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| I bought a pair and when I wore them recently a young bar maid fell in love with them. |
This isn't Europe, it's Miami , USA . They are here already. Have you seen this in any TV station or newspaper?
The presenter of the recent meeting I attended about introducing Sharia Law into our justice system pointed out the American Media and Press are purposely unwilling to inform Americans about what is gong on and are engaged in a cover up so as not to offend.
The fear of offending because you might have a different view point has reached dangerous proportions, particularly if the press and media are engaged in covering up legitimate issues and stories.
What has occurred in Ferguson is simply another instance where the voices of those who hold divergent viewpoints being expressed by thugs, looters, those bent on disturbing the peace and destroying property are stilled for fear of their person, social ostracization etc.
This is not only un-American but is also a threat to our very freedoms.
I see not a whit of difference between the intimidating behaviour of Palestinians thugs, Islamist radical terrorists and those who have been participating in 'destructive' protests in Ferguson. Maybe no beheadings have occurred but one can argue those with contrary views have had their tongues cut out and/or their throats slit.
'Peaceful 'protests are one of our legitimate rights and Martin Luther King intuitively understood the benefit of the Gandhi approach. Eventually the contrast between his actions and the dog led mobs became so appalling it caused revulsion and insured the passage of a host of Civil Rights Laws.
What has been allowed to take place in Ferguson is a blight on the achievements of those courageous Civil Rights marchers.
Furthermore, sending Attorney General Holder to Ferguson, during an on going investigation, is evidence of another unique and intemperate ideological act which establishes a new low in biased law enforcement on the part of our nation's top law enforcer but then "what difference does it make/"
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More about the Obama Administration's attitude regarding adding restraints pertaining to Israeli requests to obtain military equipment.. (See 1 and 1a below.)
And what of the rest of the world? http://bit.ly/1nzmvZ8
And eventually who will stand up for the Christians if they do not stand up for themselves and also set the tone for the haters and beheaders? (See 2 below.)
Lauder and I were classmates at Wharton but in different fraternities.
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Strassel on Reid and the Koch Brothers.
Reid is waging war, collecting and spending huge sums, smearing as liberals always do when they have to defend the consequences of their disastrous ideological policies and this is why a vote for Michelle Nunn would be tragic. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) Did the U.S. raise Hellfire by delaying missile transfer to Israel?
By Dmitriy Shapiro
The Obama administration was forced to go on the defensive last week regarding accusations published in The Wall Street Journal that White House and State Department officials were unaware of the Pentagon practice of transferring missiles to Israel. The newspaper further reported that Hellfire-missile transfers to Israel have been held back for further review.
The article strongly implied that President Barack Obama’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at an all-time low as a result of perceptions among U.S. officials that Israel is not doing enough to end its conflict with Hamas in Gaza, culminating in what the WSJ characterized as a “combative” phone call between the Obama and Netanyahu on Aug. 13.
As this news has spread, some pro-Israel observers say they feel betrayed by what they regard as the administration breaking its promise not to allow political and diplomatic disagreements to interfere with U.S.-Israel security cooperation.
The administration maintained that the extra review process is not unusual in a situation when the United States delivers weapons to countries involved in active combat. Further, the administration claimed that the review process was not on hold, as the WSJ article suggested.
“We’re not holding anything,” said U.S. State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf in Monday’s press briefing. “A hold indicates, technically, that you are not moving forward on making a decision about a transfer. So when we talked about this in other places, if there’s a hold on a request, that means it’s not moving forward. These requests are still moving forward; there’s just additional steps in the process now, and there’s been no policy decision made to not move forward with them. Again, they’re just going to take a little while longer.”
“We’ve seen in other situations, like Egypt, where the process stops. That’s not the case here,” she added.
As Harf mentioned, usually the U.S. and Israel enjoy a military-to-military relationship that allows for direct weapons transfers between the Pentagon and the Israel Defense Forces.
