What’s so terrible about the ideological, agenda-based domination of the mass media and academia is that people don’t ask critical questions that undermine their political positions. Here’s one:
The Egyptian government says it will put on criminal trial 16 people who distributed funds to Egyptian moderates from pro-democracy forces. One of them is the son of U.S. Labor Secretary Ray LaHood. The prosecutions are going forward despite Obama administration threats to cut off all aid to Egypt, which mostly goes to the Egyptian military, which happens to run the country at present.
If Egypt’s government is ready for a confrontation risking its U.S. aid over this tiny and insignificant issue, then why should we believe that the fear of losing U.S. aid will keep it from imposing Islamization on its people, sponsoring anti-Israel terrorism, becoming entangled in a war with Israel, and doing all sorts of much more important stuff?
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Haven’t seen that anywhere else, right?
Doesn’t this incident undercut all of the soothing words about how Egypt (or Libya, or other countries taken over by Islamists) will be constrained by such things?
And here’s a bonus question: Does anyone in those Islamist circles take Obama seriously as someone to fear?
Well, consider this:
Normal president: The Egyptian government is holding Americans as hostages. Therefore, I will withhold any proposal for more aid to Egypt until they are released.
Obama: The Egyptian government is holding Americans as hostages. Therefore, I will now introduce a proposal to give $800 million in aid to the new Arab governments, mostly to Egypt.
Get it? This administration either has no idea of how proper diplomacy and statecraft works, or doesn’t care. Either way, it is a disaster.
Now if you are a real moderate in the Arabic-speaking world, Turkey, or Iran, you know that your future looks very dim. You don’t draw your interpretations from the Western media. You don’t tremble at being thought an Islamophobe, because you probably are a Muslim yourself. So what do you do?
Another email has arrived in my box:
Things are getting too tough for a secular-oriented person like me. Can you help find me a job in a place that still has academic freedom?
I already have a collection of such messages and stories. There’s the engineer who found a teaching job in China; the journalist who is now in sub-Saharan Africa after being threatened with death; and the newly arrived Turkish Jews I’ve met in England, Canada, and the United States who have no illusions about the nature of the Ankara regime.
Suddenly, there are communities of thousands of Egyptian Christians in Europe, the United States, and Canada who weren’t there a little while ago. There is the well-known blogger who is now in the New World, and the democracy activist who has jumped out of the fire and into Washington, D.C.
And then there are the people who are talking about getting out. “You’re crazy,” says a relative of a more optimistic friend of mine to her complacent kinsman. “These people are building a dictatorship. I’m getting out of here with the children while there’s still time.”
Sensing what’s happening and going to happen, those who can get out are getting out. They include dedicated liberals who dreamed of democracy, and talented professionals who see no future in their homelands. Sure, lots of people would have loved to migrate before, but now they are either packing up or dusting off the suitcases. And their goal isn’t just to get a better life materially, but to have a life at all. They are, or will soon be, genuine political refugees with a well-founded fear of persecution.
I wonder how much higher the number of visa applications from Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey to North America, Europe, and Australia is now. Watch for their specialty stores, the churches of regional denominations, the ethnic restaurants opening in a neighborhood near you.
And they will find that the local extremists have preceded them there.
The West is completely indifferent to the suffering of the Christian minorities in Muslim dominated countries. One reason for this is that the West is post-Christian and could care less about the persecution of Christians, anywhere, and that includes the West itself that is targeting Christianity for extinction. The West is so blinded by its madness that it even supports the Islamic jihad against itself. The West is on a death march.
The indifference became apparent way back in Lebanon during the 1970s when as Arafat’s thugs were slaughtering Christians the Vatican’s rep., Capucci was running arms and explosives from Lebanon to the West Bank in his official Mercedes to Arafat’s operatives there.
These people, unlike the Jews of Europe are not waiting around for the inevitable. They’re leaving while they still can.
In time, the West will notice the true nature of the Middle East’s new repressive regimes but that day is a ways off.
Expect things to go from bad to worse in the foreseeable future.
Unlike the Jews of Europe they are not locked in, yet.
The West will not notice the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi regimes that it enabled. The information controllers in the MSM will not allow it. The Republicans and Democrats are both involved in squashing the truth. The US, and the rest of the West, have met their match in Islam.
I really hate to say that I totally agree..
These people are hostages until the presidential election here gets close,
..then out of “great respect for Obama”, they will be freed..oh yeah…
Our people like to keep their hands clean, and islam just doesn’t care,
basically kill ‘em all attitude on their part, that we do not want to accept..BUT WE NEED TO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE
..Money?…they don’t need our money anymore…the muslim brotherhood will provide.
