Robert Spencer in Melbourne, Australia, November 26, 2011

It was a great night! Spencer shone!

We really loved it.

It was terrific to meet up with some fellow Aussie bloggers and to be able to speak freely as mentioned in the article below. Looking forward to seeing the video.

by PJG (longtime Jihad Watch commenter)

On a day of relentless spring rain, Melbourne – or a select contingent thereof - welcomed Robert Spencer for his first talk in his first ever visit to Australia, courtesy of the Q Society of Australia. The 250-seat room was full to capacity, booked out well in advance of the day.

For a change I decided to put aside my old habit of taking notes. After all, the event was being filmed, and I would have access to the film. But afterwards, Robert asked me to write about the event for Jihad Watch, so what follows is a brief snatch of snippets.

Vickie Janson, Vice-President of the Q Society and candidate for the Christian Democratic Party, led off with a sobering disclaimer, mindful as we all are now of local laws restricting free speech, and – with a winning smile – invited anyone with ultra-sensitive feelings or a plot to use those laws against us to kindly leave. She then gave us a run-down on what is happening vis a vis the encroachment of Islamic laws and norms, that is, the steady road to control of us by them, here in Australia in schools, universities, workplaces and elsewhere. As keeping up with Islamic advancement and its enabling and funding by our government is now virtually a full-time job, much of what she informed us in her inimitably cheerful style shocked the audience.

Vickie quoted a Muslim cleric who said that there was no “clash of civilizations, but instead a rise and fall of civilizations.” It is clear that to many Muslims here and abroad their religion constitutes the “rising civilization” and ours the falling (not that they would prefer to stop at ours; Hindu and Buddhist civilizations are in their sights for being given a helping hand to disappear…)

Another member of Q called Warren then gave a talk about what he has seen in recent years in Europe, including the car-burning in France and a memorial (!) devoted to the young Muslim car thieves who were accidentally killed when they hid from pursuing police in an electricity compound and whose deaths were “avenged” by Muslim anti-police rioting. These were stories of immigration-related events our government smugly believes cannot happen in sunny Australia, where it is constantly proclaimed that multiculturalism is an outstanding success story and caution is brushed aside.

When Robert Spencer took the floor, it was clear from the enthusiastic atmosphere that few in the room were new to his views and that his message was seen as acutely urgent. He talked of the responsibility of Western people to learn and respond to the Islamic perspectives which are giving rise to Muslims’ so-frequently misinterpreted words and actions, and expanded on the theme that terrorism and da’wa (the call to Islam) are but two sides of the same coin and directed at the same result, the imposition of Shari’a law. Quoting from Maududi’s commentary in a Koran given to him by the Finsbury Park mosque and using Koran 9:5 as an example, Spencer demonstrated that what Muslim apologists claim to be a misleading absence of “context” proves to be from their own side a misleadingly invalid argument, “context” being at least as alarming as verse and backed up by respected Muslim commentary.

He spoke of many topics which will be familiar to JW readers: the Mafia-like dhimma pact, the absence of the “clash” factor as we in the West politely accede to Muslim demands, the campaign of erosion of our free speech which is central to the Islamic agenda, the existence of self-protective Western laws which are being ignored or under-utilized in the interests of political correctness, and the highly successful phenomenon of contrived Muslim victimhood which has the effect of causing us to rush to make further accommodation for them after every terrorist attack and every expression of grievance.

This last aspect was in reply to one of the many spirited questions asked of him in the latter half of the evening. Many questions reflected the helpless frustration people felt in the face of the plethora of tactics employed by Islamic organizations and individuals and shameful capitulation by our own political parties. Spencer advised not only being persistent in our efforts to inform governments and fellow citizens, but to emulate his colleague Pamela Geller’s creativity, for example her “copycat” bus and taxi advertisements which forced public enquiry into Islamic human rights abuses such as death for apostasy and honour killings.

When pressed as to the vexing question of whether President Obama is a Muslim, Spencer could only surmise that if he were, he would not be doing anything differently; the outcomes of Obama’s policies have been extraordinarily helpful to zealots in the Muslim world – both outside and inside America.

As for Iran, it is important that we understand the Iranian Shi’ite view about the Twelfth Imam and about how Muslim “victimhood” can exist in a most threatening and sinister form on a national level as a tactic of war.

And lastly, about “moderate’ or “secular” Muslims about whom so many nurture great hope, Spencer wasted little time. Of course there are many, many Muslims who pose no threat and are not determined to impose the supremacist aspect over us their religion demands they do, but he did caution, in view of fatally naïve exercises of US soldiers teaching Afghani soldiers, against playing with guns with Muslims.

We may not all be able to dazzle people with erudition and quickness of wit the way Spencer can, but at events such as this one we can develop arguments and tactics based on stated intentions of Muslims which are derived from their texts and their own tactics based on principles within those same texts. Robert Spencer and the Q Society on this night helped and encouraged us to work harder, and to devise means in the vital job of defending the uniquely free and prosperous civilization we have inherited through the blood, sweat and inspiration of others before us and which it is our sacred duty to deliver untarnished to our descendants. They will have their own battles, as we have had ours; let us at least spare them the vice-like grip of Islam.

Oh, and a good time was had by all before and after the talks. So many conversations with so many people; the freedom to speak one’s mind; not once being glared at or called a racist/bigot/Islamophobe…!

Thankyou, Q and Mr Spencer!

Monash University - Aiding and Abetting the Jihad Downunder

MONASH University prides itself on its "multicultural learning environment" and yet it produces a handbook for one certain class of students, and not for others.

How is it that this ‘institution of higher learning' has to bend over backwards to one “ethnic” group to this extent?

