http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337212/saudis-pr-roads-show-nina-shea Even before the “Arab spring” revolts — indeed, ever since the 9/11 attacks on American soil by mostly Saudi terrorists — the Saudi royal family has assiduously waged a public-relations campaign to improve its image by sponsoring major cultural initiatives in the West. In 2012 alone, these included the opening of the King Abdullah […]
http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/google-bamboozled-by-north-korea/
As if there isn’t enough trouble in the world, the executive chairman of Google Inc., Eric Schmidt, has taken it into his head to visit North Korea. Schmidt is touring the world’s leading totalitarian state as a member of a private group led by a former U.S. congressman, cabinet secretary, United Nations ambassador and New Mexico governor rolled into one, Bill Richardson — whose previous trips to North Korea have served mainly to dignify the Pyongyang regime.
Richardson’s current roadshow, with Google’s Schmidt in tow, seems to have generated some excitement at North Korea’s state propaganda organ, the Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA. KCNA has revamped its web site, including a new gmail contact address (though the address apparently doesn’t work) and more colorful variations on the same old propaganda, including a special section on North Korea’s recent ballistic missile test “Successful Satellite Launch.” The site also features such classics as an account of the launch in Ecuador of the works of third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un, glorifying the revolutionary accomplishments of his late father, tyrant Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, the Stalin-installed founder of the North Korean state, Kim Il Sung. On this same retooled KCNA web site, the private visit led by Richardson is heralded as “Delegation of Google Corp. of U.S. Arrives.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/benghazigate_the_cover-up_continues.html From the start, almost everything that we were originally and “officially” told by the Obama Administration about the Benghazigate “event” was false (i.e., a lie) or misleading or inadequate. And now that the sole suspect held in the attack has been released, the cover-up is gaining momentum. The report produced by State’s Accountability Review […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/uproar_in_georgia_over_us_ambassadors_pro-palestinian_maneuvering.html
The Republic of Georgia is in an uproar. Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has issued a statement about the explosive revelations I broke in an American Thinker in December: that the U.S. ambassador to Georgia, Richard Norland, whispered in his ear to vote in favor of the U.N. resolution declaring a “Palestinian” state, which is diametrically opposed to official U.S. policy.
But why should anyone be surprised? People actually seem taken aback by the nomination of the virulently Jew-hating Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, when actually everything in Obama’s foreign policy points to this very tendency. If Obama had appointed John Bolton, or anyone else pro-Israel, that would have been a shock. But the kapos are wringing their hands over Hagel? Really? Obama’s anti-Israel stance has been fiercely consistent, as I exposed in my 2009 true-life political thriller, The Post-American Presidency.
The revelations about Ivanishvili and Norland that I reported were based on statements made by Gabriel M. Mirilashvili, a noted Georgian businessman and owner of a corporation. Just before the November 29 United Nations vote granting non-member-state observer status to “Palestine,” Mirilashvili, who is the vice president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, as well as head of the World Congress of Georgian Jews, had a meeting with Ivanishvili. Mirilashvili stated that when he had urged Ivanishvili to oppose the Palestinian statehood resolution, Ivanishvili told him that Norland had recommended that Georgia vote in favor of the resolution.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/01/08/Opposition-Leader-Obama-Administration-Downplayed-Brotherhood-Warnings
The Obama administration chose to listen to voices suggesting that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood was moderate rather than those who warned it would resort to violence if it came to power, cables obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism show.
The cables make four things clear about the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the Egyptian revolution and how the Obama administration failed to address it:
The White House ignored the warnings, then was silent in the wake of intimidation and violence by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Despite broken promises, the White House refuses to cut funds to Morsi’s government.
Religious minorities and women are marginalized by the new constitution, while being threatened by government leaders.
Resentment from pro-democracy groups is growing as White House inaction leads to the rise of an Islamic state.
A look at recent headlines involving Egypt’s new Islamist-dominated government makes clear the radical, threatening path its leaders are charting, and that those who urged caution in dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood were prophetic. Criticism of President Mohamed Morsi in the media and among opposition groups leads to criminal investigations. Even a comedian is being targeted.
The Muslim Brotherhood, to which Morsi remains closely tied, routinely threatens Israel and issues anti-Semitic statements.
Meanwhile, Islamists rammed through a new constitution which sparked international concern for women’s and minority rights. Some analysts say the Brotherhood’s actions have pushed Egypt closer to civil war.
WH Ignored Warnings, Silent in Wake of Intimidation and Violence by Muslim Brotherhood
The reaction from Washington has been muted at best.
The Obama administration repeatedly ignored and downplayed advance warnings that the Muslim Brotherhood would resort to violent and undemocratic tactics if it came to power, Egyptian opposition leader Michael Meunier tells the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
“Stalin famously told his mother that he was the new Czar, transmuting collectivist revolution into the egotistical authoritarianism of one man. Obama has managed the same trick, merging revolutionary politics with his own brand until there is no longer a difference between the man and his revolution. FDR only promised happy days, but Obama has become the actual incarnation of hope, which may explain why there is no longer any hope to go around.”
