China’s pretty slogans and the heart-warming Olympic theme about one world and harmony  are exposed as empty and illusory, as the Jerusalem Post reports: 

Politics reared its ugly head at the Olympic Games once more on Saturday after an Iranian swimmer refused to compete alongside Israeli Tom Be’eri.

Swimmers dive into water in the National Aquatics Center at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, Saturday.
Photo: AP

Mohammad Alirezaei was due to race against Be’eri in the fourth heat of the 100 meter breaststroke, but pulled out, apparently under the orders of the chiefs of the Iranian delegation.

"This isn’t the first time this has happened and it doesn’t surprise me anymore," Olympic Committee of Israel General Secretary Efraim Zinger told The Jerusalem Post."Politics takes precedence over sport with the Iranians and the Olympic spirit is as far from them as east is far from west.

"My heart goes out to the Iranian athletes. In the Athens Olympics one of their sportsmen, who was a gold medal favorite, had to pull out because he was drawn against an Israeli.

"There’s no place for this kind of behavior in the Olympic movement and it’s a shame it continues."

 Obama will never be ready to be president. He is not the man for the job. 

Power Line shares and substantiates this opinion:

McCain has strongly and unequivocally come out in support of our ally Georgia, while placing the onus for the war squarely where it belongs, on Russia. In this, he has aligned himself with our most loyal European allies. Obama, on the other hand, issued the sort of vapid statement that would ingratiate him with the State Department while not requiring any distraction from his Hawaii vacation. An interesting point, by the way: McCain is supposed to be the old guy, but Obama is the one who needs a vacation.

Here is the latest from the McCain campaign:

This afternoon I spoke, for the second time since the crisis began, with Georgian President Saakashvili. It is clear the situation is dire. Russian aggression against Georgia continues, with attacks occurring far beyond the Georgian region of South Ossetia. As casualties continue to mount, the international community must do all it can to avert further escalations. Tensions and hostilities between Georgians and Ossetians are in no way justification for Russian troops crossing an internationally recognized border. I again call on the Government of Russia to immediately and unconditionally withdraw its forces from the territory of Georgia.

Given this threat to Euro-Atlantic security, I am pleased to see the United States, the European Union, and NATO acting together by sending a delegation to the region, in an effort to broker a cease fire. This is an important first step.

The United Nations has been prevented from taking any meaningful action by Russian objections. In view of this, I welcome the statements of democratic nations defending the sovereignty of Georgia and condemning Russian actions.

I strongly support the declaration issued by the Presidents of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and their commitment that ‘aggression against a small country in Europe will not be passed over in silence or with meaningless statements equating the victims with the victimizers.’

 

I doubt that the Europeans were thinking of Obama when they wrote this, but who knows? Maybe they had seen this "meaningless statement equating the victims with the victimizers" from the Obama campaign:

It’s both sides’ fault — both have been somewhat provocative with each other.

McCain’s statement continues:

I share their regret that NATO’s decision to withhold from Georgia a Membership Action Plan may have been viewed as a green light for aggression in the region. As they propose, a new international peacekeeping force should be created, in light of – as they observe – the ‘obvious bankruptcy of Russian "peacekeeping operations" in its immediate neighborhood.’ In addition, Finnish Foreign Minister Stubb, the Chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has said there can be no return to the status quo in South Ossetia and that Russia cannot serve as a mediator in the South Ossetian conflict. Each of these leaders represents a country that has undergone what Georgia is now experiencing.

That last is a key point, but one that is no doubt lost on Obama and his advisers. It is often said that Obama is not ready to be President, but I don’t think this is exactly right. It seems pretty obvious that Obama, given his temperament, his self-regard, his blithe ignorance of history and of the material conditions of life on this planet, will never be ready to be President. He is not unready: he is unsuited for, and inadequate to, the office.

Western interference in Yugoslavia in order to ‘protect’ Kosovo was always a bad idea.

It was unjustified in that no Western interests were involved; it was bad as a precedent;  bad in its immediate results, spreading war throughout the region; and it continues to be bad in its longer-term effects.

This is from an article in the Telegraph today:

Two key events well beyond Georgia’s borders have triggered Russia’s fury. The first was Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February and the new country’s subsequent recognition by many Western states. This brought a public warning from Moscow that Kosovo’s move to independence could set a precedent for Georgia’s two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The second was Nato’s pledge at the Bucharest summit in April that membership of the Atlantic Alliance for both Georgia and Ukraine was not a matter of "if" but "when", although in deference to Russian objections, no timetable for entry was granted. This provoked Vladimir Putin, then still Russia’s president, to promise more support for Georgia’s breakaway regions.

Now Russia has invaded Georgia. Russia is at fault, as John McCain made instantly clear. Barack Obama put out a statement implying moral equivalence between the invading Great Power and the small independency.

But as we all know, she isn’t.

This from Power Line:

Opponents of energy development like to claim that it is hopeless to drill for oil, since it would take so long to get it flowing. Barack Obama, for example, recently claimed that if Congress lifts the offshore drilling ban, it will take seven years to get any oil. Obama supported this assertion by misrepresenting a report by the Energy Information Administration. If you read this post, you already know how the Left is misusing that report.

