THINKING OF BOYCOTTING ISRAEL

ARGENTINA AND I STARE INTO CRISIS

ARGENTINA'S PLAN TO NATIONALIZE its private pension funds should make it easier for the government to refinance short-term obligations but would further undermine its credibility among investors, Moody's Investor Service said on Thursday.

Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez unveiled on Tuesday a plan to take over the $30 billion in funds managed by its 14-year-old private pension system, saying she seeks to protect pensions from the global market crisis.

"Although the proposal, if approved, would provide the government with greater financial flexibility in the short term, it undermines the government's already weak policy credibility and adds to negative perceptions about Argentina's institutional integrity—particularly governance and respect of contracts," Moody's analyst Mauro Leos said in a statement.

The move would boost the government's annual revenue by 1 percent of gross domestic product as contributions of the private pension participants are brought into the national budget, Moody's said.

With higher revenues, the government will be tempted to delay a needed adjustment in public spending, which is on an "unsustainable path," Leos warned.

"The pension proposal appears to be a short-term fix to a long-term problem," Moody's said in the statement.

Hello. This is definitively a global crisis, and one which escalates with each passing day. But what can the average Joe the Plumber do to protect himself and his family. I just had an argument with my wife about withdrawing some cash to tide is over in case of a money freeze or continued run on our FDIC-insured but troubled bank which ended when she snorted, "But we pay all our bills online."

I gave up. Some people just can't snap out of the foggy bottom haze they've created for themselves. Cash reserves, cash reserves, cash reserves. How many times do we need to hear this before suddenly we find ourselves liquidated or frozen out of assets for who knows how long if not forever, and can't put gasoline into our tanks or put food into our mouths, especially if we must leave wherever we find ourselves in peril —in a hurry. I'm not advocating panic mode here, but I do believe in being prepared, old Boy Scout, Troop 219, that I am. Guess she's afraid we'll lose ten bucks worth of interest on a few thousand dollars in a short run. Go figure.

THE ROOTS OF ARAB RACISM

I know many folks in this city, this nation, this culture get their talking points and wee-sized knowledge bits from the liner notes of the "Best of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, Speeches and Gaffs" CD, but one day soon, one hopes, that these same folks will wake up to real history to help prevent the onset of their own destruction.

THE HISTORY OF ARAB oppression of blacks, whether those blacks became nominal Muslims or not, is too long. The history of Arab enslavement of blacks started far earlier, was much more devastating in its effects, and continued much later, than the Atlantic slave trade. A scholar has estimated that because Arabs specialized in seizing young black males for use in harems (contrary to the Western imagination, harems were not just for the rulers), and would castrate their hunted prey in situ in the jungle, the mortality rate among those then taken by slave coffle to the waiting boats that would take them to the slave markets of Islam reached 90%. See "The Hideous Trade" or google that title and "Jihad Watch" for more.

Slavery is legitimate in Islam. Muhammad had slaves. Muhammad is the Perfect Man. Seventh-century Arabia allowed slavery. Seventh-century Arabia provides the Sunnah, the customs and manners that are to be followed. The Arab slave trade went up and down East Africa, with the chief entrepot for the local trade in African blacks being the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, held by the Arab rulers of Oman. The Arabs also went deep into Central Africa, and into West Africa too, while the European slave-traders never managed to penetrate the interior, preferring to remain on the coast of West Africa and having slaves delivered to them by local tribes.

Slavery was not abolished willingly by the Arabs. It was stamped out, rather, by Western powers. There is no Arab William Wilberforce. There never has been a declaration, by any Arab leader, or government, or theological institute, that slavery is always and everywhere morally wrong. And there cannot be such a declaration, because Muslims are hemmed in by the Example of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, and the practice of the Sunnah. If the French ended Arab enslavement of blacks in much of North Africa, it was the British—the Royal Navy—that helped stamp out the slave trade that continued between Africa and Arabia. This tale is told most fully in J. B. Kelly's "Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795-1880.” But the Arabs still managed, as the British presence on the seas diminished, to resurrect that slave trade, which continued into the 1960s.

In 1962, just before slavery was formally abolished—because Saudi Arabia was not yet rich from oil revenues, it had to succumb to Western pressure—20% at least of the population consisted of black slaves. For more google “Arab slave trade in Africa,” or start here.

