RUTHFULLY YOURS

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/01/01/has-the-conservative-elite-really-failed/

Ross Douthat at the New York Times (seconded by Rod Dreher at the American Conservative) thinks that Ron Paul plays a salubrious role as truth-teller and gadfly:

The United States is living through an era of unprecedented elite failure, in which America’s public institutions are understandably distrusted and our leadership class is justifiably despised. Yet politicians of both parties are required, by the demands of partisanship, to embrace the convenient lie that our problem can be pinned exclusively on the other side’s elites — as though both liberals and conservatives hadn’t participated in the decisions that dug our current hole.

In this climate, it sometimes takes a fearless crank to expose realities that neither Republicans nor Democrats are particularly eager to acknowledge.

In both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Paul has been the only figure willing to point out the deep continuities in American politics — the way social spending grows and overseas commitments multiply no matter which party is in power, the revolving doors that connect K Street to Congress and Wall Street to the White House, the long list of dubious policies and programs that both sides tacitly support. In both election cycles, his honest extremism has sometimes cut closer to the heart of our national predicament than the calculating partisanship of his more grounded rivals. He sometimes rants, but he rarely spins — and he’s one of the few figures on the national stage who says “a plague on both your houses!” and actually means it.

http://bigpeace.com/jxenakis/2012/01/02/2-jan-12-world-view-palestinians-plan-to-put-israel-under-international-siege/

THE HEADLINES:
Israelis and Palestinians to resume non-negotiation negotiations
Palestinians plan to put Israel under ‘international siege’
Saeb Erekat (AFP)
Saeb Erekat (AFP)

Jordan’s government announced on Sunday that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will meet in Jordan’s capital, Amman, on Tuesday for direct talks, for the first time in more than a year. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday welcomed the announcement, saying, “it is essential that both sides take advantage of this opportunity.” However, a senior figure in the Palestinian Authority said that “this is not a resumption of negotiations.” Palestinian chief negotiator Saed Erekat said that the meeting would be “part of ongoing Jordanian efforts to compel Israel to comply with its international legal obligations … specifically its obligation to freeze all settlement construction”. Jerusalem Post
Palestinians plan to put Israel under ‘international siege’

Agreeing to talk (but not negotiate) with Israelis on Tuesday “will be the start of an unprecedented diplomatic campaign on the part of the Palestinian leadership, and it will be a year of pressure on Israel that will put it under a real international siege. The campaign will be similar to the one waged against apartheid in South Africa,” according to Palestinian official Nabil Sha’ath.

According to information that has reached Israel, the Palestinians are considering several steps as part of their campaign:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/in-israel-a-glimpse-of-the-eternal/story-fn6bfkm6-1226230011583
“In Sinai, an Egyptian called Moses once had a vision, and now two thirds of the world’s peoples share some part of it, too, from Reykjavik to Hobart.Whole empires have come and gone in the time between, and the only thing that’s lasted is an idea. In Israel, even this agnostic can glimpse the eternal.”

IT’S CHRISTMAS and I’m in Jerusalem. And already I feel awkward.

See, there aren’t many places where you seem to be making a political statement just by visiting, or a religious one by visiting at the wrong time. Or right.

Visiting China no longer makes you seem a socialist sympathiser. Touring South Africa no longer marks you as a racist or Quisling.

I can even visit Burma again to admire the golden Shwedagon Pagoda or temple city of Pagan without being made to feel I’m a dupe of the junta, lining the pockets of the country’s mad generals. After all, isn’t this the country we’ve now agreed to help come out of the cold?

