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Friday Afternoon Roundup - Krugmanism and Communism






 
SLIDING INTO THE EAST RIVER

New York may be ruled by a governor who helped cause the financial meltdown, while New York City may have a mayor who was forced to resign from Congress and its comptroller will be a former governor who was forced to resign for transporting a prostitute across state lines. He will be replacing the current comptroller who may go to jail for campaign finance fraud.

All of that sounds like an elaborate setup to a punch line.  And it is.

When City Council Speaker Quinn, the front runner to replace Bloomberg after Weiner’s texting scandal, proposed to hike taxes, Mayor Bloomberg pointed out that 40,000 people already pay 50% of the taxes.

In one of his strangely lucid moments, Bloomberg said, “If a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral.”

It’s peculiar to think of 40,000 people holding up a city of 8 million, but that’s how shaky the Big Apple is. 

from my article this week, Is New York the Next Detroit?




NO BLOODY HOPE

In ’09, Obama destabilized Egypt. To get the Muslim Brotherhood back into power, he has to continue destabilizing the country.

As long as Obama encourages the Brotherhood to think that he wants it back in power, it has cause to hope that its violence will win the day. That is why the riots and the killings are Obama’s responsibility.

Obama can help end the violence by ending the pressure on the new Egyptian government, signaling to the Muslim Brotherhood that further efforts at disrupting the transition will be futile. That was the signal that he sent to liberal protesters throughout Morsi’s time in power. And until he does that, the blood from the rising death toll in Egypt will be on his hands.

from my article this week, Egyptian Blood on Obama’s Hands


You can also see a preview of my article for next week, Five Lessons from Egypt and the Arab Spring



SUPREME TERROR

Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood terrorist, sent the closest thing to a clear explanation of his actions to FOX News, which happens to be the only network that would actually air his statements because they contradict the Obama Inc. narrative that his was a case of workplace violence.

Hasan signs his statement/confession as SOA or Soldier of Allah. His motives entirely depend on Islam and the Koran.

"Question: What was your relationship with Anwar Al-Awlaki?

"He was my teacher, mentor and friend. I hold him in high esteem for trying to educate Muslims about their duties to Allah. May Allah accept his martyrdom. We are imperfect Muslims trying to establish the perfect religion of Allah as supreme on the land.”

And here Hasan confesses to being Al Qaeda. He names Anwar Al-Awlaki, an Al-Qaeda leader, as his mentor, and describes them as sharing a common mission of imposing Islamic Supremacism on America.

Here is a passage from Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the current head of Al Qaeda, describing their mission.

“Warfare against infidels, loyalty to the believers, and jihad in the path of Allah: Such is a course of action that all who are vigilant for the triumph of Islam should vie in, giving and sacrificing in the cause of liberating the lands of the Muslims, making Islam supreme in its own land, and then spreading it around the world.”

Nidal Hasan on Anwar Al-Awlaki: “We Are Muslims Trying to Establish the Religion of Allah as Supreme on the Land.”





BILL AYERS WAS HONORED JUST TO BE NOMINATED

So what exactly did What Difference Does It Make do to support and defend our nation and allies?

She worked for an administration that tanked two wars, started a third that got four Americans killed and forced the French to invade Mali. That administration also helped overthrow pro-American governments and replace them with Islamist regimes.

It cut health care for the military, fired countless military personnel and tied the hands of soldiers in the field leading to unprecedented casualties in Afghanistan. Hillary’s contribution to that conflict involved apologizing to Pakistan.

Giving Hillary a Patriot award in the Ronald Reagan building is like giving Polio an award in the Jonas Salk building.

Hillary to Receive “Patriot” Award in Ronald Reagan Building for “Defending Our Nation”




ICE HUGGING IS THE NEW TREE HUGGING

"Fifty musicians trekked to Farnham Glacier in the Kootenays Saturday to perform for the glacier itself and express their grief about the melting of glaciers with the aptly titled composition Requiem for a Glacier."

The glacier reportedly thought that their violins were out of tune and the trombone was a little too much. Also it was hoping for something lighter. Maybe a little Gershwin.

