The George Soros funded Media Matters has been waging a months-long attack on Glenn Beck trying to brand the commentator as a card carrying anti-Semite. Perhaps before making false charges against Beck, Media Matters should examine its own house of cards.
Two years ago, Media Matters who has received major funding from financier George Soros, hired Rosenberg, a Jew to chip away at the image of the Jewish State, similar to what Soros did in creating J-Street. MJ Rosenberg was perfect for this role as Jewish-Lobby conspiracy theorist, bully with a keyboard, and a self-proclaimed violator of national security. [Emphasis added]
To be honest I have only crossed paths with Rosenberg’s writing twice before, in the matter of Chas Freeman President Obama’s pick for NIC Chairman who was a tool for both the Saudi and Chinese government and in the matter of Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC who was wrongly charged with espionage (the charges were dropped this year). In both cases, Rosenberg’s strategy has been is to attack people personally, throw around the “N” word (neo-con), twist words around (including mine) and accuse those of us who differ from his point of view as hell-bent to run the foreign policy of the United States of America.
In today’s piece, Rosenberg says the reason for the Egyptian rebellion is the failure to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian issue:
If one needs additional proof that the “pro-Israel” lobby and the policies it dictates to US policymakers are bad for both the U.S. and Israel, look no further than what is happening in Egypt.
The regime that the Israeli government and its U.S. lobby have depended upon to enforce the status quo is going down. It is not clear when, but it’s going to be soon, much sooner than anyone ever anticipated. And you can be sure that any democratic government that takes Mubarak’s place is not going to play the role of America’s (let alone Israel’s) enforcer in the Middle East.
Hopefully, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty will survive — thousands of lives on both sides have been saved by President Carter’s Camp David Treaty — but there are no guarantees. Far from it.
Of course, no one would even be worried about the peace treaty if the Israelis had agreed to implement the critical second part of the Camp David Accords.
That was the part that would have ended the occupation. But the Israelis chose to ignore it and the lobby and the ever-faithful Congress blocked Carter’s efforts to push it through.
Its interesting that when one goes through the Wikileaks documents about the Middle East not the secret cables ties the Palestinian/Israel to issues in the other countries. In both the recent unrest in Tunisia and in Egypt not once was there a mention of the Palestinians or Israelis except for mentioning both parties would prefer to see Mubarak remain in power.
Rosenberg indicates that the reason for the lack of Israeli/Palestinian peace is Israel, Congress and of course the Israel (Jewish) Lobby. I guess he forgot the fact that Yasser Arafat walked away from a favorable deal at the end of the Clinton Administration and Mahmoud Abbas walked away from a similar deal at the end of the Bush Administration.
I am often accused of harping on the lobby’s baleful influence. I plead guilty. But it’s my obligation because (1) I know from personal experience — 15 years on Capitol Hill and four at AIPAC — how it operates, (2) I know how little it really cares about Israel, and (3) I am free to tell the truth about it. If I worked in the mainstream media or in the U.S. government, I wouldn’t be.
How do you like that, we Jews control US foreign policy and the run the media–damn we are good. But wait there is more, according to MJ Rosenberg of Media Matters if it wasn’t for the Jews, American would be best friends with Iran.
Another area where the lobby has done so much damage is in our relations with Iran.
AIPAC is dedicated to “crippling” sanctions and eventually war with Iran if sanctions don’t bring down the regime. Later this spring, AIPAC will host its annual conference which will, as has been the case for a decade, feature mind-numbing warnings about the danger posed by an Iranian nuclear bomb.
Dang those Jews are so horrible. Not only do we control everything, but we made the last two Presidents push sanctions on those innocent Iranians and those sanctions are only being imposed to help Israel. Wow the guilt is going to keep me awake for days.
Perhaps the Media Matters columnist should have read the recent accounts released by Wikileaks.
If you would like to know what the White House really thinks of Obamacare, there’s an easy way. Look past its press releases. Ignore its promises. Forget its talking points. Instead, simply witness for yourself the outrageous way the White House protects its best friends from Obamacare.
