Although I am not an observant Jew and may have little in common with such well-known online commentators as Dennis Prager and Shmuley Boteach, I am nevertheless strongly pro-Zionist, recognize Israel as the legitimate and historic Jewish homeland built on solid moral foundations, and am always aware that, should the antisemitic fever in the world ever rise to epidemic proportions, Israel through the Law of Return represents the only asylum available to those like myself. As historian Robert Wistrich writes, “the current rise [of antisemitism] is a herald of a catastrophe already in the making.” For Jews not to pay heed to what is erupting all around them, and even to abet it by one or another form of complicity, is as tragic as it is imbecilic.

I am fully persuaded that Israel must survive as a sovereign Jewish nation regardless of the world’s growing animosity, which expresses itself in any number of different ways: the demand that Israel make endless concessions to the Palestinians, that it must not respond effectively to rocket attacks from Gaza, that it shrink its borders to indefensible limits, that it allow itself to be dissolved in a so-called “binational state,” and that it remain dormant before the threat of a nuclear Iran. And then, of course, there are the manifold libels and flagrant canards to which it is constantly exposed: apartheid policies, organ harvesting, gratuitous violence, the targeting of civilians, and all the rest of the fictive and absurd vilifications hurled its way.

My concern, however, is not only with antisemites and anti-Zionists. It is also with diaspora Jews living comfortably assimilated lives in North America, who unfailingly cast their ballots for the so-called “progressive” parties that tend to put the interests of Israel’s enemies over Israel’s well-being. In Canada, for example, the vast majority of Jews are captive to the Liberal Party which regularly voted pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian on UN resolutions, regarded itself as an “honest broker” in the region which in practice meant favoring the anti-Israeli side of the Middle East controversy, and also depended—and still depends—heavily on the large Muslim voting bloc in the province of Ontario to promote electoral success. Although the Conservatives, who are currently in power, have reversed all these Liberal trends, they still cannot rely on the Jewish vote.

The same counter-intuitive situation prevails in the U.S., where nearly 80% of the Jewish community gathers dust in the pockets of the Democrats and indeed voted enthusiastically for Barack Obama. The main reason for this electoral deformity is that Jews consider themselves “liberal” in their politics, that is, as pro-welfare, pro-abortion on demand, pro-big government, and pro all the other planks that constitute the Democratic platform. Some have also distanced themselves both from their cultural and religious heritage and from the existential concerns of the Jewish state.

Yet many continue to identify with Israel’s needs and problems and are involved in various programs and organizations that contribute to the defense, solvency and social improvement of the beleaguered state. At the same time, they eschew the Republican Party which, like the Conservatives in Canada, stands firmly behind Israel. Most Jews would never vote for someone like Mike Huckabee, who has fully embraced the Israeli position in the ongoing conflict and seen through the Palestinian propaganda smokescreen, and are openly contemptuous of Sarah Palin, who installed an Israeli flag in her office and has come out in staunch support of the country. No matter. The ordinary run of American Jews remains unmoved. Fifty four congressmen have recently signed a letter taking issue with Israel’s “current blockade” of the terrorist statelet in Gaza. That all fifty-four were Democrats should come as no surprise. Nor is it in any way remarkable that the letter was backed by the Jewish advocacy group, J Street.

An exemplary case in point is furnished by Alan Dershowitz, who has written book after book and article after article defending Israel against its enemies, but still throws in his lot with Obama and the Democrats, unwilling to realize that perhaps Israel’s most determined adversary in the world today, after Iran’s Ahmadinejad, is Barack Obama himself. It is as if Dershowitz, like the majority of his nominal co-religionists in the U.S., has simply refused to acknowledge the personal history and political behavior of the American president and his loyal minions—some of whom happen to be Jewish, put in place to protect an anti-Israeli president, as Moshe Dann suggests, “from charges of anti-Semitism.” But some American Jews may be capable of learning, apparently. Marty Peretz, editor in chief of The New Republic, who once campaigned for Barack Obama, is now singing a very different tune with a different set of lyrics—“Obama’s real rage against Israel.” But this is still the exception.

Anyone who has followed the president’s social and political itinerary, his background, his contacts, his actions, should have instantly understood he would be, at best, an unreliable ally to Israel, at worst, a clever and unscrupulous antagonist. As I’ve had occasion to point out before, as have many others, this is the man who spent twenty years’ worth of Sundays sitting beneath pastor Jeremiah Wright’s antisemitic pulpit. This is the man who chummed around with former PLO spokesman and rabid anti-Zionist Rashid Khalidi. The rambling, unctuous and insincere drivel of his unteleprompted speech to the residents of rocket-battered Sderot should have given his game away even before he had finished orating.

Once in power he appointed manifestly anti-Israeli figures like Susan Rice and Samantha Power to positions of official eminence. One of his advisers was the old antisemite Zbigniew Brzezinski, the same who recommended that the American air force should engage Israeli fighter jets should Israel have the temerity to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. It was the President’s administration that reneged on the settlement consensus worked out between Israel and the former American administration. Obama’s shallow and ignorant Cairo address equated the Holocaust with Palestinian suffering and tellingly ignored the historical and continued presence of the Jewish people in the Holy Land. Though he has visited a slew of Muslim states, he studiously avoided Israel during his many presidential junkets, sending his subalterns instead.

Then we had his sly choreographing of meetings with Jewish organizations to exclude critics of his policies, his awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Israel-hater and secretary-general of the infamous Durban I conference on racism Mary Robinson, his backing of the Saudi peace plan (which envisages Israel’s retreat to indefensible borders, the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens from their homes, and the “return” of millions of manufactured Arab “refugees” to Israeli territory, thus putting paid to the Jewish state), and more recently his attempt to humiliate Israel by legislating down to it, requiring it to make ever more concessions to a Palestinian negotiating team that refuses to negotiate and forbidding Israel from building in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem—which just happens to be its capital. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Obama deliberately provoked a crisis to weaken Israel’s bargaining position and bring it into even greater disrepute among the wider public. Yossi Klein Halevi, writing in The New Republic, has no doubt that “Obama’s one-sided public pressure against Israel could intensify the atmosphere of ‘open season’ against Israel internationally” and that Obama is intent on launching a “political intifada” that could well turn into a Palestinian third intifada. Obama’s malice toward Israel is quite frankly undeniable.

Anyone who says that this president is a friend to Israel is lying to himself or is living in some alternate universe. Anyone who cannot see what National Post columnist George Jonas calls the “anti-Semitism, and Arabist agenda that emanates from the Obama administration” should be treated for cataracts. As peremptory and unnuanced as this may sound, any Jew who approves of Obama or continues to invest his fealty in the Democratic Party works insidiously against the well-being and even the survival of the Jewish state as we know it. According to recent polls, 96% of Jewish Israelis have recognized this indubitable fact, yet Canadian and American Jews foolishly persist in massively endorsing the very political parties that, whether subtly or overtly, would diminish Israel’s ability to defend itself against its sworn aggressors.

