RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://politicalmavens.com/

Here are some words for the media to avoid in discussing unexpected death by violence, particularly mass murder: healing, closure and moving on. Whether these have been supplied by pop psychology, grief counselors or other types of do-gooders, they are insulting to the victims and their survivors and set up unrealistic, undesirable standards for the rest of us. Only one day after the Newtown massacre, newscasters, planted all over that devastated town, stood solemnly at attention with their ubiquitous microphones, talking about how the community was coming together to help each other move on. Within a few short days, the “c” word had surfaced and soon enough, the president of the United States flew in to personally console the grieving families – another media event. What happened in Newtown is profoundly tragic, made more so by the tender ages of these schoolchildren and by our lack of understanding of what caused it or how to prevent it from happening again. The appropriate response to such grief may be respectful silence at a time when no words can offer solace.

Those who have rushed to judge that the availability of guns in our society is the main culprit should be aware of how prevalent guns are in Newtown households and how very little crime exists in this community. Those who blame society for stigmatizing the mentally ill and not offering treatment for them should recognize that there was nothing in Adam Lanza’s behavior that even hinted at violence, that he was never a discipline problem at school, that Asperger’s Syndrome has zero correlation with violent behavior or mental illness. He was not a child who killed small animals or set fires at an early age. Unlike the shooters of Columbine, this young man kept to himself, did not appear to be bullied for it and gave no indication of dark thoughts involving murder and suicide. For those who feel that psychiatric intervention might have prevented this, there is the rejoinder that the murderers at Aurora and Virginia Tech were receiving such attention at the time of their rampages. And for those who blame our violence-riddled popular culture, we have no indication as yet that Adam Lanza partook of that. From the meager information that has been garnered so far, it would seem that far from being a member of a gang or a groupie for rappers, or addicted to video games, he was a representative of only his solitary self.

Why aren’t we listening to the Israelis’ war warnings? It’s a repeat of what Churchill called the “unwisdom” of the West in the 1930s.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/op-ed-wars-and-rumors-of-war/article/2516196

Of World War II, Winston Churchill wrote, “There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle.” Churchill’s great history of the Second World War is preoccupied with the fact that had Europe and America acted wisely, Hitler would never have been able to cause the deaths of so many millions.

Hitler — in “Mein Kampf,” in countless speeches and in his actions — gave the world warning after warning of what would come once he achieved power. But the West did what it does best — what it is doing now on Iran — and didn’t take the evil madman at his word.

The Iranian regime is evil but not mad, at least not in the context of its radical Shiite culture. Iran’s leaders, beginning with revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, have stated again and again that Israel must “vanish from the arena of time.” Around Iran, the government has erected many billboards and signs like the one that decorated the headquarters of the terrorist Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which reportedly say, in English, that “Israel should be wiped out of the face of the world.” Iranian President Ahmadinejad last August said that Israel was a “cancerous tumor.” A month later, he told the U.N. General Assembly that Israel would “be eliminated.”

Since it came to power in 1979, the Iranian regime has pursued development of nuclear weapons. Only recently has the U.N.’s purblind nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, come to believe what has been evident since at least 1981: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is serious. Iran will not be deterred or stopped by diplomatic action.

But the West is repeating what Churchill called the “unwisdom” of the 1930s. Israel, which is most immediately and directly affected by Iran’s nuclear ambitions, is preparing for what will be — because of the West’s unwisdom — its inevitable war with Iran.

Terror and school shootings sides of same coin
By Spengler

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/NL19Aa01.html

Consider two situations. First, a madman kills 20 schoolchildren in America for unexplained reasons. Second, Muslim terrorists kill 22 children in Israel (at Ma’alot in 1974), or 186 children at Beslan in the Russian Caucusus in 2004, for clearly stated reasons. What do they have in common?

The suicidal jihadi is the Doppelganger of the angst-ridden Westerner. The jihadi attempts to reconstruct a faux version of a
traditional society that cannot survive the bright light of modernity; the Westerner seeks distractions from the inevitability of death. What the jihadi does in practice, the jaded West does in its imagination – and occasionally in real life.

Slaughter of innocents is commonplace in many Muslim countries. In this morning’s news, we hear that 10 Afghan girls were killed by a roadside bomb, and that 27 Iraqis were killed by bombs near Mosul. The National Counterterrorism Center counts 79,766 terror attacks from 2004 through 2011, with 111,774 killed and 228,317 wounded. It does not report how many of the dead and injured were children.

