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July 2013

PAUL JOHNSON: UNITED EUROPE? BAD IDEA

One aspect of American foreign policy that remains a mystery in London is Washington’s manifest desire for Britain to play a leading part in maintaining and strengthening the EU. Every U.S. President since Eisenhower has taken the view that a British withdrawal from the EU would be a disaster for the West, but none has given a detailed explanation of why. The time has come for Washington to make its position clearer, as Britain will soon hold a referendum on whether to continue its membership in the EU. Current indications suggest that a “No” vote will carry—and by a large margin.

The British public, as opposed to the political and financial establishments, has never been keen on the European experiment. And now that financial opinion has turned against it—a result of consistent attempts by the Brussels bureaucracy to marginalize the City of London through hostile regulations—there’s no force left to push for the country’s remaining in it.

There is also the lamentable and continuing spectacle of European leaders failing to agree upon a response to the global economic downturn, which has been particularly severe in Europe. If the EU was designed for any specific purpose, it was to meet such a crisis and solve it—or, at the least, mitigate it.

The consensus is that the EU leadership’s countless meetings on the issue have actually made matters worse. This is partly because of the characters of those involved. The French president, Francois Hollande, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, don’t get along. Hollande is overwhelmed by his own internal problems, particularly the evidence of corruption and rule-breaking by members of his government. Merkel is disgusted by the way Hollande runs his affairs and can barely hold her temper when they meet. Hollande’s failure has stiffened Merkel’s resolve to stick to her formula of spending cuts and austerity, which, she insists, is the only way to eliminate the EU’s enormous deficits.

DAVID GOLDMAN: ONCE AGAIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH DEFENDS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM OF JEWS…WHY DON’T JEWS DEFEND CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS FREEDOM?

Poland is the latest country to ban kosher slaughter on the spurious grounds of humane treatment of animals. Last Friday, the Polish parliament rejected legislation from the Polish government that would have permitted kosher slaughter. New regulations from the European Community requiring animals to be stunned electronically before slaughter made it necessary for national governments to create an exception for religious practice. To its disgrace, Polish legislators refused to do so. This elicited condemnation by Jewish organizations and protests from the Israeli government.

No English-language media–and none of Jewish blogs–reported that the Polish Catholic Church defended the right of Jews to practice kosher slaughter — as did the Dutch Catholic Church when the same issue came up last year in the Netherlands. A friend in Poland sent me the statement of Bishop Mieczyslaw Cislo, President of the Polish Episcopate’ Committee for Dialogue with Judaism, defending the Jewish position: “Ritual slaughter in accordance with centuries-old religious Jewish tradition does not have to be in conflict with the principle of humane treatment of animals. […] In case of conflict between modern sensibility to the rights of animals to be treated with dignity and the right to freedom of religion, you have to opt for the priority right to religious freedom because of its fundamental character.”

The Catholic Church as well as the Polish government are defending Jewish religious freedom. The persecutors of Jewish religious practice are the Polish left-wing parties. Commentary’s blog got that part of the story right:

The two main Polish political parties that opposed the government bill are not, as might reasonably be expected, populated by snarling right-wing skinheads. One of them, the Democratic Left Party, or SLD, was co-founded by Alexander Kwasniewski, who served as Poland’s president from 1995-2005. Throughout his time in office, Kwasniewski was feted by Jewish groups, particularly in the United States, for his strong stand against anti-Semitism; after leaving office, he was one of the backers of the European Council for Tolerance and Reconciliation, an organization that is unlikely to share the SLD’s revulsion for shechita.

NORMAN LEBRECHT: FROM SOCCER TO PIANO…THE BOY CAN PLAY

Midfield Virtuoso Finds His Perfect Pitch
Never, in two centuries of either classical music or organized sport, had a major player crossed from one to the other and back—until Israeli soccer player Elisha Abas returned to the piano.

Another day has gone by and the island of Cyprus is no closer to reunion. The north was invaded by the Turkish army 39 years ago, driving out 200,000 Greeks and perpetuating an illegal occupation that somehow escapes the world’s attention. Greek Cyprus this year was hit by a second disaster, a Euro bank raid that drained the life savings of ordinary citizens and precipitated economic depression. The Pharos chamber music festival I am here to attend is going ahead only because the artists are playing for free and a Russian bank is paying the rent.

On a forlorn street that hugs the frontline, a former shoe factory has been privately converted into a recital space. Inside, the audience sits in a semi-circle, arena fashion, around and above the performers. The place is packed tonight, with extra chairs dragged in from other venues and more than a hundred ticketless customers turned away at the door. It’s a big night in Nicosia, the debut of a much discussed pianist with a peculiar pedigree.

