RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/12/obama-scissorhands

Slashing defense even as he promises new systems no one will be able to deliver.

There are two ways to react to President Obama’s latest round of defense spending cuts. One is emotional but somewhat justified. The second is to analyze of Obama’s plans critically to reveal a transformation of our military that is as dangerous as Obama’s transformation of our economy.

Since Obama appeared with Defense Secretary Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey in the Pentagon press room last Thursday, many commentators have written and railed at length on radio and television about how these cuts will hollow our forces’ readiness to fight.

That reaction is understandable but it isn’t on more solid ground than Obama’s plan, because neither the plan nor the common reaction deals with the real dangers our nation faces.

Under former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Obama imposed about $400 billion in defense spending cuts by his “Queen of Hearts” method of budgeting for defense: verdict first, trial after. They ended, for example, production of key weapon systems such as the F-22 fighter, the C-17 transport aircraft, and the DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer.

Gates imposed those cuts before the Quadrennial Defense Review — “QDR” in the inevitable acronym — was performed. The QDR was supposed to be the congressionally mandated analysis of the threats the Pentagon is expected to deal with and from which its budget is supposed to be derived. But Gates and his team wrote the post-cuts QDR to justify the cuts rather than to justify a budget that answered the threats.

How the UN Achieves Sustainable Peacekeeper Rape Posted By Claudia Rosett
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/how-the-un-achieves-sustainable-peacekeeper-rape/

Year after year, since 2005, the United Nations has proclaimed its “zero-tolerance” policy [1] for UN peacekeepers sexually exploiting or even raping the people they’re sent to protect. Year after year, the abuse continues. One of the more recent horrors took place last year in Haiti, when five UN peacekeepers allegedly pulled an 18-year-old Haitian into a UN base, pinned him down on a mattress, beat and raped him. Part of the scene, in which he screams for help while being assaulted, was caught on video.

Haiti’s president protested. The five peacekeepers, all from Uruguay, were sent home to face prosecution. Uruguay’s ambassador to the UN apologized. But now comes a report from ABC News — “Haiti Outrage: UN Soldiers from Sex Assault Video Freed [2].” ABC’s Brian Ross reports that the case has apparently stalled. It’s been put on “indefinite hold.” And a UN official has confirmed to ABC that the former peacekeepers have been turned loose. It seems the Uruguayan prosecution could not find the victim, though ABC’s Ross notes that his name and address are well known, “if there is any interest in finding him.”

It gets worse. ABC’s report includes an interview with a UN peacekeeping official, an American, Assistant Secretary-General Anthony Banbury [3]. Asked if there’s any way to ensure that UN peacekeepers accused of sexual exploitation and assault will face justice, he simply admits, “Sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t.” In an earlier incident, when more than 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti were expelled for sexually exploiting underage girls, there was no sign they were ever prosecuted. That’s been largely the way of it, as cases of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers [4] have turned up again and again, in places such as the Congo, Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Burundi, Haiti, and South Sudan.

The New York Times Offers Propaganda for the Castro Regime as an Op-Ed Posted By Ron Radosh

[1] Give Guantanamo Back to Cuba.: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/give-guantanamo-back-to-cuba.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Today’s New York Times runs one of its usual idiotic op-eds from a contributor. It is not quite as bad as the time the paper ran the late Libyan dictator Gaddafi’s op-ed on how the world should deal with Israel, but it comes close.

This time it is from the pen of Harvard lecturer Jonathan M. Hansen and is titled “Give Guantanamo Back to Cuba. [1]” Mr. Hansen’s argument is simple: We should give the base back to Cuba, from whom we leased it in 1901. He says it represents the American presence on the island that “has been more than a thorn in Cuba’s side.” The real issue is, Hansen claims, our continued occupation of Guantanamo itself, since the base is nothing more than an “imperialist enclave.”

Mr. Hansen’s very language is a give-away. It makes me wonder if the name is really a pseudonym for Fidel or Raul Castro, since it is the kind of article one expects to read in the Cuban regime’s propaganda sheet, Granma. The author condemns “America’s long history of interventionist militarism,” and he continues with the argument that our entrance into the Spanish-Cuban War was not one on the side of Cuba against its brutal Spanish rulers, but one meant to take over the island for the United States. As he writes: “The United States wanted dominion over Cuba, along with naval bases from which to exercise it.”

The rest of Mr. Hansen’s op-ed touts the usual leftist interpretation of U.S.-Cuban relations: our country exploited Cuba for our control of its resources, leaving the island as nothing but a giant plantation which the United States controlled and benefitted from. He notes that between 1900 and 1920 44,000 Americans flocked to the island, “boosting capital investment…to just over $1 billion from roughly $80 million.” Not one word from the author about the benefits to Cuba from this capital for industrial development, which made the island a place of prosperity with a growing middle class.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9S78SUG0&show_article=1

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – The Taliban’s political wing is ready to enter peace talksto end the war in Afghanistan, but the insurgents will in the meantime continue their armed struggle, the group said Thursday.

