http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-battle-of-the-redskins/ Over the summer, those two legendary sources of sports coverage, Salon Magazine and MSNBC, or as they are known in some places the S Word and the M Word, announced that they would begin referring to the Redskins football team as the R Word. Ordinarily liberals would not be too eager to call a […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/aymenn-jawad-al-tamimi/reza-aslan-authority-on-islam-and-the-middle-east/ An author who came to widespread attention during the past couple of months over the release of his book Zealot (July 2013) on the life Jesus, Reza Aslan has been known primarily as an authority on Islam and the Middle East. He has been hailed by an array of commentators, most notably the celebrity […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/360974/print As the federal shutdown grinds on, Team Obama’s message to the American people is sadly consistent: Shove it — as painfully as possible. Obama’s strategic sadism disregards regular Americans’ basic needs and tortures those who resist. And if this damages people, so what? “We are winning,” a senior administration official told the Wall Street […]
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4247/who_s_afraid_of_barack_obama
While no longer accepting any special responsibility on the world stage, Obama pretends that we are all citizens together. Like Hamlet the President soliloquises; he does not act
On March 4, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson gave his second inaugural address. “We are provincials no longer,” he declared. “The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world.” Five months before, he had been re-elected on the slogan: “He kept us out of the war.”
But in the meantime, the Germans had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. By the time Wilson spoke, he had resolved to side with the Allies. The true significance of American intervention in a European conflict would extend far beyond its ultimately decisive impact on the war itself. Wilson grasped that the United States was acknowledging that its “manifest destiny” now embraced defending liberty and justice, not only on a continental but on a global scale: “There can be no turning back.”
Wilson was drawing on a long history of thinking about what it might mean to be a citizen of the world, going back at least to Immanuel Kant’s vision of “perpetual peace”. Even Machiavelli recognised ethical constraints on rulers, as Phillip Bobbitt shows in his new study of the Renaissance sage, The Garments of Court and Palace. What we would call genocide and ethnic cleansing “are such vile practices, not only incompatible with a Christian way of life but with any civilised form of living, that every man should abhor such methods and decide to live as a private citizen rather than rule at the cost of such devastation to others”.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303342104579099060830782406.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Why isn’t the wind industry subject to the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act?
For some environmentalists, the threat of climate change is so great that we must allow wind turbines to kill bald and golden eagles. The argument I’ve heard is that renewables, including wind energy, will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Less carbon dioxide reduces the threat posed by climate change, which benefits eagles and other wildlife.
In other words, we have to kill eagles in order to save them.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider the notice that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published in the Federal Register on Sept. 27. It seeks public comment on a proposed permit that will allow a wind project to kill up to five golden eagles over a five-year period, despite their protected status under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
The permit is sought for the Shiloh IV Wind Project in Solano County, Calif. If it is granted, it would formally recognize a legal double standard that is already in existence with regard to wildlife protection in America.
Wind projects routinely violate the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but no wind farm has ever faced a single prosecution. Meanwhile, companies in the oil and gas industry and other sectors are routinely indicted for violating those same statutes.
The illegal bird kills are not insubstantial. On Sept. 11, some of Fish and Wildlife’s top raptor biologists published a study in the Journal of Raptor Research that found the number of eagles killed by wind turbines increased to 24 in 2011 from two in 2007. In all, some 85 eagles have been killed since 1997. Joel Pagel, the study’s lead author, recently told me that the figure is “an absolute minimum.” Among the carcasses: six bald eagles.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-face-of-tyranny?f=puball The history of civilization dating back some five millennia is one of unrelenting tyranny, rapaciousness, arrogance, and stupidity. The players and the places changed, but the slaughter was unremitting, the suffering broken only by occasional brief periods of peace, good weather and crops. For most of the past, war, famine, and disease killed most […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/just-like-a-tyrant-obamas-executive-extortion
Like King Canute, President Barack Obama is ordering the tide of disaffection to cease and roll back into the ocean. He has even closed the ocean. Obama does not subscribe to Francis Bacon’s dictum that “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” No, his power-lusting ambition allows him to assert: “Nature and men will obey me because I command it.”
