The Western Word

Every now and then you stumble across one of those odd historical facts that is so outrageous and beyond belief that it forces you to hold your breath in sheer incomprehension.

Such an event happened to me in April this year when interviewing a group of scientists for a Western Word Radio program focused on the debate over intelligent design. I discovered then, courtesy of Dr. John West, that over a 50 year period, beginning in 1905, over 60,000 people, deemed unfit for reproduction, had been forcefully sterilized in the United States.

Although the State of Indiana was the first U.S. state to enact sterilization legislation, the hub of activity soon moved to the west coast, where California’s first sterilization law was enacted in 1909- exactly one hundred years ago this week. Like many Midwestern transplants, this practice found less restrictions in the Golden State, and by 1921 more eugenic sterilizations had been performed in California than in the rest of the United States combined. Unlike other states, the practice suffered no legal challenge or hindrance until the Supreme Court validated forced sterilization practices in the landmark case of Buck vs Bell.

The movement behind the forced sterilization laws was known as Eugenics. Eugenics stressed the application of science to human heredity and breeding in order to improve the human species both mentally and physically. Some Progressives referred to eugenics as "the science and the art of being well born." Human sterilization was carried out for many reasons. It might be implemented as punishment, perhaps in the form of castration for repeat sex offenders. It might be used for social reasons, to restrain individuals from having children because they are completely unable to care for them, either physically, emotionally or financially. But when the state sterilizes an individual because he is seen to be genetically defective and therefore likely to pass his defects on to offspring, this is eugenic sterilization. And this was the type of sterilization that many California policymakers sought to carry out.

The United States was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purposes of eugenics but the movement thereafter took off like wild fire in the rest of the world. In Japan, in the first part of the Showa era, Japanese governments promoted increasing the number of healthy Japanese, while simultaneously decreasing the number of people suffering mental retardation, disability, genetic disease and other conditions that led to them being viewed as "inferior" contributions to the Japanese gene pool. Their Leprosy Prevention laws of 1907, 1931 and 1953, permitted the segregation of patients in sanitariums where forced abortions and sterilization were common and authorized punishment of patients for "disturbing the peace." Under the colonial Korean Leprosy Prevention Ordinance, Korean patients were also subjected to hard labor.

Eugenics programs, including forced sterilization, existed in most Northern European countries, as well as other more or less Protestant countries. Some programs, such as Canada's and Sweden's, lasted well into the 1970s. Other countries that had notably active sterilization programs include Australia, Norway, Finland, Estonia and Switzerland.

Organizations in support of eugenics were established around the world. For instance, one year after Buck vs Bell, The Human Betterment Foundation came into existence in Pasadena, California with the aim "of fostering and aiding constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship." It primarily served to compile and distribute information about compulsory sterilization legislation in the United States, for the purposes of eugenics.

An understanding of the widespread support forced strerilization enjoyed in California can be gleaned with the reading of a list of the group’s inaugural Board of Trustees. They included Henry M. Robinson (a Los Angeles banker), George Dock (a Pasadena physician), David Starr Jordan (chancellor of Stanford University), Charles Goethe (a Sacramento philanthropist), Justin Miller (dean of the college of law at the University of Southern California), Otis Castle (a Los Angeles attorney), Joe G. Crick (a Pasadena horticulturist), and biologist/eugenicist Paul Popenoe. Later members included Lewis Terman (a Stanford psychologist best known for creating the Stanford-Binet test of IQ), William B. Munro (a Harvard professor of political science), and UC. Berkeley professors Herbert M. Evans (anatomy) and Samuel J. Holmes (zoology).

In other words, some of the top members of the political, business and scientific elites in the United States were among eugenics’ most enthusiastic benefactors and moral supporters.

In England, about the same time, a widespread national eugenics movement was being established. In 1908 the Eugenics Education Society was founded with the hearty endorsement of some of the leading intellectuals of the day including H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Web, among other leading politicians, scientists and society patrons.

The most infamous sterilization program of of the 20th century took place, of course, under the Third Reich. One of the first acts of Adolf Hitler after achieving control over the German state was to pass the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) in July,1933. The bill was signed into law by Hitler himself, and over 200 eugenic courts were created specifically as a result. Under the German law, all doctors in the Reich were required to report patients of theirs who were mentally retarded, mentally ill (including schizophrenia and manic depression), epileptic, blind, deaf, or physically deformed, and a steep monetary penalty was imposed for any patients who were not properly reported.

The individual's case was then presented to a court of Nazi officials and public health officers who would review a patient’s medical records, take testimony from friends and colleagues, and eventually decide whether or not to order a sterilization operation performed on the individual - using force if necessary. By the end of World War II, over 400,000 individuals were sterilized under the German law, most within its first four years of enactment.

When the issue of compulsory sterilization was brought up at the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War, many Nazi leders defended their actions by indicating that it was the United States itself from whom they had taken their inspiration.

They were right on target.

