April 29, 2010

DPA

U.S. soldiers who liberated a Nazi concentration camp in April 1945 were amazed to discover, among the countless famished and dead, seven Jewish mothers and their babies, who had somehow avoided execution or starvation.

This week, six of those former babies are to gather for an emotional reunion at Dachau on the outskirts of Munich.

German television is to air a television documentary which explores the miracle of how these three infant boys and four infant girls slipped through the cracks of the Nazi killing machine.
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What does Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and Daniel Pipes have in common?

The believed or do believe in the foreign policy of “I win, you lose”.

Daniel Pipes explains his view in Canada’s National Post.

Unnerving Our Friends, Encouraging Our Enemies
by Peter Huessy, Hudson New York
:
The United States seems to be under the impression that being the ‘strong horse’ in international affairs harms our standing in the world. We are retreating from the international stage, seemingly happy in the idea of turning both national and international security policy over to a combination of global UN agencies and regional authorities we hope will cooperate with us, and motivated more by good will than hard interests.

As members of Congress review the administration’s proposals on counterterrorism, nuclear deterrence, missile defense, and proliferation, this retreat seem to be the ‘elephant in the room’ about which few appear willing to talk. For now.
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I dind this difficult to believe, not because I think that Netanyahu wouldn’t agree but because I think that this report implies that Netanyahu got nothing in return. So what is the quid pro quo.

That’s not all. Report: Obama Promised Abbas a Palestinian State Within 2 Years

But Bibi expected to lose the Likud vote tonight.

Decision on Jerusalem made under intense pressure from U.S., ‘satisfies’ Palestinians

By Aaron Klein, © 2010 WorldNetDaily

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to quietly halt all Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem as a “confidence-building gesture” toward the Palestinian Authority as demanded by the Obama administration, a top PA official told WND.

The PA official said Netanyahu will not make a public declaration on the subject for fear of upsetting his nationalist coalition, which would be forced to respond to any public Jewish construction freeze in Jerusalem. The official said while the Jerusalem freeze would not be announced, no new Jewish construction in the eastern sections of the city will be approved by the local municipality.
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by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, INN

U.S. President Barack Obama’s Democratic majority is turning against him after barely a year in office and is racing ahead of the President to ensure Israel’s security and force harsh sanctions against Iran.

Senate Majority Leader Harold Reid of Nevada, who did not join more than 80 colleagues who recently sent a pro-Israel letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, fired off his own missive several days ago.
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by Victor Davis Hanson, Tribune Media Services

Current American relations with our once-staunch ally Israel are at their lowest ebb in the last 50 years.

The Obama administration seems as angry at the building of Jewish apartments in Jerusalem as it is intent on reaching out to Iran and Syria, Israel’s mortal enemies. President Obama himself, according to reports, has serially snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A new narrative abounds in Washington that Israel’s intransigence with its Arab neighbors now even endangers U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. Obama is pushing Netanyahu’s Likud government to make concessions on several fronts, from supplying power and food to Gaza, to hastened departure from the West Bank.
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By Kathleen Parker, WaPo

Once you’ve gone viral, there’s no turning back.

That’s the hard lesson for a Seattle cartoonist who sketched some doodles and unwittingly launched a movement.

Molly Norris, a reluctant phenomenon, wants to return to her quiet artist’s life, the one she lived largely unnoticed until she drew the Prophet Muhammad — as a spool of thread, a box of pasta, a cup of coffee, a domino, a cherry and a doggie purse.

Take your pick. Since depictions of Muhammad aren’t allowed under some (but not all) interpretations of Islam, no one knows what he looks like. And, bummer alert, anyone who tries to capture his likeness is subject to punishment by death.
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[I should mention that Saul Alinsky drfew heavily from the thoughts of Antonio Gramsci mentioned below.]

By Chuck Morse, WND

In the 1930s, Italian communist Antonio Gramsci advocated the “long march through the institutions” as the most effective means for communism to prevail in the Western democracies. He sought to overthrow capitalism and enthrone an authoritarian ideology he sincerely believed would usher in an age of equality and social justice. History has conclusively proven him to have been wrong. Gramsci disagreed with the methods of his contemporary compatriots, the Bolsheviks, who were implementing communism in Russia through violence, or what they called revolution. Gramsci’s tactics involved quietly infiltrating and then dominating cultural institutions, the media, academe, foundations, the arts, and to use those resources to impose an informal cultural dictatorship. Gramsci understood that by controlling the culture, what Marx called the “means of communication,” communism could be imposed under another name and in such a way that the democracies would find themselves asleep at the switch.
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A boon to all three, a threat to Islamist terrorism

By Hadara Graubart

Writing in The American Interest, Walter Russell Mead calls attention to a much overlooked alliance that is dramatically affecting the political landscape. “Americans often talk about Israel as if we were the Jewish state’s only real friend,” writes Mead. In actuality, a 2009 survey demonstrated that in India—which has the “third-largest number of Muslims in the world”—58 percent of the population supports Israel, compared to 56 percent of Americans. “The deepening relations between the United States, India, and Israel are changing the geopolitical geometry of the modern world in ways that will make the lives of fanatical terrorists even more dismal and depressing (not to mention shorter) than they already are.”
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Israel develops capabilities, India pays

Ajai Shukla / New Delhi February 9, 2010,

For many Indian commentators, especially those on the right, Israel provides an inspiring example of how to deal with external threat. One could equally argue that notwithstanding its comfortable position as the regional hegemon, Israel and its citizens remain insecure, xenophobic and afflicted by a disturbing sense of victimhood. It’s a debate that continues, especially in that country.

What Israel unquestionably does illustrate for India — with this country paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the lesson — is a well-considered plan for building its defence industry. In becoming India’s biggest defence supplier, Israel has bared a hard-nosed strategy that our policy-makers must grasp and emulate.
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