You can tell which Republican the media thinks is a threat by seeing whom they go after. Besides Sarah Palin, the current target seems to be Haley Barbour. The outrage de jour is over Barbour's pardon for Gladys and Jamie Scott, two sisters who served as insiders in an armed robbery. Defenders of the Scott sisters routinely emphasize that they got a life sentence for only an 11 dollar robbery. But it was only an 11 dollar robbery because that was all they had. It was still however an armed robbery executed at gunpoint. The second line of argument is the usual "racism of the criminal justice system". But the victims who testified against them were also black.

With all that in mind, Haley Barbour's pardon of the Gladys sisters after 16 years and under the current medical context is not unreasonable. His attachment of a condition in which one sister must donate her kidney to the other is more problematic, because it all opens all kinds of doors that should probably stay closed. What happens when inmates are told that a parole board will view them more favorably if they provide an organ donation? It's not quite China's gleeful carving up of prisoners for spare parts, but it's not a million miles away from it either.

But Governor Barbour's actions were reasonably practical and well-intentioned. Compare Barbour's pardon of Gladys and Jamie Scott, with Governor Patterson's pardon of John White for his murder of Daniel Cicciaro Jr. John White barely served half a year in prison for murder. Patterson didn't even bother talking to the victim's family about it. The NAACP and Al Sharpton did their dirty lobbying and they got what they wanted... with minimal media criticism.

The few media complaints mainly centered on Governor Patterson not speaking to the Ciccciaro family first. As if pardoning a murderer after less than half a year in prison would be somehow okay, if the governor had just taken time off from stealing all the furniture, to tell the victim's family what he was going to do, and tell them that there was nothing they could say that would change his mind.

Plaxico Burress shot himself with his own handgun and got a three-year prison sentence, and Michael Vick received a 21-month prison sentence for cruelty to animals.

White shot an unarmed juvenile and only had to serve a five-month jail sentence for manslaughter before being released by Paterson.

Where's the mercy for this poor child's family?

As usual there's only mercy for the killers, never their victims. The Democrats have never reformed or repented of their shameless pandering to criminals a generation ago. They've just learned to be more subtle about it.

The Rosenbaum family had to spend nearly a decade fighting to try Lemrick Nelson on civil rights charges, after a jury and a mayor who were sympathetic to his murder of Yankel Rosenbaum gave him a free pass. The Ciccciaro family clearly does not have those kinds of resources of energy to keep pushing this year after year, until it becomes a federal issue. And so the Ciccciaro family will mourn, while a murderer walks smirking out of jail and back to his church and the NAACP to talk about "healing".

The White pardon has yet to become a national story. But then Governor Patterson is not a Republican tipped to run for national service. And that also tells you everything about what the media's goal really is. Kneecap everyone who might pose a threat to Obama.

Then there's Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle's Pardon-a-Thon. If you're a criminal, then Wisconsin is the place to go.

Following a dustup at the Capitol this fall after the state Pardon Advisory Board waived interviews for applicants seeking pardons for misdemeanor crimes,

Even better...

Outgoing Governor Jim Doyle has pardoned 74 convicted criminals in the last two weeks, bringing the total for the year to 177. That’s much more than in any of his previous seven years in office.

And Doyle’s pardons since December 15th were more than the 51 he granted in all of 2009. None of the latest pardons appear to involve prominent or politically-connected people. Their crimes ranged from fleeing police to second-degree sexual assault.

And in still more pardon related controversies, Tim Pawlenty is under fire for participating in a panel that pardoned Jeremy Giefer for having sex with an underage girl whom he later married. Now Giefer is back on trial for molesting his own daughter. But if Pawlenty is under fire for agreeing to pardon Giefer, based on the fact that Jeremy Giefer had married his victim, then Jim Doyle should be similarly under fire, because his second-degree sexual assault pardon deals with the same exact situation. It's a pardon for a man who married his underage victim. So if Pawlenty is under fire, why not Doyle?

Again the answer is that Doyle is a Democratic and Pawlenty is a Republican with presidential aspirations. Had Giefer not been pardoned, the same outlets blasting Pawlenty for pardoning him, would be blasting him for being an uptight religious fanatic who ruined his life by refusing to pardon him. It's part of the media's damn you if you do, damn you if you don't game. Which is the only game you can expect opposition researchers to play.

But at least Bill Richardson has agreed not to pardon Billy the Kid. Oddly enough Obama is being criticized for offering fewer pardons than Bush did. But why offer pardons when you don't bother prosecuting the offenders?

Not when Attorney General Holder can only openly dismiss reams of evidence in the New Black Panther Case to argue that he did nothing wrong.

South of the border, Brazil's President Lula demonstrated the same sympathy for leftist thugs as Holder when he refused to extradite leftist terrorist Cesare Battisti to Italy. Battisti who had been a member of Armed Proletarians for Communism was shielded first by France's Mitterand and now by Brazil's Lula. Two of Battisti's targets were non-political. Their only crime had been to use armed force to defend themselves against attempted robberies. An act that offended the Armed Proletarians for Communism, who like so many other Communist terrorist groups were armed robbers themselves.

Pierluigi Torregiani, a jeweler was opening the store along with his adopted son and daughter, when Battisti and other ARC terrorists murdered him in cold blood. Now his son Albert Torregiani, who was there during the murder has accused Brazil's exiting President Lula of being an accessory to his father's murder. And there's really no denying it. Unlike the Scottish government in regard to the Lockerbie bomber, this isn't about money but the sympathy of one leftist thug for another. It's the same motivation behind Brazil's recognition of a Palestinian state.

The justification that Armed Proletarians for Communism used for their murder of Pierluigi Torregiani was this, "to teach people to "allow the deeds of the Proletarians forced to steal to survive". The best message to send is to not allow the likes of Battisti or Mahmoud Abbas to survive.

And speaking of Abbas and the terrorist state that the media's opinionators insist Israel must create-- is also holding a major event. No not a New Year's Party. A terrorism anniversary party.

Mahmoud Abbas, that so-called moderate leader of the Palestinian Arabs, is set to make a major televised speech tonight to commemorate the 46th anniversary of the start of the "revolution."

What happened 46 years ago?

On January 1, 1965, Fatah attempted its first terror attack, trying to blow up part of Israel's water infrastructure.

Note that this is not the anniversary of the founding of Fatah - which happened in 1957. No, Abbas chooses to commemorate the anniversary of the first Fatah terror attack. That, to him, was the start of the "revolution."

Which indicates exactly how much Abbas values peace as a goal.

Fatah has never stopped being a terrorist organization. Now it's just a terrorist organization that's no longer funded by the USSR, but by the US and Europe, recognized by Brazil and Argentina.

On a similar note, Elder of Ziyon has a story on an Arab journalist who wrote positively about the State of Israel and negatively about the level of freedom in his own country, and is now afraid of being murdered.

But there is good news. Finally a Muslim religious leader had stepped forward to condemn terrorism.

Riyadh - Sheikh Salman al-Awda warned against severe terrorist acts, bombings, and bloodshed, as well as against the groups that carry out these actions and hide behind Islam, carrying the banner of jihad. He said: "These are tools in the hands of the Zionists, Israelis, Europeans, and Orientals, with the goal of damaging Islam."

The Muslim world is so insanely racist, that it's not possible to condemn terrorism, without blaming it on the Jews and the Orientals.

Sheikh Al-Awda can't say that terrorism is wrong. No, he has to claim that the terrorists are not really Muslim terrorists, but pawns of the Jew and the Oriental against Islam. In this convoluted universe of Islam, the only way to condemn Islamic terrorism is by redefining it as Jewish and Oriental terrorism first.

Oh and don't get the idea that he's actually opposed to terrorist groups.

I believe all of the components of the Palestinian people should be respected, and there can be no stability in any region of the world without respect for all of its components. Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and other groups are equally fundamental parts of the Palestinian people.

So whatever kind of terrorists he's condemning, it's not Hamas or Islamic Jihad which are just great. No it's those "other" terrorists who answer to the Japanese-Jewish conspiracy. And people wonder why outreach to the Muslim world is useless.

But luckily Mensa member Katie Couric has the answer.

Of course, a lot of noise was made about the Islamic Center, mosque, down near the World Trade Center, but I think there wasn’t enough sort of careful analysis and evaluation of where this bigotry toward 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, and how this seething hatred many people feel for all Muslims, which I think is so misdirected, and so wrong — and so disappointing. Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show.

They already have that. It's called Little Mosque on the Prairie. But this is the answer of the liberal elite to terrorism. Ignore the terrorism and create your own fictional reality on television in which Islam is just great.

I for one can't wait for the Mohammed Atta Show. Featuring Mohammed Atta and his three wives and his eighteen children. Life lessons include honor killings, female genital mutilation, and the vast Japanese-Jewish worldwide conspiracy against Islam. It's Must See TV, in that anyone who doesn't watch it gets beheaded.

Blazing Cat Fur via Square Mile Wife has more examples of the typical kind of tolerance in another Little Mosque of Calgary that should provide great material for the Mohammed Atta Show.

Back when I was researching a New York City mosque whose prayer rugs had been pissed on by a drunk, and for whom radical leftist Rachel Barenblat of Velveteen Rabbi fundraised, I found the same obsession with Jews and AIDS. The Oriental-Jewish conspiracy has so far decline to respond to these charges.

Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has written a follow up piece in a number of outlets on the Islamic attempt to hijack the internet via ICANN.