The malicious, vindictive character of President Barack Obama’s behavior over the refusal of the House to pass a budget that would fund Obamacare (or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) and also raise the debt ceiling is open for all to see. He has ordered all national parks, and even private parks and businesses that do not receive federal funds but which are on federal property or even adjacent to it, closed, with cement or metal barricades, orange cones, and National Park “rangers” stationed to stop people (when they can) from entering any of those venues.
His actions are nothing but petty, extortionate, and venal. “I will have my way, and you will suffer pain until I get my way,” is his message. “I don’t care if you’re WWII vets or Korean War vets or just tourists who have suddenly found their vacation plans literally barricaded, until you press the House to let me have my way, you won’t be enjoying those parks, even though your tax dollars pay for them. Tough. I’m the boss. Deal with it.”
Although the federal government’s shutdown is the first in seventeen years, Obama’s actions are evocative of the Crown’s policies over the American colonies 248 years ago, when, against the advice of many members of the House of Commons and even some members of the House of Lords, Parliament passed the Stamp Act. Chief Justice of the King’s Bench Lord Mansfield (William Murray) approved of the Stamp Act as within the powers of Parliament and the Crown. The Gentleman’s Magazine of March 1765 noted:
“Lord Mansfield, as speaker, and the Earls Gower and Marchmont, by virtue of a commission from his majesty gave the royal assent to the following bills:…” and about nine are listed, one of which reads: “for laying a stamp duty in the British colonies in America.”
Although a brief & somewhat inconspicuous report, it is an exceedingly historic one, as this is the official notice–in a British publication no less–of the King’s approval of the Stamp Act. Schlesinger has under the date of March 22, 1765 a lengthy entry which begins: “In passing the Stamp Act, the English Parliament sets its first direct tax on the American colonies. The intent of this act is to raise adequate funds, together with the revenues from the 1764 Sugar Act, to support at least one-third of the total cost to British of maintaining a military organization in the colonies…”
As early as December, 1764, Prime Minister George Grenville, author and advocate of the Stamp Act of March 1765, sought Mansfield’s opinion on the legality of the tax. Mansfield replied*:
“…Though the question certainly does not want this, or any other authority, yet it will be a striking alteration to ignorant people, and an unanswerable argument ad homines; and, therefore, I wish you would employ somebody to look with this view into the origin of their power to tax themselves and raise any money at all.”
Now, let’s look at the Supreme Court ruling on the legitimacy or legality of Obamacare, and the key statement of Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion. The New York Times reported on June 28th, 2012:
“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.” [Italics mine]
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/10/10/hajj-amin-el-husseinis-animating-ideology-nazism-nazified-islam-or-islam/
During his October 6, 2013 speech at Bar Ilan University, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini. Mr. Netanyahu characterized el-Husseini as, “the undisputed leader of the Palestinian national movement in the first half of the 20th century.” The Prime Minister highlighted the ex-Muft’s role in fomenting pogroms (dating back, in fact, to the so-called “Nabi Musa” riots of 1920) during the decades between the Balfour Declaration, and the eventual creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
Netanyahu’s address also focused on el-Husseini’s World War II era collaboration with the Nazis, the clear implication being that the Mufti’s murderous, Jew-hating ideology was simply another manifestation of Nazi evil, transplanted to a local “nationalistic struggle” in the Middle East. I have just published an extensive analysis (available as a downloadable pdf of 51 pp., and 120 references, embedded at the end of this blog) entitled, “A Salient Example of Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s Canonical Islamic Jew-Hatred—Introduction, Text, and Commentary” which demonstrates that Netanyahu’s rehashing of such conventional, pseudo-academic “wisdom,” does not withstand any serious, objective scrutiny.
On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the “Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Congressional record contains a statement of support from New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about “Turkish and Arab agitators . . . preaching a kind of holy war [jihad] against . . . the Jews” of Palestine. During this same era within Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current—epitomized by Hajj Amin el-Husseini—promulgated the forcible restoration of sharia-mandated dhimmitude for Jews via jihad. Indeed, two years before he orchestrated the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920, that is, in 1918, Hajj Amin el-Husseini stated plainly to a Jewish coworker (at the Jerusalem Governorate), I. A. Abbady, “This was and will remain an Arab land . . . the Zionists will be massacred to the last man. . . . Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country.”