Of course, Jews have a long history of turning against their own, from Korah, Dathan and Abiram who revolted against Moses to those who helped further the Medieval blood libels to the Yevsektsiya (the Jewish section of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union) to the despicable Richard Goldstone today—and the uncountable numbers in between. This is not—repeat, not—to suggest that the ordinary run of American and Canadian Jews are quislings and delators of the same perfidious stamp; nevertheless, there is something almost inexplicable in their political loyalties that calls their collective acuity into question. According to the old cliché, Jews are supposed to be smart, but sometimes the facts seem to argue otherwise.

In any case, as we survey the North American diaspora, there can be little question that something is seriously amiss in the Jewish community.

The New York chapter of mighty, mighty ACORN is now mighty, mighty NY Communities for Change.  It doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?

As the national ACORN organization attempts to scam Americans by rebranding scandal-plagued local chapters, what will become of the New York educational institutions that share the ACORN name?

Will ACORN Community High School and ACORN High School for Social Justice continue to bear the name of a group associated with corruption, dishonesty, and fraud?  Or will students and parents step up and demand more dignified names for these schools?

Perhaps I shouldn’t give them any ideas. The ACORN High School for Social Justice might be preferable to the Cloward-Piven Institute of Community Organizing or the Che Guevara Revolutionary Arts Academy.

—–

Follow Jenn Q. Public on Twitter and read more of her work at JennQPublic.com.

The Iranian regime is morally bankrupt. But it was always morally bankrupt, from its earlier days. What obscured this was the fact that the "advanced" people in Iran, those who for some reason are called "on the left, " had early on decided that the Shah's regime was so corrupt, and its enforcers, the Savak, so brutal, that it had to go. They did not think that they needed to worry about those Muslim reactionaries around the Ayatollah Khomeini. Who could, in advanced Tehran, possibly take such people seriously? Who could possibly believe that such people as Khomeini might triumph? Before he came to power and consolidated his iron grip, Khomeini spoke soothingly about "democracy" and invoked, too, other of the magic phrases that so often cloud the minds of those who hear them.

Over the past five years, as the Americans have been caught in Tarbaby Iraq, and now as they are caught, in a different way, with a slightly lesser Tarbaby Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been allowed to march, steadily, without any interruption except, just possibly, a few months of prudently waiting, right after the invasion of Iraq, to see if the Americans were so much on the warpath that this time they would not stop at the Treaty of Erzrum line, but cross it, bringing the fight beyond Saddam Hussein right to the Islamic Republic itself. It never happened, and instead of Iraq ending in a Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations, as some in the Bush Administration naively assumed could or would happen, the Administration found American forces stuck there, and also doing what Ahmad Chalabi and other Shi'a exiles always hoped they would do: assuring that power in Iraq was transferred, and forever, from Sunni Arabs to Shi'a Arabs, never to be relinquished. That meant not that Iran had necessarily become the new power in Iraq, for many of the Iraqi Shi'a are not friendly to Iran, and the sense of being Arab, as opposed to being Persian, is sufficiently powerful for some to overcome any pan-Shi'ist appeal. And so far the appeal has not been made, as the Islamic Republic of Iran still tries to overcome Sunni Arab suspicions, in order to present itself as the plausible leader of the Muslims against the Infidels.

And now the Americans, even as they withdraw, slowly and stickily, from Iraq, have transferred their main military effort to Afghanistan, on the other side of Iran. But with American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, that does not make the Americans feel more confident of their ability to take on Iran's nuclear project, but less. For they are fearful -- wrongly, I think - of what the Iranians might do to the American troops on either side of Iran. The reason not to be fearful is that in Iraq, the Iranians are not quite as powerful or attractive as some imagine. Ayatollah Sistani is not impressed with them. The Shi'a who are said to be "pro-Iranian" are not really impressed with the Ahmadinejad regime, but are more worried about a possible attempt by Sunni Arabs in Iraq, with the help of Sunnis outside Iraq, to re-take power. Yet this is most implausible, given that the Sunni Arabs constitute less than 20% of the population, and the Sunni population of Baghdad has gone way down, thanks to the Shi'a efforts of the last seven years. And the Sunni heartland, in Anbar and Diyala Provinces, is an area devoid of oil, that is, devoid of money to finance a revanchist movement. In the north, the Kurds, though mostly Sunni, are on the alert to resist any attempts by Sunni Arabs, the ones moved in by Saddam Hussein as part of his arabization of Kurdistan, to retake power in Mosul or Kirkuk.

The Sunni Arabs can make life very unpleasant and uncertain for both the Kurds and the Shi'a Arabs in Iraq, but they cannot again take control of the country. The best they can hope for is the election of a Shi'a Arab - Iyad Allawi, for example - who is not so programmatically anti-Ba'ath. Allawi, with a Shi'a background, is also secular, which is to say that he is unenthusiastic about an Iraq run by those who are too devout in their Islam. Allawi himself was a Ba'ath Party member before he left Iraq in disgust for London, and it was in London that agents of Saddam Hussein tried to kill him. The prospect of Allawi in power gives the Sunnis hope of what they might consider a semi-fair deal, even if they do not regain their old hold on power.

Now the Iraq and Afghanistan ventures of the Americans constitute a squandering of resources - men, money, materiel, morale. And those ventures represent a failure of American foreign policy, or rather a failure of those in power to adequately study the texts and tenets of Islam. For if those in power had studied those texts and tenets, instead of allowing themselves to be unduly impressed by the word "religion" affixed to Islam (as Bush was so impressed), or if they did not allow themselves to be impressed by plausible, smiling, carefully apologetic representatives of Islam in the form of some Muslim advisers, including the Bright Young Reformers who have stood in the way, for many in Washington, of a sober grasping of the ideology of Islam, then another strategy would have been followed. It is interesting that Barack Obama clearly wants out of Iraq and, I suspect, out of Afghanistan too. But he will not be able to do the latter, for obvious political reasons, unless he shows that the reason he wants out of Afghanistan is not because he is soft on Islam (though he has given various signs of that, and the worst was that unbelievable speech he delivered in Cairo, a speech in which almost every phrase about Islam could be held up for inspection, analysis, and ridicule) but because he wishes to undertake an entirely new strategy, one based on a recognition that the presence of Infidels merely helps to unite Muslims, or at least to make less likely that internal conflicts will develop. And it is in the interests of the world's Infidels that the pre-existing fissures, sectarian, ethnic, and economic, within the Camp of Islam, be exploited to the fullest.

