Labour would outlaw Islamophobia, says Miliband in an exclusive interview

Rebloogged from: www.muslimnews.co.uk

24th Apr 2015

Hamed Chapman

A future Labour Government is committed to outlaw the scourge of Islamophobia by changing the law and making it an aggravated crime, according to the Party’s Leader Ed Miliband.
“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,” Miliband told the Editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J Versi in a wide ranging exclusive interview.
“We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country,” he said.

Labour Party Manifesto pledged to take a “zero-tolerance approach to hate crime” regarding the growth of Islamophobia as well as anti-Semitism. “We will challenge prejudice before it grows, whether in schools, universities or on social media. And we will strengthen the law on disability, homophobic, and transphobic hate crime,” it said.

Despite voting for the new Counter Terrorism Act last month, Labour was also critical of the way the Government has cut funding and narrowed the focus of the controversial Prevent extremism programme, saying that much of the work to “engage Muslim communities has been lost.”
“I want to overhaul Prevent programme,” Miliband told The Muslim News. The Muslim community is as an “incredibly important, incredibly rich, incredible asset to our country” and so it was really important to put on record.

“The reality is that the people I talk to in the Muslim community are absolutely full square with the idea that we’ve got to make sure that we work with our young people to stop them being dragged into this perverted (terrorist) ideology.”
“The way to do it is the Prevent programme working with communities. You got to do the things that once this ideology takes hold you try to disrupt it. For me that is the answer. We want to see how the Prevent programme is community focused.”

Challenged about the way particularly Muslim charities have been targeted by banks and discredited by the media, Miliband said in his wide ranging interview that he was “not in favour of demonising anyone (and) that is the wrong thing to do.”
“What I am in favour is the Charity Commission working without fear or favour. We got to build right across the Muslim community. There is absolutely shared purpose and shared desire to deal with a small minority in our country who get tempted to violent extremism. That is what we got to build on and it is about working with them.”

On the so-called Trojan Horse scandal that failed to find virtually any evidence of extremism or radicalisation, the Labour leader said the reality is that the “root of this problem lies in proper accountability in our schools.”
“We are going to have high standards locally. That will make sure that every school has proper oversight. When there is no proper oversight things can go wrong in schools. The best way to stop that happening is proper oversight in our schools.
“You need proper accountability. The answer to this is not to run thousands of schools from the centre of the Government but to have local accountability in schools.”

With regard to foreign policy, Miliband confirmed that Labour would have supported the recognition of a Palestinian State in last year’s UN vote. His Party’s support was why Parliament backed the principle, he said.
“We would do everything we can to work for a two state solution which is a viable Palestinian state alongside security for Israel,” he added but also pointed out that he personally was “not in favour of sanctions” against Israel.
To find a solution, he argued engagement was needed with both sides but the “reality is that we had a British Government for the last five years who had disengaged from this issue, had washed its hands off this issue.”www.muslimnews.co.uk
“I’m not going to wash my hands off this issue. I will speak out about the settlements. I spoke out about Israel’s incursion into Gaza. Some people didn’t like that I spoke out. I did speak out and I will continue to speak out and engaging with the issue. We have the American Administration who also wants to engage and wants to push forward two-state solution. We are going to partner with them to do that.”

He was dismissive that Labour’s manifesto commitment to arrest and act against those returning from fighting in Syria would be hypocritical by targeting only Muslims as it is happening now. “When I am Prime Minister there will be one law for everybody. Full treatment for everybody,” he insisted.
Likewise Miliband was adamant that Muslims should not face racial and religious discrimination when it comes to employment or suffer the most because of the austerity cuts “It is part of the law that that is prohibited. We are going to have racial equality across the Government. We will enforce it.”

“We will tackle deprivation. We will build homes, get rid of bedroom tax, raise minimum wages, build better jobs for people, have a fairer social security system,” he also insisted.
Throughout his interview, Miliband insisted that he took “extreme care” in what he said but it still did not stop him in using the generic term of “Islamist terrorism” and inferring the cause was religious rather than political when suggesting more than once it was based on “perverted ideology.”
The last Labour Government stopped engaging with many Muslim organisations at the end of its tenor and the boycott has been continued by the Conservative-led Government. Questioned about it, he assertively said he would engage.
“I will always engage with people. I really value my relationship with the Muslim community and it is a relationship I would nurture as a Prime Minister.”

