http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/authors-debate-merits-of-nobel-prize-for-chinese-writer-mo-yan-a-861381-druck.html A Controversial Choice for this Year’s Literature Prize The decision last week to award the Nobel Prize in literature to Chinese author Mo Yan has not been the cause for universal celebration. Dissidents are criticizing the choice. In interviews with SPIEGEL, award-winning Chinese writer Liao Yiwu says he is “stunned” by the choice, and […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/true-the-vote/
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder and president of True the Vote, a non-partisan movement to help citizens take a stand for free and fair elections.
FP: Catherine Engelbrecht, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Let us begin with who True the Vote is.
Engelbrecht: Thanks Jamie.
True the Vote is a nonpartisan citizen-led initiative to protect the right to vote and the integrity of our election process.
FP: What does True the Vote do?
Engelbrecht: We educate fellow voters, review incoming voter registrations, research the veracity of existing voter registries, recruit and train election observers, and fully document our observations along the way so that findings can be used to constructively reform election code legislation in future election cycles.
We have for too long believed that the processes of our elections are up to the government. Like so many other things, we relinquished our responsibility to protect and defend our vote. The consequences of our civic siesta? Inaccurate voter registries, polling places without volunteers, a weakened process, and little political will to prosecute the perpetrators of election fraud. Rules matter. Our process matters. Belief that the results of our election reflect the will of the people is the underpinning of our entire republic.
FP: Why should people care?
Engelbrecht: The only way we will ever ensure free and fair elections is if citizens care enough to get involved and help support systems that protect the interests of every American voter.The Washington Post recently came out with a survey that showed more than 80% of Americans were concerned about election fraud. People know something isn’t right.
According to Pew Research, 1 in 8 voter registration records are incorrect, yet our Federal Government sues states who attempt to maintain their rolls. 70+% of our population support photo voter identification, yet our Federal Government fights tooth and nail to stop it at every turn.
In the last 18 months alone there have been prosecutions of voter fraud cases in 31 states, just in the past few months we’ve seen election integrity compromised in Indiana, Wisconsin, Florida, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, to name a few. Our election process is vulnerable to corruption from beginning to end.
These vulnerabilities can be readily exploited by groups who subvert our systems to serve their purposes – and it will not stop until we stand up.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/freedom-from-islam/print/ In 1941, FDR proposed his famous Four Freedoms. Some seventy years later it may be time to add a fifth freedom to that list. Freedom from Islam. Freedom from Islam would have seemed like an unlikely candidate back in 1941 when the worry was over secular ideologies, but as the West and its ideologies […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/destroy-israel-conference-comes-to-illinois/ On November 22-25, activists with links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas will come together at the Oak Brook Hills Marriott Resort in Illinois for American Muslims for Palestine’s (AMP) Conference for Palestine in the U.S.: A Movement United. The event also highlights the Islamists’ success in forging interfaith partnerships with Reverend Donald Wagner […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/janice-fiamengo/dying-by-entitlements/print/ Mark Steyn has done a spate of interviews recently on the occasion of the paperback release of his 2011 bestseller After America: Get Ready For Armageddon. A few weeks ago, he remarked to Canadian television host Michael Coren that, contrary to those who claimed his predictions about American collapse were alarmist, he now finds […]
http://search.aol.com/aol/afe?query=http%3A%2F%2Fspectator.org%2Farchives%2F2012%2F10%2F16%2Fbenghazigate&s_it=DNSERROR The White House and Obama’s media cohort believe they now have the Benghazi consulate attack story under control. They have, they think, established two foundation points of the narrative that relieve Obama of any responsibility for the events and their aftermath. The two points are, first, that the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/hillary-goes-under-the-bus/
In an interview Monday with CNN, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton identified herself as the person to blame for the U.S.’s failure to prevent the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack that took the life Ambassador Chris Stevens and that of three other Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton took care to shield the White House from the scandal, saying that diplomatic security was the exclusive role of the State Department. Coming on the eve of the second presidential debate, the admission follows a barrage of high-level administration surrogates shifting blame to the State Department, and Clinton no doubt felt tremendous pressure to concede in order to remove an important cudgel at Mitt Romney’s disposal. But while Clinton may very well bear much responsibility for the tragedy, the ultimate culprit is the Obama administration policy of voluntary weak positioning abroad, which the President’s State Department was executing in Benghazi. This is why the administration engaged in such a clear cover-up following the attack, along with the President’s need to maintain the facade that he has brought the threat of Islamic terrorism under control.
The tide had turned for Clinton after the vice presidential debate last Thursday when Vice President Joe Biden put the Benghazi problem squarely in Hillary’s lap. Biden claimed that he and the president “weren’t told they wanted more security there.” On Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney doubled down. ”These kinds of issues are handled in the State Department by security officials,” he said. Over the weekend the State Department blame game was in full swing. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief re-election campaign strategist, “explained” Biden’s debate assertion to “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace. “The White House was talking about what the White House knew,” Axelrod said. “There are embassies all over the world and requests all over the world and these requests go over the the security professionals at the State Department. And there’s no doubt that some of these matters went into the security department of the State Department. But it didn’t come to the White House, and that’s what the vice president was responding to,” he added.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-madness-of-qutbs-milestones?f=must_reads
Reading Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones to pen a serious, informative, and critical review was an intellectual and literary chore I expected to be a cinch. Having finished reading this short, 160-page encomium for Islam, it is not so much a cinch as an exercise in nausea. Imagine assigning oneself the task of comparing a set of amusement park horror houses and awarding them points on how realistic their artificial ogres, witches, and ghouls were and how successfully they caused people to scream, cringe, or have strokes.
That is, how does one go about discussing with a straight face the pathological meanderings of a very disturbed and malevolent man, knowing that his meanderings have served as an intellectual sanction for terrorism, death, destruction, and the ongoing Islamic jihad against the West? What makes it so nauseous a chore is not the English translation of Qutb’s screed. I do not think the quality of the translation matters, because there is no way any translator could do the work justice other than just translating it straight from the Arabic. There are no elusive nuances to catch and objectify, there is no “poetry” or literary value to be found and captured in the work. It is the subject matter itself that is nauseous. Milestonesis the Islamic equivalent of the mental ravings of psychotic murderers such as Richard Speck, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Ted Kaczynski.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/mismatch-a-book-with-sensible-proposals-on-affirmative-action?f=must_reads In a recent book entitled Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students Its Intended To Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, the authors identify reforms that could make a difference in dealing with this ticklish racial issue, reforms, as I see it, that are eminently sensible. First, and […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/this-foreign-policys-failing-worldwide?f=must_reads After Team Obama’s horrid handling of the terrible tragedy in Benghazi, does anyone out there really cling to the left’s quickly unraveling yarn that this administration has a strong record on foreign policy and national security Sure, the prez and veep continue to chant the mantra that “Osama bin Laden is dead” – and, […]
