http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/warning-to-israel?f=puball As Iran gets closer to developing nuclear weapons, Israel has to decide whether to await U.S. military assistance to stop Tehran or to go it alone. Israel should heed lessons both from the Vietnam War and U.S. inaction in Iraq today. From the Vietnam War, Israel should remember: — North Vietnam, unlike the South, […]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/24/us-un-assembly-brazil-idUSBRE98N0OJ20130924
DILMA ROUSSEFF HAS CONTINUED IN THE LONG LINE OF BRAZILIAN PRESIDENTS WHO ARE ETHICALLY CHALLENGED….MANY OF HER MINISTERS RESIGNED AFTER ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSING PRIVILEGES AND PLUNDERING BUDGETS…THE LAST TIME SHE GOT SO DRESSED UP WAS TO ATTEND THE FUNERAL OF HUGO CHAVEZ ALONG WITH JESSE JACKSON, SEAN PENN AND AHMADINEJAD…..RSK
Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff used her position as the opening speaker at the U.N. General Assembly to accuse the United States of violating human rights and international law through espionage that included spying on her email.
Rousseff had expressed her displeasure last week by calling off a high-profile state visit to the United States scheduled for October over reports that the U.S. National Security Agency had been spying on Brazil.
In unusually strong language, Rousseff launched a blistering attack on U.S. surveillance, calling it an affront to Brazilian sovereignty and “totally unacceptable.”
“Tampering in such a manner in the lives and affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and, as such, it is an affront to the principles that should otherwise govern relations among countries, especially among friendly nations,” Rousseff told the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.
She also proposed an international framework for governing the internet and said Brazil would adopt legislation and technology to protect it from illegal interception of communications.
“Information and telecommunication technologies cannot be the new battlefield between states. Time is ripe to create the conditions to prevent cyberspace from being used as a weapon of war, through espionage, sabotage, and attacks against systems and infrastructure of other countries,” Rousseff said.
U.S. President Barack Obama was en route to the United Nations while Rousseff spoke. Speaking immediately after Rousseff, he avoided direct reference to her criticism.
“We have begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so as to properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies, with the privacy concerns that all people share,” said Obama, who concentrated mostly on the crisis in Syria and the prospects for a diplomatic opening with Iran.
Rousseff rejected the U.S. government reasoning that the NSA surveillance was aimed at detecting suspected terrorist activity and she accused the agency of engaging in industrial espionage.
Rousseff said she had asked Washington for explanations, an apology and promises the surveillance would never be repeated.
Postponing the state visit was a rare and diplomatically severe snub by Brazil. While foreign leaders frequently visit the White House, state visits are reserved for special occasions and include an elaborate state dinner. No new date has been set.
Rousseff’s state visit was conceived to highlight cooperation between the two biggest economies in the Americas and Brazil’s emergence over the past decade as a regional power.
Ties between the United States and Brazil had been improving steadily since Rousseff took office in 2011. The cancellation could harm cooperation on trade, regional affairs and other issues at a time of growing influence from China, which has surpassed the United States as Brazil’s leading trade partner.
The trip had been seen as a platform for deals on oil exploration and biofuels technology, and Brazil’s potential purchase of fighter jets from Chicago-based Boeing Co.
A report by Brazil Globo’s news program Fantastico on National Security Agency spying was based on documents that journalist Glenn Greenwald obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, was one of the journalists to first report Snowden’s leaks of classified information on previously secret U.S. telephone and internet surveillance efforts.
The report also said the United States intercepted communications of Brazilian state oil company Petrobras and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto before he assumed office.
“Personal data of citizens was intercepted indiscriminately,” Rousseff said in her U.N. speech.
“Corporate information, often of high economic and even strategic value, was at the center of espionage activity. Also, Brazilian diplomatic missions, among them the permanent mission to the United Nations and the office of the president of the republic itself, had their communications intercepted.”
(Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Will Dunham and Claudia Parsons)
Education Failure in Philadelphia Only 40% of students can read to standard. Union says so what? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323308504579083553510828552.html?mod=opinion_newsreel Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has extended a lifeline to Philadelphia’s hemorrhaging schools attached to a requirement for modest education and fiscal reforms. No thanks, says the teachers union. Herewith a parable of education decline. Philadelphia’s schools are a […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304213904579094961529497766.html?mod=opinion_newsreel On Tuesday, after a four-day siege by terrorists who murdered at least 67 people, the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, still appeared not to have been secured by government forces. The attack by more than a dozen heavily armed members of the Somalia-based al Shabaabterrorist group—including reportedly several Americans—was a thoroughly planned operation. […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304713704579095501041486012.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop As diplomatic humiliations go, Hassan Rouhani’s refusal to accept President Obama’s offer of an informal “encounter” and historic photo-op at Tuesday’s meeting of the U.N. General Assembly may not be the most consequential. But it is among the most telling. This isn’t the first time an Iranian president has left his U.S. counterpart cooling […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-real-time-evolution-of-soft-despotism Today, many who consider themselves “visionaries” are sounding the alarm about the size and scope of government. From Obamacare to the Right to Bear Arms they decry government over-reach and the bureaucratization of our government. But those who truly understand the agenda of the Progressive Movement in the United States have been sounding this […]
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13867#.UkGxgD8crYh
There is a devastating response that Israel must employ regardless of the howls of rage that will undoubtedly emanate from the Obama administration and the ever hypocritical international corridors of power.
