Shhhh…Jordan’s King Abdullah and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in talks about how to ‘neutralize’ US Secretary of State John Kerry

From Bare Naked Islam

Secretary of State John Kerry’s effusive optimism regarding the ‘peace’ talks have been a source of concern not only to Netanyahu, but also to King Abdulla II of Jordan. The two leaders’ ‘secret’ meeting yesterday in Amman— made public almost immediately by the Jordanians—was devoted to one issue: Jordan is very unhappy about the possibility that Israel would take the IDF out of the Jordan Valley.

 

Jewish Press  According to Makor Rishon, the Jordanians don’t care if the plan is to remove the IDF now, or in 10 or even in 50 years. They don’t want Israel out of that stretch of land across the water, period.

 

The immediate outcome of the two neighboring leaders getting together, a Jordanian source told Makor Rishon, is another devaluation of the chances of Kerry coming up with a comprehensive plan.

 

“If, two weeks ago, there was a fifty-fifty chance that such a document be presented, now that chance is much lower,” the source said. “For now, the Americans believe they’d be able to draft a paper, but they’ve been running into bigger and bigger difficulties. It’s possible that in the end they’ll put nothing on the table, or they’d put down something and say, ‘Take it or leave it.’ Maybe they’ll degrade the document’s contents, to enable both sides to accept it—but that would also mean that whatever achievement they reached over these past months will be lost, and that would also be problematic.”

 

Israel and Jordan have been maintaining an effective security cooperation along Israel’s eastern border. When asked in private, the Jordanians are vehemently opposed to having Palestinian forces posted along the river, preferring without hesitation the current arrangement. But, obviously, they can’t say that publicly.

 

If the security plan of General George Allen is implemented, Jordan would have to change its own security alignment long the river. The plan calls for international, Israeli and Palestinian forces to be posted, and the Jordanians—like anyone who hasn’t drunk Kerry’s Kool Aid—know this will only mean trouble.

 

Israel has had a generally quiet and prosperous peace with its neighbor to the east, with Israeli factories moving to the Hashemite side, attracted by the cheap labor, and the two countries sticking to their mutual commitments, including Israel’s obligation to provide Jordan with its share of the Kinneret water, rain or shine.

 

Much of that tranquility can be attributed to the fact that both countries’ security communities have developed an atmosphere of trust and cooperation, and so they’ve been able to bock whatever mayhem going on in the PA from spreading east into Jordan.

 

In yesterday’s meeting, both Netanyahu and Abdullah praised the success of the past 20 years. They reassured each other that the system ain’t broke and needs no fixing, thank you very much. This would go a long way to lose Kerry friends not just in AIPAC, but in the Democratic Senate and, hopefully, Vice President Biden.

 

Despite everything Biden may be saying publicly in support of his president’s aspirations, he is an old foreign policy hand, with an intimate familiarity with the Middle East. Surely, he knows how volatile Jordan is already, and how much more threatened would the king’s rule should the IDF pull out from his western flank.

 

It cannot be stressed enough that the king belongs to an endangered minority in Jordan, the 20% or so of Bedouin tribesmen loyal to him. The rest of his citizens are Palestinians who have arrived over the past seven decades. They’re doing well there, and when they don’t, the Legion and the secret police make sure they behave, occasionally massacring them by the tens of thousands.

 

But permit a direct, daily contact between armed Palestinian forces and the Hashemite Kingdom, and the fireworks would start shortly thereafter. Jordan already is a home to 1.2 million Syrian refugees. Crime is on the rise, employment is down, gun purchases are up. Jordan’s office of the interior said some 120 thousand weapons were sold there last year, and an estimated 1 million unregistered weapons are in circulation. 

 

Jordan does not want another porous border. This is why King Abdullah insists on being informed about the negotiations, if not on actually being a participant. He’s also been opposed to the fast pace of Kerry’s team. His former prime minister, Ma’ruf al-Bakhit, working on behalf of the king, has been recommending to the Palestinians to slow things down.  

The fun never stops.

