RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/#ixzz2Lub1XutN

Barack Obama has recently given us his view of the State of the Union. Like almost everything else he has ever said it was pure nonsense, intended only for consumption by his own low-information voter base. So please allow me to write a response. And since I know of two pieces of writing which, taken together, create a perfect essay on the prophesy and fulfillment of our time… the state of our Union… I will quote liberally from both.

The first is purely prophetic. It is from a May 23, 1857 letter written by British historian and social philosopher, T.B. Macaulay, to an American colleague, Henry S. Randall, author of The Life of Thomas Jefferson. The latter is a clear and unambiguous exposé of the current state of the union, taken from a November 13, 2012 article titled, Why Romney Didn’t Get Enough Votes to Win, by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, of congregation B’nai Yeshurun, Teaneck, New Jersey.

In his 1857 letter to H.S. Randall, Lord Macaulay wrote, “I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both…

“What happened lately in France is an example. In 1848 a pure democracy was established there. During a short time there was reason to expect a general spoilation, a national bankruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness… Happily, the danger was averted and now there is a despotism, a silent tribune, an enslaved press. Liberty is gone, but civilization has been saved.

“You may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils. I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion. Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land your labouring population will be far more at ease than the labouring population of the Old World. But the time will come when New England will be as thickly populated as Old England. Wages will be as low and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test.

“Distress everywhere makes the labourer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/terrorist-attack-bigger-than-77-thwarted-by-british-mi5-cops?f=puball Three suspects from Birmingham, England, were found guilty on Thursday of plotting a bombing campaign intended to be even larger than the 7/7 London attacks that occurred on May 7, 2005, in which 52 people were killed. Although the intended targets of the three Islamists remain unknown, it is clear to the police and […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/coming-to-a-theater-near-you-palestinian-propaganda This article appears at American Thinker. The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development (JF), a Palestinian-American non-profit organization, screened the film Where Should the Birds Fly on February 14, 2013, at the JF’s Palestine Center across from the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Filmed by Gaza Strip native Fida Qishta, who was present […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/inside-the-muslim-student-association-conference-part-1/

Last weekend I attended the 15th Annual Muslim Student Association (MSA) West Conference at the University of California campus in the beautiful seaside town of Santa Barbara. A thousand Muslim students flocked to the school for a packed three-day weekend of speaker sessions and workshops on spiritual tools, campus activism, and “institution building,” all with the supervision and support of the American branches of the subversive Muslim Brotherhood.

The MSA is a fifty-year-old Muslim Brotherhood affiliate with chapters on many hundreds of college campuses (check out this report on the MSA from Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism). The Brotherhood, as I’m sure all FrontPage Mag readers know, is devoted to the elimination of Western civilization. They don’t officially exist in the United States, but of course they have operated here for many decades in the guise of powerful, well-funded legacy groups, the most prominent of which were intimately involved in the MSA West Conference.

The thrust of the annual conference, as its welcome letter stated, was “to inspire, empower, and provide attendees with a tangible plan” – “action items… to improve their personal lives, their MSAs, and their communities at large” – and to link spirituality and activism: “Spirituality is the foundation, providing roots for activism; activism is actualized when produced by a sound spiritual community.” “We weren’t made to sit on the sidelines and not play an active role in society,” reads the description of a workshop led by Edina Lekovic, Communications Director for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Toward that end, the MSA hosted nearly 1000 Muslim students, according to its website, for the intense conference. I can attest to the fact that the 860-seat Campbell Hall auditorium, where the main sessions of the conference took place, was always almost entirely full for the main sessions, with more young women than young men in the strictly segregated audience. Speaking of the young women: by my estimate, more than 90% of them were wearing the hijab.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/terrorism-without-end/

The reason why the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is doomed can be summed up in a paragraph. The Arab populations left in political limbo when Israel recaptured in 1967 the territory that it had lost to Egypt and Jordan in 1948 exist only as a strategic weapon of disruption. They have been shaped into a population that is defined only by terrorism because that is the purpose that their sponsors put them to. There can be no constructive outcome of the conflict because you cannot negotiate with a weapon.

