Dreams Into Lightning 2

Morning Report: 2013-04-07

South Korea expects North to test missile soon. 'A top South Korean national security official said Sunday that North Korea may be setting the stage for a missile test or another provocative act with its warning that it soon will be unable to guarantee diplomats' safety in Pyongyang. But he added that the North's clearest objective is to extract concessions from Washington and Seoul. ...'

Anonymous pwned.

Hackers purporting to be affiliated with the collective Anonymous have for days been threatening a massive cyber attack against Israel on Sunday. Their stated vow: to “erase Israel from cyberspace.”

While Israeli government websites appeared to be functioning as of Sunday morning Israel time, Israel supporters had a surprise for the would-be attackers. The OpIsrael website associated with some of the anti-Israel hackers was itself hacked and late Saturday was playing Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah. ...

Kerry lands in Israel. US Secretary of State John Kerry has landed in Israel for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials.

Morning Report: 2013-01-04

Pakistan: Malala Yousafzai released from hospital. CNN: 'Nearly three months after she was rushed to Britain for life-saving treatment for gunshot injuries, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai has recovered enough strength to be discharged, a hospital said Friday.' The 15-year-old blogger was shot by the Taliban for advocating girls' education. Ottawa Citizen has more.

Israel: Invisible kippot. Menachem Rahat at the Jewish Press covers the rise of the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party.

Morning Report: 2013-01-03

USA: Illinois state senate moves toward gun ban. Breitbart: 'On Wednesday, the Illinois Senate Public Health Committee, led by anti-gun, Senate President John Cullerton and backed by Governor Patrick Quinn, passed House Bills 1263 and 815. These measures, if passed would ban nearly all common firearms and magazines, and institute new shooting range restrictions. ...'

Israel: Bayit Yehudi surges in polls. Tablet's Adam Chandler has trouble believing it, but the Jewish Home Party looks set to tie Labor for second place after Likud-Beiteinu in the upcoming Israeli elections.

USA: Hillary Clinton said heading for 'full recovery'. CNN reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was discharged from New York Presbyterian Hospital on Wednesday after spending three days being treated for a blood clot, and doctors expect her to make a full recovery.

China: Housing market heading for a fall? Walter Russell Mead:

The Chinese government, worried that property prices were climbing too high, first started taking steps to hold down prices. In some places, they fell by as much as ten percent. Then, fearful of the disastrous economic effects of a bursting housing bubble, authorities relaxed these policies. Now they’ve started to artificially create land scarcity to drive prices up again by reducing the number of competitive auctions. Critics worry that the skyrocketing land prices will once again increase the chances that the housing bubble will burst.

Our reaction at Via Meadia to this news is mixed. ...

Read the rest at the link.

Ehud Barak Resigns

Breitbart:

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is Israel’s most decorated soldier but was also the Prime Minister who once offered Yasser Arafat 98% of Jerusalem, announced his resignation Monday. Barak said he wants to spend more time with his family.

Barak’s Independence party, which was created after he quit the Labor party, looked as if it would not win enough votes to win seats in the Knesset. Barak has repeatedly approved middle-of-the-night expulsions of Jewish families from outposts and also blocked plans for Jews building new homes in Judea and Samaria.

Barak’s record as a soldier was sterling; he was a former IDF Chief of Staff and a highly decorated soldier, known for his daring stunts as an elite commando. ...

Arutz Sheva:

Monday’s resignation of Defense Minister Ehud Barak is another crack in the foundations of the center-left, which has been in a state of denial ever before the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and other Jewish communities in Gaza and northern Samaria in 2005.

Buoyed by a largely center-left Israeli and foreign media, which have done all but openly campaign against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the Labor and Kadima parties have been grasping a dead limb that props up Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas as a “peace partner.” The center-left parties feed themselves on feeling good over support of the international community to divide Jerusalem and rid Judea and Samaria of Jews. ...

Morning Report: 2012-11-26

USA: New Obamacare challenge. Breitbart:

The Supreme Court has now reinstated a major challenge to Obamacare. Liberty University is challenging both the Individual Mandate and the Employer Mandate of the Affordable Care Act. (Of those two, the latter is even more damaging to the economy and job creation.) A liberal panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had thrown out the case last year, saying that the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) does not permit any federal court to rule on the merits of challenges to the Individual Mandate until that requirement goes into effect in 2014.

In its Jun. 28 opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius, the justices unanimously rejected this AIA argument. So Mat Staver, who is both dean of Liberty's law school and chairman of the law firm representing the university, filed a petition for rehearing.

The Supreme Court granted that petition today. ...

Israel / international: Jewish self-defense, widespread anti-Semitism. Tablet: 'Despite the ability of Israel to cobble together a pretty impressive base of international support for its recent operation in Gaza, there were places where, almost by routine, the Israeli efforts were met by a surge of anti-Semitic reactions. ...' Atlas Shrugs has more.

