Hat tip: Damian Thompson, Holy Smoke >>>
Sunday, June 07, 2009
leJDD.fr: Avant la cérémonie de Colleville-sur-mer, célébrant le 65e anniversaire du 6-juin, Barack Obama et Nicolas Sarkozy se sont rencontrés quelques instants, avant de donner une conférence de presse commune. Malgré de nombreux points d'accord, les deux présidents ont montré des divergences sur la question, épineuse, du voile islamique et sur l'entrée de la Turquie dans l'UE.
Avant de se rendre au cimetière de Colleville-sur-mer, Barack Obama a fait un détour par Caen pour une rencontre succincte - d'une heure, photo souvenir comprise - avec Nicolas Sarkozy. Lors d'une conférence de presse qui a suivi, le président français a loué l'action de son homologue américain au Proche et Moyen-Orient: "Ça fait bien longtemps qu'on attendait que les Etats-Unis d'Amérique, la première puissance du monde, prennent toutes leurs responsabilités pour éviter le choc des cultures entre l'Occident et l'Orient.". Le locataire de l'Elysée a même affirmé "être totalement d'accord" avec le discours que Barack Obama a prononcé jeudi au Caire. "Y compris sur la question du voile" islamique, a-t-il ajouté.
Pourtant, Nicolas Sarkozy est loin de la tolérance prônée par la Maison Blanche. La restriction du port du voile était même devenue son cheval de bataille quand il était au ministère de l'Intérieur. Il est l'artisan d'une loi sur la laïcité, entrée en vigueur le 2 septembre 2004, qui interdit le port de signes religieux ostensibles à l'école publique. Une limite qu'il n'a pas manqué de rappeler: "Parce que nous sommes un Etat laïque, [...] aux guichets des administrations, les fonctionnaires ne doivent pas avoir de signes visibles de leur appartenance religieuse. C'est ce que nous appelons l'impartialité de l'administration, la laïcité." >>> Par Gaël VAILLANT, leJDD.fr | Samedi 06 Juin 2009
TIMES ONLINE BLOGS – CHARLES BREMNER: Obama Keeps His Distance in France
After Barack Obama's two days in France and Germany, Europe is getting a clearer idea of the way the new US president operates. Lesson number one: he keeps his distance.
In Germany on Friday Chancellor Angela Merkel was put out by Obama's decision to steer clear of Berlin during his flying visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In France, Obama's way of imposing his own schedule has been more striking -- to the embarrassment of President Sarkozy.
As I write on Sunday morning, the US imperial cavalcade (30 vehicles), has just driven up to the Pompidou Centre. The Obama family are visiting the modern art museum before the President flies home and leaves Michelle and the children to lunch with Nicolas and Carla Sarkozy and their four offspring at the Elysée Palace (There's an echo of Sarkozy's 2007 barbecue with George W Bush at Kennebunkport, when Cecilia Sarkozy, the President's then wife, failed to turn up.)
In 39 hours in France, staying in Paris a one-minute walk from the presidential palace, Obama was unable to find a moment to accept Sarkozy's repeated invitations to drop by. They had a 20 minute working lunch with their advisers yesterday in Normandy but Obama has also had time to take his family to Notre Dame cathedral and to dinner at La Fontaine de Mars, a good brasserie near the Eiffel tower (230 euros for their dinner in a private upstairs room, with water, no wine).
Sarkozy could not hide his disappointment when they appeared yesterday in Caen, but he has clearly got the message. Theirs is a good working relationship but Obama is not out to play buddy-buddy with Sarko or any other European leader (Gordon Brown of Britain included). >>> Charles Bremner | Sunday, June 07, 2009
ASSOCIATED PRESS: BRUSSELS — Europe was leaning to the right Sunday as tens of millions of people voted in European Parliament elections, with conservative parties favored in many countries amid a global economic crisis.
Opinion polls showed right-leaning governments edging the opposition in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and elsewhere. Conservative opposition parties were tied or ahead in Britain, Spain and some smaller countries.
Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and five other EU nations cast ballots in the last three days, while the rest of the 27-nation bloc voted Sunday. Results for most countries were expected later in the day.
The EU parliament has evolved over five decades from a consultative legislature to one with the power to vote on or amend two-thirds of all EU laws. It has 736 seats and lawmakers serve for five-year terms.
With most votes counted in Austria, the main rightist party was gaining strongly while the Social Democrats, the main party in the governing coalition, lost substantial ground.
