http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11745/pub_detail.asp The furor surrounding President Obama’s recent comments about the authority of the United States Supreme Court to overturn enacted legislation brought consternation from many a constitutional scholar as well as at least three federal appeals court judges from the Fifth Circuit, who demanded a clarification from Attorney General Eric Holder. To his credit, Mr. […]
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=265058
As time goes by and events consistently refute their dogmatic doctrine, “two-staters” are looking more and more like “flat-earthers.”
If a Palestinian state is established, it will be armed to the teeth. Within it there will be bases of the most extreme terrorist forces, who will be equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft shoulder-launched rockets, which will endanger not only random passers-by, but also every airplane and helicopter taking off in the skies of Israel and every vehicle traveling along the major traffic routes in the coastal plain. Even if the Palestinians agree that their state have no army or weapons, who can guarantee that a Palestinian army would not be mustered later to encamp at the gates of Jerusalem and the approaches to the [coastal] lowlands.
– Shimon Peres
My column last week was largely a historical account of the monumental failure of the endeavor to implement a two-state approach following the 1993 Oslo Agreements. This column will focus more on some of the conceptual defects and inconsistencies that made past failure – and will make future failure –inevitable.
Two kinds of ‘two-staters’
In principle there are two categories of “two-staters:” (a) Those who insist that in their version of a two-state solution, “secure/defensible” borders for Israel are an indispensable imperative; and (b) Those for whom “secure/defensible” borders appear to be consideration of minor–if any–significance in their vision of the two-state arrangement.
Arguably one of the most eminent spokesmen for the first category is Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz; while the second category includes figures such as Peter Beinart, and groups such as J-Street and the Geneva initiative, endorsing the Obama-prescription that the frontiers of the Palestinian state be based on the indefensible 1967-lines with “agreed” (read “minor/cosmetic”) land swaps.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2995/oil-supply-prices
“Right now the key thing that is driving higher gas prices is actually the world’s oil markets and uncertainty about what’s going on in Iran and the Middle East, and that’s adding a $20 or $30 premium to oil prices,” President Obama said March 23. It’s complete and utter nonsense. Oil is trading in lockstep with expectations for economic growth, as reflected in stock prices. There’s not a shred of evidence that geopolitical uncertainty has added a penny to the oil price. Obama’s $20 to $30 per barrel risk premium is a number pulled out of a hat, without a shred of empirical support. In effect, the President is blaming Israel for high oil prices.
On April, 3, Vice-President Biden blamed higher oil prices on “talk about war with Iran”; fear that Iran might “take out the Saudi oil fields and Bahraini oil fields”; the Arab Spring movement; “war in Libya”; the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood; and a potential for unforeseen political unrest, such as “chaos in Russia.” It’s all complete and utter nonsense. Oil prices are going up because the world economy is consuming more oil and supply has not increased to meet the demand – in part because the Obama administration discourages North American energy development, most recently by stopping the proposed Keystone pipeline from Canada. It’s easier to blame foreign phantoms for high gas prices at the pump than the administration’s business-killing politics
One might argue that the market should price strategic risk into the oil price, but the fact is that markets are not especially good at assigning prices to possible events whose probability can’t be measured.
http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/blog/2012/04/brotherhood-launches-pr-offensive-in-washington
Brotherhood Launches PR Offensive in Washington by Samara Greenberg
DO YOU REMEMBER THE REAL BROTHERHOOD WEEK LAUNCHED IN 1927 BY THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHRISTIANS AND JEWS? IT WAS ALWAYS HELD IN FEBRUARY….NOW THE WORLD’S LEADING RACISTS CALL THEMSELVES A “BROTHERHOOD”….RSK
A delegation from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) made its first official visit to the United States this week, where it has spent time in New York and Washington, DC talking to think tank experts and White House officials about the Brotherhood’s growing role in Cairo.
“The purpose of the visit is to engage the American people on issues of mutual concern in international relations, reassure [the] business community of the prospects of investments and economic growth in democratic Egypt, and boost American tourism to Egypt,” the Muslim Brotherhood’s English language website reported. In other words, the FJP is trying to assuage American fears regarding its political ambitions and depict itself as a moderate group that has the interest of all Egyptians at heart.
The delegation arrived in the U.S. after ruffling feathers by fielding a candidate for president in Egypt. The FJP previously said it wouldn’t do so. That candidate, Khairat al-Shater, this week declared that introducing sharia law would be his “first and final project and objective” as president, and that he would create a special entity to assist parliament in the process. Walking back from that announcement, at an event this week at Georgetown University FJP lawmaker Abdul Mawgoud Dardery said that the party is dedicated to the objectives of sharia law rather than its specific practice. “The principles are universal: freedom, human rights, justice for all,” he said.
http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/04/04/the-l-a-times-should-release-the-khalidi-tape-for-passover/2/
The L.A. Times Should Release the Khalidi Tape for Passover
Passover 2012, which starts at sunset Friday, will not be a particularly auspicious one for the Jewish people.
Despite being superficially strong in many ways, Israel — the sole Jewish state — and Jews in general face more determined opposition than they have at any time since World War II. From terrorists in the South of France to professors at Boston’s Northeastern University, anti-Semitism is rife. Meanwhile, Iran, which repeatedly calls for the extermination of Israel, draws ever closer to nuclear weapons capability. And the once vaunted “Arab Spring” has turned into the darkest of winters with Egypt morphing into its own Sunni version of a Khomeinist Islamist autocracy with women in veils, Christians attacked, homosexuals jailed, and the peace treaty forged at Camp David fragile as a potato chip.
But have no fear. Our president “has Israel’s back.” Or so he says.
