http://news.yahoo.com/wave-iraq-blasts-kill-56-decade-invasion-091417627.html BAGHDAD (AP) — A wave of bombings tore through Baghdad on Tuesday morning, killing at least 56 people and wounding more than 200, highlighting increasing sectarian tensions in Iraq on the eve of the anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. The attacks, mostly by car bombs, targeted small restaurants, day laborers and bus stops in […]
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2013/03/usurped-palestinian-sovereignty-line-of.html
“Palestine was the cradle of the most ancient cultures and civilisations. Its Arab people were engaged in farming and building, spreading culture throughout the land for thousands of years,” Yasser Arafat, applying several layers of gilding to the lily, told the UN General Assembly in his major address on 13 November 1974 denouncing Zionism and the Zionist Entity.
Subsequently, by themselves abandoning the term “Palestinian Arabs” in favour of “The Palestinians,” Israelis handed Arafat a major public relations victory. For they appear to concede that there was indeed a sovereign people by the latter name and accordingly reinforce a brilliant propagandistic makeover on the PLO’s part that is a tool for Israel’s delegitimisation.
Of course, despite the impression created by Arafat and his successors, there was never a sovereign people called “the Palestinians” and there was never a sovereign state called Palestine.
But try telling that to the myriad youths who, too ignorant of history to recognise the lie for what it is, have been conditioned to believe that there was, and add themselves to the ranks of the Palestine Solitary Campaign and comparable organisations.
And try telling that to their anti-Israel elders who should certainly know that when the First World War broke out, and for several centuries beforehand, Palestine was a backwater province of the Ottoman Empire …
George Galloway, for example, in ranting and raving last month about British foreign policy in the Middle East, began with an attack on Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt and proceeded with the charge that Britain committed “the original sin” of “wiping their [the Palestinians’] country off the map,” the only “country” in the Middle East to suffer such a fate.
And so it is that a rather nasty little video, featuring some well-known names among others, and recently translated into French for the benefit of gallic and francophone Israel-haters, was recently made by BDSers in Australia regarding what one participant contemptuously dubs “the so-called state of Israel” towards the “indigenous people” of Palestine. (It ends with references to “the line of division”: hence my post title.)
http://townhall.com/columnists/starparker/2013/03/18/what-i-saw-in-israel-n1535372?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl As President Obama prepares for his first trip to Israel, I hope when he gets there he sees what I saw. Several weeks ago I returned from my first trip to Israel. I went with a delegation headed by Governor Mike Huckabee, who visits Israel at least once every year. What did I see? […]
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-02-180313.html It’s hard to imagine an unhappier man than Barack Obama’s aide Benjamin Rhodes, whose ”anguish” is the subject of a March 15 New York Times profile. What keeps the 35-year-old Deputy National Security Advisor up nights is the 70,000 casualties in two years of civil war in Syria, and the likelihood that whatever the […]
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=87b74a936c723115dfa298cf3&id=7f7d4f80bb&e=552053f981
BURN IN HELL: NYT Warmist Paul Krugman to those whose ‘deny’ global warming: ‘May you be punished in the afterlife for doing so’ — Calls ‘denial’ an ‘almost inconceivable sin’
Warmist Bill McKibben laments ‘White America’ has failed: ‘White America has fallen short’ by voting for ‘climate deniers’
McKibben’s ‘White America’ in the La Times: ‘We may need, for example, things such as a serious tax on carbon; that will require mustering political will to stand up to the fossil fuel industry. And that’s precisely where white America has fallen short. Election after election, native-born and long-standing citizens pull the lever for climate deniers, for people who want to shut down the EPA, for the politicians who take huge quantities of cash from the Koch brothers and other oil barons’
Click here for McKibben’s ‘White America’ commentary in La Times (via Tom Nelson) . (No wonder the Washing Post calls McKibben “bizarre.”)
bill.mckibben@gmail.com
Last week, global warming activists condemned climate skeptics into eternal damnation. See Paul Krugman: See: BURN IN HELL: NYT Warmist Paul Krugman to those whose ‘deny’ global warming: ‘May you be punished in the afterlife for doing so’ — Calls ‘denial’ an ‘almost inconceivable sin’ — Krugman invokes God’s wrath on skeptics: ‘You can deny global warming (and may you be punished in the afterlife for doing so — this kind of denial for petty personal or political reasons is an almost inconceivable sin).’
Now Warmist Bill McKibben wants ‘white America’ to wake up to man-made global warming fears.
Reaction to McKibben/LA Times’ ‘White America’ claims – McKibben/LA Times ‘Goes Full Racist’ – ‘If they blamed the weather on some other ethnic group, they would probably be investigated by the justice department’
http://www.marksilverberg.com/article/USA/AntiZionism/171/
The Tyranny of Deceit – A Response to “Israel Apartheid Week”
In the aftermath of World War II, with the hideous revelation that two-thirds of European Jews had been systematically exterminated by the Nazis, anti-Semitism became unfashionable. But that is no longer the case. As the memory of the Holocaust fades into history, as we continue to transfer petro-wealth to our enemies; as Europe morphs into Eurabia; as Islamists take control over the UN and an increasing number of Middle East and North African countries, and as our universities become hotbeds for virulent anti-Israel teachings and rhetoric – logic fades, facts become confused with fictions, distinctions between democracies and tyrannies become irrelevant, history becomes unimportant, and anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism become indistinguishable,
Natan Sharansky uses what he terms “the 3D test” to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism, and he identifies the three categories as delegitimization, demonization and the double standard. Taking these three factors into account, one can discern that the new anti-Semitism manifests itself in many different forms and in many different forums – through divestment campaigns, international boycotts of Israeli products, entertainers and academics, holding Israel to standards no other nations in the world are required to meet – not nearly, and through “Israel Apartheid Week” on Canadian and American college campuses where Israel is assigned the role of “Jew” among the nations of the world to be singled-out, cursed, harassed and defamed.
As Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post: “Google ‘Israel and Apartheid’, you will see that the two are linked in cyberspace despite the fact that Israeli Arabs, about one-fifth of Israel’s population, have the same civil and political rights as do Israeli Jews, and even sit in the Knesset.”
Consider this. Under apartheid in South Africa, whites and non-whites lived in separate regions of the country. Non-whites were prohibited from running businesses or professional practices in the white areas without permits. They had separate amenities (i.e. beaches, buses, schools, benches, drinking fountains, restrooms), received inferior education, medical care, and other public services, and although they were the overwhelming majority of the population, they could not vote or become citizens.
In contrast, Israel is a democracy in which Jews and Arabs have equal rights under the law, live where they choose, and benefit from the same health, welfare and infrastructure policies and programs. Israeli Arabs also enjoy the highest standard of living, the highest rates of longevity and literacy, and the lowest rate of infant mortality of any Arab-Muslim population in the Middle East. Israel also has an open political system in which Israeli Arabs vote, run for office, and serve in government. Moreover, Israel allows freedom of speech to a degree not tolerated in the Arab-Muslim world, and in fact does not even employ the same kinds of safeguards against sedition and treason that are taken for granted in the United States and other Western democracies.
http://townhall.com/columnists/kenblackwell/2013/03/18/jimmy-carters-libel-israel-week-n1537018?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl Some politically correct colleges in America and Western Europe observe something they call “Israel Apartheid Week.” It’s another opportunity to libel Israel for building a defensive perimeter to keep out Arab suicide bombers. These misguided young people who libel the only democracy in the Mideast look to former President Jimmy Carter for their inspiration. […]
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/03/18/william-van-cleave-the-cold-wars-unsung-hero/
WILLIAM VAN CLEAVE WAS A FRIEND OF SHMUEL KATZ AND AFSI….A STALWART FRIEND AND SUPPORTER OF ISRAEL….RSK
There’s a certain historic symmetry that we mark the thirtieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s historic unveiling of his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) within days of the passing of a man who played a central role in inspiring it. We must take the occasion of celebrating the former to honor the latter: Dr. William Van Cleave, an unsung hero of the War for the Free World, and most especially the part of that long and continuing conflict known as the Cold War.
How fitting as well that the same day Dr. Van Cleave died in his Southern California home, the Obama administration was forced publicly to reverse course on its systematic efforts to diminish the direct manifestation of Mr. Reagan’s SDI program. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced on March 15th that the modest array of U.S. missile defenses now in place would be enhanced in the face of a growing threat from the increasingly truculent regime in North Korea. Bill Van Cleave would consider that to be the very least we can do given Pyongyang’s declaration that it is prepared to launch a nuclear attack against us.
More to the point, as one of the Nation’s most longstanding and steadfast supporters of anti-missile systems and the imperative for their deployment in the most comprehensive, effective and efficient manner possible, Dr. Van Cleave would probably have sharply criticized the modest nature of Team Obama’s new initiative. He was the sole critic allowed to testify against the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and he would have recognized in the administration’s abiding determination to limit the size and capability of our defenses in deference to Russian opposition a throwback to that happily now-abrogated accord.
On January 21, 2002, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. throughout the civil rights movement wrote an op-ed. for the San Francisco Chronicle entitled: “I Have a dream” For Peace in the Middle East. Quoting the thoughts of his longtime ally and friend, Lewis, a Democrat representing the […]
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6573
The new pope is a puzzle to nearly everybody, particularly to the politicians, pundits and other know-it-alls. He looks and sounds like a remnant of a previous time, thrown up in the squalid swamp of a trashy and superficial age. He’s not at all hip and “with it.” He’s not interested in “moving forward,” as in the current cliché. He projects humility and kindness and speaks of his Christian faith as if he really believes in the amazing grace of the Gospel. This makes the intellectual elites, and even some “holy men” of the various bureaucracies of modern Christendom, incredulous, nervous and embarrassed.
The elites are willing to tolerate religious faith as long as a believing Christian keeps it to himself and never acts on it or even talks about it. It’s OK, barely, to be a “cultural Christian,” who often isn’t really a Christian at all as Christ defined the faith in the New Testament. The new pope rebukes this synthetic Christianity, urging a return to “the Christ of the Cross” who came to redeem humankind with a sacrificial death on Calvary. This puts Pope Francis clearly at odds with cultural Christians who would reduce the faith of our fathers to a catechism lifted from the pages of the New York Times.
“I don’t think he’s what we need right now in the Catholic Church,” Madeline Cuomo, the sister of the current governor of New York and member of a powerful family with a lot of the vowels in their name that Daddy Cuomo imagined kept him out of the White House, tells Crain’s New York Business magazine. “We’re looking to move the Church forward, with gay marriage and women priests. He’s going to turn back the clock.”
Her father, the former governor, offers more unsolicited advice for the new pope, with an avuncular pat on the head: “The way he’s lived has been simple and admirable, but it has not taught him how to deal with the high pressure of huge problems in the Church. . . . The whole question of women, the question of marriage – not even the question of same-sex marriage, which is a recent development – but the whole idea of priests not being allowed to be married. That’s led to a lot of unhappy relationships and ugly relationships by people who are basically sick. That’s something this new pope will have to deal with.” And he had better deal with it at once, and with it in a way “forward” pleasing to those for whom Cuomo, pere and fils, speak.