That is one part of a two-part strategy. The other part is a campaign of education and self-education, all over the Infidel world, so that many more people come to understand the relation of Islam to the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Muslim states, societies, and even families and individuals living in environments - even within the West - that are suffused with Islam. This can be done. And if it is done, it will be hard for the world's Muslims not to have to begin thinking about the matter. And because the case, once you begin to think about it, is so obvious and so convincing, that will further demoralize the Camp of Islam. Among those who might have other reasons for jettisoning the faith, or at least de-emphasizing it (as Iranians, sick at heart from their experience under the Islamic Republic of Iran), such arguments will particularly resonate.

Now we wait to see what the Obama Administration will do about the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear project. The nightmares that American policy-makers have about Pakistan's nuclear bombs, and where they are, and who might get them, and who might use them, ought to have forever engraved on the minds of American policymakers that they must never ever allow any other Muslim state or group to acquire such weaponry. But what do we see? We see years of drift, years of not knowing what to do. The Bush Administration huffed and puffed, but in the end was ineffectual. It was ineffectual because it was caught Laocoon-like in the coils of serpents, serpents however of its own making, through its foolish hopes and dreams for Iraq, and bringing "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East. It was ineffectual because it was so uncunning and so ignorant not only of Islam but of the fissures within the Camp of Islam and, as well, so seemingly unaware of what is going on in Western Europe, which matters far more for the United States than any outcome in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Obama Administration has turned out to be, in some ways, even worse. It believes in outreach to the Muslim world, and part of that outreach is to make remarks that are flatly untrue - the speech in Cairo was a tissue of nonsense and lies when it came to the description of Islam, and if the speech was in part written, or vetted, by Muslims such as Rashad Hussain, then that explains, but does not justify the outcome, and makes the whole effort even more dismaying and frightening.

So what will happen now in Iran? Will the Americans recognize their responsibility to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Or will it rely on Israel, a country that has been denied even the weapons it knows it would need to be semi-successful in its effort? Or will it, still worse, do everything it can to prevent Israel, now mortally threatened by the possibility of those weapons being acquired by the chiliastic Twelver-Shi'a who run Iran, from acting as it must to protect itself, if the Americans will not do the job?

What happens in Iraq and Afghanistan matters far less than if the Islamic Republic of Iran acquires such weapons, and with those weapons, it will acquire something else: a permanent lease on political life. For the primitives in Iran, who far outnumber the advanced, the same primitives who were bussed in from the countryside recently to flood the streets of Teheran and other cities with demonstrations of loyalty to the regime, will be so happy with the regime that whatever those economic sanctions do will not matter. Iran will be a Nuclear Power. Iran will be, in their eyes, a Great Power. It's the delusions of grandeur, akin to those of the Shah, incidentally, who in his vainglorious way used to talk about how Iran would soon become "the second industrial power in Asia" (after Japan). Of course Iran is not the second industrial power, nor even the fifth, and Islam holds it, and forever will hold it back, despite the oil wealth. And of course we know, in the West, that the attainment of nuclear weapons will not mean much to the lives of Iranians, and if, as should happen, those "crippling sanctions" remain in force until those weapons are surrendered (the Iranians can keep nuclear power plants, as long as those are vigilantly monitored by the West, not the U.N.), things will remain difficult for them. But many of them don't care, and won't care, in the villages where there was never much to start with. For them, Iran will be a Nuclear Power. What else do they need to know?

Yet we see a new theme being developed by those who want, at all costs, to prevent the United States from taking action against the Islamic Republic of Iran. They argue a number of things. Some say: well, no attack can be guaranteed to totally destroy the nuclear project, so it's not worth doing. Quite a non sequitur, of course. Many attacks set back efforts (see that on the Osirak Reactor) for a long time, and the buying of time, so that the dissidents can finally topple the present Iranian regime, would be useful. Flynt and Hillary Leverett have had their own go at this "don't attack Iran" business, in the Op/Ed pages of the New York Times. And the Times recently offered its pages yet again to an effort in the same line, one worth looking at more closely.

This article, "Iran's Two-Edged Bomb," was written by Adam B. Lowther, described as a "defense analyst at the Air Force Research Initiative." The article argued that we should, essentially, see what was to our advantage or how we might take advantage of Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons. It was written by someone of the cheerily defeatist school, that is, the school that thinks that nothing can or should be done to stop Iran ("It's over," as Tariq Ramadan has repeatedly said about the Muslim demographic conquest of Europe, not needing to add, "we're here to stay, and there's nothing you Infidels can do about it").

Here is some of what Adam L. Lowther, defense analyst at the Air Force Research Institute, tried to convince readers. He begins with a brisk confession of hopelessness and seeming helplessness:

"With Iran having notified the United Nations nuclear Watchdog agency on Monday that any day now it will begin enriching its stockpile of uranium n order to power a medical reactor [does Adam L. Lowther believe that that is what Iran will do with that enriched stockpile of uranium? Shouldn't he tell us what he thinks might actually happen?] we should admit that Washington's approach to countering the Islamic Republic is leading nowhere. [True, because two Administrations were unwilling to employ "crippling sanctions" - the kind that you know are "crippling" because they lead to the behavior one wants - or military force, and even now we have the Obama Administration still following far behind Congress on what it is willing to do]."

And then comes the key sentence, the real topic sentence of the piece: "What's needed, however, may be less of a change of plan than a change in how we view the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran."

So, in a phrase, Adam L. Lowther dismisses the possibility, or rather doesn't even think he is obligated to consider, even if later to dismiss, the continued use of sanctions, now becoming "crippling sanctions," or "crippling sanctions" accompanied by military aid and threats of more such aid to the Baluchis in the east, the Azeris in the north, the Kurds in the west, and the Arabs in the southwest (in Khuzistan, where almost all of Iran's oilfields are located). And he dismisses, or rather, doesn't even think he is obligated to discuss, the possibility of military action by the United States, or by immediately imperiled Israel. Strange this Air Force analyst who won't even allow himself to think about the efficacy of the intelligent application of military force. One wonders what the trillions of dollars poured into our military, on weapons systems, have all been about, if in such a case as this the use of military force is not even considered. For here is a monstrous regime, headed by those who have given every sign of a deep belief in a semi-demented ideology (that of the Hidden Imam), at a time when suicide bombings are commonplace, and where a moment's thought might lead some to conclude that those who blow themselves up would, by the same logic, not be afraid to take much larger casualties among Muslims, now seen as involuntary "suicide bombers" - in order to remove a hated Infidel nation-state, Israel, from the face of the earth. Ahmadinejad is not the only Iranian leader who has said Iran "could afford" to lose a few million people in a nuclear exchange with Israel; Iran, after all, has a population of 70 million.