Last year, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had granted 111 waivers to protect a lucky few from the onerous regulations of the new national health care overhaul. That number quickly and quietly climbed to 222, and last week we learned that the number of Obamacare privileged escapes has skyrocketed to 733.
No surprise here. After all, Hamas identifies itself in its charter as the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. “Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas seek to increase role in Egypt : Stratfor,” from International Business Times, January 29 (thanks to Mackie):
The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas are collaborating and seeking to increase their roles in Egypt….The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic opposition party in Egypt, is picking up the pieces left by President Hosni Mubarak’s police force by forming committees to protect public property. …
The Muslim Brotherhood is also supplying protesters with food and first aid.
Moreover, there are unconfirmed reports that as Egypt’s border with Palestine becomes unpatrolled, “Hamas armed men are entering into Egypt” and seeking collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hamas is a Palestinian/Islamic political/terrorist organization that was founded as an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“There is a great deal of concern building in Israel and the United States… [over] whether a political opening will be made for the Islamist organization in Egypt,” said Stratfor.
WHY WERE U.S. SOCIALISTS RALLYING IN SUPPORT OF EGYPT THIS WEEKEND?
January 30, 2011
By Jonathon M. Seidl
U.S. leftist and socialist groups staged rallies across the country in support of Egyptian protesters. It’s a curious phenomenon, so we decided to dig deeper. Here’s what we found. Some of it will surprise you, and unfortunately some of it will not.
Connecting the dots
Your e-mails hit my inbox Saturday evening with a vengeance. Something wasn’t right with the pictures featured in our story of U.S. protests across the country meant to show solidarity with the Egyptian people. Those pictures must have been photoshopped, one person said, because they showed something almost too strange to be true. That “something” included signs instructing anyone who saw them to visit leftist websites — one called ChicagoANSWER.net and the other PSLweb.org. An examination of more photos revealed ads for two other sites: IACcenter.org and AnswerCoalition.org.
[snip]
Indeed, a recently posted article on the national ANSWER site boasts about the group’s involvement in the protests. For example, it explains how the Chicago event included a local ANSWER leader who preached an anti-U.S. message to the frenzied crowd. “The same war machine that sends tear gas to Mubarak and bulldozers to murder the Palestinians denies us jobs, healthcare, housing and equality here in the United States,” Heather Benno said.
ElBaradei: Muslim Brotherhood threat is a myth pushed by dictatorial regime
Listen carefully from 1:00 to 1:40. ”Muslim Brotherhood are part of the Egyptian society as much as the Marxist party here.”
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**Comment made by viewer of the above video***
ElBaradei seems to me to be fooling himself about the Muslim Brotherhood from what I can tell about them. Qutb who basically wrote the text books for Al Qaeda was one of the Brotherhood’s leading intellectuals. Has the Brotherhood repudiated Qutb? Al Qaeda #2 was a Brotherhood member. The Brotherhood’s “spiritual” leader is Qaradawi whose made so many extremist comments on gays, jihad, terrorism, beating, apostasy, etc. there’s no room here and Qaradawi is banned in the US ’cause of terrorism.
Dr. ElBaradei, for his part, has struggled for nearly a year to unite the opposition under his umbrella group, the National Association for Change. [Emphasis added] But some have mocked him as a globe-trotting dilettante who spends much of his time abroad instead of on the barricades.
He has said in interviews that he never presented himself as a political savior, and that Egyptians would have to make their own revolution. Now, he said, the youth movement “will give them the self-confidence they needed, to know that the change will happen through you and not through one person — you are the driving force.”
And Dr. ElBaradei argued that by upsetting the old relationship between Mr. Mubarak and the Brotherhood, the youth movement posed a new challenge to United States policy makers as well.
“For years,” he said, “the West has bought Mr. Mubarak’s demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood lock, stock and barrel, the idea that the only alternative here are these demons called the Muslim Brotherhood who are the equivalent of Al Qaeda.”
He added: “I am pretty sure that any freely and fairly elected government in Egypt will be a moderate one, but America is really pushing Egypt and pushing the whole Arab world into radicalization with this inept policy of supporting repression.”
