RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/04/wilders_agonistes.html

A review-essay on Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me by Geert Wilders, Regnery Publishing, May 1, 2012, 256 pp.

PART I

The Amsterdam Rijksmuseum’s current exhibit “Ottomania” punctuates ongoing commemorations marking four hundred years of Dutch-Turkish relations. With depressing predictability, the Turkish media erupted in fury over a 1683 print on display which celebrates the defeat of the Ottoman jihad campaign against Vienna. Consistent with disparaging images commonplace in that late 17th-century era, the print depicts Mehmed IV, the Ottoman sultan (r. 1648-1687), lying forlorn in bed following the humiliating defeat of his grand vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha at Vienna. A salient detail of the print shows the royal bedside commode adjacent to a Koran, placed, ostensibly, for use as toilet paper.

Shortly afterward, during his recent visit to the Netherlands as part of the same commemorations, Turkish President Abdullah Gul labeled Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders an “Islamophobe.” Interviewed by the Dutch mass-circulation daily De Telegraaf, Gul claimed that Wilders represents “an extreme voice, which feeds radicals.” Gul further accused Wilders of engendering “a negative us-against-them climate [that] is developing in the whole of Europe, which is laying the foundation for ethnic religious discrimination.” Responding to Gul’s denunciation, Wilders tweeted with appropriate disdain, “Turkish humor: Christian-teaser, Kurd-basher, Hamas-friend and Islamist Gul complaining about tolerance.”

Triple Play! Obama Blows Off Congress, Funds Palestinians, Lies About PA Stance on Israel

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/297202

Friday night news dump: President Obama has decided to provide $192 million to the Palestinian Authority despite Congress’s freeze on PA funding after its president, Mahmoud Abbas, attempted to declare statehood unilaterally last September, in violation of the PA’s treaty commitments.

Obama’s “waiver” of the restrictions on Congress’s Palestinian Accountability Act was first reported in the foreign press (AFP), which is where Americans generally need to go to get news about what the U.S. administration is up to. A report from the Times of Israel is here. [Hat tip, Creeping Sharia.] The New York Times, evidently too busy reporting on how much Israel sucks, did not find this story fit to print.

White House spinmeister Tommy Vietor stated that President Obama made the decision to pour American taxpayer dollars into Palestinian coffers in order to ensure “the continued viability of the moderate PA government.” He added the claim that, as the report puts it, “the PA had fulfilled all its major obligations, such as recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence and accepting the Road Map for Peace.”

In the real world, the very immoderate PA has reneged on all its commitments. In addition to violating its obligations by unilaterally declaring statehood, the PA has also agreed to form a unity government with Hamas, a terrorist organization that is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The PA continues to endorse terrorism against Israel as “resistance.” Moreover, the PA most certainly does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Back in November, for example, Adil Sadeq, a PA official writing in the official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, declared that Israelis

have a common mistake, or misconception by which they fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated [Zionist] enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist…

In sum, everything Obama is saying about Palestinian compliance is a lie. Even if we were not broke, we should not be giving the PA a dime. To borrow money so we can give it to them is truly nuts.

Will Congress do anything about it? There is a very simple answer to this: slash the executive branch’s budget. That is the weapon the framers gave Congress to rein in a corrupt, spendaholic executive branch. You could start with a treble damages rule: Obama gives $192 million to the PA against Congress’s directive, Congress responds by slashing $600 million out of the State Department’s budget. That would be start — though State would still have $51 billion left over to fund the Muslim Brotherhood and its other favorite Islamic supremacists.

http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2012/04/israel-is-not-yet-independent.html Israel is Not Yet Independent Tomorrow, April 26, 2012 the state of Israel will be celebrating her 64th birthday. The Jewish state is commemorating that she had prevailed, when in 1948, the day after David Ben-Gurion, at that time the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/04/a_new_declaration_of_independence.html

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary to ensure that a President, who has led the country to near ruin and who is working to discard the basic principles upon which this Great Country rests, be peaceably removed it is incumbent upon us that we submit the reasons to the people.

Without any in-depth research or vetting about his background, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States. There were voices of caution who early on exposed Obama’s connections to former terrorist Bill Ayers, anti-American vilifier Reverend Wright, crook Tony Rezko, and anti-Semite Rashid Khalidi, but they were laughed at as the people allowed themselves to be demagogued on hope and change. Evidence continues to suggest that Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate is, indeed, a forgery. This would make his presidential eligibility suspect.