The trouble is not that Israel is unable to reach a settlement with the Palestinians; but that the Muslim countries funding and operating the terrorist groups that constitute the Palestinian political factions are unwilling to give up their weapon. Negotiating with the Palestinian Authority or Hamas is like trying to negotiate with a gun or bargain with an attack dog. There is nothing to be gained from such a futile task. The conflict will end only when those countries that are behind it will decide that it should end. And they have no reason to want it to end.

Palestinian terrorism is a strategic weapon of disruption that confines and unbalances Israel. At a cost of millions, the sponsors of that terror have inflicted billions in economic damage. And there is no reason for them to stop. Watching Israel and America try to reason with their attack dogs amuses them and allows them to expand their own influence by offering to act as mediators.

For that same reason, Islamic terrorism in general is also not going anywhere. What the Palestinians are to Israel, Muslim terrorists are to the West and the rest of the world. They are strategic weapons which are allowed to exist because they serve the purposes of their sponsors. Like most living weapons, they occasionally turn in the hands of their sponsors, but that only makes the task of directing them at the proper targets more urgent.

Terrorism can never be defeated by fighting terrorists. Combine massive wealth in some parts of the Middle East with staggering poverty in other parts and the supply of mercenaries is nearly endless. Syrian Jihadists are being paid $150 a month by Qatar; a good salary for an unskilled laborer in a region where life is cheap and every family has plenty of surplus sons and mouths to feed. A barrel of oil can buy the services of a killer for a month and Qatar pumps out millions of barrels a day.

Terrorism is cheap for the sponsors, profitable for the participants and hideously expensive for the targets. A soldier in a First World nation can cost six figures. For that same amount, a backward oil tyranny can field a hundred men. When those hundred men kill a soldier, then his nation will be heartbroken and question the costs of war. When those hundred men die, their mothers will ceremonially wail and cry out for more martyrs to avenge them. And the terror will go on.

Islam makes the process easier. Like Palestinian nationalism, it is a war machine whose ideas lubricate the recruitment, rampages and replenishment of fresh cannon fodder for the wars of the old rich men of the region.

That difference in attitude and ideology is at the heart of the power imbalance. As long as that imbalance exists, then a hundred poorly trained fighters who can hardly shoot without killing themselves will still edge the Army of One.

No Muslim country has been able to field an army that will match a Western nation in some time. The Israeli-Arab wars punishingly drove that lesson home as the tiny Jewish State managed to prevail even when it faced superior numbers and at times even superior technology and surprise attacks.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/341408 For years, most Americans’ vision of history has been shaped by the New Deal historians. Writing soon after Franklin Roosevelt’s death, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others celebrated his accomplishments and denigrated his opponents. They were gifted writers, and many of their books were bestsellers. They have persuaded many Americans — Barack Obama definitely included […]

http://news.yahoo.com/qatar-poet-remains-prison-offensive-verse-072500475.html

PLEASE REMEMBER TO PRONOUNCE THAT “MODERATE” KINGDOM’S NAME CORRECTLY….IT IS “GUTTER’…SERIOUSLY….ASK THE ISLAMODIPLOMATS WHO ARE SO ENCHANTED BY THE OILY EMIRATES….RSK

A poet jailed for a verse considered offensive to Qatar’s ruler harshly denounced the Gulf nation’s legal proceedings on Monday after an appeals court reduced his life sentence but still kept a 15-year prison term.

The rant in court — rare in the tightly controlled Gulf Arab states — underscored the free speech battles across the region as Western-backed authorities take strict measures against perceived political dissident in the wake of the Arab Spring.

From Kuwait to Oman, dozens of people have been arrested in the past year for social media posts deemed insulting to leaders or calling for political forms.

“Unjust,” shouted poet Muhammad ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami in the heavily guarded courtroom in Qatar’s capita, Doha, after his appeal to drop the conviction was denied. The court, however, cut the life sentence handed down in November and imposed a 15-year term.

Al-Ajami faced specific charges from a poem posted online in 2010 that discussed the traits needed for a good leader — which apparently was seen by authorities as a challenge to Qatar’s emir and the ruling family.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/02/13/as-americas-credibility-wanes-iran-upgrades-its-nuclear-capacity/

Iran can sometimes be very hard to read, but the announcement that even as talks approach it is installing advanced and more capable centrifuges at its nuclear facility in Natanz doesn’t need much interpreting: Iran isn’t afraid of Barack Obama. The Ayatollahs have looked at the clues, added up the numbers, and come to the conclusion that the President will not use military force as Iran presses forward with its nuclear plans.

