Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

Wolf To Boehner: Establish Select Committee On Benghazi Before One-Year Anniversary Of Attacks

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Dereliction-of-Duty-FiveH. Res. 36 Has 158 Republican Cosponsors – The Majority of the Majority Party

Washington, D.C. (June 19, 2013) – Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) today continued to push for the establishment of a Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks.

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, Wolf said that too much of the investigation on Benghazi was being done behind closed doors in classified briefings at a time when congressional approval is at an all-time low and Americans are disappointed with the lack of transparency in their government.

Wolf reiterated that a Select Committee, which currently has 158 Republican cosponsors – the majority of the majority in the House, is the only way to efficiently and openly investigate the attacks.

“Too much has been done in a piecemeal fashion, behind closed doors, thereby robbing the American people of clear answers to important questions surrounding the murder of a sitting U.S. ambassador and three civilian employees, and the grievous injury of untold others,” he wrote.

Wolf noted that even the upcoming hearing before the House Armed Services Committee next week in which Gen. Carter Ham is scheduled to testify will be closed to the public and the press.

“There is no reason Gen. Ham’s testimony shouldn’t be public,” Wolf said.

Wolf pointed out that a number of other scandals involving the Obama Administration will require aggressive oversight by Congress, specifically citing the difficulty in getting answers on the IRS scandal, which only deals with one agency.

“The Benghazi case cuts across multiple national security agencies and the White House involving sensitive information, thereby putting it in a league of its own among the various scandal investigations,” Wolf said.

“This is all the more reason to take the best of the best under a Select Committee to build, at no additional cost, on the work that has already been done through regular order,” he wrote.  “There would be no need to start over, as some have tried to say.  Nor would there be additional costs – the resolution specifically states that we should use existing resources.”

Wolf reminded Boehner that there are just five legislative weeks before the one-year anniversary of the attacks in September.

“We must not wait until the second year of this investigation to commit the focused resources of a Select Committee in pursuit of government accountability and, ultimately, truth,” he wrote.  “Sources are disappearing and leads are drying up.  The Select Committee legislation needs to be swiftly brought to the floor for a vote, so the House can hold public hearings over the summer … and attempt to provide a final public report by the first anniversary of this attack.”

Wolf concluded his letter by quoting from a recent Wall Street Journal editorial: “Let Benghazi’s chips fall.  The House should appoint a Select Committee.”

Wolf’s measure to create a Select Committee has been endorsed by the parents of some of the victims, more than 700 retired Special Operations officials, by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Associations, which represents the State Department security officers who were on the ground in Benghazi, and by the Wall Street Journal, as well asother publications.  For a full list of endorsements, click here.

For more on Wolf’s work on Benghazi, click here.

The full text of the letter is here

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The Iran Lobby Buys a Friendly Face for Despotism

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216_largeBy Stephen Schwartz:

The funding of a significant pro-Iran lobby that funnels money to American universities was disclosed to the wider public for the first time during the U.S. Senate’s recent confirmation battle over Chuck Hagel’s successful nomination as secretary of defense.  By far the largest grantor is the Alavi Foundation, now under federal investigation, which has given Harvard University $345,000 over nine years ending in 2011.  Other institutions in the U.S. and Canada have also benefited from Iranian largesse.

Hagel, who represented Nebraska as a Republican U.S. Senator from 1997 to 2009, has long advocated a soft line toward the brutal theocratic regime, as exemplified by his call in 2007 for “direct, unconditional and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran.”

He has participated in at least one Middle East Studies event organized by Tehran’s tenured apologists and subsidized by the Iranian regime.  As described by Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, Hagel addressed a March 2007 conference at Rutgers University co-sponsored by the school’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) and the shadowy group that, as pointed out by the WSJ‘s Stephens and others, helped pay for the Rutgers AIC event: the Alavi Foundation.

He has participated in at least one Middle East Studies event organized by Tehran’s tenured apologists and subsidized by the Iranian regime.  As described by Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, Hagel addressed a March 2007 conference at Rutgers University co-sponsored by the school’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) and the shadowy group that, as pointed out by the WSJ‘s Stephens and others, helped pay for the Rutgers AIC event: the Alavi Foundation.