Thus, the American people are at a critical watershed moment in our history. The facts are in; Obama’s ideology and core principles are now public and exist for all to see. We can no longer claim ignorance; we can no longer be naïve; we can no longer deny what is patently before us. The record of this current president is a “history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these United States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

Mr. Obama has “given himself the powers to declare martial law[.] It is a sweeping power grab that should worry every American.” Thus, “Barack Obama is very dangerous, the apotheosis of an insidious strain of authoritarianism that destroys from within.” In a statement published on December 31, 2011, Mr. Obama states that “[t]oday I have signed into law H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012.” Though he claims that he has “signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists,” it was Mr. Obama who “demanded the removal of any and all protections for US citizens and legal residents.”

And like King George III, Obama has now established the distinct possibility of placing “[s]tanding armies without the Consent of our legislatures” — although sadly, in this case, the Senate passed this unwholesome disgrace. King George III would be pleased.

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/19653-Palestinian-Clown-Union-At-UCSD.html Palestinian Clown Union At UCSD A group of students at the University of California, San Diego, claim exclusive rights to wear clown costumes, and accuse anyone else wearing one to be clownaphobic. Ridiculous, right? Then, keep reading. After the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine at UCSD lost the vote in the student government […]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/04/25/Obama-Andrew-Sullivan-Rolling-Stone
In this week’s Rolling Stone, President Obama takes the cover story … again. The piece is a long interview, and it’s a gushing profile of Obama. This time, however, he steps in it by endorsing Trig Palin birther and The Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan:

I read all of the New York Times columnists. Krugman’s obviously one of the smartest economic reporters out there, but I also read some of the conservative columnists, just to get a sense of where those arguments are going. There are a handful of blogs, Andrew Sullivan’s on the Daily Beast being an example, that combine thoughtful analysis with a sampling of lots of essays that are out there. The New Yorker and The Atlantic still do terrific work. Every once in a while, I sneak in a novel or a nonfiction book.

Sullivan, of course, is the same charming fellow who maintains that Trig Palin, Sarah Palin’s son, is actually the child of Bristol Palin; Sarah Palin, he said, claimed the child as her own in a giant cover-up. Sullivan isn’t just one of Obama’s favorite columnists, he also visited the White House for a state dinner last month.

http://www.nationalreview.com/

A couple of days ago, Obama-campaign top dog David Axelrod threw in the towel on the dog war. “I thought it was a little absurd to talk about what the president had done as a ten-year-old boy,” he sniffed to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, which is as near as the suddenly sheepish attack dog will ever get to conceding that Barack Obama is the first dog-eating president in the history of the republic. For those coming late to the feud, the Democrats started it, assiduously promoting accounts of a 1983 Romney vacation to Canada in which the family pooch Seamus rode on the roof of the car. Axelrod and the boys thought they could have some sport with this, and their poodles in the media eagerly played along. The New York Times columnist Gail Collins alone has referred to it dozens of times.

And then Jim Treacher, the sharp-eyed wag of the Daily Caller, uncovered this passage from Chapter Two of Obama’s bestselling but apparently largely unread memoir Dreams from My Father, in which the author recalls childhood meals with his stepfather Lolo Soetoro:

I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.

There followed an Internet storm of “I Ate a Dog (and I Liked It)” gags. Axelrod, an early tweeter of Romney doggie digs, has now figured out that the subject is no longer profitable for his boss. The dogs he let slip aren’t quite that savvy. Jeremy Funk, communications director of “Americans United for Change,” is still bulk-e-mailing links to the dogsagainstromney.com video “Should We Have a President Who Isn’t Even Qualified to Adopt a Pet?” Confronted by the revelation that his preferred candidate only swings by the Humane Society for the all-you-can-eat buffet, he huffs that this is “false equivalence.” “A six-year-old with no choice in the matter” is not the same as a grown man choosing to place his dog on the roof of his vehicle. My Canadian compatriot Kate McMillan, a dog breeder, advised Mr. Funk to “try this experiment–sit a normal, American 6 year old down at a plate and tell him it’s dog meat. Watch what happens.”

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=267685

The panicky response by Israel’s leaders to the Eisner episode will only serve to encourage pernicious ‘protest tourism’ by pampered radicals.

Nor do the gods appear in warrior’s armor clad
To strike them down with sword and spear
Those whom they would destroy
They first make mad – Bharthari, 7th century (translated from the Sanskrit)

A Spanish journalist, with a particular penchant for local red wine told me how every international correspondent dreams of being posted in Israel. “It a paradise for foreign journalists” she explained. “Where else in the world can you go to an restaurant in a town like Tel Aviv, have a drink in Dizengoff and then go to sleep in a good hotel when all that stands between you and a first-hand report from “the battleground” is a 45-minute ride to Sheikh Jarrah or Bil’in.” – Tal Dror, Ynet, April, 21, 2012 (translated from the Hebrew)

The two activists, who developed a taste for the blend of arak and red grapefruit [juice] I served them at the bar, explained to me [when] I asked – half naively, half critically – “Why don’t you demonstrate in Egypt? Why not in Syria? What do you want from us?” The Swede stopped smiling and replied with deadly seriousness. “Are you crazy? Those places are really dangerous” – Ibid

Quite some time ago – when I was significantly younger and considerably slimmer – I served in a unit that operated behind enemy lines. I therefore have a keen awareness of how important it is for the motivation of combatants who undertake demanding missions and for their resolve to execute them, that they believe that – if they are in a jam – they will enjoy the unmitigated backing of their superiors.