The question then is why? Why did forced sterilization gain such traction in the United States? What could have compelled Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the country’s leading jurist and otherwise a redoubtable liberal champion of free speech and human rights, to declare in the majority opinion in Buck vs Bell that: “ It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manfiestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles is enough!”?

It has often been argued that you can’t judge one generation’s moral viewpoint from the vantage of the future. But in this case, that argument appears tendentious. There were numerous legal challenges to the eugenics laws of state governments – by both individuals and by organizations and there was a fairly vigorous editorial campaign launched against the practice. In addition, the argument that these were not regarded as moral issues at all by early U.S. 20th Century citizens, but practical utilitarian measures, designed to save society from the added expense of caring for those who could not care for themselves, also falls flat. Multiple asssociations and welfare organizations had begun to sprout by the beginning of the century which were equipped to give assistance to the mentally and physically disabled, making the United States the most prodigious locus for charitable voluteerism in the world.

The answer to this imponderable question is more likely to be found in the “progressive” thinking which had gripped the intellectual, political and social elites of the West since the mid-19th Century. The advent of Darwinist thought and the coining of the expression “survival of the fittest” ( which is accredited to the English philospher Herbert Spencer and not Darwin himself, who never mentions it in any of his works) led many to invest in the idea of racial purity in order to protect the future of their progeny in an increasingly competitve world. In the 1880s and 90s, as England, France, Russia, Germany and the Johnny-come-lately United States tussled with oneanother in carving spheres of influence into the world map, national greatness seemed to hinge on the ability of a civilization to produce a race of men worthy of empire and capable of holding on to it.

In the mad rush to secure their places on the totem pole of national grandeur, it was then commonly accepted, throughout all of these societies, that only the fit would survive. This meant that the “unfit” – blind, deaf, mute, spastic, leprous, incurably diseased and even chronically poor individuals, had to be quietly and efficiently neutered so that they would not contaminate the remainder of the national stock.

Leading progressive intellectuals of the early 20th Century had, in other words, interpreted Darwinian theory as a writ to “interfere” with human natural selection. The crass inhumanity of it all was besides the point, since such beings were in fact only half or quarter human anyway.

Looking back at this dark history we all must feel that twinge of deep embarassment when we realize that our vaunted civilization is not quite as lily-white as we once might have considered it. But that kind of regret is wasted if we learn nothing from this stain on our national reputation. Totalitarianism in Europe did not begin with brownshirts breaking bones on the streets of Rome, but with ideas that would brook no opposition. Today, there are many other commonly accepted ideas – from anthropogenic global warming to the social utility of gay marriage to scientific certainties about the origins of life and the universe - that turn viciously against those who either question or deny them. The casualties in these culture wars might not be the incomparable unfortunates of the 20th Century who had suffered physical deformation. Nonetheless they are still innocents who suffer sterilization of another sort – the stigma of isolation and the pain of non-inclusion in the national debate.

The inevitable truth is that totalitarian thinking, sporting ideologies that can turn against peaceable citizens - can sprout in any country, even one with as proud a record in protecting human liberty as the United States.

Social Darwinism, the ideology which gave life to the eugenics movement, is still very much with us today. It often reappears in the abortion debates, in the writings of such elite and highly respected philosophers as Harvard’s Peter Singer and among animal rights advocates who elevate animal life above that of human. In this hallmark month, we should remember its repercussions and vow that never again should it be allowed to overrride mens’ better moral instincts in the name of a nebulous and ultimately soul destroying sense of progress.

Want to comment on this article? See Avi Davis’ blog
Avi Davis is the president of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at adavis@americanfreedomalliance.org

Netanyahu’s Speech Enrages Arabs
by Robert Spencer (more by this author)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered a peace formula that would create a Palestinian state while preserving Israeli security and national identity in his speech Sunday. The reaction? The Palestinians and others in the Islamic world are…enraged. In Saudi Arabia, the state newspaper Al-Nadwa lamented that “every paragraph of Netanyahu’s speech makes us more pessimistic.” In Jordan, the pro-government newspaper Al-Rai huffed: “Netanyahu offered rotten merchandise. Nobody will buy it.” Mohammed Sobeih, the Arab League’s undersecretary general for Palestinian affairs, said that while “extremists in Israel” might like the speech, it was “too far from what peace needs.” The President of Lebanon, Michel Suleiman, said that the speech was “intransigent when it comes to dealing with peace or regarding the solution for Palestinian refugees.” And that was just the beginning. Others charged that Netanyahu had brought the region closer to armed conflict. Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, said that Netanyahu’s call to “recognize Israel as a Jewish state complicates things further and scuttles the possibilities for peace.” Apparently an Arab state is just fine, but a Jewish state, no. Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, meanwhile, asserted that Netanyahu delivered “a war speech that practically torpedoed and crippled all possibilities for a compromise,” and that “makes the region susceptible to great dangers that might explode in different directions.” (Humanevents)

