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NEW WORLD DISORDER


Economic hope produced the American Revolution. Economic hopelessness delivered the French Revolution. Demagogues, not democrats, will hallmark the worsening economic crisis.

The potential for political turmoil is vast. Among the populated continents, only Australia has a chance of avoiding serious violence. We in the West stand at the brink of a terrible global struggle. Our response has been to fight among ourselves.

The order that diplomats adore is crumbling.

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ARAB TRANSPARENCY


Indonesia, as per Will Indonesia Save Islam?, is not the only place in the Moslem world struggling against Jihadi Islamism.  It turns out that there are hosts of folks in the Arab world who oppose the Jihadis, the Saudi Wahhabis, the Salafists who want a Dark Ages Islam.

Now they have a voice.

It's an independent Arabic website called Middle East Transparent.  There are English and French versions (click on "English" in the top banner), but many of these articles are by Westerners.  It is articles by Arabs written in Arabic that make this site so influential.

 "Metransparent" gets around 50,000 unique visitors a day, almost all from Moslems living in the Arab world.  There's nothing else like it - for it gives voice to Arab writers still residing in countries with no intellectual freedom.

These are not exiles safely pontificating from Paris coffee shops and London salons.  These are men - and women - who have the courage to speak out under their own names from within Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, and every other Arab nation.

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THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE


The European Union faces its first existential crisis. The EU worked well in the good times, when dissenting voices could be bought off, but worsening hard times threaten to knock it apart.

Half of Europe is broke (but still putting on the dog), while the other half tries to shun its spendthrift neighbors. Not long ago, the Europeans smugly lectured the US on our financial incompetence. Now it looks like their mistakes were worse.

Greed is universal. But it's especially dangerous when masked by self-righteousness. European financial managers and investors were at least as greedy as our worst Wall Street wizards. They just fell for different -- and even bigger, even worse -- scams.

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WILL INDONESIA SAVE ISLAM?


There are 245 million folks in Indonesia.  88% of them, or 215 million, are Moslem, comprising the largest Moslem population on earth.  Just 8% of Indonesians are Christian, 2% are Hindu, and only 1% are Buddhist.

Yet the most famous landmark of Indonesia - the archaeological wonder of Borobudur - is Buddhist.  In fact, it is the world's largest Buddhist monument.  Indonesia's most famous tourist destination and most famous culture is the island of Bali.  The people of Bali are not Moslem.  They are Hindu.

Indonesia used to be Buddhist and Hindu, and is a long ways from Arabia.  How did this place become Moslem?

Answering that question may lead us to a surprising conclusion:

Our focus in the War on Islamic Terrorism has been the Middle East, then secondarily with fears that Europe is becoming Eurabia.  But it may well turn out that this war will be won or lost in Indonesia.

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YOU KNOW YOU’RE A SYRIAN WHEN…


Having spent the last two months in Damascus, Syria, I have determined through personal experience that you know you're a Syrian when...

...You have a Malcolm X sign on your rear view mirror and think Adolf Hitler was a great man for killing Jews.

...You Love Hezbollah but hate the Lebanese.

...You think all women should be virgins but you want to screw everything that walks.

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THE SUBMISSION OF OBAMA TO ISLAM


How appropriate that Barack Hussein Obama featured Aretha Franklin in his inaugural festivities since her signature song is "Respect."  Literally from the moment she finished belting out "My Country Tis of Thee" on January 20, the new President has been conveying his "respect" the Moslem world.  Unfortunately, the way he practices it seems to be spelled S.U.B.M.I.S.S.I.O.N.

Several observers have noted in recent days that Mr. Obama's outreach to the Moslem world is not only defensive and apologetic.  It explicitly embraces a narrative that is factually erroneous and deprecating to his own country.

What is really worrying is that Mr. Obama's actions and rhetoric are almost certainly being perceived by his target audience as evidence not of respect but of subservience-- precisely what Islam (the word "islam" literally means "submission" in Arabic) requires of all of us, Moslems and non-Moslems, alike.  