“I felt it, as I was playing,” said violinist Gerda Crosthwaite, 74, of Kaslo. “It is farewell to a glacier, feeling sadness it will happen. We cannot stop it any more.”

I just opened my freezer and played the world’s smallest violin for a melting ice cube.

Global Warming Orchestra Travels North to Play for Glacier





HILLARY THE MUSICAL

The Hillary Clinton production industry continues to grow. Just two days after NBC announced that it will air a miniseries about her starring Diane Lane, CNN Films today said that they are making a feature-length documentary about the onetime senator, Secretary of State and First Lady. The film will be directed by Oscar-winner Charles Ferguson.

Ferguson is a radical leftist whose resume includes No End in Sight, an Anti-Iraq War film, Inside Job, the predictable lefty slant on the financial meltdown, and a movie about Wikileaks.

If Michael Moore isn’t available, Ferguson is your third or fourth best option.

Meanwhile NBC is spending millions to air a four-hour infomercial for a future presidential candidate produced by a Hillary backer.

The pedigree of  Hillarypalooza is more interesting. “Sherryl Clark of Busted Shark will serve as executive producer along with James D. Stern and producers Julie Goldstein and Lucas Smith of Endgame Entertainment.”

Mr. Stern, 48, acquired his financial acumen, interest in politics and even his ties to basketball at the knee of his father, Richard J. Stern, a wealthy Chicago entrepreneur, part-owner of the N.B.A.’s Bulls and prominent Democratic donor.

Bill Clinton nominated Richard J. Stern to the National Council of the Arts. Stern is a Hillary donor. And even the New York Times thought that Stern’s Hillary sympathies were obvious.

“As we go forward at first into 2006, and then into 2008, I think this movie will be even more relevant, and I think the audience for it is expanding,” he said in an interview. “You’re going to go out and nominate a candidate in the Democratic Party. The question is, Can she win a place like Ohio?”

Subtle. Now this is the guy whose Hillary miniseries NBC has snapped up. NBC really is becoming a state propaganda network.

NBC to Air Hillary Backer’s 4-Hour “Hillary” Miniseries

CNN Joins NBC in Producing Hillary Propaganda Flick




PIVOT

Without much publicity or official announcements, the Unites States released five Guantanamo Bay detainees as a nod of willingness to open peace talks in Afghanistan. After officials in Kabul expressed desire for negotiations, the Obama administration released five members of the Taliban who were detained at the US detention center.

The Afghan Taliban have offered to hand over a US soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five of their own currently incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.

Releasing terrorists is unacceptable, but worse still, Obama is releasing them in exchange for terrorist goodwill, rather than bringing a captured American home.

Obama Frees Taliban from Gitmo, Neglects to Exchange Them for Captured US Soldier





THE APPEASEMENT SONG REMAINS THE SAME

I haven't written about Israeli politics in a while. After the last election, I was too disgusted to dip my toe in that pool.

Netanyahu's shameful behavior however does not surprise me at all. He couldn't stand up to pressure from Bill Clinton over Wye. There was no reason to think he would do any better here.

After dividing the county over an unnecessary draft battle, those extra soldiers will apparently be needed for the extra wave of terror that will come once more territory and terrorists are turned over to the Jihad all to prove that Israel really means well and is complying with the latest diplomatic effort to destroy it.

I don't have the energy or desire to type out everything I think about Israel's dysfunctional political establishment. It would end up sounding like a rant, rather than a reasoned piece. And much of it is, as in the United States, frankly attributable to idiot voters who follow the media to the latest phony scandal and ignore the ground burning under them.

But by the time the last election rolled around, there was hardly anyone to vote for. The fact that the Likud has no alternative to Netanyahu and neither do any of the other parties says it all. (And please don't talk to me about Moshe Feiglin, he's a good man and well intentioned, but etc...)

Netanyahu is not a leader. He's smart, articulate and spineless. He's the Galut Yid that the Sabra was supposed to leave behind, writ large.

It's a staggering bankruptcy of leadership. I could go on, but I would rather not.

Martin Sherman at the Fray in JPost says enough of it. 

Binyamin Netanyahu must resign or be induced to do so.

