יום רביעי, כ״ג תמוז תשפ״וWednesday, July 8, 2026
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Without the individual, the ballot box is only a tool for collectivist impulses and identities.
By dvora
At a dramatic press conference in Tel Aviv on Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced his resignation from politics. Barak said he would remain in his post until the establishment of the next government, following the January 22 elections.
By Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency
The feelings vary, but all agree that it’s a question of time before they will be called up again to defend Israel against the Gazan terrorists.
By Meir Indor
The same government that caved to the media and the Schalit Task Force by releasing 1,027 terrorists from prison last year has caved yet again—this time despite the fact that Hamas violated red lines by shooting missiles at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Outraged residents of the beleaguered cities of Sderot, Ashkelon, and Kiryat Malachi took to the streets, decrying the government's decision to enter into a ceasefire with Hamas.
Unless the U.S. clarifies its position regarding King Abdullah and reiterates its full backing for his regime, the Muslim fundamentalists are likely to step up their efforts to create anarchy and lawlessness in the kingdom.
For the most part, we Jews have always accepted the obligation to ward off disaster as best we can. For the most part, we generally understand that all humans have free will. Saadia Gaon included freedom of will among the most central teachings of Judaism, and Maimonides affirmed that all human beings must stand alone in the world “to know what is good and what is evil, with none to prevent him from either doing good or evil.”
Hurricane Sandy had knocked down the power lines to Noach's house. After three days with no electricity, he heard that a neighbor had a spare generator.
Two months ago the Likud announced two major victories, yet since then, neither has made it over the finish line.
As Israel’s border with Gaza heats up, Israeli officials from the highest echelons have declared that the State will defend Israeli citizens.
The notion of the “Reagan Democrat” is one cliché that should be permanently retired.
Come right in and step right up. See the bright lights and the oddities of nature. Inside folks, for the low price of twenty-two trillion dollars, you can see Binders of Women, Team Big Bird and entire reams of green windmills and fields full of bayonets and horses. Here lies become the truth and everything is full of sugar. And the highlight of the show with be Barack, the Exotic Prince from the Wilds of Indonesia and Kenya, with a special appearance by Oprah and a hologram of JFK. Here in the Carnival of Fools, the party never stops and no one ever has to pay the bill.
Dr. Aryeh Bachrach, chairman of the Almagor Bereaved Parents Forum, said: “The terrorism switch may be in the hands of Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas, but Netanyahu and Barak are able to influence them to turn it off. At the very least they should switch off the power to Gaza—immediately. Yet Netanyahu and Barak never do. […]
Noam Shalit has officially thrown his hat into the political arena and is running for a spot in the Labor party, with the goal of removing the Likud from power.
Somewhere between 68 and 70% of American Jewish voters went for Obama, depending on whose exit poll you believe. Israelis that I talk to are mystified. “Are they crazy? What were they thinking?” they ask. It’s not really mystifying. Here are some general facts about non-Orthodox and secular (the large majority) American Jews.
America has spoken. Obama has been given and has claimed his victory. America will get the government and the leaders it elected and cannot now cry over the results that will come in the next four years. Some of us can and do regret the results, but we will live with them, no weaker than we were yesterday, no less aware of what this so-called victory will mean for Israel and for the US.
Every now and then an email comes my way warning about the day when the government unleashes the military against its own citizens. This day isn't likely to come because for one thing the current regime is not particularly fond of the military. The Obama Administration isn't inflicting massive cuts on the military, cutting their health care and pushing veteran officers out the door because it likes the military as an institution. It doesn't.
By Rafi Farber
It looks like Moshe Kahlon, the popular and vaunted Likud Minister of Communications, will be the second consecutive Likud Central Committee Chairman to leave the party looking for more power. The first one, Tzahi Hanegbi who left to Kadima and was charged with handing out jobs to cronies and nearly convicted of perjury, is now back in Likud because Kadima has entirely crashed. He’s looking for a slot on Likud’s Knesset roster.
By Ben Sales and Uriel Heilman
TEL AVIV – Political pundits have long debated who is the real Benjamin Netanyahu. Is he a pragmatist handcuffed by his right-wing support base and fealty to his late father’s nationalist vision? Is he a true right-wing ideologue whose apparent concessions to Israeli-Palestinian peace are but feints?