The big winner was the rightist Freedom Party, which more than doubled its strength over the 2004 elections to 13 percent of the vote. It campaigned on an anti-Islam platform, with posters proclaiming "The Occident in Christian hands" and describing Sunday as "the day of reckoning."
In the Netherlands, exit polls predicted Geert Wilders' anti-Islamic party would win more than 15 percent of the country's votes, bruising a ruling alliance of Conservatives and Socialists. >>> By Michael Weissenstein and Robert Wielaard | Sunday, June 07, 2009
REUTERS: BOSTON - The expansion of legal gay marriage across New England could deliver an economic windfall by attracting a youthful "creative class" of workers to a region with an aging population.
In the past year, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have joined Massachusetts, which in 2004 became the first U.S. state to allow same-sex weddings, in blessing gay and lesbian weddings.
That makes the region the first in the United States where same-sex couples can move from one state to another while retaining marriage benefits.
New arrivals include John Visser and Nick Keffer, who recently moved to Hartford, Connecticut, from Raleigh, North Carolina. They plan to wed later this month.
"The sole, only reason why we moved was because it was now legal for us to get married here," said Visser, 42. "No other reason whatsoever other than marriage equality. We were perfectly happy in North Carolina."
New England has long burnished an image of tolerance. Early European settlers in the 17th-century escaped religious persecution, although they imposed their own stern doctrines and sometimes expelled dissenters. Later, the region led the right for the abolition of black slavery.
Five out of the region's six states now endorse gay weddings after New Hampshire legalized same-sex marriage on Wednesday, leaving Rhode Island as the sole holdout.
The spread of gay marriage could serve as a recruiting tool for universities, health care companies and financial services firms that dominate the region's economy, experts said. >>> By Scott Malone | Thursday, June 04, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: ‘Colonel Imam’, the Pakistani agent who trained Mullah Omar and the warlords to fight the Soviets, says the US must negotiate with its enemies
THE Pakistani intelligence agent who trained Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, to fight has warned that Nato forces will never overpower their enemies in Afghanistan and should talk to them rather than sacrifice more lives.
“You can never win the war in Afghanistan,” said so-called “Colonel Imam”, who ran a training programme for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union’s occupation from 1979 to 1989, then helped to form the Taliban.
“I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand.”
A tall, bearded figure, whose real name is Amir Sultan Tarar, he trained at Fort Bragg, the US army base where America’s special forces are stationed.
During the late 1970s and 1980s he controlled CIA-funded training camps for 95,000 Afghans and often accompanied his students on missions.
After the Soviet defeat and the collapse of communism, he was invited to the White House by the first President George Bush and was given a piece of the Berlin Wall with a brass plaque inscribed: “To the one who dealt the first blow.”
Today western intelligence agencies believe Imam is among a group of renegade officers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) who continued to help the Taliban after Pakistan turned against them following the attacks of September 11, 2001. >>> Christina Lamb in Rawalpindi | Sunday, June 07, 2009
LE MONDE: “Je suis totalement d'accord avec le discours du président Obama, y compris sur la question du voile", a expliqué le président Sarkozy, samedi 6 juin à Caen. Dans un discours sur l'islam prononcé au Caire deux jours plus tôt, M. Obama avait dit qu' "il importe que les pays occidentaux évitent d'empêcher les musulmans de pratiquer leur religion comme ils le souhaitent, par exemple en dictant ce qu'une musulmane devrait porter". La déclaration avait été vue comme une attaque contre la législation de certains pays européens, notamment la loi française de 2004 qui a de facto mis fin au port du foulard dans les écoles publiques françaises.
"En France une jeune fille qui veut porter le voile peut le faire. C'est sa liberté", a assuré le président français, estimant que la France y mettait "deux limites, parce que nous sommes un Etat laïque". "La première, c'est qu'au guichet des administrations, les fonctionnaires ne doivent pas avoir de signe visible de leur appartenance religieuse", a poursuivi le président. La "deuxième réserve" vise à s'assurer que la décision de porter le voile émane du "libre choix" des jeunes filles musulmanes et ne soit pas imposé "par leur famille ou par leur entourage". Car la France est un pays "où l'on respecte la femme". M. Sarkozy a affirmé avoir beaucoup fait lorsqu'il était ministre de l'intérieur "pour que les musulmans puissent vivre leur foi comme n'importe quelle religion". Dans la soirée, l'entourage de Nicolas Sarkozy précise tout de même : "Il est bien évident que le président de la République n'est pas pour le port du voile à l'école. C'est ce qu'impose la loi."
