CAROLINE GLICK: THE LEFT AGAINST ZION

http://carolineglick.com/the-left-against-zion/

In the 1960s, the American Left embraced the anti-Vietnam War movement as its cri de coeur.

In the 1970s, the Left’s foreign policy focus shifted to calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the US and its Western allies.

In the 1980s, supporting the Sandinista Communists’ takeover of Nicaragua became the catechism of the Left.

In the 1990s, the war on global capitalism – that is, the anti-globalization movement – captivated the passions of US Leftists from coast to coast.

In the 2000s, it was again, the anti-war movement. This time the Left rioted and demonstrated against the war in Iraq.

And in this decade, the main foreign policy issue that galvanizes the passions and energies of the committed American Left is the movement to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

This week has been a big one for the anti-Israel movement. In the space of a few days, two quasi academic organizations – the American Studies Association and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association – have launched boycotts against Israeli universities. Their boycotts follow a similar one announced in April by the Asian Studies Association.

GIULIO MEOTTI: ISRAEL’S GHETTO MENTALITY

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14265 It is ghetto-like thinking that leads Israel’s government ministers to seriously advocate uprooting Jewish towns and villages in the Jews’ ancestral homeland in order to curry favor with Arab potentates and US coteries. Claude Lanzmann is a great filmaker. His new movie, “The Last of the Unjust”, tells the incredible story of Benjamin Murmelstein, the […]

VICTOR SHARPE: TERRITORY OR INSANITY?

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14254#.UrNxnDaA2Uk Aruitz Sheva’s Mark Langfan made news when he re-publicized the Joint Chief of Staff memo from 1967. Arutz Sheva publicized it the first time in 2009 and it is just as crucial a read today. The US Joint Chiefs were not interested in Jewish patrimony or Biblical history. They were solely concerned with the […]

VALERIE RICHARDSON: ARMED RESPONSE BROUGHT AN END TO SCHOOL SHOOTING

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/18/prevention-of-school-massacre-shoots-down-argument/

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — It’s a stark fact that is fueling an already intense debate about gun rights in this state: It was an armed deputy who stopped the Arapahoe High School gunman last week from unleashing a deadly massacre, not the expansive new gun control laws approved by Colorado Democrats in March in reaction to two mass shootings.

That is the increasingly inescapable takeaway as details emerge from the school shooting Friday, when the 18-year-old gunman injured another student at random before turning the gun on himself in the school library as the armed deputy was closing in on him.

“The gun control laws didn’t make a difference,” said state Sen. Greg Brophy, a Republican who is seeking his party’s nomination for governor next year. “What made a difference was a person in the building who was armed and who rushed to end the threat.”

Even Gov. John Hickenlooper, the Democrat who signed three gun control bills in March at considerable political risk, acknowledged on CBS‘ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the laws “in this specific case aren’t going to make a difference at all.”

Gov’t Wasted $30 Billion on ‘Pillownauts,’ Crystal Goblets — Buying Human Urine!-Stephen Dinan

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/17/coburn-wasted-feds-pay-collect-human-urine/

Facebook, the hot technology company that is earning more than $1 billion in revenue, won’t pay any taxes on its income this year and instead probably will get a major refund from federal taxpayers, according to Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual roundup of wasteful spending.

Among the nearly $30 billion of unnecessary spending that the Oklahoma Republican identified in this year’s “Wastebook” were taxpayer dollars going to buy human urine, to purchase crystal goblets at the State Department, and to pay $18,000 apiece to “pillownauts” — people whom NASA recruited to lie on a bed for two straight months.

The book was released Tuesday morning, minutes before Mr. Coburn and fellow senators took a key test vote on a budget agreement that will boost spending in 2014, going back on a 2011 deal that was supposed to limit discretionary spending to less than $1 trillion.

“This report speaks volumes about why the American people have lost confidence in government,” Mr. Coburn said. “The truth is, is we’d much rather borrow money than cut spending. That’s the truth. And the American people have a right to expect much more from us than that.”

His 177-page, meticulously footnoted report contains dozens of projects he said showed “stupid” judgment on the part of the bureaucrats who authorized them, and the members of Congress who let the spending continue without reining it in.

NAVIGATING A SWINDLE

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/17/editorial-navigating-the-swindle/

When a cousin so distant that nobody in the family has ever heard of him sends an email to ask for your bank information so he can transfer a big inheritance, nearly everyone knows by now that he’s not actually a relative, and there is no inheritance. The FBI and other police agencies try to put such thieves behind bars. The Obama administration hands them a check and calls them “navigators.”

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report Monday confirming the findings of a group called Project Veritas, which caught Obamacare navigators on tape encouraging fraud. Armed with millions in federal funding, navigators were hired to boost the lagging enrollment numbers for the president’s health care scheme. So far, five navigators have been fired for telling applicants to lie about their income and health history to win freebies and subsidies they don’t deserve.

