RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/08/15/the-islamization-of-knowledge-in-the-new-egypt/?print=1

Well, when you’ve got totalitarian ambitions, and you’ve already started locking up dissenting journalists, what’s the next logical step? If you’re the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, newly minted president of Egypt, it is obvious: start banning books.

Morsi’s government has reportedly banned importation of A History of the Modern Middle East, a well-known textbook by William L. Cleveland (who died in 2006) and Martin P. Bunton. The Egyptian daily, Al-Ahram, says no reason was given for the ban. The reason, however, is patent to anyone familiar with the Muslim Brotherhood.

One of the highest Brotherhood priorities is the “Islamization of knowledge.” That, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is the explicit purpose of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a think-tank in Virginia that the Brotherhood founded in the early 1980s. IIIT’s mission is to forge “a new synthesis of all knowledge in an Islamic epistemological framework” — to borrow the fitting description found in an important 2009 study, “The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States,” written by Steven Merley for the Hudson Institute’s Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World.

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/08/15/a-lost-opportunity-of-historic/ Ninety years ago last month, the League of Nations, the precursor to today’s United Nations, approved the Mandate for Palestine, out of which Israel was to emerge in 1948. Israel’s neighbors have been in varying states of war and hostility with it from that date to this. As this conflict has flared up across […]

http://www.tedyoho.com/issues/
TED’S CURRENT ISSUES

Jobs and the Economy: Washington has stood in the way of job creation for too long by creating a climate of confusion. By promoting “garbage” legislation and handing down burdensome regulations, rules and mandates, Washington has stifled economic growth and killed jobs.
Solution: The mistakes made by politicians, financial institutions, lending houses and their lobbyists should be remembered and never repeated as the nation strives to recover. No single solution will foster the change our country and state need but we can help create an environment of certainty for all businesses. We can create it by simplifying the tax code, repealing Obamacare and taking a scalpel to all the job killing rules, regulations and mandates.

Taxes: It shouldn’t take an expert to understand the tax code. Special interest groups have controlled the tax code for long enough – it’s time to look out for America’s interests.
Solution: Our tax code needs to be simplified. I support the Fair Tax. At the minimum, the corporate tax rate should be lowered and locked in for an extended period of time that would allow businesses to make medium to long term investment plans. The estate and gift tax must be repealed.

Spending and our National Debt:The national debt has reached an unprecedented $15.4 trillion and it continues to grow daily. Out of control spending harms not only our quality of life but that of future generations. It is a direct threat to our national security.
Solution: Spending more than we take in, printing money at rates that devalue our dollar and too many taxpayer dollars being sent overseas as foreign aid are all adding to our economic uncertainty. I will not only evaluate existing federal programs but act to end wasteful projects and programs immediately. We must stop unnecessary spending. The bottom line is that the U.S. government cannot continue to live outside of its means.

Term Limits: For too long, there has been talk about congressional term limits with no results. As a result, we have too many career politicians.
Solution: In addition to personally pledging to only serving 4 terms (8 years) in the House of Representatives, I would support a constitutional amendment that would enact congressional term limits.

National Defense: I believe America still has the greatest military in the world, supported by brave men and women in uniform. Unfortunately, our troops have not received the level of support they need when they return home. Further, America’s weakened foreign policy has resulted in our drifting away from our strongest allies such as Israel.
Solution: Every single legislator needs to support our military. If we are to expect our troops to protect America at all costs, then we must guarantee to do likewise. By allocating the proper resources to our troops we can maximize their protection while serving our nation. We must also care for them after they complete their service. We should recognize the sacrifice that military families make while a loved one serves this nation. Finally, we need to stand with our allies and never waiver in our support.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/russian-attack-submarine-sailed-in-gulf-of-mexico-undetected-for-weeks?f=puball

http://freebeacon.com/silent-running/

A Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks and its travel in strategic U.S. waters was only confirmed after it left the region, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

It is only the second time since 2009 that a Russian attack submarine has patrolled so close to U.S. shores.

