By Barry Rubin

The port of Oktyabrsk is situated on the left bank of the Bug River, 58 km. north of the entry to the Black Sea. Close to the city of Nikolayev, this anonymous Ukrainian port could not seem further from the strife-torn Middle East.

Yet in the last year, Oktyabrsk has played a key role in the international structure that enables the survival of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. It is the main point from which ships bearing the Russian arms that underwrite the Assad regime’s survival set off undisturbed on their journey to the Syrian coast.

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By Janice Kephart, CIS.org

On Wednesday, May 9, House appropriators mark up their FY 2013 Subcommittee Draft Homeland Security Appropriations bill. The budget refuses the Obama administration requests to lower funding for enforcement activity on and inside the border, and denies a reorganization that would have destroyed the independence of arguably the most important border program that checks biometrics at the border to assure that people are who they say they are.

Here are the breakdowns:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
Total appropriations requested – $10,344,641,000
Total appropriations recommended – $10,164,401,000

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (CBP)
ICE total appropriations requested – $5,332,192,000
ICE total appropriations recommended – $5,473,787,000

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By Jan Ting, CIS.org

The Obama administration’s challenge to the Arizona immigration statute SB1070 is not about its popularity, or whether the statute is wise or unwise policy. Legislatures are permitted to enact laws thought unpopular or unwise by others. And as Chief Justice Roberts observed, and the administration’s lawyer agreed, the challenge is also not in any way about civil rights or racial profiling.

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By Barry Rubin

Israel is apparently going to have elections this autumn and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will almost certainly win by a big margin. Understanding why explains a lot about the country that people think they know the most about but in fact comprehend the least.

According to polls, Netanyahu’s Likud party may go from 28 to 30 seats in the 120-member Knesset. That may not sound like a big percentage but with around 12 different parties likely to win seats that margin would be sufficient.

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Does U.S. President Obama have a foreign policy or should we call it a “dangerous farcical policy.” Is he even control of the White House? By now, most people have heard the story of how, “11 Secret Service agents” and “as many as 10 U.S. military personnel,” hired prostitutes, drank alcohol, and possibly used illicit drugs — all in “security preparation” for the president to attend the Summit of the Americas in Colombia. Besides the security debacle, Obama’s diplomatic effort, “wasn’t exactly smooth sailing.” But there’s a subtle clincher to Obama’s ridiculous Colombia trip which belies his true incompetency, a clincher probably overshadowed by the security scandal, namely his seeming overtures to Argentina and its leader, who is threatening war, stealing billions, and deriding one the U.S.’s closest allies:

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by Wahabuddin Ra’ees*

U.S. president Barack Obama entered office with a bold plan to combat Afghanistan’s escalating insurgency, empower its government, encourage a political resolution of the conflict, and secure the cooperation of neighboring Pakistan—all in time for U.S. troops to withdraw by the end of 2014.

This new Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) policy has yet to deliver on its promise. While the U.S. military surge swept insurgents out of their southeastern strongholds, the rebels have responded with terror attacks and assassinations reaching into the heart of Kabul. Washington has accelerated its training of Afghan security forces, but most U.S. aid still circumvents the central government, weakening its authority. With a political settlement nowhere in sight and Pakistani support for armed extremists unabated, Washington’s options for preventing a Taliban takeover have narrowed.

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By Barry Rubin

Iraq is in a mess. Violence continues. Factionalism leads to endless bickering. Corruption is at high levels. Christians live in fear or flee altogether. Islamism is constantly creeping forward. Yet I would suggest that with all these shortcomings the “Iraqi model” is the best that can be expected for the Middle East.

What’s the worst-case scenario? Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza, Sudan, or the permanent civil war situation in Syria, Yemen, and probably Libya.

It isn’t that democracy is theoretically impossible or incompatible in principle with Islam or Arab society. The problem is that it just isn’t going to happen at this particular point in history. What you or I or small groups of moderate democratic Arabs, or naïve Western journalists want isn’t relevant here.

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By Yoram Ettinger
Israel Hayom Newsletter, April 06, 2012

Israeli leaders are able to repel President Obama’s relentless pressure to refrain from pre-empting Iran, Hizballah and Hamas; to freeze Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria; to retreat to the 1949 cease fire lines, including the repartitioning of Jerusalem; and to placate Mahmoud Abbas, while ignoring the PA hate-education, non-compliance and terrorism.

In contrast to the ironclad US public and congressional support of Israel, presidential pressure has always been part of US-Israel relations.

Therefore, contemporary Israeli leaders should emulate Israeli prime ministers who served from 1948 (Ben Gurion) to 1992 (Shamir). While they rejected — in most cases — presidential prescriptions for Israel’s national security, bilateral strategic cooperation surged unprecedentedly in spite off, and probably due to, their steadfastness.

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By Jessica Vaughan, CIS.org

The Obama administration’s half-hearted and spotty record of immigration enforcement at the workplace creates a big vacuum for state and local lawmakers to jump into. E-Verify mandates are a great start. State employer auditing programs are another effective tool, either in lieu of an E-Verify mandate or to enhance compliance with E-Verify and other requirements. Statistics from such initiatives in South Carolina demonstrate the value of employer auditing at the state and local level.

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“This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy.” This is what two Kansas City black teens told a younger white child. The black kids poured gasoline on the white kid and set him on fire a month ago (see here also). Did you even know this happened? Do you remember the 2007, big “Jena 6″ lie in which six black teens beat up a white kid in Jena, Louisiana, and Al Sharpton hailed it as “the start of the 21st century civil rights movement.” The white teen who was assaulted in 2006 had nothing to do with the hoo-ha. Some 18,000 “protesters” swarmed Jena demanding that the black teens, the so-called “Jena 6,” be released from custody — for beating up an innocent bystander. Now we have the story of the death of Trayvon Martin, edited by NBC to sound like a racist crime, but which is in fact just an incident report. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Spike Lee are unethically throwing gasoline on a fire — incident — that no one knows who ignited. Again we have political correctness gone mad. Basically, blood libel.

