In US Politics the Right still Exists

I am not American but I like to follow US politics.

It’s refreshing to see that there is a real difference between the two party candidates on many important issues, whereas here in the UK where I live there is no genuine, mainstream right-of-centre alternative commanding a large number of votes.

The British Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister, David Cameron, has sold out numerous conservative values.

His party did not receive enough votes at the last general election in 2010 to form a majority government on its own and, rather than having a minority government, the Tories are ruling in a coalition with the left-leaning Liberal Democrats.

This necessarily involves compromises, but it’s the type of compromises that Cameron chooses that represents the problem.

The Lib Dems wanted to reform the House of Lords so that unelected members would not make up the whole of it, but would only be a minority. Cameron faced an internal opposition to the reform from within his party and anyway, in the case of a reform, his privilege to appoint peers who the electorate would never vote for, like his Muslim friend Baroness Warsi, would be diminished. In 2007, Warsi was appointed Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion (I wonder what “community” is most in need of a minister to guarantee its cohesion with the others in the UK – hint: Warsi is a Muslim of Pakistani extraction). Since she had not been elected by anyone, to take up that post she had to be created a life peer as Baroness Warsi.

So, as an exchange of favours, Cameron dropped the House of Lords reform and renounced something unimportant to him, namely the freedom of religion enabling the Anglican clergy not to marry homosexual couples in Church, as his Lib Dem partners requested.

Romney does not seem to be like that.

Romney Beat Obama and Crowley on Libya. Crowley Video

This are the exact words of Candy Crowley during that infamous TV second presidential debate:

"CROWLEY: He -- he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take -- it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that."

Her wording is confused and ambiguous, but to me it sounds like she was so anxious to save Obama's face when the discussion reached the hot-potato topic of the President's farcical - and tragic - treatment of the Libyan consulate assault, that she rushed to confirm that Obama did call it a terror attack before adding, as an afterthought, "it did as well take two weeks", which was the whole point of Romney's statement.

The media did not carefully listen to her words, they just picked up her attitude which was clearly on Obama's side as if that meant anything more than a bias on her part, as if instead that solved the issue in Obama's favor.

At first I doubted if I had heard correctly, since nobody else seemed to have heard or paid attention to those crucial words: "it did as well take two weeks or so".

When I saw the above video in which Crowley herself confirmed what she had actually said, I realized that I was right the first time around.

All this post-debate obsession with who won and who lost, as if this were a football or boxing match, is missing some of the most important points.

Being in England, I watched the presidential debate on Sky News, left-leaning as nearly all British mainstream media. The minute the debate ended Sky News jumped to the conclusion that Obama had won, among other things because - and this is hard to believe but true - the moderator Candy Crowley of CNN confirmed Obama's lie that the President had called the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi an act of terror the day after it occurred, whereas the truth is what Romney said, i.e. that Obama's first response to the attack and murders had been to blame them on 'spontaneous' protests against the Youtube Muhammad video and it took him several days to admit the truth.

Do these mean scoring points, a moderator wrongly taking a candidate's side on a point of fact, like a referee determing the result of a soccer match with a wrong decision, really matter more to our deranged media than the substance of what the debaters, potential future US Presidents, said? This is not a game.

I do not fault Romney with anything in the Benghazi violence part of the debate, except that he could have attacked Obama's policies in the Middle East much more forcefully than he did, explaining that Muslim-raised Barack Hussein's support for the 'Arab Spring' was in fact aiding and abetting the very wintery rise of Islamists like the Muslim Brotherood and strengthening of Al Qaeda in North Africa, the very same people behind the Benghazi attack.

I realize, however, that the time he was given may have been too limited for him to do that in full.

How Close Abortion and Infanticide Can Be

The video above shows a CNN report on Obama's opposition, in 2001 when he was an Illinois state Senator, to the Illinois state's Born Alive Infants Protection Act, a bill to give legal protection to live babies surviving abortions, so that they would not be thrown away and left to die.

Obama voted against Born Alive and was the only senator to speak against it on the senate floor for 2 consecutive years.

The federal version of Born Alive was approved unanimously 98-0 by the US Senate. It passed overwhelmingly, approved from left to right, in the US House of Representatives. President Bush signed it into law on August 5, 2002.

As chairman of the Illionois Senate Health & Human Services Committee, Obama stopped a bill with identical wording of the federal law from being introduced in Illinois in 2003.