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has not offered his resignation, but has presented instead a plan to the PLO leadership to form a more inclusive factional government, two PLO executive committee members in Ramallah told Ma’an Wednesday. Ahmad Majdalani told Ma'an that Fayyad suggested forming a government including officials from every faction so as to evenly […]
By Barry Rubin
There is a debate over the causes of terrorism and anti-Americanism in the world. One possible view is that the principal problem is that of genuine conflict. The adversaries hold certain ideological ideas—say, revolutionary Islamism—to which American society and policies are antithetical. The collision (as with Communism, Nazism, and aggressive Japanese militarism in earlier decades) is inevitable. The United States is inconveniencing the totalitarians both because of what it does (policies) and because of what it represents (freedom, democracy, capitalism).
By Joe Kaufman
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, founded in 1994 by operatives from Hamas, this month continued its tradition of embracing individuals with ties to terrorist organizations, such as Mousa Abu Marzouk and Yusuf al Qaradawi, by featuring, as the speaker for the annual banquet of its Florida chapter, Kifah Mustapha, an imam from Chicago, whom the U.S. government has named a party to Hamas financing.
They want to have total isolation from the rest of the world? I think perhaps we should finally give it to them. It pains me to say so but based on what I am reading in their very own media, going off the deep end is not an exaggeration. It may even be an understatement! It is a wonder that they do not have a bigger OTD problem than they already do. I guess that their system works very well for them that way.
David Buskilla, mayor of the beleaguered town of Sderot collapsed on Sunday. Buskilla has been holding a hunger strike opposite the Prime Minister's office to protest the rocket attacks against his town, its failing economy as a result, and what he feels is the government's ineffectual response to fix the situation.
Many trees upstate were damaged by the hurricane that swept through the East Coast at the end of last summer, and I was involved in finding the safest equipment to clean up the mess. I love trees and found the chore of cutting them down very difficult, especially knowing that the stately 60 year old trees would be impossible to replace. Even though we planted new trees, I don't know whether I will be there to enjoy these new saplings when they are 60 years old.
At the Yesha Council Emergency Meeting dealing with the new campaign to pressure the government to authorize the Levy Report and/or make it a condition for a future coalition agreement with the parties that will form Netanyahu's next government:
By Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg
To My Fellow Rabbis: I write to you at this time of dire trouble for our country and for Israel. Last week America was under attack. Our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were slaughtered by Muslim extremists. This was not a spontaneous "protest" against an admittedly stupid video. This was an organized military assault, coordinated expressly for execution on September 11.
Sderot Mayor David Buskila has announced that he will not eat again until the government increased the budget of the beleaguered town, well-known landing site of many of Hamas’s rockets launched on civilians from sites in Gaza.
A five-day national earthquake preparedness drill, codenamed Turning Point 6, was conducted in Israel earlier this week – and the post-drill conclusions were not reassuring to the country’s citizens.
By Barry Rubin
Perhaps you remember an incredibly sensational story from back in October 2011 that after a brief period in the headlines disappeared completely. The U.S. government arrested an Iranian-American citizen in Texas and charged him with being an agent of the Iranian government who planned at Tehran’s behest to hire a Mexican drug gang to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a fiery terrorist attack in Washington D.C. It would have been another September 11, albeit on a far smaller scale. Knowing about such an operation should have been a real game-changer for U.S. Middle East policy.
Modern government is fixated on depth of control over people. It plots to control every aspect of their lives with the goal of creating a completely harmonious whole. Technology has fed the illusion that such control has become more feasible than ever allowing for the rise of truly scientific government. This illusion is destroying the nation-states of modern civilization by overburdening them with massive governments flailing for control and destroying their economies in order to achieve that control.
Last Sunday, Netanyahu told Likud ministers he plans on adopting part of the report without relating to broad legal interpretations, to avoid international criticism. Still, the proposal will add legal flexibility and remove bureaucratic obstacles, making Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria considerably easier.
Reports are indicating that Aryeh Deri will return as the head of the Shas party, while Eli Yishai will receive the senior government position, assuming the party joins the next government. The reports say that both sides have, for the most part, agreed to the terms and assuming no major changes will sign on them […]
A month before the presidential election, we know it will be close, and it will be a choice -- no mere referendum on the executive management skills of the current president. The electorate is choosing the balance between public and private sectors, between more and less government. But it is also choosing between the different ends to which government is directed, the different visions about what government is for, and in particular, the relationship politics has with suffering and sacrifice.
