RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Given the terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001, the historic date of September 11, 1683 also comes clearly into focus. That was a turning point in human history: the defeat of the Islamic armies of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic caliphate by Christian forces at the gates of Vienna. From that moment until the recent times, Christian or Western powers would dominate the Muslim world. Radical Islam seeks to violently overturn that arrangement through modern savagery and continuous warfare.”

Those that assume that radical Islam is a modern phenomenon that became prominent during Bill Clinton’s tenure as president in the 1990s merely scratch the historical surface of America’s complicated political entanglement with the Middle East’s supposed “religion of peace.” In truth, the tentacles of radical Islam go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson.

Historically, Thomas Jefferson was the first U.S. president to go to war against belligerent Islam. The American Revolution from English imperialism had left the fledgling republic deeply in debt. Trade of America’s vast natural resources of lumber, animal skins and crops with Europe was the economic answer. However, European markets, a traditional mercantile system, were not open to American commodities.

William Kilpatrick is the author of Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West. Visit his website, turningpointproject.com, for more about his work and writings.

Contrary to reports in the mainstream press, Pope Francis did not call Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas “an angel of peace.” The correct translation [2] of the pope’s words is “I have thought of you: that you could be an angel of peace.”

Why, then, was it so easy to believe the initial reports? Perhaps because the initial reports seemed to align with previous papal overtures to Palestinian leaders. Pope Francis had previously called Abbas a “man of peace,” he has shown sympathy for Palestinian grievances, and other popes have given the appearance of lending legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. For example, Pope John Paul II is reported to have received PLO leader Yasser Arafat on twelve different occasions.

Arafat was a terrorist. One would think that the Vatican would have wanted to limit its contacts with him. The same goes for Abbas. He has repeatedly honored and praised Palestinian “martyrs” who have slaughtered innocent Jews. There is evidence that he helped fund the 1972 operation that killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Why is he accorded such a cordial reception at the Vatican?

It is December 2008 in Nicosia, the sun-drenched capital of Cyprus. A stocky Russian approaches a young American: “Do you know the way to the federal post office?” he asks. Except it’s not a question; it’s a prearranged password. And the American isn’t a tourist: He’s a recently discharged U.S. Army infantryman offering to sell secrets to Russians on behalf of his disgraced father, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer. Moments later, the American is being driven in a sleek sedan along ancient streets toward the Russian Embassy. Soon after that, he’s flying home to Eugene, Ore., bearing $12,000 in crisp new $100 bills.

So begins Bryan Denson’s engaging “The Spy’s Son,” a noirish thriller that happens to be true.

Sidney Blumenthal has served in many roles for Bill and Hillary Clinton, from political Svengali to opposition hit man. So it was probably inevitable that the man who whispered to reporters that Monica Lewinsky threw herself on Bill Clinton would eventually show up in Hillary’s State Department email imbroglio, and in ways that illuminate the Clinton family mores.

The New York Times reported Monday on email records showing that Mr. Blumenthal was on the payroll of the Clinton Foundation at the same time he was being paid by groups helping Mrs. Clinton’s presidential run, at the same time he was advising a U.S. business seeking Libyan contracts, at the same time he was secretly advising Secretary of State Clinton about Libya. Every top American diplomat apparently needs a good man Friday who no one else knows about.

Asian-Americans are rebelling over evidence that they are held to a much higher standard, but elite colleges deny using quotas.
Here’s hoping the next stage of the affirmative-action debate in higher education finally has arrived.

Last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding Michigan’s ban on racial preferences in public-university admissions included a passionate dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who argued that such policies benefit “racial minorities,” by which she means blacks and Hispanics. Nowhere in Justice Sotomayor’s 58-page opinion will you find any mention of how affirmative action affects Asian-Americans, the fastest-growing racial group in the country. The omission is common among defenders of campus double standards for favored minorities, and it’s starting to annoy an increasing number of Asian-Americans. This is progress.

Thanks to friend R. Lipsky for this….rsk

Saudi Arabia has started advertising for eight new executioners to deal with the escalating number of death sentences being issued in the country.

An advert was posted on the country’s civil service jobs portal calling for “religious functionaries” with no special qualifications for “executing a judgment of death”, Sputnik reported on Monday.

According to a downloadable pdf application form for the advertised job, apart from carrying out executions – usually carried out by beheading -the position would also involve carrying out amputations on people convicted of lesser offences.

I used the verb “stupefying” to describe a long process in our nation’s schools that has produced several generations of Americans, dumbed down and resulting in more than half who are functionally illiterate, nor can do math, and, as a recent headline reported “Student’s Results in Social Studies Stagnate.”

“U.S. middle-school students’ performance on social studies didn’t improve much between 2010 and 2014, federal test scores released Wednesday (April 29) show, underscoring concerns about the uniformed citizenry and workforce.” When it comes to U.S. history, the share of students scoring at or above proficiency last year was 18%, up one percentage point from 2010. In other words, over 80% failed to have a grasp on the subject, critical to every citizen’s understanding of U.S. history, its Constitution, and governance.

Ellsworth Toohey, the arch-villain of Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, meets with Peter Keating, an arch-compromiser, second-hander, and betrayer of what few personal values he had, and who has just won a lucrative architectural contest. Toohey’s chief focus, however, is not Keating, but Howard Roark, the novel’s hero. Toohey has never met him, but fears him and is planning to destroy his career in architecture and see him jailed and taking orders from his moral inferiors.

Toohey – whose physical appearance Rand had modeled on the British socialist Harold Laski – “…spoke with a kind of cautious precision. The sounds of his voice were small and dry and final, like the cracks of matches being broken.” At one point in their conversation, which Keating senses has taken an odd turn, Toohey asks him several questions about Roark.

The Democrats can run, to paraphrase Muhammad Ali’s rebuke of a timid opponent, but they can’t hide. Hillary Clinton is turning her campaign into a game of hide-and-seek, and the party is terrified. Some leading Democrats are beginning to say out loud what they have said privately for weeks.

What she thought would be a cake walk to Philadelphia and the 2016 nomination is beginning to look like a cornbread walk, and cornbread has no icing.