Displaying the most recent of 90914 posts written by

Ruth King

SOEREN KERN: IS THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE CLOSER TO REALITY?

http://pjmedia.com/blog/united-states-of-europe-one-step-closer-to-reality/?print=1
The make-or-break summit convened in Brussels to avert the collapse of Europe’s single currency set the stage for yet another anti-democratic European power grab.

The leaders of the 27-member European Union met in Brussels on December 8 and 9 under pressure to deliver a decisive solution to Europe’s two-year-old sovereign debt crisis.

But the high-profile summit — which was billed by many as the last chance to save the euro single currency — did little to resolve the immediate crisis at hand, namely the massive debt loads of most European countries and the spiraling costs of borrowing more money to pay off those debts.

Instead, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy (aka “Merkozy”) leveraged the crisis summit to secure a “historic” commitment from all of the 17 countries that use the euro single currency (aka “eurozone countries”) to transfer broad new economic and financial decision-making powers to unelected and unaccountable technocrats in Brussels, the administrative capital of the EU.

The new “fiscal compact [1]” is a major step on the road to creating a single economic government in Europe. By giving Brussels more power to codify and enforce debt limits and impose central oversight of national budgets, the agreement takes the EU on step closer to consolidated and centralized fiscal authority in Europe. Among other features, the agreement also gives the European Court of Justice the right to strike down national laws that conflict with diktats issued by bureaucrats in Brussels, although EU legal experts are still unsure about how this can or will be enforced.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was the only EU leader who refused to go along with what many observers have described as an attempted European coup d’état.

Cameron vetoed the European power grab after Merkozy refused to give Britain — which uses the pound, not the euro — a written promise that the City of London would be exempt from heavy-handed EU rules and regulations that could damage its £46 billion (€54 billion; $72 billion) financial services sector.

In particular, Cameron had demanded that Britain be able to veto any usurpation of regulatory power over financial services from London to Brussels. He was especially keen on avoiding a move towards a Europe-wide financial transaction tax that would see London become a less attractive destination in which to do business.

In this context, Cameron had also insisted on measures that would prevent the eurozone countries from demanding that euro-denominated transactions be conducted in Frankfurt or Paris, something that would reduce the amount of business being done in the City of London.

Cameron’s veto will make life more complicated for Europe’s empire builders. In practical terms, rather than amending the existing Lisbon Treaty, which comprises the constitutional basis for the EU, the other 26 member countries of the EU will now have to forge a completely new “intergovernmental” treaty.

The agreement reached in Brussels on December 9 calls for the new treaty to be drafted within the next three months (by March 2012), even though in the past this process has taken many years. After that, the treaty will need to be ratified by each of the 26 countries. Some of them, such as Ireland, will also require holding public referendums.

Without Britain on board, the other 26 EU countries could also face potentially complicated legal obstacles, especially on how the new treaty will be enforced.

Moreover, Cameron says he will not allow the other 26 EU leaders to use the institutions of the 27-member EU to draft and police regulations for the 17 eurozone countries. Presumably, this would include the European Commission and the European Court of Justice, which Britain, as a member of the EU, helps to pay for through its annual contributions to the EU budget. He says the EU institutions are there to serve the interests of all 27 countries equally and not just a small group.

GREAT NEWS: MORE ISRAELI HOUSING IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA (AKA WEST BANK)

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-oks-homes-west-bank-settlement-095040157.html

JERUSALEM (AP) — The mayor of a West Bank settlement south of Jerusalem says Israel’s Defense Ministry has approved 40 new houses at a site near his town.

Mayor Oded Revivi said Monday the homes will create a permanent neighborhood northeast of the Efrat settlement, replacing settlers’ trailers currently on the site. He says final approval came last week.

The Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hagit Ofran, who monitors settlements for the Peace Now organization, says the trailers were put up without authorization.

She said their replacement by permanent homes amounts to retroactive approval of an illegal settlers’ outpost.

Settlement construction is criticized internationally for cementing Israel’s hold on land the Palestinians say they want for a future state.

