RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9S78SUG0&show_article=1

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – The Taliban’s political wing is ready to enter peace talksto end the war in Afghanistan, but the insurgents will in the meantime continue their armed struggle, the group said Thursday.

The militant movement’s emailed statement suggests that efforts to bring Afghan factions to the table are gathering momentum, but also highlights some of the roadblocks on the way to any settlement—in particular, the Taliban’s insistence that the government of President Hamid Karzai is an illegitimate “stooge” of the West.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the militants had been fighting for the past 15 years to establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan “in accordance with the request of its people.”

“It is for this purpose and for bringing about peace and stability in Afghanistan that we have increased our political efforts to come to mutual understanding with the world in order to solve the current ongoing situation,” Mujahid said in an emailed statement.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577143174098233432.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
A Year for Elections, Not Mideast Peace
Obama will trumpet his commitment to Israel while wondering if it will attack Iran.

INSTEAD OF ALL THE PALAVER…WHY NOT JUST DECLARE IT’S OVER ….PALARABS MISSED THEIR CHANCES AND ESCALATED THEIR DEMANDS….THE PRESENT BORDERS ARE IT…DON’T LIKE IT? MOVE NEXT DOOR OR JUST LUMP IT….RSK

Last week Israelis and Palestinians held talks for the first time since September 2010. Back then, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met at the White House, under bright lights and with great expectations, along with Jordanian King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In a matter of weeks the talks failed—and Mr. Mubarak didn’t last much longer himself. What to expect this time?

For starters, note that these talks—hosted in Amman by the Jordanian government—aren’t even “negotiations.” The Palestinians made clear that these were only discussions of whether negotiations are possible. The most one can hope for is that these exploratory talks extend for several more months or lead at some point to a Netanyahu-Abbas session. This is kicking the can down the road, to be sure, but that is a reasonably accurate way of describing the “peace process” anyway.

Whatever the hopes in Washington or European capitals, Israelis and Palestinians don’t expect a breakthrough. Instead, they’re focused on three elections: America’s, the definite one; the Palestinian Authority’s, scheduled for May 4; and Israel’s, which Mr. Netanyahu may call later this year.

For Mr. Netanyahu, the question is whether the re-election of Barack Obama would harm his own chances. The ability to get along with Washington is a key asset in Israeli politics, and Israelis would worry about four more years of U.S.-Israeli tension. It is universally understood that Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama don’t get along. That might lead the Israeli prime minister to try for elections in the fall, before our own—though a decision on whether to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites could also affect that timing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577154932994154936.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Hosannas for the Court
A unanimous ruling for religious freedom, and a rebuke to Obama.

It was a banner day for religious freedom yesterday as the Supreme Court ruled that government can’t tell religious institutions whom they can hire and fire as “ministers.” The unanimous decision was a crushing rebuke to the Obama Administration, which had taken the radical position that churches are little different from any other employer in job disputes.

In the High Court’s latest support for the First Amendment, all nine Justices upheld what’s known as the “ministerial exception” in employment disputes, recognizing a healthy degree of autonomy for churches, synagogues and other houses of worship.

In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School vs. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Cheryl Perich had worked as a religiously affiliated or “called” teacher at the Lutheran school, teaching math and music as well as leading students in prayer. In 2004, she took a medical leave for narcolepsy, a sleep disorder. When she sought to return, the school declined, and she was eventually voted out by the church congregation. Ms. Perich and the federal EEOC sued for backpay, reinstatement and damages. READ IT ALL AT THE SITE

A History Lesson for Ron Paul Posted By Humberto Fontova

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/12/a-history-lesson-for-ron-paul/

Ron Paul, in an exasperated tone during the Iowa debates, said: “All these trade sanctions!…This is why we still don’t have a trade relationship with Cuba.”

Ground Control to candidate Paul: according to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. has transacted almost $4 billion in trade with Cuba over the past decade. Up until two years ago the U.S. served as Stalinist Cuba’s biggest food supplier and fifth biggest import partner. We’ve fallen a few notches recently, but we’re still in the top half. Furthermore, the U.S. has been Castro-controlled Cuba’s biggest donor of humanitarian aid, including medicine and medical supplies, for decades.

