RUTHFULLY YOURS

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A much heralded documentary, The Flat concerns the death of the Israeli filmmaker’s 98 year old grandmother in Tel-Aviv and the revelations unveiled by this event post-mortem. Gerda Tuchler was an elegant German-Jew, married to a judge and comfortable with their long-standing friendship with a prominent Nazi propaganda minister and his wife. The Tuchlers accompanied the von Mildensteins who traveled to Palestine in the thirties where the Baron hoped to find a suitable place to dump the Jews of Germany and Europe before the more cost-effective Final Solution was found. Arnon Goldfinger, the grandson and filmmaker, is entrusted with going through the old woman’s collection of German books and memorabilia, finding photographs of Gerda and her husband vacationing with the von Mildensteins before and after the holocaust and a particularly salient newspaper article titled “A Nazi in Palestine,” recording the aforementioned trip. Complicating this already sordid picture is the disclosure that Gerda’s mother, Susi, a German Jew who visited her family in Palestine but declined to relocate from her native home, was transported to the ghetto of Riga and eventually murdered in Theresinstadt.

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2012/10/24/benghazi-from-see-no-sharia-to-ansar-al-sharia/

Followers of Ansar al-Sharia and other militias protest on September 21, 2012 in Benghazi

The Obama administration’s wall of mendacity surrounding the murderous 9/11/12 jihadist attack on our Benghazi, Libya diplomatic compound has collapsed under an avalanche of released State Department internal [2] emails [3].

Even the reliable mainstream media Obama sycophants may be compelled to report the story broken by Reuters [2] (Tuesday evening, 10/23/12). Within two hours of the attack, the State Department was aware that the jihadist group Ansar al-Sharia—declared [3] by the State Department itself to be an al Qaeda affiliate—had claimed responsibility for the raid (or more appropriately, “razzia”). These emails were disseminated [3] by the State Department to sundry “redacted national security platforms,” such as the White House Situation room, the Pentagon, the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department. An estimated 300-400 national security figures obtained [3] these emails—including persons working directly below the administration’s leading national security, military and diplomatic officials—“in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding.”

Who are Ansar al-Sharia? “AL-QAEDA IN LIBYA: A PROFILE [4]” was an August, 2012 report prepared by the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office [5], a Pentagon program office under the aegis of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. The report emphasized how Al Qaeda Senior Leadership (AQSL), working via a large, powerful, and well-established jihadist infrastructure in Libya—including, prominently, Ansar al-Sharia—sought to capitalize on the US and NATO-supported insurrection which toppled the Libyan despot Qaddafi, and fulfill its goal of making Libya part of an eventual transnational caliphate [6].

A sizable, ominous Ansar al-Sharia public rally during June, 2012 was highlighted in the August, 2012 Pentagon report [4], which also noted the unwillingness of Libya’s Sharia-supporting [7] central government to contend with these ostensibly “more radical” avatars of Sharia [8] supremacism:

In June 2012, Ansar al-Sharia staged a large-scale rally and military show of force involving dozens of military vehicles, with Islamists wearing the Afghan mujahidin’s traditional outfit. Some leaders described themselves as Islamists and called for implementation of sharia similar to that which the Taliban had implemented in Afghanistan or al-Qaeda in Somalia and Yemen. The military show of force consisted of a parade in which some 30 battalions from Benghazi, Darnah, Misrata, Al-Nufilyah, Ajdabiyah, and other Libyan towns took part in the first meeting in support of sharia in Benghazi. Islamist leaders pointed out that the aim of the military parade was to terrorize (Arabic: irhab) those who do not want to be judged by God’s law. Islamist leaders urged the Transitional National Council to clarify the identity of the state as Islamic or secular. Such a system of local affiliates might use neighborhood mosques as a support infrastructure for a religious and popular movement that could frighten politicians attempting to run on a moderate Islamic platform. …A weak Islamist-dominated central government is unlikely to confront such a radical movement, at least in the short term. The minister of religious affairs expressed his government’s weakness when he lamented the “hijacking” of mosques by extremist imams imposed by militiamen. Two of these local Islamist-oriented militias—Ansar al-Sharia and al-A’hrar Libya—are the tip of the iceberg. They broadcast typical al-Qaeda–type propaganda on the Internet, and they have adopted the black flag, which symbolizes commitment to violent jihad promoted by AQSL.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/225910
Barack Obama does not want to talk about Columbia. Not even to his good friends at the New York Times, who’ve so reliably helped him bleach away his past — a past neck-deep in the hard Left radicalism he has gussied up but never abandoned.
Why? I suspect it is because Columbia would shred his thin post-partisan camouflage.
You might think the Times would be more curious. After all, the Democrats’ presidential nominee has already lied to the Gray Lady about the origins of his relationship with Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Back in May, in a cheery profile of Obama’s early Chicago days, the Times claimed (emphasis is mine):

Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

Now look, anyone who gave five seconds of thought to that passage smelled a rat. Ayers and Dohrn are passionate radical activists who lived as fugitives for a decade. There’s no way they held a political coming-out party for someone who was unknown to them. Obviously, they already knew him well enough by then to feel very comfortable. They might have been sympathetic to a relative stranger, but sponsoring such a gathering in one’s living room is a strong endorsement.
And now, even the Times now knows it’s been had. In this past weekend’s transparent whitewashing of the Obama/Ayers tie, the paper claimed that the pair first met earlier in 1995, “at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper[.]” That storyline is preposterous too, but it is also a marked revision of the paper’s prior account (which, naturally, reporter Scott Shane fails to mention).
Why the change? The tacit concession was forced by Stanley Kurtz and Steve Diamond — whom the Times chooses not to acknowledge but who hover over Shane’s sunny narrative like a dark cloud.
Despite all manner of stonewalling by Obama, Ayers and their allies, these commentators have doggedly pursued information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That’s the $150+ million “education reform” piggy bank substantially controlled in the nineties by Ayers and Obama, who doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist radicals — radicals who, like their patrons, understood that control over our institutions, and especially our schools, was a surer and less risky way to spread their revolution than blowing up buildings and mass-murdering American soldiers. As Diamond observes, in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!”
Be clear on that much: Whether clothed as a terrorist or an academic, Ayers has made abundantly clear in his public statements, both before and after he established a working relationship and mutual admiration society with Obama, that he remains a revolutionary fueled by hatred of the United States. And while Obama now ludicrously pleads ignorance about Ayers’s terrorism — the terrorism that made the unabashed Ayers an icon of the Left — understand that this rabid anti-Americanism is the common denominator running through Obama’s orbit of influences.

NO URL: THE AUTHOR IS AN E-PAL
With all the strategies, political maneuverings, and desire to look presidential, Governor Romney passed up a plethora of issues he could have brought up or responded to the President with. Whether right or wrong in doing so, only the polls in the upcoming days and ultimately the election in 13 days will determine.
For example, as he did during the second debate, President Obama once again bitingly brought up investments the Governor may have made in Chinese companies. Not taking the bait, Romney took the high road and refused to get in the mud with Obama over this attack on his investments. He had already responded to what some consider a cheap shot during the second debate.
Like Obama, Romney’s money is controlled by a trust and has no control of the day by day stewardship of that trust or which global companies they’re invested in. If the Governor had wished to go down that road, a lesser man might have reminded the President of some his own investments:

China Life Insurance-The largest life insurance company in China, just one of several Chinese based holdings in Obama’s pension plan.
Apple-The tech company’s Chinese manufacturer Foxconn has come under increasing scrutiny for its unfair labor practices.
Domino’s Pizza-The Company’s founder, Thomas Monaghan, a devout Catholic that continuously supports anti-abortion groups.
Exxon/Mobil-One of several large energy companies in the President’s pension plan. Not exactly a company you would expect a supposed environmentally conscious Obama to own.
Halliburton-This company, once run by Obama’s arch enemy, former Vice President Dick Cheney is often criticized by the President for no-bid governmental contracts.
ConAgra-The pension fund includes shares in the food conglomerate, which makes many kinds of prepared snacks foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt, like Reddi Wip. In other words, everything that Michelle Obama has actively campaigned against.