Nigeria: Muslims blow up church, killing 11. Also from Atlas:

Two suicide attacks on a church in an army barracks in the northern Nigerian town of Jaji on Sunday left eleven people dead and 30 injured, the army said.

"Eleven people, mostly worshippers, were killed while 30 are in the hospitals with various degrees of injuries," national army spokesman Brigadier General Bola Koleosho told AFP.

A military officer who did not want to be named said the Protestant church was hit by two explosions.

"The first blast caused no casualties and curious worshippers gathered around the scene looking at the debris... and that was when the second blast happened," he said. ...

Egypt: Morsi becomes new Pharaoh. Michael Totten:

It makes no difference that he was elected. Democracy isn’t just about getting elected. A democratic election is not a one-time plebiscite on who the next tyrant is going to be. Democracy requires individual and minority rights and the separation of powers. Winners cannot oppress losers, nor do losers get to wage war on the winners.

Some of us are more surprised than others by this development, but the Muslim Brotherhood was never a democratic political movement. It's not even a close call. You don't have to be a cheerleader for Hosni Mubarak to recognize its inherent authoritarianism. ...

Read the rest for the experiences of some genuine liberals, who are isolated and outnumbered in this revolution.

Morning Report: 2012-11-25

Mexico: The other United States. Mexico's lame-duck president Felipe Calderon announced he will attempt to formally change the country’s name by taking “United States” out of it.

Egypt: Morsi's decree triggers new protests. Egypt's first democratically elected president asserted nearly unlimited powers, as rival crowds of demonstrators poured into the streets of Cairo. Egyptian opposition activists have vowed to stage a sit-in in Cairo in a protest against the president's move to grant himself extensive new powers.

UK: Girl, 11, victim in brutal sex assault. An 11-year-old schoolgirl was subjected to a "brutal" sex attack in a north London park after getting off her bus.

Israel / Hamas: UK officer says terrorists on the run. Israel achieved the goals it set for itself in Gaza, causing Hamas leaders to “run for their lives”, Britain's Colonel Richard Kemp told Arutz Sheva this week.

USA: Distributed costs, concentrated benefits favor Democrats nationally - analysis. John Hinderaker at Power Line:

At the national level, however, you can’t bring about good governance anyway, so you might as well elect Democrats who will bring home the bacon. Such thinking explains why the solidly-red Dakotas, among other states, have contributed a depressing number of Democrats to the Senate and, to a lesser degree, the House.

This is not to deny that the liberal media have a huge influence on national elections; of course they do. And it is also true, as Glenn says, that state and local issues don’t tend to be demagogued as relentlessly as national ones. But I think that what is mainly going on is that many voters are more concerned about fiscal responsibility at the state and local level than the national level, for the simple reason that the states can’t print money, and rely on sales and property taxes, along with, in most cases, relatively flat income taxes. Therefore, voters know that if they vote for more state spending, they will have to pay for it.

At the national level, we have seen an increasing disconnect between spending and payment. This is partly because most people pay either no, or very modest, federal income taxes, and partly because 40% of all federal spending is borrowed, so that our children will have to pay for it. To the average voter, federal money must seem to appear almost magically. ...

Morning Report: 2012-11-19

Israel: Tel Aviv under fire. Via Adam Chandler at Tablet, a letter from Tel Aviv:

When the first siren went off, I was still at work, where there were visitors from abroad, including some higher-ups. After some initial confusion–I, for one, have only heard the air raid sirens on Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron–we headed for the conference room that doubles as a shelter.

My wife was at home and ran to the bomb shelter downstairs, which after months of haggling over a key, the lady in charge in our building had opened in the morning. The rate of the long-range launches (one every day or so) leads me to believe that Hamas is sitting on a very small stockpile, which is good, because despite years on the edge of our seats anticipating a potential attack on Iran, Tel Aviv is not really prepared for a sustained short-range rocket attack. ...

Meanwhile, via Breitbart, the Obama administration is sending $147 million to Hamas-run Gaza.

Israel to Step Up Raids

'Israel has ordered up to 75,000 reservists on stand-by and vowed to intensify its raids on the Gaza Strip after militants targeted Jerusalem with a rocket for the first time in decades.

"Tonight won't be calm in Gaza," army spokesman Yoav Mordechai said....'

Morning Report: 2012-11-16

Israel: Rockets from Gaza strike South, rattle Tel Aviv. Missile alerts were sounded in Tel Aviv, where one rocket has landed offshore. Three Eshkol residents were wounded, and rockets have exploded in Sderot and Be'ersheva, while Iron Dome took out four rockets near Ashdod. Egypt's president Mohammed Morsi said Egypt will require Israel's assistance in finding its way out of Gaza.

Door