Ignore for the moment the rank racism, the poor spelling, the absence of any basis for the wild and irresponsible allegations...
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s call to disband the government and call for new elections may serve him well, if two public opinion polls published Thursday pan out.
By Barry Rubin
The Obama-Romney debate has been analyzed from many angles, especially about who won. Yet in the course of the event, Obama said what might be the most revealing slip he has ever made. This one phrase tells more about Obama and the ideology of his left-wing supporters than every other word they have spoken in the last four years.
By JTA
Canadian rabbis want the Canadian federal government to reconsider cuts to the federal prison chaplaincy program, which would eliminate non-Christian clergy. If the cuts are enacted, non-Christian federal inmates will be expected to turn to Christian prison chaplains for religious counsel and guidance. Canada has about 80 full-time prison chaplains, all but one of whom […]
Israel’s credit rating has been reaffirmed at A+ by “Standard and Poor,” at a time when S&P lowers the credit rating of an increasing number of Western countries. While exports to Europe dropped due to the global meltdown, Israeli exports to the U.S. surged.
The Israeli press has been featuring several leaks from Netanyahu's inner circle on Tuesday and Wednesday regarding the approaching declaration of a February vote, although an official declaration is yet to made. "We will make a decision by the opening of the winter session" of the Knesset, Netanyahu said on Tuesday. The winter session will start in two weeks.
The oldest Jewish settlements arose in Cape Town, Kimberley, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Burgersdorp. The settlements in Grahamstown and Graaf Reinet have dissolved. There was a (Jewish) community established in Cape Town, which is the oldest is South Africa, while in Johannesburg, which today houses the largest Jewish settlement in the country, the settlement was first built there in 1887, when about 88 settlers came in from England and Australia to develop the mineral wealth of the land.
We are all shareholders of the corporation of government. A corporation whose board and CEO we can vote for, but the corporation also has a variety of undemocratic governing mechanisms that make those votes much less meaningful. And the biggest problem is that many of the shareholders are part of blocs that make money from the current unsustainable practices of the corporation and vote in bad boards that rob us blind so they can make more money.
By J. E. Dyer
The year 1984, by Gregorian reckoning, came and went, and Americans seemed to have dodged the Nineteen-Eighty-Four bullet. We weren’t being interned for reeducation by a Ministry of Love. Although conservative, constitutionalist, limited-government ideas came under relentless attack in the mainstream media and the academy, those who expressed the ideas remained free to do so. (They in fact became freer with the lifting under Reagan of the genuinely Orwellian-named “Fairness Doctrine.”) In 2012, the atmosphere has changed.
By Barry Rubin
The United States is only at the start of a nasty conflict in Libya which is going to be very anti-American. It is shocking that there is so little recognition of that fact and an apparently sincere belief that all the problems there are due to a You-Tube video. Having a big problem is bad enough; refusing to recognize that one has a bad problem is potentially fatal.
Democracy only works when the character of the people is better than the character of their government. It works very badly when the character of the people is actually worse and the existing system serves much the same purpose as bars in a tiger cage do. The neo-conservatives were unprepared to grapple with such troubling notions.
“You have 10 days until I return from the United States. You must start the search for a new president,” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told government factions on Wednesday, according to a report in the Saudi Arabian newspaper Alwatan.
By Barry Rubin
These waves of demonstrations are relatively small ways of advancing the ideological readiness of the masses to accept the radical Islamist groups’ program.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released yesterday a Rosh Hashanah youtube message highlighting his government's achievements throughout the year, displaying one government achievement per month.
Hundreds of Israeli Arabs protested outside Sha'ar Shchem (Damascus Gate) in Jerusalem on Friday. Four people were arrested as the crowd tried to march towards the US Consulate. Hundreds more Arabs protested in Yafo against the 'Innocence' film. The US has forbidden any government personnel to enter the Old City of Jerusalem today.
With all the bacteria a mouth is known to contain - and the possibility that it might contain bacteria or viruses that are very harmful to a vulnerable 8-day-old child while an adult carrier might not even be aware of it - it is not exactly rocket science to know that putting your mouth on an open wound is not a good idea.
