http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/facing_up_to_the_enormity_of_our_problem.html There will be no short term solution to the problem now facing Western civilization in general, and America in particular. Modern leftist authoritarians and their intellectual progenitors have created a special historical circumstance from which recovery must be painful, slow, and often heartbreaking — namely, the complete breakdown of the shared birthright of reason […]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/religious-right-now/post/the-legal-impossibility-of-limited-palestinian-statehood-at-the-un/2012/11/28/96697738-39a6-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_blog.html On Thursday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) will again seek statehood at the United Nations. While this form of “statehood” will not confer U.N. member state status to the “Palestinian entity,” it could fundamentally reshape the Middle East, undermine international law, inhibit peace, and violate Israel’s right to exist. The resolution that the PA submitted […]
“It Is High Noon For America”
by Drew Zahn
Video: Author Jamie Glazov interviewed on biggest threats to freedom.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/drew-zahn/it-is-high-noon-for-america/
http://nsroundtable.org/as-we-see-it/go-canada/
Yesterday’s vote at the U.N. granting the Palestinians “non-member observer state” was quite the spectacle. We’ve seen this ugliness before, e.g., during the 1930s, when the League of Nations (predecessor to the UN) did nothing to stop a genocidal movement from spreading throughout Europe; when Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” was mass murderer Adolf Hitler; and when the United States of America remained neutral in the face of unthinkable horrors, until forced to join the fray following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Well, today it’s déjà vu all over again. Rather than thwarting the Palestinian bid, as a previous U.S. administration did, the current administration issued perfunctory statements of condemnation and led from behind.
In a June 3, 2011 op-ed entitled “How to Block the Palestine Statehood Ploy: Congress can take a cue from Jim Baker in 1989 and threaten to cut U.S. money for the U.N., former UN Ambassador John Bolton wrote:
The lesson for today is plain. If President Obama wants to block a General Assembly Palestinian statehood resolution, he should act essentially as Messrs. Bush and Baker did. Yet Mr. Obama is highly unlikely to do anything so decisive, which is why many in America and Israel remain gravely concerned about this latest Palestinian diplomatic ploy.
Sure enough, one and a half years later, President Obama chose NOT to block the resolution. Which begs the question: Was Mr. Obama’s support of Israel’s “right to defend itself” during the recent Gaza conflict, intended to shore up some brownie points and give him greater leverage in pressuring Israel to make more concessions in the so-called peace process?
In any case, one country that made us proud yesterday was Canada, which stood on principle and showed the rest of the world what doing the right thing looked like.
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/ 51 member countries the entire League of Nations [Todays UN] unanimously declared on July 24, 1922: Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country. The 51 member countries of the League of Nations […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3473/because-they-could Bad actors were reasonably sure that no one (U.S.) would protest and even more sure no one would stop them. The U.S. equivalent is 44,000,000 million people, who would have 15 seconds to find shelter. Before a radio interview this week, the host sent a list of questions that might arise. The answer to […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3474/blasphemy-laws-europe The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 Muslim countries, is pressuring Western countries into making it an international crime to criticize Islam or Mohammed – all on the name of “religious tolerance.” The Dutch parliament has approved a motion to revoke a law that makes it a crime to insult God. Free […]
http://www.d-intl.com/articles/international/2012-11-29/talking-turkey
N.B. Update on last week’s Let them eat their Pain au Chocolat: François Fillon will not accept defeat. He and his followers have launched a massive temper tantrum that has kept the UMP squabble on the front pages all week. There are predictions of two-way, three-way, four-way splits, demands for referendum, revoting, and intervention of former(ly disgraced) minister Alain Juppé and ex-president Sarkozy and reports that UMP activists are running off to the new Centrist UDI and, of course, the Front National. I stand by my prediction: the spat will be settled, the wounds will be healed. I think Copé will hold on to the presidency because he knows how to fight to win. To be continued…
Back in her home country, Dispatch International’s correspondent finds that the glow of Obama has worn off leaving disenchantment verging on cynicism
SOMEWHERE IN THE USA.« I did not know that death exile had undone so many… » Our old friend T.S. Eliot didn’t have in mind the stream of Americans of all sizes, shapes, and origins winding through the left to right, right to left, left to right & so on queue waiting to go through passport control at Dulles airport last Thursday afternoon, arriving just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Joined in the baggage claim area by the other stream of non-Americans that had passed through their checkpoint, we got stuck in a bottleneck at customs before finally reaching the arrival hall where greeters held up signs and families came forward to embrace the wayward sons and daughters. A tiny vaguely Oriental looking woman wearing a black sleeveless cocktail dress and a red flower in her hair asked me where I had flown in from. When I said Paris we switched to French and she was reassured… the lines are long… he’ll be getting through soon…
Less than an hour later I am “home” and unpacking the delicacies. Exquisite chocolates, foie gras, elegant little tinned terrines, exotically flavored mustards and, for the fourth generation, a notebook with a period drawing of the top of the Tour Eiffel. He loves it! His grandfather had just given him the other kind of notebook, one of those neither here nor there portable computers that can’t meet our needs but is a high tech delight to an 8 year-old. And he loves both notebooks and the Hanukah gelt from the same French chocolatier that delights his great grandmother. I wish I could have brought them a farm fresh turkey from the open market on boulevard Richard Lenoir. J. says, “If you dressed in a burqa you could bring a turkey and a goat.”
