Brigitte Gabriel on FNC

Go here to see Brigitte Gabriel's interview on Fox News Channel's 'Your World w/Neil Cavuto' - re: Bush Admin sending top diplomat to meet with Iranians. Brigitte says, "We already wasted 4-5 years of empty diplomacy that didn't get us anywhere with Iran. I believe at this time Iran is going to drag the whole world into war; it's going to have a showdown with Israel... we either go to war with Iran on their terms or on our terms. The best possible scenario that we can do right now is give Israel the greenlight to take care of the Iranian facilities where they are developing nuclear bombs..."

Obama's Berlin Speech Fails the Presidential Test By KT McFarland

The cardinal rule of presidential speechmaking is knowing the audiences you're talking to - all of them. Sen. Obama failed the test in Berlin. As a former speechwriter for several presidents, cabinet officers and members of Congress, I can attest to the great care given to crafting speeches dealing with national security issues, lest they be misinterpreted by any of the several audiences listening. Sen. Obama's mistake in Berlin was to assume the only audiences for his words were the people sitting in front of him and his most Left-wing Democrat supporters. He gave them a speech they adored, because it sounded just like one an articulate and impassioned European socialist would make, only more eloquent and more artfully delivered. Berliners loved it. But Berliners don't vote in American elections.

What about audiences around the world? How do they interpret, "The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand"? Are the poorer nations of the world to understand that a President Obama would have Americans give up their hard earned wealth and share equally with them? That sounds suspiciously like socialism, if not communism – which is exactly what Americans fought the Cold War to defeat. If so, isn't Sen. Obama offering the poor nations of the world a vision, which Americans will not support?

He also pledged that "the walls between ...natives and immigrants... are the walls we must tear down." What are the implications for illegal American immigrants? Is Sen. Obama signaling a blanket amnesty and equal access to all assistance programs to all immigrants, legal or otherwise? Immigration is considered a hot button issue throughout the United States and our failure to enact immigration legislation indicative of our lack of consensus. Does Sen. Obama have the right to call for a new immigration policy without first lining up American support?

Sen. Obama called for the "The walls between religions [to] come down." How are Muslim extremists to interpret this statement? It sounds rather like what they’re calling for too, but under their vision we all convert to Islam, live under Shar'ia law and the Caliphate. [more...]

FamilySecurityMatters.org Briefings - Week of 7/28/08

Myrick's 'Wake Up America' Agenda

Back in March FamilySecurityMatters.org told you about U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick's (R-N.C.) 'Wake Up America' agenda, a ten-point strategy designed to alert and educate Americans to terrorist threats posed by radical Islamic extremists here at home. One of Myrick's goals is to "explain to people what the roadblocks are" regarding the fight against terrorism in the United States, and she feels "very strongly about the infiltration" by those who would do us harm "that's taking place in America." The entire agenda can be found here. Since then, Rep. Myrick has made impressive progress in the implementation of her agenda. [more...]

Obama's Red Mentor
By Cliff Kincaid

In a strange development, supporters of Barack Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, are openly debating the nature and depth of Davis's commitment to the Communist Party and his relationship with the Democrat candidate. The debate has gotten heated. This unusual debate, which is taking place on Obama's official website, raises the question once again as to why Obama has not been asked by the major media about this relationship. Davis was identified as a Communist Party member by various investigative committees and acknowledged his party membership in a private letter obtained by John Edgar Tidwell, who was sympathetic to Davis and edited his books. [more...]

Taquiyya in Geneva
By W. Thomas Smith, Jr.

The so-called "fizzling" of the talks in Geneva between the United States and Iran last week was not unexpected by any expert estimation. Which makes one wonder why the US, the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, China, France and Russia), and Germany were willing to sit down with the Persian state in the first place. According to the AP, Iran "stonewalled" the six world powers "on their call to freeze uranium enrichment. In response, the six gave Iran two weeks to respond to their demand, setting the stage for a new round of UN sanctions." [more...]

Family Security Matters Briefings - Week of 7/21/08

Are Voters Who Don't Support Obama Racists? The Twisted Logic of Political Correctness
By KT McFarland

New York Governor David Paterson gave one of the keynote addresses at the NAACP's 99th annual convention at Cincinnati last week. According to one newspaper account he "suggested that the defeat of Senator Obama in the presidential election would be a victory for racism in America."

