A few items that crossed my desk

The Economics of Planned Global Failure. Daniel Greenfield

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-economics-of-planned-global-failure.html

Excerpt: The cloistered nature of central institutions makes them all the more vulnerable to ideological mapping. Ideologies thrive in hothouse atmospheres alienated from the real world where the ideal is easily mistaken for the real and passion for castles in the sky construction outweighs the mud and dirt challenges of building actual structures. The further an institution is detached from the consequences of its policies, the less capable it is of experiencing negative feedback and the less reliable the reports that reach it are.

A distinction without a difference. Mark Steyn.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/351834/distinction-without-difference-mark-steyn

Excerpt: Europeans like to distinguish between being anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist. Neturei Karta is an anti-Zionist branch of Judaism so opposed to the state of Israel that they’ve met with President Ahmadinejad, presumably to hear his exciting plans for wiping it off the map. Unfortunately, back in the Netherlands, this Neturei Karta rabbi’s assailant didn’t get the memo:

Independent Payment Advisory Board: The Death Panel

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=23321&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

Excerpt: Signs of ObamaCare's failings mount daily, including soaring insurance costs, looming provider shortages and inadequate insurance exchanges. Yet the law's most disturbing feature may be the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The IPAB, sometimes called a "death panel," threatens both the Medicare program and the Constitution's separation of powers, say David Rivkin, who served in the Justice Department under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Elizabeth Foley, a professor of constitutional law at Florida International University.

  

Deputy of banned suicide-bomb-endorsing cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi had White House meeting with National Security Council staff

http://www.investigativeproject.org/4056/exclusive-deputy-of-banned-suicide-bomb-endorsing

Excerpt: The White House's National Security Council has confirmed that staffers held a June 13 meeting with Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah, an Islamist cleric who shares leadership of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, where he is vice-president and the terror supporter Yusuf al-Qaradawi is president. The meeting occurred on the same day the Obama administration announced plans to arm Syria's rebel factions, in the wake of a determination that President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people.

Calls Grow in China to Press Claim for Okinawa

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/world/asia/sentiment-builds-in-china-to-press-claim-for-okinawa.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Excerpt: Instead, the group that gathered at Renmin University was focused on a more enticing prize — Japan’s southernmost island chain, which includes the strategic linchpin of Okinawa, home to 1.3 million Japanese citizens, not to mention 27,000 American troops.

The Bleak Prospects for Europe’s Jews

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/the-bleak-prospects-for-europes-jews/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=d4522aa58d-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-d4522aa58d-156414477

Excerpt: A new report by Dr. Dov Maimon of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute paints a bleak picture for European Jewry. As Maimon puts it delicately, “European Jewish life has quite possibly reached a negative inflexion point.”

Quote

"The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful." --President Calvin Coolidge (1873-1933)

Students 'planned terror attack using remote control planes'  By Jeevan Vasagar

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10140642/Students-planned-terror-attack-using-remote-control-planes.html

Excerpt: Police have carried out raids in Germany and Belgium targeting a suspected Islamist plot by aeronautics students at the University of Stuttgart to use remotely controlled planes for a terrorist attack. The raids involving about 90 police officers were carried out by the German equivalent of SWAT teams, as police feared the suspects might be armed