RUTHFULLY YOURS

Seems the West will do anything these days to avoid a confrontation with Vladimir Putin.

Oleksander Turchynov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national defense council, told the country’s parliament something startling last week. He said that there were 8,500 Russian regular troops now deployed in eastern Ukraine and that another 52,000 were poised just on the other side of its eastern border.

The figures are dramatic—and so much larger than what has been reported during the months of Russian attempts to destabilize Ukraine, while Vladimir Putin ’s denials of his troops’ presence continue with stubborn ridiculousness. I asked a Western security expert if the numbers sounded plausible.

A prosecutor who fingered Iran dies the day before he was to tell all.

Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman was set to deliver proof to the Argentine Congress Monday of an alleged cover-up by President Cristina Kirchner of Iran’s responsibility in the 1994 terrorist attack on a Buenos Aires Jewish community center. Hours before the hearing, Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment.
Argentine security officials said a .22 caliber pistol and one shell were found near the body. Within hours the government’s secretary of security declared Nisman’s death an apparent suicide. The coroner hasn’t made a final ruling but the timing of his death is cause for suspicion. Last week he filed a criminal complaint alleging that Mrs. Kirchner and foreign minister Hector Timerman conspired to bury the truth about the bombing of the Jewish center, which killed 85, in exchange for deals to sell food to Tehran and buy its oil.

The Fifth Republic has been a good home for Jews. A Sixth Republic may not be so hospitable.

Should French Jews move out? Does it make sense for a community that, in this century, has lost roughly 10 people to jihad in France, to pack up and go to Israel—where jihadis have claimed more than 1,000 Jewish lives? Haven’t the leaders of the Fifth Republic demonstrated in word and deed that they are committed to the protection of Jewish property and life?

The answer to that last question is yes, they have. The problem isn’t the Fifth Republic, in which French Jews have, on the whole, thrived. The problem is the arrival, sooner or later, of the Sixth. Which is why French Jews need to leave sooner rather than later, despite the disruption and risk, while the exits are not blocked and the way is still open.

In any litany of the failures of policy of the Obama Administration, the question of Guantánamo ranks high on the list.

The Bush Administration, in the white heat of post-9/11, absentmindedly improvised a solution to problem of the capture of prisoners of war–but in a war against a non-state entity. It chose an extra-legal method since Supreme Court decisions have set a precedent that non-citizens are entitled to the same legal rights as citizens under the constitution. And since the nationality of the party with which the U.S. was at war could not be identified, these were a new kind of POW, who (for lack of a better rubric) fell under the rubric of criminals.

Dismissing criticism of the creed that spawns so many fulminators, fanatics and public dangers as mere prejudice ignores Islam’s history, its embarrassment in failing to fulfill Divine admonitions to dominate and a scripturally endorsed contempt for rival religions. Hotheads and moderates alike, this is what Islam believes-the former simply exalt their faith with action

* * *Between people formed within “Western culture” and those in “the world of Islam” there is and has long been much fear, mistrust, anxiety and resentment -some of it born of incomprehension (and therefore “remediable” simply by the provision of facts, mere information), and some, even much, of it born not so much of an ignorance (that simple facts can dispel) as a vague memory of an adversarial relationship, even of hostilities.

On both sides, non-Muslim and Muslim alike are heirs, although differently, to a long history of historical rivalry for world ascendancy between civilizations representing the second and third “successor” variants of the unfolding Abrahamic faith tradition of ethical prophetic monotheism. For a thousand years these two rivals, these two organizing frameworks for world order, faced each other across the Mediterranean – and for much of that time the world of Islam was the more powerful, far-reaching and culturally accomplished.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “.
It is difficult to write satire in a political-media environment that is delusional and corrupt. Satire is a comparative art, where, ultimately, truth is the basis of that comparison. When everything is a lie and reality is absurd, the similes and metaphors of satire lose their impact.

