http://news.investors.com/Default.aspx 01/12/2012 04:29 PM ET – Initial jobless claims unexpectedly jumped by 24,000 last week to 399,000 as more workers lost their jobs, the Labor Department said Thursday. At the same time, the economy continues to lose workers. In the 30 months since the recession officially ended, nearly 1 million people have dropped out of […]
http://www.momentmag.com/moment/issues/2012/02/Alaska.html
That Great Big Jewish Land by Yereth Rosen
The 49th state was built by Jewish people, Jewish money and Jewish know-how. And although their numbers are small, Jews are still disproportionately prominent in commercial and public life.
In 1938, as the Nazis laid plans to annihilate European Jewry, a few desperate Jews dreamed of escaping to the other side of the world: Alaska. Joachim Hein, from Breslau, Germany, was one of many who wrote to the American Department of Interior for permission to immigrate to the vast northern territory with his wife, Anna, and daughter, Henny. “We shall in no way [be] a burden for the country,” he wrote in a letter now in the National Archives, “because we take our electric machines from here and furnish a manufacture in aprons and linen, like we have had here. But if this business is not agreeable to your Excellency, we are prepared to [do] every work.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/151660#replies
The EU plans a “land grab” in Judea and Samaria, seeking to gain PA control of Area C, in violation of the Oslo Accords.
The battle for control of Judea and Samaria – and specifically Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under Israeli military and political control – may come down to a “horse race,” if the European Union decides to act on a policy paper that was published by Hebrew daily Yediot AchronotThursday. According to the document, “Area C and Palestinian state building,” the EU plans to encourage, and fund, Arab building and development in Area C, without bothering to seek Israeli approval for projects, and in violation of laws regarding zoning, security, and the environment.
* Under the Oslo Accords, Judea and Samaria is divided into three areas:
* Area A, which is fully administered by the PA, and which Israelis are banned from even entering – both by Israel and the PA;
* Area B, which is formally under Israeli security control, but is under PA control for all other purposes; and
* Area C, consisting for the most part of the “settlement blocs,” such as Gush Etzion, Ma’aleh Adumim, and the Jewish towns in Samaria in the vicinity of Ariel.
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/a_crawl_through_the_fairy_dust George McGovern promised to “crawl on my knees” to Hanoi to quit the war in Vietnam. That didn’t win many friends among the grunts who fought the war designed by all those Harvard men, and Mr. McGoo’s campaign crashed and burned to the applause of nearly everyone in that distant year of 1972. No […]
http://times247.com/
Shariah law in America’s courts
Washington Times
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
A panel of federal judges has ruled that states cannot protect their courts from jurists who base their decisions on international or Koranic law. America needs better judges. Read more…
Read more at: http://times247.com/
Ahmadinejad gets honorary degree at Havana U.
AP
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
News
At the University of Havana, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received an honorary doctorate, railed against the United States and its allies and said heartless capitalism is the root cause of war. Read more…
Read more at: http://times247.com/
Obama’s appointee served on Soros boards
Read more at: http://times247.com/articles/obama-s-new-czar-tied-to-soros-occupy-acorn
http://times247.com/articles/obama-s-new-czar-tied-to-soros-occupy-acorn
Prior to her appointment yesterday as the next director of President Obama’s Domestic Policy Council, longtime immigration reform advocate Cecilia Munoz served on the board of George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
Munoz also chaired the board of directors of the Center for Community Change, or CCC, a Soros-funded community organizing initiative whose board boasts activists from ACORN, MoveOn.org and other radical groups. …
Tides functions as a money tunnel in which major leftist donors provide large sums that are channeled to hundreds of radical groups. Read the original article at WND.com
http://www.steynonline.com/4782/the-mutant-present
Flipping channels in my hotel room the other night, I caught ten minutes of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, a film I like enormously. It’s an “old” movie, from the Fifties, but Cary Grant’s suit is pretty much identical to the suits around today. Likewise, his shirt and tie. The architecture is familiar. To a viewer from 2011, a film from the 1950s is a glimpse of an earlier version of what’s still recognizably our world.
But what would a visitor from Eisenhower’s America make of our time? He might eventually get around to marveling at the iPod and Twitter, but I would bet his initial reaction would be complete amazement at the people. Instead of the sober suits and hats of a 1950 Main Street, men and women crowd the sidewalks in brightly colored leisurewear that, to his mid-century eyes, gives them the air of overgrown children, especially when slurping sugary drinks through straws from containers not dissimilar to baby bottles. He would observe that a remarkable number of these people are extremely large, waddling along like supersized moppets. The actual children are also strikingly overweight. If he went into a big-box emporium, he would be struck by how unhealthy many of the inhabitants are, cruising the aisles in motorized carts. If he were in almost any American city, he would notice that almost everybody serving him — at the newsstand, at the coffee shop — appears to be an immigrant of ethnicities barely present in the United States 60 years ago.
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/287918
It’s funny, in an Orwellian way, that in Europe there are now militant groups with such cutesy names as Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4Holland. Less funny, but perhaps more Orwellian, is this: Last month, the European Foundation for Democracy (EFD) held an event in Amsterdam featuring two speakers who favor liberalizing Islam. More than 20 members of these pro-sharia groups pushed their way in shouting “Allahu akbar!” They demanded the event be stopped, called the speakers apostates, spat on them, threw eggs at them, and threatened to kill them. Proud of these actions and apparently not overly concerned with legal consequences, they even made a YouTube video of their “protest.”
