Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Alana Goodman writes on the Israeli litigators who kept the “Freedom Flotilla II” in port.
At a radical left-wing coffee shop in Washington, D.C. last month, Code Pink founder and “Freedom Flotilla II” passenger Medea Benjamin woefully recounted the moment she realized her boat, the Audacity of Hope, wouldn’t be legally permitted to leave a port in Greece to sail to Gaza.
“There was something called a ‘complaint’ that was put against our boat,” Benjamin explained to a crowd of anti-Israel activists stuffed into the back room of the restaurant. “Well, it didn’t take long for somebody to uncover that the person, or entity, that lodged the complaint was none other than this right-wing Israeli law center based in Tel Aviv, that knew nothing about our boat and certainly had no interest in the passengers’ safety.”
The “right-wing” law center that caused Benjamin so much grief is Shurat HaDin – the Israeli group that single-handedly took down the “Freedom Flotilla II” simply by filing creative lawsuits. In total, nine out of the 10 boats in the flotilla never touched Israeli waters, largely due to Shurat HaDin’s work. …
Yesterday we had a couple of posts on Biden’s one child remarks in China. Today Kirsten Powers has more in the Daily Beast.
Joe Biden is known for occasionally clumsy remarks. But his recent error in China is far more serious than a momentary gaffe.
The vice president told an audience at Sichuan University in Chengdu: “Your policy has been one which I fully understand—I’m not second-guessing—of one child per family.”
This was an appalling statement coming from an American leader. What’s next? Will he say he isn’t “second-guessing” and “fully understands” that women are stoned for adultery in Iran?
Chai Ling, a two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement, told me she was “shocked and troubled” by Biden’s statement. Ling founded the organization All Girls Allowed to fight the one-child policy, which affects most couples and is designed to limit growth in China, which at 1.3 billion people is the world’s most populous country.
“On behalf of all the Chinese women and girls,” she says, Biden’s “statements are very hurtful. The one-child policy means the child has to be killed, whether it is forced or coerced through pressure. The women don’t feel like they have a choice. In a culture that is not welcoming to women who get pregnant and keep the baby they will be persecuted, financially and politically by the government.” …
To put a human dimension to this controversy The Financial Times has a story that will move you.
One might easily see such a thing in a Shanghai alleyway and think nothing of it: a bundle of fabric tied up with a rope. Except that this particular bundle was screaming.
I could not tell at first if the squalling child was male or female, but I knew exactly what it was doing there: a desperate mother had swaddled her newborn infant in several layers of clothing and left it alone in the winter darkness – so that it could have a chance to live.
For me, it was an all-too-familiar story: my own two daughters were abandoned at birth, left alone in a Chinese street to the mercy of strangers. But that was more than a decade ago – a decade in which China has become a powerful force in markets from natural resources to sports cars, from luxury goods to aircraft carriers. In a China of diamond iPads and gold-plated limousines were babies still ending up in anonymous alleyways?
This child’s mother had chosen the spot carefully: only steps from one of the best hotels in Shanghai, beside a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise patronised mostly by foreigners. I had been meeting my friend John there for a quick doughnut fix, and it was he who heard the baby’s cries as he chained his bicycle to the alleyway gate.
“There’s a baby outside!” John exclaimed as he slid into the seat beside me, still blustery from the cold. “What do you mean, there’s a baby outside?” I asked in alarm, bolting out of the door to see what he was talking about.
What I found was a scene whose every detail spoke of maternal care, and anguish: the multicoloured quilt was bright, thick and tied just so – the corner lay over the child’s face, to protect it from the pre-Christmas chill. Beneath the angry bundle lay two plastic carrier bags bulging with brand new baby clothes, tins of infant formula, packs of nappies and scrubbed-clean bottles, the only love note a mother could dare to leave for a child she would never know. China’s version of the stork myth is to tell children they were found in a trash can; in the case of the baby in the alleyway, that story was too close to the truth for comfort.
“There, there, little guy,” I crooned as I awkwardly picked up the quilt bundle, which immediately stopped crying. The doughnut shop staff had already called the police to report the abandonment, so I knew I would not have long with Baby Doe (or Baby Donuts, the nickname suggested irresistibly by the location). I knew that the police would call for an ambulance, too, that would whisk the child away. So for half an hour I cradled the infant (which I only later discovered was a six-week-old girl) and bawled.
I cried for the baby, for the mother, but most of all I cried for my own children: abandoned at the far more dangerous ages of one and six days old – and in weather possibly far colder. I cried for women I do not know, who were forced to discard the children who became my daughters. I cried for the fact that they may never know their child is safe, and cherished. …
David Harsanyi writes on the left’s selective use of science.
