Now for some information and items of news, important and trivial, from the wretched Third World. (Than which, Obama would have us know, we are no better.)

Item One

In Kyrgyzstan, ethnic violence rages, with multitudes killed, injured, displaced.

Gangs of young Kyrgyz men armed with firearms and metal bars were marching on Uzbek neighbourhoods and setting homes on fire. The Government has declared a state of emergency.

Thousands of terrified ethnic Uzbeks were fleeing toward the nearby border with Uzbekistan. A witness saw bodies of children killed in the stampede. Troops and armour sent into the city have failed to stop the rampages.

Russia  – which is to say Putin – incited it. His motive? To force the removal of a US air base essential for supplying the armed forces in Afghanistan. Read all about it here in a full and clear account by Daniel Greenfield. The nub of it:

The reality however is that Russia created the rioting and the massacres for its own agenda. Putin wanted to drive out the US airbase in Kyrgyzstan, even at the cost of inflaming ethnic tensions by appearing to endorse Uzbek separatism. Everything that followed can and should be laid at his doorstep.

Now Putin is trying to bring in the People’s Republic of China via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to form a united front on Kyrgyzstan in support of his own [President] Otunbayeva puppet regime. With a weak Obama Administration that was unable to respond even to Russia pulling off the Otunbayeva coup during an arms reduction treaty signing, as a deliberate slap in the face, Russia has nothing to worry about in the way of US interference.

(Well, they weren’t going so far as to build some houses in their capital city as the Israelis did when Joe Biden was visiting them, so why should Obama take offense?)

Item Two

There’ll be little international complaint about the bloodshed as both the Kyrgyz and the Uzbecks are Muslim. Find here a crisp account of  religion in Kyrgyzstan, from which we quote:

The vast majority of today’s Kyrgyz are Muslims of the Sunni branch … The Uzbeks, who make up 12.9 percent of the population, are generally Sunni Muslims.

Alongside Islam the Kyrgyz tribes also practiced totemism, the recognition of spiritual kinship with a particular type of animal. Under this belief system, which predated their contact with Islam, Kyrgyz tribes adopted reindeer, camels, snakes, owls, and bears as objects of worship. The sun, moon, and stars also played an important religious role. The strong dependence of the nomads on the forces of nature reinforced such connections and fostered belief in shamanism (the power of tribal healers and magicians with mystical connections to the spirit world) and black magic as well. Traces of such beliefs remain in the religious practice of many of today’s Kyrgyz.

Item Three

On the romantic Indonesian island of Bali, a man was seduced by a cow.

A neighbour caught Gusti Ngurah Alit allegedly wooing the farm animal …

Alit said he didn’t see an animal, he saw a beautiful young woman.

“She called my name and seduced me, so I had sex with her,” the man [said].

Alit underwent a cleansing ritual. The village chief gave the owner of the cow the equivalent of $562. …

Islamic ruling from Khomeini’s Teachings on sex with infants and animals:

“If the animal was sodomized while alive by a man … the animal must be taken outside the city and sold.”

And/or:

“If one commits an act of sodomy with a cow, a ewe, or a camel, their urine and their excrements become impure, and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed as quickly as possible and burned, and the price of it paid to its owner by him who sodomized it.”

And the man?

“If a man (God protect him from it!) fornicates with an animal and ejaculates, ablution is necessary.”

In this instance, the cow was drowned.

Now if only she’d been wearing a burqa …

It is not difficult to see what Obama likes and does not like, wants and does not want, and what is the general thrust of his world-view and political agenda.

He likes climate change. It’s an ideal cause for the far left, because if only people can be hoodwinked into believing that it constitutes a threat to all life on the planet, government can claim that it must be dealt with by forcing us to change the way we live. Dealing with it can hugely tighten government control – not just by the US government but by some global uber-body that can enforce subjection world-wide.

He likes Islam. There’s a pile of evidence for this: his Cairo speech, his bowing to the “king” of Saudi Arabia, his reluctance to interfere with Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, his reaching out to Syria … the full list would be long.

He does not like American military superiority, or American exceptionalism in any form, including its superiority in space exploration (with its potential for enhancing military power).

On January 27, 2010, the Orlando Sentinel reported that:

NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all. …

The White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible. …

The White House budget request, which is certain to meet fierce resistance in Congress, scraps the Bush administration’s Vision for Space Exploration and signals a major reorientation of NASA, especially in the area of human spaceflight.

“We certainly don’t need to go back to the moon,” said one administration official.

Everyone interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity, either because they are not authorized to talk for the White House or because they fear for their jobs.

But Indonesia and other Muslim countries will be getting US help with launching rockets?

On February 16, 2010, the same paper reported that:

Barack Obama has asked NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy.

Specifically, he talked about connecting with countries that do not have an established space program and helping them conduct science missions. He mentioned new opportunities with Indonesia, including an educational program that examines global climate change.

“We really like Indonesia because the State Department, the Department of Education [and] other agencies in the U.S. are reaching out to Indonesia as the largest Muslim nation in the world. We would love to establish partners there,” Bolden said.

 David Horowitz’s Freedom Center has just published a short book on this subject by Robert Spencer, the dependable expert on Islam.

It can be found at Front Page Magazine and needs to be read. This is from the introductory pages: 

Fearful of offending Muslim sensibilities, the

international community has averted its gaze

[from the massacre of Christians in Indonesia],

allowing the persecution to take place in the darkness. Nowhere else is

religious bigotry legitimated by holy writ, in this case the

Quran, or by a significant number of religious leaders, in this

case imams. Nowhere else does religious bigotry have such

bloody consequences. Nowhere else does such religious

bigotry take place almost entirely without comment, let

alone condemnation, from the human rights community.

Christian persecution by Muslims has become a familiar

narrative, repeated with terrifying frequency in Muslim

controlled areas throughout the world …