Immemorial

Monday, May 30, 2011
By Daniel Greenfield

Nearly 1.3 million Americans have died in the nation's wars. That is one soldier for every hundred families living today. One soldier for every 270 of us has died somewhere between the shot heard round the world' fired at Lexington and the shots being fired now as you read this on some dusty patch of rock in Kandahar. We all bear the terrible burden of their sacrifice. And the greater burden to make that sacrifice meaningful.

Some wars that are remembered and some wars that are forgotten. And it matters least whether they died standing watch on a lonely frontier with a handful of others in a clash barely dignified with a proper name or in one of the great kettles of war in which men boiled and of which songs are sung, novels written and movies filmed. Up close there is no story but that of the fight itself. The dirt, the sand and the waves. The rush of wind, the sound of a bullet and the long fall from life to death. And from beyond there is nothing but the immemorial sacrifices of those who give their lives so that the nation may live.

By the time Memorial Day or Decoration Day came into being, men had been going off to war for centuries to protect the colonies and then the republic. They had done such an excellent job of it that by the time a day to remember the fallen was set aside, pacifism had come to seem like a realistic philosophy. And that too is the price of service. To do your job so well that future generations no longer appreciate that the job had to be done at all. That those who inherited the security of their sacrifices threw dirt into the faces of those who died for them.

The philosophers of peace begin by demonizing war and end by demonizing soldiers. If war is something unnatural, then it stands to reason that the soldier is an unnatural creature. Get rid of the soldier and we get rid of the wars. The attitude is older than Vietnam. Older than human history. That uncomfortable relationship between the farmer and the hunter. The gatherer and the warrior. And while soldiers dig in beneath the howling wind, the philosophers build their airy castles. The academic fancies himself more moral than the soldier for he knows that war is a senseless and unnecessary thing. The soldier knows that war is senseless, and yet so horribly necessary.

"For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an ' "Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's  "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;" wrote Kipling. And so it has been on this side of the ocean.

The more airy our philosophy has become, the worse the image of the veteran has gotten. Rarely has the American soldier been treated as he should. Revolutionary War veterans were robbed of their pay. Civil War veterans went begging on crutches. WW1 veterans were chased out of Washington D.C. at bayonet point. WW2 veterans were denounced as a lazy and corrupt army of occupation. The Vietnam veteran was depicted as an unstable beast. The modern soldier as a broken killer. But even as we have done better at providing a safety net for veterans, the image of them has gotten worse. We may need 'Tommy', but the community organizers still long to chuck him out.

The modern hero is the rebel. The man who doesn't follow orders, but ends up doing what's right anyway. Every campus since the seventies has been crowded with conformist rebels without a cause. Even the 'Army of One' slogan bends that way turning heroism into a private matter. Something an individual does on his own time. But the heroism of the soldier is not a private act. Our warriors are not savages covered in face paint or riding on the back of pickup trucks through the desert high on hashish. The army is a reflection of our civilization. A group effort. Its solidarity is not based on cinematic archetypes, but on men following rules even when it gets them killed. There is and has always been private heroism in that. But it is a private heroism that springs from the common denominator of the group.

The left mimes horror at the sight of men charging into the face of death, yet their alternative is an equally suicidal conformity. A conformity without honor. A plan without reason. And a future that cannot be.

The military has its uniforms and the left has theirs. The soldiers have their marching orders and their treasonous counterparts have theirs. The former have Arlington. The latter have Kent State. And every day men and women risk their lives so that rebels without a cause may rave on. It is a one sided war, this culture war against the military. A cowardly campaign against those whom they know cannot answer them in kind. This frenzied effort to denounce and dismantle the national defense of a country. Compromise the military-industrial infrastructure enough, and there will be no more war, the left says. And indeed there will be no more war. Only slavery. 

A nation cannot exist only because of its soldiers. Yet without its soldiers it cannot exist at all. The existence of America is a tribute owed to the millions who served, who were wounded and who fell in the line of duty. That their sacrifices have won them the dishonor of their culture is a shameful reflection on the culture, not on them.

The sacrifices of war are immemorial. And yet they are the sacrifices of peace. There is no peace without someone to fight for you. The volunteer army is a voluntary sacrifice. A tribute of courage that passes from war to war and generation to generation. Its refining glory is that legacy. Across the centuries blood spilled is reborn as farms and factories, books and laboratories, skyscrapers and cottages. From the first militia that looked across the frontier of a darkened continent to the soldiers who rise aloft into the sky watched over by the ceaseless eyes of orbiting satellites, the growth of the nation ahead and below them is their tribute.

Yet the more secure a civilization becomes, the more it fears to look back into the red heart of the violence that gave birth to it. War is the womb of nations. But when enough wars are won, then there is room enough for the thinkers and philosophers to imagine a better way. A world without war gained not through miracles, but through the good fellowship of other men. "We have it all figured out," they cry, "all we have to do is be nice to each other." And then they stand with worthless treaties and furled umbrellas in the bloody rain.

We are imprinted to fear violence. The more security we gain, the more flight becomes the dominant instinct. The herd learns to run, hoping for security in numbers. "What of 3,000 dead," say the left, "far more die of cancer in a single year." That is the voice of the herd. The cows who dream of safety at the cost of the cattle ahead of them on the abattoir's long conveyor belt. The ostriches looking for utopia in the dirt covering their own heads. To such people, security equates to morality, and comfort becomes ethics. A refusal to risk one's life except by clambering up the occasional endangered tree becomes heroism. Bartleby and James Dean, the men who don't know why they say no, take the soldier's place in the hall of heroes.


Peace was not won for us by campus activists with kerchiefs shrieking into megaphones or bearded thinkers pontificating smugly about utopia. They have always been its greatest obstacles. For it is not some noble and glorious state. It is the absence of war. And war is only absent in the face of war. Our homes are not kept safe by the books in them, but by the weapons borne in their defense. So too no nation is kept safe from intruders by its libraries, but by its soldiers. Great libraries make great soldiers. But a library without soldiers ends up as the Great Library of Alexandria did when the Muslim horde arrived to claim it. As a pile of ashes.

Thus the existence of a nation and the sacrifices of its soldiers are inextricably linked. One cannot survive without the other. There is no single day alone that can memorialize this most immemorial of sacrifices. It is an endless thing. The life of the one and the other linked together. There cannot be only one or two days in which to remember their service, just as there cannot be but one day or two to remember one's own parents. As their sacrifices are immemorial, so much their remembrance be.

Yesterday was Memorial Day. Today their remembrance is Immemorial.

Sultan Knish

Dear 'World Community': You Are Not Our Equals

May 31, 2011

By William A. Levinson

 

The so-called world community has no standing to tell the U.S. how to run its affairs.

The political left supports the idea that the United States should conform to "international norms" in matters that range from "global norms of civilian non-possession of firearms" to respect for militant Islam.  As an example, the United Nations' Human Rights Council (HRC) has banned criticisms of Sharia law: "the Council will no longer tolerate criticism of either Sharia or specific fatwas in the name of human rights."

The world may indeed be a community but not all members of a community are equal.  The community's wife-beater and drug dealer are not the equals of the community's doctor, home builder, banker, or teacher.  Societies that abuse women and religious minorities under color of the ideology they call Islam are similarly not the equals of Euro-American and primarily Judeo-Christian nations whose laws and cultures encourage freedom of thought, rational inquiry, and full social and economic participation by both sexes and all races and religions.

The left's standard reply to unpleasant statements of truth of this nature consists of the single word "racism."  A behavioral choice, and this includes a society's culture, shared beliefs, and values, is not a race.

A Behavioral Choice is Not a Race

Martin Luther King said to judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skins.  The content of the Third World's character, and especially the character of its militant Islamic components, is why these nations are almost universally poor, ignorant, backward, and violent.

They are not poor because they, like Japan, have few natural resources; some are in fact rich in resources like oil.  Japan however made a deliberate and collective choice during the mid-19^th century to adopt certain Euro-American values and practices.  It took less than fifty years for Japan to transform itself from a feudal society to an industrialized nation equal to that of any in Europe.  Japan's status as a developing nation therefore indicated genuine development in contrast to today's so-called "developing nations," whose decades of "development" have led nowhere but poverty, ignorance, and squalor.

This also explains why the Third World hates Israel.

