http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=279083 Reinventing America or uninventing America: That is how the choice between Romney and Obama ought to be presented. Photo: Brian Snyder / Reuters A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always […]
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-signs-israel-military-aid-bill-eve-romney-165237880.html
On the eve of Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel, President Barack Obama signed into law a military aid bill for that staunch American ally at a much-publicized White House ceremony that highlighted the political advantages of incumbency.
“What this legislation does is bring together all the outstanding cooperation that we have seen, really, at an unprecedented level between our two countries that underscore our unshakable commitment to Israel security,” Obama said as he signed the measure at his desk in the Oval Office.
The president also announced he would speed another $70 million to Israel to advance the so-called “Iron Dome” short-range missile defense system, a response to sustained rocket fire from Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“This is a program that has been critical in terms of providing security and safety for the Israeli families,” he said. “We are standing by our friends in Israel when it comes to these kinds of attacks.”
The signing ceremony, a relatively uncommon event in the Obama White House, fit a pattern this week of the administration trumpeting relations with Britain, Israel and Poland—the three countries on Romney’s trip overseas to polish his diplomatic credentials.
“I hope that, as I sign as this bill, once again everybody understands how committed all of us are—Republicans and Democrats—as Americans to our friends in making sure that Israel is safe and secure,” said Obama.
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/07/27/huma-abedins-brotherhood-ties-are-not-just-a-family-affair/?print=1
Senator John McCain’s claim that concerns about Huma Abedin are a smear based on “a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations” proves more embarrassing by the day. In fact, to the extent it addressed Ms. Abedin, the letter sent to the State Department’s inspector general by five House conservatives actually understated the case.
The letter averred that Abedin “has three family members — her late father, her mother and her brother — connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.” It turns out, however, that Abedin herself is directly connected to Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major Muslim Brotherhood figure involved in the financing of al-Qaeda. Abedin worked for a number of years at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs as assistant editor of its journal. The IMMA was founded by Naseef, who remained active in it for decades, overlapping for several years with Abedin. Naseef was also secretary general of the Muslim World League in Saudi Arabia, perhaps the most significant Muslim Brotherhood organization in the world. In that connection, he founded the Rabita Trust, which is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization under American law due to its support of al-Qaeda.
You ought to be able to stop right there.
A person is not required to have done anything wrong to be denied a high-ranking government position, or more immediately, the security clearance allowing access to classified information that is necessary to function in such a job. There simply need be associations, allegiances, or interests that establish a potential conflict of interest.
Government jobs and access to the nation’s secrets are privileges, not rights. That is why the potential conflict needn’t stem from one’s own associations with hostile foreign countries, organizations, or persons. Vicarious associations, such as one’s parents’ connections to troublesome persons and organizations, are sufficient to create a potential conflict.
In this instance, however, before you even start probing the extensive, disturbing Brotherhood ties of her family members, Huma Abedin should have been ineligible for any significant government position based on her own personal and longstanding connection to Naseef’s organization.
Specifically, Ms. Abedeen was affiliated with the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, where she was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. The journal was the IMMA’s raison d’etre. Abedin held the position of assistant editor from 1996 through 2008 — from when she began working as an intern in the Clinton White House until shortly before she took her current position as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.
The IMMA was founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Omar Naseef, who was then the vice president of the prestigious King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. The IMMA’s chief product was to be its journal. For the important position of managing editor, Naseef recruited his fellow academic Zyed Abedin, who had been a visiting professor at the university in the early 1970s.
To join the IMMA, Dr. Abedin moved his family, including infant daughter Huma (born in 1976), to Saudi Arabia from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Zyed’s wife, Saleha Mahmood Abedin (Huma’s mother), is also an academic and worked for the journal from its inception. She would eventually take it over after her husband died in 1993, and she remains its editor to this day. Huma Abedin’s brother Hassan, another academic, is an associate editor at the journal.
