URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/21/ingrid-mattson-a-case-study-in-stealth-jihad/ In a recent column for Canada’s National Post, the invaluable Barbara Kay writes about one Ingrid Mattson, a Catholic who was raised in Kitchener, Ontario, converted to Islam, and went on to become a major figure in the North American Islamic establishment. Until recently she taught Islamic Studies at Hartford Seminary, […]
A Brave Rabbi Speaks Out Posted By Frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/21/a-brave-rabbi-speaks-out/
Editor’s note: The sermon below, delivered by Rabbi Schlomo Lewis of Atlanta on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, 2010, has been referred to as the “Sermon of the Century.”
“Ehr Kumt” (Yiddish for “He’s Coming”)
I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share. We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel. We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much. We want to be guilt-schlepped – but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too much. We want to be transformed but not too much.
I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.
We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-792436,00.html
More than Half of Afghans See NATO as Occupiers
Fully 60 percent of Afghans fear that the country will descend into civil war once NATO forces leave, but over half see the Western alliance as occupiers. A new survey carried out be the Konrad Adenauer Foundation has found that the mood in Afghanistan is worsening.
The troops are there, according to the mission statement, to “provide a secure environment for sustainable stability.” But 10 years after NATO entered Afghanistan to drive out al-Qaida and beat back the Taliban, a majority of the local population has come to see the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as little more than occupiers.
According to a survey published on Tuesday by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 56 percent of Afghans now see the foreign troop contingent as an occupying force. Furthermore, only 39 percent of those surveyed said they saw ISAF as a guarantee for security, well down from the 45 percent result found in the same survey in 2010. Fully 60 percent think that the country will descend into civil war once NATO forces withdraw.
The 99-Percent Solution By Roger Kimball http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/10/20/the_99-percent_solution_111750-full.html I’ve always had a soft spot for Karl Marx’s famous mot about Hegel’s observation that history repeats itself. “He forgot to add,” said the Caliph of Communism, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” What happens, then, the third time around? The 1960s certainly had […]
Romney: Proficient but Unloved http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/280876 OKAY…BUT JUST BEING THE NON ROMNEY IS NOT ENOUGH TO DEFEAT OBAMA…WHERE IS THE GOP GOING?….RSK He would be an unusual vessel for a party overflowing with populist enthusiasms. It might have been Mitt Romney’s most revealing moment in all the Republican debates. Badgered by Texas governor Rick Perry, who […]
http://news.yahoo.com/israel-ready-partially-freeze-west-bank-building-105430626.html
Israel ‘ready to partially freeze West Bank building’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to partially freeze West Bank settlement building if it will bring the Palestinians back to direct talks, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.
But the Palestinians said they were unaware of any such offer, and said that anything short of a full freeze would not be acceptable.
According to Haaretz, Netanyahu’s offer was made on Wednesday in a conversation with Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin who paid a surprise visit to the region earlier this week to try and coax the parties back to the negotiating table.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/fast_and_furious_scandal_cannot_be_contained.html
Fast & Furious is literally a killer of a scandal, drenched in the blood of victims of a federal government operation. Despite the best efforts of the Obama team to obfuscate, the truth is emerging, so that the media and even some Democrats are focusing on a full unearthing of the facts.
Tuesday, October 18 proved to be an important day in the slow march towards justice for the families of murdered federal agents Brian Terry and Jaimie Zapata, and the hundreds of Mexicans dead from Fast & Furious firearms.
First, the U.S Senate unanimously voted in favor of an amendment prohibiting funds from going to any future gun-walking type operations. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the amendment in direct response to the 2009 Fast and Furious debacle. The bipartisan consensus prompted Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) to join Cornyn in his demand for answers from Attorney General Eric Holder.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1685/pub_detail.asp
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Gaddafi’s death – who pulled the trigger? [REUTERS]
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Obama Admin Gave $ 500,000,000 (Half-Billion-Dollar) Loan to Gore-Connected Electric Car Company to Build Cars in Finland rather than in the U.S. [ABC]
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White House pulls references to Islam from terror training materials, official says [DAILY CALLER]
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Despite a campaign-style push this week by President Obama, the SENATE VOTES DOWN a Trimmed Version of His Jobs Bill [FOX]
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Republican lawmakers lambasted the Justice Department for its “false denials” in the FAST AND FURIOUS gunrunning operation, demanding that the FBI turn over documents in its ongoing probe into the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. [WT]
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Muslim Student Prohibited from Marching in ROTC Parade Because of Muslim Head Scarf and After Contacting CAIR and Is Now Trying To Change U.S. Army Policy [FOX]
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Ama Bills For LOBBYING SUPERCOMITTEE As High As During Healthcare Bill Debate [The HILL]
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U.S. ‘Misery Index’ Rises to Highest Since 1983 [CNBC]
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Coptic Christians Protest Administration, Egyptian Govt. Outside White House, Morning Shows Ignore It [NEWS BUSTERS]
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NEW UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS PERSIST ABOVE 400,000 – marks little improvement in the job market over the last six months [CNN]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10636,css.print/pub_detail.asp There is a concerted movement that began in earnest with the Progressive Era to identify the United States of America as a Democracy. To be sure, this movement has made great strides in convincing the American citizenry of just that. This movement has been so successful in delivering this message that Democrats, Republicans, Liberals […]
Paul R. Pillar’s Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform Alyssa A. Lappen
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10634/pub_detail.asp
Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform
by Paul R. Pillar
Publisher: Columbia University Press (432 pp)
The preface to Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform promises a good read as former CIA officer Paul R. Pillar details perches from which he “observed the end of one misguided war and the beginning of another”—a pair of bookends to his public service career and “two tragically ill-conceived military expeditions.” In 1973, as the Vietnam war wound down, Pillar served as a junior army field officer at Camp Alpha outside Saigon. From 2000 to 2005, he headed CIA national intelligence for the Near East and South Asia in Washington D.C.—albeit with hardly “any more influence on events in one job than in the other.”
Unfortunately, the book quickly disappoints.
On joining any U.S. military or intelligence service, officers must swear a solemn oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;… bear true faith and allegiance to the same;…[and] obey the orders of the President of the United States….”
