While they are at it, they should remember to also praise Norway for this little stunt:

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1261100.ece

What the english version of this news pieces doesnt reveal is that a norweigian priest actually suggested that if the comedian wanted to show some courage he should burn a copy of the Koran along with the bible. The comedians response was that he didnt have a copy handy and that he felt he still had 20 good years left of his life.

Posted by: ExpatriateDK at March 31, 2006 7:53 AM

I think the new name of Rice's office should be the "State of Ignorance" Dept. They are always out of touch.

Posted by: John Sobieski at March 31, 2006 8:29 AM

Who hires and promotes the people in the State Department? Certainly just by chance they should be right on an issue once in a while. They seem to be going 0-for the last 5 years at least...pick any issue.

Posted by: eve_anne_gelical at March 31, 2006 10:03 AM

Stop the "merry go round"; I'm getting a little dizzy here!

Posted by: Mackie at March 31, 2006 10:27 AM

Even MORE outrageous:

Rice, in Britain, defends democracy in Arab world

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2006/March/theworld_March1001.xml§ion=theworld

State Dept Secretary Rice states it was "Arab authoritarianism", not Islamist Extremism, that inspired 9/11 attacks

Rice: "Who today would honestly defend Arab authoritarianism which has created a sense of despair and hopelessness so desperate that it feeds
an ideology of hatred that leads people to strap bombs to their bodies and fly airplanes into buildings?"

Posted by: jeffreyimm at March 31, 2006 1:00 PM

Rice:"Who today would honestly defend Arab authoritarianism which has created a sense of despair and hopelessness so desperate that it feeds
an ideology of hatred that leads people to strap bombs to their bodies and fly airplanes into buildings?"

She is right! Even the muslims themselves dont like arab authoritarianism. It's not nearly strict enough for their tastes. What has happened so far is only a weak preview of what will happen if islam gets to truly rule the middleeast (or other countries).

Posted by: ExpatriateDK at March 31, 2006 1:17 PM

Rice mentions "Arab authoritatarianism." That shows the limits of her mind. She should, and others would, have gone further: "Islamic authoritarianism" or "Islamic despotism." They would noted that of the 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Countries, none are democracies in the Western sense, and only a handful bear any semblance to democracy at all. And these are countries where Islam has, in one way or another, been constrained. Lebanon is a member of the O.I.C., but what distinguishes Lebanon is that it has a large and still-powerful Christian community, and a half-century ago Christians, now down to about 35% of the population, were about 50%, and during the period of the French Mandate (for Syria-Lebanon) the Christians were protected, and for centuries before that, Christians had helped determine the character of Lebanon.

The other exception to the general rule of Islamic despotism is Turkey. Why? Well, just as Lebanon has a very large Christian population, as well as Druse who are not Muslims but a separate sect altogether,Turkey had Ataturk, and for three-quarters of a century Ataturk and his successors, the keepers of the posthumous cult of personality (this did Ataturk and the idea of the "Turk" help displace, for the secularists of Turkey, Muhammad and Islam), systematically limited the political power of Islam.

But Rice does not see this. And even if she did see it, she would not dare to hint at it. She would never openly ask the obvious question: is there something about Islam itself, in its fearful crushing of all opposition, its severe punishments for dissidents (i.e., those question basic elements of, or even try to leave, Islam), including not only social ostracism but economic ruin and even a possible death sentence, and in the discouragement, by extension, of every kind of free and skeptical inquiry, for that can lead to all sorts of worrisome questioning of Islam itself, and in the habit of mental submission, the habit of regarding oneself as part of a collective and never as an individual, the habit of obedience to authority, as long as that authority is declared to be "Islamic," so that a despot who is nonetheless Muslim will be obeyed.

These are the questions to be asked. She won't ask them. She's stuck on her record of "Arab auhoritatarianism."

And we, alas, are becuase of her, and others like her, both above her and below her, in the White House, in the State Department, in the Pentagon, in Congress, and in the press, radio, and television, are also stuck, stuck, stuck. And it is we who pay the price for the stupidity and mental laziness of others.

