It's the Doctrine of Jihad, Stupid

TAREK FATAH | QMI AGENCY

Twelve years after 9/11 and the beat goes on. If the news of jihadi terrorist bombings in Boston and Bangalore was not enough to wake us from our collective slumber, the arrests of Chiheb Esseghaier of Montreal and Raed Jaser from Toronto this week certainly should. Though I doubt it.

According to RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia, the two Muslim men were allegedly getting "direction and guidance" from al-Qaida elements in Iran. He added: "Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in innocent people being killed or seriously injured."

While ordinary Canadians and non-Muslims around the world are bewildered by these never-ending news reports of terrorism and alleged plots, the response by the leaders of the Islamic community is the tired old cliche - Islam is a religion of peace, and jihad is simply an "inner struggle."

The fact is these terrorists are motivated by one powerful belief - the doctrine of armed jihad against the "kuffar" (non-Muslims).

It is worth noting that not a single Muslim cleric since 9/11 has mustered the courage to say the doctrine of armed jihad is defunct and inapplicable in the 21st century. They rightfully denounce terrorism, but dare not denounce jihad.

The armed jihad launched against the infidels, is clearly promoted by the 20th-century writings of such Islamists as Syed Qutb and Hassan al-Banna of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the late Syed Maudoodi of Jamaat-e-Islami of Indo-Pakistan.

Young Muslims across Canada and the U.S. are given booklets titled Towards Understanding Islam, written by Maudoodi. In the booklet, Maudoodi exhorts ordinary Muslims to launch jihad, as in armed struggle, against non-Muslims.

"Jihad is part of this overall defence of Islam," he writes.

In case the reader is left with any doubt about the meaning of the word "jihad," Maudoodi clarifies:

"In the language of the Divine Law, this word (jihad) is used specifically for the war that is waged solely in the name of God against those who perpetrate oppression as enemies of Islam. This supreme sacrifice is the responsibility of all Muslims."

Maudoodi goes on to label Muslims who refuse the call to armed jihad as apostates:

"Jihad is as much a primary duty as are daily prayers or fasting. One who avoids it is a sinner. His every claim to being a Muslim is doubtful. He is plainly a hypocrite who fails in the test of sincerity and all his acts of worship are a sham, a worthless, hollow show of deception."

If Maudoodi's exhortations are not enough to motivate Muslims to conduct acts of terror, we have the words of the late Hassan al-Banna being distributed in our schools and universities. Al-Banna makes it quite clear that the word "jihad" means armed conflict. He mocks those who claim jihad is merely an internal struggle.

Al-Banna says this redefinition of the term "jihad" is a conspiracy so that "Muslims should become negligent."

And here is what Syed Qutb, another Egyptian stalwart of the Islamist movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, writes in his seminal work on Islam and its relationship with the West, Milestones:

"A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it (non-Muslim country), whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located."

Unless the leaders of Canadian and American mosques as well as the Islamic organizations denounce the doctrine of jihad as pronounced by the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami, and distance themselves from the ideology of Qutb, al-Banna and Maudoodi, they stand complicit in the havoc that these jihadis are raining down on the rest of us.

For those who search for the root cause of Islamist terrorism, it's the doctrine of jihad, stupid.

Obama Admin Approves Saudi Arabia For Program That Allows Wahhabis To Bypass Normal Airport Security

 

Comment by Jim Campbell, Citizen Journalist, Oath Keeper and Patriot.

Further evidence that Obama is trying to bring down America.

Did his new Secretary of State cut his first deal?

Apparently the usurper would do well to listen to is buddy Chucky Schumer who recently stated, “

Chuck is ready for shooting rag head are you?

“The Wahhabi presence in the United States is a foreboding one that has potententially harmful and far-reaching consequences for our nation’s mosques, schools, prisons and even our military. My fear is, if we don’t wake up and take action now, those influenced by Wahabbism’s extremist ideology will harm us in as of yet unimaginable ways.” -U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)

The Wahhabi sect of Islam is the purest and most violent form of Sunni Islam beliefs. It derives its name from the 18th Century Muslim scholar, Muhammad bin Abd al Wahhab.

He taught that true Muslims had to swear loyalty to their religious leader and to follow his teachings in all ways. It also requires that those who wanted to be considered true Muslims must join in jihad (holy war). The objective of this jihad is to convert or kill all non-Muslims, and those who leave Islam. Osama bin Laden is a follower of Wahhabi Islam and founded the terrorist group al Qaeda on Wahhabi beliefs.

Special Travel Benefit for Saudis a “Slap in the Face”

International Project on Terrorism

Saudi Arabia, the nation which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks, is about to become one of a handful of countries whose travelers can bypass normal passport controls at major U.S. airports. Sources tell the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) that this will mark the first time that the Saudi government will have a direct role in vetting who is eligible for getting fast-tracked for entry into the United States.

An agreement to accept Saudi Arabian applicants into the Global Entry trusted traveler program drew little notice when it was announced in January. Now, some officials question why the country merits such a benefit – which is similar to a theme park “fast pass” to avoid long lines – when other allies like Germany and France are not yet included. A program for Israeli travelers was reached last May but has not been implemented. (Entire article below)

Travelers approved for the program can skip the normal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) lines starting next year and enter the country after providing their passports and fingerprints at a kiosk. Only Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands currently enjoy the benefit, although pilot programs could expand it to a handful of others.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the agreement in January after meeting with Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. It “marks another major step forward in our partnership,” Napolitano said at the time. “By enhancing collaboration with the Government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel.”