It is not surprising that in Dayton, a Muslim girl might have made up a story blaming black men. Nor is it surprising that the Arabs in this congregation want to move from a black neighborhood to a white one. Look at how unwelcome Arabs and Pakistanis have made black Muslims who wish to attend, in any numbers, the same mosques with them. Blacks are seen as fit fodder for conversion to Islam—without really letting potential converts know much about Islam. The proselytizers hold back so much, until their targets are deeply committed and can't easily get out. They do this so as to swell Muslim ranks and perceived (and real) power, but are not so happy for the new converts to actually associate with Arabs and Pakistanis, who find such an association distasteful. Compare that with the welcoming practice of Christian churches, not least among those evangelicals who have become the butt of so much self-assured mockery.

Read it all in Hugh Fitzgerald's latest reportage on the scourge of Islam.

CHINA CRACKS DOWN ON ISLAM

(AHN) - The Chinese government is attempting to limit prayer time and areas of worship for practicing Muslims in the northwestern part of the nation, which some see as an effort to control the growth of Islam. Posted signs outside some mosques reportedly direct Muslims not to go longer than one half-hour in prayer and also not to pray outside of them, as well.

Khotan residents are also prohibited from worshipping at moques outside of their town, reportedly angering some citizens. People who are upset with the rules do not express their concerns, however, for fear of retribution from the government. China's rules on Islam stretch from public into other facets of life, as well, as only official versions of the Qur'an are acceptable to use and Imams are forbidden from teaching from the book in private.

Read these comments on the topic.

LEGALIZING TERROR IN AMERICA

IF ISLAM WITH ITS TERRORIST FOUNDER, role model and long bloody history gets all the fringe benefits and tax breaks shouldn’t all other violent gangs with terrorist founders get the same benefits?

Was the founder of the Muslim gang mentality any less violent and hateful than Shoko Asahara of “Aum Shinkryo”, David Duke of K.K.K., Charles Manson of “The Family,” William Ayer of “Weather Underground” or gang-leaders of MS-13? Didn’t the founder of Islam kill and rob more people, enslave and rape more women than all the above mentioned gangsters combined. At least these gangsters had the decency of not killing their own gang members and showing them mercy, but Prophet of Islam had no such reservations. He had his own followers burned alive when they got out of line.

Read it all at this website created by ex-Muslims.

And while the most gruesome of news continues to reach some of us concerning the volatility of global Islam on the rise, other oddball Islamic-inspired events also contribute to a mountain of evidence for concern to those of us who might wish for world peace if the question wasn't so damned contentious as to who gets to make the rules for that peace, such as this snippet from Kuwait, so many in the West sleep:

The only two women in Kuwait's executive branch risk being driven out from the government. The parliamentary legal committee has decided that their presence violates the constitution and the law, because they do not wear the hijab, the Islamic veil. The committee's statement will now be submitted to voting by the fifty members of parliament.

The Kuwaiti parliament is dominated by conservatives, who had four of the seven seats on the committee. But three "liberals" also voted against the two women. "The committee unanimously decided that appointing the two ministers in the cabinet violated article 82 of the constitution and article one of the election law for failing to abide by Islamic regulations," says Ali al-Hajeri, spokesman for the legal and legislative committee.

The two women under accusation are education minister Nuriya al-Sebih and administrative development minister Mudhi al-Humoud. Appointed following the elections on May 17, the two women immediately met with negative reactions from conservatives. At its first session, on June 1, parliament approved submission of the matter to the committee, which has now decided. That same day, as cabinet members took the oath, nine parliamentarians left the hall in protest against the "un-Islamic" attire of the two women. As one wit put it, guess in Kuwait you need to be a Type 3 Muslim to get along.

Unofficially...

Type 1. Ticks the “Muslim” box on forms. Watches al Jazeera. Doesn’t drink in front of the children.

Type 2. Goes to mosque on Fridays. Buys Halal meat.

Type 3. Prays five times a day. Neat beards and headscarves. Advocates the non-violent bits of Sharia law.

Type 4. Supports full Sharia law, and world-wide Caliphate. Understands abrogation. Bushy beards and rent-a-tents.