The reason Obama had given for voting against the Illinois state's Born Alive Infant Protection Act was that this bill was different from the similar federal law that was passed, in that it was open to being interpreted as making all abortions illegal and did not protect Roe v. Wade.

The video report shows a debate on the issue between Democrat James Carville and conservative Bill Bennett.

As you can easily see in the video, only Bennett has a valid argument: the federal law and the Illinois bill are identical, so this is not about Roe v. Wade, this is not about abortion. It looks like one of Obama's many falsities.

Carville has no arguments at all, valid or not. All he does is using ad hominem attacks against Santorum, thinking that his socialist peers will find him funny, and against the nurse who supported the bill.

Imagine for a moment if this happened in a court of law: Bennett's statement would have been accepted, Carville's would have been rejected as argumentative.

It's easy to see why the best brains belong to the right end of the political spectrum. Since socialism of various shapes and forms is the current dominant ideological orthodoxy of the West, it takes more intellect - as well as guts - to challenge it than to go along with it.

Time To Give Pakistan the South-African Treatment

Jihad Watch has published my article "Time To Give Pakistan the South-African Treatment":

It may seem an unlikely possibility, now that the Islamic world is demanding sharia, in the shape of anti-blasphemy laws, to be imposed all over the globe and Muslim Baroness Warsi, newly-appointed Minister for Faith (i.e. Islam) in the UK government, has signed during the UN recent meetings a surreal agreement between the UK, that old -- and now former -- defender of democratic freedoms, and the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) pledging that the UK and the OIC will "work together on issues of peace, stability and religious freedom", but sometimes attack is the best form of defence.

South Africa was isolated by the international community due to its apartheid policy, which put pressure on Pretoria and played a role in ending the apartheid. The British Commonwealth, of which the country was part, turned out to be particularly important in this process.

During the apartheid, the British felt particularly responsible for what they believed to be South African discriminatory policies because of the strong ties the UK had with that country through the Commonwealth, the international organization that comprises almost exclusively Britain’s former colonies.

In 1958 the African National Congress made an appeal for international solidarity. The Christians and other non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan may be too demoralized and terrorized to even ask for outside help.

I am not here making comparisons between Pakistan and South Africa, which since the end of the apartheid seems to have deteriorated.

The only leaf I am taking out of the South African book is the way international repudiation of a regime or treatment considered as odiously unfair can be an effective weapon against it.

Pakistan, another member of the British Commonwealth, has already been suspended from the Commonwealth twice: in 1999 after Musharraf seized power in a coup, and in 2007, because of its imposition of emergency rule, until “full restoration of fundamental rights and the rule of law“, for its "serious violation of the Commonwealth’s fundamental political values.

Isn’t Pakistan’s treatment of its Christians “a serious violation of the Commonwealth’s fundamental political values”?

Let's see.

The Constitution of Pakistan (PART III, Chapter 1) says: “A person shall not be qualified for election as President unless he is a Muslim of not less than forty-five years of age and is qualified to be elected as member of the National Assembly.”

In addition, the Constitution (PART VII, Chapter 3A) rules that non-Muslims cannot be judges in the Federal Shariat Court, which has the power to abrogate any law considered un-Islamic.

At least since the 1990s, we have started to learn how Pakistani Christians suffer the worst forms of discrimination only because of their religion.

The infamous Pakistani blasphemy law mandates that anyone who offends the Quran must be punished, even with the death sentence.

A 1998 United Nations document on “Prevention of Discrimination against and the Protection of Minorities”, mostly concerned with Pakistan, says: “The use of an accusation of “blasphemy” -- an ill-defined term which can be expanded to mean anything that any accuser dislikes -- merits serious attention. Some accusations of “blasphemy” can be ill-disguised death threats - as was the case in 1994 regarding the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Sudan, Mr. Gáspár Biró - and when they are not, they can be considered as sufficiently dangerous to lead to kowtowing, and even censorship at the United Nations”.

Since 1994, Amnesty International has been calling for a change in that law because it is used as a tool against religious minorities:

AI is concerned that a number of people facing charges of blasphemy, or convicted on such charges have been detained solely for their real or imputed religious beliefs. Most of those charged with blasphemy belong to the Ahamdiyya community but Christians have increasingly been accused of blasphemy, among them a 13-year-old boy accused of writing blasphemous words on the walls of a mosque despite being totally illiterate. The following case histories are supplied: Anwar Masih, a Christian prisoner; Arshad Javed, reportedly mentally ill, sentenced to death; Gul Masih, a Christian, sentenced to death; Tahir Iqbal, a convert to Christianity, died in jail while on trial; Sawar Masih Bhatti, a Christian prisoner; Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan, Muslim social activist; Chand Barkat, a Christian acquitted of blasphemy but continuously harassed; Hafiz Farooq Sajjad, stoned to death; Salamat Masih, Manzoor Masih and Rehmat Masih, three Christians.”