Details about how the plan will work with the Saudis have not been released. Nayef’s ministry, however, will be responsible for screening which applicants will be considered when the pilot program begins next year. It’s not known whether the Saudi ministry will share its raw intelligence about applicants with its American counterparts. What is known, based on information provided by a Homeland Security source, is that each individual who makes it into the program will have been vetted by both the CPB and by the Saudi Interior Ministry against various databases.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to make anyone available to answer questions about Saudi Arabia’s inclusion in the Global Entry program after repeated requests throughout last week, and after indicating someone would provide more details.

That is cause for concern, given lingering questions about possible Saudi support for some of the 9/11 hijackers and given the Ministry of Interior (MOI)’s inconsistent record on sharing its intelligence on suspected terrorists and terror financiers. Additionally, recent studies by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified significant problems in the way DHS components use computer systems and process intelligence for posting watch list lookouts and overseas screening of foreign nationals.

Once accepted into Global Entry, travelers can enjoy the faster border entry for five years.

A memo obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism said Saudi applicants “must meet the individual vetting criteria of both CBP and the MOI, and successfully complete vetting by each side against information available in various law enforcement, customs, immigration, criminal, intelligence, and terrorist databases.”

That doesn’t bring confidence to those who have investigated Saudi Arabian connections to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., whose district lost more than 70 people during the attack on the Pentagon, called the pact a bad idea. He also stated that he had not previously heard about the deal.

“I think you have radical Wahhabism in certain elements in Saudi Arabia, and I think to be more lenient there than in other places would be a mistake,” Wolf said. “There were 15 [hijackers] from that country, and there is a lot taking place in that region.

“Some of the people who went back to Saudi Arabia through Guantanamo – we find that they are in battlefields in Afghanistan or some other place, so I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Saudis have long been known for withholding information from their American counterparts. Wolf recalls that the Saudis obstructed former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s effort to investigate the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing by refusing to share information.

“I think there has been a history of not cooperating,” Wolf said.

The Saudis paved the way for 9/11 by funding the madrassas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which adds to Wolf’s concern.

Unseen Information, Unanswered Questions

“Adding KSA to the program before a full vetting of the Kingdom’s involvement in 9/11 is very unwise,” said Sharon Premoli, a 9/11 survivor who has sued the Saudis for allegedly helping finance the attacks.

“We don’t know if what they tell us is correct. Why should we trust them?” she said in an interview Thursday. She points to a 1998 agreement Saudi Arabia struck with bin Laden and the Taliban prior to 9/11. A 2011 Vanity Fair article described it this way:

In sworn statements after 9/11, former Taliban intelligence chief Mohammed Khaksar said that in 1998 Prince Turki, chief of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Department (G.I.D.), sealed a deal under which bin Laden agreed not to attack Saudi targets. In return, Saudi Arabia would provide funds and material assistance to the Taliban, not demand bin Laden’s extradition, and not bring pressure to close down al-Qaeda training camps. Saudi businesses, meanwhile, would ensure that money also flowed directly to bin Laden.

“They didn’t tell us that,” Premoli said in the interview. “They haven’t been forthcoming on anything.”

Saudi officials deny that deal existed. The only way to find out is to continue investigating, Premoli said. She’s perplexed that the brutal murder of 3,000 Americans even requires an effort to trigger additional investigation.

“Let’s vet them properly. Let’s really declassify. Let’s look at all of it. Until it is done, it’s an open wound. It’s an unanswered question.”

The Global Entry deal comes three years after U.S. officials briefly placed Saudi Arabia on a list of 14 countries whose travelers would face enhanced scrutiny when entering the United States. It followed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab‘s failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009.

A cable sent from the American embassy to the State Department that was published by Wikileaks reported that Saudi government officials expressed “shock to be included on the list” and threatened to “to re-evaluate areas of cooperation, including counter-terrorism cooperation” if it was not rescinded.

The policy was dropped three months later, replaced with a new program designed to use threat assessments and intelligence of traveler’s behavioral traits and travel patterns.

To Premoli, who is pushing legislation to strip sovereign immunity protection from governments tied to terrorist acts, both the removal of Saudi Arabia from that list and its addition to Global Entry show the country enjoys “favored nation status. It’s so extraordinary that they are so protected.”

She was critical of the Bush administration for its warm relations with the Saudi royal family and is equally critical of the Obama administration for being “a continuation of the Bush administration.” When the plaintiffs suing Saudi Arabia sought to appeal a decision absolving the Saudis to the Supreme Court, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan filed an amicus brief siding with the Saudis.

Saudi Arabian officials say all the investigations into the 9/11 attacks exonerated them of any involvement. But two former U.S. senators who led inquiries into the attacks say that’s just not so.

In affidavits submitted last year for plaintiffs suing the Saudis – including Premoli – former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey and former Florida Sen. Bob Graham wrote that the book on Saudi Arabia’s 9/11 connections should not be closed.

The 9/11 Commission on which he served lacked the time and resources “to pursue all potentially relevant evidence” involving Saudi Arabia, Kerrey wrote.