"International students would be better served with a handbook explaining Australian culture and values."

And I say Amen to that!

Salaam Monash is the title of the glossy 50-page "handbook for Muslim students".

"At Monash we understand that Muslim students have specific social, religious and cultural needs," writes Professor Stephanie Fahey, deputy vice-chancellor, in a foreword to the handbook.

The booklet lists Islamic banking and financial institutions, Muslim publications, women's groups and schools. It also lists Muslim medical and dental practitioners, which splits up doctors into male and female groups.

There is also a halal food guide and a list of halal grocers and butchers.

Much of the information seems useful and, having had a young Muslim house guest recently, I know just how tricky it can be to find halal food.

But there is no similar handbook for other religious or ethnic groups, not for Buddhists, Taoists, Germans, Greeks, Sikhs, Mormons or vegans.

Why encourage one group of people to maintain an identity separate from other Australians?

Most unwise, however, is that the handbook lists without comment some of Australia's most radical prayer halls.

Among them is cleric Sheikh Mohammed Omran's Islamic Call Society in Brunswick, where young Muslim men have been radicalised. A number of men arrested in Operation Pendennis, over a foiled 2005 Melbourne terror plot, had frequented the mosque, according to a New York Police Department study, which identified it as an "extremist incubator".

Similarly, the handbook points students in the direction of Coburg's ISNA mosque, associated with preacher Abu Hamza, who was videotaped telling men they could "beat their wives to shape them up" but only as a last resort. In the lecture entitled "The Keys to a Successful Marriage", he said: "You smack them, you beat them. You are not allowed to bruise them."

The handbook has angered people on campus.

"Monash University should not be endorsing (an) ideology which prescribes that Muslims must not eat our food, wear our clothes, share our services or even use our 'infidel' money," said four insiders who wrote to me. "International students would be better served with a handbook explaining Australian culture and values."

Monash is not alone. La Trobe has its own Muslim student guide and last year opened a $927,000 prayer room.

In 2006 RMIT produced a Muslim handbook "In the name of Allah the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful". Two years later 1000 Muslim students protested against sharing new prayer rooms with Christians and Jews.

Muslim students from overseas are a lucrative part of the fee-paying student body and keeping them happy is important.

But the message should be about mutual respect and hospitality -- not segregation and exclusion.

Tears of Jihad: Ever wondered how many people have died as a result of Jihad?

Bill Warner has the details

And people think this is a relatively new occurrence. Not if you go back in history.

Jihad. These figures are a rough estimate of the death of non-Muslims by the political act of jihad.

Africa

Thomas Sowell [Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture, BasicBooks, 1994, p. 188] estimates that 11 million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic and 14 million were sent to the Islamic nations of North Africa and the Middle East. For every slave captured many others died. Estimates of this collateral damage vary. The renowned missionary David Livingstone estimated that for every slave who reached a plantation, five others were killed in the initial raid or died of illness and privation on the forced march.[Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Missions, David Livingstone, p. 62, 1888] Those who were left behind were the very young, the weak, the sick and the old. These soon died since the main providers had been killed or enslaved. So, for 25 million slaves delivered to the market, we have an estimated death of about 120 million people. Islam ran the wholesale slave trade in Africa.

120 million Africans

Christians

The number of Christians martyred by Islam is 9 million [David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, William Carey Library, 2001, p. 230, table 4-10] . A rough estimate by Raphael Moore in History of Asia Minor is that another 50 million died in wars by jihad. So counting the million African Christians killed in the 20th century we have:

60 million Christians

Hindus

Koenard Elst in Negationism in India gives an estimate of 80 million Hindus killed in the total jihad against India. [Koenard Elst, Negationism in India, Voice of India, New Delhi, 2002, pg. 34.] The country of India today is only half the size of ancient India, due to jihad. The mountains near India are called the Hindu Kush, meaning the “funeral pyre of the Hindus.”

80 million Hindus

Buddhists

Buddhists do not keep up with the history of war. Keep in mind that in jihad only Christians and Jews were allowed to survive as dhimmis (servants to Islam); everyone else had to convert or die. Jihad killed the Buddhists in Turkey, Afghanistan, along the Silk Route, and in India. The total is roughly 10 million. [David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson,World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, William Carey Library, 2001, p. 230, table 4-1.]

10 million Buddhists

Jews

Oddly enough there were not enough Jews killed in jihad to significantly affect the totals of the Great Annihilation. The jihad in Arabia was 100 percent effective, but the numbers were in the thousands, not millions. After that, the Jews submitted and became the dhimmis (servants and second class citizens) of Islam and did not have geographic political power.

This gives a rough estimate of 270 million killed by Jihad.

Bill Warner is the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam.

This article appeared in politicalislam.com blog.

Obama Downunder....You Can Keep him!

He claims he is against Iran,,sure,,,duh,,I believe this prez.

Video here:

A photo op of the "Red Witch" and Medvedev.

How appropriate!

As Queen Victoria said: We are not amused -err,,,,fooled!

Too Little,Too Late: Goldstone: ‘Israel Apartheid’ Claims are Slander

Goldstone: ‘Israel Apartheid’ Claims are Slander from INN

After doing incredible damage to Israel's international reputation after Operation Cast Lead Richard Goldstone seems to be recanting.

Frankly I think this is too late, and no one is going to take any notice of him anyway.

The Goldstone report was commissioned by Turkey, if my memory serves me correctly, so his original findings have little credibility.

There is nothing much worse than a 'useful idiot', and there are plenty around these days.

Just look at #OWS.