Alavi is an arm of the Tehran government that has granted substantial sums to American and Canadian universities.  Its 2010 Form 990, filed in compliance with its nonprofit status with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, listed assets of $39,082,555.  Alavi’s “Direct Charitable Activities” were limited to four, all school-related: “Farsi Schools in Various Universities and Schools,” “Information Education Centers,” “Publication and Book Distribution,” and “Interest Free Loans to Education Centers.”  Its total grant outlay for that year was $2,148,630.  The 2007 Form 990 from Alavi included a line for Rutgers, indicating that Alavi’s investment in the Rutgers CMES and, presumably, the event with AIC and Hagel, was $72,500.
Read more at American Thinker

Stephen Schwartz is executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism.  He wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

 

Islam and the ballot box

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IslamOnlyBy William J. Murray:

On January 30th the Wall Street Journal carried a column by former CIA Middle East specialist Reuel Marc Gerecht which made the preposterous assertion that Islam would become moderate in a democratic setting. Gerecht went so far as to state that Israel would eventually be accepted by its Islamist neighbors when they are all “free men voting.

The alarming nature of the column was the fact that this is the advice that has been given to presidents and Congress for many years, and the results have been disastrous, as can clearly be seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and other Middle East nations.

I authored a very lengthy rebuttal to Mr. Gerecht which I knew would not be published by the Wall Street Journal, since their editors drink the Kool-Aid that makes them believe the ballot box will eliminate poverty and war worldwide — never mind the fact that Adolph Hitler was duly elected to office by the German people.

Because I believe it is so important to expose the thought processes of those in the establishment CIA and State Department who advise the White House and the Congress, I am reprinting my WND.com column in this edition of the Chairman’s Report. The headline of the column makes reference to the “Pickle Factory,” the insiders’ name for the Central Intelligence Agency. The name comes from code for the daily CIA briefings to the President which are called Pickles. (WND.com changed the title to The ballot box will not tame Islamism.)

Contrary to CIA specialist, democracy will not “diminish” Islamic imperatives
How a Wall Street Journal column rationalizes delusional thinking at the Pickle Factory

By William J. Murray

The Wall Street Journal used a half page of its editorial space on January 30th to publish a totally illogical, if not delusional, column (Israel’s New Islamist Neighborhood: If Western history is any guide, the growth of democracy slowly diminishes religious imperatives) by former CIA Middle East specialist Reuel  Marc Gerecht regarding the future “moderation” of Islam in the Middle East. It appears the Wall Street Journal’s editors, economic conservatives who can see no wrong in the human rights abuses in wealthy Islamic nations, wanted to highlight the column to justify U.S support of the Muslim Brotherhood in the takeover of half a dozen nations in the vicinity of Israel.

Gerecht asserts that:

“Israel may one day be accepted by its Arab neighbors and by its most deadly foe, Iran—but only when Arab and Iranian Muslim identities allow for it. At best, that change is decades away. Modern Islam’s great internal tug of war, between the search for authenticity and the love of modernity, must quiet before the Israeli-Palestinian clash can end.”

The key word in this paragraph is “modernity” which brings in the assumption that Islam will move out of the 7th Century and somehow accept a Martin Luther who will “fix” Islam with a reformation that will bring about the equivalent of same-sex marriages in the Episcopal Church.

On what does Gerecht base his assumptions? Later in the column he writes:

“Yet if Western history is any guide, the growth of democracy slowly diminishes religious imperatives. Representative government demystifies politics and ethics, as the here-and-now takes precedence over abstract aspirations. It makes the mundane transcendent. It promotes healthy division because it puts competing visions, even competing fundamentalist visions, to the vote. It localizes ambitions and focuses people’s passions on the national purse.”

Western history is no more a guide for modernizing Islamic nations through democracy than Stalinist history was a model to modernize China. It took over 500 years, from the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 until the ratification of the American Constitution in 1789, for cultural acceptance of democratic thought despite a Judeo-Christian religious base which promotes the dignity of the individual’s rights. Islam has no such history or character.

And to what “national pulse” does Gerecht refer? The Super Bowl? Europeans are less in touch than even Americans with any political pulse other than to demand even more benefits from their governments.

Reuel Marc Gerecht

Reuel Marc Gerecht

Apparently Gerecht sees a morally splintered Western society in which citizens have the power to vote themselves lavish entitlements as the model for the Middle East. His discussion of democracy shows his total lack of understanding that the words democracy and freedom have different definitions. Democracy is merely a process of selecting leaders and is in no way synonymous with freedom, as can be seen in the United Kingdom where even politicians are jailed for their Facebook comments which are deemed politically incorrect.

In that same paragraph be asserts that democracy “puts competing visions, even competing fundamentalist visions, to the vote.” When has this ever happened anywhere? Are the views of Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Baptists, conservative Catholics or murderous mullahs put to the vote in Western democracies? This is nonsense.

