Daniel Greenfield

An Islamist’s Crocodile Tears

We'll never know if Congressman Keith Ellison (AKA Keith Hakim, AKA Keith X Ellison, AKA Keith Ellison-Muhammad, AKA BooHoo Kaboom) brought along an onion with him, a pinch of snuff or just thought of all the CAIR campaign contributions he risked losing if the hearings fulfilled their intended purpose, to be able to let loose the waterworks. However he did it, Ellison finally succeeded at one thing. Crying on cue. he big boohoo let Ellison sell his sob story to a sympathetic public already primed by thousands of attack pieces run against King. A campaign conducted by a top Democratic public relations firm, which had done work for such clients as J-Street and the Carter Center. A campaign premised on the idea that it was wrong to ask questions about Islamic radicalization, but completely okay to accuse King of being an IRA terrorist.

Bomb, Bomb Libya… Not

In 2002, France was denouncing any proposed US led liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein as 'unilateral'. But now suddenly France is leading the call for air strikes against Libyan government forces and what amounts to unilateral action against Khaddafi. In 2002, France demanded a UN mandate for any attack on Iraq. But now France and the media have decided that a UN mandate isn't necessary after all.

How Israel’s Peacemaking Endangers Itself and the Stability of the Region

When Israeli leaders embarked on peace negotiations with the Islamic-Marxist terrorists who called themselves representatives of the ""Palestinian people", they hoped to improve relations with the Muslim world. But not only did Israel not succeed in improving relations with the Muslim world, but its bid for peace has actually destroyed its old relationships which were built on a certain respect for Israel's staying power. The more Israel has traded land for peace, the more its staying power has diminished. There is no better place to see that shift than in Turkey, formerly Israel's closest ally in the Muslim world.

Hollywood’s War on America

Hollywood's war on America may have claimed its first two casualties with the murder of two US airmen in Germany by a Muslim terrorist who was inspired by the Koran, and apparently by a clip from Brian DePalma's movie, Redacted.

A Rally at Times Square and a Time for a Muslim Moral Reckoning

The occupant of the White House's middle name is Hussein, every school curriculum lists a whitewashed history of Islam that ignores the genocides and atrocities, and there are now more positive depictions of Muslims on TV, than there are of Christians and Jews combined. But Muslims in America still aren't happy. From all the wailing and boohooing, you might think that mosques were being shelled, the way Muslims are attacking monasteries in Egypt. Or that Muslim politicians were being gunned down in the street the way that Christian politicians are in Pakistan. You might at least think that Muslims are treated like second-class citizens, the way non-Muslims are treated in every Muslim country in the world. But no, that's not the case.

5 Reasons why the Talibanization of the Middle East may not be a Bad Thing

The sweep of revolutions across the Middle East has optimists cheering and realists preparing for the worst. And the worst is generally a good thing to prepare for in the region. The regimes targeted by the movement have invariably either been allied to or achieved a stalemate with Western countries, (a statement that applies to Libya despite how loosely it may be interpreted) and did not seek to build an Islamic republic and impose it across the region. This was not about the overthrow of tyranny. Turkey with its tens of thousands of political prisoners got a free pass, so did Syria and the Iranian revolution was once again left to go it alone. The countries targeted invariably were either opposed to Iran, or not aligned with it. Jordan, which might have otherwise been ripe for a protest movement, saw little action, perhaps due to its king's recent visit to Iran.

The Economic Counterrevolution of the Environmentalists

Capitalism had won. It was not people's revolutions, but the slow industry of a rising middle class that toppled feudal monarchies. Productivity led to prosperity, and succeeding generations of new money made the class system nearly irrelevant. The process moved swiftest in the new American colonies, where a shortage of laws, problems that required ingenuity to overcome and a booming population of arrivals eager to carve out a share for themselves, laid the ground floor for it to become the economic superpower of the 20th century. The political, religious and social revolutions that accompanied this surge of history were all spinoffs of that vast unfolding flower of human productivity.

Muslim Men and Non-Muslim Women

When American mother Melissa Bender married Pakistani Mohammad Khan, she brought three children from a previous marriage into the relationship. Today the children are in protective custody after police discovered that her 13-year-old daughter, Jessie Bender, wasn't taken away by a predator, but that the predator had been right in her own house. Mohammad Khan was planning to take Melissa and Jessie to Pakistan, where the 13-year-old girl feared she would be forced into an arranged marriage. Instead she bravely went on the run and the police department appears to be doing the right thing. For now.

No Signs of Intelligence

After the CIA director began reporting intelligence he obtained from his TV set and the Director of Intelligence claimed the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular organization, it's obvious that there isn't a trace of intelligence in the Obama Administration.

The Perfect Government

Mankind has been searching for the perfect government, longer than it has been searching for the ability to transmute lead into gold. But while transmutation can turn lead into gold, no amount of energy in the world can make a government perfect. The atomic structures of every metal are a known quantity, but human beings are not. And never can be.