M. Sarkozy a qualifié le discours du Caire de "remarquable". "Il y a bien longtemps que nous attendions que les Etats-Unis, première puissance du monde, prennent toutes leurs responsabilités pour éviter un choc des cultures entre l'Occident et l'Orient", a-t-il poursuivi.
Barack Obama a explicité ses intentions: "Ce que j'ai essayé de faire au Caire, c'est d'ouvrir une conversation dans les pays musulmans mais aussi dans les pays non musulmans… Nous ne devrions pas avoir deux normes sur la liberté d'expression religieuse, l'une pour les musulmans et l'autre pour les non musulmans". >>> Caen, Envoyé spécial du Monde | Samedi 06 Juin 2009
AL ARABIYA NEWS CHANNEL(العربية): "Islam Is Also France," Sarkozy Says at Iftar
French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to protect Muslims' rights as he joined the Iftar feast Monday at the Great Mosque in Paris, marking the breaking of the daily fast in the holy month of Ramadan.
In the first such gesture by a French president to the country's sizeable Muslim minority, Sarkozy met senior Muslim clerics and promised: "I will be at your side to defend your rights. I ask you to be at my side to carry out your duties."
"Even in the government, some are observing this fast (of Ramadan)…this shows that from the top to the bottom of our society Islam is an integral part of our country," Sarkozy told his hosts.
"Much as it might displease some of those I oppose, Islam is also France," he said.
But he also said France expected all its citizens to respect French core values such as the separation of Church and state, and he condemned extremists who were using Islam to spread hate.
"Those who want violence in the name of Islam, hatred for others in the name of Islam, have no business being on French soil," Sarkozy said.
"I haven't betrayed the commitment that I made to give all my backing to Islam in France, and to fight extremism with all my strength. The two things go together," he said.
"Certain extremists want to put an end to this peace which we have in our country. Those who kill in the name of Islam and want to push the world into a global religious war smear Islam by speaking its name," he said.
With about five million Muslims, France is home to Europe's biggest Islamic community.
Sarkozy has encouraged institutional dialogue between mainstream French Muslim clerics and the broader society, but his tough stance on immigration has made him unpopular among Muslims.
France is also one of the few countries to have passed legislation banning visible religious symbols in public schools, such as the Islamic headscarf.
The law sparked a wave of anger and incomprehension among Muslims worldwide, but in France the controversy that surrounded its adoption three years ago has all but died down. [Source: Al Arabiya News Channel] AFP | Tuesday, October 02, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: The American President may not know it, but his 'Muslim world' is split by a war of ideas, says Amir Taheri.
What do you do when you have no policy, but want to appear as if you do? In the case of Barack Obama, the answer is simple: you go around the world making speeches about your "personal journey".
The latest example came last Thursday, when Mr Obama presented his "address to the Muslim world" to an invited audience of 2,500 officials at Cairo University. The exercise was a masterpiece of equivocation and naivety. The President said he was seeking "a new beginning between the US and Muslims around the world". This implied that "Muslims around the world" represent a single monolithic bloc – precisely the claim made by people like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who believe that all Muslims belong to a single community, the "ummah", set apart from, and in conflict with, the rest of humanity.
Mr Obama ignored the fact that what he calls the "Muslim world" consists of 57 countries with Muslim majorities and a further 60 countries – including America and Europe – where Muslims represent substantial minorities. Trying to press a fifth of humanity into a single "ghetto" based on their religion is an exercise worthy of ideologues, not the leader of a major democracy.
Mr Obama's mea culpa extended beyond the short span of US history. He appropriated the guilt for ancient wars between Islam and Christendom, Western colonialism and America's support for despotic regimes during the Cold War. Then came the flattering narrative about Islam's place in history: ignoring the role of Greece, China, India and pre-Islamic Persia, he credited Islam with having invented modern medicine, algebra, navigation and even the use of pens and printing. Believing that flattery will get you anywhere, he put the number of Muslim Americans at seven million, when the total is not even half that number, promoting Islam to America's largest religion after Christianity.
The President promised to help change the US tax system to allow Muslims to pay zakat, the sharia tax, and threatened to prosecute those who do not allow Muslim women to cover their hair, despite the fact that this "hijab" is a political prop invented by radicals in the 1970s.