By any measure of moral integrity and/or statesmanship, he simply cannot be allowed to continue to function as prime minister. He has deceived the public and misled the nation. He has defrauded the voters on whose support he gained political prominence and on whose ballots he ascended to power. He has reneged on past pledges and renounced the values he professed to cherish.

...

The egregious decision of the Netanyahu government not only to agree to the resumption of negotiations on the establishment of a Palestinian state, but to agree that the resumption be predicated on an prior agreement for the release of over 100 convicted perpetrators of some of the most heinous acts of slaughter imaginable.

This of course makes a mockery of solemn pledges that Israel would not agree to any a priori concessions as a condition for resuming negotiations with the Palestinians.

...

Worse, even if Israel has not explicitly agreed to accept the pre- 1967 lines as a basis for negotiations, there are strong indications that it has tacitly complied with this calamitous condition. According to numerous press reports, the text of the invitation accepted by Israel states that “the goal of the negotiations is to implement the two-state solution on the basis of the ’67 lines with minor land swaps.”

So whether Israel acknowledges it or not, it has agreed to participate in a discussion on the establishment of a Palestinian state whose frontiers will be the indefensible pre-1967 lines – unless otherwise (mutually) agreed.

...

The decision taken last Sunday represents a staggering strategic surrender by Israel.

After all, as recently as May 2011, Netanyahu defiantly stood up, publicly, to Barack Obama and rejected the very formula (sans the prisoner release) he is now accepting.

...

All this – and more – has now been irrevocably lost by a decision, substantively unjustifiable and morally indefensible, that will confer on the government the “privilege” of entering into negotiations on a formula for making the country geographically untenable, with an entity headed by a soon-to-be octogenarian leader, who is now in the ninth year of his four-year term, and whose authority is rejected by a wide swathe of the population he purports to represent.

There's more. Lots more. The only thing I disagree with is the conclusion.

Suffice it to say that Netanyahu has now embraced a policy he spent decades berating, resisting and mobilizing publics at home and abroad to oppose. He thus has either failed to implement a policy he believes in, or is implementing a policy he does not believe in.

Whichever is true, this is an untenable situation which cannot continue.

Accordingly the only act of true leadership left for Netanyahu is to resign, and to resign without delay.

Netanyahu is obviously not going to resign, though he no doubt should, and his policy was entirely predictable based on his first term.

And from the policies of "conservative" leaders in most Western countries.

Netanyahu is no different than Cameron or Mitt Romney or Sarkozy or the rest of them. They head up faux conservative parties, that talk tough to conservative voters around election time or during a crisis, and then govern from the center-left consensus.

N was good on the economy and utterly terrible on everything else. That is again something he has in common with most Western conservative governments who understand economic liberalization and little else.

They think that free markets and deregulation will fix everything. They won't.

Meanwhile right on cue, Netanyahu's people have released a made-for-youtube tough talking video. But words are cheap. The referendum bill, which at best protects Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, is as worthless as the border security part of the US amnesty bill. It's there to disguise the sellout.

And the Supreme Court will no doubt find a way to invalidate it once enough pressure has been applied.

Sarah Honig also has somewhat more confidence in Netanyahu's red lines than I do.

 Let’s be charitable. Netanyahu nowhere contemplates the betrayals that Sharon began springing on his unwary supporters a decade ago. Netanyahu’s heart may be in the right place, but he is too frightened to refuse to participate in a crooked game. Pragmatically, he even deposits a downpayment for the privilege of being fleeced.

Such pragmatism is sure to land us into more trouble than it would extricate us from. The road to disaster is paved with pragmatic good intentions.

Pragmatism is akin to focusing on specific potholes in our national path rather than sometimes lifting our eyes from the ground to scan the horizon, survey the sweep of the land and behold the full track ahead. We bog ourselves down with details and neglect the whole. We quibble about incidentals and forget the basics.

Unlike visionary against-the-odds Zionists of yesteryear, pragmatists reject dreams, absolutes and truths. Everything is judged by the assumed practical outcome. The more facile a solution, the better – even if only for the foreseeable short-haul.

