Historians are likely to look back at 2009, the first year of Barack Obama’s term in office and assess the damage it has done to Americans and to the image of America as the primary line of defense against the world’s thugs.

Recently, tragedy struck Samoa in the South Pacific Ocean in the form of a tidal wave triggered by an earthquake.  American Samoa is an unincorporated state southeast of independent Samoa.

For centenaries reformation within Islam has been impeded by several factors. This is clearly evident by the fact that many of the current leading Islamic scholars preach of today’s values such as stoning of adulteries, violent jihad, slavery, beating women, anti-Semitism, and many other inhumane teachings. Deep analysis of the factors that impeded reformation within Islam illustrates that the Internet can play a major role in making it a reality.

Two letters from the U.K.’s Health Protection Agency to top neurologists, sent on the eve of a massive vaccination program against the H1N1, or swine flu, virus and leaked to a British newspaper, warn doctors to watch for an increase in cases of a fatal brain disorder which could be triggered by the vaccine.

While the movie ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ was good cinema, it was also a big fat Hollywood fiction.  With Greece’s fertility rate of 1.36 children per woman - well below the replacement level of 2.1 - “big” is not a modifier demographers would associate with today’s Greek families.  In fact, a more accurate film might be called ‘My Big Fat Muslim Wedding’. 

The so-called “McCarthy Era” is commonly pictured (and ridiculed) as a bunch of paranoid alarmists running around believing there was a Communist under every rock.

Freedom of the press is on trial in Canada. - The trial is before a court with the Orwellian title of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The accused are Maclean’s magazine and author Mark Steyn. The crime: In mocking and biting tones, they wrote that Islam threatens Western values.

Minneapolis: Dropping any pretense of objectivity and non-partisanship, the “National Conference for Media Reform” on Saturday night turned into a Barack Obama-for-President rally, as left-wing media figure Arianna Huffington denounced Senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain as a “Trojan horse for the right” who had “sold his soul” to become president.

In late April, AccuWeather.com, led by Joe Bastardi, its chief meteorologist, issued a news release that was, to be kind, pure mush. The early warning forecast for 2008’s June to November hurricane season said that conditions like La Nina and a “continued warm water cycle in the Atlantic Basin” held forth the “chance for U.S. landfalling storms.”

The Daily Record(1) in Baltimore, Maryland recently published a story by Brendan Kearney that oddly seems to present a conflict between a bank employing Islamic Shari’ah law with its American investments and some black American borrowers and painting it as a racist issue. Sadly, the real story, that of Islamic law being imposed on American investors, is sidelined in order to pursue the race card. ( Full story reprinted at BlackEnterprise.com(2) )

An eagerly awaited public rally was to take place in Brussels - the capital of the European Union - on September 11 of this year. Called ‘Against Islamisation of Europe,’ its intent was to protest the spreading of Islamic sharia law across the European continent and honor by a minute of silence the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.

CHEBARKUL TESTING RANGE, Russia (AP)—Fighter jets streaked through the air as Russian and Chinese forces held their first joint maneuvers on Russian land Friday in a demonstration of their growing military ties and a shared desire to counter U.S. global clout.

Gordon Brown’s first Washington visit as Britain’s prime minister has prompted tea-leaf reading about the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S.-UK relationship. Momentarily diverting--and probably unavoidable--as the frenzy of speculation is, the real tests lie ahead. Actions ultimately trump semiotics in national security affairs.

It’s 2:15 on a French afternoon, and I am as usual at this time of day sitting in a cafe waiting to pay the bill for lunch. And waiting. And waiting. When you hear talk of the slowness of French meals, you may imagine haughty waiters languidly presenting an elegant meal. I am sure that happens too. But as it happens, I am not anywhere elegant. I am sitting in a very unremarkable seafood restaurant by the harbour in Dieppe.

Islamofascism is fast over taking the immigrant communities of old Europe. Now, by “immigrant community” Europeans mean Muslim immigrants, of course. Whether they be Moroccans, or Africans or what have you, large segments of Europe’s immigrants are from Muslim countries and these insular communities are long past the point of being merely troublesome already having become an outright danger. It has been a long time coming, but some Europeans are finally getting to the point of having had enough. More and more are finally beginning to speak out. But Europe’s empty PC attitudes and platitudes are hard in dying.

On any given day, about a dozen plainclothes police officers mill around the entrance to Hu Jia’s housing complex on the outskirts of Beijing, on the lookout for anyone attempting to visit the well-known human rights defender.

China has launched a four-month “war” on tainted food, drugs and exports, state media reported on Friday, as beleaguered officials embraced time-tested campaign tactics to clean up the country’s battered image.

BEIJING—China on Thursday said a global recall of millions of its toys was the responsible thing to do, but said that was the result of new industry standards _ not poor quality.

CHENGDU, China: A highly infectious swine virus is sweeping China’s pig population, driving up pork prices and creating fears of a global pandemic among domesticated pigs.

Pratibha Patil has just been “elected” President of India by votes cast by national lawmakers and state legislators.  Patil, was hand-picked by Congressional Parliamentary leader Sonia Ghandi, a powerful feminist who rode into power on the back of Nehru-Ghandi family, and who has been the woman jiggling knobs behind the curtain of the Prime Minister’s office for many years.

Back in 2005, I wrote an earlier version of this current analysis.

Jordan’s King Abdullah is clearly feeling the pressure as the spotlight increasingly focuses on the role Jordan will have to play in resolving the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank between Jews and Arabs.

Mel Gibson has a new movie out, Edge of Darkness.

The headline of Avi Yellin’s article in January 22, 2010’s Israel National News/Arutz Sheva read , “Mitchell Pitches a New 5-Point Plan for Middle East Negotiations.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visited Turkey on 6 January and attempted to dance his own version of the Turkey Trot - 100 years after its first introduction to the ballroom floor.