… in December 2007. … Over a U.S. objection, the other U.N. member states voted to approve the budget. This decision not only demonstrated a general disregard for the concerns of the U.N.’s largest financier–the U.S. is currently assessed 22 percent of the U.N. regular budget and over 27 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget–but also broke a 20-year tradition of adopting budgetary decisions only by consensus. …

The Heritage Foundation, February 3, 2010

At least Bush the administration objected to this madness, but “the Obama Administration did not even demand a vote on the proposed budget this past December.” What are we? Sheep? After last week’s elections, I’d say, “No,” but our country still has a sheep in the Oval Office. Baaaahhhhh. To add insult to injury in this three-ring circus, UN Watch reported yesterday:

… The U.S. was ambushed today at its first UN Human Rights Council review after Cuba successfully stacked the speakers list with rogue regimes and other vehement critics. Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, China, Algeria, Bolivia, Nicaragua and several Muslim states accused America of genocide, war crimes, and systematic anti-Muslim and anti-African racism. …

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by Alexander Maistrovoy

Clinton is right: “Russians” in Israel don’t really want peace, that kind of peace which Bill Clinton imposed on Serbs in Kosovo.

Clinton’s words that Russian-speaking Israelis are an obstacle to reaching peace can be understood in different ways. Excluding their emotional component, it is necessary to recognize that the immigrants from the former Soviet Union are most opposed to the Israeli/Palestinian peace process (or what is implied by this term). Let’s look at the root of this phenomenon.

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By Barry Rubin

This is one of those obscure Middle East events of the utmost significance that is ignored by the Western mass media, especially because they happen in Arabic, not English; by Western governments, because they don’t fit their policies; and by experts, because they don’t mesh with their preconceptions.

This explicit formulation of a revolutionary program makes it a game-changer. It should be read by every Western decision-maker and have a direct effect on policy because this development may affect people’s lives in every Western country.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

Islamist enmity for infidels, regularly manifested in the jihad, is by now moderately well known. Lesser known, however, but of equal concern, is the mandate for Muslims to be loyal to fellow Muslims and Islam — a loyalty that all too often translates into disloyalty to all things non-Muslim, including the American people and their government.

This dichotomy of loyalty to Muslims and enmity for infidels — which, incidentally, corresponds well with Islamic law’s division of the world into the abode of war (deserving of enmity) and the abode of Islam (deserving of loyalty) — is founded on a Muslim doctrine called wala’ wa bara’ (best translated as “loyalty and enmity”). I first encountered this doctrine while translating various Arabic documents for The Al Qaeda Reader. In fact, the longest and arguably most revealing document I included in that volume is titled “Loyalty and Enmity” (pgs.63-115), compiled by Aymen Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Did the U.S. spending of $53 billion on reconstruction efforts, or “nation-building,” work in Iraq? According to New York Times’ columnist David Brooks, it did. Unfortunately, however, his argument is flawed on numerous counts by selective evidence.

To begin with, he cites the International Monetary Fund’s report that Iraq will have the twelfth fastest growing economy in the world with a projected 7% economic growth this year, but such a statistic is misleading because, as in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, this expansion is almost entirely due to rising oil prices, and has nothing to do with development projects funded by U.S. taxpayers. Indeed, Iraq has become increasingly oil-dependent like its neighbors in the Gulf region, such that petroleum revenues account for about 70% of GDP and around 90% of government revenues.

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by Daniel Pipes*

As September 11 comes around each year, those of us who focus on radical Islam inevitably ask whether the lessons of 9/11 have sunk in — or whether they are fading as the event itself becomes a memory. Are we, in other words, progressing or regressing in what once was called the war on terror?

In contrast to a conventional war, in which objective markers such as control of territory or the output of steel indicate trends, in this new kind of war one must look to subjective factors like understanding the enemy or pride in one’s own civilization. How, on this slippery basis, does the United States stand on the ninth 9/11?

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

When perverted, evil, Islamist terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, they demolished a true “community center” — a model of human diversity and opportunity. (Why is it that so many “progressives” [cowards] hold “diversity” to be an ideal, but nonetheless double-think and apologize for radical Islamic savagery, e.g., Sunni Muslims killing Shi’ite Muslims or Islamist hatred of Jews and gays?) Claudia Rosett reminds us that New York City had one of the greatest community centers on Earth — at least before Islamists struck:

Story continues below…

Photo (c) netwmd.com, LLC

… I keep thinking that on Sept. 10, 2001, lower Manhattan had a community center. A spectacular center. It was called the World Trade Center, though I always found the name Twin Towers more alluring. One of my favorite views used to be the scene that opened up when you drove east across the Tappan Zee Bridge — from which, on clear days, looking miles down the Hudson to the southern tip of Manhattan, you could see those two white towers.

