January 28, 2005

HORROR STILL ECHOES

As candles flickered in the winter gloom, world leaders and Auschwitz survivors yesterday remembered victims of the Holocaust on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.

The ceremony, which opened with the recorded rumble of an approaching train, was held on the spot where new arrivals were brought in by rail to the camp and put through "selection" — meaning those able to work were separated from the rest, who were taken to the gas chambers.

"It seems if you listen hard enough, you can still hear the outcry of horror of the murdered people," Israeli President Moshe Katsav said. "When I walk the ground of the concentration camps, I fear that I am walking on the ashes of the victims."

Joining in the commemoration were Vice President Dick Cheney, and Presidents Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Jacques Chirac of France and Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine. German President Horst Koehler sat without speaking.

Barbed wire and brick barracks stretched as far as the eye could see. The ruined crematoriums loomed nearby. Girl Scouts brought blankets to elderly survivors sitting in the freezing cold.

"For a former inmate of Auschwitz, it is an unimaginable and overwhelming emotion to be able to speak in this cemetery without graves, the largest one in the history of Europe," said Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a survivor who later became Poland's foreign minister.

Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and the neighboring camp at Birkenau on Jan. 27, 1945. Some 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died at those camps alone.

Earlier in Krakow, Cheney said, "The story of the camps shows that evil is real and must be called by its name and . . . confronted."
[Which is what we're doing right now to the IslamoNazis in the WOT!--Jen]

Putin won long applause when he acknowledged that anti-Semitism had resurfaced in Russia, tackling an issue that the Kremlin had long failed to confront.
[..and still isn't confronting.
This is nothing but Putin giving nice-sounding sound bytes.]

"Even in our country, in Russia, which did more than any to combat fascism . . . we sometimes, unfortunately, see manifestations of this problem and I, too, am ashamed of that," Putin said.
[Russia has an abyssmal human rights record with Jews, under both the Czarist regime, the Communist and now the Russian Federation.
Anti-Semitism is imbedded deep in their consciousness as it was/is in the German one.--J.T.]

Survivor Franciszek Jozefiak, 80, said efforts to educate new generations about the Holocaust should be strengthened.

"Today, I'm remembering my father, gassed here. I'm remembering the atrocious things they did to us here," said Jozefiak.

"The message today is: No more Auschwitz. But the world has learned nothing so far — you see they are fighting and killing each other everywhere.

"Today they are saying a lot because of the anniversary, but tomorrow they will forget."

God rest the souls of those who were murdered in these death camps and may He continue to bless and comfort their relatives and survivors.

Some of these EUropean heads of state like ChIraq are here for photo ops and some display of their public wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Holocaust while downplaying the rash of anti-Semitic attacks in their own countries that have occurred since Arafat started the Intifada in 2000 and particularly since the 9/11 attacks which effectively declared "open season" on Jews, Christians, Americans and other "infidels."
VP Cheney is quite right: Evil is still evil and anti-Semitism is one of its hallmarks.
Yet, rather than reverently mark this anniversary and stress the importance of learning the lessons of Auschwitz, the MSM (in the form of the WashingtonCompost) expends its ink bemoaning Cheney's "inappropriate" outerware.
Nevermind that it was 9 degrees at Auschwitz and that Cheney is an older man with heart problems, he should have had on better fashion!
(This WaPo "Parkagate" column was written by the same woman who demonized Katherine Harris for her makeup during the election recount in 2000.)
All I could think about when I saw the pictures from the ceremony was that it was every bit as cold there in the war years (1944, especially, was one of the coldest winters on record) and one couldn't help but recall the poor detainees of the death camps who were allowed to live (for awhile longer), but who were forced to do slave labor covered only in those thin cotton mattress ticking pajamas.
If anything, our Vice President was a living example of how punishing even the climate of Auschwitz-Birkenau was.
I'm glad he was there to represent us and I'm darn proud of all of those fine men and women of the previous Greatest Generation who won the war, liberated the death camps and saved more innocents from the gas chambers!