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NORTH KOREA: THE NEXT CHRISTIAN NATION IN ASIA


2008.  That's the number that dooms North Korea's lunatic tyrant Kim Jong-il. 

If there's one thing the Chicoms in Beijing are not going to let anyone screw up, it's their coming-out party to the world, the 2008 Olympics.  They are not about to tolerate some nuclear fruitcake causing a million-death war on their doorstep.  That's why they are studying Romanian history, circa 1989.

That was the year that communist generals in the Securitatae (secret police) staged a putsch and seized power after executing Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena.  Their death by machine-gun was videotaped.  Baby Kim has a copy, and is requiring all his subordinates to view it.  It's to teach them a lesson, but you'd think that it would give them ideas instead.

It's a good bet that the Chicoms will soon be instigating a Romanian-type overthrow of Baby Kim and installing a new regime in Pyongyang.  It won't be a pro-West democracy promising disarmament and union with South Korea - but it will be far less belligerent and far more peaceful.

Such a regime will be a colony of China and will resist demands for genuine democratic elections.  What it won't be able to resist is its being rapidly Christianized.

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ELECTORAL VICTORY IN IRAQ


I don't suppose this  will get much coverage in the States as the news is so good.  No, the news is unbelievable.  

Something didn't happen in Al  Anbar Province, Iraq today, Saturday January 31.

Once the most violent and most dangerous places on earth, no suicide vest bomber detonated killing dozens of voters.  

No suicide truck bomber drove into a polling place collapsing the  building and killing and injuring over 100.

No Marine was in a firefight engaging an Al Qaeda terrorist trying to disrupt democracy.

What did happen was Anbar Sunnis  came out in their tens of thousands to vote in the first free election of their lives.
 

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THE DEATH OF THE ARGUMENT FOR MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING


One year ago, in September 2005, you learned what is actually causing whatever global warming the earth is experiencing. 

Solar Warming explained the specific mechanism involved:  the sun's increased magnetic activity deflecting the rain of cosmic rays upon the atmosphere, resulting in fewer clouds reflecting sunlight back into space and thus a warmer earth.

This month, scientists at the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen released the results of very well-designed and controlled experiments demonstrating the chemical mechanism of cosmic ray action upon cloud formation. 

Folks, this a big deal.  These are the results of a controlled experiment by serious scientists, not some GIGO (garbage-in/garbage-out) computer climate modeling.  They experimentally demonstrate how the cause of global warming or "climate change" is the sun, not us.

The argument for man-made global warming is dead.

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THE BLANK SCREEN OF A DECEPTIVE DICTATOR


Barack Hussein Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he said of himself in "The Audacity of Hope," "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."

It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was crafted shrewdly to perpetuate such confusion.

Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public.

And it is working. Many of my fellow conservative commentators are embarrassingly eager to search Obama's words, groveling for hopeful signs that he is not a radical intent on changing the face and nature of our republic.

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IMPLODING IRAN


[This is the text of a speech I am giving on Friday, October 13 to an organization composed of prominent conservative leaders throughout the country called the Council for National Policy. --JW]
 
How many of you here have been members of CNP since the 1980s and remember the critical role the CNP played in generating support for anti-Soviet freedom fighters?  Please raise your hand.

Keep them up, thanks - now, the rest of you notice who these folks are.  Remember them, and after this panel, go up to them and ask them what it was like 20 years ago when the thought of collapsing the Soviet Union seemed completely off the wall. 

Yet it was the incessant, unrelenting, demand of thousands, millions, of conservatives who belonged to organizations led by members of the Council for National Policy, that enabled the Reagan Administration to support and supply with money, training, and equipment, anti-Soviet freedom fighters.  And that turned out to be the key to winning the Cold War.

I want to talk to you today about how you, as current members of CNP, can play the same role in winning the war on Islamofascist terrorism by ridding the world of its principal sponsor, the Mullahcracy ruling Iran.