The roots of the uprising that filled Egypt’s streets this week arguably stretch back to before the Tunisian revolt, which many protesters cited as the catalyst. Almost three years ago, on April 6, 2008, the Egyptian government crushed a strike by a group of textile workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, and in response a group of young activists who connected through Facebook and other social networking Web sites formed the April 6th Youth Movement in solidarity with the strikers.
Their early efforts to call a general strike were a bust. But over time their leaderless online network and others that sprang up around it — like the networks that helped propel the Tunisian revolution — were uniquely difficult for the Egyptian security police to pinpoint or wipe out. It was an online rallying cry for a show of opposition to tyranny, corruption and torture that brought so many to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday, unexpectedly vaulting the online youth movement to the forefront as the most effective independent political force in Egypt.
“It would be criminal for any political party to claim credit for the mini-Intifada we had yesterday,” said Hossam el-Hamalawy, a blogger and activist.
Mr. Mubarak’s government, though, is so far sticking to a familiar script. Against all evidence, his interior minister immediately laid blame for Wednesday’s unrest at the foot of the government’s age-old foe, the Muslim Brotherhood.
This time, though, the Brotherhood disclaimed responsibility, saying it was only one part of Dr. ElBaradei’s umbrella group. “People took part in the protests in a spontaneous way, and there is no way to tell who belonged to what,” said Gamal Nassar, a media adviser for the Brotherhood, noting the near-total absence of any group’s signs or slogans, including the Brotherhood’s.
“Everyone is suffering from social problems, unemployment, inflation, corruption and oppression,” he said. “So what everyone is calling for is real change.”
National Association for Change(Arabic: الجمعية الوطنية للتغيير) is a loose grouping of the various Egyptian of all political affiliations and religion, men and women, including representatives of civil society and young people aims to change Egypt. There was general agreement on the need to unite all the voices calling for change within a National Assembly. Mohamed ElBaradei is in-charge of the National Association for Change. The movement aims for general reforms in the political scene and achieving some of those procedures and guarantees necessitates the amendment of articles 76, 77, and 88 of the constitution as soon as possible. Worth mentioning is that the banned political group the Muslim Brotherhood were represented by one of their key figures who attended the meeting however their stand in accepting a non-member of their group as a candidate is yet unclear. It is also unknown whether Amr Moussa the head of the Arab League who met with Elbaradei a day earlier will be part of the new movement[1].
The goal of the group is to bring about political reform based on democracy and social justice[1].
Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, a Companion of Prophet Muḥammad, is credited by many as the founder of Islamic socialism.[1][2][3][4][5] He protested against the accumulation of wealth by the ruling class during ‘Uthmān‘s caliphate and urged the equitable redistribution of wealth. Some Orientalists believe that there exist a number of parallels between Islamic economics and communism, including the Islamic ideas of zakat and riba[6][7].
Islamic Marxism is a term that has been used to describe Ali Shariati (in Shariati and Marx: A Critique of an “Islamic” Critique of Marxism by Assef Bayat). It is also sometimes used in discussions of the 1979 Iranian revolution, including parties such as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization.[10]
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So WHAT is actually happening in Egypt?
ElBaradei has been working on presidency since 2010.
ElBaradei is pro Socialism. His view of the Muslim Brotherhood is one that they are “Egyptian people as much as the Marxist people here”.
IF Mubarak (quasi-dictator) is thrown out of office, WHAT form of government will take its place? One of true freedom for the Egyptian people; or one in the style of Libya’s Mummar al-Gaddafi?
Should America still send relief/support $$ to Egypt?
IF a Middle East War erupts of Arab countries vs. Israel; WHOSE side will Obama choose to be on?
In his sermon today, Tehran interim Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami said that in contrast to the U.S.’s dream of a new Middle East under its domination, a new Middle East based on Islamic principles is now taking shape.
Stating that the popular uprisings in the Arab world herald the creation of “an Islamic Middle East” based on the religion and religious democracy – in contrast to claims by former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that a new Middle East would be developed under the leadership of the U.S. and Israel – he underlined that this ongoing unrest is the aftershock of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
He added that the recent uprisings in the Arab world have Islamic support, as people poured into the streets with the slogan of “Allahu Akhbar (Allah is the Greatest).”
