The RadioDeli

Anticipation, Griping Increases Before Obama Speech in Berlin | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 23.07.2008
In the build-up to what is probably the most anticipated American campaign speech ever held on foreign soil, one of Berlins main city magazines offered its readership cut-out American flags to wave at Barack Obamas planned address.
The presumed Democratic nominee plans to arrive in the German capital on Thursday morning. Not much of his agenda for the day has been made public, but he is set to speak at Berlins Victory Column — formally the main site of the Love Parade — at 7PM local time.

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McClatchy Press:

Samir Kuntar is sitting under a photo of himself standing next to Hassan Nasrallah and telling friends that he almost didn’t come home.

As Israel was getting ready to free Kuntar last Wednesday, the Lebanese militant told guards that he didn’t want to walk to freedom in a prison uniform.

When the Israeli guards refused, Kuntar said he told them to call off the deal.

“I’ve kept my dignity for 30 years,” Kuntar said he told his jailers, “I’m not going to give it up in the last half hour.”

The standoff lasted until the guards called their superiors, who eventually agreed to let Kuntar go free in civilian clothes.

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McClatchy Press:

Samir Kuntar is sitting under a photo of himself standing next to Hassan Nasrallah and telling friends that he almost didn’t come home.

As Israel was getting ready to free Kuntar last Wednesday, the Lebanese militant told guards that he didn’t want to walk to freedom in a prison uniform.

When the Israeli guards refused, Kuntar said he told them to call off the deal.

“I’ve kept my dignity for 30 years,” Kuntar said he told his jailers, “I’m not going to give it up in the last half hour.”

The standoff lasted until the guards called their superiors, who eventually agreed to let Kuntar go free in civilian clothes.

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CNSNews:

A British government initiative aimed at tackling radicalism among the country’s Muslims by challenging extremist views on issues like jihad and the treatment of women has drawn a chilly response from community representatives.

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CNSNews:

New rules for gun ownership drawn up by the District of Columbia City Council appear to be incompatible with the Supreme Court’s ruling that declared the city’s handgun ban unconstitutional.
 
The city’s emergency ordinance, which is supposed to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, may also violate the Americans With Disability Act, a Second Amendment group says.
 
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms points to a section of the new ordinance requiring that “Each registrant shall keep any firearm in his or her possession unloaded and either disassembled or secured by a trigger lock, gun safe, or similar device.”
 
The rule does not apply to police officers, guns kept in a place of business, or a firearm that is being used “to protect against a reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person within the registrant’s home.”
 
The provision appears to directly contradict the Supreme Court’s ruling in the District of Columbia v. Heller case,” said CCRKBA Legislative Director Joe Waldron.
 
“The court struck down the city’s trigger lock requirement, and ruled that it is unconstitutional to require that firearms be rendered inoperable at all times in the home,” he said.
 
Waldron called it “alarming” that the city council stipulated that people registering handguns “not appear to suffer from a physical defect which would make it unsafe for him to possess and use a firearm safely and responsibly.”
 
“I am wondering if the persons who dreamed up these outrageous guidelines ever heard of the Americans With Disabilities Act. In their attempt to make owning handguns as difficult and discouraging as possible for residents of the District, the people responsible for this regulation have just insulted millions of disabled Americans, including disabled veterans, who are perfectly capable of owning and using firearms,” Waldron said.
 
He said disabled people should not be subject to the “discriminatory whims” of bureaucrats.
 
“The city just lost a landmark ruling before the Supreme Court,” Waldron stated, “and already they’re trying to poke that court in the eye. That isn’t only arrogant, it’s foolhardy. Apparently the city can’t wait to find itself back in court.”

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CNSNews:

New rules for gun ownership drawn up by the District of Columbia City Council appear to be incompatible with the Supreme Court’s ruling that declared the city’s handgun ban unconstitutional.
 
The city’s emergency ordinance, which is supposed to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, may also violate the Americans With Disability Act, a Second Amendment group says.
 
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms points to a section of the new ordinance requiring that “Each registrant shall keep any firearm in his or her possession unloaded and either disassembled or secured by a trigger lock, gun safe, or similar device.”
 
The rule does not apply to police officers, guns kept in a place of business, or a firearm that is being used “to protect against a reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person within the registrant’s home.”
 
The provision appears to directly contradict the Supreme Court’s ruling in the District of Columbia v. Heller case,” said CCRKBA Legislative Director Joe Waldron.
 
“The court struck down the city’s trigger lock requirement, and ruled that it is unconstitutional to require that firearms be rendered inoperable at all times in the home,” he said.
 
Waldron called it “alarming” that the city council stipulated that people registering handguns “not appear to suffer from a physical defect which would make it unsafe for him to possess and use a firearm safely and responsibly.”
 
“I am wondering if the persons who dreamed up these outrageous guidelines ever heard of the Americans With Disabilities Act. In their attempt to make owning handguns as difficult and discouraging as possible for residents of the District, the people responsible for this regulation have just insulted millions of disabled Americans, including disabled veterans, who are perfectly capable of owning and using firearms,” Waldron said.
 
He said disabled people should not be subject to the “discriminatory whims” of bureaucrats.
 
“The city just lost a landmark ruling before the Supreme Court,” Waldron stated, “and already they’re trying to poke that court in the eye. That isn’t only arrogant, it’s foolhardy. Apparently the city can’t wait to find itself back in court.”

