http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3752/kerry-israel-accident Imposition of a solution on unwilling partners is a terrible thing to do, as well as essentially undemocratic. They have elections over there for that. Yesterday it was revealed that that the current US (“I’ve Got Israel’s back”) administration leaked to the media the specifications for the heretofore-secret US-Israel installation for Israel’s Arrow 3 […]
Report: NSA Secretly Collecting Phone Records Of All U.S. Verizon Calls The National Security Administration is secretly collecting phone record information for all U.S. calls on the Verizon network. “Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, […]
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/If-you-see-something–say-nothing-7654 Changes to the AP stylebook show that we’re blinding ourselves to the connections between Islamic extremism and terrorism. It was a report of the now numbingly familiar sort. Witnesses at the synagogue in Paris recounted that an Iranian immigrant had been screaming “Allahu Akbar!” while he chased the rabbi and his son. When he […]
A RESPONSE FROM GERALD WALPIN:
I find the definition of “bigot” very interesting:
“One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.”
When it comes to politics (even the other categories) most people are, and are entitled to be, strongly partial to one’s own views — indeed, if one is not, one doesn’t really have one’s own views.
As to “intolerant of those who differ,” that can mean nothing more than believing that those who disagree are dead wrong — an allowed view. As you so well show with your examples, the accusation of being a bigot often is thrown against those with whom one disagrees, making the accuser the bigot!
Now that is real food for thought. rsk
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-angel-band-project-why-it-matters?f=puball Readers of Family Security Matters who have followed my work over the years have noticed in the nearly 100 articles I’ve written that most often I address terrorism, geoglobal as well as domestic threats to the security of our nation, and preparedness issues. Often these are discussions about WMDs. Big picture stuff. In the […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350183/when-sunni-and-shiite-extremists-make-war-daniel-pipes
“The fighting now underway benefits those of us outside the Middle East. May it weaken both combatants even as our governments take meaningful steps to help civilians caught in the crossfire.”
In his article “The Muslim Civil War,” Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal disagrees with my argument about Syria. He characterizes the position I hold this way:
If al Qaeda fighters want to murder Hezbollah fighters and Hezbollah fighters want to return the favor, who in their right mind would want to stand in the way? . . . If one branch of Islam wants to be at war with another branch for a few years — or decades — so much the better for the non-Islamic world. Mass civilian casualties in Aleppo or Homs is their tragedy, not ours. It does not implicate us morally. And it probably benefits us strategically, not least by redirecting jihadist energies away from the West.
Wrong on every count.
Why wrong and on how many counts? Actually, Stephens points to just one count: He looks back on the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, arguing that it harmed both the West’s interests and its moral standing. He assesses its impact on the West:
It’s true that the price of crude declined sharply almost every year of the war, but that only goes to show how weak the correlation is between Persian Gulf tensions and oil prices. Otherwise, the 1980s were the years of the tanker wars in the Gulf, including Iraq’s attack on the USS Stark; the hostage-taking in Lebanon; and the birth of Hezbollah, with its suicide bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut. Iraq invaded Kuwait less than two years after the war’s end. Iran emerged with its revolutionary fervors intact — along with a rekindled interest in developing nuclear weapons. In short, a long intra-Islamic war left nobody safer, wealthier or wiser.
He finds that the fighting left the West morally tainted.
The U.S. embraced Saddam Hussein as a counterweight to Iran, and later tried to ply Iran with secret arms in exchange for the release of hostages. Patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner over the Gulf, killing 290 civilians.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/business/energy-environment/us-to-hold-sale-for-offshore-wind-energy-leases.html?_r=1&
U.S. to Lease Federal Waters for Commercial Offshore Wind Energy
By JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON — The federal government will hold the first lease sale for commercial offshore wind energy projects at the end of July, the Interior Department announced on Tuesday.
The sale will offer 164,750 acres of federal waters off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. If that is fully developed, officials said, it could produce as much as 3,400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than one million homes.
The lease sale shows the Obama administration’s determination to pursue a wide range of domestic energy production, from fossil fuels and renewable sources. Sally Jewell, the new secretary of the interior, said the department would accelerate offshore wind leasing if the July 31 lease sale was successful.
“Today we are moving closer to tapping into the enormous potential offered by offshore wind to create jobs, increase our sustainability and strengthen our nation’s competitiveness in this new energy frontier,” Ms. Jewell said in a statement. “As we experience record domestic oil and gas development, we are also working to ensure that America leads the world in developing the energy of the future.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350116/whos-brainwashed-kathryn-jean-lopez You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to find the subject of how our brains work fascinating. As Sally Satel points out in an interview with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, because the “brain is a very attractive topic to both readers and journalists . . . the sheer numbers of articles present many opportunities for […]
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3695/scantily_clad_israeli_soldiers_inspire_headline_writers Scantily clad Israeli soldiers inspire headline writers… In all the coverage of the IDF soldiers posing topless or half naked, The Sun’s headline has got to be the breast… (pun intended… I assure you) In case you missed it, and I don’t know how you could have, a group of female Israel Defense Forces […]
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3715/prepare_for_war_over_the_balfour_declaration
WELL THE BRITS HAVE A LOT OF APOLOGIZING TO DO WITH RESPECT TO BETRAYALS OF PALESTINIAN JEWS, THE TRAPPING OF MILLIONS OF JEWS IN EUROPE BY ACCEDING TO ARAB DEMANDS, AND POST WAR BLOCKADES OF PALESTINE INCLUDING FIRING UPON VESSELS OF REFUGEES TRYING TO REACH PALESTINE. TO MY KNOWLEDGE, HOWEVER, ISRAEL HAS NEVER DEMANDED THE APOLOGY THAT IS DUE…..RSK
November 2017 marks 100 years since the famous “Balfour Declaration” was made in a letter to the British Jewish community, including the famous words, “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object”.
The letter started a chain of events that led, by no means smoothly, to the eventual formation of the modern state of Israel. With the advent in recent years of campaigns such as BDS (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions), an essentially anti-Israel movement, Sabeel (Palestinian “Liberation Theology”), and a plethora of other anti-Israel organisations and groups, attempts to attribute the blame for today’s conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs have delved back into history long before 1948.
Now has arisen a group that wants Britain to apologise for the Balfour Declaration ever having been made. The Balfour Project claims that Britain deceived both Jews and Arabs in making the 1917 declaration in favour of a “Jewish national home” in what was then Palestine.