All of this goes by in a second, as Lowther ignores the effort of the past few years - the "sanctions" - and even the effect of the "crippling sanctions" or of military strikes (which one might have expected him, as a defense analyst for the Air Force Research Institute, to at least have thought worth considering), and proceeds to tell us all the good things that can happen, for the United States, if the Islmamic Republic of Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

First, he tells us, "Iran's development of nuclear weapons would give the United States an opportunity to finally defeat violent Sunni-Arab terrorist groups like Al Qaeda." Strange, Lowther knows his readers will first think, but here's just how it would work: "Here's why: a nuclear Iran is primarily a threat to its neighbors, not the United States. Thus Washington could offer regional security - primarily, a Middle East nuclear umbrella - in exchange for economic, political and social reforms in the autocratic Arab regimes responsible for breeding the discontent that led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

Let's stop right there, and try to get over our amazement and this fantastic misunderstanding, and these utopian goals. What in god's name makes Adam B. Lowther, defense analyst, think that the Saudis or other Arabs would ever do what the Americans ask? Why should they? They know perfectly well that the American "nuclear umbrella" will be extended to them not because we like their regimes, but because we don't want any harm to come to the oilfields. Again and again, over the past several decades, the Americans have tried to get these regimes, especially that in Saudi Arabia, to do something, do anything, to show that they were not simply a thieving family, the Al-Saud, determined to hold onto power and to continue to help themselves to much of the country's oil revenues, as they can. They have never done American bidding. Indeed, when the Saudis "collaborated" with the Americans, it was always the Saudis who ended up getting their way. It was Saudi Arabia that helped to convince the naïve Americans to help the muhajidin, and then to turn away, unalarmed, when the Pakistani and Saudi-supported Taliban came into Afghanistan, and were kept in power through the diplomatic, financial, and other support of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. These regimes are past masters at getting their way in Washington, and certainly at preventing even the most obvious of measures being taken to diminish reliance on oil - that is, a tax on oil at the source, and on gasoline, the latter being sizable enough to make a real dent in demand. And even if the heady days of James Akins, and Fred Dutton, and Raymond Close, and James Baker, and Colin Powell, (who accepted a Jaguar, or rather his wife did, from an appreciative friend, Prince Bandar) are no longer in fashion, Saudi Arabia has never done American bidding, and the Americans have always come away frustrated, and they always will. Would the Al-Saud change their political and economic system for the American threat to take away a "nuclear umbrella" that, the Saudis know, they would never do? Would they change what it is that lends support to the despotism, and to the economic statism, and to the mistreatment of guest-workers, and the use of Saudi money around the world to fund mosques and madrasas, and propaganda on behalf of Islam, and campaigns of Da'wa, and all the rest? Has there been the slightest indication that they would ever cease to do this, ever stop heeding the demands and duties that Islam imposes on them as good Muslims? What remarkable ignorance of the Saudi regime, and of Saudi behavior, not this year or this decade, but for the past half-century.

Adam B. Lowther might take the time to read the work of J. B. Kelly. The best place to begin is with his essay "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies," in which American reliance on the "twin pillars" - Iran and Saudi Arabia -- is shown to have been always based on a misperception of both regimes. But especially in the case of Saudi Arabia, this misperception is based on decades of propaganda put out by ARAMCO. Now ARAMCO has been superceded by a small army of Western hirelings, and by the Saudis themselves, who have become dab hands, when they meet Western leaders, at sincere liquid-brown eyes expressions of hurt and betrayal ("why do you Americans treat us this way, when we are such loyal allies?"). We are to ignore the viciousness and meretriciousness of the regime, at home, and abroad. The enslavement of foreign workers, the cruelties inflicted on those caught reading Bibles or even singing Christmas carols, the torture of Westerners arrested on trumped-up charges, or of captured Yemenis, or of Saudi subjects (not "citizens") themselves, and the hideousness of every aspect of that primitive country, are known to the intelligence services of the Western world, but apparently not to the un-intelligent services, or the un-intelligent members of our various military services.

Lowther's belief that magically, in exchange for that "nuclear umbrella," the Saudis would do our bidding is the stuff of fantasy. The Saudis wrapped us around their little finger in Afghanistan, where we didn't think beyond getting the Russians out, and did not for one minute realize that the dying days of the Soviet Empire might have lasted just a bit longer, if the result was to help stamp out the power of militant Islam (as the Soviets did, with some success, in Central Asia, with the Muslims, many of whom are now Muslim in name only because of Soviet anti-religious implacable ruthlessness). The Saudis will never do our bidding. And they know their oilfields, and the tankers in the Gulf, will always be protected by the Americans.

Lowther's second point is equally naïve, and shows an equal ignorance - this time of the workings of the world oil market, and of OPEC. Here is Lowther's claim:

"Second, becoming the primary provider of regional security in a nuclear Middle East would give the United States a way to break the OPEC cartel. Forcing an end of the sorts of monopolistic practices that are illegal in the United States would be the price o0f that nuclear shield, bringing oil prices down significantly and saving billions of dollars a year at the pump. Or, at a minimum, President Obama could trade security for increased production and a lowering of global petroleum prices."

There is so much here that is wrong, that one hardly knows where to begin. But let's try. First, OPEC is not the power it once was in the setting of prices, because there are not, any longer, large amounts of oil being deliberately kept off the market. The Saudis and others in the Gulf have always priced their oil in such a way as to maximize profits, to the extent that they can make reasonable estimates of future demand, and future supply, and the effect of price increases on worldwide demand. This means they must put into their calculations all sorts of things: the likelihood of alternative sources of energy coming on stream, the elasticity - or inelasticity--of demand in response to increases (or decreases) in prices; the possibility of innovation (as with electric cars) making demand elasticity more of a threat; the political will, absent or present, to do the kinds of things - such as a higher tax on oil - that could take place in response to a hike in the price of oil or, ideally from the oil-consuming nations' point of view, take place even when, or perhaps especially when, prices go down.

Lowther seems to think that OPEC continues to retain the same power today as it had in late 1973. As the oil price rise in 1979 showed, elasticity of demand is considerable. If the Saudis and others overshoot, they can suffer more by a collapse in demand and then in price. Lowther seems to think that we should wish for the price of oil to go down. Not quite. We should wish for the price that the oil-producing states charge to go down. For that to happen, we have it within our power to decrease demand, by taxing oil and gasoline ourselves, and in so doing, to recapture oligopolistic rents. That is, at any Time X, the Saudis will calculate that for them there is an ideal Price Y. But that price is based on a calculation that the American government will continue to be unable to put in place significant taxes on oil (as James Hansen suggests) and on gasoline (taxes large enough to dampen consumption, and on the kinds of cars that are produced). Lowther is flatly wrong. We don't want the price of oil to go down. We want it to go up, but to go up in measured, and predictable increments. That will allow for investments in electric cars, or cars that get high mileage for each gallon of gas, or in mass transit systems within cities, and high-speed railways between cities. And the price of gasoline (and of oil) should go steadily up because the governments of oil-consuming nations do the taxing themselves, and then they can rebate the taxes, or apply them to such projects as subsidies for nuclear reactors (the most important part of any sensible energy possible, however unpalatable this idea may be those who are blind believers in "alternative energy" as the way out), solar and wind power. The notion of "breaking up OPEC" is meaningless, because OPEC right now no longer has any real market power. It cannot prevent oil from other producers from reaching the market, and it cannot enforce any discipline of its own on member states to reduce their production, and it hasn't been able to do so for a long time. Adam B. Lowther is apparently unaware of what OPEC now is, and what the state of the oil market is. One wonders what exactly caused him to make pronouncements on things he knows nothing about.