Ground Control to candidate Paul: For over a decade, the so-called U.S. embargo has merely stipulated that Castro’s Stalinist regime pay cash up front through a third–party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. (You’d really, really think a libertarian would approve of this.) Enacted by the Bush team in 2001, this cash-up-front policy has kept the U.S. taxpayer among the few in the world not screwed and tattooed by Fidel Castro. Here are a few other items candidate Paul might keep in mind before any campaign stops (especially in Florida):

Per-capita-wise, Cuba qualifies as the world’s biggest debtor nation with a foreign debt of close to $50 billion, a credit–rating nudging Somalia’s, and an uninterrupted record of defaults. Standard & Poor’s refuses even to rate Cuba, viewing the economic figures released by the regime apparatchiks as utterly bogus.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/the_crass_marketing_of_a_sadistic_racist.html

CHE GUEVARA IS BACK IN THE NEWS.

You would think that such a bloodthirsty, murdering psychopath would just stay dead and buried rathert than be resurrected by deluded leftists who continue to be fascinated by his “reovlutionary” exploits.

This time, it’s the Mercedes car company who is actually using the thug to introduce new technology that will make it easier for drivers to find someone to share a ride to work with.

CBS:

“Some colleagues still think that car-sharing borders on communism,” Mercedes-Benz Chairman of the Board of Management Dieter Zetsche said onstage at CES today, speaking about Mercedes’ new CarTogether initiative. “But if that’s the case, viva la revolucion!”

To be sure, a luxury-car maker like Mercedes is not actually promoting communism. But during his CES talk, Zetsche pushed hard on a vision that the company has for a greener future that allows drivers to reduce emissions by using connected and social technology to easily find compatible passengers to share rides with.

http://politicalmavens.com/
Mabul (The Flood) is an award winning Israeli film that has just opened this year’s Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The word is commonly associated with the great Flood in Noah’s time and it is that portion of the Bible that the young bar-mitzvah boy, Yoni, is studying for his upcoming rite of passage. He is the fulcrum in a movie about family relations, coming of age, marital dysfunction, friendship and community support. Yoni’s father has lost his job as an airline pilot and has been concealing that poorly from his wife and son who clearly sense that he is lying. Yoni’s mother runs a day care center and finds consolation from her unhappy marriage in an affair with the father of one of the children in her care; Yoni is earning money by selling homework assignments in several different subjects but he is being shaken down by the school bullies. The final straw is the return of Yoni’s older autistic brother who has been institutionalized for most of his life but has to come home because the institution is failing.

http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2012/01/dear-mr-medad-sincerely-thomas-friedman.html

The other day I posted a blog on words of the New York Times’ columnist, Thomas Friedman, as reported in Egypt. I also uploaded a slightly altered version at my Jerusalem Post blog, Green-Lined.

It is now updated to include this response of Mr. Friedman:-

Update (2012-01-11 15:03:25):

Dear Mr. Medad:

The quote attributed to me by the Egyptian daily is completely mangled. I was asked by an audience member to give my assessment of the liberal’s performance in the Egyptian election. What I actually said, which the reporter, clearly not an English speaker, did not get, was that it was no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood did so well in this first election because for the last 30 years Mubarak had cleared out all the political space between himself and the Brotherhood so that he was able to come to Washington and say to successive U.S. Presidents that “It is either me or them.” I said that what the Egyptian elections produced, for the first time, were legitimate, authentic, liberal, secular, nationalist, progressive alternatives to the Muslim Brotherhood and now the Brotherhood would have to compete with such alternatives — for the first time. I then said, given the fact that the liberals had only four months to organize their parties and that the Brotherhood had been in politics for 83 years, that I thought the liberals had done amazingly well. By the way, there were many cameras filming all of this, so it is easy enough to verify.

