RUTHFULLY YOURS

The War on Wyden For daring to work on Medicare reform with Republican Paul Ryan, the Democratic senator from Oregon is lambasted by keepers of the liberal flame.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577227682039248376.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Mitt Romney has had a tough week, Newt Gingrich a tough month, Barack Obama a tough three years. But hey, they could be Ron Wyden.

Ticked off by Washington’s failure to tackle big problems? Spare a moment for Oregon’s senior senator. Mr. Wyden is the Democrat who in December had the audacity to team up with House Republican Paul Ryan on a proposal to reform and strengthen Medicare—the entitlement that is pushing the country, and seniors, off a cliff. As bipartisan exercises go, this was big, thoughtful, promising.

It was also a complete anathema to a Democratic establishment that is ideologically opposed to change, and cynically intent on using Mediscare to beat Republicans in 2012. Mr. Wyden, as a result, is taking a beating from his own.

“Ron Wyden, Useful Idiot,” railed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. “Is Ron Wyden trying to get Mitt Romney elected?” fumed the Nation magazine. Ron Zerban, a Democrat running for Mr. Ryan’s seat, accused Mr. Wyden of giving the GOP cover and proclaimed him no longer a “Democrat.”

From Bad to Worse in Egypt
The repression of civil society is far worse than anything seen under Hosni Mubarak.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204792404577227171522318732.html

Egypt’s military rulers have spent the last several months provoking U.S. and European ire with their crackdown on civil-society groups. Last week they managed to ratchet up the diplomatic crisis further, by preventing a British aid worker from leaving the country on the eve of a visit by Martin Depsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s minister for international cooperation, Fayza Abul Naga, continues to accuse my organization, Freedom House, and other international groups of trying to “create a state of chaos and work to maintain it in Egypt.” All this comes more than a month after Egyptian authorities shut down the Cairo offices of 10 Egyptian and foreign civil-society groups, including those of Freedom House.

The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has decided to ignore mounting U.S. and European criticism and escalate its crackdown. Following a politically motivated investigation, 43 people, including 19 Americans and six Europeans, are about to face criminal charges for their work supporting a democratic transition in Egypt.

The impending charges are part of a larger assault on civil society led by Ms. Naga and other holdov

Michael Devolin is a Canadian writer and new contributor to the Israeli Advocate….

Doctor Michael Phelps once said, “The trouble with heart disease is that the first symptom is often hard to deal with: sudden death.” Likewise it is difficult for Israel to deal with what is always the first symptom of war with her Muslim neighbors: their intended genocide of every living Jew residing in the Middle East. Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently had his “strategy specialist” Alireza Forghani compose a document declaring that it would be a “jurisprudential justification” for the Iranian military to wipe out the nation of Israel and all its Jewish inhabitants.

Aside from even touching on the subject of Islamic-incited, anti-Jewish hatred and genocide as being somehow connected to any type of “jurisprudential” philosophy other than the various kill-the-Jews themes found in the Koran, one has to wonder at how the Jews of Israel, especially women and children, go about their daily business after hearing the news that their Persian neighbors are keen to stomp their guts into the sand.

Logistics of an Israeli Strike on Iran: An Informed View from Germany Posted By David P. Goldman

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/02/17/logistics-of-an-israeli-strike-on-iran-an-informed-view-from-germany/

There are plenty of analysts who deal with the logistics of nuclear weapons and their interdiction in the abstract, and a very few who have dealt with the matter as an existential issue. Apart from the Israelis, for whom Iranian nuclear capability represents an existential threat, the list is short. The German defense expert Hans Rühle headed the Policy Planning Staff of Germany’s Defense Ministry during the 1980s, when the US installed the medium-range Pershing missiles in Germany and undercut Russia’s military advantage in the European theater. A nuclear exchange with Russia remained a live possibility in those days; after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the high water mark for strategic risk during the Cold War came in 1983, when then-Soviet premier Andropov declared a nuclear alert, ostensibly in response to NATO’s “Able Archer” exercise, but really as an attempt to panic the Germans.

Hans Rühle was one of the toughest and most perspicacious analysts in those heady ways. Today he evaluates Israel’s capacity to knock out Iran’s nuclear program in an essay in the German conservative daily Die Welt. It is worth reading (for non-German speakers, there’s Google Translate).

Rühle is highly confident that Israel could knock out Iran’s nuclear program for a decade or more with about 25 of its 87 F-15 fighter-bombers and a smaller number of its F-16′s. Each of the F-15′s would carry two of the GBU-28 bunker busters, with the F-16′s armed with smaller bombs. Rühle writes

There are 25 to 30 installations in Iran which are exclusively or predominately dedicated to the nuclear program. Six of them are targets of the first rank: the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the conversion works in Isfahan, the heavy water reactor in Arak, the weapons and munitions production facility in Parchin, the uranium enrichment facility in Fordow, and the Bushehr light water reactor.