NEW REPORT ON SAUDI GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS IN U.S.

Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom has just issued this extremely important study:

The 89-page report, “Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques,” is based on a year-long study of over two hundred original documents, all disseminated, published or otherwise generated by the government of Saudi Arabia and collected from more than a dozen mosques in the United States.

The propagation of hate ideology by Saudi Arabia is known to be worldwide, but its occurrence within the United States has received scant attention until now.
[And of course, the release of this report got ZERO attention from the MSM!--Jen]
Within worldwide Sunni Islam, followers of Saudi Arabia’s extremist Wahhabi ideology are a distinct minority, as is evident by the millions of Muslims who have chosen to make America their home and are upstanding, law-abiding citizens and neighbors.

The report concludes that the Saudi government propaganda examined reflects a “totalitarian ideology of hatred that can incite to violence,” and the fact that it is “being mainstreamed within our borders through the efforts of a foreign government, namely Saudi Arabia, demands our urgent attention.” The report finds: “Not only does the government of Saudi Arabia not have a right – under the First Amendment or any other legal document – to spread hate ideology within U.S. borders, it is committing a human rights violation by doing so.”

Such publications that “advocate an ideology of hatred have no place in a nation founded on religious freedom and toleration,” write James Woolsey, chairman of the board of Freedom House, in the foreword to the report.

Among the key findings of the report:

· Various Saudi government publications gathered for this study, most of which are in Arabic, assert that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping them in any way, or taking part in their festivities and celebrations;

The documents promote contempt for the United States because it is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law. They condemn democracy as un-Islamic;

· The documents stress that when Muslims are in the lands of the unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines. Either they are there to acquire new knowledge and make money to be later employed in the jihad against the infidels, or they are there to proselytize the infidels until at least some convert to Islam. Any other reason for lingering among the unbelievers in their lands is illegitimate, and unless a Muslim leaves as quickly as possible, he or she is not a true Muslim and so too must be condemned. For example, a document in the collection for the “Immigrant Muslim” bears the words “Greetings from the Cultural Attache in Washington, D.C.” of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, and is published by the government of Saudi Arabia. In an authoritative religious voice, it gives detailed instructions on how to “hate” the Christian and Jew: Never greet them first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never imitate the infidel. Do not become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel;

· One insidious aspect of the Saudi propaganda examined is its aim to replace traditional and moderate interpretations of Islam with extremist Wahhabism, the officially-established religion of Saudi Arabia. In these documents, other Muslims, especially those who advocate tolerance, are condemned as infidels. The opening fatwa in one Saudi embassy-distributed book, published by the Saudi Air Force, responds to a question about a Muslim preacher in a European mosque who taught that it is not right to condemn Jews and Christians as infidels. The Saudi state cleric’s reply rebukes the Muslim cleric: “He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his.” Since, under Saudi law, “apostates” from Islam can be sentenced to death, this is an implied death threat against the tolerant Muslim imam, as well as an incitement to vigilante violence;

There's more at the link as well as in the report itself, which can be read
on PDF here.
I'm distressed to tell you that one of the mosques they looked at was in Dallas; the others were in L.A., Oakland, Houston, Washington, D.C., Chicago and NYC.
I strongly suspected that this was the case on 9/11, but to see it confirmed...I feel sick.
All I can say is that I hope that the FBI is still monitoring these places and people closely and that we decide to confront this problem in our midst SOONER rather than later after another huge attack here with laws like the Patriot Act that have some teeth in them.
We have no-one to blame but ourselves if the IslamoFacists murder us again on our soil and we've allowed them to perpetuate this "infidel" hate right in our cities!

Tip of Lady Liberty's torch to Rod Dreher at NRO's the Corner.

At 3:00 PM (ET) today, our ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte will take your questions about the Iraqi elections at the White House website:
Ask the White House
Be there or be square!