By Barry Rubin
Egypt tells us everything we need to know about the horror of Obama's Middle East policy. The latest development is that a group of several Salafist and Jihadist groups--including the local affiliate of al-Qaida--announced a demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy. This was explained as a protest against some obscure film made in America by a crackpot that criticizes Islam but has never actually been shown to an audience and probably never will be!
By Sandy Eller
The New York City Board of Health was scheduled to vote this Thursday (two days after this issue went to press) on a measure requiring parents to sign a consent waiver before allowing a mohel to perform metzitzah b’peh, or oral suctioning, on their infants.
By Adnan Oktar
NATO is right to want to see the end of communist regimes, but their methods are all wrong. Surely, Turkey will support NATO’s efforts to make Syria a democratic country. However, Turkey will not do anything that will push it into a war with Syria. First of all, Syrian lands are old Ottoman lands and that makes Syrians our very own brothers and sisters. Turkey will never do something that could hurt Muslims and will never allow something like that to happen, either.
By Barry Rubin
Barack Obama is not a Communist, a fascist, a Muslim, a Marxist, a Progressive or even a socialist. Obama and those who control much of America’s academia, mass media, and entertainment industry—plus a number of trade unions and hundreds of foundations, think tanks, and front groups—are believers in a new, very American form of leftism.
While recognizing pitfalls of the Israeli economy such as Israel's significant social and political problems as well as a slowdown in growth, Moody's 2012 credit report seems to have more confidence in israel's economy relative to the G-20 advanced countries.
By JTA
Police prevented an Israeli man and a Palestinian man from setting themselves on fire.
Somehow, even though it should be obvious to them that the U.S. is different, they have retained the mindset that it’s OK to cheat “the Goyim” - if they can get away with it. And that is what causes the kind of Chilul HaShem that is happening here. And when the criminal is someone who is otherwise a good person, the Chilul HaShem is even greater.
In tough economic times, you make tough economic decisions. Unless you're the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians receive the highest levels of aid per capita, use it to fund terrorists in prison and at the same time rack up high debts, such as their NIS 700 million debt to the Israel Electric Company. The bulk of the aid comes from the U.S. and Europe.
By Barry Rubin
Egypt, the Arab world’s most important single country, has been turned from an ally of America—albeit an imperfect one of course—in maintaining and trying to extend Arab-Israeli peace into a leading advocate of expanding the conflict and even potentially going to war.
Last night, Defense Minsiter Ehud Barak decided that Nitzan Allon, head of the IDF Central Command, will not sign his approval for Ariel University to be recognized as a fully accredited university. This decision brought about a very angry reaction from right wing government factions.
The Egyptian army has slowed down its all-out attack on terrorist enclaves in the Sinai, several weeks after its initial, aggressive spurt on August 5. The terrorist culprits who murdered 15 Egyptian Border Guards remain at large, and the lack of progress appears rooted in political uncertainty back in Cairo. Here's one unexpected aspect of what was touted as a jihad against the murderers: the Egyptian government is going through unofficial channels, employing negotiators to talk to the Sinai terrorists. This has enraged the secular law and order types at home.
At the weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel "would need to tighten our belt" because of the global economic crisis, but that the government has taken action to increase social welfare programs and save families money.
By J. E. Dyer
There has been a tremendous growth in vague, elliptical, and/or tendentious narration of what’s going on in the nation and the world. The people can be pardoned for being tired and confused.
I would be opposed to the government legislating against doing MbP. That it is considered so vital by so large a segment of Jewry combined by the low probability of a child ever contracting herpes moves me to oppose it. In this case I do feel that banning the procedure would be an unconstitutional impediment to freedom of religion. But that is not the law being proposed.
Avraham and Moshe Tischler, 20-somethings brothers and ambitious political neophytes, recently met with The Jewish Press editorial board to discuss their current political plans and future prospects.
By Moshe Herman
Yishai is joined by technology innovator Kevin Burmeister to discuss his interest in Jerusalem and how an organization he helped start, Jerusalem 5800 is committed to creating a unified vision for the future of the city.
