RUTHFULLY YOURS

Kofi Annan’s Rendezvous with Tehran Posted By Claudia Rosett

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/kofi-annans-rendez-vous-with-tehran/

Iran welcomes a visit from the incompetent leader who does business with dictators.

The United Nations and the Arab League recently added a new layer of trouble to the agony and dangers of the Middle East by appointing as their joint special envoy to Syria none other than former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The charitable view: Annan’s appointment represented the triumph of amnesia over experience. During the heyday of Annan’s signature UN scandal — the Oil-for-Food program for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether Annan was corrupt or simply incompetent and indifferent to his own failures. Given the staggering dimensions of the graft-permeated, multi-billion dollar trainwreck of the Iraq relief program for which Annan was the chief administrator, there was really no third way, apart from perhaps some mix of crookedness and ineptitude. And given that the UN’s own “independent inquiry” into the program reported finding no evidence of corrupt dealings by Annan, we must consider him officially exonerated on that front; this leaves the conclusion that he was long ago promoted far beyond his real level of competence. Indeed, the UN’s own probe reached findings that he had done a lousy job: he had failed to provide “adequate oversight” of his handpicked staff; he had failed to ensure the basic aims of the sanctions on Iraq; and his performance “fell short of the standards that the United Nations Organization should strive to maintain.”

No Attention for Daylight Highway Stabbing in Alabama Posted By J. Christian Adams

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/04/10/no-attention-for-daylight-highway-stabbing-in-alabama/

A black motorcycle gang attacks a white truck driver. No arrests, no media. See also: The Birmingham News now finds the story newsworthy

A frightening event happened March 28 on an Alabama highway. The event has received no national attention apart from a lone story in the Macon Beacon in Macon, Mississippi. Not only was the event frightening, but the response — or lack thereof — by Alabama law enforcement authorities was almost as frightening. The local media, including the Birmingham News, failed to cover the shocking attack. With the flurry of national media attention the Trayvon Martin killing has received, why hasn’t the daylight stabbing of Nick Stokes received any attention?

Your first guess might be right.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11769/pub_detail.asp
In many ways, the worst aspect of environmentalism is why Greens not only feel free to terrorize children with doomsday scenarios, but feel compelled to do so.

I have been reviewing books for some fifty years and with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962 and books such as Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” have been offering scenarios intended to move people and governments to take action that, in retrospect, were based on bad “science” and absurd doomsday predictions.

If you were fooled by global warming, they are counting on you to be fooled again by “sustainability,” their reworking of Marx’s communism in the form of a grandiose scheme to control all of the Earth’s bounty. In June the United Nations will hold a Rio+20 conference that will declare that governments exist to ensure “sustainable well-being and happiness.” The Declaration of Independence offers the opportunity to pursue happiness. It does not guarantee it, nor does it suggest that it is government’s job to provide it.

A key element of the Green’s endless indoctrination schemes has been to reach children, the most vulnerable among us and for this reason our schools have been turned into Green prisons where their version of the Earth is pumped into the minds of children here and around the world.

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11. Pope marks Easter with call for end to violence in Syria

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Why We Need Voter-ID Laws Now – Voter fraud is a scandal, and the attorney general can’t look away anymore.
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American Universities Infected by Foreign Spies Detected by FBI
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Dozens Die as Suspected Muslim Terrorists Target Easter Service
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Study claims Obama’s health care law would raise deficit
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Obama administration diverts $500M to IRS to implement healthcare reform law
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Saudi cleric issues fatwa to demolish Christian Churches in Arabia
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Syria shells towns despite ceasefire deadline
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Woof: R.I. Democrat Introduces Lap-Dog Legislation
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Extradition of Abu Hamza and four others for terrorism offences can go ahead
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Another GSA official placed on leave in spending controversy

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11766/pub_detail.asp
On June 30, 1973, Dwight Elliott Stone, a 24- year-old plumber’s assistant, became the last man conscripted into the United States Army. With the Viet Nam War winding down, President Richard Nixon ended the draft after years of complaints over its inequities. The all-volunteer force that followed has kept this nation supplied with manpower for almost 40 years, through almost 30 years of peace and ten years of war.

Ask any high ranking American military officer if they are in favor of reinstating a national military draft and the answer would probably be “No thank you.” The common thread is that there are enough challenges training and motivating troops in the face of extended deployments in two protracted wars. Dealing with some conscripts who don’t want to be there at all only adds to their already impressive workload. And it’s hard to argue with success. The nation’s all-volunteer service has given the United States perhaps the most motivated, effective and professional military in its 235-year history.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

A few days after September 11 I saw a quote from Gunter Grass on a Manhattan lamppost. In those dark days, the lampposts and walls that weren’t covered in missing persons posters were decorated with the hysterical pamphleteering of the left urging us to blame ourselves for the attacks. The quote has long since been lost to memory, buried under smoke and ash, a green parrot perched on an empty staircase and crowds thronging on foot across the bridge.
The quote itself, like the latest Grassian screed, does not matter. Grass, like Gandhi and King, was one of the favorite go-to guys for the left’s sticky sheets of paper. When you want to write a suicide note, then you reach for a line from Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson, but when you want to write a national or civilizational suicide note, there’s always Gunter Grass.

