http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/288510 Ron Paul knows even less about the history of our enemies than he does about their proper treatment under the Constitution. He actually interrupted Monday night’s Republican candidates’ debate so he could interject the following: I would like to point out one thing about the Taliban. The Taliban used to be our allies when […]
http://bigpeace.com/cjohnson/2012/01/19/obama-kills-keystone-xl-pipeline-pleases-radicals-imperils-americas-energy-security-and-harms-economic-growth/
In ruling against the Keystone XL today, President Barack Obama has finally cast his lot with the environmentalists who fund his campaign over the blue-collar workers who need jobs in crucial swing states. He has made America more reliant on OPEC oil rather than Canadian sources and hurt the relationship with our neighbor to the north, America’s largest trading partner, as it pushes her into the arms of the energy rapacious Chinese. Canadian Resource Minister Joe Oliver was “obviously disappointed” in Obama’s State Department decision and will need to diversify its energy exports.
Republicans forced a showdown with Obama over the pipeline when they tied a decision on the pipeline to the short-term raiding of Social Security funds. The House passed a provision that would give TransCanada, the company spearheading the project, a permit to build in sixty days if Obama continued to tarry. His State Department rejected the permit earlier today.
http://bigpeace.com/jpollak/2012/01/19/israeli-diplomat-walks-out-on-left-wing-jewish-group/
The Jewish Week reports that a speech last week by Stuart Appelbaum, president of the left-wing Jewish Labor Committee, prompted Israel’s deputy consul general to walk out of its gala dinner after Appelbaum criticized Israel in blunt, undiplomatic terms.
Though Appelbaum also noted “new expressions of contempt for Israel within the Arab world,” he launched a vitriolic attack on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu:
…[S]adly, Israel is cursed with a right-wing coalition government that’s regularly giving credence to it.
We all know Benjamin Netanyahu talks a good game about a two-state solution, but, at the very same time, his administration continues to shamelessly promote the construction of illegal settlements on the West Bank – a policy that no severely impedes negotiations…
Netanyahu’s right-wing supporters in this country have pulled out the stops to slander the president as some kind of enemy of Israel.
They hope that if they repeat that lie long and loud enough that some Jews might actually fall for it … enough, maybe, to flip Florida against President Obama this fall.
Who would they replace him with? Maybe a guy like Rick Santorum – a man who said that allowing Palestinians to have their own country on the West Bank would be like the U.S. giving Texas back to Mexico.
[Which, come to think of it, may not be that bad of an idea.]
Haditha: Where Are They (the Accusers) Now? DIANA WEST
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11257/pub_detail.asp
Seven of the eight Marines charged over the 2007 Haditha massacre have been cleared. What has happened to those who first accused the Marines of killing Iraqi civilians?
Finally, the last “Haditha” trial is in progress, and, thanks to Nat Helms at Defend Our Marines, everything you need or want to know about the proceedings, the witnesses, the facts about the case of SSGT Frank D. Wuterich, the last of the Marine Mohicans, is here.
America: The Center-Right Nation Yoram Ettinger
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11255/pub_detail.asp
Recent public opinion polls reaffirm that the US is a center-right nation. So what do the polls tell us about contemporary America, and which particular factors shape its attitudes
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11254/pub_detail.asp
U.S. May Release Senior Taliban Terrorists
Steve Emerson
Five leading Taliban terrorists, currently held in Guantanamo Bay, could soon be freed as part of a peace agreement with the Afghan Taliban leadership.
Leftists, Islamists to March on Jerusalem
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11260/pub_detail.asp
The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report
European leftists who are opposed to the existence of Israel, together with known Muslim Brotherhood ideologues, are organizing a mass global march upon Jerusalem.
Candidates and Combatants By Andrew C. McCarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/288506
Monday night’s debate featured an exchange between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum regarding the treatment of American citizens who join with our jihadist enemies to make war against our country. Watching it, I got the impression that Santorum was trying to suggest a wedge between himself and Romney where I don’t think there is one — and perhaps making a play for voters who have been spun up by Ron Paul’s spurious claims about the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). (I addressed those claims in an exchange with the congressman’s son, Sen. Rand Paul, a few weeks back — see here and here).
The answers by both Romney and Santorum to the question posed seemed a bit confused — not really wrong, but incomplete. That is to be expected when candidates are given just a few seconds to address complex issues.