Carter Wants Obama to Remove Hamas from Terror List-Zalman Nelson
(IsraelNN.com) The Obama Administration should remove Hamas from the terrorist list, former President Jimmy Carter told media following his visit to Gaza today. He said he plans on pushing for the change when he meets with U.S. officials on Thursday to discuss his latest trip to the Middle East. Carter’s comments came during a joint press conference with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh following their meeting today in Gaza. The former president said he tried to convince Hamas leaders to denounce violence, accept the existing interim agreements and recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist. "Hamas leaders want peace and they want to have reconciliation not only with their Fatah brothers but also eventually with Israelis to live side by side, with two nations, both sovereign nations recognized by each other and living in peace," Carter said. Haniyeh told Carter that he supported any plan that aims at preserving Arab rights and leads to the establishment of a sovereign Arab state on all the territories that were occupied by Israel in 1967 "with Jerusalem as its capital." He urged Carter to pressure Israel to lift the security blockade which was imposed on Gaza’s border crossings to prevent weapons smuggling. (INN)

Police 'illegally' stopping white people to racially balance stop-and-search figures, watchdog claims- James Slack
Police are making unjustified and 'almost certainly' illegal searches of white people to provide 'racial balance' to Government figures. Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of terror laws, said he knew of cases where suspects were stopped by officers even though there was no evidence against them. He warned that police were wasting time and money by carrying out these 'self-evidently unmerited searches' which were an invasion of civil liberties and 'almost certainly unlawful'. The searches of, for example, 'blonde women' who fit no terrorist profile come against a backdrop of complaints from rights groups that the number of black and Muslim people being stopped by police is disproportionate. Lord Carlile suggests whites are being needlessly stopped in order to balance the books. Last year, the number of whites searched under anti-terror laws rocketed by 185 per cent, from 25,962 to 73,967. Whites made up around two-thirds of all those stopped, although, compared to the overall population, blacks and Asians remain far more likely to be stopped and searched.Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat peer and QC, condemned the wrongful use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in his annual report on anti-terror laws. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Polish Muslims call for change in law to recognise Islamic weddings-DPA
Warsaw - Polish Muslims want to change a 1936 law that requires them to pray for Poland and the country's president, Polish Radio reported Wednesday. The Muslim community also want days off for Islamic religious holidays, in the predominantly Catholic country, and to recognise weddings in mosques. The current law requires all Polish Muslims to mention the Republic of Poland and the president during Friday prayers, and regulates relations between the state and the Muslim Religious Association. "A Muslim religious wedding still doesn't have civil effects," said Pawel Borecki, of the Religious Law faculty at the University of Warsaw. "Followers of Islam also still do not have a guaranteed right to celebrate their holidays." Poland's Foreign Ministry is currently working with Polish Muslims on a draft bill that will abolish the required prayer for Poland and change the legal status of the country's Muslims.The new law would allow Muslims to take days off for religious holidays and would make a marriage in a mosque equal to a civil marriage, reported the broadcaster TVP Info. (Earthtimes)

Man convicted of terrorism free to sue over torture claims
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — A man serving a 17-year prison sentence for terrorist activities has been given the green light to sue a former US government lawyer who wrote memos that allegedly led to his torture, US media reports said Sunday. Jose Padilla, a US citizen arrested in 2002 for an alleged "dirty bomb" plot only to have the charges dropped three years later, was jailed in January 2008 for separate charges of providing support to the Al-Qaeda terror network. Lawyers for Padilla have filed a lawsuit against John Yoo, a former lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, arguing that he was responsible for crafting the legal memos which led to his detention and harsh interrogation. Padilla, who was held in solitary confinement as an "enemy combatant" for more than three years at a US Navy installation in Charleston, South Carolina, alleges he was tortured. Padilla's lawsuit, which demands Yoo be held accountable for his treatment, alleges he suffered "gross physical and psychological abuse at the hands of federal officials as part of a systematic program of abusive interrogation intended to break down Mr Padilla's humanity and his will to live." (Google)

Islamic school divides western Sydney suburb-Stuart McLean
RAPTUROUS applause and angry boos of derision greeted a decision by Liverpool Council to approve the development of a controversial new Islamic school in Hoxton Park last night. The new plan for the school, which will have up to 800 kindergarten to Year 12 students is the latest in a series of application proposals for Muslim schools in Sydney, some of which have been marred by controversy.Hundreds of members of the Muslim community who had crowded into the Liverpool Council Chambers burst into spontaneous applause and cheering after the councillors voted in favour of the decision to allow construction of the school to go ahead. Interest-free loans for Muslims Local residents have opposed the school on the grounds that it will increase traffic congestion in the area and that the land is flood prone. School Principal Dr Intaj Ali said he welcomed the decision by the council to approve the development of a new campus of the Malek Fahd Islamic school which is the State's largest Islamic school. (Dailytelegraph.au)

