RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/monarch-in-the-middle/309270/

HE IS ONE OF THE SEVERAL SIRED BY CANNY KING HUSSEIN AND HIS WIVES….QUEEN (MA)NOOR WAS QUITE IN A SNIT WHEN HE WAS CHOSEN INSTEAD OF ONE OF HER PUPS. HE HAS NEITHER THE PLUCK, THE CUNNING OR THE SMARTS OF HIS FATHER WHO MAINTAINED A TOUGH GRIP ON THE PALARABS AND TENTATIVE PEACE AND COOPERATION WITH ISRAEL WITHOUT BENEFIT OF TREATIES….ALL THAT WAS RUINED WHEN HE WAS FORCED TO RELINQUISH ANY SAY IN THE CONTROL AND DESTINY OF WEST BANK ARABS…..RSK
The Modern King in the Arab Spring

AMID THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS RESHAPING THE MIDDLE EAST, CAN JORDAN’S ABDULLAH II, THE REGION’S MOST PRO-AMERICAN ARAB LEADER, LIBERALIZE HIS KINGDOM, MODERNIZE ITS ECONOMY, AND SAVE THE COUNTRY FROM CAPTURE BY ISLAMIST RADICALS?
It is still, on occasion, good to be the king.

It is not necessarily good to be the king of a Middle Eastern country that is bereft of oil; nor is it necessarily so wonderful to be the king during the turmoil and uncertainty of the Arab Spring. It is certainly not good to be the king when the mystique that once enveloped your throne is evaporating.

But when a squadron of Black Hawk helicopters is reserved for your use, and when you are the type of king who finds release from the pressures of monarchy by piloting those Black Hawks up and down the length of your sand-covered kingdom—then it is still good to be the king.

One morning last fall, Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein, the fourth Hashemite king of Jordan, rolled up to a helipad situated close to the royal office complex in Al Hummar, on the western edge of the capital, Amman. He stepped out of an armored Mercedes—he drove himself, and drove fast, like he was being chased—and hustled to one of his Black Hawks. The king, who as a young prince served as a commander in the Royal Jordanian special forces, climbed into the pilot’s seat, talked for a moment with his co‑pilot, a trusted member of the Royal Squadron, and lifted off, pointing us in the direction of the rough, unhappy city of Karak, about 80 miles to the south. A second Black Hawk, filled with bodyguards, lifted off a moment later.

The king was flying himself to Karak, which is one of the poorer cities in a distressingly poor country, to have lunch with the leaders of Jordan’s largest tribes, which form the spine of Jordan’s military and political elite. More than half of all Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, with roots on the West Bank of the Jordan River, but the tribal leaders are from the East Bank, and the Hashemite kings have depended on East Bankers to defend the throne since the Hashemites first came to what was then called Transjordan from Mecca almost 100 years ago. This relationship has a coldly transactional quality: in exchange for their support of the royal court, the leaders of the eastern tribes expect the Hashemites to protect their privileges, and to limit the power of the Palestinians. When the Hashemites appear insufficiently attentive, problems inevitably follow.

http://www.mideastoutpost.com/

Choosing Life in Israel Reviewed by Ruth King

http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/choosing-life-in-israel-reviewed-by-ruth-king.html

David Hornik moved to Israel in 1984. In the preface to Choosing Life In Israel he states: “This book is both about my own choice to live in Israel and Israel’s choice to live and thrive in the face of challenges.”

Hornik’s book is a compendium of personal and political essays he has written since he became one of Israel’s most incisive journalists. Arranged in chronological order, they revisit in eloquent prose a besieged nation’s triumphs and tragedies, its ancient stones and its modern cities, its beauty, its warts, the incalculable harm of mindless appeasement, and its holiness.

Hornik’s heart is in Israel’s history and the vision of Zionists restored to an ancient land, but his mind is also focused on politics and the hypocrisy of those whose aim is to tarnish and delegitimize the Jewish state.