Romney was asked whether he would have signed the NDAA, as President Obama recently did. The matter is controversial because Paul, like much of the Left, claims it is unconstitutional: it provides for indefinite detention of American citizens if they are found to be enemy combatants. Romney replied that he would have signed the bill, correctly implying that, as the courts have held, American citizens may be detained under the laws of war if they join the enemy during wartime.
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2767/islam-oic-thought-police
On December 19, 2011, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning the negative stereotyping and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urged member states to take effective measures towards addressing and combating “such incidents.” This resolution, based on an initiative from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), was supported by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who hosted a closed-door three-day meeting – apparently one of many in a series called the “Istanbul Process”– in Washington D.C. with OIC representatives to discuss ways to implement the resolution.
What might sound like a step toward “tolerance,” however, is in reality an assault on freedom of speech: a UN-endorsed violation of human rights, co-sponsored by the US, and prompted by the OIC, an organization of 57 Muslim nations, most of which hold the world’s worst records on freedom of speech.
The OIC initiative for a UN resolution against “defamation of religion” is not new; the OIC has been promoting it for the last 13 years despite earlier opposition from Western countries. What changed recently was dropping the word “defamation of religion” and stressing “freedom of speech”– something about which Secretary of State Clinton seems to be enthusiastic.
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2768/germany-islamic-centers
One of the oldest universities in Germany has opened the country’s first taxpayer-funded department of Islamic theology.
The Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Tübingen was inaugurated on January 16 and is the first of four planned Islamic university centers in Germany.
The German government claims that by controlling the curriculum, the school, which is to train Muslim imams and Islamic religion teachers, will function as an antidote to “hate preachers.”
Most imams currently in Germany are from Turkey and many of them do not speak German.
German Education Minister Annette Schavan, who attended the opening ceremony, said the Islamic center was a “milestone for integration” for the 4.3 million Muslims who now live in Germany.
But the idea has been fiercely criticized by those who worry the school will become a gateway for Islamists who will introduce a hardline brand of Islam into the German university system.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
The lawyer has more in common with the prosecutor than he does with his clients and Republican and Democratic politicians have more in common with each other than they do with the people who come out to support them and vote for them. The hopes of ordinary people for the future, their ability to earn a living and their fears are only a job to the politician.
This doesn’t mean that politicians are villains, only that like the police officer and the ER nurse, other people’s urgent calls are just another day at work for them. Mediating them and dealing with them day in and day out gives them a different perspective that is detached from the present and rooted in the realities of their profession.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/why-invent-the-palestinians
This month, in Amman, Jordan, Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators met for their first time in 15 months to try to restart the “peace process.” Meanwhile, the Palestinian group that rules in Gaza, Hamas, has repeated its declaration: “The battle for the liberation of Jerusalem is closer than ever and, God willing, we will win.” Which is it to be, peace or war?
Perhaps this question should be considered against the background of the recent ruckus Newt Gingrich caused in December by saying, “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We have invented the Palestinian people, who are, in fact, Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people. . .” The entire political spectrum took umbrage. A critique from the right came from Elliott Abrams, a former Bush deputy national security adviser, who said: “There was no Jordan or Syria or Iraq, either, so perhaps he would say they are all invented people as well, and also have no right to statehood. Whatever was true then, Palestinian nationalism has grown since 1948, and whether we like it or not, it exists.”
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/01/18/united-nations-anti-israel-spectacle/
If you were concerned that the United Nations is spending too much time on the massacres of civilians in Syria, or on the ongoing arrests of journalists in Turkey, or on the repression of women in Egypt, or on the persecution and murder of Christians in Nigeria and across the Arab Spring countries – you can set your mind at ease. Today, the UN Security Council will be focused on Israel:
The UN Security Council will on Wednesday hear a briefing on the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories which the United States had opposed… Valerie Amos, the UN humanitarian coordinator, will give details on the impact of Israeli settlements at the UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday morning as part of discussions on the Middle East, diplomats said. Morocco officially made the request for the briefing as the Arab representative on the 15-member council. The briefing would be “useful,” said Morocco’s UN ambassador Mohammed Loulichki.
The AFP description that Morocco “officially made the request” is a little muted. What actually happened is that Morocco replaced Lebanon on the Security Council – yes, Iran’s Hezbollah-controlled proxy state has just now stepped down – and immediately hijacked a session on Children and Armed Conflict to demand time to talk about Israeli settlements.
