NORMAN PODHORETZ: STRIKE IRAN NOW TO AVERT DISASTER LATER

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303560204579246142096554348

A conventional-weapons attack is preferable to the nuclear war sure to come.

Not too many years ago, hardly anyone disagreed with John McCain when he first said that “the only thing worse than bombing Iran is letting Iran get the bomb.” Today hardly anyone disagrees with those who say that the only thing worse than letting Iran get the bomb is bombing Iran. And in this reversal hangs a tale.

The old consensus was shaped by three considerations, all of which seemed indisputable at the time.

The first was that Iran was lying when it denied that its nuclear facilities were working to build a bomb. After all, with its vast reserves of oil and gas, the country had no need for nuclear energy. Even according to the liberal Federation of American Scientists a decade ago, the work being done at the Iranian nuclear facilities was easily “applicable to a nuclear weapons development program.” Surprisingly, a similar judgment was made by Mohamed ElBaradei, the very dovish director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The second consideration was that the prospect of being annihilated in a retaliatory nuclear strike, which had successfully deterred the Soviets and the Chinese from unleashing their own nuclear weapons during the Cold War, would be ineffective against an Iran ruled by fanatical Shiite mullahs. As Bernard Lewis, the leading contemporary authority on Islam, put it in 2007, to these fanatics “mutual assured destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement. We know already [from the Iran-Iraq war] that they do not give a damn about killing their own people in great numbers. . . . They are giving them a quick free pass to heaven and all its delights.”

JED BABBIN: KARZAI….AGAIN

It’s nice to see Obama’s diplomacy paying off in so many places. Karzai is still stalling on a status of forces agreement with us, and has already signed a security treaty with Iran. No American should want to have our troops stay in Afghanistan for another day, far less ten years.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/hamid-karzai-deal-with-iran-boosts-talibans-prospects-for-return-to-power/article/2540515#
Hamid Karzai deal with Iran boosts Taliban’s prospects for return to power
Photo – Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani during their meeting at Tehran’s Saadabad Palace in Iran on Dec. 8. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani during their meeting at…

By now, we should be more used to — and less tolerant of — Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s machinations.

Over the last decade, he has pitched many a tantrum at U.S. officials trying to get his cooperation. His latest eruption is no tantrum.

He’s refused to follow the advice of his national council — the loya Jirga — to sign a long-term agreement allowing U.S. forces to stay in his country past 2014. And he’s signed a security treaty with Iran.

Karzai’s refusal of the U.S. deal drew an angry reaction from National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who said there would be no further negotiations.

The White House has made clear its threat to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 if Karzai doesn’t sign the agreement before the end of this year, and Karzai isn’t budging.

ALEX NEWMAN: AFTER MANDELA…A BLOOBATH?

http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/can-whites-escape-post-mandela-bloodbath

‘There is direct evidence of government incitement to genocide’

With the death of South African revolutionary icon Nelson Mandela, outside analysts and locals alike are expressing fear of a coming genocide of European-descent Afrikaners.

So significant is the threat in South Africa, some genocide experts are urging Afrikaners to consider fleeing their homeland.

Dr. Gregory Stanton, head of Genocide Watch and a man who himself fought against the apartheid system, warned as early as last year that South Africa was at Stage 6 out of 8 on the road to genocide: the planning and preparation phase.

“There is thus strong circumstantial evidence of government support for the campaign of forced displacement and atrocities against white farmers and their families,” said Stanton, after a fact-finding mission to South Africa last year. “There is direct evidence of government incitement to genocide.”

In an e-mail to a prominent Afrikaner monitoring the dangers, Stanton emphasized that Genocide Watch had raised the Genocide Stage level for South Africa to Stage 6 based on “evidence that the murders of Afrikaaner farmers and other whites is organized by racist communists determined to drive whites out of South Africa, nationalize farms and mines, and bring on all the horrors of a communist state.”