NBC sprayed race-card gasoline when it creatively edited the transcripts of the 911 call regarding the death of Trayvon Martin (see here also):

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… Evidence so far indicates that no malice was intended in the Koran-burning at the [Afghan] air base, Doug Wilson, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for public affairs, said today.

“We do not believe that this was something where those involved intended to burn the Koran as a religious document,["] Wilson said. …

“After 10 years, incidents such as this have been extremely rare,” he said. “No matter how serious this was, no one should necessarily extrapolate a broader trend about how our armed forces in Afghanistan are poised to treat religious and cultural materials.” …

- Bloomberg, Feb 23, 2012

President Obama has completely lost it. His “perspective” is reversed — upside down. Intolerant Muslim savages are again on a murderous rampage simply because some American kid accidentally burned a book. Remember Muslim madness over the silly Mohammed cartoons? A crazed Afghan killed two American soldiers today because of this non-”incident,” and all’s Barack Obama can do is apologize to whom; the Taliban? 1,883 American soldiers have been killed trying to bring civilization to Afghanistan. It is the Afghan president and civic groups who should be apologizing to the U.S. for their own barbarism and bigotry. The book which was burned was the Koran, but nonetheless, just a collection of paper pages. President Obama should be ashamed of his “apology.”

Oh, ye of little (nonexistent) faith. Are your “Islamic” beliefs so shallow that you would once again commit murder because some icon or object is accidentally destroyed? People of true faith have the strength and courage to remain civilized in the face of any tribulation — because their beliefs are rooted in their hearts, minds, and souls, and not dependent on mere objects. True believers are also unshaken by the acts of hooligans. Do these barbaric Afghans even know what they are rampaging about? Do they have any feelings of conscientiousness, forgiveness, and/or compassion? Do they only understand violence and hatred? You can’t shake my faith by burning my flag or my Bible or my Constitution — I’ll only dig my heals in because my faith tells me that civilization and the pen are mightier than any sword.

In 2001, the Taliban terrorist group so popular among Afghans, destroyed, “all ancient sculptures [in their country]. Explosives, tanks, and anti-aircraft weapons blew apart two colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan Province, 230 kilometers (150 miles) from the capital of Kabul.” Buddha was the Prince of Peace. Just read his words. He never condoned violence or intolerance.

Afghanistan was the staging ground for the 9/11 atrocity where the Taliban gave safe haven to the evil al-Qaeda plotters. These Afghan terrorists have murdered thousands of innocents and are the ultimate misogynists: “No place has been more synonymous with oppression of women in recent history than Afghanistan under the Taliban…” They stoned a woman to death for “being seen out with a man.”

To heck with Afghanistan and President Obama. If the Taliban hurt us or our friends, we can carpet bomb them from the air. President Obama should be voted out of office for his misjudgement and cowardice. Oh, by the way Mr. Obama, your “apology” — your weakness — will only encourage more violence: “Taliban leaders called on Afghans to ignore the apologies and step up attacks against Americans.”

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By Gary Gerofsky

With the Obama administration strengthening its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, home and abroad, and with a new focus on aligning America to anything and everything Islamic, including permitting operatives in America who influence the administration on Iranian policy, citizens now have almost as much to worry about with regard to the Obama Administration as the mullacracy in Teheran. If Obama is not a Muslim by birth, then his passion and his sympathies lie, nonetheless, with the re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate.

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By Barry Rubin

For the second time in a few months we have seen a crazy global Israel-About-to-Attack-Iran Story. I don’t want to go into all of the details but this tale is an example of how the media has just lost it completely due to a combination of laziness (reporters don’t really do research or check sources); agenda; ignorance; and good old sensationalism. Partly, too, it arises from the difficulty of the mass media in dealing with the Internet media era and the difficulty of the Internet media in achieving decent journalistic standards.

A couple of months ago a level of hysteria was reached on the basis of three stories:

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…If Florida courts accept provisions of Islamic Sharia law or other foreign laws and legal codes which are inconsistent with American laws it will undermine public policies enacted by our representative form of government and change our value system. …

- Florida Family Association

The dangers of Shariah should be self-evident and, thankfully, the good people of the Florida Family Association (FFA) are working against Islamism in their home state. The Obama administration, some other Western governments, and the Western mainstream media are generally soft-peddling the dangers of radical Islam, so people who value freedom and democracy should be ever vigilant. If the FFA can fluster Ahmed Rehab of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the terrorist-apologists and Shariah pushers du jour, the FFA must be doing something right.

What would Shariah mean? It would mean Islamists attempting to “destroy Western civilization from within.” It would mean misogyny and “honor killings” of innocent women. It would mean religiously-sanctioned lying (“taqiyya”) to advance the overriding of our Constitution with Islamic “law.” It would mean non-Muslims (”infidels”) living at best as third-class citizens (“dhimmitude”). It would mean Muslim cab drivers refusing blind customers with “unclean” seeing-eye-dogs. It would mean allowing the creation of autonomous Islamic “no-go zones” right here in the U.S. where American law would have no standing. Should I go on? Would you live under Shariah for fear of “inciting” Muslim anger rather than standing up for democracy? I won’t. Luckily, there are groups like the Florida Family Association fighting Shariah — and succeeding:

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by Daniel Pipes*

It’s not every day that someone like the U.S. secretary of defense forecasts an ally’s move but this just happened when Leon Panetta said that he believes, in the paraphrase of a Washington Post reporter, that “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June.” Thoughts on this unusual statement:

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