Thus if the world, for a host of ulterior motives, contends that Israel is the villain and the Arabs are its downtrodden victims, we don’t quarrel with this premise. We throw the howling hostile hounds a few bones to mollify them.

If the world, for cynical self-serving reasons, equates us with South Africa’s old apartheid regime and the Arabs with the oppressed indigenous masses, we don’t challenge this odious distortion. We try to improve our image.

If the world decides we’re foreign colonists who forcefully usurped the land of peaceful natives, we remove several settler outposts rather than refute the brazen fabrications and stress our right to our only homeland.

If the world falsely depicts us as the many and the mighty and the Arabs as the few and defenseless, we shy from military solutions to violent conflicts. If the world calls us aggressors, we apologize.

We convince ourselves that we thereby stave off immediate disaster, that we outsmart all other poker players.  But in fact we only impress ourselves, while at the same time honing our image overseas as tyrannical Goliaths, diehard apartheid adherents, colonialist interlopers and/or militarist ogres.

All this is excellently written and quite true as a policy analysis, but I am much less willing to be charitable. I think that Netanyahu, especially with his current coalition, is far more likely to spring such a surprise in the hopes of achieving a final status solution.

I hope I'm wrong.



WHO WANT TO BE THE REGION'S NEXT SYRIA

Is Egypt the Next Syria? Qaradawi Calls on Muslims around the World to Wage Jihad in Egypt




LIES, INJUSTICE AND THE CHICAGO WAY

Can someone remind me again what the difference between Barack Obama and Whitey Bulger is?

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, one insider writes, “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.”

Benghazigate: CIA Whistleblowers Warned, “You Don’t Jeopardize Yourself, You Jeopardize Your Family as Well”




LIES, INJUSTICE AND THE CHICAGO WAY II

Obama Inc. Refuses to Cancel Military Contracts with Al Qaeda Supporters




THE AMNESTYVILLE HORROR

Amnesty Bill Also Outlaws Profiling Illegal Aliens by Ethnicity, Race or Fence Climbing



RIGHTS AND WRONGS

Gay “Couple” to Sue to Force Churches to Host Gay Weddings



MUTABLE AND IMMUTABLE

But the gay rights movement is all political agenda which leads LGBT into irreconcilable absurdities.

The LGBT movement wanted to claim that homosexuality is genetic, not a choice, for political reasons… even though genetic is hardly the same as immutable.

To make this argument stick, the gay rights movement then had to argue that every single person who decides they’re gay is following an inescapable biological drive that cannot be in any way altered. And that to claim otherwise is bigotry.

That claim was already silly. It depended on accepting that not only is homosexuality a genetically immutable identity, which is a ridiculous and intellectually repugnant bit of genetic causality that becomes quite troubling when applied to genes that supposedly correlate with criminal activity, but that it applied to absolutely everyone who in any way ever identified as gay.

Making the entire ridiculous argument even sillier, the T part of LGBT decided that gender was wholly and completely mutable at any time, even though gender is about as genetic as you get.

And so we have a transsexual movement within the gay rights movement which claims that gender is mutable but sexual orientation isn’t.

Former APA President Blasts Gay Rights Ban on Sexual Reorientation Therapy for Denying Patient Choice






IT'S OBAMA'S WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT

Detroit Cops Begin Supplementing Missing Pensions with Armed Robbery

Obama Sends FSA Anti-Tank Missiles, FSA Sells Anti-Tank Missiles to Al Qaeda


California Pols Create Fake Mandatory “Retirement” Fund to Raid

US Army Switches to Ineffective Environmentally Friendly Lead-Free “Green” Bullet

Fed.Gov: Not Killing Babies Will Cost Money, Amnesty Will Bring in Money

McCain: Path to Citizenship Vital, Border Security Isn’t




IT'S NEWTON'S WORLD, OBAMA JUST LIVES IN IT

This isn’t one of those, “If a train going over the cliff at 1000 miles an  hour passes another train that’s on fire and being attacked by coyotes, which of them is more like Obama” puzzles.

At some point in his second term, Obama decided to give up even pretending to feint at the truth and just begin telling crazy lies on the assumption that his supporters can’t tell the difference.

