A dear friend, fellow tennis player and memo reader gave me Mark Levin's: "The Liberty Amendments" to read.
If you think I am sane or nuts you still should read it.
If you think Obama is a threat or not to our Republic you must read it.
If you believe our Republic is threatened from within or not you must read it.
If you are a conservative or liberal you must read it.
Get the point I am trying to make? Read: "The :Liberty Amendments!"
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A Revealing Video About The Middle East - You Decide!
http://bit.ly/1tUAY1s
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Is this what Obama is planning for America in The Middle East along with Democrats who believe weakness and feckless behavior will stop terrorism? Who will become the Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite of The Middle East, of Gaza? Will it be Kerry and Obama? You decide.
Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hqYGHZCJwk
PMW monitors Palestinian media, publications,broadcasts etc.
Itmar Marcus has been doing so for decades and has created one of the most successful Middle East anti-propaganda sites in existence.
Most Arabs and Muslims seem to have a temperament born out of the desert heat, nourished by a war like tribal culture and religious hatred. Read "The Haj," if you have not.
Even when they move to cooler climates it seems their disposition remains one of flash point when they hear or see that which they do not agree. Ask those who live in Holland, Belgium, even Norway.
As for France and England they are doomed. Only a matter of time before they will be over run by immigrants from the Middle East.
Can they be Westernized and are Westerners becoming more radical as well? You decide! (See 1 below.)
Left click on Watch: Gazans fire rockets from school and cemetery
Videos show proof of weapons being fired from civilian spaces in the Gaza Strip.===
When attention begets funding it is little wonder Hamas etc. continue to behave as they do.
If America and the West would cut off the hominy and grits we send to Hamas and Palestinian leaders, ignore them and let the Palestinians sort it out and stew in the juice of their own making, I daresay, they will eventually solve the problem created by their pitiful elected leadership..
For over 60 years, America and the West have been trying to solve the Middle East riddle by doing the same thing. Repeating what has proven does not work. It is insane.. Einstein understood that.
Even if my thinking and what I propose is wrong, it can't produce results worse than that which has already occurred.
The reason what I believe will not happen is there are too many who have a vested interest in what fails. They earn their livelihood from perpetuating myths.
Where would UNRWA's employees go if they had no jobs perpetuating Palestinian refugee slums?
How would State Department diplomats live if they were paid for accomplishments rather than constant failures? Perhaps they might change their methods and approaches.
Now they continue being paid for how many meetings they attend, speeches they make and meals they eat.
What utter nonsense.
Would any sensible parent continue to cater to a child's intemperate behavior and expect change?
A change in our approach is long overdue?
Allow Israel to eliminate the Hamas scourge. Quit pulling Hamas' chestnut out of the fire only to result in greater tragedy some years later.
If Obama and Kerry truly wanted results they would stop walking down the same useless and worn path of self-delusion and defeat. Calling for humanitarian ceasefires is simply a ruse and utter feckless lunacy
===Is the sneeze coming from the other nose? (See 2 below.)
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Now the truth comes out but you will not read about this in papers or see it on TV because it proves what liars the social media folk are as they rush to judge Israel. (See 3 and 3a below.)
Israel constantly loses the media war. Perhaps Israelis believe no matter what they do the world will never give them a fair shake.
Perhaps a nation of 6 million against 300 million has no leverage.
Perhaps Israelis believe God is on their side and fail to realize the battle for objectivity must be won from humans on earth.
In truth, because of the prejudice against Israel they go overboard to make sure their military is the most just, most careful etc.
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Dick
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1) Abbas calls for "war for Allah,"
and the West Bank erupts in violence
Intifada-style violence follows Abbas' call
for religious "war for Allah,"
causing 9 Palestinians deaths
Senior Fatah official Tirawi:
"The big explosion is coming...
No one will say that weapons are forbidden
in the West Bank."
by Itamar Marcus
Palestinian Media Watch reported on Thursday that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas had publicly declared the current conflict with Israel as a religious "war for Allah." On Friday, the Palestinian news service Ma'an printed an opinion piece that likewise interpreted the last lines of Abbas' speech as a call to West Bank Palestinians to initiate violence:
"He gave the sign to let the [Palestinian] street in the West Bank loose. Isn't the Quranic verse he quoted during his last speech, 'Permission [to fight] has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, Allah is competent to give them victory' [Surah 22:39, trans. Sahih International] a clear sign to loosen the reins of the street?"