The journal began publishing in 1979. For its initial edition, Abdullah Omar Naseef — identified in the masthead as “Chairman, Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs” — penned a brief introduction relating the IMMA’s vision for the journal. Zyed Abedin appeared as managing editor in the journal’s second edition in 1979, proclaiming in a short introduction his “deep appreciation to H.E. Dr. Abdullah O. Naseef, President, King Abdulaziz University, for his continued guidance, support, and encouragement.” (I am indebted to the Center for Security Policy, which obtained some copies of the journal, going back many years.)
Not long after the journal started, Naseef became the secretary general of the Muslim World League, the Saudi-financed global propagation enterprise by which the Muslim Brotherhood’s virulently anti-Western brand of Islamist ideology is seeded throughout the world, very much including in the United States.
We are not talking here about some random imam in the dizzying alphabet soup of Islamist entities. In the pantheon of Islamic supremacism, there are few positions more critical than secretary general of the Muslim World League. In fact, one of the MWL’s founders was Sa’id Ramadan, the right-hand and son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s legendary founder.
The MWL manages the “civilization jihad” — the Brotherhood’s commitment to destroy the West from within, and to “conquer” it by sharia proselytism (or dawa), as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the Brotherhood’s top sharia jurist, puts it.
Nevertheless, the MWL has a long history of deep involvement in violent jihad as well.
It was under MWL auspices in 1988 that Naseef created a “charity” called the Rabita Trust. The scare-quotes around “charity” are intentional. To direct the Rabita Trust, Naseef selected Wael Hamza Jalaidan. A few years earlier, Jalaidan had joined with Osama bin Laden to form al-Qaeda.
This would surprise you only if you waste your time listening to John McCain, Version 2012 — as opposed to John McCain, Version 2011, who professed himself “unalterably opposed” to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Under the Brotherhood’s interpretation of sharia, which is explained in such works as Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, all Muslims are supposed to donate a portion of their income. This obligation, known as zakat, is usually referred to as “charity” by Islamists and their Western pom-pom waivers. But it is not charity; it is fortification of the ummah – the notional global community of Muslims.
Klein: Obama plans mass amnesty in second term
FoxNews.com
Friday, July 27, 2012
Commentary
Among President Obama’s second-term plans: An expansive, de facto amnesty program for illegal aliens via both executive order and interagency directives linked with a reduction in the capabilities of the U.S. Border Patrol. Read more…
Romney: Israel deserves better than Obama
Israel National News
Friday, July 27, 2012
News
Israel deserves better treatment than it has received from President Obama, presidential candidate Mitt Romney said. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz21q8J6Le9
Lebanese judo team won’t practice next to Israelis
The Times of Israel
Friday, July 27, 2012
News
Lebanese judo team won’t practice next to Israelis
The Lebanese judo team at the 2012 London Olympics refused to practice next to the Israeli one on Friday afternoon, and a makeshift barrier was erected to split their gym into two halves. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz21qFRSp5m
http://times247.com/articles/25the-islamist-in-the-white-house6 The Muslim Brotherhood is on the rise. The Islamist group is spreading across the Middle East. The question is whether it has infiltrated the Obama administration, especially the State Department. Led by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a band of House Republican conservatives is investigating the reach of the Muslim Brotherhood. For this, they […]
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/jewish-news/us-jewish-federations-to-drop-zionism-from-their-global-plans/2012/07/27/
This is pretty scary. What’s next? Take out the word “Jewish” from the name? Reminds me of the “joke”:
Two Jews are standing against the wall, facing the firing squad. One Jew starts to say the Sh’ma, the other elbows him and says, “Shhh, they’ll get mad at us.” LORI…..
In what has been described as “a closeted and cowardly move,” the Jewish Federations of North America last week rejected the inclusion of the term “Zionism” in a major system-wide planning document.
The JFNA’s Global Planning Table is the mechanism by which JFNA and Federation leadership come together to determine the allocation of dollars for new Federation initiatives outside of the United States. The Report issued by this collaborative is considered a building block of the allocations decision making process, and it was the call to include Zionism in the recent report that was rejected. The Global Planning Table page of the JFNA website does not include either the term Zionism or Israel.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2311
Two recent videos-gone-viral should cause pause to anyone still harboring hope about the direction that Egypt has taken since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
The first of these clips, released and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), was taken from Egyptian broadcasting for the Ramadan holiday. The second was produced and circulated by the Israel-based Temple Institute, in honor of Tisha B’Av.