Israel is, like Japan, relatively poor in natural resources.  It was however settled by primarily European refugees and emigrants who brought with them Euro-American values that are intolerable to their militant Islamic neighbors.  As reported by the International Monetary Fund, Israel's per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) was $26.7 thousand in 2010.  Iran's is $4.7 thousand, so one oil-poor infidel is on average more than five times as productive as an oil-rich Iranian Shiite.  The per-capita GDPs of Syria and Egypt are less than $3 thousand, and even that of oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia is $17 thousand.

This makes Israel living daily proof of the superiority of infidel culture over militant Islamic culture.  Theocrats, mullahs, and ayatollahs who rely on the darkness of ignorance and superstition to control their subjects cannot tolerate such a beacon in their midst, and that is why they seek Israel's destruction.  It is past time to speak this unpleasant truth and others no matter how many accusations of "racism" they evoke.

Western Civilization is Superior; Live With It

"Whatever happens, we have got / the Maxim gun, and they have not."  The source of this jingoistic slogan was the Battle of Omdurman (1898) in which fanatic cries of "Allahu akbar!" proved no match for European discipline, logistics, and machine guns.  Victor Davis Hansen's Carnage and Culture (pp. 21-22) adds, "Because free inquiry and rationalism are Western trademarks, European armies have marched to war with weapons either superior or equal to their adversaries, and have often been supplied far more lavishly through the Western marriage of capitalism, finance, and sophisticated logistics."  The reference adds that Western science has operated without restraint from "religious fundamentalists, state censors, or stern cultural conservatives" -- that is, the kinds of people who are in charge of most of the Islamic world.

Ernest Volkman's Science Goes to War (p. 60) shows even more explicitly why militant Islamic societies are inferior to Christian, Hindu, and Jewish societies:

At the very moment [Thomas] Aquinas was telling his fellow Europeans how faith and reason could coexist, his counterpart, the leading Arab philosopher Ghazzali, concluded that the treasure of ancient texts represented social dynamite.  The study of science and philosophy, he wrote, was harmful because it would shake man's faith in God and undermine the Muslim religion.  Accordingly, the ruling caliph of Baghdad, to demonstrate his piety, ordered the burning of all manuscripts in the city's great library.

People who read books are universally far more advanced and affluent than people who burn books.  When a society's religious police force half the population to wear face-covering sacks, and when religious reactionaries throw acid in the faces of girls who try to attend school, that society deprives itself of fifty percent of its human potential right up front.  The paucity of Nobel Prizes in the Islamic world underscores this simple and inarguable fact.

Nobel Prize Ratio: Infidels 100, Muslims 1

The world's more than 1.5 billion Muslims have produced a total of nine Nobel Prize winners.  Of these we can dismiss outright the Peace Prizes given to terrorist Yasser Arafat and also Anwar Sadat; it was hardly an achievement for the latter to sign a peace treaty after losing a war he started.  (We dismiss Menachem Begin's Peace Prize for the same reason, as he simply made peace with a defeated aggressor.)  This leaves seven legitimate Muslim Nobel Laureates of whom at least one, Shirin Ebadi, was persecuted by her Muslim-majority nation for the activities that earned her the Peace Prize.

The world's 15 million Jews have meanwhile produced about 160 Nobel Laureates, or more than 22 times as many as the Islamic world.  This is a 2,200 to 1 ratio on a per capita basis.  It comes as no surprise that Islamic supremacists hate Jews as living daily reminders of their culture's inferiority, and they also hate the Christian world for earning almost 100 times as many Nobel Prizes as their own.  "My bully can beat up your honor student" summarizes their attitude but the world's honor students fortunately have enough advanced weapons (per Hansen and Volkman) to keep the bullies in their place.  Bullies whose most imaginative use of construction cranes is to hang gay people, women, and Baha'is don't invent things like stealth bombers, Chobham armor, and Predator drones.

We therefore dismiss with intentional and willful contempt the Human Rights Council's directive against criticism of a misogynistic death cult that incites thousands of acts of mindless violence every year.  Most of these acts are against peaceful and innocent people who identify themselves as Muslims but the bottom line is that this death cult kills people because of who they are (gay, female) or what they believe (Jew, Christian, Hindu, Baha'i, or wrong kind of Muslim).  The HRC's efforts to suppress discussion of this problem make it a willful enabler of and accomplice to human rights violations, and therefore an enemy of civilized humanity.

 

American Thinker

Palin and the White Working Class

May 31, 2011
By Christopher Chantrill

 Sunday May 29 and Rolling Thunder marked Sarah Palin's first incursion into "enemy territory" since 2008, according to Politico's Molly Ball.  The US Northeast is the region that's "least friendly" to the Tea Party favorite.

Molly might have written that, with her Tea Party base all sewn up, Palin is already reaching out to the Northeast, a target-rich environment full of the white working class that has been up for grabs in recent elections.  But then, Molly is writing for Politico, not the Wall Street Journal.

There's a good reason why the white working class is up for grabs.  It is the "the most pessimistic and alienated group in American society," according to Ronald Brownstein in the National Journal.  That is no wonder, for "the average high-school-educated, middle-aged man earns almost 10 percent less than his counterpart did in 1980."

There's only one problem, according to Brownstein.  Minorities have suffered in the recession and have experienced the same wage squeeze as the white working class.  But minorities are optimistic about their future.

We know why.  Time was that the white working class was the darling of the liberals.  But then the liberals soured on them.  In the 70s working-class whites were bigoted Archie Bunkers; in the 2000s, "bitter clingers."  Liberals decided that all along they had really loved women and minorities, and they became the darlings of the liberals, extolled and boosted in the university, the halls of Congress, in stock photos, and on stage and screen.

Of course, the white working class has only itself to blame.  Put not your trust in princes, says the Good Book.  Back in the 19^th century the working class had built its own authentic social institutions, the labor unions, the fraternal associations, the Methodist and Baptist Churches, from scratch.  But then the liberals came calling with flattery and free money.  There's a line for that too: The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

When you are living in the Garden of Eden, the darlings of the liberals, life is peachy: good jobs, good wages, benefits, health care, pensions.  But when the liberals decide to change you out for a newer model, then it's back to the real world, only now the unions are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party and the fraternal associations have withered away into irrelevance.  But for the "pessimistic and alienated" in this fallen world, there is God and guns and Sarah Palin.

You can see why the party professionals don't take Palin seriously.  The way people talk, you'd think Sarah Palin was a political newcomer, rather than a 20-year veteran of elected politics.

But there is another, bigger reason why the Republican insiders find it so difficult to take Palin seriously.  Their game is political chess, a game of movement, and Palin plays Chinese Go or weiqi, a game of position, where you put down counters and never move them.  With Going Rogue, she put down a counter that positioned herself as a "commonsense conservative."   With America by Heart she positioned herself as a "commonsense constitutional conservative."  Now, with her "One Nation" bus tour, she is mounting a "campaign to educate and energize Americans about our nation's founding principles, in order to promote the Fundamental Restoration of America."

That's the new counter that Sarah Palin is placing on the board as she moves up the Northeast corridor: the "Fundamental Restoration of America."  It has quite a ring to it.  It is just the line you would want to take if you were running for president against Barack Obama and his czars, his crony green capitalists, his waivers-for-friends ObamaCare, his regulatory blizzard, his jobless recovery, and his 1967-borders foreign policy.  With "Restoration," Palin appeals to the patriotism of the white working class without getting into tricky economic details. 

But what about women and minorities?  Isn't Palin going down a cul-de-sac bidding for the white working class, a demographic slice in decline?  It could be, but don't forget that the day will come when women and minorities will no longer be the "darlings of the liberals" either.  Women might wake up one day and decide that they believe in marriage and children; minorities might opt one day for jobs, jobs, jobs, instead of debt, debt, debt.

A warning to you women and minorities: Stand up to your liberal "partner" on these issues and you too will soon recall in your lonely pessimism and alienation the old injunction.  You'll say: forget the princes.  Put not your trust in politicians.

Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.  See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us.  At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism.

American Thinker

Will Obama Sink the Democrats?

May 31, 2011

By James Lewis

 

The media are playing "divide and conquer" games against Republicans now, a strategy that worked in 2008 by leaving us with John McCain as the only candidate.  This time they are swinging between viciously attacking Sarah Palin and her family, and hyping real or imaginary divisions between Republicans -- never among the Democrats, who present the image of a united front with Stalinesque unity.  But you can bet there\'s a lot of vicious in-fighting among Obama, the Clintons, and all the rest, because Obama may be destroying the Democratic Party as we know it.

