Ahmad Khatib: Jordan courting Islamists after Morsi's victory
Jordan is trying to woo the powerful Muslim Brotherhood after it gained more ground following the election of Islamist Mohamed Morsi as Egypt's first civilian president, analysts said on Monday.
Urging opposition Islamists to take part in early elections this year, King Abdullah II on Thursday ordered parliament to amend a controversial electoral law after they threatened to boycott the polls.
On the same day, he hosted Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on his second official visit this year since his expulsion in 1999.
"The turning point in Jordan's official position towards the Islamists following Morsi's victory is very obvious," Oreib Rintawi, who heads the Amman-based Al-Quds Centre for Political Studies, told AFP.
"Decision-makers here have realised that the region is now in the 'Brotherhood era.' The Islamists are already ruling in some Arab countries."
FP: Given their culture, I doubt that Arabs will be able to create a Caliphate, but whether they do or not, they have one unifying factor: hatred of Israel and Jews. If Jordan falls to Islamists, Israel will be entirely surrounded by them. And given the dismal economic state of Arab states (which Islam helped produce and prevents solutions to) the temptation for anti-Israel adventures will be extremely hard to resist, particularly in the context of a declining West that seems to have abandoned Israel and is appeasing them.
Consider what may happen as a consequence of the following if Israel were surrounded by Islamists:
'Hezbollah setting IDF up for another Goldstone'
Senior IDF officer says destruction in Lebanon will be extensive due to Hezbollah establishing command posts, bases in villages.
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Halevy said that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – no matter by whom – or the ongoing uprising in Syria could spark a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. In addition, increased tension between the IDF and the Lebanese Armed Forces could lead to a bigger conflict.
Last week, for example, a small force of soldiers from the Paratroop Brigade were patrolling the border when they spotted Lebanese troops standing 20 meters away and aiming their weapons –including a rocket-propelled grenade – at them. One of the Israeli soldiers, who speaks Arabic, heard the Lebanese commander dividing up targets for his men. The Israeli soldiers called in a backup force that quickly arrived at the scene, leading the Lebanese to withdraw.
“These type of incidents have the ability to turn into something larger,” a senior officer said.
Do you have any doubts that Hizb’allah understands the current Arab and Western context and will exploit it to drag the new Islamist regimes into a conflagration? Not to mention this: Arab World: Sunni Islamism stirs in Lebanon.
Elder of Ziyon: Juan Cole thinks Morsi is just like Jefferson
I really can't believe that people still take this joker seriously.
We should remember that the Thirteen Colonies that made the revolution starting in 1776 were religious societies. They had undergone the Evangelical Great Awakening, and millenarian and anti-papal movements were rife. Religious Americans fought the British for religious as well as material reasons.
...So if you are dismayed that the Muslim an-Nahda Party now dominates the Tunisian cabinet, you may as well be angry about bigotted Congregationaiists coming to power in some of the Thirteen colonies after 1776. (You could argue that the House of Representatives even today is highly religious; and the South Carolina state legislature is apparently a tailgate party for the Southern Baptist convention).
Yup, the Founding Fathers sounded just like this:
In Egypt, the MB said they wouldn't get involved in the protests - then they did.
They claimed they would not run for parliament - then they did.
They claimed they would not run for president - then they did.
But Cole believes them when they claim they will allow regular elections and listen to what the people want.
It is the "intellectual" equivalent of the mythical "law of averages," I guess.
FP: The problem is that Cole is not alone in this delusion. The entire Western establishment—governments, media, academia—and large portions of the populace fell under this spell. And with the likes of Cole teaching them, future generations of Western youth will fall under it. What do you think will happen, in this context, to current proposals by Muslim members of US Congress to introduce Islamic “education” in the American system?
US declares Afghanistan is newest ‘major non-NATO ally’
Clinton announces designation in Kabul, allowing for continued streamlined defense cooperation
FP: Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
With Turkey and Afghanistan in and Israel being excluded, how long before NATO will be Islamized?