I would also note that this is a point I have made many times before in my writings — in precisely those words — that what was missing in Arab politics was a legitimate, progressive alternative to both the official parties and the Islamists. I would also note that in my previous NYT column from I Cairo, I wrote: “…the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Al Nour Party — just crushed the secular liberals, who actually sparked the rebellion here, in the free Egyptian parliamentary elections, winning some 65 percent of the seats. To not be worried about the theocratic, antipluralistic, anti-women’s-rights, xenophobic strands in these Islamist parties is to be recklessly naïve.” (see below for Barry Rubin’s take on it)

On bribery, what I said is exactly what I have written in my own column in the New York Times twice before, “Our Congress has become a forum for legalized bribery,” which is what I believe and is hardly an original observation. Judging from reports of allegations against senior political figures in Israel that I read about in your own newspaper, Israel’s democracy is suffering from the same problem. I was warning Egyptians that uncontrolled money in politics is what can destroy their infant democracy, that it was eroding our own, and that they had to be very vigilant about this.” I was reacting to reports in the press that money from Qatar and Saudi had flowed to Islamist parties, while the liberals were starved for cash. I made no connection to any particular special interest in America. Finally, my one-hour question and answer session at AUC was not something I was paid for.

Mr. Medad, you asked aloud whether I could have said what I was quoted saying? I am glad you asked it aloud. I just wish you had asked me first before publishing this blog on your site. I am in the phone book.

Sincerely,

Thomas Friedman

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/287219
GOULD IS THE FIRST POST STATEHOOD BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL….BUT THERE WAS VISCOUNT HERBERT LOUIS SAMUEL WHO BECAME THE FIRST HIGH COMMISSIONER OF PALESTINE AND SERVED FROM JULY 1920-1925. HE RECOGNIZED HEBREW AS ONE OF THE THREE OFFICILA LANGUAGES OF THE MANDATE.. HIS APPOINTEMENT DISTRESSED SOME BRITS INCLUDING ALLENBY WHO THOUGHT IT “HIGHLY DANGEROUS” TO LET A JEW REPRESENT ENGLAND….. THE ARABS RESPONDED AS FOLLOWS:

The Muslim-Christian Association had sent a telegram to Bols:

‘Sir Herbert Samuel regarded as a Zionist leader, and his appointment as first step in formation of Zionist national home in the midst of Arab people contrary to their wishes. Inhabitants cannot recognise him, and Moslem-Christian Society cannot accept responsibility for riots or other disturbances of peace’.

A few weeks ago, a Labour MP in Britain, Paul Flynn, expressed displeasure with his country’s ambassador to Israel. “I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories,” he said, “but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist.” What Britain needs in Israel, according to Flynn, is “someone with roots in the U.K.” who “can’t be accused of having Jewish loyalty.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/12/rewarding-aggression/

Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reports that Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian legislator and member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, has told Tony Blair, former British prime minister and currently representative of the Middle East Quartet, that unless Israel stops its objectionable behavior the Palestinians won’t return to negotiations.

She was referring to two meetings that were held in Amman this month between an Israeli and a Palestinian negotiator. All accounts agree that the talks were held to appease Quartet pressure and haven’t yielded anything. Whereas Israel expresses an ongoing willingness to keep trying, PA president Mahmoud Abbas has said that if Israel does not submit to Palestinian preconditions by January 26 “all options will be open”—by which he means finalizing a deal with Hamas and Islamic Jihad leading to “popular resistance.”

What Israel has to do, Ashrawi told Blair, is stop settlement activity and precommit to the 1967 borders. She complained: “With its stepped-up illegal settlement campaign and continued efforts to create facts on the ground, Israel is undermining any and all efforts to stimulate peace.”

Obama’s Enviro-Racketeering Posted By Rich Trzupek

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/12/obamas-enviro-racketeering/

ALSO PLEASE READ:
How the EPA is Ruining American Industry Interview with Rich Trzupek, author of “Regulators Gone Wild”Rael Jean Isaac

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10596/pub_detail.asp

As I have noted on more than one occasion, in recent years the United States EPA has been acting more and more like a revenue-generating arm of the government than an agency that’s actually interested in protecting human health and the environment. A recent story published in the New York Times amply illustrates the point: fuel suppliers are being fined for failing to add a “green fuel” – cellulosic ethanol – that doesn’t actually exist into their gasoline blends.

Cellulosic ethanol has long been a particularly prized panacea among environmental groups. As any moonshiner knows, conventional ethanol has long been produced by fermenting naturally grown sugars. These sugars are readily available and relatively easy to get at in corn for example, which is why ethanol production plants commonly use corn as their feedstock. However, even Al Gore eventually realized that it was rather idiotic to take millions of acres of farmland out of food and feed production in order to “grow” a fuel that (in many gases) actually ends up on the deficit side of the energy ledger. Cellulosic ethanol theoretically addresses those concerns.