The Coming State of Eurabia

Clifford May writes a column at National Review about a new book by Bat Ye'or. Ye'or is a refugee from Egypt who has been writing for thirty years about the plight of Christian and Jewish dhimmis - religious minorities living in Muslim lands as second-class citizens. Her book, Europe, Globalization, and the Coming Universal Caliphate, looks at Muslims living in lands that once were Christian but which today call themselves multicultural. She predicts Europe will not remain multicultural for long. She's convinced that Europe is well along the way toward dhimmi status and will in the not too distant future be dominated by Islamic extremists and transformed into “Eurabia”:

Committed to a multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious, and multilateral ideology that rejects patriotism and even national identity and cultural pride, afflicted by guilt over their imperial and colonial past — and ignorant about more than a thousand years of Islamic imperialism and colonialism — Europeans have become dhimmis in their own lands; inferiors who accept their status and submit.

Muslims in these lands are not so guilt-ridden or timorous about their cause or its justness. Under the banner of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) they're determined to establish Islam and Sharia throughout the West. Ye'or calls the IOC a kind of caliphate which in contrast with Europe:

...rejects multiculturalism, openly professing the superiority of the Islamic faith, civilization, and laws.

The caliphate,” Bat Ye’or concludes, is “alive and growing within Europe....It has advanced through the denial of dangers and the obfuscating of history. It has moved forward on gilded carpets in the corridors of dialogue, the network of the Alliances and partnerships, in the corruption of its leaders, intellectuals and NGOs, particularly at the United Nations.”

May closes his piece with a warning:

If you think that’s alarmist, if you think the OIC sincerely seeks cooperation with the West or that Europeans know where lines must be drawn and have the courage to draw them, read her book. Or just wait a few years.

Trifecta

Those who want to know what the Solyndra mess is all about should read former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy's piece at National Review.

Evidently, the Obama administration is hip deep in mud on this one. Not only were they complicit in fraudulently promoting a business that everyone told them was heading for bankruptcy; not only did they bestow a 535 million dollar gift, courtesy of the taxpayers, upon a company even though everyone told them it was an enormous risk, but they also circumvented the law that would allow the taxpayers to recoup some of that 535 million in the event of the bankruptcy that everyone told them was coming. Instead, they illegally restructured the arrangement so that Solyndra's major investors would get reimbursed first, and, just by coincidence, one of the major investors happened to be one of Mr. Obama's premier fundraisers in 2008.

McCarthy opens his column with this:

The Solyndra debacle is not just Obama-style crony socialism as usual. It is a criminal fraud. That is the theory that would be guiding any competent prosecutor’s office in the investigation of a scheme that cost victims — in this case, American taxpayers — a fortune.

Fraud against the United States is one of the most serious felony offenses in the federal penal law. It is even more serious than another apparent Solyndra violation that has captured congressional attention: the Obama administration’s flouting of a statute designed to protect taxpayers.

He goes on to explain what happened and how the laws were broken. Maybe someday the name "Solyndra" will take its place alongside the word "Watergate" as a byword for White House scandal.

Since WW II there've been basically three reasons why voters have turned against presidents: Bad economy (Carter, Bush Sr.), unpopular war (Johnson, Bush Jr.), and scandal (Nixon, Clinton). President Obama appears on course for achieving the trifecta.