Conservative movement leaders have published a Citizen’s Mandate, which outlines initiatives they want Republicans in Congress to take in order to “stop” Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America,” something they say the American people made clear in the 2014 midterm elections with such decisive GOP victories.

According to Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle, the major bullet points that the conservative leaders say the citizenry expects of Republicans include: an end to Obama’s “promised ‘Fundamental Transformation’ of the country,” a stop to overreaches by the executive branch, a restoration of “Constitutional balance of power among the three branches of government,” for Republicans to “bring an end to the perennially unpopular Affordable Care Act,” to stop “the President’s Executive Amnesty initiatives,” while holding “the Executive branch accountable for its myriad abuses of power and its national security failures both foreign and domestic” and a new beginning that puts “the interests of the United States of America first among nations.”

AKCAKALE, Turkey — For the wife of the gunman accused of killing four people at a kosher super market in Paris 10 days ago, the escape from questioning about complicity in the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks was relatively easy.

Once Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, got to Turkey, she followed the path of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other European jihadi volunteers before her – into the self-declared Islamic State.

Aided by smugglers in the Turkish border town of Akcakale, and several companions, she walked through a disused border crossing on Jan. 8 and into the Syrian town of Tal Abyad, which has been an Islamic State stronghold for months.

Note: The purpose of this two-part article is to examine whether Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority, is really as moderate is we have been led to believe. Part 1 will be a straightforward analysis of Fatah’s own official symbols to determine whether Fatah is really moderate (or not). Part 2 will be a chronological review and analysis of recent statements and actions of Mahmoud Abbas and/or the current Fatah leadership to help further answer the question “Is Fatah is really moderate?”

Introduction

Why is this question about Fatah even important? We’ve been hearing a lot in the news lately about Fatah and/or Mahmoud Abbas, including 1) the on-again/off-again unification of Fatah and Hamas, 2) the ongoing efforts at the United Nations to create a Palestinian State, and 3) recent announcements that the Palestinians intend to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Moderate or not, the influence of Fatah vis-à-vis Israel will be dramatic in 2015 and beyond. Clearly, this is important not only for the future stability of Israel, the “Two-State Solution” and the entire Middle East, but for American (and the West) as well.

More specifically, why is it so important for America and the West to understand the long- and short-term strategy and tactics of Fatah? Because on March 21, 2013, President Obama stated, “Of course, Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with anyone who is dedicated to its destruction. But while I know you have had differences with the [Fatah-controlled] Palestinian Authority, I believe that you do have a true partner in President Abbas.”

A 120-page research paper entitled “No-Go Zones in the French Republic: Myth or Reality?” documented dozens of French neighborhoods “where police and gendarmerie cannot enforce the Republican order or even enter without risking confrontation, projectiles, or even fatal shootings.”

In October 2011, a 2,200-page report, “Banlieue de la République” (Suburbs of the Republic) found that Seine-Saint-Denis and other Parisian suburbs are becoming “separate Islamic societies” cut off from the French state and where Islamic Sharia law is rapidly displacing French civil law.

The report also showed how the problem is being exacerbated by radical Muslim preachers who are promoting the social marginalization of Muslim immigrants in order to create a parallel Muslim society in France that is ruled by Sharia law.

The television presenter asks: “What if we went to the suburbs?” Obertone replies: “I do not recommend this. Not even we French dare go there anymore. But nobody talks about this in public, of course. Nor do those who claim, ‘long live multiculturalism,’ and ‘Paris is wonderful!’ dare enter the suburbs.”

Martin Luther King led a movement that reversed an unspeakable injustice against fellow Americans who were patriotic citizens and who served with honor in World War 11 and the Korean War.
On 25 March 1965, Martin Luther King led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, after a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, where American Blacks and White citizens had been campaigning for voting rights. King told the assembled crowd: ‘‘There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes’’

On 6 August, in the presence of King and other civil rights leaders, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.