“Significant questions remain unanswered concerning the possible involvement of Saudi government institutions and actors in the financing and sponsorship of al Qaeda, and evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the September 11^th Attacks has never been fully pursued,” Kerrey wrote.

Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time of the attacks, was co-chairman of a joint congressional inquiry. He has spent years arguing that a 28-page chapter from that inquiry would cast things in a different light if it ever is declassified.

“Based on my experiences as the Co-Chair of the Joint Inquiry, and the evidence collected by the Joint Inquiry during the course of its investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, the information contained in the Final Report of the 9/11 Commission, and reports and published material I have reviewed, I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” Graham wrote in his affidavit.

Hijackers and Their Helpers

That line may have come in the form of Omar al Bayoumi, a Saudi who befriended hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar. While the 9/11 Commission Report describes Bayoumi as “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists,” Graham believes he was a Saudi government agent.

Al-Bayoumi first met the hijackers in 2000, helped them find an apartment and “fronted the initial payments for that apartment” along with other financial help, Graham noted.

“During the period that he assisted the hijackers, al-Bayoumi’s allowances from a ghost job with a Saudi private firm and contractor with ties to the Saudi government increased eightfold. During that same period, Al-Bayoumi had an unusual number of telephone conversations with Saudi government officials in both Los Angeles and Washington.”

All this convinces him al-Bayoumi was a Saudi agent. “To this date, this evidence has not been fully explored and pursued, to the considerable detriment of the American public.”

In a column co-written with Premoli last fall, Graham said the classified chapter from the congressional inquiry focuses on the hijacker’s financial support while they were in the United States. “Sadly,” Graham and Premoli wrote, “those 28 pages represent only a fraction of the evidence of Saudi complicity that our government continues to shield from the public, under a flawed classification program which appears to be part of a systematic effort to protect Saudi Arabia from any real accountability for its actions.”

Abdulaziz al-Hijji, an executive with the Saudi government oil company Aramco, lived in Sarasota until just before the 9/11 attacks when he is reported to have suddenly left the U.S. Al-Hijji now lives in London. Recent media reports indicate al-Hijji met with 9/11 terror leader Mohamed Atta and current al-Qaida fugitive Adnan el-Shukrijumah while he lived in Sarasota. Graham has also looked into the al-Hijji matter and reportedly met with the FBI deputy director in November of 2011 and the deputy director refused to discuss the al-Hijji matter. Graham said, “I think that in the period immediately after 9/11 the FBI was under instructions from the Bush White House not to discuss anything that could be embarrassing to the Saudis.”

Saudi Arabia sends thousands of travelers into the United States each month, and more than 92 percent of Saudis who seek entry visas receive them, Asharq al-Awsat reported. In 2012, 20,677 student visas were granted to Saudi citizens.

The United States and Saudi Arabia do about $60 billion in business each year, most of which is Saudi oil exports.

The ambiguity of Saudi Ministry of Interior’s role is of particular concern, especially when it comes to who qualifies as a “low-risk traveler.” Although individuals with defined al-Qaida ties likely would not get a pass, worries arise particularly when it comes to those who support Hamas or Hizballah.

“I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them,” Jim Phillips, senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation, said regarding the Saudi Interior Ministry.

Although the Saudi Interior Ministry has largely decimated al-Qaida’s infrastructure in the kingdom since 2003 in the wake of a series of bombings and killings of Westerners in the kingdom, Phillips says the ministry’s reliability as a partner remains an open question.

In an interview Tuesday, Graham reserved judgment on the program until more details are released on its implementation. He noted that the United States “went out of its way to placate the Saudis” after 9/11, arranging flights out of the country for Saudi nationals when all other air traffic was grounded, and waging “an effort to keep from public view the role of Saudis” in the 9/11 attacks.

Including Saudi travelers in Global Entry may be “a continuation” of an American policy of deference toward Saudi Arabia. “The question is what was the first step in approving a country to be involved in this? What are the requirements?” Graham asked. “This is not a theoretical. This really happened that 15 Saudis came into the country, I think all by aviation … It would seem there would be some red flags.”

Wolf suggested that the House Homeland Security Committee should examine the terms of the agreement to learn how it happened and it will work.

“It’s a slap in the face,” Premoli said. “Whatever they ask for, they get. There’s nothing they can’t have.”

I Saw Something, So I'm Saying Something

April 22, 2013

By Stella Paul

Are you fed up with the antiseptic slogan, "If you see something, say something?"

The authorities expect us to report suspicious backpacks, but stay silent as the tomb about the nature of the men who put them there.

We're instructed to speak up about a bloodied man's movement under a boat tarp, but to shut up about the ideological movement that drove him to commit his carnage.

Well, as it happens, I've seen quite a lot of things over the last few years that I'd like to say something about -- enough things to break a heart and to kill a country.

And after the Boston Massacre committed by two immigrant jihadis, I'm going to say them.

I've seen the president of the United States bow down before the Saudi king, whose country sent fifteen hijackers to topple our towers. The reason French President Sarkozy is laughing in the photo is because he's reading the "Kick Me" sign on Obama's rump.

I've seen Obama stand before the United Nations after the jihad-crazed slaughter of four Americans in Benghazi, including our ambassador, and proclaim "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

So much for America's right of free speech! And freedom of religion! Can you find anything in that bizarre sentence with which the Boston bombers would disagree? No wonder Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an Obama supporter.

