The Tragedy of Isolation

Thomas Sowell

...."Sometimes isolation is due to a culture that resists learning from other cultures. The Arab Middle East was once more advanced than Europe but, while Europe learned much from the Middle East, the Arab Middle East has not translated as many books from other languages into Arabic in a thousand years as Spain alone translates into Spanish annually.

"Against this background, racial and ethnic leaders around the world who promote a separate cultural "identity" are inflicting a handicap on their own people. Isolation has held back many peoples in many lands, for centuries. But such social and cultural isolation serves the interests of today's ethnic leaders."....

Multi-nation travel alert and terror threat. What’s up with that?

newsmax.com

Hot Air  ...."But not everybody is so sure. At the opposite end of the spectrum we just might find some people who think this could be a ginned up diversion to draw attention away from the Administration’s other scandals. (“Hey, don’t laugh. It worked for Bush and Cheney“!) No matter how that may sound to you, it certainly didn’t give Glenn Greenwald much pause. "....

State Department notice on the closures

Could this have anything to do with Obama's birthday?  "Coincidentally, or not, Sunday is August 4th, birthday of US President Barack Obama."

Rep. King: Al-Qaeda terror threat 'very specific'  "The alert has almost certainly altered the terrorists' plans if they did indeed, want to attack our embassy in Sanaa. Knowing how thorough al-Qaeda can be, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine them with a "Plan B" in case the operation was compromised."The next few days will be tense ones in Yemen."
What have the leaks from Snowden and Wikileaks done to compromise our security and intelligence gathering methods?

The al-Qaeda flag

Al-Qaeda Is Back! Killing Bin Laden was never enough  ...."This worldview is very difficult for Westerners to take seriously. Surely, there must be a less medieval explanation — perhaps grievances that can be addressed or fears that can be assuaged. But this conflict is deeper and more complex. Until that is understood, the U.S. and its allies cannot possibly devise a coherent strategic response — which is why 34 years after Iran’s revolution and twelve years after 9/11, we still don’t have one."... 

It's Always Selma Again; On the cheapening of civil-rights history.

"The Rev. Mr. Nostalgia"

 By James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal
"Some of the efforts to evoke the civil-rights movement today are downright laughable. The Washington Times--in a story reporting that the Smithsonian Institution is trying, no joke, to acquire the sweatshirt Trayvon Martin was wearing when George Zimmerman shot him in self-defense--reports: "The National Museum of African American History and Culture is set to open in 2015 and will display objects related to the Civil Rights Movement, such as the handcuffs used to restrain Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr."

Michael Barone; Today’s civil-rights leaders believe it is still 1955.

...."Instead there was a desperate longing to see this unhappy incident as a case of a white racist hunting down and murdering an innocent black — with a view to establishing that this kind of thing happens all the time.

"It doesn’t. Yes, young black men are homicide victims in large and tragic numbers. But the perpetrators are almost always other young black men, as in President Obama’s hometown of Chicago, where almost every weekend there are multiple such murders."....

Bill Whittle: Racism—Democrats and Republicans Switch Sides? [Video]

The Right Planet 

"...if you elect a Republican, slavery is all but over!"

 

The KKK were all registered Democrats, you know.

How religious freedom has become a non-issue in our country

World

“It would be difficult to name a single country in the world over the past 15 years where [the State Department’s] religious freedom policy has helped reduce religious persecution or increase religious freedom. …”

.... "As a matter of fact, Americans’ own religious freedom is in grave jeopardy. We are forced to prop up and pay tribute to oppressive regimes abroad. Consider Egypt, Libya, the PLO. These are persecutors of Christians, Jews, and off-brand Muslims. But we are also taxed to support an administration that issues “mandates,” including the Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. Some of these mandates are the greatest threat to religious freedom at home since 1786. It is no accident, as our non-believing Marxist friends would say. When those in power care nothing for religious freedom, all civil and religious liberty are at risk."

 

Detroit’s Collapse Is A Portent to the Nation

Conservative Daily News  "In his 2012 campaign for re-election, President Obama claimed saving Detroit as one of his success stories from his first term. He said, “We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later, that bet is paying off in a big way.” The auto industry was “saved” in skeletal fashion, and is working its way back, but Detroit proper became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy last month. And what should be alarming to all Americans is that the policies and politics that controlled the city for the past 60 years are the same that are leading the nation today."
...
One salient point the writer makes is this:

The trends that could not continue for Detroit were: steadily increasing city spending as tax revenue steadily declined, continued expansion in the size and scope of city government, and increasingly unrealistic benefit and wage concessions to municipal unions.