Elisha Abas, 41, is a descendant of Alexander Scriabin, the mystic Russian composer who believed he was the Messiah and died of a mystery bug in 1915, leaving behind five symphonies and a never-ending drama. Scriabin’s eldest daughter Ariadna moved to France, converted to Judaism, fought for the resistance in an armée Juive against the Nazis and was shot dead in an ambush in 1944; she was Elisha’s maternal great-grandmother. Her brother, Julian, a boy composer, drowned at the age of 11. A cousin, Vyacheslav Scriabin, changed his surname to Molotov and became Stalin’s trusted hatchet-man. Not many musicians have a composer, a war heroine and a mass murderer in their bloodline. In an age obsessed with celebrity, Elisha Abas has enough snaps in his family scrapbooks to keep him perpetually in headlines.

The family history pales, however, beside his personal story. As a child of four, Elisha was told he had a unique talent. Leonard Bernstein embraced him, Isaac Stern invited him to New York, Arthur Rubinstein predicted a glittering future. Elisha’s father, Shlomo, gave up his job in Jerusalem to move the family to Hod Hasharon, close to the exacting teacher Pnina Salzman. For ten years, Shlomo took Elisha to lessons, while developing a second life of his own as Israel’s best-selling children’s writer.

DIANA BLETTER: GUESS WHO IS VALEDICTORIAN AT ISRAEL’S TECHNION?…..

Guess who graduated first in this year’s medical school class at the Technion, Israel’s version of M.I.T.? The answer will surprise you. It’s a 27-year-old stereotype-buster: a charming, feminist, smart, open-minded and observant Islamic woman named Mais Ali-Saleh who grew up in a small village outside of Nazareth, in Israel’s Galilee.

Ali-Selah’s academic excellence not only marks her own personal achievement but also proves that contrary to propaganda spouted by proponents of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement — whose latest convert is Stephen Hawking — an academic boycott of Israel is the wrong approach to solving the Israel-Arab conflict. Moreover, it ultimately hurts the very people it claims to help. Ali-Selah put it best when she said, “An academic boycott of Israel is a passive move, and it doesn’t achieve any of its purported objectives.”

After Ali-Selah’s first class at the Technion, in Haifa, northern Israel, she was ready to call it quits. Ali-Selah had studied Hebrew from elementary school through high school but in the predominantly Arab area around Nazareth, she rarely used Hebrew and her vocabulary was limited. During Ali-Selah’s first Chemistry lecture, she couldn’t understand why her professor kept talking about malls. What did shopping malls have to do with Chemistry? She then realized the professor was speaking about moles, a standard scientific unit for measuring quantities of minute entities.

It did not take long for her to break through her limited language skills and rise to the top of her class. In fact, in 2011, she was one of eight students from around Israel who were presented with academic awards of excellence at the Knesset, Israel’s Senate.

THE IRS IS GOING TO WASHINGTON New testimony links political vetting to orders from D.C.

We’re starting to understand why Lois Lerner took the Fifth about her role in the IRS targeting of conservative groups. The testimony of at least three more employees in the IRS Washington office is now making clear that Ms. Lerner and other Washington IRS officials had a direct hand in slow rolling the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups in an election season.

The House Oversight Committee holds another hearing Thursday that will showcase some of these witnesses. According to Washington IRS tax law specialist Carter Hull, his supervisor Ronald Shoemaker and Manager of Exempt Organizations Technical Michael Seto, tea party applications were intentionally singled out for extra layers of review and put through an unusual process.

Mr. Hull told House investigators that normally his judgment about applications would have been enough to approve or deny their tax-exempt status. Instead of sending those applications through the normal channel, however, conservative applications were sent through Ms. Lerner’s office for review, and also directed to the IRS chief counsel. That process was highly unusual and created a vetting system in which applications were interminably delayed.

According to Mr. Hull, starting in April 2010, he was told by a supervisor to give extra attention to some tea party applications as a trial run for how the agency might handle such cases going forward. As part of that process, he was instructed to send the applications through Ms. Lerner’s office and the office of IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins for additional scrutiny.

Once he delivered them, however, the process stalled and the applications mouldered until August 2011, when Mr. Hull met with Mr. Wilkins’s staff and Ms. Lerner’s senior adviser to discuss the applications. Mr. Hull was told the applications had been on the shelf too long and needed updating. “I was taken aback,” Mr. Hull said of the request, which added even more time to the already delayed applications. “I hadn’t had the case for a while. I couldn’t ask if I didn’t have the case.”

