The NYTimes wants your guns so BAD! Makes it easy to make another Holocaust, especially in Washington State

(nytimes.com) In February 2005, Erik Zettergren came home from a party after midnight with his girlfriend and another couple. They had all been drinking heavily, and soon the other man and Mr. Zettergren’s girlfriend passed out on his bed. When Mr. Zettergren went to check on them later, he found his girlfriend naked from the waist down and the other man, Jason Robinson, with his pants around his ankles.
Enraged, Mr. Zettergren ordered Mr. Robinson to leave. After a brief confrontation, Mr. Zettergren shot him in the temple at point-blank range with a Glock-17 semiautomatic handgun. He then forced Mr. Robinson’s hysterical fiancée, at gunpoint, to help him dispose of the body in a nearby river. It was the first homicide in more than 30 years in the small town of Endicott, in eastern Washington. But for a judge’s ruling two months before, it would probably never have happened.

...wait stop! The NYTimes wants to take away the rights of people to protect themselves from government because some guy was threatened in his own home after another guy cuckolded him? So essentially the NYTimes is asking America to become like Adolf Hitler's Germany (where the Jews could not own a gun... like anyone else who wasn't a soldier)... all because some Alpha Male decided to talk shit after f#(%ing some guy's slut girl? and get this... it is a story from none other then Washington State... where any person with testicles is a threat to human decency! The Paper of FEMINISM is now completely on crack. It is pretty obvious that no one is even paying attention to the paper anymore. I found a copy and looked it over just for laughs and I could not believe the logic of this. It is too bad no one takes the NYTimes seriously... because no one bothers anymore to keep writers like this in check

.....The federal firearms prohibition for felons dates to the late 1960s, when the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, along with rioting across the country, set off a clamor for stricter gun control laws. Congress enacted sweeping legislation that included a provision extending the firearms ban for convicted criminals beyond those who had committed “crimes of violence,” a standard adopted in the 1930s.
“All of our people who are deeply concerned about law and order should hail this day,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said upon signing the Gun Control Act in October 1968.
Even the N.R.A. backed the bill. But by the late 1970s, a more hard-line faction, committed to an expansive view of the Second Amendment, had taken control of the group. A crowning achievement was the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, which significantly loosened federal gun laws. When it came to felons’ gun rights, the legislation essentially left the matter up to states. The federal gun restrictions would no longer apply if a state had restored a felon’s civil rights — to vote, sit on a jury and hold public office — and the individual faced no other firearms prohibitions.
...Criminologists studying recidivism have found that felons usually have to stay out of trouble for about a decade before their risk of committing a crime equals that of people with no records. According to Alfred Blumstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, for violent offenders, that period is 11 to 15 years; for drug offenders, 10 to 14 years; and for those who have committed property crimes, 8 to 11 years. An important caveat: Professor Blumstein did not look at what happens when felons are given guns.

(the NYTimes clarifies that the accused asked his alleged victim to leave) bottom line: If some guy were screwing my girl in my own home without my knowledge... and then started arguing with me in a threatening way ... in my own home.... I'd probably shoot him in the head as well... and I'm not a felon... or not yet... because the standards of what is a felon are getting very strange.

The state of Washington is like BIG BROTHER... extraditing people from their homes because they don't like their opinions on the internet.  Yeah... I have first hand experience. They make arrests for saying things they don't want to hear... without a previous arrest... and then intimidate you in jail. Once Washington State declares someone a felon... and they are so aggressive on the term... then they want to take your right to protect yourself away. You can see where Washington State is going with this.

Palestinian elections' in March?

(Israel Matzav) Fatah and Hamas have been holding secret meetings in Cairo with a view toward 'reconciliation' and are planning to hold 'elections' in March.

The discussions came on the eve of a planned meeting between PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in the Egyptian capital next week.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official in the West Bank, revealed Tuesday that he had held a secret meeting in Cairo with Musa Abu Marzouk, the Syrian-based deputy head of the Hamas “political bureau.”
Al-Ahmed said that he held several meetings with Abu Marzouk “in order to create a positive atmosphere” ahead of the Abbas-Mashaal summit.
The Fatah official voiced optimism regarding the prospects of success of the planned summit saying the two parties have made “good preparations” ahead of the meeting.
He said that Abbas was planning to propose to Mashaal holding new elections in March next year.

The key here is that Fatah has agreed that Salam Fayyad - the only 'Palestinian' who is trusted by the West to handle money - won't be Prime Minister.

Mazel Tov?

Chelsea Clinton, NBC Nightly News Reporter, ” Making a Difference”

...and now Beavis and Butthead gives Chelsea Clinton the Tahrir Square aka Occupy Wall Street journalist treatment.

Brain Williams confirmed it on CNN last night. Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be a part of NBC’s Nightly News segment on Making a Difference. Chelsea plans to donate part of her earnings to charity, the George Washington Memorial Hospital in the name of her grandmother. She joins Jena Bush Hager, who contributes to the ” Today Show,” another NBC news outlet.