This is not right.

Posted by: Hugh at March 31, 2006 2:02 PM

Read a commentary by Georgia Ann Geyer about the threats to the first world no longer being from the failed third world states but from unassimilated third world immigrants coming into the first world. She started by making some good points, but got a little muddled towards the end. To her credit she did try to state that Mexican immigration into the U.S. is not the same cultural assault as islamic immigration into Europe, but she equivocated the two on a higher level as mere disrepect for national borders.

Her facts on Russia, however, were spot on.

MUCH INTERNATIONAL NEWS POINTS TO A COMMON THEME

For the last few turbulent weeks -- from the monumental problems of the Iraq and Afghan wars, to illegal immigration in the U.S., to breakdown in Russia, to Islamist and labor riots in France -- I have done the usual things journalists do to try to uncover a central, core sense of new realities around us.

You're on the phone with colleagues and sources, often overseas. You stop in at a few think-tank meetings to hear specialists talk; you seek out interviews in the administration or other appropriate places -- and suddenly, if you're lucky, a theme jumps out at you from the detail of the daily search.

This time, one did. After the Third World examples of "failed states" in the '70s and '80s, I have the sense that today, we are missing the degree to which the big, "stable" countries are being threatened. They are being challenged in somewhat related ways, usually by cultural invasions of immigrants who do not choose to share the culture they are supposedly joining. And the big countries have no idea what to do about it.

Let's start in an unexpected place -- Russia, with its Islamists. Two weeks ago, Paul Goble, for many years a brilliant Russian analyst with Radio Free Europe who now teaches in Estonia, came into town with some startling information.

"Today in Russia," he told a small group of us, "20 million of Russia's 143 million people are Muslims, and many more are activists. The post-Cold War idea of a 'Common European Home,' with Russia joining Europe, no longer exists.

"Moscow now has between 2.5 million and 3 million Muslims (out of approximately 10 million people), and many now call it the 'Second Mecca.' The growth ahead is staggering. Russians are having l.02 children per family, while the Muslim Tatars and Caucasus peoples are having six to 10 children per woman. In 2004, 45 percent of the live births in Moscow were to Muslims.

"By 2025-35," he then proclaimed, "assuming that the Russian Federation stays within its present borders, it will have a Muslim majority -- within our lifetimes."

(This is one reason that Russian President
Vladimir Putin has not given up on bringing Belarus and Ukraine back into unity with Russia, an act that would diffuse the Islamist majority that is coming.)

...

Finally, the French scholar Olivier Roy, arguably the world's foremost specialist on Islam, was here this week, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His point came out of the recent experiences in France with the day-after-day riots by Islamist youths. They are not connected at all to their parents' countries, he said, but support a worldwide "ummah" of believers. They are "deterritorialized," and it is highly unlikely that they will take part in the French nation or culture because "If you are French, you can't be a Muslim."

Obviously one needs to be cautious about dealing with these new themes and with comparing them too closely. But it is becoming clear that the developed, industrialized countries (I'll include Russia imperfectly in that description) are under attack from without. These attacks are, in truth and in spirit, primarily cultural. Americans are afraid of the 11 million to 20 million illegal aliens already in America, and more to come, because they will change our culture, our history and our meaning for all time. Europeans and Russians are afraid of Muslims for the same reasons -- and because the Muslims, too, do not at heart want to become Europeans and Russians.

The power and model of the United States, largely because of the Iraq war, is already, to use the term of scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski, dangerously "delegitimized" in the world. The destruction of its culture by hordes of illegals could be the straw that breaks modern history's back.

Posted by: Lisa at March 31, 2006 2:19 PM

Metropolitan Kirill is correct to criticize the US for its blatant hypocrisy. As Russia abandons militant atheism and returns to its Christian roots, she will be better able to reverse the demographic decline and resist Islamic expansion. This should be supported, not condemned.

