RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/a_double-dose_of_spengler.html

Back in the 1990s, a publication no one had ever heard of, Asia Times, began to run a column written by someone calling himself “Spengler” — as in Oswald Spengler, the German author of the classic Decline of the West. These columns were so insightful, and so well-written, that the urge to forward them to other readers was irresistible. (I seemed to get about 10 copies of each Spengler column from various friends and ex-colleagues in the intelligence business, and I probably forwarded each column to a dozen of the ex-spooks I’d worked with during the Reagan administration.) Before long, more than a million people each week were reading these columns, and a lot of them were asking one another: who’s Spengler?

Given the extraordinary depth and breadth of his columns, several of us assumed that “Spengler” was merely the nom de guerre for a top-secret cadre of geopolitical geniuses operating clandestinely from somewhere in Hong Kong or perhaps Singapore. Not quite. It turns out that “Spengler” is actually David P. Goldman, who’s based in New York and who once headed global bond research for Bank of America. He’s also a highly regarded literary and music critic with a Ph.D in music theory.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/11/the_end_of_the_peace_process_era.html The Palestinian/Israeli conflict has entered a new era.  Since the UNSC passed Res 242, it had been focused on the “peace process,” which included the Madrid Conference, the Oslo Accords, the Roadmap, Annapolis, and, finally, Obama’s heavy-handed attempts to impose a solution. One of the reasons why Obama couldn’t get the PA to negotiate […]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/14/china-roils-not-so-pacific-pacific/

Suddenly, it seems, President Obama is all about the Pacific. As he put it at a weekend summit of the region’s leaders in Hawaii, “The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay.” Unfortunately, thus far in his presidency, Mr. Obama has caused many of his guests to see America as less and less of a power and prompted them to have serious doubts about our willingness to stay in a strategically significant way.

Such perceptions have been greatly aggravated by the dynamic that has characterized the Pacific in recent years: the increasing emergence of Communist China as an economic and military hegemonist while the United States appears to be poorly led, in decline economically and in retreat militarily.

Friends and adversaries alike have responded to such perceived changes in the geopolitics of the Pacific and its vast periphery. America’s formal or de facto allies there – a group that has of late come to include a few unlikely nations like Vietnam – are panicking at the prospect that this country will be neither willing nor able to serve as a bulwark against Chinese imperialism.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/13/decker-obama-chinas-stooge/
President Obama is overseas on a nine-day Blame America First tour. He’s ostensibly spending time on the other side of the Pacific to explore ways the United States can work better with Asian economies. Instead, he’s using his time in the spotlight to criticize the nation he’s supposed to be leading.

“We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades,” Mr. Obama said at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Honolulu over the weekend. “We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.” This is the height of chutzpah from the elected official who has done more than anyone else to undermine the competitiveness of U.S. industries. Economic uncertainty is the chief reason businesses aren’t hiring or investing in new projects. The main causes for corporate uncertainty are out-of-control government regulation, spending and taxation – problems Mr. Obama has exacerbated.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/14/us-israel-france-idUSTRE7AD25Y20111114?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has written to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reaffirm friendship despite what he refers to as their “differing views on the Middle East,” Israeli officials said on Monday.

Sarkozy’s comments, in a condolence message to Netanyahu for the death of his father-in-law, seemed an effort to try to clear the air a week after a reported gaffe this month at the G20 summit in Cannes, when he was overheard telling U.S. President Barack Obama he thought Netanyahu was “a liar”.

In addition to words of sympathy, Sarkozy’s letter to Netanyahu, according to two officials in the Israeli leader’s office, said:

“You have my friendship, and our differing views on the problems of the Middle East, and the interpretations appearing in the media, have no effect on it.”

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
Is Palestine’s Admittance To UNESCO Valid?
Sydney lawyer and Middle East specialist David Singer, a foundation member of the International Analysts’ Network, has cast his legal eagle eye over Palestine’s admittance to UNESCO, and finds that there’s a snag. His new article, entitled “Palestine – UNESCO Membership May Be Unconstitutional,” which comes via the antipodean J-Wire service, explains the issue.
‘Palestine’s membership of UNESCO could be under serious legal threat – as the vote approving such admission comes under increasing scrutiny.

The decision to admit Palestine has come at great financial cost to UNESCO and has threatened the abandonment or postponement of many of its worthy and worthwhile programs.

UNESCO notes in a Press Release on 10 November:

“The U.S has withheld its contributions following the admission of Palestine to UNESCO on 31 October. They were required to do so by U.S. laws dating from the 1990s. This leaves UNESCO with an immediate shortfall of US$65m to the end of 2011, and a further gap of 22 percent in its US$653m budget for 2012-2013. Israel has now followed suit and withheld its contribution of US$1.5m (0.3 percent of UNESCO’s budget) for 2012-2013.”

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova has now launched an Emergency Multi-Donor Fund to help find the very large shortfall resulting from dues withheld by the United States. It has left an enormous black hole to fill – given the financial crisis enveloping the European Union and its members.

One way of rescuing UNESCO from its current predicament would be to approach the International Court of Justice seeking an Advisory Opinion on the legality of Palestine’s admission to UNESCO.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The multiple incidents of sexual assault in the Occupation tent cities are as ugly as they are inevitable. The absence of theft, assault and other forms of attacks is not a natural phenomenon, it is the outcome of a system that protects individual rights. The Occupy tent cities are not concerned with the rights of the individual, but with the grand collective right of the “99 percent” to demand private property on behalf of the government. And collectivist movements are notoriously unconcerned with what happens to the individual.

The collectivist response to the allegations is to urge the victims to remain silent to avoid harming the reputation of the movement. This is a commonplace institutional response to rape allegations. It is not concerned with the individual, but the group. You have to break some omelets to make some eggs and you have to cover up some rapes and assorted bits of ugliness to have a society where everyone’s masters degrees are subsidized by the state.

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2011/11/13/its-the-foreign-policy-stupid/?print=1

ROMNEY HAS “PEOPLE PLEASER” FOREIGN POLICY, CAIN HAS NONE, …..ONLY GINGRICH AND PERRY ACTUALLY MADE SENSE IN THE DEBATE……ALSO ENERGY INDEPENDENCE , IMMIGRATION AND DEFENSE CUTS ARE PART AND PARCEL OF NATIONAL SECURITY AND WERE NOT EVEN MENTIONED IN THE DEBATES…..AND BY THE WAY….WHO IS THE ENEMY?…..RSK

“It’s the economy, stupid,” some dude named Carville once said. He was referring to what was the correct prescription for winning a presidential election — and it’s been gospel ever since.

He’s probably right. Except when it comes to actually being president, it’s something else altogether. “It’s the foreign policy, stupid” — because day one of being POTUS, you, and basically you alone, determine the foreign policy of the United States of America and much of the future and present of humanity.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-fourth-act-of-the-un-romney-circus/?print=1 There are but seven weeks remaining to the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus on January 3, and the GOP presidential primary race remains unsettled, both in that state’s contest and the national race. It is a sign of the fluidity of the race that one can find articles on the same day that point to the […]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/court-to-hear-obamacare-challenge-what-it-means/?print=1 Court To Hear Obamacare Challenge: What It Means Posted By Hans von Spakovsky and Elizabeth Garvey It’s official. The Supreme Court will consider challenges to Obamacare stemming from the Eleventh Circuit decision striking down the law’s individual mandate. In that case, 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) partially won their […]