By Phyllis Chesler

Senator Obama has released his line-up of convention speakers. His choice of speakers is neither wise nor moral nor are there that many new faces among them. Yes, I know: Senator Obama has to invite the previous living Democratic Presidents, it would be a break with tradition for him not to do so. But isn’t “change” Senator Obama’s mantra? And if not now, when?

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Here’s an excellent short film by Aish.com about Sherri and Seth Mandell, whose 13-year-old son Koby and a friend where beaten to death with rocks by 4 or 5 Palestinian terrorists. The Mandell’s wanted to, “Create something out of the tragedy of Kobi’s death,” and started a camp to help heal families who have lost children to terrorists. The Mandell’s turned adversity into advantage. Here is their story:

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The Terrorism Awareness Project has produced an excellent film summarizing and exposing the kind of propaganda the Muslim Student Association (MSA) is spreading on U.S. campuses. Example:

… The Muslim Student Association brought the jihad into the heart of American higher education and established a base among America’s youth. Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Student Association, or MSA, now has chapters on nearly 150 college campuses across North America. The Muslim Student Association postures as a religious and cultural organization. This pretense helps in its successful effort to intimidate student governments and university administrators into funding its activities. In reality, the MSA is a radical political force — a fifth column telling students that America is an imperialist power and Israel an oppressor nation. Its speakers spew anti-Semitic libels and justify the genocide against the Jews being promoted by Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hizbollah and Hamas, and the government of Iran. …

Please watch the film and spread the word by clicking on this image:

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By Phyllis Chesler

“Shaikha,” a 16-year-old Saudi girl, drank bleach in an attempt to kill herself because her father was forcing her to marry a 75-year-old man. And why? So that Shaikha’s father could himself marry the elderly man’s 13-year-old daughter! Shaikha begged and pleaded not to be forced into this marriage–even her mother supported her plea; all to no avail. … (Continue reading…)

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by Asaf Romirowsky*

Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes has argued for years that the solution to Islamism/radical Islam is moderate Islam. But the question is still, who are these moderates and where can they be found. As Pipes states, “Islamism [is] a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the Islamic law (Shari’a).”

Using this definition, moderation requires rejection of jihad to impose Muslim rule and the rejection of suicide terrorism. No more second-class citizenship for non-Muslims. No more death penalty for adultery or “honor” killings of women. And No more death sentences for blasphemy or apostasy.

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~by E.D. Kain

This is a pretty apt description of the lefties whose apologism to Islamist radicals has gotten so out of hand, that publishers, theatres, and art venues have all started pre-censoring just about anything critical of Islam from Mozart to the new authour “The Jewel of Medina” by Sherry Jones.

(note: the link to Amazon above results in a dead search)

Mick Hume writes for the Times Online, and published an article recently decrying this abandonment of our freedoms. He writes:

The threat to freedom here does not come from a few Islamic radicals, but from the invertebrate liberals of the cultural establishment who have so lost faith in themselves that they will surrender their freedoms before anybody starts a fight.

Indeed, though the Islamists are responsible for initially causing a great deal of noise about the publication of various cartoons and pictures, it is the Left that has buckled, along with corporations fearful for their profits and employees’ safety.

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By Fern Sidman

The offices of the prestigious and internationally renowned law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, LLP in midtown Manhattan was the setting for a special session convened by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists on Sunday, August 10th. The session, billed as several lectures on “Preventing Genocide; “Legal Responses to Ahmadinejad” drew about 30 Jewish lawyers and jurists from all over the country and explored the “jurisdictional, procedural and substantial legal issues involved in bringing Ahmadinejad to account and to justice” and warned that as “Iran moves closer to acquiring nuclear weapons it is vital that every means, including legal actions, be used to deal with the threat of genocide.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

All for fear of offending Muslims, we have “a quiet wave of self-censorship and cultural cowardice sweeping Western art circles:” A novel (The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones) is pulled before it even got published; the “BBC has dropped a big-budget docu-drama, The London Bombers;” “the BBC hospital soap Casualty chang[ed] Muslim terrorists into animal rights activists;” and, the “Royal Court Theatre cancel[ed] an adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.” To this sorry list, I would add all the U.S. and Canadian newspapers who refused to publish the Danish Mohammad cartoons, because the editors were cowering under their desks. I turn readers’ attention to an op-ed by Mick Hume for the Sunday Times…

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Russian President Putin’s goon-squad is using “’scorched-earth’ tactics” in Georgia, has promised to annex territory (South Ossetia and Abkhazia), and now is threatening to attack Poland. This is pure madness, but look at the reaction from Europe (or, should I say, lack thereof?), as described by the brave Russian soul, Garry Kasparov:

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by David F. Winkler
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2007. 244 pp. $34.95

Reviewed by Dale Eikmeier
U.S. Army War College

Written as a history of the U.S. Navy’s relationship with Bahrain and aimed at naval historians, Winkler’s book, Amirs, Admirals, and Desert Sailors: Bahrain, the U.S. Navy, and the Arabian Gulf, fills a void for scholars of U.S. Middle East policy. Winkler, director of programs and development at the Naval Historical Foundation in Washington, D.C., chronicles the history of the U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf from the mid-twentieth century’s petroleum and shipping offices to the present-day headquarters of the Fifth Fleet. He reveals how a series of naval officers with scant foreign policy experience forged productive relationships with Bahrain’s rulers based on mutual respect, the Navy’s need for oil, and Bahrain’s need for security. As Sheikh Essa is quoted saying to an American, “Your men and women, the ships and aircraft of the Fifth Fleet, are a mountain of fire that separates us from the Iranians, and that presence of naval forces is what has given us peace and prosperity.”

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by Daniel Pipes*

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for Al-Qaeda and was charged last week in New York City with attempting to kill American soldiers.

Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds. In particular, an estimated forty Al-Qaeda sympathizers or operatives have sought to penetrate U.S. intelligence agencies.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Yesterday in Iraq, a female homicide bomber, masquerading as a Shiite religious pilgrim, murdered 20-30 pilgrims, half of them women, and injured at least 100 others. Once again, the homicide bomber stopped at a resting tent for pilgrims.

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~by E.D. Kain

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

~WInston Churchill

The Russians are tricky. They have suckered the world into thinking that they are a more peaceful, progressive nation than they were during the Soviet era. We have been duped into believing this over the years, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Now, as Georgia burns, and the world wonders whether a ceasefire will hold or whether Putin’s puppet Medvedev will simply (as the Russians so often do) say one thing and do another…

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by Michael Rubin*

FAIRFAX - As Iranian centrifuges spin and Russian tanks roll into Georgia, foreign policy has moved to the front of the presidential election debate. Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, promises change. Such rhetoric appeals to an electorate exasperated with President Bush, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and high energy prices. How ironic it is then that that by conflating change with pandering, Obama replicates Bush’s mistakes.

It was neither the Iraq war nor the failure to embrace multilateralism which undercut U.S. credibility under Bush, but rather foreign policy flip-flops. On June 24, 2002, amidst a rash of Palestinian suicide attacks, Bush won the plaudits of terror victims when he declared, “Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership [uncompromised by terror], so that a Palestinian state can be born.” His audience applauded.

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By Phyllis Chesler

… In the so-called “real” world: an imperial Russia set Georgia on fire; Kashmir remained on fire; the Taliban bombed a bus of civilians in Pakistan, killing at least 13 people; three female aid workers and their driver were killed in Afghanistan.

Humanity seems to be subtracting from, not adding to, beauty and harmony. … (Continue reading…)

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