Already the media are spreading the Big Lie that the GOP has a "weak field" of candidates, declared and undeclared.  Like Rudy Giuliani, the best NYC mayor in the last half century and a heroic figure on 9/11/01.  Or the four successful former governors of Alaska, Massachusetts, Alabama, and Minnesota.  We have one accomplished black businessman, who looks, acts, and talks like a responsible adult, and two brave and articulate conservative women.  Even with his flaws, Newt Gingrich was the most powerful GOP Speaker of the House in the last half century.  This is a "weak field"?

When know-nothing Obama ran in 2008, the left orgasmed all over itself, and swung a Nobel Peace Prize for him, just for running while black.  Even today Obama is a hyped-up incompetent compared to Giuliani.

What the left really fears is that Obama will sink the Democrats.  American political parties come and go.  In the 19^th century the Whigs died out and the Republicans emerged with Abraham Lincoln.  Harry Truman\'s Democrats were forced to purge the Stalinist left from the Democratic Party, making a fast switch to the mainstream because they were deeply penetrated by Stalin\'s spies and agents of influence.  Americans were justifiably scared of Stalin\'s nuclear bombs, weapons so big and destructive that nobody knew what might happen.  The Democrats, some of them vociferously pro-Soviet, had to change in order to survive.  They produced generations of mainstream liberals -- Truman, Humphrey, LBJ, JFK -- who would look exactly like conservatives today.  Without purging the totalitarian left, they would have died as a party.

Today, as soon as Iran explodes a bomb, Obama is going to be in deep, deep trouble with American voters.  Nuclear proliferation is now happening all over the Middle East, because Arabs fear a nuclear Iran much more than a nuclear Israel.  Obama has Carterized the most unstable region in the world ten times over.  The Democrats well remember how Jimmy got beaten by Ronald Reagan.

The left cannot be trusted in the War on Terror.  Carter let the Shah of Iran be overthrown by murderous tyrannical throwback Ayatollah Khomeini.  The left is just weak-minded -- which is why they keep denying there is a war going on, even when our troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, and parts of Africa like Somalia.

When the history of the War on Terror is written, it will start with Jimmy Carter, who honestly thought that bloody-minded old Khomeini was "some kind of saint," according to his UN Ambassador Andrew Young.  The Shah was pro-American, and educated generations of Iranians (including women) in modern ways of thinking.  When Carter allowed Khomeini to take Iran, the mullahs immediately killed off the secular opposition, tried to overthrow the Saudis next door, and ended up in a vicious war with Saddam that killed a million people.  Today they control Iran, Syria, and Lebanon.  They have always had tactical alliances with Sunni terror groups like Hamas, the Taliban, and Al Qaida.  Afghanistan is taking huge bribes from Iran.  The Iraqis are worried that as soon as the Americans leave, they will be next.

Thank you, peace-loving Jimmy Carter.  What a masterstroke it was to enable the first modern throwback terror regime in the Islamic world.  What an example for future generations Jimmy Carter gave us.

Americans who are not mentally comatose today are turning against Obama, because O openly pushed  Mubarak out of power in Egypt, thereby sabotaging the only effective peace treaty in the Middle East.  Anybody who doesn\'t see that as a disaster is simply lost to reason.  But a lot of liberals will never, ever get it.

Just like Jimmy Carter, Obama is bringing to power the most radical Islamists in Egypt, Turkey, and the other Sunni nations.  Obama has done nothing to stop Iran\'s ruthless march to nuclear power, so that the Saudis may now be ordering their own off-the-shelf nukes from Pakistan.  China just announced that "any American attack on Pakistan would be treated like an attack on China."  North Korea allowed a US nuclear scientist to visit a brand-new enrichment plant that could only have come from China.

Is this a royal mess or what?  And that\'s only his Foreign Follies.

Domestically, what has Obama done?  He\'s Carterized the economy, with inflation rising for food and gas, and economic stagnation causing almost 10 percent unemployment.  He has constantly insulted and demoralized ordinary Americans.  He is a racial divider, not a healer.  He has literally given the middle digit to Hillary Clinton on television, and symbolically dissed just about everybody else, especially the most productive people in America.

Obama has lost the House of Representatives for the Democrats, and that means that hungry liberals all over the country see their career prospects stymied.  His plans for a second term are terrifying: like running your medical care from DC.  Rationing medical care for seniors, like the UK.  Driving doctors out of business.  Affirmative action in all the medical schools, just like Hillary proposed in the 90s.

Listen to these mainstream commentators.

Michael Barone keeps warning that Obama has brought in "gangster government."  That\'s the considered judgment of the best-known PhD political scientist in the country, the editor of the Almanac of American Politics.

Patrick Caddell, after a long career as a mainstream Democratic pollster, is utterly enraged at the leftward lurch of the Demagogues since Clinton.  Caddell is just about the last honest man on that side of the aisle.  All the decent people in the Democratic Party have been chased out.

Charles Krauthammer, the only other conservative at the Washington Post, just wrote that:

Note how Obama has undermined Israel\'s negotiating position. He is demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the territory won in the \'67 war -- its only bargaining chip. Remember: That \'67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem\'s Jewish Quarter are Palestinian -- alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.

The very idea that Judaism\'s holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem\'s Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically or demographically Arab is an absurdity.

This is not just about Israel. Imagine what people are thinking in Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia -- all international flashpoints where trust in American assurances has kept the peace for long decades.  When Obama publicly abandons Israel, people start shaking in fear all over the world.

The leftist monopoly on the news is crumbling.  The new conservative media are expanding and in quality and quantity, a long-delayed response to the leftist degradation of our culture.  Conservatives now have the most articulate speakers in the country, including Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and more.

The left is intellectually bankrupt, and the only thing keeping it alive is media control and government payoffs.  The only way the left can stay in power is by monopolizing the media and the schools, to brainwash an entire nation about such little things as the history of the Cold War.

Obama himself is locked in post-colonial socialism, an ideology that has been completely rejected in China, Russia, India, and much of Latin America and Africa.

It is fear, and not self-confidence, that is making lefties like Chris Matthews act like aggressive chimps.  When chimpanzees feel scared they go into a very aggressive stance, tear branches off the bushes, bare their teeth, and make loud noises.  That\'s Matthews today.  This is not what people do when they feel confident.  It\'s what the power class does when it\'s afraid of losing it all.

Some leftists are scared that another McCarthyist backlash will arise if Obama loses.  They have brainwashed themselves so much about Joe McCarthy that they are now scared of normal Americans.  But they also know how extreme they look.  To answer Rush Limbaugh the left presents vicious name-callers like Ed Schultz and a squad of Hollywood airheads.  If they felt confident they would simply answer substantive arguments with their own.  But they are dreadfully weak on substance.

When Americans become serious again -- when Iran\'s big bomb goes off, or the Great Recession keeps going -- they will vote out Obama and the Democrats.

Every time you read another JourNOlist claiming the GOP is in trouble, just change the word "Republican" to "Democrat."  The left isn\'t losing sleep about Republican losses.  They can see the earth yawning open under their own feet, ready to swallow them up, just as the House Democrats were swallowed up in the midterms.  Don\'t think they aren\'t worried about their poll numbers.  Don\'t think they aren\'t scared about Tea Party Americans.  Don\'t think they can allow conservatives like you and me to exercise our free speech.  They feel panicked, vulnerable, and incompetent.  That\'s where all the rage is coming from.

Historically, leftward lurches in America are always followed by conservative corrections.  Woodrow Wilson was followed by Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover; FDR and Truman by Eisenhower; JFK was relatively conservative by leftist standards, but after LBJ swung hard left, Nixon and Ford succeeded him.  Jimmy Carter led straight to Ronald Reagan.  Bill Clinton was stymied by a powerful GOP Congress.  And Obama...

We\'ll find out soon. The SEIU has just pulled out their old Communist banners, and they are tearing off the mask.  ACORN is back in business.  George Soros is funding all the loudest leftist fronts.  Marxists are suddenly sprouting all over the campuses, like an outbreak of ugly pimples.  The left is out of the closet.