The committee for permits in the state comptroller’s office has allowed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on August 15 – at his own request – to make changes in his investment portfolio, both overseas and locally. The request comes in the wake of threats by the PM to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in the near future. But it appears that Netanyahu's financial move was done in full transparency and in complete adherence with legal procedure.
We have become a rationing society. Our industries and our people are literally starving in the midst of plenty. Farmers are kept from farming, factories are kept from producing and businessmen are kept from creating new companies and jobs. This is done in the name of a variety of moral arguments, ranging from caring for the less fortunate to saving the planet. But rhetoric is only the lubricant of power. The real goal of power is always power.
Israel’s economic growth during the 2nd quarter of 2012 was 3.2%, surpassing the 2.5% expectation, compared with a 2.8% growth during the 1st quarter. Growth per capita increased 1.4%, reaching almost $30,000. Exports of goods and services –40% of Israel’s economic activity - surged 10%, following a decline during the previous three quarters.
By Barry Rubin
America, this is not the Victorian age of dark satanic mills and brutal capitalists who laugh while watching children starve.
The family: My name is Avin Gangte. I am a member of the Benei Menashe community hailing from the north-eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram in India. I am married to Hagit who is also from the same community and we have five children.
Liberman in letter to EU Foreign Policy Chief, obtained by Israeli daily Haaretz: "The Palestinian Authority is a despotic government riddled with corruption...Due to Abbas' weak standing, and his policy of not renewing the negotiations...the time has come to consider a creative solution, to think 'outside the box,' in order to strengthen the Palestinian leadership.”
How do you visualize your retirement years? Most people hope that they will finally be able to do the things that they never had time to do during their working years. Very frequently, folks anticipate retirement will be a worry-free time, full of enjoyment, and ample time to spend with family and friends. As a financial adviser, I am often saddened to see retirees facing a different picture.
Our system is an ungainly hybrid of capitalism and socialism that began when socialism was inserted as a humanizing fallback position for capitalism. Capitalism riding on socialism was meant to be more moral than the naked variety. But lately capitalism has turned into the horse and socialism into the rider, and we have just enough capitalism to pay for all the socialism.
Despite the fact that major Poskim spanning several generations declare that the lack of Metzitza B’Peh does not invalidate Bris Milah – some even requiring alternative safer methods - the fact remains that there is a strongly held view mostly among Chasidim that Metzitza B’Peh is an absolute requirement of Bris Milah.
Andrew Biggs highlights some basic facts about VP candidate Paul Ryan's plans for Medicare: 1. No one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way. 2. Traditional Medicare fee-for-service would remain available for all. “Premium support”—that is, government funding of private insurance plans chosen by individuals—is an option for those who choose […]
By J. E. Dyer
Prosperity has met its match. Regulation will kill prosperity by stealth unless we the people wake up to what’s going on. We are wildly, insanely overregulated today, and if we don’t attack the idea of the regulatory state on those terms – on the premise that regulation itself is mostly a bad thing, and we need far less of it than we have – then we will never recover.
Although Shia and Sunnis do not pray together, as both sects have the same goal – hostility to Israel – the Shia cleric, to set a precedent, recently asked the Sunni Imam to lead a prayer service attended by both congregations.
By Barry Rubin
You will be reading a lot of accounts of this event mostly saying the same things. But what’s really important?
By Barry Rubin
Israel’s “friends” abroad simply can’t seem to get out of their minds the idea that the country faces such terrible threats that it must make big concessions and beg for peace with the Palestinians on just about any terms, or try to appease hostile surrounding countries in order to stave off their wrath.
Russia's government mafia isn't cutting back, it's redoubling its aggressiveness. With less money coming in, it's relying more and more on wholesale confiscation. Confiscation was how the regime built up its original fortune, but the problem is that it's eating up the business ecosystem and running out of money to confiscate. Every 6th businessman in Russia has been prosecuted in the last decade. Three million have been sentenced in that time.
JERUSALEM – Despite public displays of support for Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who recently visited Israel, several local polls show that the Israeli leader is rapidly losing support among his own Likud Party voters. Many of those surveyed believe that his meandering political adventures, as well as his fiscal and social measures, are unfairly burdening the middle class.
By Soeren Kern
Although all marriages that take place in the United Kingdom must be monogamous, Muslim immigrants can and do employ countless evasions to practice polygamy without running afoul of British matrimony laws.
