There are few realists who will argue that the MSM isn’t functioning as a propaganda bureau for Obama. There are a few operatives for the Left who complain with righteous indignation that media is in the “tank” for the GOP, but no one in touch with reality takes this outlandish diversion seriously. Most people are intuitive enough to recognize blatant dishonesty, especially when the subject matter requires the reader/viewer to ignore common sense to accept the premise of the deception.

Vogue is the medium, Asma al-Assad (wife of the Syria’s hereditary dictator for life) is the subject, and deception is the game, but deception for the sake of deception is little more than the musings of a pathological liar. No indeed, our propagandists are not pathological liars, they have definitive purposes to justify their lies and deceit.

To understand the nuances, we must travel back in time to the period leading up to the Islamic Spring of 2011. When Americans were asking why our president only backed certain Islamic Fundamentalists in their bids for freedom and seemed to ignore secular struggles, like those by students in Iran and Syria. It was as if he had a secret playbook and would only use the considerable leverage of America when we could help those closely aligned with our enemies, like the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is times like this that fluff rags like Vogue can gin up support for the president’s peculiar partisan support of radical Islamic Fundamentalists by portraying a murderous dictator’s wife as a beautiful reformer and as a positive influence on the bloody henchman that is her husband. Unfortunately, propaganda can often be exposed, even in innocuous articles like “A Rose In The Desert.”

“Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic – the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” writes Joan Juliet Buck, of Syria’s first lady, for her introduction of Asma in the fluff article of the type for which Vogue is well known and respected. She describes her “energetic grace” and stylish shoes. Ms Buck tends to get carried away with her flowery penmanship:

“The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls ‘active citizenship.’ ”

While writing the glowing and meaningless report, Buck never thought to do independent research. Journalism is not part of her mission, her mission is to provide covering for Obama and his exposed ass in the wind. If she must write believable prose that dresses tyranny up as a fashion statement, she will do it; otherwise, her role in the propaganda industry becomes vulnerable.

Unfortunately, Buck’s propaganda appeared on news stands as Syrians took to the streets to demonstrate against the tyranny that Buck tried so desperately to mask for her president. Unfortunately, the blood splatter from 9,000 victims of Assad’s stained the pages of Vogue and the face of Ms Buck.

First Lady Asma made no attempts to mask her priorities or her contempt for young people seeking “active citizenship,” for while her young people were being slaughtered in the streets by her husband’s goons, Asma continued to shop online, according to leaked emails, for designer shoes and jewelry from boutiques in Paris and London, but Ms Buck did mention Asma’s keen sense of fashion and when you are married to Syria’s hereditary president for life, you must look your best, especially when the blood of martyrs is flowing in the streets.

Oh the article caused many people, who, like the author, peruse magazine covers in grocery checkout lanes, to gasp in disbelief when the March 2011 Vogue magazine featured Asma. However, Vogue had the presence of mind to make the glowing propaganda that had turned sour disappear. Oh, the printed page is history, but the cyber ink is no longer in existence. There were 3,200 words of cyber ink, and now there are none. The article and its CTPA (covering the president’s ass) motive has been scrubbed from Vogue’s website. Obviously, the article will be around a long time despite the hypocrisy and deception of Vogue.

Propaganda seems to be a benign enterprise; especially, when you are promoting and supporting your “Gift from God” (Nancy Pelosi quote), but there are often unintended consequences for writing lies and deception. Ms Buck and Conde Nash, the author and owner of Vogue, have just experienced what it is like to be humiliated when your lies and deceptions are exposed.

Ms Buck is now saying it was “horrifying” to be near the Assads and her biggest regret is that Vogue asked her to cover the story. Is her regret a result of being exposed as a fraud or an honest appraisal. Since honesty and integrity are compromised from the onset of this debacle, we may safely assume Ms Buck is horrified at the thought of being exposed as a liar.

Still the world is left to ponder why President Obama allows the wholesale slaughter of secular dissidents with western style philosophies of freedom, but not dissidents who are Islamic Fundamentalists. Sadly, propaganda never uses the truth, unless it benefits the purpose of the promotion; consequently, it is hard to judge the truth from the lies. Therefore, by applying simple logic, none of the product of the MSM media can be judged as being factual or legitimate.

Epilogue: Apparently the Assads liked the article, they are the ones who have chosen to preserve it for prosperity, oh the irony of failed propaganda.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant cleric who was an American citizen, was killed in Yemen.

While I don’t disagree with the Administration over this policy, I find the whole situation ironic. It was just a few years ago liberals were crying and protesting all over the fact that the United States waterboarded a few high level terrorists.

But I guess it’s ok to just a put a bullet in their head rather than making them a widdle bit scared with water eh?

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

…While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances. Mr. Holder’s remarks about the targeted killing of United States citizens were a centerpiece of a speech describing legal principles behind the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

Like I noted, I agree with the Administration.

But the hypocrisy is just mind boggling. If Bush has been suggesting these things heads would be exploding across both coasts.

