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Remember when Obama told the Russian Prime Minister that Putin should wait til he was re-elected and he would be in a better position to be more flexible?
Guess Putin listened, understood and has now been acting accordingly because he knew he was dealing with a light weight.
It may well be that Putin, at some point, might overstep and fall on his own sword but before that occurs it is also possible Cuba will be an island on which Russia will have stationed weapons and Russia will have beefed up Cuba's own military with various equipment threatening America.
It is also possible Russia will have increased its attack on Ukraine and Obama will still be impugning Putin to please let our investigators visit the Malaysian air crash site.
Meanwhile, Obama is funding Hamas by sending no strings attached tax payer money to Qtar which is Hamas' best friend and supporter while, at the same time, demanding Israel cease destroying tunnels Hamas uses to send rockets into Israel.
Furthermore, we have witnessed a loose cannon of a Secretary of State, seeking to bring about a cease fire by, unwittingly, selling Israel down the river and asking them to sign their own death warrant.
Then we have Madame Pelosi telling us Hamas is a humanitarian organization because they supply food to their citizens while converting cement, intended for building schools etc. , to build tunnels to attack Israel which, by their charter, they are sworn to annihilate.
If that is not enough, we have a president who threatens to act unilaterally by legitimizing illegal immigrants if Congress does not give him what he wants.
Finally, we have Obama raising campaign money by telling Democrat sheep, Republicans are going to impeach him and they are stupid enough to believe their king!
This is the America, Obama now presides over. A shell of its former greatness, a nation that once was respected, was basically trusted when it spoke and a country that generally projected a positive vision.
And what about all those domestic scandals where there is no" smidgen" of evidence according to our king.
You could not make the above up if you tried to do so 24/7. Yet, this disaster of a president was able to accomplish this radical change in less than 6 years.
But then if you want to believe this king who tells us things are more "tranquil" than before he took office, you must also still have hope that all this change is good!.
If that is the case then I can only say 'bless your heart you poor soul.'
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This Pentagon General believes something worse would replace Hamas and therefore suggests Israel not destroy Hamas if that is even possible in the current world environment.
Hearken back to Viet Nam and the world has seen America no longer believes in winning wars because the cost of doing so is too great and America , post Viet Nam, no longer has the stomach or will.
Is this happening again in Gaza? Has Obama signaled to Hamas, America's support of Israel is subject to Israel agreeing to a no win cease fire? Is Obama more interested in saving a terrorist organization than a democracy fighting to protect its population from constant rocket attacks and other such life threatening disruptions?
Even if Obama is on Israel's side has Kerry's diplomatic actions emboldened Hamas to continue fighting? (See 1 below.)
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Has the world decided it is time to resurrect the dark period of Europe?
History has a way of repeating itself and I suspect we are on the verge of doing so.
In my opinion hatred always lies beneath the surface waiting for a stimulus. (See 2 below.)
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The best summary of the conflict between Israel and Palestine I've ever seen. Take time to watch this short video. It's worth it. This sums up the situation so clearly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EDW88CBo-8
Netanyahu is proving he meant what he said. (See 3 below.)
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As Newsweek closes its doors we get a mia culpa from Matt Patterson.
Finally, Matt Patterson and Newsweek speak out about Obama.
As many of you know, Newsweek has a reputation for being extremely liberal.
The fact that their editor saw fit to print the following article about Obama, makes this a truly amazing event, and a news story in and of itself.
At last the truth about Obama and his agenda are starting to trickle through the protective wall built around him by the liberal media.... (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Is There Something Worse Than Hamas?
Critics of the Pentagon, and indeed of all defense establishments, have often quipped that the term “military intelligence” is an oxymoron. As a general rule, that sort of comment is as inaccurate as it is unfair. But Lt. General Michael Flynn, the outgoing head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, bolstered this assumption by declaring that the destruction of the Hamas terrorist government of Gaza would lead to something worse.
