RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/syria-after-assad/

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Shekoh Abbas, the leader of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria. He has joined with U.S. Syrian Sunni reformer Dr. M. Zhudi Jasser to advance the cause of Syrian democracy via the Syrian Democratic Coalition.

FP: Sherkoh Abbas, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about what might happen in Syria when and if Assad falls.

What do you see as following the overthrow of Assad?

Abbas: Thank you for having me, Jamie.

Basically if Assad goes, for sure it will be civil war, but if we wait too long there will be much more bloodshed or full-scale civil war. It has already started, in my opinion. There has been cleansing and fighting going on between Alawites and Sunni.

Compare the situation to Lebanon. Lebanon used to be a place for proxy war where the regimes would fight each other. However, the quicker we jump into an inclusive way out of what is going on, the better it is for Syrians and the international community. We see federalism in Syria as an inclusive way-out because it will address secular needs of stakeholders from Sunnis, Kurds, Alawites, Christians and other minorities, which will accelerate regime change in an orderly way.

Syria needs to be a workable state that is inclusive of certain stakeholders, not a failed state as it is now. This is an opportunity for the West to do things right, build a successful state, and assure that Syria doesn’t move into full scale civil war. Stakeholders may include Russia maintaining a presence in the coastal area, while the development ensues of an Alawite State, Kurdish State on the north side, and Aleppo and Damascus States for the rest of Syria. This will minimize or prevent proxy wars in our view because stakeholders will not be forced to submit to a strong central government that could oppress them.

The only way to remove support from the regime is to create an Alawite region or state and to separate the Alawites and their supporters as a people from their small presence in the regime. The solution is working with all groups in an inclusive approach and by promoting support for federalism or confederation for the above states/regions. Otherwise, we see there is a full civil war that can only get worse around the corner.

Folks from the U.S. State Department, Turkey, Qatar, and Gulf countries are currently supporting Islamist groups who seek another dictatorship, but this is not an option for Syria. These folks want a strong man and one address to go to for dealing with Syria, but the best thing is to find a way out that and address the interest of the Syrians, Russians, Europeans, the U.S., and regional counties, including Israel. Furthermore, there needs to be the inclusion of the interests of all minorities such as Kurds, Alawaite, Druz and Christians, otherwise it won’t work.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/israel-contemplates-what-if-america-doesnt-come-through/

In Israel’s internal debate for and against attacking Iran’s nuclear program, the basic dividing line is between those who put their trust in the United States/international community to take care of the problem and those who do not.

President Shimon Peres—supposed to be a figurehead who keeps out of politics—recently told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that “it’s clear to us that we can’t do it alone…. It’s clear to us we have to proceed together with America. There are questions about coordination and timing, but as serious as the danger is, this time at least we are not alone.”

But what if America were to shy off from attacking Iran, or decide it was not in its interest? Not to worry, said Peres: “I am convinced this is an American interest. I am convinced [President Obama] recognizes the American interest and he isn’t saying this just to keep us happy. I have no doubt about it, after having had talks with him.”

And former Mossad chief Meir Dagan became an international media hit by saying an Israeli attack would be “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” A few months ago he and some colleagues, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, went so far as to carefully advise the international community how to use sanctions to put a full stop to Iran’s program.

Although Peres is never quiet, Dagan at least has been quiet lately. Is he having second thoughts? One doesn’t know, but there would be good reasons for him to have them.

On Wednesday AP reported that Iran’s Asian oil-buying markets are keeping it economically afloat—and more—despite the sanctions. “When Iran welcomes world leaders to a world gathering [of the Non-Aligned Movement] next week,” AP notes, “few will get a grander reception than India’s prime minister.” That’s because, while

[o]il purchases by India, China and South Korea—which decided this week to resume Iranian imports—have not covered Tehran’s losses…they have given Iran a critical cushion that brings in tens of millions of dollars in revenue each day and means that Iran has dropped only one ranking, to stand as OPEC’s third-largest producer.

The report goes on to say that “The U.S. has pressed hard for Iran’s top customers—China, India, Japan and South Korea—to scale back on crude imports, with some success…. But Washington cannot push its key Asian trading partners too fast or too aggressively and risk economic rifts.”

It then quotes an expert who says: “Despite Western sanctions…China and Japan will remain major importers of Iranian crude oil and so will India.”