I mention this not because I was ever charged with the kind of tasks Lt.-Col. Shalom Eisner was expected to execute two weeks ago, but because it gives me some idea of the sense of bitter disappointment and disillusionment he must be feeling at the moment. The potential operational impact the episode – and the unfortunate ethos that it reflects – could have on the efficacy of the IDF cannot be ignored.

What’s wrong with this picture?

There is something deeply disturbing about the picture that is emerging in the wake of incident that took place in the Jordan Valley on the post-Passover weekend. It goes far beyond the specifics of the particular incident and reflects a deeper malaise that pervades the public discourse in the country.

On the one hand, we have a radical anti- Israeli activist belonging to an organization virulently hostile to Israel, unequivocally supportive of terror organizations dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, taking part in an unruly confrontation with Israeli security forces, who ends up with (gasp) a cut lip.

On the other hand we have a senior IDF officer with a record of proven valor in combat, highly regarded by both his men and his superiors, who has been relieved of his command, his entire career in jeopardy, because of a fleeting video of a few seconds showing him striking the aforementioned radical with a single blow.

In a stroke, years of exhausting effort, and commendable courage were washed away – as if knocking over a vitriolic anti-Israeli activist (who was seen back on his feet seconds after the blow) carried more weight than all the deeds of daring and dedication he accumulated to his credit over a long period of distinguished service.

In a twinkling, a massive PR victory was handed to Israel’s most venomous vilifiers – with an abject admission of guilt before the prosecution even presented its case.

Have the gods really made us mad? A devoted defender of Israel dispatched in disgrace while a demagogic detractor is elevated to celebrity status. Whichever way you cut it, there is something wrong with that picture.

Maniacal media

True – the fundamental aesthetics shown in the short video were highly prejudicial. A swarthy, unshaven, balding, overweight, yarmulke-donning, gun-toting Jew, clubbing a tall, blond, slender handsome Dane for no apparent reason. The visual impact could hardly be more damning and damaging for Israel.

And the media seized on it with unbridled enthusiasm, embarking on a veritable “feeding frenzy”– as if some world-shattering event had taken place. The morning news channels played and replayed it ad nauseam seemingly determined to engrave indelibly into the mind of viewers that finally definitive proof of Israel’s bestial brutally had been discovered.

Context and balance were discarded and ignored. The true nature of the organization, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), to which the aggrieved activist belonged, was obscured – or at best skimmed over – as if irrelevant.

The fact that its members openly embrace Palestinian terror groups, conceal their operatives from the IDF, intentionally initiate clashes with Israeli forces, impede army operations aimed at protecting Israeli civilians, provide Palestinians terrorist organization with financial, logistic and moral support, are active in advocating boycotts divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, played a central role in the Gaza flotillas, call for the “right of return” and thus, in effect, for the elimination of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.

None of this seemed to be of much interest to the maniacal media which made little effort to convey to the public the ilk of the people Eisner was called on to deal with–but seemed hell-bent on destroying his career and his reputation.

Reprehensible recording

Much has been said about Eisner’s “moral failing” in this episode. But what could be more morally reprehensible than the behavior of Channel 10 and its surreptitious recording and broadcast of a private exchange between a bereaved mother and Eisner, who at considerable personal risk had retrieved the body of her son after he had been killed in the 2006 Lebanon war.

In the exchange, Eisner expressed his bitterness at the lack of support he had received from his commanding officers.

Neither Eisner nor the mother, who has voiced her strong support for him in an earlier interview, had any idea that his expression of resentment was being recorded and certainly not that it would be broadcast. The public airing of the private conversation caused Eisner considerable harm and it is widely believed to have played a part in the severity of the measures taken against him by his superiors.

What made the release Eisner’s words particularly egregious was fact that Channel 10 gave the impression that they were in fact intended to be a public declaration, rather than a personal intimation of his feelings not meant for wider distribution. Indeed other media outlets quoted Eisner as if he had given an interview to the TV station.

Revulsion at this unscrupulous journalistic conduct has led to a request for a criminal investigation into the cynical exploitation of the bereaved mother’s trust. But whatever the legal outcome of the probe, it seems clear the incident comprises a new low for the already less-than-illustrious behavior of the Israeli media.

