David Harsanyi
Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Not long after President Barack Obama gave his conciliatory speeches to the Islamic world, he chose not to meddle in the sham election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In fact, he offered not a word of support for the men and women who took to the streets against that totalitarian regime.

Then, as “manmade disasters” continued to erupt spontaneously around the world — including at a United States military base — the administration held steadfast in using non-offensive euphemisms, lest anyone be slighted by our jingoist need to use words that mean something.

And when the president was given a chance to fulfill a campaign promise and acknowledge the genocide of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by Turks during World War I, he instead did everything he could to block the resolution.

These days, as Christian farmers are being slaughtered by Muslim machetes in Nigeria, outrage from the White House is difficult to find — though it made sure to instruct our Libyan ambassador to apologize to “Colonel” Moammar Gadhafi after he offered some mildly critical comments about the dictator’s call for jihad against Switzerland (true story).

Gadhafi can be forgiven, but there are transgressions that can’t. One such sin was perpetrated by Israel after the nation’s decision to allow a new housing project to be built for its citizens in its capital city, Jerusalem.

The White House became so agitated with the future 1,600-unit housing project — and the ill-advised timing of the announcement, which came during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit — that the casual onlooker might have been led to believe that the Jerusalem neighborhood in question was part of some unfinished negotiation with Palestinians or even that it was one of those “settlements.” It was neither.

Still, according to The Jerusalem Post, Hillary Clinton telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who, along with many other Israeli officials, apologized for the ill timing of the project’s announcement — to “berate,” “rebuke,” “warn” and “condemn” Israel. White House senior adviser David Axelrod used NBC’s “Meet the Press” to say that the incident was an “affront,” an “insult” and “very, very destructive.”

As the administration was manufacturing this anger, the Palestinian Authority was preparing the newly minted Dalal Mughrabi Square. You know, just a place for folks to gather and commemorate the 32nd anniversary of 1978′s Coastal Road Massacre, in which 37 Israelis — 13 of them children — were murdered in a bus hijacking.

An American named Gail Rubin, who happened to be snapping some nature pictures in the area, also was gunned down.

No worries. No affront taken. That’s not “very, very destructive” to the process. We are above the fray, above frivolous notions of “allies” or “friends.” History only matters when our enemies deem it important. We don’t want to tweak the fragile mood of the Arab street.

If the purpose of this manufactured angst is to pressure Israel into handing parts of Jerusalem over to a corrupt Fatah (we don’t need to discuss Hamas, which, unlike Fatah, has the decency not to pretend to recognize Israel’s right to exist), then someone is exhibiting a profound naivete. And if the purpose of pursuing a Jewish-free West Bank is to create good will with the Muslim world, good luck.

It is this administration’s prerogative to change our foreign policy — and allies. Yet it would be nice if someone reiterated to our new Muslim friends that the United States has yet to deploy a single soldier to risk life and limb for the security of Israel. It has, however — only recently — sent thousands of Americans to perish for, in part, the cause of Muslim freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

That sacrifice alone should be enough to absolve us from any more bowing — or kowtowing.

Copyright © 2010 Salem Web Network

source:  http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidHarsanyi/2010/03/17/why_are_we_still_bowing

Twenty-nine Websites hacked to prevent further espionage, government says

By Tim Wilson,  DarkReading
March 15, 2010
URL:http://www.darkreading.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223800311

Iranian security forces say they have arrested 30 people and disabled “the most important U.S.-backed organized networks of cyber war launched by anti-revolutionary groups.”

A report issued by the FARS news agency in Iran states that the networks received U.S. aid “and served Washington through such anti-revolutionary groups as the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), monarchist groups, and a number of other opposition groups.”

Some 29 Websites were “hacked” by Iranian security in order to find the accused, according to the reports. The Iranian government accused the sites and their operators of conducting a clandestine espionage effort under cover of human rights initiatives.

The network of sites was accused of collecting information about Iran’s nuclear program and “provoking sedition” against the Iranian government.

The networks were also accused of distributing some 70 million copies of U.S.-made anti-filtering software in Iran.

No details were released on the identities of the sites or how they were hacked.

Have a comment on this story? Please click “Discuss” below. If you’d like to contact Dark Reading’s editors directly, send us a message.

