Displaying posts published in

2014

A LIE ABOUT ISRAEL- THE POPE AND BISHOP TUTU- SEE NOTE PLEASE

From my e-pal Dr. John A.
In anticipation of an upcoming papal visit to the Holy Land, an Open Letter signed by more than 200 bishops, clerics, members of religious orders, and theologians from several faith traditions, was delivered to Pope Francis on March 5, 2014. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has now added his support of this… ———– Pure calumny and propaganda… Where is the ANY credible evidence of any official targeting of any children by Israel?? Where??!! Quite the contrary, the Palestinians are inculcating young children into hate with propaganda and training for violent jihad and in praise of suicide murderers.. The liberalo-leftist world has turned mad…JHA

http://org.salsalabs.com/o/641/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=15218

Pope Francis: Speak out to end Israel’s Targeting of Palestinian Children

PERVERSE LOGIC

http://nsroundtable.org/as-we-see-it/perverse-logic/

“CIA director John Brennan is at it again,” writes Raymond Ibrahim below, “equivocating over the nature of jihad by evoking paradigms familiar to the West.”

Many of us are quite familiar with Mr. Brennan’s world view, as we wrote about here when Brennan was first nominated to be CIA Director. As Brennan himself said, Islam had “helped to shape my own world view,” as his travels around the world for more than three decades, had taught him about “the goodness and beauty of Islam.”

Well, Mr. Brennan was at it again last Tuesday, as he spoke at the Council of Foreign Relations. You can read details of his visit below, however we would like to point out one thing.

Raymond Ibrahim writes that the “tendency to project one’s own cultural norms and priorities onto others is the height of arrogance and ethnocentrism.” He is 100% correct. It is something Americans have a bad habit of doing, including in their prosecution of the War on Terror. …” National Security Roundtable

A CIA Chief’s Willful Blindness On Jihad By Raymond Ibrahim

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/cia-chief-jihad-fueled-by-repression-economics-and-ignorance/print/

CIA director John Brennan is at it again—equivocating over the nature of jihad by evoking paradigms familiar to the West.

Last Tuesday, “during an event at the Council of Foreign Relations, Brennan was asked about the ‘war of ideas’ surrounding Islam, which the questioner said many Americans tend to equate with violence.”

The CIA chief responded by saying that al-Qaeda’s ideology is “a perverse and very corrupt interpretation of the Qur’an”; that “al-Qaeda has hijacked” Islam; that “they have really distorted the teachings of Muhammad.”

Even so, “that ideology, that agenda of al-Qaeda,” confirmed Brennan, “has gained resonance and following in many parts of the world.”

So what is the CIA chief’s explanation as to why such a “perverse and very corrupt” understanding of Islam—one that has “distorted the teachings of Muhammad”— resonates among Muslims?

SOMETHING TO PONDER: WAS MALAYSIA AIRLINES LOST BECAUSE OF TERRORISM?

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/was-malaysia-airlines-flight-370-lost-because-of-terrorism/ Terrorists want people to know what they did and why they did it. Terrorist groups usually rapidly put out a statement taking credit for an attack that they took part in… or didn’t take part in. Terrorist groups live off publicity and donations. They need to constantly kill people and issue […]

Into the Fray: My (renewed) Challenge to Michael Oren By Martin Sherman ****

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-Fray-My-renewed-challenge-to-Michael-Oren-346758
When someone who was one of Israel’s best known diplomats touts such silliness, it is difficult to know what is more disconcerting: Whether he actually believes what he is preaching, or whether he doesn’t.

Ambassador (ret.) Michael Oren: Israel must take its fate in its own hands and adopt measures that are a riposte to any Palestinian effort to declare a state unilaterally at the UN…we must not sit idly but declare what our borders are; borders that leave the maximum number of Israelis on our side and afford maximum security for Israeli citizens.

Interviewer: You are talking about a unilateral measure similar to what Ehud Olmert called “Convergence.”

Michael Oren: We should learn from past mistakes…there are dangers involved in all situations – even a two-state one, which by the way is always the preferred solution, a solution that emerges from mutual negotiations. But if this is impossible, we cannot deliver our destiny into the hands of the Palestinians or any external party, [we must] take the required steps to preserve our identity as a democratic and Jewish state, and if possible, acquire American support for these measures. – Interview with Michael Oren on what Israel should do if the negotiations with the Palestinians fail, Channel 2, March 22.

Three months ago, I called on former-ambassador Michael Oren to meet me in a public debate over his support for unilateral withdrawal from much of Judea-Samaria, if negotiations on a Palestinian state fail (See “A public challenge to Michael Oren,” January 23).