Ever since FDR made it his campaign song in 1932 while running for office during the Great Depression, the unofficial anthem of the Democratic Party has been that Tin Pan Alley classic, “Happy Days are Here Again.” But no matter how often the old Victor spun, it would not be until well after Roosevelt’s death that happy days would be here again.
Like Hope and Change, Happy Days are Here Again was a blandly optimistic and non-specific promise that good times were coming. Someday the happy days would arrive, an appropriate enough sentiment for a song whose pivotal moment came in the movie “Chasing Rainbows” where it was sung to reassure a cuckolded husband who is threatening to kill himself. And in an even more appropriate bit of symbolism, the actual movie footage of that moment is as lost as the happy times.
No matter how often the Democratic Party cheats on the American people, it can always break out a new rendition of “Happy Days are Here Again” to win them back. And even if the happy days never seem to actually arrive, the promise of “So long sad times” and “Howdy gay times” where “your troubles and cares are gone” is always a winner.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/from-the-river-to-the-sea Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas, the terror group that infests the Gaza Strip and junior partner of the Muslim Brotherhood, spewed a fraudulent and hateful mantra when he visited Gaza last month. He said, “Palestine is ours from the river to the sea.” But not so. Not so. The Land of Israel stretches […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/placing-the-blame-for-mass-murders-where-it-belongs?f=puball
The recent tragic, senseless murder spree in Newtown, CT has, once again, understandably, given rise to an outcry for solutions to gun violence. Unfortunately, it has also given a platform for the anti gun crowd to trot out their usual battery of ill conceived, non factual hyperbole they use to promote their agenda. This anti second amendment witch hunt, as usual, makes no constructive inroads towards solving the problem. It merely gives some liberal politicians and others, an opportunity to be a “hero” to some. When will we stop wasting time, money and, more importantly, human lives and talk about some of the real root causes of these too oft repeated killing sprees? It’s time to start connecting the dots instead of tilting at windmills.
There are two issues which have a direct causal bearing on these mass killings and yet have not been accorded the attention they deserve. Instead, the attention has been focused on other more politically correct but factually inaccurate causes. This failure to properly address the issues has been not only unfortunate but resulted in more unnecessary deaths.
1. First Issue The change in the law which allowed mentally disturbed people who need to be under the care and 24 hr supervision of medical staff. They and are now allowed out in society where they have the responsibility to take their medication or not.
Deinstitutionalization played a substantial role in the dramatic increase in violent crime rates in America in the 1970s and 1980s. People who might have been hospitalized in 1950 or 1960 when they first exhibited evidence of serious mental illness today remain at large until they commit a serious felony. The criminal justice system then usually sends these mentally ill offenders to prison, not a mental hospital.
Note; a 2011 study by the University of California at Berkley found that states with a higher civil commitment laws rate have a third less suicides.
A 2000 New York Times study of 100 rampage murderers found that 47 were mentally ill. In the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry Law (2008), Jason C. Matejkowski and his co-authors reported that 16% of state prisoners who had perpetrated murders were mentally ill.
In the mid-1960s, many of the killings would have been prevented because the severely mentally ill would have been confined and cared for in a state institution. But today, while government at most every level has bloated over the past half-century, mental-health treatment has been decimated. According to a study released in July by the Treatment Advocacy Center, the number of state hospital beds in America per capita has plummeted to 1850 levels, or 14.1 beds per 100,000 people. Moreover, a 2011 paper by Steven P. Segal at the University of California, Berkeley, “Civil Commitment Law, Mental Health Services, and U.S. Homicide Rates,” found that a third of the state-to-state variation in homicide rates was attributable to the strength or weakness of involuntary civil-commitment laws.
It’s important to keep in mind that the vast majority of people with mental illness do not commit crimes or engage in violence. But the popular refrain that there’s no link between mental illness and violence is simply wrong. David Kopel’s editorial in WSJ December 18, 2012
“We need to look at this relatively new phenomenon where young people in our country are motivated to take revenge for whatever demon is inside them, whatever voice is talking to them, to do something really awful at a major level like what happened…The 10 percent [of mentally ill people] who are prone to violence usually have a very serious mental illness like Jared, where voices are telling them to do things and they just lose control of themselves and a lot of times they will commit a violent act…but with treatment, most of that could be avoided…” U.S. Representative Ron Barber was shot by Jared Lee Loughner in January 2011.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/becoming-a-great-leader-advice-from-a-zero I suppose it is a law of political economy that when a burgeoning and omnivorous government reaches a certain stage of growth, its champions and beneficiaries and sinecured, career bureaucrats inaugurate self-congratulatory and appreciation organizations that “reward” bureaucrats and “public servants” for their work. These organizations are great for bringing the “recognized” together for […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/fascism-in-america It is often argued by critics of the Obama administration that it is socialistic, i.e. expanding governmental authority over the means of producing and distributing goods. Alas, there is something to be said for this point of view. As I see it, however, a more accurate way to describe the Obama government is corporatism […]
