Friday, August 31, 2012

If I Were the Devil by Paul Harvey



This speech was broadcast by legendary ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey on April 3, 1965:

If I were the Devil . . . I mean, if I were the Prince of Darkness, I would of course, want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, so I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: “Do as you please.” “Do as you please.” To the young, I would whisper, “The Bible is a myth.” I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is “square”. In the ears of the young marrieds, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old, I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: “Our Father, which art in Washington” . . .

If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull an uninteresting. I’d threaten T.V. with dirtier movies and vice versa. And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized. I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me. I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. And I’d tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine yound intellects but neglect to discipline emotions . . . let those run wild. I would designate an athiest to front for me before the highest courts in the land and I would get preachers to say “she’s right.” With flattery and promises of power, I could get the courts to rule what I construe as against God and in favor of pornography, and thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, and then from the school house, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them.

If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. If I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. And then, my police state would force everybody back to work. Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps. In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing.

Paul Harvey, Good Day.

http://nation.foxnews.com/paul-harvey/2012/03/21/1965-if-i-were-devil-warning-nation-paul-harvey

Monday, August 27, 2012

Understanding the Muslim Brotherhood

from: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314949/understanding-muslim-brotherhood-andrew-c-mccarthy

I’m a big fan of the 1 percent. No, not the dastardly 1 percent of Occupy Wall Street myth; I’m partial, instead, to the 1 percent of Congress that takes seriously the threat of Islamic-supremacist influence operations against our government.

The people have 435 representatives serving in the House and another hundred in the Senate. Of these 535, a total of 288 are Republicans — 241 and 47 in the lower and upper chambers, respectively. Of these, only five House conservatives — five — have had the fortitude to raise concerns about the Islamist connections of government officials entrusted with positions enabling them to shape U.S. policy.

Think about that. Republicans purport to be the national-security party. For decades this claim was well founded, starting with Ronald Reagan’s clarity in seeing the Soviets as enemies to be defeated, not accommodated. President Reagan’s plan for the Cold War was, “We win, they lose,” and he pulled it off because he was not under any illusions about who “they” were.

But something happened to the GOP in the Bush years. For all the welcome understanding that Bill Clinton was wrong — that the jihad could not be indicted into submission — the Bush administration never learned a fundamental truth that Reagan knew only too well: You cannot defeat your enemies unless you understand them, and you cannot even begin to understand them if you are too craven to name them.

As they gather in Tampa for their quadrennial showcase, Republicans, but for the 1 percent, remain timorous on the subject of America’s enemies. Oh, they’ll tell you that we must confront “terrorism” and crack down on the “terrorists.” But that’s not much different from claiming to be against “burglary” and “burglars.” Terrorism is a vicious crime, but it becomes a national-security threat only when it is an instrument of an ideology that aims to destroy our country. What made the terrorist organizations armed and trained by the Soviets in the Sixties and Seventies a threat was the Soviets, not the terrorism.

America’s enemies are Islamic supremacists: Muslims adherent to a totalitarian interpretation of Islam who, like Soviet Communists, seek to impose their ideology throughout the world, very much including the United States. Terrorism is an offensive strategy they use, but it is only one arrow in the quiver. Its chief utility, moreover, is not that it will coerce surrender on its own; it is the atmosphere of intimidation it creates. That dramatically increases the effectiveness of the enemy’s several other offensive strategies — legal demands for concessions, media campaigns, infiltration of society’s major institutions, and influence operations against government.

The most disheartening thing about the modern Republican party’s dereliction — about its accommodation and empowerment of our enemies under the delusional guise of “Muslim outreach” — is that it flies in the face of the Bush Justice Department’s signal counterterrorism achievement.

That was the 2007–08 Holy Land Foundation case. For once, political correctness and the fear of being smeared as “Islamophobic” were shelved. In the course of convicting several Hamas operatives, prosecutors proved that the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged in a far-flung enterprise aimed, in the Brothers’ own words, at “eliminating and destroying” our way of life “from within” by means of “sabotage.” The Bush Justice Department not only showed that what the Brotherhood calls its “grand jihad” (or “civilization jihad”) is real; Justice shed light on the ideology that fuels this enterprise, and expressly identified many of the global Brotherhood’s accomplices.

Alas, this achievement is one today’s Republicans prefer to ignore. The party of Ronald Reagan would have worn it like a badge of honor. Today’s GOP would rather engage our enemies and call them our friends — not understand them, call them what they are, and defeat them. Today’s Beltway Republicans save their wrath for the occasional conservative — the messengers who embarrass them by illustrating how small the big time has made them.

Did you know, for example, that when the Republican establishment had its hissy fit over the inconvenient 1 percent — when John McCain and John Boehner led the shrieking over their five conservative colleagues’ purported scaremongering over Islamist influence-peddling — the fact that this influence-peddling effort exists had just been proved in court?

