In what is territory currently controlled by the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank (Judea/Samaria) there is a town called Kalkilya. Kalkilya happens to be a town fully controlled by Hamas, the Islamic Jihadists whose sworn goal is the destruction of Israel, and who are responsible for countless deaths of civilians through suicide bombers trained and financed by Hamas.

The Town Council of Kalkilya has banned a performing arts festival in the town being put on by a Palestinian Arab group from Ramallah, also on the West Bank.

The reason that the Hamas leaders of the town give for banning the festival is that it is against the Muslim religion for men and women to be dancing together. It is considered immoral.

Not only does this give a taste of what lies ahead for the Palestinians (and the French, Belgians, Dutch, etc.) but it is interesting to me that Hamas considers that men and women dancing together and enjoying life is considered immoral, but killing innocent men, women and children is not.

I suppose I will never understand the Religion of Peace.

According to Iran Focus, a photo has turned up linking newly-elected President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the taking of American hostages during the U. S. Embassy siege in 1979.

The article goes on to state that:

“Ahmadinejad was a founder of the group of young activists who swarmed over the embassy wall and held the diplomats and embassy workers hostage for 444 days.”

As I noted in a previous post , the election of Mr. Ahmadinejad does not bode well for Iranian-American relations.

President Ahmadinejad went on to say:

During his first press conference as President-elect last week, Mr Ahmadinejad struck a moderate note. But today, at a memorial service for families killed in a 1981 attack on the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, he said he hoped his election victory would spark a new global Islamic revolution.

“Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 (the current Iranian year) will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world,” the official IRNA agency quoted Mr Ahmadinejad as saying.

“The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end. The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world. In one night, the martyrs strode down a path of 100 years.”

I am surprised that we haven’t had any news of incarceration or suppression of reformists yet. It’s that “new” Islamic revolution that is going to reach the entire world that we have been dealing with, and will continue to have to deal with.

Update: It turns out that the picture may not be Ahmadinejad.

You should read John Hawkins interview of Mark Steyn in Right Wing News.

Teaser:

John Hawkins: So how successful do you think the Israeli strategy of walling off the Palestinians will be?

Mark Steyn: I haven’t spent a lot of time in “Palestine,” but, when I have, I’ve never seen any sign anywhere in Gaza or the West Bank of anything remotely resembling a “nationalist” movement. There’s plenty of evidence of widespread Jew-hatred and the veneration of death-cult “martyrdom,” but not that anybody’s seriously interested in building a nation for the “Palestinian people.” So if you leave it to the Palestinians there’s never going to be a state, only decade after decade of suicide bombings. One can advance reasons for this – it’s no coincidence that the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth are the ones who have been wholly entrusted to the formal care of the UN for three generations now. But the fact is what Israel is doing is the only thing that will force the Palestinians to get up off their allegedly occupied butts and run a state: the Israelis are walling off what they feel they need, or what they can get away with, and it will be up to the gangsters of Arafatistan to see if they now feel like dropping the jihad and getting on with less glamorous activities like running highway departments and schools.

The rest is just as good.

Didn’t I hear recently that the Iraq War is dramatically hurting military recruitment?

I guess that is why the Army announced today that it had exceeded its June recruitment goals.

The recruits must not have heard that we are in an impossible quagmire in Iraq.

The American Thinker writes an Open Letter to the President. It is a must read.

Some excerpts:

In war, public support is the equivalent of cash flow. So the question isn’t whether a war is going well, but whether a war is going well enough, and fast enough, to end in victory before public support gives out. And it’s obvious that public support for the war in Iraq has begun to erode, which means that from now on we are not only in a battle against our enemy overseas, but in a race against time here at home.

I don’t know how much time is left before public support for this war erodes to the point when victory will lie beyond our grasp. Your judgment will certainly be better than mine, because only you can combine the top-secret intelligence reports on your desk with your own superb “gut feel” for public opinion to estimate just when these two trend-lines will intersect. My only suggestion is that whatever projection you come up with – Three months? Nine months? Two years? – you cut it in half. History teaches that once public support for a war starts to erode – no matter what may be the actual, on-the-ground situation – it erodes at an accelerating rate. But what matters most isn’t so much the actual date you project for when the two lines will intersect. Rather, what matters most is that you recognize these two lines now are on a collision course, and that you understand what this means:

You have less time to win this war than you thought you had. So to win, you will need to fight harder.

