Appeasement of Islam and Muslims to the point of damaging his approval ratings has been a hallmark of the Obama administration

WASHINGTON – The goodwill tour of the Middle East by the Imam behind the proposed mosque near ground zero is just part of the U.S. government’s efforts to reach out to the Muslim world.

This year, the Obama administration will spend nearly $6 million to restore 63 historic and cultural sites, including mosques and minarets, in 55 nations, according to State Department documents.

Under a program established by Congress in 2001, the department will fund at least five projects in as many countries at a cost of more than $271,000.

The contributions include $76,135 for the 16th century Grand Mosque in Tongxin, China, and $67,500 for the 18th century Golden Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. An additional $62,169 will be spent on restoring a 19th century minaret in Mauritania’s ancient city of Tichitt; $50,437 for the Sundarwala Burj, a 16th century Islamic Monument in New Delhi, and $15,450 to restore the 18th century Gobarau Minaret in Katsina, Nigeria.

The amount spent on mosque restoration projects is a fraction of the total in the 2010 Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, which also will fund projects to restore Christian and Buddhist sites as well as museums, forts and palaces.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent almost $26 million on the program to fund about 640 cultural preservation projects in more than 100 countries.

“The fund has demonstrated America’s respect for the world’s cultural heritage,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last month in announcing the 2010 projects. “Cultural heritage serves as a reminder of historical experiences and achievements of humanity. Ancient structures and objects offer important lessons for us today.”

Throughout his administration, Obama has been fervent in his support of Islam and Muslims and distinctly cold towards other faiths. Some believe that he is in fact Muslim himself (we believe this to be at least technically true, as he was born to a Muslim father and schooled as a Muslim in Indonesia – which would make him at the very least an apostate of Islam, if, as he claims, he is now a Christian).

Despite Hillary’s noble attempts to to justify this absurd initiative, it boils down to little more than propitiation – and will, as regular Un:dhimmi readers know, lead to nothing. The Islamists will take your money, curse you behind your backs and carry on espousing Jihad anyway.

[Source: Washington Post]

Look! Stupid Zionist Mercenaries! With Firecrackers! Trying to kill me!

The last couple of days have provided two perfect examples of the Islamocrat tendency to blame others for their ills – usually others, who (in their paranoid, delusional folklore) are exceedingly rich, secretly run the world, have big noses, long beards and live in Israel.

First we have rotund Hezbollah Top Turban- the tubby, jovial-looking Hassan Nasrallah (have you ever noticed that most of the Shia Mullahs tend to be rather, er better fed than their followers?) who, in the aftermath of the Lebanese ambush of Israeli soldiers near the Northern border on Monday, blamed ‘Israel’ for the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

In fact, much of the evidence and suspicion points to Hezbollah itself).

Then there’s the Supreme Deflector-in -Chief himself; the cuddly, lovable President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Fresh from a reported attempt on his life yesterday, when what appeared to be a bomb exploded near his motorcade, he attempted to play it down as high spritited play by an, um, ‘overenthusiastic supporter’.

Whereas a couple of days ago he said in a televised speech that “Stupid Zionists* have hired mercenaries to assassinate me,”.

Or perhaps, Mahmoud, it just might be that an overwhelming majority of Iranians despise you and your sadistic, bloodthirsty government; and wish you dead?

*The term Islamic supremacists and their lefty enablers like to think they can use as a euphemism for ‘Jews’, to sidestep the opprobium of normal people.

A perfect encapsulation of the hypocrisy, Taqiyya and lies faced by Israel as she tries in good faith – and desparate frustration – to negotiate peace with the treacherous, two-faced ‘Palestinians’; and of the impotency and utter irrelevancy of the UN (because you just know that it will fall on deaf ears).

Reproduced below is the communiqué sent yesterday by Gavriel Shalev, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, to Ban Ki Moon:

H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon
Secretary General
United Nations
New York

Excellency,

Less than 24 hours after an encouraging development related to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, we were reminded by the enemies of peace of the realities on the ground.

It is with grave concern that I write to you in order to inform you that shortly after 8:30 AM today, a Grad-type katyusha rocket was fired from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. The rocket landed in the major southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. Less than four hours later, two mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip and his the Sha’ar Hanegev region.