Lowther's third point has to do with Israel:

"Third, Israel has made clear that it feels threatened by Iran's nuclear program. [Yes, it's good of Lowther to admit that, however grotesquely his understatement]. The Palestinians also have a reason for concern, because a nuclear strike against Israel would devastate them as well [would it? Would bombs on Tel Aviv, Haifa, and the western part of Jerusalem "devastate" the "Palestinians"? Is Adam B. Lowther well-versed in targeting, and wind currents, and so on? And how does he know that many of the "Palestinians" would not welcome an Iranian attack, in the same way that they welcome, and train, and make heroes of, and encourage others to become, suicide bombers?] This shared danger might serve as a catalyst for reconciliation between the two parties, leading to the peace agreement that has eluded the last five presidents. Paradoxically, any final agreement between Israelis and Palestinians would go a long way to undercutting Tehran's animosity toward Israel, and would ease longstanding tensions in the region."

This statement is written by someone who has paid no attention to Islam and has no understanding of the war being waged on Israel. That war is a classic Jihad. It does not stop when Israel makes concessions, even life-threatening concessions. It does not stop because Israel, a state so tiny it is hardly discernible on a map of the word, surrenders territory after territory and gives up gains won in war, as it did when it returned the Sinai to Egypt after 1956 (under Eisenhower's pressure), and then again when it gave up the entire Sinai to Egypt again, for a "cold peace" that is misunderstood in the West, and that could be reversed by the government of Egypt and its population, the Muslims of whom have been raised up to be deeply and permanently anti-Israel. Adam B. Lowther does not understand: the reason "five presidents" could not find a "solution" to what is called, not quite accurately I'm afraid, the "Arab-Israeli dispute" - which, however, is quite a bit better than the tendentious "Israeli-Palestinian dispute" -- is that it isn't a "dispute" at all. It's a permanent war, a war to eliminate the humiliation and offense, as Muslims see it, of an Infidel nation-state, one still more offensive because it has been created and successfully and repeatedly defended from Arab Muslim efforts to destroy it, by Jews, who were always despised by the Muslims. For unlike the Christians, they did not have a powerful Western Christendom somewhere in the background, no co-religionists to possibly protect them or come to their aid, or apply pressure on Muslim states (as was done on the Ottoman government by England and France, to improve the lot of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, beginning with the Tanzimat reforms of 1839, with the pressure repeated at intervals throughout the nineteenth century). Adam B. Lowther simply does not understand that an important part of Islam is triumphalism. The spirit of compromise is not part of Islam. You win, or you lose. You are the victor, or you are the vanquished. You do not compromise with your enemies. Islam teaches, or rather inculcates, the idea that Muslims must be loyal to Islam, and to fellow members of the Umma. The whole world belongs, by right, to Allah and to Muslims, the "best of peoples." Infidels do not have rights to any part of the world, and eventually, through the steady spread of Islam, and its dominance, they will be reduced to the condition of dhimmis, the only condition that permits selected Infidels (formally, the People of the Book, Ahl al-Kitab, that is Christians and Jews as well as Zoroastrians, though informally, for reasons of cold calculation, Hindus began to be allowed to live, so as to provide the Muslim state with the Jizyah, the tax on dhimmis, that was its main source of revenue).

I don't think this "Air Force analyst" understands that the campaign to push Israel back has gone on steadily since the Six-Day War, and it began with a careful renaming of the local Arabs, the shock troops, at least in the propaganda aspect, of the Jihad against Israel. Those Arabs - that is what they were called, before late 1967, by all the Arab leaders, diplomats, and propagandists - suddenly became, metamorphosed into, the "Palestinian people." It was a way to present an alternative narrative to that of the Jihad against the Jewish State that the Arabs had freely discussed among themselves - see Ahmed Shukairy, Arafat's predecessor as the leader of the local Arabs, even though he worked out of Egypt - and that they did not cease, have not ceased, to discuss, as such splendid eavesdropping organizations as www.MEMRI.org offer us fresh evidence of, every week and every day.

The Jihad against that Infidel nation-state did not begin with Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, did not begin with Israel's declaration of statehood on May 15, 1948, but began with the first stirrings of the Jewish settlers who bought land (at greatly-inflated prices) from the absentee Arab and Turkish landlords. The very idea that there were small landholders in Israel who were dispossessed shows a complete misunderstanding of the system of land ownership in the two Ottoman vilayets and one sanjak that constituted the territory that would later be assigned, by the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, to Mandatory Palestine for the sole purpose of facilitating the creation, through the efforts of the Jews themselves, the Jewish National Home. In fact, the Jihad against Israel is merely a local manifestation of the general, worldwide Jihad, one that depends on a doctrine that does not date, that is central to Islam, and that only for a century or two fell into desuetude, not because the doctrine had at all been modified, but because the Muslims themselves rightly perceived their ability to go up against the much more powerful West would end inexorably in failure.

But things have changed. The OPEC trillions have allowed states that were permanently mired in poverty - Islam discourages economic development, both in its hatred of bid'a (innovation) and in its inshallah-fatalism (why work hard, if Allah giveth, and Allah, on the same whim, taketh away) -- to have the financial wherewithal to buy trillions of dollars worth of weapons. Those trillions have also been used to buy Western hirelings to help with propaganda, and votes at the U.N., and influence in the chanceries of the West, and academic centers or departments of Islamic studies, or endowed chairs, so as to ensure that most or all teaching about Islam remains in vigilantly pro-Islamic hands, and the ability of non-Muslims to educate themselves, in colleges and universities, truthfully about the doctrine, and practice, of Islam remains difficult and often nearly impossible, so that autodidacticism is the only way.