In the past, the majority of Muslims in Britain have often tended to vote more for Labour. It is a party that has always tended to have the most Muslim MPs, a trend that is expected to continue with the number expected to grow to 11.
“It is very important that people vote in the general elections. Stakes are incredibly high in this elections,” the Opposition Leader said.
“If you look at what I have done as Leader of the Labour Party I have learnt the lesson of Iraq war, I said no to military action in Syria in summer of 2013 when it was controversial. I have moved forward in the position to causes of Palestinian people.”
“Our Government will be absolutely committed to equality not just in law but in fact too. We are committed to race equality strategy. That is why we are committed to breaking down barriers of discrimination,” he further said.

“If you want the Government to stand up for working people it will be a Labour Government. So I urge people to vote in the elections because it is going to be a close election and if people don’t turn out to vote the danger is that you end up with Conservatives in power. So I will ask people to go out and vote.”

• Clegg pledges early review of new Prevent legislation in an exclusive interview

Worthy is the Lamb - Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir

Jonathan Cahn - The Altar of the Dark Angel on the Temple Mount

Media blitz to 'normalize' transgenderism

Reblogged from http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/media-blitz-to-normalize-transgenderism/

WND Exclusive

Target: Your children

Published: 12 hours ago

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2014/06/lhohmann_avatar.jpg
Leo Hohmann About | Email | Archive

Leo Hohmann is a news editor for WND. He has been a reporter and editor at several suburban newspapers in the Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, areas and also served as managing editor of Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh, North Carolina.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/04/I-am-Jazz.jpg

Jazz Jennings, a transgender teenager, wrote a book about having a “girl’s brain in a boy’s body.” It is now being used in schools.

The establishment media has suddenly gone ga-ga over transgenders.
Whether it’s Bruce Jenner’s prime-time interview with Diane Sawyer to discuss his “journey” from a 1976 Olympic decathlon stud to surgery- and drug-induced womanhood, or teary-eyed parents waxing softly about their child’s difficult but rewarding transformation from one sex to another, the American public is about to be inundated with journalistic stories, TV shows, books, movies and ads promoting transgenderism.

Sound off in today’s WND Poll: What’s your take on Bruce Jenner?
Like all good propaganda campaigns, it starts in the schools.
Parents of children at a middle school in Maine were outraged when they found out a guidance counselor read “I Am Jazz” to a class of 7-year-olds. The autobiographical picture book is based on the life of Jazz Jennings, a transgender teenager who talks of having a “girl’s brain in a boy’s body.”

“From the time she was 2 years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body. She loved pink and dressing up as a mermaid and didn’t feel like herself in boys’ clothing,” reads the description on Amazon. But her family was confused because they always thought of Jazz as a boy.

The book describes how Jazz “flourished once she was allowed to be herself,” said one reviewer, E.M. Kokie, in a review for ThePirateTree.com, a site that focuses on “social justice and children’s literature.”
The children’s book has won myriad awards.
NBC reported this week a story about how California Congressman Mike Honda’s “transgender daughter makes him proud.”
The boy (now girl)’s father says he just wants his child to “be happy,” as a tear forms in his eye.

Read Michael L. Brown’s sensational exposé of the perversion revolution – ‘A Queer Thing Happened to America’ – ½ price today only! 

The NBC Today Show presented the stories of several sets of parents last week who have “struggled” with their young children’s gender confusion. Most decided to support their boys’ desire to be girls, and vise versa.

Not to be outdone, CBS did a story on a family celebrating their “5-year-old son’s transgender journey.”
This is the way CBS Boston reporter Ken McCleod began his story:

“A Massachusetts couple knew their child wasn’t happy. So they made the courageous and difficult decision to raise their daughter as a boy at his own request.”