The continuous attacks against Israel are an alarming reminder of the dangers emanating from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. While Israel holds the Hamas terrorist organization responsible for these attacks, such dangerous provocations also serve as a warning that unimpeded arms transfers and smuggling into the Gaza Strip, as well as the subsequent attacks against Israel and its citizens, pose a grave threat to peace and security.

In response to the escalating threat of terrorism, Israel will exercise its right of self-defense and will continue to take all necessary measures to protect its citizens. These recent attacks on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip seriously violate international law and should be adequately addressed and condemned by the international community.

In order to fully address this matter, I wish to inform you that this identical letter has been sent to H.E. Ms. U. Joy Ogwu, President of the United Nations Security Council, to be circulated as an official document of the Security Council.

Allow me, Excellency, to renew to you the assurances of my highest consideration.

Yours truly,
Gavriel Shalev
Ambassador
Permanent Representative

Read it and weep.

A scene from 'humanitarian crisis' Gaza

Definitely one for the ‘You Couldn’t Make it Up’ dept. More absurdity from Hamas-controlled Gaza – and another clear indication of the suspect nature of the IslamoLeft ‘humanitarian crisis’ tag:

 Israel’s decision to ease its blockade on Gaza has had an odd effect on the region: it has apparently thrown retailers into a panic, causing them to pressure their rulers.

As a result, the Hamas terrorist organization is fighting the implementation of the crossing agreements proposed by the Palestinian Authority and Israel. This, despite years of bitter complaints from Hamas, albeit unsubstantiated, that the blockade by Israel was causing a humanitarian crisis in the region.

Hamas now says Israel’s agreement to ease the blockade is “part of the plot by Israelis, Arabs and Europeans” to topple Hamas.
According to the Gaza-based Al Ayyam newspaper, clothing retailers are claiming that rather than a lack, there is now an overabundance of selections in their market.

The problem is that since Hamas has not paid salaries [what happened to all those $billions in aid? Ed], there are few customers available to buy the goods. Full story at Arutz Sheva.

Stone-age mysoginistic savagery in Afghanistan again (GRAPHIC):

In disturbing video images, a 14-year-old girl is purportedly being flogged. She is alleged to have run away from a forced marriage in a remote village.

Just as disturbing to Dr. Sima Samar, chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission? “The other sad part I have to say was the reaction of the people,” she says. “The lack of sensitivity of the people.”

The video was given to Samar’s Human Rights Commission. She says police promised her they’d prosecute the man, but so far nothing despite the country’s laws that ban not just forced marriages but matrimony for girls under 16.

Many men, Samar says, including some government officials just don’t get it.

“They still think that women is the property of the men and they should be treated how they want,” she explains.

Samar was Afghanistan’s first government Minister for women but was pushed aside for being too outspoken. Little has changed since then.

“It’s 8 years,” she says. “We have new system in the country and new government in the country; they should have been more pro-active on these issues.”

But the central government has a lot of political issues to deal with, primarily making peace with the Taliban, and needs support from the conservative outer provinces.

No one has an exact figure exactly how many girls are forced into marriage. Estimates vary as high as 60 percent or more and attitudes here are so engrained that one government minister was recently reported as saying shelters that try to help these girls and women are an evil.

At one shelter in Kabul, they deal with the fallout of these everyday attitudes about women.

“Since January alone we’ve had 115 cases of forced or underage marriages,” says Manizha Naderi, with the Women for Afghan Women organization who runs the shelter.

Sukaini is typical of the recent cases. She is 15 years old now but was 13 when her family forced her to marry her 45-year-old cousin.

She says that her husband shaved her head and threatened to kill her and drop her body in a well. So she says she ran away.

Sukaini is one of the lucky ones. The shelter is helping her get a divorce. She says she doesn’t want to marry again, but just get the education she never had.

But even at this shelter, not everyone can be helped.

One of the newest arrivals is a 15-year-old girl who ran away from a forced marriages. Within hours of arriving at the shelter, several parliamentarians called the shelter to demand she sent back to her family. At the shelter, though, they fear if they do that, she’ll be killed.

Police put her in a juvenile detention facility for some time, but prosecutors authorized her return to the shelter as of now.

But the shelter’s problems are only just beginning.

