Poor Obama.

Yeah, I know. It comes from those wacky CBN reporters.

More from followers of the religion of peace….

Muslim soldiers arrested over Fort Jackson poison probe

Five individuals were arrested amid a probe into food poisoning at Fort Jackson U.S. military base, Fox News reported on Thursday (EST).

Sources told Fox the five men were detained in December over allegations that they attempted to poison the food supply at the South Carolina base.

They were all part of the base’s Arabic translation training program, referred to in the Army as “Lima 09″.

“Each of them uses Arabic as his first language,” one source told Fox News.

In an earlier report, before the arrests emerged, a military source told Fox News the suspects were Muslims.

CBN News reported that the five arrested men were Islamic and cited a source who said they may have been in contact with five Washington, DC Muslims, who were arrested in December after authorities uncovered their plans to travel to Pakistan to wage jihad against the U.S.

However, it was unclear whether the men were still in custody.

An ongoing probe into the alleged Fort Jackson plot began two months ago, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division spokesman Chris Grey told Fox News.

The Army is taking the allegations “extremely seriously,” Grey said, but so far, “there is no credible information to support the allegations”.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation told Fox News they were “aware” of the Fort Jackson investigation, however they said the inquiry would be carried out by the Army’s CID.

The investigation has surfaced in the wake of a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas last November, which killed 12 people and wounded 31 others.

It was allegedly undertaken by U.S. Army major Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, who was serving as a psychiatrist. He has been charged and a prosecution is ongoing.
Read more

On anniversary, Obama defends economic stimulus

Wed, Feb 17 2010
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama vigorously defended his $787 billion stimulus on Wednesday, insisting it rescued Americans from the worst of the economic calamity and ripping Republican critics who called it a waste.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden launched a sweeping effort to convince skeptical Americans that the stimulus has been beneficial on the one-year anniversary of a plan that was pushed through the U.S. Congress by Democratic majorities.

Obama, in a White House speech, said he believed the stimulus will save or create 1.5 million jobs in 2010 after saving or creating as many as 2 million jobs thus far.

His point was to show that the stimulus, while admittedly unpopular, had the effect of keeping the U.S. economy from plunging into a second Great Depression.

“Our work is far from over but we have rescued this economy from the worst of this crisis,” he said.

As Obama spoke, many administration officials were fanning out across the country this week to promote projects that have been funded by the stimulus to show Americans its results.

For example, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded $1.5 billion on Wednesday in stimulus grants to local and state governments to back 51 transportation projects.

The White House hoped that once Americans in their towns and cities saw the results of the stimulus, they would realize it has helped.

Obama has much work to do to convince Americans who are still struggling to find work amid a 9.7 percent jobless rate.

A CBS News/New York Times poll last week found that only 6 percent of Americans believed the package had created jobs. Another poll by CNN/Opinion Research Corporation showed a majority opposed the stimulus program.

And the price tag of the stimulus has gone up. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that when all is said and done, the package will end up costing $862 billion because unemployment compensation has been costlier than expected.

ELECTION YEAR PRESSURE

All this comes as Obama and his Democrats face pressure to show results in an election year in which their large majorities in Congress could be at risk.

Republicans eager to score political points emailed out to reporters the original administration estimates from a year ago that showed the U.S. jobless rate would only rise to 8 percent under the stimulus.

“In the first year of the trillion-dollar stimulus, Americans have lost millions of jobs, the unemployment rate continues to hover near 10 percent, the deficit continues to soar and we’re inundated with stories of waste, fraud and abuse,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

“This was not the plan Americans asked for or the results they were promised,” he said.

Anger and frustration over high government spending and deficits have been leading causes of a wave of public discontent with Washington, and Republicans sought to ride the current.

“One year later, we see plainly that the stimulus was not a well-thought-out plan,” 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said on Facebook. “It hasn’t revived our economy; instead the debt-ridden package will prove to be a drag on our economy.”

Obama used a portion of his speech to accuse Republicans of hypocrisy, saying they have enjoyed its benefits even as they criticized the plan.

“There are those, let’s face it, across the aisle who have tried to score political points by attacking what we did, even as many of them show up at ribbon-cutting ceremonies for projects in their districts,” Obama said.

He said he recognized that many Americans are not benefiting from the stimulus.

“Millions more are struggling to make ends meet. So it doesn’t yet feel like much of a recovery. And I understand that. It’s why we’re going to continue to do everything in our power to turn this economy around,” Obama said.

With Congress now working on a multibillion-dollar jobs bill, Obama warned of the possibility this year of layoffs by state governments as funding from the stimulus runs out.

What a maroon!

Biden on capital: ‘Washington right now is broken’

WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Joe Biden says “Washington right now is broken” and the country is in “deep trouble” unless it attacks ballooning federal deficits.

Asked about the political climate across the country, Biden said in a nationally broadcast interview that “we understand why they’re angry. … We get it.”

Speaking of intense partisanship in the capital, Biden said on CBS’s “The Early Show” that “I’ve never seen it this dysfunctional.” He said the message coming from the stunning Republican upset in the recent Massachusetts election was, ‘Hey guys, get your act together. Get something going.’”

Q: This myasthenia gravis-does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.

Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.

Q: You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you’ve forgotten?

via Mark Steyn: Even Barney Frank Gets It.

 

Three Reported Missing After Animal Rights Activists Take “War on Leather” to Motorcycle Gang Rally

BY: Fuzzy Duffy

Pennsylvania – Three Reported Missing After Animal Rights Activists Take “War on Leather” to Motorcycle Gang Rally.

Johnstown, PA: Local and state police scoured the hills outside rural Johnstown, Pennsylvania, after reports of three animal rights activists going missing after attempting to protest the wearing of leather at a large motorcycle gang rally this weekend. Two others, previously reported missing, were discovered by fast food workers “duct taped inside several fast food restaurant dumpsters,” according to police officials.

“Something just went wrong,” said a still visibly shaken organizer of the protest. “Something just went horribly, horribly, wrong.”

The organizer said a group of concerned animal rights activist groups, “growing tired of throwing fake blood and shouting profanities at older women wearing leather or fur coats,” decided to protest the annual motorcycle club event “in a hope to show them our outrage at their wanton use of leather in their clothing and motor bike seats.” “In fact,” said the organizer. “Motorcycle gangs are one of the biggest abusers of wearing leather, and we decided it was high time that we let them know that we disagree with them using it… Ergo, they should stop.”

According to witnesses, protesters arrived at the event in a vintage 1960’s era Volkswagen van and began to pelt the gang members with balloons filled with red colored water, simulating blood, and shouting “you’re murderers” to passers by. This, evidently, is when the brouhaha began.

Read the entire article here.

There’s a shocker… Read more…

I really hate Joe Cox. Really.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

It was serendipitous to have almost simultaneous climaxes in Copenhagen and Congress. The former’s accomplishment was indiscernible, the latter’s was unsightly.

It would have been unprecedented had the president not described the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit as “unprecedented,” that being the most overworked word in his hardworking vocabulary of self-celebration. Actually, the mountain beneath the summit — a mountain of manufactured hysteria, predictable cupidity, antic demagoguery and dubious science — labored mightily and gave birth to a mouselet, a 12-paragraph document committing the signatories to . . . make a list.

A list of the goals they have no serious intention of trying to meet. The document even dropped the words “as soon as possible” from its call for a binding agreement on emissions.

The 1992 Rio climate summit begat Kyoto. It, like Copenhagen, which Kyoto begat, was “saved,” as Copenhagen was, by a last-minute American intervention (Vice President Al Gore’s) that midwifed an agreement that most signatories evaded for 12 years. The Clinton-Gore administration never submitted Kyoto’s accomplishment for ratification, the Senate having denounced its terms 95 to 0.

Copenhagen will beget Mexico City next November. Before then, Congress will give “the international community” other reasons to pout. Congress will refuse to burden the economy with cap-and-trade carbon-reduction requirements and will spurn calls for sending billions in “climate reparations” to China and other countries. Representatives of those nations, when they did not have their hands out in Copenhagen grasping for America’s wealth, clapped their hands in ovations for Hugo Chávez and other kleptocrats who denounced capitalism while clamoring for its fruits.

The New York Times reported from Copenhagen that Barack Obama “burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret.” Naughty them. Those three nations will be even less pliable in Mexico City.

At least the president got a health-care bill through the Senate. But what problem does it “solve” (Obama’s word)? Not that of the uninsured, 23 million of whom will remain in 2019. Not that of rising health-care spending. This will rise faster over the next decade.

The legislation does solve the Democrats’ “problem” of figuring out how to worsen the dependency culture and the entitlement mentality that grows with it. By 2016, families with annual incomes of $96,000 will get subsidized health insurance premiums. Nebraska’s Ben Nelson voted for the Senate bill after opposing both the Medicare cuts and taxes on high-value insurance plans — the heart of the bill’s financing. Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln, Indiana’s Evan Bayh and Virginia’s Jim Webb voted against one or the other. Yet they support the bill. They will need mental health care to cure their intellectual whiplash.

Before equating Harry Reid to Henry Clay, understand that buying 60 Senate votes is a process more protracted than difficult. Reid was buying the votes of senators whose understanding of the duties of representation does not rise above looting the nation for local benefits. And Reid had two advantages — the spending, taxing and borrowing powers of the federal leviathan, and an almost gorgeous absence of scruples or principles. Principles are general rules, such as: Nebraska should not be exempt from burdens imposed on the other 49 states.

Principles have not, however, been entirely absent: Nebraska’s Republican governor, Dave Heineman, and Republican senator, Mike Johanns, have honorably denounced Nebraska’s exemption from expanded Medicaid costs. The exemption was one payment for Nelson’s vote to impose the legislation on Nebraskans, 67 percent of whom oppose it.

Considering all the money and debasement of the rule of law required to purchase 60 votes, the bill the Senate passed might be the only bill that can get 60. The House, however, voted for Rep. Bart Stupak’s provision preserving the ban on public funding of abortions. Nelson, an untalented negotiator, unnecessarily settled for much less. The House also supports a surtax on affluent Americans and opposes the steep tax on some high-value health insurance plans. So to get the bill to the president’s desk, the House, in conference with the Senate, may have to shrug and say: Oh, never mind.

During this long debate, the left has almost always yielded ground. Still, to swallow the Senate bill, the House will have to swallow its pride, if it has any. The conference report reconciling the House and Senate bills will reveal whether the House is reconciled to being second fiddle in a one-fiddle orchestra.

georgewill@washpost.com

As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America’s standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun.

That description of America was not, as more than a few Americans on the left believe, made by some right-wing chauvinist. It was made by President Abraham Lincoln in an address to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862.

The bigger the American government becomes, the more like other countries America becomes. Even a Democrat has to acknowledge the simple logic: America cannot at the same time be the last best hope of earth and increasingly similar to more and more countries.

Either America is unique, in which case it at least has the possibility of uniquely embodying hopes for mankind — or it is not unique, in which case it is by definition not capable of being the last best hope for humanity — certainly no more so than, let us say, Sweden or the Netherlands.

Indeed, President Obama acknowledged this in April, when asked by a European reporter if he believes in American exceptionalism. The president’s response: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

The president was honest. In his view, as in the view of today’s Democratic party, America is special only in the same way we parents regard our children as “special.” We all say it and we all believe it, but we know that it is meaningless except as an emotional expression of our love for our children. If every is child is equally special, none can be special, in fact. If every country is exceptional, then no country is exceptional, or at least no more so than any other.

With the largest expansion of the American government and state since the New Deal, the Democratic party — alone — is ending a key factor in America’s uniqueness and greatness: individualism, which is made possible only when there is limited government.

The formula here is not rocket science: The more the government/state does, the less the individual does.

America’s uniqueness and greatness has come from a number of sources, two of which are its moral and social value system, which is a unique combination of Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian values, and its emphasis on individual liberty and responsibility.

Just as the left has waged war on America’s Judeo-Christian roots, it has waged war on individual liberty and responsibility.

Hillel, the most important rabbi of the Talmud (which, alongside the Hebrew Bible, is Judaism’s most important book), summarized the human being’s obligations in these famous words: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

What does this mean in the present context? It means that before anything else, the human being must first take care of himself. When people who are capable of taking care of themselves start relying on the state to do so, they can easily become morally inferior beings. When people who could take care of their family start relying on the state to do so, they can easily become morally inferior. And when people who could help take care of fellow citizens start relying on the state to do so, the morally coarsening process continues.

There has always been something profoundly ennobling about American individualism and self-reliance. Nothing in life is as rewarding as leading a responsible life in which one has not to depend on others for sustenance. Little, if anything, in life is as rewarding as successfully taking care of oneself, one’s family and one’s community. That is why America has always had more voluntary associations than any other country.

But as the state and government have gotten bigger, voluntary associations have been dying. Why help others if the state will do it? Indeed, as in Scandinavia, the attitude gradually becomes: why even help myself when the state will do it?

Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are right about one thing — they are indeed making history. But their legacy will not be what they think. They will be known as the people who led to the end of America as the last best hope of earth.

Lincoln weeps.