As Patrick Poole, one of few to
cover the case, has observed, it is the biggest spy scandal you’ve never heard about. Right around the time McCain and Boehner were dressing down the 1 percent last month, Ghulam Nabi Fai was finally heading off to prison. He had pled guilty last December to acting as a secret foreign agent against our government.

In sum, Fai was paid millions of dollars over two decades by the Pakistani intelligence service to push its agenda through a D.C.-based front, the Kashmiri American Council. You haven’t heard much about it because it is a Muslim Brotherhood operation through and through, one that demonstrates exactly what the 1 percent is warning about.

Fai grew up in Kashmir, the disputed territory Islamists have sought to wrest from India, often by terrorism, for over half a century.
His story would be typical of Muslim Brotherhood operatives if we actually spoke about Muslim Brotherhood operatives. He became a member of Jama’at-e-Islami, which maintains close relations with the Brotherhood and is, for Pakistanis, what the Brotherhood is for Arabs — the vanguard of global Islamic supremacism.

The force that globalizes this movement is Saudi money and commitment. During one of the many Indian crackdowns on Kashmiri Islamists, Fai did exactly what Muslim Brothers in Egypt frequently did during regime crackdowns: He fled to Saudi Arabia. While studying at one of the kingdom’s Wahhabist universities, he made himself useful to a highly influential imam who incited Kashmiri jihadists. Impressed by Fai’s devotion to the cause, the Saudi government agreed to pay for his education in the United States.

The Saudis steered Fai to Temple University, where Islamists had a beachhead. Fai studied under a Palestinian sharia specialist, Ismail Raji al-Faruqi, who led the Saudi-funded “Islamization of knowledge” program. Ismail would later join Muslim Brotherhood operatives to found the
International Institute of Islamic Thought — a think tank dedicated to the “Islamization of knowledge” project, and one that worked so closely with Sami al-Arian, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad emir, that its leadership was listed among the unindicted co-conspirators cited by the Bush Justice Department at al-Arian’s terrorism trial.

At Temple, Fai became the president of the Muslim Students Association — the national organization. Established in the early sixties, the MSA is the
original foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s American infrastructure. It now has hundreds of chapters grooming Islamists across the United States and Canada. Patrick Poole has recounted the numerous MSA leaders who have graduated to violent jihadism. They include — and this is just to name a few of many — Wael Jalaidan, a founder of al-Qaeda; Abdurahman Alamoudi, a leading financier of al-Qaeda who was eventually convicted in a murder plot; and Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda leader who counseled the 9/11 hijackers and, before finally being killed in Yemen last year, was implicated in sundry jihadist plots, including the Fort Hood massacre and the attempt to bomb a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Like Fai, both Alamoudi and Awlaki were once admired in Washington as model moderates thanks to the magic of “Muslim outreach.” (So was al-Arian.)

From the MSA, Fai seamlessly moved on to the “shura council” (i.e., the advisory board) of the
Islamic Society of North America. ISNA evolved out of the MSA and the two organizations consider themselves as one. ISNA has become the largest and, perhaps, the most influential Brotherhood affiliate in the United States — see its president, Mohamed Magid, pictured here with State Department official Huma Abedin at the Iftar (end-of-Ramadan) dinner hosted by President Obama just a few weeks ago.

Fai joined ISNA in the late Eighties. That is when the Brotherhood formed Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization whose funding during and after the Intifada was the Brotherhood’s top American priority. It was to route money to the jihad against Israel that the Brotherhood established the Holy Land Foundation — the subject of the Bush Justice Department’s aforementioned terrorism prosecution. Ostensibly a charity, HLF was housed in the headquarters ISNA shared with another Brotherhood entity, the North American Islamic Trust. NAIT was formed with Saudi funding to buy up real estate throughout the U.S. for the construction of mosques and Islamic community centers — which Brotherhood ideology considers the “axis” of Islamic supremacism in each city and town. In the HLF plot, bank accounts controlled by ISNA and NAIT were used to funnel funds to Palestinian jihadists.

This Saudi and Brotherhood pedigree made Fai an ideal recruit for the Pakistani intelligence service — creators of the Taliban and longtime supporters of al-Qaeda. He was thus tabbed in the late Eighties to begin conducting influence operations against the United States. His front organization, the Kashmiri American Council, was incorporated in 1990 by Fai, along with the wife of Sayyid Syeed, ISNA’s longtime secretary-general and currently its director of (what else?) “interfaith outreach.” The venture, which opened with an office just a few blocks from the White House, got a boost from a $20,000 start-up loan from NAIT.