As if he did not have enough on his plate, Mr Obama insisted that fighting "negative stereotypes of Islam" was "one of my duties as President of the United States". However, there was no threat to prosecute those who force the hijab on Muslim women through intimidation, blackmail and physical violence, nor any mention of the abominable treatment of Muslim women, including such horrors as "honour-killing". The best he could do was this platitude: "Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons." >>> By Amir Taheri | Saturday, June 06, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: If his performance in the television studios is anything to go by, Mir-Hossein Mousavi is scarcely the obvious choice to oust President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and bring Iran back in from the cold.
A former hardliner, whose plodding style evokes comparisons from John Major to Leonid Brezhnev, he is as much a blast from Iran's revolutionary past as a breath of fresh reformist air.
Yet the bespectacled 67-year-old, who was Iran's prime minister during its revolutionary heyday in the 1980s, has come out of retirement in an attempt to end what he describes as Mr Ahmadinejad's "disgraceful" presidency.
And in his bid to convince voters that he himself is now an agent of change, he has deployed a weapon no Iranian politician has dared use before. He is the first Iranian politician in 30 years to campaign with his wife alongside him - a bold nod to equality that has given credibility to his pledges to take Iran down the liberal, pro-Western route that Mr Ahmadinejad rejects.
True, Mr Mousavi's partner, Zahra Rahnavard, a grandmother, painter and ex-university chancellor, is no Michelle Obama. While the US president's wife raises eyebrows with dresses that show her bare arms, Ms Rahnavard, 61, sticks to the chador, the all-encompassing charcoal cloak that has long symbolised Islamc [sic] conservatism.
But that has not stopped supporters hailing her as Iran's first-ever "First Lady", and on the campaign trail, her speeches in favour of greater women's rights have stolen the show for her quietly-spoken husband.
"Why are there no women presidential candidates or cabinet ministers?" she asked her audience last week in the city of Tabriz, referring to a political scene still dominated largely by bearded clerics.
"Getting rid of discrimination and demanding equal rights with men is the number one priority for women in Iran."
Thanks to the "Zahra factor", Mr Mousavi is now the strongest of the three challengers to Mr Ahmadinejad in this Friday's poll, which is proving one of the liveliest presidential contests in Iran's post-revolutionary history. Mr Ahmadinejad's bellicosity on the nuclear issue, threats to Israel and quasi-Soviet economic policies has both alienated many of his own hardline followers and galvanised the reformist camp, which suffered in the 2005 elections from disillusionment and apathy.
"In your foreign policy, you have brought shame upon Iran," Mr Mousavi told Mr Ahmadinejad during a televised election head-to-head on Wednesday. "You have created tension with other countries, and heavy costs have been brought on the nation in these four years." >>> By Colin Freeman in Tehran | Saturday, June 06, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Can Iran’s Young Ring the Changes?
As a crucial election looms, young Iranians are once again standing up against a repressive and brutal regime
Four layers of curtains prevented Havva from ever seeing out of the window of the small apartment in an affluent neighbourhood of central Tehran that she once shared with her husband and young daughter. More importantly, as far as her husband was concerned, the thick folds of material ensured nobody could ever see in to catch sight of her — even though their apartment was on the second floor and overlooked only by a tall willow tree.
Not once in nine years of marriage was Havva allowed to pull those curtains back.
When I ask Havva gently what drove her to finally try to take her own life, she wrings her hands, revealing scars on her wrists. Over a period of four months she made numerous suicide attempts. The first were undoubtedly cries for help. The final time she thought she had ensured success by swallowing 140 tranquillisers and barricading herself in her home. But a last-minute call to a relative to say goodbye raised the alarm. Emergency services broke in, and she was rushed to hospital, where she remained on life support in a coma for several days. “There was no one incident that pushed me to do this, just very heavy pressure for a long time until I understood I couldn’t take it any longer,” says Havva, a strikingly beautiful 31-year-old who asks to be identified only by this pseudonym (meaning “Eve” in Farsi), since she comes from a rich and prominent Iranian family. “All my dreams were destroyed when I married at 17. There was no light, no hope in the way I was forced to live,” she says. She talks in a low voice of how she could never leave the house without her husband’s permission, nor make friends, work or resist him forcing himself on her several times a day. “But it is the traditional way. I thought that was all there was.”
Havva’s experience is far from unusual in modern-day Iran. Despite some advances in women’s rights over the past decade, and the fact that 60% of the country’s university graduates are now female, legally and socially women are still considered far inferior to men. In the words of the lawyer Shirin Ebadi, winner of the Nobel peace prize, “criminal laws adopted after the revolution took away a woman’s human identity and turned her into an incapable and mentally deranged second-class being”.
