Most of the great wars of the past would have been far less bloody had they begun sooner. That emphatically is true of the First World War: if Germany had launched a preemptive assault on France during the First Morocco Crisis of 1905, before Britain had signed the Entente Cordiale with France and while Russia was busy with an internal rebellion, the result would have been a repeat of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 rather than the ghastly war of attrition that all but ruined Western civilization. It was a tragedy that the vacillating Kaiser Wilhelm II rejected the counsel of his general staff and kept the peace. I do not mean to impute moral superiority to Wilhelmine Germany, but to argue, simply, that swift victory by one side was preferable to what followed. It is hardly controversial to argue that Britain and France should have prepared for war with Germany and preempted Hitler’s ambitions no later than the 1936 re-occupation of the Rhineland.
Chuck Schumer announces Congress has the right to disapprove the Iran deal; he is strongly supporting the Corker bill.
Many hard-core Israel supporters thought all hopes of preventing a bad Iran deal was lost when powerful New York Senator Chuck Schumer (D) recently learned he would soon attain a long-coveted starring role in Washington, D.C.
With long-time wheeler-dealer Nevada Senator and minority leader Harry Reid’s announcement that he would retire in 2016, Schumer is the one who will step into that coveted role.
“The short, bewildering war had followed, the war of which no history had been written or ever could be written now, that had flared all around the northern hemisphere and had died away with the last seismic record of explosion on the thirty-seventh day.” That sentence appears in the opening chapter of Nevil Shute’s alarmist 1957 novel, On the Beach. The story tells of a nuclear war that had destroyed the northern hemisphere. It takes place in southern Australia, about a year after that fictional 1961 war. Radioactive dust drifts slowly, but steadily south. In the end, all die.
Horrifying memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still vivid a dozen years later when Shute’s novel was published. Those memories were kept alive by John Hersey’s telling of what happened in Hiroshima in his eponymous and best-selling book, published in 1946. Shute’s novel reminds us that the consequences of a nuclear war would not be confined to the participating parties. The book tells us that events can overwhelm expectations and that hope based on a misreading of human behavior can lead to disaster. Mr. Shute wrote: “No one knows how the war started or how it escalated.” In his desire for a deal, at seemingly any price, with a rogue nation known for exporting terrorism and for lying about their assets and capabilities, Mr. Obama may have put the world at great risk.
There was an old joke about Jews and perceived self interest- In a zoology class students are asked to write an essay on the elephant. The Jewish student submits “The Elephant and the Jews”….
The elephant I speak of here is the symbol of the Republican party. Jews in America prefer the asses (the very apposite symbol of the Democratic Party) demonstrating how susceptible they are to group think and real lack of self interest.
The liberals in America do not accept diversity- one must adhere to climate warming baloney, defense of quotas, aversion to war even in self defense, abortion on demand, suspicion of orthodoxy in Judaism and Christianity, appeasement of adversaries, a denial of American exceptionalism, unfettered immigration without any profiling, and worst of all an acceptance of a weakened and libeled Israel. One tarnishes membership in the Democratic/liberal elite by opposing any of the above, to say nothing about ostracism in the dinner parties of the artsy set. And see what has happened to Senator Menendez (D-New Jersey) for breaking from the pack.
Even ostensibly Jewish support groups such as the ADL and Haddassah go along with the whole package. In elections- local and national- Jewish voters mostly vote for the Democrats.They are looking for love in the wrong place in America. Republicans -tea party, conservative, and moderate- are stronger supporters of America and Israel by the widest margin. Perhaps the election in 2016 will bring some real self-interest in Jewish voters.
As a consequence of the deal on its nuclear programme, Iran has effectively received international legitimacy as a nuclear threshold state. It remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, and it will now feel more emboldened than ever. In other words, they’ve played us like a violin
On the face of it, the parameters of the deal on Iran’s nuclear programme are better than expected. The country is not about to join the elite nuclear club, at least for the time being. Under the proposed deal, Tehran must reduce by two thirds all its installed centrifuges, and those that remain will only be first generation.
