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Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said on Wednesday that the threats facing Israel have increased and intensified in recent years due to regional instability. He also said that Iran's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons must continue to be disrupted. Speaking to the Herzliya Conference, Gantz said that Iran's nuclear program is a "global problem and a regional problem". He added that Iran could cross the nuclear threshold within a year, if it decides to do so. "There is no doubt that Iran is seeking military nuclear capability," Gantz said. Gantz said that Gulf states are...

Iran's "evil" leaders cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, President Shimon Peres said on Tuesday, calling the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions the world's single most important issue. Peres' comments came at the opening of the Herzliya Conference, which was attended by World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, and former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. Referring to Iran's contentious nuclear program, the president called the issue "ours and the world's central problem at this time, accusing Iran of attempting to achieve regional and "even global hegemony." "Nuclear weapons mustn't be allowed to fall into the hands...

Mossad chief Tamir Pardo held secret talks with top U.S. officials in recent days, cursory comments made during a public Senate hearing indicated on Tuesday. The clandestine Washington visit was exposed during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which was participated by CIA Director David Petraeus, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate panel. During the meeting, Feinstein asked Clapper whether or not Israel intended to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, with the top U.S. intelligence official answering that he would rather discuss the issue behind closed doors. Feinstein then indicated that...

This might not be a big deal in the end, but it sure has an odd vibe that a foreign company now owns the software used to report precinct level election results in the United States. BlackBoxVoting.org reports: In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world’s dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA’s dominant election results reporting company. When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private...

WASHINGTON – A radical jihadist group responsible for nearly 50 attacks on American soil is operating 35 terrorist training camps across the nation, but the U.S. government refuses to include the organization on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorists.Jamaat ul-Fuqra, known in the U.S. as “Muslims of America,” has purchased or leased hundreds of acres of property – from New York to California – in which the leader, Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, boasts of conducting “the most advanced training courses in Islamic military warfare.”

<p>Now as the city celebrates its 125th birthday, creative South Africans are seeing gold in warehouses and cheap office space, and they're revitalizing neighborhoods with galleries, museums, shops, studios, clubs and restaurants.</p> <p>JOHANNESBURG - (AP) -- Johannesburg dates its beginnings to the discovery of gold in 1886. Its downtown, where skyscrapers tower over deep mines, was abandoned by business in recent decades, and squatters turned the office towers into high-rise slums. But now, as the city celebrates its 125th birthday, creative South Africans are seeing gold in warehouses and cheap office space, and they're revitalizing neighborhoods with galleries, museums, shops, studios, clubs and restaurants.</p>

President Barack Obama is issuing a memo today that will make it official U.S. policy to consider a country’s treatment of gay, lesbian and transgender bias when doling out foreign aid while making it easier for those being persecuted for their sexual preference to be granted asylum. Obama’s memo, which will be followed by a speech in Geneva by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “will coordinate US government agencies with respect to LGBT Issues and make it a component of US foreign policy to decriminalize LGBT status, make it a consideration for foreign aid and coordinate the asylum process for...

Foreign policy takes center stage in Washington this week as eight Republican presidential candidates gather tomorrow evening at DAR Constitution Hall for a debate hosted by The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. It airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday on CNN. Last week Heritage hosted House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) to discuss President Obama’s performance on matters beyond U.S. borders. We spoke to her about the Obama Doctrine, her concerns about U.S. policy toward Cuba and Israel, and why she is trying to reform the United Nations.

Russian warships are due to arrive at Syrian territorial waters, a Syrian news agency said on Thursday, indicating that the move represented a clear message to the West that Moscow would resist any foreign intervention in the country's civil unrest.

Meng Shujing with her grandson, Shi Junguang, and great-grandson, Shi Yaobin, in their hometown of Sanjiazi.China's Manchu speakers struggle to save language By David Lague Published: International Herald Tribune,March 13, 2007 SANJIAZI, China: Seated cross- legged in her farmhouse on the kang, a brick sleeping platform warmed by a fire below, Meng Shujing lifted her chin and sang a lullaby in Manchu, softly but clearly. After several verses, the 82-year-old widow stopped, her eyes shining. "Baby, please fall asleep quickly," she said, translating a few lines of the song into Chinese. "Once you fall asleep, Mama can go to work....