Oh, one more note from the above article:

Still, the speech contained no footnotes or specific legal citations, and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo — or in an account of its contents published in October by The New York Times based on descriptions by people who had read it.

Hmmmm, Obama and pals were all fired up to release some earlier memo’s…..oh right, that’s because they were written under Bushitler’s watch.

The Korans burned in Afghanistan were destroyed not out of malice, but out of concern. They were “mishandled” but not intentionally. Detainees had written in them, sending messages to one another. Writing in a Koran is itself considered blasphemous.

Not that anyone cares.

Riots ensued. This led to two Americans being killed soon after.

More riots.

Barack Obama apologizes, then apologizes “severely.”

Doesn’t do a lick of good.

Two more NATO officers are murdered.

Barack Obama is negotiating with our new friends the Taliban. And how did Obama’s new pals react?

Not well.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban urged Afghans Thursday to target foreign military bases and kill Westerners in retaliation for burnings of copies of the Quran at NATO’s main base in the country as a third day of violent protests began.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered across the country, some chanting “Death to America!”, Reuters witnesses and officials said. In eastern Kabul, hundreds of youths threw rocks at police, who fired shots into the air to try disperse the crowds.

“Our brave people must target the military bases of invader forces, their military convoys and their invader bases,” read an emailed Taliban statement released by the insurgency’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. “They have to kill them (Westerners), beat them and capture them to give them a lesson to never dare desecrate the holy Quran again.”

And President Hamid Karzai? Does he try to explain to his people that this was a error?

Nope. He wants those who made the mistake put on trial.

KABUL — Afghanistan wants NATO to put on public trial those who burned copies of the Quran at a NATO base, President Hamid Karzai’s office said Thursday, after a third day of bloody protests over the incident.

It said NATO had agreed to a trial, but that could not be immediately confirmed.

Karzai had earlier accused a U.S. officer of “ignorantly” burning copies of the Quran, in an incident that has deepened anti-Western sentiment in a country NATO is trying to stabilize before foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.

Demonstrations have drawn thousands of angry Afghans to the streets, chanting “Death to America!” amid violence that has killed 11 people including two U.S. service personnel.

President Obama was gratified by that response.

And Karzai just might get it. Obama told Karzai:

“The error was inadvertent; I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible,” the letter said.

Now hold on a second. Firstly, how many errors are advertent? Secondly, if this was an error and malicious, why are we not educating as opposed to “holding accountable those responsible”? Obama should be standing up for his men in uniform, not abandoning them. If it was a mistake, it was a mistake. Afghans can get over it. Where’s that peace, tolerance and understanding from Islam I am always hearing about here?

This is pathetic. Obama is getting his butt kicked. When it comes to Islam, the is no end to his obsequiousness. Yet he just runs over Catholicism.

Maybe there’s a lesson in here for Catholics. Riot, scream, kill- and you can push around President Barack Obama of the United States.

Or maybe it really is Islam that he favors over all.

Update: An Iranian military commander had this to say:

“Nothing but burning the White House can relieve the wound of us, the Muslims, caused by the Burning of Quran in the US,” he underscored.

“Their apology can be accepted only by hanging their commanders; hanging their commanders means an apology,” he reiterated.

And you might remember this as well:

Iranian authorities began to systematically seize and destroy Bibles after a Shiite cleric issued an urgent warning about the spread of Christianity.

Authorities in northwestern Iran seized 6,500 Bibles, according to the Iranian Christian news organization Mohabat News, which quotes an official as saying of the seizure that “all religions are strengthening their power to confront Islam; otherwise, what does this huge number of Bibles mean?” The agency has reported several other recent incidents of Bibles and other Christian literature being seized and sometimes publicly burned.

Mohabat reports that the government-connected cleric, Ayatollah Hadi Jahangosha, warned of “the spread of Christianity among our youth,” pointing to burgeoning satellite programming, literature, and religious articles promoting the Western tradition.

Libyan militia members man a checkpoint in the capital, Tripoli, in December

Guess no one saw this coming eh?

Armed militias in Libya are committing human rights abuses with impunity, threatening to destabilize the country and hindering its efforts to rebuild, Amnesty International said Thursday.

Militias have tortured detainees, targeted migrants and displaced entire communities in revenge attacks, according to a report the organization released a year after the start of popular uprisings that eventually ended Moammar Gadhafi’s 42-year rule.

“Hundreds of armed militias, widely hailed in Libya as heroes for their role in toppling the former regime, are largely out of control,” the report says.
Detainees at 10 facilities used by militia in central and western Libya told representatives from Amnesty International this year that they had been tortured or abused. Several detainees said they confessed to crimes they had not committed in order to stop the torture, Amnesty International said.

At least 12 detainees held by militias have died after being tortured since September, the human rights organization said, adding that authorities have not effectively investigated the torture allegations.

Well almost-no-one.

Thank you Arab Spring.

Meet the new boss…same as the old boss:

A terrified Libyan man is beaten and tortured with electric shocks by youths who appear to be former revolutionary fighters.

