Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories): 1. Poll: Gore Beats Hillary in New Hampshire
2. One-Child 'Terror Campaign' Continues in China
3. Viguerie: Fred Thompson Is No Conservative
4. Signs Warn of a Hezbollah Coup in Lebanon
5. Osama's 'Army of Doctors and Engineers'
6. We Heard: Haditha, Romney, North American Union
1. Poll: Gore Beats Hillary in New Hampshire
Hillary Clinton leads her Democratic rivals a new poll in New Hampshire, site of
the nation's first primary. But put Al Gore in the mix and Hillary comes out a
loser.
If Gore entered the 2008 presidential race, he would beat out Clinton in New
Hampshire by a margin of 32 percent to 26 percent and defeat all other announced
Democratic candidates, according to the poll of likely Democratic voters.
"Gore is the only Democrat, including Hillary, who can instantly melt the
field," David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research
Center — which conducted the poll — said in remarks reported by the Washington
Times.
With Gore not in the race, Hillary led her Democratic rivals with 37 percent of
the vote. Barack Obama was in second with 19 percent, following by John Edwards
and Bill Richardson at 9 percent each.
Story Continues Below
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney now leads in New Hampshire with 26 percent
of the vote, up from 17 percent in March, followed by Rudy Giuliani at 22
percent and John McCain and undeclared candidate Fred Thompson at 13 percent
each.
Riots have broken out in a number of Chinese towns in protest over the Communist
government's policy of limiting families to one child — a campaign that has
included the forced termination of late-term pregnancies.
Steven Mosher, president of the pro-life Population Research Institute, said
that in 1979-80, he witnessed local officials in Guangdong province arresting
hundreds of pregnant women and aborting their fetuses against their will — even
if they were already in labor.
Now he writes on the Institute's Web site that the same atrocities are being
committed in neighboring Guangxi province today, as well as in other provinces
across the country: "The one-child terror campaign continues to the present day,
violating women and tearing apart families throughout China.
"In fact, the only thing unusual about this latest campaign is how quickly news
of these atrocities spread outside China. Guangxi province is not far from Hong
Kong. No sooner had the campaign begun in May of this year than word reached the
former British colony and from there the outside world."
The Hong Kong and foreign press also reported that local officials were imposing
fines — sometimes equal to several years' income — on women who had already
given birth to a second child.
In response to these tactics, "riots broke out in 28 towns throughout the
region," according to Mosher.
"Thousands went on the rampage, storming government buildings, breaking windows,
smashing furniture, and vandalizing vehicles."
The official Xinhua News Agency claimed there were only 28 arrests stemming from
the riots, but Mosher writes that "hundreds of armed police" had to be called in
to quell the disturbances.
Mosher concludes: "How many more millions of women will have to suffer forced
abortion before China's leaders realize the bankruptcy of the policy they
adopted so long ago?"
Conservative icon Richard Viguerie says Fred Thompson disappointed the right
wing during his eight years in the Senate and there is no reason to believe he
would be change his stripes as president.
In an article headlined "Conservatives, Beware of Fred Thompson," Viguerie
called the "Law & Order" actor and expected presidential candidate a
"marshmallow Republican" who was ineffectual at investigating President Bill
Clinton's Asia fundraising scandal, and said: "Why should we expect Thompson to
be any more effective against, say, the other partner in the Clintons' 20-year
plan to rule the nation?"
A consultant and direct mail specialist, Viguerie maintained that the only time
Thompson played a major role on a significant piece of legislation in the
Senate, he was "on the wrong side of the fence," pushing for the McCain-Feingold
campaign finance bill.
Viguerie has been quite unhappy with George Bush as well. His latest book was
"Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans
Hijacked the Conservative Cause."
Viguerie also was a harsh critic of President Reagan during his presidency.
Reports from the Middle East indicate that the conflict between Hezbollah and
its opponents in Lebanon could turn violent this summer.
Articles in the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal have warned of a planned coup by
Hezbollah forces backed by Syria and Iran. A report by the Middle East Media
Research Institute (MEMRI) noted: "The articles stated that the threat voiced by
Syrian President Bashar Assad during his April 2007 meeting with U.N. Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon, namely that the situation in Lebanon would 'reach the point
of civil war,' was actually 'an official declaration of the coup he is now
staging in Lebanon.'"