A top Darfuri rebel leader, back from Libya, told AFP he is working with other armed groups to topple the Sudanese regime and that UN reports of violence subsiding in Darfur are inaccurate... Ibrahim heads the Justice and Equality Movement, Darfur's most heavily-armed group, and was a key player in the early days of the conflict, which first broke out in 2003 when he and other non-Arab rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. But he later sought refuge in Chad, which expelled him in May 2010 after a surprise rapprochement with Sudan, and he moved to...

Syria will strike Israel and "set fire" to the Middle East if foreign forces choose to launch a military strike on the protest-ridden country, Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Tuesday. During a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Assad was quoted by the Iranian semi-official news agency Fars as saying that Syria would not hesitate to strike major Israeli cities if it was attacked. "If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than 6 hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv," Assad

Economy: After years of dithering and bowing to protectionists, President Obama finally submitted three pending free-trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia to Congress for a vote. Let the U.S. economy recover. The president's decision marks the first bright economic move he has made to boost the nation's ailing economy. Dropping tariffs, opening markets and equalizing investment terms are a proven way to boost economic growth. Contrary to all the nonsense about outsourcing and giant sucking sounds, the real impact of free trade is new freedom and opportunity. The pacts are now on their way to a vote in...

by Alina Lobzina at 22/09/2011 17:57 Russian nationalists joined Moscow’s Jewish community for a protest against Palestinian calls for UN membership, which is to be submitted on Friday. Russian right wing campaigners believe that the future of Israel is crucial for their country, which is also part of the European civilization, “although not very well integrated”, according to Ilya Lazarenko, co-chairman at movement National-Democratic Alliance. The main aim of yesterday’s rally staged by Jewish youth movement Shahar was to raise their voices against the creation of a Palestinian state without considering Israeli interests. Christian support Although the vast majority at...

The blood of the ongoing murder of migrant blacks in Tripoli has a name on it many will never see: President Barack Obama and his Foreign Policy. Gadaffi is gone; his family safely ensconced in Algeria and the Obama-supported rebels left in charge are now conducting a “large scale cleaning in the areas under their control with the extermination of all blacks in the capital”, according to The Independent. Without the permission of Congress and minus the blessing of We the People, Obama took the US to war in Libya. He sided with the rebels and ultimately, in effect the...

In a statement that raises new questions, the United States Consulate in Jerusalem is denying comments from their representative in which he warned the US would veto a Palestinian statehood move at the United Nations and that financial aid would be cut by Congress if the Palestinians took that step. The denial comes after the office of key Palestinian official Saeb Erekat claimed US Consul General Daniel Rubinstein made just such a warning during a meeting last week. While the American interest in keeping bilateral diplomacy secret and vague in public is nothing new, the denial contrasts with the general...

Bring back democracy. A European's Warning to America

A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland. He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today. It...

Iran is planning to retaliate against the United States for the sabotage against its nuclear program, according to an editorial in the Kayhan newspaper, the mouthpiece of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The U.S. has all of its infrastructure connected to the Internet, the editorial says, and as a result, "it is constantly worried about an unknown player, who they will never be able to identify ... sitting in some corner of the world who would launch an attack on a sector of (the Americans') foundations. They will be taught the mother of all lessons." Specifically, Iran is looking...

The Development and Execution of Joint Operations (both civilian and military) to respond to dynamic threats against the United States has now reached a point of criticality. Over the course of the last several years, some Americans are gradually waking up to the fact that our "essence of being" as a nation and as individuals is under a constant state of attack, and this attack has been implemented methodically and slowly over time by enemies who despise our way of life. What is occurring to the great country is so heinous that it patronizes each one of us, who we...

U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority has become an increasingly controversial matter in the wake of the group's decision to bypass peace negotiations and go to the United Nations for recognition of an independent state. But the outlay of funds to the Palestinians may become even more toxic after the release of a report by a media watch organization detailing the payment of salaries from the U.S.-funded PA to imprisoned terrorists. The report from Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli-based organization that monitors the Palestinian media and culture, said that more than 5,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are getting salaries...