Huh? Is Governor Paterson implying that anyone who votes against Barack Obama is a racist? Can't someone vote against him because they don't trust his flip-flopping on major issues? Or they worry a President Obama will join the ranks of Presidents Hoover and Carter and raise taxes during a recession? Or they think Senator Obama's plan for immediate withdrawal from Iraq would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Or they suspect his brand of "aggressive diplomacy" with Iran would result in an Iranian nuclear arsenal? Or they believe he's too inexperienced and untried to be president in these precarious times?

Is this what political correctness has brought us to? That we are now a nation of people who are assumed to cast our votes, not on the basis of a candidate's record or policies, but merely on the basis of his race and ethnicity? [more...]

Israeli Strike Highlights Rogue-State Axis
By Joel Himelfarb

While the details of Israel's September 6th airstrike inside Syria remain a closely guarded secret, this much is clear: The Israeli raid has focused plenty of attention on the longstanding military relationship between Syria and North Korea, and the connections between rogue regimes in Damascus, Pyongyang and Tehran. North Korea has long been involved in helping Syria develop and improve its Scud missile force. For example, Syria is believed to have purchased more than 100 Scud-C missiles from the DPRK regime, which may be capable of carrying chemical or biological warheads. Another missile that North Korea may have helped the Syrians develop is the Scud-D; that missile, with a range of well over 400 miles, has the capability to reach pretty much anywhere in Israel and Jordan and Lebanon, in addition to U.S. forces based in Iraq and Turkey, a NATO ally. Syrian strongman Bashar Assad's regime is widely believed to have chemical and biological weapons, including mustard gas, sarin, and anthrax. And it maintains this arsenal in part through the acquisition of dual-use equipment (items with both military and civilian uses) from North Korea. [more...]

How Britain Helps Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood: Part One of Two
By Adrian Morgan

This week, the annual British event known as "Islam Expo" came to a close. In 2006, this "celebration" of Islamic heritage and identity gathered criticism as the event - then held in Alexandra Palace in North London - took place while relatives were commemorating the first anniversary of the 7/7 attacks. Additionally, some of the proposed speakers at that 2006 event were known to hold extremist views. [more...]

Family Security Matters Briefings - Week of 7/14/08

Sudan: The Beginning of the End
By J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.

On Monday the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, presented evidence to a panel of judges asking for the issuance of an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Umar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for his role in the conflict in Darfur. While it is highly unlikely that a legal indictment from a tribunal sitting at The Hague will have much immediate effect on what the United Nations has termed "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world" - if anything, as some critics of the move have already argued, it might worsen the situation, at least in the short-term - the proceedings initiated signal the beginning of the end, not only for Bashir and his Arab-dominated Islamist regime, but for the geopolitical monstrosity that has been Sudan. [more...]

Jews, Persians at Swords' Points
By Clare M. Lopez

Iranian missile tests sent shock waves across the Middle East this past week, with the clerical regime's spokesmen leaving no doubt the demonstration was aimed squarely at Israel. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Ali Shirazi, threatened to "burn" Tel Aviv while IRGC Commander Mohammed Ali-Jafari's comments took aim directly at Israel's nuclear facilities at Dimona. Iran's Great Prophet III military exercises were touted as a reaction to Israel's own war games of June, during which over 100 Israeli Defense Force F-15's and F-16's, supported by aerial refueling tankers, demonstrated their ability to cover the distance between Israel and Iran's key uranium enrichment center at Natanz. [more...]

'Ya Doesn't Hafta Call Me Hussein'
By Dr. Harvey Kushner

Back in the 1970s, comedian Bill Saluga made it big with a zoot-suited character named Raymond J. Johnson Jr. If called Johnson, Saluga erupted, "Ahh, ya doesn't has to call me Johnson! You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, or you can call me Johnny or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me RayJay, or you can call me RJ... but ya doesn't hafta call me Johnson." Who would have thought that Saluga's tirade would characterize reaction to the mention of the middle name of the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Barack Hussein Obama? Dropping the "H" bomb when referring to him gets more than a comical rant - it gets you labeled racist. Why should this surprise anyone? The terminology Gestapo activated itself less than a week after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when the President stated that we would be waging a crusade against a new kind of evil. [more...]