The Mad JewessI do have to mention Meghan McCain, a contributor to MSNBC, but not in the same sentence.

The 10 Best Celebrity Cameos In Beavis And Butt-Head History | Plastic Surgery Costs Informations

Why Did Sarkozy and Obama 'Dis' [Disrespect] Bibi?

...Avoid the NOID!...

(Barry Rubin) (h/t Docs Talk) During a conversation when they thought nobody was listening French President Nicolas Sarkozy and U.S. President Barack Obama said nasty things about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A lot of the analysis about what this tells us I think is rather misleading.
Regarding Sarkozy, French-Israel relations have been good and there have not been major problems with Sarkozy. On one hand, Sarkozy has been far friendlier to Israel than his Gaullist and Socialist predecessors. True, he is surrounded by some hostile advisors, including the career staff at the Foreign Ministry, but on the other hand there is a defense and counterterrorism establishment that admires Israel.

Indeed, Sarkozy helped kill the Palestinian unilateral independence effort in the UN Security Council, a major service to Israel. Yet France voted in favor of the Palesstinian entry into the UNESCO organization. Incidentally, Sarkozy has also not been a fan of Obama in the past.
Why suddenly has Sarkozy turned against Netanyahu? I can’t prove it but I think there is evidence for the following scenario. Sarkozy decided that he was going to broker a major deal at the UN, showing that France was a leading great power in the world. (A theme I think you have heard before is a major French goal.) So he went to Netanyahu with a proposal: Israel would accept unilateral independence for Palestine and Sarkozy would get Israel something from the Palestinians (perhaps recognition of a Jewish state?).
Netanyahu played along a bit but, of course, knew that Sarkozy wouldn’t get anything from the Palestinian Authority. Sarkozy’s idea — like that of virtually all the well-intentioned or bad-intentioned, naive or cynical, friendly or hostile to Israel busybodies who think they are going to make peace — just didn’t make real sense.

At any rate, Sarkozy thought he had something from Israel that he didn’t. His UN speech implying he wanted to support unilateral independence was certainly bad from Israel’s standpoin

t.
The deal fell through — it was doomed from the start since the Palestinian Authority wouldn’t compromise — and, of course, he blamed Israel and not the Palestinians.

Hence his fury that Netanyahu was a “liar.”

As for Obama, some have explained his remark about frustrations in dealing with Netanyahu every day as just going along with Sarkozy. Others claimed Obama’s remark was justified. This latter point is absurd.

The truth is that Netanyahu has done everything Obama has asked while the PA has done nothing at all.

If only there was a U.S. president who talked that way. But there’s more, apparently, to be gained by bashing Israel and coddling the PA in words.
Remember two things. First, U.S. policy has taken virtually no material action against Israel in terms of bilateral relations. The hostility is all words. Better nasty words and okay actions than the other way around.
Second, when PA leader Yasir Arafat doomed the Camp David talks in 2000 and turned to massive violence, then President Bill Clinton was livid. He openly blamed Arafat and the PA. Over time, though, this was all forgotten. Clinton today blames Israel for the lack of peace.
Why recent American presidents behave this way would have to be the subject of another article. But you all know the list of factors involved.
An interesting question is this: What could Netanyahu have possibly done to underpin Obama’s anger? There is only one real possible argument:

Netanyahu’s trip to Washington in which he gave Obama a lesson in Middle East politics and made a stirring speech to Congress that made Obama look foolish.

But why did Netanyahu do this? Only because while on the way to Washington he was ambushed by a major Obama speech — which had not been discussed with him beforehand — that badly undercut Israel’s strategic position. The point most cited in the speech was the idea of returning to the 1967 borders but there are worse things in it. Besides the substance, you just don’t present a major new policy critical of an ally’s interests while he’s on the plane to Washington and you haven’t even fully discussed it with him.
I could here provide a list of broken promises from Obama to Israel along with insulting and verbally damaging behavior.
But put that aside. Obama’s administration has endorsed Israel’s deadliest enemy and the most important antisemitic group in the world — the Muslim Brotherhood — coming to power in Egypt. A similar stance is being taken toward Tunisia and Libya; U.S. policy is treating the Islamist regime in Turkey as its closest ally in the Middle East despite that country’s leader making hysterical anti-Israel rants and virtually threatening war on Israel. The Obama administration is also helping Islamists in Syria and doing lots of other dangerous things on a regional level.
In the face of this long list of damage being done by Obama to Israel, he has a lot of nerve to snap about Netanyahu. Meanwhile, we are still being told from certain quarters that Obama is the most pro-Israel president in history, practically Jewish, and we should shut up about any criticism, get down on our knees and vote for him.
A little lesson in diplomacy: the king of the land is the king. Israel must get along with Obama to the best of its ability. It cannot criticize him in public and must be circumspect in discussing even his policies. It must take the course of a university official in a Terry Pratchett book who told his boss: “You’re right, sir, but I can tell you how to be even more right!” Suppose you were to ask an Israeli official what he thinks of Obama and his policies? If completely candid, that person would respond: It doesn’t matter what I think, we have to do our best to get along with him.
Ironically, Obama says that he is ashamed of past U.S. bullying and arrogance, its treatment of smaller countries. Often, however, that only seems to be true regarding countries hostile to the United States. The fact is that Israel’s existence is on the line and Obama is playing with that country’s fate.
I won’t go further here but if I make the mistake of talking in front of a microphone that I think is “off,” I might get caught complaining that we have to deal with Obama every day

all true, but has nothing to do with Sarkozy. Sarko very simply wants to win an election... and his constutuents are Vichy or Muslim. Sarkozy might be ignorant, but his main goal is power. All the backroom conjecture is nothing but conjecture. Interesting, probably true... but no real reason why dogs like to chase cats.

