RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65580
It takes a certain chutzpah to write a book that announces something will—or won’t—happen, and that if it does or does not happen the world will look considerably different than it does today—or not. This is not like predicting snow for Thursday. But Ilan Berman’s Implosion: The End of Russia and What it Means for America is up to the challenge. Berman reads economic, demographic and military trends to determine whether Russia will undergo its second major transformation in less than 100 years. Or not.

Either way, the trends provide a blueprint for policy makers who want to maximize American national interests in Russia, Eurasia and the Pacific. Part of the blueprint is translated directly from the Russian. The last 75 pages of this slim volume consist of “The Foundations of Russian Federation Policy in the Arctic Until 2020 and Beyond,” and the “National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation to 2020.” Both are windows into current Russian thinking, particularly regarding the Arctic, which is covered in some detail in the body of the book.

A bit of history: The collapse of communism and the demise of the USSR was a surprise to a lot of people who saw the Soviet Union as an unstoppable juggernaut. Economist and demographer Murray Feshbach was not among them. Chief of the jaw-breaking USSR Population, Employment and Research and Development Branch of the Foreign Demographic Analysis Division of the Census Bureau for more than 20 years, Feshbach, who might have served as Berman’s muse, toiled largely in obscurity. He noted rampant alcoholism, diseases (such as diphtheria) that had been eradicated in the West, abortion trends, and life expectancy in Russia. He took his findings to the Pentagon, where only a handful of people were interested in a back story to Soviet domination—but those who paid attention saw cracks in the mighty edifice.

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The disconnect between the past and the present in the Middle East is growing fast. Consider the anachronism called the Arab League.

In December, after an “emergency meeting” called by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby declared that “not one” Israeli soldier could remain in the territory of Palestine. An Arab League report condemning American support for “Israeli security expansionist demands” was also cited in Middle Eastern news sources but made little impression in the West.

The statement made little impression on US Secretary of State John Kerry who was “grateful that the Arab League as a whole and Saudi Arabia individually will be significantly involved in helping build support for this effort.” He also promised to update “our Arab League partners.”

The very idea that the Arab League is a ‘partner,’ and the League’s recent pronouncements, are reminders of the Arab-Israeli conflict as it once was; an era when furious expressions of “unity” over Palestine were taken seriously, and which mostly excluded the Palestinians.

Chris Christie, whose state has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country, held an Iftar dinner at the Governor’s Mansion in 2012 and invited his “friend” Imam Mohammed Qatanani, a self-admitted member of Hamas and a defender of a charity that provided funds to children of suicide bombers. Imam Qatanani is the religious leader for the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in Paterson, New Jersey, a city known to locals as “Little Ramallah.” In a June 2007 sermon at the ICPC, Imam Qatanani condemned Christians to “eternal hellfire.” He is an advocate of Islamic blasphemy laws that criminalize criticism of Islam.
Christie referred to Qatanani as “a man of great good will” and defended him when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attempted to deport him for failing to disclose his arrest and conviction in Israel in 1993 for involvement with Hamas. (Qatanani publicly ranted against Jews and in support of Hamas on the eve of his deportation hearing).
The New Jersey governor has publicly defended Sohail Mohammed, the lawyer who represented Hamas-affiliate Qatanani as well as dozens of detainees swept up by law enforcement after 9/11. Sohail Mohammed is a board member of the Muslim American Union, an organization closely integrated with the ICPC (Qatanani’s mosque) and whose leadership is linked to Hamas. Christie aggressively pushed for Mohammed to become a Superior Court judge leading to speculation that the appointment was a payoff to Imam Qatanani for the ICPC support Christie received for his gubernatorial campaign. Sohail Mohammed publicly defended Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Arian.
Christie has derided anyone who perceives shariah law as a threat in the U.S. despite the fact that 23 states have already used shariah as a factor in their deliberations. In 2009, a New Jersey judge referenced shariah when he refused a temporary restraining order for a divorced Muslim woman who had been raped and assaulted by her ex-husband, maintaining that Islamic doctrine requires wives to comply with all of their husband’s sexual demands. Under current New Jersey law, non-consensual sex between married persons is considered rape. (Fortunately, the decision was overturned 13 months later).
In 2012, Governor Christie called for an investigation into the NYPD’s counterterrorism procedures as he objected to their conducting surveillance of mosques and a Muslim student group known as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Student Association (MSA). In 2010, Christie publicly proclaimed support for the mosque at the graveyard of 911.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65571
It is hard to imagine a more damning indictment of the Obama administration’s inept approach to the Middle East than the pictures of the black flag of al Qaeda flying once more from the rooftops and minarets of Ramadi and Fallujah.

At the height of the sectarian violence that erupted in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s ousting, these Iraqi cities—situated in the country’s western Anbar Province—became synonymous with attempts by al Qaeda-backed militants to thwart Iraq’s transformation into a functioning democracy.

Disaffected local Sunni tribes that had previously pledged their loyalty to Saddam’s regime allowed al Qaeda militants, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to undertake a murderous terror campaign against coalition forces. Their efforts involved murder, kidnappings and the occasional public beheading.