Violence began immediately following Abba's speech and peaked on Saturday, as reported in the Jerusalem Post: "Nine Palestinians were killed during clashes with the IDF and Border Police over the weekend, in one of the deadliest days in the West Bank in the last 10 years." [July 27, 2014]
A cartoon published in the office PA daily today similarly indicated the PA seeks violence. The picture showed two masked men throwing Molotov cocktails and fire raging in the background. The Arabic text is a saying attributed to Mohammed regarding the end of the Ramadan fast: "The thirst has passed, and the throat is moist." In this context, the cartoon indicates that the period of quiet is over, and violence has returned.
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 26, 2014]
The Ma'an journalist cited above explained that Abbas chose to encourage the West Bank to join in the violence for political reasons:
"Abbas realized that by staying outside the arena, he would be excluded from the political game. He also knows that the [Palestinian] street in the West Bank is ready for an explosion."
The op-ed also noted an explicit statement made by senior Fatah official Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi as another indication of Abbas' desire for violence:
"What is the meaning of Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi's statement regarding the West Bank's need to enter into an armed Intifada? It's been a long time since we heard a member of the Fatah leadership talk about weapons. The West Bank's entrance into the line of confrontation will reshuffle the cards, and the action is still just beginning."
Tirawi said in a TV interview that the violence we are witnessing now in the West Bank is just the beginning and will lead to a "big explosion":
Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi: "These are small explosions, which happen occasionally, but the big explosion is coming. The big explosion is coming. After the big explosion, no one will know where it will lead and what its results will be...It is legal to use all means - to shoot, throw stones, to hold a demonstration and a sit-down strike. All these means will be possible and permissible for our people, and let no one say that weapons are forbidden in the West Bank."
[Al-Mayadeen TV channel (Lebanon), July 24, 2014]
Furthermore, Abbas issued two statements in support of continuing the West Bank unrest. In one, the PA leadership called on its "great nation to engage in continued popular action," and in the second it urged Palestinians "to continue peaceful popular resistance." As noted, the current "popular actions" are not "peaceful."
Yasser Abd Rabbo reads the PLO leadership statement: "The Palestinian leadership called on the masses of our great nation to engage in continued popular action of the broadest scope, to express its firm support for the heroic Gaza Strip and its brave resistance to the aggression army and its unceasing crimes."
[Official PA TV, July 23, 2014]
"A statement published at the conclusion of the [PA leadership] meeting stated that...'Even as the [PA] leadership emphasizes that it will continue to act to support the heroic Gaza Strip and to stem its flow of blood, it calls on all our people to continue peaceful popular resistance to support Gaza, its Martyrs (Shahids) and brave sons...'"
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 27, 2014]
PMW has reported on the PA and Abbas' Fatah movement of policy glorifying violence and honoring terrorists who have murdered Israelis. Abbas and PA leaders have said many times that they do not reject violence but that violence needs proper timing. Ma'an understands that Abbas' decision to quote a Quran source justifying religious war, and the violence erupting in the West Bank subsequent to Abbas' speech, are indicators he considers this is an appropriate time for violence.
The following is a longer segment from the op-ed arguing that Mahmoud Abbas is behind the current West Bank violence:
Headline: "A single Quranic verse ignited the West Bank"
"Mahmoud Abbas read the situation well. In an implicit way, he fully supports the Egyptian initiative - for it is inconceivable that the West Bank could oppose Egypt. He acted slowly at first, convinced that Hamas would not endure Israeli fire for long. Yet it [Hamas] has withstood Israel's painful blows, and [even] embarrassed it by capturing the Israeli soldier.
Abbas realized that by staying outside the arena, he would be excluded from the political game. He also knows that the [Palestinian] street in the West Bank is ready for an explosion. Therefore, he gave the sign to let the [Palestinian] street in the West Bank loose. Isn't the Quranic verse he quoted during his last speech, "Permission [to fight] has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, Allah is competent to give them victory" [Surah 22:39, trans. Sahih International] a clear sign to loosen the reins on the street?
Furthermore, what is the meaning of Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi's statement regarding the West Bank's need to enter into an armedIntifada? It's been a long time since we heard a member of the Fatahleadership talk about weapons. The West Bank's entrance into the line ofconfrontation will reshuffle the cards, and the action is still just beginning.Israel will not agree to a third Intifada, and this is precisely what Abbas wants. He wants Israel to knock on his door in order to find a solution."