In the internet age many excellent columns rapidly fade from memory, so this print anthology is a welcome reminder of events that shaped Israel’s destiny and the contemporaneous reaction of a clear eyed observer.

The euphoria that accompanied President Obama’s visit to Israel is reminiscent of the great optimism engendered by the Oslo Accords.

In “Intifada” written in 2003 and again in “Washington-Bibi is In. Peace is Dead” written in 2009, Hornik speaks sarcastically of the extent to which commentators and journalists disregarded the spree of terrorism that followed Oslo: “Many Israelis –if their charred bodies weren’t long ago interred–have such pleasant memories of those years (following the infamous handshake between Rabin and Arafat) in which 200 Israelis died in terror attacks, a total far beyond any previous comparable period in Israeli history.” He chides those architects and point men of Oslo who ignored the butchery and “…never stood up and said that perhaps this process should be stopped and the Israeli army should retake the areas from which Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Arafat’s PLO terrorists were now staging repeat attacks.”

In 2005 in “The Wages of Appeasement” Hornik wrote: ”…treating the likes of Hitler or Arafat or Stalin or Kim Il Sung, as benign, rational individuals….who just want to improve situations, is a very basic lapse of adult functioning.“ And, he presciently noted, well before Israelis focused on the threat of radical Islam: “The test is whether today’s democracies can stand up to the jihadist assault with its unprecedented dangers.”

In “The West’s Denial of Evil” (2006) He reminds us that the West continues to fail the test: “Almost five years after 9/11, after Madrid, London, the terror war against Israel, and so on, the cowardice–the lunging to pin blame on one’s own side, the eager abandonment of logic and fairness while rushing to embrace moral inversion and idiocy–all this is so strong as to suggest that the West’s survival is anything but certain.”

I recently asked one of Israel’s top journalists, an American who, like Hornik, moved there many years ago, why the foreign press, including Jews, echo the complaints and outright libels of Arabs in writing of Israel. The answer: “All the foreign journalists — and diplomats, for that matter, whose sport is bashing Israel — love being stationed here even while they are trashing us in their columns. They stay in nice places in trendy neighborhoods because they get a lot of bang for their buck. They have fun, because there’s always lots to cover and lots to do in their free time. There are great bars and restaurants and lots of beautiful women and men who fawn all over them. Israelis speak English, which makes it easy for foreign correspondents to talk to them. The Government Press Office which spoon feeds them translations and arranges trips and interviews, unlike the Arab countries they cover, does not penalize or threaten or ban them for any harsh criticism of Israel. “

I will be out of the country and unable to post or send or receive e-mails. I wish you all happy holidays.

It appears the rumors of Assad’s demise are wrong….But it also appears that Anthony Lewis is really dead. He was a veteran Israel “calumnist.” The mantle of nastiest journalist now sits firmly on Thomas Friedman’s shoulders.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/a-bad-apple-doesnt-fall-far-from-the-tree/print/

A month before the election that would make Obama the first Democratic Socialists of America member in the White House, another prominent DSA’er wrote a cheerful article about the 160th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto.

Barbara Ehrenreich, the daughter of a Gillette executive, had gone mainstream by writing about poverty in America, but her politics never strayed far from her own roots in a more prosaic Marxism. It wasn’t poverty that Ehrenreich objected to. It was capitalism.

After September 11, Ehrenreich complained that applying the word “evil” to Islamic terrorists made her “nervous.” “The real challenge,” she said, “is to look at terrible acts and try to work our way towards an understanding of how a human being might undertake them.”

But there is one country that the morally ambiguous Barbara Ehrenreich has no difficulty branding as “evil” or refusing to understand. On the list of endorsers for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, Barbara Ehrenreich’s name appears next to that of her son, Ben.