The stealth underwater incursion in the Gulf took place at the same time Russian strategic bombers made incursions into restricted U.S. airspace near Alaska and California in June and July, and highlights a growing military assertiveness by Moscow.

The submarine patrol also exposed what U.S. officials said were deficiencies in U.S. anti-submarine warfare capabilities—forces that are facing cuts under the Obama administration’s plan to reduce defense spending by $487 billion over the next 10 years.

The Navy is in charge of detecting submarines, especially those that sail near U.S. nuclear missile submarines, and uses undersea sensors and satellites to locate and track them.

The fact that the Akula was not detected in the Gulf is cause for concern, U.S. officials said.

The officials who are familiar with reports of the submarine patrol in the Gulf of Mexico said the vessel was a nuclear-powered Akula-class attack submarine, one of Russia’s quietest submarines.

A Navy spokeswoman declined to comment.

One official said the Akula operated without being detected for a month.

“The Akula was built for one reason and one reason only: To kill U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarines and their crews,” said a second U.S. official.

“It’s a very stealthy boat so it can sneak around and avoid detection and hope to get past any protective screen a boomer might have in place,” the official said, referring to the Navy nickname for strategic missile submarines.

The U.S. Navy operates a strategic nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia. The base is homeport to eight missile-firing submarines, six of them equipped with nuclear-tipped missiles, and two armed with conventional warhead missiles.

“Sending a nuclear-propelled submarine into the Gulf of Mexico-Caribbean region is another manifestation of President Putin demonstrating that Russia is still a player on the world’s political-military stage,” said naval analyst and submarine warfare specialist Norman Polmar.

“Like the recent deployment of a task force led by a nuclear cruiser into the Caribbean, the Russian Navy provides him with a means of ‘showing the flag’ that is not possible with Russian air and ground forces,” Polmar said in an email.

The last time an Akula submarine was known to be close to U.S. shores was 2009, when two Akulas were spotted patrolling off the east coast of the United States.

Those submarine patrols raised concerns at the time about a new Russian military assertiveness toward the United States, according to the New York Times, which first reported the 2009 Akula submarine activity.

The latest submarine incursion in the Gulf further highlights the failure of the Obama administration’s “reset” policy of conciliatory actions designed to develop closer ties with Moscow.

Instead of closer ties, Russia under President Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB intelligence officer who has said he wants to restore elements of Russia’s Soviet communist past, has adopted growing hardline policies against the United States.

Of the submarine activity, Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “It’s a confounding situation arising from a lack of leadership in our dealings with Moscow. While the president is touting our supposed ‘reset’ in relations with Russia, Vladimir Putin is actively working against American interests, whether it’s in Syria or here in our own backyard.”

The Navy is facing sharp cuts in forces needed to detect and counter such submarine activity.

The Obama administration’s defense budget proposal in February cut $1.3 billion from Navy shipbuilding projects, which will result in scrapping plans to build 16 new warships through 2017.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/outside-view-obama-doctrine-supplants-monroes

Half a century ago this October, for almost two weeks, the world dangerously slid toward war as the United States and U.S.S.R. played a nuclear chess match. The confrontation focused on whether Soviet missiles, secretly installed in Cuba, would be voluntarily withdrawn by Moscow.It was the closest the two Cold War adversaries would ever come to nuclear war.

Washington was committed to not endangering its national security by the placement of missiles drastically reducing the distance required for Moscow to launch a surprise nuclear strike against the United States while also reducing U.S. reaction time to such a first strike. Recognizing his responsibility as president to protect U.S. national security interests above all else by denying an adversary a base anywhere within the Western Hemisphere from which to conduct such an attack, John F. Kennedy understood the threat facilitated by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s actions.

In the end, Kennedy proved his mettle by confronting the Soviets, eyeball to eyeball, until they blinked. The Soviets backed down; the missiles removed; U.S. national security restored; and the Monroe Doctrine preserved.

