RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/724/europe_s_clueless_politicians_are_so_incompetent_that_they_can_t_even_figure_out_how_to_do_the_wrong_thing
The latest EU agreement uses the fiscal crisis as an excuse to erode national sovereignty and impose more centralization, more harmonization, and more bureaucratization.
There’s always been a simple and desirable solution to Europe’s fiscal crisis, but nobody in Europe wants to do the right thing because it means admitting the failure of big government and it would result in less power for the political elite.

So we get the spectacle of never-ending emergency summits as the political class blindly searches for some magical solution. Not surprisingly, the “solution” concocted by the latest gathering is not getting good reviews.

Here’s what Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

What remarkable petulance and stupidity. The leaders of France and Germany have more or less bulldozed Britain out of the European Union for the sake of a treaty that offers absolutely no solution to the crisis at hand, or indeed any future crisis. It is EU institutional chair shuffling at its worst, with venom for good measure. …There is no shared debt issuance, no fiscal transfers, no move to an EU Treasury, no banking licence for the ESM rescue fund, and no change in the mandate of the European Central Bank.

David Cameron Bats Another Century Posted By Roger Kimball

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/12/18/david-cameron-bats-another-century/?print=1

David Cameron just batted another century. I think I’ve got that right: On this side of the pond we say “hit a home run.” In Blighty, I believe one says “bat a century.” (English and other members and former members of the Empire will feel free to correct me.) [UPDATE: As many have. The correct equivalent is “hit a six.” And, I am reliably informed, one “scores a century.”] Just a week or so back, Mr. Cameron demonstrated that he was not, as many of us believed, a sort of blancmange with legs. In vetoing the proposed revisions to the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, he showed that he actually possessed a back bone and that he was willing and able to stand up for Britain. “It has to be in Britain’s interests” was his constant, and correct, refrain. When he went to Brussels for the Merkozy all-nighter, he had reportedly intended to go along to get along. But when he absorbed what the Treaty revisions would mean for the city of London (billions of pounds in new fees), he told Angela and Nicolas that they would be sailing to Eutopia without Britannia.

Mr. Cameron must enjoy standing tall. For just yesterday in a speech about religion in the public square, he told Rowan Williams, the self-described “hairy lefty” and “Druid,” who also happens to be Archbishop of Canterbury, where he could get off. He has made a pastime of criticizing the Cameron government’s spending cuts, the legitimacy of its coalition, and has recently demanded increased taxes on banks.

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2682/belgium-islamist-state

An Islamist group in Belgium is intensifying a propaganda and intimidation campaign aimed at turning the country into an Islamic state.

Over the past several months, Sharia4Belgium, a Muslim organization that wants to implement Islamic Sharia law throughout Belgium, has become increasing belligerent in its appeals to fellow Muslims to overthrow the democratic order in the country.

The latest installment of Islamist agitprop comes in the form of a video in which the Belgian Islamist Sheik Abu Imran declares that the black flag of Islamic Jihad will “soon be flying on top of all the palaces in Europe.”

The December 11 video, which has been translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), shows Imran dressed in military camouflage calling for the destruction of the Atomium, a monument in Brussels that is the national symbol of Belgium.

MR. CODEVILLA HAS GRACIOUSLY GIVEN ME PERMISSION TO POST AND CIRCULATE A PERSONAL LETTER HE RECENTLY WROTE ….RSK

Is there a Republican Establishment that differs from and is antagonistic to people who vote Republican?

Whether such a thing existed before, say, 1950, is problematic. But since about that time it has manifested itself undeniably. Consider:

Beginning circa 1940, Robert Taft of Ohio rebuilt the Republican Party’s credit with the American people. He spoke of smaller government at home and the pursuit of the national interest abroad- including opposition equally to Communists and Nazis. Wars were for winning. But the Party’s machinery and money were in New York. J. D. Rockefeller, Wendell Wilkie, John Foster Dulles, and Thomas Dewey, supported heavily by old money, were Progressives in the mold of Herbert Hoover and Woodrow Wilson. They believed that they could bring the world together onto the path of progress and improve America by tweaking FDR’s New Deal. Wilkie and Dewey lost. By 1952 the party was almost unanimously for Taft. But the Republican Progressives bought and stole delegates to the ’52 convention, especially in the South where delegates had no voters who could hold them accountable. When that did not work, they used the Credentials committee to exclude the elected Texas delegation and replaced it with one formed by them. Dwight Eisenhower was a great man. But he was foisted on the party – not picked by it.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4160141,00.html