By Mona Charen

Does anyone remember the TV show “Supermarket Sweep”? Contestants would compete with one another by careening through a supermarket and grabbing as many products as they could toss into a basket. The winner was the shopper whose cart carried the biggest price tag when the bell sounded.

It’s a fitting image for the way Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have handled the most important domestic issue of the decade. They’ve raced down the health policy aisles, sweeping items off the shelves and into their legislative carts, heedless of nutritional value, taste, or cost. As items dropped out on the hairpin turns, others were shoved into the spaces. Harry Reid inserted the Medicare “buy-in” at the 11th hour and just as quickly withdrew it under pressure. No organizing principle has governed the contents of their baskets (Pelosi added and jettisoned abortion coverage), just an urgent imperative to pass something. And now, as the clock winds down, they are declaring, as a journalistic cheerleader at the Washington Post put it, “a legislative feat of epic proportions.”

Actually, it was the sloppiest and most slapdash legislative process ever to accompany a major bill. The 383-page manager’s amendment, making changes to the Senate bill, was released on the morning of the cloture vote. Secrecy marked Reid’s handling of the bill throughout. Not only Republicans, but Democrats, too, were kept from studying the legislation. Payoffs to wavering Sens. Lieberman, Landrieu, and Nelson, on the other hand, were blatant.

The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, in concert with the White House, have bullied, bribed, and rushed their members to vote on this legislation so that the deed could be done before constituents — who oppose it forcefully — could confront their representatives face-to-face over the Christmas break.

The Democrats have endured bruising internecine conflicts and risked the loss of between 20 and 40 seats in 2010 (Pelosi’s estimate) for this. And what have they achieved? Their goal — a single-payer system or a glide path to one — remains as distant as ever. Instead, they have produced (or will, after the conference committee) an enormous new $2.5 trillion octopus of federal regulation that will increase premiums, contribute to medical cost inflation, reduce quality and choice of care, and deeply politicize an aspect of life that most Americans regard as sacrosanct. Additionally, and most alarmingly, it will aggravate the already crushing debt we are accumulating.

President Obama has betrayed every ringing promise he made about this reform. People will not be able to keep their health plans if they are happy with them. The federal government will determine which plans pass muster. As for not adding one dime to the federal deficit? Risible. The “savings” in the Senate bill consist of cuts to Medicare, not increased competition or more efficient delivery of services. And while CBO has scored the bill as reducing the deficit, CBO must abide by the assumptions Congress presents. It cannot say what we know from history to be the truth: Congress will not make cuts in Medicare. Besides, every entitlement ever enacted has wound up costing orders of magnitude more than the estimates at passage. That’s why the Medicare and Social Security unfunded liability is currently $107 trillion, according to a 2009 trustees’ report. The Reid bill will add at least 15 million new beneficiaries to Medicaid, accelerating that program’s budget-busting momentum.

The president also promised that no one earning less than $250,000 would pay higher taxes. But under both the Senate and House bills, people who do not purchase health insurance will be slapped with an excise tax (2.5 percent of adjusted gross income under Pelosicare, and $750 or 2 percent of income, whichever is larger, under Reidcare).
The Democrats have not achieved their goal of completely lassoing one-sixth of the economy, but their mammoth legislation (the House and Senate bills both top 2,000 pages) will apply heavy-handed regulation that will further gum up a system already choking on bureaucracy. Americans will be forced to buy health insurance. Insurance companies will be forbidden to price their services according to actuarial tables. And no aspect of medical care will be free of political interference. (One section of the Senate bill reinstates coverage for DXA scans because two senators insisted upon it. Another requires breastfeeding breaks in the workplace.)

The Democrats will create, among others, the following new bureaus: The Grant Program for Health Insurance Cooperatives, the Telehealth Advisory Committee, the Community Based Medical Home Pilot Program, the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, and the Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman. In short, Democrats have done the maximum amount of damage to our system that they could manage under the circumstances.

Makes 16 rolls

French Bread Rolls to Die For – 60382 – Recipezaar.

but in a year or two, at the time of the mid-term elections, I bet it’ll be another case of  not my congressman and not my senator.

what a farking bunch of shit!

Reid Bought 60 Votes With Our Money | Sweetness & Light.

And now comes this one: A stinging indictment of American Jews’ blind loyalty to the Anointed One, and antithetical to what has historically been topics, goals and ideals of Mainstream American Jewry – the State of Israel and its survival!

SBG

Jewish World Review Nov. 20, 2009 / 3 Kislev 5770

By Caroline B. Glick

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | During a recent speaking tour in Canada, MK Nahman Shai, (Kadima) shocked some of his hosts when he said that his primary goal in politics today is to bring down the Netanyahu government. Although indelicate, Shai’s comment was not surprising. Kadima is in the opposition. And like all opposition parties in all parliamentary democracies, the primary goal of its members is to bring down the government so that they can take power.

Given that this is the case, it is unsurprising that until this week, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni tried to blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for US President Barack Obama’s hostility towards Israel. Far more newsworthy than her criticism of Netanyahu was her public rebuke of Obama this week for his attempt to strong-arm Israel into barring Jewish construction in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood.

Wednesday Livni said, “Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus…and it is important to understand this for all discussions of borders in any future agreement.”

Indeed. There is an Israeli consensus. The Israeli consensus regarding Jerusalem is based among other things on the understanding that no nation can give up its capital city and survive.

Livni wants to be Israel’s Prime Minister one day. For that to happen, Israel must survive until she wins an election. And Israel will not long survive if it surrenders its right to its capital.

One might have thought that American Jews could be counted on to stand by Israel on this issue. But then, one would be wrong.

For the past six years, Republican Senator Sam Brownback has repeatedly submitted a bill to the US Senate that, if passed into law would revoke the Presidential waiver that has allowed successive Presidents to refuse to implement the 1995 law requiring the State Department to move US Embassy to Jerusalem. This year Brownback co-sponsored his bill with Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman. As luck would have it, the Brownback-Lieberman bill was submitted two weeks before Obama launched his latest campaign against Jewish building in Jerusalem.

In the 1980s and 1990s, American Jews lobbied hard to get the US Embassy moved to Jerusalem. But now some American Jewish leaders recoil at the very notion. In response the Brownback-Lieberman Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 2009, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle published an editorial last Friday entitled, “Bad move, Senator Brownback.” The newspaper’s editors condemned their retiring senator and called his bill, “a cheap, grand-standing move by a conservative Republican on his way out the door, playing to Jews and Christian Zionists while trying to throw a monkey wrench into President Obama’s diplomatic spokes.”

According to Sen. Brownback’s office, the paper never had any criticism of the same bill when he submitted it during former president George W. Bush’s tenure in office. But now, as Israel’s government and opposition stand shoulder to shoulder protecting Israeli control over Jerusalem from assaults by Obama, Kansas City’s Jewish newspaper’s editorial board willingly bucked what it acknowledged are the wishes of “Jews and Christian Zionists,” in order to stand by their man in the Oval Office.

Some of Israel’s most high-profile supporters in the US are conservative talk radio and television hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. But rather than thank them for their support, the Anti-Defamation League, which is supposed to be dedicated first and foremost to defending Jews from anti-Semitism, published a special report this week where it insinuated that they cultivate a climate of hatred and paranoia which could endanger Jews among others.

The ADL report, “Rage Grows in America: Anti-Government Conspiracies,” dubbed Beck the “fearmonger-in-chief,” for his opposition to Obama’s domestic and foreign policies. It similarly castigated the so-called “tea-party” movement which has attracted millions of Americans opposed to high taxes, and the townhall meetings this past summer where millions of Americans peacefully argued against Obama’s healthcare policies.

The ADL’s decision to issue a special report attacking Obama’s political opponents and insinuating that Americans who oppose him cultivate an environment in which paranoid and dangerous fringe groups feel comfortable operating is strange given that the ADL never put out a similar report against parallel anti-Bush movements. As Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin noted this week, the ADL was more likely to see overt and vicious anti-Semitic statements and placards being waved around at anti-Iraq war rallies than at anti-Obama healthcare and tax policy demonstrations.

Ironically, the ADL has a specific institutional interest in combating leftist paranoia. A recent movie attacking the ADL called Defamation, by leftist, anti-Israel Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir is currently hitting the film festival circuit in the US and Europe. A major hit among anti-Israel activists and regular anti-Semites on the Left and Right, Defamation accuses the ADL of exaggerating the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to justify what Shamir views as its nefarious aims. Apparently, tribal loyalty to the Left trumps the institutional interests of the ADL.

It certainly trumps the interests of New York University’s Hillel Director Rabbi Yehuda Sarna. As James Taranto reported Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal , this week Sarna called for NYU’s Jewish community to join NYU Muslims at a rally that both commemorated the massacre at Ft. Hood and denounced NYU Professor Tunku Varadarajan for writing a column in Forbes magazine.

In his article, Varadarajan committed the crime of stating the obvious fact that Ft. Hood terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was motivated by his Islamic beliefs when he shouted Allahu Akbar and shot some forty people, killing 13.

Given that people and groups like al Qaida and Hamas that share Hasan’s views assert that all Jews should be killed, it would seem that the good rabbi would not feel the need to attack professors who point out that Hasan’s views are dangerous. But then, it is no longer strange to see Hillels on American university campuses behaving in a manner that is not in line with what might be considered the interests of either the American Jewish community or the Jewish people as a whole.

Take UC Berkeley’s Hillel center for example. Since Ken Kramarz, Hillel’s current regional director for Northern California started his job in June 2007, Berkeley’s Hillel has adopted a hostile view towards Judaism and Israel. As pro-Israel community activist Natan Nestel notes, in the past year alone, Hillel held a dance party on Yom Hashoah, and it held a Cinco de Mayo barbeque on Memorial Day for Fallen IDF Soldiers. It has also failed to hold community seders for the past two years. Instead, last year, its members hung signs in the Hillel building declaring, “Matza sucks.”

Beyond its derogatory treatment of Jewish and Israeli holidays, Berkeley’s Hillel has allowed an extremist group called Students for Justice for Palestine to participate in its organizational meetings. SJP calls for Israel’s destruction through unlimited Arab immigration. It also advocates for UC Berkeley to divest from Israel. Edgar Bronfman, Hillel’s International Chairman has characterized SJP umbrella organization as “anti-Israel anti-Semitic [and] alarming”

No doubt owing in part to Berkeley Hillel’s decision to permit SJP members to spread their propaganda at its organizational meetings, Hillel’s student leaders and members participated in SJP’s Israel Apartheid Week this past March.

The student meeting that SJP participated in at Berkeley’s Hillel was sponsored by a group called “Kesher Enoshi.” This group describes itself as “a progressive Jewish community that engages directly with Israeli civil society. We do this by educating ourselves and others about the day-to-day struggles of people in Israel by making direct connections with human rights / social change organizations in Israel, linking their struggles with those on campus and in the wider community, and building a community of active participants in social change in Israel.”

This mission statement, which says nothing about Zionism, sounds an awful lot like the goal of the New Israel Fund. This month, three Arab “civil society” groups supported to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars by the NIF published a poster depicting an IDF soldier touching the breast of an Arab woman with the caption, “Her husband needs a permit to touch her, the occupation penetrates her life every day.”

The poster was issued to publicize a conference in Haifa called “My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall,” whose purpose was to demonize Israel using post-modern jargon.

Unlike Hillel, NIF is widely recognized as a far-left fringe group. But as Arab Israeli NGO’s use the dollars of American Jewish NIF donors to advance their “civil society” programs aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist, the Reform movement – which is not a fringe group — decided unanimously two weeks ago to criticize and pressure Israel for what its leadership views as Israel’s unfair treatment of its Arab citizens.

As this column goes to press, if its board members don’t cancel their meeting, the San Francisco Jewish Federation will be grudgingly voting on a resolution that would prohibit it from sponsoring events that denigrate or demonize Israel or support organizations that partner with organizations that call for divestment, sanctions or boycotts against Israel. The resolution follows the Jewish Federation of San Francisco’s decision to co-sponsor the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival last summer. That festival featured Shamir’s Defamation , and the egregiously anti-Israel film Rachel , about the late pro-terror activist Rachel Corrie. The film festival was also sponsored by the anti-Zionist Jewish Voices for Peace group, the American Friends Service Committee which hosted a dinner for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York last year, the Rachel Corrie Foundation and other radical anti-Israel groups.

If the vote takes place, it will be a great victory for a small group of local Jewish activists. These individual Jews have banded together because they are deeply disturbed by the Federation’s willingness to use community funds to advance events whose basic message is that Israel should be destroyed.

Kadima’s interests as a political party place it at loggerheads with the government on almost every issue. But its leaders this week were rational enough to recognize that they must support Israel’s sovereign rights in Jerusalem despite the fact that doing so placed it on the government’s side. Their display of sanity is a clear indication that Israeli society today is healthy and capable of meeting the challenges it faces.

It is clear that most American Jews believe that it is in their interests to support the Democratic Party and the Left. But like the anti-establishment Jewish activists in San Francisco, American Jews ought to realize that on issues like Israel’s survival and their own survival as Jews they ought to stand by their interests even when they seem to clash with their leftist and Democratic loyalties. And they ought to stand by their friends on these issues, even when their friends are conservative Republicans.