Now here’s the least funny and most Orwellian part: Very few Europeans — very few journalists, politicians, members of the self-proclaimed Human Rights community, or Muslim organizations claiming to be moderate — have expressed outrage over this boot-stomping suppression of free speech in a city, country, and continent that claim to value freedom and tolerance. Imagine if the situation had been slightly different — if, say, a Muslim Brotherhood event had been violently disrupted by spitting, egg-throwing, death-threatening Christians or Jews.
Roberta Bonazzi, EFD’s Italian-born executive director — a friend and colleague of mine — bravely vowed not to be silenced. “We are united and will continue to support inspirational Muslim reformers across Europe,” she said. The speakers she had attempted to feature also kept a stiff upper lip. Irshad Manji, Canadian author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, said that she and Dutch parliamentarian Tofik Dibi had “refused to leave, even when police asked. We wouldn’t play on jihadi terms.” Dibi, of the Green-Left party (and of Moroccan descent), said “the disruption shows that even in the Netherlands it is necessary to continue the debate on reforming Islam.”
Necessary, yes; safe, no. In Europe, increasingly, free speech ends where Islam, Islamism, and even Islamic terrorism begin. Two months ago, the Paris offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo were firebombed and its staff targeted with death threats after publication of an issue “edited” by the prophet Mohammad.
In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered on an Amsterdam street: He had directed a film about the treatment of women in Islamic societies. The film’s author, Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, also was subjected to death threats. She subsequently fled to America.
In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons satirizing terrorism in the name of Islam. That led to protests, riots, death threats, an assassination plot, and the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan.
http://www.jweekly.com/includes/print/63850/article/groups-that-demonize-israel-place-themselves-outside-the-tent/ Groups that demonize Israel place themselves outside the tent U.C. Berkeley’s Jewish Student Union’s decision to deny membership to J Street U created controversy. Opponents of the decision claim that J Street is pro-Israel, no Jewish group should be excluded, and that any exclusion is undemocratic and alienates students.Yet those who oppose J Street’s […]
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/12/obama-scissorhands
Slashing defense even as he promises new systems no one will be able to deliver.
There are two ways to react to President Obama’s latest round of defense spending cuts. One is emotional but somewhat justified. The second is to analyze of Obama’s plans critically to reveal a transformation of our military that is as dangerous as Obama’s transformation of our economy.
Since Obama appeared with Defense Secretary Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey in the Pentagon press room last Thursday, many commentators have written and railed at length on radio and television about how these cuts will hollow our forces’ readiness to fight.
That reaction is understandable but it isn’t on more solid ground than Obama’s plan, because neither the plan nor the common reaction deals with the real dangers our nation faces.
Under former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Obama imposed about $400 billion in defense spending cuts by his “Queen of Hearts” method of budgeting for defense: verdict first, trial after. They ended, for example, production of key weapon systems such as the F-22 fighter, the C-17 transport aircraft, and the DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer.
Gates imposed those cuts before the Quadrennial Defense Review — “QDR” in the inevitable acronym — was performed. The QDR was supposed to be the congressionally mandated analysis of the threats the Pentagon is expected to deal with and from which its budget is supposed to be derived. But Gates and his team wrote the post-cuts QDR to justify the cuts rather than to justify a budget that answered the threats.
How the UN Achieves Sustainable Peacekeeper Rape Posted By Claudia Rosett
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/how-the-un-achieves-sustainable-peacekeeper-rape/
Year after year, since 2005, the United Nations has proclaimed its “zero-tolerance” policy [1] for UN peacekeepers sexually exploiting or even raping the people they’re sent to protect. Year after year, the abuse continues. One of the more recent horrors took place last year in Haiti, when five UN peacekeepers allegedly pulled an 18-year-old Haitian into a UN base, pinned him down on a mattress, beat and raped him. Part of the scene, in which he screams for help while being assaulted, was caught on video.
Haiti’s president protested. The five peacekeepers, all from Uruguay, were sent home to face prosecution. Uruguay’s ambassador to the UN apologized. But now comes a report from ABC News — “Haiti Outrage: UN Soldiers from Sex Assault Video Freed [2].” ABC’s Brian Ross reports that the case has apparently stalled. It’s been put on “indefinite hold.” And a UN official has confirmed to ABC that the former peacekeepers have been turned loose. It seems the Uruguayan prosecution could not find the victim, though ABC’s Ross notes that his name and address are well known, “if there is any interest in finding him.”
It gets worse. ABC’s report includes an interview with a UN peacekeeping official, an American, Assistant Secretary-General Anthony Banbury [3]. Asked if there’s any way to ensure that UN peacekeepers accused of sexual exploitation and assault will face justice, he simply admits, “Sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t.” In an earlier incident, when more than 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti were expelled for sexually exploiting underage girls, there was no sign they were ever prosecuted. That’s been largely the way of it, as cases of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers [4] have turned up again and again, in places such as the Congo, Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Burundi, Haiti, and South Sudan.