According to Harf, there has been no change in military cooperation, other than the additional oversight of America’s weapons sales to Israel resulting from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“We, as an administration… are taking additional care to look at arms as we’re providing them to the Israelis,” said Harf. “Obviously, we have continued to move forward. There’s been absolutely no change in policy in terms of the fact that we want to provide these [missiles].”
But despite Harf’s defense, the timing of the delay—coming on the heels of the administration’s public admonishment to Israel to take “more care to protect civilian casualties”—has caused some observers of the U.S.-Israel relationship to characterize it as more fragile than either government is letting on.
“I don’t think we know the facts about this incident, but it occurs against a background of considerable tension between the Obama administration and the government of Israel,” Ambassador Elliott Abrams, who served as a top national security adviser to President George W. Bush, told JNS.org. “Unfortunately, it seems that tension is growing and will not abate while the Obama team is in power.”
“This was very obviously retaliation,” said a senior official at a pro-Israel organization in Washington, D.C., on condition of anonymity. “They’re pissed off about the diplomatic spat over [Secretary of State] John Kerry's failed cease-fire initiative, which dragged in Qatar and Turkey and extended the Gaza conflict. And so they’ve gone ahead and they have put these missiles under review.”
“It’s a reversal of the president’s promise that security issues and the military-to-military relationship will be separated from the diplomatic relationship,” the official added. “The claim that [the administration] is making, that this is the normal thing that happens when countries request arms in the middle of a conflict, is simply false.”
Obama himself has weighed in on separating diplomatic disagreements with military cooperation relating to Israel.
“Even while we may at times disagree, as friends sometimes will,” Obama said during his remarks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s policy conference in 2011, “the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable and the commitment of the United States to the security of Israel is ironclad.”
Despite the less-than-perfect relationship between Israeli politicians and the U.S. executive branch, Congress has never been more closely allied with Israel’s concerns—it recently passed legislation to grant $225 million in emergency funds to replenish Israel’s stockpile of Iron Dome defense system missiles.
“A lot of people are blowing [the Hellfire issue] out of proportion in my opinion,” said Marvin Klemow, former vice president of Israel Aerospace Industries in its Washington, D.C., office. “So there’s an extra review. OK. The question is: Are they going to be delivered or not going to be delivered, and when?
“I think it’s an attempt to stir the teapot,” Klemow told JNS.org. “I think the Hellfires will eventually be delivered [to Israel]. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last, but in the end I believe the United States government will supply the missiles to Israel.”
1a) How Islamic State's defeat will happen --- and what becomes of the Middle East if it doesn't
Hamas' war with Israel is not a stand-alone event. It is happening in the context of the vast changes that are casting asunder old patterns of behavior and strategic understandings as actors in the region begin to reassess the threats they face.
1a) How Islamic State's defeat will happen --- and what becomes of the Middle East if it doesn't
By Caroline B. Glick
Hamas' war with Israel is not a stand-alone event. It is happening in the context of the vast changes that are casting asunder old patterns of behavior and strategic understandings as actors in the region begin to reassess the threats they face.
Hamas was once funded by Saudi Arabia and enabled by Egypt. Now the regimes of these countries view it as part of a larger axis of Sunni jihad that threatens not only Israel, but them.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and its state sponsors Qatar and Turkey, are the key members of this alliance structure. Without their support Hamas would have gone down with the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt last summer. As it stands, all view Hamas' war with Israel as a means of reinstating the Brotherhood to power in that country.
To achieve a Hamas victory, Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood are using Western support for Hamas against Israel. If the US and the EU are able to coerce Egypt and Israel to open their borders with Gaza, then the Western powers will hand the jihadist axis a strategic victory.
The implications of such a victory would be dire.
Hamas is ideologically indistinguishable from Islamic State. Like Islamic State, Hamas has developed mass slaughter and psychological terrorization as the primary tools in its military doctrine. If the US and the EU force Israel and Egypt to open Gaza's borders, they will enable Hamas to achieve strategic and political stability in Gaza. As a consequence, a post-war Gaza will quickly become a local version of Islamic State-controlled Mosul.