The images, taken from a video handed to The Mail on Sunday in a Tripoli refugee camp, will be seen as fresh evidence that those who deposed Colonel Gaddafi with the help of the West are adopting methods as brutal as the dead tyrant’s.

The film shows three men tying up the blood-spattered man before whipping him repeatedly with cables, touching him on his skin with electric wires and taunting him as he pleads for mercy.

The man being whipped with cables on the video was Saleh Barhoun Gersh, who had run a general store in Towerga – which was loyal to Gaddafi during the conflict until the town was ransacked by fighters from nearby Misrata. When the rebels arrived, Mr Gersh was so frightened he wore women’s clothes to disguise himself

The film shows three men tying up the blood-spattered man before whipping him repeatedly with cables, touching him on his skin with electric wires and taunting him as he pleads for mercy

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s a new chapter all right…a new chapter in Islamic fanaticism. A new chapter in torture and violence. A new chapter in crazy.

Reality is that everyone was happy that Gaddafi was gone, but not everyone had their head in the sand, ignoring the obvious. He was being replaced by thousands of Gaddafi’s.

Mata wrote last October:

But while westerners set aside their normal respect for rule of law and justice, gleefully rejoicing in a particularly bloody end, the arguments some of us have been making about this “new and improved” Libya looking suspiciously like (if not worse) than the old Libya, is gaining traction as more proof surfaces supporting the the Libyan rebels committed war atrocities.

This goes far beyond just Gaddafi, as mass graves with hundreds of bodes are excavated… the count approx 300 in one alone at this writing.. many with their hands bound behind their backs, executed.

Ali Tarhouni of the National Transitional Council excuses the rebels as young boys who had witnessed murders of family and friends, and praised their “self control”. Hey.. you can’t make this stuff up.

And in the end we helped bring down one dictator and helped prop up a radical Islamic regime.

Obama wants US taxpayers to cough it up for the Arab Spring:

The White House announced plans on Monday to help “Arab Spring” countries swept by revolutions with more than $800 million in economic aid, while maintaining U.S. military aid to Egypt.

In his annual budget message to Congress, President Barack Obama asked that military aid to Egypt be kept at the level of recent years — $1.3 billion — despite a crisis triggered by an Egyptian probe targeting American democracy activists.

The proposals are part of Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2013, which begins October 1. His requests need the approval of Congress, where some lawmakers want to cut overseas spending to address U.S. budget shortfalls and are particularly angry at Egypt.

Obama proposed $51.6 billion in funding for the U.S. State Department and foreign aid overall, when $8.2 billion in assistance to war zones is included. The “core budget” for the category would increase by 1.6 percent, officials said.

Most of the economic aid for the Arab Spring countries — $770 million — would go to establish a new “Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund,” the president said in his budget plan.

And what would that be nurturing? This is what they have in mind:

In a recent sermon, the General Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi’, set out his vision for his movement and for Egypt in the post-revolutionary era. Citing Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Bana, he stated that the movement has two goals. The immediate goal is to prepare the hearts and minds of its members, which involves “purifying the soul, amending behavior, and preparing the spirit, the mind and the body for a long struggle.” The second, long-term, goal is to affect “a total reform of all domains of life,” which will eventually result in establishment of an Islamic state governed according to Koranic law – first in Egypt and eventually in the entire world.

Badi’ stressed that this long-term goal can only be achieved by gradual stages: by “reforming the individual, then restructuring the family, then building society and the government, then [establishing] the rightly guided Caliphate, and [finally achieving] mastership of the world.” He also emphasized that this must be achieved through cooperation among all the forces and sectors in Egypt, and without any coercion: “All these purposes and goals… must be realized… through unity of ranks [not division], by persuasion, not coercion, and by love, not by force.” Badi’ warned against the “attempts to split up the united ranks [of the nation] and drive a wedge between young and old, men and women, Muslims and Christians, and [different religious] schools and groups,” saying that the Egyptian nation will need all of its human resources in order to meet the challenges that lie ahead. Finally, he advised his followers not to follow their emotions but to manipulate the circumstances rationally and realistically: “Do not fight the ways of the world because they are overpowering. [Instead], try to overcome them, use them, change their course, and pit some of them against others.”

Obama wants us to pay for that! And what has Obama gotten us thus far? Nothing but bad news.

Remember the bad old days of George W. Bush, when cowboy foreign policy turned the world against America?

Remember how the dulcet tones and apology tours of Mr. Hope & Change would remake the globe in our favor?

Ah, never mind. The parade of horribles is on the march, and some former allies are leading the way.

Egypt, where President Obama tossed Hosni Mubarak under the bus, is rapidly becoming an Islamist state. The arrest and pending trials of 19 Americans working for nongovernmental agencies puts an exclamation point on how far Egypt has moved away from our orbit.

The Palestinians, blowing off the warning that our aid dollars cannot be used to support a government that includes Hamas, are moving toward a unity government—one that includes Hamas.

Three years of begging with the thugs running Syria got us a slaughter of civilians we are powerless to stop.

Libya, where we helped overthrow Qaddafi, is splintering, with the militias we supported starting to fight one another for power.