10 Companies Inside Obama’s Pension Fund
How Romney held back from asking the President about the $50,000-$100,000 he invested in these companies which are counter to his professed political positions is testament to the Governor’s self control. Interestingly, according to an article published in the Huffington Post; not exactly a right wing publication, “Awkward! Obama’s Pension Invests in Sheldon Adelson, the Super Rich Guy Funding Romney ,” the President and the First Lady have also invested in a Vanguard index fund and has nearly $5,000,000 in cash investments.
If behind in the race rather than questionably having the wind to his back, Romney might have inquired: “Mr. President how did a Community Organizer, in effect a social worker, acquire such wealth.” “Furthermore sir, I’m curious. In 1981 as a 20 years old sophomore in College you managed to travel to India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Africa. Where did you get the money for such extensive travel?”

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas102512.php3?printer_friendly

After watching the third presidential debate, are you clear on America’s foreign policy? I thought not. That’s because there appears to be no singular foreign policy, rather a series of foreign policies, which must be tailored to fit each nation.

I expected Mitt Romney to go after President Obama on his most recent foreign policy failure, the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed, including the U.S. ambassador. The president had no explanation as to why there was inadequate security in Benghazi, preferring instead to say only that we are “going after the killers.” Romney refused to press him on it. Some may have viewed this as a missed opportunity, but I think it was designed to show Romney’s restraint and to counter the “do you want to get us into another Middle East war?” charge.

One of Romney’s better lines was, “we can’t kill our way out of this mess,” meaning terrorism and the Middle East, but he failed to go for the political “kill;” instead he agreed with the president several times. Possibly for the same reasons I mentioned?

When moderator Bob Schieffer asked the ultimate question, “What is America’s role in the world?” neither candidate’s answer was revealing beyond their campaign speech bromides.

What was surprising was the reaction to the debate by some in the “liberal media,” which has been in the tank for Mr. Obama since he began running for president. Some of them seemed to retreat from the worshipful attitude they have displayed toward the president since beginning four years ago to assist his self-promotion as a messianic deliverer from our national sins.

Former White House aide David Gergen said on CNN, “I think Mitt Romney did something that was extremely important to his campaign tonight and that was he passed the commander-in-chief test.” Indeed, that was all he had to do, much like Ronald Reagan in his 1980 debates with Jimmy Carter. If voters want to “fire” a president, they want to be assured his replacement is up to the job. Chuck Todd of NBC News said on MSNBC, “…the president’s got bigger problems than trying to disqualify Mitt Romney now. The president has to re-qualify himself for a second term.”

http://www.examiner.com/article/president-s-policy-denies-purple-heart-to-fort-hood-terrorist-attack-victims Unfortunately for these brave Soldiers, the circumstances surrounding their deaths and wounds were that they ran didn’t fit into President Obama’s narrative that terrorism perpetrated by Muslim extremists doesn’t exist. On November 5th, 2009, Major Nidal Hasan was standing among his fellow Soldiers at the Personnel Processing Center on Fort Hood, Texas. The center […]

http://vinienco.com/2012/10/24/obama-betrays-victims-fort-hood-terror-william-murray/ Obama betrays victims of Fort Hood terror Will Gov. Mitt Romney reverse the decision of President Barack Hussein Obama and issue the Purple Heart to the victims of the jihad attack on Fort Hood in 2009? The day before the general election, Nov 5, is the third anniversary of the jihad attack by Maj. […]

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/24/obamas-nameless-war-with-a-nam

Islamism as such might as well not exist — except inside his Administration.