“The family has said that they are definitely going to take her back and that means even if they have to bring the whole province to stage a demonstration in front of our doors they’ll do it,” says Naderi. “… We have about 60 women in our shelter right now and 22 children. So it’s not just her safety – I have all these other people to worry about as well.”

The shelter is powerless, no one to defend them. In the city as in the countryside, she says, too many people sit back and do nothing. And that’s all it takes.

We thought that this story was particularly ironic in a week where, here in Britain, Muslim spin organisation Exploring Islam Foundation is running a campaign highlighting the alleged sanctity of women’s rights in Islam (and by extension, Sharia Law):

BEFORE: Exploring Islam Foundations shiny 'Taqiyya Taxi' - the PR equivalent of lipstick on a pig

AFTER: Taqiyya Taxi after our creative department decided to fix it for them

[Source: CNN via The Religion of Peace]

Traffic warden confrontations are common in the UK, but spitting is an extreme and disgraceful assault

A traffic warden is quitting after a motorist spat in her face for giving him a ticket.

Mohammed Ahmed, 25, had parked up in a bay in Manchester’s Northern Quarter without bothering to pay.

On finding he was about to get booked, he started shouting and swearing at warden Lindsey Whittaker, who is 5ft 2inch tall.

And Ahmed, of Overbrook Drive, Prestwich, ended up spitting at the victim hitting her on her left cheek and jaw said prosecutor Lindsey Willis.

The City’s Magistrates heard that Miss Whittaker had been left shocked and intimidated. In her impact statement she said: “I don’t do a job that is popular with the public.

“However, with most incidents I can brush them off and carry on – but I haven’t been able to forget this.

“It has resulted in my having to change the area I work in and question whether I want to carry on with this job.”

Ahmed pleaded guilty to assaulting Miss Whittaker and was remanded on bail until today for pre-sentence reports. Solicitor Peter Eatherall, defending, said Ahmed claimed he hadn’t intended to deliberately spit on the warden.

“He has a belief in a native American ritual to ward off future irritations that involves spitting at or towards a solid object.

“Unfortunately at the time he spat the woman stepped in front of him,” Mr Eatherall told the court.

He added that his client believed that he might have mental health problems.

We are sure that Ahmed concocted this obvious pack of lies in an attempt to escape punishment. And as sure as night follows day, you can already hear the accusations of ‘racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’ as the Judge passes what will hopefully be a stiff sentence for what is in fact an act of common assault.

His lawyer ought to be ashamed of himself for going along with such a shameful defence. We’re not the greatest fans of traffic wardens (who is?), but our sympathies go to Miss Whittaker in this case.

The more we scratch the surface, the more the true nature of the so-called ‘aid flotilla’ is revealed.:

The array of equipment found on board the ships that made up the Gaza aid flotilla was as divergent as the flotilla’s stated aims.

On the one hand there was medical equipment aimed to help ease the suffering of Gaza’s sick and handicapped, and on the other there were knives, slingshots and night vision goggles, which indicate hostile goals.

Israeli military officials have said that the amount of goods found on the ships are a drop in the sea compared to the amount of goods that regularly pass into Gaza, and extrapolated that it indicates that transfer of humanitarian assistance was not the top priority of the flotilla’s organisers.

According to the military, the 25-odd truckloads of equipment offloaded from the ships is roughly a quarter of the amount Israel transported into the Gaza strip every day.

According to the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, 100 truckloads of assorted goods are transferred into Gaza daily, and since the beginning of the year, nearly 11,000 trucks full of equipment have been transferred into Gaza.

Regarding the types of goods found in the ships’ cargo holds – wheelchairs, stretchers, hospital beds, electric wheelchairs, crutches, bandages, cotton swabs as well as food, clothing and toys – sources in the Gaza CLA say they are regularly allowed into Gaza and are not in shortage.

Aid organizations in Gaza say that the amount of truckloads imported since the end of Operation Cast Lead in January 2009 is approximately one-fifth the number registered during the first five months of 2007, and that much of the equipment transported by the Israelis does not constitute humanitarian assistance as it goes to commercial merchants, who then sell goods to the poverty-stricken population.

What is needed, they say, are things like CT scanners, x-rays, fluoroscopes, infusion pumps, medical sterilization gasses, laboratory equipment, UPS (uninterrupted power supply) batteries, and spare parts for support systems like elevators, none of which appeared to be on the ships.

