GERALD A. HONIGMAN: WHY SRI LANKA, BUT NOT SAMARIA? WHY NOT RHODESIA, BUT “THE WEST BANK”????****

http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2011/12/article119.htm

Why Sri Lanka, but not Samaria? Why not Rhodesia, but the “West Bank?”

It’s admirable (don’t you think?) when a people throws off the legacy of imperial oppression to embrace their new freedom. The very renaming of nations themselves has often been a reflection of this wonderful development.

Admirable, indeed–unless those people happen to be Jews.

Among the examples of this which have occurred over the last half century are people who lived in Great Britain’s former imperial possessions of Ceylon, Rhodesia, and Burma. Those nations are now known as Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar.

While I’ve thought about this for decades, what brought this issue onto my own front burner was an article I read recently about Myanmar’s pro-democracy hero and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. Too often foreign imperialism gets supplanted by home-grown despotism, as the latter knows only too well.

Here’s the problem, and admittedly, the Jews pose a unique case related to this discussion due to their forced exile in the wake of taking on the imperial conqueror of much of the known world not just once, but in two major (and other lesser) revolts recorded in depth by the Romans themselves. Before we proceed, please contemplate this thought for a moment…

Is a victim any less a victim because his victimization has been historically the longest enduring?

While the so-called “Progressives” of the world are adamant that the previous imperialist names of conquered lands be dismissed, why is it that when it comes to dealing with the oft-conquered land of the Jews, the opposite is the case?

Such sources of ethical enlightenment frequently insist instead that the millennia-old names of the land–Israel, Judea, and Samaria–be abandoned for the sake of the names Roman, British, and Arab imperialism and conquest gave to them instead…”Palestine” and the “West Bank.”

Everyone else is entitled to national liberation–but not Jews. The latter must agree to their scapegoat, victim, and preferred whipping post par excellence existence for eternity. Or just disappear.

With Christmas 2011 still of very much of recent memory, a good portion of the world once again became familiar with the story of Jesus’ birth. During this season, it has also become common for Arabs to declare the alleged “Palestinian”(non-Jewish) identity of Jesus.

DAVID “SPENGLER” GOLDMAN: ANKARA’S “ECONOMIC MIRACLE” COLLAPSES- CHANGES IN TURKEY

http://www.meforum.org/3134/turkey-economic-miracle

Turkey’s high-flying economy, which expanded at a 10 percent annual rate of gross domestic product growth during the first half of 2011,[1] will crash-land in 2012. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “economic miracle,” to use the Daily Telegraph’s admiring words,[2] depended on a 40 percent annual rate of bank credit expansion, which in turn produced a balance of payments deficit as wide as that of southern Europe’s crisis countries. Markets have already anticipated a sudden turnaround in the Turkish economy. The Turkish lira (TRY) fell by a quarter between November 2010 and September 2011, making it the world’s worst performing emerging market currency.[3] The stock market has fallen in dollar terms by 40 percent, making Turkey the worst performer after Egypt among all the markets in the MSCI Tradable Index during 2011. (See Graph 1 for Turkey vs. emerging markets.) And most analysts now expect that the cyclical slowdown will uncover deep deficiencies in Turkey’s labor force and infrastructure, leading to a prolonged structural slump rather than a passing recession.

The suddenness and size of this economic setback will in most likelihood erode the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) capacity to govern on the strength of pragmatic success rather than Islamist ideology; will undercut its ability to use economic incentives to defuse Kurdish separatism and contain domestic opposition; and will weaken Ankara’s claim to a leading regional role.

MORTAR SHELLS FROM GAZA CONTAINED PHOSPHOROUS….SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=251763

JUST IMAGINE WHAT THEY COULD DO IF THEY CONTROLLED THE ELEVATIONS OF JUDEA AND SAMARIA….RSK
2 mortar shells from Gaza contained phosphorousThe chemical is designed to ignite a fire around the impact zone and is banned by international law for use near civilians.

Two mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip into the rural Eshkol Regional Council on Sunday morning contained phosphorous, security forces confirmed. The shells landed in open fields, causing no injuries or damage.

Mortars containing phosphorous fired from Gaza have landed in Israeli territory in the past. Phosphorous is designed to ignite a fire around the impact zone. The chemical is banned by international law for use near civilians.

PROFESSOR MOSHE SHARON ON ISLAM ON THE ASCENT IN THE ARAB MIDDLE EAST

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=2343 Newsletter Friday December 23, 2011 ‘Radical Islamic elements are on the ascent’ Professor Moshe Sharon does not share in the excitement generated by the Arab Spring, nor does he leave much room for optimism: Not much is happening in the Middle East. Certainly not an Arab Spring. What was is what will be, only […]

ATTENTION CONSERVATIVES: GOOD NEWS ADAM BELLOW HOPES TO GIVE TEA PARTY AN IMPRINT AT HARPER COLLINS….SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/adam-bellow-hopes-to-give-voice-to-the-tea-party-with-new-conservative-imprint-at-harpercollins/2011/11/04/gIQA33NfQP_story.html

ENCOUNTER LAUNCHED “BROADSIDES” A WONDERFUL CONCISE GROUP OF BOOKS…..http://www.encounterbooks.com/broadsides/
Adam Bellow hopes to give voice to the tea party with new conservative imprint at HarperCollins

NEW YORK — Attention, conservatives: Adam Bellow says this is your moment.

