RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.i24news.tv/en/opinion/131107-piping-israeli-gas-through-turkey-is-a-really-bad-idea

The reported political obstacles to the construction of a natural gas pipeline between Israel and Turkey are but another confirmation that relations between the two countries are strained. This last Israel-Turkey row also provides an opportunity to ponder the wisdom of building an Israeli pipeline to Turkey, in the first place.

There are good reasons why Israel and Turkey are considering the construction of such a pipeline. Turkey is a natural gas importer, while Israel is about to become a natural gas exporter. Not only is Turkey trying to diversify its gas imports in order to reduce its dependency on Russia’s expansive natural gas, it also wants to solidify its key role as a transit country for energy flows: Turkey is strategically located at the crossroads of energy exporters (the Middle East and the Caucasus) and energy importers (European countries). As the EU will likely become an importer of Israel’s natural gas, Turkey could provide a transit route for an Israeli gas pipeline to Europe.

However, relying on Turkey as a transit country for Israel’s exports to Europe would constitute a long-term strategic mistake.

The infrastructure for the delivery of natural gas (either via pipelines or liquefaction) is complex and expensive, which is why exporting and importing countries are generally locked in long-term agreements. Hence the need to carefully understand the potential risks of the Turkish option.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/11/europes-true-colors/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=c210de22ba-Mosaic_2013_11_8&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-c210de22ba-41165129

A new survey published by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reveals the worrying extent of anti-Jewish abuse in Europe and failure of states to tackle this growing problem. There is now little room for doubt; Europe’s Jews feel increasingly threatened and abused, fearing antisemitic abuse from Muslim extremists, the extreme right-wing, and left-wing radicals. With few European member states taking any serious action, and the failure of the authorities to tackle this growing problem, the human rights of Jewish Europeans are under threat. 75 years after Kristallnacht, has Europe failed to learn from history?

This week marks the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Germany and parts of Austria which was the ominous prelude to the mass murder of much of European Jewry. The savage attacks of 9th November 1938 saw Jewish businesses attacked, hundreds of synagogues torched and around 30,000 Jewish men rounded up for deportation to concentration camps. German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week described Kristallnacht as “one of the darkest moments in German history,” urging “all the people in this country to show their civil courage and ensure that no form of anti-Semitism is tolerated.” But 75 years on, where do German Jews stand? Merkel herself went on to observe that today it is “almost inexplicable but also the reality that no Jewish institution can be left without police protection.”

This is true elsewhere in Europe, too. In Britain, I am used to attending synagogues protected by concrete crash barriers, watched over by teams of security guards. Our Jewish schools are surrounded with razor wire, and bomb proof doors. One security professional told me that this has become so normal most of the children don’t even notice it any more. Yet I grew up in a country that gave me, and generations of Jews before me, a safe place to live, study and pray. As a Rabbi friend of mine often publicly remarks at events of national importance, Britain has been good to its Jews, and the Jews have been good for Britain.

Yet over recent years, things have changed for the worse in Europe. Antisemitism has appeared in the lives of a generation who never thought they would experience it first hand. From stories about verbal abuse shouted at kippah-wearers and physical attacks on Jews, to an arson attack on a London synagogue and a shooting at a French Jewish school, it is clear that something has changed.

http://www.leebsmarketforecast.com/
If you’ve been busy trying to log on to the ObamaCare website, or stumbling around in search of the cupcake shop to which the New York health care website mistakenly directs you, let me catch you up with the latest news.
We’ll start with the embarrassment of a country that once launched a man to the moon, but now can’t even launch a website. Even those who hated the ObamaCare concept, and I freely admit I was never a fan, would have admired a silky-smooth execution that showcased the genius of American know-how. But that’s not what we got.
Now, not only must we suffer through the chaotic disruption of our entire medical system, but the launch also besmirched the stellar reputation of American technology. Oops! Make that Canadian technology.
Canadian? It turns out the perpetrator of the website fiasco is CGI Federal, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Montreal-based CGI Group. To execute its signature achievement, the Obama administration selected CGI, also known as “Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique,” for a hugely lucrative no-bid contract. Even if the site worked well, it would have been nice to give an American-owned company the job, especially with so many Americans still unemployed.
So far, CGI has garnered $687 million in American taxpayer funds, although its track record hardly inspires confidence. In September 2012, the Ontario government fired CGI and refused to pay them, after CGI for three years missed deadlines on its $46.2 million contract to build a registry of diabetes patients.

http://www.tracinskiletter.com/2013/11/ten-lessons-obamacare/

President Obama is still trying to downplay the launch failure of ObamaCare as if it were just a few glitches on a website.

No, it’s much more than that. It is a timeless demonstration of the failure of central planning, government regulations, and the entitlement state. It is a failure so total, so comprehensive, and so multifaceted that it will be studied by schoolchildren 50 years from now when their teachers explain to them why the giant welfare and regulatory state built up in the second half of the 20th century collapsed in the first half of the 21st.

