Displaying posts published in

January 2012

CAROLINE GLICK; AMERICA AND THE ARAB SPRING

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11294/pub_detail.asp
A year ago this week, on January 25, 2011, the ground began to crumble under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s feet. One year later, Mubarak and his sons are in prison, and standing trial.
This week, the final vote tally from Egypt’s parliamentary elections was published. The Islamist parties have won 72 percent of the seats in the lower house.

The photogenic, Western-looking youth from Tahrir Square the Western media were thrilled to dub the Facebook revolutionaries were disgraced at the polls and exposed as an insignificant social and political force.

As for the military junta, it has made its peace with the Muslim Brotherhood. The generals and the jihadists are negotiating a power-sharing agreement. According to details of the agreement that have made their way to the media, the generals will remain the West’s go-to guys for foreign affairs. The Muslim Brotherhood (and its fellow jihadists in the Salafist al-Nour party) will control Egypt’s internal affairs.

JOEL POLLAK: ACTUALLY, BOB BECKEL…BOTSWANA DOES HAVE A LOWER INCOME TAX RATE THAN THE US…..

http://bigjournalism.com/jpollak/2012/01/24/actually-bob-beckel-botswana-does-have-a-lower-corporate-tax-rate-than-the-u-s/

Actually, Bob Beckel, Botswana Does Have a Lower Corporate Tax Rate than the U.S.
Today, on Fox News Channel’s The Five, liberal panelist Bob Beckel praised President Barack Obama’s efforts at job creation: “One good sign of the economy is there are more manufacturing jobs created in the last two years than the last eight,” he said.

Beckel did acknowledge that American manufacturing was still in a bad state, and lamented that the manufacturing sector “has been bleeding jobs because corporations are going to find cheap labor overseas.”

His conservative colleague, Republican strategist Andrea Tantaros, interjected: “So cut the corporate tax.” Fellow conservative Eric Bolling backed her up–”A hundred percent right, Andrea!”–and added that U.S. corporations pay the highest tax rates in the industrialized world, after Japan recently lowered its rate.

Beckel, on the defensive, retorted: “As much as Botswana?”

FOOD FIGHTS AND CLASS WARFARE: DANIEL GREENFIELD

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

There was a time when full tables signified prosperity and thick waistlines were considered attractive. The ability to eat one’s fill was what separated the gentry from the peasant making do with a few crusts and salted leftovers. Fat was in because it represented leisure and wealth. Thin meant you were on the road to the poorhouse or to consumption, which meant your body was being consumed, not that you were the one doing the consuming.

Then feudalism went the way of the dodo, agriculture was revolutionized and starvation went extinct in the West. Between the widespread availability of cheap food and social welfare programs covering everything from soup kitchens to food stamps, it became hard to starve. Not only was the availability of food no longer associated with prosperity, but even the poor had begun to eat so well that fat began to carry working class and lower class associations.

BRITAIN GETS RID OF THE “PRESS GANG”…..AND MORE GOOD NEWS

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/ Britain Gets Rid Of The Press Gang, & More Good News, Naturally “Press TV seems to have disappeared!” came the excited, if incredulous, voice on Friday. “I keep clicking on [Sky digital channel] 515 and there’s nothing there!” Knowing that a serious complaint had been filed with Ofcom about the Iranian satellite propaganda news […]

DAPHNE ANSON:AL- HA’ARETZ BLUNDER DRAWS THUNDER FROM DOWN UNDER

Ha’aretz’s Blunder Draws Thunder From Down Under

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

The leftwing Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz recently carried this highly tendentious article by Akiva Eldar about Australian Jewry and Israel. Its headline? “Israel is shaming Australian Jews”

I know for a fact that online ripostes, even by well-informed and well-respected Middle East analysts, failed to find their way onto the Comments section. Deliberate suppression on the part of a newspaper which prides itself on its own gift of free speech, no matter how critical it is of the policies of its beleaguered nation? It would seem so.

But unfortunately for the newspaper, and for Eldar, the leadership of Australian Jewry is made of sterner stuff than its lily-livered counterparts in the Mother Country. There are comparatively few “trembling Israelites” in Australian Jewish circles, perhaps because such a large proportion of the Jewish community Down Under is derived from Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

IBD: WHO IS VETTING MUSLIM CHAPLAINS ON CAMPUS?

http://news.investors.com/Article/598759/201201241804/college-muslim-chaplains-al-qaida-hamas-background-checks.htm

Homeland Security: To please Muslim-rights groups, more and more colleges are hiring Muslim chaplains, only to watch them radicalize students. Campuses need tougher background checks.