There is no doubt that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the increased danger this will mean for Israel will - or should - end forever any further Israeli concessions. For they cannot possibly reduce themselves to a state even tinier than the one they have, precisely because that will make it easier for Iran to go in for the kill. And the smaller and more obviously vulnerable Israel becomes, the less likely it is that leaders of Muslim states, even if they wish, would be able to resist the calls of their hysterical populations for attacks or gang-ups on Israel. Remember how Nasser had to convince King Hussein of Jordan to join the attack against Israel by assuring him that the Egyptians had wiped out much of Israel's air force and was on the road to victory? Those telephone calls were recorded by the Israelis, and you can probably find them, or transcripts of them, online. The only way to prevent open warfare again between Israel and Arabs is for Israel to possess the power of deterrence -the same power that the United States relied on during the Cold War. And Israel cannot possess that deterrence if it becomes so ridiculously small, with a handful of airfields, that Hamas from the south, and Hezbollah (possibly armed by Iran?) in the north can overwhelm it, with help from the east -- and who knows who will be in control of Jordan in twenty years, or ten years, or five years, or one? Peace is, and always will be maintained, between those who will continue to conduct Jihad, and those who are the intended victims of Jihad, only if those conducting Jihad are convinced that they will lose, or lose far more, than will the other side. I have written about the doctrine of "Darura" - Necessity - many times before. I suspect that Adam B. Lowther is as unfamiliar with "Darura" as he is with the texts and tenets of Islam. And because he is unfamiliar with those texts and tenets, he has no business discussing - has not earned the intellectual right to discuss - policy toward Iran or OPEC or the Jihad against Israel.

And then there is the appeal to the interest of the arms merchants. Here is his next reason for thinking it will be just swell if Iran acquires nuclear weapons:

"Fourth, a growth in ex ports of weapons systems, training and advice to our Middle Eastern allies [allies!] would not only strengthen our current partnership efforts but give the American defense industry a needed shot in the arm. With the likelihood of austere Pentagon budgets in the coming years, Boeing has been making noise about shifting out of the defense industry, which would mean lost American jobs and would also put us in a difficult position should we be threatened by a rising military power like China. A nuclear Iran could forestall such a catastrophe."

This is extraordinary. The veriest conspiracy-theorist writing for Counterpunch, or appearing on Al-Jazeera, must be made delirious with joy by such a naked call for increasing business for the American defense industry. One wonders if Adam B. Lowther is angling, once his stint as a "defense analyst at the Air Force Research Institute" ends, for a job at Lockheed, or Boeing, or one of the other firms that he thinks, that he devoutly hopes, will benefit through an increase in business in the Middle East, if Iran gets nuclear weapons.

The piling-up of weapons in the Middle East, the heedless selling of vast quantities of the most advanced arms to the primitive tribes-with-flags in the Middle East, was one of the subjects that nearly drove J. B. Kelly mad with fury. He spent, on-and-off, nearly fifty ears in the Middle East, beginning with his time in Egypt before the coup of Nasser and Naguib, and including his time as a close advisor to Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi, back in the 1970s, helping to prepare the legal brief of Abu Dhabi against the land-grabbing Saudis. No one scared the Saudis like J. B. Kelly, for it was he who knew more about the Frontier Question - the frontiers of the Arab states of the Gulf - than they did. And no one was less impressed with Western appeasement and miscomprehension of the Saudis and other Arabs - he retained a slight soft spot for the Omanis - than J. B. Kelly. The piling-up of weapons was certain, he felt, to lead to all kinds of explosions, because such weapons were bound to be used. He predicted their use before the Iran-Iraq War, and before the latest war, proxy or being made into a proxy, war between Iran and Saudi Arabia (even if the Iranians have not been involved as the Saudis claim, or hint) in the Yemen, and before the steady violence, with most of the weapons imported from other Muslim states, in Somalia.

And Lowther is himself a little inconsistent. First, he wants the Americans to offer a "nuclear umbrella" in exchange for promises by the locals to completely change their ways - in effect, to un-islamize their societies. Lowther, however, not knowing what it means to have a society completely suffused with Islam, and expressing Islam in its political and economic and social institutions, does not recognize that that is what he is calling for when he calls for "economic, political, and social reforms." Genuine reforms of such a kind would begin, but not end, with those Saudi textbooks that inculcate hatred against the Infidels, including the millions of Infidel foreign wage-slaves who keep Saudi Arabia going.

But why stop there, in the application of the truly brilliant strategy of Adam B. Lowther, defense analyst at the Air Force Research Institute? If only he had been in charge of our policy in East Asia, we never would have bothered to try to stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. No, we would instead have secretly welcomed North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons. After all, isn't South Korea a great economic competitor? Why, last I looked, Samsung was making portable phones, and those wonderful backlit LED televisions we all hear so much about, and so much else. And then there's Hyundai, and Kia. And then there's Japan too, still eating our electronic lunch. So how to recover some of that money? We can't build those backlit LED televisions, apparently, or the rest of what Korea and Japan produce, so at least let's scare the hell out of them, so that they come running to Boeing. And what better way to scare them then to have North Korea acquire nuclear weapons? Why, think of all the contracts our defense industry could sign with the governments of South Korea, and Japan.

So to keep the manufactures of airplanes happy, to keep Boeing from leaving the defense market, by all means - let Iran get nuclear weapons. But of course. My god, why stop there? Let's try to sell arms, too, to Angola, with its new oil wealth. And while we are at it, have Angolan oil money spent on arms for Mozambique at the same time, and then encourage both parties, oil-funded, to start thinking about pushing inward from east and from west, in order to create one giant lusophone state (doing Camoens proud). Then that state, in turn, might push southward, right through the soft fotanelle of collapsing Zimbabwe and right through to Aids-weakened South Africa, where the goldmines beckon. And once that idea has been set in place, the American defense manufacturers could go to South Africa, and offer to sell them billions in weapons.

So, dear reader, you can make up a half-dozen other examples of places that, were they to become nuclear states, would so frighten other countries around them that those frightened countries would naturally turn to us, to the United States, and quickly become loyal (how loyal? for how long?) customers of the American defense industry. And don't even think that the day might come when such countries would use their weapons on other countries, not necessarily threats to them, countries that they just didn't like, for some reason. Nor should you assume that, say, Saudi Arabia might someday ask not Boeing for help, but a Chinese aircraft company - oh, they are coming along, you know - one that sold things more cheaply. That company furthermore might even supply Chinese pilots to do the bidding of the Al-Saud, and might even agree to handle all the "security for the oilfields" in a way guaranteed to be more reliable than those Americans - well, you see where all of this is, or could be, headed. You see, I see. Only Adam B. Lowther, defense analyst with the Air Force Research Institute, doesn't see.

The final point of Lowther is again economic. Still he has forgotten, and doesn't want to be reminded at this point, the fifth of his points, of the need to keep in mind the frightening effect on the world, and possible use by Iran, or by others (Hezbollah?) of nuclear weapons. That includes all sorts and conditions of nuclear weapons that Iran might manage to produce, and use, or hand off to others, or sell to others. Iran could even sell nuclear weapons to Sunni Arab regimes with which, in a spirit of pan-Islamism, it might reconcile - how does Adam B. Lowther know they won't? This could happen while the Americans are left surprised, astonished, and confused, as has happened with them so many times before, when it comes to dealing with Muslim powers, in and out of the Middle East.

