The Army We Need
A Pentagon New Year’s resolution: to give us the Army we really need
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/286748
Last week, former Army chief of staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan editorialized that the Army is repeating the mistakes of the post-Vietnam era, when it turned away from a decade’s experience fighting a counterinsurgency war, in favor of building a more capable conventional force. This, according to General Sullivan, forced the Army to improvise its way through conflicts in Panama, Somalia, and the Balkans. General Sullivan went on to say that, despite these three experiences, we still possessed the wrong Army when we invaded Iraq in 2003.
One wonders how an Army optimized to fight insurgents would have dealt with the six armored Republican Guard divisions that ringed Baghdad. General Sullivan does not address this question. What he does say is that the Army was well on its way to defeat in Iraq until, after three years of muddling through, it adopted a new counterinsurgency doctrine. Now General Sullivan fears that the Army, in its rush to put Iraq and Afghanistan behind it, will once again put its counterinsurgency skills on the shelf, as it once again turns its attention to preparing for conventional warfare.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/286736 Newt and the Courts . . . AgainA response to Stephen W. Fitschen Newt Gingrich issued a bold proposal on reining in the federal judiciary that is about 90 percent terrific and 10 percent . . . not so much. In the latter category is the idea of having Congress issue subpoenas to federal judges who hand down […]
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/763/gingrich_was_wrong_about_palestinian_identity_but_right_that_it_is_at_the_core_of_the_conflict_
I HATE TO DISAGREE WITH A STAUNCH SUPPORTER LIKE ROBIN SHEPHERD BUT THIS CLAIM IS OUTRAGEOUS…
“But that, I think is as far as we can go with him, because so what if Palestinian national identity is invented and relatively recent? There are dozens of nationalisms that could be said to have been invented relatively recently not least Zionism itself.”
TO DRAW EQUIVALENCE BETEEEN SPURIOUS CLAIMS BY LOCAL ARABS AND ZIONISM? INVENTED RECENTLY? ZIONISM…THE DESIRE TO RETURN TO ANCIENT AND BIBLICAL HOMELAND IS FAR FROM “RECENT” AND DATES FOR MILLENIA ….DOES A NATION FORFEIT ITS HISTORIC LEGITIMACY JUST TO MAKE PEACE WITH PEOPLE BENT ON ITS DESTRUCTION? AND, THE NOTION THAT ISRAEL MUST DO THIS FOR SOME SPECIOUS PROMISES OF TEMPORARY GOOD BEHAVIOR BY MOSLEM/ARABS IS A JOKE… EVEN INTELLIGENT AND THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE LIKE ROBIN SHEPHERD FALL FOR IT…..RSK
Gingrich was wrong about Palestinian identity but right that it is at the core of the conflict
It’s not so much that the Palestinians don’t want a peace deal as that they cannot continue to see themselves as Palestinian should they ever fully accept the legitimacy of Israel
There’s a very important piece in Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post by Zalman Shoval, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, on Newt Gingrich’s controversial remarks about Palestinian nationalism.
A few weeks back Gingrich, running for the Republican nomination for next year’s presidential elections, had rather too casually said of the Palestinians,“These people are terrorists”. If he’d said that a disgracefully large proportion of the Palestinian population support terrorism his comments would have had the rock solid backing of all the available evidence. As it was, he left himself open to the charge that he was smearing an entire people.
But it was his remarks appearing to dismiss Palestinian nationalism itself that really generated all the heat.
Israel’s top 20 greatest inventions of all time By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN
http://www.jpost.com/Dash/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=251079
An end-of-the-year exhibit pays tribute to Israeli innovation.
A major Israeli source of pride is the enormous number of inventions and innovations that have taken root on its soil over 63 years, despite challenges of geography, size and diplomacy. The ever-churning Israeli mind has brought us drip irrigation, the cherry tomato, the electric car grid and much more.
Throughout December at the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem, indispensable Israeli inventions are being displayed and demonstrated. Curator Varda Gur Ben-Sheetrit said that hundreds of ingenious inventions were considered for the exhibition Inventions, Inc., which offers visitors a chance to learn more and try their own hand at coming up with something new.
She emphasized that many other Israeli inventions are deserving of inclusion. “We were, of course, constrained by space limitations. Also, not every company we invited to exhibit responded,” she noted.
Another feature of the exhibition is the Transparent Studio, where graduates of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design conduct a course on innovation in the area of light and lighting design. Visitors can observe their work-in-progress and share their ideas and suggestions with the designers.
Here’s a list of Israel’s top 20 inventions highlighted at the exhibition, in no particular order.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8976283/Stop-teaching-about-the-holocaust-so-that-children-see-Germany-in-a-better-light-says-Lord-Baker.html
WELL IF YOU STUDY THE HOLOCAUST YOU SEE THE UK’S SORDID HISTORY WHICH SHUT THE GATES OF PALESTINE AND TRAPPED MILLIONS OF DESPERATE JEWS. AND ALSO, AFTER THE HOLOCAUST BRITISH SOLDIERS FIRED ON REFUGEE SHIPS OF SURVIVORS HEADING TO PALESTINE….RSK
Stop teaching about the holocaust so that children see Germany in a better light, says Lord Baker
British schools should no longer teach children about the Nazis because it makes them think less favourably of modern Germany, the architect of the National Curriculum has claimed.
Lord Baker of Dorking, who spent three years as Margaret Thatcher’s education secretary, said that he would ban the topic and concentrate on British history instead.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said that schools should concentrate on teaching “the story in our own country” rather than the events of the Second World War, including the Holocaust.