Also found on the ships were materials specifically banned by the Israeli authorities, such as cement and metal rods, which Israel fears may be used by Hamas and other terrorist organizations to build bunkers and weapons.

While the rest of the material was promptly transferred to the Kerem Shalom crossing, where it still awaits pickup on the Palestinian side, the construction material will be kept in Ashdod Port pending decisions on what to do with it.

Other items that won’t be transferred to Gaza are the weapons and military equipment found aboard the Mavi Marmara. These include knives, clubs, slingshots, bulletproof vests, gas masks and night vision goggles. The military says that the presence of these items on board the ship proves that the passengers had hostile intentions from the start.

The fact that all the weapons and military supplies that the army uncovered were found on a single ship, the Mavi Marmara, indicates that perhaps just a few of the flotilla’s participants were in on the plans to violently attack boarding soldiers, while the rest of the participants were sincere in their desire to send aid to Gaza.

With the Rachel Corrie already on its way to Israel’s territorial waters and the IDF vowing to prevent it from reaching Gaza, it will be interesting to find out what she’s carrying.

It’s little wonder that the Captain of the Mavi Marmara refused the legitimate request made to her by an Israeli Navy vessel to divert to Ashdod so her ‘aid’ cargo could be inspected for forbidden items and transferred to Gaza.

Once more, it is being left the blogosphere and the Israeli media to go behind the Islamist’s dissimulation, lies and the appalling blood libel being committed against Israel.

[Source: Jerusalem Post]

See video above as Israeli Navy officers plead with the ‘aid’ Flotilla to comply with instructions to deliver their cargo via Ashdod port. Boarding parties were reportedly met with a lynch mob armed with guns and knives.

So much for all the ‘we will not use resort to violent resistance’ crap from the Islamo-left ‘flotilla’ alliance:

Armed Navy ships escorted boats from the Gaza protest flotilla to Ashdod [where they should have gone originally, had delivering humanitarian aid been their genuine objective - Ed] on Monday afternoon, hours after IDF soldiers and activists clashed in a fatal raid.

International activists aboard the ships opened fire on IDF soldiers who boarded the ships to prevent them from breaking the Israeli-imposed sea blockade, the IDF said Monday.

A commando who participated in the raid said that the attack “looked like the Ramallah lynch.” IDF said the activists had prepared to kill the soldiers. The soldiers boarded the ships at about 2 a.m. Monday morning after the soldiers called on the ship to stop, or follow them to the Ashdod Port several hours earlier.

According to IDF reports, at least 15 activists were killed during the ensuing clashes and dozens were wounded. Some of the wounded were evacuated to Israeli hospitals by Air Force helicopters.

Five Navy commandos were also wounded, some of them from gunfire. At least two soldiers were seriously wounded.

In international reactions, Turkey, Sweden and Greece summonsed their Israeli ambassadors for discussions on the violence.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also responded to the clashes, which he called a “slaughter,” according to an AFP report.

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Al Jazeera on Monday broadcasted footage from the Gaza flotilla’s lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showing Israeli Navy commandos boarding the ship. Helicopters could also be seen flying overhead.

“It was like a well-planned lynch,” one IDF officer said. “These people were anything but peace activists.”

The IDF said that the ships would be taken to the Ashdod Port where, despite the violence, the cargo they hold will be inspected and then transferred to the Gaza Strip via land crossings. Israeli Navy commander Vice-Admiral Eliezer Marom was commanding over the operation from sea.

The Navy made initial contact with the flotilla at 11 p.m. on Sunday ordering the ships to follow them to Ashdod Port or otherwise be boarded.

The actual boarding of the ships took place at 2 a.m. Monday and was yet to be completed by 8 a.m.

Activists aboard the ships repeatedly said they would not respond with violence to the navy’s interception of their flotilla prior to the boarding.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh appeared on Al-Jazeera television to condemn the “brutal attack” and called on the UN to intervene on the activists’ behalf.

Interesting to note that Hamas leader Haniyeh also said the following last Saturday:

It seems increasingly clear exactly what the objectives of the Flotilla of Stupid were – a Turkish/Hamas terror and propaganda trap.

[Source: The Jerusalem Post]