In practice, the new arrangement makes it much easier for Muslim countries to dictate what stays on the internet and what doesn't. The removal of the material about "terrorism" was just muscle-flexing; there is much more of that kind of censorship coming. If this stands, anti-jihad sites like my own site AtlasShrugs.com and the JihadWatch.org site run by my colleague Robert Spencer will likely lose their domain names. It will become harder and harder to find the truth about jihad activity, or any resistance to it, on the internet or anywhere else.

Why is this necessary at all? Why should the U.S. relinquish control of its own invention? The internet was our extraordinary gift to the world. We kept it free. And now, like some depraved drunk, we are tossing it away and relinquishing control to the vultures and destroyers.

There's also worry over a growing push by the UN for global internet governance.

"We have to be careful about what institutions take the lead," said Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab and the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the University of Toronto. "The Chinas, the Irans, the Saudi Arabias of the world want to impose a territorial vision of control over cyberspace -- and if the ITU got its wishes, that's essentially what would happen."

In future, the debate over who should govern the Internet would do well to bear in mind its success stories like Google and Facebook, said Olaf Kolkman, director of NLnet Labs and chair of the Internet Architecture Board.

But to Iran, China and Saudi Arabia... Facebook and Google are not success stories, but serious threat. It's the case for most dictatorships. Particularly Islamic ones.

And the UN takeover of the internet can be done using the typical class warfare rhetoric of the left.

Among the little-noticed debates at the United Nations this week was one that focuses on a potentially explosive issue: the future of the Internet. On one side are those countries favoring more governmental controls. On the other are the advocates of Internet freedom.

The debate has its roots in the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a U.N.-organized conference that addressed the "digital divide" between countries over their relative access to the Internet. One result of the conference was a mandate that the U.N. should explore ways to internationalize the governance of the Internet.

And by explore ways, we mean seize control. And by internationalize, we mean turn over into the hands of dictatorships who want to censor it.

At issue is the extent to which private industry, civil society groups, and other nongovernmental actors should continue to play significant roles in the management of the Internet. At this week's hearing, organized by U.N. Department of Social and Economic Affairs, some countries, including China, favored limiting the oversight role to governmental and intergovernmental bodies.

"The governments are located in the center of this process," argued Tang Zicai, representing the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Beijing. "This process cannot be accomplished without the meaningful participation of the governments."

That would be the same process which just led China to just ban Skype. That process.

But support for increased government regulation of the Internet is growing, especially among the developing countries who constitute a majority in the United Nations General Assembly. Several were outspoken in presentations this week at the U.N. hearing.

"Developments have not been supportive of increasing the leverage of developing countries in policy issues pertaining to the Internet," said Mohammed Hussain Nejad, representing the government of Iran. "The few developed countries are either monopolizing policymaking on such issues or entering into exclusive treaties among themselves, while further marginalizing other countries, mainly developing ones," he said.

Kind of like the way Iran's regime marginalized its people by shooting them in the street. But we can't be accused of marginalizing developing dictatorships. Let's turn over control of the internet to China, Russia and Iran. Who needs freedom anyway.

"The worst case scenario would be the imposition of U.N. types of governance over the Internet," says Philip Verveer, the Coordinator of International Communication and Information Policy at the US State Department. "[It would] inevitably bring with it tremendous slowness in terms of reaching critical decisions, because you can't have decisions taken among nations on anything that won't take a very long time. It would potentially [slow] changes in the architecture of the Internet, the adoption of technology, or the commercial arrangements that surround interconnection."

Oh I wouldn't worry about that. Infrastructure decisions would be made very slowly, but some other decisions would be made very quickly. Like one scrubbing all political dissent and cartoons of Mohammed.

The government of Mauritania, in its contribution to the U.N. debate, proposed that "international policy in the field of Internet should urge each country to ensure control of Internet content" in order to block the dissemination of any information "not authorized by law and morality" in some other country.

Guess what the religion of Mauritania is?

A. Buddhism

B. Christianity

C. Judaism

D. Islam

If you guessed D., congratulations you're an Islamophobe. And you will be forced to watch 60 straight hours of the Mohammed Atta Show to purge your mind of these hateful thoughts. But also you're correct. Mauritania is a Muslim country.

The Constitutional Charter of 1985 declares Islam the state religion and sharia the law of the land.

It's "odd" how Muslim countries are so obsessed with forcing every country to monitor internet content so that no information "not authorized by law and morality" in some other country can pass.

I bet that means Muslim countries will be obligated to scrub their insane rants about the Oriental-Jewish conspiracy spreading AIDS around the world. Nah. That can't happen. But scrubbing any criticism of Islam, that's number one on the agenda.

And how is that Sharia working out for Mauritania? Just fine.

Mahjouba was raped in March on the nighttime streets of Mauritania's capital, but she will not bring charges against the man she says did it since she may be the one who ends up in prison. The 25-year-old says the legal advice she received was to not go to court, leaving her to suffer in silence.

There is no law in Mauritania that defines rape.

According to a local U.N.-funded group working with the victims, the law criminalizes the women instead of their rapists -- and society ostracizes the women.

...

She added: "I consulted a lawyer secretly, and he advised me sincerely not to seek justice because that would throw me in jail. I know what happened to other girls who decided to go to court and face the community. Their lives were destroyed completely forever. So I already know what would happen to me if I had to follow that path.

"This Islamic republic has no place for rape victims like me."

Mauritanian laws are based on Sharia law and the penal code forbids relationships between both sexes outside marriage. That includes a consensual relationship between a boyfriend and girlfriend but can also criminalize a woman who is forced to have sex.

Sidi Athman Ould Sidi Salem, a law specialist and legal adviser to the government, said: "If raped women don't bring strong evidence, which is not easy, they would be accused of Zina -- an Arabic word meaning sex out of marriage -- and end up in jail. It's because the victims of rape are always accused of a Zina which make a lot of problems."

The above information comes from the website of Women Against Sharia. One of those sites whose existence no doubt offends the Mauritanian regime's ideas of "law and morality". And another reminder of why it's so important not to let the likes of Mauritania dictate the content of speech on the internet.

Had Mayor Bloomberg spent as much time preparing for a massive snowfall, as he did promoting the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque, New Yorkers might have been able to get to work, receive emergency help and be able to walk down the street without injury. But the Mayor who spent the summer lecturing us on everything from the salt content of our food to the evils of Islamophobia--ignored the one thing he should have actually been preparing for. Winter.

It's possible that Bloomberg's ideology fooled him into thinking that winter just wasn't coming this year. Back in 2008, he had compared Global Warming to the threat of terrorism, and focused the city's resources on buying into the eco-scam. Last winter, in response to his special Global Warming panel's alarmist claims of coastal flooding and higher temperatures in the city by 2080, the Mayor said, "We cannot wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan for the effects of climate change now."

And so last winter, instead of planning for the next winter, Bloomy began planning for the apocalyptic New York City of 2080, where everyone has to live on melted ice floes and battle for parking spots with marauding polar bears.

Bloomberg's incompetence highlights the danger of decision makers falling under the influence of the Global Warming scam. And now a woman is dead and many more are injured because municipal resources were diverted from preparing for an entirely predictable snowstorm, to preparing for an imaginary disaster toward the end of the century. We had ample warning, when the Mayor of the city that suffered the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history, announced in all seriousness that Global Warming was just as dangerous as terrorism. Now we have suffered a snowstorm, and we found out that city was unprepared. What happens if we were to suffer another 9/11. Does anyone seriously think that an administration obsessed with Global Warming will be ready?

And New York's example might scale up to the whole country and the world, as we stop to consider how many resources were diverted from planning for preventable disasters and terrorist attacks to hold conferences on global warming. How many schoolchildren have lost educational time memorizing environmentalist dogma, instead of learning to explore science as a field, rather than a dogma. No wonder American students are falling behind in mathematics and science, in an educational environment where rainbow colored globes matter more than actual knowledge. Soviet science was not second-rate because of a lack of resources or education, but because of its dogmatic indoctrination which inhibited independent thinking and exploration. In the name of Global Warming, we dismantled NASA, suppressed scientific dissent and destroyed the potential of a generation of our children. That certainly puts a snowstorm into perspective.

But it's not just about Global Warming, it's about the attitude of the political elite in a nanny state.

While Bloomberg's administration made nanny state causes like nutrition, global warming and public schools its priority-- it failed abysmally at its core mission. Crime has gone up. Services have gone down. The World Trade Center has not been rebuilt. And now even in the face of a predictable snowstorm, instead of showing leadership, Bloomberg tried to show off his liberal side, by going on television and delivering an announcement in his best High School Spanish. It was an embarrassing moment not just for him, but for that whole arrogant elite which presumes to dictate the minutiae of everyone's behavior, yet can't do the job it was elected to do.

Like so many politicians, Bloomberg mistook his role overseeing a municipality that provides taxpayer funded services, for a role as urban moralist, social critic and dispenser of condescending liberal platitudes. And somehow in between mandating that restaurants display calories on their menus and trying to control their ingredients-- he didn't bother preparing for a severe winter. What's the difference? The difference is one of self-image.

Providing services during a winter emergency is something that garbage men are supposed to do. It's not something that an elitist like Bloomberg wants to be bothered with. Bloomberg didn't spend a fortune getting elected three times, in order to oversee a giant snow plow operation. He did it on a Linday-esque quest to teach New Yorkers to be better people. To manage them, the way he had managed his employees. The Mayor never saw himself as a public servant, but as a reluctant master tasked with educating and taking care of a bunch of imbeciles, who would eat themselves fat, stone mosques and emit carbon from their big mouths, if someone like him didn't step forward to pat them on the head and tell them what to do.

