Benghazi Remembered

The US Senate, which is still under Democrat control for now, looks to strengthen ties with Israel, reversing some of the damage done (at least on paper) by Obama/Kerry and co....the initiative appears to be bipartisan..Meanwhile on another front Hillary continues to take heat at the Benghazi hearings...There are so many unanswered questions that have been swept under the rug and point directly at the incompetence of this administration...The Clintons are notorious for dodgin...g scandals that would sink any other politician...a US ambassador's persistent warnings were ignored...drone reports were swept under the rug ...the ambassador was eventually brutally killed as were two Navy Seals and the Obama administration had the audacity to blame the attack on an anti-Islamic film that surfaced a month or so earlier (an excuse that has been discredited)...Obama/Hillary/Panetta/Carney blatantly lied to the American public in order to avoid taking extra heat during the Election fight against Romney in 2012....Americans of all political stripes should be ashamed of the action of this administration...which sacrificed a moral stance for political expediency...a real dark day in the history of the POTUS. Remember the time when American presidents actually stood up to the Libyans?

Eric Holder...Cheers and don't let the door hit you on the way out...

After much self-flagellation Obama has decided to act against the evil that is ISIS. Time will tell whether his actions will have the desired effect but he deserves the benefit of the doubt for now with respect to this particular action. Meanwhile politics in the great nation improved considerably with the resignation of Eric Holder from the post of Attorney General. Holder was a charlatan who side stepped investigations regarding obvious election fraud, used his office to promote a racially motivated agenda and too often took a soft stance against Islamist terror. His policies were consistent with an administration that limps from crisis to crisis and the US will be better served by his absence.

Jewish Voice for Peace...Barely Jewish not peaceful...

I have noticed several New Year posts from the inappropriately named Jewish Voice for Peace, making their way into my Facebook feed. Please note that this group is not a pro-peace initiative but an anti-Israel front group that gives the 'kosher' seal of approval to the ongoing campaign against the Jewish state. It puts a soft spin on the terror used by Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and others against Israel and decries Israel's attempts to defend itself. The mere fact that it h...as prominent BDS supporters such as Desmond Tutu and Naomi Klein on its front page explains a lot. JVP resides politically to the far left of Peace Now, New Israel Fund and J Street and it is clear that many of its members don't even believe that Israel has the right to exist in the first place preferring the two state solution as a stepping stone to a one state option that would see Israel disappear off the world map altogether. Israel and the Jewish people have legitimate peace groups on both sides of the political divide that have its best interests at heart.....JVP is not one of them

Tennis Grand Slams

I agree that men and women should earn the same prize money for the Grand Slams in tennis but then they should also play the same number of sets - best of five not three - these are the Slams after all. One must run the gauntlet to win.

911 Remembered

It has been over thirteen years since jihadists brought down the Twin Towers in New York. It's important that we in the West continue our fight against the Islamist barbarism in its many insidious forms. This includes being vigilant not only against the more obvious Jihadists (ISIL/ISIS, AL Q, Hezbollah, Hamas, the various Salafist groups, Boko Haram, the Brotherhood and others) but also those th...at operate by stealth such as CAIR, ISNA and the MSA.The radical left and many so-called progressives have helped empower some of these groups by muzzling free speech criticism and this has been extremely unfortunate. Obama appears to be waking up but his naivety on this front has cost America dearly. With Europe in the wake of demographic suicide the US is still the best hope for those who champion liberal democracy (although India may carry this mantra in the future)...but after six years of second rate leadership I just hope that it has not lost the belief that overall it is a force of good.

The Race for Mayor in Hogtown

Olivia Chow is polling at 19%, a full 22 percentage points behind John Tory in the Toronto mayorial race. She claims that she can move past Doug Ford, who sits at 34%, but I doubt it. Besides even if she does there are no second place medals here for the picking. The Toronto Star will muckrack to elevate her upwards but her campaign has been lousy so far. On another note its amusing how Tory has been re-branded as a centrist ...by the nattering classes..I remember seven or eight years ago when he ran for the Premiership of Ontario my leftist collegues were likening him to Mike Harris and urging us teachers to vote for the duplicitious Dalton McGuinty (who did more to damage teacher collective bargaining rights than any other premier in recent history...). Ah, how times have changed.

Hot Zone News

We are starting to see David Cameron adopting a tougher stance on Islamic Fundamentalism. Obama appears to have set his targets on ISIS/ISIL but he is so inconsistent in his Middle East policy that I am not sure where he is actually headed. It seems that both leaders want to re-focus NATO to deal with the threat, which must bring a smile on the face of Vladimir Putin as he extends further Russian influence westward into the Eastern Ukraine.

Joan Rivers - R.I.P

My thoughts go out to the family of Joan Rivers. She added much zip to the comedy world and although she ruffled a few feathers was always a strong supporter of Israel. We will miss her.

Plans for Worldohistory

My sister blog Worldohistory has been in suspended animation for the best part of four and a half years...However I have plans to re-ignite this blog which will serve a resource for my posts specifically dealing with our collective history. I am excited about this as I have spent a considerable amount of time reading about the Great War over the last two months and have much to share.

Thoughts on World War I

From my blog....Its been one hundred years since the beginning of the 'War to End All Wars' and the outcome of this great conflict is still very relevant today, While the war ended the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and German Empires it was also responsible for the rise of Fascism, Marxist-Leninism and Islamism. Vladimir Putin is an extension of the KGB apparatus that originated with Lenin's Cheka (during WWI) and ISIS - gains its intellectual capital (if you can call it such a thing) from the Wahhabism that challenged Turkish superiority in the Arabian Peninsula. As well American Intervensionism, which has critics on both the left and the right, can take as its champion Woodrow Wilson, who rejected the isolation of old to thrust America into the global theatre as never before. One would not be mistaken to conclude that the genesis of the US as a superpower has its origin in WWI not necessarily in a military capacity (where it swung the war against the Central Pact in 1918) but in its ability to finance the allied war machine. The American economic power house grew to adulthood in the Great War.

Secret to New Zealand All Black Success: Passion and an incredible feeder system

There is no more dominant teams perhaps in all of international sports than the New Zealand All-Blacks. Not only do the Kiwis have winning records against all competitors, their win percentage across all games is a colossal seventy-five percent (or so). This of course is no reflection on the quality of opposition. Each of the Australian Wallabies, South African Springboks as well as England and France, to name a few, play high intense rugby and boast admirable records on their own but it is the All-Blacks who steal the show. While the New Zealanders boast a proud history of great players - Jonah Lomu, Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Colin Meads – it is the level of teamwork, all round commitment, position play and the pride of following in a tradition that borders on the excellent that have elevated the All-Blacks to legendary status. They never seem to field a weak team and are always a force to be reckoned with. In fact it would not be out of line to say that the All Blacks are rugby union’s default champions. So what is the basis for this success? I believe that it is a consequence of the various tiers of competition that colour the panorama of the kiwi rugby world. Take the Canterbury Rugby Union, who are 11 time winners of the ITM Cup (New Zealand’s premier national competition). Amazingly, 48 Club teams feed into this particular union from three sub-unions, yet Canterbury is only one of 26 unions. The elite from Canterbury then play at the next level in the Super 15 Competition tier together with top players from the various other regional unions in an odyssey of rugby that pits the best of New Zealand against their counterparts in South Africa and Australia. The best of the best from these rarefied Super 15 teams are then selected to represent the All-Blacks on the international front. No other nation boasts such a multi-levelled structure that guarantees consistent competition on a yearlong basis (South Africa comes closest), but clearly it does the trick and is a key component in All Black success.