Islam will win this great battle if we do not start to understand them and obama.
“Get it? This administration either has no idea of how proper diplomacy and statecraft works or doesn’t care. Either way, it is a disaster.” Do I get it? Yes I get it. You are wrong. Obama knows, and cares plenty. What he’s doing is a disaster, just as you say it is, and it suits Obama just fine.
I am reminded of Churchill’s dedication in volume 6 of his WW2 history. It goes something like “and so the democracies triumphed, only to repeat he mistakes that so nearly cost them their lives”. He referred to the fall of nazism and the rise of Communism; in our time it is the rise of Islamism. We have this consolation, at the rate the most Islamists are progressing in another ten years they will declare fire and the wheel as un-Islamic. Until then they have to be kept from getting the bomb.
As of today it looks like Obama’s chances for re-election are good. I wonder what form the re-introduction to reality will take for his enablers?
And here is Churchill on Islam: How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
Churchill’s observations on Islam should be required reading. Here’s a link to his book “The Story of the Malakand Field Force” in which he talks about the British frontier wars in what is now Pakistan, and Afghanistan:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9404/9404-h/9404-h.htm
Read it. Live it. love it. That Gutenberg site has a pretty impressive repository of Churchill’s material.
When it comes to immigration I think of the West as naive victims who’ve abolished a dog-eat-dog world in their own countries and really don’t understand what kind of con men and problems they are importing from the Third World.
Political correctness in the West dictates that everyone is equal given the chance without regard to the idea that any kind of elite worthy of competing in the West would’ve made their own chances decades ago. Creme does not need a hand grenade at the bottom of the cup to rise to the top.
PC also dictates that to oppose immigration in virtually any form is to be a racist. Multiculturalism and ideas about diversity amount to a religion since their “tenets” have no basis in reality. Even Asia’s largest literary festival in supposedly anti-Muslim and enlightened India’s city of Jaipur last month brought out the full force of the law and PC and threats of violence when Indian-born Salman Rushdie was scheduled to appear; that appearance then had to be canceled due to solid intelligence about assassins headed for Jaipur as well as Muslim protesters stating unequivocally that they’d make trouble. One can only wonder what Oprah Winfrey, the Queen of PC thought about being there since she has in the past been accused of anti-Muslim comments.
Authors who read in protest from his banned-in-India book “Satanic Verses” are now facing charges. Could Rushdie now even appear in Central Park? Probably not, unless the city of New York wants a giant security mess on its hands due to the new immigrants who in fact are NOT just like the old immigrants. The irony of the Jaipur debacle is that one of the organizers, William Darymple, author of “White Mughals,” is anti-Israel and a Palestinian and Muslim apologist. We’ve already had the equivalent of Jaipur with South Park when Comedy Central caved in to threats from Muslims over a show.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/16/conservatives-to-announce-further-barriers-to-deter-bogus-refugee-claimants-report/
“National Post” Toronto, Canada.
Canada to introduce biometrics. “The legislation includes provisions for cracking down on human-smugglers and grants authorities the legal ability to collect biometric data from people entering Canada on a visitor visa, work permit or study visa.”
Barry Rubin, in above article: “In Toronto, I was coming out of the provincial parliament building when a man from Pakistan struck up a conversation, thinking I was an influential legislator. He told me of how his community in Toronto is full of radical Islamists and of how scared he is. The man recounted that Islamists had taken over part of an official government building, against Canadian law, and turned it into a mosque where radical ideology was preached. A friend of mine checked it out and h his information was completely correct. Canadian officials were indifferent to this violation.”
You mean to say that the Canucks let folks from who knows where run around without having taken biometrics before they were let in? WTF!!
I spent 3 hours sitting in an office building earlier this week at the pleasure of officials from USCIS being interviewed and examined. I passed. I REALLY LOVE LIVING IN A COUNTRY WITH A CONCEPT OF SECURITY.
‘$800 million mostly to Egypt’. Let me get this straight. Obama wants to give this money that he has to borrow to the leaders of a country that has asked for patience while they conquer the world for Islam and install Sharia law. Assisting in your own demise is the height of madness. Perhaps Obama can explain this to me better, maybe talk slower, as I am not a liberal. To me,a conservative, this is devoid of logic, reason, and common sense.