Follow the exciting events of the Iraqi vote this weekend with live/streaming blogged news at the Spirit of America site and also at
Friends of Democracy, which promises ground-level election news from the people of Iraq.
This should be quite a weekend, but don't spend it relying on the biased and agenda-sanitized "news" from the MSM!
Let bloggers be your guides--they actually get out of the Green Zone and these guys are Iraqis, not latte-sipping, quagmire-loving, Bush-hating Dimocrat hair-dos from the Big Networks!

January 27, 2005

Get a load of this exciting report in the Times of Londone from Baghdad:
Free to choose for the first time, voting fever grips Iraq

FOR decades, voting in Iraq meant taking part in a national exercise of state-enforced adulation, as 99 per cent of the electorate would dutifully turn out to tick the box beside the name Saddam Hussein.

Yesterday the contrast could not have been starker, as the campaign for Sunday’s elections picked up pace and voters were presented with a dizzying selection of dozens of candidates and parties.

Notwithstanding insurgent terror aimed at wrecking the polls, there is finally a palpable sense in Baghdad, and other Iraqi cities, that the country is entering a new era.

At the Babylon Hotel tribal sheikhs in long gowns and Arab headdress gathered to hear politicians extol the virtues of Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, who was being touted as the only man with the strength and will to solve Iraq’s numerous problems.

Across town Kurdish voters were treated to large slices of chocolate cake, folk dancing and poetry readings praising democracy and reminding them of their duty to their nation.
[How festive!
At least they're making it fun and friendly and getting the right spirit.
Love those Kurds!--Jen]

Elsewhere street urchins were discovering that democracy can pay. They have been hired en masse to put up posters and billboards on every wall space available and probably paid a little extra to tear down the slogans of rival politicians.

Some of the campaigning methods are fairly crude.

One boy said that the police had given him a stack of posters of the Prime Minister and ordered him to put them up around his neighbourhood. The Iraqi Electoral Commission has received complaints that some parties have warned voters that they would “go to hell” unless they supported their candidates.
[Gosh! I know I think that about the Dimocrats here, but...LOL--J.T.]
Others have used photographs of influential religious leaders, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in their campaign posters even though the Shia cleric is not running in the elections.

While voters may be confused by the experiment in democracy, they cannot complain about a lack of choice. There is a Communist Party, with the message of a “free country and a happy people”, a monarchist movement pledging the restoration of the Hashemite dynasty, and even a party under the banner of Abdul Karim al-Qassim, the former brigadier-general who seized power in a military coup.

Voters from the Sunni population, many of whom may boycott the vote, will find themselves well represented should they visit the polling stations. Ghazi al-Yawer, the President, Adnan Pachachi, Iraq’s elder statesman, and even the Islamic Iraq Party, which has officially pulled out of the vote, will present party lists on polling day.

Political pundits agree that three of the coalition lists will dominate Sunday’s polls. The United Iraqi Alliance, a loose collection of more than 100 parties supported by Ayatollah al-Sistani, is expected to win as much as 40 per cent of the vote, drawing on the support of the majority Shia population in central and southern Iraq and Sadr City, in Baghdad. Not only do Shias believe that they will finally win power after centuries as second-class citizens, they have also been told that voting is a religious duty.

In spite of the strong religious backing, the party has been at pains to emphasise that it supports secular politics and rejects any notion of an Iranian-style theocracy. To make the point that it is not bound to Islamic doctrine, it put up posters of a beautiful girl with long, flowing black hair that looked more like an advertisement for shampoo.
[Now this is kind of funny, too, but let's hope they mean it about preserving secular government!--Jen]

The second strongest coalition is the Kurdish Alliance, which could win up to 20 per cent of the vote. It is an amalgam of the two main movements, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Both groups want to protect the autonomy they have achieved over the past decade in northern Iraq and ensure that Kurds have a powerful voice in central government. They could well emerge as key coalition partners in any future government.
[Thanks to the protection of the joint U.S.-U.K. no-fly-zones and their own initiatives, of course, the Kurds have virtually run their own state since 1991.]

The fate of Dr Allawi’s Iraqi List is less clear. Condemned by critics as a puppet of America, and the man who authorised US forces to put down a rebellion in Najaf last year and storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, he nonetheless commands respect among many Iraqis who believe that the country needs a hard man to restore authority. The rest of the seats are likely to be shared by several smaller parties.

