In a move that has
many scratching their heads, the Nobel Committee awarded the
2009 Nobel Peace Prize to US Pres. Barack Obama even though
his achievements are few.
Nobel Committee Stuns Americans,
Surprises WH Staff with Prize for Obama The New Media Journal
The Nobel Committee stunned and puzzled the world community
by awarding the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to US President
Barack Obama, citing, "his extraordinary efforts to
strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between
peoples." The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited his outreach
to the Islamic world and attempts to curb nuclear
proliferation. The choice, which left many around the globe
bewildered, made Mr. Obama the third sitting US president to
win the Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Obama’s choice caught Nobel
observers off-guard because the nomination deadline for the
2009 award came less than two weeks after Mr. Obama took
office. When queried the morning of the announcement by ABC
News, White house staffers were so surprised that they
believed the inquiry to be a joke. At the announcement of
the award, there were audible gasps in the audience when Mr.
Obama's name was mentioned, as his achievements in the areas
cited by the committee are practically non-existent...It
appears that instead of recognizing concrete achievement as
it has done in the past, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee
intended the 2009 prize to support initiatives that have yet
to bear fruit, a move that in the 1930s would have seen the
committee entertaining the awarding of the prize to a young
Austrian who promised to unite and elevate the German people
to prosperity in the aftermath o World War I...
Headlines
Obama Adviser:
Sharia Law Is Misunderstood
President Barack Obama's adviser on
Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has
provoked controversy by appearing on a
British television show hosted by a
member of an Islamist extremist group to
talk about Sharia Law.
Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000
The request for troops sent to President
Barack Obama by the top US commander in
Afghanistan includes three different
options, with the largest alternative
including a request for more than 60,000
troops.
US Forces in Afghanistan
Leave Base After Brutal Attack
US forces have withdrawn from an
isolated base in eastern Afghanistan
after a fierce insurgent attack last
week that marked one of the deadliest
battles of the war for US troops, the
NATO-led coalition said Friday.
Britain to Train Pakistan’s Frontier
Corps
Britain is building a training camp for
Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps
in the southwestern province of
Baluchistan in an effort to combat the
Taliban presence around the porous
border with southern Afghanistan.
Suicide Attack Kills 42 in Pakistan
42 people were killed and more than 100
injured in a suicide bomb attack on a
bus in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan in
the bloodiest attack in the country
since the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the
leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in
August.
Somalia's al
Shabaab Declares War on Rivals Islamist Militants
Somalia's al Shabaab rebels declared war on rival Hizbul Islam militants on
Wednesday, setting up a showdown between
the two main insurgent groups in an
important southern port that could
spread across the nation.
Taliban Go Online to
Propagandize US Debate
The Taliban have said they pose no
threat to the West, in a move intended
to influence the debate currently taking
place in the Obama Administration over
the future of the Afghan war.
Scientist: Carbon Dioxide
Doesn't Cause Global Warming
A noted geologist who coauthored the New
York Times bestseller Sugar Busters has
turned his attention to convincing
Congress that carbon dioxide emissions
are good for the Earth and don't cause
global warming.
House Passes Expanded Hate Crimes Bill
The House, tacking the bill onto a
Pentagon spending bill, voted to expand
the definition of violent federal hate
crimes to cover those committed because
of a victim’s gender, sexual
orientation, gender identity or
disability.
Ethics Committee Expands Rangel Inquiry
The House ethics committee expanded a
investigation into US Rep. Charlie
Rangel (D-NY), digging into allegations
stemming from a restatement of his
personal finances that under reported
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
NMJ Radio The New Media Journal
NMJ Original
Show
This week The
New Media
Journal talks
Tea Party. NMJ
content advisor and correspondent Bob
Shoemaker and his wife Jen, an NMJ
research analyst and content advisor
herself, went to the Washington DC Tea
Party on September 12, 2009. They filed
a first-hand report after speaking with
members of the crowd. We wind up the
second half of the hour talking Iran and
jihad with Dr. Walid Phares, Senior
Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies.
NMJ-TV
Who Wrote 'Dreams from My Father'?