Yet the Global Warming fraud has been exposed, and the Democrats have suddenly found out they want missile defenses.  We now have Aegis-equipped anti-missile vessels near all the hot spots in the world; that\'s the technology the left threw screaming fits about for decades.  Had the left won that debate we would now be exposed to the tender mercies of Iranian missiles a half an hour away.  Now that the US has proven that missile defense is possible, every other nation in the world is rushing them into place.

The phony "energy crisis" is on its last legs as countries like Poland, Canada, China, and Israel have discovered major deposits of convertible shale deposits.  Natural gas from shale will break the monopoly of OPEC in less than a decade, and reactionary Islam will then lose its big money edge in the world.  The Middle East will lose much of its strategic importance as shale deposits are exploited all over the world.

Obama is starting his reelection campaign six months early. The left is already flooding us with phony pre-election headlines and disinformation.  Those are signs of panic.  They can read the portents of doom in the polls.

The left is strongest on hype, not substance.  Alinsky taught them that the appearance of power beats real power.  They are always puffing themselves up like blowfish, and trying to demoralize the rest of us.  Just watch it happen.

By next year we will know if the left can fool all the people all of the time.  No matter how much Obama tries to look like a winner, in fact he is a ball and chain for the Democrats.  He lost the House in the midterms.  Even the French and Chinese are ridiculing him.

Here's hoping that they all sink together, and that a more centrist party will succeed them.

American Thinker

Australia: Muslim Student Who Attacks 6 Women Gets Reduced Sentence Because Of ‘Culture Shock’

Posted by El Cid May 31st 2011 at 4:09 pm in Featured Story, Islam, Islamic extremism, sharia

Big Peace

DNC Chair Mad that GOP Wants to Make It Illegal to Be an Illegal Alien…Or Something

by Warner Todd Huston 

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a Democrat Congresswoman from Florida and is currently the head of the Democrat National Committee. She is also one of the most vitriolic, off base, half informed demagogues of the far left in America today. There are tons of examples of her lies and calumnies out there — it’s an almost daily occurrence now that she is DNC head — but today we have a new one. This time DWS is lamenting how Republicans want to make illegal immigration, well, illegal.

Yes, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is not bright enough to catch the “illegal” part in the phrase “illegal immigrant.” Apparently the question, “what part of illegal don’t you get,” is one she doesn’t get.
Naked Emperor has the video of Wasserman Schultz from May 26 of this year.



Transcript:

I think the president was clearly articulating that his position — Democrats position — is that we need comprehensive immigration reform. We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country that are part of the backbone of our economy. And that, that is not only a reality but a necessity. And that it would be harmful if some — you know, the Republican solutions that I’ve seen in the last few years is that we should just pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries, and in fact it should be a crime and we should arrest them all. I mean that was in legislation that Jim Sensenbrenner advanced a couple of years ago.

 So, Wasserman Schultz’ position is that we have no economy without illegal immigrants and she doesn’t understand that illegal immigrants are actually already criminals for breaking tour immigration and employment laws in the first place. Further she contends that Jim Sensenbrenner and the Republicans suggested that illegals should be all rounded up and deported.

Lies in every respect.

As to the Sensenbrenner bill she is referring to, I’ll guess that it was H.R. 4437, Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. This bill passed the House in 2005 but was stalled in the Senate.

Contrary to Wasserman Schultz’ lies, however, the bill did not require the government to “pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries.” The bill had no provision for all illegals to be rounded up and shipped home. In fact, no Republican sponsored and passed bill has ever proposed this.

Sensenbrenner’s bill did require illegals picked up in the regular process of criminal investigations to be sent home once their illegal status was determined, granted. But there was no wholesale requirement to round up all illegal aliens and ship them home. This claim is simple demagoguery. It’s an outright lie.

But, Schultz has never been anything but a total stranger to the truth, that’s for sure.

I have to say, the last two DNC Chairs have really been examples of the worst the Democrats have to offer and is proof that they really don’t see politics as an adult’s game. Previous to this nut as DNC chair the Dems had Howard “Yeeeogh” Dean as their chair. Both Dean and Schultz are vicious attack dogs that use lies and calumny to sell their DNC product. These screaming mimis are as far from the model of our statesmanlike founders as can be imagined. This is not how our founders saw the official face of politics at all.

Big Government

Twitter/Adam Sharp (D): Verified Account Status Bogus Marketing Ploy?

by Dan Riehl 

Twitter has been successful in drawing a great number of eyeballs to its application with the use of a so called verified account status. It allows the average person to track, address and even interact with what one might call celebrities in various areas of life. Unfortunately, given Democrat and Twitter official Adam Sharp’s, lack of response to accusations that another prominent Democrat’s verified account was hacked – without a blip in its verified status – one might just as readily conclude that Twitter has no genuine safeguards in place whatsoever to ensure that a verified account is truly representative of the individual it’s claimed to be for every tweet, as has previously been widely presumed.

As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on individual user accounts, for privacy reasons.

I label Twitter representative Adam Sharp a Democrat given his years of work for Senator Mary Landrieu – pointed out in a January 2009 press release.

Allen succeeds Adam Sharp, who joined the Landrieu office in June 2004 as Deputy Communications Director and has led the communications team since being named Communications Director in 2005 and Deputy Chief of Staff in early 2008.

It’s understandable, perhaps, that Sharp might be reluctant to say anything that might damage another high-profile Democrat like Weiner; however, one would think his guiding allegiance today would be his role as an official Twitter spokesperson.

As he seems so unwilling to discuss a now much publicized hacking incident involving a Twitter verified account, what are people to think?


 When CNN political analyst Jeffery Toobin takes to the nation’s cable airwaves with statements like this:

“Twitter is not a very secure environment, and doesn’t even come from the people it appears to come from.”

one wonders when Twitter will realize that Rep. Weiner’s version of events is very damaging to it’s brand.

Either Sharp’s political allegiance to a fellow Democrat is standing in the way of his being open, forthcoming, or genuinely responsive, to questions swirling about Representative Weiner’s allegedly hacked verified Twitter account, or he is covering up for Twitter’s inability to discern when a verified account has been compromised and is no longer worthy of the verified distinction.

Which is it, Mr. Sharp? Ball’s in your and Twitter’s court, as they say. Or, game on, if you prefer, as I believe another prominent politician recently said in a different context, if you will.

Big Government

Palin Plays Hard to Get

By Jay Newton-Small Sunday, May 29, 2011

 Almost any politician in the U.S. follows tried and true patterns when dealing with the media. They alert the media of an upcoming event, the media shows up, photos are taken, cameras roll. Sometimes questions follow. And then the media goes home. But not Sarah Palin.

Palin alerted the media to the first stop on her northeastern road trip: the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally in Washington, D.C. But after some event organizers expressed displeasure on Friday over her plans to attend the event, Palin’s staff refused to comment about the appearance and some reporters wondered if she’d even show up. No time was given – the event lasted from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. No venue was given – Rolling Thunder’s course goes for more than five miles from Arlington cemetery around the National Mall. The annual charity for prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action draws a quarter of a million bikes and an estimated 900,000 participants – good luck finding the Palin family amid all that.

Amazingly, some media did (bravo, AP’s Phil Elliott), though the former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee mostly declined to answer questions. She signed jackets and hats, shook hands and admired tattoos. She rode on the back of her daughter Willow’s Harley. Todd Palin rode with their youngest daughter Piper.

Their eldest daughter Bristol rode separately, according to media reports. Palin had “rolling justice” written in smeared ink on one hand and a George W. Bush sticker on her bike reading, “Miss me?”

“There’s no better way to see D.C. than on the back of a Harley! My family may be used to snowmachines more so than motorcycles,” Palin wrote on her political action committee’s website. “But whether you’re riding the open road or the frozen tundra, you’re celebrating a free spirit. What could be more American than that?”

After the rally, Palin took an “incognito” tour of Washington monuments, about which she blogged.  “We met some great everyday citizens who were also “taking it all in” in honor of the greatest nation on earth,” she wrote.

Where does she go next? North –her staff will say nothing more. Political reporters have fanned out from Antietam to Gettysburg on Sunday afternoon in anticipation of her next potential stop. Congratulations, Sarah Palin, you have turned the Washington press corps into a bunch of paparazzi stalking your every move.