Jesse Helms: The Indispensable Man Who Made President Reagan Possible
By Joel Himelfarb

Aside from Ronald Reagan, no one did more than Sen. Jesse Helms to advance the cause of freedom in the world in the past 30 years. President Reagan's contributions - staving off a communist takeover in Central America, denying trade credits and technology to the Communist Bloc, and overseeing a military buildup that ultimately won the Cold War - are well known. But the indispensable role played by the North Carolina Republican, who died July 4th at age 86, may as well be ancient history to many Americans, especially to members of the under-30 You Tube generation, many of whom were not even born when Helms began his Senate career in 1973. It's time for that to change. Helms was a giant in late 20th century American politics, and aside from Ronald Reagan, the most important figure in the modern American conservative movement. You cannot understand American politics today - particularly the sorry state of the Senate - without understanding the contributions of Jesse Helms and the enormous vacuum created by his retirement five and a half years ago. [more...]

Will Israel Strike Iran By W. Thomas Smith, Jr.

In a recent piece for the Washington Post, Israeli commentator Yossi Melman writes: "No decision to attack Iran has been made in Israel" and it is "a matter of at least one year" before any decision will be made. Melman's words seem enough to convince the editorial staffs of publications like the Post and the Nation. But sources inside the U.S. intelligence and Defense communities are telling us, there is an increasing "probability" that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) will soon strike Iranian nuclear facilities. The strikes -- if they take place -- will be far more extensive than that which occurred during the strike against Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility in 1981. The new strikes will target much more than just the nuclear sites. The extent to which America will or will not provide support will depend on multiple variables. And the strikes will not be over in a single night. [more...]

Family Security Matters Briefings - Week of 7/7/08

The Lexington Project - America's Declaration of Independence from Middle East Oil
By KT McFarland

Today our economic destiny is controlled by a few oil producing countries oceans away. They can manipulate the markets and charge whatever they want for an essential commodity that we can't live without. They use some of their excess profits to invest in terrorists and weapons and regimes, which hate us. They could bring us to our knees economically within a matter of weeks if they choose to. So what do we do? Same thing we did July 4, 1776 - declare our Independence! It's time to set America free of its addiction to foreign oil. It's time to unleash the talents of American inventors and entrepreneurs to develop clean and renewable alternatives to Middle East oil. It's time to set significant but realistic conservation goals and let the free market figure out how best to meet them. It's time to allow American industry to find domestic sources of oil and natural gas. And with gas at four bucks a gallon, and going up, we don't have a minute to waste. [more...]

Islamism and the So-called 'Muslim Voting Bloc': Shades of Theocracy
By M. Zuhdi Jasser

The modus operandi for the political empowerment of Islamists in America is in full public display during every election cycle. The sad part is few realize how central "Islamic politics" is to the driving force of transnational Islamism and its threat to American security. The incessant attempts by American Islamist groups (like the MAS, CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, ICNA to name a few) to collectivize Muslims in the body politic - from voter registrations to their ideological grievance mill - point to their goals. What better way to push forth a quasi-theocratic political agenda than to deceive the Muslim faithful into believing that their political survival as a minority in America depends upon the mixture of their faith identity with their political identity? These same Islamists spread the ideology of victimization and identity politics among any Muslims who will listen while they internally promote political Islam and Islamist statecraft within the ummah (Muslim community). They use their efforts at Muslim electoral involvement to exploit the spiritual ummah for political purposes. Most importantly, many in the mainstream media (MSM) and government turn to them to purportedly speak for the American Muslim population, even though they have no mandate or significant membership to do so. [more...]

Beyond Mugabe's Madness
By J. Peter Pham, PhD

Even by the ridiculously low procedural standards of Africa's club of presidents-for-life, last Friday's poll in Zimbabwe was a truly pathetic exercise. As Barry Bearak, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent noted Saturday in his dispatch, the voters faced a peculiar choice: "cast their ballots for President Robert Mugabe, the only candidate left in the presidential runoff, or be beaten up and perhaps killed." In a devilish twist on conventional get-out-the-vote efforts, thousands of voters across the southern African country were kidnapped at dusk by armed thugs from the ruling Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and forced to attend campaign rallies, known as pungwe ("all-night vigil") sessions, and made to chant pro-Mugabe slogans and sing the despot's praises until dawn when they were led off to vote "correctly." The recalcitrant were beaten up or worse. Even Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who won the first round in the presidential election in March only to drop out of the race less than a week before the second round after the regime-directed campaign of violence which I documented in last week's column, had to counsel his supporters, "If possible we ask you not to vote today, but if you must vote for Mr. Mugabe because of threats on your life today, then do so." [more...]

