Friday, January 30, 2015
NBC's Mohyeldin Asserts Real American Sniper a 'Racist' Who Went on 'Killing Sprees'
This is the kind of liberal slant on this true American Hero. Toward the end the POS is put in his place when the proper description of what Kyle meant by "Savages."
NBC's Mohyeldin Asserts Real American Sniper a 'Racist' Who Went on 'Killing Sprees'
NBC's Mohyeldin Asserts Real American Sniper a 'Racist' Who Went on 'Killing Sprees'
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
The Persians Are Coming!
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Tuesday - January 27, 2015
"The Iranians are on the march," warned John McCain Sunday.
"Iran is building a new Persian Empire," echoed Col. Ralph Peters.
So alarmed is Speaker Boehner, he invited Bibi Netanyahu to come and challenge U.S. policy toward Iran from the same podium where the president delivered his State of the Union address.
Bibi will make the case for new U.S. sanctions on Iran; sanctions that Obama has said he will veto as they would sabotage talks on Iran's nuclear program and potentially put us on the road to war.
Why are Bibi's insights needed?
Because, says Sen. Robert Menendez, the outgoing chairman of foreign relations, White House statements sound like "talking points from Tehran." This beloved poodle of AIPAC is always a strong contender for best in show.
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ... a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government."
So warned our first and greatest president in his Farewell Address.
But this column is not about how Washington would weep at what has become of this Republic, nor a polemic against the corruption of a capital where the currency is campaign cash and national policy is the commodity bought and sold.
The issue is whether Iran represents a threat to our security worth risking a war. For that is where many, including Bibi, want us to go.
Last week's panic was triggered by the ouster of the pro-American Yemeni President by Houthi rebels. Suddenly, we heard wails that Iran has now captured four Arab capitals -- Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sanaa.
"Death to America, death to Israel," is a slogan of the Houthis who are a Shia minority in Sunni Yemen. But who do the Houthis view as their mortal foes?
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP. Our enemy, too.
The crown jewel of the new "Persian Empire" is said to be Iraq. So how did the Iranian imperialists manage to acquire it?
George Bush sent an army up to Baghdad, ousted Iran's greatest enemy, Saddam, disbanded his army, smashed his state, and brought to power a Shia majority with religious and historic bonds to Iran.
A masterstroke of Bismarckian brilliance. And both parties voted in Congress to authorize it. Mission Accomplished! -- as they say in Tehran.
As for Damascus, Iran is but backing the Alawite Shia regime of Bashar Assad, whose father, Hafez Assad, was Bush I's ally in Desert Storm.
As for Beirut, Hezbollah arose as a resistance movement when Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon in 1982.
Yitzhak Rabin would come to regret the consequences: "We let the Shia genie out of the bottle."
Looking over the chaos that is the Middle East today, we see failed states in Libya, Yemen and Syria, with Iraq and Afghanistan perhaps next.
A strategic disaster, largely of our own making. But if al-Qaeda and ISIS are our real enemies now, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad and the Houthis are all de facto allies, fighting on the same side with us.
Alarmists may see a new Persian Empire threatening all mankind.
A closer look reveals a Shia minority in a Sunni-dominated world where Shia are despised heretics. And of all the terrorist organizations we have the most reason to fear and hate -- al-Qaida, Islamic State, Ansar al-Sharia, Boko Haram -- none is Shia, all are Sunni.
What about Iran's drive to build a nuclear bomb?
Well, Israel has 100-300 atom bombs. America has thousands. Iran's Muslim neighbor Pakistan has scores. And Iran? She has no bomb.
Iran has never tested a nuclear device. She has never produced weapons-grade uranium. Her Fordow underground plant now has IAEA inspectors and its 20-percent-enriched uranium is all being diluted. Construction of the heavy-water reactor at Arak has been halted. Half of Iran's centrifuges are not operating. There are International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and cameras blanketing Iran's program.
The U.S. intelligence community has twice said Iran has no nuclear bomb program. And the most recent finding, 2011, has never been reversed by the Director of National Intelligence.
And just how credible a foreign leader has Boehner invited to undercut his own president's credibility?
This is the same Bibi who told the Jewish community of Los Angeles in 2006, "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany ... racing to arm itself with atomic bombs." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state." Bibi even had the war plans:
"Israel would certainly be the first stop on Iran's tour of destruction, but at [Tehran's] planned production rate of 25 nuclear bombs a year, [the arsenal] will be directed against 'the big Satan,' the U.S."
