Walid Phares writes:

The so-called Somali pirates are strategically different from their historical predecessors in the Caribbean or from their contemporary colleagues in archipelagoes around the world. They aren’t a vast collection of individual thugs, acting as bands replicating what successful sea gangs have accomplished for centuries before them. There are too many of them, operating from extremely long shores, all using similar methods, and are backed from hinterland forces.

 

They may seem like pirates as they seize ships and negotiate for the ransom. But these water thugs actually belong to a wider chess game. The grand ensemble of the army of little boats is in fact part of a regional Jihadi apparatus being deployed in the horn of Africa and beyond. The Jihadi grand circle building in the region is not limited to the pirates but involves hostile forces from the mid Red Sea to East Africa. The Somali pirates are merely one facet of this grand circle…

 

The end aim is to create a vast zone of insecurity stretching from East Africa to the Red Sea. A closer look allows strategists to easily realize that these are the maritime passages from the Oil rich Gulf to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal and also parts of the East African alternative routes the most economic via Cape Town… This operation is of regional-international dimensions. It is about holding these passages hostage… It is a maritime Jihad striking at the Western/international lifeline on high seas to bring about a change in balance of power…

 

The so-called pirates are being used by land-based forces to drag the enemy [the non-Muslim world] into a wider war in the region …

 

Two months ago, Eritrea and the Iranian regime signed an agreement granting naval facilities to the Khomeinist military ships to use the country’s ports and eventually build a base on the Red Sea. Last month, reports signaled an alignment of military intelligence between the Sudanese and Iranian regimes and Hezbollah’s networks in the region…

 

 Robert Spencer writes:

An Iranian newspaper has reported that four American banks have issued formal requests to the Central Bank of Iran to open branches in Iran. Citibank, Goldman Sachs and two others left unnamed plan, according to the report, to establish temporary branches in an Iranian free trade zone if their requests are approved. The newspaper Jaam-e-Jam quoted an unnamed source explaining: “If they can work according to Iran’s banking law, they will be allowed to open branches in Tehran and other cities.”

Is this where the bailout money is going? 

It is curious that American banks – which probably wouldn’t still be in business but for the taxpayers’ largesse – would want to do business in a country where the government holds military parades featuring banners proclaiming “Death to America” and whose President has declared: “I say accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible.” 

It is just as ominous in the long term that the banks would apparently be willing to “work according to Iran’s banking law.” So in other words, Western banks operating in Islamic countries have to abide by Sharia Finance restrictions. And meanwhile, Western banks operating in Western countries likewise are increasingly accommodating Sharia Finance restrictions.

This is yet another manifestation of a stealth jihad phenomenon that is manifesting itself today in many areas besides finance: in Muslim countries, Muslims demand that Westerners conform to Islamic sensibilities, and likewise in Western countries, Muslims demand that Westerners conform to Islamic sensibilities…  

The most notorious example of accommodation to Islam is the increasing popularity of Sharia Finance, which Western banking institutions are rushing to offer to Muslims in the West even more quickly than they are rushing to open branches in the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

There is, after all, so very much money to be made. Najib Fayyad of Unicorn Capital Turkey explains: “There are Islamic finance institutions operating in over 75 countries and with assets estimated at around US$700 billion, a figure which is growing at a rate of about 15% a year.” Some of the West’s leading financial institutions, including (besides Citibank and Goldman Sachs) Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Dow Jones, HSBC Bank, Lloyd’s, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Standard & Poors, have created “Sharia Advisory Boards,” staffed with Islamic clerics and scholars, in order to help them bring their financial practices into line with Islamic norms.

A benign exercise in multiculturalism? Not quite. Christopher Holton, Vice President of the Center for Security Policy, states that “America is losing the financial war on terror because Wall Street is embracing a subversive enemy ideology on one hand and providing corporate life support to state sponsors of terrorism on the other hand.” …

What’s more, Sharia Finance is another tool of Islamic separatism: instead of assimilating into American society, Muslims are demanding, and receiving, parallel financial institutions that reinforce the idea that they are unique, not subject to the laws and norms to which the rest of us are subject – a privileged class. At the same time, Sharia Finance initiatives are giving Islamic interests increasing control over Western economic life… 

The multiculturalist anxiety to accommodate Muslim principles and practices only makes Westerners even more vulnerable. Yet instead of engaging in careful strategic planning of both domestic and international initiatives, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and two other American financial institutions are working on opening branches in a country that has considered itself at war with the United States for thirty years. 

It is a test of Congressional resolve to regulate financial institutions. Will they allow the banks which American money has just saved to establish branches in a state sponsor of terrorism? 