When Havva refers again to the curtains that she felt symbolised the crushing restrictions imposed on her by her marriage, the apartment feels claustrophobic and suffocating. It’s an all-too-common feeling in Iran today. As the country sits on the cusp of what many regard as the most significant presidential election since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini deposed Reza Shah Pahlavi from his Peacock throne at the start of the Islamic revolution 30 years ago, denouncing westernisation and ordering every woman to cover herself with the chador, there is wide acknowledgment that Iran is sitting on a powder keg of barely suppressed fury at the stifling political, economic and social constraints its citizens have had to endure under the leadership of the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. >>> Christine Toomey | Sunday, June 07, 2009
Saturday, June 06, 2009
FAMILLE CHRÉTIENNE: Alors que la campagne des européennes, particulièrement atone, cherche toujours ses thèmes, Philippe de Villiers pousse un coup de gueule sur la Turquie. Pour lui, les élites politiques connaissent bien le phénomène de l’affaiblissement démographique européen et de « l’inéluctable » progression des populations musulmanes sur le continent. Propos recueillis par Jean-Claude Bésida.
Pourquoi êtes-vous autant focalisé sur le thème de la Turquie et de l’islamisation ?
Tout simplement parce que nous verrons les premières transformations d’églises en mosquées dans les trois ans qui viennent. En tout cas, c’est ce que m’a dit Nicolas Sarkozy.
Quand ?
J’ai eu une discussion de fond avec lui à l’Elysée à la fin de l’année dernière ; il m’a dit : « Toi tu as les intuitions, moi j’ai les chiffres. Et tes intuitions sont confirmées par mes chiffres. L’islamisation de l’Europe est inéluctable. » Attention : c’est un processus qui ne se fera pas instantanément, mais qui prendra quelques décennies.
Pourquoi cette question vous paraît-elle centrale ?
La plupart des hommes politiques ont une douce ignorance de ce qu’est l’islam et se proposent de transformer l’Europe en supermarché des religions concurrentes. Sans prendre conscience que l’islam n’est pas seulement une religion, mais que, confondant le temporel et le spirituel, il impose un droit. Mais derrière cette douce ignorance des hommes politiques, il y a ceux qui savent. Et ceux qui savent ont rédigé le livre vert paru en 2000, qui est un outil stratégique de la Commission de Bruxelles. Il fait le constat suivant : dans les années qui viennent se prépare un effondrement démographique qui porte sur des dizaines de millions de bras manquants. Pour y faire face, l’Union européenne propose un apport de peuplement nouveau – c’est dit en toutes lettres. La réalité c’est que nous allons vers un chassé-croisé avec, d’un côté en Europe l’avortement de masse et la promotion du mariage homosexuel et, de l’autre, l’immigration de masse qu’on appelle maintenant l’immigration choisie et qui ajoute à l’absurdité du déracinement un élément moralement scandaleux qui consiste à piller les élites des pays pauvres. >>> Par Jean-Claude Bésida | Jeudi 04 Juin 2009
THE BRUSSELS JOURNAL:
Sarkozy: “Islamization is Inevitable” >>> Tiberge | Saturday, June 06, 2009
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Das Dritte Reich in Farbe >>>
THE JERUSALEM POST: US President Barack Obama claims to be a big fan of telling the truth. In media interviews ahead of his trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and during his big speech in Cairo on Thursday, he claimed that the centerpiece of his Middle East policy is his willingness to tell people hard truths.
Indeed, Obama made three references to the need to tell the truth in his so-called address to the Muslim world.
Unfortunately, for a speech billed as an exercise in truth telling, Obama's address fell short. Far from reflecting hard truths, Obama's speech reflected political convenience.
Obama's so-called hard truths for the Islamic world included statements about the need to fight so-called extremists; give equal rights to women; provide freedom of religion; and foster democracy. Unfortunately, all of his statements on these issues were nothing more than abstract, theoretical declarations devoid of policy prescriptions.
He spoke of the need to fight Islamic terrorists without mentioning that their intellectual, political and monetary foundations and support come from the very mosques, politicians and regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt that Obama extols as moderate and responsible.
He spoke of the need to grant equality to women without making mention of common Islamic practices like so-called honor killings, and female genital mutilation. He ignored the fact that throughout the lands of Islam women are denied basic legal and human rights. And then he qualified his statement by mendaciously claiming that women in the US similarly suffer from an equality deficit. In so discussing this issue, Obama sent the message that he couldn't care less about the plight of women in the Islamic world.