CAIRO – Hiding for years from tyrant Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, members of Islamic groups are coming to light from their forced exile as real patriots to map out freedom fighters’ strategy against the current authoritarian rule. “We are part of the Libyan people and we just want to help our country,” Abu Sohaib, not his real name, a senior commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, told the New York Times on Tuesday, July 19. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was formed in 1995 with the goal of ousting Colonel Qaddafi. Daring to protest against Gaddafi in the 1990s,...

When another worker asked what it takes to be president, Putin answered that integrity is the key quality but one should also know how to take risks. He said he had made difficult decisions. “I sometimes thought – I’ll do this and what will be, will be. Pack up and go find yourself a new job,” Putin said, recalling how militants attacked Dagestan in 1999 and the authorities “could have spent months procrastinating in search of a better solution, waiting for elections, and fearing that our decision could hurt us because […] society was tired of bloodshed.” “Yet it was...

Last week, a Doncaster district judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Vicky Haigh, the former jockey and racehorse trainer who recently fled to Ireland to prevent Nottinghamshire social services seizing her expected baby. As I reported at the time, Miss Haigh duly gave birth to baby Sapphire; mother and daughter receive regular visits from England by the baby's father and his three children, for whom she has been a beloved stepmother for six years. Judge Bennett issued the warrant after Miss Haigh failed to appear before him to answer a charge that she had breached a "non-molestation order"...

There may be those among the less than brainwashed lemmingerati out there who have noticed what, as we have pointed out for the past month when reporting on the various manufacturing and regional Fed indices, has been an epic collapse in the appropriate data series. As John Lohman so kindly demonstrates, the two month implosion has been beyond epic, and while certainly the biggest drop in the past decade, may also be the all time worst ever. To the point of this post: the last time we had an economic contraction of this magnitude was back in February of 2008,...

BOGOTA (BNO NEWS) -- Almost 300 hundred women in southwest Colombia vowed to withhold sex from their husbands until the government paves the connecting road into their village, Colombia Reports said on Friday. Dubbed the "strike of crossed legs," the women in the town of Barbacoas near the Pacific coast are trying to persuade their husbands to pressure local authorities to properly maintain the main road out of their village which stretches some 35 miles (56 kilometers) before reaching the nearest town. Many husbands of the women on strike, however, said that they would prefer that their wives engage in...

Admin moderator, if this is inappropriate please delete. Thanks! I've been helping a non-profit, the International Fire Relief Mission. We collect equipment in the US from fire departments and businesses and ship it overseas to fire departments that either don't have anything or are so poorly equipped, it's a wonder they can do anything. As an example until we shipped equipment to New Guinea, the firefighters responded barefoot wearing overalls. There's another non-profit that raises money for other non-profits and holds a yearly awards ceremony in which as much as $15,000 is awarded. We operate on about $10,000 a year....

SO many people in France believe that the world is about to end that a government agency today alerted the country to the risk of mass suicides by converts to prophesies of imminent Armageddon. Natural disasters, the internet and French fears of economic doom are lending credence to predictions that the planet will self-destruct on December 21, 2012, said Miviludes, the government body that monitors cults and suspicious spiritual activities. There have been 183 false predictions of the end of the world since the Roman Empire collapsed and these are multiplying with new technology and a global climate of fear,...

Courtesy of the recently declassified Fed discount window documents, we now know that the biggest beneficiaries of the Fed's generosity during the peak of the credit crisis were foreign banks, among which Belgium's Dexia was the most troubled, and thus most lent to, bank. Having been thus exposed, many speculated that going forward the US central bank would primarily focus its "rescue" efforts on US banks, not US-based (or local branches) of foreign (read European) banks: after all that's what the ECB is for, while the Fed's role is to stimulate US employment and to keep US inflation modest. And...

Hamas is reporting record turnouts for its summer camps for children in 2011. The 'summer camps,' combining Islamic indoctrination, paramilitary training, and social activities are set to begin again this year as United Nation’s summer camps, considered competition by Hamas, are being openly denigrated by jihadists. Children and adolescents are an important target demographic for Hamas, from which its future army of terrorists will be recruited. Summer camps are an important means for indoctrinating Gaza's youth with Hamas' jihadist ideology.

Editor's Note: This is the first of a three-part series about Kamal Saleem, a onetime terrorist who abandoned violence for Christianity. He was trained in terror starting at age 7 at a PLO assault camp, learning to know and hate his enemies, was indoctrinated in radical Islam on his mother's knee and studied with his father how to despise Christians and Jews. He later dined with Moammar Gadhafi, his website says he served under Yasser Arafat and has Arab royalty in his family tree and he worked as a career mercenary, taking his terror activities worldwide. Ultimately, he was recruited...