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Faked Outrage in the Middle East by Nonie Darwish

In the West, expressions such as “racist,” or in Muslim countries “apostate,” are intended to silence citizens and keep them muzzled. In Muslim countries, the objective is to keep people under the control of Islamic law through government enforcement. In America, a whole new generation would rather defend terrorists and criminals than be called “racists.”

Having spent most of my life in the Middle East, I am sensitive to recognizing artificially-induced, exhibitionistic, whipped-up outrage — “shaming fits” — forced upon ordinary people by “the system.”

“Shaming,” as in, “Have you no shame?” and frequently mentioned in communications among Muslims, is not looked down on, but lifted up as, for example, a fine way of raising children. It is a point of pride to promote a hatred that has been officially designated by officials or the society. Children are “shamed,” for example, if they want to befriend Christians or Jews – it would be, in America, something like having your child say he wants to befriend people in some horrendous cult. The Arabic words muayra or khajal come close – but the phenomenon is not really about words; it is about a huge, entire force in a culture.

Every society creates its own taboos: sacred cows in the form of politically correct expressions pressed upon people to encourage them to shrink and cringe whenever certain words are mentioned, and to render whatever or whomever is pointed out as disgusting as an example of what could happen to anyone who dares to “cross the line” of what is considered “correct” in each country In the West, expressions such as “racist,” or in the Muslim world expressions such as “apostate” can do the trick: these words are intended to silence citizens, keep them muzzled, and keep them beaten down.

The Muslim world is at the top of the list of cultures that have perfected the art of using this cultural tool in the Middle East, and apparently elsewhere, to stop people from thinking so they will not be able to evolve beyond the officially-provided baggage of group-think.

Guy Millière: France: Slouching Toward Totalitarianism

A “blacklist” of writers and analysts who are never to be invited on a television or radio talk show is circulated. The “fachosphère” cover of Le Nouvel Observateur looked like a poster of photos of wanted criminals. Those on the cover were not only all those who still dare to criticize Islam, of course, but also this who dare to support Israel, those who turn a critical eye on the Obama presidency and those who cast doubt on the viability of the euro.

As expected, the Paris Court of Appeals declared Philippe Karsenty guilty of defamation against journalist Charles Enderlin and public television station France 2. The evidence accumulated by experts and specialists, showing that the al Dura video report was a hoax and that the young Mohamed al Dura had not been killed by Israeli soldiers and, in fact, had not be killed at all, were totally ignored.

The Israeli government report explaining the same thing — and adding that the al Dura video report was an anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic blood libel — was also completely ignored.

If justice in France were independent from the government, another result could have been possible; but justice in France is strictly dependent on the government, and when an “official truth” has been set, judges do what they are asked to do.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: GO LIZ CHENEY

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney will run against Wyoming’s senior U.S. senator in next year’s Republican primary, her campaign said Tuesday.

Cheney, 46, is the elder of Dick Cheney’s two daughters. Her announcement is a political challenge unlike anything Wyoming has seen for years, maybe decades — Republicans in the state rarely challenge incumbents in national office. All three members of the state’s congressional delegation and all statewide elected officials are Republican.

Yet Cheney’s interest in the seat has been an open secret for months. Last year, Cheney and her husband bought a home in the posh northwest Wyoming community of Jackson Hole. She has been in the public eye in recent years as a Fox News political commentator.

She’s also been speaking frequently at Republican Party events in the state.
Wyoming has a history of very bright and conservative Republican Senators. The late Malcolm Wallop and retired Senator Alan Simpson are two good examples.

HERBERT LONDON: WISHING DOESN’T MAKE IT TRUE

President Obama recently noted that “This war, like all wars, must end.” In other words the president is outlining revisions in the legal and moral framework that have guided policies since 2001. Presumably this speech is guided by the president’s belief that we have “turned a corner” in the war with al Qaeda and other terrorist entities. Moreover, the president argued that the 2001congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force adopted after the 9/11 attack should be revised and eventually repealed to recognize the diminished capability of al Qaeda as a terror organization.

The president also insisted that despite his belief in ending the war, unmanned, remotely piloted drones remain a legal, effective and moral tool for fighting terror. One might well ask if the war is over, why are drones needed at all. But this is begging the question. The fact is that wars do not end by declaration.

Our mission in Afghanistan is concluding because the president made a unilateral decision to withdraw our forces. What is not clear is whether the Taliban got the message. From all that has been reported, their guns have not been converted into plowshares. And that is precisely the problem the nation now confronts. The president may believe that this war must end, but it doesn’t seem as if our enemies agree.

