RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/363781/render-unto-seizure-mark-steyn

In the year 1215, Magna Carta provided a freeman of England with the right to a trial in a fixed, local law court, and protected him from being “amerced [fined] for a slight offence, except in accordance with the degree of the offence; and for a grave offence he shall be amerced in accordance with the gravity of the offence, yet saving always his contentment; and a merchant in the same way, saving his merchandise” – i.e., even for a “grave offence,” a man shall not be deprived of the ability to make his living.

Four-fifths of a millennium later, a 21st-century American merchant does not enjoy the rights of his 13th-century English forebear. The Economist reports on yet another case of “civil forfeiture” by the corrupt and diseased IRS – a Michigan grocery store owned by the Dehkos family:

Fairly often, someone takes cash from the till and puts it in the bank across the street. Deposits are nearly always less than $10,000, because the insurance covers the theft of cash only up to that sum.

In January, without warning, the government seized all the money in the shop account: more than $35,000. The charge was that the Dehkos had violated federal money-laundering rules, which forbid people to “structure” their bank deposits so as to avoid the $10,000 threshold that triggers banks to report a transaction to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

This is a quintessentially Washingtonian form of shakedown. First, they pass a stupid law that has the effect of making millions of routine, law-abiding transactions appear suspicious (in this case, deposits over $10,000). Then, the vast bloated support state of the Republic of Hyper-Regulation adjusts accordingly (in this case, insurers who’ll cover a mugging of $9,975 decline to cover one of $10,037). But by then, just to cover themselves coming and going, Washington has passed another stupid law making it an additional crime to avoid committing the original crime (thus, “structuring” your deposits to avoid the $10,000 threshold).

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/363818/print Indulge me if you will, and join me in imagining that Obamacare has taken the calamitous path of the Hindenburg and ended up as little more than a smoldering warning against hubris. Imagine, that is, that enrollment rates have remained dangerously low; that the risk pools consist largely of the elderly and the sick; […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/why-are-americas-top-generals-being-fired The nation’s top military generals are being fired by the Obama administration one by one, according to a recent Reuters report. It’s a disturbing trend for several reasons. The government says that each firing does not indicate any type of breach of U.S. military security or preparedness. But this makes one wonder why the […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
The warrior’s tale is a simple enough thing. Strong as steel, but fragile as chance. It is the wind in his soul and the wall we build around ourselves to tell us who we are.

Before there were cities or nations, and railways and airports, computers and telephones– the tale was told around campfires. Acted out in pantomime, dressed up in animal furs and cave paintings. But the tale was the same. The people were confronted with a threat and they called upon the best and strongest of their men to go out and fight it. These were their warriors. What they did in the face of that threat is the tale.

The tale has many variations. Sometimes there are many warriors, sometimes only a handful. They march into the village of the enemy in triumph, or they make a last stand on a rocky outcropping, spending the last of their heart’s blood to buy time they will never know. There is the weak man who becomes strong, the strong man who becomes weak, the woman who mourns the man who will never return, and the man who goes off to battle with nothing to lose. These tales have been told countless times in the ages of men, and they will be told again for as long as men endure.

It is not only the warriors who need the tale, or those left behind. Future generations learn who they are from this tale. “We are the people who died for this land,” is the unseen moral of each tale. “We bled for it. Now it is yours to bleed and die for.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/putins-ruthless-power-an-ex-kgb-agent-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined Mudar Zahran, the leader of Palestinians in Jordan who now resides in the U.K. as a political refugee. He discusses The Palestinian Homeland in Jordan. He also explains his support of Israel, denounces the Islamists and calls out the western media for being Israel haters and not caring about the Palestinians:

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/many-things-rotten-in-denmark/print/ A Danish appeals court recently upheld the conviction under a Danish hate speech law of an Iranian-Danish woman for her remarks condemnatory of Islam.  Coming amidst the controversial statements by another Dane of Muslim background, this conviction raises troubling questions about who may say what about Islam. The artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan ran afoul of […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/whitewashing-amsterdams-islamization/print/

I love Amsterdam. I’ve loved it ever since I first visited it in 1997, and when I moved there from New York a year later, after three more visits, I was still bewitched. Not until I’d lived there for several months did I grasp that this beautiful city, which had played such a pivotal role in the development of the modern concept of individual liberty, faced a serious threat from a certain pre-modern, liberty-hating religion to which I realized I’d been paying insufficient attention. I haven’t lived in Amsterdam for fourteen years, but I’ve returned to it many times, and I’ve witnessed the dire consequences of its steady, and increasingly manifest, Islamization. I still love it, but I tread more carefully now on those cobbled streets; and precisely because I do love it, I worry about what’s happening to it.