General Flynn warned that if Israel is seeking to either decapitate Hamas, remove it from power, or to eliminate it altogether, that might not be a smart move. He asserted that Hamas would be replaced by something far more radical and, by definition, more dangerous to both Israel and the rest of the world.
“If Hamas were destroyed and gone, we would probably end up with something much worse. The region would end up with something much worse,” Flynn said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.“A worse threat that would come into the sort of ecosystem there … something like ISIS,” he added, referring to the Islamic State, which last month declared an “Islamic caliphate” in territory it controls in Iraq and Syria.
Is he right?
It is a reliable rule of existence on this planet than whenever you think things can’t get worse, they often do become even more unbearable. But that piece of general life wisdom aside, the argument that behind Hamas lurks more dangerous groups is not only unsubstantiated; to believe it you have to ignore everything we already know about Hamas.
As far as the possibility of more radical Islamists replacing Hamas, there is no question that the prospect of al-Qaeda-related groups becoming the address for Palestinian “resistance” to Israel’s existence would be scary for the West. Perhaps this fear is based on an assumption that they would not be content with slaughtering Jews as Hamas and Islamic Jihad attempt to do but would instead concentrate on killing Americans. But does anyone in the U.S.—even the spooks in the Pentagon—really believe that al-Qaeda types in the Middle East are not already doing their best to attack America right now?
Any group that replaced Hamas as the Islamist rival to the more secular Fatah would be competing in the same Palestinian political universe that grants credibility to groups that attack Israel, not Western targets. Whatever followed Hamas would not be a freelance Islamist terror group such as those in the Arabian Peninsula or North Africa but a Palestinian entity that would seek to escalate the fight against the Jewish presence in the country, not a scattered campaign against the West elsewhere.
But leaving that issue aside, the problem with Flynn’s thinking is that the more one looks at Hamas’s behavior, the harder it is to argue that there could be something that would be qualitatively worse in terms of conflict escalation or human rights.
For example, it was reported today that Hamas executed 20 Palestinians who had the temerity to launch an anti-war protest in Gaza. The protesters were branded as traitors. Would a successor group seek to repress dissent or govern Gaza with more brutality than Hamas?
Hamas has funneled much of the humanitarian aid sent to Gaza into its “military” infrastructure, constructing an underground city of shelters and tunnels for its armaments and fighters and to facilitate terror attacks on Israelis. As Tablet magazine reported, 160 Palestinian children employed as laborers were killed during the course of the building of these tunnels. Would an ISIS-clone do anything worse than that?
Hamas’s purpose, as detailed in their charter and regularly reaffirmed by both their military and political leaders, is to destroy Israel and to ethnically cleanse it of its Jewish population. Would ISIS or al-Qaeda favor a more gentle form of genocide?
To study Hamas’s actual behavior and its beliefs undermines any notion that its elimination would result in the radicalization of Palestinians and their supporters. Hamas is already so radical in terms of its intransigence against peace and Israel’s existence that any more extreme shift under a successor would be purely cosmetic and result in no tangible increase in the threat level to the region.
More to the point, anyone who truly desires a two-state solution to the conflict must understand that the only hope for that outcome—and, admittedly, it is a slim hope—is for Hamas to be eliminated, giving a chance for the supposedly more moderate Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza and to make peace with Israel.
Given the difficulty and the cost of a campaign that would completely eliminate Hamas or to replace it as the government of Gaza it may well be that Flynn’s nightmare will never be realized. Hamas thinks it is in no danger and statements such as that of the general and the willingness of the U.S. to embrace cease-fire proposals that would grant it an undeserved victory only strengthen their conviction that they can continue to fight with impunity. But using this argument to bolster Hamas’s hold on power is a terrible error. The only way to end the conflict is to demilitarize Gaza. The only way to do that is to eliminate Hamas.
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2) The Ugly Tide Washing Across Europe
The 'Gaza generation' seems worried about Arab deaths only when Jews are involved.