Read more at Religious Freedom Coalition

William J. Murray is the chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Freedom Coalition and the author of seven books including “My Life Without God,” which chronicles his early life in the home of destructive atheist and Marxist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

PC Insantiy Cripples U.S. Military

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210x300xA7lZnPmnet7N_png_pagespeed_ic_Lo0OjoQd2Uby Arnold Ahlert

A proposed new handbook for soldiers serving in the Middle East reveals an alarming level of political correctness that infests the military chain of command. The 75-page document suggests that American ignorance of Taliban culture is chiefly responsible for the spate of so-called green-on-blue attacks by Afghan trainees on their American trainers, that have claimed the lives of 63 coalition troops this year alone. The manual is still in the drafting stages, but an article published by the Wall Street Journal reeks of the typically leftist “blame America first” mentality that should enrage every American.

The leaked manual, characterized by the WSJ as the “final coordinating draft,” offers a list of “taboo conversation topics” soldiers should avoid. These including “making derogatory comments about the Taliban,” “advocating women’s rights,” “any criticism of pedophilia,” “directing any criticism towards Afghans,” “mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct” or “anything related to Islam.”

In short, a combination of self-censorship and subservience to Islamist culture – self-imposed dhimmitude if you will – is seen as the key to countering the murderous behavior of Afghan trainees.

The handbook continues: “Bottom line: Troops may experience social-cultural shock and/or discomfort when interacting with [Afghan security forces,]” it states. “Better situational awareness/understanding of Afghan culture will help better prepare [troops] to more effectively partner and to avoid cultural conflict that can lead toward green-on-blue violence.”

You know what really facilitates green-on-blue violence? Armed Afghan trainees in the presence of their unarmed American counterparts. Unbelievably, until the policy was quietly rescinded last August, American soldiers were required to remove their magazines from their weapons, while quartered inside bases with their armed Afghan trainees. That insidious policy was promoted as a “gesture of trust” directed towards our Afghan “partners.” It took 21 deaths in 2011, followed by an additional 40 deaths in 2012, for military brass to reach the painfully obvious conclusion that it wasn’t working.

In September, the training of Afghan troops was temporarily suspended. It was then Americans got their first hint regarding the mindset that has apparently reached fruition with this handbook. Islamic “sensitivity training” was stepped up.

A list of orders troops were expected to obey–or face severe punishment–included the following: Wear surgical gloves whenever handling a copy of the Koran; never walk in front of a praying Muslim; never show the bottom of boots while sitting or lying across from a Muslim, considered an insult in Islam; never share photos of wives or daughters; never smoke or eat in front of Muslims during the monthlong Ramadan fasting; avoid winking, cursing or nose-blowing in the presence of Muslims, all viewed as insults; avoid exiting the shower without a towel; avoid offering and accepting things with the left hand, which in Islam is reserved for bodily hygiene, and considered unclean.

A senior US Army intelligence official illuminated the insanity. “The Afghans that know we’re doing all this PC cultural sensitivity crap are laughing their asses off at our stupidity,” he contended.

Read more at Radical Islam

LYONS: Draft of new U.S. Army handbook must be scrapped

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troopsWashington Times:

By Adm. James A. Lyons

After the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the erosion of our military’s moral principles, regretfully, continues.

A recent Wall Street Journal article described the U.S. Army’s final-draft  handbook, which indoctrinates our military personnel heading to Afghanistan in  how to be sensitive to and accept Muslim and Afghan 7th-century customs and  values — or possibly be killed by our Afghan partners.

Unbelievable. This is being done to prevent the so-called “green-on-blue” attacks, which have cost 63 American lives this year.

According to the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., it is  our military’s ignorance and lack of empathy for Muslim and Afghan cultural  norms that is the basic cause for our Afghan military partners to react  violently and kill our troops.

For example, if our military personnel hear or witness an Afghan soldier  sodomizing a young boy, the handbook tells U.S. service members to voice no  objection, accept it or ignore it, or they could be killed. If an Afghan beats,  rapes or kills a woman in the presence of a U.S. serviceman, they are not to  interfere or stand up for women’s rights or else they might be killed.

What the Army is saying, in effect, is that if Afghan partners conduct  violence against U.S. service personnel, it is the serviceman’s fault. This is  mind-boggling. We know, according to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of  Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, that nine out of 10 Afghan military personnel are  illiterate and cannot be counted on in combat. Endemic corruption is embedded in  Afghan culture and certainly extends to their military. They cannot be  trusted.