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The Weekly Standard:

Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

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The Weekly Standard:

Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

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FrontPageMag.com

There was so much in this speech that merits a response, but I would like to draw attention to its most fatal flaw, which apparently stills persists among the far left, which is actually where Barack Obama—ranked the most liberal member of the Senate by the non-partisan National Journal—sits on the ideological spectrum. In this speech, Obama argued that the true battle against terror has always been, and remains, in Afghanistan, not Iraq. He framed the Iraq intervention as a total distraction from the real War on Terror, which resides in Afghanistan.

Yet again, this positively maddening assertion is being made by a leader of the American left. It is absolutely, unequivocally, a post-Iraq War invention. I plead with my liberal friends: If you don’t believe me, then remember what the Clinton administration stated repeatedly:

Throughout the latter 1990s, President Clinton’s State Department, headed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, listed Iraq among the leading sponsors of terrorism. It did so officially in its Patterns of Global Terrorism report, which is the formal, annual assessment on global terrorism mandated by Congress beginning in 1979 with the passing of the Export Administration Act. The final such report by the Clinton administration, in 2000, highlighted the seven leading terrorist governments: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan. Afghanistan was not even on the list. These were the same seven nations identified in previous years, with Iraq and Iran singled out as the worst offenders (1999 index, 1999 overview). In fact, the 2000 report devoted more words (and terrorist crimes) to Iraq than any other nation.

From providing safe-haven to Abu Nidal to attacking U.N. personnel, I will not review the details of the 2000 report here. Anyone interested can click the links. But I warn liberals: you will not like what you see, because it will force you to reevaluate some sacred cows produced for convenience in the era of hating George W. Bush, including those that reared their heads in Obama’s speech on Tuesday.

The fact is that the fight against global Islamic terror is exactly that—global. It must occur on many fronts. To judge that the fight was never in Iraq but always in Afghanistan is amazingly simplistic and obviously inaccurate, and would never be made by supposedly sophisticated people if not for their seething hatred of George W. Bush. That hatred forces them into back-flips and contradictions in the ugly, purely emotional process of opposing everything he does. Bush’s identification of Iraq as a prime terror threat—pursued only after the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan—is 100 percent consistent with what the Clinton administration stated throughout its eight years.

Surely, liberals know this. If they do not—and if Barack Obama, their standard-bearer, does not—then this speaks very poorly, and quite frighteningly, of their ability to run American foreign policy over the next four years. The explanation for their thinking is either ignorance or a blinding hatred of George W. Bush that obliterates their ability to assess reality and the world.

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FrontPageMag.com:

Pity Omar Khadr. That is the theme of a disinformation campaign being waged by lawyers for the Toronto-born al-Qaeda terrorist, imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay since 2002, when he killed an American soldier with a hand grenade. Designed to win Khadr’s release and to publically discredit the U.S.-run detention facility in Cuba, this campaign received a propaganda boost this week when Khadr’s lawyers released a misleadingly edited eight-minute video, itself part of a seven-hour interview conducted with Khadr in 2003 by Canadian intelligence interrogators, depicting him as a sympathetic victim. The video is indeed pathetic. In it, the junior jihadist, just 15 at the time of his capture, can be seen sobbing and pulling off his shirt when he discovers that the Canadian interrogators did not come to free him. Yet, the video also is incomplete. For instance, one Canadian newspaper has reported that in the same interrogation Khadr can be clearly heard voicing support for jihad—though that compromising detail didn’t quite make into Khadr’s lachrymose video performance.

If so, that would be very much in keeping with his extremist pedigree. Unmentioned by his public advocates is that Khadr hails from Canada’s “first family of terrorism.” His father Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian immigrant to Canada, was a high-ranking al-Qaeda member and financier. He lived in the same Pakistani compound as Osama bin Laden, fought alongside al-Qaeda militants, and was ultimately killed by Pakistani troops in 2003.

But not before he had passed on the family tradition – jihadist terrorism – to his children. Ahmed Khadr’s daughter, Zaynab, was charged with smuggling al-Qaeda propaganda into Canada. His other son, Abdullah Khadr, is imprisoned in Canada on terrorism charges, as he awaits extradition to America.

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Myway:

The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are “way ahead” of most politicians in the fight against global climate change.

Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create “a new political environment” that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels.

“I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that’s emerging now,” Gore told The Associated Press in an interview previewing a speech on global warming he was to deliver Thursday in Washington.

Gore said he fully understands the magnitude of the challenge.

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand.

“This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over,” Gore said. “It’s an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels.”

Called an alarmist by conservatives, Gore has made combatting global warming his signature issue, a campaign that has been recognized worldwide - from an Academy Award to a Nobel Prize. He portrayed Thursday’s speech as the latest and most important phase in his effort to build public opinion in favor of alternative fuels.

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Myway:

The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are “way ahead” of most politicians in the fight against global climate change.

Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create “a new political environment” that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels.

“I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that’s emerging now,” Gore told The Associated Press in an interview previewing a speech on global warming he was to deliver Thursday in Washington.

Gore said he fully understands the magnitude of the challenge.

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand.

“This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over,” Gore said. “It’s an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels.”

Called an alarmist by conservatives, Gore has made combatting global warming his signature issue, a campaign that has been recognized worldwide - from an Academy Award to a Nobel Prize. He portrayed Thursday’s speech as the latest and most important phase in his effort to build public opinion in favor of alternative fuels.

News, Kool Aide Drinkers, global 'warming' | No Comments »