So much for sanctions? At least, it seems clear that Israel shouldn’t be putting its life on the line out of a totally unwarranted assumption that they’ll work.

Meanwhile the International Atomic Energy Agency—which is supposed to make sure rogue states don’t develop nuclear weapons—is resuming talks with Iran on Friday. The ostensible goal is to gain access to Parchin, the site 20 miles southeast of Tehran where—according to Western assessments—Iran has been carrying out explosives tests relevant to nuclear weapons.

The problem is that since last November, when the IAEA fingered Parchin as a problematic site, Iran has never granted the agency access to it.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/j-christian-adams/fact-or-fiction-1001-muslim-inventions-comes-to-washington-d-c/

National Geographic Explorer’s Hall in Washington D.C. has hosted some of the most prestigious exhibits in America. Previous exhibits have included the Chinese terracotta warriors, as well as the James Caird, the lifeboat Sir Ernest Shackleton miraculously sailed from Antarctica to South Georgia Island in 1916. Currently it is hosting a curious exhibit through February 2013 entitled “1001 Inventions: Discover the Golden Age of Muslim Civilization.” This high tech, slickly produced exhibit explicitly seeks to debunk the “myth” that the dark ages were dark.

The exhibit purports to provide examples of innovations from Muslim civilization, and some of the claims may come as a surprise to those familiar with the Wright Brothers or Yuri Gagarin.

I recently visited “1001 Inventions” which was housed on the same floor as a fantastic Titanic exhibit. I purchased entry to the museum at a ticket booth staffed by Rebecca Head, a National Geographic employee. Perhaps assuming I was heading to see the Titanic exhibit, Head pushed attendance at 1001 Inventions – “There is a really great exhibit on Muslim inventions you should see.”

The exhibit begins with star power – a short movie starring Academy Award-winner Ben Kingsley. Kingsley plays a librarian who faces a trio of young uniformed (presumably British) students seeking information about “the dark ages.”

Kingsley’s character bristles at the children’s characterization, critical of those “filling your head with such nonsense and ripping down the good of former civilizations.”

But “everyone knows the Greeks and Romans invented everything!” one child replies.

Kingsley’s librarian doesn’t equivocate – “some of the most important discoveries” were made by “Muslim civilizations.”

Harry Potter-style magic takes over, and Kingsley is transformed with beautiful flourish from an English librarian into the exotic turban wearing historical figure of Al-Jazari. The children are enthralled, both on the screen, and in the audience.

Al-Jazari informs the three children that a grand civilization “that stretched from Spain to China” was responsible “for some of the most important discoveries” in the world. These include, according to Kingsley’s transformed Al-Jazari, devices such as the camera.

And herein lies the most fascinating characteristic of the entire exhibit – the slipperiness of its language. Indeed, language throughout the exhibit, as we shall see, becomes a way to trick attendees. Cleverly chosen words nudge readers toward unsupported conclusions. Myth mingles with science. Rumor becomes history.

Consider the “invention” of the camera. Al-Jazari, portrayed masterfully and magically on screen by Kingsley, says “he” was responsible for explaining “how our eyes work” and developed camera obscura. Even if it is historically accurate that Al-Jazari pioneered camera obscura, the slithery language of the screenplay generates an inference that Al-Jazari is somehow legitimately involved in the chain of inventions culminating in my Nikon 35mm.

I was reminded of George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language when he wrote: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

Kingsley’s Al-Jazari fulfills Orwell’s warning in the film when he introduces another Muslim inventor, Abbas Ibn Firnas, who “dared to dream man could fly 1000 years before the Wright Brothers.”

Outside the theater, Firnas is featured in a flight exhibit. Firnas is “said to be the first person who tried to fly. His first attempt which has passed into legend took place when he leapt from the minaret of the Great Mosque in Cordoba. Equipped with a glider with wooden struts, he managed to fly and landed more or less unharmed. [His] next flight was more ambitious. From the top of a nearby hill, he launched himself and his flying machine, apparently gliding for some distance before falling, a problem blamed on the lack of a tail.”

Notice all of the tricks of language. He was the first “who tried to fly,” and “passed into legend,” “more or less unharmed,” the “flying machine,” (implying moving parts), and “apparently gliding for some distance.” Naturally he also diagnosed that that cause of his failure was the want of a tail. The exhibit neglects to inform us about whether he applied this fix to his “machine.”