You forget the wonderfully powerful (almost hypnotic some say) personal persuasion that Zero that convinces (or connive & coerce) others to see things his way. Look what he did with just two words – hope and change! And neither Zero nor the radical islamics are prone to following the Constitution in their headlong march towards whatever fate either party has in store for us – except when it suits their goals – that is to say as a tool when its handy.
The enemy of my enemy…
It’s not his demise, just ours. He’s with them.
Now now, they’re not real liberals and minorities as found in the West’s upscale neighborhoods such as Davos. What we have here is a failure to communicate:they’re obviously fleeing the middle east because they have acute Islamophobia syndrome. All they have to do is get their heads right with the program, perhaps a little aversion therapy would do? A little Gestalt therapy with a Transactional Analysis Muslim twist and life can be beautiful again.
A real president would tell the Egyptian leaders you will let the 16 people and any remaining Americans go right now or I will send in a brigade of heavily armed Marines with full military support to rescue them… and some of those Marines might accidentally wipe out most of your military tanks and aircraft on the way. Of course, we don’t have a real president, just one who obeys what his muslim masters tell him.
Those 16 Americans, by their actions, helped to create the situation in which the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi could take power in Egypt. It will be poetic justice if they are all executed.
Moderator?
I hope we get our fair share of immigrants. For the most part it will be good people wanting out of an increasingly desperate situation. I had a Kurdish Iraqi family as next door nieghbors for 10 years and we could use more like them. What will be left in Egypt, Lebanon and Lybia will be the people Churchill described above. The radicals are great at stirring the pot, but they can’t govern. When the food gets short they will blame the West for a while and then the next round of dictators will come to power. I doubt there will ever be a Caliphate. The sectarian fighting over who would be Caliph would go on and on.
Thumbs Up for David W on what a real president would tell the Egyptians. May I add that a real president would respond to the threat from the Muslim Brotherhood, that Egypt would end its peace with Isreal if the U.S. stopped aid, by giving that aid to Isreal.
We are in a period that seems too much like the 1930′s. The Muslim world spirels towards militant Fascism, those with foresight scramble to escape while the majority, both here ant over there, stick their heads in the sand and refuse to believe what is happening. And our leader’s answere is unilateral disarmament. Obama wants to be a transormational president, so he combines the failed domestic policy experiments of the New Deal with the fialed foreign policy experiments of League of Nations. I pray we don’t get more ‘transformation’ then anyone bargained for.
Excellent article. I sure would like to believe that people who have been playing mind games with themselves are reading it. Unfortunately, most who read it are probably just thinking, “Thanks for saying it so plainly, because I haven’t seen it elsewhere,” however, we didn’t learn anything our gut instincts weren’t telling us–coming up on 2 years ago now–when obama ignored the tweeting Iranian youth, thus illustrating what our gut instincts had told us 18 months earlier, when we were frantically trying to get our relatives and acquaintances to listen to their lying ears in July 2008 when he began saying publicly what he believed about the United States of America vs. the rest of the world. As soon as he knew he had found the final solution for Hillary, he began explaining his final solution for the United States. And once he was immaculated, he began implementing his final solution for freedom loving people all over the world. NONE OF THIS IS NEWS TO ANYONE WHO WAS PAYING ATTENTION.
It just remains to see the details of the script, as effectively provided here by Mr. Rubin.
Send this article to the fools who are still lying to themselves. The good truth-telling writers are providing the syllabus for those still ready to learn–let’s keep distributing such writing. Hope for the best and ask the Sovereign God to have mercy on us.
are effectively provided here by Dr, Rubin, yes.
Yet the spine of the script, the final solution for America and freedom-loving people everywhere, which Obama is implementing, Dr. Rubin says, and would have us believe, Obama doesn’t know or care about at all.
Yeah, I know. I didn’t want to make that a major point of my comment because I always realize that I don’t have near the resources and don’t give the time to thinking about these things as these writers do.
The details of the narrative and the reality on the ground for freedom loving Arabs are laid out clearly, and that part of it is useful. Some days I am about to give up on trying to learn how to absorb information; how to use that information; how not to lay awake every night because of that information; how to have hope for change in spite of the information received.
Your point is absolutely correct. I think The Thug in Chief knows precisely what he’s doing. Precisely. And he’s long past the point where he cares about any effort to conceal it. He passed that point five days before the election in 2008 when he announced that he intended to implement a transformation of our nation. And, just like stage 4 cancer, that is precisely what is doing: implementing a massive transformation of our nation.
well-respected writers like Barry Rubin would see it, and say it.