I think Goldstone is not only a 'useful idiot', but a self-loathing Jew and in my opinion that makes him worse.

It is impossible to know how many lives have been lost, or put at risk, because of his pathetic UN collaborator. Now he tries to make up for the damage caused.

People who know what apartheid really means know Israel is NOT an apartheid state!

None other than retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone, author of the UN report damning Israel for alleged war crimes, condemns “apartheid" charges against the Jewish state.

"The apartheid charges are “an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations,” Goldstone wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times Monday morning.

Concerning the term “apartheid wall,” referring to the security barrier that straddles Judea and Samaria from the Jordan Valley to north of Be’er Sheva, Goldstone stated that the accusation is made by “those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid [and who] often point to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank…"

“The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks,” he noted.

Goldstone pointed out that being from South Africa, he knows full well what the term “apartheid” means.

“In Israel, there is no apartheid,” he wrote. “Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: ‘Inhumane acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.’"

“Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s population — vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.”

He added that the separation of Arabs and Jews in communities in Israel is often self-imposed and is not a result of enforcement.

Goldstone was careful to write that he sees a different situation in Judea and Samaria, where he stated that the situation is more complex. “But here too there is no intent to maintain ‘an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.’” headded. “This is a critical distinction, even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there.”

He explained that while “South Africa’s enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority, to the detriment of other races,… Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the WestBank.”

Goldstone wrote his opinion in light of the defunct “peace process” and said that the slanderous apartheid charges are an obstacle to an agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

“The need for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians has never been greater,” he wrote. “So it is important to separate legitimate criticism of Israel from assaults that aim to isolate, demonize and delegitimize it."

Goldstone noted that a London-based organization is holding a "hearing” Saturday night to decide if Israel is guilty of apartheid.

“The ‘evidence’ is going to be one-sided and the members of the ‘jury’ are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known,” Goldstone wrote.

Florida Appeals Court Rejects Call To Block Judge From Citing Islamic Law In Ruling

Click here to read the full story from St. Petersburg Times.

Thanks to Fox News

A Florida appeals court has rejected a request to block a Hillsborough judge from upholding Islamic law in a case involving the former trustees of a local Tampa mosque that has garnered the national spotlight.

The state's 2nd District Court of Appeal on Friday denied without comment a petition filed by the mosque, known as the Islamic Education Center of Tampa, which is challenging Hillsborough Circuit Judge Richard Nielsen’s ruling in March that he intended to cite “ecclesiastical Islamic law” in the case, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

The former trustees have been suing the mosque because they claim they were unfairly removed as trustees. Nielsen said in March that based on testimony, “under ecclesiastical law” and pursuant to the Koran, “Islamic brothers should attempt to resolve a dispute among themselves.”

The two parties reportedly agreed ahead of time to use an imam and Islamic Law to resolve any potential differences through arbitration. So Nielsen only referenced Islamic law in deciding whether the two parties could resolve their differences through arbitration. He ruled they could.

The arbitrator ruled in favor of the former trustees, an outcome that would give them control of $2.2 million in mosque funds if the decision is upheld, the newspaper reported.

But mosque officials say the arbitration never happened, and they dispute the meaning of the appeals court ruling. Mosque attorney Paul Thanasides told the newspaper that an appeals court decision without a written opinion means the court wasn’t addressing the merits of the case.

But Lee Segal, a lawyer representing the trustees, told the newspaper that the ruling was a “big time” win for his clients and vindication for Nielsen.

ALERT: Final Implementation Phase of Obama Formal Dictatorship has Begun

by Sher Zieve

Today may mark the real beginning of the end of the United States of America. We-the-People are being forced into the deadliest phase of the Obama Plan, yet – that of his overwhelming implementation of his US Police State.

Obama and his syndicate have now declared the usurpation of the State of Tennessee and its melding into the Obama government to be official. After extensive testing to see how far employees of Obama’s perverse TSA (Transportation Security Administration) would go with their sexual groping of even small children, Obama has now seen that they will do virtually anything they are tasked to do and “The One” has judged them worthy of the questionable honor of checking for US citizens’ papers on US highways, buses, trains and wherever else the now official dictator-in-chief decides he wants to exhibit his power and control over the American people.

Tennessee – which is the scene of multiple unconstitutional test cases with its completely corrupt Monroe County – has been chosen as the State that will begin the official Obama Police State. The former USA has now become either East Germany or the Stalinist USSR – take your pick.

And, this move by the Obama syndicate has nothing – whatsoever – to do with terrorists (unless you’re finally waking up to the fact that the Obama syndicate members are the terrorists). It is, however, Obama pushing hard for the final forced submission of We-the-People into the US Slave State, which has now arrived with nary a whimper.

Note: I never realized how thoroughly submissive to totalitarianism we had become, until recently. I thought we still had a chance to survive. I actually thought we would fight. On one thing Obama is correct. We have become soft.

Now, in a secondary move to seize all power in the country for himself and his syndicate, Obama has decided that he will confiscate all television and Radio broadcasts for a supposed “test” of the EAS (Emergency Alert System). Communication for both US television and Radio will be cut off on 9 November 2011 for at least 3-4 minutes.

This is both unprecedented in our history and constitutes the final phase of Obama’s testing of his ability to seize communications in the USA at will.

In the past, real Presidents of the USA have asked for time from the various broadcast networks when there was an emergency and they needed to speak. No more. We are now firmly in the bowels of the Obama dictatorship and said tyrant is violating each and every principle and law contained with the US Constitution.

The Obama-supported and implemented “Occupy Wall Street’ flea circus has provided Obama with both an “if you don’t give us what we want, we’ll turn violent” crowd and an almost perfect cover for his implementation of the finalization of his Police State. Anyone still think Obama is naïve and incompetent? Not a chance.

