http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3559/obama-eu-britain These reactions are indicative of the contempt the political elites have for the concept of democratic accountability. In a high-stakes gamble, British Prime Minister David Cameron said last week, in his long anticipated speech about the European Union, that he would like the EU to be an open, internal market based on nation states […]
http://EconWarfare.org
If your offer is high enough, you could purchase U.S. technological secrets. Rest assured, the Obama Administration will not block the sale.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Fox News (not the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or CNN) revealed today that “the U.S. government has approved the sale of bankrupt, stimulus-fund recipient A123 Systems, Inc., to China’s Wanxiang Group Corp., with a North American business based in Elgin, Ill.
Apparently Wanxiang bid was $5 million higher that that of the Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls. “The Chinese company created “a new independent trust to buy A123’s civilian unit. The civilian arm makes up the bulk of the company’s operations. The idea would then be for Wanxiang to buy the business from the trust.”
A123 makes advanced lithium batteries and has developed technologies that have key U.S. military applications. Among its clients was U.S. subsidized electric carmaker Fisker, for which it has provided batteries. The batteries’ defects forced Fisker to shut down production for a while, and led to A123’s bankruptcy. Although Wanxiang didn’t buy A123’s military unit (which was sold to a U.S. firm), the technologies Wanxiang acquires are similar to those used in the military unit.
Wanxiang is an auto-parts company headed by Lu Guangiu,who in 2011, was reportedly was “the third richest man in the National People’s Congress,” who’s close ties with China’s new government, “worries some lawmakers.”
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/01/29/senator-rubios-immigration-enforcement-fantasy/?print=1 The silly season is upon us again, which is to say: Washington finds itself in yet another debate over “comprehensive immigration reform.” The core silliness could be heard in the arguments of Marco Rubio, one of four Republicans in the Senate “Gang of Eight” urging a deal that purports to ensure real immigration enforcement […]
As a political junkie, I’ve had Zero Dark Thirty on my must-see list since I first watched previews of it. When I finally had the chance to see it, at a Sunday matinee showing, the theater was packed. And any doubts that Kathryn Bigelow’s directing was less than stellar were immediately put to rest. The […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/339062 In Zero Dark Thirty, CIA characters warn of congressmen coming after them for running the agency’s interrogation program. As it happens, they could have said the same thing about making a movie about the agency’s interrogation program. Washington is aghast at Kathryn Bigelow’s fantastically compelling new film. Zero Dark Thirty isn’t really about interrogation, […]
http://melaniephillips.com/britains-infernal-cocktail-of-hate With the row then still raging over the Lib Dem MP David Ward’s attack upon Jews for not learning the lessons of the Holocaust and oppressing the Palestinians, the Sunday Times published last weekend a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a demonic builder walling up Palestinians with cement […]
The New York Times recently discovered antisemitic statements from President Morsi—but why were they surprising?
ISLAM….YES ISLAM….IS ANTI SEMITIC SINCE THE ADVENT OF MOHAMMED….TAKE OFF THOSE ROSE COLORED GLASSES…..AS THE LIBEL OF THE DEICIDE ENCOURAGED CHRISTIAN ANTI-SEMITISM…THUS THE KORAN HAS DONE SO SINCE ITS WRITING. THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT TRULY “MODERATE” CHRISTIANS DENOUNCED IT…INCLUDING POPE BENEDICT IN HIS RECENT BOOK…..AND THE SO CALLED “MODERATE” MUSLIMS JUST GIVE DOCTRINAL JEW HATRED A PASS…..RSK
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/01/29/the-muslim-brotherhood-has-been-antisemitic-since-its-founding/
The New York Times’ January 14 report on the Middle East Media Research Institute’s (MEMRI) videos of Egyptian Mohamed Morsi’s 2010 anti-Semitic statements inexplicably omitted the larger story of the Muslim Brotherhood’s decades-long intrinsic anti-Semitism.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has uncovered comments going back to 2004 showing a pattern of pure anti-Semitic comments made by Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
MEMRI has routinely covered these sorts of bigoted and hate-filled statements from throughout the Islamic world that most media outlets such as the Times have refused to cover since the late 1990s.
Morsi’s comments reflect the Muslim Brotherhood’s intrinsic anti-Semitism that is easily obtainable dating back to its founding in 1928.
The MEMRI videos cited by the New York Times earlier this month show Morsi referring to Jews as “the descendants of apes and pigs” and saying that Muslims should “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews…”
The IPT found additional comments by Morsi on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website from November 2004 in which he described the Jews as “descendants of apes and pigs.”
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
When professional writers get together what they talk about are not the great ideas that some of their readers imagine, but mostly the mundane business of their work; the good and bad reviews, the writers, agents and editors they hate and those they like, and the relationships in their incestuous industry.
Joseph Acton, Salman Rushdie’s memoir of his years in hiding, is such a collection of industry talk, full of the good and bad reviews he received, the famous people he attended parties with and his opinion of every writer, lover and editor he came in contact with. There are plenty of meditations on his years in hiding and his relationship with his service branch protectors, but Rushdie is a creature of the publishing industry and the literary circles that made him famous and kept him influential, and the book is more about that world than it is about the reasons he went into hiding and stayed in hiding.
All biography is at its heart fiction and Joseph Acton is a triumphant work of fiction as its author labors to make Rushdie’s numerous marriages and infidelities seem like the natural outcome of a stressful situation and the neurosis of his many wives. Any writer who crosses Rushdie or whom he crosses receives that same treatment. How much of it is true, is impossible to know.