And this:

First, you need to fight harder in Iraq. You keep saying that you are giving our generals all the troops they want. With all respect, sir, this couldn’t possibly be true. In the history of the world there has never been a general who thought he had enough troops. If your generals are telling you they have all the troops they want to finish the job in Iraq, either the generals are idiots – or they have gotten the word that asking for more troops will end their careers. Sit down with your generals privately – just you and them — and find out how many troops they really think they need. If they still insist they don’t want more troops on the ground in Iraq, then get yourself a new bunch of generals. If they tell you they need another 250,000 soldiers and Marines – then fly them over from Korea, Germany or wherever they are stationed just as fast as possible. If we haven’t got them to send – then order a draft. One way or another, put enough troops on the ground in Iraq to secure that country — fast. And while you’re at it, give the orders to either take out the governments of Syria and Iran or to hit them with so much force that they quit playing footsie with al Queda and the Baathists, because we cannot win in Iraq so long as Syria and Iran are providing support and sanctuary. In short, do whatever is necessary, and do it now.

Second – and in my judgment, even more important — you need to fight harder in Washington. To explain why this will help win the war in Iraq, let me tell you about how one of your predecessors acted domestically in a way that had a huge foreign impact. Shortly after President Reagan took office, our country’s 13,000 air-traffic controllers went on strike. Reagan ordered them back to work, and when they refused he did the one thing neither the controllers nor anyone else ever imagined he would do: he fired them all.

More:

With all respect, sir, your performance in Washington has been too weak. You are letting Congress get away with stiffing John Bolton, you cut a compromise in the Senate that got a few judges confirmed but that left the Democrats in a position to filibuster whichever future nominees they choose, you haven’t vetoed a single bill despite all the budget-busting pork that is mortgaging our children’s future, and while you are out giving speeches to Rotary Clubs about how to save Social Security, your proposal to privatize a portion of future payments is being strangled in its crib by the Democrats. Whatever may be the domestic effects of all this, the foreign effects are catastrophic. The terrorists in Iraq, their leaders who are hiding in caves, the mullahs in Teheran, the creep in Damascus and the nut in North Korea – they all see what is happening to your programs and your people, and the judgment they are reaching is this: if you aren’t willing to fight to the death in Washington, you aren’t willing to fight to the death in Iraq.

The American Thinker is so right. You should go now and read this letter. I just hope the President does, and that he realizes he has a large constituency that agrees with it.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday in an article entitled, “Immigration Protest in Baldwin Park is Peaceful“, that the protest and counter-protest in Baldwin Park on Saturday was peaceful. It went on to state the following:

Next to City Hall, where about 60 protesters opposed to illegal immigration waved signs and American flags, about 600 counter-protesters sang, danced, chanted and beat drums to urge tolerance.

The Times neglected to show the examples of tolerance from the counter-protesters. You can see some of them here. Apparently, for the counter-protestors, tolerance means carrying signs that say, “Fight the Right, Fight Capitalism”, and, “Racists, get out of Aztlan.” Further examples of tolerance were T-shirts which said, “F*ck the Minutemen”, “F*ck the SOS” (Save our State)and “F*ck the Police.”

More signs: “Stop Anti-immigrant Fascism”, “All Workers Unite”, “Smash All Borders.”

Another sign, in Spanish, “Un Mundo para los Trabajadores sin Fronteras” (One world for the workers, without borders).

The fact is that the counter-protesters showed little tolerance and no understanding that what was being protested was the anti-American text on the entrance to the metrorail station, “This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is, And will be again.” and, “It was better before they came.”

Milblog has some questions for you.

Jefferson101 at Redstate.org says it as well as anyone could:

“I told you so!”