Twenty-five Iranian nuclear bombs a year! What bullhockey it all was.
Boehner seem to have concluded that new sanctions on Iran, even if it aborts negotiations and brings on a war with Iran, will be rewarded by the electorate in 2016.
Perhaps. But if this is where the GOP is heading, we'll be getting off here.
"The Iranians are on the march," warned John McCain Sunday.
"Iran is building a new Persian Empire," echoed Col. Ralph Peters.
So alarmed is Speaker Boehner, he invited Bibi Netanyahu to come and challenge U.S. policy toward Iran from the same podium where the president delivered his State of the Union address.
Bibi will make the case for new U.S. sanctions on Iran; sanctions that Obama has said he will veto as they would sabotage talks on Iran's nuclear program and potentially put us on the road to war.
Why are Bibi's insights needed?
Because, says Sen. Robert Menendez, the outgoing chairman of foreign relations, White House statements sound like "talking points from Tehran." This beloved poodle of AIPAC is always a strong contender for best in show.
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ... a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government."
So warned our first and greatest president in his Farewell Address.
But this column is not about how Washington would weep at what has become of this Republic, nor a polemic against the corruption of a capital where the currency is campaign cash and national policy is the commodity bought and sold.
The issue is whether Iran represents a threat to our security worth risking a war. For that is where many, including Bibi, want us to go.
Last week's panic was triggered by the ouster of the pro-American Yemeni President by Houthi rebels. Suddenly, we heard wails that Iran has now captured four Arab capitals -- Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sanaa.
"Death to America, death to Israel," is a slogan of the Houthis who are a Shia minority in Sunni Yemen. But who do the Houthis view as their mortal foes?
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP. Our enemy, too.
The crown jewel of the new "Persian Empire" is said to be Iraq. So how did the Iranian imperialists manage to acquire it?
George Bush sent an army up to Baghdad, ousted Iran's greatest enemy, Saddam, disbanded his army, smashed his state, and brought to power a Shia majority with religious and historic bonds to Iran.
A masterstroke of Bismarckian brilliance. And both parties voted in Congress to authorize it. Mission Accomplished! -- as they say in Tehran.
As for Damascus, Iran is but backing the Alawite Shia regime of Bashar Assad, whose father, Hafez Assad, was Bush I's ally in Desert Storm.
As for Beirut, Hezbollah arose as a resistance movement when Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon in 1982.
Yitzhak Rabin would come to regret the consequences: "We let the Shia genie out of the bottle."
Looking over the chaos that is the Middle East today, we see failed states in Libya, Yemen and Syria, with Iraq and Afghanistan perhaps next.
A strategic disaster, largely of our own making. But if al-Qaeda and ISIS are our real enemies now, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad and the Houthis are all de facto allies, fighting on the same side with us.
Alarmists may see a new Persian Empire threatening all mankind.
A closer look reveals a Shia minority in a Sunni-dominated world where Shia are despised heretics. And of all the terrorist organizations we have the most reason to fear and hate -- al-Qaida, Islamic State, Ansar al-Sharia, Boko Haram -- none is Shia, all are Sunni.
What about Iran's drive to build a nuclear bomb?
Well, Israel has 100-300 atom bombs. America has thousands. Iran's Muslim neighbor Pakistan has scores. And Iran? She has no bomb.
Iran has never tested a nuclear device. She has never produced weapons-grade uranium. Her Fordow underground plant now has IAEA inspectors and its 20-percent-enriched uranium is all being diluted. Construction of the heavy-water reactor at Arak has been halted. Half of Iran's centrifuges are not operating. There are International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and cameras blanketing Iran's program.
The U.S. intelligence community has twice said Iran has no nuclear bomb program. And the most recent finding, 2011, has never been reversed by the Director of National Intelligence.
And just how credible a foreign leader has Boehner invited to undercut his own president's credibility?
This is the same Bibi who told the Jewish community of Los Angeles in 2006, "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany ... racing to arm itself with atomic bombs." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state." Bibi even had the war plans:
"Israel would certainly be the first stop on Iran's tour of destruction, but at [Tehran's] planned production rate of 25 nuclear bombs a year, [the arsenal] will be directed against 'the big Satan,' the U.S."
Twenty-five Iranian nuclear bombs a year! What bullhockey it all was.
Boehner seem to have concluded that new sanctions on Iran, even if it aborts negotiations and brings on a war with Iran, will be rewarded by the electorate in 2016.