The articles also report that Hezbollah was continuing military preparations for
the coup in a number of locations in Lebanon, and stockpiling weapons for a
conflict with Israel.
On July 5, the Iranian news agency IRNA disclosed that Syrian authorities had
told all Syrian citizens in Lebanon to return to Syria by July 15. An Israeli
Arab daily confirmed that report the following day.
Commenting on the MEMRI report, Walid Phares — director of the Future Terrorism
Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy — said Hezbollah and its
allies "will form a government of their own and take control of large parts of
Lebanon . . .
In another ominous development, former senior American Middle East peace
negotiator Dennis Ross recently said "there is a risk of war" between Israel and
Syria this summer.
He said that while "nobody has made any decision" about going to war, "the
Syrians are positioning themselves for war" and have "rearmed Hezbollah to the
teeth."
Many British citizens were shocked to learn that most of the Muslims arrested in
connection with the London and Glasgow terrorist plots are medical doctors. But
one former jihadist is not surprised at all.
Ed Husain, author of "The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What
I Saw Inside and Why I Left," said that he attended extremist Islamist meetings
with dozens of medical students at the Royal London Hospital, and Islamists
studied at almost every British medical school and at Britain's most prestigious
engineering schools as well.
And "yesterday's Islamists are today's terrorists," he writes in an opinion
piece for Newsweek.
Husain points out that many prominent figures in the world of terrorism have had
technical training. Osama bin Laden ran a construction company; his al-Qaida
deputy Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri is a pediatrician; the 9/11 mastermind Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed is a mechanical engineer; lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta was an
urban planning student in Germany.
"Without exception, Islamist movements attract urbanites with a secular,
technical educational background," writes Husain, who believes he knows the
reasons why: "In the Arab world, the parental and social pressures on young
people to pursue medical and engineering careers only compounds the misery of
creative young minds, forced to study subjects under duress.
"Thousands of undergraduates seek greater meaning in life, an experience beyond
the mundane necessities of medicine, and a purpose that occupies their free
time. Islamist networks neatly slot into this void.
"As a teacher at the University of Damascus in Syria, I listened to the
frustrations of my students who yearned to study subjects that interested them:
literature, philosophy, theology, history, or art. But becoming a doctor was the
only way to please their parents, attain high social status, and in many cases,
escape the Arab world and live in the West. Sadly, often that 'escape'
radicalizes young Arabs."
Husain asserts in Newsweek that what he calls the increasingly prevalent
"do-it-yourself (DIY) attitude" of doctors and engineers to the study of Islam,
without the direction of trained theologians, produces "desperate, angry suicide
bombers devoid of spiritual guidance . . ."
THAT a U.S. Air Force officer has high praise for NewsMax's ongoing, in-depth
coverage of the Haditha incident and its aftermath.
Several Marines were charged with murdering innocent civilians in Haditha, Iraq,
in November 2005, charges that NewsMax correspondent Phil Brennan has
consistently shown to be questionable.
In an e-mail to Brennan, long-serving Master Sgt. Dean McKendree, who is
stationed in Korea, wrote: "I want to thank you for the story published through
NewsMax.com titled 'The Haditha Heroes' on July 11. Though I am an Air Force
Senior NCO, I have followed this incident closely. When 'everyone' else had
convicted them, you kept on going. I thank you again."
THAT NewsMax.com was the No. 1 choice of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign
for online ads during a recent one-month period.
NewsMax carried 1.6 million impressions promoting the Romney campaign during
that period, more than three times as many as the No. 2 site, Yahoo News,
according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
THAT opposition is growing to the creation of a North American Union that would
unite the U.S., Canada and Mexico in a single political entity and could
effectively erase the borders between the three countries.
The legislatures in 19 states have now introduced or passed resolutions opposing
the establishment of the NAU.
The prospect of such a union has loomed since the leaders of the three countries
agreed in 2005 to set up the Security and Prosperity Partnership.
Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., who has sponsored an anti-NAU bill in the U.S.
Congress, told NewsMax: "I hope that more Americans will become aware of the
Security and Prosperity Partnership, which will lead to a North American Union
and the destruction of the sovereignty of the United States."