But Israel is different. It’s so loaded, that my wife felt forced after a while to simply tell friends we were off to “the Middle East”, which at least sounds vaguely exotic and sensual.

http://news.yahoo.com/gazas-hamas-pm-meet-islamic-aid-group-turkey-085442796.htmlGaza’s Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya hailed Monday the “martyrs” killed in 2010 when Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish vessel trying to break the blockade of the Palestinian enclave. Haniya, on his first trip abroad since Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007, made a tour of the Mavi Marmara, part of a flotilla attacked […]

America’s Economic War Against Itself
US Export Controls

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2717/us-export-controls

In an important milestone for both China and for Europe, a few weeks ago was the first time a Western commercial satellite had ever been launched with no — repeat: no — US made components. On October 7th, 2011, a Chinese “LMarch 3B” rocket thrust a European commercial communications satellite into orbit — the first time a Western spacecraft had ridden on a Chinese rocket in well over a decade — and it was a triumph for America’s International Trade in Arms Regulation s (ITAR).

So long as the US government makes it extremely difficult and costly to get export permission for communications satellites and for communications satellite technology American industry will continue to fall behind in this critical area. It is sad to note that for more than a decade Washington has been conducting a highly effective economic war against its own US space industry.

Over the years there has been little rhyme or reason to US export control policy. Efforts to stop China from getting US military technology may or may not have succeeded but they certainly have helped the Europeans to sell their technology — which is as good if not better than US technology — to China and just about everyone else.

The last major revision of the ITAR regulations occurred in 1999 and was the result of a minor Clinton-era scandal involving Chinese-originated campaign contributions, and the Chinese hijacking of US satellite technology. Not only did a Chinese commercial “Long March launch” vehicle explode, but the wreckage of the US communications satellite it was to carry into orbit was stolen. As a result, Congress decreed that Communications satellites, and their components, would be regulated as if they were munitions. They also ordered the State Department, rather than the Commerce Department, to assume authority over providing or withholding these export permits.

This ruling had the immediate effect of tearing the guts out of an important part of the US space industry’s export market. European firms were all too happy to jump into an area which the US had previously dominated. The cost in US jobs h as been in the thousands, and even worse, the US has now fallen behind in certain critical aspects of space technology.

It is ironic that an administration which claims to be devoted to supporting the US photovoltaic industry has failed to take some simple actions which could dramatically improve the export of high-quality US-made solar power systems for spacecraft.

France’s Teetery Effort to Reverse Creeping Islamization

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2719/france-creeping-islamization

Muslim immigrants will find it more difficult to obtain French citizenship from now on.

New citizenship rules that entered into effect on January 1, 2012 will require all applicants to pass exams on French culture and history and also to prove that their French language skills are equivalent to those of a 15-year-old native speaker. Moreover, candidates seeking French citizenship will be required to pledge allegiance to “French values.”

The new measures — drawn up by Interior Minister Claude Guéant — are part of a concerted effort by the French government to push back against the Islamization of France.

Muslim applicants make up the majority of the 100,000 people who are naturalized as French citizens each year comes amid rising frustration that the country’s estimated 6.5 million Muslims are not integrating into French society.

Guéant has said that immigrants who refuse to assimilate should be denied French citizenship.

According to Guéant, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, the citizenship process should be “a solemn occasion between the host nation and the applicant” and that immigrants should be integrated through language and “an adherence to the principals, values and symbols of our democracy.”

From now on, applicants for French citizenship will also be required to sign a new charter establishing their rights and responsibilities. Drafted by France’s High Council for Integration (HCI), the charter reads: “Becoming French is not a mere administrative step. It is a decision that requires a lot of thought … applicants will no longer be able to claim allegiance to another country while on French soil.” The new rules, however, will not affect dual nationality, which will still be allowed.

Dear Friends

Please sign this petition to reverse UNESCO’s illegal admission of Palestine without the required majority of 129 votes required by article II (2) of UNESCO’s Constitution.

This decision has cost UNESCO the loss of at least $100 million per annum in American funding.

http://www.change.org/petitions/wwwunescoorg-review-palestines-admission-as-a-member-of-unesco

I am hoping to get 100000 signatures – so your help in circulating it to your email list and face book friends would be greatly appreciated

Happy New Year

Regards

David

http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2011/12/article119.htm

Why Sri Lanka, but not Samaria? Why not Rhodesia, but the “West Bank?”

