JOSEPH BOTTUM: CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST….SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2587/christians-middle-east

FOR THE LATEST NEWS ON THE SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN MOSLEM COUNTRIES PLEASE GO TO THE EXCELLENT SITE :

http://www.persecution.org/

Of the eight million people or so living in Israel, around 20% are Arabs—of whom about 7% are Christian. Israel’s Arab Christians, in other words, number only about 110,000 people, living mostly in tight communities in Jerusalem and the Galilee.

For all the solicitous attention paid to them by such international Christian organizations as the World Council of Churches, you would think they were a larger and more important group. Much of the Vatican’s diplomacy—its occasionally adversarial relations with Israel, its Palestinian favoritism, its reluctance to condemn the Islamic dictatorships—derives from its belief that the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East are at risk, and that the best way to defend them is to be seen to side with Arabs against their perceived enemies.

Hard to say the Vatican is wrong about the first part. At the beginning of the twentieth century, large numbers of Christians still lived in their traditional Orthodox and Catholic communities, from the Holy Mountain of Mount Athos all the way around the Mediterranean—through Asia Minor, down the Levant, and across North Africa to Morocco. In 1914, they made up 25% of Ottoman Empire.

The next year the Turks began the systematic part of their slaughter of the Armenians, and the churches of the Middle East have been in catastrophic decline ever since. By 2001, Christians were down to less than 1% of the Turkish population. The recent news out of Egypt—thousands of Coptic Christians fleeing the country since March, with 28 killed and hundreds wounded in Cairo on October 9—is only the latest installment in the ongoing story of the dying of ancient Christianity in the Middle East. The single most dangerous thing in the world to be, right now, is a member of a Christian community in a Muslim country.

The second part of the Vatican’s view of the Middle East, however—the idea that what is left of the Christians can be defended by trying to forge relations with Muslim extremists—has proved dangerously wrong, both as an understanding of the Christians’ situation and as a strategy for helping them.

VACLAV HAVEL DEFINED PRINCIPLED DISSENT: JONATHAN TOBIN

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/vaclav-havel-dissident-playwright-and-former-czech-president-dies/2010/09/21/gIQATAeD2O_story.html

Vaclav Havel, a Czech writer who was imprisoned by his country’s communist rulers, only to become a symbol of freedom and his nation’s first president in the post-communist era, died Dec. 18 at his weekend home in the northern Czech Republic. He was 75.

The death was announced by his assistant, Sabina Tancevova, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Havel underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1996 and had suffered from lung ailments in recent months.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/18/havel-dissent-communism-democracy/

The death today of Vaclav Havel at the age of 75 reminds us what it truly means to speak up for liberty against tyranny. A playwright who became a symbol of dissent against an evil Soviet empire, Havel spent years in Communist jails for his activities and writings that championed individual freedom. He co-authored the Charter 77 manifesto that gave new life to the cause of human rights in his own country and helped inspire others elsewhere living under the Soviet yoke. Eventually, he helped lead his nation to freedom after the fall of the Berlin Wall and served as the first president of a free Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic after the Slovaks left to form their own nation.

But there is more to be learned from recounting the story of Havel’s sacrifices and triumphs than just a tale of individual heroism. What ought to be remembered about Havel and the “Velvet Revolution” that he led to victory is that it was won by an uncompromising defense of the principle of democracy and individual rights when many unenlightened Western “realists” and liberals made it clear they were more interested in accommodating the Soviets than working to free those suffering under their tyranny. Havel’s struggles also gives us a yardstick by which we can measure the worthiness of contemporary protest movements around the world that now claim the mantle of dissent.

THE COMPANY RON PAUL KEEPS: JAMES KIRKCHICK

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/company-ron-paul-keeps_613474.html

The Republican Jewish Coalition announced this month that congressman Ron Paul would not be among the six guests invited to participate in its Republican Presidential Candidates Forum. “He’s just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization,” said Matt Brooks, executive director of the RJC, adding that the group “rejects his misguided and extreme views.”

Paul’s exclusion caused an uproar, with critics alleging that his stand on Israel had earned the RJC’s ire; an absolutist libertarian, Paul opposes foreign aid to all countries, including the Jewish state. “This seems to me more of an attempt to draw boundaries around acceptable policy discourse than any active concern that President Dr. Ron Paul would be actively anti-Israel or anti-Semitic,” wrote Reason editor Matt Welch. Chris McGreal of the Guardian reported that Paul “was barred because of his views on Israel.” Even Seth Lipsky, editor of the New York Sun and a valiant defender of Israel (and friend and mentor of this writer), opined, “The whole idea of an organization of Jewish Republicans worrying about the mainstream strikes me as a bit contradictory.”

While Paul’s views on Israel certainly place him outside the American, never mind Republican, mainstream, there is an even more elementary reason the RJC was right to exclude him from its event. It is Paul’s lucrative and decades-long promotion of bigotry and conspiracy theories, for which he has yet to account fully, and his continuing espousal of extremist views, that should make him unwelcome at any respectable forum, not only those hosted by Jewish organizations.

DAVID ISAAC: THE RIGHT RESPONSE TO THE “MOST PRO ISRAEL PRESIDENT EVER”

http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=840&Source=email

“Trying to portray Obama as pro-Israel is not a simple task. From the outset of his tenure in office, Obama has distinguished himself as the most anti-Israel president ever,” Caroline Glick writes in a September op-ed for The Jerusalem Post.

After providing a laundry list of historic presidential firsts against Israel, Glick adds: “Given Obama’s record – to which can be added his fervent support for Turkish Prime Minister and virulent anti-Semite Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and his massive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and Egypt – it is obvious that any attempt to argue that Obama is pro-Israel cannot be based on substance, or even on tone.”