The lessons of that failure will not be new lessons. They’re the ones we should have learned in the 20th century, when we had plenty of examples to draw from. But a generation has grown up that doesn’t remember the 1970s, the failures of socialism, or the depredations of Communism. And because those topics are not yet part of a standard school curriculum, we’ve had to relearn them in the School of Hard Knocks, with Professor Obama giving us a refresher course.

In the hope that we won’t have to learn this all over again another thirty years from now, here are ten big lessons from the launch of ObamaCare about why big government fails.

1. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

We’ve already seen about a half-dozen stories like this one, in which an Obama voters declares, “I was all for ObamaCare until I found out I was paying for it.” Or as another one puts it: “Of course, I want people to have health care. I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.” Well, who did he think was going to pay for it?

The entire middle-class welfare state, to which ObamaCare is the latest addition, is an attempt to make the middle class into a constituency for big government by promising them endless benefits, from free health care to a guaranteed income, with no costs, consequences, or trade-offs, and no strings attached. Everything is supposed to be paid for by “the rich,” which means anyone who makes a dollar more than you. But when the law is passed, a whole chunk of the middle class finds out that they are the ones getting fleeced for the benefit of anyone who makes a dollar less than them.

If you want to figure out the winners and losers of ObamaCare, it’s not so much about the rich versus the poor. It’s this: the more you are productive and self-supporting, the more likely you are to end up paying the freight for everyone else. That’s what promises of a free lunch always amount to: punishing the productive and rewarding the unproductive.

What do you suppose are the long-term consequences of that kind of system? Well, let’s start by looking at what the regulatory state does to productive people, which is our second lesson.

2. Regulation stifles production.

How did the president who deployed state of the art information technology for his re-election campaign manage to botch the website for his signature piece of legislation? Listen to this explanationfrom some of the Obama campaign’s own Web guys: “The government has to follow a code called the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which is more than 1,800 pages of legalese that all but ensure that the companies that win government contracts, like the ones put out to build HealthCare.gov, are those that can navigate the regulations best, but not necessarily do the best job.”

In other words, when you pass a lot of regulations, it only makes people good at following regulations. As I replied: “But what do they imagine ObamaCare is, if not a massive set of new regulations? If a mere 1,800 pages of federal procurement regulations cause 94% of federal IT projects to fail—how about the 2,000-plus pages of the Affordable Care Act?”

A truly creative, productive mind answers to only one “regulator”: reality. It looks at facts and results and figures out what is actually required to get things done, rather than following some arbitrary set of rules. But government regulations put precisely such rules between a worker’s mind and reality. That’s how the federal government ended up launching a system that had been tested against every clause and subsection of the Federal Acquisition Regulation—but hadn’t been tested to see if it would work in the real world.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/how-american-woman-escaped-her-gaza.html?fb_action_ids=582318835137657&fb_From USA Today: Gunfire cracked all around Sara Rogers as she climbed to the roof of her high-rise home in Gaza. The year was 2005, and Israeli soldiers were fighting Palestinian gunmen to stop rocket attacks and destroy smuggling tunnels. Rogers closed her eyes. “Just let one hit me in the head,” she begged. “And make […]

http://sarahhonig.com/2013/11/08/another-tack-glitch-or-glion/

History-altering events don’t always burst dramatically onto our scene. Sometimes they sneak in surreptitiously and we barely detect that something significant has been kick-started.

Thus most of us hardly noticed the renewed buzz about convening a conference on creating a Middle East Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (MENWFZ). Yet again – the bloodshed of the misnamed Arab Spring notwithstanding – Arab regimes, with Egypt at the lead, are pushing hard for an international focus on Israel’s purported nuclear power.

This was amplified by reports that that representatives of several Arab states met with Israeli officials last month in Glion, Switzerland, to set the groundwork for a conference on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Official Israel hadn’t confirmed that the Glion get-together indeed took place but, more notably, it hasn’t denied it either. If true, this overlooked event is a milestone one – the first time that Israeli and Arab delegates have consented to discuss WMDs. Is this a positive development?

It might be just a minor Israeli goodwill gesture or a new small step in a big glitch – the first Israeli retreat from decades of refusal to accede to Arab demands that the Jewish State, rather than its would-be annihilators, be denied nonconventional munitions.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/kerrys-slander-of-illegitimate-israeli-settlements/print/

The Israeli-Palestinian “peace talks” have reportedly hit a rough patch. The talks on Tuesday were said to have “ended in a row, with raised voices and the exchange of verbal insults.”