In the first instance, such a development will render life in southern Israel too imperiled to sustain. The Western Negev, and perhaps Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod, will become uninhabitable.
Then there is Judea and Samaria. If, as the US demands, Israel allows Gaza to reconnect with Judea and Samaria, in short order Hamas will dominate the areas. Militarily, the transfer of even a few of the thousands of rocket-propelled grenades Hamas has in Gaza will imperil military forces and civilians alike.
IDF armored vehicles and armored civilian buses will be blown to smithereens.
Whereas operating from Gaza, Hamas needed the assistance of the Obama administration and the Federal Aviation Administration to shut down Ben-Gurion Airport, from Judea and Samaria, all Hamas would require are a couple of hand-held mortars.
Jordan will also be directly threatened.
From Egypt's perspective, a Hamas victory in the war with Israel that connects Gaza to Sinai will strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic State and other allies. Such a development represents a critical threat to the regime.
And this brings us to Islamic State itself. It couldn't have grown to its current monstrous proportions without the support of Qatar and Turkey.
Islamic State is obviously interested in expanding its conquests. Since it views itself as a state, its next move must be one that enables it to take over a national economy. The raid on Mosul's central bank will not suffice to finance its operations for very long.
At this point, Islamic State wishes to avoid an all-out confrontation with Iran, so moving into southern Iraq is probably not in the cards.
US forces in Kuwait, and the strength and unity of purpose of the Jordanian military, probably take both kingdoms off Islamic State's chopping block for now.
This leaves Saudi Arabia, or parts of it, as a likely next target for Islamic State expansion.
Islamic State's current operations in Lebanon, which threaten the Saudi-supported regime there, indicate that Lebanon, at a minimum, is also at grave risk.
Then there is Iran. Iran is not a member of the Sunni jihadist axis. But when it comes to Israel and the non-jihadist regimes, it has cooperated with it.
Iran has funded, trained and armed Hamas for the past decade. It views Hamas's war with Israel in the same light as it viewed its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah's war with Israel eight years ago.
Both in Iraq and Syria, Iran and Islamic State have shown little interest in making one another their primary target. Turkey and Qatar have often served as Iran's supporters in the Sunni world.
This is the context in which Israel is fighting its war with Hamas. And due to this context, two interrelated strategically significant events have occurred since the war began.
The first relates to the US.
The Obama administration's decision to side with the members of the jihadist axis against Israel by adopting their demand to open Gaza's borders with Israel and Egypt has served as the final nail in the coffin of America's strategic credibility among its traditional regional allies.
As the US has stood with Hamas, it has also maintained its pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran. The US's position in these talks is to enable the mullocracy to follow North Korea's path to a nuclear arsenal.
The non-jihadist Sunni states share Israel's conviction that they cannot survive a nuclear armed Iran.
Finally, President Barack Obama's refusal to date to take offensive action to destroy Islamic State in Iraq and Syria demonstrates to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states that under Obama, the US would rather allow Islamic State to expand into their territory and destroy them than return US military forces to Iraq.
In other words, Obama's pro-Hamas-, pro-Iran- and pro-Muslim Brotherhood-axis policies, along with his refusal to date to take effective action in Iraq and Syria to obliterate Islamic State, have convinced the US's traditional allies that for the next two-and-a-half years, not only can they not rely on the US, they cannot discount the possibility of the US taking actions that harm them.
It is in the face of the US's shift of allegiances under Obama that the non-jihadist Sunni regimes have begun to reevaluate their ties to Israel. Until the Obama presidency, the Saudis and Egyptians felt secure in their alliance with the US. Consequently, they never felt it necessary or even desirable to consider Israel as a strategic partner.
Under the US's strategic protection, the traditional Sunni regimes had the luxury of maintaining their support for Palestinian terrorists and rejecting the notion of strategic cooperation with Israel, whether against Iran, al-Qaida or any other common foe.