So, too, Obama spoke about the need for religious freedom but ignored Saudi Arabian religious apartheid. He talked about the blessings of democracy but ignored the problems of tyranny.
In short, Obama's "straight talk" to the Arab world, which began with his disingenuous claim that like America, Islam is committed to "justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," was consciously and fundamentally fraudulent. And this fraud was advanced to facilitate his goal of placing the Islamic world on equal moral footing with the free world.
In a like manner, Obama's tough "truths" about Israel were marked by factual and moral dishonesty in the service of political ends.
On the surface, Obama seemed to scold the Muslim world for its all-pervasive Holocaust denial and craven Jew hatred. By asserting that Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are wrong, he seemed to be upholding his earlier claim that America's ties to Israel are "unbreakable."
Unfortunately, a careful study of his statements shows that Obama was actually accepting the Arab view that Israel is a foreign - and therefore unjustifiable - intruder in the Arab world. Indeed, far from attacking their rejection of Israel, Obama legitimized it. >>> By Caroline Glick | Friday, June 05, 2009
YNET NEWS: Obama’s speech in Cairo presents Netanyahu with unequivocal dilemma
President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo is supposed to be no less than a terribly loud bell ringing through the corridors of Israel’s political establishment. For those who thus far did not understand – or did not wish to understand – the winds blowing from Washington, Obama left no room for doubt: The United States supports Israel, yet the era of trickery, promises, and the gradual annexation in Judea and Samaria is over. The time has come for action; the time has come for moving towards a resolution of the Palestinian problem. And in Obama’s view, there is only one solution: A Palestinian state.
Beyond its expected effect within the Muslim world, the Cairo speech is no less than an effort to outline a path for Israel’s political establishment; a clear signal where things are headed. Ever since Obama’s election, officials in Jerusalem have sought ways to explain, interpret, and circumvent what has been obvious for a while now. With arrogance and contempt, officials here attempted to downplay the tension vis-à-vis the Americans, blur the disagreements, and hide behind various “natural growth” arguments. Now, Obama has made it clear: Wasting time and continued settlement construction are out; negotiations on the establishment of a Palestinian state are in. This message will affect Israel’s public and political discourse in the near future.
For Netanyahu, this is a major junction that offers only two directions: A collision course with the world’s greatest power, which will lead to Israel’s isolation and ostracism in the international arena – or a dramatic policy shift [e] that will exact difficult political prices. In other words: The prime minister must decide whether he’s going with Likud’s more rightist members, or with Obama.
When these are the options, Netanyahu has reason for concern in political terms. Wherever he turns, he will be hurt: If he folds in the face of the American pressure and modifies the narrative that has been accompanying him since he took office, he will encounter domestic resistance and an “Intifada” on the part of the Right and the settlers. Yet if he insists on going along with the conservative line that characterizes him and his government, in the face of the American pressure, he will quickly lose the Israeli public’s support, and possibly also the support of the Labor party, which is committed to the two-state solution. In both cases, Bibi’s current coalition may be shaken up. >>> Attila Somfalvi | Saturday, June 06, 2009
THE WASHINGTON TIMES: OPINION/ANALYSIS:
Now it's on to Normandy, to apologize to the Germans. It's the least an American president can do after the way the Allied armies left so much of Europe in rubble. There's a lot of groveling to do for what America accomplished in the Pacific, too.
This prospect should appeal to Barack Obama, who relishes the role of Apologizer-in-Chief. Apologizing for manifold sins against civilization is not always easy, but it's simple enough: "Blame America First." You just open a vein and let it flow. In Cairo, Mr. Obama opened an artery.
America, unlike the president, is guilty of hubris, arrogance and cant. All that must change. "Change" is what the smooth-talking Chicago messiah says he is all about. "Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail," he told the Muslim elites Thursday at Cairo U. "So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it." It's not "a world order" that elevates America, but events. No other country is as generous, as forgiving, as willing to sacrifice blood and bone when the world calls for help. If not America, who? Hasn't the president heard?