Alarmingly, some chaplains have actively supported al-Qaida and called for violent jihad against “kaffirs,” or infidels. And yet they still have access to students, and remain on the university payroll.

Take Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, Muslim chaplain at Northeastern University in Boston. He has urged Muslims to pick up the “gun and sword” on behalf of recently imprisoned al-Qaida terrorists.

Last month, Faaruuq held a fundraiser for Aafia Siddiqui, a one-time MIT student also known as “Lady al-Qaida,” who’s serving an 86-year prison sentence for opening fire on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Siddiqui, a senior al-Qaida operative based in Pakistan, was captured with notes about a “mass casualty attack” in the U.S., along with a list of New York landmarks.

“What a brave woman she continues to be, and how much her bravery and her faith and her belief warrants our support at this time,” said Faaruuq, as he encouraged Massachusetts Muslims to help raise $30,000 for her appeal.

“She’s only guilty of defending herself,” he said. In fact, Siddiqui yelled “Death to America” as she fired on soldiers. A federal judge called her actions premeditated.

While ignoring such evidence, the Northeastern chaplain condemned American soldiers as “kaffirs” and exhorted Muslims to “cut through” them with machetes.

“Go out and do your job,” he said, referring to jihad. READ MORE AT SITE

JAMES DELINGPOLE: GREENPEACE’S FOREST POLICY IS UNSUSTAINABLE

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100131545/greenpeaces-forest-policy-is-unsustainable/ Here is a guest post from one of my environmental heroes, Patrick Moore. The reason he’s an environmental hero is because, unlike so many campaigners in the green movement, he doesn’t believe that in order to save the world its necessary to destroy Western industrial civilisation. I highly recommend his superb book Confessions of […]

RUTHIE BLUM: IT’S JEWISH MONEY STUPID!

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1253

Last week, on Jan. 19, U.S. President Barack Obama released a video called “America and Israel: An Unbreakable Bond.”

The seven-minute clip is an amalgamation of sound bites from the president’s own speeches, interspersed with statements made by different prominent Israeli leaders, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Its apparent purpose is to refute claims on the part of the Republicans that the Obama administration is anti-Israel. Its true goal is to keep the president’s campaign afloat with Jewish cash.

To achieve this objective, the video features the voices of President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, and Netanyahu himself waxing poetic about Obama.

It’s a neat trick.

SCOTT WALKER’S SUCCESS IN WISCONSIN….LABOR REFORM LAWS ARE WORKING: CHRISTIAN SCHNEIDER

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_1_scott-walker.html

One morning last February, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker called his staff into his office. “Guys,” he warned, “it’s going to be a tough week.” Walker had recently sent a letter to state employees proposing steps—ranging from restricting collective bargaining to requiring workers to start contributing to their own pension accounts—to eliminate the state’s $3.6 billion deficit. That day in February was when Walker would announce his plan publicly.

It turned out to be a tough year. The state immediately erupted into a national spectacle, with tens of thousands of citizens, led by Wisconsin’s public-employee unions, seizing control of the capitol for weeks to protest the reforms. By early March, the crowds grew as big as 100,000, police estimated. Protesters set up encampments in the statehouse, openly drinking and engaging in drug use beneath the marble dome. Democratic state senators fled Wisconsin to prevent a vote on Walker’s plan. Eventually, the Senate did manage to pass the reforms, which survived a legal challenge and became law in July.

TURKISH WOMEN VICTIMS OF “PERMITTED’ RAPE: VELI SIRIN

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2773/turkish-women-permitted-rape

At the beginning of the New Year, as reported in the daily newspaper Haber Türk (Turkish News) of January 6, 2012, E.D., a 25-year old man in the northwestern Turkish city of Bolu, took his 11-year old “wife,” Z.Ç., to the hospital because she suffered pain. The news story identified the couple only by their initials. The doctor diagnosed the girl as eight months pregnant by her “husband.” Whether the girl was in a condition to consent to sexual relations is obviously questionable. One would more probably assume she was raped by the 25-year old.

Marriage to an 11-year old girl is illegal in Turkey, but such cases are a constant in the country’s life.

The doctor called for the girl to be kept in the hospital for in-patient care, but her “spouse” refused, and the couple returned to their village, Alpagut, near Bolu. The hospital released them after the girl signed a document declaring her wish to leave the facility.