PAMELA GELLER: A SHAMEFUL STATE DEPARTMENT INITIATIVE

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/a_shameful_state_department_initiative.html

Today the Islamized State Department will be meeting with the Islamic supremacist Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to discuss strategies and develop action plans in which to impose the restriction of free speech (or blasphemy, as truthful speech about Islam is considered in Islamic law) under the Sharia here in America.

Photos accompanying news reports about the upcoming meeting shows Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at a meeting last summer in Istanbul. Such prominence is given to this totalitarian organization. That photo reminds me of Neville and Adolf.

The respect and deference that the United States is paying to the OIC amounts to surrender in installments. The very idea that the U.S. Secretary of State is meeting with the OIC to discuss “religious tolerance” is like having Himmler meeting with Jews to condemn Jew-hatred. Under Islam. there is a complete and utter absence of “religious tolerance” of non-Muslims living in Muslim countries under the Sharia.

The call for “respect and empathy and tolerance,” coming from the most brutal and oppressive ideology on the face of the earth, reminds me of the “peace and equality” that was promised in Hitler’s campaign posters for the Nationalist Socialist Workers (Nazi) party.

LEO RENNERT: UNPARDONABLE OVERSIGHT…WASHPO AND NYTIMES OMIT MENTIONING NOBELS IN MEDICINE, CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS LITERTURE AND EOCNOMICS

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/wash_post_ny_times_shortchange_winners_of_5_nobel_prizes_including_israeli_laureate.html

The Sunday, Dec. 11 editions of the Washington Post and the New York Times carry extensive articles about three women from Liberia and Yemen who accepted this year’s Nobel Peace Prize at a Saturday ceremony in Oslo. The new Nobel laureates, who have been in the forefront of the fight for democratic reforms and women’s rights, fully deserved this prestigious recognition.

Missing, however, from the two papers’ Sunday editions was any recognition of the equally meritorious new Nobel laureates in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and economics. They picked up their Nobels at a separate awards ceremony also on Saturday in Stockholm, presided over by the king of Sweden.

The Post contented itself with a one-sentence mention at the bottom of its Peace Prize article that the other five Nobels were presented in Stockholm — without identifying any of the winners. The Times didn’t even go that far. It skipped all mention of the separate Nobel awards ceremony in Stockholm.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: A BADLY INVENTED PEOPLE *****

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

In the post-news environment, media no longer exists to report, it exists to disseminate glib talking points that sound good at first, but don’t stand up to examination. Fact checks, one of the latest media gimmicks, have become another vector for disseminating talking points. So have media blogs which began repeating the same ridiculous thing over and over again.

Take the response to Gingrich’s accurate statement that the Palestinian Arabs are an invented people. Aside from all the hysterical “sky is falling” nonsense, is the comparison between the Americans as an invented people and the Palestinian Arabs.

Let’s look at how wrong this is and in how many ways. To begin with the American colonies did not demand their independence based on some spurious ancient history. If they had then Washington would have dressed himself up as an Indian and instead of the United States of America, there would have been the Indian States of Iroquisville.

DOUBLE STANDARDS UNDER BRITISH LAW:A. MILLAR

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2652/double-standards-under-british-law

Is it appropriate for a judge to suspend a sentence of a convicted, violent criminal – so that he can walk free instead of serving time – if the criminal is “religious”?

In early 2010 Cherie Blair Q.C., wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, suspended the sentence of Shamso Miah, who had assaulted and injured a man.

According to the police, on the day of the incident Miah, a Muslim, had left a mosque, and gone to a local bank, where he became embroiled in a disagreement with another man, Mohammed Furcan, whom he then punched in the face. Furcan chased Miah outside and demanded to know why he had been assaulted, at which point Miah punched him to the ground, breaking his jaw. Miah claimed that he had acted in self-defense, but security cameras at the bank showed this to be a lie.

“I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years,” Blair told Miah at sentencing, “based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before.”

