RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/01/strangest-diplomatic-initiative-ever-youve-got-a-friend.php
Let’s cut Kerry a little slack. In Vietnam he was apparently shot in the butt…and in esoteric cases that injury could result in brain damage….rsk
Strangest Diplomatic Initiative Ever: You’ve Got a Friend!

The administration has acknowledged that it erred by not participating in a meaningful way in the giant pro-free speech demonstration in Paris, so it has tried to make amends by sending John Kerry to France. Apparently thinking that he needed reinforcements to convey a full sense of the administration’s symbolic support, Kerry brought along…James Taylor.

For you youngsters, Taylor is a folk musician whom people our age listened to in 1970–a mere 45 years ago. Here is Taylor performing “You’ve Got a Friend” while Kerry looks on in a state of acute discomfort. Don’t feel obliged to watch to the end; I didn’t:

God only knows what the French made of this. Maybe James Taylor is still popular there, like Jerry Lewis. Before we mercifully draw down the curtain on this episode, let’s turn the floor over to the genius of Iowahawk, on Twitter:

During this week’s Golden Globes ceremony, Hollywood made numerous gestures in support of our freedom of expression. Referencing the computer hack of Sony Pictures in response to the film “The Interview” and the horrific murders at the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, Hollywood voiced support for fearlessly standing up for the right to insult. It is now time for Hollywood to act courageously by creating films that authentically portray the life of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad.

Opinion leaders need not get lost in balancing rights to criticize, satirize and insult with our natural calls for civility and responsible dialogue. No civilized Westerner can argue against truth and its pursuit. U.S. defamation law generally holds truth as a complete defense. It is a noble cause in itself and justice is intended to flow from it.

With Islam’s Sharia law, however, truth, like non-Muslims themselves, is subordinate to the primacy of Islam and Mohammad. Defending Mohammad’s pre-eminence at all costs has deeply implanted “war is deceit,” taqiyya and other forms of dissimulation throughout Islam; avenging the Prophet, as seen in the Hebdo murders, is Sharia’s justice.

There simply is no way to understand Islam without full comprehension of Mohammad’s life. Islam declares Mohammad the best of all Muslims; therefore a seriously engaged Muslim looks to Mohammad’s life for the best guidance on how to be a “good” Muslim. And because Mohammad is also the self-declared final prophet, no one can come after him to change, reform, or revolutionize Islam. The Quran, unlike the Bible, is not made up of stories. Rather, it comprises the words of Allah, and its verses are presented non-chronologically based on length. The Hadith, the vast collections of sayings and acts of Mohammad, also lack any context. Neither can be meaningfully understood except against the background of Mohammad’s life.

In 539 BCE, Babylonian King Belshazzar ignored the writing on the wall – as interpreted by the Prophet Daniel – and was, therefore, annihilated by the Persians (Book of Daniel, Chapter 5).

In 2015, Western civilizations must read the writing on the wall, desist from ambiguity, denial and political correctness and embrace clarity, realism and political incorrectness, in order to survive and overcome the clear and present lethal threat of Islamic takeover, which gathers momentum via demographic, political and terroristic means.

While medical ambiguity, and the failure to diagnose lethal disease, cause personal misfortune, policy-making ambiguity and denial could trigger national and international calamities.

History proves that Western ambiguity and the refusal to identify enemies – due to ignorance, gullibility, oversimplification, appeasement, delusion and wishful thinking – have taken root, yielding major strategic setbacks and painful economic and human loss. When it comes to reading the writing on the wall, Western eyesight has been far from 20:20, dominated by modern day Belshazzars, ignoring modern day Prophet Daniels.

A COMMENTARY Editorial

The jihadist siege of a kosher grocery store in eastern Paris on January 9 was not the beginning of a new threat to French Jews and the Jews of Europe. Rather, it was the culmination of a decade of crisis. And it will not be the end.

The new era of deadly anti-Semitism in France began with the January 2006 murder of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi. He was coming from a Shabbat meal with his mother when he was ambushed by a gang in a Paris slum. The gang held him captive for 24 days, during which time he wasbeaten, stabbed, burned with acid, mutilated, lit on fire, and tortured to death. Halimi’s murderers were African and North African Muslim immigrants with ties to Islamic extremists. They called themselves the Gang of Barbarians. And they chose Halimi because he was a Jew.

France’s 5 million Muslims account for 10 to 12 percent of the country’s total population. It is the largest Muslim population in Europe; it is also the most problematic. Several factors contribute to thisreality.

The first is radical Islam. Since the late-20th century, a Saudi-funded, anti-Semitic strain of Islamist radicalism has spread to all corners of the Muslim world. Many of France’s recent Muslim immigrants from North Africa have brought their Islamist and jihadist sympathies to Europe.Indeed, a 2013 poll found that a startling 27 percent of French Muslims younger than 24 support ISIS.

AS the English writer George Orwell well understood, you can invariably rely on members of the Western intelligentsia to make profoundly silly comments and to ignore difficult facts. The responses by barrister Julian Burnside and journalist/historian Paul Ham to the Islamist murders in Paris illustrate the point.

In the immediate aftermath of the most recent terrorist attacks in France, 7.30presenter Leigh Sales interviewed the Paris-based Ham. In response to the first question, Ham recounted how he had attended “the huge meeting in the Place de la Republique last night” following the attack on Charlie Hebdo . He added that this area “is the symbol of the revolutions of 1830, of 1848, of 1870 and it is the strongest, most powerful recognition of the values the French hold dear — of equality, of liberty, of fraternity”.