Other cultural norms our professional U.S. military must accept without  reservation by our Afghan partners is desertion, drug use, thievery, dog torture  and collusion with the enemy, the Taliban. Also, U.S. military members must not  discuss Islam in any form.

All of this guidance is un-American. It is totally against our core  principles and everything we stand for as Americans. It threatens to further  diminish our military principles, stature and fighting spirit. As columnist  Diana West stated in a recent article, if this handbook directive is  implemented, we will be forcing our military to submit to Islam and its  governing Shariah law or die — exactly the choice offered to infidels who have  been vanquished by jihad. Our military’s silence and acquiescence would be the  humiliating price for their existence.

This should be seen as another attempt to undercut our professional military  and our warrior reputation that has guaranteed our freedom and way of life for  the past 236 years.

None of this humiliating guidance should come as a surprise. The Obama  administration has had a massive purge under way to remove all training manuals,  lectures and instructors who link Islamic doctrine and its governing Shariah law  in a factual way to Islamic terrorism. These manuals are being removed from all  government agencies, including the Department of Defense and intelligence  agencies. All our training manuals have been purged of the true nature of the  threat from Islam and Shariah.

The degrading of our military’s fundamental principles should be viewed in a  much broader perspective. We cannot overlook the fact that with or without  sequestration, we are unilaterally disarming our military force. This is  happening in spite of an uncertain world situation with the Mideast still in a  state of turmoil and evolving threats posed by China, Russia and Iran.

Separately, we see our First Amendment rights being trashed by our secretary  of state through her participation in the Istanbul Process championed by the  57-member-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC is  sponsoring a United Nations mandate that would make it a crime to express  anything they consider blasphemous against Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. This  same theme was expressed by President Obama in his September speech to the U.N.  General Assembly in New York.

If these attacks on America’s exceptionalism and core principles are  collectively analyzed, it appears that there is an insidious agenda at work to  fundamentally change America. All of these negative factors must be challenged  and defeated. As a first step, the Army’s draft handbook should be trashed.

Second, Congress must take positive action to protect our First Amendment  rights and force the Obama administration to withdraw from any further  participation in the Istanbul Process. Third, the unilateral disarmament of our  military must be reversed. It’s time for members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to  take a position that supports the oath they took to protect and defend our  Constitution.

Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific  Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.

 

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SOS: Save Uncle Sam

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afghan21Written by: Diana West

The Wall Street Journal reports this week about a new draft handbook for US troops in Afghanistan designed to prevent their Afghan “partners” from murdering them. (And yes, we’ve seen this same material before.)

The problem, according to  the Army, is  “ignorance of, or lack of empathy for Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms” on the part of US troops.

The solution, according to the Army, is for  troops to accept these same Muslim and/or Afghan norms — or else be killed. In effect, then, Uncle Sam is  ordering  Americans  to submit to Islam or die — exactly the choice offered to infidels vanquished by jihad. As far I can tell, the main difference is Uncle Sam will require them to salute while submitting.

I simplify, of course, but I do not exagerate. Say, Joe American hears about  boys being sodomized by Afghan Army personnel. Such pederasty is in accordance with “Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms.” According to Uncle Sam, Joe American must say  nothing, must ignore the issue altogether — or  risk being killed.

Say Joe American observes the enslavement of Muslim and/or Afghan women — another “Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norm.” It makes Joe mad. But zip it, Joe — or die.

Christians and Jews who have lived under Islamic law across the centuries would recognize the diminished state of the American soldier circa 2012 as that of the classic dhimmi: the non-Muslim subject to Islamic law; his silence, his acquiesence the humiliating price of existence. Similarities to the janissaries, the Islamized forces stolen as children from Christian populations by the Ottomans to enforce Islamic law under the caliph, are also increasingly evident.

In our time, we may also understand this as  another  iteration of  the Hair-Trigger Moderate (introduced back in The Death of the Grown-Up). The syndrome describes  the society-wide phenomenon of curbing speech about Islam to prevent something, anything from setting the hair-trigger moderate off (tick, tick, tick…). This  should, but doesn’t, reveal the “moderation” to be the fraud that it is. We saw this  when George W. Bush recanted the word “crusade” after 9/11/01 (mustn’t offend, or else alienate our  “friends”). We see it in this Army draft manual in 2012  (mustn’t offend, or else receive a bullet/axe in the  head). We see it everywhere in between: in the elimination of “jihad,” “Islamic terrorism,” etc., from contemporary debate, in the Danish cartoon “crisis,” in government prosecutions and persecutions of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria,  Lars  Hedegaard in Denmark, Tommy Robinson in England, in the Obama administration’s scapegoating and incarceration of the maker of “Innocence of Muslims,”   in the “Istanbul Process.” Such self-gagging  reflects the influence — the ascendance — of Islamic law. It reflects our own rush to  dhimmitude.