[Op-ed by Muhannad Ubeid, Ma'an (independent Palestinian news agency),
July 25, 2014]
Note: the captured Israeli soldier to which this article refers is Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul, who was declared MIA after his Armored Personnel Carrier was destroyed during combat in Gaza on July 17, 2014. Hamas claimed to have kidnapped him. On Friday, July 26, 2014, the IDF declared that Oron Shaul was 'a soldier killed in action whose burial site is unknown.'
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2)Contrarian's Case: Why US Could Dip into Recession
Just as the U.S. economy is strengthening, other countries are threatening to drag it down.
Employers in the U.S. are creating jobs at the fastest pace since the late 1990s and the economy finally looks ready to expand at a healthy rate. But sluggish growth in France, Italy, Russia, Brazil and China suggests that the old truism, "When the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold," may need to be flipped.
Maybe the rest of the world will sneeze this time, and the U.S. will get sick.
That's the view of David A. Levy, who oversees the Levy Forecast, a newsletter analyzing the economy that his family started in 1949 and one with an enviable record. Nearly a decade ago, the now 59-year-old economist warned that U.S. housing was a bubble set to burst, and that the damage would push the country into a recession so severe the Federal Reserve would have no choice but to slash short-term borrowing rates to their lowest levels ever to stimulate the economy. That's exactly what happened. Now, Levy says the United States is likely to fall into a recession next year triggered by downturns in other countries, the first time in modern history.
"The recession for the rest of the world ... will be worse than the last one," says Levy, whose grandfather called the 1929 stock crash and whose father won praise over decades for anticipating turns in the business cycle, often against conventional wisdom.
Levy's forecast for a global recession is an extreme one, but worth considering given so much is riding on the dominant view that economies are healing. Investors have pushed U.S. stocks to record highs, and Fed estimates have the U.S. growing at an annual pace of at least 3 percent for the rest of the year and all of 2015. Investors have also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into emerging market stock funds recently on hopes economic growth in those countries will pick up, not stall.
Worrisome signs are already out there. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, European banks are still stuck with too many bad loans from the financial crisis. Business debt there is too high. And confidence is fleeting, as investors saw earlier this month when stocks sold off on worries over the stability of Portugal's largest bank.
In China and other emerging markets, the old problem of relying on indebted Americans to buy more of their goods each year and not selling enough to their own people means a glut of underused factories.
"The world hopes to ride on the coattails of the U.S. consumer," says Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, "but the U.S. consumer isn't in a position to take on the burden."
Emerging markets bounced back faster from the financial crisis than did rich countries, but Levy thinks a big reason for that has made things worse. Overseas companies plowed money into factories, machines and buildings used to make things on the assumption that exports, after snapping back from recession lows, would continue to grow at their prior pace. They have not, a big problem since companies had been investing too much to expand production before the crisis, too.
Compared to such fragile economies, Levy says the U.S. is in decent shape. Like most economists, he's not worried about the nation's 2.9 percent drop in economic output in the first quarter, attributing it to harsh winter weather. He expects growth to return, but not for long, as a recession in either Europe or emerging markets spreads to the U.S.
Levy says the U.S. is more vulnerable to troubles abroad than people realize. Exports contributed 14 percent of U.S. economic output last year, up from 9 percent in 2002. That sounds like a good development, but it also makes the country more dependent on global growth, which, in turn, relies more on emerging markets. Those markets accounted for 50 percent of global output last year, up from 38 percent in 2002.
Levy predicts a U.S. recession will throw its housing recovery in reverse, and push home prices below the low in the last recession. He says panicked investors are likely to dump stocks and flood into U.S. Treasurys, a haven in troubled times, like never before. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite to its price, is likely to fall from 2.5 percent to less than 1 percent — an unprecedented low. In 2012, when investors feared a breakup of the euro-currency bloc, the 10-year yield fell to 1.4 percent.
His forecasts may seem a bit much, but Levy comes from a family with a good record of running against the crowd.