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com
FRANKLY…THEY ALL MISS THE POINT….FIRST: LEARN FROM HISTORY AND SCUTTLE THE TWO STATE (DIS)SOLUTION. SECOND: IT IS NOT JUST ABOUT IRAN…IT IS ABOUT JIHAD AND ISRAEL IS A STEPPING STONE TO THE INTERNATIONAL CALIPHATE…THIRD: IT IS INSANE TO PROMOTE ANY POLICY IN THE MIDEAST WITHOUT REAL ENERGY INDEPENDENCE AND WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO NAME THE ENEMY….RSK
With Washington, D.C., talking Israeli politics, National Review Online asked experts: “Going into a presidential-election year, what’s a sane, responsible Israel policy?”
ELLIOTT ABRAMS
A sane, responsible Israel policy would reflect reality in the region today. Israel’s cold peace with Egypt may unravel as Islamists grow in power there, and the long-safe border between Israel and the Egyptian Sinai is already unsafe. Jordan’s stability is not certain, and Syria is awash in blood. The Palestinian leadership flirts with Hamas and invites it to join the PLO. And of course Iran’s nuclear-weapons program moves forward relentlessly.
The only firm ally we have in the region is Israel. Accordingly we should (1) maintain our military aid and our diplomatic support for Israel; (2) seek to improve life in the West Bank, with as much self-government for Palestinians and as few Israeli intrusions as security permits, while acknowledging that any final peace agreement is far away; and (3) state clearly the U.S. policy that Iran will never be permitted to acquire nuclear-weapons capability, and that we would support Israel in the aftermath of a military strike (Israel’s or ours) at that program.
Put in the negative, we should stop Obama-style pressures on Israel for negotiations with the Palestinians that cannot at this juncture possibly succeed, and stop undermining Israel’s military credibility against Iran with what the president called “loose talk.” The key concept is simple: Support your friend against your enemy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303302504577323691134926300.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
Two tragedies are apparent in the Trayvon Martin case. The first is obvious: A teenager—unarmed and committing no crime—was shot dead. Dressed in a “hoodie,” a costume of menace, he crossed paths with a man on the hunt for precisely such clichés of menace. Added to this—and here is the rub—was the fact of his dark skin.
Maybe it was more the hood than the dark skin, but who could argue that the skin did not enhance the menace of the hood at night and in the eyes of someone watching for crime. (Fifty-five percent of all federal prisoners are black though we are only 12% of the population.) Would Trayvon be alive today had he been walking home—Skittles and ice tea in hand—wearing a polo shirt with an alligator logo? Possibly. And does this make the ugly point that dark skin late at night needs to have its menace softened by some show of Waspy Americana? Possibly.
What is fundamentally tragic here is that these two young males first encountered each other as provocations. Males are males, and threat often evokes a narcissistic anger that skips right past reason and into a will to annihilate: “I will take you out!” There was a terrible fight. Trayvon apparently got the drop on George Zimmerman, but ultimately the man with the gun prevailed. Annihilation was achieved.
If this was all there was to it, the Trayvon/Zimmerman story would be no more than a cautionary tale, yet another admonition against the hair-trigger male ego. But this story brought reaction from the White House: “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon,” said the president. The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ubiquitous icons of black protest, virtually battled each other to stand at the bereaved family’s side—Mr. Jackson, in a moment of inadvertent honesty, saying, “There is power in blood . . . we must turn a moment into a movement.” And then there was the spectacle of black Democrats in Congress holding hearings on racial profiling with Trayvon’s parents featured as celebrities.
In fact Trayvon’s sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America’s civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the “poetic truth” that these establishments live by. Poetic truth is like poetic license where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic truth lies just a little; it bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important truth.
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/when_clever_only_looks_like_dumb
“One outraged pundit decides that Mr. Obama has revealed himself to be “no longer a serious man. Nor an honest one.” This misses the point, too. Barack Obama never was.”
Presidential contempt for the Supreme Court and inconvenient law is not new. But rarely has a president sounded so, well, dumb, as when Barack Obama lectured the justices on what they can and can’t do to his cherished Obamacare.
The court would take an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” if it overturns his health-care scheme because it was enacted by “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” the president declared. Obamacare actually cleared the House by only seven votes, 219 to 212, and on their face the president’s remarks betray an astonishing ignorance of the Constitution and how the republic works.
But Barack Obama is neither dumb nor ignorant. The man praised as the greatest orator since Demosthenes celebrated hope and change in ancient Greece knows better than to bandy words foolishly. So why would he say something so foolish and dumb?
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/111074/sec_id/111074
The play within the play
In October 2011 an extraordinary opportunity to apprehend the ill-defined “Middle East” conflict was offered in the form of a play within the play. Discourse was disabled by flesh and blood images acting out the drama with exquisite unity and perfect casting. Playing the role of Israel, Gilad Shalit, courageous survivor of five years of unspeakable deprivation, emerged frail, pale but gloriously resistant. The little that we know of the conditions of his imprisonment is already too much. Kidnapped at the age of 19 near the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel (two IDF soldiers were killed in the cross-border attack), held in some sort of dungeon, starved of human company, starved of daylight, undernourished, not even given eyeglasses with which to see the ugly contours of his constricted world, Gilad stood before us, a miraculous survivor. The celestial light of dignity suffused his flesh and bones with metaphysical force.
What decent human being would not have misgivings about the release, in exchange for Shalit, of 1027 murderers, thieves, and thugs determined to use their liberation as a license to renew the persecution of Israeli Jews?
Another Tack: Obama of the open mic ‘The tongue weighs practically nothing,” notes the anonymous aged adage, “but so few folks can hold it.’ Some supercilious sorts don’t even seem to try too hard – like American President Barack Obama, given to remarkable and repetitive chattiness when he’s precariously near open microphones. He is so accident-prone, […]