In the final presidential debate on October 22, President Barack Obama spoke briefly about the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on U.S. officials and personnel in Benghazi. He outlined why the U.S. had gone into Libya before the attack. He outlined the answers he is still seeking following the attack. But he did not say why this terrorist attack had occurred or why the U.S. had been ill-prepared to meet it in what is, after all, a volatile city alive with militias recently freed from dictatorial rule. Nor did he tell us why his Administration strenuously avoided calling it a terrorist attack for two weeks, preferring instead to speak of a spontaneous assault in the course of a demonstration of Muslims offended by an anti-Muhammad video.

Mitt Romney did not pursue the subject, so we got no closer to the heart of the matter, yet the implication of this apologetic gloss of the first two weeks is obvious: Ambassador Chris Stevens was not murdered by Islamists who hate America and its allies and mean to attack us again; he was the victim of the local reaction to one of the products of American freedom of speech. Once the attack was acknowledged as the handiwork of terrorists, however, followers of al Qaeda, virtually the only officially acknowledged extremists, were cited as the perpetrators. And here lies the problem: the Obama Administration will not acknowledge that an extreme and violent segment of the Muslim world ranging far beyond the confines of al Qaeda is at war with us. To do so would have required him to explain why the U.S. had been empowering Islamists, including in Libya, some of whom may have been responsible for leaking information that enabled the terrorists to locate and kill the Americans.

Just why and how has this refusal to name the Islamist enemy come to characterize the four years of Obama’s presidency? Because President Obama agrees with the view that Islamists as a force in world affairs are not be shunned and that wisdom dictates coming to terms with those among them who are hot engaged in active hostilities at this moment. The idea is defective, because common to all Islamists is Muslim supremacism and the undeviating pursuit to subvert the non-Islamic world.

Yet, since Barack Obama took office, Islamist antagonists, other than those involved in active hostilities like al Qaeda and the Taliban, whose hostility cannot be denied or ignored, have gone unnamed. Presidential statements on the anniversaries of the 1983 killing of 242 U.S. servicemen in Lebanon by Hizballah or the 1979 seizure by Islamist students of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, to name two examples, failed to even mention the perpetrators of these acts, as it had become U.S. policy to propitiate both parties.

Indeed, the Obama Administration has refused to associate terrorists attacking America with Islam. Administration officials have spent four years speaking of particular terrorists at home and abroad as isolated “extremists,” even when Islamist terrorist connections (for example, between Fort Hood sniper Nidal Hassan and the American-born al Qaeda in Yemen leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, who advised him) were readily traceable.

In a May 2010 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney-General Eric Holder only grudgingly and hypothetically conceded that radical Islam could be the inspiration for some individuals involved in recent acts of terrorism, before immediately asserting that such people were acting on a “version of Islam that is not consistent with the teachings of it.” Similarly, in March 2011, Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough told a Muslim audience that extremists in their midst “falsely claim to be fighting in the name of Islam.” When Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, held hearings on homegrown radical Islam the same month, the Administration publicly opposed it.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/foreign-policy-debate-too-much-agreement/article/2511521 In Monday night’s debate, Mitt Romney’s mission was to demonstrate the clear contrasts between his foreign policy and President Obama’s. Knowing this, Obama’s strategy was to show that Romney’s foreign policy ideas were either wrong or not very different from his own. Through most of the 90-minute debate, Romney’s policies left him open to […]

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2012/10/23/interview-on-presidential-foreign-policy-debate-with-americas-morning-news/ Interview on Presidential “Foreign Policy Debate” with America’s Morning News Posted By Andrew Bostom On October 23, 2012 This morning (10/23/12), during an interview with John McCaslin and Dana Mills of America’s Morning News [1] I pointed out that the final Presidential debate, ostensibly devoted to “Foreign policy,” (predictably [2]) did not address jihadism […]