It can only be hoped that the San Francisco pro-Israel upstarts’ campaign against the Federation was successful yesterday. Then too, if the American Jewish community is to long survive, these San Francisco Jewish activists’ demand that their community support Israel’s right to exist must be joined by their fellow American Jews throughout the country.

JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Caroline B. Glick: Obama’s failure, Netanyahu’s opportunity.

Scary. That’s what this mob of right wing ideologues are to most of us. Scarier still, they have a national platform to use code words and race baiting to spread fear and mistrust. It would be sad, even funny, if so many people weren’t hurt by them. Hate crimes are up. False accusations and outright lies have cost good people their jobs and their reputations. And we don’t know who will be next.

These millionaires posing as “everyday Joes” are trying to run our lives from a studio — and it’s got to stop.

If you agree, sign up here to find the simple things you can do to let them know we’ve had enough. It’s clear. These attacks are a sign that they’re the ones who are running scared — scared of change.

So, okay. Someone’s pissed off at conservatives. That’s all fine and good. But then I begin to get this feeling of  “W’hell. I wonder if there’s more to it than just someone not liking conservatives.”

So I go do a lookup on the domain.  stopthewitchhunt.org is ostensibly owned (or was at least listed as the registrant) by someone named Makani Themba Nixon of  The Praxis Project in Washington, DC. Hmmmm. Seems kinda fishy to me. So I go look up thepraxisproject.org, a rather simple task.  Here’s who they are:

Praxis Staff

• Sarah Broom, Communications Director
• Ditra Edwards, Director of Training
• Josué Guillén, Technology Manager
• Noeleen Nuñez, Administrative Manager
• Salimah Salaam Muhammad, Finance Director
• Makani Themba-Nixon, Executive Director
• Marta Urquilla, Policy Director

Board of Directors

The Praxis Project is overseen by a distinguished group of scholars and leaders with backgrounds in higher education, labor, medicine, public health, law, community organizing, training, and technical assistance. Board members have worked with many racial and ethnic groups to counteract social injustice.

And here’s what they say they do:

What We Do

Praxis trains our partner organizations and provides research, technical assistance and financial support to tackle issues impacting the well being of communities.

In recent years, national and local policymaking has focused on the punishment and surveillance of individuals – disproportionately affecting the poor, the disenfranchised and people of color.To counter discriminatory and punitive measures, Praxis works with local organizations to shift policy decisions toward solutions that confront the root causes of community problems while holding corporations and other institutions accountable for their role in causing these problems.

Our priority at Praxis is to form partnerships with organizations whose constituents are disproportionately affected by social ills and to help erase the nation’s health-justice gap.

Why We Are Here

• The current systems of power relations are unjust, unfair and challenging – sometimes impossible – for most people in this world to lead healthy lives.

• The problem is systemic and institutional.

• If we are to effectively address social problems, we must weed out the root causes.

• Communities have power, but exercising their power is often discouraged by a mainstream culture of individualism and mistrust. They also face legal and institutional barriers to their full participation.

• Communities can achieve social justice by realizing their power. They can organize into effective movements and devise potent legislative, media and legal strategies to broker holistic improvements for their families and neighbors.

• We work locally because it is a sphere where those with less political power and resources can more effectively be heard. And, given recent trends in policymaking to devolve more authority to local governments, the local sphere is increasingly the arena where key social policy is made.

How We Make a Difference

Typically, when a community identifies a problem or creates a vision, Praxis supports its efforts through a multi-tiered approach.

The Praxis action strategy:

• Collaborate with local partners to craft a community-centered design for change
• Conduct a walk-about to survey the issue

• Research pertinent laws, policies and potential funding mechanisms
• Develop a set of options
• Design a communications plan to support the advocacy initiative
• Devise a legal strategy to facilitate change.

Sounds innocuous enough. But would someone please tell me why they’re establishing a website complaining about conservatives?  I’ve got it! They’re whackadoos!  Here’s what they say their name came from:

About Our Name

Although there are other organizations with the name Praxis, and there’s even a Praxis Project in the Midwest, we’ve had our name since 1995.

The name is drawn from three meanings for the word Praxis. The first is from Catholic pedagogy where it means practicing one’s religion or applying the principles of religion to day to day living. This value, practicing or living out one’s beliefs—especially as they relate to social justice, is an important part of our organizational philosophy.

Karl Marx took the term to apply it more broadly to the process of applying theory through practice as a methodology for developing more informed theory and practice for social change. Of course, this requires attention to both reflection and direct action, and their relationship to each other. This process is the core of our work.

The final meaning is drawn from more modern roots—Star Trek lore. (If you have no idea about Star Trek, please bear with us while we talk to other trekkies…)

Praxis was a Klingon moon that imploded leaving their world in disarray. The Klingon people had little choice but to make a strategic alliance with the Federation in order to save their world. Klingons had long warred with the Federation. They were an “exotic”, messy addition to the Federation’s fairly homogenous alliance…

Klingons embraced death as an honorable thing, compared to a federation that sought to avoid death and injury at all costs. In short, they were pretty different. In order to build a principled alliance, people and systems had to change. For us, this metaphor of Praxis as an agent of principled alliance building is especially salient.

Well then. To take them seriously or not, that’s the question…  Then I read on their site, some interesting things in their news link about funding opportunities.  And who’s name shows up?  Hmmmm. One interesting name appears as a partner or something and is related to the Open Society Institute, a George Soros thing.

Now there’s a shocker…

But I still don’t understand what that has to do with the hate this supposed community service group spews.  We’re all entitled to our opinions, right? But then, don’t go hiding who you are and what you represent with something like stopthewitchhunt.org!!!!

SBG

American Thinker: Obama’s True Lies.

SBG

Will the Real Racist Please Stand Up?.

And I had to laugh. Almost hysterically….

But there’s a lot of truth here.

The American Self Immolation, Truly a Sight to See – Pravda.Ru

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UN vote to bar Jews from their holiest spot

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/10/un-vote-to-bar-jews-from-their-holiest.html

The sender also included this note:

The UN is the UN. A leopard that will never change those spots…. May God
have mercy on their collective souls.

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Reid Criticizes Mormon Church for Proposition 8 Support – Political News – FOXNews.com

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“A world with less tensions?????”  What kind of stupidity is that?

“All these things have contributed to — I wouldn’t say a safer world — but a world with less tension,” Jagland said by phone from Strasbourg, where he was attending meetings in his other role as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

Nobel Panel Defends Obama Peace Prize Decision – Political News – FOXNews.com

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SBG

Atlas Is Shrugging

By Ralph R. Reiland on 10.6.09 @ 6:06AM

The headline in Investor’s Business Daily, September 16, 2009: “45% of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul.”

The headline in the Boston Globe, September 28, 2009: “States risk it, raise tax on rich.”

The problem with four of nine U.S. doctors saying they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” is that “the number of doctors is already lagging population growth,” reports Investor’s Business Daily.

Add millions of new patients to a shrinking supply of doctors and the obvious result is an English-style queue, longer waits in pain, and a centrally-directed rationing of service.

The aforementioned Boston Globe article on soaking the rich explains that New York’s increased confiscation of income from the “deep-pocketed rich” through higher taxes is producing a “millionaires’ exit.”

Said New York’s lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch, regarding the flight of the state’s millionaires and the decline in government revenues that has already occurred as a result of the higher tax rates: “People aren’t wedded to a geographic place as they once were.”

In Atlas Shrugged, a novel by Ayn Rand, the most productive and creative citizens in the United States — the innovators, risk-takers, artists, entrepreneurs, capitalists, intellectuals, industrialists — overturn the conventional concept of victimhood and go on strike, refusing any longer to be exploited by society, refusing to be demonized as too successful, too rich, too individualistic, too free.

Led by John Galt, the novel’s hero, the industrious organize a strike against the ever-expanding yoke of government coercion. They strike to halt the murder of man’s spirit, to halt the confiscation of man’s work, to defend individualism, reason, liberty, human achievement and the market economy.

They strike by mysteriously disappearing, by withdrawing their productivity from society, by withdrawing their minds and ingenuity, in a walkout that Galt describes as “stopping the motor of the world.”

Near the climax of the novel, Galt takes over a radio broadcast to reveal the strike and its rationale, explain why society has collapsed into an ever-growing crisis of scarcity and misery, and deliver a manifesto for liberty to a corrupt society:

I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world.… All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who have taken them away from you. We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt…

There is a difference between our strike and all those you’ve practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer.

You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty…

Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your world of man’s mind…

While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem, I beat you to it — I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp…

The inauguration of Barack Obama took place on January 20, 2009. The Economist magazine reported that week that Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, had moved up to 33rd place among Amazon’s top-selling books.

Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a columnist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

From Politico.com . . . Good article..

SBG

By: Josh Gerstein / October 6, 2009 05:15 AM EST

Greg Craig, the top in-house lawyer for President Barack Obama, is getting the blame for botching the strategy to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison by January — so much so that he’s expected to leave the White House in short order.

But sources familiar with the process believe Craig is being set-up as the fall guy and say the blame for missing the deadline extends well beyond him.

Instead, it was a widespread breakdown on the political, legislative, policy and planning fronts that contributed to what is shaping up as one of Obama’s most high-profile setbacks, these people say.

The White House misread the congressional mood – as it found out abruptly in May, when theSenate voted 90-6 against funds for closing the base after Republicans stoked fears about bringing prisoners to the U.S. The House also went on record last week opposing bringing Gitmo detainees here.

The White House misread the public mood – as roughly half of Americans surveyed say they disagree with Obama’s approach. A strong element of NIMBY-ism permeates those results, as Americans say they don’t want the prisoners in their backyards.

But most of all Obama’s aides mistook that political consensus from the campaign trail for a deep commitment in Washington to do whatever it takes to close the prison.

“The administration came in reading there to be wide support for closing Guantanamo at home and abroad, and I think it misread that attitude,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor who held Defense and State Department positions on detainee policy. “In general, they were right….but there was very little willingness to accept the costs and risks of getting it done.”

The White House declined to make Craig available for an interview, or discuss the Gitmo deliberations in detail, but several allies and even some critics scoffed at suggestions that Craig bears the main responsibility for the missteps.

“This clearly was a decision that had the full support of the entire national security team,” said Ken Gude, who tracks Guantanamo issues for the liberal Center for American Progress think tank. “It’s typical Washington that someone has their head on the chopping block, but it’s ridiculous that it’s Craig.”

“The implication that this was the brainchild of the White House counsel is not really credible,” said Elisa Massimino of Human Rights First.

When Obama signed a series of executive orders on Guantanamo during his second full day in office, what grabbed attention was not his promise to close the prison but his pledge to do it within one year.

During the presidential campaign, Obama talked almost daily about closing Guantanamo, but he rarely offered a timeline. His Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), spoke in a far greater specificity, proposing to move the Gitmo prisoners to Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas.

However, back in July 2007, Obama co-sponsored an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that called for Guantanamo to close within a year. Obama’s primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was also a co-sponsor.

Some Bush administration officials contend that the one-year timeline was driven by a naïveté on the part of Obama’s aides.

“To a certain extent, they had drunk a lot of the far-left Kool-aid: that everybody, or most people, at Guantanamo were innocent and shouldn’t be there, and the Bush administration was not working very hard to resolve these issues, and that the issues were fairly easy to resolve once adults who were really committed to doing something about it in charge,” said one Bush official who met with Obama’s aides during the transition on Gitmo. “It became clear to me they had not really done their homework on the details.”

But even back on Jan. 22, 2009, the same day Obama signed the orders, Craig acknowledged some of the difficulties involved – including that some of the detainees can never be tried, a problem Craig called “difficult” and “most controversial.”

Now Obama’s decision to set a one-year deadline is being widely second-guessed. Craig supported the idea – and Craig’s allies say that a deadline was needed to persuade foreign governments that Obama was serious. They note that President George W. Bush talked on at least eight occasions about his desire to close Guantanamo – and left office with 250 prisoners there.

“Simply reasserting the intention to close Guantanamo would not have been sufficient in the international community,” Gude said. “They had to have a firm date and they had to have a timeline.”

Gude had advocated an 18-month timeline to “build in a cushion” but he said the only real mistakes the White House made involved failing to anticipate the resistance in Congress – particularly surrounding the Senate’s sharp rejection of Obama’s $80 million request to close Gitmo.

“They made that request without much supporting information and opened the door for Republicans in Congress to make it a Congressional issue and they did it very successfully,” Gude said. “The White House didn’t have a plan to support Democrats who were willing to back up their proposal and it all fell apart.”

Craig’s backers contend that, if that was the White House’s key misjudgment, other top officials share responsibility for the breakdown.

“It seems very unlikely to me that Greg Craig, by himself, engineered a DOD appropriations request,” one lawyer close to Craig said.

In retrospect, there were early signs of possible trouble ahead. Within hours of Obama signing the orders, McCain warned of a backlash and said the time frame the president set out would be “very difficult” to achieve.

A McCain adviser said the Obama team should have known. “I don’t think they realized how much heat McCain took from conservatives” during the GOP primary, said the aide, who asked not to be named. “Had they been aware of that I don’t think they would have handled it this way…..It shouldn’t have surprised anybody.”