The World Trade Center was, as some of its chroniclers have said, a vertical city. It was a place of shops, cafes, restaurants, news stands, many offices and a huge plaza where in summer there were concerts, and people lunched outdoors around the fountain. Its basement concourse was the place where in 1982, as an aspiring journalist, I engaged in the oxymoronic business of calming my nerves with a cup of coffee, at one of the multitude of coffee shops, before going across the street for a job interview. It was the place where over many years I came and went from subway stops that let out into the World Trade Center complex, where you could buy everything from t-shirts to airplane tickets. I bought my favorite briefcase there, won a raffle for a bread-basket, picked up shampoo, toothpaste and dishracks; I met friends and business contacts for lunch there, walked through it on the way to more distant shops and restaurants, and interviewed people in the offices above. When I moved back to New York in 1997, after almost a dozen years working abroad, my editor took me to lunch in the North Tower, more than 100 stories up, at Windows on the World.

In one of the lower buildings of the complex, there was a huge and marvelous Borders bookstore, with a big poetry section, a cafe, and benches outside. It was a great place to play hooky from the office. It’s gone. It’s all gone. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

In a rare moment of clarity, the BBC published an article explaining why Americans can burn Korans, Bibles, Torahs, or American flags as expressions of free speech. Maybe a few people around the world will read this article and get a better understanding of the values we cherish and make us strong — time better spent than blaming the U.S. for every problem under the sun. Perhaps the “teaming masses” will get a clue as to why millions of immigrants, probably emigrants related to/known to most of these masses in some way (family, friendship, neighbors, etc.), have flocked to our great nation. And if new immigrants to the U.S. don’t understand our values, we’re pretty good at assimilation — or at last resort, there’s always police, riot police, the FBI, or the National Guard. For foreign entities who wish to destroy our cherished values, as in 911, that’s why we have aircraft carriers, Marines, F-16s, and cruise missiles. In other words, if you don’t like Americans’ right to free speech — e.g., the many “progressives” who would suspend free speech when it suits their cowardly agendas — you can just piss off. From the Beeb:

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by Daniel Pipes*

The furor over the Islamic center, variously called the Ground Zero Mosque, Cordoba House, and Park51, has large implications for the future of Islam in the United States and perhaps beyond.

The debate is as unexpected as it is extraordinary. One would have thought that the event to touch a nerve within the American body politic, making Islam a national issue, would be an act of terrorism. Or discovery that Islamists had penetrated U.S. security services. Or the dismaying results of survey research. Or an apologetic presidential speech.

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WASHINGTON (August 31, 2010) — Every year, 300,000 to 400,000 children are born to illegal immigrants in the United States, each one of them automatically a U.S. citizen despite the illegal status of their parents. This practice of automatic, or birthright, citizenship is not the result of any specific legislation, regulation, executive order, or judicial ruling, and yet has become de facto law of the land.

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by Ryan Mauro*

It seems almost unthinkable, but Islamist groups are, as we speak, hard at work creating Muslim states-within-states in the U.S. Indeed, this process has been unfolding for a long time across the Western world, through the creation of isolated Muslim enclaves in both rural and urban areas, as well as through the designation of “no-go zones” where governments admit to having little authority over Muslims living there, essentially leaving them to function as autonomous regions.

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by Daniel Pipes*

As U.S.-Israel tensions climb to unfamiliar heights, they recall a prior round of tensions nearly thirty years ago, when Menachem Begin and Ronald Reagan were in charge. In contrast to Binyamin Netanyahu’s repeated apologies, Begin adopted a quite different approach.

The sequence of events started with a statement from Syrian dictator Hafiz al-Asad that he would not make peace with Israel “even in a hundred years,” Begin responded by making the Golan Heights part of Israel, terminating the military administration that had been governing that territory from the time Israeli forces seized it from Syria in 1967. Legislation to this effect easily passed Israel’s parliament on Dec. 14, 1981.

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by Daniel Pipes*

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has, since its founding in 1994, served as the Islamist movement in North America’s most high-profile, belligerent, manipulative, and aggressive agency. From its headquarters in Washington, D.C., CAIR also sets the agenda and tone for the entire Wahhabi lobby.

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By Andrew Whitehead

I want to share what I believe is one of the most important books to come out regarding the dangerous activities of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an FBI identified front group created for Hamas.

“Muslim Mafia” exposes CAIR’s activities to the light of day and clearly demonstrates with convincing proof that CAIR is in America with the primary purpose of weakening our country in favor of CAIR’s proclaimed version of radical Islam; a political and violent ideology that has evolved into the most wicked and destructive “religion” in existence.

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By Phyllis Chesler

P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, with the help of Gaubatz’s son Chris, who went undercover, have published an important, perhaps even an explosive and sensational book which exposes the Muslim-Brotherhood connected Council on American-Islamic Relations, otherwise known as CAIR.

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