In the 20 years that followed, Fai received approximately $4 million in funding from Pakistani intelligence. He used it to buy access — scores of meetings with top federal officials, a ballyhooed annual conference on Capitol Hill, and international credibility as a prominent Muslim who had Washington’s ear. The lion’s share of his political contributions were targeted at Republicans, particularly Representative Dan Burton, the chief congressional supporter of Fai’s Kashmiri American Council, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Fai, however, opportunistically courted members of both parties, and the executive branch as well as Congress. In fact, when President Obama was elected, Pakistani intelligence directed Fai to build relationships in the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon. Nor did they leave it at government officials; Fai was instructed to court specific members of the media and particular Washington think tanks.

Fai had a partner in the scheme: an American named Zaheer Ahmad, who lived in Pakistan and orchestrated the scheme by which Pakistani funds were transferred to Fai. Ahmad, mysteriously, is no longer among the living. Turns out that in the weeks before the 9/11 attacks, he and a Pakistani nuclear scientist had a meeting with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawhiri about getting mass-destruction weapons for al-Qaeda. That meeting was reported by the Hindustan Times in fall 2011, and two days later Ahmad was found dead in Pakistan — of a cerebral hemorrhage, they say.

It was in 2011 that the FBI concluded it had plenty of evidence to justify arresting Fai. For years he had illegally failed to reveal his status as a Pakistani agent, and he had lied about it in FBI interviews, another felony. But in moving on Fai, the Bureau was stalled by the State Department and the CIA. As Poole suggests, this may be explained by a desire not to exacerbate the growing tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan after American special forces raided bin Laden’s Pakistani compound and killed the al-Qaeda leader that spring. That may also explain why Fai got a sweetheart plea deal — requiring only a two-year prison term — despite the fact that the FBI told the court Fai had refused to cooperate regarding “his involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Pakistani terrorist groups.”

Here’s the most alarming thing — the thing about our enemy being an enemy: Even after Fai pled guilty and was sentenced, the Muslim Brotherhood’s American infrastructure continued to support him ardently. As Poole reports, fundraising dinners in his honor were held by ISNA, the Muslim American Society (which is the Brotherhood’s quasi-official presence in the United States), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (
CAIR – which originated out of the Brotherhood’s now-defunct Islamic Association for Palestine and serves as an Islamist public-relations and lawfare arm). Mind you, Fai’s guilt is not in doubt; he pled guilty and agreed to a 26-page statement of facts detailing his operations against our country. Yet the Brothers stand by their man.

When the five House Republicans rose up to call for scrutiny of enemy efforts to influence our government, they were not speaking hypothetically. The effort is very real. And the enemy is now so brazen, so confident about the inroads it has made, that it publicly closes ranks around its operatives even after their treachery has been laid bare.

Republicans have had ample opportunity to stand with their intrepid 1 percent. Most of them are in hiding, though. The few who’ve spoken up have, like their Democratic counterparts, calculated that it’s more expedient to stand with the Muslim Brotherhood’s network than with those trying to expose the Muslim Brotherhood’s network.

Twenty-eight years ago this week, the Reagan Republicans gathered in Dallas for their convention, rightly anticipating a landslide electoral victory. They understood the enemy and they had no reluctance about calling it exactly what it was. But that was then.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is the author, most recently, of
The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Over-21-years-of-age Daughters' Dating SOP

[IMG]


In order to address the constant growing-up of my daughters and the societal craziness in which we reside, the following guidleline has been developed and issued.

Over-21-years-of-age Daughters' Dating Standard Operating Procedure:

Applicabilty:
This SOP applies in full to:
1) All of my daughters over the age of 21 and under the age of 26 who:
a) have not yet obtained either their bachelors degree
AND
b) have not yet been certified/licensed in the professional career of their choice
OR
c) remain financially dependant

2) Any polite young Christian gentleman who is:
a) completing his graduate studies
OR
b) financially independent
OR
c) home from deployment
OR
d) working diligently and excessively at his career
AND
e) attending a date with one of my daughters.

Definitions:
Date: A social, one-to-one, interactive event involving two relatively mature persons of the opposite sex.

Daters: The two relatively mature persons of the opposite sex who are participating in a social, one-to-one, interactive event.

Group Date: More than one pair of daters participating in a similar social, one-to-one, interactive event at the same time and in the same place.

Authorized Types of Dates:
1) Church Service: The Church's doctrine must conform to the Lutheran Confessions as expressed in the Book of Concord. The Church does not have to be Lutheran. There must be at least 12 people in attendance at the service.

2) Lunch: Lunch must take place in a public venue shared by at least 12 other persons. Each dater will either pay for or bring their own meal and beverage.  No alcohol or drugs are permitted.

Note: Group dates are highly encouraged provided that all particpants conduct themselves in accordance with this guideline.

