Are Christians humans, too?

President Obama, on those rare occasions when he defends his Libya policy at all, focuses on Col. Muammar Qaddafi's threats of "no mercy" to the rebels in his strife-torn North African satrapy. It's a "humanitarian" imperative. America, the president says, has a moral duty to intervene when millions are threatened with extermination.

In the Sudan, some 5 million Africans have died for decades at the hands of the Islamist government in Khartoum. So brutal has been the rule of Omar al-Bashir that when the majority of Christians and followers of traditional African religions in South Sudan recently had the chance to vote on separation, most regions registered near unanimous votes to break away. Yet there have been no calls from the Obama administration, or previous administrations, for the United States to intervene militarily in the Sudan.

Which leads us to ask: Are Christians humans, too? How is it that when U.S. administrations have been willing to spend blood and treasure for endangered peoples in the post-Communist era, it has been the case that we will intervene when Muslims are threatened, not when it is Christians who are being slaughtered?

Take Iraq, for example. When Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were not found, we were told that at least we had stopped his mass murder of Kurds and Shiites. Well, that should promise a better future for Iraqis.

Except that we now learn that two-thirds of Iraq's Assyrian Christians have been forced to flee the country of their birth since the United States took down Saddam. Iraqi Christians have lived, often precariously, in the Fertile Crescent since biblical times. But only now is this ancient Christian community facing extinction. All the while, U.S. taxpayers shell out millions in foreign military assistance to a Baghdad government that cannot, or will not, protect its Christian minority.

In Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus assures us that the U.S. military presence is helping to establish a stable foundation for democracy. Only 500,000 Afghan children attended school under the Taliban, and none were girls. Since 2001, the general says, there are now 5 million Afghan children being educated. We might feel a lot better about that fact if we could also be assured that they are not being taught in madrassa schools where they learn to murder their neighbors who are Christian.

Pakistan has recently seen its only Christian Cabinet member assassinated. He was the lone voice for the Christian minority in that country. Also assassinated there was a Muslim provincial governor who had taken a Christian woman under his protection. That late governor had called for a repeal of the country's blasphemy law, which makes it a hanging offense to say there is a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Five hundred Pakistani lawyers and professors applauded the governor's assassination-by his own security guard. Yet, we are told that Pakistan is a democracy. Are we surprised that Pakistan has not been able to locate the hiding place of Osama bin Laden?

Lebanon was once a rare candidate for status as an Arab democracy. But decades of political violence have targeted such figures as President-elect Bashir Gemayel, a Maronite Christian, who was assassinated in 1982, and President Rene Moawad, also a Maronite, who was killed by a car bomb in 1989. More recently, the great hopes of a "Cedar Revolution" for democracy have faded as Lebanon has fallen under the rule of Hezbollah, the terrorist "Party of God" dominated by Iran.

Fearless Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, a former Muslim, heads Barnabas Aid, a U.K.-based Christian advocacy group. Barnabas informs us that Coptic Christians are being murdered in Egypt. Sporadic attacks occurred under Hosni Mubarak, whom the United States financially supported for 30 years. Christian persecution of the Copts is intensifying in Egypt since Mubarak's ouster. There, some 6 to 9 million Christians of the country's 80 million people. In neighboring Ethiopia, a country with a Christian tradition going back to the Book of Acts, Barnabas reports some 100,000 Christians are fleeing new attacks by emboldened Islamists.

We Americans are moved by humanitarian concerns. Just look at the outpouring of prayers and financial aid to Haitians, the Japanese, Indonesians, and other victims of natural disasters. It should be noted that the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference-both groups whose members possess vast oil wealth-have done virtually nothing to help afflicted peoples.

The time is fast approaching for a searching reappraisal of a foreign policy that seems willing to rescue those being led to slaughter provided only that they are not Christians.

SOURCE

************************

The World's Most Unfair Tax System

Which country has the most progressive - i.e., parasitical, socialistic, and grotesquely unfair - tax system in the industrialized world? None other than the erstwhile Land of Liberty:



Don't worry about Comrade Obama imposing socialism on America. It's already been imposed. That's why the economy is slumping toward collapse, as people mutter bleakly about our best days being behind us.

This won't stop Democrats from continuing to bleat about "the rich" (a.k.a. employers) being forced to "pay their fair share." Until we've been reduced to subsistence level collectivism, their work is not done.

SOURCE

***************************

Gingrich vs. Gingrich

by Jeff Jacoby

NEWT GINGRICH sees himself as a statesman, a public-policy sage, and a potential president of the United States. The former House speaker has written more than 20 books, produced a half-dozen documentaries, and launched organizations that focus on subjects as varied as health care, the importance of faith and free markets, and the interests of American Hispanics. It is clear that Gingrich is smart, curious, articulate, and energetic. He is never at a loss for words, and he has an opinion on everything.

But is he serious? For someone who holds himself out as a public intellectual, Gingrich comes across all too often as more glib than thoughtful -- more interested in jumping into the fray than in expressing carefully worked-out ideas. When he takes a strong stand on a controversial issue, it's never clear how much conviction and deliberation have gone into it. He seems to think and speak at full gallop, tossing off opinions as fast as they come to him, less interested in being right than in being heard -- and in taking shots at the opposition. Of course it is in the nature of American politics that Republicans criticize Democrats, and Democrats disparage Republicans, but Gingrich professes "to rise above traditional gridlocked partisanship." And yet Newt the Republican combatant is a much more familiar figure than Newt the nonpartisan visionary.

