http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/284773 I’ve been alarmed by the latest polls. No, not from Iowa and New Hampshire, although they’re unnerving enough. It’s the polls from Egypt. Foreign policy has not played a part in the U.S. presidential campaign, mainly because we’re so broke that the electorate seems minded to take the view that if government is going […]
Corruption and Islamism in Egypt Posted By David P. Goldman
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/12/02/corruption-and-islamism-in-egypt/
Egypt under Mubarak was a tightly-controlled kleptocracy, and Egypt since Mubarak has been an uncontrolled kleptocracy, in which public officials steal whatever isn’t tied down. Shiploads of rice, diesel fuel, and other tradables are leaving Egyptian ports for hard-currency markets, while the country–which imports half its caloric consumption–runs out of money. Mubarak’s elite has helicopters revving on their roofs. It’s no surprise Islamists swept this week’s parliamentary elections. Whom do we expect Egyptians to vote for?
A new book by an economics reporter at Egypt’s al-Wafd party’s newspaper alleges massive corruption at the country’s central bank. Reviewed in al-Wafd newspaper today, the book by Mohamed Adel Ajmi claims that central bank chief Farouk Abd El Baky El Okdah exercises one man rule over the country’s banking system through cronies in all the central bank’s major departments. The central bank’s reserves, Ajmi claims, are unaudited and subject to the personal control of the central bank governor, who abused his position to enrich political allies of deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/690/same_old_story_in_the_new_middle_east Same old story in the new Middle East The Arab world has a tendency to waste resources in a fight against “plots and plans” that don’t exist. In this respect, the new Middle East is shaping up to look just like the old one There is a growing chorus of voices acknowledging that it’s […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/obama_and_the_occupoopers.html
“This is the image of the Obama years you’ll want to keep in mind for next November. Blacks and Hispanics cleaning the leavings of rich white kids.”
Well, Obama had the youth vote last time, when one 27- year old white kid told me he voted for Obama “because Hillary looks too white.” This is a middle-class unemployed irresponsible left-indoctrinated spoiled-rotten would-be Occu-pooper.
I like him personally. He’s a nice, completely brainwashed kid, even with his DUIs; but what a national disaster when you multiply him by 50 million.
Well, that was 2008.
http://stevenplaut.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html
Israel’s Mona Lisa Weapon
By Steven Plaut
She’s unforgettable, she’s a legend though…
It’s kinda incredible
— From “Mona Lisa” by Britney Spears
Meet Israel’s secret weapon against terrorism, code named “Mona
Lisa.” Not only is Mona Lisa an effective weapon against Arab
anti-Israel terrorism and Islamofascism, but also is one of the most
effective weapons in the Israeli arsenal against the guttersnipes
screaming about imaginary “Israel Apartheid.” Let us sit back and
watch in amusement as Hitlerjugend from the “Boycott and Divest from
Israel” movement and their fellow jihad travelers try to cope with our
Mona.
There are two critical things you need to know about this new
secret weapon. The first is that Mona Lisa is the real name of an
Israeli woman combat soldier. At her parents’ suggestion – she writes
it as a single word, Monalisa (Nat King Cole did the same!). The
second thing you need to know is that she is an Arab.
http://sarahhonig.com/2011/12/02/another-tack-the-selective-barking-of-hired-hounds/
Hysterical headlines and none-too-coincidentally promoted causes célèbres are more often than not revealed as having been much ado about nothing. But there are different sorts of superfluous fusses.
Some are grounded in crass sensationalism, motivated by pompous publicity-hounding, ratings-boosting and irrepressible rampant shallowness. The results can be dire even without malevolent premeditation.
Inevitably, however, the loudest screamers in any given media campaign are acutely aware of the underlying sham of their pose. They fabricate the fake with forethought aplenty. They intentionally orchestrate uproars against nonexistent provocations. Their much-ado-about-nothing isn’t born of vulgarity but by deliberate design.
The current case of the roundly reviled libel law is so blatant that it cannot but be ascribed to premeditation. It’d take gross ignorance not to realize that the recently enacted amendment changes nothing, that the 1998 amendment to the 1965 Defamation Law was in itself ludicrous, that the original amendment and its updated version both matter little. The very portrayal of the latest legislative adjustment as a freedom-suppressant is so wildly disproportionate that it reeks of manipulation and ill-will.
Iran May Target American Bases in Germany
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3317/iran-may-target-american-bases-in-germany
Iran is planning on attacking U.S. military airfields in Germany, to preempt a possible strike on Tehran, reports Germany’s Bild news source. Evidence of the plot was uncovered by federal investigation into a German businessman, on charges of “suspicion of espionage activities to sabotage,” who was working with Iran’s embassy in Berlin.
