RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2011/12/14/poverty_doesnt_make_thieves__liberalism_does/print

This week, the Los Angeles Times reported a wave of theft plaguing area high schools. The objects at stake? Tubas. According to South Gate High School music teacher Ruben Gonzalez Jr., thieves broke into the band room and stole nothing but tubas. A few weeks before, thieves took eight sousaphones from a Compton high school. Either the original cast of “The Music Man” is criminally eager for a revival, or these thieves are selling the horns on the black market.

Now the left loves to claim that crime waves like this are caused by poverty. If you’re poor, the logic goes, you’ll have to steal a loaf of bread — or a trombone — to feed your child. Criminality thus becomes a moral act.

There’s only one problem with this logic: It’s absolutely wrong.

During the Great Depression, levels of crime actually dropped. During the 1920s, when life was free and easy, so was crime. During the 1930s, when the entire American economy fell into a government-owned alligator moat, crime was nearly non-existent. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was excellent, crime rose again.

In Britain, where the social safety net is more like a social swaddling cloth, crime rates other than murder are significantly higher than in the United States. Actually, the highest rate of car theft in the world is in peaceful, socialist, unicorn-riding Switzerland. Next comes New Zealand. Then Britain, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, Scotland, Italy, Canada and Norway. That’s right — the U.S. isn’t even in the top ten.

Why is that? It’s not that these other countries are impoverished — far from it. It’s not that their poor are Dickensian urchins following the advice of newfangled Fagins. It’s that these countries have bred generations of people who think they are entitled to the property of others.

That mentality predominates in poor areas more than rich ones. There’s a reason for that: Those who succeed economically in a free market system do so based on the notion that they don’t deserve anyone else’s property unless they work for it. They don’t sit back waiting for someone to take care of them. They don’t wait for welfare checks. They go out into the world and earn their way forward.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2011/12/14/port_whine_big_labors_occupunks/print Scruffy progressive protesters locked themselves together across railroad tracks, blocked traffic and shouted profanities at police on Tuesday in a coordinated “West Coast Port Shutdown.” Truckers lost wages. Shippers lost business. This is what the Occupy Wall Street movement calls “victory.” Aging Big Labor bosses toasted one another from the sidelines as they declared […]

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2658/nuclear-freeze

Over thirty years ago, the “Nuclear Freeze” was launched across Europe and in the United States. Its leaders pushed for an end to the US nuclear modernization program of President Reagan, knowing full well that an already modernized Soviet nuclear weapons enterprise would markedly shift what Moscow called the correlation of forces distinctly in its favor. Despite millions of dollars funneled into the campaign by the Kremlin, Reagan and his allies, most notably Britain’s Prime Minister Thatcher and Germany’s Helmut Kohl stood firm. The allies deployed what were known as INF forces in Europe, including US Pershing and Ground Launched Cruise Missiles, in Britain, Germany, Italy and Holland, and faced down the Soviet deployment of nearly 2,000 such rockets in both Europe and Asia.

While deploying such missiles was a close call–in the US Congress nearly 80% of Democrats refused to support the procurement of the missiles to be deployed in Europe—Reagan pulled the rug out from under the freeze advocates by proposing a “Zero-Zero” option. The US President said the US would refrain from deploying such missiles if the Soviets withdrew and eliminated all their already deployed missiles and stopped any further build-up.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/13/the-real-threat-to-peace-is-western-support-of-palestinian-rejectionism/

“Peace” has become such a dirty word…leaving it in the hands of barbarians to make or break a deal. The real threat is continuing to indulge the fantasy of an invented people and all their spurious and evil claims to Jewish patrimony and legitimacy in Palestine….and the continual and perverse determination to avoid the fact that the Arab war against Israel is and has always been a jihad…..rsk

As Jonathan correctly noted yesterday, it’s ridiculous to assert that Israeli-Palestinian peace is threatened by plans to build 40 new homes inside a settlement that everyone knows will remain Israeli under any agreement. But if UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would like to see a genuine obstacle to peace, I suggest he study what happened at a conference of Mediterranean writers in Marseille last week: An Israeli author was kicked off a panel discussion because a Palestinian writer refused to sit at the same table with him.

http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Books/Article.aspx?id=246804&prmusr=Mp6NOhuVKb93PLNR06QJ92IpspwIXBsCF0CyMblcJ2DzJmw89TtxodGaMAzTOnKQ
Gertrude Himmelfarb’s new volume about ‘another aspect of Jewish experience’ in England counters the endless tomes documenting the philosophy of the country’s anti-Semites.Statue of Winston Churchill.

Jews who find a steady diet of books about the anti-Semitism of England’s learned classes more unpleasant than exploratory surgery will find a welcome antidote in Gertrude Himmelfarb’s scintillating and (mostly) optimistic historical essay, The People of the Book, about the counter-tradition she calls English “philosemitism.”

But that term, like “People of the Book” and “anti-Semitism,” is steeped in ambiguity, tainted in its origin and generally applied anachronistically.

The term “People of the Book” originated with Muhammad, and in the Koran, refers to Jews and Christians. It has pejorative overtones, as in “People of the Book! Why reject ye the Signs of Allah.”