As Palin moves up the East Coast, ending her trip in politically important New Hampshire, the press seems poised to follow. I would say Palin’s goal is to torture the “lame stream media,” but there may be more going through her mind. In many ways, it’s a smart ploy. The frustration and time spent looking for Palin, only to have her say next to nothing,  is driving the press wild. Even if it yields few stories, Palin still controls her own message by blogging the trip herself, and forcing everyone to check her website to see what she’s saying and where she’s going.

The goal of the road trip seems to be two fold: 1) to bring the attention back to her after months of laying low, and 2) raise money for her political acti0n committee ahead of June’s Federal Election Commission reporting deadline. Both goals seem to indicate she’s considering a run for the presidency. The public attention from her trip coupled with new fundraising would be the perfect springboards for an announcement. Another added benefit: She’s dominating the news cycle in a week important to her potential rivals for the nomination.

So, will she run? “Don’t know,” she told one fellow Rolling Thunder biker. The more she plays hard to get, the more the media — and voters, she hopes — want her.

Swampland

America's Exceptionalism and Destiny

May 30, 2011

By Steve McCann

 

The people of United States, a nation struggling to regain a sense of optimism and confidence, have, over many years, been told by the elites in American society that their country is one of an ignoble nature and history.  That "American Exceptionalism" is a myth which has precipitated the plunder of the planet and the exploitation of mankind throughout the world. 

A nation whose alleged sins have been so egregious that the current President, whose primary campaign promise was to "transform America" into a collectivist state, feels duty bound to go around the world on bended knee apologizing for those perceived transgressions.

The United States has become a ship without a rudder aimlessly wandering about the turbulent seas piloted by those who only interest is themselves, their ideology and thirst for power.  Yet the majority of the American people know that they have in their possession the key to a prosperous and equitable society: individual freedom and liberty concurrent with a significant constraint on the power of government.

They also know that in the annals of mankind the true account of America's contribution to the world and it peoples is one of magnificent achievement whether freeing millions from tyranny by force of arms or improving their standard of living by fostering global economic growth and new technology.  

Perhaps the one thing above all others that many in the United States, particularly among the ruling class, do not appreciate is the indispensable and unprecedented role this nation has played in giving hope and a real-life vision of the blessings of true freedom and liberty to countless millions throughout the world.  Nothing this country has done in its history can compare to being what Ronald Reagan referred to as: "The Shining City on the Hill."

On this Memorial Day the following is a tale emblematic of this unique role and the strain of honor and bravery that permeates the American character.  While this story took place in Europe during World War II, it could have been set in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, or countless other nations:

A soldier, a small American flag on the shoulder of his jacket, slowly walks through the streets of a once bustling city now lying in ruin.  The few still upright walls, their windows and doors blown out, appear as skeletons framed against the blue sky.  His senses honed to a fine razor's edge to react to the slightest sound or movement, he steps carefully around the broken bricks and shattered glass.

The soldier hears a faint stirring behind him and wheeling around, rifle at the ready in anticipation of  the worst, he sees, instead, a young girl perhaps five or six years of age slowly walking towards him.  Her tattered clothes barely able to cover her emaciated frame.  Their eyes meet.  Eyes now dulled by the weariness of war and the never-ending struggle for survival.

He offers his hand to her and while wary she senses a genuine kindness in his demeanor.  They share a chocolate bar and though unable to communicate there is an instant bond.  She then motions to three other children, among them a boy around the age of two or three, to join them.  They slowly and apprehensively come from the behind the shattered walls.  Welcoming them into the group, the soldier, with a gentle smile, gives all his rations to the youngsters.  For an hour or two, the children, some for the first time in their brief lives, revel in a sense of security and companionship as they gather around the soldier.  They sit and talk to each other as best they can while the thoughts of the young man gradually turn to the memory of his childhood, family, and a sweetheart in a small town so far away. 

When the time comes for the soldier to depart, the little girl tugs on his sleeve and with tears in her eyes hugs and kisses him on the cheek; the other children hold onto him unwilling to let go.  Doing what he must, the soldier reluctantly turns away and without hesitation returns to his duty and the bloody cauldron of war; but he leaves behind children who for the rest of their lives would cherish the memory of that day and of the young man from another country who had shown them such genuine friendship and kindness.

The following day a snipers bullet found its mark and the same young man so full of hopes and dreams lay dead beneath the gaunt image of a splintered and shattered tree silhouetted by the purple haze of the setting sun.

Yet in a street of a devastated city thousands of miles from his home the soldier had shared a fleeting moment of peace and tranquility with a new family, those he and his fellow Americans had freed from a life of slavery and oppression and given a chance to pursue their dreams as he willingly gave up his.

The country, the United States of America, from whence this soldier came, is unique in the history of mankind.  When attacked by foreign powers America never viewed those incidents as a pretext to conquer and permanently subjugate other nations.  Rather this country in the pursuit of self-defense also aspired to the noble calling of freeing others from tyranny and allowing the people of those nations to establish their own governments based on freedom and liberty.

The basic tenets in the founding of the United States: 1) that all men are endowed by God with certain inalienable rights and, 2) that the individual and not the state is paramount, enabled a society to be created that fostered love and respect not only of country but of fellow man regardless of where he might live.

It is this distinctive trait among all global communities which has motivated countless American men and women over the years to willingly take up arms to defend a land they cherish and to expend blood and treasure so others can live in peace and freedom.

Those that were liberated, initially pre-occupied with rebuilding and getting on with their shattered lives, sometimes have failed to acknowledge their debt to those living and dead who rescued them and succeeding generations from lives of tyranny and repression.  As the years march inexorably on, the memory of the past, particularly the most unpleasant chapters are pushed into the recesses of daily consciousness.  With each new generation the knowledge and experience of war and survival is replaced with the demands of day-to-day living but throughout the four corners of the earth the sacrifices and the ideals that America represents are embedded in the psyche of all men.

I have lived among the people of the United States for sixty years after having been welcomed to its shores as a survivor and displaced orphan from World War II.  I have been privileged to get to know the magnificent everyday citizens of this country from all walks of life and ethnicity whether in the foothills of Appalachia, the farm fields of the Great Plains, the imposing vistas of the West or the streets of America's cities.  Their forbears created and molded the country that became the foremost nation on earth.  That drive, determination, and character still beats deep within the heart of all who are proud to call the United States their home.

I am confident that once freed from the shackles of oppressive government as well as the misguided, egocentric, and often hostile leadership extant throughout the corridors of power, the vast majority of the people of this nation will make certain that America's best days are still ahead of it.  The role of being the noblest and most successful experiment in the annals of mankind is this nation's destiny and an obligation it will fulfill.

 

American Thinker

Obama and Immigration

May 30, 2011

By Elise Cooper

 

Earlier in May President Obama gave what was billed as an "immigration speech" in El Paso, Texas.  What he said was factually misleading and politically motivated.  He said nothing about the drug violence in Mexico, which is destabilizing the entire country and spilling over the border into the United States.  Furthermore, his most misleading statement was "borders first, borders first, that's become the common refrain...we've answered those concerns."  American Thinker interviewed those knowledgeable about border security and immigration reform to see if border security concerns no longer exist.

All interviewed agree that the border is more secure today; yet, believe this issue is far from resolved.  The Government Accountability Office issued a report that stated 44% of the Southwestern border was secure with only 16% considered airtight.  Congresswoman Candice Miller (R-MI), chairwoman of the Subcommittee for Borders, cited the Department of Homeland Security's own statistic, that approximately 30% of the Southern border is operationally under control which "means, to most people, that we do not have a secure border. We have a long way to go."

This was the first visit by President Obama to the Southwest border; yet, he did not go there to assess the current situation.  Congressman McCaul (R-TX), Chairman of the Homeland Security Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, believes that the President just came down "to give a political speech and said the border is secure, mission accomplished.  Let's check the secure box so we can get on with our immigration agenda for the 2012 election."  Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) said these words in July, 2010, which remains relevant today, "First and foremost among the necessary steps is the imperative task of securing our borders. I was disappointed to hear the president give short shrift to border security concerns by saying that our nation's southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years. That is not a sign of progress; it is a statement on the poor job we have done in securing the border for the past two decades."