Unanswered challenge

In the column, I challenged Oren to address what I saw as the numerous and dangerous lacunae in his policy proposal, to elaborate on its prospective implementation, and to explain how any benefits would, in fact, accrue from such implementation.

I challenged him to give some idea of his envisioned post-unilateral evacuation map, of the frontiers to which he sees Israel withdrawing, and of how they would be demarcated and secured.

I called on him to designate which portions of the western slopes of the Judean-Samarian highlands that command the heavily- populated coastal plain, Israel’s only international airport, much of the trans-Israel highway, and vital infrastructure installations, he would, unilaterally, include under Israeli jurisdiction, and which portions he would, unilaterally, exclude.

These, and other trenchant questions, regarding the feasibility and advisability of his proposed policy paradigm went unanswered – and with good reason. For any attempt to translate Oren’s (or any other) unilateral prescription from the conceptual to the concrete will quickly reveal it to be, at best, impractical imbecility—or worse, deliberately detrimental.

Oxymoronic formula

It pains me to have to resort to such harsh language with regard to the affable Oren, with whom I have always maintained an amicable relationship, and who, has devoted much of his adult life to meritorious service to his country.

But lives – many lives – are at stake and his current proposal is so patently preposterous and perilous that it must be condemned in the strongest possible terms, exposed as the hallucinatory hazard it truly is, and dispatched swiftly from the public discourse, with the scorn it richly deserves.

JOHN WOHLSTETTER: PANAMA 100 YEARS LATER

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/panama-100-years-later

Begin with one of the most famous (to some, infamous) quotations from a generation ago: California Republican Senator S. I. Hayakawa (served 1977-83) said during the election preceding the 1977 signing of the Panama Canal Treaty, “We should keep the Panama Canal. After all, we stole it fair and square.” Yet in 1978 the senator would help shepherd the treaty through the Senate and win ratification.

A trip I recently took to Panama entailed becoming a member of the trip sponsor, the Theodore Roosevelt Association, whose namesake began building the Canal pursuant to the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of November 18, 1903, 15 days after, with U.S. backing, Panama declared its independence from what had been Gran Colombia. The U.S. set up the Canal Zone as a separate entity, governed under Delaware law, with a U.S. governor. The September 7, 1977 Panama Canal treaty, which came into effect October 1, 1979, provided for transfer of full control to Panama on December 31, 1999. Spurred by pressures arising out of the shooting of demonstrating student-nationalists by U.S. soldiers – at the behest of an addled garrison commander – in 1964, the treaty negotiated between the Carter administration and Panama’s dictator, Omar Torrijos-Herrera, proved a rare foreign policy triumph for Carter.

Early plans to build a canal date back to the 16th century. It was after crossing the Panama isthmus that Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513. The one major failed attempt was a 15-year late-19th century effort by Suez Canal architect Ferdinand de Lesseps. His Suez success did not face the significant variations in terrain elevation that made Panama unsuitable for a pure sea-level canal.

It was the brilliant American engineer John Frank Stevens who saw that a sea-level canal would not work; he devised the locks system. Stevens resigned in 1907, and passed the torch to David DuBose Gaillard, who saw the project to completion, under the overall supervision of George Washington Goethals. In November 1906 Theodore Roosevelt visited Panama (and Puerto Rico), becoming the first president to travel abroad on official diplomatic business.

The Canal’s 27,609-person death toll combines an estimated 22,000 for the failed French effort plus 5,609 for the decade-long American effort. Most of the difference was disease; when William Crawford Gorgas directed the effort to conquer yellow fever, thousands of lives were saved. Nearly 40,000 workers toiled to build the Canal, mostly West Indians; the workers on the French and American efforts moved 268 million cubic yards of dirt – more than 25 times that for the (English) Channel Tunnel. The project cost the U.S. a total of $375 million ($9.5 billion in 2012 dollars, reflecting a 25-fold depreciation of the greenback); the cost was a record for an infrastructure project up to that time.

The Panama Canal locks transit system consists of six locks, depicted here (place cursor over locks for video simulation), the first starting and the last ending at sea level. On the Pacific side there are three locks, two Miraflores, one Pedro Miguel, rising a total of 26 meters (85 feet) to the artificial Lake Gatun; the three Gatun locks on the north side lower the ships to the Atlantic side. Lake Gatun, at about 20 miles, is the largest share of the 50-miles transit, followed by the roughly 9-mile Culebra Cut (also known from 1915 through 1999 as the Gaillard Cut, after the engineer who directed its creation). When Panama took possession of the Canal it revived the original name, which had been used from 1903 to 1914. Initially 92 meters (302 feet) wide, the Cut has been expanded twice, and now is 192 meters (630 feet) in straightaway sections and 222 meters (728 feet) on curved sections. Alongside the Canal is the Chagres River, which is the only river running across the entire isthmus.