In 1996, another Christian, Ayub Masih, was incarcerated in solitary confinement for two years, convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death in 1998 due to a neighbour’s accusations that he supported Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. Eventually his lawyer proved that the accuser had used the conviction to force Masih's family out of their land and take control of the property.

It is supposed to be in connection with this episode that the Pakistani Catholic Bishop John Joseph killed himself in 1998 to protest the blasphemy laws, for the repeal of which he had been campaigning. Before his death, Bishop Joseph had publicly declared that the charges against Ayub Masih were false, and fabricated to force 15 Christian families to drop a local land dispute with Muslim villagers.

Since then the story has just been a repetition of many similar cases, so much so that even homosexual and human rights activist Peter Tatchell – not exactly a friend of the Church – has condemned persecution of Christians in Pakistan, and the Pakistan United Christian Welfare Association has demanded a separate province in Pakistan to protect the country’s around 2.8 million Christians from persecution.

One of the most recent horrors is that of the 11-year-old Christian girl threatened to be burnt alive by a Muslim mob for another false “blasphemy” accusation, while her family and several other Christian families were driven out of their homes in terror.

And Hindus are also an oppressed minority in Pakistan.

The UK’s National Secular Society, whose president Terry Sanderson said: “There is certainly a need for some kind of inter-religious understanding among OIC member states, a number of which suppress Christianity and other religions in a brutal and merciless fashion”, may also be in favour of pressure brought on Pakistan, which is certainly one of the most serious offenders among the OIC’s member states Mr. Sanderson is referring to.

Other campaigns of international political, financial, economic, cultural and sporting sanctions against Pakistan should also be conducted, as they were against South Africa.

South Africa’s bans from sporting events were employed as an effective instrument of pressure, and so could be banning Pakistan from Commonwealth Games, Cricket World Cup, and the like.

Obama Was Born and Raised a Muslim

If anyone in the USA, for some extraordinary reason, is still in doubt about whom to choose for President, I recommend two things. The first is an empiricist approach: you have tried one candidate and he failed, you haven't tried the other. In experimental science it would be reasonable to choose the not-yet-tried possibility.

The second thing is, if you haven't already done so, to read "Obama's Muslim Childhood" by Daniel Pipes.

The discovery that Obama has been wearing for over 30 years a ring with the first part of the Islamic declaration of faith, the Shahada, “There is no god except Allah”, will make sense to you if you read it, because you'll realize how important Islam has been in the President's life. WND's Jerome R. Corsi, who has written several books on Obama, explains:

The Shahada is the first of the Five Pillars of Islam, expressing the two fundamental beliefs that make a person a Muslim: There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s prophet.

Sincere recitation of the Shahada is the sole requirement for becoming a Muslim, as it expresses a person’s rejection of all other gods.

Egyptian-born Islamic scholar Mark A. Gabriel, Ph.D., examined photographs of Obama’s ring at WND’s request and concluded that the first half of the Shahada is inscribed on it.

“There can be no doubt that someone wearing the inscription ‘There is no god except Allah’ has a very close connection to Islamic beliefs, the Islamic religion and Islamic society to which this statement is so strongly attached,” Gabriel told WND.

Let's go back to Pipes' long and very well-researched article. After observing that the incumbent accuses his rival Romney of hiding some of his biographical details, it says: "A focus on openness and honesty are likely to hurt Obama far more than Romney. Obama remains the mystery candidate with an autobiography full of gaps and even fabrications".

A list of Obama's clashes with the truth and inaccuracies about himself - like "He lied about never having been a member and candidate of the 1990s Chicago socialist New Party", or his claim that he was born in Kenya - follows, before Pipes gets to the main topic of his essay, which is Obama and his campaign's lies about Obama's Muslim childhood.

The President, repeatedly although in a contradictory fashion, has denied having ever been a Muslim.

Pipes, through a painstaking fact-finding work, shows that Obama was born and raised as a Muslim, and while in Indonesia he went to Koranic classes "studying 'how to pray and how to read the Koran,' but also actually praying in the Friday communal service right on the school grounds", attended the local mosque, wore sarongs, garments that in Indonesian culture only Muslims wear, and took part in advanced Islamic religious lessons which included the difficult task of reciting the Koran in Arabic. None of this was inevitable, because in Indonesia ""Muslim students were taught by a Muslim teacher, and Christian students were taught by a Christian teacher".