Perhaps. But if this is where the GOP is heading, we'll be getting off here.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
Sunday, January 25, 2015
What Bobby Jindal Gets about Islam — and Most People Still Don't
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Selma, 50 Years On By Patrick J. Buchanan
Tuesday - January 20, 2015
On Martin Luther King Day, 2015, how stand race relations in America?
"Selma," a film focused on the police clubbing of civil rights marchers led by Dr. King at Selma bridge in March of 1965, is being denounced by Democrats as a cinematic slander against the president who passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In the movie, King is portrayed as decisive and heroic, LBJ as devious and dilatory. And no member of the "Selma" cast has been nominated for an Academy Award. All 20 of the actors and actresses nominated are white.
Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains, says Rev. Al Sharpton, the higher up you go the whiter it gets.
Even before the "Selma" dustup, the hacking of Sony Pictures had unearthed emails between studio chief Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin yukking it up over President Obama's reputed preference for films like "Django Unchained," "12 Years a Slave" and "The Butler."
"Racism in Hollywood!" ran the headlines.
Pascal went to Rev. Sharpton to seek absolution, which could prove expensive. Following a 90-minute meeting, Al tweeted that he had had a "very pointed and blunt exchange" with Pascal, that her emails reveal a "cultural blindness," that Hollywood has to change, and that Pascal has "committed to this."
These cultural-social spats -- LBJ loyalists vs. the "Selma" folks, Sharpton vs. Hollywood -- are tiffs within the liberal encampment, and matters of amusement in Middle America.
More serious have been the months-long protests against police, following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner on Staten Island, some of which have featured chants like, "What do we want? Dead Cops!"
The protests climaxed with the execution in Bedford-Stuyvesant of two NYPD cops by a career criminal taking revenge for Garner and Brown.
Race relations today seem in some ways more poisonous than in 1965, when there were vast deposits of goodwill and LBJ pushed through the Voting Rights Act easily, 77-19 in the Senate and 328-74 in the House. Only two Republican Senators voted against the VRA.
But not a week after LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, the Watts section of Los Angeles exploded in one of the worst race riots in U.S. history. After seven days of pillage and arson, there were 34 dead, 1,000 injured, 3,000 arrested, and a thousand buildings damaged or destroyed.
The era of marching for civil rights was over and the era of Black Power, with Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown and The Black Panthers eclipsing King, had begun.
In July 1967, there were riots in Newark and Detroit that rivaled Watts in destruction.
After Dr. King's murder in Memphis in April of 1968, riots broke out in 100 more cities, including Washington, D.C.
By Oct. 1, the nominee of the Democratic Party, civil rights champion Hubert Humphrey, stood at 28 percent in the Gallup poll, only 7 points ahead of Gov. George Wallace.
Though Nixon won narrowly, the Great Society endured.
And in the half-century since, trillions have been spent on food stamps, housing subsidies, Head Start, student loans, Pell Grants, welfare, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and other programs.
How did it all work out?
Undeniably, the civil right laws succeeded. Discrimination in hotels and restaurants is nonexistent. African-Americans voted in 2012 in higher percentages than white Americans. There are more black public officials in Mississippi than in any other state. In sports, entertainment, journalism, government, medicine, business, politics, and the arts, blacks may be found everywhere.
Yet the pathology of the old urban ghetto has not disappeared. In some ways, it has gotten much worse. Crime in the black community is still seven times what it is in the white community.
Test scores of black students remain far below those of Asian and white students. While 40 percent of all infants are born to single moms, the illegitimacy rate in black America is over 70 percent.
Whether it is dropout rates, drug use rates, delinquency rates or incarceration rates, the rates for blacks far exceed those of white and Asian-Americans, and of immigrants and Hispanics.
White households have a median family income below that of Asians, but far above that of black Americans. White households have on average $143,000 in wealth in stocks, bonds, home equity and other assets, 13 times that of the average black household.
At Howard University in 1965, LBJ declared, "We seek ... not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and equality as a result."
"Equality as a result"?
Measured by the average incomes and wealth of Asians and whites and Hispanics and blacks, we have failed. And income inequality is back again, as issue No. 1.
After 50 years of affirmative action and the greatest wealth transfers in human history, "equality as a fact" has not been achieved and will not be, absent a greater seizure of power by the U.S. government and larger and virtually endless transfers of wealth.
The reports of Karl Marx's death have been greatly exaggerated.
On Martin Luther King Day, 2015, how stand race relations in America?