New Yorkers never liked Bloomberg, but they tolerated him for the one and only good quality that he had going for him. His competence. Unlike his Democratic rivals, he had come out of the business world and knew how to run a large operation. But Bloomberg liked that part of himself the least. Inside his broad suits and horsey face, beneath the cold tones and patrician dignity of a mortician, beat the heart of a man certain that he was destined for great things. Being a billionaire wasn't enough. Neither was being mayor. Unlike Giuliani, Bloomberg was never cursed with any love for the city, or concern for its inhabitants. They were just stepping stones on his way up to bigger things.

After teasing a run for the White House, auditioning to be Obama's new treasury secretary, and spending the fall advocating furiously for the Ground Zero Mosque-- the snowstorm of late December made it clear that he had completely neglected his responsibilities. Bloomberg appointed himself the conscience of the city and the nation, but he forgot that he wasn't elected to be our conscience, but to see that our streets were clean.

That's the humiliating lesson that American democracy regularly serves up to arrogant politicians who act like messiahs and gurus, only to discover what we really think of them when the laundry doesn't get done. After the fortune spent on turning Obama into the "Hope of All Mankind", he was shocked to learn that the country was mad at him because the economy was bad. And all those people, whom he thought loved and adored him, really just wanted to be able to buy a new pair of pants at the mall, without worrying about upcoming layoffs.

Months later, the media is still slowly processing the revelation that most Americans did not vote for him in order to be inspired by his teleprompter addresses, but because they accepted the idea that a leader from a new party might be able to fix the economy, where the leader from the last party had failed. And the humiliation of that revelation is incalculable. Far from being some grand coronation and the ushering in of a new age-- the election really came down to a job interview, in which one candidate passed because he seemed like a young, ambitious and energetic go-getter.

But that's the way America has always been. We are not North Korea. We don't elect politicians in order to be inspired by their speechmaking, and we certainly don't elect them so that they can tell us what to do every minute of the day. We certainly don't elect them in order to worship them. We do it so they can keep the city, the state and the country running. We don't remember leaders because they inspire us, but because they get the job done. Had the United States divided permanently on Lincoln's watch, or ceded Hawaii to Japan under FDR or turned over Europe to the Soviet Union on Reagan's-- none of these men would have been viewed as inspiring leaders. But as tragic failures. And we have no use for leaders who think that doing the job we elected them for is beneath them. No use at all.

Obama has found that out the hard way. Now so has Bloomberg. And liberal politicians will go on finding it out over and over again, when they insist on treating their elected office as a platform to show their disdain for the common man.

For Bloomberg, Global Warming and the Ground Zero Mosque were moral crusades pitting him against an apathetic and ignorant citizenry. On the other hand cleaning the streets? Feh. That kind of grunt work is beneath the mayor's dignity. Let the slobs get out shovels and dig for themselves, while the snow plows focus on the important areas, like the street that Bloomberg lives on and Times Square in preparation for his big New Year's Eve event. And that is the other problem with the nanny state.

A system run by people who disdain the title of "public servant" will ultimately fail at meeting the basic needs of the people. And nanny states have a way of overextending themselves into doing everything, while actually doing nothing. The more a nanny state tries to do, the more things it does badly. And eventually it stops being able to do anything at all, except to maintain its own grip on power. The city can tightly regulate public nutrition if it so chooses, but don't expect it to be ready when a snow emergency comes. Because no matter what the press releases say, resources are finite. And so is the attention span of those in charge.

Before the snowstorm made the streets of New York undriveable, Bloomberg had already made much of Manhattan undriveable by narrowing and whittling away entire streets to create bicycle lanes and pedestrian areas, all part of his 2030 plan to fight Global Warming by forcing residents to use public transportation. But Global Warming did not come. Instead the cold and the snow fell. While the city was busy putting up bus stop ads warning about the flooding dangers from Global Warming, the winter came and did what winters so often do. Because winters don't pay attention to Global Warming conferences or the best biased evidence of researchers looking to score some grant money by promoting an imaginary threat. They don't care about the nutritional agenda of an out of touch billionaire. Unlike regulations, research studies and the media-- they are not manipulatable. They just are.

In the midst of Bloomberg's snow job, we have an opportunity to remember what it is we hire politicians to do. And that politicians who go off the reservation and begin doing a job they weren't asked to do-- are not just abusing their power, but neglecting their duties. This week a woman died, because of a liberal mayor who promoted Global Warming, controlled restaurant menus and championed a mosque-- but didn't get around to planning for a snowstorm.

Haven't you heard, Israeli democracy is in danger. That's the latest media talking point on Israel. And where is the threat to Israeli democracy coming from? From its democracy. Confused? That's probably because you think that the word 'democracy' has something to do with the popular vote and the right of every person, irrespective of their religion, country of origin or accent to vote for the party of their choice. As misguided as the vote may be. When it actually means the right of media pundits, academics and elitist judges to dictate how the country is run based on the values of a entitled upper class scrambling to hold on to power.

Out of their concern for Israeli democracy, the American media and the Obama Administration have been pressuring Netanyahu to "broaden" his coalition by replacing the Shas party of Middle Eastern Jews and the Israel is Our Home party of Russian immigrants, with the Kadima party. Traditionally calls for a broader coalition usually mean one that represents more of the country. But due to their fear for "Israeli democracy", this is actually a call for a coalition that represents fewer sectors of the country.

Liberals who usually value diversity in everything, want to close the door on a broad coalition in Israel. Why? Because Middle Eastern Jews and Russian immigrants tend to be right-wing, and diversity is only a legitimate value when it serves to promote the left. But when the right wins elections, suddenly the pundits rush to their keyboards to type out an urgent telegraphic warning. DEMOCRACY THREATENED BY DEMOCRACY. STOP. DEMOCRACY MUST BE ABOLISHED TO PRESERVE DEMOCRACY. STOP. But if democracy threatens democracy, it's not democracy that's under fire. It's the insistence of a small group of powerful people on getting their way regardless of what the public wants.

Atlantic shill Jeffrey Goldberg shows off this Orwellian grammar when he warns that "wide swaths of Israeli Jewish society" are undermining the country's democracy. And he lists Orthodox Jews, Middle-Eastern Jews, Settlers and Russian Jews. In other words the majority of the country. And how is this terrible majority of Israelis undermining the country's democracy. Well Edgar, they're going to the polls and voting for the parties of their choice. And then the parties represent them in the Knesset and in the government coalition. Clearly this threat to democracy cannot be understated.

Unsurprisingly Jeffrey Goldberg's list of the "Fearsome 4" are all associated with the right. Even more unsurprisingly they all represent ethnic and religious minorities that deviate from the establishment left's native born secularism. Goldberg's screed is a familiar one to anyone who has spoken to an upper class leftist complaining about religious people moving into his neighborhood, even as his face turns with red outrage at the thought of anyone from the working class complaining about Muslims moving into their neighborhood.

It's a familiar enough story. 19th century American progressives who fought for the rights of slaves, hated and agitated against Irish Catholic immigrants as threats to democracy. Their tolerance which seemed to extend very far, stopped dead cold when it encountered people who were enough like them, for their otherness to be infuriating, rather than exotic. 19th century New York Jews reacted much the same way to the flood of Russian Jewish immigrants bringing with them their old school religion, quirky mannerisms and Yiddish dialect. And they reacted, much like the Labor elite did to the arrival of Middle Eastern Jews, with repugnance and a calculated attempt to strip away their religion and their culture in the name of civilizing them.

But despite all the radiation exposures, taunts and police batons, Middle Eastern and Russians Jews have still not properly civilized to the standards of the faculty of Hebrew University and the Supreme Court. They still insist on viewing Muslims with suspicion (it must be racism). They want Israel to be a strong country that can stand up for itself (clearly racism). They think that laws should be made for people, rather than for the approval of the EU. And they want to see an Israel that is more democratic, less bureaucratic and less subject to the control of the very elites who discriminate against them (have you ever heard such racism in your life). Clearly they are a threat to Israeli democracy. Or rather the part of it that substitutes its own undemocratic exercise of power in place of democracy.

The fall of the Labor elite began when a racist crack at its own campaign rally, helped lead to Begin's victory. Since then every left wing party still thinks that it can win the Sefardi or Russian vote by pushing one of their own hacks, paid to conduct outreach to those communities, onto the party list. And when they end up with bupkes, they blame (what else) racism. Then out come the op-eds warning that these people are a grave threat to Israeli democracy. Like Pharaoh regarding the Children of Israel, they whisper gravely that this rabble will soon outnumber them. And what happens then? Prime Minister Lieberman? President Ovadya Yosef? Settlers with their own handheld nuclear weapons? Cats and dogs playing the balalaika with prayer amulets around their neck on the other side of the Jordan? And what will Europe think then? Ribbono Shel Olam, what will the Washington Post think?

This carnival of bigotry resounds in an echo chamber, as the declining left elite whispers to American journalists and diplomats about the dangers of "all those people". The ones who didn't live in tents or go to Mapai meetings with my grandfather. Who haven't read Amos Oz, don't care about the annual Rabin anniversaries or worse yet go to their Daf Yomi class without a thought for his legacy. That vast majority of the country that just doesn't fit into the vision of a decrepit left that long ago lost the country, but still hasn't given up hope of taking it down with them.