WE HAVE HAD A LOVELY FAMILY HOME IN CONNECTICUT…IT DATES FROM 1762 WITH MANY ORIGINAL FEATURES…BUILT AS A SCHOOLHOUSE BY A MR. GEORGE LAKE IT HAS BEEN OCCUPIED BY ONLY FOUR FAMILIES…THE LAKES, THE FULHAMS AND THE GREENS WHO SOLD IT TO THE KINGS. WHEN WE OCCUPIED IT IN 1969 WE FOUND A DIARY OF LETTERS TO ONE OF THE FORMER OWNERS. IT WAS DATED MARCH 25, 1936 IN WHICH THE CORRESPONDENT STATED THAT HE COULD NOT WAIT TO LEAVE “JEW YORK”….I GUESS THE MAN NEVER HAD A PASTRAMI ON RYE…..RSK

With a heritage that stretches back 400 years and vital contemporary community that’s reinterpreting old traditions for 21st century, Jewish New York features museums and historic sites, world’s largest menorah and trendy new Tribeca restaurant

Museums and historic sites, the world’s largest menorah, and a trendy new Tribeca restaurant inspired by an old-school Catskills resort. They’re all part of Jewish New York, with a heritage that stretches back 400 years and a vital contemporary community that’s reinterpreting old traditions for the 21st century.

New York City has the largest concentration of Jews in the world outside of Israel, according to the Jewish Databank, which put the city’s Jewish population at 1.4 million in 2002.

The stories of European Jews who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are relatively well-known and easy to find in places like the Lower East Side. But visitors with an interest in Jewish New York will also want to explore many other parts of the city, from the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn to a 17th century graveyard on a Chinatown sidestreet.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2001/01/hitchens-200101
Visit to a Small Planet

HITCHENS WROTE THIS EXCELLENT COLUMN IN JANUARY 2001. BOTH AUTHOR AND SUBJECT DIED THIS WEEK…AND I CAN ONLY REGRET THAT HITCHENS’ TRANSFORMATION NEVER INCLUDED RESPECT FOR ISRAEL WHOSE ENEMIES ARE WORSE THAN KIM IL SUNG….RSK
North Koreans worship their dead dictator, Kim Il Sung, and his son the reigning Kim Jong Il, despite the surreal nightmare of famine, isolation, repression, and nuclear peril the dynasty has spawned. In Pyongyang, the author wonders whether mass delusion is the only thing that keeps a people sane.
by Christopher Hitchens

The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them, with their nuclear-family implications, as “Fat Man and Little Boy.”) And a river runs through it. And on this river, the Taedong River, is moored the only American naval vessel in captivity. It was in January 1968 that the U.S.S. Pueblo strayed into North Korean waters, and was boarded and captured. One sailor was killed; the rest were held for nearly a year before being released. I looked over the spy ship, its radio antennae and surveillance equipment still intact, and found photographs of the captain and crew with their hands on their heads in gestures of abject surrender. Copies of their groveling “confessions,” written in tremulous script, were also on show. So was a humiliating document from the United States government, admitting wrongdoing in the penetration of North Korean waters and petitioning the “D.P.R.K.” (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) for “lenience.” Kim Il Sung (“Fat Man”) was eventually lenient about the men, but not about the ship. Madeleine Albright didn’t ask to see the vessel on her visit last October, during which she described the gruesome, depopulated vistas of Pyongyang as “beautiful.” As I got back onto the wharf, I noticed a refreshment cart, staffed by two women under a frayed umbrella. It didn’t look like much—one of its three wheels was missing and a piece of brick was propping it up—but it was the only such cart I’d see. What toothsome local snacks might the ladies be offering? The choices turned out to be slices of dry bread and cups of warm water.

www.carolineglick.com Why I won’t miss Christopher Hitchens PLEASE READ A HITCHENS COLUMN ON NORTH KOREA’S HOOLIGAN LEADER WHO ALSO DIED THIS WEEK..RSK I have read several appreciations of Hitchens written by conservatives and neo-conservatives who knew him and appreciated his transformation from a man of the left into a man of the right since the […]

Ron Paul’s Newsletter Problem – Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/ron-pauls-newsletter-problem-185300315.html

RON PAUL IS NOT JUST A CRANKY CURMUDGEON AND GADFLY…HE IS A NASTY AND DANGEROUS BIGOT AND THE IDIOTS WHO MONITOR THE DEBATES JUST GIVE HIM A PASS WHILE THEY HOUND GINGRICH….RSK

Rep. Ron Paul, a leading candidate for president, published a series of monthly newsletters in the 1980s and 1990s, according to a Weekly Standard piece by James Kirchick. He repeats some of information he revealed in a 2008 New Republic piece.