Here's Lowther:

"Last, the United States would be able to stem the flow of dollars to autocratic regimes in the region. It would accomplish this not only by driving down the price of oil and increasing arms exports, but by requiring the beneficiaries of American security to bear a real share of its cost. And in the long run, a victory in the war on terrorism would save taxpayers the tens of billions of dollars a year now spent on overseas counter-insurgency operations."

So these regimes will do what they have given no sign of ever doing before. Did Egypt, without any oil, and dependent on the Americans for $2 billion a year, change in any way, over the past three decades, the stratokleptocracy that runs and more or less owns Egypt? Has Egypt, despite now and again making throat-clearing noises about "democracy" and unspecified "reforms," in any way over those thirty years done a single thing to show it is willing to engage in "economic, political, and social reforms" in order to keep being on the receiving end of vast amounts of entirely unmerited American largesse? Hasn't the regime in Egypt not only mocked the idea of "democracy" in its conduct of elections, but failed to improve, and even has seemed to make the situation worse, for the persecuted and threatened Copts in Egypt? What do Copts tell us about their own situation, when they are in the safety of the West? And what about the other Muslim countries, such as Pakistan? Pakistan has been favored as a recipient of military aid for a half-century, ever since CENTO and the Dulles brothers, with their naïve belief that Islam was "a bulwark against Communism" and so Muslim states deserved American support. And Pakistan was so meretricrious in its dealings, and the executive branch of our government so terminally credulous in dealing with it, that members of Congress who had been following the matter (such as Senator John Glenn) rose up and passed the Pressler Amendment, and then discovered that the Executive Branch continued to make a mockery of the intent of that amendment, letting Pakistan get away with murder. And of course Pakistan managed to create its bomb with money freed up by American aid. We, American taxpayers, paid for that Pakistani nuclear project, and the "Islamic bomb." But perhaps Adam B. Lowther doesn't care, because in his view that, no doubt, simply made it possible - or did it? What did India do? - to sell more defense systems to India.

How exactly does Lowther think that the rich states of the Gulf can be persuaded not only to institute "economic, political, and social reforms," but also to buy more weapons from America? Why would they buy them from America if they could buy them, at lower prices, from China - unless of course America is willing not to set up any barriers to the Saudi efforts to spread Islam within the West, and willing as well not to stand up for non-Muslims, such as Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Maronites, and foreign Christians, being mistreated in Muslim Arab lands, all in order not to offend Saudi Arabia?

He hasn't thought this out.

In fact, he hasn't thought anything out.

If his Op/Ed were passed in to me by a student - say, a freshman full of bright ideas - I'd give it a D plus. Or possibly I'd move it up to a C plus. I'm kind, you see. I wouldn't want to discourage him. I'm indulgent with the young, the confused, the ignorant. But Adam B. Lowther is not a freshman in college. He's a defense analyst, discussing matters of life and mass death. And with him one need not be so indulgent. One should apply appropriate standards, and give him his due. On second thought, I'll change that D plus, but not upwards. Downwards - to an F.

Last year, White House economists claimed that the $862 billion stimulus would create 3.3 million jobs. Since then, the nation has lost more than 3 million jobs.

That’s a 6.3 million jobs gap. By the White House’s own standards, the stimulus failed.

So President Obama has shifted his argument. Sure, the economy lost jobs, he concedes — but without the stimulus, it would’ve lost nearly 2 million more jobs.

This is nothing but faith-based economics. The White House estimate of “saving” nearly 2 million jobs is based not on observations of the economy’s recent performance — but merely on the administration’s unshakable belief that deficit spending must create jobs and growth.

Specifically, the White House staff’s “proof” that the stimulus created jobs is an economic model that they programmed to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates jobs. How’s that for circular logic?

In other words, even if we’d lost 20 million jobs, their models would basically crank out the conclusion that we’d have lost 22 million without the stimulus.

Worse, the central tenet of this “faith” is false: The premise that stimulus spending must create jobs just isn’t true.

The stimulus theory is that government spending injects new dollars into the economy, thereby raising demand and spurring economic growth. That makes some sense — if you don’t ask where the government got the money.

Congress doesn’t have a vault of cash waiting to be distributed. Every dollar it “injects” into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new income, and therefore no new demand, is created: It’s merely redistributed from one group of people to another.

Removing water from one end of a swimming pool and pouring it in the other won’t raise the overall water level, no matter how large the bucket. It’s the same with redistributing dollars from one part of the economy to another.

via Fantasy jobs – NYPOST.com.

The recent Swiss vote to ban minarets was seen by many as a further indication that European populations are waking up to the threat of Europe’s Islamization and the need to stop the trend. If so, the European Union—the centralized bureaucracy that, as documented in Bat Ye’or’s important book Eurabia, went “over the heads” of European publics to meld the European and Arab/Muslim civilizations in the first place—still hasn’t caught up and remains locked in a pro-Arab/Muslim disposition.

At least, the EU’s stance on Jerusalem would suggest so. Last week the new EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, “came down hard on the Israeli government” in her maiden speech to the European Parliament and said:

“East Jerusalem is occupied territory together with the West Bank. The EU is opposed to the destruction of homes, the eviction of Arab residents and the construction of the separation barrier.”

Her words prompted Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon to reply:

“Just as the Romans did not succeed in cutting off Jerusalem from Israel, so too will diplomats from the UN and the EU be unsuccessful as well.”

Ashton, previously the EU’s trade commissioner and expected to be given considerable authority as a new sort of EU foreign minister, also called Israel’s recently launched ten-month moratorium on settlement construction a “first step”—representing, as the EUobserver comments, “a cooler tone than EU foreign ministers who last week took ‘positive note’ of the move.”

The EUobserver also pointed out that the speech was

“significant for what it left out: Ms Ashton did not say that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that it faces a security threat from Palestinian ‘terrorists’ or that Palestinians should immediately return to formal peace talks—the classic tenets of Israeli supporters.”

Ashton’s statements also come hard on the heels of an EU-Israel spat over Jerusalem in which the EU explicitly called for East Jerusalem to become the capital of a Palestinian state. That demand was later only partially toned-down under intense Israeli objections.

In other words, even at a time when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly accepted the call for a Palestinian state and enraged part of his right-wing base with the settlement moratorium, the EU keeps reflexively embracing Arab/Muslim positions. As always, the EU’s stance on Jerusalem ignores several facts.

Jerusalem was unified under Israeli sovereignty in 1967, after nineteen years in which Jordan illegally occupied the city and finally used it to attack Israel despite being implored by Israel to keep out of the fighting.

