http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/06/the_view_from_the_west_bank.html The View from the West Bank Syria spirals out of control. Iran marches toward nuclear Islamageddon. So, naturally, Secretary of State John Kerry schedules yet another trip to “solve” the region’s relatively stable, if not ideal, Israel-Palestinian dispute. Like so many in foreign policy circles, Kerry and the Obama administration know — absolutely […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/moderate_win_in_iran_is_the_worst_possible_outcome.html
‘Moderate’ win in Iran is the worst possible outcome
Many opinion makers and shapers in the West already seem to be in a swoon over Hassan Ruhani’s victory in Iran’s presidential election.After all, in the six-man field (no women allowed), Ruhani was the only “moderate” or “reformist” and the most likely to give heartburn to Supreme Leader Khamenei. In fact, some mavens go so far as to call the election outcome a resounding rebuke to Khamenei by Iranian reformers. Ruhani, with his electoral “mandate” might weaken or soften Khamenei, they postulate.
So what’s not to like? Plenty.
For starters, under Iran’s two-level governing regime, the Supreme Leader calls all the shots on security and foreign policy matters. Ruhani’s win no withstanding, Khamenei will continue with Iran’s genocidal agenda against Israel, the rush to acquire nuclear weapons, a determination to attain supremacy in the Middle East over more “moderate” Sunni-led regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and extensive sponsorship of terrorist groups like Hezbollah.
For his part, Ruhani will be left with only a domestic portfolio, akin more accurately to a prime minister’s function, while the fanatical mullahs hold sway over Iran’s imperial ambitions and quest for Shiite domination throughout the region.
Where Ruhani’s victory really matters, however, is in providing propaganda fodder to modern-day Chamberlains in the West who are averse to confronting Iran’s existential threats and now will have some ammunition to counsel more patience, more talks, more quixotic “engagement” with Tehran. Their argument will be that there now may be an Iranian “spring” worth exploring — with the West needing to show patience and not confronting Khamenei and his co-horts.
In the meantime, Iran’s growing arsenal of centrifuges will continue to spin and proceed unimpeded toward production of weapons-grade nuclear materials for atomic bombs.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/watch_the_good_guys_and_leave_the_terrorists_alone.html Barack Obama alleges that snooping is in the nation’s best interest because it is a powerful tool needed to keep Americans safe from dangerous terrorists. Yet, taking political correctness to a whole new level of lunacy, mosques, where terrorist types like to mingle with likeminded people, are currently off-limits to spying, snooping, and undercover […]
For over 10 years, Al Qaeda has had a detailed plan to start fires throughout the West and has published instructions for remote control ember bombs. They have been responsible for massive property damage and deaths throughout the U.S. and Europe.
In order to adopt more effective strategies to fight this threat, the U.S. must begin treating these fires as a national security issue rather than a land management issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFHM0rd9cX8 (8-9 minutes)
Janet Levy,
Los Angeles
More proof that uneconomic, too early and inefficient government interventions as subsidies for ‘green’ energy — a form of socialist economic engineering with pseudo benevolent intent — is having unintended harmful effects on real, economically meaningful employment and on government finances…..Dr. John A.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10122850/True-cost-of-Britains-wind-farm-industry-revealed.html
Every job in Britain’s wind farm industry is effectively subsidised to the extent of £100,000 per year, The Telegraph can disclose.
A new analysis of government and industry figures shows that wind turbine owners received £1.2billion in the form of a consumer subsidy, paid by a supplement on electricity bills last year. They employed 12,000 people, to produce an effective £100,000 subsidy on each job.
The disclosure is potentially embarrassing for the wind industry, which claims it is an economically dynamic sector that creates jobs. It was described by critics as proof the sector was not economically viable, with one calling it evidence of “soft jobs” that depended on the taxpayer.