What were the newsletters sent out by Ron Paul?

They went under a variety of names since first published in 1978, two years after Paul was elected to Congress, including “Ron Paul’s Freedom Report,” “Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report.” Most of the newsletters were published by a company Paul founded called “Ron Paul and Associates” in 1985 during a hiatus of his congressional career. According to an article in Reason, a tax document from 1993 indicates that the organization had an income of $940 thousand, mainly from sale of the newsletter.

What was published in the various newsletters?

The newsletters did not have a byline but invoked Paul’s name a considerable amount and were written in the first person. The newsletters contained commentary on issues of the day that are presumed to be from Paul’s perspective.

Kirchick has found some of the material in the Paul newsletters to have racially charged contents. In a commentary on the 1992 Los Angeles riots, for example, a “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” claimed that order was only restored when “blacks lined up for their welfare checks.” Another issue accused Martin Luther King Jr. of seducing underage boys and girls and of beating up his paramours. Yet another issue recounted a story, not backed up by evidence, that suggested that gangs of teenage black girls were roaming the streets of New York and deliberately injecting white women with HIV infected syringes.

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2587/christians-middle-east

FOR THE LATEST NEWS ON THE SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN MOSLEM COUNTRIES PLEASE GO TO THE EXCELLENT SITE :

http://www.persecution.org/

Of the eight million people or so living in Israel, around 20% are Arabs—of whom about 7% are Christian. Israel’s Arab Christians, in other words, number only about 110,000 people, living mostly in tight communities in Jerusalem and the Galilee.

For all the solicitous attention paid to them by such international Christian organizations as the World Council of Churches, you would think they were a larger and more important group. Much of the Vatican’s diplomacy—its occasionally adversarial relations with Israel, its Palestinian favoritism, its reluctance to condemn the Islamic dictatorships—derives from its belief that the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East are at risk, and that the best way to defend them is to be seen to side with Arabs against their perceived enemies.

Hard to say the Vatican is wrong about the first part. At the beginning of the twentieth century, large numbers of Christians still lived in their traditional Orthodox and Catholic communities, from the Holy Mountain of Mount Athos all the way around the Mediterranean—through Asia Minor, down the Levant, and across North Africa to Morocco. In 1914, they made up 25% of Ottoman Empire.

The next year the Turks began the systematic part of their slaughter of the Armenians, and the churches of the Middle East have been in catastrophic decline ever since. By 2001, Christians were down to less than 1% of the Turkish population. The recent news out of Egypt—thousands of Coptic Christians fleeing the country since March, with 28 killed and hundreds wounded in Cairo on October 9—is only the latest installment in the ongoing story of the dying of ancient Christianity in the Middle East. The single most dangerous thing in the world to be, right now, is a member of a Christian community in a Muslim country.

The second part of the Vatican’s view of the Middle East, however—the idea that what is left of the Christians can be defended by trying to forge relations with Muslim extremists—has proved dangerously wrong, both as an understanding of the Christians’ situation and as a strategy for helping them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/vaclav-havel-dissident-playwright-and-former-czech-president-dies/2010/09/21/gIQATAeD2O_story.html

Vaclav Havel, a Czech writer who was imprisoned by his country’s communist rulers, only to become a symbol of freedom and his nation’s first president in the post-communist era, died Dec. 18 at his weekend home in the northern Czech Republic. He was 75.

The death was announced by his assistant, Sabina Tancevova, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Havel underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1996 and had suffered from lung ailments in recent months.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/18/havel-dissent-communism-democracy/

The death today of Vaclav Havel at the age of 75 reminds us what it truly means to speak up for liberty against tyranny. A playwright who became a symbol of dissent against an evil Soviet empire, Havel spent years in Communist jails for his activities and writings that championed individual freedom. He co-authored the Charter 77 manifesto that gave new life to the cause of human rights in his own country and helped inspire others elsewhere living under the Soviet yoke. Eventually, he helped lead his nation to freedom after the fall of the Berlin Wall and served as the first president of a free Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic after the Slovaks left to form their own nation.

But there is more to be learned from recounting the story of Havel’s sacrifices and triumphs than just a tale of individual heroism. What ought to be remembered about Havel and the “Velvet Revolution” that he led to victory is that it was won by an uncompromising defense of the principle of democracy and individual rights when many unenlightened Western “realists” and liberals made it clear they were more interested in accommodating the Soviets than working to free those suffering under their tyranny. Havel’s struggles also gives us a yardstick by which we can measure the worthiness of contemporary protest movements around the world that now claim the mantle of dissent.