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Between May 29 and July 1919, an expedition organized by Cambridge astronomer Arthur Eddington and the Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson photographed first an eclipse of the Sun (May 29) and then, a month later, the stars where the Sun had been during the eclipse. By comparing the two photographs, the deflection of light caused by the Sun’s gravity could be precisely measured. Einstein’ gravity theory predicted a deflection value of 1.75 arcseconds, and Newton’s gravity theory a value half that. The results were announced in November 1919 to a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society....

The brutal end of Moammar Gadhafi was foretold. It is an end that despots want to cheat, and some do, as Stalin and Mao did. But Gadhafi became a hunted man, and it was only a matter of time when the hunt for him was over. It was Gadhafi’s misfortune to fall into the hands of his tribal foes, unlike the Iraqi despot. Saddam Hussein was, ironically, lucky to be found by American soldiers instead of being trapped like a hunted animal, and his life extinguished as mercilessly as he had killed his opponents. There is none despised more in...

Every year around this time the world witnesses a parade of heads of state arriving in New York. This marks the opening of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly when free people of open democratic societies are deluged with advice or insults by dictators and despots from around the world. This year is no different than previous years ever since the failed League of Nations was given a new lease under the banner of the United Nations. Those individuals who can recall history will remember the League was the grand scheme of progressive politicians, such as Woodrow...

The Libyan mission Operation Odyssey Dawn, under UN authority, is a dog's breakfast and nothing good is going to come out of it. The conniving elite of the Arab League has snookered an ever-ready coalition of western powers to do its bidding. And the western powers (Britain, France, the U.S. and Canada dutifully in tow), with their sights protectively fixed on oil-rich desert patches of the Middle East and North Africa, needed little urging to respond. This operation, as repeatedly broadcast by coalition leaders, is to save Libyan lives. Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague, for instance, announced in Parliament: "Our...

We are creatures of history even as we make history. (Click here for Roger L. Simon's reply to Salim's original letter.) Dear Roger,Thanks for your extending our conversation in cyberspace. I welcome your questions, and expect more to follow.I believe it is more than right for you to pose them, since I wrote you as a Muslim. In these times, Muslims do have a lot to answer for — and non-Muslims do have reason to be skeptical.But I am a student of history, much more so than theology, and I trust you will grant me the following observation. We live...

Dear Roger, Since 9/11 I have been mulling over the words of Georgi Arbatov pinned on the wall above my desk. I don’t believe in conspiracies, and I strive to keep my distance from the sophisticates of the Chomsky school of conspiracy-peddlers. But I do believe in what Barbara Tuchman described so well in The March of Folly. Folly, it seems to me, is the most severe and unforgiving sin of politicians, especially politicians responsible for the security of societies in advanced cultures of relative freedom, such as ours at this time in history. As Martin Walker, then the...

For the past several years, the buzz among those who take more than passing interest in world affairs has been about the meteoric rise of Communist-controlled China as the new global power. There are those around the world who view China’s emergence as a certainty, long anticipated, and deserving celebration. For them, this historic development is also indicative in some ways of the diminishing importance of the West, and in particular the decline of the U.S. from its pre-eminent superpower status. Among the many voices who have thrown caution to the wind in embracing China’s rise as inevitable and good...

The Arab rejection of the Jewish state has been the main obstacle for peace in the region. Canada is right to give Israel our diplomatic support. Perhaps no foreign-policy file, apart from Canada’s bilateral relationship with the United States, stirs more domestic controversy than Ottawa’s role in the Middle East, particularly under the present stewardship of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Critics view the strong public support Harper and his ministers have given Israel since 2006 as undermining Canada’s long-standing balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict. For Harper’s critics, the troubling reality is that Ottawa has abandoned the constructive role of...

Point de bascule, or the tipping point, is a Montreal-based French language webmagazine. It is dedicated to explore and expose Islamist activities in our midst, particularly in Quebec. Point de bascule is the creation of Marc Lebuis, a remarkable French-Canadian with a passionate interest in global affairs and adeep concern about the dangers of Islamism to his country. Last Thursday, Point de bascule held a press conference open to the mainstream media and public to discuss the latest lecture tour of Tariq Ramadan in Montreal and Ottawa sponsored by Islamist organizations, such as the various chapters of the Muslim Association...

Into the ninth year since the menace of Islamism spilled out well beyond the borders of the Arab-Muslim world, the West and the U.S. in particular continue to be incoherent about how to respond. To get a sense of this incoherence in dealing with Islamism effectively, we need to recall how the west, led by the U.S., dealt with a far greater existential challenge from the Bolshevik-Communist threat of the Soviet Union armed with nuclear might. Continent in ruins At the end of the war against Hitler’s Germany, Europe lay in smouldering ruins, its population terrorized, broken and displaced. The...