As the son of John and Barbara Ehrenreich, leftist politics of the worst kind were in Ben Ehrenreich’s DNA, and both mother and son found their calling as pseudo-journalists who exploited other people’s suffering while managing to make the story all about them.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/a-tribute-to-americas-heroes-robert-spencer-and-pamela-geller-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by James Patrick Riley, the CEO & Founder of Colony Bay Entertainment, Morgan Brittany, a TV and Movie star (“Katherine Wentworth” in “Dallas”) and Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director of PolitiChicks.tv.

The Gang members gathered to discuss: German Philosophy, Sex and Hollywood. The dialogue occurred in Part II at the 8:30 mark, where the panel discussed Andrew Klavan’s argument about why Conservatives should have faith in the Arts. The segment began with a focus on Islamic Blasphemy Laws in the U.S. and ended with an analysis of Obama’s Abbas Romance on His Visit to Israel.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/borek-volarik/i-lived-through-the-real-obamacare/print/

It was bad in the Czech Socialist Republic — but it wasn’t as bad as in Cuba, where patients have to bring their own sheets to the hospital.!!

In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic all health care was free for everybody! Oh, what a paradise….well, until you actually experienced the “worker’s paradise,” as the communists proudly called it, in real life.

First, everybody contributed to the cost of the health care, but in a hidden way – through the income tax. There were no tax returns to be filed at the end of year. All taxes were automatically deducted from the gross pay. There were no write offs. The only difference was in marital status and number of children. The young, single people, paid a so-called “ox tax.” That was a bit alleviated by marriage and then every newborn child lowered the tax and generated so called “child bonuses.” The state used the money from the taxes to cover all the state’s spending — health care being one of them.

Well, you get what you pay for, right? Right!

What do you expect from a dentist on a salary set by the state’s pay scales? How about a really ugly crown and no anesthetics (Novocain was in short supply, distributed by the state to dentists by a system of rations on monthly a basis); well, a small envelope with big money…casually left at the receptionist’s desk, would make miracles.

What do you expect from a doctor on a state’s salary? Don’t you worry, you always got your aspirin!

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/an-american-christians-letter-from-an-iranian-prison/ Thanks to a letter received by his family last week, new details have emerged about Pastor Saeed Abedini, an American citizen and Christian convert from Islam, who has been held in Iran’s brutal Evin Prison since September of last year and was sentenced in January to eight years in prison for “evangelizing and threatening […]

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/03/20/an-islamic-crossword-puzzle-for-the-aspiring-jihadist/?singlepage=true Click here to print. An Islamic Crossword Puzzle for the Aspiring Jihadist Posted By Bruce Bawer On March 20, 2013 @ 7:00 am In Death,Humor,Islam,Religion,Satire,Suicide | 1 Comment Freelance writing is a financially precarious career – you’ve always got to be on the lookout for new opportunities, or you’re screwed. So when I found […]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/largest-u-s-muslim-group-features-terror-in-flagship-publication/ The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is the largest Muslim organization in the United States and Canada. It encompasses youth movements — including the largest Islamic collegiate group, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) — as well as hundreds of mosques throughout North America. ISNA issues a bi-monthly publication titled Islamic Horizons. At face […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/is-the-climate-the-biggest-threat?f=puball

The commander of American forces in the Pacific, Admiral Samuel Locklear, told a Boston Globe reporter last week that the most serious long-term security threat to the Asia-Pacific region is climate change.

Locklear said in the interview that instability stemming from a warming planet “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

Apparently having faced some raised eyebrows in previous conversations on the matter, the admiral admitted that “People are surprised sometimes” to hear him say climate change is the biggest threat to peace in the Pacific.

He’s right on this account: Many would be surprised-or even shocked-to hear our senior warfighter in the Pacific say that.

It’s likely that his listeners would expect him to talk about nuclear North Korea or China’s military build-up, cyber or space warfare or even the ongoing sovereignty disputes in the East and South China Seas, which involves some of our allies and friends.

In fairness to the admiral, there are a lot of possible reasons for his views. First, Locklear could be convinced of what he says or was being cautious with his words so as to not exacerbate existing tensions with the likes of North Korea, whose rhetoric of late has been anything but friendly.