"Jews Care About Their Own!" Is Not An Indictment

Edward Gilbert, the leader of the Catholic Church in Port of Spain...

EXERCISING THE EMPATHY MUSCLE (h/t Daled Amos) by Rabbi Avi Shafran

Politicians are often subject to derision, often for good reason. Recently, though, a Catholic cleric hurled an unusual and creative insult at local politicos: They are like Jews.
Edward Gilbert, the leader of the Catholic Church in Port of Spain, the capital of the southern Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, made the comparison between elected officials and “the original Jewish people,” explaining that Jews, at least in ancient times, cared only about their own.
“The Jews were compassionate and caring to the people of their nation, to the people of their race…,” Archbishop Gilbert reportedly said during an October 24 religious ceremony commemorating the 225th anniversary of the Roman Catholic presence on Trinidad. Christianity, he proudly asserted, “universalized the concept of love.”
Predictably, the Anti-Defamation League protested the sermon, calling Mr. Gilbert’s statements “a disturbing repackaging of ancient anti-Jewish canards and supersessionist beliefs.” The American Jewish Committee chimed in with chiding of its own, contending that “such prejudicial comments not only reflect personal ignorance, but also ignorance of the teaching of the Catholic Church since Nostra Aetate.” That was a reference to the Vatican II declaration repudiating the centuries-old “deicide” charge against all Jews, stressing the religious bond shared by Jews and Catholics, and reaffirming the eternal covenant between G-d and the People of Israel (though it does not, of course, renounce the essential beliefs of Christianity).
Personally, I wasn’t insulted by the Archbishop’s characterization, even if he meant to include contemporary Jews.

Because caring for one’s own is eminently defensible. In fact, it’s the only way to truly care for anyone.
Not much effort is needed to profess true love for all the world; but to actually feel such love just isn’t possible. Gushing good will at everyone is offering it to no one.
That is because, by definition, care grows within boundaries; our empathy for those closest to us, to be real, must be of a different nature than our concern for others with whom we don’t share our personal lives. Boundaries are what make those beloved to us… beloved to us.
Every person lives at the center of a series of concentric circles, the smallest one (in a healthy dynamic) encompassing parents, spouses, and children; the next circle out, other family members and friends; the one beyond that, members of their ethnic or religious groups. At a distance removed from that is a larger circle of human beings with similar values. And further out still, the circle containing the rest of humanity.
It is perfectly proper that we feel, and demonstrate, our deepest concern for the circle closest to us. More: it is the only way to achieve genuine care, providing us the ability to bestow it, if in a less intense form, upon those in the next circle out, and, in turn, on those beyond it.
Nothing demonstrates the danger of “universalizing the concept of love” better than the religion Mr. Gilbert represents. For all Christianity’s claim to have expanded its affection to all of humanity, early Church history was characterized by the vicious intolerance demonstrated by early “fathers” and emperors; the Middle Ages’ Crusades left swollen rivers of blood; and, a few centuries later, Reformation battles between Catholics and Protestants added millions of corpses to the body count.
Perceptive Jews and non-Jews alike understand how essential it is that ethnic or religious groups show special concern for other members of their “tribes.” They sense what to some may seem counterintuitive: it is precisely the intense empathy we feel and express for our “inner circles” alone that enables us to feel genuine, if somewhat less acute, concern for those in more distant ones. People who focus their deepest feelings on those close to them are those most likely to truly care about their fellow citizens or wider circles still. Exercising the “empathy muscle,” so to speak, provides the ability to feel—less intensely but more genuinely—concern for people who are not close to us.
So while the Trinidadian cleric may have been attempting an insult, he inadvertently provided his listeners—and all who were reached by media reports of his words—something else: a valuable opportunity to ponder how caring works.

this post gets to the heart of why liberal universalism (also meaning Catholicism) is the heart of what is wrong with the world today and how true love does not come from abstract ideas like "the world", but rather true love comes from loving within boundaries. That means NATIONALISM, and your FAMILY. The real haters think they are in love with Gaia or some material everything. The real lovers have walls. The real haters want to tear down borders. The real haters want to push standards that are not compatible with FAMILY. The real haters want to create universal equivalencies. They want to take away difference. The real haters don't want to recognize gender. The real haters don't want to recognize borders. The real haters are what today we consider social liberals... and they have so much in common with the liberals of yesteryear... yes the liberals called Christians.