It started last week when Israel released the second batch of Palestinian security prisoners, all of whom were serving time for murder or attempted murder. They were welcomed as heroes in Ramallah. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas shook each freed prisoner’s hand, and they were awarded generous cash grants on top of the stipends they already receive.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to allay outrage particularly on the more right-leaning side of his coalition, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the building of 3500 housing units for Israelis—all of them either in East Jerusalem or West Bank (Judea and Samaria) settlement blocs. Several Israeli officials claimed the Palestinian side had already consented to such construction as a quid pro quo for the prisoner releases.

Tuesday’s dustup in the talks was said to have erupted over that issue. The Palestinian negotiators claimed their side had never agreed to such a quid pro quo and slammed the construction itself. Many reports said the talks on the whole were on the verge of collapse.

A few hours later, on Tuesday afternoon, U.S. secretary of state John Kerry arrived in Israel in an effort to salvage the situation.

He lost no time taking the Palestinian side.

For one thing, he claimed that “at no time” had the Palestinians consented to any Israeli building beyond the 1949 armistice lines—even, it was implied, as a concession in return for Israel’s wholesale freeing of terrorists.

Kerry also stated, immediately after discussions with Abbas: “Let me emphasize at this point the position of the United States of America on the settlements is that we consider them…to be illegitimate.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/dont-forget-the-other-entitlement-monsters/print/

he continuing attention devoted to the blunders, incompetence, and lies surrounding the Obamacare rollout is much deserved. But we shouldn’t forget that the President’s health-care monstrosity is merely the latest and biggest of scores of government entitlement programs suffering from the same flawed progressive assumption––that government “experts” armed with coercive power alone can solve problems better left to the states, civil society, and the free market. In reality, such programs relentlessly metastasize, increasing as well fraud, waste, abuse, and costs.

One such program is SNAP, the kinder and gentler name for what we used to call food stamps. Apparently the old coupons were too hurtful, so they have been replaced by the Electronic Benefits Transfer card that looks like a debit or credit card. Over the last decade, SNAP recipients have increased from 21 million to 47 million, 1 in 7 Americans. But benefits paid out have nearly quadrupled from $21 billion to $75 billion. This total, by the way, doesn’t count the $7.2 billion spent on the Women Infants and Children program that also provides taxpayer-funded food. And don’t forget the other costs of the program, which tack on another nearly $4 billion. Part of this expansion reflects Obama’s relaxation of work and income requirements, and the increase of benefits by 13.6% as part of the 2009 stimulus bill (that increase expired on November 1). Worse yet, some speculate that Obamacare, by expanding the number of people eligible for Medicaid, might further increase the number of SNAP recipients by 3%-5%.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/purging-and-transforming-our-military/

President Obama hasn’t just been hollowing out the military since taking office, he’s been gutting it, purging it of ideologically hostile personnel, and fundamentally transforming it into something other than a war-fighting force, military experts say.

Although few with military ties are willing to say it openly, it seems the administration is leading an orchestrated effort to seriously undermine the readiness of the military. Some reports indicate that Obama has purged 197 senior military officers since moving into the White House and that many of the retired officers have been harassed at their new civilian jobs for criticizing the president’s policies. The effects of these purges will be felt long after Obama leaves office.

This is, of course, the same through-the-looking-glass administration that goes out of its way not to label actual Islamic terrorists as terrorists, that calls terrorist attacks “man-caused disasters,” and refers to the Global War on Terror as the “Overseas Contingency Operation.”

A retired senior military officer and combat veteran who remains involved in national security affairs, told FrontPage in an interview that President Obama is involved in social engineering of the United States military.

“Having women in combat is bad,” he said. “It is changing the social complexion of the infantry and we now have this epidemic of sexual assaults.”

Soldiers are told not to be mean to gays, he said. “Do you really think the individuals who are joining the all-volunteer force will be joining to pull triggers or to get sensitivity training?”

The former officer said that President Obama is getting rid of experienced war fighters for no apparent reason.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/ten-reasons-obamacare-will-fail/

There is a fundamental difference between economists and lawyers (or legal scholars) when it comes to resolving complex social and economic problems. Economists believe that human behavior and the functioning of institutions are based upon incentives. Lawyers and legal types believe that one can resolve complex problems by passing laws and imposing regulations. The latter think one can legislate away the problem.
I like to describe the approach by lawyer-types to such problems as “rain laws.” They are like trying to resolve the problem of flooding from heavy rainfall by means of a law making it illegal for it to rain. Or solving droughts by passing a mandate that it must rain. Making global warming illegal is a pretty close runner-up idea. An example of a rain law in the area of health care would be to solve shortages, health care inflation, and inadequate coverage by passing a law making it illegal for people to get sick. A second example would be Obamacare.The entire matter of Obamacare is so complex that most people have lost sight of the fundamental problems within it and especially its rain law aspects. Instead, the media and much of the public are concentrating on tangential matters, like whether or not the software on the Obamacare web sites is functioning properly.