Copyright © 2007 CMP Media LLC

John Hawkins
Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Barack Obama’s first year in office was one long string of gaffes, foreign policy blunders, and domestic disasters strung together in a long, terrible line. Although it’s not possible to adequately catalogue every blunder in Obama’s first year in something shorter than a book, here are some of the many, many blaring lowlights that really stood out:

1) The stimulus that didn’t: The Democrats shoved through a stimulus bill that cost more than the Vietnam and Iraq wars combined. Why? Over and over again, they said “jobs, jobs, jobs.” In fact, the Obama Administration said that if the bill passed, they expected it to keep unemployment below 8%. Instead, unemployment hit a 26-year high of 10.2% in November.

2) Pyrrhic “victory” on health care: In one of the most nauseating displays of government “sausage making” in American history, the Democrats have used open bribery to push a wildly unpopular health care bill through both the House and the Senate. The Democrats are willing to trade tax increases, increased premiums, Medicare cuts, government-financed abortions, taxpayer-funded care for illegals, death panels, rationing, and reduced quality of care for a bill they believe will help move America towards socialism. However, this is turning into the Hindenburg of political bills and could very possibly cost the Democrats the House, the Senate, and the White House over the next couple of election cycles unless Scott Brown wins in Massachusetts and helps kill the bill deader than Lenin in the next few weeks.

3) Thanks for the help on the campaign. Enjoy your new company! In what may be the “crookedest” government deal since the Teapot Dome Scandal in the early twenties, Barack Obama broke legally binding contracts and spent more than 50 billion dollars in taxpayer funds to save union jobs at GM and Chrysler. When it was all said and done, the unions, which provides political shock troops for Democrats all across the country, ended up with more than 50% of Chrysler and almost 40% of General Motors. Jack Abramoff, Bernie Madoff, and Charles Ponzi together couldn’t have bilked as many Americans out of their money in a hundred years as Barack Obama did with this scam.

4) Obama lets you know what he really thinks about race: Barack Obama has been well served by letting his supporters play the race card for him while he keeps his hands clean. That way, he looks like a good guy, even while his friends and allies scream “racism” at everyone who gets in his way. However, the mask slipped on the Henry Louis Gates case and Americans got to see what Obama really thinks about race.

After admitting that he didn’t know all the facts, Obama accused the police of “stupidly” arresting his friend and then went on lecture everyone about the racism that surely had to be involved. It was Obama’s most revealing moment on race since he tossed his own grandmother under the bus even as he supported Jeremiah Wright.

5) Book ‘em, Danno! The decision to put 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed on trial in New York is simply bizarre. No one in the Obama Administration has been able to give a coherent explanation for why KSM is being tried in New York while other terrorists are facing military tribunals. Why increase the chances of a terrorist attack in New York, give KSM the chance to spew propaganda in the court room, risk the release of sensitive intelligence data, and give a slick lawyer a chance to let Khalid Shaikh Mohammed off via a loophole? This is all doubly true since both Barack Obama and Eric Holder have assured Americans that KSM won’t be released, no matter what happens. That should help America’s image abroad — making a big show of putting a terrorist through our criminal justice system and then in essence telling the world it’s a sham trial that’s about as meaningful as the courtroom proceedings in North Korea or Cuba.

6) This is the most important fight ever! Here’s when we give up: Since Obama got into office, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has markedly deteriorated. General Stanley McChrystal gave Obama a plan to help turn things around, and after months of golfing, Obama got around to partially approving it — along with a timeline, explaining when we were leaving. Just after telling Americans how vital Afghanistan was, not just to America’s security but to the world, Obama then told the audience when we’d be starting to pull out, whether we won or not. After it became clear that the timeline had the potential to dramatically undercut support for the war, the administration backpedaled like they were training for the Tour De France, leaving everyone confused about where we really stand.

7) Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Al-Qaeda nipping at your nose: Isn’t it great to know that after all the obtrusive, annoying, and time consuming searches we have to endure at the airports, terrorists can still get on airplanes with explosives? Moreover, despite the fact that our government was given every warning that the Christmas Day Pantsbomber was a threat, not only did they manage to fail to connect the dots, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano declared that “the system worked” because passengers managed to thwart the terrorist attack. As if that wasn’t insulting enough, aggravating, completely ineffective new rules were implemented because of the attack, and after the Nigerian pants bomber was foolishly put into the civilian court system, he immediately stopped talking. Where’s Jack Bauer — or for that matter, Dick Cheney — when we need some adults to help protect our country?