Type 5. Taliban and al Qaeda.

Like VP candidate Joe Biden said, "Gird yourself, people. It's going to get rough."

STOCK CRISIS HELPS CONSUMERS

THE COLLAPSE OF COMMODITIES that drove oil prices back below $70 a barrel Thursday is reverberating through the world economy from Texas to Timbuktu.

While falling commodities prices are helping struggling American consumers and businesses with dramatically lower energy costs, they are devastating rising stars such as Brazil, Russia, Dubai and Australia. Even China, the engine behind the commodity boom, is faltering, though it remains one of the only emerging-market juggernauts that still has growing surpluses of cash to keep plowing into U.S. financial markets.

Indexes of major commodities from copper and wheat to coal and corn have plummeted more than 40 percent since setting record highs in early July, led by the halving of oil prices. The big drop in energy costs helped give Wall Street a lift Thursday, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 401 points.

While the price plunge has brought welcome relief from commodity-fed inflation that surged to 5.8 percent in the United States, it has hurt some U.S. energy investors, farmers and mining companies while causing a collapse in income for major commodity producers like Brazil, Russia and the Middle Eastern oil exporters, most of whom depend on the revenue from commodity exports not only to drive growth but to fund government.

As the commodity bubble burst in July, revenues abruptly fell, leading to precipitous drops in the financial markets of emerging countries. Those declines accelerated with the recent rout in global markets. The economic outlook has dimmed for countries that once boasted double-digit growth, while their brimming coffers of foreign reserves have stopped growing.

Brazil's international reserves fell by nearly $1 billion in one day this week to $203 billion, while the drop in revenues of oil producers like Russia has been even steeper, sinking the country into a deep financial crisis. Russia's 25 richest oligarchs reportedly have lost an astounding $240 billion from the crisis in commodities and other financial markets.

Within a matter of months, Dubai, an oil-rich emirate in the Persian Gulf, has gone from boasting it would become a major new Middle Eastern financial center serving businesses around the world to having to be bailed out of a financial crunch with a $15 billion cash infusion from its sister emirate, Abu Dhabi.

Read it all.

This is all good. Now we need American leadership to rebuild American industry and infrastructure, financing it however it can be pieced together. I am not an economist. I am a patriotic American who is tired of sending billions of dollars elsewhere to prop up other nations and despots, nations who generally despise us for it, yeah, just like the Republican candidate for the top spot said.

THAT PATRICK HENRY EXPRESSION

LET'S TURN TODAY to the brilliant and informative interview of esteemed author Robert Spencer, founder of the popular but often misunderstood Jihad Watch website, in an article prefaced here by Spencer himself, published in an Italian journal.

In addition to his role as founder and principal contributor to Jihad Watch, Mr. Spencer is a contributing editor to online Front Page Magazine and author of numerous scholarly books on Islam, its founder Mohammed, and the implications of contemporary jihad in the context of its own history. Do not be fooled by cheap imposters and hired fools who shill for their new masters in the trojan horse guise of multiculturalism.

Read it all, starting with Mr. Spencer's introduction:

THE ITALIAN MAGAZINE—Polizia e Democrazia—interviewed me for their August/September 2008 issue, in which they describe me as "un neocon americano che ha raggiunto una notevole notorietà con i suoi libri (sette) e un sito estremamente combattivo aggiornato quotidianamente." That is, "an American neocon who has gained remarkable notoriety with his books (seven) and an extremely combative website updated daily."

Neocon. Extremely combative. You get the idea. Here is the English text of their questions as I received them, and the answers I sent them. This was an email interview, so bear in mind as you read it that all the questions were sent to me beforehand in the order in which I answered them -- none were formulated in response to anything I answered. So the question about whether my gay or feminist friends ever suggest I build bridges was not talking about Chesler or Bawer, but about the hypothetical gays and feminists appalled by my work that the interviewer had in mind.

PD: In your website you say you are from the muslim world and that you were impressed by your own grandparents tales. Could you tell more?

RS: My grandparents were exiles from the Ottoman Empire. They used to describe their life there in glowingly positive terms. My grandmother spoke of the beauty of the muezzin’s call to prayer when she heard it in the early morning. These stories fascinated me and awakened a hunger in me to know more about that part of the world.