The exhibit also features an interactive game for children where they can help Firnas fly by flapping their arms.

This all might seem harmless, but consider the argument I had with my 8-year-old after leaving the exhibit. She was convinced that the Wright Brothers were not the first to fly, and instead it was Firnas launched from the mosque at Cordoba a millennium ago. This would not be the only instance when thought corrupted the language of the exhibit, which in turn corrupted thought, at least among the more impressionable.

The short introductory film with Kingsley playing Al-Jazari goes on to tell the three on-screen students (and the many children in the theatre) that the 1001 inventions include medical devices, ideas or unspecified things which somehow led to the compass and GPS satellite navigation and the very Industrial Revolution itself.

Al-Jazari hands the children a book called “1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World” and urges them plainly to “spread the word.”

Nietzsche was not only a fierce critic of European anti-Semitism, but his quest to create the Übermensch was the inspiration behind the Zionist project to mold the New Jew.
Nietzsche blamed the Jews for giving birth to Christianity, whose morality praising weakness he opposed. But he wrote that the Jews themselves have a history of great passions, virtues, decisions, struggles and victories that flow into great men and deeds.

On August 25, 1900, the man who famously declared the death of God died. As the body of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was laid into its grave three days later, one of the mourners declared that one day the world would consider Nietzsche’s name sacred. He spoke more from bereavement than wisdom: Nietzsche himself had written that he was afraid people might one day make him holy.
When I asked Israel Eldad to sign his translation of one of the philosopher’s books, Eldad, the extremely ideological former commander of Lehi, surprisingly quoted from Nietzsche: “If you want to follow me, be loyal to yourselves.”
Vladimir Jabotinsky, supreme commander of the Irgun in the 1930s, urged his followers to carry but “one flag” – that of Zionism. Yet he wrote that he himself refused to be branded or categorized but preferred to think freely as a Nietzschean “superman” would.
Conferences have been held in Jerusalem devoted to Nietzsche’s metaphysics, epistemology, science, and theory of this or of that. But arguably, Nietzsche’s greatest influence was his character.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/314851

Good news for Senator Harry Reid: If he’s a little bored while waiting for Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, there are plenty of other elected officials — in his own party, to boot! — who merit the same eyebrow-raising he’s directed at the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. The Senate majority leader has expressed consternation about the fact that Romney has some money in offshore accounts, which probably reduces his tax burden. According to the Huffington Post, Reid quipped, “Most Americans don’t have the benefit of Swiss bank accounts or tax shelters in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.” And Gawker just published more than 950 pages of Bain documents related to Romney’s offshore holdings, saying they detail his use of “exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy.”

Some of the “preposterously wealthy” Americans who do use such “schemes” include Senators Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), and John Kerry (D., Mass.). That should be music to Reid’s ears, since his transparency crusade might be a little easier to pull off within his own party.

He could start with Feinstein. OpenSecrets.org lists her as the seventh-wealthiest senator, with a net worth between $44 million and $94 million, according to her latest disclosure forms. And, just like Romney, she keeps a portion of it in offshore accounts. Her most recent reports say she has an unspecified amount (at least $1 million) “held independently by the spouse or independent child” in Coral Growth Investments, Ltd., in St. Peter Port, Guernsey. Guernsey, a tax haven, is a small island in the English Channel that early this year drew the ire of a British Labour-party leader for helping wealthy Brits dodge taxes. The California senator also has between $500,000 and $1 million in a fund called Cevian Capital II L.L.C. in Jersey, another of the Channel Islands. According to her latest forms, that holding generated between $15,000 and $50,000 in capital gains, interest, and dividends. Feinstein has another $1,000 to $15,000 in Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar that is an up-and-coming tax haven.

Like Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal is on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Also like Feinstein, he has funds sheltered from taxes — $15,000 to $50,000 in a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands, to be exact. That might not sound like a huge number, but his most recent disclosure forms say he made $50,000 to $100,000 from the fund in capital gains, dividends, and interest.

Lautenberg appears to be in the same boat. The New Jerseyan is the fifth-wealthiest senator, with a net worth that, in 2006, was six times the Senate’s average. His most recent forms show that his wife’s family has between $500,000 and $1 million in Port Louis, Mauritius. The money is in a real-estate private-equity fund that does its actual investing in India, and the earnings it generates are subject to taxes, as one of his representatives told National Review Online.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314858/virtues-premium-support-deroy-murdock

‘Governor Romney now owns the Republican, Ryan budget that puts millionaires ahead of Medicare and the middle class,” House minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California recently snapped.