As I’ve been writing since before he usurped the Office of POTUS, Obama has been hired to destroy the USA and once he’s in power we may not be able to get rid of him. He knows precisely what he’s doing.

Any more questions?

More at Gulag Bound

Obama’s Gift to Iran: Stupid or deliberate?

I say deliberate.

Obama’s Gift to Iran

by Ralph Peters

With thanks to AIM

At the strategic level, naivety can do more damage than outright malevolence. And President Obama came to the Oval Office with no knowledge of, and little interest in, foreign affairs and security. His core agenda was domestic, and, gushing self-confidence, he assumed that he could solve international problems in his spare time–challenges that had frustrated the best efforts of far-more-experienced men and women. A babe in a poisoned woodland thick with wolves and witches, he assumed that he could smile and persuade the wolves not to eat him and the witches to cast their spells in his support.

One grim result is his abandonment of Iraq to Iranian influence. The strategic consequences are potentially catastrophic. At best, he has made a mockery of 5,000 dead American troops and our tens of thousands of wounded. And the worst of it is that he didn’t even try to play this to our nation’s advantage.

He didn’t even show up on the field. He simply threw the game to Iran by his absence: Our troops did their duty—and won. And their commander-in-chief went Absent Without Leave.

Before detailing the current administration’s myopia and ineptitude regarding Iraq—and Iran’s skillfulness—it’s essential to be fair: Obama has grown in the job, learning, painfully, that foreign leaders are not all susceptible to his ward-politician charm and self-congratulatory rhetoric.

He still has a great deal to learn (including humility), but this borderline pacifist evolved to become the president who dramatically increased the use of drones to target terrorists; who green-lighted killing bin Laden and Awlaki; who didn’t close Gitmo—despite his campaign promise to do so; and who, after his customary dithering, ultimately backed the French and British in their determination to remove Qaddafi from power in Libya (despite diplomatic lies, the goal was always to get Qaddafi out).

He even has shown signs of realizing that the Pakistanis are not our friends, that the Palestinians are not all oppressed innocents, and that China does not have our best interests at heart.

But he’s always had a blind spot regarding Iraq. And Iraq’s the big one. Everything that he’s gotten right over the past year is small change compared to our looming confrontation with Iran. And Obama just handed Iran an enormous strategic advantage by fleeing from Baghdad.

Why does Iraq matter? Location, location, location, for a start. It’s the geographical keystone at the head of the Persian Gulf, still the most-crucial oil-producing region in the world. And it borders Iran: Consider how useful even small US bases in Iraq would be, were we forced to take military action to derail Iran’s nuclear ambitions—action that would amount to serious warfare, not just surgical strikes. And Baghdad has enormous emotional resonance in the Arab world. Iraq’s also the fault-line state where Shia and Sunni Muslims collide on one of the most-volatile frontiers of religious culture.

And there’s more: A pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad outflanks our key regional partners (not allies, but partners with shared interests). Instead of providing a buffer for Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, a Shia-dominated, pro-Iranian government in Iraq becomes a threat to them. An Iraq subject to Iranian influence also facilitates Tehran’s support of the Assad regime in Syria and, by extension, Hezbollah and Hamas—it’s a lot easier to drive arms and assassins across Iraq than to ship them all the way through the Suez Canal.

Even a small remaining US presence in Iraq (about 20,000 troops would have been right) also would have continued to provide the much-needed fig leaf for Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs not to go at each other again. With our troops leaving, there’s at least an outside chance that Iraq will tumble back into civil war—and this time it would draw in other regional powers. At the very least, terrorists of various stripes will be empowered.

Obama sees none of it. He remains a prisoner of his own anti-Bush rhetoric. Iraq was Bush’s war and, therefore, bad. But the left needed to “prove” it was strong on security, too, so Afghanistan, a worthless land of pederasts and dung heaps, became our strategic priority that Bush “neglected.”

The problem is that Iraq truly matters on multiple strategic counts, while investing in Afghanistan is about as smart as investing in cathode-ray-tube technology (or solar-panel manufacturers) in Silicon Valley. The sole reason to keep even a small US contingent in Afghanistan is to continue to kill terrorists across the border in Pakistan. Beyond that, everything we do there is wasted. But, thanks to Obama, we’re mired in Afghanistan and abandoning the strategic prize of Iraq to Iran.

And the mullahs and political leaders in Tehran have taken advantage of Obama’s blindness with breathtaking effectiveness. While pursuing nuclear weapons, backing Syria’s Assad with weapons, money and secret-police assassins, egging on Hezbollah and Hamas—and killing US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq–Iran has not had to pay a single meaningful price.

Our government huffs and puffs, then does nothing at all. The Obama administration (and, to be fair, the Bush administration before it) has allowed the Iranians to run wild.

Naturally, Tehran concludes that we’re weak-willed, exhausted and scared. Hence the recent plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US right in Washington (not that I would have wept for His Excellency myself…).

The Iranians in 2011 have come to the same conclusion that al Qaeda did in 2001, in the wake of the cowardice of the Clinton administration: They’re convinced that, no matter what they do, we’ll simply cower and take it.

And they might be right.

I’ve long been fond of pointing out that, while we play diplomatic checkers, the Iranians play chess (the game was a Persian invention, after all). I have to admire the skill with which Tehran has manipulated both the Iraqi political scene and the Obama administration: The Iranians recognized that the issue of legal immunity from Iraqi law for US troops was the perfect lever to hoist us out of the country.