Maybe instead of asking for his birth certificate, we should have been asking for his first grade math scores. 

Obama: If There Were More Gov Workers, Deficit Would be Lower, Tax Revenues Would be Higher





SO DOES THIS MEAN THAT EVERYONE IN FLORIDA WILL END UP HIV POSITIVE TOO?

Considering that the GDP of Illinois is behind Florida and Chicago is basically a Detroit waiting to happen, Jesse Jackson might look to his own backyard instead of trying to “bring down” a state which has oranges while his own hometown has gangs.

Florida is a state with a democratically elected government. Does bringing it down mean reducing it to the level of Chicago?

Jesse Jackson Vows to “Bring Down” Florida like South Africa




NANCY PELOSI OR NANCY DREW

"In other words, it’s not exactly clear why California’s businesses are disappearing. Florida, another state hard hit by the bursting of the real estate bubble, and the state with the second most businesses, added new businesses at the nation’s seventh-fastest rate."

It’s a mystery all right. One state has low taxes and a Republican governor. One state has high taxes and a Democrat. One state is adding businesses and in the other state, businesses are mysteriously vanishing.

Can any junior detectives solve this mystery before all of California’s businesses disappear?

California Lost 5.2% of its Businesses in 2012




HO HO HOSSEIN IS GOING TO WIN

At his chummy meeting with Vietnamese Communist leader Truong Tan Sang, Obama said, “we agreed that one of the great sources of strength between our two countries is the Vietnamese American population that is here but obviously has continued strong ties to Vietnam.”

That’s like saying that the Cuban-American community is a great source of strength between America and Castro’s Cuba.

While Obama delivered this howler with a straight face, outside Vietnamese-Americans, many of whom had come as refugees to the United States, protested the shameful betrayal.

Vietnamese-Americans Protest Obama’s Meeting with Communist Dictator



RECONQUISTA

The message here is goodbye British louts, hello Saudi Islamists. I imagine the mandatory bathing suit in Majorca will soon be a Burka.

The Spanish island of Majorca has implemented a ban on drinking alcohol in public and plans to replace its budget hotels with upmarket luxury resorts in a bid to discourage binge-drinking European holidaymakers and replace them with high spending, wealthy tourists from Dubai.

“We want people who spend a lot of money, such as more tourists from China and Dubai. St Tropez, Miami and Las Vegas are the places we’re orienting ourselves towards,” Alvaro Gijón, deputy mayor of the island’s capital Palma de Majorca, added.

Because the one thing Miami and Las Vegas are known for is being alcohol free.

Spanish Island Bans Drinking to Replace Europeans with Muslim Tourists




A MORE PERFECT ONION

1.a. Eco-rider to "Abortions R' US " (MA1.5): To better conserve the scarce resources of our eternally-endangered Planet, all aborted fetuses will be harvested into artisanal beer coolers, packed with small-batch dry ice, and dispersed by means of surplus FBI, IRS, CIA and NSA Lear Jets to Federal tissue and organ banks for the future use of important Americans such as politicians, film-stars, social media moguls, dot-com billionaires, and their heirs and assigns in good standing with the DNC. More stored "sustainable" abortions means a better chance of a perfect match should members of these groups pack in their livers, kidneys, brains, or sexual organs with booze or drugs. If this had been done 40 years ago Walt Disney, Ted Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter would still be alive.

...

3. The Better Americans Through Extra Diversity Bill (BATED): Let's face it, too many Americans, when it comes to marriage, are still sticking to their own kind and even, in some extreme cases, the opposite sex among their own kind.

BATED solves this phenomenon via forced marriages for the diversity-impaired. This bill, which requires all Americans to register their race, color, creed and national origin at birth, will give a much needed high-colonic to the presently stalled "Coffee Colored Compromise."

Good Democrats know well that the natural leanings of love often make mistakes (as opposed to the unnatural leanings), but with good Democratic government the mistakes that the normals make can always be rectified. Because some critics have referred to this as "eugenics," the BATED Bill will rectify this problem by mandating that it be called "newgenics."