Today the Institute for Energy Research followed up with more information about misuse of that report. I want to focus on this point:

EIA’s analysis assumes that leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Yet, off the coast of California, some of these resources have already been leased. A report from Wall Street research house Sanford C. Bernstein says that California actually could start producing new oil within one year if the moratoria were lifted. The California oil is under shallow water and already has been explored. Drilling platforms have been in place since before the moratorium.

There are other areas, too, where pumping could begin in months, not years. Obviously full exploitation of our energy resources will take longer. But that is an argument for starting quickly, not an argument for delay. And we can at least begin to get relief from high energy costs quite rapidly.

 Worse even than Obama’s taking money from our enemies – Karen Hughes gave it to them.   

This from Jihad Watch and NewsMax:

Bush aide Karen Hughes gave money to jihadist groups

So says Steve Emerson. "Terrorism Expert: Karen Hughes Gave Money to Bad Guys," by Kenneth R. Timmerman for NewsMax, August 3 (thanks to PRCS):

A longtime adviser and close confidant of President Bush funneled millions of dollars in U.S. government grants to radical Islamist organizations, many of whose leaders have been convicted or indicted in terrorism cases in the United States, respected terrorism expert Steven Emerson told Congress last week.

“When Ms. [Karen] Hughes was appointed as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, she set the tone to continue a disastrous policy of outreach with Islamist partners,” Emerson told the House International Relations Committee.

Among the recipients of the State Department grants actively championed by Hughes was Ahmed Younes, formerly an official with the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a group that has “publicly challenged the designation of Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations” and whose leaders “have made extreme statements defending terrorist organizations,” Emerson said.

Another beneficiary of Hughes’ outreach program to American Muslims was Aly Abuzaakouk, the executive director of the American Muslim Council (AMC) and a former director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIHT).

 

Actually, it’s the IIIT.

The North Virginia-based IIHT “is suspected of being a pivotal cog in the Muslim Brotherhood’s high command in America," according to federal law enforcement records newly released to Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism under the Freedom of Information Act….

The IIIT was named as an allied group in the infamous Muslim Brotherhood memorandum of 1991 that emphasized that the Brothers “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Anyway, read it all.

 

 

 Jim Brown reports on ONENEWSNOW:

 John Bolton writes in the Wall Street Journal (whole article here):

Iran is pursuing two goals simultaneously, both of which it is comfortably close to achieving. The first – to possess all the capabilities necessary for a deliverable nuclear weapon – is now almost certainly impossible to stop diplomatically. Thus, Iran’s second objective becomes critical: to make the risks of a military strike against its program too high, and to make the likelihood of success in fracturing the program too low. Time favors Iran in achieving these goals. U.S. and European diplomats should consider this while waiting by the telephone for Iran to call.

The following is from a report and commentary you can read here.

 Iraqi Terrorist and former leader of the fanatic Mehdi army, Ahmed Al-Fartoosi, responsible for the deaths of dozens of British soldiers is suing the British Ministry of Defence —why?? – because someone left pornography near a toilet that Al-Fartoosi used.

How ironic that a man who apparently had no problems with killing dozens if not more people should scream like a baby over his "virgin" eyes looking at nude pictures is cause for a lawsuit.  But then again – did anyone force open Ahmeds eyes and make him look at the porn?? Obviously not. Thus if he looked at it – he did so voluntarily. Nevertheless, the mere presence of the likely magazine is enough for this brave muslim to put his hand out to receive compensation for his "discomfort".

The other "egregious" offences committed against Fartoosi for which he wants the British taxpayers to provide free legal aid so that he can in essence…………sue the British taxpayers are:

HEARING porn videos being played on a soldier’s laptop;

 

BUMPING his arm and thigh when being put in an armoured vehicle; and

 

LOSING sleep in his cell due to noise and lights from a corridor.

No formal complaints were ever logged regarding the above incidents leading one to surmise that the above "horrific events" were not upsetting UNTIL Fartoosi and Attorney Phil Shiner met.  Far too often, a dhimmi lawyer, such as Phil Shiner, is waiting in the wings and ready to dip his hands into the British taxpayers pockets so that, in this instance, he can also self-righteously pretend to protest a war that he says he disagrees with and also manage to greatly enrich his bank account in the process. (Shiner has a past history of profiting off of legal aid money to defend Iraqi insurgents.)

Thus Fartoosi, via Shiner, is suing for false imprisonment and violations of new European human rights laws. Many feel that the EU human rights laws encourage terrorists to come to Britain. The EU human rights laws are consistently far more favorable to terrorists, murderers and rapists then to the victim so much so that a prominent British newspaper has started a movement to end the travesty that has been brought by these laws:

"The whole concept of “human rights” in Britain has become a travesty under which the interests of killers, rapists and paedophiles are placed above those of their victims."

 Imran Shahid, Zeeshan Shahid, and Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq wanted revenge on ANY white youth because someone had thrown a bottle at Imran.

So they stabbed and burnt Kriss Donald to death.

Now a witness who appeared at the murderers’ trial has been stabbed.

Read the story here. 

The writer and former gulag prisoner Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died at the once unimaginable age of 89.

His most famous books, "One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "The Gulag Archipelago" brought the horrors of the Gulag to the attention of the West. They also ended the disgusting insistence of the Left that the Gulags were merely acceptable prisons for criminals.

It is suspected that anywhere from 2 million to 40 million died in the gulags.

There is a comprehensive and interesting obituary here.