Diplomats flock to Paris for summit on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Palestinians were seeing "their future state melt away" due to Jewish settlements, Ayrault said. In turn, Israelis suffered nearly daily violence by those who "harness frustrations to promote an agenda of hatred," he added.

Deutsche Welle  "Envoys from over 70 countries, including the US, have gathered in Paris to discuss the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel's Netanyahu has slammed the meet as "rigged" against his country."

. . . "The Sunday conference also sends a symbolic message to the incoming US administration led by Donald Trump, who vowed to provide even stronger support to Israel. Trump has picked hardliner David Friedman as his ambassador to the Jewish state.

"Israel responded with outrage to the UN resolution and dismissed the Paris summit as "rigged by Palestinians."

"On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as "the last twitches of yesterday's world," hinting that his government was holding out for a US policy shift under Trump.

" 'The conference convening today in Paris is a futile conference," he told his cabinet." . . .

PA depicts a world without Israel  

Official PA daily refers to Israel as "occupied Interior"

Source: Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 20, 2016

“Nineteen-year-old Ma’amoun Qashua… played in the past at the Hapoel Petah Tikva club in the occupied Interior (i.e., Palestinian term for Israel).”

Palestinian religious leaders threaten religious war over Jerusalem

George Will: Academia may now be beyond satire

George Will  "The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is a window on the sometimes weird world of academia, recently revisited a hilarious intellectual hoax from 20 years ago. Reading the recollections of the perpetrator and of some who swallowed his gibberish is sobering.

"In 1996, Alan Sokal, a New York University physicist and self-described “academic leftist,” composed an essay that was a word salad of solemn academic jargon. He said he strove to be “especially egregious,” by maundering on about “the dialectical emphases” of “catastrophe theory” becoming a “concrete tool of progressive political praxis.” His essay’s gaudy title was: “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”

"He sent it to the left-leaning “cultural studies” journal Social Text, which swooned, perhaps in part because Sokal larded his nonsense with political tropes that are catnip to lettered leftists — “emancipatory mathematics,” “demystify and democratize the production of scientific knowledge,” “the crisis of late-capitalist production relations.” Soon after Social Text published his faux scholarship, Sokal revealed in another journal, Lingua Franca, that it was a parody.

"This would have been obvious to anyone whose intelligence had not been anesthetized by the patois of “deconstructionist” and “poststructuralist” professors. They move on to Nietzsche’s assertion that there are no facts, only interpretations, which he wrote shortly before going mad at age 44." . . .

Satellite Reveals End of “Unending” N. California Drought

Global Warming  "With more rain and snow on the way, the supposed “unending drought” that the New York Times reported on last year has, in a matter of weeks, ended — at least in Northern California.

"Yesterday’s color satellite imagery from NASA shows the dramatic changes which have occurred since the same date three years ago:

– Widespread and deep snowpack
– Greening vegetation
– Rivers overflowing their banks
– Strong river discharge into the Pacific Ocean

NASA Aqua MODIS color satellite imagery of N. California separated by exactly three years, showing dramatic snowpack increase, vegetation greening, and river discharge into the Pacific Ocean.

 Here’s a zoomed version of the NASA Terra MODIS image yesterday covering the San Francisco Bay area northeastward toward Sacramento:

"The latest GFS model forecast for the next 10 days predicts another 2 to 10 inches of rain, depending on location, with several more feet of snow at higher elevations." . . .

Todd Starnes: Jennifer Holliday pulls out of inauguration; apologizes

Todd Starnes  "Tony-award winning singer Jennifer Holliday has decided not to sing at President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration – caving in to significant pressure from gay and lesbian fans who were outraged by her decision to put patriotism over politics."
. . . 

“ 'We’ve become such a polarized country – we’re not listening to what the Obamas have said,” she told the newspaper. “They told us to move forward with hope – they didn’t tell us to stop participating.”

"Ms. Holliday went on to say she was singing for the people – the nation.

“ 'I voted for Mrs. Clinton, and they knew that. But if someone wants me to sing a national anthem or something, we think about America, and we go,” she said.

"It wasn’t long before Ms. Holliday learned that the Trump Administration appreciates tolerance and diversity more than militant members of the LGBT community." . . .