First, we could never agree to allow our Soldiers and Marines to be hauled up on bogus charges and tried in kangaroo courts in the immature (to put it kindly) Iraqi judicial system.

Second, the Iranians understood that this was an issue that would resonate with the Iraqi population, given our mindless employment of mercenary thugs from the former Blackwater and other “security” companies—some of whose employees appear to have used Iraqi civilians for target practice…then walked free. Iran’s agents made hay out of the bad behavior of the psychopaths who had been on the US payroll.

Working through their proxies in Baghdad—primarily, but not only, Moqtada al Sadr’s radical Shia block—the Iranians made it impossible for either side to back down. And “Poof!” The Americans, having deposed Saddam, paid in blood, and spent almost a trillion dollars on Iraqi freedom and reconstruction, are headed home, while Iran moves in. Tehran won without losing a single Iranian life. At most, the mullahs doled out a few minor bribes.

Obama simply quit—and was relieved to do so. He did it because he was blind to the looming consequences. He did it to please his restive base. And he did it because he had been too nearsighted, lazy and politically bigoted to develop personal relationships with Iraqi leaders who could have helped us through this “made in Iran” crisis.

But it isn’t Obama who will pay the price. It’s our troops, if the region blows up. It’s Iraqis. It’s our regional partners. It’s consumers, if the deteriorating situation in the Persian-Gulf region leads to catastrophically higher oil prices. Ultimately, it’s you.

Obama’s real political ancestor is, ironically, the diehard segregationist Woodrow Wilson. Both men have pacifist roots, and both put us on the path to a major war (stay tuned for our coming confrontation with Iran). Both fit the mold of the idealist ungrounded in reality. Both were consumed by ambitions that far outstripped their abilities.

The only faint good news in Obama’s early holiday gift to Iran of Iraq’s integrity and freedom is that any Iran-Iraq strategic collusion will only last from the short-term through the mid-term. In the long-term, conflicting interests and, above all, Persian condescension toward Arabs will alienate most Iraqis. But the danger zone is that short-to-mid-term stretch, with Tehran rushing to develop a nuclear-weapons capability and Iraq’s internal rivalries and grudges unresolved. The best we can expect is continued low-level violence in Iraq.

The worst ranges from a civil war that tears Iraq apart, to a violent, extended military confrontation with Iran that closes down Gulf oil production amid a widespread regional conflict.

Obama’s pigheaded determination to get our last troops out of Iraq and praise himself for doing so could be the worst American diplomatic blunder since Yalta. At the very least, it’s a wanton gift to our determined enemies.

Muammar Gaddafi has been killed as hometown of Sirte finally falls

Alternate headline: Nobel Peace Prize Winner orders death of a tyrant!

FORMER Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi has been killed in the final desperate battle for his home town of Sirte. From the Australian

I am certain that the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda will fill the void. I am also certain that things will get much worse in Libya.

The 69-year-old Gaddafi is the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings that swept the Middle East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and greater democracy.

Gaddafi's son Mutassim was shot in the chest and killed. Confusion surrounds the fate of Gaddafi's favoured son, Saif al-Islam. Libyan state television said his son had suffered a similar fate, but other reports said he had been shot in the leg. This morning, Interpol and the International Criminal Court were still calling for Saif to surrender, sparking debate about his whereabouts.

Colonel Gaddafi was killed after being dragged from a drain by rebel fighters who had just won the battle for Sirte, Gaddafi's home town.

He had apparently been shot in the leg and the shoulder.

Looking bloodied, video images showed Gaddafi trying to flee his captors

He was transferred to a pickup truck, but was caught in crossfire and shot in the head, Libya's interim prime minister said.

"When the vehicle started moving, it was caught in crossfire between Gaddafi fighters and the revolutionaries, and he was shot in the head,'' according to Mahmoud Jibril.

"He was alive up to last moment, until he arrived at hospital'' in the town of Misrata.

People across Libya celebrated news of the death of Gaddafi who had brutally ruled Libya for 42 years.

News of Gaddafi's death was greeted with shock around the world US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, about to begin a television interview, was handed her mobile phone with the news sent as a text message on it.

"Wow!" she said.

Gaddafi had pledged to fight to the end and Saif al-Islam had vowed that "blood will flow" if rebels continued their fight both these statements proved to be true.

Saif al-Islam, educated at the London School of Economics, had long been groomed by Gaddafi as his eventual successor.

Gaddafi had been one of the world's most mercurial leaders, dominating Libya with a regime that often seemed run by his whims and bringing international condemnation and isolation on his country for years.

"We announce to the world that Gaddafi has been killed at the hands of the revolutionaries, and Gaddafi's tyranny and dictatorship has been finally ended for Libya and all the world and this chapter has been closed," National Transitional Council official Abdel Ghogha said at a news conference in Benghazi.

"[With] the news of the end of tyranny and dictatorship in Libya . . . it will never be the same again after the revolutionaries have been able to get to the heads of the tyrants . . . who met their fate and destiny, which is a fate and destiny of all dictators and tyrants," Mr Ghogha added.

"It is an historic moment. It is the end of tyranny and dictatorship. Gaddafi has met his fate,'' he added.

He said that the fugitive despot's death been "confirmed by our commanders on the ground in Sirte, those who captured him after he had been wounded in the battle for Sirte".

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed," Mr Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli.

Thousands of people were murdered or imprisoned during Gaddafi's rule.

Libya has great wealth through oil but much of this wealth has been taken by Gaddafi, his family and his cronies.

Gaddafi had been barricaded in with his heavily armed loyalists in the last few buildings they held in Sirte, furiously battling with revolutionary fighters closing in on them.