Maybe I personally did not tell you, personally. But I couldn’t resist starting off that way. A good number of us out here on the leading edge of the Right Wing have been loudly proclaiming for years that this was the way things were heading. And the crowd yawned. All I can say now is “Good morning, boys and girls. Are you awake now?”

I was reading the comments in Pejman’s article, and someone stated that “this was the worst Supreme Court decision ever”. And they were being called to task over that statement. “What about Plessy V. Ferguson? What about Dred Scott?”

What about them? Those decisions left some people enslaved and/or oppressed. That’s bad enough, but this one leaves us all enslaved and oppressed at the whim of the Government. This is, beyond a doubt, the absolutely worst Supreme Court decision ever.

Property rights have always been the cornerstone of our system. The founding fathers recognized that there were some instances in which the public good could require that the Government acquire private property But this decision proclaims that the Government’s economic interest is an overriding “public good” that trumps personal property rights.

The majority decision talks about “legitimate Government interest in promoting economic development”. That is a pretty way of phrasing it, but I hope we all fully aware of what the purpose of this exercise is. New London, Conn., wants to increase it’s tax base. And the Supreme Court has now said that the desire of Government to make more money overrides your property rights.

Pursue that line of thought for a moment. It makes visions of slippery slopes and of huge cans of worms opening dance in my head. Doesn’t it do the same to you? Try one of my “off the top of the head” thoughts on what this decision appears to me to do, just to get started.

For instance, assume that the “municipality” in question has an income tax, in addition to a property tax. (Several do.) Since it is now legal for the Government to take your property and re-sell it to someone for a Mall, what is preventing that municipality with an income tax from taking it from you to sell to someone with a higher income. Does this not equally promote “economic development” for the municipality?

Then we have the lovely “penumbra” of this decision. Fifty or sixty years ago laws didn’t seem to have penumbras, but now that they’ve been discovered, they seem to be finding them attached to most all of them. And I suspect that to a good left-wing jurist, this one has penumbras that glow in the dark. If the Government’s economic interests are more protected by the Constitution than my property rights, how are any of my other rights any more protected if the Government finds an economic interest in violating them?

The Supremes just ruled that I have the right to be secure in my person and property for just as long as it is in the best economic interest of the Government for me to be. And only for that long.

There’s no doubt in my mind. Worst Supreme Court decision ever.

Redstate thinks something is brewing:

Consider the following:

Today, White House Counsel Harriet Miers met for several hours with multiple Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. These same members have been called to the White House multiple times over the past week to discuss the Supreme Court.

The Attorney General’s office has sent representatives to the hill every day this week, and has had previously unseen amounts of contact with the leading members of the committee.

In the staff rooms of the committee offices, there are stacks and stacks of folders on potential Supreme Court nominees – their strengths and weaknesses enumerated at length. Lower level staff have been told to clear next week, and solely devote their work to research on Supreme Court Nominees – a handful of names.

Whoever it is – they’re coming.

The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , in a fraudulent election where 1,000 potential candidates were disqualified including all 93 women who were candidates, is a disappointment to those who thought that the winds of freedom were wafting through the entire Middle East.

Ahmadinejad’s victory doesn’t bode well for any improvement in relations between Iran and the West. Ahmadinejad said that better ties with the United States would not be a priority. He doesn’t support Western-style democracy and last week said:

“We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy.”

A knowledgeable Iranian secular blogger, S’can-Iranic, sums it up this way:

To put what I am going to conclude in a nutshell, I suffice to say that Ahmadinejad is a radical Islamist Hugo Chavez at best.

Politically:

It is highly probable that within the next two days, most of the Islamist reformists (yes the Islamist veterans who created this regime’s security and police apparatus) find themselves in jail, get assassinated, executed. The die is already cast for the non-Islamist ones who are secular. The world community, if it cares at all, should be worried that Akbar Ganji and Abbas Amir Entezam might perish in the course of the consolidation of the hardliners’ power at all levels in the regime. The families of the people who have already been executed for political reasons should be aware that they can be persecuted on a mass scale.

Economically:

Europe and North America will restrict their relationship with Iran to oil, but will benefit from the capital flight that will ensure the first year of Ahmadinejad’s Presidency.