Today, the same threat, involving a different adversary and facilitator, exists — and has existed since 2006 — yet has been ignored by U.S. President Barack Obama. While comments he made last month sought to minimize concerns about this threat, they portrayed a false sense of security to Americans.

In a July 11 interview, Obama assured the American people another dictator, again providing an adversary with a base on his home soil from which missiles capable of hitting the United States would be positioned, represented no “serious” national security threat.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/inside-the-warmist-faith/

For those of us who might have thought (hoped?) that the climate-change hysteria of a couple of years ago was already on its way into the dustbin of history, the New York Times ran a piece on August 11 insisting that the danger is more urgent than ever. “Until recently,” wrote Northern Arizona University earth scientist Chirstopher R. Schwalm, Clark University geographer Christopher A. Williams, and Kevin Schaeffer of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, “many scientists spoke of climate change mainly as a ‘threat,’ sometime in the future. But it is increasingly clear that we already live in the era of human-induced climate change, with a growing frequency of weather and climate extremes like heat waves, droughts, floods and fires.” In the Times piece, which is apparently a précis of a recent essay in the journal Nature-Geoscience, the three authors argued that the recent drought in the American West, in its length and severity, represented a radical departure from previous droughts, and that climate models suggest that “this extreme event could become the new normal.” Their prescription: to prevent “a multidecade megadrought,” we must “reduce fossil-fuel emissions.” And their conclusion: “there can be little doubt that what was once thought to be a future threat is suddenly, catastrophically upon us.”

Yeah, whatever. I might be more inclined to take this sort of thing seriously if I hadn’t paid attention to Climategate and spent several days in December 2009 at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, which took place shortly after that scandal. Never have I seen a supposedly scientific event that was so thoroughly disconnected from science and suffused with politics – and so easily confused with religion. Climategate, it will be recalled, exposed the fact that global-warming boosters in the scientific community had been engaged in efforts, as a Wall Street Journal editorial put it, “to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics.” As I wrote at the time, it was no surprise that Climategate didn’t spell a quick end to the climate-change scam, for the scam wasn’t really about science at all but about politics – about having an excuse to target capitalist countries (above all the U.S.), which, as the dogma told us, was desecrating the environment and destroying the ozone layer.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/time-for-liberals-and-progressives-to-get-new-labels/

We need to find a new label for the ideology espoused by leftist Democrats. “Liberal” doesn’t accurately describe the party of blinkered intolerance, fanatical certainty, and an eagerness to destroy freedom in order to achieve some dubious utopia. “Progressive” is more historically accurate for ideas that go back to a movement that started in the late 19th century. But it still suggests that lefties are the party of improvement and the future, when in fact they are reactionaries recycling failed ideas about as au courant as a Nehru jacket and a puka-shell necklace.

These labels, moreover, function like newspeak in Orwell’s 1984. They suggest that lib/progs are tolerant champions of individual freedom and rights, skeptical of old-fashioned group identity, believers in nuance and complexity, open to new ideas that challenge authority, and respectful of difference and diversity. Liberals fancy themselves the party of reason and truth, their views and ideas the consequence of education and nuanced thinking, and their prescriptions and policies the only viable way to improve human life and eliminate suffering and oppression.

Flip through any newspaper at random and you will find examples that show today’s lib/progs are exactly the opposite of those flattering clichés. Take global warming, back in the news recently after the announcement that last year’s average temperature was the highest on record. “The science is settled,” the lib/progs scold us, and there is a “consensus” that human activity is warming the planet to dangerous levels and causing more frequent catastrophic weather events. Those who challenge this “consensus” are “deniers,” either stooges of the oil companies or hopelessly ignorant rubes irrationally closing their eyes to an inconvenient truth.