View of Newt, from across the pond

(h/t bokertov) by Melanie Phillips ~ by way of Dan Friedman

Newt Gingrich has now overtaken other Republican candidates in the race for the presidential nomination. According to PPP polling, in a startling come-back from the political dead Gingrich has now overtaken Herman Cain and Mitt Romney while the rest of the field have been reduced to also-rans. Republican voters in Iowa, which Gingrich has to win over in order to stay in the race, appear to be listening to him with interest.
This Lazarus-like resurrection surely illustrates the depths of the Republican problem. Gingrich was written off long ago because, in addition to a messy private life, his career imploded in even worse controversy. In 1997 as Speaker of the House of Representatives, he was reprimanded and fined for ethical wrongdoing after admitting failing to ensure that the financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving the House ethics committee false information.
Yet despite all this Gingrich has now become the front-runner for the Republican nomination. The reason is pretty obvious. First, he has performed strongly in the TV debates between the contenders; and second, virtually every other breathlessly announced front-runner has promptly disintegrated under scrutiny, either through intellectual limitations, flip-floppery or allegations of sexual wrongdoing....
.... Well might heads be scratched over the Republicans’ calamitously weak store of presidential material. But the reason why they are fielding one crash-and-burn artist after another is surely that the Republican party has itself crashed and burned, in that it has lost its sense of purpose.
Ever since the defeat of Soviet communism, western conservatives have been in a state of woeful intellectual and moral confusion. What they failed to grasp was that while state communism was dying the threat to the west merely transferred itself to the cultural and social sphere through the twin attacks by secularism and left-wing ideology.
The west is now suffering from the baleful legacy of the ‘Boomer generation’, those born after World War Two and who turned with such nihilistic glee on the consumerist society that had nurtured them. As this article by Walter Russell Mead suggests, the Boomers created a culture of narcissism that has expressed itself on both left and right through failed or destructive economic and social policies. The resulting self-centred and debauched culture has created a vacuum into which the enemies of civilisation are steadily marching.
Like their Conservative party cousins in the UK, US Republicans have failed to grasp that the task for conservatives today is as stark and as urgent as it has been ever since Edmund Burke articulated it in the face of the French revolutionary terror: to defend life and liberty in the free world against its enemies both within and without.
Faced with the apparently overwhelming power of the left-wing media and intelligentsia, weaponised through their Orwellian hijacking of the language of the centre ground and their career-ending bullying and intimidation of all who dare to disagree, many conservatives have succumbed to the cultural mind-bending without even realising they have been in effect captured by the enemy.
The reason why Newt Gingrich is striking such a chord is principally because hedoes realise all this very well, and so delivers a very clear message and the hope of a return to reality. He gives expression, in other words, to an authentic conservative voice. Gingrich is very smart, a serious thinker and a good communicator. He is also extremely tough and resilient. He is without doubt a Big Beast in the political jungle -- beside whom Mitt Romney, his chief rival, seems a diminished figure....

essentially... Newt is still there because he appears to be the only guy in politics that really gets it. Cain might of said a, "Me too"... but when the media got to him (and also Michelle Malkin and any Conservative Vagina in politics apparently)... all that was left was Newt and without black skin. I still like Cain, but he's facing the racism... that only hysterical feminist women still have towards black men. Real racism isn't in everyday dealings. Real racism comes in on a sexual vehicle. For all of Obama's hateful shrouded opinions of the West and Zionists, he is able to convince the ladies that he won't rape them in a back allyway of Washington DC. very sad. I like Newt a lot, but I hate to see Ron Paul take the party this way.

Syria's Arab League Suspension

(Council on Foreign Relations)

Inside the Birthright protesters

(Birthright protester VIDEO)

(Fresno Zionism) Kiera Feldman, smelling and looking expensive (her words), interrupts Steven Pease, who looks on bemused in the background

Yesterday (Fresno Zionism) wrote about how a Birthright reunion in New York was disrupted by anti-Israel demonstrators. If you haven’t seen the video, watch it now. Far more unsettling than the accusations they hurled at Israel — by now (Fresno Zionism) is used to the lies and expressions of hatred that accompany such protests — was the combination of robotic “mic check” chanting along with the expressions of glee, even laughter, from the antisemitic — yes, (Fresno Zionism) said antisemitic, and (Fresno Zionism) will support this — activists, as they interrupted a talk by author Steven Pease, doing their best to impose their totalitarian vision of what may and  may not be heard on the audience.
So who were they? They were members of “Young, Jewish, and Proud” (YJP), the “youth wing” of the Jewish Voice for Peace organization, the only Jewish organization to make the ADL’s list of the top ten anti-Israel  groups in the nation.
As (Fresno Zionism) mentioned yesterday, the male speaker in the video is Max Blumenthal, left-wing ‘journalist’ and videographer who is known for baiting pleasant evangelical Protestants and drunken students. Blumenthal has been responsible for some vicious anti-Israel slanders, including an incredible 2010 article which asserted that the use of deadly force on the Mavi Marmara was planned and intended in advance, in order “to lift the morale of the Israeli public while intimidating Iran and the Arab world.”
The first female speaker was Kiera Feldman, who wrote a snarky piece in The Nation about her own Birthright trip, suggesting that the main idea was “promotion … of flings among participants, or between participants and [Israeli] soldiers” as a form of Zionist mind control. Birthright sponsors admitted to her that bringing together young Jewish people tends to encourage marriage between Jews, which they think is a good thing (Feldman apparently doesn’t).
Her article is full of the usual clichés (Gaza is “the largest open-air prison in the world,” “illegal occupation,” etc.), and there is an air of dishonesty about it — she obviously played a friendly role when she interviewed the sponsors for her article, and of course she happily accepted her free ticket to Israel while planning to ‘expose’ the Zionist plot.
Feldman describes the events at the Birthright reunion in a blog post called “Consider Birthright Israel Occupied.” She seems to revel in deception, even when it’s unnecessary:

I did my best to smell and look expensive, like someone who would normally come out on a Monday night to hear “venture capitalist and turn-around CEO Steven Pease,” author of a 622-page book called The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement…
“Watch out for the microphone,” Steven Pease told me as I stepped over the cable, en route to the food table. He is a kindly gray-haired man, with a pair of glasses perched atop his head. “Aren’t Jews very accomplished at everything?” I goaded him on. “I thought we were the best at not tripping.” He smiled and answered, “Basketball, the Olympics—very good.” This man apparently cannot be satirized.

Birthright provided food for the attendees, and the gang happily abused their hospitality, in a way completely at odds with Jewish (or Arab, for that matter) tradition. They seem to count this as points for their side on the grounds that they are, or at least represent, the oppressed Third World; and therefore deception, theft, almost anything, is justified.
Feldman and Blumenthal, of course, have highly privileged backgrounds. Kiera Feldman graduated from Ivy-League Brown University in 2008 (in 2010, the total cost of a year at Brown was $51,360. No wonder she smells and looks expensive!) And Max Blumenthal is the son of Senior Adviser to President Clinton Sidney Blumenthal.
Then they began their chanting, which went on until they were, as Feldman says, “gently” removed.
Proud and happy about having made their point by silencing the opposition like fascist Brownshirts, they continued their protest outside, until the shoe was placed on the other foot:

Soon, we acquired a disgruntled passerby, an ultra-Orthodox man getting in our respective faces. He shouted down the human mic’s solo shouter, demanding a “dialogue” none of us wanted, utterly derailing the repetition by turning us into a confused clamor. In this way, the human mic is only human.
Chanting half-heartedly, we asked one another if it was time to go home. What’s the point now? Something hard and angry flashed within me as the shouting grew intolerable. As if I were watching an out-of-body experience, I saw myself jump the ultra-Orthodox man, but didn’t. Never before have I fantasized violence…

I suggest that it is telling that the man she so wanted to hurt was “ultra-Orthodox,” that is, someone whose Jewishness was out in front of him, a symbol of what Feldman, Blumenthal and the others so much don’t want to be. Do I assume too much? Listen to their chant:

We will not be fooled
by corporate CEOs
telling us
we are the Chosen People
and reinforcing
Jewish stereotypes.
…
Throughout history
Jews have been persecuted
as scapegoats for powerful bankers.
These memories
give us responsibility
to speak out
against corporate exploitation
and human rights violations.

The first verse refers to Steven Pease’s book, which suggests that Jews are disproportionately represented in many areas of human achievement. They can’t bear to hear this, because they are afraid it will make the antisemites angry. The Jew must keep a low profile. Despite their claimed ‘Jewish pride’ they actually have none — they accept the antisemitic stereotype of the Jew as a worthless creature and live in fear of the goyim.
But in the second verse, they accept the other antisemitic stereotype, that Jews are enormously powerful, especially in finance, and use their power to exploit the non-Jewish poor. For this reason they become crusaders against exploitation, including of course the ‘exploitation’ of innocent Palestinian Arabs. They will be better than these Jews and perhaps, they feel, the antisemites will see that they are not like other Jews, such as the “ultra-Orthodox man.”
Although they say they are struggling to prove the stereotype wrong, their fact-free approach to Israel, the way they are prepared to believe absolutely anything ugly about Jews, Israel and Israelis — viz. Feldman’s article about Birthright and Blumenthal’s fantasy about the Mavi Marmara affair — is evidence that they nevertheless believe the irrational stereotypes.
Their behavior fits precisely the description of a Jew in the grip of the Oslo Syndrome, as explained by Dr. Kenneth Levin in his book of that name. I summarized Levin’s thesis in a post last year:

…anti-Jewish attitudes in oppressed Jews result from a) internalizing  and coming to believe the antisemitic canards of their oppressors, and b) an unrealistic delusion that they have the power to change the behavior of the antisemites by self-reform — by ‘improving’ themselves so as to no longer deserve antisemitic hatred.
These mechanisms have led to an attenuation of Judaism itself, in which the focus on God, the Jewish People and the Land of Israel in traditional Judaism has been replaced with a universalist doctrine which minimizes national, ethnic and cultural divisions and espouses abstract ‘justice’ for all humankind as its highest goal — and which sees a transnational utopia as the ultimate Jewish goal.
Proponents of this universalist ethic see it as an evolution in Jewish ethical principles, a progressive improvement from a particularist and parochial past to a more modern, ‘higher’ form of ethics. But often — as when Jewish left-wing activists call for ‘justice for Palestinian Arabs’ while ignoring the context of the intermittent war being prosecuted against the Jewish state by the entire Arab world and Iran — universalist ethics provide a cover for anti-Israel positions.

