Zurich unveils sex drive-in The Swiss city of Zurich on Thursday unveiled a sex drive-in which local authorities say will enable them to keep closer tabs on prostitution, a year after voters backed the plan. Due to be opened officially in a ceremony on Aug 26, the nine so-called “sex boxes” are located in a […]
Home From his rented vacation villa in Vineyard Haven, MA, President Obama conceded the obvious, “America cannot determine the future of Egypt,” he said. He went on to declare, “We don’t take sides with any particular party or political figure,” only to contradict himself by announcing the cancellation of U.S.- Egyptian joint military exercises “while […]
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Menachem-Begin-His-legacy-a-century-after-his-birth-323183?utm_source=Menachem+Begin%27s+Legacy+on+his+100th+Birthday+%28Jerusalem+Post%29&utm_campaign=Menachem+Begin%27s+Legacy+on+his+100th+Birthday&utm_medium=email
Begin’s life had, at its core, an unwavering constant, a guiding principle that shaped everything. It was a life of selfless devotion to his people. That devotion fashioned a life in which determination eradicated fear, hope overcame despondency, love overcame hate, and devotion to both Jews and human beings everywhere coexisted with ease and grace. It was a life of great loyalty-to the people into which he was born, to the woman he loved from the moment he met her, and to the state that he helped create.
Menachem Begin, Israel’s sixth Prime Minister, was born one hundred years ago today. A century after his birth, and more than two decades after his death, it behooves us all, regardless of our political stripes, to take a moment and to reflect on the profundity of his contribution to the Jewish people. That claim will undoubtedly strike many as strange, since more than half a century after he helped rid Palestine of the British, Begin is still disparaged by many of the very same Jews who see in the American revolution a cause for genuine pride.
Begin himself seemed to sense the irony, so he spoke time and again about the American revolution. In an article commemorating the thirty-fifth anniversary of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s death, he combined two passages from Thomas Jefferson’s letters-one to James Madison and another to William Stephens Smith. “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical,” Begin quoted Jefferson, adding the American revolutionary’s sobering observation that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
It was natural that Begin thought about the Zionist revolution in light of what American revolutionary patriots had wrought 175 years earlier. After all, the American and Zionist revolutions shared much in common. Both were fueled by a people’s desire for freedom after long periods of oppression in which religion had played a central role in their persecution. Both were designed to force the British to leave the territory in question so that they (the American colonialists and the Zionists) could establish their own, sovereign countries-in Israel’s case on the very ground where a sovereign Jewish nation had stood centuries before. Both produced admirable democracies. And both were violent revolutions.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatballs “The next thing could be that Danish nurses are forced to go under cover as Muslim women in order to please Muslim patients.” — Martin Henriksen, Spokesman, Danish People’s Party [DF] One of the largest hospitals in Denmark has admitted to serving only halal beef — meat that is slaughtered in accordance with strict […]
One of the biggest questions about fighting terrorism is whether we intend to fight it on the military level or on the ideological level.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
Wars have ideological components. Propaganda likely predated the written word. Undermining an enemy’s morale can be a very effective means of turning the tide of battle. But in warfare, the ideology is there to further military aims, while in an ideological war the military is a tool for achieving ideological victories over the enemy.
It’s a fundamental distinction that cuts deep into the question of what we are doing in places like Afghanistan and what we hope to accomplish there.
The dichotomy between words and bullets could occasionally be somewhat ambiguous during the Bush Administration, but there was a general understanding that we were on a mission to kill terrorists and their allies. If by killing them, we could discredit their ideology and dissuade fellow terrorists from following in their footsteps, so much the better.
The Obama Administration has shifted the primacy of the conflict to the ideological sphere. Like the rest of the left, it would rather fight ideological wars, which are its strength, than military conflicts, which aren’t.
The left believes it understands ideas, but is much weaker when it comes to military affairs. Even Stalin did his best to avoid an open conflict with Hitler. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union remained afraid of superior Western firepower and technology and pulled back from any test of American determination that risked breaking out into open warfare.
Florida Professor Gives ‘Civilization Jihad’ Lecture, Despite Attempts by Hamas-Backed CAIR to Shut it Down Florida Professor Gives ‘Civilization Jihad’ Lecture, Despite Attempts by Hamas-Backed CAIR to Shut it Down: A University of Central Florida professor spoke before a full audience Tuesday night and warned that there is a “civilization jihad” being waged by Islamic […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/an-unambiguous-example-of-harry-hopkinss-pro-soviet-perfidy-revealed
Diana West’s American Betrayal enumerates an impressive litany of FDR “co-President” Harry Hopkins’s pro-Soviet activities. Here is a partial listing: his excessive largesse toward the USSR via Lend-Lease, which he oversaw, even to the point, arguably, of sacrificing American and British military needs; his relentless dedication to Stalin’s “Second Front” demands, opposing at least equally viable military alternatives less “advantageous” to Soviet expansionist designs in Eastern Europe, as originally laid out in the secret August, 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany; his dismissal of the 1940 Soviet Katyn massacres of 22,000 Polish civilians, soldiers, and officers; his labeling of Soviet defector to the U.S., Victor Kravchenko (author of the memoir, “I Chose Freedom”), a “deserter,” while pressing FDR to deport Kravchenko back to the USSR, where he faced certain execution; and, according to one very credible American witness, his apparent role in the facilitation of uranium shipments to the Soviets-after such shipments were embargoed.
This incomplete litany far transcends the controversy over whether Hopkins was Soviet “agent 19”-a case made, separately, by intelligence historians Eduard Mark, and Herbert Romerstein, but contended by the intelligence historian team of Haynes and Klehr.
Perhaps the most compelling evidence West presents of Hopkins’ traitorous perfidy is conveyed by reproducing a personal and confidential letter FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote to Hopkins and FDR (dated May 7, 1943), and chronicling what followed via revelations from a KGB archive. But what is of equal importance, in terms of West’s discussions of the glaring omissions in our historical understanding is a striking example of how established academics-in this instance, Christopher Andrew, insert their own a priori judgments in attempting to exculpate Hopkins of having consciously abetted Soviet anti-US espionage. More remarkable is Andrew’s omission of objective evidence-the direct contents of Hoover’s letter to Hopkins-making explicit what Hopkins had been told about Soviet “embassy member” Zarubin/Zubilin, i.e., that he was a Comintern agent.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/08/15/a-soldiers-story As told to our correspondent, George H. Wittman Usually there are only twelve men in a patrol. It depends. When possible, there are three more. These extra guys are what the Army calls “redundant.” I don’t think it’s the correct word in ordinary English, but in Army lingo it means that the jobs these […]
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/08/15/scarlett-ohara-runs-for-presid “Anyone who says racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention.” — Hillary Clinton to the American Bar Association “Hillary cannot have black women’s allegiance for free. Black women will not be relegated to the status of supportive Mammy, easing the way for privileged white women to enter […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355812/coming-hillarycult-charles-c-w-cooke Dispiriting as it is to admit for those of us who like our republics modest and our republicans unassuming, we are living through one of those bothersome periods in American history in which cults of personality are all the rage. Cory Booker’s victory on Tuesday evening was as inevitable as will be his coronation […]