Today, the National Security Council and Obama senior adviser Pete Rouse are effectively in charge of closing Gitmo, though Press Secretary Robert Gibbs denied Craig had been stripped of his responsibilities on the prison. “There are number of people that are working on it, Greg being one of them,” Gibbs said.

A review of Guantanamo prisoners is also nearly complete, with about 80 detainees up for release and State Department envoy Dan Fried lining up places to receive them.

“Our friends and allies have accepted or agreed to accept more than 30 of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be sent home due to humane treatment concerns, and are seriously considering taking others,” said a White House official who asked not to be named.

But it’s been slow. Obama’s administration has transferred 17 Guantanamo prisoners to other countries so far – compared to 19 by the Bush administration in the first nine months of 2008.

Obama aides have blamed the delays on disarray in government files about the detainees, but several former officials said that is not directly linked to the thorniest questions such as where to locate detainees in the U.S. “Those issues that have been kicked down the road are by far the hardest,” Waxman said.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.

I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events.

Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife’s grandparents, her father’s two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.

But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.

History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.

It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.

The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially.

It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.

I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances – by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world’s most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn’t get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country’s civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.

We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy’s civilian population from harm’s way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.

Delegates of the United Nations,

Will you accept this farce?

Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.

If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here’s why.

When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What self-defense?

The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us –my people, my country – of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!

Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

All of Israel wants peace.

Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it.

We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.

Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more.” These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.

We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.

But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.

That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don’t want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.

We want peace.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the “confirmed unteachability of mankind,” the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.

Churchill bemoaned what he called the “want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill’s assessment of the “unteachibility of mankind” is for once proven wrong.

I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history — that we can prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.

By Caroline B. Glick

Surveying today’s myopic Middle East on the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | There has been much talk in recent months about the prospect of Syria bolting the Iranian axis and becoming magically transformed into an ally of the West. Although Syria’s President-for-life Bashar Assad’s daily demonstrations of fealty to his murderous friends has exposed this talk as nothing more than fantasy, it continues to dominate the international discourse on Syria.

In the meantime, Syria’s ongoing real transformation from a more or less functioning state into an impoverished wasteland has been ignored.

Today Syria faces the greatest economic catastrophe in its history. The crisis is causing massive malnutrition and displacement for hundreds of thousands of Syrians. These Syrians – some 250,000 mainly Kurdish farmers – have been forced off their farms over the past two years because their lands were reclaimed by the desert.

Today shantytowns have sprung up around major cities like Damascus. They are filled with internally displaced refugees. Due to a cataclysmic combination of irrational agricultural policies embraced by the Baa’thist Assad dynasty for the past 45 years which have eroded the soil, and massive digging of some 420 thousand unauthorized wells which have dried out the ground water aquifiers, Syria’s regime has done everything in its power to dry up the country. The effects of these demented policies have been exacerbated in recent years by Turkey’s diversion of Syria’s main water source, the Euphrates River, through the construction of dams upstream, and by two years of unrelenting drought. Today, much of Syria’s previously fertile farmland has become wasteland. Former farmers are now destitute day laborers with few prospects for economic recovery.

Imagine if in his country’s moment of peril, instead of clinging to his alliance with Iran, Hizbullah, al Qaida, and Hamas, Assad were to turn to Israel to help him out of this crisis?

Israel is a world leader in water desalination and recycling. The largest desalination plant in the world is located in Ashkelon. Israeli technology and engineers could help Syria rebuild its water supply.

Israel could also help Syria use whatever water it still has, or is able to produce through desalination and recycling more wisely through drip irrigation – which was invented in Israel. Israel today supplies fifty percent of the international market for drip irrigation. In places like Syria and southern Iraq which are now being dried out by the Turkish dams, irrigation is primitive — often involving nothing more than water trucks pumping water out of the Euphrates and driving it over to fields that are often less than a kilometer away.

Then there are Syria’s dwindling oil reserves. No doubt, Israeli engineers and seismologists would be able to increase the efficiency and productivity of existing wells and so increase their output. It is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that Israeli scientists and engineers could even discover new untapped oil reserves.

But of course, Syria isn’t interested in Israel’s help. Syria wants to have its enemy and eat it too. As Assad has made clear repeatedly, what he wants is to receive the Golan Heights – and through it Israel’s fresh water supply – for nothing. He wants Israel to surrender the Golan Heights, plus some Israeli land Syria illegally occupied between 1948 and1967, in exchange for a meaningless piece of paper. In this demand, Assad is supported by none other than Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan whose country is drying Syria out. It is Erdogan after all, who mediated talks aimed at convincing then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to give up the Golan Heights for nothing and it is Erdogan today who is encouraging the Obama administration to pressure Israel to surrender its water to Syria for nothing.

Beyond demanding that Israel give him the Golan Heights, Assad is happy associating with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hassan Nasrallah, Khaled Mashal and various and sundry al Qaida leaders who move freely through his territory. Hanging out with these murderers affords him the opportunity to feel like a real man – a master of the universe who can kill Israelis, Iraqis and Americans and terrorize the Lebanese into submission.

As for his problems at home — Assad imprisons any Syrian engineer with the temerity to point out that by exporting cotton Syria is effectively exporting water. Assad doesn’t fear that his regime will collapse under the weight of five decades of Ba’athist economic imbecility. He is banking on the US and Europe saving him from the consequences of his own incompetence through economic handouts; by turning a blind eye to his continued economic exploitation of Lebanon; and perhaps by coercing Israel into surrendering the Golan Heights.

The same of course can be said of the Palestinians. Actually, the case of the Palestinians is even more extraordinary. From 1967 through 1987 — when through their violent uprising they decided to cut their economy off from Israel’s — Palestinian economic growth in Gaza, Judea and Samaria rose by double digits every year. Indeed, while linked to Israel’s, the Palestinian economy was the fourth fastest growing economy in the world. But since 1994 when the PLO took over, although the Palestinians have become the largest per capita foreign aid recipients in recorded history, the Palestinian economy has contracted on a per capita basis.

The one sure-fire path to economic growth and prosperity is for the Palestinians to reintegrate their economy with Israel’s. But to do this, they must first end their involvement in terrorism and open their economy to free market forces and the transparency and rule of law and protection for property rights that form the foundations of those forces. The very notion of doing so however, is considered so radical that supposedly moderate, pro-peace and free market friendly Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad rejected the economic peace plan put forward by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu out of hand. After all how can the Palestinians accept free market forces when it means that – horror of horrors – Jews might buy and sell land and other resources?

The Palestinians and the Syrians are not alone. From Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and Indonesia, the Arab and Muslim world has preferred poverty and economic backwardness to the prosperity that would come from engaging Israel. They prefer their staunch rejection of Israel and hatred of Jews and the economic stagnation this involves to the prosperity and political freedom and stability that would come from an acceptance of Israel.

As American economic and technology guru George Gilder puts it in his new Book, “The Israel Test” , “The test of a culture is what it accomplishes in advancing the human cause – what it creates rather than what it claims.”

Gilder’s book is a unique and necessary contribution to the current international debate about the Middle East. Rather than concentrate solely on Arab claims from Israel as most writers do, Gilder turns his attention to what the nations of the region create. Specifically, he shows that only Israel creates wealth through creativity and innovation and that today Israel is contributing more to the human cause through its scientific, technological and financial advances than any other country in the world except the US.

The Israel Test describes in riveting detail both the massive contributions of mainly Diaspora Jews to the US victories in World War II and the Cold War and to the scientific revolutions of the 20th century that set the foundations for the computer age, and the massive contributions of Israeli Jews to the digital revolution that defines and shapes our economic realities today.

	BUY THE BOOK
	Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.).

But before Gilder begins to describe these great Jewish contributions to the global economy and the general wellbeing of people around the world, he asserts that the future of the world will be determined by its treatment of Israel. As he puts it, “The central issue in international politics, dividing the world into two fractious armies, is the tiny state of Israel.”

In his view, “Israel defines a line of demarcation,” between those who pass and those who fail what he refers to as “the Israel test.”

Gilder poses the test to his readers by asking them a few questions: “What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishment? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement or do you impugn it

and seek to tear it down?” By his telling, the future of civilization will be determined by how the nations of the world – and particularly, how the American people – answer these questions.

Gilder’s book is valuable on its own accord. I personally learned an enormous amount about Israel’s pioneering role in the information economy. Beyond that, it provides a stunning rebuttal to the central arguments of the other major book that has been written about Israel and the Arabs in the US in recent years.

Steve Walt and John Mearshimer’s The Israel Lobby has two central arguments. First they argue that Israel has little value as an ally to the US. Second, they assert that given Israel’s worthlessness to the US, the only reasonable explanation of why Americans overwhelmingly support Israel is that they have been manipulated by a conspiracy of Jewish organizations and Jewish-owned and controlled media and financial outlets. In their view, the nefarious Jewish-controlled forces have bamboozled the American people into believing that Israel is important to them and even a kindred nation to the US.

Gilder blows both arguments out of the water without even directly engaging them or noting Israel’s singular contributions to US intelligence and military prowess. Instead, he demonstrates that Israel is an indispensable motor for the US economy, which in turn is the principal driver of US power globally. Much of Silicon Valley’s economic prowess is founded on technologies made in Israel. Everything from the microchip to the cellphone has either been made in Israel or by Israelis in Silicon Valley.

It is Gilder’s own admiration for Israel’s exceptional achievements that puts paid Walt and Mearshimer’s second argument. There is something distinctively American in his enthusiasm for Israel’s innovative genius. From America’s earliest beginnings, the American character has been imbued with an admiration for achievement. As a nation, Americans have always passed Gilder’s “Israel test”.

Taken together with the other reasons for American support for Israel — particularly religious affinity for the people of the Bible — Gilder’s book shows that the American and Israeli people are indeed natural friends and allies bound together by their exceptionalism which motivates them to strive for excellence and progress to the benefit of all mankind.

Today Americans commemorate the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Those attacks were the greatest confrontation to date between American exceptionalism and Islamist nihilism. On this day, Gilder’s book serves as a reminder of what makes the US and its exceptional ally Israel worth defending at all costs. “The Israel Test” also teaches us that so long as we keep faith with ourselves, we will not be alone in our fight against barbarism and hatred, and inevitably, we will emerge the victors in this bitter fight.

Please forward this article to Jewish organization leaders who can change this situation.

David Podvin
The Silence of the Jewish Lambs
July 21, 2009

The presidents of Jewish organizations in the United States were craven accomplices to the Holocaust. They refused to support imperiled Jews abroad because doing so would have created controversy at home. As six million of their brethren were being slaughtered, American Jews recoiled into the fetal position. Six decades later, the current American Jewish hierarchy has just visited the White House to demonstrate that while the names may have changed, the cowardice remains.

Jewish leaders in America know that supporting Israel requires opposing Barack Obama, which as Hillary Clinton and John McCain learned means being marginalized as racists. It is a price these invertebrates are unwilling to pay. The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee and Hadassah were therefore silently complicit when Obama permitted Turkey to supply the Hezbollah-dominated Lebanese military with weapons that will kill Israeli Jews.

There was additional silence from the National Council Of Jewish Women and the Union For Reform Judaism and the National Jewish Democratic Council when Obama granted to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip $900 million that will finance the murders of countless other Israeli Jews.

There has also been stony silence from the Orthodox Union and the United Jewish Communities and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs following Obama’s decisions to deprive Israel of the fighter jets and attack helicopters necessary to fend off the Nazi-esque terrorist groups that he is subsidizing.

The silence of the American Jewish lambs has been deafening as Obama insists that Israel must not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons designed to eradicate Zionism.

Obama has treated Israel the way any rational person would expect Israel to be treated by a guy who spent twenty years attending an anti-Semitic church. Meanwhile, the American Jewish community has been afflicted with a severe case of moral laryngitis. Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has lost its voice. The group, which Internet liberals constantly identify as being the driving force behind a diabolical Hebrew conspiracy, steadfastly refuses to challenge Obama’s irrational hostility towards the Jewish state.

For months, there have been leaks to the media claiming that the leaders of America’s major Jewish organizations are “privately distressed” about Obama’s relentless anti-Israel jihad. These are the self-serving whispers of Machiavellian poltroons. When Jewish leaders were presented the golden opportunity to challenge Obama on July 13, they responded by delivering the most submissive White House performance since the days of Monica Lewinsky.

Fairness dictates noting that two of the fifteen leaders in attendance did take an unyielding stance. Debra DeLee of Americans For Peace Now and Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street acted as powerful advocates for the Palestinian murderers they so love. In the ongoing conflict featuring Israel and Hamas, these progressive Jewish leaders have declared “neutrality”. Yet theirs is the liberal form of neutrality, which consists of demanding that Israel capitulate to genocidal anti-Semites.

Following the meeting, Ben-Ami gloated that the Zionist Entity would soon learn the futility of requesting American Jewish support against Obama’s predations. It seems unlikely that Israel would ever count on American Jews for anything. Israelis know that when the time arrived to make the pressure-packed decision between saving European Jewry from annihilation or worshiping Franklin Roosevelt, American Jews choked.

Now, they are choking again.