And so Atlantic's token pro-Israel blogger who so loveth the Jewish state that he recently called on American Jews not to donate money to Israel after its devastating Carmel forest fire, does his part for the echo chamber. After a previous post celebrating Jerusalem's diversity, he delivers one warning that Israel's diversity will be the death of it yet. The difference is that his Jerusalem post celebrated Israel's non-Jewish diversity. But his "Fearsome 4" condemns Israel's Jewish diversity. Like Israel's celebrity leftists who shamelessly don yellow stars to protest the deportation of African illegal aliens, while simultaneously calling for the deportation of Jewish residents of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria-- it's about demarcating the lines of permissible bigotry.

And you can even see their point. They need African illegal aliens to clean their houses, just as they need Muslims to work cheaply doing errands for them-- but what use do they have for the bearded settler who won't mop their floor for a few coins, but incites the hatred of their comrades in the Brussels branch of the Socialist International? The despised Sefardi and the contemptible Russian refused to be the members of their lower class. They refused to take a few handouts to pull the lever for Labor. Instead they insisted on democracy. And that makes them a threat to democracy.

Labor is defunct. The narrative of the right is the dominant one. Why? Because the left has lost all touch with reason, abandoned even the pretext of national security and dived so deep into corruption that it hasn't hit bottom yet. The Kadima party that Obama and the foreign media would like to see in Netanyahu's coalition is the creature of two Prime Ministers, one of whom has been indicted, and another of whom escaped indictment only by virtue of being in a coma. It is a party that exists only because its mutually corrupt cretins haven't decided which other party to leave it for yet. It is currently led by the protege of the man who may be the first Israeli Prime Minister to go to jail. It is not left-wing by way of ideas, but because it hasn't thought of anything else it should be. And its otherwise brainless leader knows that the only way to the top is if Obama pressures Netanyahu into giving her what she wants to enter the coalition.

The pundits would have you believe that Israeli democracy is threatened by Ovadya Yosef, the local version of Pat Robertson, and that crazed lunatic Avigdor Lieberman, who recently stated firmly that Israel shouldn't even discuss apologizing to Turkey for the confrontation with the Islamist fanatics on board the Mari Marmara. Yet the same media that rushed to hiss and spit on Lieberman for stating the obvious, praised Olmert as a wise and prudent leader for saying the same thing. What's the difference between insanity and wisdom? Political affiliation of course.

Israel's democracy isn't threatened by the refugees from the Muslim World and the Soviet Union that it took in. Those refugees are the reason for its existence. It is not threatened by the rising number of religious Jews either, whether in Jerusalem or Judea. A country cannot survive for long without religion. And Religious Zionism has become the backbone of Zionism. It is however threatened by a small number of powerful elites who use their judicial positions, their newspaper columns and their academic posts to bar the door to democracy. It is the likes of Labor's Haim Ramon, who famously screamed, "If you do not accept our democracy, then we will crush you"-- who are the real threat.

All these columns warning about the danger to Israeli democracy from the majority of its citizens are nothing but kinder, gentler echoes of Ramon, defining their way as "democracy" and the way of the people would like to go, as undemocratic. When all the Goldbergs warn about the danger of a majority of minorities upstaging their liberal consensus, they are preaching a quieter bigotry. Not the noisy slur or the wrongful arrest, but the roundabout insinuation. No direct statement that Sefardim are primitive barbarians, Russians are all prostitutes or Orthodox Jews are fanatically primitive. Instead the same thing is accomplished by labeling them all as threats to democracy. By castigating their elected officials as primitive, fanatical and barbaric. It's the same message, but delivered in a classier way.

All this concern about Israeli democracy is an inherent admission that one man's vote is not as good as another. That the dot com entrepreneur just back from Malta casting his ballot for Meretz is an informed voter who is a blessing to Israeli democracy. And the darkie, dati or russkie casting his vote for Shas, Yachdut HaTorah or Yisrael Beitenu is an ignorant blight on democracy who needs a bath and a good beating, not necessarily in that order.

American liberal Jews who work themselves in a lather over Israeli democracy are unconsciously echoing those same prejudices. And treating democracy as a fixed value that embodies their values. By making democracy equivalent to liberalism, they show that they are the real threat to democracy.

Liberal Jews who worry whether they'll be able to remain Zionists if they disapprove of Israel's government are missing the point. Zionism is not the endorsement of a government, but of a right. It is not the process by which the country is run, but the inspiration for its existence. One does not need to respect a government, to respect the process that elects governments. A country may be founded for ideals, but even the smallest country is still a vast brawling mass of people that changes from generation to generation. Anyone who thinks that they have to be able to approve of Israel in every generation in order to be a Zionist might as well opt out now.

Israel isn't one thing or another, it's many of them. It's the source of many of the world's religious ideas, and the place where they all get together to meet and fight it out. It's breathtakingly socialist and capitalist, secular and religious, multicultural to a ridiculous degree and just as prejudiced. You can meet Japanese Rabbis, Jewish anti-semites and people who fancy themselves the reincarnation of King David, without having to travel more than a kilometer or two. Which is to say that Israel is a lot like America or the more democratic parts of the world, and so unlike so much of the undemocratic Middle East, where differences are punished and dissent is a crime. And that is exactly what Israel would turn into if the professional worriers for its democracy got their way.

Zionism, like every national movement, is an idealistic springboard for a real society. And real societies are ugly. They have their grand moments and their ugly ones. For every noble speech, there is an ignoble scandal. And for every virtue, there is a crime. For those who worry so fastidiously for Israeli democracy, there is a simple enough solution short of demonizing most of the country because it doesn't vote your way. Move there and vote for yourself.

Like a Rorschach test which tells you more about the patient, than about the image on the card, Wikileaks reveals more about the left than it does about America. And what it reveals is that the left's antipathy toward America is not policy based at all. If Wikileaks' heavily edited helicopter video at least allowed the left to pretend that it was opposing American war crimes, the leaked diplomatic cables are based on nothing more than opposing American diplomacy. Not even the capital D diplomacy, but the small letter diplomacy. The minor observations, petty notes and random scribbles of a bored diplomatic corps observing well known situations.

The diplomatic cable leaks were not broadcast to protest against the war, or to undermine a right wing government-- they were broadcast because Anti-Americanism is a compulsive need. While American liberals fancy that the right man in D.C. can make the world love us, their own comrades internationally need an America to hate. If an America didn't exist, they would have to invent it. A more confident pro-American leader like Bush may stir up more venom and outrage, but America was not beloved under Clinton. And it's not adored under Obama. If Che were dug up, pumped full of zombie juice and stuck in the oval office-- the red che t-shirt wearing crowd would be burning American flags anyway.

During the Bush era, the chattering classes liked to believe that America's PR problem was fixable. But America's PR problem exists because it is a global superpower. The problem isn't the War on Terror or McDonalds or Hollywood or the dollar. Or any of it apart. It's all of it together. There's no fix for it, except to dethrone America. Turn it into a has-been, a former empire feeding off the good graces of others and opening its historical institutions to tourism. That won't fix the problem. The UK is not exactly all that beloved either. But it will dial down the obsessive hatred to a dull roar.

As the first fully Anti-American leader to sit at the helm of the country, Barack Hussein Obama is self-aware enough to understand that it is not any single element, but the perception of America as a global power in every arena that feeds that hatred. And it is why he's done everything to weaken American power and independence across every spectrum, from its economy to its military to its space program and its culture. But even a wholly anti-American leader wasn't enough to fix the PR problem.

The willingness of the American left to cheer Assange on shows that not only couldn't America Lite (TM) win over Europe's leftists, but it couldn't even win over their slower and pudgier American counterparts. But what's the basis of their opposition? Do they really believe that diplomats shouldn't be able to privately report their assessment of what is going on in another country? And would they be willing to apply the same standard to journalists or NGO officials? Obviously not.

The romance of Wikileaks has little to do with policy, and a good deal to do with anti-Americanism as an emotional response, sticking it to "The Man", even when you are the man. Especially if you are the man.

The appeal of the anti-American brand is directly linked to American power. Not the abuse of that power, merely the power or even the perception of that power alone is enough. The existence of that power alone is perceived as arrogant, isolationist and imperialistic. It's perceived that way, because there is a psychological need to perceive it that way. For all that the left envisions a paranoid America seeking out phantom enemies that don't exist, it is the left that desperately needs that phantom enemy. That phantom empire to childishly batter its fists against. The Big Daddy to rail against and finally slay.

Anti-Americanism is not an informed critique, but an uninformed rant. An ongoing tantrum and a status symbol. It is that latter part which so effectively mobilizes the left. It is what drew Assange to successfully cash in on the glamour of anti-americanism. And what drew decrepit leftist shill, Michael Moore, out of his cave to grab a piece of the action. After Obama's victory, the left has quickly exhausted the possibilities of cheerleading the White House. As emotionally fulfilling as it might have been for them to finally win, they would rather act out their revolutionary fantasies, than settle down to the boring work of supporting every initiative. The left is at its best when fighting enemies. And while Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich still offer up the usual targets-- America itself is a much bigger target.

It's hard to claim to be oppressed by Sarah Palin. And there's only so much mileage that even the greenest of environmentalists can milk from his love of elk. But being oppressed by America-- there's always mileage in that. Before Assange, the left had to make do with detained Gitmo terrorists, who did the sort of things that their ACLU defenders could only fantasize about, but lacked that edge of cool. With Assange, Anti-Americanism isn't just about defending some Kuwaiti or Somali terrorist with a Koran in one hand and a copy of Harry Potter from the Gitmo prison library in the other, anymore. Assange makes anti-Americanism cool again, replacing the more overt violence, with sabotage. Assange calculatedly acts out the fantasies of the left. And the left flocks to defend him.