"Selma," a film focused on the police clubbing of civil rights marchers led by Dr. King at Selma bridge in March of 1965, is being denounced by Democrats as a cinematic slander against the president who passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In the movie, King is portrayed as decisive and heroic, LBJ as devious and dilatory. And no member of the "Selma" cast has been nominated for an Academy Award. All 20 of the actors and actresses nominated are white.
Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains, says Rev. Al Sharpton, the higher up you go the whiter it gets.
Even before the "Selma" dustup, the hacking of Sony Pictures had unearthed emails between studio chief Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin yukking it up over President Obama's reputed preference for films like "Django Unchained," "12 Years a Slave" and "The Butler."
"Racism in Hollywood!" ran the headlines.
Pascal went to Rev. Sharpton to seek absolution, which could prove expensive. Following a 90-minute meeting, Al tweeted that he had had a "very pointed and blunt exchange" with Pascal, that her emails reveal a "cultural blindness," that Hollywood has to change, and that Pascal has "committed to this."
These cultural-social spats -- LBJ loyalists vs. the "Selma" folks, Sharpton vs. Hollywood -- are tiffs within the liberal encampment, and matters of amusement in Middle America.
More serious have been the months-long protests against police, following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner on Staten Island, some of which have featured chants like, "What do we want? Dead Cops!"
The protests climaxed with the execution in Bedford-Stuyvesant of two NYPD cops by a career criminal taking revenge for Garner and Brown.
Race relations today seem in some ways more poisonous than in 1965, when there were vast deposits of goodwill and LBJ pushed through the Voting Rights Act easily, 77-19 in the Senate and 328-74 in the House. Only two Republican Senators voted against the VRA.
But not a week after LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, the Watts section of Los Angeles exploded in one of the worst race riots in U.S. history. After seven days of pillage and arson, there were 34 dead, 1,000 injured, 3,000 arrested, and a thousand buildings damaged or destroyed.
The era of marching for civil rights was over and the era of Black Power, with Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown and The Black Panthers eclipsing King, had begun.
In July 1967, there were riots in Newark and Detroit that rivaled Watts in destruction.
After Dr. King's murder in Memphis in April of 1968, riots broke out in 100 more cities, including Washington, D.C.
By Oct. 1, the nominee of the Democratic Party, civil rights champion Hubert Humphrey, stood at 28 percent in the Gallup poll, only 7 points ahead of Gov. George Wallace.
Though Nixon won narrowly, the Great Society endured.
And in the half-century since, trillions have been spent on food stamps, housing subsidies, Head Start, student loans, Pell Grants, welfare, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and other programs.
How did it all work out?
Undeniably, the civil right laws succeeded. Discrimination in hotels and restaurants is nonexistent. African-Americans voted in 2012 in higher percentages than white Americans. There are more black public officials in Mississippi than in any other state. In sports, entertainment, journalism, government, medicine, business, politics, and the arts, blacks may be found everywhere.
Yet the pathology of the old urban ghetto has not disappeared. In some ways, it has gotten much worse. Crime in the black community is still seven times what it is in the white community.
Test scores of black students remain far below those of Asian and white students. While 40 percent of all infants are born to single moms, the illegitimacy rate in black America is over 70 percent.
Whether it is dropout rates, drug use rates, delinquency rates or incarceration rates, the rates for blacks far exceed those of white and Asian-Americans, and of immigrants and Hispanics.
White households have a median family income below that of Asians, but far above that of black Americans. White households have on average $143,000 in wealth in stocks, bonds, home equity and other assets, 13 times that of the average black household.
At Howard University in 1965, LBJ declared, "We seek ... not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and equality as a result."
"Equality as a result"?
Measured by the average incomes and wealth of Asians and whites and Hispanics and blacks, we have failed. And income inequality is back again, as issue No. 1.
After 50 years of affirmative action and the greatest wealth transfers in human history, "equality as a fact" has not been achieved and will not be, absent a greater seizure of power by the U.S. government and larger and virtually endless transfers of wealth.
The reports of Karl Marx's death have been greatly exaggerated.
Against Terrorism -- But for What? By Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday - January 23, 2015
Following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that France "is at war with terrorism, jihadism and radical Islamism." This tells us what France is fighting against.
But what is France fighting for in this war on terror? For terrorism is simply a tactic, and arguably the most effective tactic of the national liberation movements of the 20th century.