The communists had useful idiots, people who lacked the common sense to perceive they were supporting a cause that despised them. The Jewish community has provided Obama with useful eunuchs who lack the testicular fortitude to oppose a president practicing the “even-handed” approach between the Jews and the Jew killers.

The president whom Jewish leaders abjectly adore refuses to meet an Israeli foreign minister who doesn’t like Arabs, but Obama warmly embraces a Holocaust-denying Palestinian president who financed the massacre of Jewish athletes. Obama’s wrath is directed not against Islamic terrorists but Jewish carpenters. He is a grotesque bigot who should be publicly confronted and thoroughly humiliated.

Instead, American Jews compete to see who can be his most prostrate sycophant.

As a result, Israeli Jews find themselves going back to the future…specifically 1939. Reviled by the world, not for what they do but for who they are. Threatened with annihilation by implacable anti-Semites. Abandoned by an American president disdainful of their plight.

And cursed with fellow religionists who embrace the adage that a bowed head is never severed. Had John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning book been about the American Jewish community, it most definitely would not have been titled “Profiles In Courage.”

About David Podvin
David Podvin is a California-based commentator. For the past decade, he has analyzed politics in essays that have appeared internationally.

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/podvin/2009/print/07232009.htm

SBG

Jewish World Review August 28, 2009 / 8 Elul 5769

The rigged game

By Caroline B. Glick

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Tuesday the Guardian reported that the Obama administration is now making Israel an offer it can’t refuse: In exchange for a government order to freeze construction for Jews in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the administration will adopt a “much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program.”

Israel should refuse this offer.

What the Guardian account shows is an Obama administration looking to blame Israel for the failure of its policy of attempting to appease the likes of Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Come September, US President Barack Obama is going to have a difficult time of it. Obama set a September deadline for his strategy of diplomatically courting the mullahs. This policy involves deferring further sanctions against Iran and all but openly renouncing the option of using military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations while waiting politely for the mullahs to sit down for tea with US officials.

Far from accepting Obama’s offer, the Iranians have spit on it. Indeed, they have been too busy brutalizing their own people and building bombs and missiles to even respond to him directly. Instead, they have signaled their contempt for Obama by promoting known arch terrorists to high office. For instance Ahmadinejad just appointed Ahmad Vahidi, the suspected mastermind of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia where 19 US servicemen and women were murdered to serve as Defense Minister.

In support of Obama’s appeasement efforts, both the House and the Senate Foreign Relations committees set aside veto-proof bills that would place sanctions on companies exporting refined fuel to Iran. But Congress, now on summer recess, reconvenes in September and members are anxiously awaiting a green light from the White House to put the bills before a vote.

So unless something saves him, Obama will look like quite a fool next month. His appeasement policy has given the mullahs eight precious months of unimpeded work at their nuclear installations. Their uranium enrichment facility at Natanz is now operating some 5,000 centrifuges with another 2,400 centrifuges about to go online. That is an eightfold increase in centrifuge activity from a year ago.

Obama now turns to Israel to avoid embarrassment. If he can convince Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the White House will only get serious about Iran’s nuclear weapons program if Netanyahu freezes Jewish building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, then Obama can present his sudden willingness to sign on to veto-proof Congressional sanctions legislation not as a consequence of his own failure, but as a result of Israeli pressure.

If Obama succeeds in getting Netanyahu on board, the American media discussion of sanctions will focus on the issue of Israeli power over US policy. The so-called Israel lobby will be pummeled as pundits argue about whether Obama was right or wrong to succumb to Israeli pressure to support Congressional sanctions. No one will remember that Obama was forced to support the sanctions because he had no other choice, since next month his engagement policy will become indefensible.

On the other hand, if Israel refuses to play ball and doesn’t provide Obama with a concession which he will be “forced” to pay for with a harder line on Iran, then he will still have to adopt a harder line on Iran. In this case however, it will be attributed to the failure of his appeasement policy towards Iran rather than to the success of his Middle East diplomacy against Israel.

Obama’s apparent interest in setting Israel up as the fall guy for the failure of his engagement policy is the same policy he will doubtless follow if matters continue on course and Iran acquires nuclear weapons. At that point, Obama can be counted on to claim that it was Israel’s recalcitrance in the negotiations with the Palestinians or the Syrians or the Lebanese that forced the mullahs’ hands. That is, he will say it is the absence of “progress” in the “peace process” due to whatever imagined Israeli intransigence that made it impossible for the Iranian “moderates” to convince the “hardliners” to give up their nuclear weapons program.

In Obama’s defense it should be noted that at least he worries about being embarrassed by the failure of his Iran policy. He knows that the overwhelming majority of Americans consider Iran to be an enemy of their country. In a poll of US voters taken in May, some 80 percent of Americans claimed that a nuclear-armed Iran would constitute a threat to US national security and 57 percent said that Israel would be justified in launching a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear installations.

Things are different on the other side of the Atlantic. Obama’s European counterparts do not face a comparable situation. They have no reason to fear being embarrassed when and if Iran emerges as a nuclear power because their constituents view Israel as threat equal to or greater than Iran.

European politics – particularly as they relate to the Middle East- are not informed by rational interests so much as they are defined by attitude. Facts today mean little in Europe. They are easily crushed under the weight of the fantasies that dominate European political discourse.

The main fantasy governing Europe’s attitude towards the Middle East is the belief in Israeli militaristic venality, fundamentalist messianism, and territorial greed. It is this fantasy that protects European leaders from the need to account for their six years of failed appeasement towards Iran during which Iran has made its swiftest progress towards completing its nuclear weapons program.

It is the predominance of anti-Israel attitudes throughout the continent that enables European leaders to make light of the Iranian nuclear threat even as ever growing swathes of the continent fall within the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles.

A mere glance at the daily Middle East coverage of your standard European newspaper suffices to demonstrate the depths Europe’s obsession with hating Israel. The absence of peace is always Israel’s fault. The fact that the Arabs have never accepted Israel’s right to exist is either whitewashed or justified. So too, Arab terrorism is explained away while every act – small and large – that in any way asserts Israel’s right to defend itself is pounced upon as proof of Israel’s criminality and brutality.

Case in point is an interview Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor gave to Germany’s Der Spiegel’s diplomatic correspondent Erich Follath ahead of Netanyahu’s visit to the country this week. The entire interview consisted of interchanges like the following:

Follath: You blame Palestinian intransigence [for the absence of peace]. Western leaders are, of course, demanding that the Arab side compromise on some issues. But they are also putting pressure on Israel to make concessions, as well, especially when it comes to its aggressive settlement policy in the West Bank.

Meridor: There is no such policy.

Follath: You don’t regard new settlements in the occupied territories as being a major stumbling block in the peace process?

Meridor: That’s exactly why we aren’t building new settlements. We haven’t approved any.

Follath: You are sidestepping the issue. US President Barack Obama wouldn’t urge Israel to stop its settlement policies if he didn’t have a reason to do so.

Meridor: What you describe is neither the official policy of Prime Minister Netanyahu nor the official policy of the government.”

Follath’s questions, and his dogged determination to ignore everything that Meridor said reflect this general European propensity to embrace the fantasy of Israeli criminality over the reality of Israeli willingness to do just about anything for peace.

Israel has for years based its public diplomacy regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program on successive governments’ assessments that given Iran’s global reach and the threat it poses to global security, states will be more willing to act to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons than they are to acknowledge Palestinian terrorism which is employed almost exclusively against Israel. What Israeli leaders – including Netanyahu – have failed to recognize is that the antipathy of Europeans towards Israel is so great that they are willing to explain away Iran’s nuclear weapons program because it is aimed first of all against Israel.

Case in point is yet another screed by Follath published in Der Spiegel in June. There he characterized Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad as “twins,” who are united in their “apocalyptic religious visions.” As he sees it, both are equally responsible for the rising likelihood of war between Israel and Iran that is liable to suck in countries around the region and the world. As far as he – and his loyal readers – are concerned, Israel and Iran deserve each other.

Such views inevitably temper any propensity European leaders may have to act against Iran. This was demonstrated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her appearance with Netanyahu in Berlin on Thursday. Merkel rejected Israel’s comparison of Iran’s stated aim of destroying Israel to the German Holocaust saying, “There is no comparison between the Holocaust and the Iranian nuclear program.”

If there is no comparison, then Germany, which she claimed is duty bound to defend Israel due to the Holocaust, has no obligation to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

But if Merkel is wrong, and as a result of the lackadaisical attitude she, her European colleagues, and the Obama administration have adopted, Iran acquires nuclear weapons and as promised, uses them to commit a new genocide of Jewry, she has no reason to worry. The anti-Israel attitude now rampant in Europe will ensure that she will pay no price, and will not even be embarrassed for her failure to heed the warnings.

Case in point is the newest Swedish media blood libel against Israel, and the numerous blood libels – most prominently France 2’s Muhammad al Dura blood libel from September 2000 – that preceded it. Stories like Aftonbladet’s fiction of IDF theft of Palestinian organs and France 2’s false allegation that the IDF murders Arab children sell newspapers and raise television ratings because the popular animus against Israel is so great that people are willing to buy newspapers and watch television networks that propagate obvious lies that feed this irrational hatred. Indeed, it pays to disseminate such lies.

France 2’s Charles Enderlain, the father of the al Dura lie just received France’s Legion d’honneur from President Nicholas Sarkozy. Then too, anti-Israel activist Felicia Langer just received Germany’s Federal Cross of Honor, and Israel hater Mary Robinson was just awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The lesson of all of this for Israel is clear. Whether Netanyahu is dealing with Obama or European leaders, the game is rigged against us. Any move that Israel makes towards these leaders will simply facilitate their further castigation of the Jewish state and support their clear intentions to do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring the means to destroy Israel.

As we have been all too often in our history, today Israel stands alone against our enemies. We can either defeat them, or we can be defeated. The choice is ours.

JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

SBG

August 09, 2009

By Sally Zelikovsky

Democrat bigwigs and their media shills have concocted a libelous narrative of the town hall phenomenon that has shaken up the party’s health care plans. They meet the classic definition of Chutzpah, as explained by Leo Rosten in the Joy of Yiddish:

Gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible “guts”; presumption plus arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to.  A Chutzpanik may be defined as the man who shouts, “Help! Help!” while beating you up.

Ah, democracy! It never works better than when informed citizens gather in town hall meetings to discuss and debate the issues of the day.

But, oh, democracy! It’s never more damaged than when partisan zealots plot to disrupt town hall meetings in order to prevent any honest debate of the issues.

And that’s exactly what’s happening in health care forums held across the nation by members of Congress….Taking a page right out of a Nazi playbook, organizers bus in professional protestors and arm them with instructions on how to take over meetings, shut down discussion, shout over any pro-health care reform speakers, and then post video of the resulting chaos on YouTube. It’s mob rule, pure and simple.

It takes Chutzpah, Bill, to think that any of us would take our cues from a Nazi playbook.  Many of us are Jewish, gay or Catholic — groups persecuted by the Nazis.  A considerable number of tea partiers have family who fought and died or were injured fighting the very bastards you align us with.  And, let’s be honest, Bill.  The Nazis persecuted political dissenters, something we never did during the “Dissent is Patriotic” years of Bush. Given the memos on the White House website, memos from Health Care for America NOW! and the overall tone of the mainstream media about our supposed bad behavior (when the same media gave a free pass to every liberal protest during the Bush years), an atmosphere of repression is being created.

Your characterization of us as “professional protesters” is drenched in chutzpah.  The left has paid community organizers whose express job it is to agitate.  The left buses in people from the hinterlands, equips them with signs, shirts and buttons, gives them lunch and presto!  Instant demonstration.  I can personally attest that there is not one professional protester at the San Francisco Tea Party.  I organize it.  I know.  Like it or not, Bill, we are all home grown.  Some of us cut our teeth watching the left go nuts in front of Marine Recruitment offices in Oakland.  But in the agitation world, we just fell off the turnip wagon.

Now, remember, you called us yahoos.  So which is it?  Are we slick, Astroturf professionals?  Or tobacco-chewing, toothless yahoos?  You can’t have it both ways.

And listen up, Bill.  If some of us took our cues from a handbook, it was the one our President studied, one we picked up and read when doing our homework about Mr. Obama: Alinsky’s despicable Rules for Radicals.  Right out of, what did you call it? The Nazi handbook? Bus them in, make them professional, arm them, take over meetings, shut down discussion, shout over them and use the media.

Tsk, tsk.  The C-word again, Bill.  “Mob rule pure and simple.”  If the few shout downs you wring your hands over amount to mob rule in your book, you better go back and read your history.  Don’t forget to include the Bush years when mobs, anger and derangement ruled the day.  By the way, how is it that you and your fellow journalists know that the people who cause the unruly behavior are right wingers?  As I said, many tea party folk hail from your end of the political spectrum and many left-wingers attend these meeting as well.

