RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/291737

While we’re on the subject of the Muslim Brotherhood, this February 16 report from Steve Emerson at the Investigative Project on Terrorism will be an eye-opener. As I mentioned in my column over the weekend, the FBI — following the administration’s lead — is purging its training materials of publications that are deemed offensive to Muslims (you know, crazy stuff like claims that passages in the Koran and Hadith promote violent jihad, Islamic supremacism, killing of apostates, oppression of women, etc.). So what are the criteria the Bureau uses to figure out what materials are offensive? And who decides?

You’ll never guess. Steve, who has been talking to some mighty outraged law-enforcement officials, writes:

It was just revealed two days ago that FBI Director Mueller secretly met on February 8 at FBI headquarters with a coalition of groups including various Islamist and militant Arabic groups who in the past have defended Hamas and Hizballah and have also issued blatantly anti-Semitic statements. At this meeting, the FBI revealed that it had removed more than 1000 presentations and curricula on Islam from FBI offices around the country that was deemed “offensive.” The FBI did not reveal what criteria was used to determine why material was considered “offensive” but knowledgeable law enforcement sources have told the IPT that it was these radical groups who made that determination. Moreover, numerous FBI agents have confirmed that from now on, FBI headquarters has banned all FBI offices from inviting any counter-terrorist specialists who are considered “anti-Islam” by Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/921/european_democracy_is_on_the_edge_of_the_abyss

It’s been moving this way for some time, but now Europe’s leaders are going to have to answer a simple question on democracy: For, or against?

It’s often the little details casually slipped into the coverage that give the game away. Try this from today’s BBC report on the EU’s latest destined-for-certain-failure bailout deal for Greece:

“Opinion polls suggest that the two parties in the coalition, which currently dominate parliament, are facing huge losses at the next election, scheduled for April. Parties on the far left and far right, which are set to make big gains, are opposed to the bailout deal.“

So, fascists and communists are set to make inroads as the centre-right and centre-left parties of Europe discredit themselves by their dogged commitment to a set of suicidal policies concocted in Brussels? Well I never.

“Predictable, and predicted“, as the eurosceptics are now fond of saying: the hollowing out of European democracy has been leading us in this direction for years.

But the more you look into it the worse it gets. George Tzogopoulos, of the Bodossakis Foundation think tank, was quoted in the Irish Independent last week as saying: “In my view the election (in April) will be postponed because of EU pressure.“ All quite casual and unremarkable. A leading Greek analyst just thinks the EU will ban a general election.

License To Murder: The Enduring Threat of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion Dr. Alex Grobman

Introduction

“There are a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people’s, and they do not observe the king’s laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them.” Book of Esther 3:8.

“Among themselves they [Jews} are inflexibly honest and ever ready to shew compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies.” Tacitus, The Histories Book V

Antisemitism existed in one form or another throughout much of human history. This study examines some historical examples of this particular strain of hate, focusing especially on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most deceitful, dangerous and pernicious of the libels ever used to incite hatred and violence against the Jewish people.

The myth of an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world as advanced in the Protocols has been exposed by historians, journalists, politicians, police and religious leaders. In November 1937, the Court of Appeals in Berne, Switzerland, concluded: “This scurrilous work contains unheard of and unjustified attacks against Jews and must without reservation be judged to be immoral literature.”1

Social issues are so fascinating for the same reason debates over them are so often dull and frustrating: because the language of ideology, morality and law is insufficient to describe the human complexities involved. Writing at National Review Online, City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald calls our attention to a case in point:

Katie Roiphe’s full-throated defense of single parenthood should not really come as a surprise, given the iron-clad grip of feminism and the related prerogatives of the sexual revolution on the elite worldview. This proud single mother and NYU journalism professor, who is definitely not “too poor to marry,” is insulted by a New York Times article on the 53 percent illegitimate-birth rate among females under 30. . . .

But despite its overdetermined status, Roiphe’s Slate piece is nevertheless a sobering reminder of how great the abyss still is between those who understand the costs of family breakdown and those who see it as merely “refresh[ing] our ideas of family.” Roiphe concludes that there are no (annoyingly retrograde) studies on “what it will be like for . . . children to live in” the coming world without marriage. Actually, we know already. It’s called the ghetto.

Mac Donald is right as far as she goes. Roiphe’s views are fully consistent with the selective nonjudgmentalism that is an essential component of contemporary feminist ideology (selective because feminists are happy to stigmatize men–“deadbeat dads,” for instance–and women like Sarah Palin who reject the pieties of feminism). It’s also true that Roiphe is blasé about the effects on children, including children less privileged than her own offspring, of growing up without fathers. To her, the only risk worth worrying about is that they will bear the brunt of others’ censure.

But when you read Roiphe’s article, it turns out there’s more going on here. For one thing, ideologically she is just confused. Consider her second paragraph:

Conservatives will no doubt be elaborately hysterical over the breakdown of morals among the women of Lorain [Ohio, dateline of the Times piece], but they will be missing the major point, which is that however one feels about it, the facts of American family life no longer match its prevailing fantasies. For those who have associated single motherhood with the poor and uneducated, and increasingly, with the urban very-educated . . . they now have to confront the changing demographics of the vast American middle. No matter how one sees this development, . . . one has to recognize that marriage is very rapidly becoming only one way to raise children.

And there goes Electability by N. Richard Greenfield

THE GOP DEBATES ARE MORE AKIN TO MUD WRESTLING THAN TO SERIOUS DISCOURSE. HERE IS RICHARD GREENFIELD’S TAKE SO FAR….THE GOP WILL BE SINGING “GLOOMY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN”….RSK

N. Richard Greenfield owns Ledger Publications in Hartford, Connecticut, which publishes weekly and monthly newspapers in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He has been active in politics for many years and has worked on a number of campaigns around the country.