The subsidy was disclosed in a new analysis of official figures, which showed that:
• The level of support from subsidies in some cases is so high that jobs are effectively supported to the extent of £1.3million each;
• In Scotland, which has 203 onshore wind farms — more than anywhere else in the UK — just 2,235 people are directly employed to work on them despite an annual subsidy of £344million. That works out at £154,000 per job;
• Even if the maximum number of jobs that have been forecast are created, by 2020 the effective subsidy on them would be £80,000 a year.
One source, who owns several wind farms, and did not wish to be named, said: “Anybody trying to justify subsidies on the basis of jobs created is talking nonsense. Wind farms are not labour intensive.”
There has been mounting controversy about the value of both onshore and offshore wind farms, with discontent among back-bench Conservative MPs.
www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS New protein can save women’s lives. (Thanks to Israel21c) Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered a protein code-named PEDF that treats pain and fertility problems in women suffering from angiogenesis of the uterus. It can also cure potentially life-threatening side effects caused by IVF treatments. http://israel21c.org/news/israeli-researchers-offer-new-relief-for-gynecological-disorders/ […]
Israel’s former disgraced and disgraceful Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2005 while defending the disastrous Gaza withdrawal:
“We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors.”
At the time many were appalled, but how similar are those thoughts to American citizens who just don’t give a damn about sovereignty, patrimony, patriotism and the existential threats to our liberties, security and national culture?
I hate to quote Senator Bob Dole who inappropriately hawked Viagra after his ‘electile’ defeat in 1998…but really:
Where is the outrage????
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
THE DISPENSABLE OBAMA
The Dispensable Nation is the story of a struggle between two Democratic administrations; the one that exists and the shadow administration that Hillary Clinton attempted to create as Secretary of State. Like any fawning propaganda text, The Dispensable Nation has to be read on two levels. On one level, it’s a critique of Obama’s foreign policy. On another level, it exists to make the case for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In 2008, Obama campaigned against Hillary Clinton as the peacenik versus the warmonger who voted to invade Iraq. Now Hillary’s people are preparing to run her as the peacenik alternative to the warmonger of the previous administration who was too hard on Iran and the Taliban.
To understand how terrible the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton would be, it’s enough to know that here she is depicted as the negotiator to Obama’s militarist. If you thought that Obama spent too much time apologizing and negotiating, then just wait till Hillary arrives. And indeed, one of the few foreign policy “triumphs” of the Secretary of State that Nasr cites involved an apology to Pakistan.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351128/national-security-right-goes-silent-andrew-c-mccarthy
The jihad rages on, but the War on Terror is over.
There is no longer a national-security consensus — no longer the political support for wartime defense measures, much less offensive combat operations. While the enemy continues to fight, our will to break the enemy’s will has vanished. After a contentious week, that much is clear. The controversy swirling around shadowy intelligence programs hasn’t gotten to the bottom of those programs, but it tells us everything we need to know about . . . us.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dog that did not bark is a metaphor worn out by journalists. This week, though, the lack of a bark was loud and clear: The bark of the national-security Right defending the wartime powers of the presidency. For a variety of reasons, many of the protagonists have developed amnesia about how we came to have the programs now provoking all the cavil: the debates over the PATRIOT Act and FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).
After a series of attacks through the Nineties, the 9/11 atrocities destroyed the World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon, and killed nearly 3,000 Americans. In the savage clarity, our nation finally realized that what I’ve called “kinetic Islam” — a combination of militant jihadists and their sharia-supremacist enablers — was at war with the United States. The PATRIOT Act was a product of our vigorous and persuasive contention, on the national-security right, that the challenge was an enemy force, not a criminal-justice problem. That challenge demanded a national war-footing, not judicial due process.
It was precisely this contention, moreover, that beat back the Left’s effort to intrude the judiciary into the collection of foreign intelligence — constitutionally, a paradigm executive function — when FISA was overhauled in 2008.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351120/big-politically-correct-brother-mark-steyn The bozo leviathan sees everything . . . and nothing. Every time I go on his show, my radio pal Hugh Hewitt asks me why congressional Republicans aren’t doing more to insist that the GOP suicide note known as “the immigration deal” include a requirement for a border fence. I don’t like to tell […]