Copyright © 2010 Salem Web Network

source:  http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/01/19/seven_lowlights_from_obamas_first_disastrous_year_in_office

Ahmadinejad showing papers during election. It shows that his family’s previous name was Jewish

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad’s birthplace, and the name derives from “weaver of the Sabour”, the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran’s Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad’s track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: “This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad’s background explains a lot about him.

“Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.

“By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society.”

A London-based expert on Iranian Jewry said that “jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews.

“He has changed his name for religious reasons, or at least his parents had,” said the Iranian-born Jew living in London. “Sabourjian is well known Jewish name in Iran.”

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London said it would not be drawn on Mr Ahmadinejad’s background. “It’s not something we’d talk about,” said Ron Gidor, a spokesman.

The Iranian leader has not denied his name was changed when his family moved to Tehran in the 1950s. But he has never revealed what it was change from or directly addressed the reason for the switch.

Relatives have previously said a mixture of religious reasons and economic pressures forced his blacksmith father Ahmad to change when Mr Ahmadinejad was aged four.

The Iranian president grew up to be a qualified engineer with a doctorate in traffic management. He served in the Revolutionary Guards militia before going on to make his name in hardline politics in the capital.

During this year’s presidential debate on television he was goaded to admit that his name had changed but he ignored the jibe.

However Mehdi Khazali, an internet blogger, who called for an investigation of Mr Ahmadinejad’s roots was arrested this summer.

Mr Ahmadinejad has regularly levelled bitter criticism at Israel, questioned its right to exist and denied the Holocaust. British diplomats walked out of a UN meeting last month after the Iranian president denounced Israel’s ‘genocide, barbarism and racism.’

Benjamin Netanyahu made an impassioned denunciation of the Iranian leader at the same UN summit. “Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium,” he said. “A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies the murder of six million Jews while promising to wipe out the State of Israel, the State of the Jews. What a disgrace. What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations.”

Mr Ahmadinejad has been consistently outspoken about the Nazi attempt to wipe out the Jewish race. “They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets,” he declared at a conference on the holocaust staged in Tehran in 2006.

source:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6256173/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-revealed-to-have-Jewish-past.html#

Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 02, 2009

“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.” — French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Sept. 24

WASHINGTON — When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom. Just how low we’ve sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration’s satisfaction when Russia’s president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the U.N., that “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable.”

You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as The Washington Post inconveniently pointed out, President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions. And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.

Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia … what? An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority — and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran’s nuclear program — whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Sarkozy, who could not conceal his astonishment at Obama’s naivete. On Sept. 24, Obama ostentatiously presided over the Security Council. With 14 heads of state (or government) at the table, with an American president at the chair for the first time ever, with every news camera in the world trained on the meeting, it would garner unprecedented worldwide attention.

Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.

Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports Le Monde, Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later — in Pittsburgh. I’ve got nothing against Pittsburgh (site of the G-20 summit), but a stacked-with-world-leaders Security Council chamber, it is not.

Why forgo the opportunity? Because Obama wanted the Security Council meeting to be about his own dream of a nuclear-free world. The president, reports The New York Times citing “White House officials,” did not want to “dilute” his disarmament resolution “by diverting to Iran.”

Diversion? It’s the most serious security issue in the world. A diversion from what? From a worthless U.N. disarmament resolution?

Yes. And from Obama’s star turn as planetary visionary: “The administration told the French,” reports The Wall Street Journal, “that it didn’t want to ‘spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N.”

Image? Success? Sarkozy could hardly contain himself. At the council table, with Obama at the chair, he reminded Obama that “we live in a real world, not a virtual world.”

He explained: “President Obama has even said, ‘I dream of a world without (nuclear weapons).’ Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite.”

Sarkozy’s unspoken words? “And yet, sacre bleu, he’s sitting on Qom!”

At the time, we had no idea what Sarkozy was fuming about. Now we do. Although he could hardly have been surprised by Obama’s fecklessness. After all, just a day earlier in addressing the General Assembly, Obama actually said, “No one nation can … dominate another nation.” That adolescent mindlessness was followed with the declaration that “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” in fact “make no sense in an interconnected world.” NATO, our alliances with Japan and South Korea, our umbrella over Taiwan, are senseless? What do our allies think when they hear such nonsense?