Our passage was blessed by a mostly sunny Saturday. We began on the Pacific Ocean side, which, as the Canal isthmus runs east-west, is on the south end, at a colorful place named Flamenca Island [sic]; the north side, at the Atlantic (actually, the Caribbean) end, reaches the port of Colon. Thus in 16th century parlance the Pacific was the Southern Sea (and the Atlantic the Northern Sea). Both ports rest at sea level; the Pacific tide runs 21 feet daily, whereas the Caribbean-Atlantic Ocean side runs a mini-tide of only 1-1/2 feet. All gates for locks on the Pacific side are higher, to allow for tidal flow. The existing gates have functioned for a full century, operating purely on gravity to move water in and out of the lock chambers. The gates on the Pacific side weigh 700 tons each.

We boarded our vessel, the Pacific Queen, at 7 a.m. By 7:15 we had passed under the Bridge of the Americas, rising 100 meters above sea level; across it runs the Pan-American Highway, which goes from Chile, with one gap, 30,000 miles all the way (not as the crow flies) to Alaska. Traversing the three locks on the Pacific side, we reached the midway point, Centennial Bridge, around 11 a.m.; the bridge spans Gold Hill to Contractor’s Hill. Gold Hill was named to help create a stock market commodity price bubble; a predictable frenzy ensued, as investors piled in only to be outmaneuvered by insiders. We see on the east bank a huge red and white construction crane, and are told that it had been used by billionaire magnate Howard Hughes to lift his monster Spruce Goose seaplane out of the water after its only flight, in 1947.

CAIR Gets Muslim TV Show Killed Over Ethnic, Religious Stereotyping

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/cair-gets-muslim-tv-show-killed-over-ethnic-religious-stereotyping

The terrorist front organization Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has repeatedly proven that it wields tremendous power in the Obama administration and now the group is flexing its bulging muscles in Hollywood, successfully killing a new show on a major television network over negative stereotypes of Muslims.

This is the same nonprofit that got the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to purge anti-terrorism training material determined to be “offensive” to Muslims. Judicial Watch uncovered that scandal last summer and obtained hundreds of pages of FBI documents revealing that a group of “Subject Matter Experts” determined certain anti-terrorism training curricula contained material that was offensive to Muslims. The excised files included references linking the Muslim Brotherhood to terrorism, tying al Qaeda to the 1993 World Trade Center and Khobar Towers bombings, and suggesting that “young male immigrants of Middle Eastern appearance … may fit the terrorist profile best.”

CAIR also got several police departments in President Obama’s home state of Illinois to cancel essential counterterrorism courses over accusations that the instructor was anti-Muslim. The course was called “Islamic Awareness as a Counter-Terrorist Strategy” and departments in Lombard, Elmhurst and Highland Park caved into CAIR’s demands. The group responded with a statement commending officials for their “swift action in addressing the Muslim community’s concerns.”

Founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, CAIR has also wielded power in a number of other cases during the Obama administration. It has impeded an FBI probe involving the radicalization of young Somali men in the U.S., pressured the U.S. government to file discrimination lawsuits against employers who don’t accommodate Muslims and forced American taxpayers to fund “Islamically permissible” meals for Muslim prison inmates.

Boko Haram: How a Militant Islamist Group Emerged in Nigeria by Femi Owolade

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4232/boko-haram-nigeria

The Western influence of British colonialists caused a division among the people of Northern Nigeria, who were once united by Islam. This division saw, on one side, the so-called “civilized” — by Western standards — elite who were used by the British as agents of colonization; and on the other side, the commoners, who vehemently resisted Western influence in the region.

Dissatisfaction with Western influence also led to an emergence of Islamist fundamentalists among people of the Northeastern region of Nigeria.

The reason Mohammed Yusuf founded Boko Haram appears to be that he saw an opportunity to exploit public outrage at government corruption by linking it to Western influence in governance.

What developments might have triggered the emergence of violent Islamist group Boko Haram during the last decade in Nigeria? According to Umar Mamodu[1] — a scholar and key Boko Haram historian — its inception in 2002 resulted from a clash between the moderate Islamic teachings of the prominent Sheikh Jafaar Adam at the Mahammadu Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri-Borno State in the Northeastern part of Nigeria, and the more militant interpretation of the Qur’an by his disciple, Mohammed Yusuf.[2]

According to Mamodu[3], Yusuf believed in the creation of a new order in which the wretched should inherit the earth, and for his extremist views, was expelled in 2002 from the Ndimi Mosque Committee.[4] Later that year Yusuf built a mosque in the northeast Nigeria to serve as a magnet for primary and secondary school pupils who, in response to his teachings, would abandon Westernized schools in the belief that Western education [Boko] is a sin [Haram]; hence the name Boko Haram.[5]