According to HCAN’s instructional memo Fight Back against the Right, health care reform proponents are directed to attend town hall meetings with the primary purpose of…disrupting them, especially those arranged by…conservatives (seems a bit like the kettle calling the pot black, hm?).  Left-wingers, who, unlike the right wingers in this memo, are not described as militant or extreme, are advised to meet with Members of Congress ahead of time to talk strategy (where’s that wholesome debate?), bring more people to the meetings than the other side will have because they will have smaller numbers (so what are you so afraid of?), assign 3-5 people to speak with reporters and “be assertive in shaping the narrative that they write” (where’s that down home objective journalism, you supposedly practice?) and are asked not to debate the policy at these meetings but to “re-focus the agenda on communicating with the Member of Congress” who “needs cover” because “they are getting beaten up by right wing zealots….”  The memo states that its left-wing protestors should “let the Member know….that we, the majority, agree with him.”  Beautiful Stalinesque sleight of hand at the expense of freedom.  And you, Bill, are a part of that.  I’m sure you are proud of your Chutzpah.

Having encouraged viewers to show up, sympathetic anchors on Fox News then pretend these are “grassroots” protests springing up spontaneously across the country in opposition to President Obama’s plans for health care reform. Nonsense. There’s nothing spontaneous about them. They’re not grassroots protests, they’re “Astroturf” protests. Just look at who’s paying the freight, who shows up and what orders they’re given.

First of all, no one is paying the freight.  I pay for the permits out of my own pocket.  I set up and paid for my own website.  I finance the T-shirts and stickers.  Sometimes a couple of friends throw some money my way as a donation to buy something like wristbands to give away.  Show me the money, Bill, and oh, there’s more Chutzpah!  Let’s look at the funding for America’s all-American Grassroots Organization of the Century: ACORN, that pinnacle of authentic, left-wing grassroots community organizing facing court challenges in several states for its voter fraud violations, heavily funded by a host of left-wing and liberal groups.  Does their size, influence, funding and organization make them less grassrootsy?  If it does, then I’ll make you a deal.  If you label them an “astroturf” organization, then when the tea party movement gets that big and powerful and well-funded, then you can call us astroturf too.

But as long as you refer to ACORN as a grassroots group, you might want to pull back on the Chutzpah and allow us the same classification and recall that most of us are doing this from our home computers, on our own time.  Ask 99% of us why? Because we want the best this country has to offer in terms of liberty and prosperity for our children and their children.  I know, so sappy it’s hard to believe it’s true.  How can cold-feeling fiscal conservatives care about their offspring?  Only liberals are that caring.

Funding and direction for the Stalinist-style campaign comes from two conservative, lobbyist-run Washington think tanks: Americans for Prosperity, headed by Tim Phillips, former partner of Ralph Reed in Century Strategies; and FreedomWorks, led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Previously, both organizations funded and orchestrated the so-called “tea parties” staged on April 15. And in many ways, today’s town halls are simply a continuation of yesterday’s tea parties, with many of the same players and tactics.

It’s Chutzpah time again!  What funding? Can you show it to me?  And again, even if it were there, nu?  (That’s Yiddish for “So what?”)  What direction?  Everyone I know, who is a tea party coordinator, does their own thing.  I can’t even get the various groups in the Bay Area to work together because they are so entrenched in their grassrootiness.

But this is when I really had it with your Chutzpah: your reference to our Stalinist-style campaign.  Who is shutting up whom? Who has been forestalling townhall meetings?  Who printed the Fight Back Against the Right memo (clearly addressed to folks on the left) instructing people how to arrange or dominate townhall meetings with their MOCs?  In one breath, MOCs refuse to meet with constituents they assume are right wingers, HCAN puts out a memo telling left-wing agitators how they can go about arranging such meetings and that if they organize their own, they will have much more control over the event and will be able to limit the other side’s opportunities for disruption.  “When the other side gets too loud, we should shut them down with chants that counter their message.”  So, townhall meetings, disruption and shout downs are ok for left-wing agitators, but not right-wingers.  And the left should wrest control from the right and re-focus towards the left, but when it is the other way around, oh, I get it, it is an angry, unruly mob!

Thank G-d your average American can diagnose a case of Chutzpah with ease.  I’m sorry to report, Bill, that you are suffering from an acute case of Terminal Chutzpah.

How does this all sound for nonpartisanship, inclusiveness and open debate?  Who is asking whom to snitch, Bill?  And let’s examine some of the dots here in this scenario.  We have a memo from HCAN, the server for which is owned by Blue State Digital, which happens to be the former employer of Macon Phillips, who is Obama’s media director and the suspected author of the now infamous “flag us” statement from the White House.  Who is Stalinesque? Didn’t Stalin have a politburo?  Doesn’t Obama have a record-breaking number of Czars who, I might add, are unaccountable to the People?

One more thing you should know, Bill.  My husband and many of the tea party members came from Socialist or Communist dictatorships.  In particular, my husband’s family came from the USSR.  When they were contemplating a move to the US in the early 70s, they couldn’t even tell their extended family and friends for fear that information might be coerced from them in ways that make waterboarding look like child’s play.  They lived in fear that someone might get suspicious and snitch on them.  The mere act of thinking about leaving the USSR put their jobs and apartment at risk.  A mere slip of the tongue from their children in school could land them in the gulag.  All this while you were worrying about whether you should wear black or brown shoes with your suit.

The tactics used by the left in the HCAN memo and in your own article, Bill, where you turn the debate on its head and shout “See?” have been around since bipeds crawled out of the primordial ooze.

I thank G-d I will be on the side of history with people who fought for the right of the common man to be heard rather than on the side that went through all manner of contortions to silence, marginalize and ultimately dehumanize the common man.

Yes, Americans don’t like “rude, ugly obnoxious behavior on the left or right” but they also have a good nose and can sniff guys like you out like Limburger Cheese.  And that is precisely what scares you.

In the end, the staged town hall protests will hurt the opposition’s cause, not help it. Which is why, were I a Republican member of Congress, I’d encourage these yahoos to stay home. Were I a Democratic member, I’d pay them to show up.

In the end, Bill, were I a Republican member of Congress, I’d encourage the tea people to keep doing what they’re doing because it is their God-given right enumerated in the Constitution and one that you exercise freely on a daily basis with access to millions.  Were I a Democrat member, I’d stop grousing ad nauseum about your constituents exercising their First Amendments and earn your keep by actually answering their questions instead of obfuscating and prevaricating about the bill’s contents.

Before I finish, I’d like to extend Bill an invitation to come to my home and explain to my children what a “tea bagger” is and how he can possibly include in that definition a person like their mother…an educated, heterosexual, Jewish, stay-at-home mom who is at the forefront of the tea party movement in the Bay Area.  Once again, the press is debasing the tone of debate in America and giving parents across the nation cause to consider cancelling their subscriptions to a media that persists in using such odious and reprehensible verbiage to malign the millions who feel their representatives are not listening.

Sally Zelikovsky is the Founder of Bay Area Patriots and the Coordinator of the San Francisco Tea Party.  She thanks President Obama for rushing through legislation inimical to liberty, forcing millions from all walks of life to wake out of their complacency and work together on issues that bind them, showing the world what true nonpartisanship is.

Rabbi Yonason Goldson

Hello, dummies!  Oh my God, look at you.  Anyone else hurt in the accident?

Seriously, Senator Reid has a face of a Saint – A Saint Bernard. Now I know why they call you the arithmetic man.  You add partisanship, subtract pleasure, divide attention, and multiply ignorance. Reid is so physically unimposing, he makes Pee Wee Herman look like Mr.  T. And Reid’s so dumb, he makes Speaker Pelosi look like an intellectual. Nevada is soooo screwed!

If I were less polite, I’d say Reid makes Kevin Federline look successful.

Speaking of the Speaker…  Nancy Pelosi, hubba, hubba!  Hey baby, you must’ve been something before electricity. Seriously, the Speaker may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you.  She really is an idiot. Madame Speaker…  want to make twelve bucks the hard way?  Pelosi says she’s not partisan, but her constituents call her Madame Pelossilini.

Charlie Rangel…  still alive and still robbing the taxpayers blind.  What does that make, six decades of theft? Rangel’s the only man with a rent-controlled mansion.  He’s the guy who writes our tax laws but forgot to pay taxes on $75 grand in rental income! So why isn’t he the Treasury Secretary?  Rangel runs more scams than a Nigerian Banker.

Barney Frank – he’s a better actor than Fred Flintstone.  Consider…  he and Dodd caused the whole financial meltdown and they’re not only not serving time with Bubba and Rodney, they’re still heading up the financial system! Let’s all admit it…  Barney Frank slobbers more than a sheepdog on Novocain. How did this guy get elected?  Oh, that’s right…  he’s from Massachusetts. That’s the state that elects Mr. Charisma, John Kerry — man of the people!

You know, if Senator Dodd were any more crooked, you could open wine bottles with him. Here’s a news flash, Dodd: when your local newspaper calls you a “lying weasel”, it may be time to retire. Dodd’s involved in more shady deals than the Clintons.  Even Rangel looks up to him!

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, I really respect you…  especially given your upbringing.  All you’ve overcome…  I heard your birth certificate is an apology from the condom factory. I don’t know what makes you so dumb, but it really works for you. Personally, I don’t think you’re a fool, but what’s my opinion compared to that of thousands of others?

As for President Obama, what can I say?  They say President Obama’s arrogant and aloof, but I don’t agree. Now it’s true when you enter the room, you have to kiss his ring.  I don’t mind, but he has it in his back pocket. His mind is open to new ideas — so open that ideas simply pass through it. Obama lies so much, I was actually surprised to find out his first name really was Barack.

Just don’t ask about his middle name! But Obama was able to set a record…  he actually lied more in 60 days than Bill Clinton.

FOR THOSE THAT VOTED FOR “HOPE AND CHANGE”… BEND OVER AND PREPARE TO RECEIVE YOUR BOUNTY!

This is a summary of some of the provisions of the proposed Healthcare Bill.  You won’t believe it!

FROM THE CURRENTLY PROPOSED HEALTH CARE BILL !

These are some items in the Health Care Bill that many members of our Congress have chosen not to take the time to read.

Welcome to the Proletariat:

Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS THAT SELF-INSURE!!

Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill – THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get

Pg 354 Sec 1177 – Govt WILL RESTRICT  ENROLLMENT of Special needs people

Pg 42 of HC Bill – The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC Benefits for you.

PG 50 Section 152 in HC bill – HC WILL BE PROVIDED TO ALL NON-US CITIZENS, illegal or otherwise

Pg 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill- ALL NON-RESIDENT ALIENS will be exempt from individual taxes. (Resident Americans will pay)

Pg 58 HC Bill – Govt will have real-time access to individuals finances & national health care card

Pg 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 Govt will have direct access to your bank accounts for electronic funds transfer, no choice

Pg 72 Lines 8-14 Govt is creating an HC EXCHANGE to bring private HC plans under Govt control.

PG 84 Sec 203 HC bill – Govt mandates ALL benefit pkgs for private HC plans in the Exchange

PG 85 Line 7 HC Bill – Specs. for of Benefit Levels for Plans

Pg 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18 The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan

pg 124 lines 24-25 HC No company can sue Government on price fixing. No “judicial review” against Government Monopoly

pg 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill - DOCTORS/ AMA - The Govt will tell you what your salary will be.

Pg 145 Line 15-17 An Employers MUST auto enroll employees into public option plan. NO CHOICE

Pg 126 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.

Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Employer with payroll 400k & above, who does not provide public option, pays 8% tax on all payroll

Pg 150 Lines 9-13 Businesses with payroll btw 251k & 400k who doesn’t provide public option pays 2-6% tax on all payroll

Pg 167 Lines 18-23 ANY individual who doesn’t have acceptable HC according to the Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income

Pg 195 HC Bill -officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans finances/personal records

PG 203 Line 14-15 HC - ”The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax”

READ THE FOLLOWING LINES SLOWLY….

Pg 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill- Govt WILL REDUCE PHYSICIAN SERVICES for Medicaid Seniors, and low income people.

Pg 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill – Doctors, doesn’t matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same

PG 425 Lines 4-12 Govt mandates Advance Care Planning Consultations. (seniors)

Pg 425 Lines 17-19 Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of atty. Mandatory!

PG 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3 Govt provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death

PG 427 Lines 15-24 Govt mandates program for orders for end of life. The Govt has a say in how your life ends

Pg 429 Lines 1-9 An “adv. care planning consult” will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates

PG 429 Lines 10-12 “adv. care consultation” may include an ORDER FOR END OFLIFE plans. AN “ORDER” from GOV

Pg 429 Lines 13-25 – The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order.

PG 430 Lines 11-15 The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life.

IS THIS WHAT WE WANT, AMERICA?

I think NOT!

I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as too big to fail.   Gimme a break!

Maybe it wasn’t the bailouts that stunk.  Maybe it was the brown-25 (by Ur-Anus Corp) in your pants…

Bernanke Had to ‘Hold His Nose’ Over Bailouts

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The U.S. administration is trying to get Israel to freeze construction in its West Bank settlements and to shelve plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu says there are “naturally” differences of opinion between Israel and the U.S., but that the sides are “trying to reach an understanding.”

In other words, come for a visit. We’ll sit and talk. I’ll listen. You listen.  But, you won’t tell me how to run or defend my country.

Meanwhile, Mitchell said Sunday the U.S. administration is determined to achieve a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement.

In other words, if you don’t do what we say, we’re gonna have problems. The Anointed One demands subservience.

Netanyahu: Israel Wants ‘Understanding’ With U.S.

