RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/petermullen/100185123/the-world-wants-israel-to-show-restraint-but-why-should-it-place-its-life-in-the-hands-of-foreign-bureaucrats/

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is a priest of the Church of England and former Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. He has written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal.

Yesterday the Prime Minister said, “The international community must show courage to allow time for sanctions against Iran to work” – that is, to persuade the rulers of that country that there is no advantage to them in the project to develop nuclear weapons. But the history of the effectiveness of sanctions is not encouraging. In a series of local wars since 1945, sanctions have been applied against a number of states whose policies the so called “international community” has disapproved, but they almost always failed spectacularly to achieve the desired results: against, for example, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and the Serbs’ massacre of Bosnians.

There are no grounds for believing that sanctions will achieve the desired aim concerning Iran. The historical record shows, in fact, that threats and sanctions are counterproductive for they encourage regimes to persevere in their disapproved policies. A baited bear becomes more aggressive, not less.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443675404578059311445951162.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she takes responsibility for security at the American diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in an attack last month.

“I take responsibility,” Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview in her office. “I’m the Secretary of State with 60,000-plus employees around the world. This is like a big family…It’s painful, absolutely painful.”

On Monday, in Lima, Peru, she also told television interviewers that she accepts the blame, adding that security at America’s diplomatic missions overseas is her job, not that of the White House.

Her comments come as Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, criticize the Obama administration for its handling of the security before the attack by extremists and its explanations afterward.

She also spoke in advance of the second presidential debate, which will occur Tuesday night. Both security arrangements in Benghazi and the administration’s differing explanations of whether the attack was the result of mob violence caused by an anti-Muslim video or a calculated terrorist strike were the subject of disagreement in last week’s debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

At the debate, Mr. Biden said the White House wasn’t aware of requests for additional security at diplomatic installations in Libya, an account that Mrs. Clinton’s remarks appear to confirm.

In her comments to CNN in Peru, Mrs. Clinton said President Barack Obama and Mr. Biden weren’t involved in security decisions at the consulate in Benghazi. “I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha,” she said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443675404578058823818713046.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

WHAT COULD THEY HAVE PROMISED HER TO GET HER TO TAKE THE BLAME AND FALL?…..IT IS NOT LIKE THE CLINTONS TO BACK OFF AND BE SUBMISSIVE….RSK

As the White House blames State for Libya, the Secretary says little.

Hillary Clinton ducked questions Friday about what and when she knew about the nature of the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, and then she got the heck out of D.C. The Secretary of State, who flew to Peru Monday for a conference on women’s empowerment, is savvy enough to smell political trouble.

Throughout the fallout from Libya, she has taken a low profile. But this position is becoming increasingly untenable. The focus of Congressional attention and debate has shifted to her shop. Even as they defer to an internal investigation—whose conclusions won’t be out before Election Day—Joe Biden and the White House last week dumped responsibility for the security and intelligence failure that led to the assault on the Benghazi mission on the State Department and CIA. Does the Secretary care to comment?

On the day after the September 11 attacks, Mrs. Clinton stood alongside President Obama at the White House without speaking. When the Administration needed someone to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows the next weekend to discuss Libya, Mrs. Clinton was the natural choice. Yet she made no appearance and was replaced by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice.

An early Obama supporter and candidate to replace Mrs. Clinton in a second term, Ms. Rice offered the now infamous view that the attacks were a “spontaneous reaction” to an anti-Islam YouTube video. For eight days after the assault, the Administration stuck to that story.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/authors-debate-merits-of-nobel-prize-for-chinese-writer-mo-yan-a-861381-druck.html A Controversial Choice for this Year’s Literature Prize The decision last week to award the Nobel Prize in literature to Chinese author Mo Yan has not been the cause for universal celebration. Dissidents are criticizing the choice. In interviews with SPIEGEL, award-winning Chinese writer Liao Yiwu says he is “stunned” by the choice, and […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/true-the-vote/

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder and president of True the Vote, a non-partisan movement to help citizens take a stand for free and fair elections.

FP: Catherine Engelbrecht, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let us begin with who True the Vote is.

Engelbrecht: Thanks Jamie.

True the Vote is a nonpartisan citizen-led initiative to protect the right to vote and the integrity of our election process.

FP: What does True the Vote do?

