JOHN BERNARD: The End of Counter Insurgency Operations? Don’t Bet on It!

http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/ Now that a politically survivable solution has been accepted to end the current conflict in Afghanistan, the discussion of COIN (Counter Insurgency ) doctrinal viability has begun. Even though the debate over this doctrine has raged since it’s inception, this last ten year ordeal is forcing the visionaries and philosophes to re-engage in the […]

FRANK SALVATO: WHAT WISCONSIN REALLY MEANS

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/5827   Some of What Wisconsin Means By Frank Salvato   There are many in the pundit-sphere who are dissecting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recall victory and declaring that Mr. Walker’s retention means one thing or another. Truth be told, many of their declarations hold merit as far as political science is concerned. But, American […]

LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS: THE SILENCING OF THE MIDDLE EAST

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/06/07/the-silencing-of-the-middle-east/

The Middle East is becoming quieter. No, the swords are not turning into ploughshares, it’s not that kind of quiet. Instead, it is the sound of truth that’s slowly being silenced. And it’s happening not only because the PA grows stronger, but also because the west grows weaker.

Thirty years ago the young Arab journalist Khaled abu Toameh quit working for PLO media outlets. They did not allow reporting on what abu Toameh saw as the news people needed to know. Instead, he was told to take the words dictated by the Arab leadership, and cut and paste them into the stories they then published, but under his byline. They weren’t his words and it wasn’t the news, so he turned to western media for outlets that allowed him to write and speak about what people needed to know.

In those thirty years the PA media has not become more open. Instead, the PA leadership has become more emboldened and the western media – either because of physical or moral exhaustion – is allowing the PA’s censorship to seep into and rot away at core freedoms, both of speech and of the press.

Under the Palestinian Authority’s Penal Code, a holdover from when Jordan illegally occupied the territories, defamation suspects can be arrested and held in detention for up to six months before they are charged with a crime. Esmat Abdul-Khalik, an al Quds University lecturer and single mother of two, was arrested in late March and held in solitary confinement and denied the possibility of any visits because someone else criticized PA President Mahmoud Abbas on her Facebook page, calling him a traitor and suggesting he resign. Abdul-Khalik is not the only Arab arrested recently for Facebook page activity, at least three others have recently been picked up for daring to criticize members of the government.

WES PRUDEN: REMEMBERING THE BOYS OF SUMMER 1944

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/node/2388

The boys of a distant summer are fading now, unsteady on their feet, many with canes and some on walkers. But when they talk of their longest day, their steps quicken, their eyes grow bright with proud remembrance of duty done.

This was the week when some of us remembered their remarkable deeds on a dark June morning 68 years ago, when the earth and time stood still and the greatest armada in history landed on the coast of France.

They’re leaving us swiftly now, dying at the rate of 800 every day, the last of the 16 million men who put on the khaki to march to the sound of the guns. Not much notice of the day was taken this year. President Obama forgot to say anything about their heroics and sacrifice. Maybe he was too busy, flying off to Hollywood to crack suggestive smutty jokes about Michelle and Ellen DeGeneres, and collecting campaign cash from a party for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Leadership Council. Even Michelle, who has lately been talking a lot about helping military families, was busy raising money in New York City and Philadelphia.

Homage to sacrificial courage has gone out of fashion in certain circles. The new World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, a favorite of veterans, their families and everyone else, is derided for its “triumphalism.” One critic likens it to something Mussolini could have built in Rome. Another sneers at the idea of preserving “the memory of something that ripped up half the planet, killed millions of people and took six years to run its course.”

Not so long ago a triumph of American arms was something for everyone to celebrate. “America hates losers,” Gen. George S. Patton said in the dreary early days of the war when nothing was going right, “and that’s why we’re going to win this war.” Nothing was more important than triumph, and no triumph was more remarkable or more complete than the triumph of the allies on the five invasion beaches of Normandy.

YISRAEL MEDAD: A RESPONSE TO AREIKAT, CHIEF REP OF PLO TO THE US COLUMN….” THE TIME FOR PALESTINE IS NOW” IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

http://myrightword.blogspot.co.il/2012/06/no-time-really-for-palestine.html Claiming that “it is in Israel’s vital interest to resolve the conflict and end the 45-year occupation”, Maen Rashed Areikat, chief representative of the general delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States. writes in the Wall Street Journal The Time for a Palestinian State Is Now Some excerpts with my comments, […]

SARAH HONIG: THOSE WHO DENY FREEDOM

Another Tack: Those who deny freedom US President Barack Obama fancies himself in grand Lincolnesque terms and avers over and over that Abraham Lincoln is his model. Quite shamelessly invoking the Great Emancipator, Obama chose to kick off his first presidential bid on February 10, 2007, in Springfield, Illinois, just where Lincoln voiced his historic challenge […]

THE GLAZOV GANG: IS JUDAIC THEOLOGY EQUIVALENT TO ISLAMIC THOLOGY ON CALLS FOR VIOLENCE?