About the crowds on Friday in Paris chanting "Palestine will overcome" and "Israel, assassin": Where were they a few days earlier when news broke that over the previous weekend Syria's civil war had produced 720 more dead, adding to the 150,000 others who have not had the honor of demonstrations in France?
Why did the protesters not pour into the streets when, a few days before that, the well-informed Syrian Network for Human Rights revealed that so far this year Damascus's army, which was supposed to have destroyed its supply of chemical weapons, carried out at least 17 gas attacks around Kafrzyta, Talmanas, Atshan and elsewhere?
Will these people, "outraged" for a day, claim that they did not know, that they saw no images of the others who died, and that today only images have the power to stir them to action? That is not going to work. Because they had seen what was happening in Syria. As reporters later discovered, those same grisly images, or older versions of them, were appropriated, doctored and retweeted by organizers of the anti-Israel demonstrations under the dishonest hashtag GazaUnderAttack.
Pro-Palestinian protesters in Paris take part in a demonstration against the military action in Gaza in July. Getty Images
Will the protesters claim that they were rallying against French President François Hollande and a policy of unilateral support for Israel that they do not wish to see conducted "in their name"? Perhaps. But conducting outward politics for inner reasons—converting a large cause into a small instrument designed to salve one's conscience at little cost—reflects little genuine concern for the fate of the victims. Even more pointedly, should not the same reasoning have filled the same streets 10 or 100 times to protest the same president's decision, likewise taken in their name, not to intervene in Syria?
Will they say that it is Israel's disproportion in force that is shocking, the imbalance between an all-powerful army and defenseless civilians? That argument has some merit, but in the end it also doesn't hold up. For if that were the reason for protests—if one were primarily concerned about the Palestinian children whose deaths are indeed an abomination—one would demand that Hamas operatives leave the hospital basements where they have buried their command centers, move the rocket launchers that they have installed in the doorways of United Nations schools, and stop threatening parents who wish to evacuate their homes when an Israeli leaflet informs them that a strike is imminent.
Moreover, if alarm about disproportion and asymmetry were the true wellspring of the protesters' rage, would they not have had at least a passing thought for another disproportion that, not so far from Gaza, now afflicts the most wretched of the wretched, the most defenseless of all, the Christians of Mosul? Hamas's "brothers" are offering these Iraqis the following ultimatum: Embrace Islam or die by the sword.
The truth is that these protesters—most of them young members of the self-proclaimed "Gaza generation," for whom the latest in chic is to sport a kaffiyeh made in Palestine—assume it is normal for Arabs to kill other Arabs.
They are also unperturbed upon learning, from the very mouth of the Hamas leadership (Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4), that in 2012 alone the construction of the infamous Gaza tunnels cost the lives of 160 Palestinian children who were turned into little slaves and buried in the rubble.
The oldest of these protesters also missed the chance to mobilize in favor of the 300,000 Darfurians massacred by Sudan; the 200,000 Chechens whom Putin, in his own elegant phrase, "kicked into the crapper" not so long ago; and the Bosnians who were besieged and bombarded to general indifference for three years. The truth is that for these selectively conscientious objectors, indignation arrives only when one has the opportunity to condemn a military consisting mostly of Jews.
The double standard is odious. And it has become increasingly evident across Europe in the past month. Bluntly anti-Semitic slogans have marred most European demonstrations "in support of the people of Gaza." Residents of Frankfurt and Dortmund were horrified in mid-July to see neo-Nazi groups join hands with left-wing Islamists in a grim chant: "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas." The center of London was blocked on July 19 by thousands who gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Kensington to shout their hatred for Jews.
Not to mention Amsterdam, the city of Spinoza, Europe's capital of tolerance, where in certain neighborhoods it has become practically impossible to wear a yarmulke in public without running the risk of being insulted or assaulted.