I've seen Obama's minions arrest and jail an obscure California film-maker for creating a YouTube video that criticizes Mohammed. Incredibly, I then witnessed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempt to blame the hapless guy for inciting the Benghazi slaughter. How about arresting Obama's pal George Clooney for bad acting? That would make more sense.

I've seen Obama's UN ambassador hustle to pass UN Resolution 16/18, an "anti-blasphemy law" pushed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to make criticizing Islam an international crime. So if you harsh the mellow of Shariah fanatics by critiquing their child marriages, honor killings, homosexual hangings, and genocidal plots to wipe out Israel, you're the one who's going to jail.

I've seen Janet Napolitano, Obama's Homeland Security Secretary, refuse to use the term "terrorism" and insist on calling jihad-inspired carnage "man-caused disasters." As she helpfully explained to a German interviewer, she selected this term to "move away from the politics of fear" and, presumably, towards the politics of insanity.

I've seen Obama's Department of Defense, which prosecutes our War on Man-Caused Disasters, order a complete purge of "anti-Islamic content" from all military training materials. Do me a favor: If you see a U.S. soldier, could you explain to him what "jihad" means?

Just this month, I've seen a U.S. Army training instructor teach his military students that "Evangelical Christianity" is the leading movement of dangerous "Religious Extremism," along with "Catholicism" and "Islamophobia." Funny how that works. I didn't notice the entire city of Boston cowering inside their homes to stay safe from Islamophobes, did you?

I've seen the FBI conduct an interview with Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 and come up blank. Maybe if Obama's FBI hadn't just purged its counterterrorism training manual of words like Muslim, Islam, jihad, Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Sharia, they might have found a clue.

Three weeks ago, I saw the U.S. Army formally refuse to award Purple Hearts to the 13 soldiers killed and 32 wounded in the shooting rampage of Major Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood. Although Hassan was in extensive communication with Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki before screaming "Allahu Akbar" and opening fire, the military claims Hassan merely committed "workplace violence."

I suppose Hassan's slaughter of the pregnant 21-year-old soldier Francheska Velez was just "sexual harassment." Fort Hood hero Sgt. Kimberly Munley now says that Obama "betrayed" her and the other victims.

I've seen the military refuse a Purple Heart to Private Andy Long, who was killed in 2009 outside an Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. His murderer was an all-American boy who converted to Islam at Tennessee State University and traveled to a terrorist training camp in Yemen, before returning home to commit jihad.

Obama threatened to veto the entire 2013 Defense Authorization Act, because it awarded a Purple Heart to Private Long, whom the military claims is merely a victim of street crime. See no jihad, hear no jihad, speak no jihad.

I've seen jihadis kill and maim Jews at the El-Al airport counter in Los Angeles and the Seattle Jewish Federation, attempt to blow up airplanes with explosives in their shoes and underwear, go on a hit-and-run killing spree in San Francisco and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and plant a car bomb in Times Square. And after each Allah-crazed attack, the political-media complex rushes to assure us that Islam is "a religion of peace."

Of course, nobody in the mainstream media seemed to notice, but I watched Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris driven underground in fear of her life after proposing "Everybody Draw Muhammed Day" on Facebook. Unlike the late Margaret Thatcher, who provided government protection for author Salman Rushdie when his life was threatened by jihadis, Obama has given Molly Norris exactly nothing -- not even one word of support.

Americans are being disarmed of our right to free speech, our most potent weapon in this brutal war. Obama and his media allies are locking up the language to even discuss the nature of our enemy, and leaving us stripped of the basic knowledge we need to resist submitting to Islam.

Oh, here's another thing I saw: Page 261 of Obama's The Audacity of Hope, in which he writes, "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." Are the winds ugly yet?

Stella Paul's new ebook is What I Miss About America: Reflections from the Golden Age of Hope and Change, available at Amazon for just $1.99. Write Stella at Stellapundit@aol.com

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/04/i_saw_something_so_im_saying_something.html at April 22, 2013 - 07:56:16 AM CDT

From TownHall.Com

20 Questions Liberals Can't Answer

By John Hawkins

4/20/2013

Liberalism doesn't convince with logic. It can't, because the policies liberals advocate don't work. So instead, liberals have to use emotion-based ploys and attack the motives of people they disagree with while attempting to keep conservative arguments from being heard at all. Why? Because they have no good answers to questions like these.

1) A few days ago, we were hearing that the Boston Marathon bombers COULD BE conservative, which proved that the Right is evil. Now, when we know that the terrorists are Muslims, how can the same liberals be saying that it means nothing?

2) If you believe we have a "right" to things like health care, food, shelter and a good education, then doesn't that also mean you believe we also have a right to force other people to unwillingly provide those things at gunpoint?

3) How can you simultaneously want a big government that will make decisions that have an enormous impact on the lives of every American while also saying that the character and morals of our politicians don't matter?

4) What exactly is the "fair share" of someone's income that he’s earned that he should be able to keep?

5) Why is it that time and time again, revenue paid to the treasury has GONE UP after we've cut taxes?

6) Are you pro-choice or pro-abortion? If it's pro-choice, do you feel people should be able to choose to have an assault weapon, what kind of light bulb they use in their house or whether they'd like to put their Social Security funds into a private retirement account?