German Attorney General Harald Range confirmed the case on Thursday, stating the federal law enforcement had “launched an investigation and conducted operational measures.” This included a house search authorized by an investigating judge on Nov. 2.
Iranian terrorism expert Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh told the Jerusalem Post that the Islamic Republic’s terrorist operations are directed from their embassies. “He [the suspect] had contact to Iran’s Embassy – and was clearly a part of the Iranian terrorist cell that was led by the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Berlin,” Wahdat-Hagh said.
However, not all news reports confirm the plot. The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office told the Jerusalem Post that the businessman was not subject to an arrest warrant and that there are no “indications that in Germany an attack against US American installations was planned or will be planned.”
Relations between Germany and Iran have recently deteriorated. Nuclear negotiations with Iran are at a deadlock and the recent attack by Iranian protesters on Britain’s embassy prompted the recall of several European Union ambassadors, including Germany’s.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/
Kibbutz Sasa sits one mile from Israel’s Lebanese border. Founded in 1949, it is the site of the tomb of the second-century rabbi Levi ben Sisi. It hosts groves of fruit trees and a dairy farm and has 210 members. Kibbutz Sasa is also the home of the main factory of Plasan, a company that started out making hard plastic containers like garbage cans in 1985. For four years now, American soldiers have driven more safely in Iraq and Afghanistan, thanks to Kibbutz Sasa and Plasan’s CEO, Dani Ziv.
It was Ziv who, in the 1980s, urged the company to take up the manufacture of protective ballistic vests for soldiers and police. In 1989, Plasan won its first contract to make body armor for the Israel Defense Forces, and then for IDF vehicles. When war came to Afghanistan and then Iraq, orders went through the roof, especially from the United States. Plasan’s profits soared some 1,500 percent, from $23 million in 2003 to $330 million in 2007. Today they stand at over $500 million, with 90 percent of the company’s orders coming from Europe and the United States.
Plasan specializes in a very dense plastic composite product that affords ballistic protection without significantly adding to the weight of the vehicle. “Their work is exceptional,” says a senior Israeli defense industry executive about Plasan. “To convince the U.S. military that you are a reliable outfit is no mean feat. They did it all alone, without any help from a former ambassador or defense ministry director general.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4156222,00.html
Our president traveled to Jordan on Monday. If King Abdullah does not come to Jerusalem, Jerusalem comes to Abdullah. Secretly. Only thanks to the Jordanian news agency, which leaked word of the secret visit, we got to hear about it.
The truth is that it would not have been such a great disaster if we did not hear about it; it would not even amount to minor ignorance.
President Shimon Peres’ diplomatic meetings have no significance whatsoever, if we ignore for a moment the significance of the good feeling they bestow upon our president. Shimon Peres is addicted to secret meetings. They remind him of distant days where he cooked up sensational peace processes under the public’s nose. A meeting here, a quick concession there.
“The meeting was held at the king’s palace and bilateral issues were discussed,” the President’s Office said, toying with lofty worlds. The term “bilateralism” has an intoxicating diplomatic scent, as if real things are happening behind the curtain, yet in this case bilateralism can be summed up with “good morning your majesty” and “what would you like to drink.”
Nothing significant is happening in the Middle East at this time with the exception of the events in Cairo’s squares and on the streets of Syria.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150340
Oped: Giulio Meotti Takes on The Economist
In a hardhitting article, Italian journalist Giulio Meotti documents the influential magazine’s subtle and not-so-subtle Israel bashing.
The Economist Cover
In contrast to most newsmagazines, like the moribund Time and Newsweek, The Economist has a circulation of 1.2 million copies weekly around the world. Its correspondents have entrance to decision-makers of all levels in Washington and Europe.
This most prestigious British weekly, extremely influential in elite circles in the US as well, prides itself on being neither right nor left. It has, in fact, endorsed candidates in Britain and the United States from both sides of the political divide.
But on the Middle East, The Economist has a radical anti-Israel agenda. For years, Jewish groups and media critics have aimed their fire at Israel bashers on CNN, the BBC, in The New York Times and cultural media outlets such as the London Review of Books.
But The Economist is more subtle about it. Economist editorials and feature articles are published anonymously, giving the impression of being much more reputable and sophisticated.
A recent article titled “The Bedouin Under Israeli Rule” went beyond the usual slant, accusing the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing and promoting the imperialist-colonialist narrative. The CAMERA media watchdog denounced the fact that “The Economist presents the Israeli government’s resettlement of Bedouin into cities as part of a program driven purely by ethnic chauvinism”.
