http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-bawer/heading-toward-the-eu-exit/print/ On the European Union front, things are getting more and more promising. For years now, a majority of Brits have favored their country’s withdrawal from the EU, compelling Prime Minister David Cameron to promise a renegotation of the terms of UK membership and a referendum on the question of withdrawal after next year’s general […]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/green-socialists-on-mars/print/
We live in a strange world in which the weather is a subject of furious political debate. People have been arguing about the weather ever since the first rainstorm caught the first man without the umbrella that he did not yet know how to make, but they didn’t hold political debates over it.
For the last fifty years, the anti-weather side has been insisting that the world is headed toward a Frostean apocalypse of ice or fire. The calm biblical assertion that “Seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” was replaced by the terrifying certainty that the planet would soon turn into Mars or Venus; either too hot or too cold.
The end of weather was here. Instead of stable rhythms and cycles that might last for months or centuries, there was a runaway weather apocalypse that would culminate in unlivable conditions.
The doomsday predictions roll out daily without any regard to scientific or experiential reality. The more the predictions fail to match up, the more urgently Warmists insist on action. The harder it snows, the more articles appear warning that snow may soon be a thing of the past.
Never mind the weather; the end of weather is almost here.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/secular-palestinian-leader-calls-out-john-kerry-on-peace-plan-on-the-glazov-gang/print/
This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Mudar Zahran, a leader of Palestinians in Jordan who has been living in exile in the UK since 2010. He compares Israel’s and Jordan’s treatment of the Palestinians and expresses some taboo truths.
He also calls out John Kerry on his “peace plan” for the Mideast and asks why a U.S. Secretary of State is threatening Israel to commit suicide:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/the-pentagons-bow-to-islamic-extremism/
“Caving to pressure from Muslim groups, the Pentagon has relaxed uniform rules to allow Islamic beards, turbans and hijabs. It’s a major win for political correctness and a big loss for military unit cohesion,” said a recent report. This new relaxation of rules for Muslims comes at a time when the FBI is tracking more than 100 suspected jihadi-infiltrators of the U.S. military. Just last month, Craig Benedict Baxam, a former Army soldier and convert to Islam, was sentenced to seven years in prison due to his al-Qaeda/jihadi activities. Also last month, Mozaffar Khazaee, an Iranian-American working for the Defense Department, was arrested for sending secret documents to America’s enemy, Iran. According to a Pentagon spokesperson, the new religious accommodations—to allow Islamic beards, turbans, and hijabs—which took effect very recently, would “reduce both the instances and perception of discrimination among those whose religious expressions are less familiar to the command.” The report concludes that, “Making special accommodations for Islam will only attract more Muslims into the military at a time when two recent terror cases highlight the ongoing danger of Muslims in uniform.” But it’s worse than that; for not only will it attract “more Muslims,” it will attract precisely the wrong kinds of Muslims, AKA, “Islamists,” “radicals,” etc. This is easily demonstrated by connecting the dots and understanding that Muslims who adhere to visible, non-problematic aspects of Islam—growing beards and donning hijabs—often indicate their adherence to non-visible, problematic aspects of Islam. Consider it this way: Why do some Muslim men wear the prescribed beard and why do some Muslim women wear the prescribed hijab? Most Muslims would say they do so because Islam’s prophet Muhammad commanded them to (whether via the Koran or Hadith).
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-lawless-presidency/print/
In a move both transparently political and utterly contemptuous of the rule of law, the Obama administration has yet again made changes to the healthcare law. The Treasury Department issued a fact sheet Monday, outlining the new regulations (laughingly referred to as “final”). They now give employers with 50-99 employees until 2016 to comply with ObamaCare’s employer mandate. In addition, employers with 100 or more workers who originally had to cover 95 percent of them to be in compliance will only have to offer coverage to 70 percent of their employees next year, transitioning to the original percentage by 2016. In short, a law written and passed by Congress and signed by the president is becoming whatever the Obama administration wants it to be.
And as usual, the administration wants it both ways. Even as it disputes the idea that ObamaCare is causing many companies to eliminate employees as a means of getting below the 50-worker threshold when the mandate kicks in, Treasury officials warned that businesses must “certify” they are not eliminating workers to avoid that mandate. Employers will self-attest to this reality on their tax forms under penalty of perjury.
In other words the IRS, where not even a “smidgen” of corruption has occurred according to President Obama, could end up as the ultimate arbiter of any employer-employee disputes regarding reasons for an employee’s termination. And a decision in the employee’s favor could yield a one-two punch where a business owner is both cited for perjury and required to implement the business mandate from which he was previously exempt.
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/02/an-undeserved-triumph/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=eb420373b7-2014_2_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-eb420373b7-41165129
The Triumph and Tragedy of Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land
Ari Shavit’s new book was praised for balancing the story of Zionism’s accomplishments with criticism of its founding sins–but his work distorts history and hurts the chances for peace.
peace.
“Contrary to many of Shavit’s reviewers, there is nothing courageous about this kind of writing that is plainly wrong on the facts and relies on a false historical interpretation to enforce its moral logic. The refugees of Lydda may still be marching in Shavit’s vivid but distorted imagination, but in reality they and their descendants – now totaling 5-7 million souls – have been locked up for the past 65 years in miserable refugee camps. It is not because of Zionism that they are still there. Rather it’s their own leaders and the Arab regimes who want them to remain locked up.”
Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land may well be the most commercially successful, yet also critically acclaimed book by an Israeli writer explaining his country’s complicated history to American readers. It made the New York Times best seller list for several weeks and was praised profusely in most major book review outlets, including a rave by the New Republic’s literary editor Leon Wieseltier on the cover of the Times’ Sunday book review. The review’s editors then selected Shavit’s book as one of the 100 best books of the year. Meanwhile, over at the Grey Lady’s editorial pages, columnist Thomas Friedman chimed in, touting Shavit’s book as a “must-read” and recommended that President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu read it before their next contentious telephone conversation. Shavit also won the National Jewish Book Award in the category of Jewish history and has spoken to overwhelmingly appreciative audiences at Jewish Y’s and synagogues around the country.
Why has Washington looked the other way as Moscow revived Cold War weaponry? http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303442704579358571590251940?mod=Opinion_newsreel_8 The Reagan administration’s 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty is celebrated as the “cornerstone” of nuclear arms control. But Moscow has openly flouted the spirit and apparently the letter of the INF Treaty at least since 2008, signaling that it is determined […]
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579376793890614128?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop A life-like statue of a guy sleepwalking in his underwear awakens a protest by campus feminists. A realistic-looking statue of a sleepwalking schlub in his underpants has caused an outrage at Wellesley, a women’s college in Massachusetts near Boston. The students are so disturbed that they want him—I mean, it—gone. Grab the smelling salts, […]
http://www.d-intl.com/2014/02/10/frances-united-front-of-jew-hatred/?lang=en
Parts of the French left have no problems participating in anti-Semitic demonstrations demanding that Jews be kicked out of France. The Socialist government is less than pleased.
PARIS. What happened in the streets of Paris on the 26th of January? On the eve of Shoah Remembrance Day, a significant contingent of demonstrators marching in the Jour de Colère [Day of Rage] howled “Jews, get out of France” and other vicious anti-Semitic slogans.
the best coverage of the march I have seen begins with a display of Islamic Jew hatred on the Champs Elysées in October 2012. Then, scenes of wild Dieudonné fans mocking the Shoah alternate with choice excerpts from the Day of Rage, illustrating converging branches of Jew hatred packed into a cocktail of contemptuous destructive rage.
One week later, on February 2nd, a far larger crowd marched peacefully for five hours with absolutely no violence, anti-Semitism, or disrespect for the République. The Manif’ pour tous [Everyone’s protest march] is a movement created last year in an attempt to block the passage of the mariage pour tous [marriage for everyone] Bill. Though the Hollande government tried desperately to link the two movements, the difference is visible to the naked eye and confirmed by closer examination of the people, the discourse, and the outcome.
The Left, which is never more than a heartbeat away from the barricades, adores street protests… when it is in the Opposition. Today, an embattled government with nothing to show for its first 18 months in office but a tawdry politico-sexual scandal at the summit is tut-tutting about “baseless” demonstrations. The JDC [Jour de Colère] is, apparently, the brainchild of Béatrice Bourges, a dissident of the MPT [Manif’ pour Tous]. Exasperated with the failure to prevent passage of the same-sex marriage law, Bourges created an aggressive Printemps Français [French Spring] faction that engaged in battles with the police, easily used by the government to discredit the squeaky clean MPT movement that had mobilized at least half a million. Having failed to take over leadership of the MPT, Bourges sought new allies and new forms of action.
Ten days before the Day of Rage, in a debate with Pierre Cassen of the anti-Islamization site Riposte Laïque, Béatrice Bourges presented her analysis of same-sex marriage and parenthood, by adoption and eventually artificial insemination and womb rental, as part of a global project of “transhumanism.” The plan is to create a New Man hors sol [without national identity] and hors sexe [without sexual identity], a slave of an oligarchy determined to rule the world by turning people into featureless units of production and consumption. Her choice of villains and vocabulary ring with the familiar string of adjectives often associated, in times of trouble, with Jews: “stateless cosmopolitan unscrupulous money-grubbing demons of finance …”
Cassen announced he would not participate in the Day of Rage after Dieudonné encouraged his followers to join the troops. Bourges countered, helter skelter, that Dieudonné himself wouldn’t attend, the best way to discourage his acolytes was to ignore them, but it doesn’t matter if they do come because this is the Day for all the rhymes and reasons of Rage, no one should be excluded. Expressed rage, she said, is less prone to violence than repressed rage. These and other predictions about attendance—“it will be a tsunami”– and results—“the government has feet of clay, a few good blows and it will topple”– turned out to be equally inaccurate. I have not found on the Jour de Colère or Printemps Français any statement sites of disapproval of the anti-Semitic slogans, chants, and signs.
http://www.danielpipes.org/14063/obama-hollow-promises-abroad As U.S. credibility and stature diminish in world affairs, the American president and his secretaries of state and defense engage in eloquent denial. Unfortunately for them, realities trump words, even persuasive ones. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, “where the water-cooler chatter was about America’s waning influence in the Middle East,” John Kerry […]