His grandfather, Jerome, didn't just call the Great Crash of 1929, he sold all his stock and liquidated his wholesale goods business in anticipation of it. Immediately after World War II, when many experts thought the U.S. was sure to fall into another depression, his father, Jay, accurately predicted a rapid expansion instead. In late 1999, his uncle, Leon Levy, a hedge fund manager and collector of antiquities, invited this reporter into his office, pointed to a bust of a rich Roman near his door and mused on the fleeting nature of fortune. He then predicted a new generation of wealthy would be laid low soon in a coming dot-com crash.
Those stocks began their long dive a few months later.
For all the prescience from this latest Levy, he thinks the origin of the world's economic malaise is far more complex and deep than investors focused on the housing collapse think. The problem is not just that people in the U.S. took on mortgages they couldn't afford, but too much borrowing of many kinds in many countries, and by businesses as well as individuals. This buildup of excessive debt started so long ago — Levy dates it to the 1980s in the U.S. — that people no longer know what's prudent.
Many economists, for instance, are impressed that debt held by U.S. households has fallen from 130 percent of annual take-home income before the crisis to 104 percent, suggesting that people aren't borrowing too much. But what is a healthy level? Levy is not sure, but he suspects it's a lot lower, noting that, in 1985, debt
was 74 percent of people's income.
Whether all this means a U.S. recession is a different matter.
Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities, also thinks people are missing signs of a coming global slowdown, but that the U.S. economy will continue to grow anyway. Daniel Alpert, author of a grim book called "Age of Oversupply" about the glut in exports from foreign countries that so worries Levy, doesn't think the U.S. will fall into recession, either. And Cornell's Prasad, who sees many of the same problems as Levy, suspects emerging economies may be "bottoming out," suggesting investors buying their stocks now might not be so stupid after all.
Still, Levy, chairman of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, a consulting firm, has proved more right than wrong lately.
For a year now, some experts have been expecting a surge in corporate spending on factories, machines and equipment in rich countries where it had lagged, and a continuation of strong spending in emerging markets. That would speed economic growth because such capital expenditures, even if wasteful, add to gross domestic product. But Levy has said the world already has spent too much expanding capacity to produce things, and the optimists are wrong. Last month came proof. A Standard and Poor's report showed capital expenditures, adjusted for inflation, dropped by 1 percent globally last year, and by 4 percent in emerging markets — a reversal from decades of ever bigger outlays.
That may be healthy in the long run. But as China tries to contain the fallout from a deflating real estate bubble, India grows at its slowest pace in a quarter century, Brazil teeters on recession and Russia may have already sunk into one, the timing is awful. Last week there was bad news from the eurozone. Industrial production in the 18 countries that share the euro currency fell 0.5 percent in the year through May, suggesting that even the modest recovery there might be stalling.
You don't have to buy Levy's gloomy predictions to see the world may be at a worrisome crossroads.
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3)MAJOR NEWS OUT OF ISRAEL: It was an errant Hamas rocket that hit the UN school, ooooops
UNRWA has admitted a Hamas misfired rocket hit a U.N.-run school in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, according to Channel 2′s Ehud Ya’ari, but an errant IDF artillery shell also may have hit the facility, where Gaza sources claim an estimated 17 children and United Nations personnel were killed and 200 others were wounded Thursday afternoon.
Other sources have said the death toll is closer to 10.
Ya’ari also reported that one IDF shell struck the school, but this has not been verified.
The IDF spokesman remarked, and UNRWA confirmed, that misfired Hamas rockets fell and exploded in the area of the Beit Hanoun school. The IDF also reported there was significant combat in that area, where Hamas has used schools and hospitals as terror bases. The army shot artillery shells at Hamas targets, and one of the shells may have gone off course.
However, if even one of the explosions was a result of Hamas rockets, which seems to be the case, foreign media will have to throw up their hands in surrender to their constant attempt to show Israel as a mass murderer of innocent children.
Israel was immediately blamed for supposedly bombing the school, and UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness jumped all over the IDF for the tragedy.
Israel has made it clear that Hamas is responsible for any and all deaths.
Foreign news agencies already have blamed Israel and have published gory pictures of the aftermath of the attacks, which came a day after U.N. Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon expressed “alarm” that 20 rockets were found for the second time in a UNRWA school but that they had “gone missing.”