One thing not in doubt is that the elections will go ahead and that there will be a result sometime next month. “I think that despite everything, many Iraqis will vote on Sunday,” Fadel Alfatlwi, the head of the Iraqi Institute for Peace and an independent candidate, said. “With the occupation and all the horrible things that have happened, people dream that they will be wealthy and happy. That dream starts with the election.”

Well, Mr. Alfatlwi, we feel pretty much the same way when we vote here in America!
Dreams, HOPE, the freedom to pursue happiness and to LIVE and prosper in liberty...As President Bush said once again in his Inaugural address, this is what all human beings share and what we want for our fellow men and women and we've made that possible in Iraq and Afghanistan!
I'm so pleased and proud of my country, especially all our troops in country, when it makes things like this possible and I can only hope that some of my tax money went into it.
We can't know how wonderful an event this really is without having lived under the darkness that was Saddam, but we can try.
I'm thrilled and excited for the Iraqi people and I'm sure that this will be the first of many free and democratic elections in their great country.

January 25, 2005

Victor Davis Hanson has written an important essay explaining that it was our very use of military force to liberate and then bring democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq that has opened up our options to live in a freer and more peaceful world without the use (or maybe even the threat) of more military action.
Has Iraq Weakened Us?

I urge you to read the whole thing, but here's the particularly important concluding paragraph:

The removal of the Taliban and the election of Hamid Karzai were of historic importance. So too was the end of the Saddam Hussein mafia, and so, following the present long ordeal, will be the Iraqi elections. Without a doubt, Saddam’s Iraq was the most challenging of all the Middle East rogue regimes. The next step, reforming or changing the governments in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran demands its own flexible strategy and its own proper diplomatic and military calculus. But, contrary to the imagining of critics, the post-Iraq reformation of the Middle East will not necessarily have to be accomplished by the invasion of tens of thousands of American troops. Other remedies may well suit our national and humanitarian interests—strategies opened up, ironically, by our previous determination to use our ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as by our will to see the process through to its end, without hesitation, apology, or compromise.

Don't let it escape your attention that Hanson also stresses that military withdrawal from Iraq, such as certain Dimocrats are whining for now, would be disastrous and would "un-do" all that we and our allies have accomplished in the region and send the Middle East, along with the rest of us, into a new Dark Ages of IslamoFacist murder and tyranny.

Report: EU, Iran nuclear talks deadlocked

Talks between European powers and Iran are deadlocked on the key issue of uranium enrichment, with Iran refusing to consider scrapping such programs even while acknowledging they make no economic sense, according to a confidential document obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
[...]
The United States and several other countries fear Iran is seeking to enrich uranium not to the low level needed to generate power, but to weapons-grade uranium that forms the core of nuclear warheads.

Iran publicly insists it only seeks to make low-grade enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, but the summary of the last meeting on Jan. 17 in Geneva appears to blur that assertion. It says that Iran privately acknowledged what Washington and its allies have argued all along _ that as an oil rich country it does not need nuclear energy.
"Iran recognizes explicitly that its fuel cycle program cannot be justified on economic grounds," the document says.

This mounting crisis will continue unless and until the United States gets involved and forces the mullahs to stand down.
The Ayatollahs know that these EU powers are "paper tigers" and these talks remind me of numerous instances of cat and mouse with the EUroweenies being the ones who say "Eek!"
Not to make too light of this--Iranian nukes are a huge problem--and given their learning curve on nuke bombs and missiles, it may very possible that the Iranians will have the ability to hit these same EUropean countries with nuclear-tipped missiles in the next few months and years, if they don't already.
Let's hope that President Bush and his fine team have yet another creative and bold solution to this looming threat.
As the notice says, "Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear."
I expect the President's SOTU address to be even more interesting than his Inaugural one.

Here's the link to the President's Inaugural address, both in text format and on video:
President Sworn-In to Second Term