Displaying posts published in

2013

BRITISH M.P. DAVID WARD CLAIMS JEWS PERPETRATE ATROCITIES AND COMPARES MID EAST CONFLICT TO “HOLOCAUST” SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2567/british_member_of_parliament_claims_liberated_jews_perpetuate_atrocities_compares_mid_east_conflict_to_holocaust

Liberal Democrat MP David Ward has been said to have ‘breached common decency’ for his remarks about “the Jews”, conflating the Middle East Conflict with the Holocaust

REGRETS…HE HAS A FEW….AND HAS TAKEN DOWN THE OFFENDING STATEMENT FROM HIS WEBSITE…..RSK

British Member of Parliament David Ward has issued a statement to the ‘Asian Image’ magazine, juxtaposing the Middle East Conflict with the Holocaust.

As Holocaust Memorial Day is to be observed on Sunday, the Liberal Democrat MP, upon signing the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment in the House of Commons, stated:

“Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Ward’s statements come at a particularly sensitive time, and many will argue that the comments indeed are in breach of the European Union Monitoring Centre’s definition on anti-Semitism, of which it is stated that, “Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)” is a particular example of anti-Semitism.

TWEET ABOUT DAVID WARD’S COMMENTS BY CLICKING HERE

Ward’s comments may be said to fall foul of the definition, as they actively seek to contrast the Middle East conflict, which is indeed an ongoing conflict between various parties, with the oppression and mass slaughter of the Jews under Nazi Germany.

David Ward is the Member of Parliament for Bradford East, the constituency that neighbours George Galloway’s Bradford West. Campaigners have told The Commentator that Ward’s comments are ‘disgusting, deplorable and factually inaccurate, bordering on anti-Semitism and breaching all levels of common decency in the run up to Holocaust Memorial Day”.

US Envoy Sees “Strong, Unrelenting Bias Against Israel” at Human Rights Council but Urges J’lem’s Cooperation Nonetheless. (HUH?)

THANKS TO http://www.eyeontheun.org/articles-item.asp?a=7818

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=300857

‘Israel to boycott UNHRC despite US protestations’

GENEVA – Israel is expected to boycott the UN Human Rights Council next week despite the United States urging its ally to show up for an examination of its record, the US ambassador said on Thursday.

The Jewish state is scheduled to be in the dock of the Geneva rights forum on Tuesday, Jan. 29 as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, the council’s regular scrutiny of all United Nations member states.
“They (Israeli officials) signalled that they want it postponed. It is very unlikely they will participate on the 29th,” US human rights ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe told reporters in Geneva.

“I’m fairly optimistic we will find a solution that does not undermine universality or cooperation. That is my hope.”

Israel’s last review was in December 2008, when it attended. A boycott would be unprecedented and diplomats fear other countries might follow suit to avoid scrutiny of their human rights records.

Israel suspended relations with the council last May because of what it called an inherent bias against it, and has informally told the council’s president, Poland’s ambassador, that it wants the session postponed, a UN spokesman said.

“A decision will be taken in the event Israel does not show up for its UPR, the council will decide on a course of action. States are working very hard behind the scenes to come up with a solution,” council spokesman Rolando Gomez told Reuters.

Islamic states, often led by Pakistan and Iran in the forum, would have to agree to any postponement of the examination of Israel’s record. The next UPR sessions are in April and October.

A team of UN investigators, set up by the council last year, is due to report soon on whether Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories violate international human rights law. Washington cast the only vote against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE WEEK THAT WAS PART 2

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL Colin Powell left the Republican Party on bad terms, twice, washing out of the Bush Administration, and then running to Obama out of spite at not being picked by McCain. Four years later he has nothing to show for it. The Republican Party hasn’t gotten into the White House, but […]

DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE WEEK THAT WAS PART ONE

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ GOING FOR BROKE According to Hillary Clinton’s long-delayed Benghazigate testimony, the State Department just did not have enough money to provide security for a mission in one of the most dangerous places in the world.It did however have 16 million dollars to spend on 2,500 kindle book readers at the drastically inflated price of […]

KEITH JOHNSON: SHIFTING ARGUMENTS ON CLIMATE

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323854904578264233733676680.html?mod=WSJ_article_LatestHeadlines Climate change is back on the agenda in Washington after President Barack Obama‘s call to action in his second inaugural address. And while polls suggest that public belief that manmade causes are behind warmer temperatures isn’t yet back to the levels seen in the middle of the last decade, concern about climate change is […]