The journalist who publicized the conversation later issued an apology, stating: “The last thing I want as a military correspondent, an Israeli journalist, a patriot and Zionist, is to hurt the feelings of a bereaved mother.”

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/04/27/europe-as-king-lear/?singlepage=true “No, no, no, no!” Thus quoth Lear to Cordelia near the end of the grimmest play Shakespeare wrote. As my friend John Allison observes, Europe is acting a lot like Lear on his way to prison: “No” said the Irish on February 25, 2011. They ejected Fianna Fail, the largest party in Ireland since […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

TRUTH, JUSTICE AND JOURNALISM

It seems almost redundant to link to the Reuters piece on George Zimmerman that nearly everyone has seen by now, but what’s interest about it is just how routine it is. It’s a standard background piece and thousands like it run after prominent crimes. Any sizable news organization can put one out within a week and smaller community papers and magazines regularly run them when there’s a major case. When the case is big enough, some of them get turned into movies, mostly they help set a tone.

All they really involve in meeting with some of the locals, arranging for interviews, taking some notes and writing up the results. And what’s really interesting about “Prelude to a Shooting” is how long it took until a media organization chose to run it.

I strongly suspect that there’s a dozen pieces like it sitting in file folders and desks in other media organizations that have not decided what to do with them. I suspect the Reuters piece was in that same state until someone decided to finally run it. The Zimmerman family has been proactive in reaching out and trying to tell the story. It’s the media that has held the door shut.

“Prelude to a Shooting” is not the last word on the case. It’s background on Zimmerman, not the entire set of events, and it wouldn’t even be all that significant except for the lynch mob atmosphere in the media and the refusal of the media to do any basic reporting on the case besides spewing back the same ‘hoodie and skittles’ narrative.

If Zimmerman had just shot a man in cold blood, there would be little point in laying out the background, it would be no more than another Bernie Tiede piece, but instead we do get crucial bits of context that explain what was going on in the neighborhood at the time in the context of property values, constant break ins and a neighborhood on the edge.
It’s the final concluding material on Emmanuel Burgess that sets the most important context in the case. It tells us part of why events happened the way they did and that along with Martin’s No Limit Nigga material sets a different stage than the one that the media has thrust on us.

BUILDERS AND DESTROYERS

We are more than who we are at any given moment. We are also who we aspire to be.Both Zimmerman and Martin were flawed men, but Zimmerman’s writings and behavior showed a man who aspired to be something better, while Martin’s showed that he wanted only to sink down. Martin can’t be entirely blamed for that, he did not create and perpetuate the fake gansta culture. It’s the mostly white entertainment industry that did that, often embedded in the same news corporations which organized the lynching of George Zimmerman.

The entertainment industry did not tell Martin what would happen if he assaulted an adult man who was concerned about the neighborhood, while Martin was concerned about getting the “Respect” that gangsta culture told him he was entitled to by virtue of his posing.

Martin did not understand that life was different than gangsta culture. That men who have guns don’t necessarily go waving them around. And that sometimes when you have someone down on the ground and you’re beating on them, they will use what they have.

Had Martin killed Zimmerman, he would be preening for the cameras now, the defiant upward head tilt you see so often in court photos. The pose that says, “I don’t care, because I’m too cool to care.” It’s the pose that the man who might have been Martin’s father often wears to tell us that he’s going to go on doing whatever he likes, because he can.

But that’s not what you see in Zimmerman’s face, it’s not just regret, it’s pain. Zimmerman did not intend to take another human life, and he regrets that and regrets how society sees him, and he is coming to terms with doing what he had to do. There is a basic decency in his expression which cannot be photoshopped onto Martin’s face. The photoshopping can pale his skin, younger photos can make him look innocent, but nothing can make him look decent.

Zimmerman quoted Burke. Martin quoted hip hop. That was the fundamental difference between the two men, not race, but culture. Zimmerman aspired to be a good human being. Martin aspired to be street trash.

In a society under siege, there are builders and there are destroyers. Zimmerman was a builder, we will never know what Martin might have become, but he was on a path to becoming a destroyer.

We live in a culture that punishes builders and rewards destroyers. That treats the destroyer as innocent and moral, because he is untainted by knowledge and experience, because he resists the builders and spreads anarchy and chaos.

The gap between Martin and Zimmerman is the gap between the graffiti scrawler and the business owner, the occupy wall street thug and the office worker, the rap star and the composer, the activist and the entrepreneur.

Martin was just another pawn in a culture war waged by the destroyers against civilization. As a a man he gorged himself on destroyer culture, imitated it and then fatally lived it out. As a dead man, he became a rallying cry for the destroyers.