PD: How this childhood memory impact your actual work?

RS: It led to my study of the region in general and ultimately to my study of Islam.

PD: If you can say, what is actually your faith, if you have one?

RS: I am a Melkite Greek Catholic.

PD: Have you ever thought in the past that the jihad/Islamic problem was going to become so important? Were there in the past some warning signs even you didn’t read?

RS: In 1979, during the Iranian hostage crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran, I was a freshman in college. This was the first indication I had that the inchoate political forces (as I understood then) that had led to my grandparents’ exile may have had something to do with the dominant religion of the region as well. It appeared to me then that this problem was very large and was going to grow. But I did not at that time fully grasp the import of this “warning sign” or others that occurred in those years.

PD: Were you, in the past, interested by other kinds of religious fundamentalisms?

RS: I was and remain interested in religions in general.

PD: You speak a lot about “moral equivalence”. Could you better describe what you mean by that?

RS: I do not believe that the teachings of all religions are equal in their capacity to inspire violence – or in their capacity to inspire anything else, for that matter. Yet it is a common claim that the problem we face is one of “fundamentalism” in general, not of the Islamic jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism in particular. Yet where is the Christian Al-Qaeda? The Christian 9/11 hijackers? The Christian preachers exhorting their followers to murder? That is what I mean by moral equivalence. It saps our will to face the real challenge and diverts our attention to problems of far less importance and scope.

PD: Can you drive a distinction between groups and individuals who says every religion can be right-wing and totalitarian but do nothing against it and those ones who actually denounce and fight against all kinds of religious extremisms?

RS: I don’t believe, as I just stated, that all “religious extremisms” are equal in their capacity to incite their adherents to violence and mayhem. There have been over 11,000 violent attacks worldwide committed in the name of Islam and jihad since 9/11. How many violent attacks have been committed by other “religious extremists”?

PD: What are your personal opinion about antiabortion terrorists or about Hindu extremists?

RS: I oppose them, and observe that they are useful in promoting moral equivalence arguments that distract people from the reality of the global jihad. The disparity is particularly glaring in connection with the murders of abortion doctors, when one puts the handful of these murders and the universal condemnation of them by Christian leaders against the thousands of jihad attacks and the vague and loophole-ridden condemnations of terrorism (not jihad or Islamic supremacism) by Islamic leaders, and claims that both are examples of equivalent “religious extremisms.”

PD: Do you support the separation of religion from politics and if so do you support it only when Islam is involved or in any case?

RS: It depends on what you mean by the separation of religion from politics. If you mean the banishment of all religious principles per se from the public debate, I do not support that when it comes to any religion. In a pluralistic republic religious people should have as much right as anyone else to put forward their views in the public square. If, however, you mean that the state should not establish a particular religion, I very strongly support the principle of non-establishment of religion as enunciated by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In the particular case of Islam, there is no traditional sacred/secular distinction, and a denial of the proposition that government should be organized along anything but religious lines. This is a threat to the principle of non-establishment of religion, which I believe has been uniquely valuable in enabling people of differing views to live in harmony with one another without trying to establish hegemony over one another or do violence to the other’s way of life. It should be recognized as such.

PD: You say you want to protect the judeo-christian civilisation. May I assume you don’t like so much secular states or you just think secularism is not strong enough?

RS: I like secular states, i.e., ones in which there is no governmental establishment of religion, very much. This idea in itself is a product of Judeo-Christian principles going back to Jesus’ saying “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.” It is no accident that this principle did not take root in the Islamic world except under Western influence. I have written that Westerners, even atheists and secularists, need to regain an awareness of their being the children and heirs of a civilization – a Judeo-Christian civilization – that has value and is worth defending and preserving. In contrast, if by “secularism” you mean the thoroughgoing relativism and cultural self-hatred that pervades so much of the West today, then yes, certainly, I do not believe it has the slightest chance of standing up to the Islamic supremacist challenge.

PD: Many people and among them many politicians, expecially catholics and evangelicals are re-descovering their faith identity now. Do you think it’s genuine gesture or just another way of mixing religion with politics, a sort of “my identity against your identity”. Wouldn’t it be better if religion was just an intimate personal thing?