NewsBusters previously reported that CNN's Fareed Zakaria had met with President Obama face-to-face to discuss foreign policy. Obama's other reported "source" of information on foreign policy, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, mocked Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday on CNN, and added that he should have dutifully obeyed the demands Obama outlined in his recent Mideast speech. According to a May 11 New York Times article, Friedman was one of two foreign policy journalists "sounded out" by President Obama for information on foreign affairs. The other, CNN's Fareed Zakaria, has previously criticized Israel's prime minister for not...

Leaders across America whose organizations represent literally millions of people have told the nation of Israel, much like the wizard told Dorothy in Oz, "don't listen to that man behind the curtain," or in the current case, don't listen to the man in the White House. The message came just hours after Barack Obama announced to the world Israel needs to return to its pre-1967 borders to appease Palestinians dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish nation. Obama made the statement in an address in advance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned visit to the White House today. Netanyahu...

Here's an update to yesterday's piece on "doing the right thing"........ which was a big thank you kiss to Tom Blumer, editor of the leading business blog, Bizzy Blog, and a PJM contributor. The foreign contribution story I broke in July 2008 took months to pull together. It is irritating to listen to people justify what amounts to an intellectual theft. It is wrong. Not only did we go through thousands of pages of FEC douments, but I followed up with David Keene (yes, Grover's boy) in 2008 as well. He was the President of the ACU, and I implored...

No one is immune from an audit, including President Barack Obama. The Federal Election Commission has begun an audit of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, according to Roll Call newspaper. The campaign, a record-breaking fund-raising machine that brought in nearly $750 million for then-candidate Obama, attributed most of its contributions to small-dollar donors. But the size of the haul almost guaranteed an audit would eventually occur.

Bill O'Reilly is either the worst journalist ever or he flat out lied to several people who wrote him. However, he invited us to send him the evidence if his facts are wrong. 1. Will you stake your professional reputation that Mr. Obama is constitutionally eligible to be president? Ken McFadden, LaGrange GA A Yes 2. How do you know Obama did not attend college on foreign student aid? Edith Keenan Lake Stevens, WA A. He reportedly received federal aid assistance and affirmative action help. There is not one shred of evidence any foreign money was involved. 3. What about...

AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers are considering whether to ban state courts from considering foreign religious or cultural laws, such as the Islamic law of Shariah. The goal "is to require a Texas court to uphold and apply only the laws ordained by the constitutions of (Texas and the United States), prohibiting any other interpretation," said Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, a former Arlington mayor pro tem. "This is now happening all over Europe ... and in Dearborn, Mich. ... and it could spread throughout the United States. "We all know what Shariah law does to women - women must wear burqas,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Persistent Federal Reserve critic Representative Ron Paul plans to hold a hearing on the U.S. central bank's emergency loans to the branches of non-U.S. banks, his spokeswoman said on Saturday. "I was surprised and deeply disturbed ... to learn the staggering amount of money that went to foreign banks," Paul said in a statement. "These lending activities provided no benefit to American taxpayers, the American economy, or even directly to American banks," he said.

"When you move to a foreign country, it's like being reborn," said Sholtis, who once worked as associate director of media resources at Rockefeller University in New York. "Everything is new; it really stimulates your mind."[snip]Then again, good medical care in many popular retirement spots is so affordable, Medicare runs often aren't necessary, according to travel researchers and Americans living abroad.Eight hospitals in Mexico are accredited by the Joint Commission International, a not-for-profit group that helps set quality and safety standards at hospitals and other health facilities.Besides Mexico, AARP includes Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, Portugal, Spain, southwestern France and...

Don Wade and Roma will be relating the story at 7:20AM this morning about documents surfacing that show Barry Obama registered in college as a foreign student in order to get financial aid. Listen live at LISTEN LIVE LINK.