Consider the former speaker's position(s) on Libya. On March 7, before US military action against Moammar Khadafy had begun, Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren asked Gingrich what he would do about Libya. Without hesitation, he called for aggressive American intervention and derided the president for not having ordered it already:

"Exercise a no-fly zone this evening," Gingrich demanded. "The idea that we're confused about a man who has been an anti-American dictator since 1969 just tells you how inept this administration is. . . . This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with."

So eager was Gingrich for action that he wanted it done unilaterally: America "doesn't need anybody's permission," he said. "We don't need to have NATO. . . . We don't need to have the United Nations. . . . All we have to do is suppress [Khadafy's] air force, which we could do in minutes."

Two weeks later, on the day the UN Security Council voted for a Libyan no-fly zone, Gingrich intensified his criticism. The Obama White House, he told Sean Hannity, "is maybe the most passive and out of touch presidency in modern American history." Khadafy was still in place two weeks after the president said he had to go, Gingrich observed, and "there is no evidence that the no-fly zone by itself will be effective."

The next day, Gingrich told Politico that the president's position on Libya "makes us look weak and uncertain and increases the danger in the Persian Gulf."

Yet by Sunday, with US missile strikes on Libyan air defense systems underway, Gingrich's tune began to change. Now Obama was guilty of "opportunistic amateurism without planning or professionalism," he said, and the only thing that could explain the administration's decision was "opportunism and news media publicity."

On Wednesday, March 23, Gingrich went on NBC's "Today" show to condemn the entire operation. "I would not have intervened," he told Matt Lauder. "I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Khadafy. I think there are a lot of allies in the region that we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces." For good measure he labeled the military campaign, which so far has gone pretty well, "about as badly run as any foreign operation in our lifetime." That will come as news to anyone who can remember Vietnam, Somalia, or Iraq before the surge.

Thus in the space of three weeks, Gingrich went from blasting Obama for not imposing a no-fly zone in Libya "this evening" to blasting Obama for imposing a no-fly zone in Libya. On March 3 he wanted the president to tell Khadafy "that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we're intervening." By March 23 he was mocking "humanitarian intervention" as an unserious "public relations conversation."

But if the only consistent note in Gingrich's ever-evolving position on Libya is that Obama is always wrong, just who is the unserious one? On his website, Gingrich describes himself as an internationally recognized "expert on world history, military issues, and international affairs." He would like to be regarded as a man of deep learning and principled ideas. He is coming across so far as a politician who will say anything to score cheap points.

SOURCE

************************

Pathetic: Media Matters Plots "Guerilla Warfare" Campaign Against Fox News

The loathsome creatures at Media Matters For America are officially evolving from nominal media "watchdog" to a codified Left-wing attack dog. This rabid, pitiable puppy will be nipping at the heels of one specific target. Guess who?

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of "guerrilla warfare and sabotage" aimed at the Fox News Channel.

The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the "nerve center" of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals - not least among the donors who fund Media Matters' staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.

In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters - which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget - is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points, as well as a series of under-the-radar tactics.

Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox's top executives but on a series of midlevel officials...

Brock said Media Matters also plans to run a broad campaign against Fox's parent company, News Corp., an effort which most likely will involve opening a United Kingdom arm in London to attack the company's interests there. The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org to work on developing campaigns among News Corp. shareholders and also is looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network.

The group will "focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests - whether that be here or looking at what's going on in London right now," Brock said, referring to News Corp.'s - apparently successful - move to take a majority stake in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

Question for legal minds: MMFA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (with a -c4 activist arm). How many tax-exempt non-profits are explicitly dedicated to "disrupting the commercial interests" of their enemies?

SOURCE

*************************

London Riots Illustrate the Decline and Fall of Britain

Liberalism is a disease that attacks the moral backbone of a civilization, rotting it into a putrescent jelly that cannot hold society erect. At that point it collapses. This is happening now in Britain, which was one of the greatest nations in history within the memory of many still living today.

Anarchists today broke away from one of the largest protests Britain has ever seen to bring chaos to the streets of London.

The Ritz hotel and Fortnum & Mason were among the buildings targeted in the capital after groups of rampaging youths intent on spreading havoc left the mass anti-cuts demonstration.

Around 500,000 activists and campaigners descended on London this morning to protest at the Government's drastic cuts programme.

The cuts were as inevitable as the riots. As the last great British leader Margaret Thatcher observed, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. "

The cockroaches with the masks are the result of generations that were never expected to take any responsibility for their own parasitical existences. They are Britain's post-civilization future, bred by the Dole. Next comes authoritarian collectivism, a totalitarian form of serfdom.

If this could happen to Britain, it could happen to America — and it will, if the disease is not cured quickly.

SOURCE. (See the original for pix)

*************************

ELSEWHERE

It's called "inflation": "Does anybody besides Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke really believe the U.S. economy is not suffering from increasingly serious inflation? Bernanke -- like the rest of us -- has seen soaring prices for precious metals, base metals, gasoline, diesel fuel, crude oil, and corn, wheat, and other foodstuffs. He has seen big increases in the nation's Producer Price Index and a record high in the United Nations Food Price Index, up about 25 percent in the past year."

Correcting fantasies about Social Security: "Let's bring the Trust Fund lie down to a very personal level ... You can't create an asset by writing yourself an IOU. If you take $10 out of your right pocket, spend the $10, and then write yourself an IOU for $10, the IOU is worthless, EVEN if you place it in your Left-pocket Trust Fund. The Social Security Trust Fund is really the Left-pocket Trust Fund. And these so-called bonds are just another political con-job designed to dupe the American people"

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************