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October 2015

MY SAY: HOW PROFOUND!

I got a lot of flack for deriding Henry Kissinger’s Wall Street Journal Editorial “A path out of Middle East Collapse”which I called “prattle.” I greatly admire James Lewis who writes for the American Thinker , and enjoy his columns and wisdom , but today he defends Kissinger so I took a second look.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/10/henry_kissinger_is_nuclear_catastrophe_inevitable.html

He calls Henry Kissinger “the wisest foreign policy analyst in the land” and gives these examples: Parenthesis mine

Kissinger’s most crucial point: “If nuclear weapons become established (in the Middle East), a catastrophic outcome is nearly inevitable.” (wow! who would have thunk)

And then enumerates other “high points” of Kissingerian profundity:

1. “With Russia in Syria, a geopolitical structure that has lasted four decades is in shambles.” (no kidding)
2. Four Arab states have ceased to function: Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. All are at risk of being taken over by ISIS, which aims to become a global caliphate governed under shariah law. ( You think?)
3. The U.S. and the West need a coherent strategy. We don’t have one now. (Really?)
4. Treating Iran as a normal power is wishful thinking. It could happen over time. But today, Iran “is taking on an Armageddon dimension.”
Israel is in the maelstrom, but so is the rest of the world, which is why Russia is making an unprecedented military intervention in Syria. Putin is protecting Russia first of all. (Hmmm….sounds ominous)
5. “So long as ISIS survives and remains in control of a geographically defined territory, it will compound Middle East tensions… The destruction of ISIS is more urgent than the overthrow of Bashar Assad.” (How original)
6. “The US has already acquiesced in a Russian military role.” (Gasp!!!)

My case that it is mostly prattle rests….rsk

ISIS Fires Up Palestinians by Bassam Tawil

The current wave of stabbings of Jews in Israel is an attempt to imitate Islamic State terrorists, who have been using knives to behead many Muslims and non-Muslims. In most attacks, the Palestinian terrorists focused on the victims’ throats and necks. They are trying to replace Islamic State jihadis as the chief “butchers” of humans in the Middle East.

How can our leaders in Ramallah accuse Jews of “contaminating” the Aqsa Mosque with their “filthy feet” at a time when our youths burn a religious site such as Joseph’s Tomb? Palestinian Authority security forces, which maintain a tight grip on Nablus, did nothing to prevent the arson attack.

The attacks are an attempt to erase history so that Jews will not be able to claim any religious ties to the land. This is exactly what the Islamic State is doing in Syria and Iraq.

Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders are lying. This is not a struggle against “occupation” or a wall or a checkpoint. This is an Islamic State-inspired jihad to slaughter Jews and wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Middle East Peace Process: Oh No, Not Again! by Shoshana Bryen

The Palestinians seek three things:

Creation of an independent state without recognizing a legitimate and permanent State of Israel in any territory.
Sovereign control of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.
The right of entry for all remaining 1948/9 Arab refugees from Britain’s Mandatory Palestine, and for their descendants, to any place within pre-1967 Israel in which they, or their antecedents had lived.

Israel seeks three different things:

Recognition of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel within finalized “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” This is the security promise of UN Resolution 242 to which Israel is entitled.
The capital of Israel in Jerusalem and Israeli protection for Jewish patrimony in Eastern Jerusalem.
“End of conflict; end of claims.” After an agreement, the Palestinians will not be able to press additional claims against Israel for territory or other “rights.”

For the Obama administration now to pursue a Palestinian state…would likely be seen by both sides as nothing more than a shiny new distraction for the benefit of the U.S. negotiators’ vanity, nothing more.

Islamic Teacher Recruits 4-Year-Olds to be Terrorists Four-year-olds? What’s next? Daniel Greenfield

Is there any place lower for Islam to go? Four-year-olds? What’s next? Recruiting babies at the fetal stage? Getting papers to commit their first born for the Jihad before conception?

Four pupils of Gandini Primary in Kaloleni, Kilifi County, Kenya, have said their Islamic teacher, Samwel Wanjala Wambwile, recruited them for the terrorist group Al-Shabaab.

According to Kenya’s Daily Nation, Wambwile was arraigned for recruiting seven children in the school to become Al-Shabaab members on June 19, 2015.

The children are all between the ages of four and 16.

Giving testimony before Principal Magistrate Diana Mochache, the victims who were old enough to testify said Wambwile alias Salim Muhamud Wambwile radicalized them inside the Jilad mosque.

One of them, a female standard five student, said the teacher taught them martial arts and advised them to fight non-Muslims in school.

Another victim said Wambwile wrote the words “Radical Boys” on their shirts and told them all non-Muslims should be persecuted to death.

The ‘Jerusalem Awakening’ What the carnage is really all about. Richard L. Cravatts

The carnage in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel continued this week with an increased ferocity and barbarity, with stabbings, shooting, bombings, car ramming, rocket attacks, and other assaults on Israeli citizens claiming the lives of five Israelis and twenty-five Palestinians in the past two weeks alone. While the violence intensifies and seems to be spiraling out of control, not only touching Jerusalem but also the West Bank, Gaza, and other Israeli towns, officials are intent on identifying the inspiration for the latest escalation of jihad against Jews.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was quick to assign blame, not to the perpetrators of the deadly attacks—psychotic young men acting in the name of Allah to purge the land of Jews—but to the victims themselves, Israelis. Speaking at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, Kerry disingenuously observed in a question and answer session after his talk that, “There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing.” Blaming the settlements for being an obstacle to peace is a favorite refrain for this administration, of course, and it puts the responsibility for the outbreak of violence squarely on Israel, and Netanyahu, instead of where it more justifiably belongs: namely, with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and a culture of death where “resistance” and martyrdom are promoted as virtuous rather than inhumanly counterproductive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was more accurate in identifying the inspiration of the current uprising, this so-called “Jerusalem Awakening,” that has increased the tension of everyday life for Israelis and Arabs alike. At a weekly cabinet meeting Netanyahu correctly observed that Israel is “. . . in the midst of a wave of terrorism originating from systematic and mendacious incitement regarding the Temple Mount – incitement by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and the Islamic Movement in Israel.”

Frustrated’ Muslims Can’t Stop Killing Jews… and Everyone Else: Daniel Greenfield

Muslim “Frustration” caused 9/11 and every other act of terror.

As Jews were being butchered in the streets of Jerusalem, Secretary of State John Kerry blamed them.

“There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years, and now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing,” the nation’s greatest diplomat said.

“Settlements” are Jews living in parts of Israel captured by the invading Muslim armies in 1948, from which Jews were ethnically cleansed, and then retaken and liberated by Israel in 1967. A Jew living in a part of Jerusalem from which Jews were driven out in 1948 is a “settler” who “frustrates” Muslims.

And who can blame Muslims for taking an axe or a knife to those frustrating Jews. Not John Kerry.

Back before 1967, Muslim terrorism had to be attributed to “frustration” at Jews living anywhere in Israel. Before Jews had an independent state or any realistic possibility of achieving one, Muslims were frustrated at Jews living. And so they strove to make the Jews into the “unliving” by murdering them.

That much hasn’t changed.

“Frustration” is one of the most common excuses for Muslim violence. Most frustrated people just punch a wall. It takes a special sort of person to respond to frustration by ramming into a bus stop and then hacking at an elderly Rabbi with a cleaver or stabbing a 13-year-old boy on a bike.

But Muslim “frustration” is an international problem.

Dan Rather on Bush Memo Story: ‘We Got to the Truth But We Paid a Painful Price’ By Nicholas Ballasy

Former CBS Evening News Anchor Dan Rather said 60 Minutes “got to the truth” in 2004 but paid a “painful price” for the story on former President George W. Bush’s National Guard service that aired before the 2004 presidential election.

Aside from the authenticity of the memos, Rather said the “basic story” remains true today.