The militant movement’s emailed statement suggests that efforts to bring Afghan factions to the table are gathering momentum, but also highlights some of the roadblocks on the way to any settlement—in particular, the Taliban’s insistence that the government of President Hamid Karzai is an illegitimate “stooge” of the West.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the militants had been fighting for the past 15 years to establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan “in accordance with the request of its people.”

“It is for this purpose and for bringing about peace and stability in Afghanistan that we have increased our political efforts to come to mutual understanding with the world in order to solve the current ongoing situation,” Mujahid said in an emailed statement.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577143174098233432.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
A Year for Elections, Not Mideast Peace
Obama will trumpet his commitment to Israel while wondering if it will attack Iran.

INSTEAD OF ALL THE PALAVER…WHY NOT JUST DECLARE IT’S OVER ….PALARABS MISSED THEIR CHANCES AND ESCALATED THEIR DEMANDS….THE PRESENT BORDERS ARE IT…DON’T LIKE IT? MOVE NEXT DOOR OR JUST LUMP IT….RSK

Last week Israelis and Palestinians held talks for the first time since September 2010. Back then, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met at the White House, under bright lights and with great expectations, along with Jordanian King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In a matter of weeks the talks failed—and Mr. Mubarak didn’t last much longer himself. What to expect this time?

For starters, note that these talks—hosted in Amman by the Jordanian government—aren’t even “negotiations.” The Palestinians made clear that these were only discussions of whether negotiations are possible. The most one can hope for is that these exploratory talks extend for several more months or lead at some point to a Netanyahu-Abbas session. This is kicking the can down the road, to be sure, but that is a reasonably accurate way of describing the “peace process” anyway.

Whatever the hopes in Washington or European capitals, Israelis and Palestinians don’t expect a breakthrough. Instead, they’re focused on three elections: America’s, the definite one; the Palestinian Authority’s, scheduled for May 4; and Israel’s, which Mr. Netanyahu may call later this year.

For Mr. Netanyahu, the question is whether the re-election of Barack Obama would harm his own chances. The ability to get along with Washington is a key asset in Israeli politics, and Israelis would worry about four more years of U.S.-Israeli tension. It is universally understood that Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama don’t get along. That might lead the Israeli prime minister to try for elections in the fall, before our own—though a decision on whether to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites could also affect that timing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577154932994154936.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Hosannas for the Court
A unanimous ruling for religious freedom, and a rebuke to Obama.

It was a banner day for religious freedom yesterday as the Supreme Court ruled that government can’t tell religious institutions whom they can hire and fire as “ministers.” The unanimous decision was a crushing rebuke to the Obama Administration, which had taken the radical position that churches are little different from any other employer in job disputes.

In the High Court’s latest support for the First Amendment, all nine Justices upheld what’s known as the “ministerial exception” in employment disputes, recognizing a healthy degree of autonomy for churches, synagogues and other houses of worship.

In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School vs. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Cheryl Perich had worked as a religiously affiliated or “called” teacher at the Lutheran school, teaching math and music as well as leading students in prayer. In 2004, she took a medical leave for narcolepsy, a sleep disorder. When she sought to return, the school declined, and she was eventually voted out by the church congregation. Ms. Perich and the federal EEOC sued for backpay, reinstatement and damages. READ IT ALL AT THE SITE

A History Lesson for Ron Paul Posted By Humberto Fontova

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/12/a-history-lesson-for-ron-paul/

Ron Paul, in an exasperated tone during the Iowa debates, said: “All these trade sanctions!…This is why we still don’t have a trade relationship with Cuba.”

Ground Control to candidate Paul: according to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. has transacted almost $4 billion in trade with Cuba over the past decade. Up until two years ago the U.S. served as Stalinist Cuba’s biggest food supplier and fifth biggest import partner. We’ve fallen a few notches recently, but we’re still in the top half. Furthermore, the U.S. has been Castro-controlled Cuba’s biggest donor of humanitarian aid, including medicine and medical supplies, for decades.

Ground Control to candidate Paul: For over a decade, the so-called U.S. embargo has merely stipulated that Castro’s Stalinist regime pay cash up front through a third–party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. (You’d really, really think a libertarian would approve of this.) Enacted by the Bush team in 2001, this cash-up-front policy has kept the U.S. taxpayer among the few in the world not screwed and tattooed by Fidel Castro. Here are a few other items candidate Paul might keep in mind before any campaign stops (especially in Florida):

Per-capita-wise, Cuba qualifies as the world’s biggest debtor nation with a foreign debt of close to $50 billion, a credit–rating nudging Somalia’s, and an uninterrupted record of defaults. Standard & Poor’s refuses even to rate Cuba, viewing the economic figures released by the regime apparatchiks as utterly bogus.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/the_crass_marketing_of_a_sadistic_racist.html

CHE GUEVARA IS BACK IN THE NEWS.