Addressing worshipers at the Tehran University campus, Ayatollah Khatami noted the events unfolding in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen, and pointed out that while the Western countries have, in their media, denied the roots of the Islamic Revolution and these revolutions’ religious nature, the fate of the Tunisian dictator demonstrated the divine tradition that those who oppose the sacred religion of Islam are doomed to failure.
Referring to the ongoing rallies in Yemen, he said that such developments are inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran. He also noted that Tunisians were holding their first Friday prayers since the departure of their dictator to demonstrate the Islamic Revolution’s influence on their protests.
On recent developments in Lebanon, Khatami said that the Lebanese nation is demanding the foiling of the enemies’ insidious plots and conspiracies there, because they wish to make their own decisions. He congratulated Hizbullah, and said that the incoming Lebanese government is causing intense concern to the usurper Zionist regime and the U.S.
Elsewhere in his sermon, he noted that on the eve of the 32nd anniversary of the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the 10-Day Dawn (i.e. the national celebration of the anniversary) serves as the symbol of the Iranian nation’s freedom and independence, which revived Islam and gave the sacred religion of Islam its grandeur.[1]
(CNSNews.com) – Media in the Arab world are generally reporting cautiously on the protests rocking Egypt following the shakeup in Tunisia, but those in Iran are giving the turmoil prominent, almost gleeful, coverage.
Sunni Egypt, viewed as the leader of the Arab world, and Shi’ite Iran are longstanding rivals.
Iranian outlets, especially those linked to the government and establishment, are using terms like “revolution” and “uprising” to describe the protests, painting the demonstrators as heroic and giving headline treatment to voices predicting the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak.
The approach is in sharp contrast to their treatment of Iran’s own political upheaval following disputed presidential elections 18 months ago. Then many Iranian media organizations promoted the government position and treated protestors unsympathetically – even with contempt. (Traditional media was also heavily censored during that period.)
The Tehran Times, Iran Daily and Resalat newspapers were among those that led their Thursday editions with the Egypt story, using headlines like “Spirit of Tunisia comes to Egypt,” “Egyptians demand end to Mubarak rule” and “Intensification of public protests against Mubarak regime.”
The Tehran Times describes itself as the mouthpiece of the Islamic revolution, Iran Daily is affiliated with the official state IRNA news agency, and Resalat is a conservative daily supportive of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Press TV, which is semi-official and gets state funding, quoted a former Arab League diplomat as saying the uprising in Tunisia was “one of the most inspiring events of the Arab world in the contemporary time,” empowering people in various countries suffering under dictatorships.
“Egypt on verge of revolution,” ran a headline on another story published by Press TV, citing the opinions of a Lebanon-based Mideast scholar. The same story and headline were replicated on the Web site of Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB.
Some media worked the word “revolution” into headlines even when using wire service copy that did not include the term.
Press TV ran an unscientific poll asking viewers to predict the outcome of the “popular uprising” in Egypt. As of early Friday almost half of respondents said it would lead to Mubarak’s departure from the country, 28 percent said it would be quelled with U.S. support, and roughly the same number selected the option saying it would “bring about Mubarak’s collapse but the remnants of the system will persist.”
Under the headline “Arab world despotism nearing collapse,” IRIB quoted an Islamist analyst, Azzam Tamimi, as saying that regimes were under threat not just Egypt but also Jordan, Algeria, Libya, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
“The U.S. administration is helplessly watching the situation as dictators, which it has backed for decades, are overthrown or on the verge,” commentator Salman Ansari Javid wrote in a Tehran Times op-ed.
“Sooner or later we will have to add these dictators to the list of the endangered species,” he said. “The sooner the better.”
The IRNA news agency highlighted the views of a leading Egyptian scholar, Kamal Helbawi, who predicted the downfall of the regime and said Mubarak may emulate ousted Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled into exile earlier this month.
“The people want release from American hegemony and Israeli monopoly and manipulation,” Helbawi told IRNA.