7) If corporations are so awful, greedy and bad for the country, then shouldn't we be celebrating when they decide to close their plants here and move overseas?

8) How can liberal economists like Paul Krugman be right when they claim that our economy isn't doing well because we aren't spending enough money when we're already running massive, unsustainable deficits and spending is going up every year?

9) If Republicans don’t care about the poor, why do studies consistently show that they give more to charity than Democrats do?

10) Give us a ballpark estimate: If something doesn't change dramatically, how long do you think it will be until we have an economic crash in this country similar to the one we're seeing in Greece or Cyprus?

11) Since we "all agree" with the idea that our level of deficit spending is "unsustainable," what would be wrong with permanently freezing federal spending at the current level until we balance the budget by increasing revenue, cutting spending or some combination thereof?

12) If we change God's definition of marriage to make gay marriage legal, then what's the logical argument against polygamy or even adult siblings supposed to be?

13) In a world where people can easily change states and can, with a bit more difficulty, permanently move to other roughly comparable parts of the globe, do you really think it's feasible over the long haul to have a tax system where 86% of the income taxes are paid by the top 25% of the income earners?

14) If you win a lawsuit that's filed against you, why should you have to pay huge legal bills when you did nothing wrong while the person who filed the suit pays no penalty for wrongly accusing you?

15) How can you oppose putting murderers to death and be fine with killing innocent children via abortion?

16) A minimum wage raises salaries for some workers at the cost of putting other workers out of jobs entirely. What's the acceptable ratio for that? For every 10 people who get a higher salary, how many are you willing to see lose their jobs?

17) The earth has been warming and cooling for thousands of years with temperature drops and increases that are much larger than the ones we've seen over the last century. Since we can't adequately explain or model those changes, what makes us think we can say with any sort of confidence that global warming is being caused by man?

18) We live in a world where people have more choices than ever before in music, entertainment, careers, news sources and what to do with their time. Shouldn't government mirror that trend by moving towards federalism and states’ rights instead of centralizing more and more power in Washington, DC?

19) If people in the middle class aren't willing to pay enough in taxes to cover the government services that they use because they don't think it's worth the money, shouldn't we prune back government to a level people do feel comfortable paying for in taxes?

20) If firms can get by with paying women 72 cents on the dollar for the same quality of work as men, then why don't we see any firms with all female labor forces using those lower costs to dominate the marketplace?

John Hawkins

John Hawkins runs Right Wing News and Linkiest. He's also the co-owner of the The Looking Spoon. You can see more from John Hawkins on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, G+, You Tube, and at PJ Media.

Sarah Palin’s Eulogy for Margaret Thatcher (National Review Online)

 

Today we say goodbye to a towering figure of the 20th century. With the passing of Margaret Thatcher, we’ve sadly lost the last living member of that great triumvirate that included Ronald Reagan and John Paul II — those giants who defeated the evil empire of Soviet Communism and allowed the liberation of its captive nations. We’ve also lost one of the great champions of economic freedom and democratic ideals.

Many will focus on the fact that Margaret Thatcher’s career was a collection of “firsts” for women — she was the first and youngest female Conservative-party member to stand for election, the first woman to hold the title Leader of the Opposition, and the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom.

But Thatcher not only broke a glass ceiling; she broke a class ceiling. She was a grocer’s daughter from the back of beyond who advanced to the height of power in a class-conscious society. Like her friend Ronald Reagan, she was an underestimated underdog and political outsider. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Evening Standard, once said, “There was no Thatcher group within the Tory Party. . . . She was utterly and completely on her own. She simply was an outsider in every way.”

She was at heart a populist taking on the Conservative party’s old guard, who disdainfully referred to her as “That Woman.” The disdain was mutual. She referred to them as “the not so grand grandees.” As Thatcher later said, “It didn’t matter what they called me as long as I got the job done. I mean, to me they were ‘Those Grandees.’ They just don’t know what life is like. They haven’t been through it. And eventually if they didn’t help our cause, they had to go. But it didn’t bother me too much that they were patronizing like that. Frankly, the people, who are the true gentlemen, deal with others for what they are, not who their father was. Let’s face it: Maybe it took ‘That Woman’ to get things done, and the real reason why they said it was because they knew they just hadn’t got it within them to see things through.”

In taking on “Those Grandees,” she wasn’t afraid of having strong opinions and fighting for them — something the establishment often found distasteful. British ambassador Sir Anthony Parsons recalled a conversation about this: “She said, ‘You know, Tony, I’m very proud that I don’t belong to your class.’ I said, ‘Prime Minister, what class do you think I belong to?’ She said, ‘I’m talking of course about upper-middle-class intellectuals who see everybody else’s point of view and have none of their own.’” And, of course, like all conservatives and trailblazers, she had to endure more than her share of vicious media attacks. Sir Archie Hamilton once recounted how he asked Thatcher whether she read the daily newspapers. “‘Oh no!’ she replied, ‘They make such hurtful and damaging remarks about me and my family, that if I ever read the papers every day, I could never get on with the job I am here to do.’” I know exactly what she meant. And as she said, “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”

Anyone witnessing her brilliant debating skills in the House of Commons can understand why her opponents were reduced to childish attacks. She passionately demolished all their arguments with facts.

