http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/to-defeat-the-taliban-we-must-defeat-the-ideology?f=puball Just last week the Taliban executed a horrific well-coordinated attack against a restaurant in Kabul often frequented by westerners. It was not a location where any Afghan or Coalition military personnel gave patronage but rather expatriates and UN civilian workers. In a classic military attack, first the homicide bomber detonated to the front of […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamas-war-on-us-energy
There is no reason for the U.S. to be in such a slow recovery from the financial crisis of 2008. If President Obama would get out of the way, our national debt could be dramatically reduced and hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created in the nation’s energy sector, leading to the expansion of its manufacturing sector and still more jobs.
As Daniel Simmons, the Director of Regulatory and State Affairs for the Institute of Energy Research told the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Healthcare and Entitlements in February 2013:
“The federal estate contains vast energy resources, but the federal government allows energy production on a very small percentage of taxpayer-owned federal lands. The Interior Department has leased just two percent (2%) of federal offshore areas and less than six percent (6%) of federal onshore lands for oil and gas development.”
“These technically recoverable resources total 1,194 billion barrels of oil and 2,150 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that is owned by the federal taxpayer…the value of the estimated oil resources is $119.4 trillion and the value of the estimated natural gas resources is $8.6 trillion for a grand total of $128 trillion.”
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/01/20/white-house-rings-in-start-of-iran-nuke-agreement-hails-its-strong-and-disciplined-democracy/?print=1
The Obama administration hailed the first day of the interim nuclear agreement with Iran while quietly chiding Tehran over an invitation from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for the Islamic Republic to join Geneva talks on Syria.
Syrian opposition figures threatened to pull out of the talks and the U.S. said Iran needs to endorse the end of Assad’s rule in favor of a power-sharing transitional administration. Both parties also oppose Iran’s continued supplying of arms and other support to Bashar Assad’s regime.
“Today, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran has taken the initial specific steps it committed to on or by January 20th, as part of the Joint Plan of Action between the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China, coordinated by EU High Representative Catherine Ashton), and Iran. As a result, implementation of the Joint Plan of Action will begin today,” White House press secretary Jay Carney announced in a statement this morning.
“Specifically, the IAEA has verified in a written report and subsequent briefing for P5+1 technical experts, that Iran has, among other things, stopped producing 20% enriched uranium, has disabled the configuration of the centrifuge cascades Iran has been using to produce it, has begun diluting its existing stockpile of 20% enriched uranium, and has not installed additional centrifuges at Natanz or Fordow. These actions represent the first time in nearly a decade that Iran has verifiably enacted measures to halt progress on its nuclear program, and roll it back in key respects. Iran has also begun to provide the IAEA with increased transparency into the Iranian nuclear program, through more frequent and intrusive inspections and the expanded provision of information to the IAEA. Taken together, these concrete actions represent an important step forward,” Carney continued.
ARABS HECKLED AND LEFT THE HALL WHEN HE DENOUNCED THOSE WHO DISGRACEFULLY CASTIGATE ISRAEL….
http://www.timesofisrael.com/harper-tells-israel-through-fire-and-water-canada-will-stand-with-you/
THE TEXT:
Monsieur le Premier Ministre, Monsieur le Président de la Knesset, Monsieur le Président de la Cour Suprême, Monsieur le Chef de l’Opposition, Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres, Et les Députes, Distingués Invités, Mesdames et Messieurs,
Shalom. And thank you for inviting me to visit this remarkable country, and especially for this opportunity to address the Knesset. It is truly a great honour.
And if I may, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my wife Laureen and the entire Canadian delegation, let me begin by thanking the Government and people of Israel for the warmth of your hospitality. You have made us feel extremely welcome. We have felt immediately at home.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Canada and Israel are the greatest of friends, and the most natural of allies. And, with your indulgence, I would like to offer a reflection upon what makes the relationship between Canada and Israel special and important. Because the relationship between us is very strong.
L’amitié entre le Canada et Israël prend ses racines dans l’histoire, se nourrit de valeurs communes et se renforce volontairement aux plus hauts échelons du commerce et du gouvernement ce qui est l’expression de fermes convictions.
The friendship between us is rooted in history, nourished by shared values, and it is intentionally reinforced at the highest levels of commerce and government as an outward expression of strongly held inner convictions.
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/01/20/what-is-pop-culture-polytheism/?print=1
Last year I started experimenting with Instagram. Inspired by PJM columnist Zombie I decided to create an account to A) confuse the hell out of people, B) stir up trouble, and C) explore the truth of what people believe in the world today without the baggage of my existing politically incorrect identity clouding how they addressed me.
As with Zombie, with “Thoth and Ma’at Married” people can’t even tell if I’m a man or woman — the handle includes the names of both male and female Egyptian deities of writing (and thus serves as my stealth so-con way of promoting marriage too). They likewise can’t tell at first glance what my religion, politics, or philosophy are. I use the account to engage with people all across the spectrum of cultures and ideas to try to learn more about where their values come from and how they think. On January 10, one of the atheists that I follow posted a photo in which he asked for anyone to ask him his opinion about anything. I asked which side he supported in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here’s the exchange that followed and the revealing admission from an atheist about where he really learned right from wrong in our pop culture-dominated world today:
So he simultaneously admits he knows nothing but expresses his preset ideological opinion that the governments are driven by money and the militaries by primitivism.