 

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John Kerry, Jihad Coddler

Michelle Malkin / Townhall Columnist

The myth of the poor, oppressed jihadist never dies. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is the latest Obama administration official to peddle this odious narrative. Cue John Lennon's cloying "Imagine," don your plaid pajamas, and curl up with a warm cup of deadly naivete. 

While meeting with Catholic Church officials at the Vatican in Rome on Monday, Kerry expounded on their "huge common interest in dealing with this issue of poverty, which in many cases is the root cause of terrorism or even the root cause of the disenfranchisement of millions of people on this planet." In other words: If only every al-Qaida and Taliban recruit had a fraction of Kerry's $200 million fortune, they'd all be frolicking peacefully with infidels on jet skis sporting "Coexist" bumper stickers.

This wasn't a one-off. Kerry delivered a similar Kumbaya-style discourse at the Global Counterterrorism Forum last fall: "Getting this right isn't just about taking terrorists off the street. It's about providing more economic opportunities for marginalized youth at risk of recruitment."

Naturally, the Foggy Bottom apple doesn't fall far from the Pennsylvania Avenue terror-excusing tree. President Obama subscribes to the very same "midnight basketball" theory of counterterrorism. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Obama asserted that jihad "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

The chronic cluelessness of the root-cause apologists of jihad never ceases to amaze. Britain's MI5 reported in 2011 that two-thirds of the U.K's jihad suspects were from middle-class backgrounds, "showing there is no simplistic relationship between poverty and involvement in Islamist extremism."

Thorough reviews of the empirical evidence shows, as the RAND Corporation reported, that "(t)errorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated or afflicted by mental disease.

Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment).

Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds."

Here's a refresher cheat sheet:

--9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta went to Hamburg University to study urban planning.

--Convicted al-Qaida scientist Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis.

--Osama bin Laden did a summer school stint at Oxford.

--Christmas Day underwear bomb operative Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab was an elite Nigerian engineering student who studied at one of Britain's leading universities and "lived a gilded life."

--Jihadist Samantha Lewthwaite, the notorious "White Widow" British Muslim convert linked to last year's Westgate mall massacre in Nairobi, was the daughter of a soldier and a former University of London student.

--British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a London School of Economics student, was convicted of abducting and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl.

--Seven upper-middle-class jihadi doctors were implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings.

--Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri didn't need more education or wealth to steer him away from Islamic imperialism. He had a medical degree. So did former Hamas biggie Abdel al-Rantissi.

--Al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed attended Chowan College in Murfreesboro, N.C., and then transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he earned his degree in mechanical engineering along with 30 other Muslims. Mohammed applied his Western learning to oversee the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot (six Americans dead), the U.S.S. Cole attack (17 American soldiers dead) and the September 11 attacks (3,000 dead). He also has been linked to the 1998 African embassy bombings (212 dead, including 12 Americans), the plot to kill the pope, the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and the Bali nightclub bomb blast that killed nearly 200 tourists, including two more Americans.

Osama bin Laden, of course, was dedicated to spending every last penny of his inherited Saudi fortune -- estimated at between $50 million and $300 million -- to wage war on the West. Al-Shabaab jihadists have amassed their own terror campaign chest through the illegal ivory trade.

Privileged jihad funders from Qatar and other Gulf states heap their petro-dollars on al-Qaida. The Taliban raised $400 million in one year, according to a 2012 U.N. report, not just from opium, but largely from "donations, taxing local economies and extorting money from such targets as drug dealers, cellphone operators and aid projects." Indeed, since 2006, "the Taliban have managed to finance an ever-increasing number of attacks, reflecting a year-on-year increase in income," the U.N. report said.

Memo to stupidly rich elitist John Kerry, richly stupid progressive Barack Obama and the administration's bleeding-heart bureaucrats in a bubble: Financial bankruptcy is not, and has never been, the "root cause" of Koran-inspired hatred and violence against nonbelievers. Lack of intellectual stimulation is not, and has never been, the "root cause" of radical Islam's centuries-old and never-ceasing imperative to establish a worldwide caliphate and conquer the West. The root cause of civilizational jihad is unmitigated evil and arrogance, not lack of compassion, understanding or social justice.