Judaic Theology Equivalent to Islamic Theology on Calls for Violence? — on The Glazov Gang
by Jamie Glazov
It doesn’t get much hotter than this on Frontpage’s debate program.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/08/lady-gaga-islamic-violence-and-double-standards-on-the-glazov-gang-2-1/

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: THE REAL STARS OF ILLINOIS TODAY ARIE FRIEDMAN RUNNING FOR STATE SENATE

Illinois is the state of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Emanuel Rahm, Sen. Dick Durbin, Rod Blagojevich, Mel Reynolds the Congressman found guilty in 1995 on state counts related to having sex with a minor. Sentenced to five years. Then found guilty in 1997 on 15 federal counts regarding actions during campaigns for Congress. Sentenced to six and a half years. President Clinton commuted his sentence in 2001.

BUT ILLINOIS HAS SOME REAL STARS: SENATOR MARK KIRK, CONGRESSMAN JOE WALSH….TODAY’S STAR IS

Friedman for Senate | Dr. Arie Friedman for Illinois Senate District 29
www.friedmanforsenate.com/
Welcome to the site of the Friedman for Senate Campaign. Dr. Arie Friedman is running for State Senate, Illinois District 29.

KAREN MCKAY : MESSAGE TO LOOSE LIPS…..”SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE HELL UP!” ****

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/too-much-information-just-shut-up

“The enemy is prepared to meet our advertised assaults on his bases of operations and facilities. He is not cowering or scurrying away. He doesn’t care how many civilians die or how many of their own jihadist number are “martyred,” but he does care greatly about killing as many Americans and Jews as he can in the process. He has also studied Vietnam and learned more from that experience than have we, and he learned how to manipulate the US media to achieve the same results.”

“Loose Lips Sink Ships!” posters warned during WWII. Today, secrecy has no cachet. In 2010, for instance, we heard months of public discussion of detailed plans for the upcoming Kandahar campaign to root out the Taliban. Administration functionaries publicly elaborated, talking heads argued, and retired officers analyzed the strategy, tactics, troop strengths, timelines, munitions, targets, objectives, outcomes, exit strategies of the campaign.

President Barack Hussein Obama is obsessed with exit strategies from Iraq and Afghanistan, regardless of reality on the ground or consequences-and blabs about them into every microphone he can find. Exit strategies, for God’s sake! What kind of insanity is this?

We’ve been barraged with public discussion on Iran, and leaks by the Obama Administration of Israel’s secret plans to stop Iran’s development of nuclear bombs. Do we wonder that the Israelis don’t trust our government and decline to tell us what they plan to do?

STANLEY KURTZ: OBAMA’S THIRD PARTY HISTORY ****

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302031/obamas-third-party-history-stanley-kurtz

On the evening of January 11, 1996, while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism. In 2008, candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. The issue remains as fresh as today’s headlines, as Romney argues that Obama is trying to move the United States toward European-style social democracy, which was precisely the New Party’s goal.

In late October 2008, when I wrote here at National Review Online that Obama had been a member of the New Party, his campaign sharply denied it, calling my claim a “crackpot smear.” Fight the Smears, an official Obama-campaign website, staunchly maintained that “Barack has been a member of only one political party, the Democratic Party.” I rebutted this, but the debate was never taken up by the mainstream press.

Recently obtained evidence from the updated records of Illinois ACORN at the Wisconsin Historical Society now definitively establishes that Obama was a member of the New Party. He also signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.

Minutes of the meeting on January 11, 1996, of the New Party’s Chicago chapter read as follows:

Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party “Candidate Contract” and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party.

Consistent with this, a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early 1997 lists Obama as a member, with January 11, 1996, indicated as the date he joined.

Knowing that Obama disguised his New Party membership helps make sense of his questionable handling of the 2008 controversy over his ties to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). During his third debate with John McCain, Obama said that the “only” involvement he’d had with ACORN was to represent the group in a lawsuit seeking to compel Illinois to implement the National Voter Registration Act, or motor-voter law. The records of Illinois ACORN and its associated union clearly contradict that assertion, as I show in my political biography of the president, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.