In an authoritative essay published in The Wall Street Journal, Abdurrahman Wahid, the first president of newly democratic Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, described what constitutes "right Islam" as distinct from "wrong Islam." He warned people of good will to recognize that "a terrible danger threatens humanity." This peril, Wahid wrote, emanates from an "extreme and perverse ideology in the minds of fanatics," specifically "Wahhabi/Salafist ideology -- a minority fundamentalist religious cult fueled by [Saudi] petrodollars." The importance of this essay, and the warning in it, comes from the prestige of the author. Abdurrahman Wahid is an Islamic scholar who...

The revulsion of Iranians for the political system that has imprisoned them for three decades was triggered by the disputed results of the June 12 election. Once, however, the opposition took to the streets and the regime spilled blood to intimidate the people, it became transparently clear the revulsion a majority of Iranians are displaying is not over details of the rigged election. It is directed at the bloody-minded theocracy oppressing them, and its overthrow most Iranians want. Those with the misfortune of living inside totalitarian regimes know -- except for their apologists and the delusional lib-left crowd in the...

Nineteen months or seemingly an eternity ago, in March 2007, the Washington Post published a long background piece by Peter Slevin on senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, and the relationship that connected both to Saul Alinsky (1909-72) of Chicago. The life experience Obama brings as his credentials for the White House is of a community organizer in Chicago. Slevin reported Alinsky's disciples hired Obama to "organize black residents on the south side, while learning and applying Alinsky's philosophy of street-level democracy." In 1985 Obama moved to Chicago and there discovered Alinsky through his disciples and writings. It...

In his final State of the Union address on Monday, President George W. Bush spoke again at length about the war on terror, and the strategic importance of a "free Iraq" in securing a beachhead for freedom and democracy in the Arab heart of the Middle East. Bush reminded Americans and others that the free world is "engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century" against those -- the Islamists and their supporters -- opposed to "every principle of humanity and decency" that free people hold dear. Iraq and Afghanistan liberated from the clutches of tyranny will be...

The recent release of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report on Iran's nuclear program has been received by critics of the Bush administration as vindication of their insistence that Iran poses no threat to peace and stability in the Persian Gulf region and beyond. The key judgment -- Tehran halted its nuclear program in the fall of 2003 -- is surrounded by extensive qualifications indicating difficulties in assessing Iranian nuclear intentions, and that the NIE "does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons." In refusing to make such an assumption, the intelligence community does not tell the...

History does not progress in a straight line for people from whichever point they set forth to their desired end. This illusion is served by retrospective view, and then deviations explained as results of people's ignorance or the caprice or duplicity of leaders as those today on the liberal-left -- those on the right in their time displayed the same tendency -- mindlessly repeat the silly phrase "Bush lies and people die." The politics of the Arab Mideast show how improbable is the idea of history's linear progress in the region. More than 500 years of Turkish rule of this...

The upside about the Mideast conference to be hosted by the Bush administration at Annapolis, Md., is the low expectation of all parties for any dramatic breakthrough to bring to an end the Palestinian-Israeli dispute over land and refugees prior to establishing the Palestinian state. The downside is predictable. Failure on the part of the United States to meet the one-sided Palestinian demands -- by leaning on Israel -- without any assurance or evidence that Palestinians cease supporting terrorism, will be grist for terrorists, their supporters and apologists in the region. The plain truth about such Mideast conferences is the...

There comes a point at which diminishing returns on most issues begin to go negative. Such a point in denouncing Islamist terrorism and equally the Muslim majority's silence against this menace was reached sometime ago. As Islamist terrorism, however despicable, became mundane occurrence in the daily news cycle, the deafening silence of Muslims -- except for lonely voices of feeble opposition -- has given credence to growing numbers of non-Muslims that Islam is as much a religion of peace as the Klanmen's politics is an expression of multiculturalism. But there is another side to this abject reality. The Muslim majority's...

Iran's Shiites seek expansion, power By SALIM MANSUR Toronto Sun Saturday, February 3, 2007 Even as Democrats in the U.S. Congress work overtime to manufacture a U.S. defeat in Iraq, and their domestic supporters and well-wishers outside of America cheer them on, there is another devious battle unfolding in the Middle East. The sectarian conflict inside Iraq was ignited with demonic precision by the al-Qaida forces. Their publicly announced purpose was to derail the unfolding democratic process set in motion by elections within a constitutional framework, and wreck the hopes of the Iraqi people for freedom and decent living....

Stay the Course To win the war on terror, we need to be strong. By Salim Mansur The old Brechtian adage, that the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line, is a useful reminder for most observers of American politics to pause and reflect on the situation in post-Saddam Iraq. There has been much doubting recently among those who support President George Bush's bold undertaking in the war on terror about where his policy is now headed after liberating a portion of the Middle East and liberating Iraqis. The reason for such doubting stems from the...