In summary, the record points to Obama having been born a Muslim to a non-practicing Muslim father and having lived for four years in a fully Muslim milieu under the auspices of his Muslim Indonesian stepfather. For these reasons, those who knew Obama in Indonesia considered him a Muslim.

"My Muslim Faith"

In addition, several statements by Obama in recent years point to his Muslim childhood.

(1) Robert Gibbs, campaign communications director for Obama's first presidential race, asserted in Jan. 2007: "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago." But he backtracked in Mar. 2007, asserting that "Obama has never been a practicing Muslim." By focusing on the practice as a child, the campaign is raising a non-issue for Muslims (like Jews) do not consider practice central to religious identity. Gibbs added, according to a paraphrase by Watson, that "as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood's Islamic center." Clearly, "the neighborhood's Islamic center" is a euphemism for "mosque"; spending time there again points to Obama's being a Muslim.

Particularly crucial is the section of the article concerning how Obama interacts with - I was temped to say "fellow" - Muslims, acting as if they were indeed his coreligionists. He acts and tells them things that a Christian, as he says he is, would never do and say, like talking about Jesus as a dead prophet.

When addressing Muslim audiences, Obama uses specifically Muslim phrases that recall his Muslim identity. He addressed audiences both in Cairo (in June 2009) and Jakarta (in Nov. 2010) with "as-salaamu alaykum," a greeting that he, who went to Koran class, knows is reserved for one Muslim addressing another.

Obama, in addition, has an exaggerated sense of the importance of Islam and Muslims, to the point that he hugely "overestimates both the number and the role of Muslims in the United States," which "smacks of an Islamist mentality".

So it's not surprising that

Muslims cannot shake the sense that, under his proclaimed Christian identity, Obama truly is one of them.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister of Turkey, has referred to Hussein as a "Muslim" name. Muslim discussions of Obama sometimes mention his middle name as a code, with no further comment needed. A conversation in Beirut, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, captures the puzzlement. "He has to be good for Arabs because he is a Muslim," observed a grocer. "He's not a Muslim, he's a Christian," replied a customer. No, said the grocer, "He can't be a Christian. His middle name is Hussein." The name is proof positive.

The American Muslim writer Asma Gull Hasan wrote in "My Muslim President Obama":

I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a very unscientific oral poll, ranging from family members to Muslim acquaintances, many of us feel … that we have our first American Muslim president in Barack Hussein Obama. … since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice. "Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is."

Obama's middle name Hussein is again considered one of the reasons.

In conclusion, available evidence suggests that Obama was born and raised a Muslim and retained a Muslim identity until his late 20s. Child to a line of Muslim males, given a Muslim name, registered as a Muslim in two Indonesian schools, he read Koran in religion class, still recites the Islamic declaration of faith, and speaks to Muslim audiences like a fellow believer. Between his non-practicing Muslim father, his Muslim stepfather, and his four years of living in a Muslim milieu, he was both seen by others and saw himself as a Muslim.

This is not to say that he was a practicing Muslim or that he remains a Muslim today, much less an Islamist, nor that his Muslim background significantly influences his political outlook (which, in fact, is typical of an American leftist). Nor is there a problem about his converting from Islam to Christianity. The issue is Obama's having specifically and repeatedly lied about his Muslim identity. More than any other single deception, Obama's treatment of his own religious background exposes his moral failings.

Questions about Obama's Truthfulness

Yet, these failings remain largely unknown to the American electorate. Consider the contrast of his case and that of James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces. Both Frey and Obama wrote inaccurate memoirs that Oprah Winfrey endorsed and rose to #1 on the non-fiction bestseller list. When Frey's literary deceptions about his own drug taking and criminality became apparent, Winfrey tore viciously into him, a library reclassified his book as fiction, and the publisher offered a refund to customers who felt deceived.

In contrast, Obama's falsehoods are blithely excused; Arnold Rampersad, professor of English at Stanford University who teaches autobiography, admiringly called Dreams "so full of clever tricks—inventions for literary effect—that I was taken aback, even astonished. But make no mistake, these are simply the tricks that art trades in, and out of these tricks is supposed to come our realization of truth." Gerald Early, professor of English literature and African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, goes further: "It really doesn't matter if he made up stuff. … I don't think it much matters whether Barack Obama has told the absolute truth in Dreams From My Father. What's important is how he wanted to construct his life."