But as Matt Ridley writes in The Wall Street Journal, this “settled science” in fact reflects a “monopoly that clings to one hypothesis (that carbon dioxide will cause dangerous global warming) and brooks less and less dissent. Again and again, climate skeptics are told they should respect the consensus, an admonition wholly against the tradition of science.” Thus the respecters of “complexity” and “science” unscientifically simplify the planet’s most complex system, one the mechanics of which we as yet don’t fully understand––certainly not enough to assert as revealed truth that increases in a trace gas in the atmosphere can drive the whole system. And the vicious shunning and slandering of anyone who practices the skepticism of received paradigms that has driven modern science, reveals that the champions of “diversity” and “tolerance” of ideas that challenge authority are in fact intolerant and irrational, more interested in ideology than in truth, and slaves to self-appointed authorities.

Similarly, the supposed believers in individual freedom and autonomy are the first to sacrifice both to the coercive power of the state and its bureaucratic minions. The most notorious recent example is the directive from Health and Human Services that Catholic institutions and businesses have to provide their employees with contraceptives including abortifacients, thus violating their religious beliefs. The lib/progs who regularly squeal about a fabricated First Amendment right to view pornography on a public library computer are perfectly happy to destroy that same amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion and religious speech.

But this is just a more visible example of a phenomenon that has become so common that we hardly notice it anymore. Universities and colleges, those supposed lib/prog bastions of free inquiry and freewheeling debate, have been in the forefront of using institutional power to police speech and proscribe anything that violates the lib/prog ideology. The latest offender is the University of Delaware and its “anti-bullying” prohibition. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the university defines “bullying” as “[a]ny deliberately hurtful behavior, usually repeated over time, with the desired outcome of frightening, intimidating, excluding or degrading a person.” Examples include “teasing,” “ridiculing,” and “spreading of rumors.” As FIRE points out, “The broad wording of this policy makes it highly vulnerable to abuse, with the potential to silence a great deal of protected speech such as parody and satire (which often ridicule their targets) and political speech.”

So the same people who call Republican women “sluts,” who accuse the Tea Party of being “racist,” who depict black Republican Representative Allen West punching an old white woman, and who imply that Mitt Romney is a “felon,” a tax cheat, and possibly a murderer of a little old lady, are so worried that an 18-year-old might be teased and get his feelings hurt that they are willing to gut the First Amendment. So much for the “diversity” of ideas and the “tolerance” of opposing viewpoints, so much for the fealty to individual rights and the value of dissent against orthodoxy.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-greenfield/egypt%e2%80%99s-muslim-brotherhood-begins-descent-into-tyranny/

Barely two months after taking power, the Muslim Brotherhood has wasted no time in swiftly taking Egypt down the road to a totalitarian state. Its latest target is Al-Dustour, a Christian-owned newspaper, which had condemned President Morsi’s ties to Hamas as a threat to Egyptian national security. Al-Dustour was accused of sedition and stirring up sectarian discord—the latter is code for insulting Islam. Most dangerously, Al-Dustour implied that the Rafah attack had been backed by Morsi’s own Hamas allies to enable him to crack down on the domestic opposition.

Al-Dustour is not the first newspaper to be targeted by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has already used its parliamentary position to name dozens of new editors for Egypt’s major state-owned newspapers, including Al-Ahram. Akhbar Al-Youm, the second-largest newspaper in Egypt, will be run by a descendant of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Bana.

In response to the Islamist hijacking of the Egyptian press, many reporters have spoken out against the move and some have even gone on strike. But the Muslim Brotherhood’s assault on Al-Dustour is a warning that the days of independent newspapers opposed to the regime are numbered. Both Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood have suggested Islamist Turkey as the model for the new Egypt. Now the Muslim Brotherhood is imitating Erdogan’s crackdown on the military as well as his totalitarian control over the Turkish press.

In addition to the Muslim Brotherhood’s assault on the press, one television network, Al Fareen, has already been taken off the air. More are certain to follow. Khaled Salah, the editor of the Youm7 newspaper, was assaulted by Muslim Brotherhood protesters demanding the closure of AlFareen and the arrest of anyone who criticizes Morsi and the Brotherhood.

The Rafah attack by Islamist terrorists plotting to invade Israel that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers has been exploited by the Brotherhood to launch a domestic crackdown on the opposition. The Brotherhood has issued a statement blaming Israel for the attack. But in reality Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have been the true beneficiaries of the violence.