Thatcher didn’t have powerful patronage. All she had were powerful ideas, ideas based on liberty. During a meeting about the Conservative party’s best course to take in the economic crisis of the 1970s, some so-called pragmatist was arguing in favor of a Third Way between free-market capitalism and socialism. Before he was even finished, Thatcher reached for her handbag, pulled out a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, threw it on the table, and said, “This is what we believe in!”

She put those beliefs into action. Like Reagan, she was a leader for whom word and deed were one and the same. A leader of a conservative think tank behind the Thatcher revolution famously said, “We were not interested in political office for the Conservative party. We were interested in power for them to get things done.” And that’s exactly what Thatcher did. While others in her party were interested in holding on to political office and overseeing “the orderly management of [Britain’s] decline,” she actually radically reformed a broken system and brought it back to free-market principles, leaving her country stronger, wealthier, and a leader in the world when just a decade before it had been dismissed as “the sick man of Europe.” Her push to privatize British industry and lower tax rates led to a substantial economic expansion and became a model for other countries shrugging off the yoke of socialism.

She was a visionary always ahead of her time because her vision was rooted in time-tested truths about man’s fallibilities and aspirations. Today, in light of Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis, all observers can recognize the wisdom of her unflinching defense of national sovereignty and democratic accountability. I’m sure there are many Europeans today who wish their leaders were as prescient as Britain’s Thatcher in her skepticism of ceding control to a centralized continental bureaucracy.

She was above all a patriot who loved her “Land of Hope and Glory” with all her heart and believed in its greatness and its history as the “Mother of the Free.” As her current successor in 10 Downing Street said, “She didn’t just lead our country; she saved our country.” And she changed the world in the process.

The grocer’s daughter from Grantham became freedom’s Iron Lady at a time when too many were soft and equivocating. She is sadly gone now, but her intrepid will, her time-tested ideals, her unfailing trust in what is right and just, and her legacy, as solid as iron, will live on forever.

— Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, was the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president.

Don’t Fire Until You See The Whites of Their Cassocks (Mark Steyn–National Review Online)

 

By Mark Steyn

April 7, 2013 9:38 A.M.

This is one for the “too stupid to survive” files: US Army Labeled Evangelicals, Catholics as Examples of Religious Extremism.

When I first saw the headline, I assumed it must all be a little less obviously bone-crushingly stupid or at any rate more nuanced once you got into the story. But I invite you to look at the accompanying poster for the Equal Opportunity training brief issued by the Army Reserve in Pennsylvania. It lists “extremist” groups, starting with “Evangelical Christianity” at Number One, “Al Quaeda” (misspelled under any Roman rendering of Arabic) at Number Five, “Hamas” at Six, and “Catholicism” rounding out the Top Ten.

Think of the number of people involved in the creation, printing and distribution of this graphic – and along the way not one of them stopped to say, “Hey, this is totally dumb.”

At the beginning of America Alone, I quote Arnold Toynbee: “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.” The urge to suicide is always there; the trick is keeping it confined to the outer edges: In the Cold War this kind of moronic false equivalence was the province of leftie professors and fringe playwrights, who spent three decades failing to notice nobody from West Germany was climbing over the Berlin Wall to get into the East. Now this false equivalence is peddled by the politically correct eunuch bureaucracy of the US military.

When Major Hasan got a case of Pre-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and opened fire at Fort Hood standing on a table yelling “Allahu Akbar!”, it was just the luck of the draw: He could have been shouting the Angelus. Best to prepare for all eventualities.

As Robert Spencer says, this is not going to end well.

Toxic Government by Democrats: Minneapolis

 

Posted By John Perazzo On April 4, 2013 @ 12:58 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 7 Comments

Editor’s note: The following is the first in a series of articles that will expose the misery of life in America’s poorest cities, all of which have one thing in common: they are controlled exclusively by Democrats. Each article presented by FrontPage will reveal how the production of mass urban poverty is much more than just a failure of leadership, but a means of political survival for the Left. To read the background pamphlet by David Horowitz and John Perazzo, “Government Versus The People,” click here.

The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota—whose population is composed of 63.8% whites, 10.5% Hispanics, and 18.6% African Americans—has been governed exclusively by mayors from the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, the state affiliate of the Democratic Party, since 1978.

As of 2011, the poverty rate in Minneapolis was 23.5%, more than one-and-a-half times the national figure of 15%. This differential is consistent with a longstanding, well-documented trend: Virtually all of America’s poorest cities have been led politically by Democrats for many years, even decades. In 2010, for example, not even one of the ten poorest large cities in the U.S. had elected a Republican mayor since the 1980s. In fact, 8 of the 10 cities had been led exclusively by Democrats for more than half a century.

The common thread running through each of these economically decrepit cities is a phenomenon that Harvard scholars Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer famously dubbed “The Curley Effect,” after its prototype, James Michael Curley, who served four non-consecutive terms as mayor of Boston between 1914 and 1950. This phenomenon, Glaeser and Shleifer explain, is the strategy of “increasing the relative size of one’s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies.” Forbes magazine puts it this way: “A politician or a political party can achieve long-term dominance by tipping the balance of votes in their direction through the implementation of policies that strangle and stifle economic growth. Counterintuitively, making a city poorer leads to political success for the engineers of that impoverishment.”