Lord Baker, who introduced the National Curriculum in the 1980s, said: “I would ban the study of Nazism from the history curriculum totally.
http://israel21c.org/health/new-solution-kills-hospital-superbugs
New ‘solution’ kills hospital superbugs By Karin Kloosterman
Resistant bacteria are soon to meet their match: a genetically engineered fluid that restores their susceptibility to antibiotics.
Every patient, nurse, doctor and visitor to a hospital knows the drill: hands get a splash of antibacterial fluid found at every bedside, entrance and exit. Keeping hands clean can prevent some infections, but superbugs — those sometimes deadly bacterial strains resistant to antibiotics — can outwit the best hygiene practices.
Hospital-acquired infections are one of the leading causes of preventable death in the developed world today, with 100,000 people in the United States alone dying every year from bugs they catch as patients in the hospital, according to the World Health Organization. The old and very young are at an especially high risk of infection from resistant bacteria that can spread like wildfire.
But now superbugs may have met their match, thanks to a genetically engineered cleaning solution developed in Israeli laboratories.
Costing only a few dollars a quart, the solution is non-toxic to patients and can be spread on hospital surfaces to kill what conventional soaps and antibiotics can’t, report researchers Rotem Edgar from the Tel Aviv Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center and Udi Qimron from Tel Aviv University. They detailed their technology recently in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Weakening the superbugs
The solution uses a laboratory-grown virus called a bacteriophage, which disrupts the DNA of resistant bacteria and renders them susceptible to antibiotics.
“We have genetically engineered the bacteriophages so that once they infect the bacteria, they transfer a dominant gene that confers renewed sensitivity to certain antibiotics,” says Qimron, who believes his solution will one day be part of every hospital’s anti-germ arsenal.
The researchers say that the new spray could be applied on any surface where there is a high concentration of germs, such as door handles, faucets, bedrails and handrails.
The product is now ready to be tested, first on a nasty strain of E. coli that leads to urinary trac
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2711/europe-march-towards-islam
Post-Christian Europe became noticeably more Islamized during 2011.
As the rapidly growing Muslim population makes its presence felt in towns and cities across the continent, Islam is transforming the European way of life in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.
What follows is a brief summary of some of the more outrageous Islam-related controversies that took place in Europe during 2011.
In Austria, an appellate court upheld the politically correct conviction of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a Viennese housewife and anti-Jihad activist, for “denigrating religious beliefs” after she gave a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam. The December 20 ruling showed that while Judaism and Christianity can be disparaged with impunity in postmodern multicultural Austria, speaking the truth about Islam is subject to swift and hefty legal penalties.
Also in Austria, the King Abdullah Center for Inter-Religious and Inter-Cultural Dialogue was inaugurated at the Albertina Museum in downtown Vienna on October 13. The Saudis say the purpose of the multi-million-dollar initiative is to “foster dialogue” between the world’s major religions in order to “prevent conflict.” But critics say the center is an attempt by Saudi Arabia to establish a permanent “propaganda center” in central Europe from which to spread the conservative Wahhabi sect of Islam
Darfur: Land of The Islamist Power Struggle
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2708/darfur-islamist-power-struggle
On December 23, the Sudanese army killed one of the most influential rebel leaders in Darfur, Khalil Ibrahim. The Washington Post wrote that Ibrahim’s death represents a “major setback to the eight-year-old rebellion in Sudan’s western region, and to the Justice and Equality Movement [JEM], which Ibrahim founded several years ago and developed into the most organized rebel force in Darfur.” Ibrahim’s life story, however, shows how his actions were dictated more by his eagerness for power and by his Islamist agenda rather than by finding a solution to Darfur’s worst humanitarian crisis of this century.
If You Care for the Palestinians, Boycott the Palestinian Authority by Mudar Zahran
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2712/boycott-palestinian-authority
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) president, Mahmoud Abbas, went to the UN General Assembly in September, seeking recognition for a Palestinian state — a request that was not only unilateral in breach of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 838. In response, three congressional committees blocked $200 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority, a move the PA described as “collective punishment” — although it is hard to understand why it does not consider firing thousands of rockets at civilians in Israeli villages “collective punishment.”
In November of 2011, 44 lawmakers, all Democrats, wrote to the heads of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee, claiming that “Maintaining U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority is in the essential strategic interest of Israel and the United States”]. Nonetheless, it might just be in the Palestinians’ best interest if the US, and the world, not only stops financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, but even boycotts it.
When the autonomous PA came into existence through the legal framework of the Oslo Peace Accord, signed between the Israelis and the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] in 1993, the agreement was the most advanced political accomplishment ever by any terrorist organization. The PLO was the first terrorist entity ever to be rewarded with such as internationally-supported agreement as Oslo. This reward for bad behavior doubtless inspired the PLO to continue doing what it has always done best: promoting terrorism.
http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2011/12/29/americas_big_loser_2011_americans/print
In North Carolina this week, a young man named Mostafa Kamel Hendi hit upon a plan to make ends meet in this rotten economy: He decided to knock over a local gold store. Tape shows this determined and enterprising flower of American youth strolling into the store, hoodie over his head, and then gesturing to the clerk, Derek Mothershead, to shove some money in a plastic bag.
Mothershead, however, not being a member of the liberal effete class who believe that all robbery is a noble redistributionist impulse, had an unexpected reaction. He handed Hendi some money — and then, as Hendi bent to put the money in the bag, Mothershead clocked him with a tremendous left. Hendi went down, bleeding profusely. “There was just an opportunity there where I thought that I could actually do something and justice could be served,” said Mothershead, “and I thought that’s what needed to be done.” This tough Mother then forced Hendi to clean up his own blood with paper towels and cleaning solution. “If he wants money,” Mothershead added, “get a job. Work like everybody else in this world.”