Congressional Muscle and US Foreign Policy Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

http://bit.ly/P8LdSa

On March 5, 2014, the US House of Representatives voted 410:1 to upgrade Israel from a “Major Non-NATO Ally” to a “Major Strategic Partner” – a congressional initiative, significantly expanding the mutually-beneficial US-Israel strategic cooperation in the areas of missile defense, intelligence, national security at-large, technology, energy, cyber security, irrigation, space satellites, defense industries, etc. The Senate is expected to overwhelmingly support the US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014, highlighting the systematic bi-cameral, bi-partisan consensus support of Israel by the US constituent, and therefore by its most authentic representative: Congress – the independent, co-equal, co-determining branch of the US government.

For instance, when Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, was asked by the Secretary of the Navy to rescind an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill – upgrading the port of Haifa facilities for the Sixth Fleet – the Senator responded: “According to the US Constitution, the Subcommittee on Defense supervises the Department of the Navy and not vise versa….” The amendment remained intact, in defiance of the Administration, enhancing the operations of the Sixth Fleet in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean.

When requested to support initiatives of Democratic presidents, based on partisan loyalty, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who was an arch-defender of congressional power, stated: “I am the obedient servant of the Constitution, not the President!”

RUTHIE BLUM: TALK ABOUT BEING A TURKEY

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7875

While the latest twist in the trial of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert upstages the investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom, a different type of scandal is unfolding that is worthy of far greater worry.

But with the Israeli media more interested in discussing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s blocking of Twitter and YouTube, and broadcasting his sudden onset of laryngitis during an election rally, the real story involving Turkey has barely been reported.

On Thursday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave the green light to Turkey to complete construction on a hospital in Gaza, which it began building in 2011 by smuggling materials through illegal tunnels. The hospital will be run jointly by Turks and Palestinians.

Ya’alon’s permission grants Turkey the right to transfer 500 trucks of building materials and 70 trucks of electrical and communications equipment into the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave.

This gesture suggests that recent reports in the Turkish press according to which normalization with Israel is soon to resume are accurate. Indeed, for the past few days, Turkish newspapers have referred to a number of developments indicating that the four-year break in relations between Jerusalem and Ankara is on the brink of a resolution.

Ties between Turkey and Israel were severed in 2010, when a Turkish Gaza-bound flotilla with armed pro-Palestinian activists was intercepted by Israeli commandos. In the ensuing fray, during which the Israeli soldiers were viciously attacked with various weapons, nine activists were killed. Turkey never took responsibility for its part in the incident. Israel, on the other hand, has continued to try to repair the damage. At the behest of U.S. President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even issued a personal apology to Erdogan, and has been negotiating a compensation package for the families of those killed during the raid.

Erdogan keeps upping the ante, however, not only demanding greater sums of money than Israel originally agreed to pay, but setting as a condition for a settlement the listing of the siege on his terrorist buddies on Gaza. Nevertheless, Netanyahu has not rescinded his offer to pay compensation — a misnomer for acts of self-defense — due ostensibly to reasons of regional realpolitik.

This has not been working in Israel’s favor. Turkey under Erdogan has become increasingly hostile to its former ally. And it has a lot more to gain from good relations with the Jewish state than the other way around. In fact, after a four-year hiatus, Israelis are starting to plan vacations to Turkey again. This is a source of great revenue for the Turkish tourism industry, because Israelis spend lots of cash when they go abroad. Nobody is more keenly aware of this than Turkish shopkeepers.

WHO IS SENATOR CORI BERNARDI? UP FRONT DOWN UNDER

Cori Bernardi is an Australian politician. He has been a Liberal Party member of the Australian Senate since 2006, representing the state of South Australia. In Australia our winter is their summer and “liberal” is conservative.

Bernardi has written a book

Product Details
THE CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION by Cory Bernardi (Nov 1, 2013)

An unapologetic advocate for mainstream values, Cory Bernardi presents a bold vision for a stronger nation that is founded on conservative principles. He takes the fight to the political left and calls for an overturning of the existing moral relativism that threatens Australia’s way of life. Bernardi argues that the best way to tackle this threat is to protect and defend the traditional institutions that have stood the test of time, something that he has done during his time as a senator in the Australian Parliament. Bernardi’s work courageously promotes the conservative cause and sets out a path to a better Australia through a commitment to faith, family, flag, freedom and free enterprise. This volume reminds us that conservative principles – not the populist whims of the left – generate enduring stability, success and strength. That is why we need a conservative revolution.

And guess what? The lefties have gone viral in denouncing the book in the reviews section. Guess why? He’s pro-life…rsk