Polls show that a large majority of Americans would rather stick with the doctor and health plan they have than enlist in the one-size-fits-all Obamacare. Democrats suspected this might happen, so they hatched the subscheme to pay “community organizers” to boost enrollment figures — not necessarily the actual enrollment, just the figures. Navigators don’t have to know anything about insurance or medicine, and they usually have only five or so hours of training, or less. They might be ex-cons, since there are no background checks. Only skill in the art of the hustle is needed.

The Social News Site Reddit is Banning Climate Change Deniers from its Science Forum:Laura Lopez

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/193545-reddit-science-forum-banks-climate-change-deniers

The social news site Reddit is banning climate change deniers from its science forum, a moderator for the site said.

Nathan Allen, the moderator for the forum /r/science — which provides a digital space for people to discuss recent, peer-reviewed science publications — wrote about the move to ban skeptics of climate science on Grist. A representative for Reddit confirmed the decision with The Hill.

While the science forum is a small section of Reddit, it has 4 million subscribers, Allen noted, which is nearly twice the circulation of The New York Times.

“After some time interacting with the regular denier posters, it became clear that they could not or would not improve their demeanor,” Allen said in his post for Grist.

Allen said that while some commenters did object to the move, given Reddit’s claim to preserve free speech at all costs, most users have welcomed the change.

He said the news industry should follow suit.

The Direction of Health Care if ObamaCare Persists — on The Glazov Gang

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/mandela-and-double-standards-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Ann-Marie Murrell, Monty Morton and Dwight Schultz.

The Gang gathered to discuss The Direction of Health Care if ObamaCare Persists. The dialogue occurred in Part II and examined the damage that is in store to Americans’ healthcare if Obama gets his way. The segment also shed light on: Does a $17 Trillion Debt Really Matter?

In Part I, the Gang shed light on Mandela and Double Standards (see Daniel Greenfield’s article The Mandela Myth). The episode also focused on “Elian Gonzalez Leaves Cuba For First Time,” “Obama’s Handshake with Raul Castro,” and much, much more.

See both parts of the two-part series below:

Part I:

DANIEL GREENFIELD: EGYPT BURIES THE BROTHERHOOD

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/egypt-buries-the-brotherhood/print/

It’s not unusual for the United States and a Muslim country to be on the opposite sides of the War on Terror. It is unusual for a Muslim country to take a stand against terrorism while the United States backs the right of a terrorist group to burn churches, torture opposition members and maintain control of a country with its own nuclear program.

But that’s the strange situation in what Egypt’s public prosecutor has declared “the biggest case of conspiracy in the country’s history.”

The media assumes that the charges accusing Muslim Brotherhood leaders of conspiring with Hamas and Hezbollah, passing state secrets to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and plotting to help foreign terrorists kill Egyptian soldiers is a show being put on for Western audiences. They couldn’t be more wrong.

This isn’t about winning international PR points. It’s about destroying the credibility of the Brotherhood in the eyes of Egyptians and burying it along with what’s left of the Arab Spring in the waters of the Nile.

Obama assumed that cuts to military aid would force Egypt to restore the Muslim Brotherhood to power. He was wrong and the latest round of criminal charges show just how wrong he was.

The charges that the Muslim Brotherhood conspired with Hamas and Hezbollah to unleash a wave of terror against Egypt go to the heart of this struggle between the Egyptian nationalism of the military and the Islamic transnationalism of the Muslim Brotherhood. They paint the Muslim Brotherhood as not merely corrupt or abusive, the way that many tyrannies are, but as a foreign subversive element.

The Myth of Turkish Secularism by David Boyajian

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/the-myth-of-turkish-secularism/

Turkey is a secular state. So claim its government and nearly all mainstream Western media. They are mistaken.

In civilized, democratic countries, secularism means not only a respectful separation between church and state but also freedom of religion. As we shall demonstrate, Turkish policies have long been the antithesis of secularism.

The Turkish government massively supports and funds Islam – specifically Sunni Islam – inside the country. Turkey simultaneously represses religions such as Alevism, and bullies and persecutes indigenous Christians, most of whom it liquidated in 20th century genocides. Moreover, it uses Islam to project Turkish political power into Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Turkey’s system is more properly termed State Islam.

This article is not a criticism of Islam or its faithful. We respect both. Turkey’s secularism myth, nevertheless, cries out to be laid bare.

State Islam

The Directorate of Religious Affairs – known as the Diyanet – is the government body that represents and directs all of Sunni Islam in Turkey. Created in 1924, a year after the Republic of Turkey was formed, the Diyanet is enshrined in Article 136 of the Turkish Constitution. The Diyanet is huge and powerful. Operating under the Prime Minister, it employs about 100,000. All Sunni clergy are salaried civil servants of the Diyanet.