Under Israeli rule, Muslims and all other groups (except Jews—on the Temple Mount itself) have enjoyed full freedom of worship—a stark contrast to the nineteen years of Jordanian rule when Jews and Christians were denied access to Jerusalem’s holy places and Jewish synagogues and gravestones were destroyed and desecrated.

Muslims already have full control over Mecca, Medina, and countless sacred locales and shrines throughout the vast Muslim world, and their demand for Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem and the redivision of Israel’s capital can reasonably be regarded as excessive – especially when, as noted, Israel gives Muslims full access to their Jerusalem shrines and full rights in the city.

Indeed, Jerusalem is full of minarets, and any visitor to its Old City or its Arab neighborhoods can attest to the vibrancy of Muslim religious life there. The EU should be more concerned with Islamization on the continent than with taking harsh stances against Israel as it struggles to survive and to find the right mix of accommodation and steadfastness in an Arab/Muslim environment hostile its very existence.

But for the EU, after decades of forsaking its Judeo-Christian roots for pro-Arabism, that may be too much to expect. Even if European populations are starting to grasp the consequences of this civilizational self-abnegation, Europe’s Brussels-based bureaucracy remains willfully ignorant of the stakes.

Thirty Flyglobespan crew members are stranded in the Muslim holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia.

The airline had a contract to carry passengers between Delhi in India and Medina for the Hajj pilgrimage.

Flyglobespan captain Bob Lee revealed that the crew members have been confined to their hotel for at least four days because, as non-Muslims, they are not allowed to move around the city.

He said crew members were unable to get seats on flights out of Medina because of the huge demand.

Capt Lee said 1,000 Flyglobespan passengers from India were also trying to find alternative flights home, adding to the difficulties facing the crew.

Katrina McBride, from Fife, said: "My daughter and a number of other crew who work for Flyglobespan are currently based in Saudi and India - who's looking after them? Who will bring them home, when and how soon?

"We are currently in limited communication with my daughter who is in a state of panic.

"She has already phoned, crying her eyes out worrying about what will happen, who will pay her hotel bill as she been working out there for almost six weeks?"

Representatives from developing countries – a bloc of 135 nations – said they refused to participate in any formal working groups at the 192-nation summit until the issue was resolved.

The African-led move was a setback for the Copenhagen talks, which were already faltering over long-running disputes between rich and poor nations over emissions cuts and financing for developing countries to deal with climate change.

via My Way News – Developing countries boycott UN climate talks.

FP: Ines Laufer, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.

In our last discussion, we focused on how Germany has exposed a young girl to female genital mutilation and how Germany, and Europe in general, is not protecting young girls from this barbaric crime.

Today I would like to talk to you about a new campaign you have started. Tell us about it.

Laufer: Thanks Jamie.

Our research brought to light that to up to 400,000 sponsored girls who are marketed by the big development organizations PLAN International, World Vision, Kindernothilfe and ChildFund do not receive protection from female genital mutilation. We have started a new campaign, at sponsoredgirl.com, to protect the girls from female genital mutilation. We invite your readers to come join us.

These children are marketed in order to acquire money from trustful donors. The donors pay about 30 Euros per month – which means 360 Euros per year, in the belief that the organizations do all they can for providing a better life — including health for the sponsored children. PLAN International for instance, acquires about 72 million Euros every year, just by marketing the 240,000 concerned girls.

But asked about female genital mutilation on the sponsored girls, these organizations openly and publicly claim that demanding the safe protection of the girls would be against their approaches and against their policy.

So, by failing to demand, to stipulate and to control the protection of the sponsored girls from FGM, the organizations must be considered complicit in every single crime perpetrated against a little girl in this regard.

We are The Alliance for Protection of Girls from Female Genital Mutilation. We consider this simply scandalous and unacceptable. It is a crime against the girls and also a system of defrauding the donors.

That’s why we launched this campaign. It is suited to go the largest step forward in the direction of an end of FGM since the beginning of the fight against these practices. It could lead to true and immediate protection of a few million girls.

FP: Ok, what concretely does the campaign demand?

Laufer: It demands that all organizations who work with the sponsored-child-system, should make sure that all girls in their projects – in the relevant regions – are safely protected from violence like female genital mutilation.

This demand is based on the cognition that it is not only possible but very easy to achieve that goal – and even more: It does not cost any money.

It is just about the change of the attitude, approach and policy of the organisations. We call for:

[1] The stipulation of the safety and protection from FGM of the sponsored girls in the preconditions for support for the communities – and regular check ups.

[2] A careful selection of the project partners, which means that only those communities that support children’s rights will be targets of help. This means an investment of donations in the most economic and effective way.

[3] The complete solution – the two steps to safe protection – you find here.

FP: How do the mentioned organizations react to your activism on behalf of the victims of FGM?

Laufer: To be honest, Jamie, they all react quite similar so far, with a mixture of ostrich behavior (putting their heads into the sand) and helpless efforts to defend their current policy of tolerating and accepting the mutilations of thousands of sponsored girls.

But in fact, they deliver us one proof after the other that confirms how much this campaign is needed – how important it is and that it will have a deep impact to truly stop FGM.

To the people who sign and send the petition letters, they send standard-answers which make clear that they did not even read or understand what we demand. They still refuse to admit that they are fully responsible for every single mutilated girl in their projects because of their failure to implement the adequate protection measures. And they do not have any scruple to simply tell tales.

We can sum it up as following: There is much ignorance and denial and no adequate seriousness or goodwill to even understand what should be changed and how.

But I am sure this will change soon.

Only, it doesn’t lie in our hands anymore. Now, the world public – every person who feels concerned and disturbed by the knowledge that every day, thousands of little girls are mutilated by FGM – is asked to help the campaign.

FP: What exactly can people do to help the campaign? Is it about money and donations?

Laufer: No, Jamie – it is absolutely not about money or donations. It is about something much more important: It’s about the power of everyone’s voice. By investing exactly two minutes of time and a few clicks, everyone can help – while comfortably sitting in front of the computer. Every reader can help free this world from the nightmare of female genital mutilation. It has never been so easy.

At the www.sponsoredgirl.com website, you find four prepared letters, addressed to PLAN International World Vision, Kindernothilfe and ChildFund, see here.

Every person who signs and sends the letters – and who even steps back from current sponsorship-contracts, enlarges the pressure on the organizations. And this helps us to strengthen our efforts in demanding them to consequently protect the children.

That’s why: Please sign the letters and send them to your friends that they can do it too.

FP: So how has the campaign been going?

Laufer: Well, let me tell you this. In the last ten days, more than 750 letters have been sent to the organizations already. But we would like to achieve at least 5,000 to put the campaign at the next level of public pressure.

FP: Ines Laufer, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview. I encourage all of our readers who want to help stop this genocide against girls to go to www.sponsoredgirl.com.