Islamic Terrorism

50th Anniversary Of Berlin Wall: The Ultimate Symbol Of Oppression Remembered!

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Today, a half century ago, the East German government in lockstep with the Soviet Union, its master, started construction of the infamous Berlin Wall, which became the ultimate symbol of oppression, the true image of what Soviet Communism was all about!

For the next 28 years, until the evening of November 9 and day of November 10, 1989, the Berlin Wall became the center of the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, evoking the worst images of the Cold War.

Many people died trying to ram through the checkpoints with their cars; or attempting to climb over the wall with its barbed wire top, or jumping over the wall from nearby buildings at the location of the wall, or digging tunnels under the wall in a multitude of locations.

President John F. Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan were remembered for their condemnations of the Berlin Wall and what it represented.

When the wall came down suddenly in November 1989 during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, it was a sign of the end of the Cold War, and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet system of government in 1991, after all of Eastern Europe was liberated from the yoke of communism in 1989.

It was a great moment of rejoicing, still in many ways hard to conceptualize, that the wall had actually come down, with East German border guards assisting in the destruction themselves.

It made many think that there would be peace in the world, and that the United States would be the only super power, with no realization that we were entering a new era, in many ways more dangerous, the era of Islamic Terrorism with those engaged in that terrorism having absolutely no limits, including suicide, in their fight against the Western world and Christianity and Judaism!

So today is a day to celebrate, but with great sense of the challenge that we still face in the future, and at a time when America has so many domestic complexities and lack of cooperation by the two major political parties, endangering, therefore, America’s future!

Twenty One Years Ago Today, The World Changed For The Worst!

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On August 2, 1990, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein attacked and occupied the oil nation of Kuwait, presenting a threat to Saudi Arabia and all of the Middle East, and to the world’s petroleum supply.

President George H. W. Bush created an international coalition centered around the United Nations to demand that Iraq withdraw, but when that failed, in January 1991, the Persian Gulf War ensued, with it being won in six weeks, successfully removing Iraq from Kuwait, but failing to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Saudi Arabia agreed to allow US forces into their nation, angering Muslim nationalists throughout the Middle East, who hated the thought of Christian troops in the holy land of Mecca and Medina, and Islamic terrorism now became a major threat to the United States and the Western world, with the development of various groups, including Al Qaeda under Osama Bin Laden.

This intervention led long term to September 11, to the invasion of Afghanistan to overcome Al Qaeda, and the later intervention in Iraq, overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but leading to a long bloody civil war engulfing American forces, and taking attention off Afghanistan.

Here we are today, with American troops in Iraq, although not in combat, and war continuing in Afghanistan, our two longest wars in American history, and effectively bankrupting our economy, causing massive expenditures in fighting terrorism and defending US interests in the Middle East, and promoting the loss of civil liberties through the Patriot Act, and the inability to deal with the many domestic problems our country faces.

So on this 21st anniversary of Iraq going into Kuwait, one can see the long range deleterious effects of this short lived war, with damaging impact that threatens the supremacy of the United States domestically and in foreign affairs in 2011!

The Republican Urge To Provoke Violence And Bloodshed

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The Republican Party, instead of promoting harmony and a sense of common purpose among the population of the United States, instead, for some odd reason, hard to fathom, does just the opposite! Everything it advocates instead provokes violence and bloodshed, without any rhyme or reason!

Examples of this abound!

1. Wisconsin, Ohio and other states take away labor’s right to collective bargaining, provoking massive demonstrations and outrage.

2. Florida cuts unemployment compensation to the lowest number of weeks of any state, 20 weeks, in the midst of an all time high unemployment rate of 12 percent, one of the highest in the nation, bringing desperate people to the brink of violence.

3. Florida also decides to make it more difficult for former felons to regain their voting rights, making it five years after completion of sentence and probation before one can even request restoration of voting rights, angering many who will feel discrimination.

4. New Hampshire and other states are working to make it more difficult for college students to vote in their college towns, as well as states which want to require state mandated IDs which intimidate poor people and minorities from registering to vote.

5. Arizona and other states are promoting profiling, giving police the right to stop anyone who they believe to be an illegal immigrant, and in the process advocating nativism.