Engelbrecht: We educate fellow voters, review incoming voter registrations, research the veracity of existing voter registries, recruit and train election observers, and fully document our observations along the way so that findings can be used to constructively reform election code legislation in future election cycles.

We have for too long believed that the processes of our elections are up to the government. Like so many other things, we relinquished our responsibility to protect and defend our vote. The consequences of our civic siesta? Inaccurate voter registries, polling places without volunteers, a weakened process, and little political will to prosecute the perpetrators of election fraud. Rules matter. Our process matters. Belief that the results of our election reflect the will of the people is the underpinning of our entire republic.

FP: Why should people care?

Engelbrecht: The only way we will ever ensure free and fair elections is if citizens care enough to get involved and help support systems that protect the interests of every American voter.The Washington Post recently came out with a survey that showed more than 80% of Americans were concerned about election fraud. People know something isn’t right.

According to Pew Research, 1 in 8 voter registration records are incorrect, yet our Federal Government sues states who attempt to maintain their rolls. 70+% of our population support photo voter identification, yet our Federal Government fights tooth and nail to stop it at every turn.

In the last 18 months alone there have been prosecutions of voter fraud cases in 31 states, just in the past few months we’ve seen election integrity compromised in Indiana, Wisconsin, Florida, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, to name a few. Our election process is vulnerable to corruption from beginning to end.

These vulnerabilities can be readily exploited by groups who subvert our systems to serve their purposes – and it will not stop until we stand up.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/freedom-from-islam/print/ In 1941, FDR proposed his famous Four Freedoms. Some seventy years later it may be time to add a fifth freedom to that list. Freedom from Islam. Freedom from Islam would have seemed like an unlikely candidate back in 1941 when the worry was over secular ideologies, but as the West and its ideologies […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/destroy-israel-conference-comes-to-illinois/ On November 22-25, activists with links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas will come together at the Oak Brook Hills Marriott Resort in Illinois for American Muslims for Palestine’s (AMP) Conference for Palestine in the U.S.: A Movement United. The event also highlights the Islamists’ success in forging interfaith partnerships with Reverend Donald Wagner […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/janice-fiamengo/dying-by-entitlements/print/ Mark Steyn has done a spate of interviews recently on the occasion of the paperback release of his 2011 bestseller After America: Get Ready For Armageddon. A few weeks ago, he remarked to Canadian television host Michael Coren that, contrary to those who claimed his predictions about American collapse were alarmist, he now finds […]

http://search.aol.com/aol/afe?query=http%3A%2F%2Fspectator.org%2Farchives%2F2012%2F10%2F16%2Fbenghazigate&s_it=DNSERROR The White House and Obama’s media cohort believe they now have the Benghazi consulate attack story under control. They have, they think, established two foundation points of the narrative that relieve Obama of any responsibility for the events and their aftermath. The two points are, first, that the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/hillary-goes-under-the-bus/

In an interview Monday with CNN, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton identified herself as the person to blame for the U.S.’s failure to prevent the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack that took the life Ambassador Chris Stevens and that of three other Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton took care to shield the White House from the scandal, saying that diplomatic security was the exclusive role of the State Department. Coming on the eve of the second presidential debate, the admission follows a barrage of high-level administration surrogates shifting blame to the State Department, and Clinton no doubt felt tremendous pressure to concede in order to remove an important cudgel at Mitt Romney’s disposal. But while Clinton may very well bear much responsibility for the tragedy, the ultimate culprit is the Obama administration policy of voluntary weak positioning abroad, which the President’s State Department was executing in Benghazi. This is why the administration engaged in such a clear cover-up following the attack, along with the President’s need to maintain the facade that he has brought the threat of Islamic terrorism under control.

The tide had turned for Clinton after the vice presidential debate last Thursday when Vice President Joe Biden put the Benghazi problem squarely in Hillary’s lap. Biden claimed that he and the president “weren’t told they wanted more security there.” On Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney doubled down. ”These kinds of issues are handled in the State Department by security officials,” he said. Over the weekend the State Department blame game was in full swing. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief re-election campaign strategist, “explained” Biden’s debate assertion to “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace. “The White House was talking about what the White House knew,” Axelrod said. “There are embassies all over the world and requests all over the world and these requests go over the the security professionals at the State Department. And there’s no doubt that some of these matters went into the security department of the State Department. But it didn’t come to the White House, and that’s what the vice president was responding to,” he added.