Rivalry
Relations between Egypt and post-revolution Iran historically have been strained over Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and its ties with the U.S., its support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and the state burial Egypt gave the ousted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (whose first wife was an Egyptian princess) in 1980. After President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981, Iran angered Egypt by naming a street in Tehran after the leader of the assassination plot, who was executed.
The two Muslim countries repeatedly have clashed over the Palestinian issue. Iran is a key backer of Hamas, the terrorist group spawned in 1987 by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mubarak’s main Islamist rival.
The Egyptian government, meanwhile, supports Hamas’ adversary, Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, and maintains a security blockade on the border between Egypt and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Cairo has also accusedTehran of using another proxy in the Arab world, Hezbollah in Lebanon, to destabilize Egypt.
In one of the classified State Department cables released by Wikileaks late last year, the U.S. envoy in Cairo reported in 2009 that Mubarak had “a visceral hatred for the Islamic Republic, referring repeatedly to Iranians as ‘liars,’ and denouncing them for seeking to destabilize Egypt and the region.”
“There is no doubt that Egypt sees Iran and its greatest long-term threat, both as it develops a nuclear capability and as it seeks to export its ‘Shia revolution,’” Ambassador Margaret Scobey wrote in the cable, according to published reports.
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a source of information for the major media on such matters as the Arizona shooting rampage, is now placing its articles in a communist newspaper
Professional “Anti-hate” Group Goes to Bed with Reds
By Cliff KIncaid
January 30, 2011
John Rossomando of The Daily Caller has broken a story about how the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a source of information for the major media on such matters as the Arizona shooting rampage, is now placing its articles in a communist newspaper through a left-wing “news service.”
The paper is the People’s World, the official on-line publication of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The CPUSA is the old Moscow-line party which was funded by the Soviet Union and infiltrated the U.S. government with agents and spies. It was an official sponsor of the October 2, 2010, “One Nation Working Together” progressive rally in Washington.
The Rossomando piece reports that Mark Potok, the director of the “intelligence project” of the SPLC, “declined to comment when asked whether ‘People’s World’ should remove his commentary or whether he disapproved of the CPUSA newspaper’s decision to publish his piece.”
The no-comment is unusual for Potok, who has been widely quoted by the press as some kind of authority on the “far right,” with National Public Radio portraying himas an expert on “extremist groups.” Now, the SPLC itself stands accused of being in bed with an organ of a political party whose ideology The Black Book of Communismsays is responsible for about 100 million deaths.
Dupes, a book on how communists use liberals for their own purposes
Paul Kengor, author of Dupes, a book on how communists use liberals for their own purposes, told Rossomando, “It is ironic that liberal groups such as the SPLC, like other liberals, never see the pro-communists as the bad guys.”
But this isn’t the first time that Potok has appeared in the People’s World. An article from March of 2010claimed he had played a role in forcing Lou Dobbs to leave CNN and quoted him as saying that constituents of Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann should pressure her to “stop” making “false allegations” about President Obama.
The SPLC President J. Richard Cohen said Dobbs was a racist and had to go because he dared to assert that Obama’s certification of live birth, released by the Obama presidential campaign, is not the “original document” because it fails to include basic information about the hospital where he was born and the attending physician. Legitimate or long-form birth certificates include such information.
While attempting to protect Obama from serious scrutiny into his background, the SPLC labeled communist terrorist bomber Bill Ayers, an associate of the President, “a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education,” and even promoted an American Indian groupthat celebrates the killer of two FBI agents.
Questionable fund-raising techniques of the SPLC, including exaggerating alleged right-wing threats to make money
The Potok article in the communist paper denounces an obscure event sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Liberal Journalist Ken Silverstein has written several articles about the questionable fund-raising techniques of the SPLC, including exaggerating alleged right-wing threats to make money. In regard to the Arizona massacre, the SPLC was quick to cite a Fox News report, later exposed as false, that a right-wing group had influenced shooter Jared Loughner.
