Friday, May 29, 2009

VIDEOS OF ANTI-JIHAD PROTEST IN LUTON, ENGLAND --IS THIS THE UK'S NEW "SHOT AT THE CONCORD BRIDGE"?





Funny how every single Euro-Muslim demonstration quickly blossoms into an orgy of arson, assault, theft and general mayhem, after which the media does its best to minimize the chaos caused by the "Asian youths"...But a rather low key affair with one (1) broken window is described as follows by the supposedly respectable Daily Mail:

Nine arrested after masked mob's march against Muslim extremists turns violent

By CLAIRE ELLICOTT Last updated at 4:29 PM on 25th May 2009

Nine people have been arrested after hundreds of anti-Islamist protesters clashed with police yesterday. The streets of Luton descended into violence after demonstrators, many hiding their faces behind balaclavas, brandished England flags and chanted at officers. A group called March for England was said to have organised the rally as a peaceful protest against Muslim extremists. They were joined by a local group United People of Luton.

Two of those arrested have been charged: one man for possessing an offensive weapon after stones were found in his pockets, and a woman was charged with breaching an anti-social behaviour order. Another man was fined £80 for a public order offence. [compare these offenses with the mass destruction that routinely attends Euro-Muslim demonstrations--J.O.]

The other six people, all men, have been bailed without charge pending further inquiries. [IOW, 9 arrests, 3 petty charges for the whole "mob"--J.O.]

During the protest, the mob, which included teenagers and women, held banners with slogans such as 'No Sharia Law in the UK' and 'Respect our Troops'. [PRETTY SCARY!!]

After looking at the 2 new vids, what do you think? I doubt as much as 1% of the crowd has "masks," but that's what the Mail focused on. Hmmmmmmmmmm

SOURCE



Cheers For Cheney

Dick Cheney clearly drives the liberal media nuts. As much as they'd like to bask in the glow of the new and glorious Obama Era, they simply cannot achieve that requisite state of nirvana with Cheney around. They spent eight long years packaging Cheney as some evil and deadly combination of Darth Vader and the Ebola virus. Now they can add to the descriptors a new title: Count Dracula. The man refuses to die.

That's why every speech he makes draws a ferocious chorus of media boos of outrage at the idea he would dare to think he has freedom to speak in the first place. CNN's Anderson Cooper was so flustered over Cheney's latest speech at the American Enterprise Institute that he asked Cheney's daughter Elizabeth: "If a Democrat was doing this in a Republican administration, wouldn't be the Republicans be saying, this is traitorous?"

This is just too rich. When President Bush was in power, he was regularly assaulted with rhetorical flame-throwers. He was a mad bomber, a dictator, a grand ayatollah, a world-class dolt, even a "smirking chimp." He was Gomer Pyle, all Three Stooges and Dan Quayle Redux. His tactics were comparable to the KGB, the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge. And his critics were painted as the essence of patriotic dissent.

But when Cheney protests the Obama administration weakening the war on terror to the point it won't even call it terror (just a "man-caused disaster"), bam! He's Benedict Arnold.

Cindy Sheehan insisted Bush killed her son in Iraq and literally suggested Team Bush was traitorous: "George and his indecent bandits traitorously had intelligence fabricated to fit their goal of invading Iraq." Everywhere she went, the media laid out the red carpet. But when Cheney defends himself, it is "traitorous"?

Cheney was blunt about waterboarding. "To call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims."

Cooper savaged Cheney's daughter with Evil Empire analogies on harsh interrogation techniques. "These are techniques which have been around. I mean, the Nazis used them. The Khmer Rouge used them. The North Koreans used them." Does Cooper really believe that America is just like those mass-murdering dictatorships? We waterboarded the architect of 9/11, but Cooper's addled outrage implies that the man with the water pitcher is as evil as the man with the wet face who sent more than 3,000 American men, women and children to their deaths.

When it comes to Bush and Cheney, activists in the media can't produce anything but distorted caricatures. Here's CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Cheney's speech: "He chose to speak in a chilling code, in which methods of torture such as waterboarding became 'enhanced interrogation,' in the way that death might be called 'enhanced sleep.'" In their fevered imaginations, waterboarding is a piece of rhetorical Saran Wrap removed from execution.

Dick Cheney knows this is all wildly exaggerated. That's why he spoke out against "feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists." He added "that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about values."

Anderson Cooper and Jeffrey Toobin: He's talking about you.

Some of those distorters of truth call themselves the "news" media, but their "values" are often at odds with the national interest. Getting the story first and getting the Pulitzer Prize seems like less of a social responsibility than keeping the country safe.

The former vice president didn't pull punches on media irresponsibility. One passage that caused a stir was his attack on the New York Times for blowing the secrecy of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. "After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn't serve the interests of our country, or the safety of our people."

The New York Times didn't find that passage "fit to print." They hailed Obama's "nuanced" approach, while denouncing Cheney's speech as implying "absolutism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Dick Cheney was right to support an aggressive war on terror then, and he's right to get out on the public stage and support an aggressive war on terror now, as the Obama administration makes crucial decisions on whether we stay aggressive, or lay our defenses down. Liberal outrage at this volume tells you he's doing something very right.

Where was he from 2001 to 2008?

SOURCE



Harold Koh Is Too Dangerous for America

Does Barack Obama really want to make Americans subject to foreign law and courts? That is the question senators should ask when they vote on his nomination of Harold Hongju Koh, former dean of the Yale Law School, to be the top lawyer at the State Department.

Koh is encumbered by a long paper trail that proves he is eager to use foreign and international law to interpret American law. He calls himself a transnationalist, which means wanting U.S. courts to "domesticate" foreign and international law -- i.e., integrate it into U.S. domestic law binding on U.S. citizens.