RS: It is impossible to generalize without knowing to which politicians you are referring. In any case, the main obstacle, albeit still generally unrecognized, to religion being “just an intimate personal thing” is not Western identity politics but the Islamic supremacist ideology.

PD: What do you think about the French strict secular laws? At least you can admit the islamist problem there is less strong than in Holland or in the Uk.

RS: I don’t think that would be an accurate admission at all, given the simmering violence of French “youths.” France’s strict secular laws have done nothing to end that violence – although the failure of France to deal adequately with this problem actually has nothing to do with French secularism as such.

PD: Do you believe that human rights are universal?

RS: Yes.

PD: From the comments on your websites you accuse women’s and gay rights supporters of being busy with “petty causes”. Why equal pay at work, child care, reproductive freedom or civil unions should be petty causes? And, once again, wouldn’t be more positive to incite these movements to broaden their agenda without giving up the domestic issues?

Since that is not language that I use and I don’t recall saying it, I just did a search at my websites for the phrase “petty causes.” It does not, in fact, appear in anything I have written.

PD: Do you have feminist friends?

RS: Yes.

Gay and lesbian friends?

RS: Yes.

PD: If so what do they think about your work?

RS: They are uniformly supportive. Allow me to refer you to the work of my friend and pioneering feminist Phyllis Chesler. In her book The Death of Feminism she offers a harrowing personal narrative and a unique feminist perspective on women and Islam. She and I cowrote a monograph last year, The Violent Oppression of Women In Islam. I was also deeply honored to count as my friend the great Oriana Fallaci, who was a feminist in the truest and best sense. For a gay perspective on Islamic jihad supremacism, I can recommend the work of Bruce Bawer, especially his maginificent book While Europe Slept. I do not know him well, but he and I have been in friendly contact over the last few years after meeting at a conference in The Hague, and I am a great admirer of his work.

PD: Do they ever suggest you to build bridges?

RS: Feminists and gays who oppose resistance to Islamic jihad supremacism do not realize how much it will victimize them.

PD: Do you support reproductive freedom for women? I mean, after all in almost all Islamic countries abortion is illegal or severely limited, pre and post natal care is not well funded, contraception is not widely known and maternal health is poor.
What I find very strange about this issue is that the same people (Vatican, evangelical groups) that denounce Islamic extremism ally themselves with Islamic states at the Un conferences just to keep abortion illegal. Is this issue so important for them that they forget everything and lie with the enemy?
What is your opinion about all this?

RS: I oppose abortion, but I believe that the survival of free societies is at stake, and have not hesitated to ally with those who support it in defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. The groups that ally with Islamic countries to defeat abortion initiatives may be entering into similar alliances with those with whom they disagree on other issues. In any case, Western abortion advocates are whistling in the dark if they think they will be able to convince large numbers of Muslims to get abortions if Islamic authorities forbid it.

PD: It’s been a decade or so that Islam is all the time in the media. Whetever in a positive or negative light everyone is obsessed by islam. Why so?

RS: Because there are violent Islamic supremacist movements dedicated to the subjugation of non-Muslims as inferiors all over the globe, from Indonesia across Asia and into Africa (particularly Nigeria), and of course Europe.

PD: Religion and cultural journalists also write about it all the time. One can ask if there is anything else worth of importance. Why what a Muslim girl says is considered more important or newsworthy than, for example, a Mennonite girl or a Lutheran lady?

RS: Because there are no armed Mennonite or Lutheran groups around the world dedicated to the subjugation of non-Mennonites or non-Lutherans under the rule of Mennonite or Lutheran law.

PD: Don’t you think that this importance of the so-called Islamic world has been shaped, at least in part, by western media?

RS: No. In fact, the mainstream Western media has done everything it could to downplay or ignore altogether the Islamic element of jihad violence.

PD: Speaking about the Islamic world, do you really think this is a sort of monolith?

RS: No, and I have never claimed otherwise.

PD: Moderate muslims. Once again I would say the press is to blame. Journalists and experts talk all the time about moderate muslims but no one has ever come up with a definition of sort. Why?