Timing:
Church Service attendance may commence no earlier then 08:00 and conclude no later that 17:00 or sundown which ever occurs first. The total elapsed time for such event shall not exceed two hours.

Lunch attendance may commence no earlier than 10:45 and conclude no later than 16:00 or sundown which ever occurs first. The total elapsed time for such event shall not exceed two hours.

Frequency:
The shall be no more than two dates per calendar week.  The calendar week shall start at 08:00 on Sunday.

There shall be no more than one date with the same young gentleman in any given week.

A lunch date and a Church service date may NOT be conducted on the same day.

Intimacy:
1) Physical: Hand holding in transit (walking) is permitted.  Only opposite (right hand to left hand or left hand to right hand) shall be permitted. Same hand (right hand to right hand or left hand to left hand) hand holding is not authorized.

Foot-to-foot incidental contact is acceptable provided both persons are wearing shoes. Sandals are not consider to be shoes.

A small closed-mouth peck on the cheek shall bepermitted but not required upon the satisfactory completion of a third date with the same polite young Christian gentleman who is either completing his graduate studies, financially independent, home from deployment, or working diligently and excessively at his career. This contact shall last no more than two seconds and shall not be in conjunction with any other physical contact.

2) Financial: There shall be no sharing, borrowing, or talk of money.

3) Emotional: Laughter, smiling, and happiness are encouraged. Anger, jealousy, loud-talking, teasing, rebellious activity, threats, ultimatums, disregard for this SOP, and sexual innuendo will be the cause for the immediate cancellation of the current and any future dates.  There will be absolutely no sharing of secrets, disappointments, ailments, or phobias.  Falling in love is strictly prohibited.

4) Social:  Although the "date" in and of itself is a public and social event, there will  be no references made that imply social connectivity or obligation between the daters.  For example, the terms boyfriend, girlfriend, lover, partner, going-steady, honey, baby, in love, et al, are deemed to be absolutely inappropriate.

Prohibited Activities:
1) Violation of the standards described above
2) Any and all activities not permitted by the standards described above
3) The two daters being in a car together whether alone or not alone
4) The two daters being alone together
5) Inappropriate dress, language or conduct
6) Poor manners
7) Either dater entering the residence of the other dater or the residence of an opposite sex friend of the other dater
8) Any violation or criticism of the spirit of this guideline

(Kissed You) Goodnight by Gloriana

Singin' starts at 1:10.  Rachel Reinart solo at 2:40.

More of a good thing:

(Kissed You) Goodnight by Gloriana

These are the basic chords for the acustic version.  The electric version is 1/2 step higher.

Intro:
Bb, Fsus, Ebmaj7

Verses:
Bb, Ebmaj7
Bb, Ebmaj7
Gm, Eb, Bb, F
Gm, Eb, Bb, F

Chorus:
Bb, Fsus, Ebmaj7, F
Bb, Fsus, Ebmaj7, F
Gm, Eb, Bb, F
Gm, Eb, Bb, F

Bb, Fsus, Ebadd9

The easier way that I play it.

Capo on third fret for acoustic version.  Capo on the fourth fret for the electric version.

Chords:
G =320003
Cadd12 =X32013
Cmaj7add12=X32003
Dadd12 =XX0235
Emadd10 =022003

Notes:
Hammer on the third for the G and Cmaj7 in the intro and first two line of verse.

G, Dadd12, Cmaj7add12, Cmaj7add12
G, Dadd12, Cmaj7add12, Cmaj7add12(let ring)

                        G
I dropped you off
          Cmaj7add12
Just a little after midnight
                 G
Sat in my car
       Cmaj7add12
Till you turned off your porch light
                       Emadd10     Cadd12
I should have kissed you
                       G                                       Dadd12
I should have pushed you up against the wall
                      Emadd10     Cadd12
I should have kissed you
        G                               Dadd12(let ring)
Just like I wasnt scared at all

Chorus:
  G
I turned off the car
Dadd12
Ran through the yard
Cadd12                        Dadd12
Back to your front door
    G
Before I could knock
Dadd12
You turned the lock
        Cadd12                       Dadd12
And met me on the front porch
          Emadd10                 Cadd12
And I kissed you
G      Dadd12
Goodnight
                             Emadd10   Cadd12
And now that Ive kissed you
        G                                  Dadd12
Its a good night good night baby goodnight

G, Dadd12, Cmaj7add12, Cmaj7add12(let ring)

Verse 2:
                     G
You couldnt see me
C
Watching through the window
                    G
Wondering what went wrong
C
Praying that you wouldnt go
                            Em         C
You should have kissed me
                             G                                      D
You should have pushed me up against the wall
                            Em         C
You should have kissed me
                             G                           D
I was right on the edge and ready to fall