Nothing has changed in Iran, except the mullahs are three years closer to a nuclear bomb.

Russia has accepted our “reset” concessions and responded by sticking its thumb in our eye from Iran to Syria.

Meanwhile, how many new allies have we made in the past three years? None.

An undated photo of Hamza Kashgari.

A columnist for the Jeddah-based Al Bilad newspaper, Hamza Kashgari, was detained Thursday by Malaysian police after fleeing to the country from Saudi Arabia to escape execution after he insulted the Prophet Muhammad:

Mr. Kashgari’s tweets incited outrage in the conservative Islamic country, where many regarded them as blasphemous, and reportedly prompted the king to call for his arrest. Blasphemy is a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

More than 13,000 people have joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari.”

According to The Daily Beast, a friend of Mr. Kashgari, who asked not to be named, accompanied him to the airport and witnessed his detention.

“We were just watching him, waiting for him to pass the immigration checkpoint. Once he submitted his passport, they asked him to step away for a few minutes,” The Daily Beast quoted the friend as saying. “And suddenly these two people without uniforms just arrested him.”

An official from Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who refused to be identified, said Mr. Kashgari would likely be repatriated to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Kashgari would be sent back “because he is on the watch list of Saudi Arabia,” the official said.

Some reports have suggested that Mr. Kashgari wanted to seek asylum abroad. But the foreign affairs official said Malaysia does not grant asylum out of respect for the laws of other countries. “It’s not our practice to grant political asylum,” the official said, adding that the ministry had contacted the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

The official said Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country, had good diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

What was it that was so horrible for him to earn the ire of puritanical Islamists and calls for execution? What was his crime? He twittered:

In one Twitter post, which has since been deleted but was published by Agence France-Presse, Mr. Kashgari wrote to the Prophet: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you. I will not pray for you.”

The Daily Beast:

Last week, just before the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth, Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old Saudi writer in Jidda, took to his Twitter feed to reflect on the occasion.

“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you,” he wrote in one tweet.

“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more,” he wrote in a second.

“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more,” he concluded in a third.

Really?! Seriously?!? That’s it!?! This constitutes an outrageous insult and blasphemy against the Prophet?

Actually, not at all surprising for the thin-skinned fanatics of the religion of perpetual rage (to clarify this for new readers: I aim this at the Salafis, Islamists, Taliban, Qutbists, and likeminded puritanical Islamic fundamentalists).

Twitter quickly flooded with responses to Kashgari, registering more than 30,000 within a day. He was accused of blasphemy, and enraged Saudis called for his death. By the time he removed the tweets and issued a long apology, backtracking on his comments and begging for forgiveness, the danger had already expanded beyond the Web. Someone posted Kashgari’s home address in a YouTube video, and, his friends say, vigilantes came looking for him at his local mosque. The Saudi information minister banned Kashgari’s local newspaper column and barred outlets across the country from publishing his work. Nasser al-Omar, an influential cleric, called for him to be tried in a Sharia court for apostasy, which is punishable by death. Other leading clerics decried Kashgari on their own, and Saudi Arabia’s council of senior scholars issued a rare and harshly worded communiqué condemning him and his tweets and demanding that he be put on trial. Yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s leading news site, SABQ, reported that the king himself had issued a warrant for Kashgari’s arrest.

With the pressure mounting, Kashgari fled to Southeast Asia earlier today. Hours later, in his first interview with the press, he told The Daily Beast that he was stunned by the turn of events but resigned to the fact that he can never return home. “It’s impossible. No way,” he said. “I’m afraid, and I don’t know where to go.” Kashgari says he is now planning to apply for asylum abroad.

Though Saudi Arabia has seen uproars over controversial newspaper articles or scholarly works before, no great calls for Sharia trials have ever sounded in the kingdom on account of a few tweets—and the furor has gone viral, snowballing into a bigger scandal than anything the country has seen in the recent past.

When he caught wind of the tweets, Fouad al-Farhan, a respected liberal and Saudi Arabia’s most influential blogger, knew Kashgari was in trouble. He quickly got in touch with the young writer and urged him to issue the apology. “Don’t try to be a hero,” he told him. “You will lose big time.”

Well….I bet this is one of those times when he is not loving Muhammad but feeling the hate.

By tweeting about the prophet, al-Farhan says, Kashgari crossed a line that even Saudi liberals won’t dare to touch. Even so, al-Farhan was surprised by the level of rage that Kashgari inspired, and how quickly it spread. In a span of just days, the issue came to dominate social media—from the onslaught of tweets under the hashtag #HamzahKashghri to vitriolic YouTube videos and a Facebook group, currently boasting nearly 8,000 members, called “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari”—and reached all the way to top clerics and the king. “There was an amazing anger. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” al-Farhan says, noting that the outrage in Saudi Arabia has exceeded even the levels seen after a Danish newspaper infamously published a cartoon of Muhammad in 2005.

“I think it’s because this is an extremely unique case. We’ve never had our own Salman Rushdie before. We’ve never had a case as extreme as this one of someone crossing the line,” al-Farhan says.