RS: Because all the orthodox sects of Islam and schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. What, then, is a moderate? Someone who is not waging jihad at the moment? A jihadist who is practicing Muhammad’s dictum “war is deceit” and trying to lull infidels into thinking there is no jihad threat? A lax or nominal Muslim who doesn’t care to wage jihad? An ignorant Muslim who doesn’t know about jihad? A genuinely reformist Muslim who rejects the violent and supremacist elements of traditional Islam? Most journalists and experts use the term “moderate Muslim” imprecisely and without definition because they don’t even know enough about Islam to ask the proper questions of these “moderates” or even to know what they should expect from them?

RS: Personally I like more progressive Muslims. It’s not simply a matter of words. In my own experiences with them as a journalist they really are genuine and concrete.

PD:What do you think about them?

RS: You’d have to give me a specific example of whom you have in mind.

PD: In the forum of your website left-leaning people and progressives are attacked all the time. While it’s true many progressive are now inconsistent some actually are. So why throwing the baby with the water?

RS: I have stated many times that the anti-jihad resistance is not a liberal or conservative, Right/Left issue, but a matter of civilizational survival. However, the leftist/jihadist alliance we see in many places, and the general “progressive” refusal to see any problem beyond “American imperialism” has been noted.

PD: Even in politics democrats are depicted as bad guys far more often than republicans. Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and John Edwards, for example, have a perfect record on Israel. What’s so wrong with them?

RS: None of the people have mentioned have demonstrated any awareness of the larger jihad threat.

PD: Speaking about politics I assume you like McCain.

RS: You assume wrong.

PD: Did you like Clinton?

RS: No.

PD: And why not Obama? If he was so dangerous for Israel would ever have he been at Aipac? Many Jewish who consider Israel important support him.

RS: I don’t think Obama has any greater awareness of the global jihad threat than McCain (or Clinton).

PD: Besides that what would be the good running mate for both of them? [This interview took place before the running mates were chosen.]

RS: I don’t have any interest in this, and have no answer for it. Neither party in the U.S. has shown that as an entity it has any understanding of the global jihad, or any comprehensive plan to deal with it. No candidate does either.

PD: Let’s talk about the Middle East. Why the Islamic religious factor is so rarely taken into consideration by experts and diplomats? And why what is a low-level conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is considered the most pressing issue in the world?

RS: I suspect that most experts and diplomats don’t take the Islamic religious factor into account because they don’t understand the nature of religious appeal in general, and so they underestimate its power in the Islamic world. The importance of the Palestinian issue in world politics is a tribute to the massive propaganda effort the Palestinian Arabs and the Islamic world has undertaken with immense focus and intensity since the 1960s.

PD: Why people who really suffer such as Darfuri people and indigenous tribes all over the world receive so little attention? How Palestinians have become “the victims” who deserve all the attention and support?

RS: The Darfuris are victims of jihad—a jihad by “authentic” Arab Muslims against black African cultural Muslims. The victims of jihad have no advocates—the UN is in the hip pocket of the OIC, and the West doesn’t want to antagonize the Islamic world further by saying anything about Islam or acting on behalf of its victims, even if they themselves are Muslims. The Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, are the focus of a vast and immense, decades-long propaganda effort that has been undertaken by jihadists to further the cause of Islamic jihad.

PD: Is the Pro-Israel movement becoming effective? Or sometimes it’s over suspicious and paranoid?

RS: I don’t think it has been very effective in recent years, but would not accuse it of over-suspicion and paranoia. It is facing an extremely sophisticated, well-heeled, and little-understood opponent.

PD: Palestinians have the support of the entire Islamic world and numbers matter. Same goes with the jihadist activities or Islamic movements. One can say: “It’s the numbers, stupid!” What can be done to block or make less dangerous a way of thinking that has so many followers?

RS: First: expose it. Show Westerners what is happening. What to do then will follow from that.

PD: You got a lot of e-mails from muslims themselves. Aside from the hate-filled ones and the supporting ones, what the others say?

RS: Hate-filled on the one hand and supportive on the other covers it fairly well.

PD: Did you ever get hate mail from non-Muslims?

RS: Yes.

PD: Have you ever experienced dangerous situations?

RS: Yes.

PD: Is your safety protected?

RS: Usually I have a guard or two with me when I speak.

PD: How is affecting your personal and family life?

RS: I do not speak about my personal and family life in public.

PD: And, above all, is it worth it?