And especially so in the US military, now mired in  Islamic quagmires for more than a decade. Other  “cultural norms” US forces must accept without objection include dog torture, desertion, drug use, and even sympathy for the Taliban.

Yes. Among the Army draft handbook’s “taboo conversation topics” are  “making derogatory comments about the  Taliban.”

You can rub your eyes, but that’s what it says. The US and Afghans are  partnering in the first place because We and They are supposed to have this common enemy, the Taliban. But say something bad about the Taliban and  your “brother in arms “  might get mad enough to kill you.

On first glance, we can read this as evidence of Uncle Sam’s certifiable dementia.  But maybe we should think of it instead as a clear admission: Uncle Sam knows we have met the enemy and he is … in our pup tent. Uncle Sam knows our Afghan “allies” have more in common with the enemy than with Us, the People, but he continues with the doomed, damned mission anyway. Why? Have we been subverted to Islam’s ends? In a word, yes. Is there hope of reversal? Not much, not really, unless something changes in the body (and brain) politic. When/if that happens,  we might look back on this Army draft handbook  as plea for help: Uncle Sam crying out to be rescued from the tiny band of extremists that has seized control of American interests.

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The Absurdity of Treating a Terrorist Gang Like a State

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By Bruce Thornton

The currently suspended missile duel between Israel and Hamas exposes yet again the surreal absurdity of the way the international community handles this conflict between a democratic state and a terrorist gang. Yesterday’s cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas is another example of the folly of treating a bunch of murderers like a legitimate government.

Consider, for example, the way a terrorist outfit like Hamas, self-defined in its charter by its genocidal goals, is treated as if it were a legitimate state. But Hamas is not a government that rules over a sovereign territory defined by international borders. If you want a recent graphic illustration of Hamas’ true nature, peruse this video of the aftermath of the summary execution of 6 accused “collaborators.” Or consider Hamas’ official television coverage of this week’s terrorist bombing of a bus in Israel. Or contemplate the barbarity of using its own “citizens” as human shields for its munitions dumps and rocket launchers. Calling Hamas honcho Ismail Haniyeh a “Prime Minister,” as virtually every world government and news organization does, doesn’t mean he is actually a prime minister, no matter how many elections are held. These titles and voting procedures do not constitute a legitimate government that should be recognized as such by the world community as though it respects international laws and treaties like the Geneva Conventions. Let alone should this façade of political legitimacy rationalize the millions of dollars Western governments give to Hamas under the guise of U.N. aid for social services, freeing up funds for purchasing weapons and munitions.

The same pretence of state legitimacy is equally absurd in the case of Palestinian “President” Mahmoud Abbas, the holocaust-denying head of the Palestinian Authority, which is recognized as the sole representative of the Palestinians instead of the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization ever since the cosmetic makeover brought about by the 1993 Oslo Accords. The PA is still just another terrorist gang, as demonstrated by its frequent honoring of terrorist murderers by naming streets and parks after them, and its clinging to the goal of destroying Israel through demands for territorial concessions and the “right of return” for an endlessly growing number of “refugees.” As such, the PA’s main functions include peddling to the international community the “two-state” and “nationalist aspirations” canard in order to delegitimize Israel and obtain money, and to distribute to its people whatever international financial aid is left over after PA fatcats have skimmed their take. Yet today as in the past, the U.S. is intervening in the current conflict to ensure that Abbas rather than Hamas is the “primary interlocutor with the international community,” as the Wall Street Journal reported, because it allegedly is more “legitimate” and “moderate”––the only sign of its moderation being that it believes Israel should be destroyed later rather than sooner.

Of course, totalitarian regimes for decades have appropriated the government titles and offices of legitimate governments, but at least a state like the laughably named Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea actually controls a recognized territory defined by international borders (except for the armistice line in the south). That hypocrisy is bad enough, but extending it to terrorists whose sole foundation for existence is the destruction of a neighboring legitimate nation compounds hypocrisy with delusion. It demands that superficial nomenclature substitute for reality. After all, as Plato pointed out, a gang of thieves behaves “democratically” when it divvies up the loot. But that machinery does not signify the presence of the principles and beliefs that constitute legitimate government.