6. Arizona and other states are cutting benefits for poor people who need transplant surgery, angering family members of those patients.

7. States are laying off teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public servants, and by increasing the unemployment rate, are fueling resentment among many of the newly unemployed. Also, the crime rate is bound to go up as we have fewer police officers.

8. States moving to criminalize abortion are provoking pro life extremists to the potential for bloodshed and violence.

9. States promoting guns on campus and in bars and other public places tends toward violence and bloodshed potential in the future.

10. The promotion of opposition to gay rights helps incite threats and violence against those by religious extremists who see homosexuality as a threat to American society.

11. The promotion of the “Birther” conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama by Republican leaders and conservatives fuels threats against our President by those who think he is a Muslim.

12. Congressman Peter King, by holding hearings on Islamic terrorism, promotes the image that we cannot trust the Muslim population within our midst.

This is a dangerous set of circumstances which makes one wonder what the future of the nation is, with the tendency of the Republican Party to be oblivious to what is occurring, or is it oblivious, or in fact purposely promoting these circumstances? One has to wonder!

Are Muslim Citizens Threats To Homeland Security? The Peter King Committee Hearings And The Real Threat To The Nation!

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New York Republican Congressman Peter King, a member of the House since 1993, is the new Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and is about to conduct hearings on what he calls the Islamic threat to America presented by disloyal Muslims in American society.

King can certainly give several examples of Muslims in America who have been proved to be engaged in terrorist activities, fortunately stopped by excellent intelligence activities by cooperation between federal and state government officials. With the tragic exception of the Fort Hood massacre by a Muslim soldier, all of the attempts have been prevented.

But are we to say, for instance, that all community college students should be considered dangerous and worthy of investigation by the Homeland Security Committee, because of Jared Lee Loughner shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, which led to six deaths and thirteen wounded?

Are we to say that all white Christians who had been in the military should be investigated because of Timothy McVeigh blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995, killing 168 people and wounding nearly a thousand people?

We cannot allow the Islamic haters in this country, many of them Christian fundamentalists, to anger and provoke good, law abiding Muslims, several million among us and growing, into hating the nation they willingly migrated to or have grown up in as citizens, to feel they are being persecuted or scapegoated, particularly when Muslim soldiers are fighting for us, and in many cases, have helped report and crack plots by the miniscule number of Muslims who have conspired against us!

What Peter King is doing is really the new McCarthyism, loose labeling people as Communists, and now substituting Muslims for Communists!

It is also important to point out that Peter King has a “skeleton” in his closet, his strong advocacy for the terrorist Irish Republican Army in its long war against British control of Northern Ireland. Can a person who supported terrorism actions against America’s strongest ally, Great Britain, be taken seriously when he claims to be fighting terrorism by promoting insecurity among law abiding Muslims, who are certainly over 99 percent of all Muslims?

And it should be pointed out that IF King really wishes to investigate terrorism threats, look to the hundreds of such groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, including neo-Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, and Ku Klux Klansmen!

The number of such groups are at an all time high of 1,002, with many of them so called “Patriot” groups that have grown dramatically since Barack Obama became President, and believing that the federal government is the “enemy”!

And if one counts groups that go beyond just hate groups and Patriot groups to include nativist extremist groups which are a threat to ethnic, racial, religious and sexual orientation minorities, then the total is 2,145, a 40 percent increase from 2008-2009 and a 22 percent rise in 2009-2010!

Also realize that many Republican politicians and talk show hosts on radio and television use loose rhetoric, and are encouraging the paranoia and hate by their loose use of language!

So only when Peter King is willing to investigate and publicize the far greater threat from right wing hate groups would his committee be seen as doing something worthy of our support!

Sad Anniversary: FDR Executive Order 9066, The Internment Of Japanese Americans In World War II! :(

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Today is the 69th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, requiring the internment of about 110,000 Japanese Americans, just two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, simply because they were seen as a security risk to the nation due to their ethnicity and possible loyalties to their nation of origin.