The intellectual left, he contends, is in a vacuum. The right is where there are ideas, variety, excitement. And Bellow, a former liberal who has made a career of pushing conservative writers and controversial issues to the forefront of American publishing, wants to hear from you.
As an editor at the Free Press and then Doubleday, Bellow, son of the late novelist Saul Bellow, guided such provocative voices as Dinesh D’Souza (“Illiberal Education”), David Brock (“The Real Anita Hill”), Jonah Goldberg (“Liberal Fascism”), and Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein (“The Bell Curve”) to the top of the bestseller lists.

Now he thinks he can do the same with representatives from the tea party, the decentralized protest movement that has energized conservatives, dismayed liberals and spooked presidential candidates with its focus on free markets, limited government, fewer taxes and balanced budgets.

ANDREW BOSTOM: A RESPONSE TO ROBERT SMALL

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/response_to_robert_small.html Robert Small’s latest essay didn’t address any of the (irrefragable) arguments from my two prior evidence-based rebuttals (here, and here) — as per relevant Western, not Islamic, Sharia-compliant standards —  about the Nadhlatul Ulema’s (NU’s) faux “moderation”, and the ugly, living jihadist legacy wrought by the NU, as well other examples of “moderate” Indonesian […]

DANIEL GREENFIELD:The Year We Lost Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Most of the Middle East

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

About the only people having a Happy New Year in the Muslim world aren’t the Christians who are huddling and waiting out the storm, but the Islamists who use a different calendar but are having the best time of their lives since the last Caliphate.

The news that the Obama Administration has brought in genocidal Muslim Brotherhood honcho Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to discuss terms of surrender for the transfer of Afghanistan to the Taliban caps a year in which the Brotherhood and the Salafists are looking up carve up Egypt, the Islamists won Tunisia’s elections, Turkey’s Islamist AKP Party purged the last bastions of the secular opposition and Libya’s future as an Islamist state was secured by American, British and French jets and special forces.

Time Magazine declared that 2011 was the Year of the Protester, they might have more honestly called it the Year of the Islamist. In 2010 the Taliban were still hiding in caves. In 2012 they are set to be in power from Tunisia to Afghanistan and from Egypt to Yemen. They won’t go by that name of course. Most of them will have elaborate names with the words “Justice” or “Community” in them, but they will for the most part be minor variations on the Muslim Brotherhood theme.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE GENOCIDE DOCTRINE

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Whether or not Ron Paul actually said that he would not intervene to stop the Holocaust, there is nothing particularly extraordinary about this position. The United States has never intervened to stop a genocide. Not in WW2 and not since when several genocides have taken place, most notably in Africa, without any military intervention.
The United States did participate in two NATO wars justified with phony claims of genocide, but the only ethnic cleansings that have taken place have been of Serbs from Kosovo and of Africans from Libya. Which is to say the closest thing to a genocide in either case was perpetrated by our allies against the people we were bombing on their behalf in two civil wars. And neither of those rise anywhere near the level of genocide.

OBAMA’S POLITICAL BLITZKREIG: ROGER KIMBALL

Obama’s Political Blitzkrieg Posted By Roger Kimball

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/12/31/obamas-political-blitzkrieg/

The thing you have to admire about the Obama administration is its ability to fight furiously on several fronts at once. The economy. Individual liberty. The rule of law. National security. In his pursuit of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” (as he promised [1] his followers in October 2008), Barack Obama has managed to undermine them all. It’s been an impressive, if also a depressing, performance.

Just a few reminders: On the hustings, Obama lambasted George Bush [2] for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over the course of eight years. That was, I readily acknowledge, profligate behavior. But Obama has vastly outstripped George Bush, adding more than $6 trillion to the national debt in just under 3 years. $4 trillion, $6 trillion: if only there were some means of making it as gargantuan a task to write or read those words as it is to comprehend what such numbers portend. There is no way, so I hesitate to remind you that Obama is set to ask for another $1.2 trillion in spending money. When that happens, the federal debt will clock in at more than $16 trillion. Thanks for the hope, Barack!

MARK STEYN: HAPPY NEW YEAR? RING OUT THE NEW, RING IN THE OLD

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com

Ring out the new, ring in the old.
No, hang on, that should be the other way around, shouldn’t it? Not as far as 2011 was concerned. The year began with a tea-powered Republican caucus taking control of the House of Representatives and pledging to rein in spendaholic government. It ended with President Obama making a pro forma request for a mere $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. This will raise government debt to $16.4 trillion — a new world record! If only until he demands the next debt-ceiling increase in three months’ time.
At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke — broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur — and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece’s. That’s true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.
#ad#Public debt has increased by 67 percent over the last three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, “$16.4 trillion” has no real meaning, any more than “$17.9 trillion” or “$28.3 trillion” or “$147.8 bazillion.” It doesn’t even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough: Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realize that, even as they’re borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That’s to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the 16.4 trillion is reduced to 13.7 trillion, and then 7.9 trillion, and eventually 173 dollars and 48 cents. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done.