Terrorism was used by the Irgun to drive the British out of Palestine and by the Mau Mau to run them out of Kenya. Terrorism, blowing up movie theaters and cafes, was the tactic the FLN used to drive the French out of Algeria.
The FALN tried to assassinate Harry Truman in 1950 at Blair House, shot up the House of Representatives in 1954, and, in 1975, blew up Fraunces Tavern in New York where Washington had bid his officers farewell. The FALN goal: Independence from a United States that had annexed Puerto Rico as the spoils of war in its victory over Spain.
What did the FLN, FALN, Mau Mau, Irgun and Mandela's ANC have in common? All sought the expulsion of alien rule. All sought nations of their own. All used terrorism for the same ends as Uighurs do in China and Chechens do in the Caucasus.
Osama bin Laden, in his declaration of war upon us, listed as his casus belli the presence on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia of U.S. troops and their "temple prostitutes." He wanted us out of his country.
What are Valls' terrorists, jihadists and radical Islamists fighting for? What are the goals of ISIS and al-Qaida, Boko Haram and Ansar al-Sharia, the Taliban and al-Shabab?
All want our troops, our alien culture and our infidel faith out of their lands. All seek the overthrow of regimes that collaborate with us. And all wish to establish regimes that comport with the commands of the Prophet.
This is what they are recruiting for, killing for, dying for. We abhor their terror tactics and deplore their aims, but they know what they are fighting for. What are we fighting for?
What is our vision that will inspire Muslim masses to rise up, battle alongside us, and die fighting Islamists? What future do we envision for the Middle East? And are we willing to pay the price to achieve it?
Comes the reply: America is fighting, as always, for democracy, freedom and the right of peoples to rule themselves.
But are we? If democracy is our goal, why did we not recognize the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, or of Hezbollah in Lebanon? Why did we condone the overthrow of the elected regime of Mohammad Morsi in Egypt? Why do we not demand democracy in Saudi Arabia?
But hypocrisy is the least of our problems.
The real problem is that hundreds of millions of Muslims reject our values. They do not believe all religions are equal. They do not believe in freedom of speech or the press to blaspheme the Prophet. Majorities in many Islamic countries believe adulterers, apostates, and converts to Christianity should be lashed, stoned and beheaded.
In surveys, the Muslim world not only rejects our presence and puppets, but also our culture and beliefs. In a free referendum they would vote to throw us out of the region and throw the Israelis into the sea.
For many in the Mideast collaboration with America is a betrayal. And our presence spawns more terrorists than our drones can kill.
This week Valls conceded there are "two Frances," adding, "A territorial, social, ethnic apartheid has spread across our country."
Have her five million Muslims become an indigestible minority that imperils the survival of France? Have France and Europe embraced a diversity more malignant than benign, possibly leading to a future like the recent past in Palestine, Cyprus, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Ukraine?
T. S. Eliot said, to defeat a religion, you need a religion.
We have no religion; we have an ideology -- secular democracy. But the Muslim world rejects secularism and will use democracy to free itself of us and establish regimes that please Allah.
In the struggle between democracy and Allah, we are children of a lesser God. "The term 'democracy,'" wrote Eliot, "does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike -- it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God ... you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin."
Germany used democracy to bring Hitler to power. Given free elections from Morocco to Mindanao, what kind of regimes would rise to power? Would not the Quran become the basis of law?
If Charlie Hebdo were a man, not a magazine, he would be torn to pieces in any Middle East nation into which he ventured. And what does a mindless West offer as the apotheosis of democracy?
Four million French marching under the banner "Je Suis Charlie."
Whom the gods would destroy ...
Friday, January 23, 2015
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
God's Wings
When you can't control the wind, adjust your sails!!! This is so beautiful-make sure you read to the bottom. The painters of these Feathers are outstanding, But the message below the Feathers,"God's Wings," will touch your heart.
God's WingsAfter a forest fire in Yellowstone National Park , forest rangers began their trek up a mountain to assess the inferno's damage. One ranger found a bird literally petrified in ashes, perched statuesquely on the ground at the base of a tree. Somewhat sickened by the eerie sight, he knocked over the bird with a stick. When he gently struck it, three tiny chicks scurried from under their dead mother's wings. The loving mother, keenly aware of impending disaster, had carried her offspring to the base of the tree and had gathered them under her wings, instinctively knowing that the toxic smoke would rise. She could have flown to safety but had refused to abandon her babies. Then the blaze had arrived and the heat had scorched her small body, the mother had remained steadfast...because she had been willing to die, so those under the cover of her wings would live. 'He will cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you will find refuge.' (Psalm 91 : 4) My instructions were to send this to people that I wanted God to bless and I picked you. Please pass this on to people you want to be blessed. Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you can share it with someone Special. To realize the value of a Friend...lose one.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Monday, January 19, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Beautiful Engraving
Engravings in metals that are precious to us can be so meaningful and expressive!