Read more at Front Page

Qatar’s takeover of Europe

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Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani

By Giulio Meotti

Read this carefully.  It is a shocking and factual description of the situation at present, but it is also the prophecy of the future for Europe – or should we already call it Eurabia.
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal maintains a residence in Qatar, while the Taliban opened their first representation in a foreign country in its capital, Doha.

A hateful wind emanating from the small Islamic emirate is now blowing toward Europe, a wind accompanied by an ocean of poisonous, oily, bloody money – all coming from the peninsula in the Persian Gulf which today is the world’s richest country.

Slowly, Qatar is buying Europe’s assets.

Qatar, not exactly or even the slightest bit French-speaking, has just joined the “International Organisation of la Francphonie” as an associate member. Qatar’s goal is clear: to change and manipulate French culture. For example, the Voltaire School in Doha banned a religious book that discussed Christianity in the Middle Ages.

Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who has cultivated the image of a pro-Western reformist, vowed to “spare no effort” to spread the teachings of Wahhabi Islam across “the whole world”. Last December Qatari Emir inaugurated the “Imam Imam Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab” Mosque in Doha, dedicated to the founder of the most virulent, anti-Jewish and totalitarian Islamic school of religion.

Qatar’s octopus is working on three fronts: overthrowing despotic Arab regimes and replace these with sharia-based countries; destroying Israel by financing the terror groups (the emir just visited Gaza) – and Islamizing the European continent through mosques and investments.

In Germany, Qatar’s sovereign fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, owns 17 percent of Volkswagen, 10 percent of Porsche and 9 percent of construction giant Hochtief.

In Italy, to mention just one well known firm, Qatar just bought Valentino’s fashion style company, while AC-Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi is also ready to sell the powerhouse to the ruling Emir of the State of Qatar.

In the UK, the Qatar Muslims own swathes of the Canary Wharf financial district in London. Qatar also owns 20 per cent of the London Stock Exchange.

Qatar invested in the Paris St. Germain soccer club and it is an investor in the French Total Oil group, as well as British Shell.

Qatar financed the 95% of the Shard tower in London, the highest skyscraper in Europe.

In Cannes, the emir bought an hotel famous for hosting celebrities during the film festival, but it’s also looking to buy a Jewish symbol like the Les Trois Rois hotel in Basel, Switzerland, scene of the iconic portrait of Theodor Herzl.

Qatar has also purchased, for 300 million euros, the building which hosts part of the US Embassy in Paris.

Qatar announced last February, when Nicolas Sarkozy was still the President of France, that it was willing to spend $65 million in the French banlieues, the suburbs home to the vast majority of the six million Muslims in France. Then Qatar doubled the sum to €100 million, which the extreme leftist French newspaper Libération describes as a “Qatari take over of the banlieues.”

Another newspaper, Le Figaro, seeing the handwriting on the wall (writing a check?, published an article recently, titled: “Will France become an Islamic Republique?”.

Gas-rich Qatar may invest up to 10 billion euros in big French firms, the ambassador of the Gulf state in France, Mohamed Jaham Al-Kuwari, announced this week.

In Switzerland, where Qatar is economically very important, famous firms such as Swatch, Tissot and Victorinox, have removed the cross of the Swiss flag from many advertisements, especially in Arab and Asian countries. In many cases the cross on the red background, a sign of identity of the Swiss cantons, has been replaced by the words “Swiss Made”. The Victorinox, the famous manufacturer of knives, replaced the cross with the letter “V”. The Swatch justified the removal by saying that “Muslim countries are not allowed to show the cross in public.”

Qatar in Spain funnels its donations through the Islamic League for Dialogue and Coexistence , a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and which controls the Catalan Islamic Cultural Center. Qatar just paid $450,000 to renovate that center based in Barcelona.

In Italy, the Qatari emir is financing the construction of many mega mosques, while in Ireland Qatar recently donated €800,000 to build a mega-mosque in Cork.

Donations helped also to secure Qatar a seat in the Unesco’s World Heritage Committee, used by the Palestinians to advance their Jüdenrein agenda in Judea and Samaria.

Qatar also has an ambitious project to build a mega mosque and Islamic institute in Munich, Germany, which they say would “build a bridge between Islam and Europe”. Munich – where Pope Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop from 1977 to 1981 – is the city in which the Muslim Brotherhood has gained control of most of the mosques and of active Islam in Germany and in Europe.