A convoy of about 80 vehicles tried to flee the area and was blasted by NATO airstrikes.

French Defence officials said one of its warplanes had identified and fired a warning shot across the convoy, but it was not destroyed.

A US Predator drone had struck the same convoy, however, it was unclear if deposed Gaddafi was there.

Television footage showed footage of Gaddafi lying severely wounded, bleeding from the head and stripped to the waist as fighters rolled him over on the pavement.

The body was then taken to the nearby city of Misrata, which Gaddafi's forces besieged for months in one of the bloodiest fronts of the civil war. Al-Arabiya TV showed footage of Gadhafi's bloodied body carried on the top of a vehicle surrounded by a large crowd chanting, "The blood of the martyrs will not go in vain."

The news sparked celebrations across the country, amid hope the dictator's demise was the final chapter in the nine-month conflict that has cost thousands of lives.

Gaddafi's last stronghold, Sirte, had earlier fallen to forces loyal to the NTC, which formed after the collapse of the Gaddafi's regime.

An anti-Gaddafi fighter said the former leader had been found hiding in a hole and shouted "Don't shoot, don't shoot" when confronted by fighters of the NTC.

The NTC said that Moussa Ibrahim, the man who became the face of the Gaddafi regime as his international spokesman, had also been captured in Sirte.

In Sirte, medics said the defence minister in Gaddafi's ousted regime, Abu Bakr Yunis, had been killed in the battle. Yunis's body was identified at the field hospital where it was brought in on a pick-up truck.

NTC fighters who had fought in the bloody conflict that toppled the veteran despot at a cost of more than 25,000 lives were jubilant at the news of his capture.

Pick-up trucks blaring out patriotic music criss-crossed the streets of Sirte, as fighters flashed V-for-victory signs and chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest).

Many pick-up trucks are playing the new national anthem and other revolutionary songs.

"Sirte is free. The whole of Libya is free," said Khaled Ballam, field commander of the February 17 Brigade, which took part in the final assault on Sirte.

"We had some clashes but there was no fierce resistance as many Gaddafi fighters were trying to escape rather than fight because they had no other option. The game is over."

Abdul Matlub Saleh, a fighter from the February 17 Brigade, said: "Every inch of the city is liberated. Our people are spread everywhere. There is no fighting. The gunfire that you are hearing is all celebrations."

An AFP correspondent heard sporadic gunfire in the neighbourhood during the morning as NTC fighters went house to house to root out the snipers who have inflicted heavy losses in their ranks in recent days.

Medics said that at least three NTC fighters were killed and 30 wounded in the operation.

"I am happy we have got revenge for our people who suffered for all these years and for those who were killed in the revolution. Gaddafi is finished," said fighter Talar al-Kashmi.

Further reading: Libya and the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine.

There are many more links on R2P.

Oddly enough Soros' name may come up, but it was essentially drafted by Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister under a Labor Government, and Samantha Power, wife of Cass Sunstein. I am hearing alarm bells!

Robert Spencer is coming Downunder.

Details here and at SheikYerMami’s site.

Simon Deng - The United Nations: Accessory to Slavery and other Crimes Against Humanity

Simon Deng tells it like it is.

With thanks to HNY

Like you, I came to this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance to protest this third Durban conference which is an effort based on a set of lies, and organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.

Durban III will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has lost its way. Its obsession with the Jewish obvious: . For over 50 years, 82% of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel. Hitler could not have been made happier.

Given all the good Israel does in the world, given its democracy and its striving to follow the highest standards of human rights, even in the face of the most brutal, the most fanatic enemies, the Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people know that.

But friends, I come here today to make a different case. I come with what you might at first think is a radical proposition: I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

For over fifty years the indigenous black African population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

In South Sudan, my homeland, Sudan, about four million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed, and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

Everybody at the United Nations is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency to provide for them; this agency, UNWRA, treats them with a special privilege.

Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN even resisted using the word "slavery" to describe the enslavement of tens of thousands of my people. Why? Because slavery is a crime against humanity, apparently no one committing it wanted to end up before an international court. When Khartoum insisted that the term "abducted people" be substituted for the word "slaves," the UN, caved to Arab pressure and agreed. Try that in America. Try calling Frederick Douglas an "abducted person." It is outrageous.

The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the root causes of Sudan's conflicts. Take Darfur, for example. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a "tribal conflict." It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism, as it has typically been practiced in Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And they also do not want to be Arabized. They like their own African languages and dress and customs. They resist Arabization. The Arab response is genocide. But nobody tells the truth about Darfur.

In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The regime is targeting the black Africans -- Muslims and Christians. This happened to the Nuba people before. In the 1990's hundreds of thousands were murdered; a large number of women were raped; children were abducted and forcibly converted to Islam. Nobody at the UN told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you see a massive amount of outrage and reports and protests about this coming out of the UN or Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International? Do you hear them condemn Arab anti-black racism?

Look at the pages of the New York Times, or the record of the UN condemnations, What you will find is "Israeli crimes" and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages by the exaggerations of Palestinian suffering. Why? Because what Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin that we are all supposed to address.

The truth is that the West commits a real sin when it abandons us: the actual victims of non-Westerns. Our suffering has become almost taboo.

Let me return to the topic of slavery: while there are issues that divide public opinion, we can all agree that for one man to own another is a sin, and it should be stopped. The Americans tore themselves apart over the issue of slavery.

Chattel slavery, a centuries-long practice in Sudan, was revived as a tool of war in the early '90s. The Islamist regime in Khartoum declared jihad, or holy war, and thereby legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.

I do not like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when I was made a slave. An Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat destined to Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family's left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word "no." All I could say was "yes," "yes," "yes."

