I can't help myself........... Rome is burning!

Amir Taheri. Telegraph Correspondent.

What do you do when you have no policy, but want to appear as if you do? In the case of Barack Obama, the answer is simple: you go around the world making speeches about your "personal journey".

The latest example came last Thursday, when Mr Obama presented his "address to the Muslim world" to an invited audience of 2,500 officials at Cairo University. The exercise was a masterpiece of equivocation and naivety. The President said he was seeking "a new beginning between the US and Muslims around the world". This implied that "Muslims around the world" represent a single monolithic bloc – precisely the claim made by people like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who believe that all Muslims belong to a single community, the "ummah", set apart from, and in conflict with, the rest of humanity.

Obama ignored the fact that what he calls the "Muslim world" consists of 57 countries with Muslim majorities and a further 60 countries – including America and Europe – where Muslims represent substantial minorities. Trying to press a fifth of humanity into a single "ghetto" based on their religion is an exercise worthy of ideologues, not the leader of a major democracy.

Mr Obama's mea culpa extended beyond the short span of US history. He appropriated the guilt for ancient wars between Islam and Christendom, Western colonialism and America's support for despotic regimes during the Cold War. Then came the flattering narrative about Islam's place in history: ignoring the role of Greece, China, India and pre-Islamic Persia, he credited Islam with having invented modern medicine, algebra, navigation and even the use of pens and printing. Believing that flattery will get you anywhere, he put the number of Muslim Americans at seven million, when the total is not even half that number, promoting Islam to America's largest religion after Christianity.

The President promised to help change the US tax system to allow Muslims to pay zakat, the sharia tax, and threatened to prosecute those who do not allow Muslim women to cover their hair, despite the fact that this "hijab" is a political prop invented by radicals in the 1970s. As if he did not have enough on his plate, Mr Obama insisted that fighting "negative stereotypes of Islam" was "one of my duties as President of the United States". However, there was no threat to prosecute those who force the hijab on Muslim women through intimidation, blackmail and physical violence, nor any mention of the abominable treatment of Muslim women, including such horrors as "honour-killing". The best he could do was this platitude: "Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons."

Having abandoned President Bush's support for democratic movements in the Middle East, Mr Obama said: "No system of government can or should be imposed on one nation by another." He made no mention of the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Muslim countries, and offered no support to those fighting for gender equality, independent trade unions and ethnic and religious minorities.

Buried within the text, possibly in the hope that few would notice, was an effective acceptance of Iran's nuclear ambitions: "No single nation should pick and choose which nations should hold nuclear weapons." Mr Obama did warn that an Iranian bomb could trigger a nuclear arms race in the region. However, the Cairo speech did not include the threat of action against the Islamic Republic – not even sanctions. The message was clear: the US was distancing itself from the resolutions passed against Iran by the UN Security Council.

As if all that weren't enough, Mr Obama dropped words such as "terror" and "terrorism" from his vocabulary. The killers of September 11 were "violent extremists", not "Islamist terrorists". In this respect, he is more politically correct than the Saudis and Egyptians, who have no qualms about describing those who kill in the name o

Ammendmant: He has quadrupled the defecit.

The British have just elected two members of the British National Party to the European Parliament. A backlash against being ripped off by members of both parties, but perhaps more against Gordon Brown, his liberal/labour policies, and the rights of the Brits being constantly stripped away.

This is a prime example of how dangerous obama is and where he plans on taking this country.

Back in the old days we used to say that England was five yrs behind America. As in, when it happens here, the US (whatever IT maybe) it will happen five yrs later in the UK. It appears that now the UK may be the canary in the coalmine. Mike, Sorry for hi-jacking this thread. Gotta hair accross my ass. >>>

England USA soon to be licking the boots of the Chinese . They are now in the process of creating an economy with a number of member states to create a Chinese Euro . No more dollar standard.

No Apologies here

Come gather round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon Youll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you Is worth savin Then you better start swimmin Or youll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin.

Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance wont come again And dont speak too soon For the wheels still in spin And theres no tellin who That its namin. For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin.

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Dont stand in the doorway Dont block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled Theres a battle outside And it is ragin. Itll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin.

Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And dont criticize What you cant understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is Rapidly agin. Please get out of the new one If you cant lend your hand For the times they are a-changin.

The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The order is Rapidly fadin. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin.>>>

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No need to apologize to me, Jed. Throw a few more hairs across your ass and carry on, you're doing quite well if you ask me. :)>>>

Problem here,we blamed the Reps for all the ills in the world and put the Dems back in. In 2012 we may well see what problems the Dems caused and re-insert the Reps. Then in 2016, re-elect the Dems. Etc Etc Etc So on and So on

So there are no losers between the 2 major parties. Just a sharing of power.

FAT and COMPLACENT. >>>

Yeah, I remember those days Mike, young as I was, but the party at the fore back then was the National Front which had a distinctly racist image not to say mandate. This is the agenda of the lefties in the UK now, to cast that same mantle over the BNP, portray them as racists as opposed to Nationalist. Admitedly there is a fine line between the two. Also, the time you are reffering two was the bailout of the UK by the IMF, the country, again, being under a Labour goverment. This was ended with election of Maggie Thatcher. The Iron Fist who broke the unions.........one of the best things for the country being held hostage by Scargill and his ilk.>>>

---Our freedoms have been eroding for many years as the public votes their wallet rather than electing leaders with integrity. You get the leaders you deserve. ---Jesus taught in the parable of the talents...to one he gave 5 talents, to another he gave 2 talents, to another he gave 1 talent. Upon returning the master asked for an accounting. The man with 5 talents invested wisely and now had 10 talents. The one with 2 talents now had 4 talents. The one with one talent was afraid and buried his talent. Jesus called him a wicked and lazy servant. ---Jesus said, take the one talent and give it to him who has 10. In Obamanomics it will be "Take 5 talents from him who has 10 and give it to him who has one." This is so each can "pay his fair share." In modern lingo it is called "good money after bad." ---The point is that success as taught by Jesus is rewarded not penalized. Failure is penalized. In a free market economy failure leads to bankruptcy with successful people picking up the assets of those that fail usually at firesale prices. That is as it should be. ---In Obamanomics failure is rewarded with gov't bailouts so those that failed in business (for many reasons) can go at it again at taxpayer expense. ---The parable is found in Mt 25:14-30. It might also be noted that we are not equal. Some have more than others. We don't all have the same starting point but we all can "double our money." Those who "do nothing" are rebuked in this story.

Lanny>>>

Good points, lanny, but Obie is simply the most excessive with his welfare grants, very, very far from the only one>>>

Lanny,

I would add one thing to Obamanomics............ take from those that failed, steal from those that had no control over the situation, then give it to the unions as a reward for campaign donations. That is exactly what's happening to the auto industry.>>>

Yo Peter, Looks like obama was listening to Putin after all...... http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D98OOJCG0&show_article=1>>>

The man (Obama) thinks that our Constitution and laws crafted around it are what's wrong with America........ if you ask me.>>>

I think these comments can be said about almost all politicians in recent (and not so recent years) and from what I can see nobody really knows what any of these late events are going to ultimately yield, no matter how much trajectory charting is done, or how intelligently. I'm not casting aspersions on the discussion, mind you, but I wouldn't single out Obama any more than I did Bush. Our job is to push back wherever and whenever we feel the need and never to expect a single person or a single posture to yield the kind of system we want. The ideal system we think we are looking back on was always a struggle, never existed purely, and can never be reconstructed permanently.>>>