So every now and then, liberals are treated to a big self-righteous laugh at the expense of some backwoods Christian conservative candidate who “ignores science” by doubting evolution or global warming — or, gasp, both.
Much, for instance, has been made of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent suggestion that evolution is a “theory that’s out there“ with ”gaps in it.” He even insinuated that evolution and creationism should both be taught in schools — because folks are “smart enough to figure out which one is right.”Sanctimony to red alert!
Now, I have no interest in watching my kids waste their time with creationism, but unlike progressives, I have no interest in dictating what other kids should learn. Remember that these folks, bothered by the very thought of their offspring’s hearing a God-infused concept in school, have no problem forcing millions of parents to accept bureaucrat-written curricula at government-run school monopolies. They oppose home schooling. They oppose school choice. They oppose parents choosing a religious education with their tax dollars.
As a voter, like me, you may find Perry’s view on creationism disconcerting and a sign of an unsophisticated candidate. But the fact is that the progressives’ faith-based devotion to government is far more consequential than Perry’s faith-based position on evolution. …
Karl Rove likes the work of John Boehner.
The politician who has done more than any other to set the national agenda this year will soon return to Washington. It is not President Barack Obama. It’s House Speaker John Boehner.
After his annual August bus tour to help re-elect House Republicans, Mr. Boehner will spend a short vacation next week at his house in West Chester, Ohio, where he’ll relax by cutting his lawn with something not often seen on Martha’s Vineyard: a Toro push mower.
It’s been a remarkable run for Mr. Boehner. It began even before he became speaker, during last December’s lame-duck session, when outnumbered House Republicans outmaneuvered Democrats and Mr. Obama on taxes.
Mr. Boehner won by shifting the debate from whether wealthier Americans should pay their “fair share” to whether it is wise to raise taxes amid high joblessness and sluggish growth. It worked. Mr. Obama started by calling for higher taxes. He ended by signing a two-year extension of all the Bush tax cuts.
We go from a DC winner to a piece by Peter Wehner about the DC whiner-in-chief, who now, with Irene moving up the East Coast will have another excuse.
Now more than halfway through his third year in office—with the economy flat-lining, American prestige evaporating, and public anxiety spiking—Barack Obama is the most vulnerable incumbent president since Jimmy Carter. The election is still 14 months away, but it’s not too early to see the broad outlines of the GOP’s case against the president.
Economic Malpractice: Obama inherited a tough economy, but his stewardship has in many respects made the situation worse.
The unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent (it was 7.8 percent the month Obama took office). July marked the 30th consecutive month in which the unemployment rate was above the 8 percent level that the Obama administration said it would not exceed as a result of its stimulus program. Chronic unemployment is worse than during the Great Depression, while the share of the eligible population holding a job (58.1 percent) has declined to the lowest level since the early 1980s.
The housing crisis is also worse than in the Great Depression. Home values are worth roughly one-third less than they were five years ago. Consumer confidence has plunged to the lowest level since the Carter presidency. And from the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, we experienced five consecutive quarters of slow growth. America’s GDP for the second quarter of this year was an anemic 1.3 percent; in the first quarter, it was 0.4 percent. Even more problematic for the president, there are virtually no signs that things will improve anytime soon. He now has to hope for an economic miracle.
Given this atrocious record, Republicans should repeatedly affirm what Obama’s senior counselor, David Plouffe, has acknowledged: The president “owns” the economy. It’s the product of his handiwork. And if Obama is reelected, we will get more of the same. The Republican theme for the 2012 campaign should consist of two words: Had enough? …
Pickerhead has not worried readers about the president’s household expenses, travel, vacations, etc. etc. However, the news that the president and his wife arrived for their Vineyard vacation four hours apart in separate planes is impossible to understand. Follow the link in Powerline’s post to the Daily Mail article. Makes it sweet they’ll have to leave Sunday or Monday because of the hurricane. Tip of the hat to God.
Human Events tells us the Obama administration is issuing regulations for goatherds.
The Obama administration is setting new workplace regulations to assist foreign workers who fill goat herding positions in the U.S. , including employee-paid cell phones and comfy beds.
These new special procedures issued by the Labor Department must be followed by employers who want to hire temporary agricultural foreign workers to perform sheep herding or goat herding activities. It describes strict rules for sleeping quarters, lighting, food storage, bathing, laundry, cooking and new rules for the counters where food is prepared.
“A separate sleeping unit shall be provided for each person, except in a family arrangement,” says the rules signed by Jane Oates, assistant secretary for employment and training administration at the Labor Department.
“Such a unit shall include a comfortable bed, cot or bunk, with a clean mattress,” the rules state. …