 Pakistan is disintegrating. There the Taliban is rapidly gaining territory and power, and it may not be long before it has its hands on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. And that would mean al-Qaeda will own The Bomb. 

The US under the Obama presidency will do nothing to prevent this happening. And it would be against India taking action to destroy Pakistan’s  nuclear installations.

Likewise, it will do nothing to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed power. And it is against Israel taking action to destroy Iran’s nuclear development sites.

Caroline Glick warns:

The situation in Pakistan of course is similar to the situation in Iran. There, as Iran moves swiftly towards the nuclear club, the US on the one hand refuses – as it does with Pakistan – to make the hard but essential decision to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. And on the other hand, it warns Israel daily that it opposes any independent Israeli operation to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state. That is, the Obama administration is forcing Israel to weigh the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran against the threat of an abrogation of its strategic alliance with the US in the event that it prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power on its own.

In both Pakistan and Iran, the clock is ticking. The US’s reluctance to face up to the ugliness of the options at its disposal will not make them any prettier. Indeed, with each passing day the stark choice placed before America and its allies becomes ever more apparent. In both Pakistan and Iran, the choice is and will remain seeing the US and its allies taking swift and decisive action to neutralize nuclear programs that threaten global security, or seeing the world’s worst actors successfully arm themselves with the world’s most dangerous weapons. 

From an article in Newsmax by Ken Timmerman (read it all here): 

When newly appointed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Barack Obama next month, don’t expect a public spat over peace process politics. Sources in the new government tell Newsmax that the Israeli prime minister is determined to focus all of his energy on convincing Obama that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons dwarfs all other concerns either nation could have. Netanyahu sees the threat from a nuclear-armed Iran as a “hinge of history,” that could fundamentally alter the world if it goes unchallenged, sources told Newsmax in Jerusalem on Tuesday. 

If the world fails to meet the challenge of stopping the Iranian regime’s nuclear quest, Netanayhu believes “this could be a turning point that is irreversible.”

Should Iran succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons, it would be the first time that a radical Islamic regime dedicated to Israel’s destruction had ever acquired such massive destructive power. “We cannot assume that the normal rational calculations other actors have had for the last 50 or 60 years are going to hold true,” one source said.

But what if Obama desires that irreversible historical change? What if he desires Israel’s destruction? Every appointment he has made in connection with Middle East policy, every step he has taken since coming to power in relation to the Arabs and Islam, has demonstrated his sympathy with the Islamic powers – even to the point of inventing a ‘moderate Taliban’. His decision to base his Israel-Palestine policy on the Saudi plan, which is a formula for the destruction of Israel, confirms his lack of sympathy for the Jewish State. We suspect that Netanyahu is extremely unlikely to change Obama’s mind. There may or may not be a public spat specifically over the (misnamed) ‘peace process’, but there is very likely to be an irreconcilable clash over Iran. 

Is Obama’s response to the launching of the long-range missile by North Korea merely (though very dangerously) stupid, or is it a sign that President Obama does not want to carry out his paramount duty, the protection of his country?       

Melanie Phillips writes:

Both Professor Eytan Gilboa and John Bolton, here and here have observed that the crisis over North Korea has a significance beyond itself. It is the first major test of Obama – and how he reacts will tell the world how he intends to deal with Iran.

So far he could hardly have performed more stupidly. Here’s Bolton:

Incredibly, U.S. Special Envoy for North Korea Stephen Bosworth revealed – just a few days before the launch – that he was ready to visit Pyongyang and resume the six-party talks once the "dust from the missiles settles." It is no wonder the North fired away. Once the missile shot was complete, the administration’s answer was hand-wringing, more rhetoric and, oh yes, the obligatory trip to the U.N. Security Council so that it could scold the defiant DPRK [North Korea]. Beyond whatever happens in the Security Council, Mr. Obama seems to have no plan whatever.

…Iran has carefully scrutinized the Obama administration’s every action, and Tehran’s only conclusion can be: It is past time to torque up the pressure on this new crowd in Washington. Not only is Iran’s back now covered by its friends Russia, China and others on the U.N. Security Council, but it sees an American president so ready to bend his knee for public favor in Europe that the mullahs’ wish list for U.S. concessions will grow by the minute.

Obama believes that offering a hand of friendship to the enemies of civilisation turns swords into ploughshares. If he is not persuaded otherwise, he will test that craven theory to destruction. Our destruction.

Scott Johnson of Power Line lists the causes of his depression: 

I feel utterly powerless to do anything about the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures. It seems to me that every day he is responsible for assaults on the freedom and well being of the American people. I can’t keep up and I can’t stand to pay attention.