Assange allows the left to play at revolution, without fear of getting hurt. People may die because of Assange, but it will generally be in parts of the world that they hardly ever visit, except as protest tourists, flashing their EU or American passports, sweeping in to take some photos of the native wildlife, pose with a local human rights activist, maybe wave a sign or throw a stone, and then head on home to their flat and their flatscreen and their good life.

Seen in that light, Wikileaks is less a resource and more of a theme park, lending the experience of virtual revolution to the pampered sons and daughters of the prosperous West, allowing them to participate in imaginary assaults on the regime without ever leaving the comfort of their living room. So much of the activism has been headed that way, like Twitter campaigns in which people with nothing at stake pretend that they're making a difference in the protest movements of countries like Iran, where protesters are tortured, raped and murdered.

Virtual activism leads to actual dehumanization, whether it's the informants whose lives Wikileaks placed at risk, or the women who have accused Assange of rape. The detachment of activism from those affected by it, makes it easier to reduce violent acts to button pushing. With no skin in the game, activism becomes a game. A social media contest with egotistical, not moral stakes. Not a contest of ideas, but of wills.

America as a cartoon villain remains a vital prop in this virtual theme park. It's a vital villain to the left, which forms a revolutionary identity by fighting against the powerful. Not those in the wrong, those with the power. By equating evil with power, greed with wealth, armed forces with war crimes, and ability with crime-- the left's own ideology makes anti-americanism inevitable. If America is powerful than it must be evil.

Obama has severely hurt America, but he hasn't come close to destroying it. And the Anti-American left doesn't want him to. It needs America as a windmill to tilt against. And if America were to fall, Russia or China would not make nearly as satisfactory a villain. Because they don't look much like daddy and they won't treat their attacks as a game. Without an America to assail, they would be left in a cold world where revolution isn't a game, but a firing squad. Where denouncing the government doesn't bring you book deals, but cold prison cells.

It is that combination of power and fair play that makes America into such an appealing target. Its morality is a perfect target for accusations of hypocrisy. Like children bent on proving their parents wrong, the more America tries to do what's right, the more it's denounced as a monstrous evil regime. That way the game of revolution can go on endlessly. The anti-American junkie's rush of fighting the power, before heading off to work, swollen with self-satisfied outrage at his own moral courage.

Wikileaks is an important reminder, not for the present, but for the future, that anti-Americanism cannot be sanded away with progressive administrations. America will still be hated no matter which party and what man sit in power. It will be hated because its haters define their identity through that hatred. Their conspiracy theories enlarge their self-image. Their anti-American activism is a form of petty rebellion by overgrown children. Their sabotage is not policy based, it's ego based. Anti-American is an emotional addiction, not a reasoned policy critique. And there's no way to take the product away from the addict. We are not the problem. They are.

"A flag bearing a crescent and star flies from a flagpole in front of the World Trade Center, next to a Christmas tree and a menorah."

New York Times, 1997

In 1997, Mohammed T. Mehdi, head of the Arab-American Committee and the National Council on Islamic Affairs, lobbied to have a crescent and star go up at the World Trade Center during the holiday season. His wish was granted, despite the fact that Mehdi had been an adviser to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the religious leader behind the original bombing of the World Trade Center.

Long before the Ground Zero Mosque was even a twinkle in the eye of a violent ex-waiter and a slumlord Imam, the World Trade Center allowed Mohammed T. Mehdi to bully it into flying the symbol of Islam.

By 1997, Mohammed T. Mehdi had become an unambiguously ugly public figure. He had been fired by Mayor Dinkins in 1992 for anti-Semitic remarks. The year before he had proclaimed that, "Millions of Arabs believe Saddam stands tall having defied Western colonialism". In 1995, the US Attorney's Office in New York had listed Mehdi as one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the trial of Sheik Rahman. Mehdi had already published a book titled "Kennedy and Sirhan: Why?", which argued that Robert Kennedy's assassin had been acting in self-defense.

Considering Mehdi's role in actively working on behalf of the Sheik behind the wave of terrorism that included the original attack on the World Trade Center, if the WTC should have turned down anyone's request for an Islamic symbol at the site, turning down Mehdi should have been a no brainer. And yet when all was said and done, in the winter of 1997 there was an Islamic star and crescent at the World Trade Center. And another one at the park in front of the White House. No one in the media thought it at all odd, that a man who had a long record of blatantly supporting terrorists should get his way. They thought it was just great.

The previous year had marked the first annual Ramadan dinner, integrating the Islamic celebration into the Clinton Administration's schedule of events. Bill Clinton who had not come down to the World Trade Center after the bombing, had a different set of priorities. A month after 9/11 however, Bush went Clinton one better, when he became the first US President to host a Ramadan dinner. Many of the Muslim ambassadors at the event were there representing countries which had helped finance Al Queda. Little more than a month after the attacks that killed 3,000 Americans, the President of the United States sat down to break bread with the money men for the killers.

But the Star and Crescent flying at the World Trade Center did not prevent it from being targeted in a second greater attack four years later. Nor did Bush's Ramadan dinners do anything to diminish Islamic terrorism. On the contrary, every gesture of appeasement only seemed to make it worse. Before the star and crescent flew at the World Trade Center, the site suffered only a few dead. After it, thousands dead. The more Ramadan dinners Bush hosted, the more Americans died. There was of course no direct connection between the two, only an indirect one. Because the Star and Crescent and the Ramadan dinners both signified a deliberate blindness to the threat of Islamic terrorism.

No one who understood what had happened at the World Trade Center in 1993, would have permitted a banner associated with its attackers to be flown there. But while the World Trade Center, administered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, let Mehdi have his way, Muslims in dark rooms were plotting to fulfill Sheik Rahman's formula for a war on America and the free world; "Cut the transportation of their countries, tear it apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land."

While the Star and Crescent was blowing in the cold December wind coming off the Hudson River, an even colder wind was blowing out of Hamburg, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. A year earlier Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had come up with the idea and presented it to Osama bin Laden. A year later the operation began to move forward.

While Secretary of State Albright was holding her Ramadan dinners, other Ramadan dinners were being held out of sight at which more substantive events were being discussed. While the US was busy bombing Yugoslavian civilians in order to create a separatist Muslim state for KLA terrorists, Osama bin Laden and Mohammed were recruiting the first of the 9/11 hijackers. That same grim parallelism would go forward, as the US tried to appease Muslims, while Muslims tried to murder Americans.

In 1997, the New York Daily News wrote an upbeat story about Mehdi's Star and Crescent, which envisioned Islam blending in merrily into the holiday season.

New York may seem a little brighter this holiday season as the glowing Muslim crescent and star symbol nudges its way onto a seasonal landscape of Christmas trees, menorahs and Kwanzaa candles.

Watch out, ho, ho, ho-ing Santas you might get drowned out by cheery folks yelling, "Allahu akbar!"

Four years later, Muslims had indeed made things brighter in New York City with the flames of the attacks of September 11. The 9/11 hijackers left behind notes, which said among other things, "Shout, 'Allahu Akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers". If there were any Santas on those planes, they were certainly drowned out by the cries of "Allah Akbar". And if that didn't drown them out, having their throats being slit by the cheery folks with box cutters surely would.

On the Christmas of 2001, New York City was a city with an open wound. Muslims had finally made their impact on the holiday season in a truly unforgettable way. At Ground Zero, workers were still struggling to search through the remains, looking for bodies or parts of them. "It would be like a gift for somebody," a police officer said, who was spending his holiday searching through the debris. A gift for the non-believers on that holiday season from Islam.

But while Muslims were stuffing their faces in November 2001, Americans were mourning for the dead. While Abdul and Mohammed and Raisa were picking through their lamb stew, Americans were picking up the pieces. And yet it was Americans who were repeatedly told to be sensitive to Muslim concerns. From Pakistan, Musharraf urged the US to suspend bombing his Taliban allies during Ramadan... in the name of sensitivity. New York City schools were making arrangements for Muslim prayers out of "heightened sensitivity to Muslim concerns after the Sept. 11 attack". As usual it was not Americans who were on the receiving end of "heightened sensitivity", but the people whose ideology had conspired to murder them.

And on the 9th anniversary of 9/11, Islam had another gift for us. Having bought up a building damaged in their own attack, they plotted to set up a grand mosque near Ground Zero. Another gift to New Yorkers from the religion that keeps on giving. On the same date as the Battle of Vienna against the Muslim horde and the breaking of ground on the construction of the Pentagon, Muslims murdered 3,000 Americans. And on the 9th anniversary of that date, another Crescent and Star, another mocking reminder that Muslim atrocities represent a victory, rather than a defeat.

And the same people who did not learn the lesson in 1997, and allowed the Crescent and Star to fly at the World Trade Center, are now eager to let the Ground Zero Mosque go forward. In the name of tolerance of course. Yet despite the Crescent and Star, and even the designs of the World Trade Center itself, which supposedly incorporated Islamic elements from Mecca, appeasement proved to be no defense. 3,000 people died on 9/11 because America preferred to appease, rather than confront. And we are still busy appeasing, like never before.