The location, nature, and defenses as well as (with some limitations) the type of installed anti-aircraft systems are extensively known.

-http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2032/Did-Saudi-Prince-Buy-Fox-News-Silence.aspx–

Have you heard about the 23-year-old Saudi journalist who tweeted an imaginary conversation with Muhammad? It went something like this: He loved Muhammad, he hated Muhammad, he couldn’t understand Muhammad, he wasn’t going to pray for Muhammad. If this isn’t exactly a disquisition on faith and doubt a la “The Brothers Karamazov,” remember, we’re just talking Twitter.

If you haven’t heard of this young man, whose name is Hamza Kashgari, it could be because you’re watching too much Fox News. As of this writing, almost a week after the Kashgari story broke, I haven’t found a single story about it at the Fox News website. (You try.) Meanwhile, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC and CNN have all reported the Kashgari story, clueing in their viewers on how far totalitarian Islam, Saudi style, will go to exert its control over the human spirit. But not Fox.

British Middle East Consultant’s Antisemitic Rant On Iran’s Propaganda Channel Website

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

The website of Press TV, Iran’s 24/7 satellite progaganda news channel that recently lost its licence to broadcast in Britain, carries a long over-the-top antisemitic rant by a bloke called Peter Eyre, described as “Middle East Consultant”.

The fact that the article is headed “BBC hikes up the Zionist propaganda machine” points to its crackpot nature.

Here’s a taste of Eyre’s ire:

“We now see another “Imperialistic Empire” taking its place know as the “New World Order” (NWO) with its headquarters firmly embedded in the City of London.

This evil satanic organisation, consisting mainly of Zionists and very senior members of the Freemasons have spread their evil tentacles over most of the UK and launched this country on a programme of continuous conflicts and war.

The NWO controls world finances, world politics, the UN, WHO, the ICJ, the judicial system, education, police and the military via its arm – NATO.

The heartland of the NWO are the Rothschild’s, members of the EU Royal Families, the Pilgrim Society, the very senior members of the Freemason´s (including many MP´s and members of the House of Lords), the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House London), Friends of Israel and The Bank of England etc.

There is a steady stream of politicians that pay regular visits to Chatham House to pledge their support for Israel with our current Prime Minister David Cameron, his deputy Nick Clegg and many others such as former PM Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, Ken Clarke, William Hague, George Osborne to name but a few. It is in the bowels of this building where they swear their allegiance to Zionists backed groups and Israel (their funders) instead of our own country.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/902/chavez_allies_hysterical_response_to_a_democratic_challenge_in_venezuela

“Many attacks were patently offensive. Chavez supporters are zeroing in on Capriles’s Jewish ancestry in an effort to animate latent anti-Semitism in Venezuela. A pro-government publication did not mince words: “This is our enemy, the Zionism that Capriles today represents. Zionism, along with capitalism, are responsible for 90% of world poverty and imperialist wars.”

Within 48 hours of the impressive victory in Venezuela’s first-ever presidential primary, the winner Henrique Capriles Radonski, who favours an end to polarization and national reconciliation, faced a barrage of vituperative, mendacious, and scandalous attacks by supporters of the Chavez regime.

A chorus of baying hounds swiftly sought to discredit the young presidential aspirant from the start. Leading the pack was Diosdado Cabello, the rattled former military comrade and possible heir-apparent to Chavez, who denounced Capriles as a stooge of the Right. “Now we know who is the candidate of imperialism, of capitalism and the right wing. The anti-patriotic candidate has a face. He won’t have an easy election campaign.”

http://news.investors.com/article/601355/201202160805/big-deficit-from-sluggish-obama-recovery.htm? THIS IS AKIN TO A DOCTOR REASSURING A CRITICALLY ILL PATIENT THAT THE CHAPPED LIPS ARE BETTER…..RSK  View Enlarged Image President Obama told an Atlanta TV station this week that the reason he’s unable to live up to his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half is “because this recession turned out to be a […]

When Did Honesty Become Optional? By Frank Salvato

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/4590

Throughout time politicians and their handlers have been prone to omitting unpleasant facts or manipulating them so as to mold issues to their advantage. This is the concept behind “spin”; a form of propagandizing that crafts an “alternative” interpretation of an issue, organization, person, event or campaign in order to sway the public’s opinion “for” or “against” said issue, organization, person, event or campaign. In fact, the “art of spin” has created an entirely separate category of political animal; the “spin doctor,” many of whom are regularly featured on the many mainstream media news outlets disguised as “political strategists.” But somewhere along the line, the art of employing wit, reason, personality and persuasive rhetoric in order to achieve a political ends gave way to the blatant lie, and never before has it been as evident as it is today.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/the_coming_end_to_endless_talk Crunch time is coming in Iran, but President Obama and his men act as if they’re at the senior prom, trying to dance the minuet without anyone to dance with. The White House is trying desperately to rewrite Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s interview with David Ignatius of The Washington Post, where Panetta was said […]