This explains their contention (expressed by Blumenthal and another woman in the video) that a Jewish state cannot be democratic, and must be ‘racist’: particularism is bad, universalism is good.
And it also explains Feldman’s sudden fury at the “ultra-Orthodox man” — precisely the kind of Jew that excites hatred among non-Jews, that hatred that Feldman fears so much that it has pushed her into the arms of the antisemites themselves.
So in a sense, these ‘proud Jews’ are nothing of the sort. They are fearful Ghetto Jews, who have swallowed the antisemitic stories of their oppressors hook, line and sinker, and who are engaged in the (impossible) task of trying to prove themselves worthy to those who would as soon as murder them as look at them.

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Cleared From Zuccotti Park

(h/t EYE)

(ABC) More than 100 people were arrested after New York police dressed in riot gear made a surprise early-morning visit to clear out Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, the main camp of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Although authorities had planned to let the protesters back in after a clean-up — without their tents and tarps — a judge apparently issued a restraining order prohibiting reentry.
Protesters were ordered to leave the park at 1 a.m. Tuesday, on the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which quickly spread to cities across the country and globe.
In a press conference Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the protesters and their equipment had become a health and safety hazard and they were preventing others from using the privately-owned park.
“The First Amendment doesn’t protect the use of tents and sleeping bags,” Bloomberg said. “Now they will have to occupy the park with just the power of their arguments.” The mayor said the city would review the judge’s order and decide when to reopen the park.
According to New York’s Deputy Police Commissioner for Public Information Paul Browne, 70 arrests were made at the park. Coupled with earlier arrests on Broadway north of the park, more than 100 protesters were taken into custody.
The final group of about a dozen protesters removed from the park were chained to each other and to trees. Emergency services officers used portable power saws to sever the chains.
NYPD surrounded Zuccotti Park with officers in riot gear and broadcast by bullhorn the order for protesters to vacate the park, which was soon lit up with flood lights. Reports indicated police said they would arrest anyone who refused the order to leave.
Police were seen pouring into the scene from all directions and sealing off the park. Officers backed by additional vans drove protesters north up Broadway away from the park.
In one instance there was a scuffle with police, and one person was arrested after some objects were thrown.
At least two brief violent clashes were reported north of Zuccotti Park, while two arrest wagons were filled with protesters at Broadway, about two blocks north of the park.
At the park, the tents, street furniture and any possessions protesters refused to move were dismantled and tossed into dumpsters and open-topped city garbage trucks. Workers moved in with steam cleaners and other equipment to clean the park.
A number of downtown New York street corners were packed with protesters standing chest to chest with helmeted police armed with batons.
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Chief of Department of the NYPD Joe Esposito were on the scene supervising police, while hundreds of officers began to gather north of the park in lines, ready to march downtown.
By 2:30 a.m. only a handful of protesters remained in the park, although hundreds were gathered in pockets nearby. Protesters who vacated Zuccotti Park marched up to Foley Square, approximately 10 blocks north of City Hall. That group was soon forced north by police and broken up into scattered groups that were effectively dispersed.
A flyer that was handed out to protesters read: “The city has determined that the continued occupation of Zuccotti Park poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard to those camped in the park, the city’s first responders, and to the surrounding community.
“You are required to immediately remove all property, including tents, sleeping bags and tarps from Zuccotti Park. That means you must remove the property now.”
The flyer indicated that protesters would be allowed into the park “after a few hours” when the park has been cleaned, but they “will not be permitted to bring tents, sleeping bags, tarps and similar materials.”
The following tweet appeared at approximately 1:20 a.m. ET on the NYCMayorsOffice Twitter feed, which is the official Twitter of the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg: “Occupants of Zuccotti should temporarily leave and remove tents and tarps. Protestors can return after the Park is cleared. #ows”
“From the beginning, I have said that the City had two principal goals: guaranteeing public health and safety, and guaranteeing the protesters’ First Amendment rights. But when those two goals clash, the health and safety of the public and our first responders must be the priority,” the statement from Mayor Bloomberg read.
“That is why, several weeks ago the City acted to remove generators and fuel that posed a fire hazard from the park … We have been in constant contact with Brookfield and yesterday they requested that the City assist it in enforcing the no sleeping and camping rules in the park. But make no mistake — the final decision to act was mine,” Bloomberg said.
The Occupy Wall Street movement issued a statement an hour after the police action at Zuccotti Park began.
“Supporters and allies are mobilizing throughout the city, presently converging at Foley Square. Supporters are also planning public actions for the coming days, including occupation actions,” the statement said.
The Occupy Wall Street protesters had reportedly planned to cause a massive disruption in traffic on the streets of lower Manhattan Tuesday in an attempt to delay the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