Koh wants to put the United States under a global legal system that would diminish our "distinctive rights culture," such as our broad speech and religion rights, due process and trial by jury. Koh complains that our First Amendment gives "protections for speech and religion ... far greater emphasis and judicial protection in America than in Europe or Asia."

Yes, our Constitution does give individuals more rights and freedom than any other country, and we Americans like those rights and freedoms. But Koh thinks we should bow to foreign rules and court decisions, and to United Nations treaties whether or not we have ratified them.

The State Department's chief lawyer is not just any lawyer. He becomes the voice of the United States on international legal issues, such as the negotiation and U.S. interpretation of treaties and U.N. pronouncements.

Importing treaties and foreign law into American law could impose lots of rulings that the American people don't want, such as approval of same-sex marriage, unlimited abortion, legalized prostitution and abolition of the death penalty. This would be a broadside assault on American sovereignty.

Foreign law is fundamentally different from American law. Whereas our Constitution sets forth limited governmental powers and recognizes broad individual rights against government (such as freedom of religion and speech), European constitutions proclaim entitlements to government services such as education, health care, maternity leave, housing and environmental protection.

We certainly don't want to import law from foreign countries that recognize polygamy, arranged marriages between cousins, so-called honor killings of women who reject such arrangements, cutting off hands as punishment for theft, stoning women to death as punishment for adultery and prohibiting the private ownership of guns.

As Judge Robert Bork has written, international law is really not law as Americans understand the term -- it is just international politics. Not passed by any legislature, international law is often written ex post facto and administered by foreign or U.N. bureaucrats pretending to be judges.

Unfortunately, Koh's views are not unique among left-wing lawyers or even among Supreme Court justices, and it's long past time for us to rise up and put an end to this un-American nonsense. The confirmation of Koh would give legal support to the Supreme Court justices who have already said they favor using foreign law.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who calls himself a "comparativist," suggested in a dissent in Knight v. Florida that it is "useful" to consider court decisions in India, Jamaica and Zimbabwe on allowable delays of execution. Zimbabwe may have much experience with executions, but we don't need its guidance about due process.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been making speeches advising lawyers that "your perspective on constitutional law should encompass the world. ... Our island or Lone Ranger mentality is beginning to change."

While still on the High Court, Sandra Day O'Connor told a Georgetown University audience that international law "is vital if judges are to faithfully discharge their duties. ... International law is a help in our search for a more peaceful world."

Even Justice Anthony Kennedy invoked foreign "authorities" when he couldn't find any language in the U.S. Constitution to justify overturning the Texas sodomy law in 2003. His decision cited non-American sources, including a committee advising the British Parliament, decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, a brief filed by former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and "other nations, too."

Kennedy emphasized the "values we share with a wider civilization." In fact, most other countries do not share American values, and we certainly do not want to share theirs.

During his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice John G. Roberts pointed out a particular danger of using foreign law. He said that reliance on foreign law wrongly "expands the discretion of the judge" and substitutes a judge's "personal preferences" for the U.S. Constitution.

Citing foreign law gives a veneer of respectability to liberals who espouse the "living Constitution" heresy and want to change it without obtaining the approval of the American people through the amendment or legislative processes.

The Senate should reject the nomination of Harold Koh. Then, the Senate should require all judicial nominees to proclaim their adherence to the U.S. Constitution as written, and their rejection of the use of foreign or international law to interpret American law.

SOURCE



Elena Bonner on Israel

Excerpt below: Elena Bonner is the widow of Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov

Throughout the years of Israel’s existence there has been war. Victorious wars, and also wars which Israel was not allowed to win. Each and every day — literally every day — there is the expectation of a terrorist act or a new war. We have seen the Oslo Peace Initiatives and the Camp-David Hand-shake and the Road-map and Land for Peace (there is not much land — from one side of Israel on a clear day you can see the other side with the naked eye).

Now, there is a new (actually, quite old) motif currently in fashion (in fact it’s an old one): “Two states for two peoples.” It sounds good. And there is no controversy in the peace-making Quartet, made up of the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia (some great peace-maker, with its Chechen war and its Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries, and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fattah) put additional demands to Israel. I will speak only of one demand: that Israel take back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and demography are needed.

According to the official UN definition, those who have fled from violence and wars are considered refugees — but not their descendants who are born in another country. At one time the Palestinian refugees and the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number — about 700,000 to 800,000. The newly-created state of Israel took in the Jews (about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by UN Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance. Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first generation, but in the second, third, and now even in the fourth generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency’s report, the number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to natural population growth. All these people have the rights of Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid.

The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, among them about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Imagine Israel then, if another five million Arabs flood into it; Arabs would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus created next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel, there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria be cleansed of Jews and turned over to Palestinians – while in Gaza today there is not a single Jew remaining.

The result is both strange and frigthening, and not because Israel will be actually destroyed – it’s a different time and different Jews. It is terrifying to see the short memory of the august peace-making Quartet, their leaders and their citizens if they let this happen. Because the plan “two states for two peoples” is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a second one with the potential to do the same thing. A Judenfrei Holy Land - the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today?

And another question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It’s a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn’t the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit trouble you in the same way as the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?

You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists, and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners’ everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House. And although he, like President Bush before him, does not know what to do with the Guantanamo prisoners, there is hope that the new Administration will come up with something.

But during the two years Shalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Shalit’s rights. The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Shalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents?

And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Shalit. Release — not exchange for 1000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes.

Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Shalit is an Israeli soldier, Shalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism.

Thirty-four years have passed since the day when I came to this city to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel Committee).

Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope that countries, their leaders, and people everywhere will recall and adopt Sakharov’s ethical credo: “In the end, the moral choice turns out to be also the most pragmatic choice.”

More HERE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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