As a writer, Gunter Grass is a blacksmith, hammering together graceless and shapeless lumps that aren’t good for much except hitting people over the head. Take his latest masterpiece which has for a brief shining moment gotten people outside Germany and Sweden to mention his name in conversation. You don’t have to know German to recognize that, “Es ist das behauptete Recht auf den Erstschlag der das von einem Maulhelden unterjochte” is not exactly Die Lorelei. In a fitting irony the author of the Tin Drum has a tin ear.

Like Die Lorelei’s protagonist, Gunter Grass writes about being filled with unnameable emotions, but instead of seeing water nymphs combing their hair while ship captains ram their boats into the rocks, Grass is attempting to impress audiences with his bold struggle against Jewish accusations of bigotry to forewarn us about the threat of the Jewish state.

Netanyahu does not look much like a Rhine Maiden, but there is something about the Jewish state that drives European leftists to crash their ships against the rocks more reliably than any water nymph. No sooner does Israel buy a German submarine, than Gunter Grass leaves off staring at the Rhine Maidens to write a screed denouncing the Jews and their submarines.

Grass is a worse poet than Hitler was a painter and in an asymmetrical competition, the Fuhrer would have to edge out Gunter. But as writers they are both equally bad. “Was Gesagt Werden Muss” is a sort of compressed Mein Kampf, chronicling Gunter Grass’ own Kampf in a more concise form. It reeks of the same stylistic inadequacies, the stench of self-righteousness mingled with self-pity. Like Hitler’s postcard paintings, it is exactly the sort of tacky art that a Nazi would make.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3007/germany-koran

Salafists also believe that democracy, because it is a man-made form of government, must be destroyed.. According to Die Welt, the Salafists have launched a “frontal assault” against people of other faiths and “unbelievers”. Many Islamists believe Islamic Sharia law is a divine ordinance that is to replace all other legal systems. The number of Islamic radicals in German is surging. Islam is giving them respectability.

Islamic radicals in Germany have launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign to distribute 25 million copies of the Koran, translated into the German language, with the goal of placing one Koran into every household in Germany, free of charge.

The mass proselytization campaign — called Project “Read!” — is being organized by dozens of Islamic Salafist groups located in cities and towns throughout Germany, as well as in Austria and in Switzerland.

Thoughts on Things You Cannot Say Posted By Roger Kimball

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/04/10/thoughts-on-things-you-cannot-say/

I am not going to comment directly on l’affaire Derb, the case of my friend John Derbyshire, who was ostracized [1] from the pages of National Review for writing a column elsewhere [2] that expressed unacceptable opinions about race. I would, however, like to register my admiration for what Mark Steyn had to say about the incident, in particular what he has to say about the condition of free speech in the public square. “The Left,” Mark notes:

is pretty clear about its objectives on everything from climate change to immigration to gay marriage: Rather than win the debate, they’d just as soon shut it down. They’ve had great success in shrinking the bounds of public discourse, and rendering whole areas of public policy all but undiscussable. In such a climate, my default position is that I’d rather put up with whatever racist/sexist/homophobic/Islamophobic/whateverphobic excess everybody’s got the vapors about this week than accept ever tighter constraints on “acceptable” opinion.

Indeed. As I wrote to another friend, it used to be that if someone expressed an opinion you didn’t like, the proper response was to endeavor to refute it. What happened to that ambition? Mark, I fear, is correct: “The net result of Derb’s summary execution by NR will be further to shrivel the parameters, and confine debate in this area to ever more unreal fatuities.”

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/19515-Diversity-Vs-Understanding.html Diversity Vs Understanding I grew up in my working class neighborhood with friends of different races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and sexual orientations. Although there were stereotypes and jokes that, in retrospect, are embarrassing, we all talked openly and understood each other. That bred mutual respect and defense of each’s rights to fair treatment based […]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/mexican-town-celebrates-easter-with-burning-of-the-jews/

Mexican town celebrates Easter with ‘burning of the Jews’

A small Chiapas town ends its Holy Week observance by parading Jewish effigies through the streets, then setting them on fire The 2006 film ‘Borat’ depicted an absurd ‘Running of the Jew’ ceremony. In Mexico, a newspaper is reporting on a genuine ‘Burning of the Jews’ event.
The world is full of charming Easter traditions, but this isn’t one of them.

A newspaper in Mexico is detailing Sunday’s “burning of the Jews,” an annual tradition in Coita, a small town in the state of Chiapas. As part of the custom, locals spend the middle of their Holy Week making Jewish effigies — a reference to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus before his crucifixion.

The fake Jews are then displayed for three days in different parts of the town, serving as an example of poor conduct.

They’re ultimately paraded through the streets on Easter Sunday, with local children assigned to stand in front of them and collect money for flammable materials.