Chorus:
  G
I turned off the car
D
Ran through the yard
C                                  D
Back to your front door
     G
Before I could knock
D
You turned the lock
        C                                  D
And met me on the front porch
          Em         C
And I kissed you
G      D
Goodnight
                             Em         C
And now that Ive kissed you
        G                                  D
Its a good night good night baby goodnight

G D C C
G D C C
G D C C
G D C C

Chorus:(Palm Muted)
   G
I turned off the car
D
Ran through the yard
C                                 C
Back to your front door
G
Half scared to death
D                                 C(let it ring)
Cant catch my breath

Arent these the moments we live for

           Em          C    G      D
And I kissed you      Goodnight
                             Em          C
And now that Ive kissed you
        G                                  D                G        D
Its a good night good night baby goodnight

        Em                               C                G        D
Its a good night good night baby goodnight
        Em                               C                G        D
Its a good night good night baby goodnight
        Em(let ring)                 C(let ring)  G(let ring)
Its a good night good night baby goodnight

Friday, August 17, 2012

Who lost Egypt? by Caroline Glick

In 1949, the Communist takeover of China rattled the US foreign policy establishment to its core. China's fall to Communism was correctly perceived as a massive strategic defeat for the US. The triumphant Mao Zedong placed China firmly in the Soviet camp and implemented foreign policies antithetical to US interests.

For the American foreign policy establishment, China's fall forced a reconsideration of basic axioms of US foreign policy. Until China went Red, the view resonant among foreign policy specialists was that it was possible for the US to peacefully coexist and even be strategic allies with Communists.

With Mao's embrace of Stalin this position was discredited. The US's subsequent recognition that it was impossible for America to reach an accommodation with Communists served as the intellectual architecture of many of the strategies the US adopted for fighting the Cold War in the years that followed.

Today the main aspect of America's response to China's Communist revolution that is remembered is the vindictive political hunt for scapegoats. Foreign Service officers and journalists who had advised the US government to support Mao and the Communists against Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalists were attacked as traitors.

But while the "Red Scare" is what is most remembered about that period, the most significant consequence of the rise of Communist China was the impact it had on the US's understanding of the nature of Communist forces. Even Theodore White, perhaps the most prominent journalist who championed Mao and the Communists, later acknowledged that he had been duped by their propaganda machine into believing that Mao and his comrades were interested in an alliance with the US.

As Joyce Hoffmann exposed in her book Theodore White and Journalism as Illusion, White acknowledged that his wartime report from Mao's headquarters in Yenan praising the Communists as willing allies of the US who sought friendship, "not as a beggar seeks charity, but seeks aid in furthering a joint cause," was completely false.

As he wrote, the report was "winged with hope and passion that were entirely unreal."

What he had been shown in Yenan, Hoffmann quotes White as having written, was "the showcase of democratic art pieces they (the Communists) staged for us American correspondents [and] was literally, only showcase stuff."

Contrast the US's acceptance of failure in China in 1949, and its willingness to learn the lessons of its loss of China, with the US's denial of its failure and loss of Egypt today.

On Sunday, new President Mohamed Morsy completed Egypt's transformation into an Islamist state. In the space of one week, Morsy sacked the commanders of the Egyptian military and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists, and fired all the editors of the state-owned media and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists.

He also implemented a policy of intimidation, censorship and closure of independently owned media organizations that dare to publish criticism of him.

Morsy revoked the military's constitutional role in setting the foreign and military policies of Egypt. But he maintained the junta's court-backed decision to disband the parliament. In so doing, Morsy gave himself full control over the writing of Egypt's new constitution.

As former ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel wrote Tuesday in The Jerusalem Post, Morsy's moves mean that he "now holds dictatorial powers surpassing by far those of erstwhile president Hosni Mubarak."

In other words, Morsy's actions have transformed Egypt from a military dictatorship into an Islamist dictatorship.

The impact on Egypt's foreign policy of Morsy's seizure of power is already becoming clear. On Monday, Al-Masri al-Youm quoted Mohamed Gadallah, Morsy's legal adviser, saying that Morsy is considering revising the peace accord with Israel. Gadallah explained that Morsy intends to "ensure Egypt's full sovereignty and control over every inch of Sinai."

In other words, Morsy intends to remilitarize Sinai and so render the Egyptian military a clear and present threat to Israel's security. Indeed, according to Haaretz, Egypt has already breached the peace accord and deployed forces and heavy weaponry to Sinai without Israeli permission.

The rapidity of Morsy's moves has surprised most observers. But more surprising than his moves is the US response to his moves.

Obama administrations officials have behaved as though nothing has happened, or even as though Morsy's moves are positive developments.