OBAMA’S ABUSE OF POWER

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578263793332301584.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop An appeals court says his recess appointments are unconstitutional. President Obama has shown increasing contempt for the constitutional limits on his power, and the courts are finally awakening to the news. A unanimous panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the President’s non-recess recess appointments are illegal and an […]

Long Tradition of Presidential Appointments During Senate Breaks Faces Constitutional Challenge

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324039504578263772492524536.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

By MELANIE TROTTMAN, JESS BRAVIN and MICHAEL R. CRITTENDEN

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Barack Obama violated the Constitution in filling labor board vacancies, a decision that could reshape a long-standing practice by U.S. presidents to make recess appointments.
A federal appeals court ruled that President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor panel. Aaron Zitner reports on Lunch Break. Photo: AP.

Such appointments—which bypass Senate approval to install top administration personnel—have been used by presidents for at least 90 years. But in the past two decades, Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton ratcheted up use of the tactic to avert congressional obstacles. Friday’s decision, if it holds, would restrain that power.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the National Labor Relations Board for the past year has lacked the quorum required to conduct most business because three board members were named by Mr. Obama in recess appointments the court ruled invalid.

The decision strips the board of key powers and could void some of its actions over the past year.

The board made more than 200 case rulings last year, including a decision that protected workers from being fired for complaining about working conditions on sites like Facebook, FB +1.48% and a decision that gave greater rights to unions in employee-discipline cases.

ANDREW HARROD: NO MERE EXISTENCE FOR ISRAEL

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/no_mere_existence_for_israel.html Inauguration weekend has come and gone, and with it the preceding “No Blank Check for Israel” rally on Saturday, January 19, 2013. Rally participants first assembled in Farragut Square to hear various speakers and then marched through adjoining streets to Pennsylvania Avenue between Lafayette Square and the White House where President Barack Obama two […]

MARK STEYN: THE OBAMA SIMULACRUM

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/338863/obama-simulacrum-mark-steyn

This administration sneers at reality and its consequences.

If I’m following this correctly, according to one spokesperson for the Marine Corps Band, at Monday’s inauguration Beyoncé lip-synced to the national anthem but the band accompanied her live. However, according to a second spokesperson, it was the band who were pretending to play to a pre-recorded tape while Beyoncé sang along live. So one or other of them were faking it. Or maybe both were. Or neither. I’d ask Chuck Schumer, the master of ceremonies, who was standing right behind her, but he spent the entire performance staring at her butt. If it was her butt, that is. It might just have been the bulge of the Radio Shack cassette player she was miming to. In an America with an ever more tenuous grip on reality, there’s so little to be sure of.

Whether Beyoncé was lip-syncing to the band or the band were lip-syncing to Beyoncé is like one of those red pill/ blue pill choices from The Matrix. Was President Obama lip-syncing to the Founders, rooting his inaugural address in the earliest expressions of American identity? (“The patriots of 1776 . . . gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.”) Or maybe the Founders were lip-syncing to him as he appropriated the vision of the first generation of Americans and yoked it (“preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action”) to a statist pitch they would have found utterly repugnant.

The whole event had the air of a simulacrum: It looked like a presidential inauguration, but the sound was tinny and not quite in sync. Obama mouthed along to a canned vocal track: “We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.” That’s great! It’s always reassuring to know the head of state is going to take issue with all those people wedded to the “belief” that America needs either to shove every granny off the cliff or stake its newborns out on the tundra for the wolves to finish off. When it comes to facing the music, Obama is peerless at making a song and dance about tunes nobody’s whistling without ever once warbling the real big numbers (16 trillion). But, like Beyoncé, he’s totally cool and has a cute butt.

A couple of days later, it fell to the 45th president-in-waiting to encapsulate the ethos of the age in one deft sound bite: What difference does it make? Hillary Clinton’s instantly famous riposte at the Benghazi hearings is such a perfect distillation that it surely deserves to be the national motto of the United States. They should put it on Paul Krugman’s trillion-dollar coin, and in the presidential oath:

“Do you solemnly swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?”

“Sure. What difference, at this point, does it make?”

IN SPITE OF ISLAM: NURIT GREENGER

It is better to tell the truth about Islam and be called ‘Islamophobe’ than to lie about this religion to appease the Moslems’ ear. —Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and the editor of its […]