For someone who has advocated, as I have, for nearly half a century the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a fully recognized Israel, this is truly discouraging. That there are sincere men and women among the demonstrators I do not doubt. But I would urge them to think twice before letting themselves be manipulated by those whose motive is not solidarity but hate, and whose true agenda is not peace in Palestine but death to Israel—and, as often as not, alas, death to Jews.
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3)
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The IDF killed over 20 terrorists and struck more than 200 targets from the air in the past 24 hours in Gaza. The targets included mosques which were being used by Hamas for military activities. One such mosque was used as a command center while another had been in use as an observation post to monitor IDF troop movements. That mosque was in close proximity to a children's playground. Troops destroyed three terror tunnels and discovered another containing large quantities of AK-47 assault rifles and grenades. A tank force operating in Gaza discovered a weapons cache inside a mosque, also on Tuesday overnight. The arsenal included a "Kornet" anti-tank missile launcher which was loaded and ready for use. Troops also found explosives and maps. On Tuesday afternoon, a Givati infantry force opened fire on five terrorists who surfaced from a tunnel that led to a mosque. All five were killed in the IDF's fire. Hamas cells attempted to fire anti-tank missiles at a tank from the 401st Armored Division, which returned fire. A total of nine terrorists were killed in exchanges of fire on Tuesday. The IDF reported two wounded. On Tuesday Israeli tank fire hit the fuel depot of the Gaza Strip’s only power plant, cutting electricity to Gaza City and many other parts of the Palestinian enclave of 1.8 million people. A thick column of black smoke rose from the facility, which supplies the territory with two-thirds of its energy needs. The fuel containers were left in flames. The IDF struck 135 Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets across Gaza on Tuesday as ground units continued to map out and destroy tunnels and clash with terrorist cells. It struck over 70 targets overnight between Monday and Tuesday, including the home and offices of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political wing. Both buildings were used as a command center to manage terrorism, the IDF said. Four mosques used to store weapons, a terrorism tunnel and an underground rocket launcher located near another mosque were also attacked, the IDF said, adding that one of the four mosques also housed a tunnel shaft, while a second had been turned into a Hamas command and control center. Five soldiers were wounded inside Gaza on Tuesday by a Palestinian mortar attack. Two were airlifted to the Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba, and three were taken by ambulance to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. Earlier on Tuesday, the IDF announced that five soldiers had been killed in an attempted infiltration into Israel on Monday via a cross-border tunnel. The five died when attackers fired an antitank missile at the base of an IDF watch tower. Soldiers at the top of the tower shot and killed at least one terrorist who attempted to retrieve a dead soldier’s body. Dozens of rockets from Gaza were fired at various parts of Israel on Tuesday evening, including in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. A rocket was fired at Beit Shemesh and rocket alert sirens wailed in the Jerusalem hills at around 8:30 p.m. They were the first Color Red warnings for the area in recent days. Four rockets were intercepted over Beersheba and five more landed in open areas around the city after sirens blared there and in surrounding areas at around 9:30 p.m. At approximately 10:15 p.m. sirens wailed in the Tel Aviv area, the Shfela area and in Ashdod. The Iron Dome defense system intercepted one rocket over greater Tel Aviv. Two more landed in open areas between Ashkelon and Ashdod. |
4)- "I Too Have Become Disillusioned"
by Matt Patterson (Newsweek Columnist - Opinion Writer)
"Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, and execute the world's most consequential job?
"Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, less often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.
"He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor;" a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking : how on Earth was such a man elected president?
"Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberal-dom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were 'a bit' extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard because of the color of his skin.
"Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?
"Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon - affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.
"Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.
Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin - that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.
"And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be?
As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be President despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.
"What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people - conservatives included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed.
"The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his Teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth - it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years. (An example is his 2012 campaign speeches which are almost word for word his 2008 speeches)
"And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck;
I inherited this mess. Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the task. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. (The other day he actually came out and said no one could have done anything to get our economy and country back on track). But really, what were we to expect?
The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?
"In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.
When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense.
It could not have gone otherwise with such an impostor in the Oval Office."
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