An Odd Comment

(How Iran persecutes its oldest religion | Vlad Tepes) Big Black Booty Porn says: (November 15, 2011 at 7:32 am) But it seems they can not get enough of the big black booty porn. This regime is also a big fan of that genre of porn. I have sent the Pres literally tons of the stuff. He can not get enough. My only worry is that when he is finished with it, he should spare a thought for those less fortunate than himself and sell it off to other fans for a cheap price. Also if he is really compassionate he should remember that his regime has chopped off the right hand of a lot of men who need that hand to jack off when viewing the gigantic black assess in the magazines. If the regime wants to get its compassionate face back it needs to go to the homes of these porn fans and help them to jack off. The pres himself should set an example by being the first to perform this compassionate jacking off duty for the black booty fans he has maimed for life.

Human organ trafficking war between Sinai Bedouins

(h/t Dan / EOZ) From Al Masry al Youm:

The Al-Tiaha tribe has besieged the Al-Nakhalwa tribe in Sinai since Sunday, accusing it of smuggling Africans and stealing their organs. They killed a Nakhlwa tribesman, whom they believe is involved in human organ trafficking, and arrested his assistant in order to deliver him to the police following fierce gun battles between the two tribes.
Nakhalwa tribe elder Sabbah al-Nakhlawy denied his tribe is involved in such activity.
Meanwhile, a woman by the name of Hanan Mohsen reported to the police that a gang tried to kidnap her and take her organs.
For his part, North Sinai Security Director Saleh al-Masry said the matter was exaggerated. “We have a firm security plan for the area,” he said.

I can't wait for all the people who slam Israel for organ trafficking to denounce Egyptian organ-trafficking.
Because it is obvious that they are motivated by pure humanitarian concerns and not hatred of the Jewish state.
UPDATE: This article by Mordechai Kedar reveals much more about the illegal organ trade in Egypt, and it is shocking. (h/t Jean)

Why Don't The Israeli Arab have better Representatives?

(h/t writingtw / Khaled Abu Toameh  November 15, 2011)
Dudu Elharar, a famous Israeli singer, music producer, actor and television and radio presenter, was once a staunch left-wing supporter of the peace process with the Palestinians. Today, however, he is a right wing activist who no longer believes in peace or coexistence.
Last week, Elharar revealed that he changed his political views after watching and hearing former Arab Knesset member Azmi Bishara campaign against Israel in the local and international arenas.
Bishara was one of a number of Arab Knesset members who spent more time and effort seeking to delegitimize and isolate Israel in the international community than to look after the needs of his constituents.
Some of the Arab Knesset members have exploited this position to widen the gap between Jews and Arabs inside Israel. These Knesset members are largely responsible for the fact that Elharar and many Israelis today see Arab citizens of Israel as a fifth column and an enemy from within. Most of the Arab Knesset members are elected to defend the rights of the Arab minority and seek equality and better opportunities for their community. But instead of devoting most of their time to solving serious problems facing the 1.5 million Arab citizens, such as unemployment, poverty and lack of proper infrastructure, these parliamentarians start doing things that only cause damage to the interests of their constituents.
Bishara, for example, became friendly with some of Israel's enemies, including Syria and Hizbullah. He and other Arab Knesset members have been taking an active role in efforts to delegitimize, defame and isolate Israel in the international community.
It is not that they shouldn't have the right to criticize Israel. But when they appear alongside leaders and spokesmen for Hamas, Fatah, Hizbullah and anti-Israel groups around the world, the Arab Knesset members are playing into the hands of those Israelis who consider the Arab citizens as a real threat to Israel.
Just last week, another Knesset member told an anti-Israel forum in South Africa that Israel is an apartheid state. It is hard to see how such a grave allegation would help improve relations between Jews and Arabs inside Israel.
The role of Arab Knesset members should be to fight for increased budgets, better infrastructure, new working places and full integration into Israeli society. The overwhelming majority of Israeli Arabs are fighting for integration into Israel, not separation.
The next time Israeli Arabs go to the ballot boxes, they should vote for those who represent their real interests, and not candidates who only know how to deliver fiery speeches and promote hatred. This is the only way to rebuild mutual confidence between Jews and Arabs inside Israel and persuade people like Elharar that the Arab citizens are not on the side of the country's enemies.

Obama To China: Behave Like A “Grown Up”

Obama tries to make China his triumph like Nixon's triumph was supposedly peace with China, but like Nixon this triumph could be short term if anything at all. Peace with China is probably the reason why our economy is ailing today. We were better off hating the country then seeing them take out jobs. The Chinese are the best negotiators in the world and if America does not really have a threat to end all trade with China then there is little reason why China would listen to him.