Why are so many Muslims willing to kill themselves and others? It is an expression of cultural despair. Muslim civilization is disintegrating under the onset of modernity, as I argued in my 2011 book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too). The encroaching sense of social death motivates the most horrific sort of acts.

What kind of mind could walk into an elementary school and shoot 20 young children to death? Whatever it was that motivated the Sandy Hook killer, he had something in common with the Chechnyan and Arab terrorists who systematically murdered 186 school children during the 2004 Beslan massacre. That probably was the single most horrific act since the downfall of National Socialism.

The slaughter of children is sufficiently rare in the West that it overwhelms us with horror and grief. There have been five school shootings in Europe during the past 10 years with 10 or more dead, and two in the United States – the 2007 Virginia Tech incident and the Sandy Hook shootings. Despite its much stricter gun control, Europe has been the scene of more mass school killings than the United States. We Americans would be fooling ourselves to think that stricter gun laws would help.

My eagle eyed e-pal Max W……sent me this quote from Obama:

“IF THEY BRING A KNIFE TO THE FIGHT, WE BRING A GUN…..”

How about a Czar for “Rage Control?”

http://times247.com/
GAFFNEY: Hagel a dangerous choice for defense

GAFFNEY: Hagel a dangerous choice for defense
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. | Of particular concern is Hagel’s enthusiasm for U.S. disarmament in the nuclear arena. His advocacy of a “world without nuclear weapons” affords a vehicle for challenging the president’s like-minded efforts to bring about the only thing that is remotely achievable if unimaginably irresponsible: a world without U.S. nuclear weapons. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2FP7J81Yu
Israel gun policies could be model for U.S.
Washington Free Beacon
Monday, December 17, 2012
News
Israel’s experience with gun ownership is likely to be used by both sides of the gun debate in the United States following Friday’s mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2FP86LaPS
GOP sees major gaps in Benghazi review
Shaun Waterman

Republican lawmakers are questioning a report by the panel tasked with investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on Benghazi, expressing skepticism about the probe’s thoroughness and frustration that their key concerns will not be addressed in the report by the Accountability Review Board. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2FP7dD1uy
Scorcese to direct HBO Bill Clinton documentary
Daily Caller
Monday, December 17, 2012
News
Martin Scorcese, the native New Yorker and director best known for his ultra-gruesome, gruff fiction films like “Taxi Driver,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Departed,” has decided to take on a more realistic subject by directing a documentary about Bill Clinton. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2FP7s6UCR

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335879/roadblocks-hagel-eliana-johnson

Chuck Hagel disapproves of what he has evocatively called “the Jewish lobby.” He may have more reason to do so if, as is rumored, President Obama nominates him to replace Leon Panetta as secretary of defense. If he is tapped by the president, Hagel is likely to face bipartisan resistance from pro-Israel groups that have long considered him a foe. For his part, Hagel has declared, “I’m not an Israeli senator,” and told former State Department official Aaron David Miller disapprovingly, “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here.”

“Institutionally, AIPAC would be opposed to him,” says a source active in both national security and the Jewish community, who notes that, while some groups are prohibited from taking formal positions on political nominees, AIPAC will do what it can to scuttle Hagel’s confirmation if, in fact, he is nominated. Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), tells National Review Online, “The record clearly shows that there is strong bipartisan concern with Chuck Hagel’s record and his comments, and I think you will see this come to the fore if that nomination does go forward.”

In fact, Jewish leaders are already expressing that concern. Several leaders from the Jewish community reportedly arrived at the president’s Hanukkah party on Thursday to warn administration officials against nominating Hagel. One attendee said Hagel was “the talk of the party”; another said the controversy over his nomination would be “Susan Rice times ten.” A fact sheet highlighting the positions Hagel has taken on Iran, Israel, and terrorist groups from Hamas to Hezbollah is reportedly circulating on Capitol Hill. The RJC said in a statement that nominating Hagel would be “a slap in the face for every American who is concerned about the safety of Israel.”

Defeating a Hagel nomination, however, will be more difficult than mounting a vocal opposition, in large part due to the Senate’s tradition of collegiality. Tradition indicates the Senate would extend a former senator — one whose Senate colleagues would be directly involved in his confirmation — considerable latitude. Sources say that, in order for the opposition to have a real chance at defeating a possible Hagel nomination, a sitting senator — around whom others can rally — must be willing to mount a battle against him. A founder of the non-partisan national security organization Secure America Now, Allen Roth tells National Review Online, “If nobody takes the lead in the Senate,” it’s unlikely the Hagel foes will be able to get much traction. “We’re at the early stages of this,” says Brooks. “My sense is obviously that there will be somebody that emerges. I just haven’t heard of anybody yet.”