More needs to be done considering that drug violence is spilling over into the US.  All interviewed agree with Congresswoman Giffords' comment that the drug violence "both directly and indirectly affect us ... national security begins with border security."  Douglas, Arizona Police Chief Alberto Melis wants Americans to understand that there are many rugged areas that are hard to secure.  He agrees with Congressman McCaul's proposed legislation, to designate the Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, since "a secure border means that 100% of the criminals are kept out."  Congressman McCaul feels that the President misled the American people when he stated, "El Paso and other cities and towns along this border are consistently among the safest in the nation."  McCaul regards Juarez, Mexico as the most dangerous city in the world, just across the river from El Paso.  He explained that El Paso is considered safe because Homeland Security classifies "spillover violence by leaving out key matrices such as kidnapping, extortion, and cartel versus cartel violence."  Sebastian Rotella, a journalist who has covered the border extensively and wrote books about border security, emphasized that in 2012 Calderon will no longer be the Mexican President and the next President is likely to be more sympathetic and more willing to deal with the cartels since "the next President may not be willing to make this bloody commitment.  Our window of opportunity is shutting."

To secure the border, what is needed, is the proper mix of boots on the ground and technology, but the most important aspect is for the US Government to focus, take the offensive, and have a sense of urgency.  McCaul wants the Colombian model, based on joint intelligence-military operations, applied to Mexico.  Congresswoman Miller suggests having a striker brigade on the border to "protect our border and make the drug cartels think twice about coming across."

Besides border security the President also spoke about immigration reform, accusing his opponents of using the immigration issue for partisan advantage: "We've seen a lot of blame and a lot of politics and a lot of ugly rhetoric around immigration." Texas Hispanic Republican Representative Jose Alisedas resents the President's speech since "I had to wait all this time to become a citizen; yet, people can cut in line to get amnesty.  The Democrats have mastered the thinking that if you are against illegal immigration you are against Latinos.  The reality is if you look at the Democratic platform they have been very good at portraying themselves as supporters of the little people.  These policies hurt the low-income legal constituents since having illegal immigrants as cheap labor brings down wages. We should not make it easy for the uninvited and should kill the incentives by enforcing laws that says employers cannot hire illegals."

Just as legal low income Americans are hurt by illegal immigration so are those legal Americans who want to attend college. American citizens, including Latinos, have college spots and tuition grants taken away from them by illegal immigrants.  Congressman Brian Bilbray (R-CA), the chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, criticized the President for not addressing this issue and cautions that "Americas have fewer rights than somebody living in the States illegally.  There is no political activism for those who are here legally.  For example, Martinez is suing the University of California, Davis, because he was not given in state tuition as a US citizen; yet, California was granting in state tuition to illegals."

According to Congressman Bilbray, border control should not be the sole focus of an immigration enforcement policy.  He wants to see congressional and Presidential action that includes mandatory workplace verification of immigration status, measures to curb misuse of Social Security and IRS identification numbers, real ID, and partnerships with state and local law enforcement officials.  For Congressman Bilbray President Obama in this speech only "addressed the symptom of the problem.  The real problem is the employment and benefit magnet in the cities, the illegal employers.  E-Verify and Real ID are issues that are not anti-immigrant and can be bi-partisan.  These do not place a burden on the Latino community."  He also wants to end the ability for employers to claim a tax deduction for their employees.  Currently there are a vast amount of illegals that are listed as employees, which means that the IRS knows the name, address, and place of employment of these illegal aliens.  Essentially employers are taking tax deductions for wages paid to illegal employees.  It appears that Congress and the Supreme Court are doing what the President and Federal Government should have done.  After the Supreme Court ruled that Arizona could deny employers a business license if they are repeatedly caught hiring illegal immigrants, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) decided to put forward a bill requiring all employers to use E-Verify.

The speech was both sarcastic and political.  It showed that the President enjoys being a candidate and not a leader or he would never make statements such as, "You know, they said we needed to triple the Border Patrol.  Or now they're going to say we need to quadruple the Border Patrol.  Or they'll want a higher fence.  Maybe they'll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat.  They'll never be satisfied.  And I understand that.  That's politics."  Pete Hoekstra, a former ranking member of the intelligence committee felt that "the Republicans are willing to work with the President to secure the border.  If the President believes the most effective way is to build a moat with alligators that is his decision.  He can start building it now.  We don't want to hear 'I have given you what you want.'"  What Americans want is a secure border and to send a clear message to illegal employers, that it is unacceptable to hire illegals. 

 

American Thinker

The Nazis Find a Home in Post-Mubarak Egypt

May 30, 2011

By Andrew G. Bostom

 

Wednesday May 25, 2001 a group of Egyptians, led by founding member Emad Abdel Sattar proclaimed the establishment  of "a contemporary frame of reference" Nazi Party.

Sattar reportedly stated that the party, whose founding deputy is a former military official, would bring together prominent figures from Egyptian society, and vest all powers in a "carefully selected" president. 

The Egyptian Leftist publication Al-Masry Al-Youm, at its English website, further contends the Nazi party operated clandestinely during the Mubarak regime which had prevented party leaders from carrying out their activities in the open. Two Facebook pages which appeared recently under the title of "the Egyptian Nazi Party," may confirm the party's public emergence since Mubarak was deposed.

Whether or not the inchoate new Egyptian Nazi Party, operating within a  "modern framework," becomes a significant political force, Nazism and its ugly resonance with the country's Muslim masses, has a prolonged, disturbing legacy in Egypt. 

Aribert Ferdinand Heim, was a member of Hitler's Waffen-SS, and a psychopathic "medical doctor" who committed the most heinous atrocities at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps, including: the performance of operations on prisoners without anesthesia; removing organs from healthy inmates, who were then left then to die on the operating table; injecting poison, including gasoline, into the hearts of others; and taking the skull of at least one victim as a "souvenir."

As revealed in this February 4/5, 2009 New York Times story, Heim, like many Nazi war criminals, lived safely in Egypt, perhaps for up to three decades, following his flight from Europe in 1962.

A dusty briefcase with rusted buckles, sitting nearly forgotten in storage here in Cairo, hid the truth behind Dr. Heim's flight to the Middle East. Obtained by The New York Times and the German television station ZDF from members of the Doma family, proprietors of the hotel here where Dr. Heim resided, the files in the briefcase tell the story of his life, and death, in Egypt.

Josef Kohl, a former inmate at Mauthausen, gave the following testimony regarding Heim to a United States war crimes investigating team on Jan. 18, 1946, less than a year after the German surrender.

Dr. Heim had a habit of looking into inmates' mouths to determine whether their teeth were in impeccable condition. If this were the case, he would kill the prisoner with an injection, cut his head off, leave it to cook in the crematorium for hours, until all the flesh was stripped from the naked skull and prepare the skull for himself and his friends as a decoration for their desks.

During 1979, Heim (who died on Aug. 10, 1992, according to his son and the death certificate), wrote a letter to the German magazine Spiegel, after the publication of a report about his war-crimes case. Whether he ever sent the letter, which was found in his files (along with numerous others were "written in meticulous cursive style in German or English") is unclear. According to the Times report,

the letter...accused Simon Wiesenthal, who was interned at Mauthausen, of being "the one who invented these atrocities." Dr. Heim went on to discuss what he called Israeli massacres of Palestinians, and added that "the Jewish Khazar, Zionist lobby of the U.S. were the first ones who in 1933 declared war against Hitler's Germany."  The Turkic ethnic group the Khazars were a recurring theme for Dr. Heim, who kept himself busy in Cairo, researching a paper he wrote in English and German, decrying the possibility of anti-Semitism owing to the fact, he said, that most Jews were not Semitic in ethnic origin.

Heim converted to Islam (in his case, at the Cairo mosque of Sunni Islam's foremost religious teaching institution, Al Azhar), becoming "known to locals" as Tarek Hussein Farid. Apparently, Heim, aka, Dr. Death, became a devout Muslim,  "maintained the discipline to walk some 15 miles each day through the busy streets of Egypt's capital...to the world-renowned Al Azhar mosque", and bonded with his Muslim neighbors, who knew him as "Uncle" Tarek Hussein Farid.

He formed close bonds with his neighbors, including the Doma family, which ran the Kasr el Madina hotel, where Dr. Heim lived the last decade before his death. Mahmoud Doma, whose father owned the establishment, said Dr. Heim spoke Arabic, English and French, in addition to German. Mr. Doma said his neighbor read and studied the Koran, including a copy in German that the Domas had ordered for him. Mahmoud Doma, 38, became emotional when talking about the man he knew as Uncle Tarek, whom he described giving him books and encouraging him to study. "He was like a father. He loved me and I loved him."