So sequestered by the US, Israel became convinced that the only way it could enjoy any benefit from its shared strategic interests with its neighbors was by first bowing to the US's long-held obsession with strengthening the PLO. This has involved surrendering land, political legitimacy and money to the terror group still committed to Israel's destruction.
The war with Hamas has changed all of this.
The partnership that has emerged in this war between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia is a direct consequence of Obama's abandonment of the US's traditional allies. Recognizing the threat that Hamas, as a component part of the Sunni jihadist alliance, constitutes for their own regimes, and in the absence of American support for Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have worked with Israel to defeat Hamas and keep Gaza's borders sealed.
Most Israelis have yet to grasp the strategic significance of this emerging alliance. This owes in large part to the Left's domination of the public discourse.
The Israeli Left sees this new partnership. But it fails to understand its basis or significance. For the Left, all developments lead to the same conclusion: Whatever happens, Israel must strengthen the PLO by strengthening Palestinian Authority Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas.
Failing to recognize the basis for Israel's emerging strategic partnership, led by Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, the Left is advocating using our new ties with Saudi Arabia and Egypt as a means of strengthening Abbas by organizing a regional peace conference.
What they fail to understand is that such a move would destroy the partnership.
Israel's strategic cooperation with Egypt and Saudi Arabia owes to their shared interests. It cannot extend beyond them. And they have no shared interests in regard to the PLO.
Threatened by the axis of jihad, no Muslim government can be seen publicly with Israelis. Asking Egyptian and Saudi leaders to have their pictures taken with Israelis is like asking them to sign their own death warrants.
Moreover, Israel's required end-state in negotiations with the PLO — defensible borders and recognition of its sovereign rights to Jerusalem — is something that no Muslim regime can publicly accept — especially now.
So far from building on our new cooperative relationship, if the government heeds the Left's advice and uses our incipient ties with the Saudis and Egyptians to strengthen the PLO, it will highlight and exacerbate conflicting interests and so destroy the partnership.
Moreover, the fact is that the PLO can play no constructive role for any of the sides in weakening our common foes. As he has for the past decade, during the current war Abbas has demonstrated that he is utterly worthless in the fight against the forces of jihad — both of the Sunni and Shi'ite variety.
At least for the duration of Obama's presidency the interests that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel share in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and defeating the Muslim Brotherhood/Islamic State as military and political threats can only be advanced through joint action.
The Obama administration would have forced Israel to bow to Hamas's demands weeks ago if the Egyptians and Saudis hadn't opposed a Hamas victory.
Without Israeli military action, Iran will become a nuclear power. In light of the US's backing of Iran's nuclear program, such an Israeli operation is effectively impossible without regional support.
As to Islamic State, right now the US is interested in cooperating with Iran in fighting the barbaric force.
In exchange for Iranian cooperation, the US is liable to cede Basra and the Shatt al-Arab to Iran.
Effective cooperation between Israel, the Kurds and the Sunnis could contain, and perhaps defeat, Islamic State while reducing Iran's chances of securing the strategically vital waterway.
Since the emerging partnership between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the Obama administration's destruction of US strategic credibility, it is fairly clear that if properly managed, it can last until January 2017. Until then, in all likelihood, the US will be unwilling and unable to rebuild its reputation.
And until then, the parties are unlikely to find alternative means of securing their interests that are more effective than joint action.
Given the stakes, and the complementary capabilities of the various parties, Israel's primary task today must be to work quietly and diligently with the Saudis and Egyptians to expand on their joint achievements in Gaza.
The Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi alliance can ensure that all members survive the Obama era. And if lasts into the next administration, it will place all of its members on more secure footing with the US, whether or not a new administration decides to rebuild the US alliance structure in the Middle East
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2) WHO WILL STAND UP FOR THE CHRISTIANS
By RONALD S. LAUDER
3) Those Koch Attacks Are Working
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEl
When Harry Reid began attacking the billionaire Koch brothers, plenty of political pros wondered what game the Democratic leader was playing. Now that his strategy is becoming clear, the question is whether Republican donors will let him rob them of their best chance in years to roll back the Obama agenda.