{Reuters/Matzav} President Barack Obama served notice on Sunday that the United States was fed up with China’s trade and currency practices as he turned up the heat on America’s biggest economic rival.
“Enough’s enough,” Obama said bluntly at a closing news conference of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit where he scored a significant breakthrough in his push to create a pan-Pacific free trade zone and promote green technologies.
Using some of his toughest language yet against China, Obama, a day after face-to-face talks with President Hu Jintao, demanded that China stop “gaming” the international system and create a level playing field for U.S. and other foreign businesses.
“We’re going to continue to be firm that China operate by the same rules as everyone else,” Obama told reporters after hosting the 21-nation APEC summit in his native Honolulu. “We don’t want them taking advantage of the United States.”
China shot back that it refused to abide by international economic rules that it had no part in writing.
“First we have to know whose rules we are talking about,” Pang Sen, a deputy director-general at China’s Foreign Ministry said.
“If the rules are made collectively through agreement and China is a part of it, then China will abide by them. If rules are decided by one or even several countries, China does not have the obligation to abide by that.”
Even as Obama issued the veiled threat of further punitive action against China, it was unclear how much of his tough rhetoric was, at least in part, political posturing aimed at economically weary U.S. voters who will decide next November whether to give him a second term.
Obama insisted that China allow its currency to rise faster in value, saying it was being kept artificially low and was
hurting American companies and jobs. He said China, which often presents itself as a developing country, is now “grown up” and should act that way in global economic affairs.
The sharp words between the U.S. and China contrasted with the unified front that Asia-Pacific leaders sought to present with a pledge to bolster their economies and lower trade barriers in an effort to shield against the fallout from Europe’s debt crisis.
The members of APEC, which accounts for more than half of the world’s economic output, said they had agreed on ways to counter “significant downside risks” to the world economy.
That followed an appeal by Obama, seeking to reassert U.S. leadership to counter China’s growing influence around the Pacific Rim, for a commitment to expand trade opportunities as an antidote to Europe’s fiscal woes.
International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, in Honolulu to consult with APEC leaders, said the euro zone upheaval risked sweeping the world economy into a “downward spiral” that all countries had a stake in resolving the crisis.
TRADE LIBERALIZATION PROMISED
APEC said in a final communique: “We recognize that further trade liberalization is essential to achieving a sustainable global recovery in the aftermath of the global recession of 2008-2009.”
The communique also expressed a firm resolve “to support the strong, sustained and balanced growth of the regional and global economy” — a clear reference to U.S. concerns about a huge trade deficit with China’s export-driven economy, fiscal problems in developed nations and the low savings rate in the United States.
In another bow to U.S. pressure, APEC committed to reducing tariffs on environmental goods and services to 5 percent as a way to promote green technology trade, overcoming China’s resistance to the idea.
Differences persist among APEC members — a point hammered home by U.S.-China tensions — and the question remains how far leaders will be able to go in turning promises into action. Many, Obama included, will face resistance to opening markets further to foreign competition.
Obama’s public denunciation of China’s policies came as he faces pressure at home, from Republican presidential contenders as well as fellow Democrats, for a tougher line on Beijing. But U.S. leverage is limited, not least because Beijing is America’s largest foreign creditor.
Though Obama acknowledged a “slight improvement” in the value of China’s yuan, he insisted it was not enough.
The United States has long complained that China keeps its currency artificially weak to give its exporters an advantage. China counters that the yuan should rise only gradually to avoid harming the economy and driving up unemployment, which would hurt global growth.
Hu was quoted by Chinanews.com in Beijing on Sunday as saying a big appreciation in the yuan against the dollar would not help U.S. trade and unemployment problems.
The yuan inched up against the dollar. Dealers said Hu’s comments in Honolulu indicated that China had no intention of letting the currency rise faster in the near term.
U.S. ENGAGEMENT
Obama declared U.S. engagement in the Asia-Pacific region as “absolutely critical” to America’s prosperity. By harnessing the potential for expanded trade with the world’s fastest-growing region, Obama hopes he can create U.S. jobs to help him through a tough reelection fight in 2012.
Obama’s drive toward a pan-Pacific free trade zone — the signature U.S. achievement of the summit — got a boost when Canada, Mexico and Japan said they were interested in joining talks now under way among nine countries, and they agreed to complete the detailed framework in 2012.
The Philippines was discussing the matter, U.S. officials said.
The Transpacific Partnership adds momentum to Obama’s pledge to double U.S. exports, made more urgent by the virtual collapse of the Doha round of trade talks. A free trade zone in the region would outstrip the market size of the European Union. But for Japan, such a deal faces major political obstacles at home.
Yet there was little promise of immediate economic dividends as such trade deals often take years to take effect.
Obama is seeking to assure allies of a U.S. “pivot” as China flexes its economic and military muscles in Asia and beyond. But leaders may doubt whether Washington can avoid being distracted by economic woes at home and foreign policy priorities like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.