As part of Obama’s new political initiative to bypass a Congress that rejected his political leadership in 2009 and 2010, he has announced executive orders to allow the Federal government to restrict economic activity to fit legislative goals he apparently no longer believes he can win in political debate. One of the most important new targets in this new post-Congressional agenda is Texas. The EPA is messing with Texas in ways that threaten to disrupt the biggest jobs producer in the United States. [Emphasis added]
The EPA is moving to restrict Texas’ ability to continue as the largest production base for natural gas in the nation. As the largest consumer and producer of natural gas, Texas provides an important alternative in energy production to the conventional fossil fuels of coal and oil Those fuels have fallen into dire regulatory restrictions that Vice President Biden suggested should eventually lead to the end of coal production in the United States. Natural gas has emerged as an important transitional fuel to the green economy. Despite this, the Obama administration is moving to limit this component of Texas’ economic boom.
A secret weapon in the battle over Texas is EPA regulator Dr. Al Armendariz. Armendariz was tapped by the Obama administration to limit natural gas production in Texas. In his seminal article on natural gas production from the Barnett shale in North Texas, Armendariz argues that gas production contributes more to global warming than automotive traffic in Dallas:
“For comparison, 2009 emission inventories recently used by state and federal regulators estimated smog- forming emissions from all airports in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area to be 16 tpd. In addition, these same inventories had emission estimates for on-road motor vehicles (cars, trucks, etc.) in the 9- county Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area of 273 tpd. The portion of on-road motor vehicle emissions from the 5-counties in the D-FW metropolitan area with significant oil and gas production was 121 tpd, indicating that the oil and gas sector likely has greater emissions than motor vehicles in these counties.”
The research relies on “personal conversations” Armendariz had with natural gas producers in the Dallas area. This is not generally acceptable standard for research but it is laying the foundation for intensely regulating the last major fossil fuel that Texas and the United States can turn to in the 21st century. The promotion of the activist/ expert to the office of EPA bodes ill for energy use in the United States. The EPA plans to designate Dallas air as “serious” with regard to ozone pollution based on 1997 standards. Though Dallas has economically boomed and had a population increase of more than 25% since 1997, the city has reduced ozone levels from 102 parts per billion to 86 parts per billion. This impressive feat draws no acceptance from the EPA and the 2 ppb will be enough to designate Dallas as having some of the dirtiest air in the nation. Dallas air is getting cleaner and will likely soon meet the 1997 standard despite rapid economic growth, but the EPA is eager to dIM the star of Lone Star success.
The broader war on CO2 is also important. The potential ramifications for natural gas producers are huge since CO2 regulation is authorized by a 2007 Supreme Court decision that allows the EPA to regulate such emissions.
NOW ADD WHAT IS HAPPENING CURRENTLY in the MIDDLE EAST PLUS PAST and PRESENT FOREIGN POLICY…….
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**ALL CREDIT TO Steven McCann for this article****
Carter Redux?
January 29, 2011
By Steven McCann
For those who lived through the 1979 Iran revolution and the abandonment of the Shah of Iran by the Carter administration, there is a tangible sense of foreboding as to what form the outcome of the current upheaval in Egypt will take.
Like Carter, Obama has made overtures to the Islamists. 1n 1978 Jimmy Carter was on the side of “human rights” and eagerly embraced Ayatollah Khomeini. Carter’s UN Ambassador Andrew Young went so far as to call him “some kind of saint”.
It now turns out that in 2009, the Egyptian daily Almasry Alyoum reported that President Obama secretly met with representatives of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, the Hamas and Al Qaeda ally that has been barred by the US and put on the terror watch list by the Bush administration. By doing so and choosing Egypt as the locale for his Muslim outreach speech, in which he never once used the words “terrorism”, “terrorist” or “war on terror,” the question must be asked: Did or does the Obama administration realize the difference between freedom-based revolutions (which do not include jihadist elements) and violent overthrows orchestrated by the same jihadists. Secretly meeting with the jihadist elements can only embolden them. [Emphasis added]
There are numerous reports out of Cairo that the islamist element has not only helped foment this uprising but is now taking control of it.
Bet the President didn’t think he was planting the seeds of today’s protests in Egypt. But what does he expect when he goes to a country in a decades-long police-enforced state of emergency, with tens of thousands of political prisoners, and announces that “you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion.”
He may have awakened a sleeping giant. Too bad the Iranian people didn’t receive the same favor a year and a half ago when they were protesting in the streets against a regime that makes Egypt look Jeffersonian by comparison.