“By picking Representative Paul Ryan, Governor Romney has doubled down on his commitment to gut Social Security and end Medicare as we know it,” Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada snarled.

Pelosi and Reid know better. The Medicare-reform proposal of presumptive GOP running-mate Paul Ryan is precisely as extreme as the health plan available today to every member of Congress. Ryan envisions average seniors’ being able to enjoy Capitol Hill–style medical options. This itself, however, would be a choice. Seniors who oppose choice in health coverage will be 100 percent welcome to remain within traditional Medicare.

Ryan’s “far-Right” Medicare reform is co-sponsored by Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon liberal Democrat (2010 Americans for Democratic Action rating: 100 percent). Unlike most Democrats, Wyden understands that if Medicare continues to traverse today’s path, by 2024 it will tumble into a canyon.

“Paul Ryan shares my belief that we don’t hold election certificates to sit on the sidelines, and that the only way to tackle some of the big challenges facing our nation is to work together on big solutions,” Wyden said as he and Ryan (2010 ADA rating: 0 percent) unveiled their legislation last December. “Paul has also long shared my view that the best way to hold down health costs is to give all Americans the ability to hire and fire their insurance company.”

Wyden-Ryan would do just that, although no time soon.

“Americans currently over the age of 55 would see no changes to the structure of their benefits,” their bill summary states. “Starting in 2022, Medicare would begin offering seniors a choice among Medicare-approved private plans competing alongside a traditional Medicare plan.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444443504577599120307000312.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion

Dr. Coburn, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, served on the “Bowles-Simpson” National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. He is the author of “The Debt Bomb” (Thomas Nelson, 2012).

Coburn: The Truth About Ryan and His Critics
First Obama rejected the ‘grand bargain’ of his own Bowles-Simpson commission. Then he turned around and ridiculed the Wisconsin congressman’s comprehensive alternative.

The more voters learn about Congressman Paul Ryan’s leadership style and his thoughtful and creative approach to solving problems, the more they will decide that the Romney-Ryan ticket looks presidential and electable. That’s why there has been a coordinated effort in recent days to ramp up not just the “Mediscare” rhetoric against Mr. Ryan, but to depict him as a partisan ideologue who was instrumental in derailing a grand bargain on the deficit. This line of attack is cynical and, most of all, false.

First, Paul Ryan didn’t force President Obama to abandon the budget recommendations of his own 2010 deficit commission, known as Bowles-Simpson. Mr. Obama’s decision to punt on deficit reduction—and then to ridicule Mr. Ryan’s plan to address the deficit—offended and disappointed Republicans and Democrats alike.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444812704577605802637698824.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond
By MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY

Conventional wisdom holds that Connecticut Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon—a political neophyte in a famously Democratic stronghold—has no chance of victory in November. But a Rasmussen poll released Tuesday suggests otherwise. At the very least Mrs. McMahon seems to be making it a horse race.

The Rasmussen sample, which surveyed 500 likely voters, gave the Republican from Fairfield County 49% of the vote against 46% for the heavily favored Democrat candidate, Congressman Chris Murphy. That three percent spread is the first time Mrs. McMahon has edged out her opponent in a poll, though she has been narrowing the gap for months. The Real Clear Politics average of polls, since the end of May, now favors Mr. Murphy by a measly spread of 2.6%.

The Rasmussen poll is also the first major poll released since Mrs. McMahon became the official Republican candidate, decisively beating former Republican Congressman Chris Shays in the Aug. 14 primary. Mr. Shays went down to defeat partly because his record in the House was considered too moderate for many primary voters. But Mrs. McMahon also spent heavily to crush him. The Los Angeles Times reported that the bill during primary season was “at least $12 million, much of it from her own pocket.” The former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) executive has deep pockets and she is not afraid to shell it out. In her failed 2010 bid to win a Senate seat, she used almost $50 million of her own money.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/08/cutting-khazar-crap.html