Russell Shorto also professes to love Amsterdam. A longtime New York Times Magazine contributor, he’s lived there since 2008, serving (until recently) as director of the city’s John Adams Institute, which, according to its website, seeks to reinforce Dutch-American cultural ties by hosting talks by “interesting American thinkers and writers…such as Al Gore, Toni Morrison, Jesse Jackson, Jonathan Franzen, Madeleine Albright, Spike Lee, Paul Auster and Francis Fukuyama.” (Don’t worry: as its website is careful to underscore, it’s not the kind of “’patriotic’ organization” that “waves a little American flag and tries to promote America.”)

A few years back, Shorto wrote a book about the Dutch influence on New York City – and, by extension, on the entire U.S. Now he’s written a book called Amsterdam: The History of the World’s Most Liberal City. It’s receiving the kind of adoring reviews in the usual places that strong suggest that, whatever its other merits or demerits, it doesn’t vigorously challenge any mainstream-media orthodoxies about the current state of affairs in Europe. When I read Janet Maslin’s review in Monday’s Times, one sentence, in particular, jumped out at me. Shorto, Maslin wrote, “cites two contrasting approaches to tensions between Islam and the West: the radical position of the outspoken Somali-Dutch feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and a two-man Muslim-Jewish team of leaders who tilt toward conciliation.” “Radical”? “Outspoken”? These are the two adjectives Maslin chooses to describe the courageous, principled Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Also, I knew which “two-man Muslim-Jewish team” Maslin was referring to: the Jewish half of the team, Job Cohen, is the man who, while mayor of Amsterdam (2001-2010), urged “accommodation with the Muslims,” up to and including toleration “of orthodox Muslims who consciously discriminate against their women. (As I asked in my book Surrender:“Where would he draw the line? At forced marriage? Wife-beating? Rape? Honor killing?”) Plainly, I needed to take a look at Shorto’s book, and pronto.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-myth-of-islamic-extremism/print/ The question of Islamic extremism has more relevance to Muslims than to non-Muslims. It’s mainly Muslims who are obsessed with Islamic extremism. And with good reason. As they so often point out; they tend to be its leading victims. It’s not that Islamic extremism doesn’t exist. Islam, like every ideology, has its gradations. It’s […]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/11/12/coming-betrayal-israel/

In Geneva, Switzerland, The United States and other major powers appeared close to a deal with Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for lifting some economic sanctions against the terrorist-sponsoring state.

Negotiations, however, fell apart at the last minute when France and Iran balked at the final wording on the interim draft. Talks are expected to resume within a few weeks, but it is worth pausing to consider what was nearly agreed to and what the outcome could likely be.

President Obama has pledged to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that America has Israel’s “back.” Who knew he had a knife? An agreement that trusts Iran’s promises and allows it to surreptitiously complete development of nuclear missiles would stab Israel in the back.

North Korea promised former President Jimmy Carter during his 1994 visit to Pyongyang it would close a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in exchange for food and humanitarian aid. The reactor was subsequently re-opened. Memo to the Obama administration: tyrants lie.

Unlike North Korea, an officially atheist state, Iranian mullahs have repeatedly said they have a religious duty to annihilate Israel, not to mention America. How do secular diplomats negotiate with people who, in their minds, would be violating “Allah’s will” by making deals with the “great Satan”?

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4051/uk-interfaith Leading interfaith activists such as Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg have defended working with extremist institutions by claiming, “We have to take risks to engage with each other. The Jewish community will be far weaker if we all shelter within a comfort zone labeled ‘They all hate us out there’.” As the British Islamist preacher Haitham […]