Goodbye Gitmo. Farewell Ground Zero. While New Yorkers are struggling to make ends meet, Bloomberg is golfing with Obama. Every Islamic act of terrorism is met with worries about growing Islamophobia, as if the terrorists were Islamophobes, rather than Islamophiles. While the majority of New Yorkers and Americans want the mosque to move, the rich and the powerful want it where it is. How better to show Muslims how tolerant we are, than to show that we are willing to denigrate our own dead for a trade deal with Dubai. At Bloomberg's own Ramadan dinner, he praised his favorite Muslim slumlord and defender of terrorists. Bloomberg who had never heard of the word freedom, when it came to what ordinary New Yorkers can eat, drink, smoke or where they can drive, rediscovered the word as applied to the freedom of Muslims to give yet one more gift to New Yorkers in preparation for the holidays.Allahu Akbar and Ho, Ho, Ho.

After the 2010 elections, it's not exactly news that Obama has lost America. But in a less public referendum, he also lost the world. Obama's cocktail party tour of the world's capitals may look impressive on a map, but is irrelevant on a policy level. In less than two years, the White House has gone from being the center of world leadership to being irrelevant, from protecting world freedom to serving as a global party planning committee.

Even the Bush Administration's harshest critics could never have credibly claimed that George W. Bush was irrelevant. He might have been hated, pilloried and shouted about-- but he couldn't be ignored. However Obama can be safely ignored. Invited to parties, given the chance to show off his cosmopolitan sophisticated by reciting one or two words in the local lingo, read off a teleprompter, along with some cant about the need for everyone to pull together and make the world a better place, and then dismissed for the rest of the evening.

As a world leader, he makes a passable party guest. He has a broad smile, brings along his own gifts and is famous in the way that celebrities, rather than prime ministers and presidents are famous. On an invitation list, he is more Bono than Sarkozy, Leonardo DiCaprio not Putin. You don't invite him to talk turkey, not even on Thanksgiving. He's just one of those famous people with a passing interest in politics who gets good media attention, but who has nothing worthwhile to say.

The only countries who take Obama seriously, are the ones who have to. The leaders of Great Britain, Israel and Japan-- who have tied their countries to an enduring alliance with America based on mutual interests and values, only to discover that the latest fellow to sit behind the Oval Office desk no longer shares those values and couldn't give less of a damn about American interests. It's no wonder that European leaders ignore him as much as possible. Or that Netanyahu visited America, while Obama was abroad. Or that Japanese politics have become dangerously unstable.

On the enemy side, the growing aggressiveness of China, North Korea, Iran, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda can all be attributed to the global consensus that no one is at home in the White House.And if no one is at home in the White House, then that's a perfect time to slap the big boy around the yard. China is doing it economically, the rest are doing it militarily. They're all on board with Obama's Post-American vision of the world. But unlike him and most liberals, they have a clear understanding of what that means. The America of some years back, which actually intimidated Libyan dictator Khaddafi into giving up his nuclear program, without lifting a hand against him is long gone. So is the Cedar Revolution. Syria and Iran are back in charge in Lebanon. And in Afghanistan, the Taliban are laughing at our soft power outreach efforts.

Obama's soft power approach emphasizes the 'soft' and forgets the 'power'. It neglects even Clinton era understandings about the role of America in the world, and reverts instead to a Carter era sense of guilt that bleeds into hostility toward American interests and allies. While the rest of the world puts their own interests first, they act like a cog in some imaginary global community, turning and turning toward the distant horizon of international brotherhood. While China, Russia and most of the world walk down their backs and up their jellyfish spines, laughing all the way. And America's allies gird themselves and prepare for the worst.

From the first, this administration has curried favor with America's enemies by betraying and humiliating its allies. But these hideous acts of moral cowardice have not won Obama the approval of America's enemies. Only their contempt. And a Nobel Peace Prize from a committee of elderly left wing Swedes, awarded not for any accomplishment, but for the lack thereof. For being a man without a country, a leader without a spine and a representative of America who gives no thought for the interests of that country.

Now that the Koreas stand on the brink of war, Iran continues its drive toward a nuclear bomb, Al Qaeda is going global, Hezbollah is on the verge of taking Lebanon and Mexico is on the verge of imploding-- the impact of America's absence on the global stage is all too clear. The countless cocktail parties and toasts have not changed the world. All they've done is highlighted the transition of the White House from world leadership to global party guest. Trip after trip has ended in photo ops and policy failures. Instead Obama is stuck dumpster diving into the futile quest for a Palestinian state, not because such an entity will make the world any better, but because it will make him look good.

Obama has no mandate at home, and he has even less of one abroad. America's enemies do not fear him. Only our allies do. Kim Jong Il does not sit up nights worrying what Obama will do. Because the consensus in North Korea, Iran and the rest of the world is that the sea will rise, the sun will set and Obama will do nothing. Except maybe write a strongly worded letter, offset by some quiet backchannel diplomacy from his coterie of international left wing stooges reassuring the offender that, "No, Barry really isn't mad at you. He's just concerned. Really, really concerned."

Liberal pundits mock the rough and ready style of conservatives like Reagan, Bush or Palin in world affairs, but what they fail to realize is that the over-educated naivete, trendy cosmopolitanism and buzzword rich approach of a Kerry or Obama come off as laughably pathetic on the world stage. Republicans might be hated, but they can't be ignored. Democrats on the other hand are catspaws and pawns, fools who are so sure of their cleverness and determined to embrace every culture in the way that only the graduates of Ivy League institutions can, that any Third World vendor could twirl them around his fingers.

World leaders are rarely liked, but effective ones are respected. And effective world leaders don't lead with appeasement, don't compromise before the other side has even made an offer and negotiate on behalf of their country, rather than some intangible global consensus. They understand that they represent a country, not a popularity contest. They don't travel abroad to be adored or be greeted with parades and gifts, but to achieve tangible results on specific issues. To do otherwise is not to be a world leader, but a celebrity who happens to have picked up a big title along the way.

To be a proper American president on the world stage, means choosing to be respected, rather than liked. Obama always chooses to be liked, rather than respected. Because respect comes from accomplishment and character, while 'liking' is a function of appearance and image. Aiming to be 'liked' is playing to Obama's strengths. But being liked is irrelevant outside of an afterschool special. World affairs is not a networking seminar, it is a negotiation between countries who have billions of dollars and millions of lives on the line. And Obama has no idea how to play that game. Like the kid who never fit in anywhere, he's still trying to be liked. And he's willing to sell out American interests and allies to get the cool UN kids to like him.

Unfortunately Obama's irrelevance is also America's irrelevance. A Republican House of Representatives cannot do what Obama should be doing. And any attempt to show strength gets shouted down by the liberal punditocracy as treason and undermining the White House. As if anyone, anywhere could undermine Obama internationally as much as he undermines himself. The same liberals who considered Ted Kennedy's treasonous offer of cooperation with the Soviet Union or Kerry's trip to Latin American Marxist terrorists to be acts of courage, damn Republicans who supported allies in Ecuador and Israel as traitors. And so Obama must have a free hand to do it all on his own. To do what Kennedy or Kerry could have only dreamed of.

Obama has lost the world. He has made the country that he claims to represent into a shadow of its former strength and glory. And his irrelevance endangers American lives. Not just those of soldiers in war zones, laboring under restrictive Rules of Engagement, written so as not to offend Muslims. Not just those of Americans at risk for domestic terrorism under an Attorney General who sympathizes with terrorists, more than with Americans. But to everyone living in a world where countries like North Korea and Iran feel free to do what they want, where our economic rivals such as Russia and China advance their interests and their espionage, and where terrorists across the Muslim world grow in boldness and number because they have no one left to fear anymore. In America and around the world-- Barack Hussein Obama endangers us all.

There has been a good deal of talk about Net Neutrality, but the Clinton Administration's internationalization of ICANN means that there's a much more serious threat to freedom of speech on the internet than even the FCC. A threat that hardly anyone is talking about.

Here's a brief excerpt of a much longer piece

10) Further alterations to the geographical makeup of ICANN's Board of Directors would mean a considerable shift in power towards the Arab League, which would presumably vote as a bloc far more than preexisting Geographic Regions.

12) Should the League of Arab States gain bloc voting power at ICANN, there is every indication that it will seek to replicate its effective takeover of the United Nations General Assembly, likely in conjunction with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

15) On October 28, 2010, at OIC-CERT's Second Annual General Meeting, OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu noted the following as a core mission of OIC-CERT: "In view of the phenomena of discrimination, stereotyping and defamation targeting Muslims and their religion known as 'Islamophobia,' we invite the OIC-CERT to use its available professional and technical resources (in line with its objectives stated in terms of reference) in order to cooperate with the 'OIC Islamophobia Observatory' to identify the best ways and means including technical, administrative and legal tools to combat anti-Islamic contents on the internet."

The OIC has already effectively used the UN to push its censorship agenda. But the UN is virtually toothless when it comes to the United States. However if the Muslim world can dominate ICANN the way it dominates the UN General Assembly, then free speech on the internet is dead.

If this succeeds then 10 years from now, not only will sites like Jihad Watch or Religion of Peace lose their domain names, and most discussion of Islamic terrorism have to 'go on the run' in pop up social media groups that constantly get shut down (already the situation on sites such as Facebook) functioning like rats in the walls. But even the sites of mainstream politicians and newspapers will be targeted. Mandatory filtering by ISP's. The removal of Israel's Il domain, are all possibilities. And if anything I probably haven't gone far enough.

The internet will become what the UN General Assembly is, a voice that speaks the Islamic narrative as one and bans any discussion or debate. Or marginalizes it so far that it never gets heard.

Is this already underway? Yes.

On September 25, 2010, ICANN's board of directors removed a reference to "terrorism" from the fourth version of its Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG, or DAGv4), after complaints were received from several Arab individuals and organizations.