Al-Farhan has been harshly critical of Kashgari’s tweets. Even Kashgari’s friends, all of whom requested anonymity, say they’re reluctant to come to his defense—and have even felt the need to attack him themselves. “Everyone who tried to objectively deal with this case was immediately stigmatized and labeled an enemy of the prophet, who therefore should suffer the same fate Hamza is awaiting,” says one.

Adds another: “Right now we’re not worried about freedom of speech. We’re worried about the safety of our friend. And right now we can only help his safety if we condemn him, and [from there] try to rationalize what he said.”

Kashgari says he never expected such an outcry—“not even 1 percent.” But he knows the mindset of his critics well. He was raised as a religious conservative in a traditional Salafi community, becoming more liberal and “humanist,” in the words of one friend, as he grew older and embraced the Web. His writing also grew more provocative, particularly on Twitter, where he had attracted the ire of conservatives who kept a close eye on everything he wrote. Ahmed Al Omran, who keeps the popular blog Saudi Jeans, says it’s common for conservative activists to keep watch over liberal-minded social-media feeds. “They wait for the moment when they say something controversial to use it against them. Hamza is apparently one of the people they’ve been monitoring,” he says. “Most people feel strongly about the situation. But at the same time, I feel that conservatives are trying to take advantage of the situation, make an example out of him, and show their strength.”

Kashgari has since deleted his Twitter account, and he says some like-minded friends have done the same. He declined to comment on his apology and retraction but insisted his battle was still not lost. “I view my actions as part of a process toward freedom. I was demanding my right to practice the most basic human rights—freedom of expression and thought—so nothing was done in vain,” he says. “I believe I’m just a scapegoat for a larger conflict. There are a lot of people like me in Saudi Arabia who are fighting for their rights.”

If Kashgari is to somehow survive this, it’s going to take a mass media international outcry and pressure.

Perhaps, like the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” event, an “Everybody Tweet Muhammad Day” is in order to show support for Kashgari.

At last Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast Obama claimed that his policies are motivated by “God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’.” He then conflated this law of love with the golden rule, and made a blatantly dishonest claim about Islam:

I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato

In fact, Islam repeatedly and explicitly rejects the law of love, teaching instead a law of hate.

When Jesus was asked “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), he answered (via the parable of the good Samaritan) that everyone is everyone’s neighbor. Islam, in contrast, instructs Muslims to be good only to other Muslims. Koran, verse 48.29:

Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those with him are firm of heart against the unbelievers, compassionate among themselves.

Verse 3.28 says that Muslims can only pretend to befriend infidels:

Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may Guard yourselves from them.

Of course we are very familiar with this in practice, as one revealed terror-plotter after another is described by surprised neighbors and co-workers as the nicest guy.

“That” Golden Rule vs. “The” Golden Rule

I guess Obama can call the law of love “that Golden Rule” if he wants, but there actually is a corollary of the law love (implied by the law of love but not implying it) that is called THE Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). There is a hadith in Islam (a reported saying of Muhammad) that is similar in form to the Golden Rule, but opposite in substance. It only calls for goodwill towards other Muslims:

None of you will have faith till he wishes for his (Muslim) brother what he likes for himself.

Bukhari 1.2.13, translated by M. Muhsin Khan.

Preceding hadiths back up Kahn’s non-universalist translation of the Muslim version of the Golden Rule. Bukhari 1.2.10 reads:

The Prophet said, “A Muslim is the one who avoids harming Muslims with his tongue and hands…”

In Islam the principle of reciprocity is extended only between Muslims, which makes it a principle, not of reciprocity at all, but of bigotry and prejudice. Islam is the only religion of any significance that does not embrace a universal principle of reciprocity.

Islam rejects even the idea of cooperation. Koran, verse 9.28:

O ye who believe! Truly the Pagans are unclean; so let them not, after this year of theirs, approach the Sacred Mosque. And if ye fear poverty, soon will Allah enrich you, if He wills, out of His bounty, for Allah is All-knowing, All-wise.

i.e. Go broke rather than have dealings with infidels.

Not loving: the Koran’s endless instructions to subjugate and kill infidels

Verse 9.29:

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Another murderous verse (Koran 9.5) is the infamous “verse of the sword,” so central to traditional Islamic doctrine:

Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush.

Etcetera ad nauseum.

Well meaning left-wing multiculturalists convince themselves that these verses are no worse, and no more relevant, than God’s Old Testament instructions to the Jews to annihilate one people after another on their mission to conquer the promised land, but those were not universal instructions to conquer everybody. They are framed as specific permissions from God to attack a specific people at a specific place and time. In accordance with this specificity, these Bible verses have rarely if ever been used as a justification for aggressive conquest.

Not all Christians have always heeded the law of love in its properly universal Christian form, but that was no fault of the Bible, while to Christianity’s great credit its various churches have all long since dedicated themselves to understanding and following the law of love as well as flawed human beings are able, and Judaism has done the same.

Decades before Jesus declared that the commandments to love God and to Love your neighbor are all the law and the prophets, Rabbi Hillel had said the same about the golden rule:

“What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary.”