In January, 2005, I wrote a chapter in the first volume of my trilogy, “Politicide: The Attempted Murder of the Jewish State”. It was titled, “The ultimate answer to Arab terror.”
I had hoped that my suggestion in that chapter would have borne fruit, but it was not to be. Let me suggest, again, what I had posited almost nine long years ago – a period in which hundreds more Jews have perished in Judea and Samaria and some 10,000 Jewish souls in Gaza were violently deported from their homes and farms by Israeli leaders who believed that their actions would bring, “peace in our time.” And oh, how the angels in heaven must have wept at such foolishness.
A direct and pure Zionist response to Arab and Muslim terror against Israelis must be the building or rebuilding of Jewish villages throughout Judea, Samaria, all of Jerusalem, and the Golan in direct response to Arab butchery and barbarism.
And each new village should be named in eternal memory of the Jewish victim who fell at the hands of Arab hate and evil.
I had pointed out that the Greek playwright of the 5th century BCE, Euripides, once penned the words “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, first they make mad.” I then went on to add that, “today, some 2,500 years later, an Israeli government led by a once great military hero is responding to relentless acts of Arab terror and aggression in a way that is incoherent, indecisive, and frankly suicidal.” I was, of course, referring to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The clear-eyed Palestinian journalist Khaled abu Toameh points out that, if the Palestinian Authority wants the world to take it seriously as a ‘partner for peace’ with Israel, it is going a mighty strange way about showing it.
In separate incidents in the past few days two Israeli soldiers were murdered in the ‘West Bank’– one of them having been lured there from Tel Aviv to his death – with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claiming responsibility.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is the armed wing of Fatah. Fatah is the party of Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, who does not distance himself from such atrocities committed by his own armed wing.
The PA has also been involved in ‘a massive campaign of incitement’ against Israel, with some officials calling for an escalation of ‘popular resistance’ and with others disseminating inflammatory lies about Israeli behaviour – creating the kind of toxic atmosphere which fuels attacks such as the killing of the two Israeli soldiers.
The Palestinian Authority is deemed by Britain, the US and the EU to be a ‘moderate’ body with which Israel must negotiate an agreement for a Palestinian state.
How can the PA possibly be moderate when it openly and routinely supports murder and promotes incitement to hatred and violence against Israel?
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/359434/senate-gop-gamesmanship-obamacare-defunding-not-honorable-andrew-c-mccarthy On Sunday evening, we discussed the debate on defunding Obamacare – specifically, whether Senate Republicans were being disingenuous in their claim to support defunding. While arguing that Republicans were engaged in sleight-of-hand, I conceded that the GOP’s calculation that avoiding a government shutdown outweighs defunding Obamacare is not “frivolous.” Ramesh proceeded to inflate this concession, […]
On September 21, 2013 more than a dozen members of al-Shabab, a terrorist organization closely associated with al-Qaeda launched a horrific terror attack on a mall in Kenya. The attack on civilians left dozens dead and dozens injured. Initial reports indicated that Americans and Europeans were among the terrorists.
As soon as the information about some of the terrorists being “American” was broadcast, reporters began discussing how America’s malls and other such facilities in the U.S. might be vulnerable to terrorist attacks and what could be done to protect them.
Incredibly, not one discussion ever focused on the issue of America’s borders or immigration laws that could be America’s first line of defense and last line of defense against the entry and embedding of international terrorists if our borders were actually made secure, including the process by which visas are issued and the inspections process conducted by CBP inspectors are carried out.
These are issues that are not being discussed in the media or in Congress, even as the number of countries that participate in the Visa Waiver Program, which strips a major layer of America’s security away, has recently been increased to 37.
On July 12, 2011 Californians for Population Stabilization posted my commentary which provides an analysis of how dangerous the Visa Waiver Program is, it was entitled:
“Visa Waiver Program Endangers our Safety and Security”
Perhaps the news organizations that have been cheering for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” made a conscious decision to ignore the national security implications of failures to address border security and the lack of integrity to the visa process that were so clearly articulated in the preface of the “9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel:”
“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.”