Protesters demand Bermuda premier's resignation after his 'disrespect' to the UK over Guantanamo Four- Sarah Titterton
Hundreds of protesters demanded the resignation of Bermuda's premier yesterday in anger over his decision to strike a secret deal with the U.S. to send four Guanatanmo detainees to the island behind the UK's back.Dr Ewart Brown's decision to harbour the four Chinese Uighurs has ignited a firestorm on the usually complacent island - and caused a flurry of diplomatic activity between The Foreign Office and Washington.Yesterday protesters took to the streets in the British territory's capital of Hamilton, surrounding the Cabinet building and drowning Dr Brown out when he tried to address the crowds. Police estimated the crowds at nearly one thousand. The island's population is 65,000.Bermudians said they were not against the presence of the Uighurs on the island. Their fury was targeted at Dr Brown and what protesters claimed was the 'disrespect' he had shown Britain and locals by not consulting them before making the decision. The protest was being carried out online too, with many young Bermudians voicing their feelings on Facebook, and - with a twist of Bermudian humour - satirical videos being posted online.

The Anti-American Civil Liberties Union -A.W.R. Hawkins
The American Civil Liberties Union has brought many lawsuits since 9-11 that were aimed at releasing publicly information that would damage our war effort. But now, it has an ally in the White House. When President Obama decided to release the Department of Justice legal opinions (those the media insists on calling the “torture memos”), it was a huge victory for the ACLU. But that isn’t enough for them. Nothing ever is. The same ACLU who regularly fights against Christian prayers at high school graduations, the display of nativity scenes at Christmas, and “discrimination” against trans-gendered students on college campuses is now insisting, by its lawsuit, that “detainee abuse” photographs be released. Now the ACLU lawsuit is at the center of the House-Senate stalemate on the war supplemental bill. The ACLU is seeking release of more photos that they contend show abuse of terrorist detainees during interrogation. Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Ct) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) tied an amendment to the Senate bill that would bar release. The Democrats -- voting on a straight party line -- stripped the provision out in the House-Senate conference. (Human events)

Paris: Increasing tensions between immigrant youth and police-Le Monde
Community activists in Villiers-le-Bel suburb of Paris, where riots broke out in 2007, are sounding the alarm. Over the past month there have been severe clashes every weekend between the local youths and police.
The activists, young men aged 24-30, are the only ones who have authority over the youth. Six of them met in late May with Secretary of State for Urban Policies, Fadela Amara, who wanted to establish direct contacts in the city. Said (28) says that they're on the verge of a catastrophe. There used to be a little hate, but now it is even worse, and has deteriorated over the past year. One 24 year old shopkeeper, requesting to remain anonymous, says that when there's no more guiding values, no more future, they get to the logic of suicide bombers. One of the group's leaders says that the police come in in a guerilla mode. They show up dressed like Robocop, as if they're entering an occupied area. (Islamineurope)

Farewell to Judgment Roger Scruton
The sciences aim to explain the world: they build theories that are tested through experiment, and which describe the workings of nature and the deep connections between cause and effect. Nothing like that is true of the humanities. The works of Shakespeare contain important knowledge. But it is not scientific knowledge, nor could it ever be built into a theory. It is knowledge of the human heart. Shakespeare doesn’t teach us what to believe: he shows us how to feel—case by case, person by person, mood by mood. As universities expanded, the humanities began to displace the sciences from the curriculum. Students wished to use their time at university to cultivate their leisure interests and to improve their souls, rather than to learn hard facts and complex theories. And there arose a serious question as to why universities were devoting their resources to subjects that made so little discernible difference to the wider world. What good do the humanities do, and why should students take three or four years out of their lives in order to read books which—if they were interested—they would read in any case, and which—if they were not interested—would never do them the least bit of good? (TheamericanSpectator)

Is America Losing Its Innovative Edge?-Peter Wood
Is America is falling behind other nations in the kind of innovations that drive economic prosperity? If so, is higher education part of the problem? An important new report offers some surprising answers. The report, issued in February by the Washington-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the European-American Business Council (EABC) presents a rigorous international study showing which nations are currently ahead and which ones are making rapid progress. Titled The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU & U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness, the report puts the United States currently in sixth place worldwide, behind Singapore, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark, and South Korea. And it puts the U.S. in last place among the forty countries studied for percent gain between 1999 and 2009. Competitiveness and Innovation. The fear that the United States is losing its competitive edge is not limited to this report. (NAS)

Media Bias

Free Speech, But Not for Me?-Frank Gaffney, Jr.
Paul Krugman's outrage is selective and aimed, as usual, at conservatives.I was surprised to see the New York Times columnist take a swipe at me and the paper that has long been my home. Since Frank Rich, another New York Times columnist, and numerous bloggers have all written essentially the same thing as Mr. Krugman, it is obvious that a new line of attack against conservatives is emerging. It needs to be stopped in its tracks. In a column called "The Big Hate," Mr. Krugman seized upon two unrelated shootings in different cities – of a Kansas abortionist and a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum guard in Washington – to contend outrageously that disaffected conservatives and Iraq war veterans may pose a public threat. Mr. Krugman faulted the leading lights of the conservative media for fostering a climate of alienation and anger. He castigated Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, charging them with "mainstreaming right-wing extremism." (Familysecuritymatters)

