RUTHFULLY YOURS

There is much….too much ado about nasty Tom Friedman. The orotund Tom waddles around where even the noxious team Walt/Mearsheimer fear to tread.

Even liberals recognize what an oaf he is. Here is some choice criticism of Tom from Matt Taibbi reviewing Friedman’s book “The Earth is Flat”…..
Flathead The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman.

By Matt Taibbi. Originally published April 21, 2005 in the New York Press.

The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays.

Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It’s not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It’s that he always screws it up.

On an ideological level, Friedman’s new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit. If its literary peculiarities could somehow be removed from the equation, The World is Flat would appear as no more than an unusually long pamphlet replete with the kind of plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country.

He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity.

http://rolocroz.com/junk/friedman.html

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11026/pub_detail.asp

President Obama deserves credit for authorizing the execution of Osama bin Laden and for significantly intensifying the drone campaign against terrorists. He’s largely stopped romanticizing the Palestinians; has recognized that Putin made an ass of him; and has even hinted that he might stand up to China on some issues. But even if he turns into a combination of Ike, Reagan and Carl von Clausewitz in the coming months, his administration’s foreign-policy record will forever be defined by his disastrous rush to leave Iraq—then brag about it.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/39563#CurDomainURL#/blog.cfm
Hon. Geert Wilders’ New Book Offends Egypt Even Before It is Published

The Dutch Ambassador to Egypt, Susan Blankhart was called to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, today, to protest ‘defamation of Islam’ in a new book by the Hon. Geert Wilders. Wilders’ book is scheduled to be released here in the US, next April. The Egyptians were likely using this opportunity as a media event. We note that this occurred while our State Department’s conference on The Istanbul Process Combating Intolerance conference was taking place in DC. With representatives from member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the EU, the OSCE, gathered in Washington why miss an opportunity to stifle any criticism of Islam and deny Free Speech? After all this plenary session in DC is developing ‘best practices’ to rein in religious intolerance. How Orwellian of them.

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/writers/?showid=Melanie%20Phillips

Mahmoud Abbas is the man who Britain, America and Europe think deserves to be the president of an independent state of Palestine — the establishment of which, they tell themselves, would end the Middle East impasse.

To Western eyes Abbas, the Fatah-backed President of the Palestinian Authority, is a moderate. It is, however, simply astounding that he should be viewed in this way. It is even more astounding that Western liberals should endorse him and give him a free pass for his behaviour.

Muslims convicted in America of supporting terrorist groups are heroes and the victims of injustice, a national convention of Palestinian activists was told. In addition, speakers said the fight for a Palestinian state will center on American college campuses.

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)’s conference on Palestinian activism in America attracted more than 2,000 people Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago.

Last year’s AMP’s conference revealed the organization’s goal to delegitimize the State of Israel in America. This year’s conference reinforced that message, while taking it a step further.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“The right wing extremist strains of Israeli Judaism are threatening to turn that ignition into a conflagration.” That quote comes from Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, the same Rabbi now being widely quoted for his bizarre Tim Tebow column. Or rather there are numerous articles quoting the column without mentioning his name or who he is.

This is not the article that I had planned to run tonight. That article has already been written and sits waiting. It may be timely, but it will have to wait until next week, because this is timelier and it needs to be said.

In the last hour I read through numerous blog posts treating Hammerman’s column as a Jewish view and turning it into an attack on Jews in general. Some of those attacks are fairly mild mannered, but they come down to the same thing. Those pieces however show very little wisdom.

http://lennybendavid.com/ How much of the Palestinian Refugee saga is a fraud? Here’s an example There’s little question that some of Palestine’s Arabs date back a millennium. Indeed, studies show that some, particularly those in the Hebron Hills areas, were Palestinian Jews who were forced to convert to Islam.  Some families in places like Yatta still […]

On Muslim Anti-Semitism, It’s Gutman Versus the Saudis
CENTURIES BEFORE SAUDI ARABIA STARTED TO PEDDLE OIL AND INFLUENCE THE MUSLIM WORLD HATED JEWS…..PLEASE READ ANDREW BOSTOM’S “THE LEGACY OF ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITISM”…..RSK
On one side is President Obama’s still-not-fired Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman, who told a crowd of Europeans that Muslim anti-Semitism has geopolitical rather than religious roots. On the other side are Saudi high school textbooks just exposed in a new report from the watchdog group MEMRI:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/friedman-newt-mitt-bibi-and-vladimir.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir
“I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics.That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”

I have a simple motto when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I love both Israelis and Palestinians, but God save me from some of their American friends — those who want to love them to death, literally.

That thought came to mind last week when Newt Gingrich took the Republican competition to grovel for Jewish votes — by outloving Israel — to a new low by suggesting that the Palestinians are an “invented” people and not a real nation entitled to a state.

This was supposed to show that Newt loves Israel more than Mitt Romney, who only told the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom that he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem because “I don’t seek to take actions independent of what our allies think is best, and if Israel’s leaders thought that a move of that nature would be helpful to their efforts, then that’s something I’ll be inclined to do. … I don’t think America should play the role of the leader of the peace process. Instead, we should stand by our ally.”

That’s right. America’s role is to just applaud whatever Israel does, serve as its A.T.M. and shut up. We have no interests of our own. And this guy’s running for president?…….ENOUGH SAID…FROM ALL THE ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT

German Court Bans Muslim Prayers in Schools

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2666/germany-muslim-school-prayers

Germany’s top administrative court has ruled that a Muslim student is not entitled to perform prayers at his school because the act has the potential to create “very severe conflicts.”

Germany’s Federal Administrative Court found that although the right to pray at school is guaranteed by religious freedom under the constitution (Grundgesetz), students lose that right if a conflict is created in the process.

The court also ruled that schools are not obligated to accommodate Muslims by providing them with separate prayer rooms.

The ruling in the landmark case has both legal and political consequences. Not only do schools across Germany now have a legal basis for banning Muslim prayers, but the widely-watched case also feeds into the larger debate about the role of Islam in Germany.