THE FIRST MUSLIM HEAD OF STATE MAY BE IN AMERICA--NOT EUROPE
(13/02/08 Filed in: Culture/ Death of the West).

From Mr Thomas Landon via Brussels Journal: "If I had been asked two months ago "Which Western country runs the greatest risk of electing a Muslim-born leader and how soon do you think this is going to happen?" I would have bet on the Netherlands somewhere in the next decade. Today, it looks as if the first Western country with a Muslim-born leader might very well be the United States next year, when President Barack Hussein Obama enters the Oval Office."

"Perhaps Mr. Obama strikes the Europeans as the "most
European candidate" because he was born a Muslim. If America
can have a Muslim-born leader, why not Europe, many
Europeans will ask. They know that the latter is "unavoidabl
e" (to use the archbishop of Canterbury's words). In America
, Mr. Obama's Muslim family background (unlike Mr. Romney's
Mormonism) is a non-issue because he attends a Christian
church. Nevertheless, being born from a Muslim father,
raised by a Muslim stepfather, having been enrolled at
school (in Indonesia) as a Muslim and having attended Friday
prayers at the local mosque as a young boy, he cannot be
seen by Muslims as anything but a Muslim, especially because
he has never explicitly rejected the faith of his fathers
nor said anything negative about it.

"The day Barack Hussein Obama comes to the White House many
Muslims, also in Europe, will see it as a vindication of
recent announcements by radical Islamists that the green
flag of Allah will soon fly over the White House, Buckingham
Palace, the Vatican and the other "fortresses of the West."

"Since perception is often more powerful than reality the
importance of an Obama presidency cannot be underestimated.
The Amer ican political establishment, including the
Republicans, are very naive about the Islamic threat to
Europe. Rather than working against the Islamization of
Europe American policies tend to hasten the process. America
is an ally of Saudi Arabia - a dictatorship which funds the
most extremist Islamic organizations. America pushes for the
independence of Kosovo, which will establish an Islamist
regime in the heart of Europe. America wants the European
Union to accept Turkey as a member state. If Mr. Obama
proceeds with these policies (as he is likely to do) and
withdraws from Iraq, thereby indicating that America has
lost the war, the radical Islamists in Europe will become
even more arrogant than they are today.

"Obviously, America is not to blame for Europe's present
predicament. The demographic and religious vacuum in Europe,
which is being filled by Muslim immigrants and by Islam, is
entirely of Europe's own making. The Europeans - and they
alone, not the Americans and not even the Muslims, who were
invited to come to Europe - are to blame for the
Islamization of the old continent. The irony, however, is
that America does not seem to draw lessons from Europe's
predicament.

"The specter of Islam is haunting the world. The Europeans,
who lack America's fighting spirit, are trying to appease
their enemy and are hoping for "soft Islamization." America,
sadly, does not even seem to have noticed that there is a
problem. It called Mr. Romney to account for his Mormonism
but has yet to ask Mr. Obama for his views on Islam."

Obama's Tax Deal
A nice-sounding bill called the "Global Poverty Act,"
sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator
Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could
result in the imposition of a global tax on the United
States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal
religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending
subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.   Senator
Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or
Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. But on Thursday,
February 14, he is trying to rush Obama's "Global Poverty
Act" (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would
commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national
product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal
13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S.
already spends.
http://newswithviews.com/Kincaid/cliff207.htm   Baz

Obama, Che, and JFK
By Jeff Jacoby
In 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered in Texas by a fervent
admirer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In 2008, a large
Cuban flag emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara,
Castro's brutal henchman, is prominently displayed in a
Barack Obama campaign volunteer office in Houston.  Obama
has been widely compared to JFK, most notably by the late
president's brother and daughter. President Kennedy, a
stalwart anticommunist, despised Castro and his gang of
totalitarian thugs. But when word broke last week that
Obama's supporters in Houston work under a banner glorifying
Che, the campaign's reaction was to brush it off as an issue
involving only volunteers, not the official campaign. After
two days of controversy, the campaign issued a statement
calling the flag "inappropriate" and saying its display
"does not reflect Senator Obama's views." Would JFK have
reacted so mildly?  In December 1962, Kennedy offered a
blunt summary of the Castro/Che record to that date. "The
Cuban people were promised by the revolution political
liberty, social justice, intellectual freedom, land for the
campesinos, and an end to economic exploitation," he said.
"They have received a police state, the elimination of the
dignity of land ownership, the destruction of free speech
and a free press, and the complete subjugation of individual
human welfare." Eleven months later, in a speech intended
for delivery on the day he was assassinated, Kennedy
regretted that Castro's "Communist foothold" in Latin
America had "not yet been eliminated."  Were he alive today,
it's hard to imagine JFK feeling anything but contempt for
those who extol a dictatorship that has been crushing
freedom and human beings for nearly 50 years. And it would
surely pain him that so many of the cheerleaders are members
of his own political party.  The lionizing of Che, a
sociopath who relished killing and acclaimed "the pedagogy
of the firing squad," is not just "inappropriate." It is
vile. No American in his right mind would be caught dead
wearing a David Duke T-shirt or displaying a poster of Pol
Pot. A celebrity who was spotted with a swastika-festooned
cap or an actress who revealed that she had gotten a tattoo
depicting Timothy McVeigh would inspire only repugnance. No
presidential campaign would need more than 30 seconds to
sever its ties to anyone, paid staffer or volunteer, whose
office was adorned with a Ku Klux Klan banner. Yet Che's
likeness, which ought to be as loathed as any of those, is
instead a trendy bestseller and a cult favorite.  A few
years ago the New York Public Library gift shop sold Che
wristwatches. These it described as "featuring the classic
romantic image of Che Guevara, around which the word
'revolution' revolves." But Che's idea of revolution was
anything but romantic. What he cherished was hatred and
murder: "Hatred as an element of struggle," he wrote in 1967
, "unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human
being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an
effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing
machine." It was a sentiment he expressed repeatedly - and
lived up to.  With Che at his side, Castro toppled Fulgencio
Batista in January 1959. "As soon as they had seized power,"
notes *The Black Book of Communism*, a magisterial survey of
communist terror and repression in the 20th century, "they
began to conduct mass executions inside the two main prisons
, La Cabana and Santa Clara." As chief prosecutor of the new
regime, Che oversaw the bloodbath, ordering hundreds of
executions in the first months of 1959. Those he killed,
*The Black Book* records, included "former comrades-in-arms
who refused to abandon their democratic beliefs."  Like
totalitarians of every stripe, Che didn't scruple at the
death of innocents. "Quit the dallying!" he ordered Jose
Vilasuso, a conscientious government lawyer who was seeking
evidence against several prisoners. "Your job is a very
simple one. Judicial evidence is an archaic and secondary
bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! We execute from
revolutionary conviction."  Time magazine once called Che
the "brain" of the Cuban Revolution, and saluted his "icy
calculation, vast competence, high intelligence, and . . .
perceptive sense of humor." A better description comes from
journalist Humberto Fontova, who observes in *Exposing The
Real Che Guevara* that Che was for Castro what Heinrich
Himmler was for Hitler and Lavrenty Beria for Stalin - "the
snarling enforcer." Fittingly, a massive drawing of Che
adorns the headquarters of Cuba's secret police in Havana.
That this sadistic thug's face also adorns the office of a
US presidential candidate's supporters is appalling and
disgraceful. That the candidate couldn't bring himself to
say so is even worse.