Islamic terrorism never had such dutiful tools as the American fools who rationalize it.

Obama Administration Mandates Racism in Schools

Mona Charen / Townhall Columnist

 

The Departments of Education and Justice have teamed up to make the lives of students in tough neighborhoods even tougher. Framed as a measure to combat discrimination against black and Hispanic children, the guidelines issued by the Obama administration about school discipline will actually encourage racial discrimination, undermine the learning environments of classrooms and contribute to an unjust race-consciousness in meting out discipline.

Claiming that African-American and Hispanic students are more harshly disciplined than whites for the same infractions, the Obama administration now advises that any disciplinary rule that results in a "disparate impact" on these groups will be challenged by the government.

"Disparate impact" analysis, as we've seen in employment law, does not require any intentional discrimination. It means, for example, that if an employer asks job seekers to take a test, and a larger percentage of one ethnic group fails the test than another, that the test is de facto discriminatory because it has a "disparate impact."

In the school context, the federal government is now arguing that if a disciplinary rule results in more black, Hispanic or special education kids being suspended or otherwise sanctioned, the rule must be suspect. The "Dear Colleague" letter explains that a disciplinary policy can be unlawful discrimination, even if the rule is "neutral on its face ... and is administered in an evenhanded manner," if it has a "disparate impact" on certain ethnic and other groups.

The inclusion of special education students is particularly perverse, as special ed students frequently get that designation because their emotional disturbances cause them to misbehave in various ways.

So if a rule against, say, knocking over desks, is found to be violated more frequently by special ed than regular ed students, then the rule must be questioned? That's circular.

As the CATO Institute's Walter Olson notes, the federal guidelines pass over one example of disparate impact with no comment -- namely the dramatically more males than females who face disciplinary action nationwide. If we are to judge a rule's lawfulness by the disparate impact on males, no rule would survive the inquiry. Is it possible that more boys misbehave in the classroom than girls? To ask this question is to venture into an area the federal government would have us avoid. Actual infractions by individuals are not the issue. We must have group justice, not individual justice.

We've actually been down this road many times before. Various state and federal agencies have raised concerns about the large numbers of black and Hispanic students facing disciplinary action. Such concerns helped to generate the rigid "zero tolerance" policies the administration now condemns.

Zero tolerance is a brainless approach to a subject that requires considerable finesse and deliberation, but the disparate impact rule is even more pernicious.

Under the new dispensation, teachers, principals and other officials will have to pause before they discipline, say, the fourth black student in a month. "How will this look to the feds?" they'll ask themselves. Will the student's family be able to sue us? A variety of solutions to the federally created problem will present themselves. School officials can search out offenses by white and Asian students to make the numbers come out right. Asian students are disciplined at rates far below any other ethnic group. Is this due to pro-Asian bias in our schools, or is it because Asians commit many fewer infractions? Oops, there we go into territory forbidden by the federal guidelines.

Another solution will be to ignore misbehavior by blacks and Hispanics. For classes with large numbers of minority students, this guarantees that the learning environment for the kids who actually want to learn will be impaired as teachers -- reluctant to remove troublesome students -- expend precious time on kids who are rude, threatening, loud or otherwise disruptive. Every minute of the school day taken up by bad kids is taken away from good kids. It's a true zero-sum game.

So the Obama administration's pursuit of group justice actually leads to injustice to individual students. Whites and Asians will be disciplined more than they merit it by their conduct, and fewer students of all groups will get the kind of classroom atmosphere that is conducive to learning. Even the students who get a pass on their bad conduct are disserved, as they will not have learned that disrespectful language, tardiness and even violence are unacceptable in society.

Everyone loses. Obama strikes again.

Op-ed:
ObamaCare...just another name for welfare medicine 
By: Diane Sori

Welfare state...a system in which the government undertakes the chief responsibility for providing for the social and economic security of its population, usually through unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, health care, and other social-security measures

It's very important that 'We the People' NOT let ObamaCare fade from our public consciousness, so to that affect I give you ObamaCare by the numbers...numbers Obama himself does NOT want you to see...starting with his claim that 38 million more Americans will be insured when ObamaCare is in full operational mode. But this is NOT quite true as 38 million people will NOT be paying for health insurance...most will be added to the Medicaid rolls...welfare medicine in a welfare state personified.