BBC: Television for Dhimmisby David J. Rusin
Downplaying the threat of Islamism while simultaneously disparaging Western culture is the stock in trade of countless media outlets, but few have pursued this task with such vigor as the BBC. Though its well-documented bias in covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict serves as Exhibit A, the same worldview is expressed in the BBC's broad deference to Islam. Islamist Watch highlighted two examples in 2008: comedian Ben Elton's assertion that "the BBC will let vicar gags pass but they would not let imam gags pass," along with a Christian party's protest that the network was censoring criticism of the London mega-mosque. Other cases from the IW archive include Hindus and Sikhs accusing the BBC of favoring Muslims and the head of the BBC arguing that Islam should be treated more sensitively than Christianity.
News items from May and June demonstrate that the broadcaster has only accelerated its descent into dhimmitude:
• The BBC Trust has rejected complaints against a 2008 Bonekickers episode that, in the words of the Daily Mail, depicts a Christian extremist graphically "hacking off a moderate Muslim's head in an unprovoked attack." Telegraph columnist Damian Thompson writes, "Only a BBC drama series would, to quote the complainant, 'transfer the practice of terrorist beheadings from Islamist radicals to a fantasized group of fundamentalist Christians.'"
(Islamist-watch)

Iran blocks world from seeing poll protest bloodshed as rival Ahmadinejad and Mousavi supporters hit the streets-LIZ HAZELTON
• Foreign media banned from leaving offices to cover turmoil...
• ... but Iranians still dodge censors to post updates online
• Iranian legislators concede some disputed ballot boxes still be recounted
• Seven shot dead after election protest rally ends in violence
Iranian leaders imposed draconian restrictions on foreign media yesterday to prevent eyewitness reporting of the bloodshed and chaos on Tehran’s streets. The move came as opposition supporters staged another rally last night. It was claimed that hundreds of thousands of followers of defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi turned out to protest in the north of Iran’s capital, but it was impossible to verify because of the media crackdown. Journalists have been effectively confined to their offices and hotels. Officials have refused to extend the visas of correspondents allowed into Iran to cover the elections. The rules cover all reporters, including Iranians working for foreign media. Any images or descriptions of the violence that have characterised Tehran’s street protests amid allegations that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election was ‘rigged’, have been blocked. The authorities have even cut off text messaging and some internet access. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Obama Should Speak Truth to Islam Because Others Can't -By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
It was not an April Fools' joke. When President Barack Obama met the Queen of the Commonwealth at Buckingham Palace, he gave her an iPod. Last week, I was half expecting the president to show up in the Middle East laden with Kindles. He could have started with a special reading selection when he met Saudi King Abdullah. The day after, when the President spoke to the Muslim world at Al-Azhar University, I pictured him handing out another Kindle to Muhammed Sayyid Tantawy, the university's grand sheik. Obama might have had a third Kindle for the ambassador of Iran to Egypt (for this man represents the ayatollah, who is the highest authority for Shia Muslims), who attended the presidential address. Unlike the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one. The king of Saudi Arabia; the grand sheik of Al-Azhar University (the largest, and in the eyes of many Muslim scholars, most prestigious Islamic centre of learning); and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran all make equal claims to represent the heart and soul of the umma.No difference is greater between American and Islamic principles than the founding ideals of both. (AEI)

Wilders attacks hate speech laws-KR News
Geert Wilders, well-known for his anti-Islam stance, spoke to a packed gathering at parliament
Outspoken Dutch politician Geert Wilders spoke at the city’s Free Speech and Islam Conference at Christiansborg Palace amid high security in the parliament buildings on Sunday. The conference was organised by the Danish Free Press Society after the government’s own free speech and anti-racism conference was repeatedly delayed until this autumn. Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen had previously said that Wilders, who heads the Dutch right-wing Party for Freedom, was not welcome at the autumn conference as he ‘associates an entire religion with hatred’. Accompanied by a large number of Danish intelligence service agents, Wilders did not mince his words on the topic of the day. ‘Islam is not a religion, it’s a threat against everything we stand for,’ said Wilders, pointing to the spread of Islam in other countries to back up his argument. According to Wilders, 40 percent of British Muslims want to introduce Sharia law, while half of all Dutch Muslim students look favourably upon the terror attacks of 9/11 in the US. (Cphost.dk)

The Text of Geert Wilders’ Speech-Baron Bodissey
From the PVV website, here is the text of the speech given by Geert Wilders yesterday in Copenhagen (Note: I corrected a few typos in this version):
Ladies and gentlemen, Thank you, Danish Free Press Society, again for inviting me to speak to you here in Copenhagen. It is good to be back in Denmark. Thank you, my friend, Lars Hedegaard. And last but not least, I thank the Danish border police for having allowed me into the country. Ladies and gentlemen, last week was a tremendous week. My party, the Dutch Freedom Party, came second in the Dutch elections for the European Parliament! (GatesofVienna)