For instance, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, one administration official dismissed the significance of Morsy's purge of the military brass, saying, "What I think this is, frankly, is Morsy looking for a generational change in military leadership."

The Journal reported that Egypt's new defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sissi, is known as a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer. But the Obama administration quickly dismissed the reports as mere rumors with no significance. Sissi, administration sources told the Journal, ate dinner with US President Barack Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan during Brennan's visit to Cairo last October. Aside from that, they say, people are always claiming that Morsy's appointments have ties to Morsy's Muslim Brotherhood.

A slightly less rose-colored assessment came from Steven Cook in Foreign Affairs. According to Cook, at worst, Morsy's move was probably nothing more than a present-day reenactment of Gamal Abel Nasser's decision to move Egypt away from the West and into the Soviet camp in 1954.

Most likely, Cook argued, Morsy was simply doing what Sadat did when in 1971 he fired other generals with whom he had been forced to share power when he first succeeded Nasser in 1969.

Certainly the Nasser and Sadat analogies are pertinent. But while properly citing them, Cook failed to explain what those analogies tell us about the significance of Morsy's actions. He drew the dots but failed to see the shape they make.

Morsy's Islamism, like Mao's Communism, is inherently hostile to the US and its allies and interests in the Middle East. Consequently, Morsy's strategic repositioning of Egypt as an Islamist country means that Egypt - which has served as the anchor of the US alliance system in the Arab world for 30 years - is setting aside its alliance with the US and looking toward reassuming the role of regional bully.

Egypt is on the fast track to reinstating its war against Israel and threatening international shipping in the Suez Canal. And as an Islamist state, Egypt will certainly seek to export its Islamic revolution to other countries. No doubt fear of this prospect is what prompted Saudi Arabia to begin showering Egypt with billions of dollars in aid.

It should be recalled that the Saudis so feared the rise of a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt that in February 2011, when US President Barack Obama was publicly ordering then-president Hosni Mubarak to abdicate power immediately, Saudi leaders were beseeching him to defy Obama. They promised Mubarak unlimited financial support for Egypt if he agreed to cling to power.

The US's astounding sanguinity in the face of Morsy's completion of the Islamization of Egypt is an illustration of everything that is wrong and dangerous about US Middle East policy today.

Take US policy toward Syria.

Syria is in possession of one of the largest arsenals of chemical and biological weapons in the world. The barbarism with which the regime is murdering its opponents is a daily reminder - indeed a flashing neon warning sign - that Syria's nonconventional arsenal constitutes a clear and present danger to international security. And yet, the Obama administration insists on viewing Syrian President Bashar Assad's murderous behavior as if it were a garden variety human rights crisis.

During her visit with Turkey's Islamist Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu last Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't even mention the issue of Syria's chemical and biological weapons. Instead she continued to back Turkey's sponsorship of the Islamist-dominated opposition and said that the US would be working with Turkey to put together new ways to help the Islamist opposition overthrow Assad's regime.

Among other things, she did not rule out the imposition of a no-fly zone over Syria.

The party most likely to be harmed from such a move would be Israel, which would lose its ability to bomb Syrian weapons of mass destruction sites from the air.

Then of course, there is Iran and its openly genocidal nuclear weapons program. This week The New York Times reported a new twist in the Obama administration's strategy for managing this threat. It is trying to convince the Persian Gulf states to accept advanced missile defense systems from the US.

This new policy makes clear that the Obama administration has no intention of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Its actions on the ground are aimed instead at accomplishing two goals: convincing Iran's Arab neighbors to accept Iran as a nuclear power and preventing Israel from acting militarily to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The missile shields are aspects of a policy of containment, not prevention. And the US's attempts to sabotage Israel's ability to strike Iran's nuclear sites through leaks, political pressure and efforts to weaken the Netanyahu government make clear that as far as the US is concerned, Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not the problem.

The prospect of Israel preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is the problem.

Several American commentators argue that the Obama administration's policies are the rational consequence of the divergence of US and Israeli assessments of the threats posed by regional developments. For instance, writing in the Tablet online magazine this week, Lee Smith argued that the US does not view the developments in Egypt, Iran and Syria as threatening US interests. From Washington's perspective, the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran is more threatening than a nuclear-armed Iran, because an Israeli strike would immediately destabilize the region.

The problem with this assessment is that it is nonsense. It is true that Israel is first on Iran's target list, and that Egypt is placing Israel, not the US in its crosshairs. So, too, Syria and its rogue allies will use their chemical weapons against Israel first.

But that doesn't mean the US will be safe. The likely beneficiaries of Syrian chemical weapons - Sunni and Shi'ite terrorist organizations - have attacked the US in the past. Iran has a history of attacking US shipping without a nuclear umbrella. Surely it would be more aggressive in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz after defying Washington in illegally developing a nuclear arsenal. The US is far more vulnerable to interruptions in the shipping lanes in the Suez Canal than Israel is.