All of this talk about “history’s guidance” in this speech overlooks last September’s al Qaeda attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. It overlooks the role al Qaeda now plays with the rebel forces in Syria. It ignores as well the resurgence of violence in Iraq.

MY SAY: ROGER SIMON SAYS IT BETTER….SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/07/17/confessions-of-a-racist/?print=1

AND YES…IF I SEE BEARDED MUSLIM MEN CONVENING NEAR THE MEN’S ROOM ON AN AIRPLANE I PANIC…RSK

“I hate to admit it. It’s really quite embarrassing, humiliating really. But — even though I was an actual civil rights worker in the South and (crazy me) later gave money to the Black Panthers — in the interest of transparency (that’s what we all aspire to nowadays, isn’t it?), I cannot tell a lie, George Washington:

I am a racist. Worse than that, I profile.When I see a black gangbanger walking down the sidewalk toward me at night, sometimes I cross to the other side. Even if he’s not wearing a hoodie.Ditto for skanky white guys in ponytails who look like meth heads, bandana-clad Mexicans who might be members of the Zetas, and Asian guys with ominous Fu Manchus, black belts, and ninja pajamas.Yes, I profile. In that way, at least, I am sort of like the Reverend Jesse Jackson [1].

Not only that, if I carried a gun (I don’t though, I’m too sloppy. Just last week my wife yelled at me for backing up over one of the solar garden lights we just bought) and one of those guys jumped me and started beating the living daylights out of me, I might well shoot him.So I’m racist… and a profiler. Baaaad.

Why am I racist?Because I profile, duh. I’m kind of an equal opportunity racist. I profile everyone.

But just to put the icing on the cake, someone I don’t know called me a “racist” on Twitter yesterday. “You must be a racist,” he said, thankfully omitting the requisite exclamation points. This was in reaction to my appearance on NPR to discuss an article I had written on the Zimmerman trial, the same article a columnist at the Washington Post called “deranged [2]” because I likened that sorry, hypocritical event to a Stalinist show trial.

Silly me.So it’s settled. I must be a racist.

But don’t be smug, dear reader. You’re a racist, too. Even if you comment seventeen times a day on The Huffington Post, cursing Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, you’re still a racist.That’s just the way things go these days.

Tough luck.”

UPDATE: I wrote the above Tuesday morning. Obviously, I was having some fun. But since then I have heard the latest turn in the Zimmerman/Martin saga and I have lost my sense of humor. Our Department of Justice, in its “wisdom,” has just decided to establish an email address [3] through which George Zimmerman’s fellow citizens can report on putative examples of his racism, although a full investigation of the same had been conducted over a year ago by the FBI, yielding a result of no racism [4]. What DOJ is doing now constitutes a witch hunt employing the methodology of a police state, citizen spying on citizen, with Attorney General Eric Holder and his henchman Tom Perez assuming the role of Markus Wolf [5]. If you don’t remember who he was, you can click on the link. Or perhaps have a look at this film [6]. The U.S. Department of Justice channels the Stasi. Did you ever think it could happen here?

A MILLION YEARS OF CLIMATE CHANGE WITHOUT HUMANS AND CO2: IAN RUTHERFORD PLIMER

Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology.

PLIMER: “Okay, here’s the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland ,

… Since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet – all of you.

Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress – it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.

I know….it’s very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids’ “The Green Revolution” science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs…..well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere in just four days – yes, FOUR DAYS – by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time – EVERY DAY.

I don’t really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.

Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year – think about it.

Of course, I shouldn’t spoil this ‘touchy-feely tree-hugging’ moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.

And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.

Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the bogus ‘human-caused’ climate-change scenario.

Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention ‘Global Warming’
Anymore, but just ‘Climate Change’ – you know why?

It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down.

And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme – that whopping new tax – imposed on you that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer.

It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.

But, hey, relax……give the world a hug and have a nice day!”

NETANYAHU’S ACTIONS AND OBAMA’S WORDS

‘I am not in the habit of saying what we did or we didn’t do,” Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, when he was asked if Israel had carried out a July 5 attack in Syria against a cache of Russian-made anti-ship missiles. “My policy,” the Prime Minister added, “is to prevent […]

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: GO LIZ CHENEY

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney will run against Wyoming’s senior U.S. senator in next year’s Republican primary, her campaign said Tuesday.

Cheney, 46, is the elder of Dick Cheney’s two daughters. Her announcement is a political challenge unlike anything Wyoming has seen for years, maybe decades — Republicans in the state rarely challenge incumbents in national office. All three members of the state’s congressional delegation and all statewide elected officials are Republican.