Wafa Sultan On Obama's Speech-By Amy Alkon
This wise and courageous woman (courageous because Muslims murder apostates and people who exercise freedom of speech) gives her take on Obama's pandering to the Arab world: Mr. Obama is a politician, and a very astute one. However, his speech revealed that his view is unduly influenced by naïve desire. His perception of Islam and the reality of Islam need to be synchronized. I am a physician and a realist who has lived and experienced the effect of my Arab culture and Islamic religion since childhood. The president pandered to Muslims: praised their accomplishments, commiserated with their grievances, and apologized for injustices done to them by centuries of colonialism -- without once mentioning the history of rampant and violent Arab colonialism. He avoided any mention of Jihadi tenets, or of the Islamic political ideology of supremacy over non Muslims -- principles embedded in Sharia law. These are taught and sanctioned openly by Al-Azhar, the university that hosted him, the foremost center of Sharia studies. (Mensnewsdaily)

Asra Nomani: Fighting for the Soul of Islam-Phyllis Chesler
A religious Muslim feminist and the Morgantown Mosque
Asra Q. Nomani is best known for many things. A former Wall Street Journal reporter, she is also the author of [1] Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. Nomani is a religious Muslim feminist who organized the first-ever woman-led, mixed-gender Islamic prayer group in New York City in 2005, and who made a good faith effort to bring her hometown mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia into the twenty-first century, both in terms of women and tolerance. Nomani, born in Bombay but raised in Morgantown, is also the last friend whom Daniel Pearl saw before he was kidnapped, held captive, and beheaded on video. Pearl was staying at Nomani’s rented home in Pakistan. Currently, Nomani teaches journalism at Georgetown University where she co-leads the Pearl Project, which will publish their discoveries about what really happened to Daniel Pearl. Nomani will now also be known as the subject of a documentary about her struggle for the soul of Islam, which is airing tonight — June 15 — on PBS at 10 p.m. EST. [2] “The Mosque in Morgantown” is the latest feature in the [3] America At a Crossroads series.
(pajamasmedia)

A Statement From First Principles-Melanie Phillips
The essence of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech a few hours ago, which you can read in full here, was simply this:
Israel wants peace with the Palestinians. The cause of the conflict remains, as it ever was, the Arabs’ refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their historic homeland of Israel, which (contrary to Obama’s claim) predated the Nazi Holocaust by several thousand years. Those (like Obama) who think the cause is the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza are confusing cause and effect. The fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is therefore a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Far from Israel occupying Palestinian land in Judea and Samaria, it is the Palestinians who are living within the ancient Jewish homeland. Israel does not wish to rule them and they can have a state of their own, provided they accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and provided a Palestinian state is demilitarised so that it does not possess the means to destroy Israel. To this statement of historical truth and the most elementary requirements of morality and justice, the Palestinians’ reply was unequivocal. (Spectator.co.uk)

WWW or KKK? Wiesenthal Center reports hike in 'online hate'-Abe Selig
"I could have wiped out all the Jews in the world, but I left a few of them so that you would understand why I would have destroyed them," reads the Arabic text on a Facebook group page praising Adolf Hitler. A shadowy portrait of the Nazi leader stands off to the side, and at the bottom of the page "Hitler" is scrawled in English, in a font reminiscent of a Disney advertisement, as if the group were discussing Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck and not a genocidal dictator. This example of online hate is just a sample of similar content revealed in a new report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center titled "Facebook, YouTube and How Social Media Outlets Impact Digital Terrorism and Hate," which details the size and scope of Internet hate and terror sites in 2009 and was presented to Foreign Ministry officials on Monday. The report says some 10,000 hate sites, games and other online postings now call the Internet home. (Jpost)

Where Anti-Semitism Is Mainstream- Richard Cohen
To far more people than we would like to admit, the mystery of James W. von Brunn, the alleged shooter at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is not that he held such weird and depraved views about Jews and the Holocaust, but that those views are considered weird and depraved. In vast parts of the Islamic world, too many people not only deny the Holocaust but embrace the thinking that made it possible. In his remarkable speech at Cairo University, President Obama only inferentially mentioned this aspect of what has become an ugly part of the Middle East: a tolerance for and advocacy of old-style anti-Semitism. There is, in fact, nothing that von Brunn professed that is not commonly heard or published in the Middle East. Do Jews control world finance, media, international organizations and the United States itself? (Washingtonpost)

The Stormfront Accomplices Joe Kaufman
Since the June 10th shooting/murder perpetrated by James Von Brunn at Washington, D.C.’s U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, many eyes have been focused on Stormfront, the white supremacist web forum, which has left the group’s leaders concerned. Their concern is understandable, because, while they didn’t load Von Brunn’s gun or pull the trigger for him, they are still in large part to blame for what happened. When James Von Brunn walked into the lobby of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, he had one mission in mind and that was to kill as many people as he could, thereby bringing terror to the Jewish community, a community which he despised. As a result, an African-American museum security guard named Stephen T. Johns was fatally wounded, while attempting to save others during the attack. Von Brunn is well past his prime at 88 (a number which incidentally is code for “Heil Hitler”), but his violent obsession with Jews and blacks has driven him to do the unthinkable. (Frontpagemagazine)