Though the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instituted an unprecedented 10 month building freeze in Judea and Samaria due to pressure by the US beginning in November 2009, an Israeli business newspaper report shows that financial support for Jewish communities leaped a whopping 38% the following year.
By Barry Rubin
To a remarkable extent—and this has nothing to do with his views or policies—Bibi Netanyahu is the only functioning politician in Israel today. No wonder he is prime minister, will finish his current term, and will almost certainly be reelected in 2013. Consider the alternatives.
Israel's government seeks a commercial bank to grant credit to businesses created by new immigrants and returning residents.
By Tzvi Fishman
Moshe Rabainu didn’t say any of the other 515 excuses you usually hear. Just the opposite. Moshe begged again and again and again, 515 prayers, to be granted the incomparable blessing of entering the Land. Today, there are people frummer than Moshe. The Land of Israel isn’t glatt enough for them. Or they don’t like the government. Or they’re worried about finding jobs, as if the hand of Hashem is too short to feed them. They prefer to rely on Uncle Sam instead.
Jerusalem originally showed up on the official website as the capital of a country, but it was East Jerusalem, and the capital was “Palestine,” not Israel. Following complaints filed last week by a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Olympics site was changed. Now Jerusalem does not appear as the actual capital of any country at all.
By JTA
Germany's parliament called on the government to step in to protect the right to religious circumcision of boys, as long as it is done by a medically qualified practitioner who avoids inflicting pain. An overwhelming majority of German lawmakers passed a non-binding resolution Thursday urging the administration of Chancellor Angela Merkel to submit a law […]
By JTA
The attack, which Israel’s government is blaming on Iran, comes on the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead. Israel, Argentina and many other governments blame Iranian agents for that incident; Tehran denies the allegations. “All signs point to Iran,” Israeli Prime Minister […]
Syria's defense minister and several other government officials were killed or hurt by a suicide bomber in Damascus Wednesday, a day after Israel's Director of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi had said that President Bashar al-Assad's days were numbered. Also killed in Wednesday's blast was Assad's brother-in-law, who was Syria's deputy defense minister. The bomber, who struck during a meeting of government and security heads, reportedly was a bodyguard.
For the second time in just two months, the Israeli political universe was upended when Shaul Mofaz’s Kadima Party voted to quit Israel’s governing coalition.
The world has become used to hearing and watching stories about massacres against civilians in Syria. But until recently, almost all the victims were Syrian citizens.
Yehuda Weinstein, the government's legal adviser announced Friday that a new government body will be established in October to oversee and review the actions and decisions of the State's prosecutor office. According the report in Makor Rishon, the new office will review the transparency and ethics of the State's prosecutor.
By dvora
“Let me be honest with you,” the rosh yeshiva began. It was not a good sign. I was sitting for a farher, an entrance interview, with the rosh yeshiva of a well-known yeshiva in Jerusalem, and it was about to go very badly. I was, to be fair, a very unusual applicant. I had just graduated from law school. My classmates and friends were headed off to prestigious clerkships or to seek their fortunes. I had other plans. My secular learning had now outpaced my Torah learning, and it was time, I believed, to catch up.
A tight, organized network of Iranian terrorists seems to be using elementary schools, universities and government institutions -- not to mention manipulating the multicultural system -- to promote its messages of propaganda and hate, apparently with the ultimate goal of conquering the "infidel."
By J. E. Dyer
The period of the Obama tenure, and now the 2012 election, are forcing Americans to reconsider, in a way I’m not sure we have for a good 200 years, what the vote means, and what politics means to our lives. Since 1792, the sense has gradually crept upon us that when we elect a president, we are electing our collective future. That sense took a giant leap forward with the FDR presidency, and frankly, it took another one when Reagan entered office.
Obama responded to an economic crisis by working to create two kinds of jobs. Government and union jobs. This was not about anything as simple as rewarding his supporters. The Black community got very little in exchange for supporting him. The Hispanic community similarly ended up with some token appointments, but not much to show for it. This was about shifting jobs from the private sector into the public sector and its feeders.
The “outposts committee” recommended legalizing and expanding the outposts. Leaders in the region are urging immediate implementation.
July 3, 2026 