Blip.tv
President Barack Obama wrote two
best-selling books, one of them
Dreams from My Father. Jack
Cashill's examination of Mr. Obama's
writing brings to the forefront many
questions, among them, "who really wrote
Dreams from My Father?" In this
documentary based on Mr. Cashill's
writing, the hypothesis is offered that
surmises the book was authored by none
other that William Ayers. his hypothesis
is solid in its presentation. To wit,
how does a law student -- even a Harvard
law school student -- attract enough
attention to warrant receiving a
six-figure advance on a book deal from a
major publishing house? This is just one
of the questions raised in this short
documentary.
Repentance
by Ari Bussel The world
stood by uninterested when, for eight years,
residents of a small city near the Gaza
border could not rest. During the day, their
children playing outside or at school were
unprotected from a constant rockets
bombardment. During the night, everyone was
at home, but most homes lacked safety. There
was no place to hide, only to run away. Most
residents of Sderot stayed, unable to move.
They simply could not afford to do so.
Several factories had outlets in the area –
from food production to textile
manufacturing and afforded work for the
families. For the majority of the period,
the residents of area were deserted by
Israel as by the international community.
Every so often politicians stopped there for
a photo-op, but nothing of substance was
attempted.
Rescue Writers from
Scourge of Libel Tourism by
Rachel Ehrenfeld
Paul Williams has lived in Pennsylvania all
his life. Yet with pretrial proceedings that
begin today, Canadian libel laws now
threaten to ruin him financially. Williams
is a National Book Award-winning writer
whose 2006 éxposé, "The Dunces of Doomsday,"
revealed potential terrorist threats to the
United States emanating from McMaster
University in Ontario, Canada. Although the
book was published only in the US, he's
being sued for libel in Canada by the
university, which is demanding an apology
and $2 million in damages. Williams is just
the latest entry on an increasingly long
list of victims of "libel tourism" - a list
that includes me.
Government Is Not the
Answer,
Nor Is Obama by Dr.
Laurie Roth
Ronald Reagan said it best. Big Government
is never the answer. It is the problem! It
always masks itself at first as the savior,
problem solver, and the defender of the poor
and most needy. We saw this kind of
seduction and bold takeover strategy used by
Castro in Cuba, Hitler in Germany, Mussolini
and Stalin, to name but a few. They didn’t
gain power by stating their plans to control
all media, seize all guns, land and food
supplies. They didn’t talk about the mass
murders and torture to come once the
seduction was complete and distraction wore
off. They engorged themselves on the
societal worship they received while they
planned their reigns of destruction and
horror. Millions sat back and let them do it
as they prayed for them!
Is The Federal Reserve
a Secret Society? by
Sharon Hughes
While the White House claims an urgency to
pass healthcare reform, and while Christina
Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council
of Economic Advisers, tries to convince the
American people that the $787 billion
stimulus plan is working by hitting things
such as the $25 a week increase in
unemployment checks the now 9.4% unemployed
in our country are getting, the facts prove
otherwise. Holding something like this up as
proof that the stimulus plan is working is,
to put it mildly, unbelievable.
Hypocrisy of the
Radical Left:
A Call to Action by Dr.
Alan Bates, MD
How could a radical minority be elected by
Americans to run our government particularly
when that minority embodies values which are
the antithesis of our founding documents and
their emphasis on personal liberty? Most
Americans value honesty, integrity, and
self-sufficiency, and care not one whet
about controlling others' lives. But that is
hardly the case with the Far Left which has
reached critical mass in Congress and the
Administration. There are two reasons for
this.
Classic Insanity by Dr.
Sanity
"The definition of insanity is doing the
same thing over and over again and expecting
different results." I'm sure you've all
heard this famous definition of insanity,
which is quoted frequently, and is
alternately attributed to Ben Franklin, or
maybe Albert Einstein, or possibly some
football coach somewhere. Whoever it was who
said it first, the phrase remains popular
because it has a lot of face validity and
common sense behind it; and it happens to be
a powerful and fairly compelling statement
about the intractibility and the
pervasiveness of psychological denial and a
refusal to face reality as the underlying
foundation of insanely dysfunctional
behavior. Well here is a perfect example of
insanely dysfunctional behavior, and how the
Democrats and their clueless leader wish to
repeat the mistakes of the past; but this
time make them even worse...