His aim seems to be to reduce us to government dependents. His inattention to rehabilitation of the financial system in lieu of vastly expanding the size and scope of the government is a dead giveaway, as is his lack of concern over the vast destruction of wealth his policies are working (and will continue to work).

Perhaps most depressing to me is the manifestation of his adolescent grandiosity in his stewardship of foreign policy and national security. He doesn’t understand that the government of Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons it can put to evil purposes. He thinks he can sweet-talk them out of achieving this objective.

He doesn’t understand that the government of Iran is a tyranny that oppresses the Iranian people. He thus addresses the mad mullahs as though they represent the people of Iran…

Get a clue, man! The mullahs who rule Iran with an iron fist hate you and everything you represent. They hate you in part because they view you as an apostate. They hate you in part because you represent the United States. They hate you in part because you represent the American people. They don’t hate us becasuse President Bush didn’t talk nice to them!

Make no mistake. The mullahs love the weakness and stupidity that President Obama transmits at ear-shattering levels in his message to them (and in his earlier Al Arabiya interview). They rebuff his advances because they know he will only treat their rebuffs as reasons to pursue them with renewed ardor.

Obama believes his cluelessness represents the higher wisdom. It is a source of his monumental self-regard. Thus his response to Vice President Cheney’s criticism of Obama for undoing, and vowing to undo, the Bush administration policies that kept the American people safe from attack safe for seven years after 9/11:

President Obama, rejecting former Vice President Dick Cheney’s contention that Obama has put the nation at greater risk of terrorism, suggests in an interview airing tonight on "60 Minutes" that the previous administration’s stance was an "advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Obama asks. "It hasn’t made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

"Brought to justice"? Good god, man, what the hell are you talking about? I don’t know what he is talking about – they haven’t seen the inside of the United States District Court for the District of Colulmbia? – but I do understand what Obama means when he says the Bush policies were "a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment." Obama and his fellow Democrats helped make them so by spreading pernicious falsehoods about their illegality and cruelty. Even worse, like the pitiful Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Obama aspires for us to be be well liked!

I am depressed because the president of the United States is a fool who will immiserate us, render us wards of the state and lose us our life and liberty to those who understand what they are about.

 American Thinker comments:

Could someone please pinch the US officials who attended the Gaza Reconstruction Conference?

Daniel Pipes quotes U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (Republican of Illinois): "To route $900 million to this area, and let’s say Hamas was only able to steal 10 percent of that, we would still become Hamas’ second-largest funder after Iran."

In other words, the Grad rockets that will fall on my head in Be’er Sheva when next time Hamas attacks Israeli civilians will have come from the taxes paid by my fellow compatriots.  Is this what Americans want?  Is this what America stands for?      

The few questions about the donors’ conference in Gaza that I would like to ask are not what this will do to us in Israel, but what it has already done to American officials, to the US itself, and to our whole civilization. What Mark Kirk said is just logical, yet the people in the Administration who came with this plan do not seem to realize how absurd what they are doing is. How can it be?

How can it be that the US Administration is giving millions to a genocidal organization whoseArticle 7 of the Hamas Charter reads "O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him’?

At what point did US officials start behaving like Soviet ones – saying things that they and everyone else, know are lies and yet they continue to do so?  How on Earth can these officials reconcile it with their own conscience?  But even assuming that they find a rationale, do they really believe that helping Hamas attack Israel is in the US interest? 

At what point have these officials stopped been challenged by the press?  Will anyone of the reporters ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton how can she reconcile her beliefs with giving money to an organization so it can deliberately target civilians in Israeli cities?    

Where is the uproar? Where are the protests?

At what point has America changed?

Can someone please pinch these officials and remind them what the US used to stand for?

  From the Heritage Foundation:

 On March 29, local elections will be held in Turkey. If the current government wins these municipal races, especially in Ankara and Istanbul, the country will be encouraged to go even further down the road toward Islamic extremism. Whatever happens internally (where the nature of Turkish society forces it to go more slowly), Ankara’s foreign policy is increasingly aligned with that of the radicals in the region – not only Hamas but also Syria and Iran.

Turkey’s many friends are hoping that moderation and its traditional political virtues win out. But what’s happening there may well be the most important political event in the Middle East since the Iranian revolution 30 years ago. Think of what it means if, in whole or even in part, Turkey goes from the Western to the radical camp; clearly this is a world-changing event.