Despite his role in fomenting the1920 pogroms against Palestinian Jews, el-Husseini was pardoned and subsequently appointed mufti of Jerusalem by the British high commissioner, in May 1921, a title he retained, following the Ottoman practice, for the remainder of his life. Throughout his public career, the mufti relied upon traditional Koranic anti-Jewish motifs to arouse the Arab street. For example, during the incitement which led to the 1929 Arab revolt in Palestine, he called for combating and slaughtering “the Jews.” not merely Zionists. In fact, most of the Jewish victims of the 1929 Arab revolt were Jews from the centuries-old dhimmi communities (for example, in Hebron), as opposed to recent settlers identified with the Zionist movement.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/8/book-review-the-supreme-court-vs-constitution/
The Constitution is under attack on two fronts. On one, proponents of ever-expanding central government see little in the Constitution that limits federal authority. On the other, the same politicians and interest groups champion broad, often newly discovered “constitutional rights” whose protection curtails the traditional power of state and local governments to enact laws intended to protect the public health, safety and welfare.
In “The Supreme Court vs. The Constitution,” Gerald Walpin’s focus is on judicial interpretations of the Bill of Rights that have circumscribed these long accepted “police powers” of state and local governments. His thesis is that our country is ill-served by Supreme Court decisions based more on the personal social, and political views of the justices than on the carefully chosen words of the Constitution.
Mr. Walpin takes his charge from Justice Samuel Alito Jr., who remarked in 2011 that “ordinary citizens should know more facts about the Constitution.” Accordingly, the author intends his book to provide “all Americans, including the overwhelming number who are not lawyers, with a simple, but not simplistic, understanding of what is happening to our Constitution.”
A harsh critic of what most would call “judicial activism,” Mr. Walpin makes clear such activism is not a phenomenon always associated with either the political “right” or “left,” or with a particular political party. Thus, he quotes President Obama’s attacks on legal challenges to Obamacare as inviting unacceptable “judicial activism,” and recalls President George W. Bush’s lament that “some judges give in to temptation and make law instead of [simply] interpreting.” The author even reminds us of President Lincoln’s warning that “decisions of the Supreme Court” could deprive “the people” of their right “to be their own rulers.”
http://www.meforum.org/3637/israel-jewish-majority
VERY WELCOME DEVELOPMENT BUT NOT ENTIRELY NEW….AMBASSADOR (RET.) YORAM ETTINGER WAS THE PIONEER IN ISRAELI CENSUS STUDIES THAT PROVED THE “DEMOGRAPHIC DOOMSDAYERS” WRONG. FOR TOO LONG SOME PARTISANS OF ISRAEL WERE WRINGING THEIR HANDS ABOUT AN POTENTIAL ARAB MAJORITY THAT WOULD PRECLUDE A “DEMOCRATIC” ISRAEL. EVENTS ON THE GROUND INCLUDING JUDEA AND SAMARIA HAVE PROVEN THEM WRONG EXACTLY AS ETTINGER PREDICTED…..RSK
Growth trends and population forecasts have played a significant role in the political landscape of the Middle East, especially over the thorny question of Israel and the disputed territories. The notion that the Jewish majority of Israel is in danger of being swamped by Arab fertility has repeatedly been used as a political and psychological weapon to extract territorial concessions from the Israeli government. In September 2010, U.S. president Barack Obama referred to the so-called “hard realities of demography” that threaten the survival of the Jewish state.[1]
Such a conclusion is wrong. Analysis of long-term demographic developments leads to quite the opposite conclusion: In the long run, a strong Jewish majority, not only in the state of Israel—as this author projected almost twenty-five years ago[2] and the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics recently reaffirmed[3]—but also in the Land of Israel[4] is quite possible.
Middle East Population Annual Growth
It is useful to analyze the processes among world populations in general and in the Middle East and the Arab world in particular. Such scrutiny helps to determine whether demographic trends within the Jewish and Arab population groups living in the Land of Israel differ or resemble the general tendencies observable within the global population over the last sixty plus years, the same general time frame as that of the state of Israel.
Beginning in 1966, the annual population growth in the Middle East rose consistently until it peaked at 3.24 percent in 1980[5] when it began to ebb—at a faster pace than in the developed world.[6] In the subsequent thirty-two years, the Middle East population increase has gone down by more than a half, to 1.45 percent in 2012 (see Figure 1).