Joseph Acton is Rushdie’s way of settling scores, some probably justified, some probably not, with countless reviewers, writers, politicians and wives. Throughout it all he manages to maintain the persona of an affable man wronged by unfair attacks and allegations, though toward the end when discussing his breakup with Padma Lakshmi, he begins ranting incoherently about Scrooge McDuck.
What Joseph Acton isn’t about, is Islamism or even freedom of expression. Rushdie does his best to make his ability to write and live freely as the acid test of freedom of expression, and he has a case considering that silencing him was the first major move to enforce Islamic law in the West. But it’s less a case of a courageous reformer speaking out, than a mildly famous left-wing writer discovering that circumstances had placed him on the firing line.
Rushdie occasionally delivers stirring defenses of freedom of expression and at one point even holds all of Islam, as it is practiced today, responsible, he appears to learn very little from the experience. At one point, he is introduced to an elderly Enoch Powell, who warned against immigration, and remembers wanting to punch him on an earlier occasion. It never occurs to him to overlay his experience on the Rivers of Blood that Powell warned about.
Hillary Admits The Existence of Jihad — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
The Secretary of State contradicts four years of the administration’s Jihad Denial.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/hillary-what-difference-does-it-make-clinton-on-the-glazov-gang/
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/january/the-gop-must-lead-again-on-civil-rights
From its anti-slavery roots to the battles for justice in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights. Only after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did the Democratic Party get in on the action, giving up on its historical base in the South to court minority voters in the North. Since then, the GOP has not reduced its commitment to civil rights, but it has emphasized them by fighting for personal freedom, individual empowerment, and protection from government; meanwhile, Democrats expanded government to push for more equality of outcomes, group rights, and protection by government. Somehow the Democrats managed to portray their version as the only approach to civil rights, and to saddle Republicans with the historical sins of the Democrats: segregation, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and repression.
There are three important civil rights issues today that the GOP should lead on. They are each sound public policy. Their first and most direct impact will be improving the lives of minorities, but they will also have widespread economic benefits for everybody. They are clearly in synch with Republican values, particularly the libertarian part of the Republican coalition. And they would be extremely popular, making them good politics, particularly amongst a demographic Republicans are now losing badly. But the GOP has failed to frame these as civil rights issues and place them at the core of its party platform, partly resulting from a belief that Democrats already “own” civil rights as an issue, partly due to some less-libertarian Republicans disagreeing with the proposals, and partly because some of the changes, while consistent with small government, feel a bit too radical for those embracing the label “conservative.”
There have been many articles since the election by pundits detailing how the GOP must change. Clearly I’m now writing one too. But there is a difference. Many of these articles can be summarized as, “If the GOP would only move to all of my positions it would be so much better.” In contrast, I’ve only chosen issues where I think it’s reasonable to ask my party to move. There are other issues where it might be politically expedient for the GOP to change, and I desire these changes myself, but I would not ask it. For instance, after the election, many have written about how the GOP must move to the center on social issues. That would be welcome to me as I am not a social conservative. I’m pro-gay marriage and have actively supported groups trying to advance this cause, and I am generally pro-choice. But to ask members of my party to change on the issues many find sacrosanct is a bridge too far. I accept that both parties are coalitions and I will never find full agreement with anyone other than myself (some days even that feels ambitious). Rather, I have chosen issues where, after what I assume will be considerable debate, there is hope we can come together based on the GOP’s avowed small government, free enterprise principles.
We are allowed to attempt to skew immigration toward skills we need, or at least away from those who immigrate not to join our free enterprise system, but to immediately partake in our safety net.
Issue #1 is immigration. The hysteria of some Republicans on this issue, with threats of excommunication for straying from the party line (which I guess I now risk — though as a donor, not a politician, I suspect they will continue to take my money!), is counterproductive. Immigration is, and always has been, a huge positive for our country. Every Republican who talks about the American Dream should know it is a tale of immigration. There are those who deserve the label RINO, but it’s those who would compromise our small government principles for power, not those who wish to allow millions of hard working freedom-seekers to pursue the American Dream.
More and easier immigration does not have to be a free-for-all. We are allowed to protect our borders. We are allowed to attempt to skew immigration toward skills we need, or at least away from those who immigrate not to join our free enterprise system, but to immediately partake in our safety net. We are allowed, to some extent, to protect our culture and encourage new immigrants to assimilate like generations before them have done. Republicans should continue to advocate for these things. But, speaking bluntly, too often the GOP’s boisterous opposition to most things immigrant comes across as racist, even if that’s not the intent. To the extent that this is a misunderstanding, and much of it assuredly is, it has to be fixed. To the extent that it is a reality, and at least a small part of it sadly must be, our party should unequivocally repudiate it, as Democrats should repudiate some very similar anti-immigrant attitudes found in some parts of their ranks.
Of course the most contentious issue surrounding immigration is what to do with the illegals who are already here. I use a simple test when thinking about this issue. Would I commit the crime (and it is a crime) these people committed to make my family’s life better? I would in a heartbeat. If I were Jean Valjean, I’d have stolen that loaf of bread. Frankly, if you would not have done these things for your family, I have no use for you. This is not always the test we want to use in matters of law. If I can understand how an aggrieved father would take vengeance on the person he thinks murdered his child, it does not mean the law should always forgive his actions. But in the case of illegal immigration I think the empathic course is the reasonable one. To punish people harshly for doing precisely what I would do in their situation is a hypocrisy I cannot endorse.
Now, the riposte to this is a fair one: “What about those who immigrated legally? Is it fair that illegals, who indeed broke our laws, get the same benefits as those who followed the legal path?” Of course that is not fair. I will leave the specifics for others on another day, but surely there is a path to legality for illegals that is considerably more generous and humanitarian than the current situation, but still a substantially tougher path than that of legal immigrants.