Yet Cheney’s interest in the seat has been an open secret for months. Last year, Cheney and her husband bought a home in the posh northwest Wyoming community of Jackson Hole. She has been in the public eye in recent years as a Fox News political commentator.

She’s also been speaking frequently at Republican Party events in the state.
Wyoming has a history of very bright and conservative Republican Senators. The late Malcolm Wallop and retired Senator Alan Simpson are two good examples.

HERBERT LONDON: WISHING DOESN’T MAKE IT TRUE

President Obama recently noted that “This war, like all wars, must end.” In other words the president is outlining revisions in the legal and moral framework that have guided policies since 2001. Presumably this speech is guided by the president’s belief that we have “turned a corner” in the war with al Qaeda and other terrorist entities. Moreover, the president argued that the 2001congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force adopted after the 9/11 attack should be revised and eventually repealed to recognize the diminished capability of al Qaeda as a terror organization.

The president also insisted that despite his belief in ending the war, unmanned, remotely piloted drones remain a legal, effective and moral tool for fighting terror. One might well ask if the war is over, why are drones needed at all. But this is begging the question. The fact is that wars do not end by declaration.

Our mission in Afghanistan is concluding because the president made a unilateral decision to withdraw our forces. What is not clear is whether the Taliban got the message. From all that has been reported, their guns have not been converted into plowshares. And that is precisely the problem the nation now confronts. The president may believe that this war must end, but it doesn’t seem as if our enemies agree.

All of this talk about “history’s guidance” in this speech overlooks last September’s al Qaeda attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. It overlooks the role al Qaeda now plays with the rebel forces in Syria. It ignores as well the resurgence of violence in Iraq.

DIANA WEST ON ANTHONY WEINER’S “HUMA”NITARIAN PROBLEMS

Princess Huma, the Media and the Muslim Brotherhood MRC’s Tim Graham picks up on the New Republic’s Isaac Chotiner’s pick-up on a particularly fawning New York Magazine gush-crush by Mark Jacobson about Huma Abedin — aka Mrs. Anthony Weiner, aka veritable Muslim Brotherhood Princess. Oops. Neither Graham nor Chotiner mention this salient aspect of […]

CONFRONTING “DADDYLESS” GIRLS ON THE OPRAH SHOW….SEE NOTE PLEASE

THERE ARE NOW FOUR GENERATIONS OF CHILDREN BORN TO TEENAGE MOTHERS REPEATING THE MISTAKES OF THEIR GRANDMOTHERS AND TRYING TO REAR CHILDREN WITHOUT FAMILY STRUCTURE, FATHERS OR A MEANS TO SUPPORTS THEM. THE “WOMEN’S RIGHTS” GROUPIES AND BLACK LEADERS FAIL TO CONFRONT THIS PERNICIOUS TREND….RSK

For girls who grow up without fathers, it’s not unusual to act out sexually and look for validation in all the wrong places. Promiscuity is often observed as a common practice among “daddyless daughters” and is just one possible effect of not having a father figure. It’s also something Dr. Steve Perry, founder of Capital Preparatory Magnet School, has seen in his work with fatherless girls, leading him to a startling definition of promiscuity as a whole.

“Promiscuity is the main thing,” Dr. Perry says in the above video from “Oprah’s Lifeclass,” on the topic of daddyless daughters. “It’s rarely seen as self-mutilation, but that’s exactly what it is.”

Iyanla Vanzant, a prominent voice in the discussion on both daddyless daughters and fatherless sons, agrees. “Absolutely. It’s violence against the self,” she says.

Dr. Perry continues, “Often when we look at young girls who are dealing with pain, we think of self-mutilation as the cutting. That, too, but [promiscuity is] the self-mutilation of allowing someone to physically enter you.”

“Wow, that’s a big one,” Oprah says. “Self-mutilation comes in the form of promiscuity and it’s violence against the self. I never thought of it that way before.”

For Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada, there’s something even more troublesome about promiscuous girls. “The thing that shocks me with these young girls is that… they don’t necessarily even like the guys that much,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Why did you do that? You don’t even like the guy?’… They don’t know.”

NATIONAL SECURITY ROUNDTABLE…ERIC HOLDER’S PRIORITIES AND ISRAEL’S “ANGER” MANAGEMENT

http://nsroundtable.org/straight-talk/message-of-the-day/

Actually, this should be Question of the Day:

The President of the US and his Attorney General were unaware of Benghazi, IRS, Fast & Furious and other FEDERAL debacles, yet feel compelled today to stick their noses in a STATE case, i.e., Florida’s George Zimmerman trial. What’s wrong with this picture?
Update To ‘Blabbermouths Inc.’