This happened despite the fact that most of these people had been born in America, while others had become citizens or were applying for it, but simply their face and appearance was enough to put them into internment camps behind barbed wire and under military guard until early in 1945, they were ordered released, without any recompense for three lost years in what was basically a prison due to their national origins, not anything they did to deserve incarceration! 🙁

An all Japanese American military unit in Europe won more honors and recognition than any other unit in World War II, while their families were being mistreated in this terrible manner!

Only in 1988, the American government and President Ronald Reagan apologized formally for the forced internment, and arranged for the 50,000 survivors a lump sum payment of $20,000.

This horrible event ended just a day after the Supreme Court ruled that their internment was justifiable in war time, in the case of Korematsu V. US on December 16, 1944. The next day, the order went out to release them on January 2, 1945, even with the war not over, and many months left until the US utilized the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in August 1945.

The memory of this injustice and violation of civil liberties should not be forgotten at a time when we have so many Islamic haters who wish to deny all Muslims in this country what all American are entitled to–basic freedoms, without any denial unless it can be proved that they are, as individuals, involved in terrorist or other criminal activity.

The Bill of Rights must be preserved, or our democracy is a mockery!

30th Anniversary Of The End Of The Iran Hostage Crisis: Its Long Range Effect!

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On this day thirty years ago, Inauguration Day of President Ronald Reagan, the Iran hostage crisis, which destroyed any hope of President Jimmy Carter to win re-election, came to an end.

The nation was kept literally captive for 444 days from November 4, 1979 onward, as we all worried about the safety and survival of the 52 Americans held hostage at US Embassy in Teheran.

We were gripped by this crisis, and it became the constant news story for all of 1980, an obsession we could not overcome.

It created fame for Ted Koppel of ABC News, who originally covered the crisis day by day at 1135PM weekday evenings, and then expanded the news coverage at that odd hour to create Nightline, which he anchored for 26 years!

Iran became the biggest foreign policy headache of the United States, and in many ways, remains that 32 years later!

We basically were unable to resolve the issue satisfactorily as a great power, and yet Iran has continued to tie us in knots, and we still cannot figure out how to deal with the threat of this Islamic terrorist nation which has complicated our lives more than any other nation in the past three decades!

With the Soviet Union, as evil as they were, reason and measured response could work, and the Soviets had their limits.

Unfortunately, with the combination of Islamic extremism and resentment at US support in the past for the Shah of Iran, there is a concern that the Iranians today have no limits and might be ready to sacrifice themselves rather than cave in or concede in any way to the United States or other Western nations.

And by this nation getting deeply involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, ironically, Iran has become emboldened and stronger than ever before, and they clearly have no intention of compromise or concession, while the old Soviet Union was willing over time to make agreements and concession.

So in this second decade of the 21st century, Iran remains the center of strategic planning, intelligence estimates, and sleepless nights for many in the American diplomatic and military community! 🙁

65 Year Commemoration Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki And Growing Concern Over Iranian Threat! :(

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Today marks the 65th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb attack on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

We have been living in the age of nuclear weapons for so long, and the baby boom generation grew up with the constant fear of a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States!

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, we had a sense of relief that the nuclear threat was gone, but we failed to recognize the growing threat of Islamic Terrorism, and the maniacal nature of those who hate the West, and using religion, are ready to do whatever is necessary to defeat modern Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist societies in the name of Allah!

For a few years now, we have seen the growing threat of a crazy, maniacal government in Iran, proceeding toward the development of nuclear weapons that could threaten the existence of Israel, but also of Europe, the Sunni Arab Middle East, and much of Asia!

The world has been sitting by debating resolutions in the United Nations, and tightening economic sanctions against the government of Ahmadinejad, and one senses a similar situation to what happened in the 1930s as Adolf Hitler built up his war machine, and the world seemed unable to react in a timely fashion!

One hopes that the Iranian story is not following the history of Nazi Germany, but it is clear that more must be done to stop the Iranian ability to develop nuclear weapons before the possibility of a world wide Holocaust emerges, due to fanatical religious terrorism!

This is a day to pray for world peace, but also to prepare for what is likely to be a confrontation fairly soon with the totalitarian Iranian regime which threatens its neighbors and the peace of the world! 🙁