Orthodox Islam, in contrast, is aggressively carrying its law of hatred and violent aggression to every corner of the globe.

Our taqiyyist president

Obama quite obviously “don’t know much about history,” and “don’t know much about a science book,” but he does know the Koran. He studied it for years as a child and even took classes in “menjaji,” or Koran recitation in Arabic, which is the gold standard of fundamentalist Islamic education.

Hatred of the infidel is not hidden in Islam. It is the essence of it. No one can study Islam at all without comprehending this, and Obama surely does comprehend it. His claim that Islam embraces the law of love can only be a strategic lie, what in Islam is called taqiyya, and the fact that he seems to be engaging in taqiyya is pretty good evidence that Barack Hussein Obama actually is Muslim and is using the Oval Office to promote Islamic supremacism.

Obama’s claim that he is Christian, not Muslim, is not probative because Islam’s very first instruction to converts is that they should lie about their religion. Tabari 8.23 (one of the hadiths, or reported sayings of Muhammad):

en Nu’aym came to the Prophet. ‘I’ve become a Muslim, but my tribe does not know of my Islam; so command me whatever you will.’ Muhammad said, ‘Make them abandon each other if you can so that they will leave us; for war is deception.’

If Obama is Muslim, he would lie about it. Muslims who live amongst Christians are supposed to pretend that they are Christian, if by doing so they can advance the cause of Islamic conquest.

In one set of hadiths, Muhammad asks who will murder a man whose poetry Muhammad finds offensive. He then grants a volunteer (Muhammad bin Maslama) permission to lie to the victim in order to get close enough to do the deed, and the volunteer proceeds to pretend that he has turned against Muhammad (i.e. that he is no longer a Muslim). This is regarded by orthodox Islam as model behavior.

In sum, Obama is certainly lying about Islam, and hence is almost certainly an orthodox Muslim who embraces the Islamic law of hate. So what else is new? Honestly, we knew this before the 2008 election.

(As for the sheer destructiveness of the policies that Obama claims to be required by love, don’t be such a wuss: “You’ve gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.”)

“And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
- Barack Obama

For twenty years Barack Obama claimed to belong the Trinity Baptist Church where the pastor made grand exclamations:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then Obama threw both Wright and the church under the bus upon learning of the terrible things Wright had been saying for the past twenty years while Obama had been attending the church and not noticing.

Once they were elected, Bill Clinton and George Bush went to church. Bush went in belief, and Clinton most likely went for contrition. Obama, on the other hand, went to the gym following being elected.

There were more mirrors in the gym than in church.

The Obama’s did not regularly attend church through April 2010, although they did make it to Easter service. Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter as it sure seems that Obama pays no attention to anything anyone in churches says.

But it has been reported that Obama has joined a particular church- that being Our Lady of the Perpetual Blackberry.

Absent traditional services, the president has found a high tech spiritual ritual. He receives a daily devotional on his blackberry.

Obama’s avoidance of church, slips of the tongue:

“my Muslim faith…”

Click here to view the embedded video.

and his bowing to Muslim leaders

have led many to believe that Obama is a Muslim.

Nearly a quarter of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim or a follower of Islam, according to a recent Newsweek poll. The poll, conducted August 25-26, suggests that 24 percent of Americans believe he is a Muslim, compared to 42 percent of respondents who believe he is a Christian.

Ten percent believe he was “something else” and 24 percent don’t know. In April and June of 2008, a similar poll suggested that 13 percent of Americans believed that Obama is a Muslim.

And then there was this:

“the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to — or before he’s been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world — you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father — obviously Muslim Americans (are) a key part of Illinois and Chicago.”

What’s an American to believe?

With the election looming, Obama needs to shore up his Christian bonafides. He’s clinging to religion more tightly than ever.

(CNN) – President Barack Obama delivered an unusually stark Christian message at the White House Christmas tree lighting Thursday night, saying Christ’s message “lies at the heart of my Christian faith and that of millions of Americans.”

“More than 2,000 years ago, a child was born to two faithful travelers who could find rest only in a stable, among the cattle and the sheep,” Obama said at the tree lighting ceremony, a longstanding White House tradition.

“But this was not just any child,” Obama continued. “Christ’s birth made the angels rejoice and attracted shepherds and kings from afar. He was a manifestation of God’s love for us.”

Obama has been more public and specific about his religious beliefs since polls last year showed that only a minority of Americans know he is Christian. Last Easter, Obama got unusually specific about his beliefs on Christ’s resurrection at a White House prayer breakfast.

He’s become almost…..evangelical:

In his remarks at Thursday’s tree lighting, Obama said that Jesus “grew up to become a leader with a servant’s heart who taught us a message as simple as it is powerful: that we should love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves.”

“So long as the gifts and the parties are happening, it’s important for us to keep in mind the central message of this season,” he said, “and keep Christ’s words not only in our thoughts, but also in our deeds.

Peace be upon you. “

OK, I made that last sentence up.

Maybe.