It begins with the routine comments regarding “rich, smelly Jews,” proceeds onto the vandalism of Jewish symbols, veers into public discussions over “which kind of rope is best suited for hanging Jews,” and warnings over “Jewish control of the homeland.”
Jewish teen beaten in France as anti-Semitism surges in Europe
North African youths attack Jewish Ozar Hatorah student on train • French Interior Ministry: Anti-Semitism "contradicts the values of the republic" • European Jewish Congress: “The period of tolerance for anti-Semitism needs to end now.”
FP: Just like always: Talk and no action.
Tens of thousands call for universal service in Tel Aviv
Protesters march from 'Camp Sucker' to Tel Aviv Museum Plaza in call for more equal distribution of service burden, chanting "One people, one draft!"; Diskin: "Something is rotten in Israeli politics."
But at the beginning of the week, things looked different. A week after the representatives of the National Religious Party and Yisrael Beytenu quit the committee, the unofficial representative of the haredi parties, attorney Jacob Weinroth, also announced his resignation. From that point forward it became clear that the committee was finished. It no longer represented the public, and it certainly didn't represent the coalition.
FP: I predicted that this issue is not solvable and we are beginning to see how right I was. Not only that, but by reading the whole article you also find how right I have been in losing confidence in Israel’s political establishment. It’s pathetic and existentially dangerous in the situation in which Israel finds itsel.
Matt Taibbi: A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation
This is unbelievable, shocking stuff. A sizable chunk of the world’s adjustable-rate investment vehicles are pegged to Libor, and here we have evidence that banks were tweaking the rate downward to massage their own derivatives positions. The consequences for this boggle the mind. For instance, almost every city and town in America has investment holdings tied to Libor. If banks were artificially lowering the rates to beef up their trading profiles, that means communities all over the world were cheated out of ungodly amounts of money.
First there were huge bid-rigging settlements for Chase, UBS, Bank of America, GE and Wachovia. Now we’ve got a $450 million settlement for Barclays for Libor manipulation, and one imagines this won’t be the end of it. Anyway, more on this to come soon, and if you’re wondering, yes, there should be a lot more press on this.
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Another one bites the dust. The Royal Bank of Scotland is about to be fined $233 million (£150 million pounds) for its role in the Libor-rigging scandal. It joins Barclays as the first banks to walk the plank in what should be, but so far is not, the most sensational financial corruption story since the crash of 2008.
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The news that RBS is involved comes with a perverse twist. This is from the Times UK:
The bank, which is 82 per cent owned by the taxpayer, is preparing for a political firestorm over the affair because it believes that it has no power to claw back bonuses from the traders responsible. Instead, the expected fines would be borne by the shareholders — largely the Government.
Libor manipulation is a crime that already robs the public to create bonuses for bankers. By artificially lowering interest rates, the banks caused cities, towns, countries, and other public entities to receive smaller returns on their variable-rate investment holdings. If it turns out that taxpayers end up paying the fine for RBS's crime of robbing taxpayers, how perfect would that be?
FP: If not stopped—and who will stop them?--they will continue to rob the public blind until nothing is left.
A Weizmann team helped develop particle detectors, a Technion prof designed a key experiment, and several researchers were involved in building the accelerator
Israeli company offers first ‘medical smartphone’
LifeWatch Technologies has developed a device that essentially lets users get a full medical checkup just by picking up the phone
FP: Let Islam lead Arabs to do that.
RECOMMENDED READS
Martin Sherman: Into the Fray: The honorable thing to do (MUST READ)
CiF Watch: David Frost’s interviews with Benny Morris & Suhu Arafat: A stark contrast in political sympathy
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians' Islamist Spring
Mark Steyn: Lights out for U.S.-style Big Government
Matt Taibbi: LIBOR Banking Scandal Deepens; Barclays Releases Damning Email, Implicates British Government
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