He recalled how Uncle Tarek bought rackets and set up a tennis net on the hotel roof, where he and his siblings played with the German Muslim until sundown. But by 1990, Dr. Heim's good health began to fail him and he was diagnosed with cancer.

Thus Heim epitomized scores of other Nazis, who found safe haven in Egypt, most importantly, the pious Muslim jihadist and Nazi ideologue,  Johannes "Omar Amin" von Leers. Historian Bat Ye'or has described this phenomenon, as follows (here, pp.154-55):

...they lived under false names and worked in anti-Zionist propaganda centers, such as the Institute for the Study of Zionism, which was founded in Cairo, in 1955. Its director, Alfred Zingler (alias Mahmoud Saleh), worked together with Dr. Johannes von Leers (d. 1965, alias Omar Amin), who had been a specialist on the "Jewish Question" in Josef Goebbels' propaganda department. Zingler's main assistants were Dr. Werner Witschale and Hans Appler (Saleh Shafar), who had also served on the staff of Goebbels' ministry, as well as Louis Heiden. Heiden was the editor of one of the many Arabic versions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and of a translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf into Arabic. In 1955, the Cairo Egyptian special services for anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda hired Appler.

Other Nazis settled in Egypt as well. Most of them worked with the Egyptian government as advisers on anti-Zionist propaganda or assisted with the organization of police forces or as military trainers in Palestinian terrorist camps. In 1957, according to Frankfurter Illustrierte [August 25, 1957], the number of Nazis in Egypt was two thousand. [emphasis added] Erich Altern (Ali Bella), the chief of the Jewish section of the Gestapo in occupied Galicia [Eastern Central Europe, between Poland and Ukraine] during the war, escaped to Egypt in the early 1950s, where he served as a military instructor in the Palestinian camps. [Standartenfuhrer (an SS regiment leader)] Baumann (Ali Ben Khader), who had collaborated in the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and went into hiding, became a military specialist in Egypt for the army of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The pervasive impact of this ugly mentality is perhaps best illustrated by then Colonel Anwar El-Sadat's 1953 "Letter to Hitler". When, in September, 1953 several news agency reports were circulated claiming that Hitler was still alive, the Cairo weekly Al Musawwar, posed this question to a number of Egyptian personalities, including Sadat: "If you wished to send Hitler a personal letter, what would you write to him?" In response, Sadat wrote the following, published September 18, 1953: (here, p. 155 )

            My dear Hitler,

I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart. Even if you appear to have been defeated, in reality you are the victor. You succeeded in creating dissensions between Churchill, the old man, and his allies, the Sons of Satan. [emphasis added] Germany will win because her existence is necessary to preserve the world balance. Germany will be reborn in spite of the Western and Eastern powers. There will be no peace unless Germany once again becomes what she was. The West, as well as the East, will pay for her rehabilitation-whether they like it or not. Both sides will invest a great deal of money and effort in Germany in order to have her on their side, which is of great benefit to Germany. So much for the present and the future. As for the past, I think you made mistakes, like too many battlefronts and the shortsightedness of Ribbentrop vis-a vis the experienced British diplomacy. But your trust in your country and people will atone for those blunders. We will not be surprised if you appear again in Germany or if a new Hitler rises up in your wake. [emphasis added]

Almost 40 years ago (1973/74) Bat Ye'or published a remarkably prescient analysis of the Islamic antisemitism and resurgent jihadism in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout the Muslim world. The primary, core Antisemitic and jihadist motifs were Islamic, derived from Islam's foundational texts, on to which European, especially Nazi elements were grafted.

Nazi academic and propagandist of extermination Johannes von Leers' writings and personal career trajectory - as a favored contributor in Goebbels' propaganda ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers) while working as an anti-Western, and antisemitic/anti-Zionist propagandist under Nasser's regime from the mid-1950s, until his death in 1965 - represents the apotheosis of this convergence of jihad, Islamic antisemitism, and racist, Nazi antisemitism, described by Bat Ye'or.

Upon his arrival in Egypt in 1956, it was the jihadist and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, former Mufti of Jerusalem, who welcomed von Leers, stating, "We are grateful to you for having come here to resume the struggle against the powers of darkness incarnated by international Judaism." The ex-Mufti oversaw von Leers' formal conversion to Islam, and remained one of his confidants. And von Leers described the origins of the Muslim "forename," Omar Amin, that he adopted as part of his conversion to Islam in a November, 1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson,

I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti.

Already in essays published during 1938 and 1942, the first dating back almost two decades before his conversion to Islam while in Egypt, von Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Medina. These essays reveal his pious reverence for Islam and its prophet, and a thorough understanding of the sacralized Islamic sources for this narrative, i.e., the Koran, hadith, and sira. which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.

Von Leers' 1942 essay simultaneously extols the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty, and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later. And even earlier, in a 1938 essay, von Leers sympathized with, "the leading role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the Arabians' battles against the Jewish invasion in Palestine." Von Leers observes that to the pious Muslim,

...the Jew is an enemy, not simply an ‘unbeliever' who might perhaps be converted or, despite the fact that he does not belong to Islam, might still be a person of some estimation. Rather, the Jew is the predestined opponent of the Muslim, one who desired to bring down the work of the Prophet.

Von Leers, for example, offers this reverent summary characterization of Muhammad's activities in Mecca, and later Medina, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics:

[Mecca] For years Muhammad sought in Mecca to succeed with his preaching that there was only one God, the sole, all-merciful king of Judgment Day. He opposed to the Christian Trinity the unity of God, rejected the Christian doctrine of original sin and salvation, and instead gave every believer as a guiding principle the complete fulfillment of the commands of the righteous, given by a compassionate and just God, before whom every individual person had to account for his acts.

[Medina] September 622 he left Mecca for Medina, where he took up residence. Here he encountered the Jewish problem for the first time. He believed in the victorious power of good in the world, he was firmly convinced that the religion of the one and only God, with its easy, practical, reasonable, basic laws for human life was nothing other than the original religion. He wanted to take mankind out of the current turmoil and lead it toward the original, clear vision of God. But since he had to deal with people who had been influenced by both Christianity and Judaism, he said that it was the religion in which Abraham (Ibrahim) had already believed, andwhich Christ and Moses had proclaimed, only each time it had been distorted by human beings. He said that this had been revealed anew to him by God. He wanted to make the path easy to follow for both Christians and Jews; thus at first he allowed his followers to pray facing toward Jerusalem. He repeatedly emphasized that he only wanted to purify the existing religions, to establish the restored, newly revealed faith. At the same time he was a skilled statesman. When the Arab tribes were unified, theJews became a minority in Medina. Muhammad provided them with a kind of protectorate agreement: they were to retain their administration and their forms of worship, help the faithful defend the city, not ally themselves with Muhammad's opponents, and contribute to the faithful's wars. The Jews could have been satisfied with this. But they       began a general hate campaign against Islam, which proclaimed a pure conception of God.

Citing (or referring to) the relevant foundational text sources (i.e., Qur'an 13:36; 8:55-58; 59:1-15; the sira and canonical hadith descriptions of the fate of individual Jews such as Abu Afak and Ka'b ibn Ashraf and the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayzah, as well as the Jews of the Khaybar oasis), von Leers chronicles Muhammad's successful campaigns that vanquished these Jews, killing and dispersing them, "or at most allow[ing] them to remain in certain places if they paid a poll tax." Von Leers further describes the accounts (from the hadith, and, more elaborately, the sira) of Muhammad's poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, and also notes the canonical hadith that records Caliph Umar's rationale for his putative expulsion from northern Arabia of those remaining Jews who survived Muhammad's earlier campaigns:

On his deathbed Mohammed is supposed to have said: "There must not be two religions in Arabia." One of his successors, the caliph Omar, resolutely drove the Jews out of Arabia.

And von Leers even invokes the apocalyptic canonical hadith that forty-six years later became the keystone of Hamas's 1988 charter sanctioning a jihad genocide against the Jewish State of Israel:

Ibn Huraira even communicates to us the following assertion of the great man of God: "Judgment Day will come only when the Moslems have inflicted an annihilating defeat on the Jews, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden says to believers: "Behind me stands a Jew, smite him."