I suspect Obama would probably call it Smarter Eugenics. It's his SOP for disastrous and discredited policies.

from American Digest




KILL THIS WORD

Stakeholder is one of those Orwellian libspeak words creeping into English that gets on my nerves. It also gets on Steven Hayward's nerves.

An NGO “stakeholder” is a euphemism for a self-appointed special interest group that wants to twist the administrative and legal process to get what they can’t get directly through legislation or elections.  I think the only good “stakeholder” is the vampire hunter about the plunge one in the bloodsucking government we’ve got today.

Stakeholder representation refers to the growing practice of explicitly allocating positions on government boards, commissions, and advisory bodies to special-interest groups.

A hybrid of quotas, Scandinavian-style corporatism, and old-fashioned interest-group liberalism, stakeholder representation holds that interests with a “stake” in a government policy or regulatory activity should be officially represented on the government agency that oversees that area of policy.

While the theory posits a cut-and-dried reality, the practice is a sloppy, highly politicized affair. Self-appointed pressure groups such as environmentalists, consumer advocates, and civil-rights organizations share equal standing with parties who have traditionally represented constituent interests, such as business, organized labor, or property owners, while other interests are excluded altogether. . . .



DON'T FORGET TUNISIA

The Muslim Brotherhood's overthrow in Egypt shouldn't lead us to forget that Islamists still rule in Tunisia as the original consequence of the Arab Spring.

Tunisia: The country was rocked on Thursday by the assassination of political opposition leader Mohamed Brahmi, an open critic of the ruling Ennahda party’s Islamization policies. The assassination outside Brahmi’s home took place on the country’s Republic Day, so many Tunisians were not at work and began gathering around government buildings in protest. The Ennahda office in Sidi Bouzid – the birthplace of the “Arab Spring” – was torched by protesters.

Many in Tunisia are blaming Ennahda for Brahmi’s murder, particularly because of the inability on the part of the government to bring to justice the assassins of Brahmi’s political partner, Chokri Belaid, who was killed back in February. Reports indicated that the same gun used to kill Brahmi had also been used to kill Belaid. Now protesters are calling for the dissolution of the government led by Ennahda.

A government official this week blamed the assassinations on a cell of Ansar al-Shariah, but it’s not likely that Tunisians are going to buy the attempt by Ennahda to distance itself from the jihadist group. In the past, Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi has played a public double game, denouncing Salafists to the Western press, and then colluding with them in private to push Islamization policies. He’s also known for making his own supremacist statements, such as his claim back in November that Islamists would rule the Arab world.

It should be noted that Ghannouchi has been greeted with open arms by top U.S. Islamic groups closely tied to the Obama administration, despite Ghannouchi being subject to a ban on entering the U.S. since the early days of the Clinton administration for terrorist activities until the Obama administration dropped the ban two years ago. Since, he’s been feted on Capitol Hill by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and he was recently the keynote speaker at an event with top Obama Muslim adviser and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) president Mohamed Majid outside D.C.

from Patrick Poole's column at PJ Media





NO GREAT WALL FOR AMERICA

It’s bad enough when your government is importing people to do “what Americans aren’t willing to do” at a time when Americans are willing to take any job at all, if only the government will let them contract for work without interposing itself with regulations and demands for paperwork. It’s much worse when your government is advertising abroad all the benefits you can get at the expense of the US taxpayer, if you will just move here and refuse to or can’t work.

...

I suspect a lot of people will glump through life, demanding all the special perks because they’re “victims” and refusing to accept that they might not be working as hard as others, because after all “systemic racism” and “white male privilege.”  (These same people, in a more traditional system, like, say, Islam, would accuse genii of cursing them.  Do genii exist?  Probably not, but in that society people believe them, and it provides an excuse.  The same with “Systemic racism” and “white male privilege.”)

...

However the China-lust of our ruling class (“We should be more like China.  They know how to get things done”) leads me to believe the main idea is that them little brown peoples are more subservient, and if we had more of them we could do things more like China, by main force and command.  (I did say that our elites are racist, right?)

Some observations from Sarah Hoyt. I am less optimistic than she is either about self-deportation or the prospects of constructing any kind of workable future in a society locked down into a Socialist political system.