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/ Peter Jackson’s first of three Hobbit films took a thrashing from the critics, who disliked the effect produced the new 48-frames-per-second projection system. This makes everything a bit too clear, a bit too smooth, such that sets and costumes seemed artificial to some. It is off-putting at first. Halfway through the film, though, I […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/worst-school-massacre-in-us-history-not-a-shooting?f=puball

The mainstream media uses the term “school shootings” because it fits nicely into their narrative that guns are to blame and therefore law-abiding citizens should be disarmed. But by limiting their discussion only to shootings, they ignore the worst school massacre in U.S. history which wasn’t a shooting at all.

Virginia Tech, 2007: 33 dead.
Newtown, Connecticut, 2012: 28 dead.
University of Texas, 1966: 16 dead.
Columbine, Colorado, 1999: 15 dead.

This is Bath Township, Michigan, 1927: 45 dead and not a single shooting death.
May 18, 1927. Andrew Kehoe, school board treasurer, unleashed pure evil on the Bath Township school by detonating dynamite, firebombs and pyrotol.

8:45 AM – Multiple explosions are heard on Kehoe’s farm. Neighbors rush to find every building on his property ablaze. They also find that Kehoe had trapped his animals in the barn assuring their deaths. Kehoe’s wife had been bludgeoned to death but her body was so unrecognizable that it was not found until the next day. Kehoe is seen fleeing the scene in his truck but stops to ominously tell the volunteers fighting the fire, “Boys, you’re my friends. You better get out of here. You better head down to the school.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/hamas-nazis-and-their-american-supporters/ “For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave,” the introduction to the Hamas Charter states. That isn’t the right way to say it of course. It’s supposed to say Israelis or Zionists. That way there would be plausible deniability. That way Thomas Friedman and Roger Cohen could look at it and […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/education-or-indoctrination/

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Brigitte Gabriel, the author of two New York Times Best Sellers “Because They Hate” and “They Must Be Stopped.” She is also the founder and president of ACT! for America, the largest national security grassroots organization in the U.S. with over a quarter of a million members, 750 chapters nationwide and a full-time lobbyist on Capital Hill. She just issued a report titled: Education or Indoctrination? The Treatment of Islam in 6th through 12th Grade American Textbooks.

FP: Brigitte, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Congratulations on issuing your new report, Education or Indoctrination. What inspired you to embark on this project?

Gabriel: When I was doing research for my second book “They Must Be Stopped,” I came across numerous instances where information that was being put in school textbooks or taught in classrooms was inaccurate, sometimes outright false, and at times sounded more like indoctrination than education. ACT! For America Education executive director and I discussed this at length in 2009, because when we traveled and spoke to groups about this they were very concerned. We investigated the issue more closely and found there had been a handful of previous studies done on this, but we believed much more needed to be done. We also knew that if we did a report, we could leverage its impact by drawing on the strength of our growing grassroots organization. So by late 2009 we drafted a plan, created the budget to do it, and embarked on the research in early 2010.

FP: How broad was your research?

Gabriel: We retained a top-notch team of experts with years of experience in this area. They selected 38 textbooks based on how widespread they are used in the schools and how much they address the topic of Islam. To give you an example of the breadth of the research, our team spent two years conducting the research, and comparing what they found with credible historical sources as well as Islamic sources. The results were astonishing, even to those of us who are familiar with this issue.

In some books the errors were less frequent and egregious, but in most of the books errors of the commission and omission occurred with such frequency that it was clearly evident the average student today is receiving a rewrite of history that paints a rose-colored picture of the history and central doctrines of Islam that is not supported by the facts. The report is painstakingly and thoroughly documented, with nearly 375 footnotes and a bibliography of nearly 275 sources.

FP: What type of topics do you address in your report?

Gabriel: The report examines everything from the founding of Islam and its early history, up through modern times. The report addresses a broad range of topics such as:

– Muhammad and Jerusalem

– Relationship between Muhammad and the Jews of Medina

– Sharia law

– Status and treatment of Jews and Christians under Islam

– Jihad and the early Islamic conquests

– Islam and women

– Islam and slavery

– Islamism

– The Crusades

– The Holocaust

– The Arab-Israeli conflict

– Terrorism

– 9/11