This typically occurs when Democratic administrations adopt policies that redistribute wealth from the prosperous to the poor, causing the latter to become economically dependent upon their political patrons, and thus to become a permanently pro-Democrat voting bloc. At the same time, these redistributive policies cause the people harmed by them (i.e., those from whom wealth is extracted) to emigrate to other cities and states, thereby further solidifying the political power of Curleyist practitioners.

The beneficiaries of Curleyist redistributionism invariably become unable to perceive the connection between left-wing policies and their negative consequences. Instead, they view Democrats as the noble, last line of defense that stands between them and total destitution. As a result, their loyalty to Democrats persists, undiminished, regardless of how bad conditions may get—chiefly because they interpret the failures of leftist policies as evidence that those policies simply did not go far enough, probably as a result of conservative obstructionism. Thus do residents of Democrat-controlled cesspools of poverty and crime continue, in perpetuity, to elect Democrats to political office.

Prior to the permanent Democratic takeover of Minneapolis in 1978, the city’s poverty rate had been consistently lower than the national average. Then, through most of the 1980s, the ripples of the Reagan economic boom delivered a positive effect to cities nationwide, including Minneapolis. Indeed, Minneapolis added some 3,000 new jobs to its downtown area each year from 1981-87. In 1983, only 8% of the city’s metropolitan-area population lived below the poverty level, as compared to approximately 15% nationally.
But by 1988, Minneapolis’s left-wing Democratic mayor, Donald Fraser, had grown troubled by the stark contrast between those sections of his city that were thriving economically, and a number of African-American neighborhoods where crime, teenage pregnancy, and welfare dependency were widespread. Fraser believed that the proper remedy for these pathologies would be to implement a host of taxpayer-funded, government-administered social-welfare programs. “What is needed,” said the mayor, “is a more thoughtful discussion, a rethinking of the city, of welfare support, and it should begin right here.” Specifically, Fraser held that federal and local agencies needed to focus more of their attention and financial resources on the economic and social problems confronting unwed mothers and their children. His successors as mayor, Sharon Sayles Belton and R.T.Rybak, have shared this same perspective—a mindset that has fueled the decades-long trend of ever-increasing wealth redistribution and government subsidies for the poor, not only in Minneapolis but across the United States.

By no means is financial hardship in Minneapolis limited solely to low-income residents. Indeed, the city’s homeowners pay higher property taxes than their counterparts in most other metropolitan municipalities. One study of 142 metro areas found that only 15 of them bore a heavier property-tax burden than Minneapolis as of 2010, and that was before Minneapolis raised its property taxes by 4.7% in 2011.

Just as Minneapolis residents face significant economic challenges, so must they deal with the city’s sizable crime problem. In the early 1990s, crime began trending downward in much of the U.S. for various reasons, including the decline of the crack cocaine epidemic, more aggressive policing strategies, and harsher punishments for criminal behavior. New York City, under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and police commissioner William Bratton, led the way in this regard with their CompStat crime-tracking system and their use of the so-called “broken-windows” approach to crime-prevention. In comparison to other cities, Minneapolis was slow to adopt the new law-enforcement and criminal-justice strategies and thus lagged behind the national trend for several years. But once the city changed its ways (e.g., by incorporating CompStat) in the late 1990s, it likewise experienced a noteworthy reduction in crime.

Notwithstanding this positive downward trend, however, crime rates in Minneapolis remain far higher than statewide and national figures alike. For example, in 2010 the violent crime rate for Minneapolis exceeded the corresponding Minnesota rate by 346.55%, and the overall U.S. rate by 161.03%. Similarly, the property crime rate in Minneapolis surpassed the Minnesota rate by 84.44%, and the national rate by 61.27%.

In a particularly ugly develoment, Minneapolis in recent times has been the scene of numerous incidents involving “flash mob” violence, usually by large groups of black assailants targeting white victims. For example, on March 17, 2012, a gang of some 20 young men inflicted serious brain injuries on one young man, just an hour after a large group of assailants had beaten an out-of-town couple in that same location. Six days later, without provocation, 15 to 20 suspects attacked and beat three cyclists, leaving one of the victims with a broken jaw. As Sergeant Steve McCarty of the Minneapolis Police Department observed: “It’s just mainly to create mayhem, assault people and just whatever they can do. It’s a weird mentality I don’t think a lot of people can fathom or understand. Just to victimize people.” And a few days after that, four Minneapolis juveniles assaulted two men in quick succession, rendering one of the victims unconscious and inflicting serious injuries (including a broken arm) on the other.

It has long been commonplace for Democrat-led cities to have much-higher-than-average crime rates. As of 2011, for instance, America’s ten most dangerous cities were all strongholds of Democratic political leadership. Minneapolis’s experience, therefore, is par for the course.

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/john-perazzo/toxic-government-by-democrats-minneapolis/

Global Warming? Oops! Never Mind! (American Thinker)

April 1, 2013

 

By Jonathon Moseley

What was the Earth's temperature yesterday?  Nobody knows.  In fact, it's a ridiculous question.  Almost every place on Earth today has a different temperature from that of any other location.  So, is our planet's temperature rising?  Do we even know?