With popular sovereignty and populist revolution bringing Islamofascism (or orthodox Islam) to power across the Arab world, it is important to remember that democracy is not the criterion of legitimacy. To be legitimate, government must be republican. That is, it must serve to establish a system of liberty under law. If the majority use democracy to violate the natural liberty rights of the minority, that “tyranny of the majority” is no more legitimate than the “tyranny of the minority” that is exercised by unelected dictators. Such, at least, is the founding ideology of the United States.

The framers of our Constitution were highly suspicious of democracy, which they often denigrated as “mob rule.” To them democracy was a necessary evil. If we must be ruled, let it be by ourselves. But there are many ways in which we are not supposed to be ruled at all, but are supposed to be free, according to natural law (i.e. according to what can be understood about right and wrong on the basis of moral reason, regardless of whether our capacity for moral reason comes from God or from godless nature).

Hence the enumeration of limited federal powers in Article I of our Constitution, and the enumeration of individual rights in the Bill of Rights (explicitly incomplete). Unfortunately, our Democratic Party seems to take its name literally. They have been systematically breaking down constitutional limits on majority power since the New Deal, when FDR tore down the Constitution’s system of limited federal power.

With the Democrats in control of all of our information industries (academia, news and entertainment media, all of our biggest philanthropies, all of our professional organizations), the priority of liberty is no longer widely understood. As a result, democracy is often held up as a first principle, when in our system it’s value is purely instrumental. It is valued as a way to secure liberty, and it is without value if it fails to be advantageous for that purpose.

Our loss of understanding of the priority of liberty leaves the nation standing perplexed as the Arab world falls in a single sweep to popular tyranny. Democracy—our supposed criterion of right—is leading to the most evil outcome: the empowerment of al Qaeda and Iran in country after Middle Eastern country, while America mumbles half a cheer and a lot of quiet fretting.

Daniel Pipes on the disastrous consequences of regarding democracy as principle in the Middle East

Pipes has a nice piece on our state of impotent discombulation. He does not say anything about democracy not being the correct criterion of legitimacy—very likely he does not understand this point himself—but he nicely sums up the confusion that is created when U.S. policy-makers treat democracy as principle in the Arab-Muslim world:

•Democracy pleases us but brings hostile elements to power.
•Tyranny betrays our principles but leaves pliable rulers in power.

“As interest conflicts with principle,” says Pipes, “consistency goes out the window.”

But is inconsistency really the problem? Obama has actually been perfectly consistent. Where dictators are friendly or pliable, he throws them to the wolves (demanding that Ghaddafi and Mubarak leave). Where they are hostile to the U.S. and not at all pliable, he is silent and unmoved when protesters are slaughtered en masse (Iran and Syria).

The obvious explanation is that Obama himself is not just a Muslim, but is an Islamofascist. (The evidence for both is overwhelming.) He skillfully uses the Democratic Party’s immoral priority of democracy over republicanism to advance democracy where the outcome will be anti-republican, and suppress it where republicanism is likely to prevail.

The key is Iran. A democratic Iran would almost certainly embrace liberty/republicanism, but so long as it remains in the hands of the Islamofascists, it can usurp every populist movement in the area to the Islamofascist side. Hence Obama’s determination to see that Iran gets The Bomb.

Assert republicanism over democracy

Faced with a president who is actively making use of the errant principle of democracy to undermine the national interest, it is not enough to advocate some wise balancing of democracy and interest. Instead, it is necessary to clarify and insist that republicanism, not democracy, is our principle, and that democracy should only be advanced where doing so advances the cause of liberty. Until we get regime change in Iran, that means no-where else in the Islamic world should we be pressing yet for democracy. Iran has to come first, or it will usurp every other attempt at democratic reform.

This strategy would expose Obama for what he in fact is doing, using a false principle to advance the Islamofascist cause. Pipes, in contrast, casts Obama as a bumbler, presumably well intentioned. Would that it were the case. Pipes’ suggestions for how to deal with the conflict between democracy and interest are fine as far as they go:

Aim to improve the behavior of tyrants whose lack of ideology or ambition makes them pliable. They will take the easiest road, so join together to pressure them to open up.

Always oppose Islamists, whether Al-Qaeda types as in Yemen or the suave and “moderate” ones in Tunisia. They represent the enemy. When tempted otherwise, ask yourself whether cooperation with “moderate” Nazis in the 1930s would have been a good idea.

Help the liberal, secular, and modern elements, those who in the first place stirred up the upheavals of 2011. Assist them eventually to come to power, so that they can salvage the politically sick Middle East from its predicament and move it in a democratic and free direction.

If Obama was merely a bumbler, he could learn from this advice. Since he is actually an Islamofascist, the only counter is to assert correct moral principle: that our goal is to advance liberty, and that democracy is only on the side of principle where it serves to promote liberty. Otherwise Obama can just continue to pretend to be acting on American values as he helps elevate Islamofascists to power across the Middle East.

