, have fewer children, are less influenced by – or even renounce – religion; they see and desire the benefits of western civilization, take advantage of its openness to individual effort, and try to become part of it rather than destroy it. Unfortunately it is a theory that has been tested and not proved. It is out of the prosperous third generation of Muslim immigrants that Islamic terrorists have arisen in Britain, to place bombs in trains and park a car full of explosive in the streets of its capital. Even if there were strong evidence in favor of the theory, an experiment that requires the First World to pour its resources into the Islamic Third World is unrealistic and impracticable because it is not affordable.

An alternative idea is to isolate the Islamic nations: apply extreme sanctions; refuse to trade with them, even though they have the oil that the West needs; do not give them aid; do not permit Muslim immigration into Western countries, and deport back to their countries of origin as many present immigrants as law and civilized values permit; in sum, leave Islam to its own devices, and let internecine conflict, lack of modern technology, poor medical knowledge and general ignorance take their toll of the enemy to reduce it to impotence. This too is unrealistic, if for no other reason than that such measures would offend the sense of moral self-worth that determines the political choices of at least half the people in the Western world; those who hold compassion as their highest value and vote for parties that claim to be motivated by it – in other words, the political left.

There is no easy answer. The civilized world has at present the intellectual and economic, as well as military advantage over Islam. But if it cannot find a way with all its powers to preserve itself, it will be overcome. Europe has chosen not to resist. When most of Europe as well as most of Asia have become fully Islamized, as they very likely will be, how might America, if it is still free, deal with such a changed world? What will it do to ensure its survival when it is the last stronghold of civilization?

Jillian Becker September 30,  2009