Further:
Even so, should Mubarak fall, there is a real danger of the Islamic Brotherhood imperiling this US ally. Barack Obama sure picked a foolish place to give a community organizing speech.
There is no question that Mubarak ran a quasi police state; but there were ways to force democratization on Egypt over the years without making overtures to radical elements and giving them an effective wink and a nod.
The world cannot afford another Iran on the shores of the Mediterranean thus in control of the Suez canal and completing an encirclement of Israel. That will almost guarantee a Middle East War.
President Obama is trying to reposition himself as a moderate. His State of the Union address was aimed at convincing the public that he is serious about fiscal responsibility and reining in out-of-control budget deficits. His public relations offensive boils down to one seminal theme: Socialism is out; centrism is in.
Hence, Mr. Obama called for a freeze on discretionary spending affecting numerous domestic agencies. He wants to work with Republicans to “fix” his health care overhaul – to reform it, not repeal it. He has a newfound opposition to earmarks. He is a champion of bipartisan consensus building.
Don’t buy it. The address was an obvious attempt to con the electorate into forgetting not only the past two years, but Mr. Obama‘s real agenda: the transformation of America into a social democratic state. His “spending freeze” is nothing more than smoke and mirrors – a clumsy attempt to look serious about the looming debt crisis. His “freeze” would not only lock in the record-high levels of spending implemented by the administration, it would fail to make any dent in runaway entitlements and other costly programs – which are the real threats to our national solvency.
Mr. Obama is a fantasist. His demands for a spending freeze are akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The American economy is about to crash upon the rocks of fiscal reality. The day after his address, the Congressional Budget Office released the estimate for this year’s budget deficit: $1.5 trillion. This is the largest deficit in U.S. history, and it comes on top of Mr. Obama‘s previous trillion-dollar blowouts. He is burying America under a mountain of red ink. He is not only fiscally reckless, but morally bankrupt. His spend-and-borrow policies are mortgaging future generations – saddling them with a massive debt that will be almost impossible to repay.
Under Mr. Obama‘s watch, America is being reduced to a second-class nation. Our trade deficits are huge. The dollar is plummeting. Investment capital and businesses are fleeing. The economy remains stagnant. Unemployment is high. Power and wealth are slowly shifting toward the East – especially China.
It is no accident that Mr. Obama deliberately singled out Beijing for praise in his address, welcoming the rise of the communist giant. As America amasses more debt, the Chinese are buying up our Treasury bonds. China is financing our orgy of deficit spending. The result: Washington is becoming an economic vassal of Beijing. Mr. Obama – slowly but surely – is undermining U.S. national sovereignty, making America increasingly dependent upon Chinese largesse. This is the ultimate price for becoming the world’s largest debtor nation. We no longer control our own destiny. Uncle Sam now bows to the Red Dragon.
None of this matters to Mr. Obama. At his core, he is a radical leftist who seeks to dismantle capitalism and the achievements of the Reagan revolution – low taxes, deregulation and the reassertion of American exceptionalism.
In fact, like most ideologues, Mr. Obama is quite open about his intentions. Despite forging a popular tax deal with Republicans, the president in his speech returned to the cardinal principle of the progressive left: class warfare. He vowed that the Bush tax cuts would not be extended permanently, saying the only way to curtail skyrocketing deficits effectively is to raise taxes on “the wealthy” – those making more than $200,000 a year.
The Democratic strategy has been to erect a bloated Franco-German entitlement state, which is marked by high spending and burdensome regulatory oversight, in order to compel huge tax increases. Obamacare, the stimulus package, the massive expansion of government power – all of this has led to runaway deficits and a fiscal reckoning. Mr. Obama understands that European-style spending inevitably results in European-style taxation. He is the consummate anti-Reagan.
Yet he shares one key similarity with Reagan: the nature of his political enemies. Reagan’s good fortune was to be constantly underestimated by his liberal critics. Mr. Obama is enjoying a similar fate. Conservatives keep writing him off – and he keeps coming back.
Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn in Egypt 2009/2010.