Then on June 7 come the Lebanese elections. Given the vast amounts of money they have spent, their use of violent intimidation and demoralization due to the Western abandonment of the moderates, it is likely that Iran’s Syrian clients will take over Lebanon’s government. This does not mean domination by Hizbullah but by four allied forces: pro-Syrian Sunni politicians; Michel Aoun’s Christian forces; and the two Shi’ite groups, Hizbullah and Amal.

Already, Lebanon’s president and former armed forces’ commander Michel Suleiman is very close to the Iran-Syrian orbit. This doesn’t mean that Lebanon will be annexed or militarily reoccupied by Syria, or that Lebanon will become an Islamist state internally. But it does mean that Lebanon will become a reliable ally of what Syrian President Bashar Assad calls "the resistance front."

In the region, these two developments will be perceived as two big victories for Teheran, and a sign that the Islamist-radical side is the wave of the future.

And what is the United States doing to fight, stop or manage this visible crisis?

Nothing.

Finally, on June 12, presidential elections will take place in Iran itself. The likelihood is the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, either fairly or through manipulation of the ballot. The Iranian ruling establishment, which might have been persuaded to endorse a less extreme candidate if there had been enough Western pressure to make the incumbent look bad, has backed an openly aggressive anti-Semite.

Even though Ahmadinejad is not the real ruler of Iran, he and his allies are working to make him so. And of course his reelection means not only that Iran is waging a campaign to get nuclear weapons, it will mean that it is moving at the fastest possible speed, with the least likelihood of compromising and the most probability of using such a weapon (or forcing Israel to act militarily to stop the process). By years’ end, or shortly after, Iran might have an atom bomb.

In short, 2009 is looking like a year of massive defeat for the US and its friends in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Washington is blind to this trend, pursuing a futile attempt to conciliate its enemies, losing time and not adopting the policies desperately needed.

The only point in this article by Barry Rubin – all of which is worth reading – with which we take issue is his assumption that the new US administration is merely blind or mistaken in pursuing policies that will strengthen the ‘Islamist-radical side’.

How long will it take, how much more of the same must Obama and the Democrats do, before the understanding breaks over the US electorate and the Western world in general that they mean to strengthen the (up until now) Islamic enemy, weaken the West, diminish individual freedom, and make the population dependent on government. The end of prosperity is the beginning. Next comes the end of liberty. Finally, the enemy wins.

 Thomas Sowell writes about America’s moral decay, and the pessimism, approaching despair, that many feel with the political direction it has taken:

One of the many symptoms of this decay from within is that we are preoccupied with the pay of corporate executives while the leading terrorist-sponsoring nation on earth is moving steadily toward creating nuclear bombs.

Does anyone imagine that we will care what anyone’s paycheck is when we see an American city in radioactive ruins?

Yet the only serious obstacle to that happening is that the Israelis may disregard the lofty blather coming out of the White House and destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities before the Iranian fanatics can destroy Israel.

If by some miracle we manage to avoid the fatal dangers of a nuclear Iran, there will no doubt be others, including a nuclear North Korea.

Although, in some sense, the United States of America is still the militarily strongest nation on earth, that means absolutely nothing if our enemies are willing to die and we are not.

It took only two nuclear bombs to get Japan to surrender– and the Japanese of that era were far tougher than most Americans today. Just one bomb– dropped on New York, Chicago or Los Angeles– might be enough to get us to surrender.

If we are still made of sterner stuff than it looks like, then it might take two or maybe even three or four nuclear bombs, but we will surrender.

It doesn’t matter if we retaliate and kill millions of innocent Iranian civilians– at least it will not matter to the fanatics in charge of Iran or the fanatics in charge of the international terrorist organizations that Iran supplies.

Ultimately, it all comes down to who is willing to die and who is not.

How did we get to this point? It was no single thing.

The dumbing down of our education, the undermining of moral values with the fad of "non-judgmental" affectations, the denigration of our nation through poisonous propaganda from the movies to the universities. The list goes on and on.

The trajectory of our course leads to a fate that would fully justify despair. The only saving grace is that even the trajectory of a bullet can be changed by the wind.

We have been saved by miraculous good fortune before in our history. The overwhelming military and naval expedition that Britain sent to New York to annihilate George Washington’s army was totally immobilized by a vast impenetrable fog that allowed the Americans to escape. That is how they ended up in Valley Forge.

In the World War II naval battle of Midway, if things had not happened just the way they did, at just the time they did, the American naval force would not only have lost, but could have been wiped out by the far larger Japanese fleet.

Over the years, we have had our share of miraculous deliverances. But that our fate today depends on yet another miracle is what can turn pessimism to despair.