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Read on.. Click here

SBG

Here’s a  snippet!

Police officers weren’t the only folks being called racist by Obama supporters last week. If you have ever harbored doubt about why the Obama machine has been unable to provide incontrovertible proof of his U.S. citizenship, then you … are … a … racist.

Sure, it sounds funny enough to be a Jeff Foxworthy punch line, but it was said in utter, condescending sincerity.

By Anne Bayefsky

	The Anointed One

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | President Barack Obama last Monday met for the first time with leaders of selected Jewish organizations and leaks from the meeting now make one thing very clear. The only free country in the Middle East no longer has a friend in the leader of the free world. Obama is the most hostile sitting American president in the history of the state of Israel.

This was the very first meeting with Jewish community’s leaders. Earlier requests for an audience with major Jewish organizations had reportedly been ignored. Six months after taking office the president finally got around to issuing an invitation to stop the bleeding. Increasing numbers of Jews even among the overwhelming number who voted for Obama have been voicing serious concern about his real agenda.

The meeting, however, did not showcase the president’s trademark engagement and dialogue routine. Instead, he decided to cherry pick his Jewish audience to include pro-Obama newcomers with little support in the mainstream Jewish world, such as J Street, while blackballing the Zionist Organization of America. The oldest pro-Israel group in the United States, with a Washington office second in size only to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was not a voice Obama wanted to hear. This leaves the president willing to engage Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but not ZOA President Mort Klein.

The growing alarm in the Jewish community was also something the White House was bent on covering up. They refused to put the meeting on the President’s public schedule until it was outed. The White House demanded strict confidentiality and issued a terse couple of lines that it occurred when it was all over.

WAKE UP!

But there is no papering over the distressing reality that emerged. The president told his listeners that he preferred putting daylight between the United States and Israel. His reported justification: “there was no light between the US and Israeli positions for the last eight years, and no progress was made.”

Evidently, unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, 21 settlements and 9,000 residents counts for nothing. The Palestinian terrorist leadership and street have refused to accept a Jewish state for the past eight years (and the previous 53) because the United States did not add sufficiently to Israel’s isolation.

The president apparently believes that the Palestinians are more likely to end terrorism, incitement to violence and rampant antisemitism if the United States applies more pressure on their victims. Even if Obama doesn’t get it, Mahmoud Abbas does. He is now refusing to negotiate anything with the new Israeli government until Obama’s settlement conditions are met.

During the meeting, the president repeatedly described his new policy in terms of one of Yasser Arafat’s favorite mantras, “even-handedness.” That’s diplotalk for a moral equivalence between an Arab war against Jewish self-determination launched from the day of Israel’s birth decades before any “occupation” and the conditions of third-generation Palestinian “refugees” kept in limbo pending Israel’s destruction. But Obama’s even-handedness was no slip of the tongue. In his Cairo speech, the president equated the Holocaust to Palestinian “dislocation.”

The president promoted his strategy of putting hard public “pressure” on Israel as a means to build more credibility with Arab states. He must have meant the kind of credibility that comes from his policy of leaving an “open door” to Iran after its discredited election.

A DEM PRESIDENT BLAMING THE MEDIA?

Obama then claimed that the widespread perception of an anti-Israel agenda was all the media’s fault because the media is only interested in a “man-bites-dog” story. When an administration sends a US ambassador back to Syria though it is still listed as a key state sponsor of terrorism, hosts terrorist kingpins pursuing Israel’s annihilation, and was caught trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the story is far-fetched alright, but true.

The president joked that Al-Jazeera often airs pictures of him wearing a yarmulke at the Western Wall. Except the photo-op during the election campaign had been intended to fool a Jewish audience that is no longer amused.
Reports also quote the president as claiming Israel has yet to “engage in serious self-reflection.” Considering Israel is a democratic country forced to send its children into the armed forces for two to three years and its men into reserve duty for another twenty-five, that isn’t the audacity of hope. It’s just plain audacity.

There is no doubt that the pressure on Israel from the Obama administration is going to get a lot worse, as the President told the group “there is a narrow window of opportunity for advancing the peace process.” Everyone understood the threat. The narrow window is Obama’s self-defined political ambitions bearing no relationship to the realities of the Middle East or the welfare of either Israel or the United States.

Tells it all just like it is….

A sign in NC - Get out your wallets!!!

Pelosi Censors Republicans

Monday night Democrats voted to shut down the U.S. House Representatives rather than allow a handful of Republican Congressmen to speak on the floor. What could have been so offensive or frightening about our discourse that Speaker Pelosi felt she had to protect her party by gagging free speech in the House?

In fact, we had planned to speak on the lack of transparency of the House since Democrats took control. We had planned to criticize Speaker Pelosi for repeatedly denying Members, the media, and the public to right to read legislation before it was voted on. We were set to discuss House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s statement last week that if his Members were required to read the Democrats’ healthcare reform package before it was voted on, it would fail.

So the Speaker obviously feels that if the public is truly aware of her party’s agenda, they will reject it. She is now making sure the public is kept in the dark by trampling the centuries-old democratic traditions of the House.

Read the entire article here

From the Washington Times …

The difference, and it’s only a slight one, is that robbers, burglars and thieves often hold themselves to higher standards than members of Congress. “

Mr. Franken goes to Washington

Now comes Hizb ut-Tahrir, a movement looking to recruit jihadis to establish a new caliphate. Just what we need. More murderous whackadoos. In America. With our pan-arabist, pan-islamist, islamophilic administration, particularly in the White House and State Department. Setting up shop (or reestablishing itself) in Chicago, the third largest city in America and the city with the one of the largest muslim population centers in the USA.

Just what America needs.

For some real interesting reading, click on the links throughout this article from JewishWorldReview.com.

By Steven Emerson

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international movement seeking to re-establish an international Islamic state – or Caliphate – and to indoctrinate Muslims into supporting jihad, wants to step up its recruitment efforts in the United States. On July 19, the group, whose alumni include 9/ 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and suicide bombers, will hold a conference titled “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam” in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in Oak Lawn, Ill, a Chicago suburb.

For decades, Hizb ut-Tahrir America (HTA) has operated covertly, holding these Khalifa (Caliphate) conferences in the United States under the name of front organizations. But that has begun to change. Last fall, the group issued a leaflet in its own name urging Muslims to boycott the U.S. elections. The group just released this video promoting the July 19 conference. According to the conference website, the program includes a question-and-answer session and two panels; one entitled “Capitalism is Doomed to Fail,” the other “The Suffering Under Capitalism.”

The conference initially was scheduled for the Aqsa School in Bridgeview, Ill. But the school withdrew, claiming Hizb ut-Tahrir officials “misrepresented themselves.” An official said the group approached the school in late April claiming it wanted to hold a bazaar-type event in July that would involve selling traditional food and clothing. School officials said that when they learned the real purpose, they cancelled and refunded the group’s deposit.

While solid numbers are difficult to come by, there is little question that Hizb ut-Tahrir’s worldwide membership has grown substantially since the September 11 attacks, says Madeleine Gruen, a senior analyst with the NEFA Foundation. In 2003, estimates of HT membership ranged from 10,000 to 100,000 people worldwide. Today, by contrast, the group (currently active in more than 40 countries) has approximately 100,000 members in Indonesia alone and “many thousands” more around the world, Gruen told IPT News.

“Jews are a people of slander. They are treacherous people who violate oaths and covenants. They lie and change words from the right places. They take the rights of the people unjustly, and kill the Prophets and the innocent.”

In the United States, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s following is estimated at no more than a few hundred. The decision to hold this month’s conference under its own name is a sign that the group is preparing to raise its profile. Once that is achieved, Gruen adds, its cadres are supposed to establish “an Islamic government and military” in order to take Hizb ut-Tahrir’s message to the world.

HT seeks to fuse an ideology combining orthodox Islam, Marxist-Leninist economics, anti-Semitism and opposition to Western democracy into a political program to bring back the Caliphate. Despite its public rhetoric about nonviolence, Hizb ut-Tahrir has “precisely the same ideology and objectives” as al Qaeda, Gruen told IPT News. And HT has a much larger membership base to recruit from, she added.

While it refrains from carrying out terrorist actions itself, Hizb ut-Tahrir glorifies jihadism and excoriates the terrorist organization Hamas as being too soft on Israel. In a leaflet posted on its website July 1, HT said that if the Caliphate were in existence, all of “Palestine” would be rid of “the usurpation of the Jewish occupiers” and brought “to the fold of the Islamic state.”

HT was founded in 1952 in Bayt al-Maqdis, a Jordanian-occupied suburb of Jerusalem, by Sheikh Yaqiuddin Al-Nabhani, a man whose philosophy had been shaped by the Muslim Brotherhood. After he concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood was too moderate, Al-Nabhani formed Hizb ut-Tahrir. After its involvement in failed coup attempts in Egypt and Jordan, HT was banned throughout the Middle East. It moved to Western Europe, and after the fall of Soviet Communism the group spread into Central Asia.

HT is obsessed with the purported evils of the United States, President Obama and the capitalist system. A look at its website found articles with titles like “Bailouts and bonus culture shows [sic] the corruption of democracy;” “Obama Offers Sugar-Coated Poison for the Region!” (a recap of the President’s recent visit to the Middle East); and “G20 Leaders attempt to salvage the last vestiges of Capitalism.” A common theme is that Muslims in Pakistan should not join with the U.S. military in fighting against the Taliban. “Fighting Muslims is a great evil, which only benefits America,” reads one typical entry on the HT website.

A posting entitled “Obama’s words will not hide America’s ugly face of Colonialism” said of the President’s speech to Muslims in Egypt last month:

“Although this appears a seemingly positive gesture towards the Muslim world, the actions of his government appear every bit as ruthless as the Bush administration. [Obama] differs only to the extent that, unlike Bush who spoke with frank hatred, he uses ’soft power’ and personal charm to cover his intentions.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesmen have emphasized that their organization does not engage in terrorism. They claim the U.S. and Pakistani governments seek to suppress the group because they fear its advocacy of “justice” for Muslims.

Critics say the argument is a sham. “The freedom and justice HT seeks by overthrowing democracy can often only be attained through violence,” said Zeyno Baran, senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Eurasian Policy in July 2008 testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

In her testimony, Baran added: “HT is not likely to take up terrorism itself. Terrorist acts are simply not part of its mission. HT exists to serve as an ideological and political training ground for Islamists. And I have called them a ‘conveyer belt to terrorism.’ ”

Terrorists who have been members of Hizb ut-Tahrir include Al Qaeda’s Mohammed; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, who was originally a member in Jordan; Hambali, head of the East Asian-based terror group Jemaa Islamiya, and Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who were recruited by Hamas to carry out suicide bombings at a Tel Aviv seafront bar. Read more about HT’s record as a “conveyor belt” for producing terrorists here.

In a June 2001 article in its publication Al-Waie, Hizb-Ut-Tahrir issued a fatwa on suicide attacks which said that “all ways and means which a Muslim uses to kill unbelievers is [sic] permitted as long as the enemy unbeliever is killed.” It is acceptable to “blow yourself up amongst their military encampments or blow yourself and them up with a belt of explosives.”

HT has been banned in Turkey and Germany for distributing literature that includes incitement to hatred and violence against Jews. In a paper for the Manhattan Institute, Gruen pointed to one leaflet distributed by the group titled: “And Kill Them Whenever You Find Them, and Turn Them Out From Where They Have Turned You Out.” It stated that:

“Jews are a people of slander. They are treacherous people who violate oaths and covenants. They lie and change words from the right places. They take the rights of the people unjustly, and kill the Prophets and the innocent.”

The leaflet then encouraged martyrdom operations against Jews.

Despite the incendiary message, law enforcement’s hands are tied when it comes to a group like Hizb ut-Tahrir, said Bob Blitzer, who formerly headed the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts. “Preaching violence is not enough reason to arrest anyone,” he said. “Law enforcement is probably aware of this group and is checking them out” to the extent that it can under the law.

The danger is that as a result of exposure to HT’s extremism “someone on the edge gets radicalized and takes it to heart and commits a violent act,” Blitzer said.

That doesn’t mean the government is powerless. Given that Hizb ut-Tahrir conferences typically include sympathizers from numerous countries, federal homeland security officials should expect supporters of the group to try to enter the United States in order to attend the Khalifa Conference, Gruen said. The United States Code bars from the United States any alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.”

But in the past the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (the federal agency chiefly responsible for stopping foreign supporters of extremist groups from entering the United States) has been asleep at the switch when it comes to HT. In 2007, Hizb ut-Tahrir had a booth right next to the Department of Homeland Security at a conference sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America – a Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization that was an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal government’s successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

Dan Vara, a former attorney for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Florida, has been at the forefront of many key enforcement matters involving counterterrorism and counterintelligence. He says ICE has ample legal authority to prevent Hizb ut-Tahrir’s foreign supporters from entering the United States.

“I would rake them over the coals on these issues” related to HT’s support for the Taliban and advocacy of Hamas violence, Vara said in an interview.