Obama's Real Agenda: Israel's Dimona Nuclear Facility- Moshe Dann
"I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons. That is why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. And any nation - including Iran - should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the Treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I am hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal." Pres. Barack Hussein Obama, June 4, 2009
(AmericanThinker)

Mastermind of 9/11 attacks claims torture 'only makes me tell lies to keep my interrogators happy'-Mail Foreign Service
Accused al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claims interrogators tortured lies out of him, government transcripts reveal. The terror suspect, who proudly took credit for more than two dozen other terror plots, said the torture only forced him to lie to keep his interrogators happy. 'I make up stories,' Mohammed said at one point in his 2007 hearing at Guantanamo Bay. In broken English, he described an interrogation in which he was asked the location of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. 'Where is he? I don't know,' Mohammed said. 'Then he torture me. Then I said, "Yes, he is in this area or this is al-Qaeda which I don't know him." I said "no", they torture me.' Yet at the same military tribunal hearing, Mohammed ticked off a list of 29 terror plots in which he said he participated. The transcripts were released as part of a lawsuit in which the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking documents and details of the government's terror detainee programs. Previous accounts of the military tribunal hearings have already been made public. But the Obama administration has since reviewed the still-secret sections and determined that more could be released. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Former US security chief warns on Hezbollah threat- Andrew Beatty – WASHINGTON
(AFP) — Hezbollah could surpass Al-Qaeda as the most serious long-term threat to the United States, the former head of homeland security Michael Chertoff is to warn in a book published later this year.
Chertoff -- who for four years headed efforts to prevent a repeat of the attacks of September 11, 2001 -- alleges Hezbollah is better equipped, better trained and better politically positioned than Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. "Al-Qaeda and its network are our most serious immediate threat, they may not be our most serious long-term threat," Chertoff writes in a book to be published in September, a draft of which was obtained by AFP. "Having operated for more than a quarter-century, (Hezbollah) has developed capabilities that Al-Qaeda can only dream of, including large quantities of missiles and highly sophisticated explosives."
Chertoff says the group, whose Arabic name means the "Party of God," also has "uniformly well trained operatives, an exceptionally well-disciplined force of nearly 30,000 fighters, and extraordinary political influence." (Google)

NEFA Foundation: "Target: America": The Conspiracy to Establish a Terrorist Training Camp In Bly, Oregon"-Madeleine Gruen
The NEFA Foundation has released the 19th report in the “Target: America” series, which focuses on the conspiracy to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon in late 1999 through early 2000.
In October1999, Seattle native, James Ujaama came up with the idea of opening a jihad training camp outside of the tiny town of Bly, Oregon, where his acquaintance from the Dar-us-Salaam mosque in Seattle, Semi Osman, had moved with his family to a 160-acre abandoned sheep ranch. Ujaama proposed the training camp idea to his spiritual mentor, London cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri. Al-Masri, who had a track record of facilitating and funding jihad training for his followers, saw potential in Ujaama’s idea, and sent two of his closest followers, Oussama Kassir and Haroon Rashid Aswat, from London to the United States to investigate further.The men found the conditions on the Bly ranch to be unsatisfactory for the purpose of establishing a jihad training camp and abandoned the plan. However, the evidence presented in the indictments and the recent trial of Oussama Kassir revealed useful information about terrorist training methods. (Nefafoundation)

What an Armed Muslim Brotherhood Should Mean to the U.S.-Steve Emerson
An Egyptian newspaper claims the Muslim Brotherhood may have constituted a large, well-armed wing, with perhaps thousands of operatives, and its purpose is to engage in terrorist operations. The report, published May 27th in Egypt's Al-Masry Al-Youm, carried the headline, "Why is Security Silent About the Secret Armed Organization of the Brotherhood?" A potential mission for this Muslim Brotherhood armed division would be to send 10,000 trained fighters to south Lebanon (Hezbollah territory) and to Gaza to attack Israel. Author Hussaneyn Kuroum notes there are some Muslim Brotherhood leaders who refute the existence of an armed wing, but the current Secretary General (Guide) Mahdi Akef, has made statements clearly indicating that the organization has such an armed element. The article questions what the Egyptian security services may or may not know about this unit. Kuroum cites an interview in a separate Egyptian publication with Brotherhood opponent Wahid Hamid, who argues Akef's brash talk has meaning: (Familysecuritymatters)