How odd that a lowlife's story about his sordid activities inspires high moral standards while the U.S. president's autobiography gets a pass. Tricky Dick, move over for Bogus Barry.

Obama has a disproportionate desire to appeal to, as well as appease as we saw in the case of the Muhammed film, Muslims. The head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Charles F. Bolden, Jr., explained that Obama "wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." Which incidentally is not even remotely as great as Obama seems to believe. But that's for another post.

It's up to Americans to decide if they want to re-elect a President who lies in matters of personal identity, especially religion, which has obvious, major ethical implications. In comparison, as Pipes points out, Romney's "prior tax returns, the date he stopped working for Bain Capital, and the non-public records from his service heading the Salt Lake City Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts" are of little importance.

And it's up to Americans to decide if they want to re-elect a President who has Muslim background and sympathies, in a world where the West's need to distance itself from the Islamic world, to reaffirm its values of democratic freedoms against a Muslim world that tries ever more aggressively to impose its Sharia's blasphemy laws on it, to recognize with dispassionate eyes potential enemies emerging from the "Arab Spring", and to deal with a nuclearizing Iran, increases by the day.

There is a saying: "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic". I was brought up a Catholic and I know that, although I consider myself now an atheist Christian, as Oriana Fallaci described herself, so, not believing in God, I am not a Catholic any more, family upbringing and childhood impressions remain with you all your life. I suspect the same applies to Obama, and all the above rich and detailed information confirms it.

If I were American, I know what I would do.

UK Asian Machete Gangs Battle in the Streets

The Accrington Observer (via Christian Defence League) reports these events in Accrington, a town in Northern England:

Rival gangs brandishing hammers and machetes clashed on the streets of Accrington.

Around 20 Asian men are believed to have been involved in fought middle of a main road on the outskirts of the town centre.

A 36-year-old man suffered a broken jaw after being clubbed to the back of his head with a hammer during the brawl at around 10pm on Saturday.

Shocking CVTV images of the fight show hooded figures squaring up before the gangs fled as police moved in.

Witnesses described the clash as 'something you would see in America' and some said violence had been brewing at either end of Blackburn Road all day.

Detectives have made three arrests but said they don't know why the violence had taken place.

Detective Inspector Jill Johnston said the brawl may have been pre-planned.

She said 10 extra officers were sent out on patrol in the town centre and surrounding areas following the fight.

DI Johnston, of Accrington CID, said: “For that many men in their 20s and 30s to be fighting in the street, not near a pub or nightclub, is rare.

“Whether it is two groups who have arranged a fight, I don't know.

“It is possibly a dispute between two local Asian families or groups. They are old enough to know better.”

She added: “We are trying to make some sense of it all. We have CCTV footage of the incident. It appears that one group has gone to the scene in vehicles and then entered into a fight.

“We are trying to piece it all together and are hoping to make some more arrests.”

The incident took place at around 10pm on Blackburn Road in Accrington, close to Swiss Street.

Residents said traffic was held up as the gangs fought in the road.

When the police arrived the men all made off.

One businessman, who asked not to be named, said: “It was lads from the top and bottom ends of town.

“There was about 20 lads - some were in cars and were ramming people on the road.

“It looked like a gangland and is a big concern as I live and work around here with my family.”

He added: “They started clashing and waving hammers and machetes around like crazy.

“It was just mad and was going on though the whole day with little clashes. It just came to a head and ended in a big me-lee. It was something you would see in America.”

One Blackburn Road resident, who declined to be named, said more cameras and street patrols are needed.

He said: “We don't know who they were or what it was about. It's very worrying when something like this happens near your home.”

The article refers to "Asian men" and does not indicate whether there is further information about them.

But it's useful to add that Accrington is near Burnley, where this film documenting how large numbers of Muslims have affected local people's lives was made, and Rochdale, where Muslim men groomed and sexually abused white young girls for a decade, undisturbed by police and social services too frightened to intervene.

Douglas Murray Video on Iran and Israel on the BBC

Douglas Murray is a very brave British commentator, not afraid of defying the political correctness dominating every UK public debate, even when he has to face the sancta sanctorum of that orthodoxy: the BBC.

Douglas Murray is former director of the British think tank Centre for Social Cohesion and is now an associate director of another UK think tank, the conservative, pro-Israel Henry Jackson Society.