Panetta Stonewalls House Committee Chairman McKeon on Benghazi

Posted on: October 22nd, 2012

The news keeps getting worse. The Washington Free Beacon reports today that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has “blocked” four senior military officers from answering questions on the Benghazi attack posed by Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).

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Missile Defense: Serious Business as Usual

Posted on: October 22nd, 2012

The major argument against taking preemptive military action against Iran is the fear that Tehran’s retaliatory capability will engulf the Middle East and other regions in serious violence and turmoil, throwing the world’s already fragile economy into a deep recession or even an economic depression. This mindset is coupled with a peculiar assumption that absent […]

Negotiations with Iran: Obama’s ‘October Surprise’ to Help Win Election?

Posted on: October 22nd, 2012

Are supposed negotiations with Iran the “October Surprise” intended to win the election for President Barack Obama, an Iranian trick for buying time, or both? The answer is both. It’s an incredibly transparent ploy though with the cooperation of the mass media such a gimmick might well have some effect.

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‘The Right Kind of Jihad’

Posted on: October 21st, 2012

The Iranian Green Revolution had brave Neda Agha-Soltan, and the Pakistanis have the stubbornly courageous Malala Yousufzai. At fourteen, when the Taliban tried to assassinate Malala for promoting education for girls, she had been defying the Taliban for years. Whether these girls are catalysts for sustained revolutions may well depend on how many in the West […]

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Muslim Countries Seek to Restrict Free Speech Globally

Posted on: October 21st, 2012

In recent years, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has been the focus of an intense lobbying campaign by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 Muslim countries that are aggressively pressuring Western countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam. In August 1990, the Muslim member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation officially adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, an alternative document to the 1948 United Nations' document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cairo Declaration states that people have "freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with Islamic Sharia law."

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The Rise of American Mediocracy

Posted on: October 21st, 2012

America can be a Democracy or a Mediacracy. It cannot and will not be both. And the only way to preserve democracy is to challenge the Mediacrats and force them out of the public space that they have usurped and back into the private sphere of their financial interests where they belong.

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Iranian Agent Admits Plot to Kill Saudi Ambassador in Washington DC

Posted on: October 19th, 2012

Perhaps you remember an incredibly sensational story from back in October 2011 that after a brief period in the headlines disappeared completely. The U.S. government arrested an Iranian-American citizen in Texas and charged him with being an agent of the Iranian government who planned at Tehran’s behest to hire a Mexican drug gang to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a fiery terrorist attack in Washington D.C. It would have been another September 11, albeit on a far smaller scale. Knowing about such an operation should have been a real game-changer for U.S. Middle East policy.

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The Limits of Government Power

Posted on: October 19th, 2012

Modern government is fixated on depth of control over people. It plots to control every aspect of their lives with the goal of creating a completely harmonious whole. Technology has fed the illusion that such control has become more feasible than ever allowing for the rise of truly scientific government. This illusion is destroying the nation-states of modern civilization by overburdening them with massive governments flailing for control and destroying their economies in order to achieve that control.

The End of the American Presidency

Posted on: October 18th, 2012

The American presidency came to an end on October 15, 1992 during a Town Hall debate between Bush I, Ross Perot and Bill Clinton. The stage of the Town Hall seemed more like a place for Phil Donahue or Sally Jesse Raphael to strut around, biting their lips, and dragging out tawdry tales for audience applause, than for three presidential candidates to discuss the future of the country.

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Erdoğan at War

Posted on: October 18th, 2012

Why does the Turkish government act so aggressively against the Assad regime of Syria? Perhaps Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hopes that lobbing artillery shells into Syria will help bring a satellite government to power in Damascus. Maybe he expects that sending a Turkish war plane into Syrian air space or forcing down a Syrian civilian plane en route from Russia will win him favor in the West and bring in NATO. Conceivably, it's all a grand diversion from imminent economic crisis due to borrowing too much.

Er, No, Obama Didn’t Win the Debate

Posted on: October 18th, 2012

We’ve reached a watershed here, where we either live in our own heads affirming reality, regardless of spurious inputs from demagoguery or sentiment, or we give up on reality and let demagoguery and sentiment take over at the decision table. Did the president pull off a performance last night, in terms of sounding passionate and full of conviction? To some extent, yes. Does that mean he won the debate, or even achieved a draw with Romney? No.

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Crowley: Obama’s Teleprompter Substitute

Posted on: October 18th, 2012

We can now fairly assume that both Democrat and Republican analysts concluded that President Obama's weak performance in the first presidential debate could be attributed to the absence of a teleprompter. The president's reputation -- earned or unearned -- as a golden orator cannot be upheld without this prop. So, to level the playing field -- as he is fond of saying -- he was provided with a flesh and blood teleprompter in the shape of Candy Crowley for the second debate.

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The Alternative

Posted on: October 18th, 2012

“We’ve been living under mortar fire for 18 years. We have to do something,” said the young woman from Sderot on Razi Barkai’s radio show. “What do you want the leaders to do?” asked Barkai. “I don't know, but what they are doing now doesn’t help,” replied the Sderot resident. “Sorry to say this to you, but they also don’t know what to do,” Barkai said. “[It’s] not because they are stupid, but because there is simply no solution.”

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A Nation Of Kreplach

Posted on: October 17th, 2012

Hoshana Rabbah is, according to tradition, the day the judgment of Yom Kippur is sealed and finalized. There are some changes in the morning prayers. We circle the bima seven times with our lulav and esrog and then we put them down and take five aravos and beat them on the synagogue floor as if to say, “These are being beaten instead of me.”

Arab Teachers’ Rejection of Holocaust Education Highlights Arab Anti-Semitism

Posted on: October 17th, 2012

Rumors of a U.N. decision to introduce Holocaust studies in schools in Palestinian refugee camps run by UNRWA have outraged Jordanian teachers.

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Palestinian Statehood, Terror, And The U.S. Presidential Election (First of Two Parts)

Posted on: October 17th, 2012

President Obama and Governor Romney strongly disagree on many issues but the daylight between them is especially great in the imminent matter of Palestinian statehood. For his part, the president still believes in a two-state solution, and in a corollary willingness of the Palestinian side to negotiate fairly. His opponent is unambiguous in a fully contrary insistence that the Palestinians are not interested in peace.

Changing the Battlefield

Posted on: October 17th, 2012

The unwillingness of the Obama administration to label the September occupation of American diplomatic facilities in Cairo and Benghazi, and the murder of an American diplomat "acts of war" make this an opportune moment to consider two lessons emanating from more than a decade of warfare in the Arab and Moslem world.

Rosenblatt v. Silverman: A Culture War

Posted on: October 17th, 2012

Rosenblatt couched his message, as Silverman sometimes does hers, using his notion of Judaic values and cultural identity. And that’s when it hit the fan.

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As We Care For Survivors, Don’t Forget The Damage Done To Their Descendents

Posted on: October 17th, 2012

The words "Never Forget" have become synonymous with the Holocaust, but as the actual horror of the Holocaust starts to fade, it's time we add to the mantra an addendum: "Never Ignore."

Don’t Blame Adelson For Collapse Of Israel’s Monolithic Liberal Media

Posted on: October 17th, 2012

Liberal pundits have coined a new saw: Sheldon Adelson and the newspaper he owns, Israel Hayom, are primarily responsible for the collapse of many Israeli media outlets, and this endangers Israeli democracy.

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