The rest is predictable.
Then there is the new TV series “Transparent,” a comedy-drama television series produced for Amazon Studios Video that debuted last year. The series, created and directed by Jill Soloway, presents the story of a Los Angeles family and their lives following the discovery that the person they knew as their father Mort (Jeffrey Tambor) is transgender.
At the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 11, the show won the award for best television series.
Former model Tyra Banks has also produced a transgender TV series for VH1 called TransAmerica, starring transgender model/activist Carmen Carrera.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/04/carmen-carrera.jpg

Transgender model Carmen Carrera stars in a new TV series produced by Tyra Banks.

According to Hollywood Reporter, “the eight-episode docuseries will chronicle a group of Chicago women united by the shared experience of being transgender. The series is described as an earnest look at a group of millennial women — who happen to be transgender — living, loving and building their careers. The series will explore how their sexuality impacts their lives.”

Susan Levison, executive vice president of programming for VH1, told Hollywood Reporter: “This is a show about a group of compelling, gorgeous young friends who are on a unique journey while staying true to their authentic selves. We believe that message resonates.”

Summer camps for the gender confused
And the movement isn’t limited to a media blitz.
The transgender movement now offers transgender-friendly summer camps for children of all ages.

Camp Aranu’tiq is one such venture. Launched in 2010, the program seeks to offer an overnight camp experience designed specifically for “transgender and gender variant youth.”
Aranu’tiq is a chugach (Indigenous people of Alaska) word for “a person who was thought to embody both the male and female spirit,” according to the camp’s website. “Aranu’tiq people were often revered and thought to be very lucky because their existence transcended traditional boundaries.”

Camps are held for pre-teens and teens at undisclosed sites.
The camp was founded by Boston native Nick Teich, a PhD candidate at Brandeis University and author of the book “Transgendered 101: A Simple Guide to a Complex Issue. He has a “deep personal interest in helping transgender youth to be themselves,” according to the camp’s website.

The assistant camp director is Morgan Darby, a former teacher and girls’ basketball coach who relocated from Oakland, California, to Boston. She is an active member of MassEquality, an LGBT statewide grassroots advocacy organization and holds and master of arts degree in gender and cultural studies from Simmons College.

The camp also has psychologists and therapists who collaborate with parents and support groups, “supporting families through transition.”
One such professional is Bob Ditter, a family therapist in Boston who, according to his bio, “is a nationally recognized trainer and consultant for organizations that work with young people. He has visited over 600 summer camps in the United States.”
Under a section “Who can attend Camp Aranutiq’s programs,” the camp’s website states:

“Camp Aranu’tiq is for those who feel that they do not fit into the norms our society has prescribed for gender. This includes those who have “transitioned,” those who happen to express their gender differently than others, and those who may experience teasing or bullying because of their gender.”

The camp says of its staff:

“About half to two-thirds of our counselors at each program are trans-identified. We feel it is important to have role models who are of all gender identities and expressions. We seek a diverse group of staff and volunteers.”

Camp Aranu’tiq was winner of the Eleanor Eells Award in 2012. This award recognizes program excellence as well as research in practice at camps, according the Eleanor Eells website.
Camp Aranu’tiq is just one example. There are dozens of similar camps easily found online.

‘Christian’ camps for transgenders?
Some even claim to be “faith-based.”
“The Naming Project” touts itself as a “faith-based organization that aims to provide a haven for LGBTQ and allies alike.”

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/04/the_naming_project.jpg_0.jpg

The logo for The Naming Project, which claims to be a Christian ministry.

It is holding a camp session from July 26-31 at Bay Lake Camp in Deerwood, Minnesota. “Youth ages 14-18 of all sexual and gender identities who are interested in talking and learning about sexuality and gender in the context of their own spiritual understanding are encouraged to attend,” according to the website glaad.org.

The Naming Project promotes a documentary called “Camping Out.”
The Naming Project says it is “a Christian ministry that walks with youth wherever they are on their own faith journey. Youth from around the country attend our summer camp, and we communicate with youth, parents, pastors, youth workers, and others who care for LGBTQ youth.”

The Naming Project is just one example of how the LGBT movement is spilling over into the Christian church.
The LGBT Humanist Council promotes a program called “Sharing Our Stories,” which celebrates the lives of LGBTQ people.

A group in Gastonia, N.C., called Gaston Has Heart is one of many to pick up on the theme, offering a “Sharing Our Stories” program at a local church, All Saints Episcopal, last month.
“The day will consist of three wonderful keynote speakers, Joshua Burford; The Dr. Rev. Gary Butterworth; and Matthew Morrell Comer. Also, we will offer ten educational workshops, on a wide-variety of topics related to the LGBTQ Community, over the span of three concurrent sessions,” the group’s Facebook site says. “Finally, we will hold a ’round table’ discussion on collaboration in the Community.”

The site further explains that, “‘Sharing Our Stories’ is appropriate for anyone in the LGBTQ Community, its allies and advocates, educators, those in the human services field, parents, families, friends, members of the faith community and many more.”
But not all scientists are on board with the transgender movement’s basic hypothesis, that gender confusion is a genetic, permanent condition.

Top psychologist throws water on LGBT ‘science’
There is a solid body of research that indicates gender confusion is best understood as a mental disorder, often temporary in nature.
Former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Paul R. McHugh, M.D., concluded it is “biologically impossible” for a person to change the sex they were born with, and those who advocate “sexual reassignment surgery” are thus promoting mental illness.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, McHugh, who is Hopkins’ Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, cites a long-term Swedish study that followed transgendered persons for up to 30 years, and revealed that “beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable non-transgender population.”
McHugh’s research further concluded: “When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings.”

Yet, the push to normalize transgenderism rushes forward.
It’s no coincidence that the transgender movement should follow on the heels of a very successful same-sex marriage movement, says David Usher, president of the Center for Marriage Policy.

It comes in the wake of a late 2014 ABC News poll showing 58 percent of American adults now approve of same-sex marriage, up from just 32 percent nine years ago. So the media machine is moving on to the next stop on its family-destroying agenda, says Usher.
He believes the movement will result in tragedy for hundreds of young people who are being sold a lie.
“I’m just wondering what planet I’m living on now, but this is all basically straight out of (Alfred) Kinsey (the famous sexologist). The whole concept is that one’s biological sex is completely immaterial,” he said. “That’s just the next phase of the sexual liberation movement, to make it so physical sex means absolutely nothing.”
Inherent in this “junk science” is the idea that the mind is all powerful and the mind prevails over reality.
“And basically we live in an age when reality just doesn’t matter anymore. What is, isn’t. This is basically liberals trying to bring in the last stage of cultural destruction laid out by Herbert Marcuse,” Usher said.

Building a new social order
Marcuse was a German-American philosopher, sociologist and political theorist associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. This school taught that it was necessary to advance the theories of Karl Marx beyond economics into the realm of sociology and culture. It was the crossing of Marx with Freud.
“Just as classical economic Marxism argued that under capitalism the working class was oppressed, so the Frankfurt school used Freud to argue that under Western culture everyone lived in a constant state of psychological repression,” said William Lind in a documentary produced by the Free Congress Foundation.

The idea was to end sexual alienation, which cultural Marxists argued was just as significant as economic alienation.
Just as economic Marxism had to destroy capitalism before it could rebuild a society under socialist principles, cultural Marxists work to destroy the family and religious institutions so they can usher in a new order based on secularism and brute materialism.
Some have called it “cultural terrorism.”
“This is the socialist mindset. If you can destroy the meaning of what it means to be a woman or a man, then the whole country is up for grabs,” Usher said.

The American Psychological Association decided in 1974 that homosexuality was no longer a mental health issue. Transgengerism is the next phase of that metamorphosis.
School counselors in some school districts are already being directed to “new research” that suggests they must “advocate” for gender-confused students in elementary and middle schools.
“So what the APA has done is create a lot of people who are very malleable and they get sick, get depressed, and they need resources, which of course is always presented in another government program, because you create people with mental problems who need constant counseling,” Usher said.

These kind of strange approaches to mental health issues, and the blurring of the lines between men and women were common in the Soviet Union, Usher said. But even the Soviets and the Nazis were not as extreme in embracing transgenderism as those who make the rounds in America’s left-of-center political circles.
“If only a few people believed it, it wouldn’t be so frightening,” he said.

 

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/media-blitz-to-normalize-transgenderism/#ELTjetkYIXgOJwOu.99

The new government’s greatest tasks

Reblogged from http://carolineglick.com/

Friday, April 24th, 2015

In testimony last week before the House committee in charge of State Department funding, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power acknowledged that the Obama administration intends to abandon the US’s 50 year policy of supporting Israel at the United Nations.
After going through the tired motions of pledging support for Israel, “when it matters,” Power refused to rule out the possibility that the US would support anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council to limit Israeli sovereignty and control to the lands within the 1949 armistice lines – lines that are indefensible.

Such a move will be taken, she indicated, in order to midwife the establishment of a terrorist-supporting Palestinian state whose supposedly moderate leadership does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, calls daily for its destruction, and uses the UN to delegitimize the Jewish state.
In other words, the Obama administration intends to pin Israel into indefensible borders while establishing a state committed to its destruction.


In about a week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s new government will be sworn in. The new government will have no grace period before it will be called upon to forge and implement policies to lead Israel through perhaps the most trying time in its history.
Clearly, developing the means to cope with our deteriorating relations with the US is one of the most urgent issues on the agenda. But it is not the only issue requiring the attention of our leaders.

Israel must quickly determine clear strategies for contending with the consequence of US’s strategic shift away from its allies: Iran’s nuclear project. It must also determine the principles that will guide its moves in contending with the regional instability engulfing or threatening to engulf our Arab neighbors.
As tempting as it may be to believe that all we need to do is wait out Obama, the fact is that we have no way of knowing how the US will behave once he has left office.
The Democratic Party has become far more radical under Obama’s leadership than it was before he came into office. Hillary Clinton may very well become the next president, particularly if Jeb Bush is the Republican nominee. And she has evinced no significant interest in moving the party back to the center.

As secretary of state during Obama’s first term in office, Clinton was a full partner in his foreign policy. Although she appears less ideologically driven than Obama, there are many indications that her basic world view is the same as his.
Moreover, the world has changed since 2009. The Middle East is far more volatile and lethal. The US military is far less capable than it was before Obama slashed its budgets, removed its most successful commanders and subjected its troops to morale-destroying mantras of diversity and apologetics for Islamic terrorism.

In light of these changed circumstances, there are in essence two major principles that should guide our leaders today. First, we need to reduce our strategic dependence on the US. Second, we need to expand our policy of openly and unapologetically making the case for our positions to the American public.

On the first score, the need to limit our dependence on US security guarantees became painfully obvious during Operation Protective Edge last summer.

Obama’s interference in military-to-military cooperation between the Defense Ministry and the Pentagon, and his decision to implement an unofficial arms embargo on Israel in the middle of a war, was a shocking rebuke to the powerful voices inside the IDF General Staff and in policy circles that Israel can and must continue to trust the US to back it up in crises.
Our need to limit our dependence on the US to the greatest practicable degree will have consequences on everything from our domestic military production and development industries to intelligence and operational cooperation with the US and other governments.

It is imperative as well that we develop a plan to wean ourselves off of US military aid within the next three-five years.

Netanyahu’s critics continue to attack him for his decision to abandon the longstanding policy of settling disputes with the US administration through quiet diplomacy. They blame Netanyahu’s decision to publicly air Israel’s opposition to Obama’s nuclear diplomacy for the crisis in relations. But they are confusing cause and effect. Netanyahu had no choice.
Obama has made clear through both word and deed that he is completely committed to a policy of reaching a détente with Iran by enabling Iran to join the nuclear club. He will not voluntarily abandon this policy, which his closest aides have acknowledged is the signature policy of his second term.

Under these circumstances, it has long been clear that quiet diplomacy gets Israel nowhere. Open confrontation with the administration is the only way that Israel can hope to limit the damage the administration’s policies can cause. By publicly laying out its positions on issues in dispute, Israel can provide administration critics with legitimacy and maneuver room in their own critiques of Obama’s policies.