“A year or two from now you will be hearing a lot about it, but not now, when it might not be too late to prevent the exodus.”
I don’t think you will hear anything.
At a trip to the airport recently I witnessed a good many Nikab adorned women exiting the International arrivals, my husband and I looked at each other and silently watched as our country slowly but surely dug the knife into it’s wrist.
I hadn’t visited the airport to pick up family or guests in quite some time. Women in Nikab by the dozens let alone a woman in a hijab is a brand new phenomenon. The arrival section was filled with bearded men waiting on the Karachi flight.
It was comforting to see the handsome pilots and beautiful stewardesses walking out form our KLM arrival flight along with the nicely dressed Dutch folk. Two contrasting civilizations neatly laid out for all to see.
Thank you Canada.
Thank goodness I was born when I was and lived in this time before all is wasted and Balkanized.
Incidentally the mosque not too far from our house now has young girls dressed in full nikab , just as Tarek Fatah has warned they are forcing immigrant parents to pull the girls out of public school and radicalizing them. Forcing the niqab on even the youngest. The girls were crossing the street from the Mosque carrying grade nine and ten text books.
You should go to Heathrow Airport in London. You would not know where you were. It is as if you have stepped into the Arabian Nights. Extraordinary.
Hi ex canuk, I’m from Toronto too. Hope we can change the US back to what it was when I journied here.
Mac, are you a Canadian and are you talking about an airport in Canada?
Just wondering.
You know I think the reason this idiot in office is moving so fast, is because they don’t really think he will get another term. Heaven help us if he does.
For all those who refuse to vote for this one and that one, I will vote for a stale sandwich before I sit home and refuse to vote!
I agree that most Yanks are unaware that they stand on the edge of a waste pit that destroys incentive and happiness and takes a generation to reverse if at all. But I still have confidence in the degree of involvement in politics & civics of the average American, which is greater than any Canuck or Brit or European I’ve ever met.
About three months before I left, premier of Ontario, Mr. McGinty introduced himself to me at a “meet and greet” at our favorite donut shop (Tim’s) on a cold and snowy afternoon. I showed him the visa in my passport and told him in one or two sentences why I was, in middle age, leaving his paradise. I’ve rarely seen a man more angry.
For the Yanks in the readership, the stupidity of unsupported spending, “green energy” policies which have given Ontario the highest energy costs of any jurisdiction in North America, a budget where more than half of the revenue of the province goes to public “one size fits all” health care is documented here in today’s paper, and “smart growth” policies of land rationing which makes single family detached housing in Toronto the most expensive in the world (yes, it beats NYC or London UK) outside of Asia, is documented here:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/16/don-drummond-catalogues-the-mcguinty-mess-in-meticulous-detail/
Sound familiar? This will be the USA in another five years: permanent austerity sold to the public as a form of civic duty, either under the guise of “safety” or “environmentalism” — the British formula of the last 100 years basically since World War One, while those in the game (civil servants, politicians, and execs of large companies exclude the middle classes from capital accumulation via confiscatory tax rates.
YYZ
Man I got a thrill imagining that conversation with Premier Dad.
@Ex Pat & Ex Canuck
Welcome home.
“Obama: The Egyptian government is holding Americans as hostages. Therefore, I will now introduce a proposal to give $800 million in aid to the new Arab governments, mostly to Egypt.”
Um, in the old days we used to call this ransom.
I’m waiting for a new version of “Nightline” to begin. “America held hostage, day 1.” Only instead of Iran, it’s now Egypt. It was started under Jimmy Carter, but now for some reason they don’t want to do it for Obama. Wow, I wonder why? Because for every day that ticked higher and higher, Carter looked worse and worse in the polls. Now, are you telling me that the mainstream media wouldn’t want that same thing to happen to their favorite son, Obama? Naaaa, can’t be right. Just another reason to hate the mainstream media.
We appear to have a new policy about hostages and ransom payments. The USA paid $465,000 each for the hikers that were held in Iran – the new word for ‘ransom’ in that case was “bail”. I never read a press story asking exactly who paid this nearly 1.5 Million dollars in ‘bail money’.
The $800 Million is Obama’s walking around hostage money. I expect the word is out that it’s open season on Americans. Any ‘hostage’ situation would be bad for the re-election, which means it’s easy money. Nothing is more important than the re-election.
The West’ use and throw away Eastern Christian policy has been on-going for centuries. But to see the West enabling the jihad against the West is cognitive dissonance on a scale that is mind boggling.