“The Vatican Against Israel”: by Giulio Meotti- A Review by Janet Levy

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14158
in his new book, “The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse”, Giulio Meotti explores the theological foundation for 1,700 years of Catholic enmity toward Jews and how this is played out against Israel since the start of modern Zionism.
“The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse”, by Giulio Meotti, Mantua Books Ltd., 2013 204 pp., $22.00

With the election of Pope Francis this past March as the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, hopes have run high for a much-needed turnaround in Jewish-Catholic relations that would finally extinguish centuries-old, Catholic anti-Semitism and its concerted efforts to sabotage the Jewish State.

Those hopes took shape when, as cardinal of Argentina, he maintained close ties with the local Jewish community, attended Rosh Hashanah services, co-hosted a Kristallnacht memorial ceremony, and was the first public figure to condemn the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires by the Islamic terrorist group, Hezbollah.

But the jury is still out on how the relationship will progress with the new papacy, especially in light of a recent meeting Pope Francis held with Malaysian politician, Anwar Ibrahim, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operative and founder of the MB front organization, the International Institute of Islamic Thought. Ibrahim has kept alive charges of Islamophobia in the West and has close ties with Bosnian imam Mustafa Ceric, another Muslim Brotherhood member who himself is tied to controversial Egyptian Islamic theologian, Youssef Qaradawi, who has been banned from entering a number of Western countries because of numerous anti-Israel, anti-U.S. statements.

JONAH GOLDBERG: TRIUMPH OF THE VULGARIANS

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/365967/triumph-vulgarians-jonah-goldberg Newspapers are among the last places in America that have close to zero tolerance for [expletive deleted]. I could give you a hint about what word is between the brackets, but I’d best not, for fear of arousing the ire of the editing Comstocks. About twice a year, I quote a profanity from a […]

GUSHING AMANPOUR WHEN BARACK SHOOK HANDS WITH RAUL: BRYAN PRESTON

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/12/10/christiane-amanpour-gushes-as-obama-shakes-hands-with-castro/ President Barack Obama declined even to attend the funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Instead of attending, he dispatched a pair of former secretaries of state to attend. Obama attended the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and addressed the service. He also mixed and mingled, and CNN had its cameras […]

WHEN BARACK MET RAUL- THE HANDSHAKE.. BY BRIDGET JOHNSON

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/12/10/kerry-on-castro-handshake-obama-didnt-choose-whos-there/?print=1 Confronted by a member of Congress today about President Obama’s handshake with Cuban dictator Raul Castro, Secretary of State John Kerry brushed it off as just doing what was expected of world leaders in the moment. Kerry was testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the Iran nuclear deal when the onetime chairman […]

GORDON CHANG: ASSASSINATION RUMORS IN CHINA?

http://pjmedia.com/blog/assassination-rumors-in-china/ A return to “the ruthless era of ancient Chinese palace politics”? For about a week, assassination rumors have been swirling around the Chinese capital. According to reports carried in Hong Kong outlets such as Mingjing News, Zhou Yongkang has been detained for involvement in a plot to kill Xi Jinping, the newish ruler of […]

ORWELL HAD SEEN 1948 BUT HE HAD NOT SEEN 1984- DANIEL GREENFIELD

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Orwell’s mistake in 1984 was assuming that a totalitarian socialist state would maintain the rigid linguistic conventions of bureaucratic totalitarianism. That future commissars and fuhrers would insist on everyone talking like office clerks picking out words from a coded manual of procedures. It was an understandable mistake though. Orwell had seen 1948. But he […]

IN”EVITA”BLE HILLARY? DANIEL GREENFIELD

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Last month she was named a “Global Champion” by the International Medical Corps at a gala Beverly Hills event crowded with celebrities, received the American Patriot Award at the National Defense University Foundation in the Ronald Reagan Building and the Hermandad Award from the Mexican American Leadership Initiative. Considering that Hillary Clinton is as […]