Official sources in Jerusalem say “there is no anger” toward the US administration over leaks to CNN and The New York Times regarding an “alleged Israeli attack” in Latakia, Syria, this month (see “Blabbermouths Inc.”).

Still, Israel is still trying to understand how and why it happened, i.e., why twice in the past two months American media ran reports – based on tips from US officials – that could get Israel caught up in a military conflict with Syria.

Well, Israel, one reason could be the current US administration can’t keep its mouth shut, even if its life, rather someone else’s life, depends on it. See some examples here, here, here, here, here and here.

Another reason could be politics, i.e., wag the dog-type considerations that have nothing to do with you and more to do with the motley crew in the White House today.

Aiding Islamist Propaganda By Rachel Lipsky

In the latest clashes between the Egyptian Army and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, at least 51 mostly Muslim Brothers were killed near a Cairo military building, prompting Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie to vilify — you guessed it — Jewish people. “Even the Jews have never done to Egypt what the army did,” Badie stated. […]

NONIE DARWISH: FAKE OUTRAGE IN THE MARTIN /ZIMMERMAN CASE

Having lived half my life in the Middle East, I am especially sensitive to recognizing fake outrage and shaming forced upon ordinary people by the social system. Every society uses shaming to define its morality, but some societies go too far in using and abusing shaming words that make people cringe and shrink whenever […]

RYAN MAURO: THE ISLAMIST TIES OF “RELIGIONS FOR PEACE”

Religions for Peace USA (RFPUSA), which says it is “the largest and most broadly-based representative multi-religious forum in the United States,” is holding a webinar on July 25 titled, “What You Can Learn from the Fight to End Islamophobia.” The group is yet another coalition of Islamists and their non-Muslim political allies. And, as usual, it is tarring the Islamists’ opponents as “Islamophobes.”

The webinar is being jointly held with the American Center for Outreach, a Tennessee Muslim group that will use the event to highlight its “successful challenge to the nation’s most vehemently anti-Muslim legislation in 2011.”

The seminar is being promoted by the Shoulder-to-Shoulder Campaign, another interfaith bloc allied with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. You’ll notice a lot of cross-pollination if you look at the leadership of RFPUSA, Shoulder-to-Shoulder and ISNA’s declared “interfaith partners.”

Naeem Baig, President of the Islamic Circle of North America, sits on RFPUSA’s Council of Presidents and Executive Council. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo identifies ICNA as one of its fronts as part of its “kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” The memo instructs its members to use “the art of ‘coalitions,’ the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation.’”

ICNA’s conferences bring together the rock stars of the Islamist movement. At its 2011 event, radical imam Siraj Wahhaj advised the audience to wait to talk about Sharia because “we are not there yet.” At ICNA’s event over Memorial Day Weekend, radical imam Zaid Shakir told the audience of 32,000 that the U.S. Constitution is inferior to Sharia because Muslims and non-Muslims are equal.

The President of ISNA, Imam Mohamed Magid, is on the Council of Presidents. In 2004, he reacted to U.S. investigations of some Muslim Brotherhood entities by saying the U.S. government is “intent on dismantling Muslim organizations and bringing them down.”

BRUCE BAWER: EUROPE’S ISLAMO-FASCIST POLICE- THE MUTAWEEN

Here’s another Arabic word that both you and I would prefer not to have to know but probably should: mutaween. It means “religious police” or “morality police.” In Saudi Arabia it’s an officially constituted entity whose officers are fully empowered to arrest and punish anyone who violates sharia law – which, of course, can mean anything from committing various sexual acts to being caught taking a sip of water during Ramadan. The Saudi morality police made international headlines in March 2002 when they physically prevented dozens of girls from escaping a burning school in Mecca because they weren’t properly covered.

After that horrific incident, which resulted in fifteen deaths, people around the world congratulated themselves on not living in such a backward culture. And yet the Islamic morality police, far from being confined to Saudi Arabia – or even to the Muslim world – are an increasing presence in Europe and elsewhere.

To be sure, Islam’s moral cops in the Western world aren’t officially sanctioned. They aren’t even necessarily an organized force; many, if not most, of them are self-appointed monitors of public morality. And compared to their counterparts in Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and the Gaza Strip, they’re amateurs. But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere. Given time, and given enough leash by the real police and others in positions of public trust who prefer to look away from this deplorable state of affairs, these amateurs will increasingly resemble their Saudi models. In the meantime, they already wield real power. Authentic refugees from the Muslim world – non-Muslims or secular Muslims who fled to the West precisely to avoid such surveillance and control – are very aware of that power. So are an increasing number of natives of Western countries who live in largely Muslim neighborhoods – and who are increasingly being reminded that their ways of life conspicuously violate sharia strictures.