A Conversation with a Neo-Conservative about Egypt

1. "Egypt has undergone a democratic revolution" Egypt has not undergone anything of the sort. Street protests by a few percent of the population is not a democratic revolution. The majority of Egypt's 80 million people have not made their feelings known. Nor can they make their feelings known except through a democratic election. Protests by different groups with widely varying agendas are not a substitute for elections. Anyone calling for Mubarak to step down, rather than to hold free and open elections, is not endorsing a democratic revolution-- just a revolution led by leftists and Islamists.

Presidential Boots Too Big To Fill

Bill Clinton showed up on Time Magazine covers often enough, but was never disguised as another American president. But so far Time has presented us with a cover picture of Obama in FDR drag and another one of Reagan embracing Obama. Before the big O's term is done, we may well be treated to another cover of Obama playing basketball with Andrew Jackson on the cover of Newsweek or in bed in the Lincoln Bedroom with Abe Lincoln for Time's last print issue.

What if the Problem Really is the People?

A thousand talking heads and neo-conservative experts on the region assure us that a bright future stretches out before Egypt like a magic carpet. "Democracy," "Freedom", "Representative Government" are the buzzwords that trickle wetly out of their printers. All cynicism is disdained and skepticism swept into the dustbin. History is being made here. But the tricky thing about history is that it isn't a point on a map, but a continuous wave. Like the tide, history is made and remade over and over again, formed and repeated, washed and beached on the shores of time.

Obama’s Foreign Gifts

On the third day of Obamass, it came time to list all the gifts sent his way by foreign leaders... and the foreign gift registry has a list of gifts given to Barry Hussein , his family and his associates by foreign leaders. The most expensive gift on the list came from, "Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" in the form of a "Large desert scene on a green veined marble base featuring miniature figurines of gold palm trees and camels", valued at thirty-four thousand dollars.

Pulling Back the Egyptian Veil

The Obama administration is demanding an immediate "transition" in Egypt. By transition they mean that Muslim Brotherhood hand puppet Mohammed ElBaradei should take power immediately without the benefit of winning an election first. Mubarak has agreed not to run for reelection. ElBaradei said that he won't run for office, but then said that he might run "if the Egyptian people want me." (As if the Egyptian people have anything to do with it.) But the foreign backers of the protests, Soros and Iran, want ElBaradei to take power without winning an election.

Will Ethanol Break the Muslim World After All?

Ethanol has proven to be an inadequate solution to the problem of foreign oil, but it has toppled at least one Arab ruler and may not be done yet. The Soros backed college students and the Islamists have done their part in the protests, but the Tunisian and Egyptian mobs would never have made their showing without a goad. And the goad was high wheat prices. Part of the spike in wheat prices was due to the shift to ethanol production.

Democracy of Cannibals

The chaos in Egypt has brought forth pious praises of democracy. "So what if the Muslim Brotherhood seizes power," the pundits ask, "as long as there are democratic elections." But what is the virtue of democracy anyway? The one fundamental virtue of democracy is that it is the widest possible means of distributing power within a system. And that leads to a system that is only as good and bad as the sum of its voters. It is possible to have a democracy of cannibals, so long as the majority agrees that's the way to go. Or a democracy in which a quarter of the population has no legal or civil rights whatsoever. So long as that is the expressed will of the majority.

State of the Union Address 2012

- Satire STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS Jan 13th, 2012, Capitol Hill Mister Speaker, Vice President Biden, Supreme Leader Hu Jintao, distinguished lenders and fellow indebted Americans I would like to begin this address by congratulating the brave women and men of the 113th congress who managed to make it here tonight. I know that it was not easy reaching Washington D.C. due to the furious blizzard of what appears to be the onset of a new Ice Age. My administration has been focused on combating Global Warming, now as our planet falls farther and farther away from the sun, and polar bears have come streaming in force from the North Pole-- I pledge to you that I will put just as much effort into battling the new Ice Age, as I did in resisting Global Warming.

Obama Loses the Middle East

It's no coincidence that major revolutions against Western backed governments have occurred under weak American presidents. The Iranian revolution against the Shah happened on Jimmy Carter's watch. The current violence in Tunisia and Egypt is taking place under Obama. And the timing is quite interesting. Revolts which coincided with a new opposition congress almost suggest that they were scheduled for a time when Obama would be at his politically weakest.

The Fall of the Strongmen

The attempt to establish a post-colonial order of kings and strongmen to replace the British and French colonial rule over the Arab Muslim world was doomed from the start. Some of the kings were overthrown by native officers who had been trained by the British and the French to fight their wars. The officers who overthrew them became strongmen themselves. The recently deposed Ben Ali was a Tunisian officer trained in French and American schools, who had helped push out the French and his predecessor. Egypt's Mubarak was an Air Force officer who replaced Sadat, who replaced Nasser-- all members of the Free Officers Movement which overthrew the Egyptian monarchy.