Big talkers don't know when to stop when they're on a rhetorical roll because they can't remember which facts are actually facts and which "facts" they're making up. Mr. Obama even attributed the Golden Rule, from the teachings of Christ, to "every religion." In an interview before the Cairo speech, he called the United States one of "the largest Muslim countries," based on its Muslim population, and he later put the number of Muslims in America at 7 million, more than even most Islamic advocacy groups claim. The most reliable estimate, by the nonpartisan Pew research organization, is 1.8 million. That would make the United States the 48th "largest" Muslim nation, just behind Montenegro. Mr. Obama often has trouble with numbers, big and small; he once boasted of having campaigned in 57 states.
Mr. Obama described himself as "a Christian, but," and offered a hymn to the Muslim roots he insisted during the late presidential campaign he didn't have. He invoked his middle name, "Hussein," as evidence that he was one of "them." The Obama campaign insisted last year that anyone who uses the middle name was playing with racism. >>> Wesley Pruden*, Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC | Friday, June 02, 2009
*Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
What a stupid, idiotic thing to do! The Obamas are behaving like petulant children. Shame on them! Most undignified! – ©Mark
TIMES ONLINE: The Obamas turn up in Paris this evening, but have declined a dinner invitation from the couple next door: the Sarkozys.
President Obama’s reluctance to spend more than minimum time with the French leader on his visit for the D-Day anniversary has come as an embarrassment to the Elysée Palace.
America’s First Family will not be dining with President Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, even though they are staying at the residence of the US Ambassador, yards from the Elysée apartments where the Sarkozys spend their weekends. >>> Charles Bremner in Paris | Friday, June 05, 2009
Friday, June 05, 2009
NZZ Online: Präsident Obama hat mit einem Besuch im früheren Konzentrationslager Buchenwald deutlich gemacht, dass der Holocaust auch in seinem Politikverständnis eine entscheidende Rolle spielt.
Zusammen mit seiner Gastgeberin, der deutschen Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel, hat der amerikanische Präsident Barack Obama am Freitagnachmittag das Nazi-Konzentrationslager Buchenwald bei Weimar besucht. Damit machte er deutlich, dass seine Dialogbereitschaft gegenüber der islamischen Welt nicht etwa als Abwendung von den Juden oder vom Staat Israel zu verstehen ist. Nach einem Rundgang durch das Lager riefen er und Merkel zu Wachsamkeit gegenüber Unmenschlichkeit und Terror auf. Er werde nie vergessen, was er hier gesehen habe, sagte Obama, der sichtlich zutiefst bewegt war.
«Nie wieder»
Obama ist der erste amerikanische Präsident, der Buchenwald besichtigt. Mit dem Lager, in das unter der Herrschaft der Nationalsozialisten rund eine Viertelmillion Menschen verschleppt wurden und in dem mehr als 56'000 zu Tode kamen, verbindet sich in seinem Fall auch ein Stück Familiengeschichte. Laut Angaben des Präsidenten gehörte der heute 84 Jahre alte Bruder seiner Grossmutter 1945 zu den amerikanischen Soldaten, die einen Teil des Lagers befreiten. «Dieser Ort lehrt uns, wachsam zu sein in unserer eigenen Zeit, damit so etwas nie wieder passiert», sagte Obama. Am Denkmal für alle Häftlinge auf dem einstigen Appellplatz legte er eine weisse Rose nieder. Merkel machte klar, dass es Teil deutscher Staatsräson sei, die immerwährende Erinnerung an den Zivilisationsbruch durch den Völkermord an den Juden wachzuhalten. Der KZ-Überlebende und Nobelpreisträger Elie Wiesel erzählte Obama von seiner Zeit in dem Lager. >>> U. Sd. Dresden | Freitag, 05. Juni 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: What is happening to Gordon Brown now makes John Major's government look like a triumph, observes Simon Heffer.
Watching an embalmed-looking and robotic-sounding Gordon Brown giving his press conference, one recognised one of the failings of our otherwise revered constitution: that it places no bar on a man who has taken leave of his senses still holding Her Majesty's commission as first minister. No government has had so bad a day since Black Wednesday, 17 years ago; and let us not forget the revenge the country took for that.
What is happening now makes John Major's government look like a triumph. We do not need to rehearse here the litany of disasters affecting Mr Brown and his administration, but let us anyway: the haemorrhaging of cabinet ministers, the demands from backbenchers that he go, the withering contempt of former colleagues, the abuse from the feminist "sisterhood", the inability to handle the expenses scandal, the shattered wreck of the British economy, the botched reshuffle, a backbencher walking out and forcing a by-election, a slaughter in the local elections and, on Sunday, the possibility of Labour's being beaten by both the Lib Dems and Ukip.