“One, did former President Bush when in his troubled youth, did he use his father’s influence to get into the Air National Guard as a way of avoiding Vietnam? That’s a fact. Fact two: Once he got in the Air National Guard after performing well, in some ways, very well, disappeared for a year, nobody disappeared for a year, now those are facts,” Rather said at the Washington premiere of Truth, a film based on a book written about the controversial 60 Minutes segment that aired in 2004.

“Everybody is entitled to their opinion but they aren’t entitled to their own facts. The reason this film is called Truth is we got to the truth but we paid a painful price for it,” he added.

The broadcast included documents that were not authenticated by forensic experts, which ultimately led to the dismissal of the staff that worked on the story as well as the firing of producer Mary Mapes. The fallout is referred to as the “Killian documents controversy” – after Lieutenant Colonel Killian, Bush’s superior in the National Guard, whose name appears on the documents.

Barack Churchill, 1939 By Victor Davis Hanson (hilarious!)

“Certainly we do not need a disproportionate response to Herr Hitler that initiates a cycle of violence on both sides. We need to tamp down the rhetoric.”
I have nothing to offer you, except blood, sweat, and arugula.

Winston Churchill, well before he became prime minister in May 1940, was busy all through 1939 prompting the British government to prepare for war — and then, as first lord of the Admiralty, helping to direct it once it broke out. But what if Churchill had been Barack Obama? What would Britain’s foremost opponent of appeasement have been like?

The Munich Agreement

Obama-Churchill might have said something like the following in regards to the 1938 Munich Agreement.

“We live in a complex world and at a challenging time. And none of these challenges lend themselves to quick or easy solutions, but all of them require British leadership. If we stay patient and determined, then we will, in fact, meet these challenges. The Munich Agreement is a comprehensive government agreement. It is the first that actually constrains Nazi Germany from further aggression, and one whose provisions are transparent and enforceable. It is a sober and judicious way to preclude war and to bring Germany back into the family of nations and to become a credible regional power, while allowing the German people to express their legitimate aspirations.”

Smoking gun’ emails just released by UK Daily Mail prove Hillary a bigger liar than Tony Blair By Thomas Lifson

The UK Daily Mail is making big headlines (at the top of the Drudge Report page as I write) with its exclusive story purporting to prove that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was committed to war with Iraq at a time he was telling the British public that he was seeking a diplomatic solution. The email it cites came from “a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal.”

I think the Daily Mail has buried the lead. For one thing, the secret memo to President Bush authored by then US secretary of State Colin Powell, rather than proving Blair was committed to war clearly states, “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary.” That is a contingency. If diplomacy had succeeded, then Blair would not be committed to war.

But much more important to me than this UK-centric story is what we learn about Hillary Clinton’s emails. Take a look at the memo itself, the top line in the left had column.

Peter O’Brien: Climate Change and Mute Conservatives

The increase in global temperatures, touted by warmists but nowhere evident in almost 19 years of flat-lining satellite readings, is said to inflict many dubious ills, from shark attacks to hermaphroditic lizards. Its only demonstrable consequence, however, is the cowardice of those who dare not speak up
At the essence of conservatism is the philosophy that, while accepting change as inevitable, it should be for the good or, at the very least, do no harm. Coupled with this should be a healthy scepticism and an insistence that any case for significant disruption of society and the economy be first subjected to rigorous examination. This raises the matter of what we now routinely refer to as “climate change” – catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), to use one of the climateers’ favoured and emotionally laden descriptors.

Tony Abbott, speaking frankly, once conceded that “climate change is crap”. It’s difficult to know just how many conservative voters share that conviction if one goes only by the polls. Take as one example a recent Lowy survey that posed two questions. The first asked what Australia’s approach to the upcoming Paris climate conference should be, with 63% of respondents agreeing we need to “commit to significant reduction” in greenhouse gas emissions pour encourager les autres. Only 35% believe we should not make commitments ahead of other countries. But this result seems to fly in the face of responses to the second question, relating to belief in global warming. While 50% of respondents rate climate change a serious problem, 40% believe its effects will be gradual and can be dealt with by taking less costly and disruptive steps over time. The remaining 10% believe that “unless we are sure that global warming is a problem” we should take no steps at all.