The public debate in the US regarding Obama’s policy of appeasing Iran was transformed by Netanyahu’s speech before the joint houses of Congress last month. Before he came to town, most of the voices in the US warning against Obama’s nuclear diplomacy were dismissed as alarmist. Netanyahu’s speech changed the discourse in the US in a fundamental way. Today, Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is highly controversial and unpopular.
And this brings us to the second burning issue the next government will need to contend with immediately upon entering office: Iran.

Since word of Iran’s nuclear weapons program got out more than a decade ago, Israel has operated under the assumption that a sufficient number of members of the policy community in Washington were committed to a policy of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons to make the abandonment of that policy politically impossible. Netanyahu’s strategy for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program has centered on convincing those policy-makers to take action, whether through sanctions on Iran or through other means that would make it impossible for Obama to conclude a deal with Iran that would give the nuclear program an American seal of approval.

In recent weeks, we have seen the collapse of that assumption. The Senate’s feckless handling of Obama’s nuclear accommodation of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism exposed Israel’s operating assumption as overly optimistic. So the policy must be updated.

An updated policy must be based on two understandings. First, the US will not stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Second, due to Obama’s commitment to nuclear accommodation of Iran, at this point unless Iran’s nuclear installations are destroyed through military force, it will become a nuclear power. Israel’s survival will be compromised and a nuclear arms race throughout the region will ensue.

Given this reality, Israel’s public diplomacy should no longer be viewed as a means to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Rather, Israel should view it as a means to empower American lawmakers and others to stand with Israel in the event that it carries out military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons.
Open support for Israel by the US public and by politicians and media organs will make it more difficult for the administration to harm Israel in retribution for such action.
As for the strike itself, both the operational and diplomatic aspects of a military action must be calculated to make the most of the changing regional dynamics.

Last summer, in fighting Hamas in Gaza, Israel found itself acting in alliance with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates against Hamas, Qatar, Turkey and the US. The Arab states served as Israel’s blocking backs. They enabled Israel to withstand massive pressure from the administration that sought to coerce Israel into ending the fighting on Hamas’s terms.

In recent weeks, the media in Egypt and Saudi Arabia have expressed support for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations. This support will be helpful in the aftermath of any such strike as well, and will again make it difficult for Obama to take revenge on Israel. Moreover, Israel must capitalize on these states’ opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons program in order to convince them to provide operational support for Israeli forces attacking Iran.
This of course brings us to the third major issue on the next government’s agenda: formulating principles to govern our relations with the Arab world.

One thing is obvious. The goal that informed all previous governments in the past – that Israel’s top goal should be to sign peace deals with our neighbors – is irrelevant.
Our neighbors are all engulfed in wars or crises spurred by domestic opponents. These opponents have embraced al-Qaida and Islamic State and consequently, their domestic disputes with their leaders have been transformed into existential struggles between Islamic totalitarianism and regular authoritarianism.

Israel’s policy to date for handling these affairs has been to support the Egyptian military government and the Jordanians and to prevent Iranian proxies in Syria from directly attacking Israel. This policy is correct and should remain in place. But Israel also needs to adopt policies that will enable it to protect itself in the absence of friendly regimes in Amman and Cairo.

To this end, Israel must stabilize the situation with the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. Israel must ensure that it has complete military control over these areas to prevent a spillover from Syria and to withstand the effect of a potential rise of jihadist forces in Jordan. As for Gaza, Israel must stop viewing Gaza, which behaves as a separate body politic from Judea and Samaria, as related to Judea and Samaria.
Gaza is a base for the global jihad and is a threat to Israel and Egypt alike. It has to be understood and treated as such.

In short, under the current circumstances, just as the notion of sitting down and signing a peace deal with Syria or Saudi Arabia is absurd, so the notion of reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians is a throwback to an entirely different time. Today the only way to keep the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria separated from the chaos and jihad in neighboring states is to make them part of Israel. As a preparatory step toward that goal, the next government must act to more fully integrate Arab Israelis into Israeli society.

To this end, Netanyahu would do well to appoint a Muslim Arab minister to his government charged with integrating the Arabs more fully into Israeli society.

The world has changed since 2009. America has changed. The Middle East has changed. Israel faces an array of challenges and threats it has never faced before. The next government must understand the dynamics of the situation and quickly forge policies based on the world as it is, not as it was or as we would like for it to be.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Army forces ROTC cadets to wear high heels

Cadet Command says it is not to blame

By: streiff (Diary)  |

Great strides, so to speak, are being made in the US military’s jihad against sexual assault.

Army ROTC cadets are complaining on message boards that they were pressured to walk in high heels on Monday for an Arizona State University campus event designed to raise awareness of sexual violence against women.

The Army openly encouraged participating in April’s “Walk A Mile in Her Shoes” events in 2014, but now it appears as though ROTC candidates at ASU were faced with a volunteer event that became mandatory.

This, to put it charitably, is freakin insane.

This doesn’t appear to be some sort of rogue action. According to cadets commenting on the subject the order comes from the top: MG Peggy Combs, commanding general of US Army Cadet Command. And it is highly coercive:

A ding on an evaluation that you don’t support the command’s EO program is a guarantee that you won’t get promoted while on active duty. As a cadet it will probably prevent you from being selected to go on active duty rather than receiving a 90-day active duty for training billet and moved into the Guard or Reserve. It has also against Army Regulations to require soldiers to buy items of clothing for wear while on duty.

I contacted the US Army Cadet Command and asked them about this. I received a response from the command public affairs officer, Mister Mike Johnson. According to Mr. Johnson, ROTC detachments were directed to participate in university activities that focus on reducing sexual assault. No instructions were given on how they were to participate. Participation by cadets was not mandatory and no directive was given to penalize absent cadets. According to Mr. Johnson, only 15 or so cadets at Temple participated as the walk was held during class hours. The Army did not require the purchase of high heels and is looking into that question.

Clearly, the message Cadet Command tells me it sent is not the message that was received in the field. And unless there is a widespread conspiracy to lie about what happened, the Cadet Command needs to examine what the hell is going on and take a serious look at who it has running ROTC “battalions”. However, even in its best light this is a problematic exercise. Do ROTC cadets, in uniform, wearing red high heels really demonstrate anything about sexual assault? What lesson are these young men and women supposed to take away from this?How about pride in wearing the US Army uniform? How about the number of men that are coming forward with complaints of sexual assault ? Don’t men count?

More to the point, this is what we are training future commissioned officers: wearing heels lets you understand women. Can you think of anything more superficial?

THE SECOND COMING

Note from the blogger: I found this poem in the Prologue page of an ebook I ordered today titled: Slouching towards Gomorrah" by Robert Bork.
I found it very "à propos".

 William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
     

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. 

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

---

The Second Coming was written in 1919 in the aftermath
of the first World War. The above version of the poem is
as it was published in the edition of Michael Robartes and
the Dancer dated 1920 (there are numerous other
versions of the poem). The preface and notes in the book
contain some philosphy attributed to Robartes. This printing of the poem has a page break between lines 17 and 18 making the stanza division unclear.

Following the two most similar drafts given in the Parkinson and
Brannen edited edition of the manuscripts, I have put a
stanza break there. (Interestingly, both of those drafts
have thirty centuries instead of twenty.) The earlier drafts
also have references to the French and Irish Revolutions
as well as to Germany and Russia.

Several of the lines in the version above differ from those
found in subsequent versions. In listing it as one of the
hundred most anthologized poems in the English
language, the text given by Harmon (1998) has changes
including: line 13 (": somewhere in sands of the desert"),
line 17 ("Reel" instead of "Wind"), and no break
between the second and third stanza.