How much more proof of his utter unsuitability to lead a party or a government does Mr Brown need? And, now the momentum has started, how much more encouragement does his party need to boot him out, and to live up to their rhetoric of doing what is right for the country?
For most people in Mr Brown's position, just watching a recording of their own press conference would be enough to make them reach for the revolver and the bottle of Scotch. But Mr Brown isn't most people. He is never wrong – or at least, despite his hints about mistakes, can never admit he is, even to himself. Mistakes are things inevitably made by others. He has an entourage of oiling and greasing cronies, many of them mediocrities powered by rampant ambition, some of whom prospered in the reshuffle. Those who offer differing opinions are reviled, humiliated, and see the rough side of Mr Brown's occasionally infantile personality. That is why several politicians can no longer bear to work for him. However bad the public find him, the reality is even worse. >>> By Simon Heffer | Friday, June 05, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: The party of far-right anti-Muslim MP Geert Wilders, who was banned from entering Britain earlier this year for his xenophobic beliefs, has won its first four seats in the European Parliament, according to a Dutch exit poll last night.
The result, which places the Freedom Party second in the Netherlands behind the ruling Christian Democrats and ahead of Labour, suggests that many continental voters will swing behind fringe anti-immigrant parties in the European poll.
An exit poll for the Dutch national broadcaster NOS gave Mr Wilders’s party around 15 per cent of votes, with the ruling right-of-centre party on 20.3 per cent. It confirms forecasts that the Right will be the main victors of this week’s European Parliament elections, with results set to be declared officially in Sunday night after polls have closed in all 27 EU countries.
Mr Wilders, who will not be among his party’s MEPs, lives under police protection after numerous death threats for his outspoken views on closing mosques and blocking immigration in Europe’s most densely populated country.
The party’s message found a resonance in a backlash against the tolerance of immigrants for which the Netherlands has become known. Mr Wilders, 45, instantly recognisable with his shock of dyed platinum hair, last year made a controversial film which portrayed images of extremist violence against a backdrop of the Koran.
“Turkey as [an] Islamic country should never be in the EU, not in 10 years, not in a million years,” he said while campaigning on the slogan "More Netherlands, less Europe". Europe Voters Swing to Right, Say Pollsters >>> David Charter, Europe Correspondent | Friday, June 05, 2009
THE FOX FORUM: With every speech he gives, President Obama goes further and further in diminishing Christianity in America while inflating Muslims here and around the world.
For Americans this appears to be at best an incredibly bad choice of rhetoric or at worst the manifestation of a prejudice hidden in Obama, finally making its way out.
To Muslims though, it has a much deeper meaning tied to the concept of “Dhimmi,” the subjugation of other religions to Islam. I’ll define that in more detail at the end of this column, but first let’s examine the proof that Obama is diminishing Christians while inflating Muslims.
It started in a speech he gave in 2007 when he stated, “Whatever we once were, we’re no longer a Christian nation.” At that same speech he criticized Christian leaders, claiming they have used their religion for political purposes.
I guess he thinks “Jihad” is a Christian word.
He repeated again that “America is not a Christian nation” a few weeks later. Little was made of it during the Presidential campaign because the media protected Obama from controversy at all costs. Either that or they just didn’t grasp for themselves the “Dhimmi” implications Obama’s words had for Muslims around the world.
One of his campaign promises was to give a speech “in a major Muslim capital” in his first 100 days in office.
The only such speech he made was in Turkey. At a press conference before his speech, Obama said, “[O]ne of the great strengths of the United States is — although as I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation…”
He went on to say that America is also not a Muslim or Jewish nation, but no one has ever assumed that. His point therefore was to once again make sure the world knew he doesn’t consider America, comprised of 78.5% Christians, a “Christian nation.”
Three times in two years is enough, Mr. President. I fully understand you don’t consider America a “Christian nation.”
Perhaps what the President is referring to is that America has a secular government. We do, after all, have a secular Constitutional Republic that explicitly allows no state religion while allowing the practice of any religion.
The question then becomes does he see nations that are majority Muslim the same way? Has he made it a point to tell them three times they are not “Muslim nations?” In hypocritical fashion, no he hasn’t.
If Turkey was his first speech in a “Muslim capital,” why does he call it that? Like America, Turkey is a secular Constitutional Republic that explicitly allows no state religion while allowing the practice of any religion. See the double standard? According to Obama, Turkey is Muslim but America is not Christian. >>> By Tommy DeSeno | Friday, June 05, 2009
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