Such a system might eventually collapse, but large dependent populations will mean that we still end up with a hybrid oligarchy/welfare state of the kind that much of the world has, where the population gets enough subsidized food from the giant corporations controlled by powerful families to keep from starving.

A system like that can be disrupted with new technology and ideas. Look at what social media did in the Arab Spring. But disrupting a society does not actually make it workable. It just adds more chaos.


Comments

  1. Daniel, regarding Netanyahu's behavior. I posit that it is due to his belief that Israel cannot survive without American support. I have no doubt that the Obama administration has repeatedly threatened Israel with greatly reduced aid and a collapse of American support for Israel in the UN. Do you agree that Netanyahu is caving to the Obama administration's pressure out of the belief that Israel cannot survive without American support?

    And, do you believe that Israel can survive without American support?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Israeli politics section of your Friday round-up is terrible, not how you write about it but what you write about it. We conservative, thus reality of life approaching and not illusion approaching Jews are getting the tendency to suppress thinking about with "ostrich behaviour" to what we see developing there because it's so frightening and incomprehensible. All what happens in these bogus peace talks is beyond comprehension, releasing unrepentant murderers as a "goodwill"gesture, talks about 1967 borders while we all know how those came about and what they lead to, the thought of abandoning Jerusalem where I clearly remember the pré '67 division wall The thought even of abandoning the factually conservative kibbutzim (outposts of civilization in wild territory) , now derogatory called "settlements" by the left wing media with 650.000 of our brothers and sisters, it's all to horrible to contemplate. And the fact that nobody in Israel manages to mass rally the public against this folly of it's political leadership, sooted by the words of Netanyahu that the view from "up there" is different from "down below" is incredible.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I do not disagree with you often, but I disagree with you regarding your assessment of Netanyahu. I think that he is conducting a very smart strategy to outlast Obama. He is pretending as if he is interested in playing the game of peace talks knowing that nothing could possibly come out of these negotiations. He knows that Abbas will never agree to recognize Israel as Jewish state and to any other reasonable conditions that he already set. What choice does he have?! If he resists to start of negotiations, Obama would label him as an obstacle to peace and further weaken Israel.

    Releasing 100 prisoners is dangerous, but Israel is better of killing those creeps after they are released than spending money on them in jail.

    He is trying to outlast and outsmart Obama, and we must support him and wish him good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Hillary to Receive “Patriot” Award in Ronald Reagan Building for “Defending Our Nation”"

    I posted the following on the National Defense University Facebook page.

    "I did not serve in the armed forces but have always highly respected those who did as defenders of freedom and individual rights.

    However, I understand that the NDU will give Hillary Clinton a patriot award.

    If this becomes a fact, I will be embarrassed to live in the same country with the people involved in such a cowardly shameful act which betrays everything which members of our armed forces fought, and in some cases died, for."

    ReplyDelete
  5. I haven't written about Israeli politics in a while. After the last election, I was too disgusted to dip my toe in that pool.

    ...please don't talk to me about Moshe Feiglin, he's a good man and well intentioned, but...

    Daniel, I am not going to talk to you about MF, but I hope it would be OK to ask just one substantive question, to which I cannot find an answer myself: in your opinion, what MF and his supporters are doing wrong, or what they are not doing right?

    At some point, I came across Paul Eidelberg's criticism that it was a strategical MF's mistake to join Likud, instead of creating his own independent party, but in general there's not much related materials where I can extract the true meaning of what's happening (or not).

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think Feiglin's political strategic thinking is pretty decent, but he can't be the man out front and ZA made a mistake by transitioning to the Leadership Institute instead of keeping the more confrontational activism going

    I understand why they did it, but much of the energy was wasted

    and if Feiglin is going to change the Likud, he needs a front man that people might get behind

    ReplyDelete
  7. Steve D12/8/13

    'Peace cannot be found on the moral high ground, only the mountains of the graves of the dead.'

    No! Peace is an effect, not a cause and it definitely CAN be found on the moral high ground.

    Think this through; I beg of you! My survival depends on it.

    ReplyDelete

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