The reason Israel and the US are allies is that Israel is the US's first line of defense in the region.

If regional events weren't moving so quickly, the question of who lost Egypt would probably have had its moment in the spotlight in Washington.

But as is clear from the US's denial of the significance of Morsy's rapid completion of Egypt's Islamic transformation; its blindness to the dangers of Syrian chemical and biological weapons; and its complacency toward Iran's nuclear weapons program, by the time the US foreign policy establishment realizes it lost Egypt, the question it will be asking is not who lost Egypt. It will be asking who lost the Middle East.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Chances of Success

Annoucement of The ACELC Film Project



If after watching this video, you, your congregation, your associates or your members feel motivated to help the Association of Confessing Evangelical Lutheran Congregations with this project financially, you may send a donation at the following address:

ACELC
P.O. Box 1761
Independence, Missouri 64055.

Please mark your check: “For ACELC Film Project.”

Their website: http://www.acelc.net/

Friday, August 10, 2012

The Patriot Volunteer

Minute Men

The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth.

Thomas J. Jackson

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Why Muslims must hate Jews by Nonie Darwish


Nonie Darwish: Why Muslims must hate Jews

Why Muslims Must Hate Jews
by Nonie Darwish

Recently a Pakistani religious leader, Pirzada Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai, said: 'When The Jews Are Wiped Out... The Sun Of Peace Would Begin To Rise On The Entire World'. The same preaching is routinely done not only by clerics but politicians, in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. This is not just Ahmedinijad, it is at the heart of Islamic theology that world peace will be established only when all the Jews are wiped from the earth. But few people in Western media are alarmed by this kind of rhetoric or care to expose this dreadful dark side of Islam’s obsession with Jew hatred.

I do not believe one has to be an authority on human behavior or group thinking to find out the obvious pathology in Islamic Jew hatred. It is time for all of us to uncover and expose this atrocity against the Jewish people. We owe that to humanity and the truth.

No true Muslim can see that such hatred is unbecoming and unholy for a world religion to focus on and that the credibility of Islam is tarnished by such hatred. No Muslim is allowed to go far enough to self analyze or question why such hatred. Muslims defend Jew hatred by claiming that Jews betrayed Muhammad and thus deserving of this kind of treatment. Even when I was a Muslim, I believed that the one sided story against Jews by Islam, was enough to justify all the killing, terror, lies and propaganda by Islamic leaders against Jews. To the average Muslim, routinely cursing Jews in mosques feels normal and even holy!

After a lot of thinking, analysis, research and writing I discovered that Jew hatred in Islam is an essential foundation to the Islamic belief system that Muslims cannot seem to be able to rid themselves of. Jew hatred masks an existential problem in Islam. Islam is terrified of the Jews and the number one enemy of Islam is the truth that must be constantly covered at any cost. It does not matter how many Muslim men women and children die in the process of saving Islam’s reputation. The number one duty of Muslims is to protect the reputation of Islam and Mohammad. But why would a religion burden its followers like that? This is why:

When Mohammed embarked on his mission to spread Islam, his objective was to create a uniquely Arabian religion, one created by an Arab prophet, which reflected the Arabian values and culture. Yet to obtain legitimacy, he had to link it to the two previous Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity. He expected the Jewish tribes who lived in Arabia to declare him their Messiah and thereby bring him more legitimacy with Arabs, especially with his own tribe in Mecca, the Quraish. Because his own tribe had rejected and ridiculed him, Mohammed needed the approval of the Jews, whom he called the people of the book. But the conversion of Jews to Islam was part of the scenario that Mohammed had to accomplish in order to prove to Meccans that they had made a mistake by rejecting him.

That was one of the reasons Mohammed chose to migrate to Medina, a town that had predominantly been settled by Jewish tribes and a few impoverished Arabs who lived around the Jews. The Jews allowed Mohammed to move in. At the beginning, the Koran of Mecca was full of appeals to the Jews, who were then described as “guidance and light” (5:44) and a “righteous” people (6:153–154), who “excelled the nations” (45:16). But when the Jews rejected the appeasement and refused to convert to Islam, Mohammed simply and literally flipped. The Quran changed from love to threats and then pure hatred, cursing and commandments to kill Jews. Rejection by the Jews became an intolerable obsession with Mohammed.