Consider the situation in Oslo, where things are bad, though not quite as severe (yet) as in many other European cities. Zahid Ali, an actor and stand-up comic, recalled in a 2010 interview that he’d been living with Oslo’s morality police for twenty years, ever since his early teens. “If he smoked on the street in Oslo,” reported NRK, “his mother, father, uncles, and aunts know about it before he got home” – because the news had been passed to them via Pakistani cab, bus, and tram drivers, a class of people whom Ali described as the “largest intelligence service” in Norway. Ali, now a familiar face on Norwegian television, said that members of the morality police in the heavily Muslim neighborhood of Grønland now routinely stopped him on the street to tell him: “I don’t like what you’re doing! I hate you! I’m going to kill you!” The threats, which he said had grown steadily worse over the previous five or six years, were usually delivered in Punjabi, and when Ali replied in Norwegian, his tormentors grew even angrier. (“If I answer in their language,” he explained, it means that “I’ve accepted their culture, accepted that they’re right.”) Ali said he took the threats seriously enough to avoid Grønland whenever possible.

ARNOLD AHLERT: HOLDER’S REIGN OF RACIAL TERROR

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is apparently ready to pick up where he left off last year and continue his investigation into whether Trayvon Martin’s civil rights were violated by the recently acquitted George Zimmerman. Holder had stepped aside to let the Florida trial of Zimmerman proceed, but it would appear that the verdict rendered Saturday night is too irresistible for the man who oversees one of the most racially-polarized Justice Departments (DOJ) in the history of the nation. “Experienced federal prosecutors will determine whether the evidence reveals a prosecutable violation of any of the limited federal criminal civil rights statutes within our jurisdiction, and whether federal prosecution is appropriate,” the DOJ announced.

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous was thrilled with the news. Regarding the conclusion of the trial, he said in a statement, “We are outraged and heartbroken over today’s verdict. We will pursue civil rights charges with the Department of Justice, we will continue to fight for the removal of Stand Your Ground laws in every state and we will not rest until racial profiling in all its forms is outlawed.”

Such “coordination” between the NAACP and the DOJ has already occurred. As a 2012 article in the Orlando Sentinel reveals, the DOJ’s Community Relations Service (CRS) “helped set up a meeting between the local NAACP and elected officials” leading to the temporary resignation of Sanford police Chief Bill Lee, who was subsequently fired for failing to file charges against Zimmerman. The article further notes that the CRS, which the DOJ claims ”does not take sides” in their role as “peacemakers” in community racial conflicts, also “arranged a police escort for college students to ensure safe passage for their 40-mile march from Daytona Beach to Sanford to demand justice.”

DOJ coordination with the NAACP was not limited to Sanford. In 2010, following a year of stonewalling by the Department, two former DOJ officials testified under oath before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. They revealed that the NAACP pressured the DOJ to drop its already won voter intimidation case against New Black Panther members videotaped at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008. Two men were shown dressed in military-style uniforms with one holding a night stick.

JOHN PODHORETZ: FILIBUSTER FOLLIES

WHEN WILL GOP “REID HIM THE RIOT ACT” BY REMOVING THIS BUFOON FROM CONGRESS?….RSK

“The sensible answer today is the same sensible answer that held in 2005: Don’t do it. These rules exist and have existed because they’ve made the Senate function better than it would have had they never been promulgated. Change them when it’s expedient for you, and you open Pandora’s box.”

Here’s what you should remember when you read about the battle over fundamentally changing the rules of the US Senate, a battle that will go on despite a deal struck yesterday to avoid a major partisan conflagration this week.

Superficially, the arguments made for change sound as if they’re more democratic than the current system — in which it takes a three-fifths vote rather than a simple majority to move legislation through the Senate, and in which a single senator can block action on a variety of fronts for any reason he chooses.

Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, sounds reasonable when he says “the Founding Fathers wanted an up or down vote” on Senate matters save overriding a presidential veto, approving a treaty or impeaching a president. (For those, the Constitution requires a “supermajority” vote.)
Hypocrite: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was fine with the filibuster when he was the minority leader.

But Reid’s remarks are a historical absurdity. In the first place, the Constitution gives the Senate and the House complete authority over how it works on a day-to-day basis. The language is plain: “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”

This means, in effect, that the Senate could decide everything would have to be approved unanimously to pass — and that would be entirely constitutional.

