Oxfam’s lopsided logic On the face of it, Oxfam is as irreproachable as motherhood and apple-pie. Who can be against its declared goals of combating hunger and promoting justice? Oxfam’s confederation and its familiar charity shops are fixed features in some 90 countries worldwide. Founded in the city of Oxford in 1942, it crusaded for […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4160/marine-le-pen-chauprade Le Pen’s worldview seems comes from the man sitting next to her, Aymeric Chauprade, who taught geopolitics at the Joint Defense College of the French army, until he was fired after writing a book in which he voiced the possibility that that the 9/11 attacks might have been part of a deliberate plot conceived […]
WILLKOMMEN TO DEUTSCHLANDSTAN…JUST AS GISELE BAT YE’OR PREDICTED IN HER BOOK “EURABIA”….RSK
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4155/germany-muslim-friendly
Muslims attending the gathering were offended by the insinuation that Islam could be radical or violent, and demanded instead that the German government take steps to make “Islam equal to Christianity” in Germany. They were equally unwilling to discuss the main item on the official conference agenda: “Gender Equality as a Common Value,” and refused even to acknowledge that there might be any connection between Islam and forced marriage.
While focusing his energy on expanding the rights if Muslims in German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière has been largely silent about the responsibility of Muslim immigrants to take measures to integrate better into German society.
Germany’s new coalition government is signaling that it wants better relations with the country’s Muslim community.
In a series of newspaper, television and radio interviews, Thomas de Maizière—who was recently sworn in as Germany’s new interior minister—has announced a series of pro-Muslim initiatives apparently designed to defuse escalating tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims there.
Among other policy initiatives, Maizière says the government plans to change German immigration laws to make it easier for Muslim immigrants to obtain dual-citizenship and thus to maintain religious and cultural links to their countries of origin.
Maizière also says he intends to give Muslims more say in setting the agenda of the government’s ongoing dialogue with the Islamic umbrella groups that represent the estimated 4.5 million Muslims now living in the country.
While focusing his energy on expanding the rights of Muslims in Germany, Maizière has been largely silent about the responsibility of Muslim immigrants to take measures to integrate better into German society.
Step in Obama’s Climate Action Plan, without a price tag, will assess risks and then tell landowners “this is how you need to manage.” http://pjmedia.com/blog/new-usda-climate-hubs-to-school-farmers-ranchers-on-climate-change/?print=1 WASHINGTON — President Obama enacted part of his promised Climate Action Plan today with the creation of regional “Climate Hubs” to coordinate a global warming response with farmers, ranchers and […]
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2014/02/05/the-gop-and-social-issues-contd-confronting-the-gay-marriage-question/?print=1
Here at Ordered Liberty, I weighed in a few days back on the discussion Roger Simon and Bryan Preston were having about whether the Republican Party should de-emphasize social issues. Some other points are worth making.
The first is that not all “social issues” are created equal.
I don’t think either Roger or Bryan suggested otherwise. To recap how we got here, while Roger’s headline referred generally to “social conservatives” (“How Social Conservatives Are Saving Liberalism”), his post homed in on gay marriage. In rebuttal, Bryan did not delve deeply into the substance of gay marriage; instead, he broadened the debate to consider how a conservative retreat on gay marriage would fit into a pattern of surrender on social issues across the board. It is those issues that inspired the demographic known as “social conservatives” to, as Bryan says, “get into politics in the first place.” Thus, he contends, de-emphasizing them would cause social conservatives to disengage from politics. I agree. As argued in my post, the GOP cannot win elections with major defections from this critical component of its base.
Yet, it confuses matters to speak of “social issues” as one indiscriminate bunch, and to imply that each should be handled the same “no compromise” way. Just as every skirmish in the culture war is not equally significant, different social issues are of varying importance.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304851104579359141941621778?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories
U.S. News
Sniper Attack Knocked Out Substation, Raises Concern for Country’s Power Grid
SAN JOSE, Calif.—The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.
Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.
To avoid a blackout, electric-grid officials rerouted power around the site and asked power plants in Silicon Valley to produce more electricity. But it took utility workers 27 days to make repairs and bring the substation back to life.
Nobody has been arrested or charged in the attack at PG&E Corp.’s Metcalf transmission substation. It is an incident of which few Americans are aware. But one former federal regulator is calling it aterrorist act that, if it were widely replicated across the country, could take down the U.S. electric grid and black out much of the country.