It’s admirable (don’t you think?) when a people throws off the legacy of imperial oppression to embrace their new freedom. The very renaming of nations themselves has often been a reflection of this wonderful development.

Admirable, indeed–unless those people happen to be Jews.

Among the examples of this which have occurred over the last half century are people who lived in Great Britain’s former imperial possessions of Ceylon, Rhodesia, and Burma. Those nations are now known as Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar.

While I’ve thought about this for decades, what brought this issue onto my own front burner was an article I read recently about Myanmar’s pro-democracy hero and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. Too often foreign imperialism gets supplanted by home-grown despotism, as the latter knows only too well.

Here’s the problem, and admittedly, the Jews pose a unique case related to this discussion due to their forced exile in the wake of taking on the imperial conqueror of much of the known world not just once, but in two major (and other lesser) revolts recorded in depth by the Romans themselves. Before we proceed, please contemplate this thought for a moment…

Is a victim any less a victim because his victimization has been historically the longest enduring?

While the so-called “Progressives” of the world are adamant that the previous imperialist names of conquered lands be dismissed, why is it that when it comes to dealing with the oft-conquered land of the Jews, the opposite is the case?

Such sources of ethical enlightenment frequently insist instead that the millennia-old names of the land–Israel, Judea, and Samaria–be abandoned for the sake of the names Roman, British, and Arab imperialism and conquest gave to them instead…”Palestine” and the “West Bank.”

Everyone else is entitled to national liberation–but not Jews. The latter must agree to their scapegoat, victim, and preferred whipping post par excellence existence for eternity. Or just disappear.

With Christmas 2011 still of very much of recent memory, a good portion of the world once again became familiar with the story of Jesus’ birth. During this season, it has also become common for Arabs to declare the alleged “Palestinian”(non-Jewish) identity of Jesus.

http://www.meforum.org/3134/turkey-economic-miracle

Turkey’s high-flying economy, which expanded at a 10 percent annual rate of gross domestic product growth during the first half of 2011,[1] will crash-land in 2012. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “economic miracle,” to use the Daily Telegraph’s admiring words,[2] depended on a 40 percent annual rate of bank credit expansion, which in turn produced a balance of payments deficit as wide as that of southern Europe’s crisis countries. Markets have already anticipated a sudden turnaround in the Turkish economy. The Turkish lira (TRY) fell by a quarter between November 2010 and September 2011, making it the world’s worst performing emerging market currency.[3] The stock market has fallen in dollar terms by 40 percent, making Turkey the worst performer after Egypt among all the markets in the MSCI Tradable Index during 2011. (See Graph 1 for Turkey vs. emerging markets.) And most analysts now expect that the cyclical slowdown will uncover deep deficiencies in Turkey’s labor force and infrastructure, leading to a prolonged structural slump rather than a passing recession.

The suddenness and size of this economic setback will in most likelihood erode the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) capacity to govern on the strength of pragmatic success rather than Islamist ideology; will undercut its ability to use economic incentives to defuse Kurdish separatism and contain domestic opposition; and will weaken Ankara’s claim to a leading regional role.

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=251763

JUST IMAGINE WHAT THEY COULD DO IF THEY CONTROLLED THE ELEVATIONS OF JUDEA AND SAMARIA….RSK
2 mortar shells from Gaza contained phosphorousThe chemical is designed to ignite a fire around the impact zone and is banned by international law for use near civilians.

Two mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip into the rural Eshkol Regional Council on Sunday morning contained phosphorous, security forces confirmed. The shells landed in open fields, causing no injuries or damage.

Mortars containing phosphorous fired from Gaza have landed in Israeli territory in the past. Phosphorous is designed to ignite a fire around the impact zone. The chemical is banned by international law for use near civilians.