The United Nations knew about the brutal enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs from the early days of the conflict. Human Right Watch issued extensive reports about the issue. These reports gathered dust on UN shelves. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening.

As soon as the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, the UN agency backtracked, and proceeded to criticize the Non-Governmental Organizations that worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League. So much for "human rights for everybody".

As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. In 2005, the refugees camped outside the offices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Cairo looking for mercy. Instead, the United Nations closed its doors and left the helpless women and children at the mercy of the ruthless Egyptian security forces who brutally slaughtered at least 26 of them.

After this event the Sudanese realized that Arab racism is the same, whether it is in Khartoum or in Cairo. So they continued looking for a shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for punishingly long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

The fact that even Darfuris, who are Muslims, chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area, speaks volumes.. Israel is racist? Israel is against the Muslim world? Ask the thousands of black Muslim Darfuris who found shelter inside the Jewish state.

When I asked the refugees about the treatment they receive in Israel, their response is absolutely the opposite of what the United Nations alleges. They were welcomed and treated like human beings. Compared to the situation in Egypt, they described their lives in Israel as "heaven." No-one called them "abid" – an Arabic word for slaves often used in Sudan, Egypt and other Arab nations.

Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. It is a state of people of the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with beautiful black Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Israel is a state that has taken my own black people in, rescued them, and helped them.

So, yes … my claim may be a radical claim: I claim that the victims who suffer most from the UN's anti-Israel policy are not just the Israelis but all those people who have to be ignored in order for the UN to tell its big lie against Israel: all those victims of non Western abuse, especially all those victims of Arab and Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab and Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

So far, the Israelis have only been cursed by the UN. But look at the situation of the Copts, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais and Sikhs who suffer from Islamic oppression. We all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned so that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

Before I conclude let me tell you a story that reflects a special connection that the people of South Sudan feel toward Israel. In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor, and then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked and numb. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: "This is our people." I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On July 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. We achieved freedom despite the opposition from the Arab world and despite the United Nations, whose General Secretary, Bi Ki Moon, lobbied for the unity of Sudan. For the South Sudanese, that would mean continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland; and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel's legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I salute the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, who had the courage to state publicly that South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its people, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth.

This originally appeared in a a slightly different form as an address at a conference titled "The Perils of Global Intolerance", in New York City, September 22, 2011.

Petition: Cut off the $1.3B in aid annually to Egypt, unless they bring to justice the killers of the massacre of Coptic Christian

Sign here.

The Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church under the leadership of Pope Shenouda III met with seventy Bishops, on Monday October 10, 2011 in the Papal residence, Cairo, Egypt to discuss the events of the prior day in front of Maspiro where 24 of our beloved children were killed and at least 200 injured.

Coptic Christians feel that their problems are always being repeated without accountability and without the due justice of the law.Eyewitnesses & countless photographs and videos recount how the Egyptian Military used armored vehicles to mow down peaceful protesters.

WE PLEA to the President, and Congress, to push for a full investigation,to bring the perpetrators to justice in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to cut off military aid until FULL COMPLIANCE.

Iran vows 'decisive action' on US claims of assassination plot

Will this be Obama’s War?

Iran vows 'decisive action' on US claims of assassination plot from the Australian

IRAN'S Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has warned of a "decisive response" to any "inappropriate action" over US claims of a Tehran-directed assassination plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington.

"If American officials are entertaining any illusions, they should know that any inappropriate action - whether political or security-related - will meet with the Iranian people's decisive response," he said in a speech in western Iran yesterday.

Ayatollah Khamenei, who has labelled the plot claims "absurd", said: "The Islamic Republic of Iran will face off any plot, or destructive or obstructive measures, with all its might."

President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, in his first comments on US claims over the alleged plot, was quoted as saying: "Iran is a civilised nation and doesn't need to resort to assassination."

Addressing the US government, he said: "Terror belongs to you."

Highlighting an apparent schism with the President, Ayatollah Khamenei accompanied his warning with suggestion that Iran could scrap the post of a directly elected president.
He suggested that, in future, the president could be elected by MPs rather than through a national poll. It remained, he said, a "distant" prospect, but his words will embolden hardliners determined to oust Mr Ahmadinejad. Iran's two most powerful men have been in a power struggle since April, when Mr Ahmadinejad sacked his intelligence minister, only to see him reinstated by the Supreme Leader.

The President boycotted government for 11 days before bowing to an ultimatum from the Ayatollah to return or be dismissed.

US officials were yesterday consulting allies and other countries on ratcheting up pressure on Iran, which is already subject to UN and US sanctions over its controversial nuclear program.

Senior Democrat Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate intelligence committee, warned that the US and Iran were on a "collision course" as Tehran steps up its nuclear program and escalates hostilities with its alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington. She said this was not the time for war with Iran, but for stronger international sanctions to change its behaviour, saying she favoured sanctions on Iran's central bank.

"Iran is escalating, I believe, its nuclear development. Iran is increasingly hostile," she said in an interview with Fox News. "It's a very dangerous situation.

"If you project out a number of years, we are on a collision course. If we want to avoid it, we have to take action to avoid it."

Iran denies any involvement in the thwarted plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir.

But US President Barack Obama has vowed Iran will "pay a price" for what he says is incontrovertible proof it had a hand in trying to contract a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit.

Saudi Arabia has said it will make "a suitable response" over the alleged plot, which it has requested be brought to the attention of the UN Security Council.