The death march of the West continues…
I think the entire budget of aid that we give to Egypt should be diverted to fund research by the National Institutes of Health, which is facing severe cutbacks. Money given to Egypt benefits no one, while money given to NIH benefits humanity
“Good-Bye, Middle East! Liberals and Minorities are Fleeing”
I don’t blame them. I would get out too before the crap hits the fan.
I don’t think the Egyptians care at all about the activities of these few Americans. I think they want to provoke the US to withhold $$$ aid so that they can then claim that the action of the US government is an abrogation of the Sadat-Begin-Carter treaty, thereby rendering Egyptian compliance unnecessary from a legalistic point of view. All in all, a slick chess gambit, while we are continuing to play checkers.
Here is some great news. Yahoo is already proclaiming Obama the winner of the upcoming election. Doesn’t that just warm your coccles? Could somebody save me an airline thowup bag.
give a shit
about the hostages
they can rot
or whatever
I think Obama may decide to set up a big rescue operation and wants to use the same Navy Seals unit that made him look good when they killed Bin Laden. I think the 800 million is a smokescreen to buy time to get a clearer picture of the American political landscape. He is waiting to see if the Republican candidate becomes clear and gains real momentum(June or July). Only the media could turn the heat up and get him to do something about the American hostages sooner. They won’t. This is how they always support Democrats. They give Democrats all the latitude they want on any issue(see the ridiculous economic coverage). Imagine how the media would behave if this were a Republican president in an election year and these Egyptian turds had kidnapped 16 or so Americans and threatened to put them on trial. Obama is afforded the chance to fail to do anything at all. If, when July gets here and Obama’s re-election looks very probable, Obama can just choose not to try a rescue plan. Nothing done, nothing said. To hell with 16 American citizens. Obama wins his election. If the Republicans finally come to their senses in time to get behind a candidate and get him some momentum, Obama takes the very real risk of failure and tries a rescue. He holds out more(not less) money to the Egyptians for allowing a successful rescue, succeeds is a hero and wins his election. This is the real power of being a sitting Democrat President running for re-election. Remember, Jimmy Carter tried the same thing to win his own re-election and the danged helicopters got full of sand and started crashing and everything went wrong and Reagan won in a landslide. Don’t think for a minute that the media will put any pressure on Obama, like they mistakenly did to Carter, and don’t think for a minute that Obama will try any operation that carries that much risk no matter what his election chances look like. And this is what made Jimmy Carter a better President than Obama has ever been. Obama won’t be pushed, by any of today’s media, into taking any risks that could negatively impact him. In this way, the media gives Obama the option to even be a worse President than they gave to Carter. If you are wondering why Carter got worse treatment from the media, don’t. Ted Kennedy was busy trying to unseat Carter for the Democrat nomination and the media wanted to facilitate the chances for that horrible outcome. This monster has to be removed from our White House.
In the United States, at least, our main problem is that we have elected a government that seeks our destruction. The Obama Administration is a renegade Presidency that has zero respect for our Constitution and laws, which has allied itself with any group that promises to overturn our culture.
We live in interesting times.
I was wondering if anyone knew of any addresses or groups that are helping any of these refugees, and if so, would they be so kind as to post them here? I for one would like to get the word out that there are people in need, and there are people like myself that would be willing to help.
Hopefully Mr. Rubin may have some suggestions?
If Obama is clueless, so is most of the US establishment. Well, less so than those of other Western countries, of course. I don’t believe it is cluelessness; no, it is practical policy based on the exigencies of trade, one-world realities and philosophy, and the feeling that they don’t want to alienate Saudi and other Muslim states that presumably favor migration from their countries, or would raise a fuss if stopped.
Here in the northern Galil around the city of Kiryat Shmonah, we are choc-full of Arabic speakers. Yet, most of these are not Muslims but Druze – a few are Alawites or Christian. There is an awareness of two cultures mixing, but there is also a sense that most of the Druze in northern Israel – including the Israeli Golan – are in Israel to stay, accept at some level that this will be a Jewish dominant culture, and so on. Yet, there is no doubt that should winds change, and somehow the Arab states and armies threaten Israel’s existence, things would change.
Overall, this does not seem likely to happen. And for all the threat from and talk about Iran and Hizbollah, I have the feeling that we will handle them – and thrive.
As for the Western nations and their naivete about Muslim immigrants – yes, it is certainly there. PC mixing with the realities of one big happy world – and both are big factors in Israeli life as well.