Posted by: Provoslavni at March 31, 2006 2:27 PM

"Metropolitan Kirill is correct to criticize the US for its blatant hypocrisy. As Russia abandons militant atheism and returns to its Christian roots, she will be better able to reverse the demographic decline and resist Islamic expansion. This should be supported, not condemned."

-above

Let me make clear that I do not believe in "militant atheism" and am thus not defending Russian totalitarianism in any way. However, you present an outlandish argument: that Russia is returning to its "Christian" roots and it can thus resist Islamic expansion. Kindly prove that assertion. If anything, I see just the reverse happening.

Posted by: Kafir Nonbeliever at March 31, 2006 8:08 PM

Clinton missed a gigantic opportunity to unite Russia and the U.S. during the period of Yeltsin, before the Russian mob and border wars with Slavic seperatists and rising jihadist Muslims soured the chance. A move toward real cultural exhanges could have solidified Russia's first steps out of totalitarianism, but Bill was more fixated on a thong than his nation's future, much less the Western world's.

Bush is doing just as poor a job in securing the common interests of Russia and the U.S., failing to recognize that we are brothers and sisters in the same struggle against the next tyrannical global terror state.

Focused on idiocies that squandered his "political capital" on the foredoomed and untimely folly of his "social security reform" and now his reward-the-lawbreakers / "guest worker program", better known, in laymen's terms, as amnesty for border-violating invaders.

There is no sign of anyone else in government- with a chance at gaining power- who appears any better informed about the crossroads of history we are now approaching:

The Time of the Failure to Resist Cultural Terrorism.

Bowing to nearly every demand that we adapt to the beliefs of those who have contempt for our nation, our traditions, and aim to destroy our freedoms.

And still talking in the language of pre-9/11.

Our enemy is in a conscious total war mode.

While we are pussyfooting toward oblivion.

Unwilling to even call Islamic Imperialism by its real name.

Barbarians can only be stopped with the pure barbarism of real warfare.

We seem not to have to stomach to save our guts.

It looks like the mid-1930's, but without the general American pride and inherent love of country that existed back then and could be drawn upon during a crisis.

Off to email Curt Weldon.

The disgust must be passed on.

Posted by: profitsbeard at April 1, 2006 12:29 AM

Too many "to"'s above. I meant:

"We seem not to have the stomach..."

Posted by: profitsbeard at April 1, 2006 12:33 AM

WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH!!! Who would have said that the State Department had such a brilliant sense of humour?

Posted by: Paolo at April 1, 2006 12:36 AM

What is news here. Anyone looking at State language for 20 years and the reports themseves for as long has they have been produced would see a glaring anti-Orthodox trend.

In Russia the church was crushed by the Marxists. When the Soviet oppression ended, what did the Western Christians do? help the church recover? no they came in with massive prostelytizing campaigns

Posted by: FrankLev at April 1, 2006 8:08 PM

Kafir Nonbeliever,

A nation is better able to resist Islamicization if its culture is strong and vibrant. Russia is in a crisis because its 70 year experiment with athiestic communism has been an absolute disaster. As the Muslim peoples of the former Soviet Union are undergoing a Saudi-financed islamic revival, the Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist peoples of Russia lack any similar outside support. Of course, the overwhelming majority of Russians are of Slavic Christian background.

It is a return to these roots of Russian culture, that will give Russia a solid historical base to re-assert itself against Islam. Although, I am a confirmed believer in the truth of historical Christianity, I am being very pragmatic here. After all, even a Russian athiest is the heir to a Christian, Jewish or Buddhist culture and can proudly affirm his/her heritage.

As for reversing the demographic decline, this is pragmatic as well. Religious people, whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist (or, unfortunatly, Muslim) tend to have more children than secularized families. As the Chechens, Tatars, and other Muslims try to outbreed everybody else, it is very important that Russians and other Europeans reverse their suicidal population decline.

Posted by: Provoslavni at April 1, 2006 11:17 PM