By Mark Krikorian, CIS.org
The Washington Post’s editorial writers ought to read their own newspaper. Monday’s lead editorial bemoaned the fact that having illegal aliens go to the “back of the line” is deceptive since there is no “line” for them:
by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi and Oskar Svadkovsky*
Among the second wave of Arab Spring uprisings that followed Tunisia, Syria was the most spectacular “out of the blue” that suddenly arose in the face of the media and analytic community. Just days before Deraa exploded with protests last March, some analysts were still scrutinizing Syria’s circumstances and declaring the country to be immune from the Arab Spring. Nor did reporters who visited the country spot signs of a brewing storm.
Another great video from the good folks at Aish.com, “We’ve Gotta Live Together: Building unity through kindness:”
A briefing by Mark Durie*
Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist and pastor of an Anglican church. He has published many articles and books on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992. On January 18, he spoke to the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia.
Thank G#d that Brits have a prime minister with guts and a moral center — not afraid to condemn the country’s 40-year slippery slide towards decadence. UK PM David Cameron was speaking the honest truth, affirming that, “We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so.” From the Beeb:
In a speech in Oxford on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, the prime minister called for a revival of traditional Christian values to counter Britain’s “moral collapse”.
He said “live and let live” had too often become “do what you please”.
The PM said it was wrong to suggest that standing up for Christianity was “somehow doing down other faiths”. …
by Svante E. Cornell*
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) was reelected to a third term in June 2011. This remarkable achievement was mainly the result of the opposition’s weakness and the rapid economic growth that has made Turkey the world’s sixteenth largest economy. But Ankara’s growing international profile also played a role in the continued public support for the conservative, Islamist party. Indeed, in a highly unusual fashion, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began his victory speech by saluting “friendly and brotherly nations from Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Amman, Cairo, Sarajevo, Baku, and Nicosia.”[1] “The Middle East, the Caucasus, and the Balkans have won as much as Turkey,” he claimed, pledging to take on an even greater role in regional and international affairs. By 2023, the republic’s centennial, the AKP has promised that Turkey will be among the world’s ten leading powers.
by Asaf Romirowsky*
The Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) watchdog, which “monitors abuses of academic freedom and politicization of Israeli campuses by extremists and radicals,” has found, “Israeli academic institutions have been misused in recent years for radical anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic propagandizing, often by tenured radicals with embarrassing academic records and dubious research credentials.”
By Barry Rubin
In a rare glimpse behind the curtain, a Palestinian scandal sheds a lot of light on the Palestinian Authority, Arab politics, and Western illusions. Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Labor Ahmed Majdalani was being interviewed by a radio station when, not realizing that his microphone was on, he referred to Palestinian workers as “brothers of whores.” Hundreds of callers complained. Majdalani’s answer? He claimed he was talking about Israelis, not Palestinians!
By Gary Gerofsky
The only non-military response to Islamism and the creeping sharia (Islamic law) that is infecting the world is through strength and activism against this scourge and against those in power who are facilitating Islamist expansion. The generations that went before us defeated communism and fascism, and now we must step up to the plate to defeat Islamism. This task is made seriously difficult because we have a Muslim supporter in the White House and weak, ignorant, misinformed leaders married to multiculturalism, wishful thinking, and leftism that is intent on appeasing Islamists in all but a few places (For political reasons related to 9/11, Al Qaeda seems to be the only real Islamist concern for the Obama administration.) Our Western countries have become divided states, one part for the radicals and one for the majority of citizenry — and, by virtue of our free and fair society, they are both afforded the same rights. The new world order has its new world leader with Obama encouraging dissent and self-loathing among his own countrymen while boosting the political fortunes of Muslim Brotherhood forces who want us dead and who live by their belief in intolerance and a world ruled by Islamic edicts.
By Fern Sidman
Since Friday morning, November 11th, Jews around the world and especially in the Orthodox enclaves of New York have been recoiling in horror over the overtly anti-Semitic vandalism that took place in the early morning hours near Ocean Parkway and Avenue I in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Three vehicles were torched and a gruesome array of hideous epithets as well as the perfunctory swastikas and KKK emblem were indiscriminately scrawled on cars and benches. As community outrage reached a fever pitch, it was duly noted that this attack was clearly planned to coincide with the 73rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, (the night of broken glass), when on November 9-10 1938, as a pogrom of mammoth proportions erupted in Hitler’s Europe, almost 200 synagogues were destroyed, over 8,000 Jewish shops were sacked and looted, and tens of thousands of Jews were deported to concentration camps.
by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*
As the U.S. troop presence in Iraq continues to diminish, it is worth examining what sort of political system has been left behind. Is Iraq really a democracy as many officials in the Bush administration hoped it would be? Sadly, the answer to this question cannot be in the affirmative.
It is of course true that in March 2010, Iraq conducted elections recognized as free and fair by the UN. However, as Osama al-Nujayfi, the Sunni speaker for the Iraqi parliament, astutely observed, democracy is more than just about holding elections. In many of the other essential aspects of a truly democratic society, Iraq’s status is far from satisfactory.
By Jerry Kammer, CIS.org
Some late-night time with Tivo this week provided three compelling Latino perspectives on the state of the American dream. The first came from a former illegal immigrant from Mexico who is now a brain surgeon; the second from an unidentified Central American migrant riding atop a train rumbling toward the U.S. border; the third from a former Cuban refugee who is now president of Miami-Dade College.
By Barry Rubin
The easiest way to understand the current situation in the United States is this:
We are in a new version of the 1960s with four significant differences.
1. The radicals aren’t just demonstrating in the universities, they control them.
2. The radicals aren’t being ignored by the mass media, they control them.
3. The president of the United States is the leader of the New Left, sort of like the head of the campus branch of SDS and the Black Student Alliance put together. In comparison, Bill Clinton was the head of the campus Young Democrats.
4. The music’s not nearly as good.
Yet is support for the radical Left really higher than in the 1960s? I don’t think so. The movement has just camouflaged itself much better, including convincing millions of people that this is a mainstream liberal one.
By Gary Gerofsky
I nearly burst out laughing when I heard a Canadian “occupier” say that this occupation movement started in the Middle East and spread from there to Wall Street and on to Toronto. It struck me humorous on many levels, but frightening as well, starting with the fact that the Left formerly regarded “occupation” as a bad thing but now they have adopted the concept and look upon it as the right of the “99 percenters” to protest over the fact that they cannot live like a Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or the King of Saudi Arabia. Union leaders like Sid Ryan, a big supporter of the occupiers, should also be (but are not) placed in the greedy column by the mobs. Leftists seem to be immune from their own criticism. Occupation has been a derogatory term coined by leftists and Islamists to beat up on Israel and America and so I wonder why they chose to call themselves occupiers. They disingenuously strive to identify with the protestors in Egypt. The occupiers apparently do not take notice of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood looks poised to take control of Egypt: Christians are being run down and killed in the streets by Islamists and the military; the Israeli embassy has been sacked; gas pipelines blown up; and peace agreements denounced. It is a country headed for disaster. Is this the model that the “occupiers” aspire to?
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