1) Until 2009, ICANN necessarily complied with applicable United States Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations regarding terrorism, and had no reason to specify such as the subject of a background check.

2) The term "terrorism" was included without any conceivably objectionable modifiers such as "Islamist."

3) The Chairman of the (Pan Arab) Multilingual Internet Group Khaled Fattal declared that the term "terrorism" itself was objectionable because "it will be seen by millions of Muslims and Arabs as racist, prejudicial and profiling." Fattal requested not only its removal, but an apology from ICANN.

The two-pronged approach of silencing dissent and unleashing terror is underway. This is why the internationalization of ICANN poses the gravest of threats not just to the thing we call freedom of speech on the internet, but to the entire global organization of knowledge and debate that has come to run through its networks. If ICANN goes IslamCANN then they will have captured the consensus.

This is a situation that few are talking about, even though in retrospect it may come to be one of the 5 issues that dramatically changes the world as we know it.

Meanwhile the UN is working along its own track.

The United Nations is considering whether to set up an inter-governmental working group to harmonise global efforts by policy makers to regulate the internet.

Establishment of such a group has the backing of several countries, spearheaded by Brazil.

At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would attempt to create global standards for policing the internet - specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks.

The Brazilian delegate stressed, however, that this should not be seen as a call for a "takeover" of the internet.

But that's exactly what it is. A unified set of laws with regard to the internet is not about policing criminal activity. That is already policed under existing laws. It's about criminalizing dissent.

Brazil's left wing regime, which just decided to recognize Palestinian Arab terrorists as a state, tried to help Iranian dictator Ahmadinejad get nuclear fuel, is acting as a stalking horse for the takeover of the internet.

India, South Africa, China and Saudi Arabia appeared to favour a new possible over-arching inter-government body.

The appearance of China and Saudi Arabia on this list is not exactly shocking. China wants to tightly control all content that its citizens access. And Saudi Arabia representing the Muslim world wants to control the depiction of Islam worldwide. Between the Muslim world and China and left wing regimes like Brazil, there is a common agenda. Censorship. Control.

US politicians have responded to moves from within the United Nations to form an inter-Government panel to regulate the internet, putting forward a resolution demanding the UN maintain a "hands-off approach".

California Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack has put forward a resolution that the United Nations and other international governmental organisations take their hands off the Internet.

Introducing House Resolution 1775 [see full text below], Mack argued that "the Internet has progressed and thrived precisely because it has not been subjected to the suffocating effect of a governmental organization's heavy hand.

"The attempt of the United Nations to overtake something that is so central to our economy-like the Internet-is offensive and completely out of line," she said.

"We have a hard enough time keeping the Federal Communications Commission's hands off the Internet; imagine having to convince governments like Syria, Iran and Venezuela."

A Republican congress is better position to oppose this, but the Obama Administration is committed to few things more seriously, than to weakening American power and collaborating with the ascension of the Muslim world.

The only real obstacle is likely to come from tech companies such as Google who benefit from open policies and don't want to see the boot of dictatorships come down on them. Not just for ideological reasons, but for profit motives too.

Vint Cerf, widely regarded as the father of the internet, also hit out at the United Nations plan.

"Today, I have signed that petition on Google's behalf because we don't believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance," Cerf said on Friday on behalf of Google where he works as its chief internet lobbyist.

Cerf said the beauty of the existing governance structure was that it was "bottoms-up" and influenced by a range of stakeholders, including companies and academics.

"This model has not only made the Internet very open—a testbed for innovation by anyone, anywhere—it's also prevented vested interests from taking control," said Cerf.

With falling US leverage and the growing dominion of China and the Muslim world-- the ball is now in the court of companies like Google.

Of course I haven't touched on the Obama Administration's own attempts to take over the internet. But others have covered that issue more than adequately.

Eddie at Something You Might Like sums up the three overall routes. I've written about COICA myself recently in $335,906 is the price of the Constitution. But of these ACTA is probably the scariest. More so than Net Neutrality or COICA, because

1. ACTA is secret. There have been leaks but we don't know what's fully inside. The level of secrecy has been the subject of diplomatic complaints. And Freedom of Information requests have been denied on national security grounds.

2. ACTA is negotiated as part of an international process, which means it's likely to force the US to abide by the standards of countries with less respect for free speech. And that makes it a potentially direct attack on the Constitution.

And 3, from Eddie

Worse, since ACTA is structured as a “trade agreement,” it would not need Senate approval like a normal treaty. It’s a bureaucratic takeover of great proportions, aimed largely at the Internet.

Now in more transparency news, Freedom of Information Requests have torn the burqa off Mayor Bloomberg, forcing disclosures as to just how deeply involved he was with the Ground Zero Mosque aka Park 51.

The Bloomberg Administration tried to pretend that it was just standing up for Freedom of Religion, when in fact it was so thoroughly entangled with the project, that it might as well have been an investor. There are conflicts of interest here up the Wazoo and the Yangtze.

Mayor Bloomberg's top deputies went to great lengths to help the developers of a planned mosque near Ground Zero - even drafting a letter to the community board for them.

A flurry of emails released by City Hall yesterday revealed the coaching Hizzoner's brass gave to the imam pushing to build the mosque, Feisal Abdul Rauf.

At one point, Community Affairs Commissioner Nazli Parvizi even drafted a letter for Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, to send to Community Board 1, which was voting on the project.

"As a Muslim-American and a New Yorker, I take my role in keeping New York the greatest City in the world serious," the draft said. Parvizi also provided the contact information for the board.

...

But one critic of the mosque charged that the emails prove that backers rigged the public approval process.

"They were in cahoots all along," steamed Andy Sullivan, a Queens construction worker and vocal mosque critic.

And it gets worse...

The e-mails also document donations of $300 from the Cordoba Initiative and $150 from the American Society for Muslim Advancement, a sister group, to help pay for an Aug. 24, 2009, dinner celebrating the holy Islamic month of Ramadan at the mayor's residence.

It was at that event that Rauf first told Bloomberg about his plans for the Islamic center, and the mayor responded that it sounded like a good idea, Loeser said.

Loeser said the donations did not influence the mayor's support of the project.

That looks a whole lot like Rauf helping fund an event to promote Islam at Bloomberg's pad. And Bloomberg getting behind the project after the event. Some politicians might call that synergy, but it smells a whole lot like corruption.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the documents show the city was an active proponent of the project.

"The mayor's office was at the beck and call of the ground zero mosque folks," Fitton said. "He obviously feels strongly about it, but he shouldn't turn the taxpayers of New York into advocates for this group."

The American Center for Law and Justice, which has sued the city to try to stop the Islamic center, said Bloomberg continues "to promote and advance a project that offends most New Yorkers and most Americans." A CBS News poll in August said about 71 percent of Americans oppose the project.

Except Bloomberg doesn't care what New Yorkers or Americans think. The latest issue of New York Magazine actually praised him for it.

Pamela Geller has a lot more of on the latest on Rauf's antics.

But speaking of Bloomberg, the Mayor is back to posturing about the World Trade Center rebuilding. And pretending to be outraged that hardly anything has been done in over 9 years.

Mayor Bloomberg lashed out at the Port Authority Friday for the "craziness" that has delayed World Trade Center rebuilding efforts.

"It's time to stop this craziness of everything and we just have to move forward here," Bloomberg said on WOR radio Friday morning.

"And if we don't, you are going to see me out there beating the drums every day. I'm not going to leave this world with a hole in the ground 10 years from now," Bloomberg vowed.

Let's be clear about what "craziness" is. The craziness is the infighting between Bloomberg and Pataki\Patterson, none of whom actually want to rebuild the WTC, but all of whom want to pass the blame around in a circle to each other.

If Bloomberg had been a quarter as enthusiastic about rebuilding the World Trade Center, as he was about the Ground Zero Mosque, it would have been done already.

Instead Governor Pataki's office took their whack, rejecting a proposal to rebuild the Twin Towers, designating an unfit architect that Pataki had inappropriate ties to, turning in the unworkable and ugly Freedom Tower. Then not long after Michael Bloomberg got his crack, designating his own idiot architect who had described the original Towers as ugly, and completely trashed the project further. That was quite a while back.

The Port Authority deserves the blame. But so does Bloomberg. And when the state and city governments aren't blaming each other. They're blaming Larry Silverstein. Silverstein is not a very pleasant figure, but he's been the goat in all this. Even though as owner, he should have been the deciding voice in rebuilding the WTC, instead he's gotten screwed over and blamed for everything by an arrogant bag of wind like our Mayor Mike.

Now Mayor Mike is pretending otherwise in order to bash the Port Authority, which is a mess of its own caliber, a corrupt mismanaged agency run by two state governments incapable of even managing their own budgets.

His harsh words for the Port Authority came after WTC developer Larry Silverstein told 60 minutes that failure to redevelop Ground Zero is "a national disgrace."

Silverstein recently agreed to chip in another $250 million into the embattled project. But sources said he'll limit plans to two medium-sized towers and scrap one that was designed to be taller than the Empire State Building.

"Larry Silverstein in all fairness was asked to put some more money in the wing. He agreed to put $250 million of his own money in. He had a very rational plan and I can tell you at this point, it is the Port Authority that has to come back," Bloomberg told radio show host John Gambling.

That's the rational plan that Bloomberg condemned because it had too much office space, and not enough room to build community theaters, playgrounds, green space to display the horrible bizarre artwork that City Hall Park is already littered with, and every other piece of insanity that local community groups and the Mayor wanted.

