Thursday 5 January 2012


Sunni v Shia: The ME’s new strategic conflict

By Barry Rubin, Rubin Reports

Of course, conflicts between Sunni and Shia Muslims are notat all new, but the fact that this is becoming a central feature on the regional strategic level is a dramatic shift. After all, as long as there were secular-style regimes preaching anall-inclusive Arab nationalist identity, differences between religious communities were subordinated. Once there are Islamist regimes, theology becomes central again, as it was centuries ago.

However, no one should misunderstand the situation. This is fundamentally a struggle for political power and wealth. When Sunni and Shia states or movements battle they are acting as political entities not pursuing old theological disputes.

The growing power and influence of Iran’s Islamist regime posed a tremendous problem for Arab Sunni Islamists. They generally did not like Iran because it was Persian and Shia, yet it was the only Islamist game in town. Thus, Arab Sunni Islamist Hamas became an Iranian client. The...

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Court: Obama must be ‘constitutionally’ eligible

By Bob Unruh, WMD

For the first time in dozens of court cases challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, a judge has ruled that Obama must, in order to be a candidate on the Georgia ballot for president in 2012, meet the constitutional demands for candidates for the office.

A hearing has been scheduled later this month for evidence on the issue that has plagued Obama and his presidency since long before he took office. At issue is the constitutional requirement that a president be a “natural-born citizen.” Some allege he was not born in the U.S. as he has claimed and, therefore, is not eligible.

Others, including top constitutional expert Herb Titus, contend that the term “natural-born citizen,” which is not defined in the Constitution, would have been understood when the document was written to mean the offspring of two U.S. citizens. That argument is supported by a 19th-century U.S. Supreme Court decision

Under that standard, Obama could not qualify, because...

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Islamophilia and the Israeli Question


The dominant theme of the Islamophile foreign policy narrative is that America’s troubles with Islamic terrorism and the violent instability of the Middle-East somehow derive from our excessive closeness to the Jewish State. In this narrative, which is prevalent among diplomats, journalists and assorted talking heads who are neither but pretend to be both, the terrorists are really just critics of our foreign policy. Except instead of penning smarmy New York Times columns like Thomas Friedman or Nick Kristoff, they plant bombs and ram planes into buildings not for the greater glory of Allah, but to prove the theses of Adlai Stevenson III and Zbignew Brzezinski.

The trouble with this is that it fails to reflect any reality other than the one in the stifling craniums of the opinionators. The foreign policy dolts have been complaining about the Zionist menace long before there was a special relationship between the United States and...

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Tamar Yonah interviews Francisco Gil-White

Audio: Denial Can Get You Killed (Warning: This show is not for kids)

A7 Radio’s “The Tamar Yonah Show” with Tamar Yonah

Denial Can Get You Killed (Warning: This show is not for children)

Why isn’t anyone telling the truth to the People? Do our leaders purposely lie to us about the enemy who wants to kill us? (There is no ‘Palestinian People’ they are an ‘invention’. Then why does PM Binymain Netanyahu and the LEFT want to give up Jewish Land to a non-nation that has no claims or historical proof showing any significant connection to this land?) Are Israeli Leaders ignoring historical fact, then feeding it to the public, in order to push through agendas of the International Community because they believe we are too weak to fight them? Do our leaders look at themselves like ‘grasshoppers’ as mentioned in the Biblical story of Moses who sent out the 12 spies, where 10 of them came back contended that...

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South Sudan, Israel’s New Ally

by Daniel Pipes

It’s not every day that the leader of a brand-new country makes his maiden foreign voyage to Jerusalem, capital of the most besieged country in the world, but Salva Kiir, president of South Sudan, accompanied by his foreign and defense ministers, did just that in late December. Israel’s President Shimon Peres hailed his visit as a “moving and historic moment.” The visit spurred talk of South Sudan locating its embassy in Jerusalem, making it the only government anywhere in the world to do so.

This unusual development results from an unusual story.

Today’s Sudan took shape in the nineteenth century when the Ottoman Empire controlled its northern regions and tried to conquer the southern ones. The British, ruling out of Cairo, established the outlines of the modern state in 1898 and for the next fifty years ruled separately the Muslim north and Christian-animist south. In 1948, however, succumbing to...

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Our World: Is Israeli society unraveling?

By CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

On balance, Israeli society is extremely healthy.

Unemployment is at record lows. At a time of global recession, the Israeli economy is growing steadily.

Israeli Jewish women have the highest fertility rate in the Western world with an average of three children per woman. Education levels have risen dramatically across the board over the past decade with dozens of private colleges opening their doors to more and more sectors of the population.

Israel’s diverse Jewish population is becoming more integrated. Sephardic and Ashkenazi intermarriage has long been a norm. Secular Jews are becoming more religious. A new educational trend that received significant media attention in recent months involves secular parents who send their children to national religious schools to ensure that they receive strong educational grounding in Judaism.

And as secular Jews become more religious, both the national religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors are becoming...

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Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel

Posted by Britannia Radio at 17:00