RS: Of course. It isn’t as if I am not going to die if I don’t do this. Have you ever heard of the adage, “Give me liberty or give me death”? Have you ever heard that the signers of the American Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to their cause? Have you ever heard that Dr. Martin Luther King stated that if you have nothing for which you are willing to die, you have no reason to live?

PD: How, according your experiences, are the ways of reacting to the Islamist problem of atheists and agnostics, of conservative Christians, of progressive Christians, Jewish and believers of other faiths. Do you see a similar reaction from each distinct group?

RS: Atheists and agnostics generally tend to think it is a generalized problem of fundamentalism, and are indifferent to it or think it can all be solved by adjustments of U.S. foreign policy. That goes also for progressive Christians and liberal Jews.
Conservative Christians and Jews, with some notable exceptions, generally have a greater awareness of the threat.

PD: Speaking about policy makers in Europe. Why they are so obsessed in accommodating radical Muslims demands? Sometimes they go even further than Islamists themselves. Is it a state of mind or what?

RS: They see the writing on the wall. They know what group will have electoral majorities before too long.

PD: Going at the foreign policy level, Islamic states can dictate the law because of oil and oil is an issue rarely mentioned by anti-islamists activists. Why?

RS: I mention it all the time. We have to get free of it. There should have been a Manhattan Project to find alternative energy sources begun years ago.

PD: Do you support the spread of renewable energies? Recently Israel is going in that direction. Good for the environment and good for our safety. Wouldn’it be perfect?

RS: I am in favor of anything that would free the West from dependence upon oil.

PD: Aside from fighting against Islamists, are there other issues dear to you? Which ones?

RS: No other issue is as important to me, and I don’t spend any time working on any other issue.

PD: Could you describe your typical day?

RS: Typing.

PD: What are the things in which you find solace?

RS: I like music very much, although I no longer play.

PD: What is the opinion you have of Italy, according to news reports you get?

RS: The situation there is dire, as it is all over Europe, but not as bad as it is in northern Europe.

PD: What are the states that give you the most hope in the western world and the ones that make you despair? Choose the best and the worst from the Islamic world too.

RS: It would be oversimplifying to the point of inaccuracy to provide any such continuum for either the West or the Islamic world. There are currents that are encouraging and discouraging all over—for example, in Turkey secularism is gravely threatened, but there has also been a significant demonstration of support for it.

PD: Are police forces answering correctly to islamists? Is there a difference between police officers who are on duty and see the real things and the upper police establishment? Do you see trends? What would you suggest?

RS: In general law enforcement officials do not recognize this problem and are learning from appeasers and stealth jihadists. The officers on duty in general have a better awareness than do their superiors. The trend in this, if anything, is toward even more political correctness and unwillingness to face the reality of the problem. I would suggest that law enforcement officials gain the courage to face reality, however politically incorrect it may be—and fire all their advisers on this issue, replacing them with people who actually know what is going on and will tell them.

DISTURBING ARABIC FLASH CARDS

FLASH CARDS DESIGNED TO TEACH ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS of Arabic have a curious way of doing it. We've all seen flash cards used to teach math functions and simple words. But we're sure you haven't seen flash cards like these! One of our chapter leaders happened to be in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Minnesota, and saw a package of flash cards apparently intended to help someone translate Arabic words and phrases into English.

What he saw when he bought the cards was, to say the least, far different than what he expected. Here is a sample of some of the English words and phrases translated from the Arabic in this flash card set.

"assassination attempt"
"counter strike"
"attack"
"air strike"
"enemy"
"The army seized power"
"We buried the dead man yesterday"
"to seize power"
"martyr"
"to die in a battle"

To see a PDF image of the actual flashcards, designed by Fethi Mansouri, please click HERE. You will need Adobe Reader or similar software to view the image.

I guess we're pretty straight-laced here in America. Our flashcards designed to teach English have such controversial words and phrases such as "thank you," "could you please help me?", and "what time is it?" I don't think you'll find an English translation flashcard set with words like "assassination attempt."

One has to wonder who would need an Arabic flash card set that translates "assassination attempt" into English. Then again, maybe we shouldn't have to wonder at all.

Guy Rodgers
Executive Director
ACT for America
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456

ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America's national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam.