Problems for the green police
Question Socrates: Part I. Back to the Future
F**k You Very Much, Mr. Commander-in-Chief. Sir.
Playing the Violence Card
Scalia: Constitution doesn't protect women, gays
FDA urges consumers to avoid sexual-enhancement drinks
Next Obama chapter: Change coming to White House
14 states may target birthright citizenship
Ex-Lebanon Leader: Christians Target of Genocide
Republican Congressman: Ban Funding of Obamacare in Every Appropriations Bill This Year
Chilling Video: Openly Rooting for Revolution, The Left Calls For American Civil Unrest & Riots
Navy Gets its Holiday Wish and Buys Both LCS Classes
Never Forget The Fed Caused The Economic Downturn
China backs Spain to emerge from crisis: Beijing
European nations begin seizing private pensions
Obamacare Ends Construction of Doctor-Owned Hospitals
UFC Champ Jacob Volkmann Says He Wants To Fight Obama…
Josh Groban Sings Kanye's Tweets!!
Vulture tagged by Israeli scientists flies into Saudi Arabia ... and is arrested for being a spy
USS Enterprise captain relieved of command following lewd videos.
Sudan's president vows to support South after secession
Backlash against perks for EU officials
Chinese truck driver's dramatic escape
Guarding the Pork Barrel: Germany Opposes Attempts to Reform EU Agricultural Subsidies
Diplomat attacked with döner knives
India overtakes China as most attractive market for Japanese firms
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
News.............
Video: Bit O' Lace (1944 - 1945)
This series consists of moving images shot by pilot John H. Bauman in flight on the B-17G "A Bit O' Lace," K identifier, bomber of the 709th Bomb Squadron of the 447th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force, late in World War II.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Melanie Phillips on Israel
A re-post from Melanie Phillips
January 3, 2011
The challenge of public diplomacy vis-a-vis the delegitimisation of Israel
Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media, 30 December 2010
As we all know by now, Israel has lost the battle for public opinion in the west. Even the Israel government is now acknowledging this fact. Israel and its defenders have been outclassed and outmanoeuvred in a war of the mind being waged on a battleground it never even acknowledged it was on.
Calls for more and better hasbara, however, are meaningless if the message or narrative promoted by Israel and its defenders misses the point of the attack being waged upon it. And it does miss that point, by a mile.
You cannot resist or overcome a threat unless you first understand its nature.
The first thing to say is that this phenomenon is characteristic not just of the media animosity or economic or academic boycotts. It goes across the intelligentsia and political class, spreading well beyond the normal suspects on the left into the mainstream middle-classes.
In Britain, the universities, the established church, the theatrical and publishing worlds, the voluntary sector, significant elements within the Foreign Office, members of Parliament across the political spectrum, as well as the media have overwhelmingly signed up to the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel.
The scale of this phenomenon is nothing short of a multi-layered civilisational crisis.
The west is experiencing a total inversion of truth evidence and reason. A society’s thinking class has overwhelmingly subscribed to an immoral, patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account of the Middle East, past and present, which it has uncritically absorbed and assumes to be true.
continue reading
Video: British troops fighting in Afghanistan close ups
You will need to turn the volume right up.
H/T Marc
From the pilot's viewpoint, an F-15E Strike Eagle positions under the boom of a KC-135R Stratotanker during a training mission Dec. 17, 2010, over North Carolina. The F-15E is from the 335th Fighter Squadron from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller)
H/T Marc
News...........
Electric sticker shock
Russian Duma to link missile defense to START limitations
Starting to see the truth come out about ROTC on campus?
Job #1 for Congress
A 1944 Christmas miracle for Gen. Patton
Dave Barry’s 2010 Year in Review
USA’s bumblebee population declining
Council crematorium plans to freeze-dry or dissolve bodies in sci-fi bid to be more environmentally friendly
New RAF helmet allows pilots to shoot down enemy jets by looking at them
Iran invites EU, Russia and China to tour nuclear sites
British consulate employees in Jerusalem linked to terror attack
Sangin insurgents agree to stand up to Taliban
China's next president "redder than the red"
Man who jumped out of window saved by New York garbage
Ivory Coast 'street general' calls off Golf Hotel assault
Escaped Penguin Ends Up in Lion Enclosure
and finally.......
Your 100 favorite women of 2010
Awesome Celebrity Candids of 2010
The big con game..........from Rico
First the MSM told us we were all gonna freeze to death and die because of man-made global cooling and it's all our fault!
Then they said we were all gonna cook to death and die because of man-made global warming and it's all our fault!
Now they are trying to convince us that we're all gonna die from either one or both and it's all out fault!
RUN - PANIC - FOLLOW YOUR LEADERS. BLINDLY.
There are several themes here:
- We know better than you, because we're so smart and you're NOT, so you had better just believe us! [elitism]
- It's caused by eeeevil humans (whatever the problem) destroying Mother Gaia! [anti-humanism]
- The individual must be punished by the GROUP! [communism]
This is what comes of so-called journalists shilling a political agenda instead of reporting facts, and this is exactly why nobody with two brain cells to rub together gets their "news" from newspapers or magazines or TV anymore....the incredibly arrogant stupidity of the MSM.
- Small wonder there is now a move afoot to clamp down on the internet. Tyranny despises competing thought.....
Monday, 3 January 2011
How Are the Jews Doing? by Alan Caruba
A Copy Post
Monday, January 3, 2011
How Are the Jews Doing?
By Alan Caruba
Wondering how the world’s Jews are doing may seem a trivial question, but I have long thought of Jews as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. When events turn nasty in the world, it is the Jews who are most often its first victims.