The European Council for Fatwa and Research is headed by imam Yusuf al Qaradawi, based in Doha, Qatar.

Qatar is a bastion of anti-Semitism, which goes around the world along with the investments. A Qatari television show, based on a book by late Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani, shows a Holocaust survivor who resorts to prostitution and claims the Nazis did no wrong. “I didn’t see any gas chambers”, she is seen saying. An actor depicting former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin calls on Jews to murder Arab civilians.

Qatar is also hosting many conferences which demonize the Jews.

Read more at Israel National News

Giulio Meotti, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He is at work on a book about the Vatican and Israel.

The Dangerous Lie Of The Hijab

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by Abigail R. Esman:

As the number of converts to Islam grows around the world, little is more surprising than the fact that the vast majority of those converts are women – by some counts, as many as four times the number of women in the United States as men. And over and over, as if reciting dogma, these women offer the same bizarre explanation: Islam, they say, with its “modest” dress code, frees them from the “oppression” of Western society and a culture that judges women on their looks alone. It is, in fact, as if they have bought into the religion not for its precepts, but for its costumes.

Perhaps you could even believe their reasoning if most of these women actually dressed in full chador or burqa. But they don’t. Rather, they simply cover their heads – and occasionally their bare necks – in hijabs, or headscarves, arguing – with flawed logic and misrepresentations of the principles supporting Western notions of equality and feminism – that even this is a sign of “liberation” as much as it is of their allegiance to a religion.

And evidently, more and more non-Muslims are buying it, especially as legal battles erupt in Europe — and in some American cities — over the right to wear a hijab in the public realm.

Latest among them, it seems, are the editors of the International Herald Tribune, who earlier this summer ran an op-ed by Ayesah Nusrat, a self-described “Indian Muslim,” defending her decision to don a hijab at the age of 23. (What the editors evidently failed to notice was that the pious young author of the piece lifted all of her ideas and a reasonable portion of her words directly from a previously-published essay by a Canadian Muslim, Naheed Mustafa, which is widely available online,)

Poorly written, speckled with faulty grammar and plagiarized clauses, Nusrat’s piece presents a downright bizarre depiction of Western media and public opinion (among other things, she describes Western feminism as being defined by “a skewed perception of women’s equality as the right to bare our breasts in public”). Nonetheless, her commentary places in full view of a wide public one of the biggest obstacles we face in combating the growth of Islam in the West, and, even more, of political, aggressively Islamist Islam as it masquerades as a faith – and a doctrine – based on justice and equal rights, slinking its deceitful, theocratic destructiveness into the secular humanism of the West.

And it is exactly that deceit which makes it all so dangerous, especially to young women struggling with their own body image and sexuality: what easier escape, what simpler coping mechanism, than to throw a sheet over your head before heading out in public, and convince yourself that no one either sees what you look like underneath, or cares? (Indeed, Dutch psychiatrist Carla Rus, who works closely with young Muslim women – including converts – notes that the ease of dress and discomfort with cultural emphases on appearance is behind much of the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam, and contributes to the radicalization of Muslim women in Western countries.)

But Islam is not about garments, any more than a hijab actually covers anything but a woman’s hair. In fact, to the contrary, a hijab-wearing woman in the West attracts attention to herself merely by the fact of the scarf itself, and to the political statement it really represents: “I am not-you. I am Muslim. I am other, and I reject what is not me.” It pronounces the “us” of “us and them” in a gesture of arrogance and isolationism, while ignoring the greater truth of any faith: that it exists in your heart and in your behavior, and no more.

Read more at IPT

Abigail R. Esman is the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy In The West (Praeger, 2010). A columnist at Forbes.com, her articles have also appeared in The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and others.

The Silence of the Pulpits

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By Bill Warner at Political Islam:

If you are even slightly awake about the world news today, it is no surprise   that Christians are being killed, raped and brutalized throughout the Islamic   world. However, there is a place where you can go and escape the dreadful and   relentless details of Christian annihilation by Islam. You can just go to church.   For example, this week in Nigeria   Christians were killed. Nothing out of the ordinary, indeed in the world   of Christian persecution, this is routine.
And so the response to the murder of Christians is found in nearly every church   is …wait for it…, complete silence—not a mention or reference   to it or the brutality against Christians that happens almost every day in the   Islamic world. This is not a passive silence, because if you try to change it,   you will fail. The silence is an active, working conspiracy that goes throughout   nearly all of Christendom.