 That's us dishing-out an allowance to  over 78% of the nations in existence... Thanks US taxpayers- but most of them still hate you anyway. And if you feel like a chump- you should: we'll be paying for this dubious investement (+interest) ad infinitum: America doesn't have any money to be giving-away in the first place, all discretionary federal spending is in-effect borrowed these days... [video of Rep Ted Poe (R-Tx)  on foreign aid and where it goes -here-] Maybe for a start we could cut-off, say, Moscow or Beijing... or so you'd think! The interactive foreign aid map linked below tells all......

As pointed out previously in I Can See Russia, one of Sarah Palin’s roles was that of Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard. While she wouldn’t have been charged with making decisions concerning the military, she would have been kept informed of any possible threats to the state. While Border States in the U.S. Southwest have to deal with the invasion of illegal aliens, Alaska has to contend with the ominous threat of Russian “Bear” bombers. Should these military airplanes penetrate our defenses, they could quite possibly disrupt the flow of oil by bombing the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System...

(CNN) -- Al Qaeda's North African wing has said "it will do whatever we can to help" the uprising in Libya, according to a statement the militant group posted on jihadist websites The statement by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was posted Thursday, said SITE, a terrorist-tracking organization based outside Washington. In the statement, the group said Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's decision to hire mercenaries and use planes to fire on protesters invalidates claims that the group is killing innocent civilians. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb started as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat with aspirations to...

WASHINGTON: Despite being in the throes of a crippling political and economic crisis and almost entirely dependent on handouts from the United States and multilateral aid, Pakistan is poking a finger in the international community's eye. Days after it was revealed that Islamabad has doubled its nuclear weapons' inventory in the past decade, American experts have discovered that it has begun building a fourth plutonium-producing reactor to produce even more nuclear bombs to add to the 100-plus it already has. The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) announced on Wednesday that it has obtained commercial satellite imagery from...

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake reaching a magnitude of 7.0 rocked Haiti. Over the next two weeks, 52 aftershocks measuring a magnitude of 4.5 or greater had added to the devastation. The city of Port-au-Prince was littered with rubble and death as impromptu tent cities sprang up everywhere. By July, an estimated $1.3 billion in funds had been raised by U.S. relief organizations. Charity is one of the most selfless, noble activities in which a person can participate; however, good intentions do not always beget good results. A year later the bodies are gone. The tent cities have upgraded...

“Spontaneous” demonstrations of thousands of youths pouring out into the streets with such force as to compel the flight of a long-time president… To which country are we alluding: Georgia, Serbia, Myanmar,[1] Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Iran, Hungary…? This time it is Tunisia. All of these “revolts” followed the same pattern. Already the Tunisian revolt is being called a “color revolution” by media and political pundits, and it has also been provided with a name; the “Jasmine Revolution,”[2] like the abortive “Green” and “Saffron” Revolutions, and the successful Velvet, Rose, Orange, and Tulip Revolutions, etc. These “color revolutions” all have a...

- We wanted democracy, and now we get less and less responsibility. We wanted national integrity and territorial sovereignty, and we have control from Brussels. We wanted a free market, and we got the social market. We went one way, after the fall of the communist system, and after two decades of this, we go another. It is a disappointment for all the countries that broke free of communism, said Klaus. As noted, the current radical changes in the EU must be a cause for concern throughout Europe. He yesterday met with Serbian President Boris Tadic, Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic,...

We would all like to think that humankind is getting smarter and wiser and that our past blunders won't be repeated. Bookshelves are filled with such reassuring pronouncements, from the sage advice offered by Richard Neustadt and Ernest May in Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers to the rosy forecasts of Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, not to mention Francis Fukuyama's famously premature claim that humanity had reached "the end of history." Encouraging forecasts such as these rest in part on the belief that we can learn the right lessons from the past...

After the 2010 elections, it’s not exactly news that Obama has lost America. But in a less public referendum, he also lost the world. Obama’s cocktail party tour of the world’s capitals may look impressive on a map, but is irrelevant on a policy level. In less than two years, the White House has gone from being the center of world leadership to being irrelevant, from protecting world freedom to serving as a global party planning committee. Even the Bush Administration’s harshest critics could never have credibly claimed that George W. Bush was irrelevant. He might have been hated, pilloried...

The U.S. intelligence community has an official response to the massive WikiLeaks document dump -- WTF. It's not what you think. WTF is the acronym for the newly formed WikiLeaks Task Force, a project launched by the CIA to determine how the leak of hundreds of thousands of cables and files will affect intelligence