2) WHO WILL STAND UP FOR THE CHRISTIANS
By RONALD S. LAUDER
Why is the world silent while Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East and Africa? In Europe and in the United States, we have witnessed demonstrations over the tragic deaths of Palestinians who have been used as human shields by Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza. The United Nations has held inquiries and focuses its anger on Israel for defending itself against that same terrorist organization. But the barbarous slaughter of thousands upon thousands of Christians is met with relative indifference.
The Middle East and parts of central Africa are losing entire Christian communities that have lived in peace for centuries. The terrorist group Boko Haram has kidnapped and killed hundreds of Christians this year — ravaging the predominantly Christian town of Gwoza, in Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, two weeks ago. Half a million Christian Arabs have been driven out of Syria during the three-plus years of civil war there. Christians have been persecuted and killed in countries from Lebanon to Sudan.
Historians may look back at this period and wonder if people had lost their bearings. Few reporters have traveled to Iraq to bear witness to the Nazi-like wave of terror that is rolling across that country. The United Nations has been mostly mum. World leaders seem to be consumed with other matters in this strange summer of 2014. There are no flotillas traveling to Syria or Iraq. And the beautiful celebrities and aging rock stars — why doesn’t the slaughter of Christians seem to activate their social antennas?
President Obama should be commended for ordering airstrikes to save tens of thousands of Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion and have been stranded on a mountain in northern Iraq, besieged by Sunni Muslim militants. But sadly, airstrikes alone are not enough to stop this grotesque wave of terrorism.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is not a loose coalition of jihadist groups, but a real military force that has managed to take over much of Iraq with a successful business model that rivals its coldblooded spearhead of death. It uses money from banks and gold shops it has captured, along with control of oil resources and old-fashioned extortion, to finance its killing machine, making it perhaps the wealthiest Islamist terrorist group in the world. But where it truly excels is in its carnage, rivaling the death orgies of the Middle Ages. It has ruthlessly targeted Shiites, Kurds and Christians.
“They actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick” a Chaldean-American businessman named Mark Arabo told CNN, describing a scene in a Mosul park. “More children are getting beheaded, mothers are getting raped and killed, and fathers are being hung.”
This week, 200,000 Aramaeans fled their ancestral homeland around Nineveh, having already escaped Mosul.
The general indifference to ISIS, with its mass executions of Christians and its deadly preoccupation with Israel, isn’t just wrong; it’s obscene.
In a speech before thousands of Christians in Budapest in June, I made a solemn promise that just as I will not be silent in the face of the growing threat of anti-Semitism in Europe and in the Middle East, I will not be indifferent to Christian suffering. Historically, it has almost always been the other way around: Jews have all too often been the persecuted minority. But Israel has been among the first countries to aid Christians in South Sudan. Christians can openly practice their religion in Israel, unlike in much of the Middle East.
This bond between Jews and Christians makes complete sense. We share much more than most religions. We read the same Bible, and share a moral and ethical core. Now, sadly, we share a kind of suffering: Christians are dying because of their beliefs, because they are defenseless and because the world is indifferent to their suffering.
Good people must join together and stop this revolting wave of violence. It’s not as if we are powerless. I write this as a citizen of the strongest military power on earth. I write this as a Jewish leader who cares about my Christian brothers and sisters.The Jewish people understand all too well what can happen when the world is silent. This campaign of death must be stopped.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ronald S. Lauder is the president of the World Jewish Congress.
3) Those Koch Attacks Are Working
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEl
When Harry Reid began attacking the billionaire Koch brothers, plenty of political pros wondered what game the Democratic leader was playing. Now that his strategy is becoming clear, the question is whether Republican donors will let him rob them of their best chance in years to roll back the Obama agenda.