It was at the CPAC conference a few weeks ago that former governor Mitt Romney threw out the comment that his time in office in Massachusetts was “severely conservative.”(1) Richard Viguerie(2), the lion of the conservative right, immediately countered that no serious observer of the governor’s tenure ever used the word conservative in describing it.

No doubt, Republicans who gain high office in very liberal states like Massachusetts have a great deal of difficulty governing, but Governors Kasich in Ohio and Walker in Wisconsin(3) are rising to the task as they enunciate core principles and work hard to move their states in the right direction. Governor Romney showed no such initiative. He got along with the legislature, did deals and ended up with a record that boasted Romneycare(4) as its crowning achievement.

If Governor Romney’s campaign for the presidency can’t gain traction from his record as governor, the positions he took while running for various other offices don’t serve him well either. As John Kerry(5) found out during his failed run for higher office. changing positions on major issues, while not a problem in Massachusetts, doesn’t go over well elsewhere. Governor Romney is foundering on the same truth and here is how former Bush speechwriter, Michael Gerson(6), describes his dilemma. “Romney’s main political vulnerability is a serious one. Running for Massachusetts’s governor in 2002, he was a pro-choice, economically centrist, culturally liberal, business-oriented Republican. Running for president in 2008, he was a thoroughly pro-life, orthodox supply-side, culturally conservative, Fox News Republican. Romney’s shape-shifting 2008 campaign only reinforced the impression of a consultant-driven candidate.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/291694/mccain-graham-heart-muslim-brotherhood-andrew-c-mccarthy McCain & Graham [Heart] the Muslim Brotherhood Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have taken time off from helping install an Islamist government in Libya (mainly the Muslim Brotherhood, with some help from al Qaeda) and calling for the arming of the Syrian “rebels” (mainly the Muslim Brotherhood, with some help from al Qaeda) […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/22/oliver-stones-son-the-jewish-christian-muslim/

In the midst of all the important news stories competing for my attention lately, I found myself distracted the other day by what, at first blush at least, seemed a decidedly trivial one. Apparently there exists someone by the name of Sean Stone. He is twenty-seven years old, and is the son of Oliver Stone, the famous film director, writer, and outspoken fan of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and other charismatic totalitarians. Coincidentally, Sean Stone has also appeared in twelve of his father’s own movies, which means he is obviously an exceedingly talented young actor.

Sean was born with the middle name of Christopher, which means “bearer of Christ.” He has now, however, changed his name to Sean Ali Stone, because he has converted to Islam. In what seems a nod to family tradition, he did not just convert to Islam, he did it in a country run by the kind of tyrants his dad loves, namely Iran.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/22/obama-puts-israel-on-ice/

The Obama administration is putting another full-court press on Israel. First it was “settlements”—not to build a single home for a Jew in Judea, Samaria, or parts of Jerusalem. Now it’s even graver—not to defend itself against a growing existential threat.

The pressure is both public and behind the scenes. On Sunday, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told CNN: “It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran. A strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve their [Israel’s] long-term objectives….”

On Monday—what fortuitous timing—the New York Times reported that Israel was incapable of such a strike anyway because “its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously—and use at least 100 planes.” The Times quoted various U.S. defense analysts who support that assessment.

Meanwhile National Security Adviser Tom Donilon has been the latest in a series of top U.S. officials to come to Israel and tell its leaders behind closed doors that they should trust in the god of sanctions. Israel Hayom reports that in an exchange between Donilon and Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak and chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, “Israel…demanded that the U.S. challenge Iran to immediately put an end to its nuclear program.” The U.S.—not surprisingly—responded by “urg[ing] Israel to allow sanctions against Iran to do the job and cease planning for a military strike.”

The Left’s Blind Eye to Non-Western Suffering Posted By Ben Shapiro

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/21/the-lefts-blind-eye-to-non-western-suffering/

Last Thursday, Voice of America reported one of the saddest stories of the last few years: about half of all girls in Kenyan slums apparently give their bodies to older men in trade for sanitary napkins. As health educator Lydiah Njoroge, a field officer for the Freedom for Girls Program, explained,

The least [expensive] in the market is 40 shillings … a packet that has eight pieces in it. So, because this girl cannot afford 40 shillings – their mother, their parents are poor, they have other things to provide food and shelter – sanitary towels are not a priority. So the girl just goes [and] has sex with an older man, most of the time not the same man – they would have one this month, another one next month, so they are very, very at risk of having HIV.

This story was largely buried in the media. Instead, the media focused on issues like Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian Arab-populated areas; Rick Santorum’s opinions on birth control; and, of course, the evils of those GOPers who didn’t want to extend the payroll tax cut. Can you say priorities, anyone?

Obama’s Anti-Semitic Anchors Posted By Daniel Greenfield

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/22/obama%e2%80%99s-anti-semitic-anchors/print/

Jews occupy a peculiar position in the Democratic Party: The Jewish vote is part of the Democratic base, but at the same time the party does not represent Jewish interests, either at home or abroad, and of the last three Democratic presidents, two were nakedly hostile to the Jewish state. Now the second of them is running for reelection and is counting on the Jewish vote.

After November 6th, 2012, Barack Obama will either be a leader with absolute control over foreign policy and nothing to lose or the first Democratic incumbent since Carter to lose the White House. For Obama everything hinges on securing the next four years and that requires him to play up his pro-Israel credentials while trying to convince Jewish voters that the animosity and ugliness of his present term never happened.

But there are two things dragging him down: The Center for American Progress and Media Matters.