SOEREN KERN: MUSLIMS INTIMIDATE THEIR WAY ACROSS EUROPE

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2657/muslims-intimidate-europe

A mob of some 20 Islamists stormed a debate in Amsterdam that was featuring two Muslim liberals, the Canadian writer and Muslim feminist Irshad Manji and the Dutch-Moroccan Green Left MP Tofik Dibi.

Muslim extremists belonging to the group Sharia4Belgium, which seeks to establish Islamic Sharia law across Europe, yelled “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is Greater”) and threatened to break Manji’s neck. Waving an Islamist jihadist flag, they then demanded that Manji and Dibi be executed for apostasy.

The December 8 debate on how liberal Muslims can prevent Islam from being hijacked by Muslim extremists was held at the De Baile venue in downtown Amsterdam, and was sponsored by the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy. The event resumed after police arrested several of the Islamists.

The incident highlights the increasing frequency with which Muslims are using intimidation tactics — including harassment and even murder — in an effort to silence free speech in Europe and to impose Islam on the continent.

DAVID SINGER: END THE OCCUPATION AND SUBSTITUTE RIGHT THE WRONGS

David Singer, the Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst, has written a characteristically crackerjack article entitled ‘Palestine – “End The Occupation” and “Right the Wrongs”’ that seems to have first appeared here (Hat tip: reader Shirlee).

I think that, like all of his articles, it deserves as wide an audience as possible.

Writes David Singer:

‘I don’t think there has ever been any Arab propaganda slogan as powerful and successful as “End The Occupation”.

These three little words have managed to turn Israel’s miraculous victory in the 1967 Six Day War and its triumphal return to parts of the biblical and ancestral land of its forefathers – as something to be reviled and reversed. Those mouthing the slogan have not sought to have the “occupation” ended in favour of Jordan – the previous Arab occupant during the period 1948-1967. Rather they are insisting it all be given – albeit with mutually agreed land swaps – to another group – the “Palestinians” – who did not exist

• in 1937 – when the Peel Commission issued its Report

• in 1947 – when the United Nations recommended the partition of western Palestine into an Arab State anda Jewish State.

•Between 1948-1964 – when no claim was made by any such group to territory that any Arab claimant could have gained by the stroke of an Arab League pen – after such territory had been ethnically cleansed of every single Jew who had been living there prior to 1948

The “Palestinians” only first saw the light of day in 1964 when the PLO Charter was promulgated and Article 1 declared:

‘Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.’

Article 5 went on to declare:

‘The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father – whether inside Palestine or outside it – is also a Palestinian.’

No recognition was given to the fact that groups other than Arabs had lived in Palestine from time immemorial – long before the Arabs had ever conquered and occupied the area.

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ARAB AND ISRAELI CULTURE IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
“The Difference Between Arab Culture & Israeli Culture Is The Difference Between Barbarism & Civilisation”: Brigitte Gabriel Praises Israel & Warns Of Islamic Radicalism (video)
In this spell-binding speech, the well-known Lebanese-born American writer Brigitte Gabriel, addressing a Jewish audience in California some months ago, gives a graphic account of the destruction of her idyllic childhood and her beloved Lebanon by Islamic radicalism, and warmly praises Israel and Israelis – citing the “love and compassion” that she saw there, not only towards her and her mother as Christians, but towards Muslim Palestinians.

She stresses that, in the world today, most Muslims are not radical jihadists. Nevertheless, she cautions, the radical minority comprise perhaps 15 to 25% (some 300 million people). The USA has been infiltrated by Al Quaeda, Islamic Jihad, and (especially) Hamas. Listen as she reels off the name of the cities in which Hamas cells (disguised) operate! She warns of the indoctrination by Saudi Arabian influences of most of the mosques in America. She calls the universities “Occuped Territories” because they are being infiltrated by anti-Israel Saudi-funded centres and professors.

Insane Dogma: “Islam Will Protect America” Ashraf Ramelah

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11021/pub_detail.asp Will we ever know the extent to which President Obama’s most recent submission to the pressured demands of Islamists has endangered American national security? When the Obama administration yielded to the outcries of Muslim-American citizens and Islamic organizations recently with the removal of FBI training manuals containing certain anti-terror material deemed “offensive,” the President […]