Morsi has used the attack to sack top Egyptian military leaders including Egypt’s Defense Minister, its Chief of Staff, its head of the General Intelligence Service, its chief of the Presidential Guard and its head of the Republican Guard. The purge had little to do with making Egypt safer and a great deal to do with Morsi and the Brotherhood seizing the opportunity to displace their only real rivals in the country’s tangled power structure.

The Brotherhood has crowned itself with the “revolutionary” label, describing any attack on its power as an attack on the January 25 Revolution and its martyrs. That familiar use of language emphasizes that Egypt is a revolutionary state and is constantly struggling against seditious and subversive forces. And revolutionary states suppress dissent against revolutionary power through state terror.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s statement cynically conflated the Rafah attack with outcries and protests by the domestic opposition and exploited the deaths of Egyptian soldiers at the hands of Morsi’s allies to call for a crackdown on domestic opposition to the Brotherhood. It demanded harsh action against “the instigators of vandalism and subversion throughout the land and against their collaborators and agents involved in causing this deliberate confusion, chaos and mayhem across Egypt under the pretext of exercising freedom.” And it urged Egyptians to report any “subversion” to the authorities.

Another Muslim Brotherhood statement accused the Mossad of being behind the attack and followed that with a call for Egyptian military control of Sinai. Egypt trashing the Camp David Accords and rolling back whatever security there was in the Sinai for a hostile border between the two countries is not in Israel’s interests—but it is part and parcel of the Brotherhood’s war agenda.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314030/cairo-packs-egypt-s-media-elliott-abrams The recent sacking of all of Egypt’s top military officials by its new Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, was met with considerable approval in the West, including the United States. After all, the argument goes, he was elected, and don’t we all favor civilian control of the military? Why call this a Brotherhood power […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444318104577587322446430152.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

America’s real interests, he understands, come from our deepest values.

Last summer, the chairman of the House Budget Committee made a foray into foreign-policy land with a speech to the Alexander Hamilton Society in Washington, D.C. About 100 people showed up, and it got next to no coverage. That should now change—and not just because Paul Ryan’s views on America’s role in the world are no longer a matter of one Wisconsin congressman talking.

Here, in CliffsNotes form, is what the speech tells us about Mr. Ryan. First, that he’s an internationalist of the old school; in another day, he would have sat comfortably in the cabinets of Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy or Ronald Reagan. Also, that he believes in free trade, a strong defense, engagement with our allies—and expectations of them. Also, that he wants America to stay and win in Afghanistan. Furthermore, that he supports the “arduous task of building free societies,” even as he harbored early doubts the Arab Spring was the vehicle for building free societies.
Related Video

Columnist Bret Stephens provides an update on the Syrian civil war and military shake-up in Egypt. Photos: Associated Press

It tells us also that Mr. Ryan has an astute understanding of the fundamental challenge of China. “The key question for American policy makers,” he said, “is whether we are competing with China for leadership of the international system or against them over the fundamental nature of that system.”

What Mr. Ryan’s speech really tells us, however, is that he knows how to think.

Most foreign-policy speeches by American politicians take the form of untidy piles of verities and clichés. Here, for example, is Barack Obama on China: “As we look to the future, what’s needed, I believe, is a spirit of cooperation that is also friendly competition.” Here he is on the U.N.: “The United Nations can either be a place where we bicker about outdated differences or forge common ground.” Here he is to the British Parliament: “The time for our leadership is now.”

Mr. Ryan doesn’t have the president’s reputation for eloquence. Nor do his speeches ride on the windy drafts of “Yes We Can.” But unlike Mr. Obama, his speeches communicate ideas and arguments, not pieties and emotions.

Thus this speech begins not with a cliché but with a contention: “Our fiscal policy and our foreign policy are on a collision course.” It proceeds, briefly, to demonstrate the point quantitatively: Defense spending in 1970 consumed 39% of the federal budget but takes only 16% today. In the proverbial guns-to-butter ratio, our veins are already clogged.