The Senate majority leader since last year has been regularly assailing Charles and David Koch, accusing the libertarian donors of endless misdeeds and trying to "buy the country." The Koch-bashing strategy appears to have two goals. One is to spur Democratic donors to open their own wallets. The other is to warn Republican donors that they will face a public smearing if they give to GOP candidates. The Reid strategy is working.
It's true that Republicans are raising a lot of campaign money, and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran has navigated his party through a successful primary season. The GOP has recruited strong candidates, from Arkansas's Tom Cotton to Montana's Steve Daines. A solid lineup has put the party in play in Democratic-leaning Iowa, Michigan, Colorado and New Hampshire.
The NRSC is on track to clear $70 million in 2014—a fundraising record for the organization. Yet Democrats are raising more. As of the June 30 financial reporting deadline, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had raised $25 million more than the NRSC—cashing in on Obama events and on the party's Hollywood and Wall Street patrons. The same is true for the House, where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has consistently outraised its Republican counterpart this year.The NRSC fended off challenges by clunker candidates to sitting incumbents, and it has devoted serious resources to candidate training, which has (at least so far) spared it any Todd Akin moments. After failing three straight cycles (2008, 2010, 2012), this is the GOP's best shot at the retaking the Senate since pre-Obama years.
Of more concern to Republicans is the money that Democrats are funneling into their outside Super PACs, the campaign vehicles best positioned to damage Republican candidates. The heavyweight in this field is Mr. Reid's Senate Majority PAC, which—thanks in part to Mr. Reid's Koch agitation—is landing windfall donations that have turned it into the second-largest spender this cycle after the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The two Democratic organizations have each spent close to $32 million. By comparison, the Republicans' Senatorial Committee has spent about $16 million, and the biggest GOP Super PAC, American Crossroads, has spent about $7 million.
The Senate Majority PAC is central to the Democratic campaign strategy of running furious attack ads against GOP senatorial candidates. Democratic candidates entered their races with exceedingly low approval ratings, thanks to their ties to the Obama agenda. The Super PAC ads—which accuse Republicans of being everything from corrupt social-lunatics to women-haters—drag down GOP favorability ratings, tightening races.
Mr. Reid's Koch attacks also appear to be depressing donor giving to GOP Super PACs that could run their own attack ads and even the odds. Super PACs have to disclose their donors. That hasn't bothered Democratic billionaires like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, climate activist Tom Steyer or hedge-fund titan James Simon —all of whom have given multimillion-dollar donations to Senate Majority PAC.
But Republican insiders say the Koch attacks, and the IRS targeting (and audits) have made Republican donors skittish of donor disclosure. They are still writing checks, though much of the money is going to 501(c)(4) organizations that don't have to disclose their funding sources.
Some of these groups, like Americans for Prosperity, the largest conservative spender so far this cycle ($22 million), have done an admirable job of running issue ads that hold Democratic candidates responsible for policy failures like ObamaCare. Money is also flowing into Crossroads GPS, the 501(c)(4) arm of that organization. Yet IRS rules also limit the amounts these 501(c)(4) organizations can spend in direct campaign or attack ads. This means the GOP remains at a competitive disadvantage.
Some GOP insiders believe that Republican donors also remain somewhat depressed about the millions that were flushed in past failed attempts to take back the Senate or to elect Mitt Romney. Whatever the reason, total Democratic spending is outpacing Republicans spending by millions in states that could spell the difference to Senate control in November: North Carolina, Colorado and Michigan. This financial mismatch could also hold down GOP gains in the House.
The Democratic Party for years has waged a campaign to cow and silence Republican donors—pushing the IRS to target GOP groups, advocating legislation to clamp down on free speech, and publicly harassing private citizens for engaging in elections. Mr. Reid is betting that this campaign will save a majority mired in failed Democratic policy. Republican donors, having dreamed so long of this opportune midterm moment, risk getting outmatched by Mr. Reid again.
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