You would think that such a bloodthirsty, murdering psychopath would just stay dead and buried rathert than be resurrected by deluded leftists who continue to be fascinated by his “reovlutionary” exploits.

This time, it’s the Mercedes car company who is actually using the thug to introduce new technology that will make it easier for drivers to find someone to share a ride to work with.

CBS:

“Some colleagues still think that car-sharing borders on communism,” Mercedes-Benz Chairman of the Board of Management Dieter Zetsche said onstage at CES today, speaking about Mercedes’ new CarTogether initiative. “But if that’s the case, viva la revolucion!”

To be sure, a luxury-car maker like Mercedes is not actually promoting communism. But during his CES talk, Zetsche pushed hard on a vision that the company has for a greener future that allows drivers to reduce emissions by using connected and social technology to easily find compatible passengers to share rides with.

http://politicalmavens.com/
Mabul (The Flood) is an award winning Israeli film that has just opened this year’s Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The word is commonly associated with the great Flood in Noah’s time and it is that portion of the Bible that the young bar-mitzvah boy, Yoni, is studying for his upcoming rite of passage. He is the fulcrum in a movie about family relations, coming of age, marital dysfunction, friendship and community support. Yoni’s father has lost his job as an airline pilot and has been concealing that poorly from his wife and son who clearly sense that he is lying. Yoni’s mother runs a day care center and finds consolation from her unhappy marriage in an affair with the father of one of the children in her care; Yoni is earning money by selling homework assignments in several different subjects but he is being shaken down by the school bullies. The final straw is the return of Yoni’s older autistic brother who has been institutionalized for most of his life but has to come home because the institution is failing.

http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2012/01/dear-mr-medad-sincerely-thomas-friedman.html

The other day I posted a blog on words of the New York Times’ columnist, Thomas Friedman, as reported in Egypt. I also uploaded a slightly altered version at my Jerusalem Post blog, Green-Lined.

It is now updated to include this response of Mr. Friedman:-

Update (2012-01-11 15:03:25):

Dear Mr. Medad:

The quote attributed to me by the Egyptian daily is completely mangled. I was asked by an audience member to give my assessment of the liberal’s performance in the Egyptian election. What I actually said, which the reporter, clearly not an English speaker, did not get, was that it was no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood did so well in this first election because for the last 30 years Mubarak had cleared out all the political space between himself and the Brotherhood so that he was able to come to Washington and say to successive U.S. Presidents that “It is either me or them.” I said that what the Egyptian elections produced, for the first time, were legitimate, authentic, liberal, secular, nationalist, progressive alternatives to the Muslim Brotherhood and now the Brotherhood would have to compete with such alternatives — for the first time. I then said, given the fact that the liberals had only four months to organize their parties and that the Brotherhood had been in politics for 83 years, that I thought the liberals had done amazingly well. By the way, there were many cameras filming all of this, so it is easy enough to verify.

I would also note that this is a point I have made many times before in my writings — in precisely those words — that what was missing in Arab politics was a legitimate, progressive alternative to both the official parties and the Islamists. I would also note that in my previous NYT column from I Cairo, I wrote: “…the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Al Nour Party — just crushed the secular liberals, who actually sparked the rebellion here, in the free Egyptian parliamentary elections, winning some 65 percent of the seats. To not be worried about the theocratic, antipluralistic, anti-women’s-rights, xenophobic strands in these Islamist parties is to be recklessly naïve.” (see below for Barry Rubin’s take on it)

On bribery, what I said is exactly what I have written in my own column in the New York Times twice before, “Our Congress has become a forum for legalized bribery,” which is what I believe and is hardly an original observation. Judging from reports of allegations against senior political figures in Israel that I read about in your own newspaper, Israel’s democracy is suffering from the same problem. I was warning Egyptians that uncontrolled money in politics is what can destroy their infant democracy, that it was eroding our own, and that they had to be very vigilant about this.” I was reacting to reports in the press that money from Qatar and Saudi had flowed to Islamist parties, while the liberals were starved for cash. I made no connection to any particular special interest in America. Finally, my one-hour question and answer session at AUC was not something I was paid for.

Mr. Medad, you asked aloud whether I could have said what I was quoted saying? I am glad you asked it aloud. I just wish you had asked me first before publishing this blog on your site. I am in the phone book.

Sincerely,

Thomas Friedman