Bismarck is said to have said: “There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.” Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network.

source:  http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/10/02/obamas_french_lesson

Larry Elder
Thursday, October 01, 2009

Close your eyes, and pretend it’s still the George W. Bush administration.

In Afghanistan, more American service members died in August than in any month since the war began. His top military commander says that without more troops, we run the risk of losing the war. Iran admits operating a second previously undisclosed nuclear facility. Unemployment stands at 9.7 percent, with consumer confidence lower last month after a brief uptick. An important domestic initiative — one he campaigned on — faces a likely make-or-break month in Congress.

What does the President do? He flies to Copenhagen to personally lobby the International Olympic Committee to bring the Olympics to Crawford, Texas.

During Hurricane Katrina, critics accused President Bush of showing insufficient concern. CNN’s Bush-hater-in-chief, Jack Cafferty, lit into him. Insensitivity! Lack of empathy! Poor sense of priorities! When the Iraq War started going badly, critics pounced on Bush for allegedly “failing to listen to his generals” about the troop strength necessary to secure that country.

Fast-forward. Americans elected Barack Obama, an “elegant and eloquent” liberal president. And my, how things change.

Iran’s second — now acknowledged — nuclear facility appears to have but one purpose: to make a bomb. For good measure, over the weekend, Iran test-fired medium-range missiles with the distance to reach Israel.

Obama, during the campaign, called a nuclear-armed Iran “unacceptable.” The President now demands that Iran come clean, or else. Or else … what? Face “stiff sanctions.” Never mind that our country’s sanctions against Iran have been in place for 30 years. Ratcheting them up to include, say, energy embargoes requires the approval of U.N. Security Council members China and Russia. Who do you think assists Iran in the construction of its nuclear program? China and Russia.

The President, in August, called Afghanistan a “war of necessity.” Obama’s chosen top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wrote — in a report requested by the White House — that the conflict “will likely result in failure” without an increase in troop strength within the year. Obama sat on the report for a month, after which it was leaked to The Washington Post. He told the general to scrub the additional troop request because he now wants to reassess the entire mission.

Let’s revisit.

After we helped expel the former Soviet Union from Afghanistan, we left. Afghanistan became a haven for terrorists, who were protected, sponsored and encouraged by its government. From there, al-Qaida conceived and directed 9/11, an attack against America that resulted in the loss of 3,000 lives. We attacked Afghanistan and toppled its Taliban government. After that country approved a constitution and established a government, we promised to remain until it could defend itself and serve as an ally in the war on terror.

A failure in Afghanistan would allow a safe haven for more attacks and would threaten to destabilize next-door Pakistan, a country that possesses nuclear weapons.

Our enemy seeks to impose theocratic governments in the Middle East and the Arab world. Then it seeks to subjugate (SET ITAL) all (END ITAL) non-Muslim peoples. In July 2007, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s No. 2, outlined the terror group’s objectives. There is a near-term plan to globally target “Crusader” (U.S., NATO, etc.) and Jewish interests. The long-term plan has two parts: overthrowing “corrupt” non-Islamic governments and “hurrying to the fields of jihad like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, for jihad preparation and training. Thus, it is a must to hurry to the fields of jihad for two reasons: The first is to defeat the enemies of (Islam) and repel the Zionist Crusade, and the second is for jihadi preparation and training to prepare for the next stage of the jihad.” He failed to define “the next stage.”

Obama, despite previous statements to the contrary, apparently considers a nuclear-armed Iran preferable to U.S. military action. And now that the majority of Democrats want out of Afghanistan, the “war of necessity” no longer seems necessary.

The picture now comes into sharp focus. Americans voted for president a man who thinks that government creates wealth; that “greed” caused the current economic crisis; that taxpayers should provide health insurance for those who don’t have it; that a government-induced housing and financial crisis can only be addressed by more government; that government can more efficiently and profitably run businesses than can the private sector; that “global warming” requires the imposition of job-killing and price-hiking action against emitters; and that government should “spread the wealth” by taking from those who have “too much” and giving to those who have “too little.”

National security is, as always, job one. We are at war against Islamofascists. To accomplish their ends, they seek chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. This is a conflict that, not unlike the Cold War, will likely take decades.

For now, though, President Obama intends to fly to Copenhagen to personally lobby to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Iran and Afghanistan can wait.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network.

source:  http://townhall.com/columnists/LarryElder/2009/10/01/an_olympics_we_can_believe_in?page=2