Addendum: the New Deal actually ushered in a new (and un-ratified) Constitution

Since everything affects interstate commerce in some way, post-New-Deal Supreme Courts have held that Congress is empowered to regulate anything and everything under its power to regulate interstate commerce. Pre-New-Deal Courts had rejected that interpretation on the grounds that it violated Justice Marshall’s first principle of constitutional interpretation:

It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible unless the words require it. [5 U.S. 137, 174 (1803).]

Allowing everything to be regulated under the commerce clause did not just render one clause of the Constitution without effect, it vitiated the entire system of limited enumerated powers.

That system of limited enumerated powers stood in the way of FDR’s desire to implement a Soviet-style command economy, where the government dictates to industry the quantities that it will produce and the prices it will charge. Yes, Roosevelt did actually try to implement such a system, dictating prices and quantities to every major industry in America. That was the job of the NRA (the National Recovery Administration), created by the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA). (See FDR’s Folly, by Jim Powell, chapter 9.)

NIRA was struck down by the Supreme Court, prompting FDR’s infamous court-packing scheme and “the switch in time that saved nine.” Intimidated by a popular president during a time of national agony, the Supremes agreed to abandon the Constitution, and we have never gotten it back.

Crossposted at Error Theory

The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Sc. I
I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground.

True Love Often Overlooks Previous Indiscretions,

Conservatives traditionally resist government intrusion into the home and personal lives of American citizens: Liberals tend to welcome the guiding hand of government into every facet of modern life. This is one of the fundamental differences between Liberalism and Conservatism. During the GOP Debate, Rep. Bachman called Governor Perry on his issuance of an executive order in 2007, requiring all girls in Texas to receive Gardasil, unless a waiver was signed by her parents. Gardasil by Merck, prevents infection of the more common strains of human papilloma virus. These particular viruses, once established, can initiate genital warts, as well as cervical, anal, vulvar, and vaginal cancers. The vaccine Gardasil prevents the infection and consequently prevents the associated diseases.

Texas lawmakers blocked the EO, arguing that the vaccine was too new to be considered safe, others argued that the order preempted parental rights and that the vaccine would encourage young girls to become sexually promiscuous at an early because of a false sense of security provided by the Gardasil.

The Flirtatious and Promiscuous Scarlet Has A Difficult Time Choosing From Her Many Suitors

Michelle Bachman provided an example of personal anecdotal evidence to stress the risk of injecting the vaccine into young girls. Apparently a young mother told her that her daughter suffered mental retardation after being injected with the vaccine. Thus this is more than enough proof for Bachman to refute the scientific studies of over 20,000 women and girls who were injected with the vaccine prior to FDA approval.

The studies concluded that the vaccine was 100% effective, an almost unprecedented result. The most serious side effect was redness, soreness, and swelling of the injection site.

Gardasil may be considered one of the most extraordinary risk-benefit ratios of all pharmaceuticals.

We have government intrusion in our lives; we are now required to wear seat belts and motorcycle helmets. People accept the fact that seat belts make crashes more survivable, as do motorcycle helmets, but the helmets interfere with the image of a bad ass on a motorcycle. Therein lies part of the conflict; much of our choice of transportation is based on an image. An image that we subscribe to and emulate within our own psyche and an image that we want to cultivate in the minds of those who view us. Yet the motorcycle road racer would never consider running down the track at speeds approaching two hundred miles an hour without a helmet, but if helmets save lives in motorcycle wrecks by lessening head trauma, how many lives could be saved if drivers and passengers of cars and trucks were required to wear a helmet. Surely head trauma is a major cause of death on the highway.

Since nearly all people engage in sexual activity, all of us are exposed to the papilloma virus. A rarely discussed fact is that certain men are carriers of the infection. Although they suffer no ill-effects, if they have multiple partners, they can spread the infection to many others, bringing misery and death as an unseemly gift of their sexual prowess.

The public would be enraged, Conservatives particularly, if these carriers of this often lethal infection were identified on the internet so that potential partners could have a choice in avoiding the infection of Don Juan types intent on serial infection of vulnerable maidens. Consequently, we allow carriers to continue to spread untold misery and death among females as a cost of our Constitutional freedoms.

A woman may only have one partner in her sexual life, but if that partner is a carrier of the infection, she will more than likely suffer through one or more of the associated diseases and death as a result.

Will we Conservatives be able to face our daughters and granddaughters if they have contracted one of the dreaded diseases and tell them that it is only collateral damage and a cost of our freedom; she may die secure in the knowledge that she contracted the disease as a free woman and she may now die a free woman, she can also take solace in the fact that the man who infected her will be free to infect many more women and their other partners as well, all in the name of freedom.

We may all rest assured that scientific minds like Michelle Bachman’s can recognize a potential problem when a woman complains that her twelve year old daughter suffered mental retardation after being injected with Gardasil.

As a Conservative, I realize that strict adherence to any ideology leads to fanaticism; common sense must be injected into the mix to keep the ideas and goals viable, but interposing uninformed personal opinions and ignorance into any situation is counter productive and nearly as offensive as falsifying data under the premise of science.

Hypnos and Thanatos (God of death) carrying dead Sarpedon, while Hermes watches.