Similarly “philosemitism” was originally pejorative; it was invented, like its opposite, anti-Semitism, by German Jewhaters.

They used it to disparage people they deemed “soft on the Jews.”

The term “anti-Semitism” itself was a pseudo-scientific euphemism for old-fashioned Jew-hatred, and is still invoked by devotees of the Arab cause: “How can I be called an anti-semite [spelled thus] when I support the Semites called Arabs?” The answer is that anti-Semites don’t hate “Semites”; they hate Jews.

Himmelfarb, without denying either the pioneering role of England’s anti- Semites (the inventors of the blood libel, the first to expel their country’s Jewish population) or their recent resurgence, tries to balance it with “another aspect of Jewish experience – the respect, even reverence, for Jews and Judaism displayed by non-Jews before and after the Holocaust.”

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1977/The-View-from-the-Tower.aspx

If I were a psychiatrist I could find the perfect label for the depths of denial or the heights of delusion that manifest themselves in Frederick and Kimberly Kagan’s latest declarations on Iraq published in the Washington Post as “opinion.” “Fantasy” is a more like it. Their premise is that the American nation-building exercise in Iraq failed not because nation-building is pure academic utopianism (leftist cant) that withers in real-world conditions (Islam), but because the exercise didn’t go on long enough.

They pre-emptively score Prez Obama for the happy talk that’s the predictable outcome of his meeting today with Iraq’s Maliki. Fair enough. The image of Iraq he is sure to present, they write, “is a mirage.” But if we’re talking about disconnection from reality, the Kagans have once again pulled their own plug.

They write:

Even after the last U.S. soldier departs, America’s core interests in Iraq include:

●Ensuring that Iraq contributes to the security of the Middle East, rather than undermining it through state collapse, civil war or the establishment of a sectarian dictatorship;

●Ensuring that terrorist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda or backed by Iran cannot establish sanctuaries;

●Promoting an Iraq that abides by its international responsibilities;

●Containing Iranian influences that are harmful to U.S. interests in Iraq and the region; and

●Signaling U.S. commitment to the region at a pivotal moment in history.

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/12/gingrichs-fresh-hope.php
Last Friday, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, did something revolutionary. He told the truth about the Palestinians. In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an “invented” people, “who are in fact Arabs.”

His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the “Palestinian people” was artificially carved out of the Arab population of “Greater Syria.” “Greater Syria” included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term “Palestinian people” only became widely accepted after 1977.

As Daniel Pipes chronicled in a 1989 article on the subject in The Middle East Quarterly, the local Arabs in what became Israel opted for a local nationalistic “Palestinian” identity in part due to their sense that their brethren in Syria were not sufficiently committed to the eradication of Zionism.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10975

For years, I have risked scorn, defamation, and even physical menace for telling the truth about the “Palestinian” Lie.

Although the “Palestinians” claim a sacred national identity with roots in the Holy Land, the truth is that no such people or group ever existed historically. (Yes, I know that now, given the enormous propaganda and funding for terrorism that there is, indeed, a group of people who call themselves “Palestinians” and who are viewed as such by the immediate world.)

My point is that this group has no historical roots. That is my only point. And, given the enormous disinformation on this subject, I believe it is an important point.

For many millennia, the entire Middle East was only pagan, Jewish, Roman, Greek, and Christian. Islam itself only arose in the 7th century CE and Muslims thereafter conquered and colonized the Middle East and central Asia. Islamic genocide, imperialism, colonialism, forced conversions, slavery, anti-black racism, and both gender and religious apartheid characterized the Arab Muslim “takeover” of the region.

http://nationalconferenceonjewishaffairs.org/

NCJA STATEMENT AFFIRMS HISTORICAL TRUTH EXPRESSED BY SPEAKER GINGRICH
For Immediate Release
Contact: NCJA Press (212) 726-1124 natlconference@gmail.com

The National Conference on Jewish Affairs is pleased that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich affirmed what many have historically known, which is that there never was an indigenous Arab “Palestinian” people, race, or religion with their own language, flag, distinct culture, history, or national identity. There were a few pockets of Arabs scattered in the area that were in no way distinct in national character from any of their fellow Arabs among the population of Middle East. Indeed, the term “Palestinian” was used to refer to Jews since Roman times living in that territory. Yassir Arafat and other collaborators co-opted and politicized the term “Palestinian” to refer to the collection of various Arab individuals whom Arab leaders forcibly congregated in settlements so as to create a visible presence for the purpose of making claims on territory belonging historically and legally to the Jewish People.

In a bold move, Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Danny Ayalon, appealed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) meeting in Geneva this week to end the UN’s decades-old support for the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).

A video presenting Israel’s new position on the issue assumes PM Netanyahu’s approval.

Despite widespread criticism of UNRWA, however, it’s doubtful that efforts to reform the agency or eliminate it will be successful.

Ironically, one of the main obstacles is the Israeli government — especially the Ministry of Defense and some in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — which continue to support it.

Moreover, the US State Department opposes any changes. All fear an explosion of violence that would result. Rather than deal with the issue creatively and realistically, most would rather avoid it, pass it on and hope it will go away, thus compounding the problem.

And as long as UNRWA exists the issue of Palestinian refugees cannot be resolved and will continue to sabotage efforts towards peace.