Still Antisemitic After All These Years
It’s been estimated that during the Second World War Bosnian Muslims comprised almost 12 per cent of the mainly Croatian Ustaše, the Nazi puppet regime that embarked on a ruthless extermination of Serbs, Romany people, and of course Jews, who then numbered between 14,000 and 22,000 in Bosnia.But as Wikipedia states in its entry on the Mufti of Jerusalem:
“Among the Nazi leadership, the greatest interest in the idea of creating Muslim units under German command was shown by Heinrich Himmler, who viewed the Islamic world as a potential ally against the British Empire and regarded the Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia as a ‘ridiculous state’. Himmler had a romantic vision of Islam as a faith ‘fostering fearless soldiers’, and this probably played a significant role in his decision to raise three Muslim divisions under German leadership in the Balkans from Bosnian Muslims and Albanians: the 13th Handschar, the 21st Skanderberg, and the 23rd Kama (Shepherd’s dagger)…. Dissatisfied with low enlistenment, Himmler asked the mufti to intervene. Husseini negotiated, made several requests, mostly ignored by the SS, and conducted several visits to the area.] His speeches and charismatic authority proved instrumental in improving enlistment notably….’
Sad to say, despite the small number of Jews living in their country today, antisemitism is clearly alive and well among some Bosnians.
In this shocking footage,
“Bosnian fans meet a group of pro-Palestine demonstrators and after “Free Palestine” soon start chanting “Ubij, ubij Židove” (“Kill, kill the Jews!”) in Vienna’s central square (Stephansplatz) a few hours before the international friendly Austria – Bosnia&Herzegovina.”
The West seems to have lost the capacity and the will to criticize political Islam.
While “peace-loving” liberals in the West show support and sympathy for Hamas, and have removed Hamas from Europe’s terror list, Hamas leaders have been busy expressing their support and sympathy for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
Why then, for Europeans, is Hamas a “more acceptable” terrorist group than ISIS? Because it targets Jews?
If these Islamic jihadist groups cannot carry out their mission right away, it is not because they do not want to. It is because they do not have enough power to — at least for now.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
2015.04.05 (Kayamla, Nigeria) – Islamists raid a local market, kill four trader and take their food for the cause of Allah.
2015.04.05 (Misrata, Libya) – A woman and two children are among six innocents laid out by a Shahid suicide bomber.
2015.04.03 (Nalagonda, India) – Students Islamic Movement of India members gun down a local cop.
2015.04.03 (Logar, Afghanistan) – Four children and two women are among a family of seven disassembled by Religion of Peace bombers.
2015.04.03 (Sinai, Egypt) – Three civilians are murdered by a branch of the Islamic State.
2015.04.03 (Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan) – Sunni extremists gun down two people outside a children’s hospital.
People surely have a right not to participate in any activity which goes against their religious beliefs. Certainly ministers of religion must be free to decide whether to officiate at a gay wedding or to offer their churches. After that, things get very grey indeed.
They are big on free speech and religious freedom in the United States and, because of the past treatment of blacks, sensitive and resistant to all forms of discrimination. However, they face the same dilemma that all tolerant democracies face — as we did in reconsidering Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act — which is to craft a balance between upholding individual freedoms on the one hand and rejecting discrimination on the other.
Recent events in the small town of Walkerton in Indiana illustrate the dilemma. The facts of the case have been in the news but, briefly, they are as follows: Indiana was in process of passing a religious freedom law not too different from a similar federal law signed by Bill Clinton and laws in place in most other US states. The law basically gives individuals and businesses a legal fallback (a better chance in court) if they object to being compelled by the government to do something against their religious beliefs.
In a process of profound importance, five Arab states in the Middle East have effectively ceased to exist over the last decade. The five states in question are Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya. It is possible that more will follow.
The causes of their disappearance are not all the same. In two cases (Iraq, Libya) it was western military intervention which began the process of collapse. In another case (Lebanon) it is intervention from a Middle Eastern state (Iran) which is at the root of the definitive hollowing out of the state.