Four generations, stretching from 8 to 102 going on 103. Where did we come from, how did we get here, how did we fare and what’s in store? Europe, USA, some to Israel and back to the USA and a branch back to Europe and exogamy bringing in new shapes and angles and the spirit of adventure sending out tendrils. Here’s a picture of M.’s son, he’s studying in Osaka this year.
Something has changed. Talking politics is no longer forbidden. Because the glow of Obama has worn off, leaving a subdued disenchantment verging on cynicism. The distaste for Mitt Romney and the belief in his evil intentions was the prime mover. Benghazi? Not really a major concern. I don’t want to focus on the election or the candidates—what’s done is done—I want to grasp the contours of the public mind. En famille, why not? Young couples with children today are often not so young. Women postpone childbirth to lock into their careers first. In most cases it takes two wage owners to support a family. But the woman’s salary goes entirely for child care. No publicly funded daycare like we have in France? No. And it doesn’t end there. We have to send our children to private school. The public schools are terrible.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2328/Susan-Rice-Distraction-The-Real-Benghazi-Questions.aspx
This week’s syndicated column
It is neither “racist” nor “sexist” to question U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s role in the Benghazi scandal. It is, however, almost entirely beside the point.
Rice wasn’t making life-and-death decisions on Sept. 11, 2012, when the U.S. compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi came under attack; President Obama was. Rice, therefore, is unable to answer the all-important question about what order President Obama issued upon hearing that U.S. diplomats in Benghazi were under fire. She can’t look America in the eye and answer whether the U.S. military was ordered not to rescue Americans fighting for their lives.
Nor is Rice likely to be the Obama administration official who first concocted the false narrative blaming a YouTube video for a (nonexistent) protest in Benghazi, which, the false narrative continues, “spontaneously” erupted into “unplanned” violence – the whopper President Obama told for two full weeks.
Another key piece of the puzzle Rice is unlikely to possess is why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, three days after the Benghazi attack, was out there flogging that same concocted story, as when Clinton tried to console the father of slain ex-SEAL Tyrone Wood by promising him the video’s producer would be arrested and prosecuted. Further, it is unlikely Susan Rice can explain why CIA Director David Petraeus went before the House Intelligence Committee, also on Sept. 14, in a closed session and similarly lied, deceiving members into believing that an “unplanned” attack left four Americans, including an American ambassador, dead.
These are just some of the red flags over Benghazi that can never be checked if GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire continue to monopolize the issue and focus solely on Rice and those not-all-that-interesting talking points. It’s almost as if they wish to tighten the lens over Benghazi so closely that we never notice that what’s really needed is a review of the administration’s Arab Spring policies. It is these policies, which, thanks in large part to Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and White House adviser Samantha Power, actually put Uncle Sam on the path to jihad in Libya by supporting al-Qaida and other jihad terrorists in their bid for power. Maybe that’s because the GOP largely supported these same disastrous policies, too.
Here are some of the Benghazi questions that still demand answers:
Who came up with the administration plan to discard early intelligence confirming the U.S. had sustained an al-Qaida-linked terrorist attack in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11, and to seize on a lie blaming a YouTube video for the attack? Who got everyone – White House, State, CIA (but not, it seems, Defense) – on board? After the president addressed the United Nations on Sept. 25 (citing the video six times), the false video narrative peters out. Who called the whole thing off?
http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2012/11/a-few-notable-anniversaries-on.php?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The+Palestinians%27+big+day&utm_campaign=20121130_m114417479_The+Palestinians%27+big+day&utm_term=Continue+reading___ With the nations of Europe and the rest of the world lining up to support the PLO bid to receive non-member state status at the UN General Assembly, it is worth noting two anniversaries of related but forgotten events. Of course, everyone knows the obvious anniversary – Nov. 29, 1947 was the day the […]