I believe this engraving is especially communicative and I thought you would appreciate it.
Friday, January 16, 2015
To Die for Charlie Hebdo?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday - January 16, 2015
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it."
That maxim of Voltaire was among those most invoked by the marching millions in Sunday's mammoth "Je Suis Charlie" rally in Paris.
This week, in the spirit of Voltaire, French authorities arrested and charged Cameroonian comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, and 54 others, with "hate speech."
Yes, Monsieur Voltaire, there are limits to free speech in France.
Dieudonne's crime? He tweeted, "I am Charlie Coulibaly," the last name of the killer of four innocent Jews in that kosher market.
A wounding wicked remark.
And what are now the limits of free speech in France?
Prime Minister Manuel Vals lists four. "There is a fundamental difference between the freedom to be impertinent and anti-Semitism, racism, glorification of terrorist acts, and Holocaust denial, all of which are crimes, that justice should punish with the most severity."
Vals' list brings to mind another quote of Voltaire's, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
Why did Vals not include slanders against Catholicism and Islam, the world's largest religions, both of which have been repeatedly insulted by Charlie Hebdo? In the banlieues north of Paris, they wish to know.
Pope Francis himself said yesterday, "You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. ... If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch."
Is our new Pope offering preemptive dispensations to Catholics who sock those who mock their faith? That's pre-Vatican II thinking.
Back to Vals' list. Who decides what is "anti-Semitism" and what is "racism"? In America, these terms are tossed around with abandon.
As for the "glorification of terrorist acts," Israel's Menachem Begin, the ANC's Nelson Mandela, and the PLO's Yasser Arafat were all credibly charged with acts of terrorism in their liberation struggles.
And all three won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Millions of Algerians reside in France. Is it impermissible for them to celebrate the FLN in Algeria and the often-terrible deeds that won their independence? Algerians did not fight the French in stand-up battles, but rather with bombs in cafes and movie theaters.
Did not the maquisards and French Resistance, during and after the Nazi occupation, exact savage reprisals, of which some in France are today ashamed?
Who decides which historical events are off-limits for debate?
Even before the Paris march, Vals had declared "war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity."
But does not the renewed publication of cartoons that insult the Prophet undermine the fraternity and solidarity of French Muslims, Christians and secularists in Val's war on terrorism?
Has Charlie Hebdo really helped to unite the West and the Islamic world in the "war ... against jihadism, against radical Islam"? Or has it divided us?
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, our ally who ousted the Muslim Brotherhood, killed hundreds, and imprisoned thousands, just issued a decree allowing him to ban foreign publications offensive to Islam.
Why might President Sissi regard Charlie Hebdo as toxic?
According to a 2013 Pew Poll, 80 percent of Egyptians favor the stoning of adulterers and 88 percent the death penalty for apostates.
The figures are comparable for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Across the Middle East, majorities favor the adoption of sharia law. Many support beheadings, stonings, the lash and amputations of limbs for lesser offenses.
What does these polls tell us?
First, if we insist that freedom of the press means standing behind the blasphemies of Charlie Hebdo, we should anticipate the hatred and hostility of majorities in the Islamic world to whom faith and family are everything -- and our First Amendment is nothing.
Second, the idea that, by sending armies of Americans into that part of the world for a decade or two, we could convert these peoples, steeped in a 1,500-year-old faith, to share our embrace of religious, cultural and moral pluralism and secularism was utopian madness.
Third, as Islamic peoples grow in number and militancy, while the peoples of Europe age and pass on, and the migrants continue to come from the Maghreb and Middle East, Europe will have to adapt to Muslim demands or face endless civil and cultural conflict on the Old Continent.
The moral befuddlement in France mirrors that of the West.
In welcoming the return to the newsstands of Charlie Hebdo, with a cartoon mocking the Prophet on its cover, President Hollande said, "You can murder men and women, but you can never kill their ideas."
True. And anti-Islamism is an idea. As is the "radical Islam" against which France has declared war.
And which of the two ideas appears today to have more adherents willing not only to march for it on Sundays, but to die for it?
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