Who can blame them?

Christians are fleeing Lebanon to escape political and economic crises and signs that radical Islam is on the rise in the country. In a poll to be published next month which was exclusively leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, nearly half of all Maronites, the largest Christian denomination in the country, said they were considering emigrating. Of these, more than 100,000 have submitted visa applications to foreign embassies. Their exodus could have a devastating effect on the country, robbing it of an influential minority which has acted as an important counter-balance to the forces of Islamic extremism.

About 60,000 Christians have already left since last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. Many who remain fear that a violent showdown between rival Sunni and Shia factions is looming. "If we love our children we have to tell them to get out," said Maria, a Christian mother of one from the northern city of Tripoli, who refused to give her surname for fear of reprisal. "When my daughter finished her high school I sent her to Europe, and I will follow her if I can."

Christine, another Christian woman, said that all of her family's younger generation had left the country, adding that Tripoli had become increasingly Islamised in recent years. There is a rising number of veiled women and religiously bearded men on the streets - although she blamed economic and political instability for much of the emigration. Christians, who make up 22 per cent of the population, have historically played a major role in the development of Lebanon's political, social and cultural institutions. Currently the president, the army commander and the head of the central bank are all Maronites, and under the agreement which ended the civil war in 1989, half the 128 seats in Lebanon's parliament are reserved for Christians.

"Lebanon has always been a bastion of religious tolerance, but now it is moving towards the model of Islamisation seen in Iraq and Egypt," said Fr Samir Samir, a Jesuit teacher of Islamic studies at Beirut's Universit‚ Saint-Joseph.

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ELSEWHERE

French Right promises to impoverish France: "Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading candidate for the French presidency, has emerged as an unabashed economic patriot.... Sarkozy ripped into the takeover of Arcelor, Europe's largest steelmaker, by Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian steel magnate. A "mistake," declared Sarkozy: "Look at the waste of Arcelor, which we sold off on the cheap because we believed the steel industry was history. They got it wrong. They lied." Calling free trade a policy of naivete, Sarkozy promised an "industrial policy." He has in mind retaining industry and restoring manufacturing jobs to a France that has been losing both. France's economic destiny cannot be left to the market, he told young entrepreneurs in Paris."

Census data unsafe: "Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The Census Bureau surveys the population every decade with detailed questionnaires but is barred by law from revealing data that could be linked to specific individuals. The Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily repealed that protection to assist in the roundup of Japanese-Americans for imprisonment in internment camps in California and six other states during the war."

The big initiative chill: "Sometimes citizens need to bypass state legislators when they decline to pass a law that voters like but politicians don't. Citizens can be wrong, of course. But it's not as if legislators pass only good laws. Besides, citizens are, often, right. Representative Kirk Adams has introduced measures to 'solve' the 'problem' of citizens having too much say. The proposals include giving lawmakers the power to gut it a few years after it has passed, letting lawmakers write the title of a measure, making it harder to fund an initiative, making it harder to collect signatures, making it harder to pay signature gatherers for actually gathering signatures. Representative Adams simultaneously tells reporters that he's not trying to undercut the power of people to make laws -- and that if his measures aren't accepted, lawmakers will have to consider ... more drastic measures."

The power of freedom: "Of the almost 7 billion people on this planet, only 300 million are Americans. To put that in perspective, less than 5% of the population of this planet are Americans- and yet, the world is obsessed with our existence and what we represent. In the course of just over 200 years, we have provided the world with ideas, contributions and realities that are in the consciousness of every human being on the planet. Given our numbers and short history, we should not have had this profound influence on history and mankind- and yet, we have. The secret to our our successes and influence can be attributed to one powerful word: Freedom. The notion that all men are created equal, is a biblical concept. It took America to make that a reality, in those ideas called freedom and democracy. "They will beat their swords into plowshares.nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore," can only come about as the result of freedom and democracy for all mankind. It is folly to believe that anything less will bring about peace"

Iraq: Jihadists behead, roast Christian toddler: ""When they cook a dish in the Middle East, it is traditional to put the meat on top of the rice when they serve it. They kidnapped a woman's baby in Baghdad, a toddler, and because the mother was unable to pay the ransom, they returned her child - beheaded, roasted and served on a mound of rice." The infant's crime was to be an Assyrian, but this story, reported by the Barnabus Fund, went unnoticed in the West, like so many other horrific accounts of Christian persecution in Iraq. Since the invasion of Iraq, Muslim militants have bombed 28 churches and murdered hundreds of Christians."

Muslim taxi-drivers at work in Norway: "Blind woman Gry Berg, accompanied by her guide dog, was denied entry into four taxis in the center of the city of Oslo, Norway, this March. Three of the drivers claimed that their unwillingness to accept her dog was due to allergy, while the fourth one simply locked the car doors and refused to give an explanation for why he wouldn't let Ms. Berg into his cab. Andreas Strand, leader of the youth organization of The Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted, reacts strongly to this treatment. "It makes it difficult for blind people to live a social life," he says. Strand claims that it has become an increasingly common problem that blind people accompanied by guide dogs are denied access to taxis, and has written a letter of complaint to the three companies whose drivers were involved in this particular incident."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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