So Obama's recently touted good news that about 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare since October 1st is anything but good news, for the bad news is that 1.46 million out of those 1.6 million have actually signed up for Medicaid NOT for the private pay policies offered on the exchanges.

And guess who subsidizes Medicaid...we taxpayers do...'We the People' who actually work and pay taxes will now be giving yet another free ride to those who don't.

Over the next few months if these numbers continue as expected they will, ObamaCare's monetary needs could very well bankrupt both the federal and state governments. Right now almost 8 cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends goes to Medicaid...currently translating into more than $265 billion per year. But the Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicaid spending will more than double over the next 10 years, reaching $554 billion by 2023, and all because of ObamaCare.

And once again, where will that needed money to meet the now burgeoning Medicaid rolls come from...from we taxpayers of course who will be hit with tax increases like NEVER before just so we can carry those who have been carried for far too long as it is.

And this is what Barack HUSSEIN Obama intended right from the first moment he stated that ObamaCare will be the law of the land...as in take from the 'haves' to make the 'have nots' even more dependent on the government for their very existence instead of having them take responsibility for themselves...to make sure the 'have nots' NEVER bite the hand that feeds, clothes, and now takes care of all their health care needs.

And so our beloved country will forever be known as the Welfare Medicine States of America...a country where projections say that within a decade 17 million Americans will be receiving ObamaCare subsidies (and for the most part they will be people who had health insurance they were happy with and could afford before the monstrosity that is ObamaCare reared its ugly head and made their policies cost prohibited or had them cancelled outright), and an additional 21 million Americans will have been added to the 63+ million people already on the Medicaid rolls...stressing to the breaking point a system already a trillion+ dollars in the red.

And that does NOT include the more than 20 million Americans that will be added to the Medicare program by 2025 as our population ages. And while Medicare is NOT a handout...as one pays into it their entire working life...it still places financial stress on our health care system payouts, but it really shouldn't have to as the people who put money into Medicare should be the only ones benefiting from Medicare...liberal kumbaya nonsense be damned.

Now let this anything but nice number sink in...within that projected decade when those new people are added into those currently on Medicaid, 84+ million Americans out of a total population of then probably close to 320 million will be getting basically free health care that we taxpayers will actually be the ones paying for them to get. Talk about 'redistribution of wealth'...it's more like the rape of the American middle-class taxpayer as almost a third of all Americans will be beholden to the government for their medical needs.

And this in turn will create even more 'sponges'...who never met an entitlement they didn't like... 'sponges' who will be happy to sign-up for food stamps and other freebies...as in 'hey man free stuff'...which they really do NOT qualify for but which thanks to Obama's 'fundamental transformation of America' they will get. Remember, the simple fact is that one freebie always leads to another freebie, especially with the 'gimme gimme...you owe me' demographics of our society.

And with the number of Americans signing up for Medicaid greatly outpacing the number of Americans signing up for private health insurance policies, can a single-payer system be far behind...something that we all know was always Obama's true objective as ObamaCare was designed to fail...and fail it will since it is monetarily unsustainable.

Want more...here's a bit of added info about the subsidies themselves that also will NOT make you happy...according to the The Kaiser Family Foundation roughly 48% of Americans who buy individual insurance today would be eligible for subsidies...meaning those eligible would receive an average of $5,548, which would cover 66% of the price. And guess who picks up that cost...yup...we taxpayers yet again for where else will the government find the money to pay for all of this.

Talk about the ObamaCare fiasco translating into taking from Peter to pay Paul.

And so the bottom line after digesting these most upsetting of numbers is that we must rid ourselves of ObamaCare post-haste or we will indeed become a welfare nation forced into a single payer system of health care. And if that happens it means we go from bad to worse...much worse. So this is the reality we must face...we MUST MUST MUST get the vote out in November and retake the Senate and keep the House for that and only that will allow us to wake up from the nightmare that is ObamaCare...period.