Many years ago, Science News or Scientific American had an article on negotiation strategies. Their conclusion was that the best strategy was “Tit-For-Tat”. If your negotiating partner is cooperative, then be cooperative. If not, pay back the same way. Many business courses also support this view. Negotiations include actions as well as words. Actions […]
DANIEL GREENFIELD: BILL DE BLASIO’S OPEN DOOR FOR TERRORISTS http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/bill-de-blasios-open-door-for-terrorists/print/
“I want at least 1,000 to 2,000 to die in one day,” Shahawar Siraj told an NYPD informant.
The Pakistani illegal alien and Muslim bookstore employee was discussing his plans to kill as many New Yorkers as possible. “I’m going to f___ this country very bad.”
But before Siraj and his collaborator could bomb the 34th Street subway station, they were arrested. Their plans to bomb the subway and Macy’s came to nothing. But under Bill de Blasio, the New York Police Department would never have been allowed to lay a finger on them.
Some years later, Ahmed Ferhani was telling an NYPD undercover detective about his plan to bomb churches and synagogues. He talked of blowing up “the biggest synagogue” in Manhattan, dressing up as a Jewish worshiper, planting a bomb and walking away.
What both cases had in common was a lack of external leads. They weren’t Al Qaeda members. Their attacks would have been as much of a shock as the Boston Marathon bombings or the Fort Hood shootings. They were the “lone wolf” Jihadists who have become today’s terrorist threat.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/america-grows-weary-of-war-while-our-enemies-amass-their-forces-sequestrations-national-security-toll
As the U.S. cuts important military capabilities to meet arbitrary budget reduction targets, the Department of Defense and the nation’s security will continue to take a beating without some new long-term budget and strategy agreement.
The security of our friends and allies, such as the Republic of Korea, Germany, Columbia and Israel, will also suffer as we risk cuts to tactical air support for Seoul, NATO support for extended nuclear deterrence in Europe and counter insurgency assistance for Bogota against FARC, and missile defenses for Tel Aviv.
Why are we in this predicament? Sequestration — automatic defense budget cuts — are cutting $50 billion a year out of $350 billion in our defense spending this year, and every year, for the next eight years as part of the 2011 debt reduction agreement.
As military personnel costs and the overseas war contingency funding are exempt from such cuts, the remaining accounts — of research, development and acquisition of weapons systems –are being hammered. Moreover, these cuts come on top of the overall defense cuts of $300 billion in 2009; the $175 billion cut in 2010, and the $487 billion cut in 2011.
Added together, defense spending from 2009-2022 has, and will be, reduced by more than $1.5 trillion, not including a projected further near-trillion dollar reduction in 10-year costs of overseas contingency operations such as in Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen.
To avoid further sequestration, we need a new long-term budget agreement — including entitlement reform with spending restraints. Otherwise, as the October 2, 2013 Congressional Budget Office update warned, the U.S. economy will be hard pressed under such rising spending and a growing debt to have sufficient capital to invest in new business to employ the 24 million Americans not now employed or working only part-time.
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/10/17/remembering-america/?print=1 I was having lunch yesterday with a politically mature Democrat, one of those “Scoop Jackson” fellows you read about in books but — unless you are older than I am — have probably never met outside a book’s pages. These are the chaps who see a fairly large role for government but who are […]
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6027 Time to go cold turkey Much is being made of Thursday’s Washington Post piece by David Ignatius asserting that Turkey supplied Iran with the names of several Iranians cooperating with the Mossad. It is not clear whether these were the same “Israeli spies” whose executions were reported last April by Iran’s state media. It […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/361573/print Every day this month, activists are meeting on a different Newark street corner at 5 p.m. Each marks the spot of a different murder, and they are trying to drive away the “murderous spirits” they believe have taken hold of their city’s young men. It wasn’t any particular event that spurred them to action, […]
http://politicalmavens.com/ “Gravity” is a stunningly beautiful visual experience, capturing the vast stillness of space in a way that highlights man’s existential plight in the universe. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play two astronauts who become unmoored while on a routine assignment by the news that debris from an exploded satellite is hurtling towards […]
http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=2096&c=22205&m=20691&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce 1. According to KPMG, one of the four largest CPA firms in the world, investments in Israeli start-ups during the third quarter of 2013 ($660MN) were the highest since 2000, 34% higher than the second quarter and 35% higher than the third quarter of 2012. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, another big-four CPA firm, […]
www.shmuelkatz.com Recently, the Jerusalem-based online newspaper, “The Times of Israel,” ran an interview under the headline, “When they become PM, they realize how utterly dependent Israel is on the US.” The headline was a quote from the interview subject, Eitan Haber, a former aide to late-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Haber was explaining why, in […]
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/oct/15/sickening-anti-semitism-view/
Yes, The View is at it again. For the details, please go to Debbie Schlussel’s article here. As for me, as someone who escaped all that when it came to Toulouse, France, I cannot stomach too much of this, thinking as I did, that history will not repeat itself. Our kids will be safe. Our grandchildren will never have to endure. Never again, right? Wrong! For here we go again.
Those of us who weathered the likes of Auschwitz, we complacently believed that once was enough, that one Holocaust was enough to satisfy the bloodlust that is inherent upon those who are stricken with that particular sickness of the spirit known as anti-Semitism.
Been there, done that, so we wrote off Europe, as from day one that is the place where the cry has been great against the Jewish people. Over there even the grass that feeds the cows is anti-Semitic. Gone viral is a video of a British couple that had their wedding ruined by a bigoted film-maker. That is Europe and so what else is new?
But Coming to America, this golden land, we felt safe, or no more at risk from bigotry than any other group…and here we prospered along with our neighbors. We gave America and the rest of the world the cure for polio, providing our Einsteins and our Salks in many fields besides science, so it is no wonder that a Jewish refugee from Russia, Irving Berlin, wrote “God bless America.”
He was right. America is a land to be blessed.