Here’s when I drop my counterculture conservative provocation, defining the evil in the issue and then seeing how he or any of his followers choose to react to the facts:
Did my provocation catch any fish? Yes, two revealing responses. The first a somewhat innocent, naive idealist, and the second doubting my facts.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/from-martin-luther-king-to-obama/print/
On the day before Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, the New Yorker unveiled an extended interview with Obama in which the flailing leader blamed his poor approval ratings on racism.
“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,” Obama told the editor of the liberal magazine known for its cloyingly obscure cartoons and overwhelmingly white readership.
Obama began his first term with an approval rating of 68 percent; a figure unmatched since JFK. No Republican had enjoyed a starting approval rating above 60 percent in 60 years, indicating how much more willing Republicans were to give the other guy a fair shot than their Democratic counterparts. At 12 percent, his disapproval ratings were also much lower than those of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.
If his current approval rating of 40 percent pro and 51 percent con can be put down to anything, it isn’t race. When Obama began his first term in office, he had the approval of 41 percent of Republicans. By the time the year was out, that number had fallen to 16 percent.
At the start of his first term, he had the approval of 62 percent of independent voters. Today he has the approval of less than half that number. Only his support from his own party has remained unchanged.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/j-christian-adams/stop-giving-obama-radicals-the-benefit-of-the-doubt/print/ In the Spring of 2011, National Security Council staffer Samantha Power sent emails to top Pentagon officials. Her emails contained GPS coordinates in Libya. She demanded that the Pentagon launch immediate air strikes on top of these coordinates, no questions asked. Power, you see, had friends in NGOs on the ground in Libya looking […]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/gathering-storms-the-iranian-drive-for-nuclear-weapons/
“Iran is now at the last lap of the nuclear marathon,” Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, former Israeli Minister for Congressional Affairs, stated during a January 14, 2014, conference call. Sponsored by the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) after a January 8 EMET/Center for Security Policy (CSP) panel on Iran (video here), the two policy discussions highlighted growing dangers from an uncontained Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Nuclear weapons were part of an Iranian “long term strategic vision” dating from the 1980s, Lebanese-American Middle East scholar Walid Phares explained at the Russell Senate Office Building. Along with these “fissiles,” Iran was developing missiles as weapons delivery vehicles, an arsenal currently capable of striking Israel and in the future targets like Moscow. Iran’s Islamic Republic “perceived itself as a superpower” challenging infidels such as the Israeli “Little Satan” and the American “Greater Satan” with an international revolution analogous to Soviet Communism. The subsequent presentation by Andrew Bostom on canonical Islamic anti-Semitism recurring throughout history emphasized the troubling ideological nature of the Islamic Republic.
There is in Iran currently, however, “nothing to compare” with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, Phares determined. Despite contrary hopes, Iran betrays the “opposite of reform.” Phares dismissed impressions of Islamic Republic moderation as manifesting how this regime is “not predictable on the tactical level” while maintaining a consistent strategic vision. The Islamic Republic is willing to go “very far” in the name of pragmatism and “sell you anything.” Iran, for example, is currently claiming to be “part of the war on terror” alongside the United States in opposing Al Qaeda in Iraq, a “narrative” of “common enemies” designed to impress “Ivy League experts.” Yet “there is no difference” between the infamous Islamic Republic founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the current Islamic Republic Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Crude obfuscation is the stock in trade of many political actors. Not so the president of Iran.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304302704579333101938929802
This column is about Iran. But first a word about a bearded bully closer to home.
On Monday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman accused this newspaper of “crude obfuscation” for failing to run a correction for a mistake I made in a recent column on income inequality. “Oh, and for the record,” he wrote with his customary charm, “at the time of writing this elementary error had not been corrected on the Journal’s website.”
In fact, a formal correction was posted on Jan. 5 and I addressed the subject at length on Jan. 3.
Columnists make mistakes, and when we do we post timely corrections. Well, some of us do. What’s amusing about Mr. Krugman is that he should now commit his own elementary error in the service of a loudmouth accusation. While he’s paying attention, maybe he can explain his August 2002 contention that ” Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble,” or his January 2010 claim that “Europe is an economic success.” Misreading Census Bureau data, as I accidentally did, is a misdemeanor intellectual offense compared with those whoppers.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304302704579332393806457848?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Now that President Obama’s promise in December of a “pretty definitive statement” about the nation’s electronic intelligence-gathering practices has been fulfilled with Friday’s speech, it is worth looking at what will actually happen as a result, at least in the near term, and what won’t.
The speech was preceded by seven months of arguably the most damaging leaks of national-security information—how we collect electronic intelligence—in the nation’s history, as the result of disclosures by former government contractor Edward Snowden. Yet the president made no recommendation as to how such leaks might be stopped.
To be sure, he mentioned the “avalanche of unauthorized disclosures” that resulted in “revealing methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations . . . for years to come.” But the rhetorical afterburners immediately kicked in to carry us to a higher altitude: “[T]he task before us now is greater than simply repairing the damage done to our operations or preventing more disclosures from taking place in the future.”
Forgive this brief demurrer, but consider: A young man gets a medical discharge from the military notwithstanding that his avocations include kickboxing, then has a rocky and brief tenure at the CIA that ends with his negotiated retention of his security clearance—which allowed him then to be employed by a military contractor in a job that gave him access to the secrets he later leaked—and then he manages to disable a complex computer system and steal more than a million-and-a-half documents. Are we not entitled at least to some brief assurance that the holes in the system that allowed Edward Snowden to do what he did have been sewn up?