JAMES TARANTO TO ERIC HOLDER “SHUT UP AND SPEAK HONESTLY”

Attorney General Eric Holder sounded a familiar theme in his first public comments after George Zimmerman’s acquittal. “I believe that this tragedy provides yet another opportunity for our nation to speak honestly about the complicated and emotionally charged issues that this case has raised,” Holder told the annual Social Action Luncheon of Delta Sigma Theta, a historically black sorority. “We must not–as we have too often in the past–let this opportunity pass.”

The comment echoes, albeit softly, Holder’s famous 2009 declaration that “in things racial,” America is “a nation of cowards.”

As if prompted by Holder’s exhortation, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post weighs in with a column on the Zimmerman case:

I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize. I don’t know whether Zimmerman is a racist. But I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.

Cohen goes on to say that “the problems of the black underclass are hardly new” and that while their origins can be attributed to slavery and Jim Crow, “for want of a better word, the problem is cultural, and it will be solved when the culture, somehow, is changed.”

One may agree or disagree with Cohen’s point of view, but one cannot accuse him of dishonesty or diffidence. He is, just as Holder urged, expressing himself honestly about complicated and emotionally charged questions.

Michael Calderone of the Puffington Host reports on the reaction:

MARK STEYN ON THE “PROFUMO AFFAIR” FIFTY YEARS AGO

Fifty years ago, it was the Summer of Profumo in London, commencing with a ministerial resignation that brought down a Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and eventually his successor, Lord Home, too. Half-a-century on, it remains Britain’s most famous sex scandal, and sufficiently potent that later this year Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and […]

Lori Lowenthal Marcus:JCPA: ‘We’re The Voice of American Jews,’ But Many Beg to Differ

The JCPA went to congress urging the U.S. to restart the “peace talks.” It also claims to be the the representative voice of the organized Jewish community. Both ideas are wrong-headed according to many who spoke with The Jewish Press. As we conclude the somber observance of Tish B’Av, the time when so […]

I hate to admit it. It’s really quite embarrassing, humiliating really. But — even though I was an actual civil rights worker in the South and (crazy me) later gave money to the Black Panthers — in the interest of transparency (that’s what we all aspire to nowadays, isn’t it?), I cannot tell a lie, George Washington:

I am a racist.Worse than that, I profile.When I see a black gangbanger walking down the sidewalk toward me at night, sometimes I cross to the other side. Even if he’s not wearing a hoodie.Ditto for skanky white guys in ponytails who look like meth heads, bandana-clad Mexicans who might be members of the Zetas, and Asian guys with ominous Fu Manchus, black belts, and ninja pajamas.Yes, I profile. In that way, at least, I am sort of like the Reverend Jesse Jackson [1].

Not only that, if I carried a gun (I don’t though, I’m too sloppy. Just last week my wife yelled at me for backing up over one of the solar garden lights we just bought) and one of those guys jumped me and started beating the living daylights out of me, I might well shoot him.So I’m racist… and a profiler. Baaaad.

Why am I racist?Because I profile, duh. I’m kind of an equal opportunity racist. I profile everyone.

But just to put the icing on the cake, someone I don’t know called me a “racist” on Twitter yesterday. “You must be a racist,” he said, thankfully omitting the requisite exclamation points. This was in reaction to my appearance on NPR to discuss an article I had written on the Zimmerman trial, the same article a columnist at the Washington Post called “deranged [2]” because I likened that sorry, hypocritical event to a Stalinist show trial.

Silly me.So it’s settled. I must be a racist.

But don’t be smug, dear reader. You’re a racist, too. Even if you comment seventeen times a day on The Huffington Post, cursing Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, you’re still a racist.That’s just the way things go these days.

Tough luck.

UPDATE: I wrote the above Tuesday morning. Obviously, I was having some fun. But since then I have heard the latest turn in the Zimmerman/Martin saga and I have lost my sense of humor. Our Department of Justice, in its “wisdom,” has just decided to establish an email address [3] through which George Zimmerman’s fellow citizens can report on putative examples of his racism, although a full investigation of the same had been conducted over a year ago by the FBI, yielding a result of no racism [4]. What DOJ is doing now constitutes a witch hunt employing the methodology of a police state, citizen spying on citizen, with Attorney General Eric Holder and his henchman Tom Perez assuming the role of Markus Wolf [5]. If you don’t remember who he was, you can click on the link. Or perhaps have a look at this film [6]. The U.S. Department of Justice channels the Stasi. Did you ever think it could happen here?

Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon