The New Republic

This is not a fantasy. The Nigerian Secret Service found in a ship bound from Iran to wherever, with a stop-over in Lagos, 13 containers of weapons about which the bribery bureaucracy had begun to fake papers. Where do you think they were going? To Disneyland? Here’s the report by Barak Ravid in today’s Ha’aretz. Please take notice Jimmy Carter, eminence gris of the Elders. Or maybe the senile. READ MORE >>

The Obama presidency has been obsessed with remaking the Damascus-Washington relationship. Some of his experts told him it was both imperative and just beneath the surface. All you had to do was try. For some comic relief, I suppose, the State Department also sent two oh-so-brilliant men from the “wired” life-style: Alec Ross and Jared Cohen—yes, of course, Jewish—to Damascus to entice the Arabs into the future. READ MORE >>

This is my rather crude way of putting John Vinocur's subtle answer to the question he posed yesterday in his "Politicus" column in the International Herald Tribune: "Could U.S. lose Europe to Russia?" Of course, Obama cares mightily about the Third World. The Third World is a mess, an unholy mess, and it's about time that someone make this argument clearly rather than let it linger as an unspoken and mischievous truth. READ MORE >>

Everybody, quite literally everybody is irked by Bibi Netanyahu's refusal to give the peace processors another two months of a ban on construction in the West Bank. As if such a prohibition would produce more than the last ten months when Israel unilaterally precluded construction in the territories and the Palestinians responded with squat. READ MORE >>

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The average Frenchman will live to 81.5 years of age...and growing. And since France is nearly broke one of the steps -but just one of them- it has to take is to raise both the ages for minimum retirement and for full state pensions. The fact is that the Wall Street Journal editorial page is the site where the argument is made the most honestly and persuasively. READ MORE >>

Adam Nossiter in the International Herald Tribune makes as clear as the facts allow why there is no mystery in the regime targeting the motorcyclists. As it happens, they are the "gun-wielding...assassins of police officers, politicians and others in this dusty city near the desert" that has moved "the authorities to declare that a radical Islamic sect thought to have been crushed by Nigerian troops last has been revived." The city is Maiduguri. The sect is Boko Haram. READ MORE >>

I wrote about “Ovadia,” the beloved head of the Council of Torah Sages and the leading Sephardi “adjudicator” (which is what the Jerusalem Post called him yesterday), about a month ago and in four different posts: here, here, here READ MORE >>

The newspapers have more or less stopped quoting Dr. A'jad in full or even enough for us to grasp the horror of it all.  This was a big trip for the tyrant. So here are some excerpts from what he said to those he craves to convert to the religion of death:   My dear brothers and sisters, the truth is that the former slave-owners and colonialists, after suffering defeat in the face of the determination of the nations, are pursuing the same goals by changing their image and adopting new slogans. [...] READ MORE >>

There's so much been written about the ethical collapse of "J-Street" that there's almost no need to comment some more. Still, the big news is that more than half its bills have been paid by one of the world's biggest billionaires and by some mystery lady in Hong Kong who may or may not have been forking over a Chicago gangster's cash. The other news is that the "J-Street" founder, the son of a corrupt British Labor lord, thinks that the founding of Israel was a mistake. There may be some Jews who agree. But they are mostly Jews who don't care about the survival of the Jewish people. READ MORE >>