Brown the Betrayer: Britain’s Sellout Prime Minister Has Broken Faith and Ties with U.S.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS – Editorial: It was Winston Churchill who asked in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, "What kind of people do they think we are?" And it is Gordon Brown who has given grounds to believe that today's British are a cowardly, unprincipled, amoral and duplicitous lot. Because he is all of those.

Can he remain in power having been revealed as at least complicit in an atrocious miscarriage of justice and breach of faith? That will be up to the Brits, but on this side of the Atlantic Ocean it is inconceivable that an elected official would have a snowball's chance after sanctioning an oil-for-terrorist deal.

Surely Brown can hardly survive the revelation that his government assured Libya that the prime minister did not want the Lockerbie bomber to die in prison, a message duly passed on to the Scottish official who released Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on "compassionate grounds."

As for the "special relationship" between the U.S. and Britain, the storied alliance built on the resolve of World War II and carried on through Thatcher and Blair, through Iraq and Afghanistan: It is, in a word, gone.

Brown's maneuverings to get into the good graces of Libyan mass murderer Moammar Khadafy broke the bond between America and the Blessed Plot beyond his ability to repair it. That work will fall to someone else, someone who values human life more than commercial expediency, someone who is stalwart rather than a sneak, someone true to his pronouncements.

The U.S. and the U.K. committed to imprisoning Megrahi in Scotland after the Libyan spy was convicted of blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the air over that country in 1998. The atrocity was a direct precursor of 9/11, and no one could have imagined that Brown - leader of a nation that, too, has been terror's target - would trash the pledge.

But Brown did trash the pledge, and in the most revolting terms, letting it be known, it bears repeating, that he did not want Megrahi, author of 270 murders, to die in prison.

So, Megrahi has returned to Libya a hero, perhaps dying of prostate cancer, perhaps not. Brown got his way, and he will never outlive the stain. [Source: New York Daily News] | Wednesday, September 02, 2009

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Brown the betrayer: U.S. fury over British broken promise to keep Lockerbie bomber in jail >>> James Chapman | Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Editorial: Warm Welcome to Barack Obama
ARAB NEWS: For too long the Arab world has been waiting in vain for a US administration that will address the rights of the Palestinians within a viable sovereign state of their own. For too long America’s friends and allies within the region, among whom the best and most long-standing has been Saudi Arabia, have been urging on successive US presidents the reality that the terrible injustices done to the Palestinians underpin the violence and extremism that has gripped the region. For too long Washington has not listened to our message that its slavish and unquestioning support for a bullying and expansionist Israel has, in fact, sabotaged America’s wider foreign policy goals in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world.

As today we welcome President Barack Obama to the Kingdom, dare we hope that we are greeting a US leader who is at last listening to the advice and warnings that have so long been ignored in Washington? Saudi Arabia has itself provided one of the major building blocks for a lasting resolution. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, first proposed by King Abdullah when he was crown prince and later endorsed unanimously by the Arab League summit in Beirut, remains in place. It negates Israeli protests that they have no partners for peace, because it offers 22 Arab states who will recognize Israel as part of a comprehensive and just settlement for Palestinians. Once the Arab countries recognize Israel, the rest of the Muslim world will follow suit.

The American president has to cut through much lumber left by his predecessors. At the heart of it lies a legacy of often-deep distrust that has built up in the Arab world.

From time to time Washington promises to tackle the Palestinian issue, especially when it wanted Arab support for the Iraq war or its confrontation with Iran. Because it failed to honor this pledge, it encouraged extremism among Palestinians who felt the betrayal bitterly and gave the bigoted thugs of Al-Qaeda an excuse for their fanatical violence. Obama’s people say that when he addresses the Arab world in Cairo tomorrow, he will be speaking from the heart. No doubt. But he should know that he needs also to be speaking to the hearts of Arab people themselves, who have learned to disbelieve Washington’s warm words and will only now judge America by its deeds.

No one believes the president has a magic wand. In the Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu he faces an apparently intransigent negotiator. But it is often the most inflexible sticks that break first. Despite the powerful Zionist Washington lobby, Obama has the power to bring about radical change for the Palestinians, for Israelis too and for the whole region. He is a man who has dedicated himself to change and indeed represents it in his own presidency. His domestic and international agendas are daunting. But it seems he recognizes how pivotal a Palestinian settlement is to a large portion of US interests. His welcome here today is, therefore, all the warmer for the high hopes with which we greet him. [Source: Arab News | Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Editorial: Don’t Pin Much Hope on Obama
ARAB NEWS: Having welcomed the historic victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election, let us begin by shedding too much expectations of him. They are likely to be dashed — generating a great deal of pain and resentment into the bargain.

There are some quite extraordinary notions circulating about what sort of president he will be, particularly in this part of the world — for example, that he is going to turn years of American Middle East policy on its head. This is a willful, and ultimately destructive, fantasy.

Despite attempts by his more extreme opponents during the campaign to paint him as un-American, President Obama is not going to run the White House in the interests of anyone other than the American people. Nor should his victory be seen as a defeat or comeuppance for the US, although that is how it is being presented in some corners of the world. That is to ignore that a majority of Americans, fed up with the past and seeing him as the personification of the American dream, voted enthusiastically for him. He is, by virtue of his election, everything that America stands for. He is Uncle Sam, the all-American kid, The Chief.

As president, Barack Obama is going to defend American interests first, not those of some other nation. There will be attempts at dialogue, even at finding peace in the Middle East, but no one should imagine that they would be radical or pursued with all his energy and determination. Iraq is one thing — and even then there can be no certainty that every last American troop will be pulled out from there in 16 months. But a president whose deputy is Joe Biden, a man who last year said that Israel is “the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East” and who is proud to call himself a Zionist, is not going to turn his back on the Israelis. His appointment of Rahm Emanual as his chief of staff makes that doubly certain. Emanual is an even more convinced Zionist (his father was a member of the Zionist terror organization Irgun), not to mention a prominent figure in the US Jewish lobby. Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israeli as the one it is replacing. >>> Editorial | November 7, 2008

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Arab News on Fitna
ARAB NEWS: A number of Islamic scholars and leading political figures have called for a boycott of Dutch products in protest at the film by Dutch MP Geert Wilders which attacks the Qur’an and equates Islam with violence.

It is a revolting, blasphemous and deliberately insulting film. The desire not to let this abomination pass without response is wholly understandable. Nonetheless there is little logic to a boycott. It is not the Dutch who have committed this outrage. It is an individual — albeit an MP — but one who does not represent the Dutch mainstream. It would be different if the film had been made by the Dutch government or a member of the Dutch royal family or had been approved by the Dutch Parliament.

In fact, the Dutch government has resolutely condemned the film — Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende went on television to castigate it and its maker — while Dutch TV stations have refused to show it and there has been widespread public disapproval. Moreover, at the last election, Dutch voters specifically rejected the far right with its anti-Muslim agenda. Editorial: Wilders’ Film >>> | April 18, 2008

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