Let’s begin with the former — an Arabic version of “Candid Camera” — in which celebrities are invited to what they think is a serious talk show ostensibly conducted by German TV. When the guest arrives at the studio and the interview begins, he (or she, since there is also a segment with a female interviewee) is told that the program is actually Israeli. This is the point of the prank: to watch how each reacts to this news and to film them doing it.
One of these Egyptian celebs goes so ballistic that he begins punching a camera man — whom he now believes is an Israeli Jew — and then smacks the woman interviewer so hard that she is flung a few feet into a wall. Before he manages to kill someone on air, the crew hastily informs him that he has been the butt of a joke — and then they all have a big laugh together. No hard feelings. It is understandable that he should want to murder Jews, after all. Ha ha.
The second star engages in similar behavior. Again they all hug and make up at the moment that things start getting mega-violent.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312312/declining-defense-budgets-and-end-jointness-mackubin-thomas-owens Since the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reform Act of 1986, “jointness” — cooperation and harmony among the armed services — has been an important consideration in the planning and funding of U.S. military forces. Congress passed the act in response to the operational deficiencies it perceived to be plaguing the military […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-tapson/ramadan-ding-dong/
As is customary, President Obama and wife Michelle released their annual Ramadan greetings last Friday. Also customary for Obama, it was full of platitudes about Islam’s supposedly invaluable contribution to American culture, and devoid of any acknowledgement of the dark reality of the Arab Spring that he helped facilitate.
The statement began:
Michelle and I extend our warmest wishes to Muslim Americans and Muslims around the world at the start of Ramadan. For Muslims, Ramadan is a time of fasting, prayer, and reflection; a time of joy and celebration. It’s a time to cherish family, friends, and neighbors, and to help those in need.
In ironic response, CNN posted this headline two days later: “Iraq Bombs Kill 25 People as Muslims Celebrate Ramadan.” Similar headlines followed: “Ramadan Fails to Curtail Syrian Violence.” “Muslims Begin Ramadan Fast; Bombs Hit Thai South.” “7 Shot Dead in Karachi on First Day of Ramadan.” So much for reflection, joy, and celebration.
Even if many Muslims around the world weren’t respectful of Ramadan, at least American officials in Guantanamo were. In deference to the Muslims who are vacationing – sorry, I mean incarcerated – there, they graciously postponed any court hearings to allow the murderous 9/11 plotters their time of contemplation and joy.
Ramadan is also a reminder, the Obamas’ statement went on, “to people of all faiths of our common humanity and the commitment to justice, equality, and compassion shared by all great faiths.”
Not according to a group by the name of “Qaedat al-Jihad,” a branch of al Qaeda that has been described as one of the “affiliates of the Global Jihad movement.” This is their take on Ramadan, delivered in their statement claiming responsibility for last Wednesday’s terror attack against Israeli tourists in Bulgaria that killed seven and wounded dozens more:
The month of Ramadan is a month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and God’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators… The holy war is not confined to a particular arena and we shall fight the Jews and the Americans until they leave the land of Islam.
So much for our common humanity, “shared by all great faiths.” Holy war? That’s odd – Western academics and Muslim Brotherhood front groups here in America keep insisting that jihad is about “inner striving” and has nothing to do with holy war. Studying for a college exam is jihad. Raising your children well is jihad. Quitting smoking is jihad. Qaedat al-Jihad clearly didn’t get that memo.
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/michael-widlanski/sleepless-in-seattle-clueless-in-dc-and-new-york/
It is hard for the average American to answer tough questions about terrorism or Mideast politics. It is natural, then, to rely on “experts” in government, the press and academia to give responses to the following queries:
* Is Islamic extremism a growing force inside the United States?
* What chances are there to develop more peace and stability from the political upheavals that have been called “Arab Spring”?
* How can we work with the Syrian government or against the Syrian government to end the bloodshed in that country?