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PROOF THAT THE TREASURY SECRETARY IS A TAX CHEAT

 
Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) is Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for writing federal tax legislation.  Last September, he admitted he did not pay the required income taxes on some of his private income (Caribbean rental properties, etc.).

Although Republicans demanded he resign his chairmanship, Speaker Nancy Pelosi firmly supported Rangel.

Yesterday (1/27), Timothy Geithner was sworn in as Treasury Secretary, despite the fact did not pay $34,023 in self-employment taxes from 2001 to 2004 when he worked at the International Monetary Fund.

Geithner said that his failure to pay self-employment tax was due to mistakes made by his individual tax return preparation software, which he identified in his testimony during his Senate confirmation hearing as Turbo Tax.

This is a provable lie.  And it gives the Republicans a golden opportunity:  to introduce the "Rangel-Geithner Equal Treatment Under The Tax Law Bill."

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SMUGGLERS’ PARADISE


This is a story about 21st century Persian smugglers and 19th century British soldiers driven crazy by literally going "around the bend."  It takes place in one of the world's most inhospitable and strategically critical places in the world - the Strait of Hormuz.

This is where the sharp tip of Arabia, known as the Musandam Point, sticks into the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Indian Ocean.  The Strait of Hormuz is only 30 miles wide from Musandam Point to the coast of Iran, and through it passes a substantial fraction of the world's crude oil, pumped out of the Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, Iranian, and Emirati oil fields, and into giant supertankers which snake through the Strait in continuous succession.

That's where I am right now, writing this overlooking the Strait of Hormuz.  The sun is setting, and I can see it lighting up the cliffs of Iran. 

There's a direct flight from Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.  From there I drove through the other Emirates like Sharjah and Umm al Qawain, then up into the wasteland of Musandam to here.

I had come to see a Persian smuggling operation running contraband across the Strait by speedboat into Iran.  But first, let's talk about those crazy Brits...

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PUTIN’S DISASTROUS GAS GAMBLE


To little notice in America, a drama is being played out in Eastern Europe that future historians may mark as the beginning of the end of Russia's neo-imperialist ambitions under Vladimir Putin.  The economic house of cards he has built is collapsing as the tyrant himself heads for the dustbin of history.

Turning off the natural gas spigot in the middle of a harsh winter to much of Eastern Europe that is completely dependent on it and has few alternative sources to heat its schools and hospitals is the kind of  imperial hubris that often drives dictators past the tipping point and ultimately to their downfall.

This, as Moscow's army of European lobbyists led by paid Gazprom lapdog and former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, sing the praises of ever greater European dependence on Russian energy.

Yet, Europe's cowardice notwithstanding, it is difficult for anybody with even a basic knowledge of the facts not to see that this time Putin has miscalculated badly and is playing a losing hand from an increasingly untenable position.

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TORTURED LOGIC AND TORTURING TERRORISTS


When House Majority Leader John Boehner accused Democrats last week of wanting to protect the "rights" of terrorists more than the lives of Americans, a number of Republican Senators winced - because they knew Boehner's accusation also applied to three of their colleagues:  John Warner, Lindsay Graham, and most especially, John McCain.

A lot of folks who have had personal contact with McCain think a part of him is mentally unhinged.  It scares them to death that he might be president.  The upside of the debacle he has caused opposing President Bush's proposed legislation on terrorist interrogation is that there are enough voters now who see his mental instability to block his White House aspirations.

Yet if McCain is around the mental bend, even more so is the Supreme Court - or at least the five Justices (Breyer, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg) whose pro-terrorist ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (June 29, 2006) is the cause of this mess.

For those interested in the tortured logic of the Supreme Court, I am appending a discussion of it at the end of this article.

What we're going to talk now about is torture, and how it isn't necessary.  For there is a way, using a knowledge of brain chemistry, to make a terrorist quickly and easily sing like a canary - without any torture at all.

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