ARTHUR KOESTLER, THE ERUDITE AND BRILLIANT WRITER WAS ONCE A MARXIST AND BECAME A FIERCE CRITIC OF COMMUNISM. HIS “DARKNESS AT NOON” IS A MASTERPIECE IN DISCLOSING THE MAD AND FANATIC VIOLENCE OF THE STALINISTS. HE WAS ALSO AN EARLY MILITANT ZIONIST WHO THEN TURNED ON ISRAEL AND ZIONISM AND IN 1976 PUBLISHED “THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE” PROMOTING THE CANARD THAT ASHKENAZI JEWS HAD NO LINEAL ANCESTRAL TIE TO ISRAEL WHICH SERVES THE PALARAB CAUSE SO WELL…..RSK

On their website Australians For Palestine make a laughing stock of themselves by putting up that map I blogged about yesterday, describing it (with an accompanying story from Facebook about some pesky “Zionists” who took offence at it) as a map of 1700, but that’s not the only lie that Australians For Palestine have swallowed and perpetuated.Elsewhere on the website the organisation (which incidentally does not baulk at reproducing articles from the antisemitic Redress site) quotes extracts from Encyclopaedia of the Palestine Problem by the late Issa Nakhleh, one of which states:

“The Khazars are a people of Turkish origin who lived in the kingdom of Khazaristan in the south of Russia. They were converted to Judaism in the 9th century A.D. Approximately 90% of the Jews of today are of Khazar origin and have no ethnic or historical relationship with Palestine.”

It”s the final sentence in that passage that’s the mendacious one (though the impression that Nakhleh gives, that the Khazars in their entirety embraced Judaism, is misleading nonsense too).

That complex intellectual Arthur Koestler sure left a poisoned legacy with his The Thirteenth Tribe (1976), for, as was obvious the moment it appeared, it was manna to Israel’s enemies everywhere.

Reportedly, Koestler believed that if it could be shown that European Jewry descends not from Biblical Semites but from the Khazars, antisemitism would disappear. I wondered at the time, and I still wonder, whether the thesis that he pursued so avidly was rooted in some psychological anxiety regarding his own identity. Might the man with the magyarised Jewish background be satisfying a personal quest born of some anxiety in boyhood to assure himself that, like the Magyars themselves, he too was of Turkic stock?

PRESBYTERIANS FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE CITE AMERICA-ISRAEL FRIENDSHIP LEAGUE’S “CRITICAL ROLE” IN DEFEAT OF BDS/APARTHEID RESOLUTIONS

Reverend Dr. William Harter Calls 2012 Meeting of Presbyterian General Assembly “Intense”

New York, August 23, 2012: In a letter addressed to Kenneth Bialkin, Chairman of the America Israel Friendship League, the Reverend Dr. William Harter, co-convener of the Presbyterians For Middle East Peace, summarized the results of several votes cast during the 2012 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, held in Pittsburgh in July. The Reverend Dr. Harter said the role played by the AIFL was “absolutely central and critical” in the defeat of the Divestment and “Apartheid” overtures proposed at the recent PC USA meeting. “The AIFL’s support and investment – moral, spiritual, and financial – and the personal presence and counsel of the League’s leadership were invaluable.”

Harter noted that nine of the PFMEP members present in Pittsburgh had participated in a delegation of Presbyterian clergy who had traveled to Israel as part of a group sponsored by AIFL. Among those was Reverend David Berge, Associate Pastor for Youth from Ojai, California, whom Dr. Harter characterized as “eloquent, both in committee hearings and at the plenary.” Harter called the work of The Reverend William (Bill) Borror “invaluable, both in his testimony and in strategic planning.” The critical logistical support and “very effective” discussions with commissioners led by the Reverend Dr. John Wimberley, PFMEP’s co-convener, and all the members of the PFMEP were “crucial.”

“Our journey to Israel equipped the representatives with essential knowledge and experience,” said the Pastor Emeritus. “This year’s struggle was the most intense I have experienced in 42 years of attending General Assemblies. The votes were very close, but voices of reason prevailed. The intercessory prayers of many, many individuals and congregations were answered. Finally we must recognize that this result was achieved b’Ezrat HaShem – with the Help of G-d. His name was, and is, glorified as we continue to give thanks for His miraculous power and compassion.”

Bialkin, speaking on behalf of the AIFL, said “the efforts and success of Dr. Harter and each of our colleagues are deeply appreciated. We look forward to evolving, continued positive associations with Presbyterian Church USA leaders and members. “

Kenneth Bialkin Harley Lippman

Chairman President