Take a simple example: prayer for the persecuted. From a Christian perspective,   this falls under the heading of obvious. Try taking the idea of prayer for the   routinely murdered Christians in Nigeria or Egypt to ministers, boards and any   part of the structure of the church and see how far you will get. You will get   rejection with a myriad of lame and evasive excuses, since they fear to recognize   the suffering of Christians around the world. If you acknowledge the suffering,   you might ask the question: why are these Christians suffering? Ah, there is   the rub. The suffering is caused by Muslim jihadists who are following the Islamic   doctrine of jihad against the Christian as found in Koran, Sira and Hadith.   Islam is the cause of suffering of Christians, as well as Jews, Hindus, Buddhists   and atheists.

STOP!!! We cannot say those things! Facts are the new hate speech, so we cannot   speak about the jihad against Christians. Therefore, we get no prayers for the   persecuted, because it would lead to talk about why the murder of Christians   keeps happening. And that truth would lead to being called an Islamophobe, so   we are not going there. Result: silence.

It is ironic that the Wall Street Journal, a FINANCIAL newspaper, has run   an article about the silence in the pulpit concerning the suffering of Christians.   We live in a time of moral inversion when Christian leaders are chastised for   their moral bankruptcy by money men. It is supposed to be the other way around.

Actually, there are few religious leaders left in America. Instead we have   chief-executive-officers who manage a 501 c 3 institution that has meetings   on Sunday. In too many cases, Christianity has devolved into an hour’s   meeting that is supposed to make you feel good for a week.

This 501 c 3 corporate mentality is another one of the roots of the denial   of the Christian suffering. If you are willing to see the doctrinal roots of   the ongoing murder of Christians by Muslims, then you might have to speak about   it from the pulpit and that could be seen as political speech. In spite of the   fact that there has never been a 501 c 3 revoked because of political speech   by a minister, the imagined loss silences ministers. Hmmm, if a minister is   worried about the IRS revoking his 501 c 3 then who is the minster serving?   Caesar or Christ?

Now you may not be a Christian, and so it might seem that there is nothing   here for you. But in reality we all have pulpits. Are we using the suffering   of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, women, gays, and intellectuals caused   by Islam as a topic of conversation with those around us? Who is is comfortable   with bringing up anything negative about Islam? To tell those facts about Islam   is a social crime and you will be accused of being a hater/Islamophobe. So most   of us remain silent about the evils of political Islam, and we are just like   the ministers—silent in our own pulpits. Christians and non-Christians   share the fear of being insulted as bigots and Islamophobes.

It turns out that all of those who oppose any social evil will be hated. Think   about it. It takes a massive amount of power to put into place any societal   doctrine, such as multi-culturalism and political correctness. The government,   universities, many churches, synagogues and the media have become enforcers   of multi-culturalism and political correctness. They are very powerful and believe   that their dogma rules all peoples.

They are also full throated apologists for Islam. Now it turns out that their   actual knowledge about the doctrine and history of political Islam is close   to zero and Muslim-brotherhood-approved, but that is no problem. The Establishment   just says that those who find fault with Islam are bigots and they hate us.

The silence of the pulpits is the greatest aider and abettor of Islam in the   US. No one serves and advances Islam better than the silent ministers. They   have abandoned their duty of courage in the face of persecution, but the rest   of the flock still looks for moral leadership from them. Islam triumphs when   Christian leaders do not condemn the murderous evil of political Islam.

Even worse than the silent ministers are those who go to “interfaith dialogs”   and smile while the Muslims assert religious and political dominance over them.   The nice, oh so nice, Christians and Jews show up to tie, while the Muslims   are there to win, and they do.

Christians need to follow the example of Jesus and willingly suffer the condemnation   by the Establishment and fight against the political Islam that murders Christians.   Said another way, Christians should demonstrate courage and sacrifice to support   their cruelly murdered brothers and sisters.

We cannot defeat political Islam until we get Christian boots on the ground.   Do the math. The pulpits must become a source of courage and knowledge and stand   up for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and all others who suffer under Islam’s   persecution today and for the last 1400 years.

It isn’t just about religion; it is about the survival of our civilization.

Dr. Warner founded the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI) and is   its director. He has produced a dozen books, including a Koran, a biography   of Mohammed and a summary of the political traditions of Mohammed. He also developed   the first self-study course on Political Islam. He has given talks nationally   and internationally about Islamic political doctrine. He writes articles and   produces news Bulletins that record the suffering of the victims caused by Political   Islam.