Thoughts on the
Hysteria About Afghanistan by
Victor Davis Hanson
Afghanistan is a messy war, but so far it
has been conducted with a minimum loss of
American life while achieving some important
goals. We can argue about current
strategies, fault what’s been done in the
past, deplore the length of the war, lament
its cost, or blame each other for its
inconclusiveness, but the facts remain that
we removed the Taliban, weakened al-Qaeda in
the region, fostered a consensual government
in the most unlikely of places, and helped
to prevent another catastrophic attack on
our nation originating from that part of the
world — and did all this with a degree of
skill that is reflected in losses that by
historical standards are quite moderate.
It's Time to Pay Close Attention to the
Politicians by Frank
Salvato, Managing Editor
I have long said that we, the citizens of the United States, must demand
good government over politics from our elected officials. The need for
this demand has grown exponentially over the past four decades. While
We the People were pre-occupied with the trappings of the
self-centered 1960s, the self-absorption of the 1970s, the greed culture
of the 1980s and the falsely elevated self-esteem culture of the 1990s,
political opportunists and special interest operatives, cloaked in the
façade of public service, quietly took control of our federal
government. Now we are paying the price of cronyism politics over good
government.
Our Unalienable Universal
Natural Rights
by Nancy Salvato, Senior Editor
Prior to people compacting or agreeing to live in a society under a rule
of law to which they consent, they live in liberty, which refers to "a
state of exemption from the control of others.” This liberty is abridged
by the establishment of government. Civil liberty is the liberty of men
in a state of society, or natural liberty, so far only abridged and
restrained, as is necessary and expedient for the safety and interest of
the society, state or nation. A restraint of natural liberty, not
necessary or expedient for the public, is tyranny or oppression...
US Strategy for Afghanistan: Achieving Peace
in the Graveyard of Empires Dr.
Anthony H. Cordesman,
Center for Strategic &
International Studies
The president and his new national security
adviser have both said that ―we are not
winning. Others have talked about a
―stalemate. Let’s be more frank: we may be
winning tactical battles, but we are clearly
losing the war, and 2009 and 2010 will be
years of crisis. Under the right
circumstances, and with the right resources
and implementation, President Obama’s
proposed shifts in strategy may well be
enough to win the war. It is up to this
Congress to fully exercise its role in
ensuring that resources are adequate and are
being used to win, and that we do not again
fall into the trap of lying to ourselves
about what is happening. For seven years, we
have overpromised and underperformed. We
have spun what is happening into victory
while the enemy has gained, and we have sent
men and women home in body bags. It is time
to underpromise and overperform. The trends
in Afghanistan are not good. The decline in
our position can be measured in crude terms
by looking at the trends in violence,
although our count ignores many of the most
critical trends in Afghan-on-Afghan violence
and are far more accurate in some parts of
the country than in others. The US and her
allies continue to win every tactical
engagement. The fact is, however, that
tactical victories are irrelevant if the
insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan continue,
if the insurgency gathers strength, and if
the insurgency steadily expands its areas of
influence. We are fighting a battle of
political attrition on the enemy’s terms,
and they are winning. US and UN intelligence
maps that were issued or leaked during 2005
to 2007, and more recent NATO/ISAF maps
issued in January 2009, show that the size
of the high-risk areas inside Afghanistan
have increased by 30% to 50% every year
since 2005. Kabul is scarcely under siege,
but it has turned from a city where NATO/ISAF
and aid personnel could wander as tourists
to one so filled with violence that the U.S.
and foreign compounds have become the
equivalent of a ―Green Zone.
Featured Book
Keeping a Republic
by
Nancy
Salvato
This free PDF eBook by Nancy Salvato,
the Director of Constitutional Studies
for BasicsProject.org, examines the
issue of American sovereignty and how it
relates to the continued well-being of
our Republic. From the deliberations
undertaken during the framing of the US
Constitution to the challenge of
maintaining national sovereignty in a
time of Progressive globalization,
Keeping a Republic examines the
philosophy and ideology that served the
Framers in creating the United States of
America, ideals valid to this very day.
Featured DVD
Ronald Reagan:
Rendezvous with Destiny This
documentary examines
and celebrates the life and legacy of
the 40th President of the United States.
Hosted by Newt and Callista Gingrich,
it tells the story of the
Reagan presidency and the three pillars
that shaped his time in office: reviving
the American economy, restoring America
s spirit, and challenging the oppression
of the Soviet Union.