However, it is officially admitted:  Global warming stopped 15-20 years ago.  The mainstream media is struggling very hard to explain this away.  They admit that the Earth stopped warming 15 to 20 years ago.  But just you wait -- disaster is coming unless we vote liberals into office.  They cannot explain the pause.  Yet they "know" global warming will kill us all unless we vote Democrat.

So was global warming ever real?  Or is this hysteria a hoax, like the Y2K computer disaster that never happened?

Just concerning today's temperature first, we would have to measure hundreds of thousands of locations and then average temperatures from all over the planet.  We don't have that many weather stations.  So we don't even know what yesterday's temperature for the planet was.  We certainly don't know what the temperature was a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago.

Are today's weather measurements accurate?  Heck no.  Weather stations are measuring the jet blast from airplanes taking off at airports, the heat from air conditioners on office building rooftops, the heat of asphalt parking lots and streets and cities.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts is one of the greatest heroes of truth and freedom.  His blog "Watts Up With That?" has changed the world and is one of the most influential resources on global warming.  Watts became truly famous with his recurring "How Not to Measure Temperature" series reviewing the world's automated weather stations.

For example, concerning Henderson Field, in the Solomon Islands, Watts reported that jet exhaust from taxiing airplanes blows straight into the weather equipment.  Do we care about the Solomon Islands?  Well, if you are trying to track the planet's overall temperature, yes, you must include the whole world.  Otherwise, you are simply watching weather variations moving around from one part of the planet to another.

Rooftop weather stations were busted.  Many weather stations are on the roofs of major office buildings, where they are affected by the heat blast from massive industrial air conditioners.  The sun also heats the top of the building and the surrounding buildings and streets.  So the weather station is actually measuring the "heat effect" of the city -- not the climate.  They are also measuring the nearby air conditioner.  "How Not to Measure Temperature, Part 48" exposed a building-top station in Baltimore.

In "How Not to Measure Temperature, Part 93," Watts reports how the weather station most responsible for claims of warming temperature in England is stationed next to a massive air conditioner on the ground and a brick building.  And they are all together inside a ground depression.  This traps artificial heat, causing an inaccurate temperature reading.  The temperature reading is also near industrial activity in London.

In "Part 90," Watts reports on a station set in a small parking lot, on the asphalt, next to an air conditioner.  The blog "Gust of Hot Air"  reports on a weather station at the Marysville, California Fire Department.  It used to be in a grassy yard.  Now the yard is a parking lot.  And the measurement equipment is within 10 feet of an air conditioning unit that cools cell tower electronics and the bar-be-cue that firefighters cook with a couple times a week.

Nearly all of the weather stations in the world were created only after the invention of the airplane (at least those which report organized, historical records).  Very few spots on the Earth were being sampled before World War I.  But the farther back in time we go, the worse it gets.  So the sampling of the Earth's temperature was changing over time.  We are comparing apples and oranges when we compare the sample set that exists today with the much smaller sample sets the farther we go back through the decades of data.

But isn't sampling an accepted scientific tool?  Only if it is truly random according to careful rules and techniques.  Weather station samples are fixed in certain locations, always the same, not randomly selected for each year.  And the Earth's weather is tremendously variable.  But it is not random in the sense necessary for statistical measurement.  We may not understand all the highly complex weather patterns.  But the sample of weather stations is fixed -- or in other words, not random.

We are measuring not changes in the climate, but rather the "heat effect" of expanding cities due to urban sprawl.  Most temperature measurements are at airports.  A great many airports were built out in the empty countryside, perhaps 5 to 25 miles from the city they serve.  But urban sprawl has now extended outward to those airports.  So as we compare data over past decades, we are seeing the increase in temperature caused by expanding cities -- not a change in the planetary climate.

It is well-known that there is a "heat effect" when asphalt roads and concrete buildings replace trees, grass, and open fields.  This creates a localized increase in temperature at ground level.  (However, this affects the distribution of heat, since sunshine is still the same over the entire planet.  It probably does not change the global temperature overall.  It will increase convection and temperatures near the ground.)  Yet it's actually worse than that.  And the heat content held within water, air, and rock is different from one to the next.  So temperature swings in the air may be misleading.

Although the concept of a thermometer is thousands of years old, no scale of precise standardized measurement was invented until the 1700s.  Therefore, we have no meaningful records of temperature earlier than the Industrial Revolution, in terms of the ability to compare measurements recorded over time.  Even then, scientific instruments must be calibrated for accuracy.  Even a thermometer attempting to measure temperature on a standardized scale may not read the same as another thermometer.  Accuracy in scientific instruments requires standardization and careful calibration.  Quality has not been consistent since the 1700s.

So global warming hysteria is based not on any accurate measurements of global climate, but rather on "proxies."  That is, scientists give their interpretation of tree rings and bacterial samples in fossils.  Global warming "science" is strikingly similar to a witch doctor reading the entrails of a goat.

Here's the problem, and it is a foundational precept in science: you cannot analyze data to a greater precision than the original measurement.  So if you have data measured only in yards, you cannot analyze that data to draw conclusions at the level of inches.  You will get errors.  With global warming, we don't know historical temperatures with precision.  Therefore, imprecise historical data cannot support the attempted predictions.

Well, then, how can we say that global warming stopped 15-20 years ago if we really don't know what the temperature is or has been?  We have no valid basis for saying that the world is warming.  We can't say that it is or it isn't.  But the whole global warming concept is simply...well...hot air.

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