Not only did the Jews reject him, but also their prosperity made Mohammed extremely envious. The Jewish Arabian tribes earned their living from legitimate and successful business, but Mohammed earned his living and wealth through warfare, by attacking Arab tribes, some of whom were from his own tribe, and trade caravans and seizing their wealth and property. That did not look good for a man who claimed to be a prophet of God. The mere existence of the Jews made Mohammed look bad which led Mohammed to unspeakable slaughter, beheading of 600 to 900 Jewish men of one tribe, and taking their women and children as slaves. Mohammed had the first pick of the prettiest woman as his sex slave. All of this senseless slaughter of the Jews was elaborately documented in Islamic books on the life of Mohammed, not as something to be ashamed of, but as justified behavior against evil people.

One does not have to be a psychiatrist to see the obvious, that Mohammad was a tormented man after the massacre he orchestrated and forced his fighters to undertake, to empower and enrich himself and his religion. To reduce his torment, he needed everyone around him as well as future generations, to participate in the genocide against the Jews, the only people whom he could not control. An enormous number of verses in the Koran encouraged Mohammed’s fighters to fight, kill and curse Muslim fighters who wanted to escape fighting and killing Jews. The Quran is full of promises of all kinds of pleasure in heaven to those who followed Mohammed’s killing spree and curses and condemnation to those who chose to escape from fighting. Muslims were encouraged to feel no hesitation or guilt for the genocide because it was not they who did it, but “Allah’s hand” was behind the killing.

Mohammed never got over his anger, humiliation, and rejection by “the people of the book” and went to his grave tormented and obsessed that some Jews are still alive. At his deathbed Mohammed entrusted Muslims to kill Jews wherever they found them, which made this a “holy commandment” that no Muslim can reject. Muslims who wrote Sharia, understood how Mohammed was extremely sensitive to criticism and that is why criticizing Mohammed became the highest crime in Islam that will never be forgiven even if the offender repents. Mohammed’s message on his deathbed was not for his followers to strive for holiness, peace, goodness, and to treat their neighbors as themselves, but a commandment for Muslims to continue the killing and the genocide against the Jews.

Killing thus became a holy act of obedience to Mohammed and Allah himself. Mohammed portrayed himself as a victim of Jews and Muslims must avenge him till judgment day. With all Arab power, money and influence around the world today they still thrive at portraying themselves as victims. Sharia also codified into law the duty of every Muslim to defend Mohammed’s honor and Islam with their blood and allowed the violation of many commandments if it is for the benefit of defending Islam and Mohammed. Thus Muslims are carrying a huge burden, a holy burden, to defend Mohammed with their blood and in doing so they are allowed to kill, lie, cheat, slander etc.

Mohammed must have felt deep and extreme shame after what he had done to the Jews and thus a very good reason had to be found to explain away his genocide. Thus by commanding Muslims to continue the genocide for him, even after his death, Mohammad expanded the shame to cover all Muslims and Islam itself. All Muslims were commanded to follow Mohammed’s example and chase the Jews wherever they went. One hundred years after Mohammed’s death, Arabs occupied Jerusalem, and built Al Aqsa mosque right on top of the Jewish Temple ruins, the holiest spot of the Jews. Muslims thought they erased all memory of Jewish existence.

Mohammed’s genocide of the Jews of Arabia became an unholy dark mark of shame in Islamic history, and that shame, envy, and anger continues to get the best of Muslims today. In the eyes of Mohammed and Muslims, the mere existence of the Jewish people, let alone an entire Jewish state, de-legitimizes Islam and makes Mohammed look more like a mass murderer than a prophet. For Muslims to make peace with Jews and acknowledge that Jews are humans who deserve the same rights as everyone else would have a devastating effect on how Muslims view their religion, their history and the actions of their prophet.

Islam has a major existential problem. By no will of their own, the Jews found themselves in the middle of this Islamic dilemma. Islam must justify the genocide that Mohammad waged against the Jews. Mohammad and Muslims had two choices: either the Jews are evil sub-humans, apes, pigs, and enemies of Allah, a common description of Jews still heard regularly in Middle Eastern mosques today, or Mohammad was a genocidal warlord and not fit to be a prophet of God, a choice that would mean the end of Islam.

Then and now, Mohammad and Muslims clearly chose the first worldview and decreed that any hint of the second must be severely punished. Jews must remain eternally evil enemies of Islam, if Islam is to remain legitimate. There is no third solution to save the core of Islam from collapsing; either Mohammed was evil, or the Jews were evil. Any attempt to forgive, humanize, or live peacefully with Jews is considered treason against Islam. How can Muslims forgive the Jews and then go back to their mosques, only to read their prophet’s words, telling them they must kill Jews wherever they find them? It does not add up, if someone wants to remain Muslim.

That is why, the number one enemy of Islam is, and must remain, the truth. If the truth exposes Islam’s unjustified Jew hatred, Muslims will be left with an empty shell of a religion, a religion whose prophet was a murderer, a thief and a warlord; without Jew hatred Islam would self-destruct.

Nonie Darwish is the author of The Devil We Don’t Know.