The IDF initially responded to the report of the alleged bombing of the school in Beit Hanoun with a statement saying, the IDF is “currently in the midst of combat, with Hamas terrorists in the area of Beit Hanoun, who are using civilian infrastructure and international symbols as human shields. In the course of the afternoon, several rockets launched by Hamas from within the Gaza Strip landed in the Beit Hanoun area. The IDF is reviewing the incident.”
Beit Hanoun has been a favorite site for terrorists because of its close proximity to Gaza Belt communities.
Approximately 20-30 percent of Hamas rockets have landed or exploded inside Gaza, and Channel 10 television said that UNRWA, after having spewed out anger at the IDF, has confirmed that Hamas was the source of the attacks.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness, who has been strangely subdued about not knowing that rockets were hidden in at least two UNRWA schools – and that number is certainly much larger – turned up the volume with his usual anti-Israel condemnation over the bombing of the school.
Gunness told Israel Radio that UNRWA tried to coordinate with the IDF during the day to leave a window open for civilians to leave the school, but that request “never was granted.” He tweeted, “Precise co-ordinates of the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanoun had been formally given to the Israeli army.”
He has not had too much to say about the rockets that “have gone missing.”
His boss U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was not so worried that the first batch of rockets found in a UNRWA school last week was turned over to Hamas, now is furious that no one knows who picked up the second batch. A wild guess might be, possibly, maybe, that they went back to their rightful owners, Hamas.
“Those responsible are turning schools into potential military targets, and endangering the lives of innocent children,” Ban stated.
3a)Israel’s challenge
OUR OPINION: Its right of self-defense is not negotiable
HERALDED@MIAMIHERALD.COM
When Hamas decided to initiate rocket attacks on Israel, it invited the furious reprisal that began earlier this month. Three times since 2006, Israel has responded to aerial assaults on its citizens with fierce counter-attacks, and each time the fighting has come to an inconclusive end that allows its enemies to replenish their arsenals and start planning for the next round.
For that reason, Israel’s Security Cabinet unanimously rejected a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire on Friday, though Israel agreed to a 12-hour pause for Saturday. The images from the funerals of Israeli troops are heart-rending. The scenes of horror and destruction in Gaza, gut-wrenching. No one could wish for the people of Gaza to endure prolonged misery.
But it was Hamas that wished for the fighting. First, by attacking Israel, and then by rejecting an Egyptian ceasefire proposal because it wanted its own narrow demands addressed first. That included lifting border restrictions and the release of dozens of former prisoners Israel rearrested in a crackdown on the West Bank after the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers.
Throughout the fighting, Hamas has used the civilian population of Gaza as hostages. That is one big reason the terrorist group has worn out its welcome there. It uses populated areas to fire deadly rockets into Israel. U.N. officials have also said they twice found Hamas using abandoned schools to conceal dozens of rockets.
The refusal to agree to a cease-fire more than one week ago, along with the discovery of an extensive network of tunnels leading into Israel, triggered the Israeli ground assault and the determination of its government to achieve a twofold aim: Destroy the tunnels and degrade Hamas’ arsenal to render it ineffective.
Without that, Hamas would be exposed as dangerous and useless. Its control of Gaza has only worsened the lives and prospects of Palestinians who live there.
Israel must be allowed to crush the threat from Hamas, not just for a few months or a year (the last ceasefire took effect in November 2012), but for the foreseeable future. The right of self-defense is not negotiable.
While it is putting an end to Hamas, Israel must also do a better job of avoiding civilian casualties. As mentioned earlier, Hamas thrives amid reports of the deaths of women and children under Israeli attacks. It’s an integral part of Hamas’ strategy. Thus, Israel has both a moral necessity to avoid civilian casualties and an enormous self-interest in ensuring that mistakes resulting in more civilian killings don’t happen.
Marginalizing Hamas and reducing its support among Palestinians is another strategic imperative. As long as Hamas is seen as an effective standard-bearer for Palestinian aspirations, it will draw grassroots support. It’s doing a pretty good job by itself of alienating Palestinians, especially those in Gaza who understood that provoking another round of fighting with Israel would invite disaster. But Israel can hasten the erosion of Hamas’ popular support by helping to improve the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, has become an effective partner in keeping the peace.
The ultimate challenge for Israel is to help provide a better life for Palestinians in the West Bank, giving them a glimpse of a more-peaceful future — including the return of Mr. Abbas’ group to power in Gaza. That, of course, requires victory over Hamas and an end to its destructive power.
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