Von Leers's 1942 essay concludes by simultaneously extolling the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later:

They [the Jews] were subjected to a very restrictive and oppressive special regulation that completely crippled Jewish activities. All reporters of the time when the Islamic lands still completely obeyed their own laws agree that the Jews were particularly despised. . . .

Mohammed's opposition to the Jews undoubtedly had an effect-oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed by Islam. Its back was broken.

Oriental Jewry has played almost no role in Judaism's massive rise to power over the last two centuries. Scorned, the Jews vegetated in the dirty alleys of the mellah, and were subject to a special regulation that did not allow them to profiteer, as they did in Europe, or even to receive stolen goods, but instead kept them fearful and under pressure. Had the rest of the world adopted a similar method, today we would have no Jewish question-and here we must absolutely note that there were also Islamic rulers, among them especially the Spanish caliphs of the House of Muawiyah, who did not adhere to Islam's traditional hostility to Jews-to their own disadvantage. However, as a religion Islam has performed the immortal service of preventing the Jews from carrying out their threatened conquest of Arabia and of defeating the dreadful doctrine of Jehovah through a pure faith that opened the way to higher culture for many peoples and gave them an education and humane training, so that still today a Moslem who takes his religion seriously is one of the most worthy phenomena in this world in turmoil.

Seven decades ago, University of Notre Dame historian Waldemar Gurian, and Protestant theologian Karl Barth, each elucidated the profound attraction of Islam for a hardcore Nazi ideologue such as von Leers-which also underpins the subsequent Islamic-Nazi symbiosis so evident in post World War II Egypt.

Gurian, a refugee, who witnessed first hand the Communist and Fascist totalitarian movements in Europe, concluded (circa 1945) that Hitler, in a manner analogous to the 7th century precedent of Muhammad, had been the simplifier of German nationalism.

A fanatical simplifier who appeared as the unifier of various German traditions in the service of simple national aims and who was seen by many differing German groups - even by some people outside Germany - as the fulfiller of their wishes and sharer of their beliefs, with some distortions and exaggerations - such, as long as he had success, was Adolf Hitler.

Based upon the same clear understandings, and devoid of our era's dulling, politically correct constraints, Karl Barth [from, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day] had offered this warning, published in 1939:

Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill - with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam [emphasis in original], its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah's Prophet

Investigative journalist John Roy Carlson's 1948-1950 interviews of Arab Muslim religious and political leaders provide consummate independent validation of these Western assessments. Perhaps most revealing were the candid observations of Aboul Saud, whom Carlson described as a "pleasant English-speaking member of the Arab League Office." Aboul Saud explained to Carlson that Islam was an authoritarian religio-political creed which encompassed all of a Muslim's spiritual and temporal existence. He stated plainly,

You might describe Mohammedanism as a religious form of State Socialism...The Koran give the State the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate property. It grants the ruler of the State unlimited powers, so long as he does not go against the Koran. The Koran is our personal as well as our political constitution.

And after interviewing Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna himself, who "preached the doctrine of the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other," Carlson observed:

It became clear to me why the average Egyptian worshipped the use of force. Terror was synonymous with power! This was one reason why most Egyptians, regardless of class or calling had admired Nazi Germany. It helped explain the sensational growth of the Ikhwan el Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood]

However, as Brynjar Lia's 1998 analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood's formative years (1928-1942) points out,

...al-Banna was anxious to distance himself from the aggressive chauvinism and racism that flourished in several countries in the 1930s, and rejected racial theories as utterly incompatible with Islam. In fact, the Muslim Brothers used to make fun of the Young Egypt Party (Misr al-Fatah) which they saw as trying to imitate the German Nazis.

Lia acknowledges how Al-Banna's and  the Muslim Brotherhood's vision remained steadfastly Islamic-hence its deep resonance with the timeless aspiration of the Muslim masses to establish a transnational Muslim Caliphate via jihad.

Quoting the Qur'anic verse [2:193] "And fight them till sedition is no more, and the faith is God's," the Muslim Brothers urged their fellow Muslims to restore the bygone greatness of Islam, and to re-establish the Islamic empire...[T]het even called for the restoration of "former Islamic colonies" in Andalus (Spain), southern Italy, Sicily, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands...When they did express admiration of certain aspects of Nazism or Fascism, it was usually in the context of demonstrating that the Europeans had implemented some of "the principles of Islam," such as modest dress code, encouragement of early marriage, a strong patriotism, and a military jihad spirit.

Remarkably concordant views on jihad were expressed by von Leers during the same era, prior to his formal conversion to Islam. I was able to obtain (from the Russian State Military Archive of captured Nazi documents), and have translated from the original German, an unpublished ~ 6000 word essay Leers' wrote during World War II (apparently in 1942), entitled, "Philosophies of Peace and War in Islam."  

Disingenuously ignoring the explicit imperial designs of jihad-to subjugate all of mankind under Islamic Law, as detailed with lucidity in the Koran, sunna, and a millennial continuum of Muslim jurisprudence-von Leers provides this hagiographic overview of Islam's bellicose institution for global conquest, linked to his condemnation of Western European Christendom:

For quite a long time, however, the great colonial powers have been using treaties between themselves and smaller nations merely as a mutual means of help, that is, until one nation has become stronger than the other in its leadership and its means of war.  The Qur'an intends and demands that treaties be established upon the bases of justice and equal rights of access, without ulterior motives or underhanded intentions - otherwise, there will never be peace upon the earth.

Leers amplifies this traditional Muslim apologetic in his assessment of the Koranic injunction-verse 9:29-for timeless jihad against Judeo-Christian societies.

"Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden -- such men as practice not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book -- until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled" (9:29, Arberry translation). One must therefore fight against those who possess the Book and who threaten the land and life of the Muslims, who oppress the people or want to convert the Muslims to their faith.  This enemy, when defeated, must pay tribute....This payment, therefore, is not a "payment of reparations" in the European sense, by which the enemy is completely ruined.

Predictably, Leers also highlights this traditional Koranic statement of Jewish perfidy in relation to wartime treaties. But again, Leers "exegesis" on Koran 8:55 is entirely consistent with the gloss on this verse in the seminal, mainstream Koranic commentary Tafsir al-Jalalayn which maintains that 8:55 refers specifically to the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza.

The Qur'an considered the Jews, who never remained true to the treaties they made with the Prophet, to be lower than cattle.  It says concerning them, " Surely the worst of beasts in God's sight are the unbelievers, who will not believe, those of them with whom thou hast made compact, then they break their compact every time, not being godfearing" (8:55-56, Arberry translation)

Until his death in 1965, von Leers remained unrepentant about the annihilationist policies towards the Jews he helped advance serving Hitler's Reich. Indeed he was convinced of the righteousness of the Nazi war against the Jews, and as a pious Muslim convert, von Leers viewed the Middle East as the succeeding battleground to seal the fate of world Jewry. His public evolution over the course of three decades illustrates starkly the shared centrality to these totalitarianisms - both modern and ancient - of the Jews as "first and last enemy" motif.

Over fifty years later ignorance, denial, and delusion have engendered the sorry state of public understanding of this most ominous conversion of hatreds, by all its potential non-Muslim victims, not only Jews. This lack of understanding is little advanced by the spate of contemporary analyses which seek "Nazi roots" of the cataclysmic September 11, 2001 acts of jihad terrorism, and see Nazism as having "introduced" antisemitism to an otherwise "tolerant", even philosemitic Islamic world beginning in the 1930s. Awkwardly forced, and ahistorical, these analyses realign the Nazi cart in front of the Islamic steed which has driven both global jihadism and Islamic antisemitism, since the 7th century advent of the Muslim creed, particularly during the last decade of Muhammad's life.

Finally, an  October 1957 US intelligence report on von Leers' writing and activities for Egypt and the Arab League confirmed his complete adoption of the triumphal Muslim worldview, desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization by jihad (#382):

He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail

The so-called "Arab Spring" has unleashed jihadist forces-most notably within Egypt itself-pious Muslim convert "Omar Amin" von Leers long ago foresaw, and cherished. Those who wish to preserve our uniquely Western heritage of freedom must not ignore, or worse still, delusively re-interpret this existential threat. 

 

American Thinker