The US Justice Department and FBI say the alleged plot leads back to officials in the Quds Force, a special operations outfit within Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

Quds Force personnel are said to have transferred nearly $US100,000 ($97,094) to the bank account used by a member of the Mexican drug cartel who was really a paid US informant. The money was allegedly part of a $US1.5 million hit on Mr al-Jubeir, possibly through the bombing of a Washington restaurant.

An Iranian used car salesman who is a naturalised US citizen, Manssor Arbabsiar, is said to have confessed to acting as the go-between for his cousin, whom he described as a top Quds official. Mr Arbabsiar is in US custody, charged with the plot. The US has charged another Iranian, Gholam Shakuri, said to be an Iran-based Quds agent who flew to the US to speak with Mr Arbabsiar.

PM Gillard Passes CO2 tax on Australians

A bad day for democracy in Australia, following on the heels of the judgement against Andrew Bolt’s right to free speech.

The West is falling badly, and democracy is losing its grip.

All politicians lie – we know that, but have a look at the video clip of Gillard’s pre-election promise (below) and I can’t really see any way that it can be misinterpreted.

She did not win in her own right but forged a coalition with the Marxist Greens, and a few ‘independents”, to hold onto power here.

Her political opponent, Tony Abbott, in spite of the leftist media bias, did remarkably well. Gillard’s party managed to entice the “independents” to stick with her.

Most Australians did not want this tax but she rammed it down their throats, much like Obamacare was rammed down the throats of American citizens.

I cannot help but wonder sometimes why politicians bother to read polls when they have absolutely no intention of taking any notice of what the average citizen really wants.

I have said before on other blog posts:

Is there any leader in the West who has not literally declared war against his/her own people?

I cannot think of anyone but am open to suggestions.

At one point I thought Netanyahu was an exception but today we find he is releasing over 1000 prisoners (aka jihadists) to obtain the release of Gilad Shalit.

Don’t misunderstand me – I am happy for Gilad Shalit – but now Netanyahu has placed his people, many more than one soldier, in harm’s way.

He has caved in to the demands of Hamas.

If he were going to do that anyway then why didn’t he do it years ago? Israel's current situation is more precarious than what it was when Gilad Shalit was first captured.

Sadly I see no Reagan or Churchill on the horizon.

(picture above of Parliament House, Canberra).

by Chris Kenny in The Australian

Tax triumphalism not a good look

Video of Julia Gillard’s pre-election promise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5pzSvSCUZo&feature=player_embedded

THE disconnect between the political/media fishbowl and mainstream Australia is often stark.

We have seen a clear demonstration of that with the Prime Minister and her team applauding, kissing and congratulating each other on the passage of their carbon tax bills through the House of Representatives.

Only yesterday Newspoll showed a massive primary vote split of 49 to 29 between the dominant, anti-carbon tax Coalition and the struggling, pro-carbon tax Labor government.

Climate change ranked as the lowest priority of the main issues for voters, and even then, more people thought the Coalition would handle the issue best. Polls have shown that well over half the population opposes the carbon tax and little more than a third support it.

Simply, the tax is unpopular.

Yet in the rarefied atmosphere of Canberra, Labor MPs publicly pat themselves on the back for passing it.

The political myopia of this self-congratulation is stunning. It only makes a bad situation worse.

Labor promised not to introduce a carbon tax and there is already a good deal of anger from voters about the broken promise. It is being expressed through talkback radio, letters to newspapers, and polling results.

So the optics of jubilant politicians is terrible politics: triumphalism at the trashing of a pledge. Away from Canberra, in the real world, the television pictures will only antagonise voters.

It suggests to voters that the government does not care what they think.

It solidifies a perception of politicians being out of touch - isolated from the daily concerns of voters.

Julia Gillard says she broke her word on the carbon tax because of political necessity and for a higher ideal - healing the planet. If we take that as a given, then a smart politician would look to pass the measure more in sorrow than triumph.

If Ms Gillard really wants to take voters with her on this crusade, she needs to tell them that it was with a heavy heart that she broke her word.

If the Prime Minister gets voters to listen, she might be able to convince some of them that the carbon tax is worthwhile.

But voters won't listen if they think Labor is celebrating how it turned its back on the wishes voters expressed through the ballot box last year.

Obviously enough, mainstream Australians like to be treated with appropriate respect.

Someone in the Prime Minister's office should be aware of these optics. The government should have been seen to pocket the win, in a sober fashion, with no sense of triumphalism.

Sarkozy: Turkey Should 'Revisit' Armenian Genocide and Israel is "silly"

Sarkozy: Turkey Should 'Revisit' Armenia Genocide from INN

What a disappointment Sarkozy turned out to be.

On one hand having a go at the Turks – a good thing - on the other calling Israel ‘silly’ for wanting to be recognized as a Jewish state! How many Islamic states are there again?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Turkey on Thursday to "revisit" its history regarding the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, AFP reported.

"Turkey, which is a great country, would be honorable to revisit its history like the other great countries in the world have done: Germany, France," Sarkozy told journalists at a joint press conference with Armenian President Serge Sarkisyan.

Sarkozy, who is on a 48-hour tour of the Caucasus, arrived in Armenia on Thursday and will visit Azerbaijan and Georgia as well. His entourage includes four ministers, film director Alain Terzian and singers Charles Aznavour and Helene Segara.

He was to meet with the Patriarch of Armenia's Christian church, and then visit the Genocide Memorial Museum to pay respects to Armenians killed by the Ottomans in 1915.

Sarkozy angered Turkey before his election in 2007 by backing a law making it illegal to deny the fact that the Armenians were victims of genocide. The French lower house of parliament later rejected the measure.

Earlier in the week, Sarkozy was quoted as saying that Israel's insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state is "silly."