I was bemused when a minor lambast against “pacifists” trying to start a war against Israel led to this comment:
“…the Israelis steadfastly refuse to publish a list of allowed goods and appear to change their minds daily on what is allowed. Eg. Hair conditioner is banned at the moment…”
Oh my, no wonder the people in […]

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William Churchwestbankvoices@gmail.comOn 13 April 2010, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Order 1650 (Order regarding Prevention of Infiltration) went into effect.  Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups have predicted mass deportation of Palestinians.  The Israeli government’s public relations machine has gone into high gear spinning the order as a beneficial human rights move and they claim only […]

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by William ChurchEditor West Bank VoicesThe newspaper headlines are full of talk of President Obama putting pressure on Israel’s Netanyahu to halt the settlements in East Jerusalem and restart the peace negotiations.   In reality, Israeli internal politics leaves very little room for a solution regardless of actions by the United States.Last month Israel shook the potential […]

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If you follow the British news, you might have noticed an ongoing scandal about Scotland releasing the mastermind of the Lockerbie bombing (the bomb at Christmas time of 1988  that destroyed Pan Am 103 and took the lives of 270 people).
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released last August at Libya’s request because he was terminally ill […]

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Maureen Dowd, the red headed vixen of the NYTimes editorial page, gushes effusively on attending an art show in the Saudi kingdom:
It was an unlikely moment, SoHo comes to Saudi Arabia — the first mixed exhibition anyone can remember in Riyadh, the stultifying capital of a country that bans any exhibition of […]

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In Psychiatry, there used to be something called a Rorschach test.. where they show you ink blots and ask you what they look like.
The idea is that one would “project” one’s ideas and worries into the object, and you could get an idea what was on their mind.
Sort of the equivalent in religious people seeing […]

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A small factoid on StrategyPage:
the last decade has produced, for the first time, a large number of female combat veterans. There are nearly a quarter million of them, including over 5,000 receiving disability benefits (for injuries received in combat, or non-combat, operations).
Until recently, the “official” story was that woman were not allowed to serve […]

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The story carries the headline: France: Catholic Church Rejects Ban on Full-Face Veils
Except the “Catholic Church” did no such thing. The Bishop in charge of “interreligious dialogue” in France made a statement, but his opinion is not the opinion of the Catholic church.
“If we want Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries to enjoy […]

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The advertising campaigns on our local cable TV is “Malaysia, truly Asia”, suggesting that you can visit there and see all of Asia in a microcosm: The beaches of SEAsia, the foods of India, and the bargains of China, all in one.
Well, last week’s attacks on seven churches just lost them the visits of a […]

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A headline about President Obama’s Speech on national security from the Philippine Inquirer notes:
Obama speech won’t bump ‘Lost’ premiere–White House 
Well, after a kerfuffle about the President “bumping” Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special, it’s nice to see that President Obama has his priorities intact. (I should note that Pope John Paul II rescheduled his installation […]

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Umaru Abdul Mutallab, father of the “Christmas Underwear Bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, needs to be recognized as a very brave man and a true friend of America. Up until now he has only been briefly mentioned for his deed, but an article at Politics Daily by Jeffrey Weiss not only corrects that it asks […]

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A Broken System
To say that there was a breakdown in our transportaion security system, does a disservice to the word breakdown. 
Red flags and clear warnings not being used to thwart the recent attempted airliner bombing,  Shine a light on more than just a lack of screening equipment.  The basic threat assessment process was shelved […]

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Those who travel by air in the future might soon face full body pat downs to check for bombs in the bosom and crotch, thanks to Umar the Panty bomber.
But the real problem is that “no using the rest room for the last two hours of flight”. Apparantly, Umar spent an hour in the restroom […]

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…while the world sits on its collective hands and this continues unabated.
Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.
The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a […]

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I wrote an article two months ago calling the President to task for his indecisiveness in responding to General McChrystal’s request for 40,000 reinforcements in Afghanistan. I was pretty annoyed that the alleged “leader” of our country would take so long with a decision that was costing my fellow military men and women’s lives each […]

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President Obama once again waxed eloquent this week at West Point– he is one hell of a good orator, I’ll give him that! (Text of speech HERE.)
It was also an exceptionally pro-American speech — for Obama that is; his obsessive need to pound his chest and scream Mea Culpa (figuratively of course) on behalf […]

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The murders at Fort Hood have been blamed on jihadi terrorism, a fantasy disease called post traumatic syndrome by proxy, and “going Postal”.
Presumably “Road Rage” will be the next diagnosis for the Psychiatrist who went on his own personal terrorist strike.
But until now, I was not aware that many of his victims were themselves members […]

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One of the frustrating things when working in child maternal health in poor countries is trying to integrate medical aims into the cultural background of the people, without destroying it.
This NYTimes story, about trying to get the Mullahs in Afghanistan to approve of their people using birth control, is a good example of how to […]

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I was startled to find this important editorial in the NYTimes:

A Final Verdict on the Presidential Salute

After a couple of paragraphs explaining the writer’s expertise in saluting, and another couple of paragraphs on the history of presidential salutes, we come to the conclusion:
(President Obama’s) salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.
Huh?
It’s true that […]

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It is as if the entire Washington press corps has forgotten everything any of them knew in 2001 and early 2002 and have no perspective on what is going on in Afghanistan now.
In late September of 2002 newspapers were flooded with glorious tales about the Northern Alliance – and the NA deserved every bit of […]

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The founder of Human Rights Watch, Robert Bernstein, has watched as his organization has lost its focus and come unmoored (to mix metaphors), and has written a piece in the NY Times about what he sees as the principal reason.
AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding […]

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President Obama was brought up in Asia, yet he seems clueless about Afghanistan, and of the geopolitical problems in this area.
The press is even worse, preferring the simplistic out of date explanations of the “Afghanistan is Viet Nam” meme, or the “Stop the war” meme, or stressing civilian casualties “reported” by Taliban linked sources without […]

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Marketed as “the first collection of modern Afghan music ever to be released internationally” by director Havana Marking, this collection of music from the new critically acclaimed documentary Afghan Star is an impressive international dance album at worst and a groundbreaking collection of music at best. The documentary, released this past summer, follows a number […]

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From Eliot Cohen:
Unless you are a connoisseur of small pictures of bearded, brooding fanatical clerics there is not much reason to collect Iranian currency. But I kept one bill on my desk at the State Department because of its watermark—an atom superimposed on the part of that country that harbors the Natanz nuclear site. Only […]

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So President Obama is scrapping the Bush “Missile Defense program” that was planned to protect Europe from Iran.
Yes, I know. There is some question if the missile defense was any good against the actual threat, and all it seemed to do is irritate Russia. And it’s not like the program would merely be scrapped: there […]

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A lot of nonsense being written in the news about Conservative writer George Will deciding to throw in the towel in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is a mess. Big deal. It’s been a mess for a couple thousand years, and trying to “win” a war there and put in a crumpets and tea democracy is a bit delusional.
But […]

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Here’s a story lead from Politico: Washingtonians get ‘wee-weed up’?No one can figure out what President Obama was talking about when, during remarks at a national health care forum, he said:
“There’s something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up. I don’t know what it is. But that’s what […]

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An article on the left-leaning website Truthout announced yesterday that a “new direction in the war on terror” may result from a case that occurred in the last year of the Bush Administration. Bryant Neal Vinas, an American-born suspected terrorist who was captured in Pakistan, was given “all the rights of  American criminal suspects.” The results? […]

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Today’s Manila Bulletin has it’s usual supplement from the New York Times, and the headline blares:
A Nuclear Free Vision.
In the Depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Colombia University wrote…about the vision of a “nuclear free world”.
It seems that President Obama was promoting nuclear disarmament in the 1980’s.
That in itself is strange […]

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White House Photos, Lawrence Jackson. The President discusses Iran during his opening remarks at the Press Conference at the White House, June 23, 2009.

FreeMediaOnline.org,  Free Media Online Blog,  GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, June 26, 2009, San Francisco – Ronald Reagan’s strong response to the imposition of martial law  against the independent Solidarity trade union in Poland in 1981 was distinctly different […]

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