Yeats, William Butler. Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Chruchtown, Dundrum, Ireland: The Chuala Press, 1920. (as found in the photo-lithography edition printed Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1970.) Yeats, William Butler. "Michael Robartes and the Dancer" Manuscript Materials. Thomas Parkinson and Anne Brannen, eds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Lawlessness and Global Transformation: Understanding the Times–Jan Markel and guest Michelle Bachman

Reblogged from servehiminthewaiting.com

By STLloyd April 22, 2015 Barack Obama Bible prophecy Iran

 

Folks,I highly recommend that you listen to this broadcast of Jan Markel with Michelle Bachman about the rapidity with which Obamaa’s dealings with Iran is bringing us to the brink of WWIII It is rare to hear someone in her position to speak so freely and clearly from a prophecy perspective, about the things taking place in our world right now.--S.T. Lloyd
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/understanding-the-times/custom-player


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PART I HERE

Op-Ed: Attack Now – Russian Interference Leaves Israel No Choice

Reblogged from Israel national news
Via servehiminthewaiting.com  

Soon it will be too late, if it is not too late already...

Published: Friday, April 17, 2015 8:54 AM

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal,...

► More from this writer

The Obama Doctrine – scorn your friends, reward your enemies – has finally reaped the whirlwind, namely Russia and its pledge to provide Iran with an array of the most advanced “defensive” missiles on earth. This leaves Israel with no choice except to act BEFORE those missiles are deployed. 

Israel must attack to remove those nukes before it’s too late.
If it was difficult to successfully strike Iran’s nuclear facilities today, tomorrow will be near impossible. So the scientific experts tell us.

The S-300 Surface-to-Air Missile System would provide Iran with an impenetrable shield.It’s been explained that the S-300 Surface-to-Air Missile System would provide Iran with an impenetrable shield.

If anything, Russia’s move has clarified the situation. Israel’s duty to defend itself has never been more urgent and an attack scaled to wipe out Iran’s nuclear emplacements would likewise be a favor to any number of Sunni states that tremble from Iran’s Shiite encroachments throughout the Arab world.

Read this for one newsman’s heroic efforts to stop a worldwide caliphate, reminding readers that “The Koran Has Arrived And It Has Come To Devour The Bible.”

Jordan’s King Abdullah II told Fox News’ Bret Baier that somebody better do something, quick, seeing Iran on the prowl throughout the Middle East and beyond:  “You’ve got to connect all these dots together. All these issues are areas of instability,” declared Abdullah in connection to Iran’s heavy footprints throughout the region.
He cited Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan and his own country as being at risk.
Abdullah did not directly call for help from the United States or Israel, but the hint was unmistakable.

On seeking a deal to stop or stall Iran’s nuclear program, America’s infantile negotiators, led by John Kerry were no match for the ayatollahs. These were children bargaining with grown men. The ayatollahs trifled with Obama’s “best and brightest” during the negotiations and scorned them as laughable losers after the negotiations.
The result was no deal at all. Iran gets to keep arming itself with no one to stop it from growing bolder.
Certainly the United States, under Obama, cannot be counted on to come to the rescue. Thus, a vacuum waiting to be filled.

Enter Vladimir Putin, who saw the perfect opening, an opening he’s been waiting for along the decades to replace America as the dominant world power in the Middle East. He can’t be blamed. Russia does what Russia does because it is Russia. But the United States has no excuse for being so lame.

Putin and the ayatollahs must be dancing at finding Obama and Kerry so easily duped, 
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Putin to voice his displeasure. Apparently Netanyahu was assured that these missiles for Iran are weapons meant only for defense – which is terrible enough since the system could destroy (Israeli) jets trying to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

But as noted in a recent column here, during the Cuban Missile Crisis Putin’s ancestor Nikita Khrushchev gave similar assurances to John F. Kennedy. No worries. Those missiles are only defensive. Until it turned out differently and the United States was ready to go to war – world war! – to get those Soviet arms removed from Cuba, be they defensive or offensive or both.

Israel finds itself in the same perilous spot as regards Iran. There is no choice but to take action now.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. The new thriller from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a heroic editor’s singlehanded war on terror and against media bias. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

SHOCKING DOCUMENTARY 3- False spirits invade the church - KUNDALINI WARNING - Andrew Strom -Part 3