Are British Muslims Treated Like Jews in 1930s Germany?
By Adrian Morgan

On Jews, Muslims and Hitler

Yesterday - Monday July 7, 2008 - was the third anniversary of the suicide bombings on London Transport. Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsay blew themselves up on underground trains, while Hasib Hossain boarded a Number 30 bus and detonated his rucksack in Tavistock Square. Fifty-two people were killed and hundreds were injured. On British television, a documentary was broadcast on Channel 4, entitled "It Shouldn't Happen To a Muslim." This was produced by Peter Oborne, and it asserted that Muslims have become demonized in British society. In an article in the Independent newspaper, Peter Oborne argued that Islamophobia is the new "British disease." He follows the line that Muslims are being oppressed, and states that "Surveys show Muslims have the highest rate of unemployment, the poorest health, the most disability and fewest educational qualifications of any faith group in the country. This means they are vulnerable, rendering them open to ignorant and hostile commentary from mainstream figures." [more...]

Family Security Matters Briefings - Week of 6/30/08

Obama's Terror-Fighting Fantasies: Democrat Typifies the 'September 10' Mentality
By Joel Himelfarb

According to Sen. Barack Obama, there is a relatively painless solution to the terrorism problem America faces today: going back to the anti-terrorism tactics of the Clinton years. "It is my firm belief that we can track terrorists, we can crack down on threats against the United States, but we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told ABC News last week. "And you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo [Bay]. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks, for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of those folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law around the world, and given a boost to terrorist recruitment, in countries that say, 'Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims,' " Obama added, "We could have done the exact same thing, but done it in a way that was consistent with our laws." [more...]

Proud Pagan Witch Backs Obama's Poverty Bill
By Cliff Kincaid

While Sen. Barack Obama struggles to keep the public in the dark about the nature of his pro-UN Global Poverty Act, a recent "Bay Area Interfaith Leaders' Luncheon" was held to lobby for Senate passage of the bill, whose cost has been estimated at $845 billion. An actual witch who spoke at a "Pagan Pride" festival in San Francisco was one of the listed participants. The witch, known as the "Elder Donald Frew" of the "Wiccan Community," was interviewed by the Reverend Don Lewis of "Witch School International" for a "reality" show called "Magick TV" and is shown talking about his involvement in the United Nations-backed United Religions Initiative. You can see the interview here. Magick TV features a "daily spell." [more...]

An Energy Plan to Avoid $5 per Gallon Gas
By KT McFarland

Do you find yourself wondering lately WHAT HAPPENED to America? A few years ago we had won the Cold War, were the envy of the world, and the economic superpower. Now we have a collapsing dollar, a record national debt which is increasingly owned by foreigners, skyrocketing food prices, and the price of gas has doubled in just two years. We're fighting a costly and seemingly open-ended war against radical Islam.Much of the world hates us. And every opinion poll shows Americans think things will only get worse. It feels like the wheels have just come off the trolley. [more...]

Beyond Mugabe's Madness
By J.Peter Pham, PhD

Even by the ridiculously low procedural standards of Africa's club of presidents-for-life, last Friday's poll in Zimbabwe was a truly pathetic exercise. As Barry Bearak, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent noted Saturday in his dispatch, the voters faced a peculiar choice: "cast their ballots for President Robert Mugabe, the only candidate left in the presidential runoff, or be beaten up and perhaps killed." In a devilish twist on conventional get-out-the-vote efforts, thousands of voters across the southern African country were kidnapped at dusk by armed thugs from the ruling Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and forced to attend campaign rallies, known as pungwe ("all-night vigil") sessions, and made to chant pro-Mugabe slogans and sing the despot's praises until dawn when they were led off to vote "correctly." The recalcitrant were beaten up or worse. Even Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who won the first round in the presidential election in March only to drop out of the race less than a week before the second round after the regime-directed campaign of violence which I documented in last week's column, had to counsel his supporters, "If possible we ask you not to vote today, but if you must vote for Mr. Mugabe because of threats on your life today, then do so." [more...]