If there is a rise in anti-Semitism worldwide it is, frankly, hard to detect from the constant, endless background noise from those who hate Jews full-time and would be utterly bereft of any purpose in life if there were no Jews.
Sadly, Christians in the Middle East are suffering attacks that have long been familiar to Jews throughout history and, these days, the Israelis. There is no room for live-and-let-live in that region of the world where the two Islamic sects, Sunni and Shia, do not hesitate to kill one another.
When one considers that the Iranian mullahs, desperately trying to construct their own nuclear weapons, have vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the map, inquiring as to the Jews’ welfare in general and Israelis in particular is not a trivial question. A nuclear attack could easily cascade into a general exchange of such weapons, a goal the mullahs actually want to trigger.
Thomas Cahill, an Irish author, said, "The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside - our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews."
So, perhaps, in a way, we are all Jews.
In October 2010, my eye was caught by a speech by the press magnate, Rupert Murdoch, to the annual banquet of the Anti-Defamation League in New York. “We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews,” said Murdoch.
This may be difficult for most Americans to comprehend because perhaps no where else in the world, other than Israel, have Jews not only prospered, but found a level of acceptance that is truly unique. In Israel, being a Jew is the ultimate definition of normality.
Murdoch, however, said that “conventional” anti-Semitism has largely failed, citing the wars against Israel since its founding in 1948. Now, said Murdoch, Jews are the target of a “soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it.”
This is going to be particularly evident when “Durban III”, a United Nations conference, takes place in September.
Originally called the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance” the UN conference name was shortened to the “World Conference Against Racism.” Suffice to say, as with most things involving the UN, the conferences have been the exact opposite of their announced purpose.
The previous Durban conference in Geneva caused European delegates to walk out when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, a keynote speaker, launched into a tirade against Israel and Jews. The Conference is recognized worldwide as a cesspool of anti-Semitism. In both conferences the hatred was directed against America as well as Israel.
Durban III will be held in New York!
It will be instructive to see if the U.S. government will send delegates to this hate fest or will officially and outspokenly protest and reject its message.
As Murdoch noted in October, there is a “curious situation we have today: Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran—a nation that makes no secret of wishing Israel’s destruction—pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.”
Murdoch said that anti-Semitism has found “a disturbing new home…in polite society, especially in Europe” and expressed concern that America was “distancing herself from the Jewish state.” He added that “the most virulent strains of anti-Semitism “come from the left”, often dressed up “as legitimate disagreement with Israel.”
He warned that Obama administration policies, generally called an outreach to the Muslim world, “Far from making peace more possible…are making hostilities more certain.”
The Iranian mullahs and their Syrian puppet have been supplying an enormous stash of rockets to Hezbollah, the Iranian's Palestinian entity in Lebanon, just as they fund and direct Hamas in Gaza. 2011 may well be a repeat of the 2006 hostilities and Israel will surely not repeat the mistakes that prolonged the last conflict.
So 2011 is yet another year in which to ask how are the Jews doing around the world.
The U.S. and its allies have been militarily engaging virulent Islamists since 9/11, but Islamist attacks predate that event by many years. The Islamist threat has spread to Europe and England, and remains active against America.
The Holocaust is a symbol and a warning of what happens when Jews or any other group is targeted for extermination. Death to America is chanted daily by some. Afterward, “genocide” entered the lexicon as the practice infected parts of Asia and Africa.
The Jews remain the most useful barometer to determine the advance or retreat of evil in the world.
© Alan Caruba, 2011
Posted by Alan Caruba at 2:10 PM
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Iran, Israel, Jews, united nations
Tempering the Tea Party in 2011?
An interesting piece at LAT, "'Tea Party' Activists Keep Watch on Congress' New Class."
Additional analysis, with links and photos, is here.
Trotskyites Strike Back Over Feminists' Julian Assange Allegations
You know this whole radical progressive schism over the Assange rape allegations has gotten out of control when one of the world's leading revolutionary parties is pushing back against the feminist left's charges against the WikiLeaks frontman. See the Socialist Equality Party's, "The Nation Joins the Campaign Against Julian Assange."
And I've written a full-blown analysis here: "Trotskyite Fourth International Attacks The Nation's 'Right-Wing Campaign' Against Julian Assange."
News........
The LCS is not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment…
The science of consensus
Thousands of dead birds picked up in Ark. town
The Manchurian Candidate
King William's College "Christmas Quiz" 2010
GOP agenda may mean more in 2012 than now
Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of Understimulation
The Last Roll of Kodachrome Film Ever Will Be Developed Today
Have scientists discovered how to create downpours in the desert?
We've shot down West's spy planes, claims Iran: Aircraft 'intercepted in Persian Gulf'
Competing Visions: France and Germany Split over Plans for European Economic Government
Man Robs Store With Tree Branch; Clerk Defends Himself With Hammer
Real estate vs. the fourth estate........from Rico
CRE (commercial real estate) isn't talked about by the Mnistry of Truth a.k.a. the Fourth estate, but it is taking-down banks at an evr-increasing clip.
- Some are forecasting 800 bank failures in 2011, primarily due to CRE.
Less talked about (if THAT'S possible) is housing. Homes. The other 'real estate.'
- I think Case-Shiller are right and housing prices/values will revert to the mean. [Translation for Democrats (C): Drop. Fall in value.] This would mean a further decline of 23%....but, just like values overshot on the upside I suspect they will overshoot to the downside and over-correct, meaning more than a 23% drop.
Just don't hold your breath for any similar decline in property taxes, however.
- Not as Counties go broke and Municipal Bonds tank.