Ahmadinejad, as a hardliner populist and with statist tendencies (please read very bad and inefficient socialism, which was the style of the former Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s), will deplete the present oil dollars savings of the treasury (collected thanks to high oil prices during the past three years).

Foreign investors, except the Chinese who are the main foreign power that was the winner of this election, are scared away from Iran for the foreseeable future. Capital flight from Iran will most probably happen in Iran on an unprecedented scale in the modern economic history of Iran.

Domestic and international Consequences of Ahmadinejad’s Welfare policies:

Ahmadinejad’s administration will generously distribute this money in poor neighbourhoods to shore up and solidify their unequivocal support. These working class neighbourhoods that have suffered most since the end of the war will constitute the bulwark of the populist militia that will be used to persecute lower and upper middle class in major urban centres.

This population will be used as suicide fighters against any possible attack and/or intervention by the United States or any other foreign power.

Socially:

Iran will eventually produce a mass refugee problem for Europe and North America if Ahmadinejad’s administration goes on a rampage of radicalizing many aspects of life in Iran according to the Islamic dicta. However, the EU and the US will gain economically, and socially, by the Iranian brain drain.

Hardliners are already on the street harassing young men and women. European countries and North America should await an increasing number of social refugees escaping Youth Islamic vigilantes (Basijis) and the Revolutionary Guards. Iran’s education system and school will become “brain washing” concentration camps with a curriculum. The parents will fight back by challenging the ideological teachings of the school, many might be betrayed by their own kids and arrested. Many would decide to send their kids abroad and/or escape the country with their kids for this main reason.
As a result of the ideological pressure on technocrats, many technocrats will join cohorts of immigrant population who are escaping Iran for other political, social, and economic reasons.

Security, Nuclear Policy and Defence:

Iran’s hardliners might as well start to target their dissidents abroad by conducting terrorist operations. The regime will also take harsher stance against the United States. It will be seen to what extent they will alienate Europe, but it is highly possible that with a much renewed sense of confidence, the hardliners try to use China against Europe and the US. It will be seen how Russians under Putin will determine their course of action (because the US and EU offers of accommodation to Russia are an important variable in the Russian Foreign Policy decision making about Iran).

Israel has most probably already adopted its “Plan ‘C'” (worst possible case scenario) on Iran, as most probably the hardliners will increase their financial and military support for the Hezbollah of Lebanon and the Palestinian militias. Israelis could be even more in trouble, because the hardliners of Iran might increase their support for the Islamists in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt (not necessarily to cause regime change in these countries) but to infiltrate these regime’s security apparatus to stir more anti-Israeli sentiments in each of these countries.

Overall Conclusion: Domestically and Internationally

Iran will not be as isolated as it was in the 1980s, but the hardliners can force the EU and the US to adopt a united policy against them. Why? Because the hardliners would have to adopt Khatami style social policies in order to convince the EU that they are not as radical and it is doubtful whether they would be willing to do so, especially after they have developed a dozen nuclear devices at least.

I would say Ahmadinejad’s regime will increase the Islamic Republic of Iran’s life expectancy for the short term (maybe another eight years). However, the new middle class that might emerge as a result of its social and economic welfare policies might still fail to offer the hardliners the kind of unequivocal support that they want. Iranians have an outstanding record in preserving their traditions and assimilating inside and outside invaders. As self-reflective as all Iranians are, after attempting to avoid the hardliners’ cohorts for a while, a cultural war may ensue, which can incur Ahmadinejad’s administration massive losses; if and only if the moderates (seculars and Islamists) are assisted by highly advanced telecommunication technologies (Hoder gets the last word here), and take a united and coordinated stance.

There could be a plus side to this event. The reformists in Iran who were frustrated with the slow pace of reform may now be motivated to create a true revolution.

On the other hand, I have a feeling that many of the reformers will conclude that a long vacation outside the country will be much healthier than staying in Iran. A major crackdown on dissenters is sure to be imminent.

Certainly the wealthy with funds in Iran will be moving them out of the country.

Too bad for the people of Iran.