This in a nutshell is why there's still a hole in the ground. It's a national disgrace, as Bloomberg says. Except insofar as the Federal government didn't just take over the whole damn project itself. I'm not sure the results would have been that much better, but I suspect under Bush, the towers might have actually gotten rebuilt, instead of the city getting a small tower, and a political football still being tossed around.

Speaking of malfeasance, Governor Paterson is going out by freeing the NAACP's favorite murderer. John Harris White gets set free after spending half a year in prison. White had already gotten a ridiculously light sentence of less than 5 years for murder. There are people in prison for stealing batteries who got longer sentences.

The NAACP has since dragged the White case through every possible forum, contending over and over again that he was the victim of racism, that the shooting was justified because of racism-- on and on and on. And now with a corrupt unintentional replacement governor on the way out, they finally got their wish. And a murderer walks free.

Local NAACP officials had campaigned aggressively on behalf of Mr. White. In October, the state chapter passed a resolution calling for his sentence to be commuted. "It's time for healing," said Hazel Dukes, president of the state chapter. "The district attorney did his job, and the governor did his job. No one is rejoicing; no one is gloating."

No one did their job actually. If race was taken out of the picture, John White would have been serving an extended stretch in prison. And Danny Cicciaro's wouldn't be constantly dragged out by a media eager to put the victim on trial. But the NAACP won. And Dukes is repulsively gloating at the last gift from a non-governor who may end up spending time in jail himself.

It's not time for healing. It's time to condemn the hijacking of the justice system to serve the ends of an organization with a racial agenda, that is more interested in creating a scandal for fundraising purposes, than in the public safety of all New Yorkers, and in justice being done.

Gov. David A. Paterson's decision to shorten John White's sentence followed a large-scale campaign on White's behalf with letter-writing drives, online petitions and personal appeals to the governor from African-American leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota was sharply critical of the governor for not consulting Daniel Cicciaro Jr.'s family beforehand. Cicciaro was the 17-year-old whom White fatally shot after a confrontation outside White's Miller Place home.

Bassett confirmed the governor did not ask for any input from Cicciaro's family, nor was he required to. Spota's office also was not asked to weigh in on the

clemency application.

And why would he? It's not like this was ever about doing the right thing. It's about the same thing that all New York politics is now. Giving Al Sharpton whatever he wants. See Eric Schneiderman.

Moving on now. Boker Tov Boulder points out that America could be a coal superpower

Coal is truly “America's fuel.” The United States has more recoverable coal than any other nation; the 272 billion tons of coal reserves in the United States represent one-quarter of the world's total estimated coal supply.

There is more energy potential in America's coal than in all the oil of the Middle East.

In fact, America's recoverable coal has the energy content equivalent of a trillion barrels of oil, a figure roughly comparable to all the world's known oil reserves. At current rates of consumption, U.S. coal reserves will last at least another 200 years.

At NewsReal, Lisa Graas takes on Max Blumenthal's Islamophobia smear at CBS. That CBS would even showcase someone like Max Blumenthal shows just how low their standards have fallen.

Even more disturbing than Blumenthal‘s background is that the conspiracy rhetoric doesn’t merely appear on his own blog but is being promoted across the leftist media including CBS News, Mother Jones, The Nation, Huffington Post, Common Dreams, Tom Dispatch, Democratic Underground, and anywhere else that spastic leftists love to rejoice in ludicrous fantasies about an “Islamophobic crusade” conspiracy. If we needed any further proof that reason is dead in the leftist media, it’s certainly clear now.

But there's a basic difference between Blumenthal's work being featured in the unhinged dungeons of places like HuffPo or Democratic Underground where conspiracy theories, hatemongering and outright insanity find their natural habitat. But when that kind of sewer leakage moves up to CBS News, what's next? An op-ed by a 9/11 Truther? A Mossad killed Kennedy piece? It's not like there's much of a difference at this point.

From Solomonia and CIF Watch, a piece on the Guardian's continuing silence

On the morning of Tuesday, December 21st, catastrophe was narrowly averted when a Kassam rocket exploded near a kindergarten in a kibbutz close to the Gaza border just as the children were arriving. We are, of course, grimly familiar with this tactic of targeting educational establishments at crucial times of the day as used so often by the terrorists in Gaza for many years now.

The day before seven mortar shells were fired into the region surrounding the Gaza Strip and on the Sunday night, four mortars exploded near Ashkelon. In the three weeks since the beginning of December, thirty-one mortars and five Kassam rockets have been fired at civilian targets in southern Israel and the number of border incidents has doubled.

We can search in vain for the Guardian's outraged article about the targeting of pre-school children peppered with references to International Law and Geneva Conventions.

We can sit and accumulate cobwebs waiting for Harriet Sherwood's 'human interest' story on the psychological effects of years of living in the shadow of Islamist terror upon Israeli civilians.

We can look forward to the CiF expose of the smuggling route of weapons from Iran, via Syria, to Hizbollah and then to Gaza in much the same way as for years my little sister was convinced every birthday that she would awake to find a pony tethered to the end of her bed.

If this current escalation continues and gets out of hand, Israel will of course have to respond forcefully at some point in order to meet its obligations regarding the protection of its civilians. To the millions of Guardian readers throughout the world this will of course come totally out of the blue, just as Operation Cast Lead did at the time, because they will yet again have been denied the background knowledge which is so essential to a complete understanding of the difficulties facing Israel.

On that note I'd like to introduce readers to Irish4Israel, a new Ireland based pro-Israel organization, looking to pick up steam through participation and collaboration.

More fun from the Dar Al Islam, via the absolutely invaluable Religion of Peace website.

American Muslim indicted for wanting to join US military to kill soldiers

American Muslim indicted for wanting to join US military to kill soldiers. A US-born Muslim from Staten Island, New York, has just been indicted for lying to the FBI about his true intentions to join the US military and then start killing US soldiers. 21-year-old Abdel Hameed Shehadeh faces three terrorism-related charges that involve his plan to join the US military only so he could fight against US soldiers. According to the complaint, Shehadeh plotted to deploy with the US military to Iraq, but once there to desert the military and then fight alongside Islamic terrorists against the US. Shehadeh is also an operator of multiple, radical and violent Jihadist websites that promote terrorism against the west.

But no doubt, as Joe Klein claimed of the Fort Hood Massacre, he was just suffering from preemptive PTSD.

Much as the MEMRI video of a Gitmo detainee claiming that Jewish witches made him see his siblings naked and experience rape by a cat-- has been excused by leftist blogs claiming that torture drove him insane. Sorry, but no.

If Walid Muhammad Hajj had been considered as crazy by Al Jazeera as it is by us, it wouldn't have been aired. But this is a part of the world where people still believe in witches, and sometimes execute them. Where cats are associated with demons (Muslims believe cats drive away angels) and events such as this are not unusual.

Obviously Walid Muhammad Hajj was experiencing his own bizarre fantasies. Just as former Gitmo inmates who claimed that they were sexually harassed by women or had menstrual blood thrown at them, were describing their own insane fantasy life. And in the altered state of reality encouraged by their culture. Stories that were taken seriously as elements of outraged by their leftist enablers.

Now compare Walid Muhammad Hajj's fantasies with stories that were edited enough to be taken seriously by mainstream media outlets back in 2005.

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt, thong underwear and a bra during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren’t their wives.

...

The female interrogator wanted to “break him,” Saar adds, describing how she removed her uniform top to expose a tight-fitting T-shirt and began taunting the detainee, touching her ------, rubbing them against the prisoner’s back and commenting on his apparent ------.

And then the cat came out and raped him.

The difference is that one collection of lies sounds less plausible, because it's hard to convince even most Western terrorist sympathizers that there are Jewish witches siccing lustful cats on prison inmates. The other is just as stupid, but sounds plausible, even though it taps into delusional Islamic misogyny.

This is the same reason why the media usually doesn't report on claims about Zionists training attack sharks to destroy Egyptian tourism-- but does report on the usual THEY STOLE MY OLIVE TREES nonsense. But they're both lies and there's no difference between the lies. Not to Muslims anyway.

She may be the ancient Greek Goddess of Love, but a picture of a nude Aphrodite on the new passport of Cyprus has set more than hearts racing.

Cypriot diplomats are furious with the interior ministry for failing to consult with the foreign ministry before issuing passports with a depiction of a naked immortal that might offend conservative foreign cultures.

"They are worried that civilians and diplomats could get into trouble, particularly traveling to very conservative Islamic countries," the authoritative Phileleftheros daily newspaper wrote on Thursday.

The interior ministry said it was too late to change them, the newspaper said.

Funny how everyone else is expect to respect Islamic traditions, but Muslims are expected to react violently to the cultural traditions of others.

Cyprus should have just stuck with a cat. That's the one that really seems to set Muslim hearts racing.

Meanwhile Wikileaks reveals yet more US pressure on Europeans to promote Islam

And the New York Times appears to have censored Yisrael Medad on the Lede blog by Robert Mackey-- for the crime of proving Robert Mackey wrong. Robert Mackey is often wrong, always biased, and quoting facts that show he's wrong has become a bannable offense at the old Gray Hag.

For reference here is the controversial comment that h
ad to be censored



Facts are awful things. Aren't they.

To close it up. Saddam Hussein's Koran written in his blood still needs a home. Since Obama didn't like that Churchill bust and sent it back to the UK, maybe he'd like a Saddam's Blood Koran to display in the Oval Office instead?