For example, Section 1182 of the United States Code allows consular officers or the attorney general to bar from the United States “any alien who endorses or espouses terrorist activity or support of a terrorist organization.” That section also provides that “Any alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is inadmissible.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir has a right to peacefully assemble and discuss whatever ideology it chooses. U.S. law enforcement, however, has a right to invoke the law and prevent foreign Islamists seeking to attend the conference from entering the United States.

Its compelling…

Jewish World Review July 13, 2009 / 21 Tamuz 5769

By Anne Bayefsky

Why does Obama treat the two so differently?

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Speaking in Ghana on Saturday President Obama lectured Africans on local repression, corruption, brutality, good governance and accountability. The startling contrast to his June speech in Cairo was revealing. Stroking Muslim and Arab nations has become the hallmark of Obama’s foreign policy.

In Egypt, he chose not to utter the words “terrorism” or “genocide.” In Egypt, there was nothing “brutal” he could conjure up, no “corruption” and no “repression”.

In Ghana, with a 70% Christian population, he mentioned “good governance” seven times and added direct calls upon his audience to “make change from the bottom up.” He praised “people taking control of their destiny” and pressed “young people” to “hold your leaders accountable.”

He made no such calls for action by the people of Arab states—despite the fact that not a single Arab country is “free,” according to the latest Freedom House global survey.
Before the Muslim world Obama donned the role of apologist-in-chief. Over and over again his examples of shortfalls in the protection of rights and freedoms were American: the “prison at Guantanamo Bay,” “rules on charitable giving [that] have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation,” impediments to the “choice” of Muslim women to shroud their bodies.

Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation. In a rare tongue-lashing for Africans from any American president, he chastised: “It’s easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict … But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy … or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants … tribalism and patronage and nepotism … and … corruption.”

He might equally have said to the Arab and Muslim world: “It’s easy to scapegoat Israel and blame your problems on the presence of Jews—albeit on a fraction of 1% of the territory inhabited by the Arab world—but Israel is not responsible for poverty, illiteracy, torture, trafficking, slavery and oppression rampant across your countries.” But he did not.

In Ghana he pointed to specific heroes that had exposed human rights abuse, singling out by name a courageous investigative reporter. In Egypt, though journalists and bloggers are routinely threatened, jailed and worse, no such brave soul came to mind.

In a Christian African nation he said, “If we are honest, for far too many Africans, conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun. There are wars over land and wars over resources. And it is still far too easy for those without conscience to manipulate whole communities into fighting among faiths and tribes.”

To the Arab and Muslim world he could have said: “Since the day of Israel’s birth Arab and Muslim countries have made conflict with Israel a part of life, warring over land and manipulating whole communities into fighting in the name of Islam to render the area Judenrein.”

Instead, he turned on the only democracy in the Middle East and said the presence of Jews on Arab-claimed territory—settlements—is an affront to be “stopped.” It didn’t matter that agreements require ultimate ownership of this territory to be determined by negotiation or that apartheid Palestine is hardly a worthy pursuit.

From Ghana he chided Africans: “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end.”

For an Arab and Muslim audience he cooed: “America will defend itself, respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities, which are also threatened.”

Ghanaians will likely turn the other cheek, secure enough to take it and even be grateful for the spotlight. But Obama’s double-standard is not a victimless crime. The disparity between the scolding he gave in Ghana and the love-in he held in Cairo illuminates an incoherent and dangerous agenda.

In his lofty, but empty, rhetoric in Ghana, Obama promised “we must stand up to inhumanity in our midst,” pledged “a commitment … to sanction and stop” warmongers and embraced the Zimbabwe non-governmental organization that “braved brutal repression to stand up for the principle that a person’s vote is their sacred right.”

These are devastating words for Iranians struggling valiantly to keep the hope of democracy alive but forced to bear witness to the contradiction. Betrayed, they have watched the Obama administration pledge to move forward on negotiations with illegally ensconced Iranian thugs—at the very same time their victims are being rounded up, tortured and readied for show-trials in advance of certain execution.

On Friday, Obama, and the rest of the G-8 with his blessing, announced that thinking about more sanctions on Iran can wait until September. And then we can expect yet another round of Security Council dickering over minimalist responses to more Iranian stalling tactics—until an Iranian nuclear weapon is inevitable. Though it is 2,202 days since the U.N.’s atomic energy agency first declared that Iran was violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Obama pretends legitimizing those same nuclear-proliferating fascists makes it more likely the clock will stop ticking.

Iranians standing up for their allegedly “sacred rights” know Obama has it exactly backwards. Speechifying about “our interconnected world” and “common interests” in Ghana was cold comfort to the voices of Muslim dissidents and Jewish victims deserted in the Obama wilderness.

SBG

Jewish World Review July 10, 2009 / 18 Tamuz 5769

By Caroline B. Glick

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had reason to feel good about himself this week. Less than a month after he secured his hold on power for another four years by rigging the presidential elections, Ahmadinejad felt comfortable addressing his subjugated nation as its rightful dictator. So in a chilling televised performance on Tuesday, he triumphantly declared the stolen June 12 poll the “freest” and the “healthiest” elections in the world and promised they would act as a harbinger for Islamic revolution worldwide.

Ahmadinejad’s accomplishments these past few weeks have been vast and unmistakable. By securing the unconditional support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his power grab, Ahmadinejad killed three birds with one stone. He ensured that the clerical hierarchy in Qom — which is dependent on Khamenei for its financial stability — acquiesced to his authority. He expanded the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ control over the country by making them the indispensible guardians of the revolution. And he effectively transformed Khamenei from the “supreme leader” into a creature of Ahmadinejad’s will. The moment that Khamenei gave Ahmadinejad his full support and gave a green light to the Revolutionary Guards to repress the protesters, Khamenei tied his own fate to that of his president.

This means that today Ahmadinejad is completely free to maintain and escalate his policy of international brinksmanship on all levels. From Iran’s race towards nuclear capabilities, to its efforts to destabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, to its support for Hizbullah and Hamas, to its support for anti-American regimes in Latin America and its cultivation of terror networks in the Western Hemisphere, to its strategic proliferation alliance with North Korea, Ahmadinejad’s continued reign means that the world can expect expanded Iranian activity on all these fronts.

In the meantime, the rest of the world’s response to events in Iran has been discouraging. The G8’s decision Wednesday to wait until late September to even consider stronger sanctions against Iran means that at a minimum Ahmadinejad has another three months to enrich uranium without worry. And given that US President Barack Obama is on record supporting pursuing negotiations with Iran until at least January 2010, it is hard to imagine that the international community will take any concerted action against Iran in the foreseeable future.

As he moves forward, no doubt Ahmadinejad takes heart from the supine US response to North Korea’s July 4 missile launches. Tuesday Yediot Ahronotreported that Israeli analysts who reviewed videotapes of North Korea’s missile tests concluded that alongside the various short range Scuds it sent over the Sea of Japan, Pyongyang also launched a Taeopodong-2 multi-stage long range missile capable of reaching Alaska. Tal Inbar, head of the Space Research Center said, “The three seconds seen [of the Taeopodong-2] on the video prove how much North Korea’s long range missile program has advanced.”

At the same time, both South Korean intelligence and US Defense Department sources have accused North Korea of responsibility for launching massive cyber-attacks against US and South Korean computer systems over the past week. The attacks temporarily crippled multiple systems including those of the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, the South Korean Foreign Ministry, the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange and the Washington Post.

In the face of all of this, the Obama administration has been disturbingly timid. The White House’s most consistent response to North Korea’s belligerent moves has been to ignore them and hope North Korea decides to behave itself.

Matching their meekness towards Iran, the G8 leaders responded to Pyongyang’s most recent provocations with an announcement that they would like to become friends with Kim Jung Il. As Obama put it, “It’s very important for the world community to speak to countries like Iran and North Korea and encourage them to take a path that does not result in a nuclear arms race in places like the Middle East.”

Over the past several weeks, as the regimes in Pyongyang and Teheran have become ever more brazen in demonstrating their belligerent contempt for the West, the prevailing wisdom has argued that the West has no good options for containing or defeating them. The traditional take on North Korea is that the world’s leading missile and nuclear proliferator poses less of a burden to global stability than a post-regime North Korea filled with millions of starving people who have been cut off from the world for sixty years. By this thinking, the world is better off living with a psycho-state capable of fomenting a global nuclear war than caring for its victims.

As for Iran, as Gabriel Schoenfeld wrote last month in the Wall Street Journal, due to the gutting of the CIA’s capacity to conduct covert political warfare during the 1970s, today the US lacks the capability to assist Iranian regime opponents in their efforts to overthrow the mullocracy. As Schoenfeld put it, “the US appears utterly powerless to influence the course of events.”

Schoenfeld urged the US to move swiftly to rebuild its covert political operations capacity. While this certainly makes sense, in truth, the US doesn’t need to build up much of a capacity to topple either the regime in Pyongyang or the regime in Teheran.

Despite Ahmadinejad’s success in maintaining his grip on power, it is an indisputable fact that regime opponents succeeded these past few weeks as never before in destabilizing the regime and in demonstrating its hollow core. Even as Ahmadinejad was glorying in his victory, his opponents — defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi and former president Muhammad Khatami — were calling for a three-day national strike.

Thursday, thousands of Iranians risked life and limb to heed the call to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the regime crackdown on university students. That the 1999 crackdown occurred on Khatami’s orders shows that regime opponents are looking for fundamental, revolutionary change in the regime — not cosmetic reforms.

It is worth noting that Iran’s current revolutionary ferment arose from the unlikeliest of sources. The June 12 elections were not supposed to pose a challenge to the regime. All they were supposed to do was pit one regime loyalist against three other regime loyalists.

The fact that the public could view Ahmadinejad’s decision to steal the election from former prime minister and regime loyalist Moussavi as an opportunity to bring down the regime demonstrates clearly the magnitude of the public’s rejection of the Islamic revolution. Quite simply, if the Iranian people can take these elections as an excuse to call for the overthrow of the regime, any spark can light that fire.

While a refurbished CIA would no doubt be helpful in this regard, it is not necessary. The international community already has the necessary tools to do the job. All it needs — indeed all any one country needs — is the will to actively assist Iran’s disparate dissident groups who separately and together wish to see the end of the mullocracy.

Iran’s borders are porous. Whether through international defense contractors or covert operatives working for any country, arms can be easily smuggled to various disaffected minorities from the Azeris to the Kurds, the Baluchis the Ahwaz Arab, and the Bahais. Iraq’s ratlines run two ways. So do Afghanistan’s.

As to the Persians, they are already taking the lead in calling for national strikes. They should be supported through internet, radio and satellite broadcasts. Whether through the Voice of America, the Voice of Israel, Radio Free Europe, or Radio Free Iran, foreign agents can pump in truthful and relevant information about the regime and enable coordinated, countrywide unrest that could potentially topple the regime in a matter of days or weeks.

Then there is North Korea. As ailing dictator Kim Jung-Il uses his brinksmanship to secure a smooth transfer of control over his malnourished slave state to his son ahead of his death, it seems as though no one in the West has a clue what to do about North Korea. The US, we have been told, is too overextended with its deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq to successfully deter or prevent North Korea from carrying out further provocations and proliferation activities. And anyway, for years we have been told that North Korea isn’t really serious about its threats. As far as the “experts” are concerned North Korea’s leaders don’t really mean anyone any harm. They just want to scare us all a little to make sure we don’t get any ideas about bringing them down.

But the fact is that between its own provocations and its massive proliferation of missiles and nuclear technology, North Korea is an enormous threat to global security. And it is also a fact that overthrowing the regime in North Korea is the easiest, safest, fastest, and most humane way to prevent the likes of Kim Jung-Il from provoking and proliferating the world into a nuclear conflagration.

All it would take to put an end to this monstrous regime is for South Korea to open up its borders. How long would it take for the last North Korean to turn off the lights when Seoul beckoned over the horizon?

The models for overthrowing the regimes in Teheran and Pyongyang are not new. Modified versions were successfully implemented just twenty-odd years ago. The model for Iran is Poland circa 1981. The model for North Korea is East Germany in 1989.

Unfortunately, whereas in the 1980s the leaders of the Free World were committed to winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union by securing the freedom of those who lived under Communism’s jackboot, today, led by Obama, the Free World behaves as though the Berlin Wall fell of its own devices. The will of free men and women risking everything to oppose tyranny had nothing to do with it, we are told. If we care about peace, we should appease the likes of Ahmadinejad and Kim, not bring them down.

On Tuesday, an insect wrecked Ahmadinejad’s victory speech. As he bragged that Iranian democracy is a role model for the world, a large moth zoomed around him, breaking his train of thought. Ahmadinejad was brought low before his people by a moth he couldn’t swat.

If a bug could humiliate Ahmadinejad in what was supposed to be his moment of triumph, surely the willing nations of the world — or even just Israel — together with the brave Iranian people can bring him down. It would certainly be more cost effective than trying to negotiate a deal with a nuclear-armed mullocracy.

And certainly the South Koreans and the Japanese can feed the starving North Koreans and free them from the bondage of their monstrous regime. Doing so would be vastly less expensive than living under the shadow of Pyongyang’s nuclear-armed psycho-regime.

Just because the US is currently on vacation from its role as leader of the Free World doesn’t mean that other free people cannot do the right thing.