One of the clues that lead them to this conclusion is the U.S. decision to cut back the number of aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf region. If Washington were serious, the Iranians believe, we would be building up our naval presence, not drawing it back.

President Obama’s choice of one of the most prominent “Iran doves” in American public life as his new Defense Secretary is also being read in Tehran as a sign of the President’s thinking. Surely, the mullahs appear to believe, if the President were really serious about using force to stop Iran’s nuclear program, he would be appointing someone who isn’t deeply opposed to it. In any case, this kind of appointment is what people overseas often see as a signal. The President may not have meant to send it, but he did.

The announcement of more troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in last night’s SOTU will confirm the already widespread view in Tehran that the U.S. is in retreat and that if Iran hangs tough it can get what it wants. If the U.S. really were gearing up for war, the mullahs would expect to see signs that American forces in the region were strengthening positions rather than standing down by land and by sea.

From Iran’s point of view the Administration also seems to be standing down in Syria. A year ago Washington was full of tough talk: demands that Assad relinquish power, unambiguous statements that he “must go.” America was huffing and puffing—but folded like a cheap suit when it came time to back words with deeds. From an Iranian point of view this sends two very clear signals. First, don’t worry about threats and rhetoric from this White House. When they utter threats, they are just making noise. Assad “must go,” Iran “must stop” its nuclear program. This is just chit-chat; it won’t be followed up by anything other than diplomatic notes.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323384604578323624206553326.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion
Who Has Abe’s Back?
Obama leaves doubts whether he fully supports Japan.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Washington last Friday bore fruit in several ways. In public, both sides emphasized the strength of the alliance and the importance of Japan shouldering more responsibility for global peace and prosperity. In private, Mr. Abe discussed with President Barack Obama Japan’s plans to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. Perhaps most encouraging was the Prime Minister’s optimistic message: I am back and so is Japan.

Mr. Abe has enjoyed considerable success in the first two months of his return to power. With the stock market on a tear and his popularity rating above 70%, he has momentum needed to overcome domestic vested interests and commit to trade liberalization. But he also needs the Obama Administration’s support to ensure American interests don’t block Japan’s entry into TPP. That support is still in question, in part because U.S. automakers and unions don’t want to see lower tariffs on Japanese trucks.

The Prime Minister was also focused on shoring up Japan’s security, which depends on the U.S. alliance. In public he only obliquely referred to the long-running conflict over a deal to relocate U.S. bases on Okinawa, but he left little doubt that his government will work to clean up the mess left by the Democratic Party of Japan’s attempt to renegotiate the plan.

China’s challenge over the Senkaku Islands drew the most pointed comments of his visit. In an interview with the Washington Post published as the visit began, and again in a speech to a foreign policy think tank, Mr. Abe stressed that he would not allow Beijing to change the status quo in the East China Sea by force or intimidation. At the same time, the Prime Minister made clear that he is not spoiling for a fight with China. He offered an open hand of cooperation and compromise to Beijing, and he steered clear of controversies over Japan’s wartime history.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/02/life_without_father.html

The research continues to affirm it. The statistics highlight it. But actually reading what young people have to say about the reality of missing dads and overworked but caring mothers confirms it. There is no pretense, and the pain is evident.

After assigning Langston Hughes’s “Thank You Ma’m” and Anthony Brandt’s “My Grandmother: A Rite of Passage” to my college composition class, I asked them to select one of the following writing choices.

Describe a person who has acted as a mother to you. Even though she may not be your biological mother, what makes you see her as a mother-figure? Why do you view her as special?

Do outside research on the importance of fathers in children’s lives. How do mothers and fathers differ in their parenting styles? Why is a father important in a daughter’s life? In a son’s life? Be very specific and make sure you cite your research.

How has the loss of a parent affected your outlook on life? Is the loss a result of divorce, death, separation or desertion? Does it make a difference what caused the loss? In what way?

Here is a part of the selection from a 19-year-old single mom.