UN Report Recommends Human Rights Global Governance of Trade Negotiations
Each nation is free to negotiate with another nation regarding the manner in which trade will be conducted between their countries. As part of a free trade negotiation, officials from each country may consider how the trade agreement provisions might impact human rights. The question is: should United Nations officials and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and foundations be permitted to undermine national sovereignty by funding and training local civil society organizations to demand that ambiguous or fiscally unattainable economic rights, such as the right to health, be addressed in trade agreements? On June 2nd, Mr. Anand Grover, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, presented his first thematic report to the 11th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. The report, which examines how trade agreements can negate the flexibility of developing countries to secure relief from intellectual property (IP) laws, opens the door to the human rights global governance of bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations. (Globalgovernancewatch)

The Global Fifth Amendment-Andrew C. McCarthy
Obama Goes to Court, Part II: Miranda Meets Al-Qaeda.
(Note: In the first part of this article, Andrew C. McCarthy explained how Dickerson v. United States changed Miranda warnings from a tool for protecting rights into a right in itself, disregarding an act of Congress. Here he shows how those warnings, intended for use in domestic law enforcement, came to be part of the fight against global terrorism, with unfortunate consequences.) At the murky crossroads between criminal enforcement and national defense, international terrorism has brought to the fore Dickerson’s unintended, but easily foreseeable, consequences. On Aug. 7, 1998, al-Qaeda jihadists bombed the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, murdering at least 224 people. The bombings were treated as criminal offenses rather than acts of war, which meant conducting crime-scene investigations in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. (Nationalreview)

Questions on EPA's Cost Estimates for Waxman-Markey Climate Change Legislation by David Kreutzer and Nicolas Loris
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) analysis of the economic impact of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill relies on a variety of assumptions. These assumptions strongly bias the cost downward when compared to the results of studies done by the Center for Data Analysis (CDA) at The Heritage Foundation and by CRA International for the National Black Chamber of Commerce.[1]
CRA's economic analysis projects that by 2030 Waxman-Markey would reduce national GDP by roughly $350 billon below the baseline level, cut net employment by 2.5 million jobs (even after accounting for new "green" jobs), and reduce an average household's annual purchasing power by $830.[2] These projections compare with the devastating consequences found by The Heritage Foundation's CDA.[3] (Sciencepublicpolicy)

New Glimpses of Life’s Puzzling Origins-Nicholas Wade
Some 3.9 billion years ago, a shift in the orbit of the Sun’s outer planets sent a surge of large comets and asteroids careening into the inner solar system. Their violent impacts gouged out the large craters still visible on the Moon’s face, heated Earth’s surface into molten rock and boiled off its oceans into an incandescent mist. Yet rocks that formed on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, almost as soon as the bombardment had stopped, contain possible evidence of biological processes. If life can arise from inorganic matter so quickly and easily, why is it not abundant in the solar system and beyond? If biology is an inherent property of matter, why have chemists so far been unable to reconstruct life, or anything close to it, in the laboratory?The origins of life on Earth bristle with puzzle and paradox. Which came first, the proteins of living cells or the genetic information that makes them? How could the metabolism of living things get started without an enclosing membrane to keep all the necessary chemicals together? But if life started inside a cell membrane, how did the necessary nutrients get in? (NYT)

When the World Tilted--Again-Edward Kosner
What do Motown, the microchip and Fidel Castro have in common?
In 1959, I was a 22-year-old night rewrite man at Dorothy Schiff's scruffy, liberal New York Post, doing stories about the quiz-show scandals, slumlords, mob slays and a young senator from Massachusetts who was running for president. I read Norman Mailer's "Advertisements for Myself," listened to Miles Davis, went to a Lenny Bruce performance and saw John Cassavetes's "Shadows." I was blissfully unaware that I was living at a hinge of history. Now I know better. Fred Kaplan's clever "1959" has almost persuaded me that the end of the Age of Ike was one of those turning points in political and cultural history that signal the emergence of a new way of living and thinking about it. Of course, it's an old trick to pick a year -- say, 1945, with the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or 1970, with the shooting of antiwar students at Kent State -- as the cusp of a new era or the end of an old one. (WSJ)

The Golden Age of Conspiracy-Nick Cohen
I assume that readers do not believe that the CIA, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex or some other manifestation of the System ordered the murder of JFK. Conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination, once everywhere, are now confined to the diminishing audience for Oliver Stone's movies. I am not sure, however, that you can say, hand on heart, that you have not thought for a fleeting moment that maybe there just might be something in the following propositions:
• That Nato governments and their tame journalists invented the "atrocities" committed by Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia and her allies in order to justify a war to expand the empire of neo-liberalism into the southern Balkans;
• That Prince Philip, along with the British and French intelligence services, arranged the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, because she was about to marry a Muslim;
• That the 9/11 atrocities in New York and Washington were an "inside job" organised by a rogue faction within the US intelligence agencies or maybe the Bush administration itself to justify war in the Muslim world;
• That Israel warned Jews to stay away from the World Trade Centre on 9/11 but allowed the slaughter of gentiles to stoke up hatred of Muslims; (Standpointmag.co.uk)