MICHAEL CUTLER: ‘LABORING UNDER A MISCONCEPTION”…ON IMMIGRATION

http://michaelcutler.net/ Hi Gang:  Here is my most recent commentary for the CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization) website.  As you likely know, I have been intimately involved in the immigration issue for more than four decades.  I entered on duty with the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) in October 1971 as an Immigration Inspector.  Four years […]

JONATHAN TOBIN:What’s the “Different Story” About Obama and Israel?

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/18/obama-israel-reform-iran/

As I noted earlier, President Obama’s pitch for the Jewish vote has more to do with his appeal to knee-jerk liberalism on a host of non-Jewish issues than it does with concern for Israel’s welfare. Nevertheless, it is a misnomer to think liberal Jews such as those who cheered Obama Friday at the Reform biennial, don’t care about the Jewish state.

However, their willingness to accept Obama’s claims on the topic says more about their desire not to turn on a Democrat than it says about his virtues. One must ignore much of what has transpired in the last three years in order to believe the president’s claims.

The main element of Obama’s claim is that he has done more for Israel’s security than any of his predecessors. It is true he has done nothing to interfere with the security alliance that has grown since it was initiated during the Reagan administration. Military aid has flowed in large amounts, and for that Obama deserves some credit. But to speak, as he does, as if this relationship was invented by him, is absurd. On Friday, he alluded, as his defenders often do, to the Iron Dome missile defense system the two nations have created. But that project was initiated and funded by the Bush administration. The most we can say of Obama’s involvement is that he chose not to prevent it from being deployed.

DIANA WEST: AN URGENT PETITION FOR LT. MICHAEL BEHENNAS

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1980/Please-Sign-1Lt-Michael-Behennas-Petition-for-Clemency.aspx A November update from Scott and Vicki Behenna (which I missed it when it arrived in my inbox last month): To the thousands of supporters of 1Lt Michael Behenna, It has been awhile since we sent out an update.  Michael’s lawyers have filed the petition to the Court of Appeals of the Armed Forces […]

MICHAEL COREN:NEWT’S UNPOPULAR TRUTH

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2011/12/16/newts-unpopular-truth-palestine-wasnt-even-a-country-100-years-ago

Newt’s unpopular truth: Palestine wasn’t even a country 100 years ago

Newt Gingrich got into all sorts of trouble a few days ago when he claimed: “There was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.”

Newt, you’re completely correct, and this is one of the bravest and most intellectually informed things any of the Republican candidates have said so far.

Contrary to what you might hear from leftists, labour leaders, students and manipulative Arab activists carefully pulling on the emotional heart-strings of gullible westerners, the Palestinians as an identified group trace their ancestry not — as with the Jews — back thousands of years, but to 1920.

Until then, Arabs living in what we now know as Israel regarded themselves as Muslim or Christians, and not as Palestinians.

For centuries they had been subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and as Arabs did not recognize any particular national boundaries, and felt commonality with Muslims in Algeria or Yemen rather than Christians who lived in the next village.

Ottoman maps and records, and the writings of foreign travellers, do not speak of Palestine or Palestinians.

RON PAUL: A BIGOT UNMASKED BY HIS OWN WORDS

http://www.conservativesnetwork.com/2011/12/16/who-wrote-the-ron-paul-newsletters-ron-paul-wrote-them-clear-proof/

***I grant permission to anyone to take the content in this entry and redistribute it. The truth needs to get out.***
People wonder who wrote the Ron Paul newsletters.

First, if you’re new to this topic, it’s important because for around two decades, he had newsletters written that contained much racist content. He financially profited off of the newsletters. You can read about it more in depth here .

The purpose of this entry is to answer a simple question.

Who wrote the Ron Paul newsletters?

In a 1996 interview with the Dallas Morning News, Ron Paul was asked about his newsletters. In that interview he defended them. You can read a copy of the interview here. You can purchase a hard copy of that interview here.

In the interview, he did not deny he made the statement about the swiftness of black men.

“If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them,” Dr. Paul said.

He also said the comment about black men in the nation’s capital was made while writing about a 1992 study produced by the National Center on Incarceration and Alternatives, a criminal justice think tank based in Virginia.

AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD: EUROPE’S BLITHERING IDIOTS AND THEIR FLIM FLAM TREATY

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100013758/europes-blithering-idiots-and-their-flim-flam-treaty/
Europe’s blithering idiots and their flim-flam treaty

What remarkable petulance and stupidity.

The leaders of France and Germany have more or less bulldozed Britain out of the European Union for the sake of a treaty that offers absolutely no solution to the crisis at hand, or indeed any future crisis. It is EU institutional chair shuffling at its worst, with venom for good measure.

It is risky to reach instant conclusions on a fast-moving story but it looks as if the EU may soon be reduced to a shell, with a new union forming among the core.

Much has been said about whether David Cameron handled this well or badly. I leave that debate to my colleagues. What strikes me as a former EU correspondent is how threatening this is to the EU Project itself.

A country – and a large one – may start to disengage for the first time. The aura of historical inevitability that has swept Europe towards ever closer union for half a century has been punctured. Yes, Croatia will soon join, as Sarkozy chirped triumphantly, but that is not quite the same thing (no offence meant to the South Slavs).

Utter confusion will ensue over the legal structures of the EU. For whom will the European Commission work? For whom the European Court? It will be chaos for a while. This is the nightmare that fonctionnaires have always feared.

And what for? All this upheaval for a mess of pottage, a flim-flam treaty? The deal is not a “lousy compromise”, said Angela Merkel. Well, actually that is exactly what it is for eurozone politicians searching for a breakthrough.

It tarts up the old Stability Pact without changing the substance (although there will be prior vetting of budgets). This “fiscal compact” is not going to make to make the slightest impression on global markets, and they are the judges who matter in this trial by fire.