An estimated 1,300 American troops died trying to crush the violent insurgency in Anbar. It ended when the Sunni tribes, angered by Zarqawi’s uncompromising pursuit of a radical Islamist agenda, turned on the al Qaeda interlopers and, as part of the so-called “Sunni Awakening,” backed U.S. efforts to eradicate al Qaeda. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. missile strike on his hideout in the outskirts of Baghdad in 2006. The remainder of Iraq’s al Qaeda network was rolled up, and its black flags removed from public display, during the military surge masterminded by retired U.S. Gen. David Petraeus.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65568The so-called Arab Spring unleashed forces that have been dormant for a century. Like their counterparts throughout the region, Israel’s Arabic-speaking minorities are changing in profound ways. But our leaders fail to grasp the implications of what is happening.

Consider the Christian community.

Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox priest from Nazareth, has become the symbol of this new period. Nadaf is the spiritual leader of an Israeli Christian movement calling for Israeli Christian youth to serve in the IDF. He is responsible for the 300 percent rise in Christian Arab enlistment in the IDF in the past year.

Nadaf does not hide his goal or his motivation. His seeks the full integration of Israel’s 130,000 Christians into Israeli society. He views military service as the key to that integration.

Nadaf is motivated to act by the massive persecution of Christians throughout the Arab world since the onset of the Arab revolutionary wave in December 2010.

As he explained in a recent interview with Channel 1, it is “in light of what we see happening to Christians in Arab countries, how they are slaughtered and persecuted on a daily basis, killed and raped just because they are Christians. Does this happen in the State of Israel? No, it doesn’t.”

Shahdi Halul, a reserve captain in the Paratroopers who works with Nadaf, declared, “Every Christian in the State of Israel should join the army and defend this country so it will exist forever. Because if, God forbid, the government is overthrown here, as it was in other places, we will be the first to suffer.”

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65564What is so weird here is that Al-Ahram effectively admits this is a conspiracy theory. It’s basically a Jews-poisoning-the-wells type story, but with a camel-droppings angle. Weird…

Today, the most widely circulating Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, has run a front-page report headlined in red and bold, ”Israeli conspiracy on Sinai’s underground water.”

In a black bold lead, the report stresses that ”liberating Sinai and restoring its territories from Israeli occupation was not merely our dream; the dream was to develop this region to be our real exit from all economic troubles.”

However, the report claims, ”the ship of the state is always besieged with conspiracies.” (Our italics)

“Unsatisfied with their crimes in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 in Sinai, Palestine, and South Lebanon; Zionists brought Prosopis juliflora, a kind of Mesquite [shrub or tree] which is considered so dangerous, to Sinai.”

Next, the newspaper goes on to explain the dangers of the tree and how it was brought to Egypt.

First, it says that an Israeli tourist, who works in the agricultural sector, had given some of the plants (which can be poisonous, produce hundreds of thousands of seeds and which take over pastoral grasslands, use scarce water, and, with their thorns and many branches, form impenetrable thickets that prevent animals from accessing the land they occupy) to a Sinai Bedouin as a “gift”.

”Mesquite has colonized thousands of hectares of the governorate’s land, having severe economic and environmental impacts”, the report claimed.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65561Has there ever been a better story? It’s like a version of Titanic where first class cheers for the iceberg

Yes, yes, just to get the obligatory ‘of courses’ out of the way up front: of course ‘weather’ is not the same as ‘climate’; and of course the thickest iciest ice on record could well be evidence of ‘global warming’, just as 40-and-sunny and a 35-below blizzard and 12 degrees and partly cloudy with occasional showers are all apparently manifestations of ‘climate change’; and of course the global warm-mongers are entirely sincere in their belief that the massive carbon footprint of their rescue operation can be offset by the planting of wall-to-wall trees the length and breadth of Australia, Britain, America and continental Europe.

But still: you’d have to have a heart as cold and unmovable as Commonwealth Bay ice not to be howling with laughter at the exquisite symbolic perfection of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition ‘stuck in our own experiment’, as they put it. I confess I was hoping it might all drag on a bit longer and the cultists of the ecopalypse would find themselves drawing straws as to which of their number would be first on the roasting spit. On Douglas Mawson’s original voyage, he and his surviving comrade wound up having to eat their dogs. I’m not sure there were any on this expedition, so they’d probably have to make do with the Guardian reporters. Forced to wait a year to be rescued, Sir Douglas later recalled, ‘Several of my toes commenced to blacken and fester near the tips.’ Now there’s a man who’s serious about reducing his footprint.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/sustaining-the-triad-the-enduring-requirements-of-deterrence

On November 8, 2013, the Commander of the US Strategic Command, General C. Robert Kehler gave his final public speech before his retirement, at the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, St. Marys, Georgia, at an event I planned and hosted. Given the growing discussion in Washington over the future of our nuclear deterrent, Russian and Chinese nuclear modernization and the major push the administration and others are making to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranian government, his remarks are very appropriate. They are here in their entirety.

General Kehler: Thank you, Peter. Good morning everybody.

My objective is to not become more famous in the last week of my tenure as the Commander of Strategic Command. [Laughter]. But I must say, it’s a pleasure and a delight to be here.

To Admiral Tofalo and Admiral Breckenridge, thanks for taking an active leadership role in sponsoring this. There are lots of folks in the room that made this happen, and many of you have traveled here from around the country to include communities that are located adjacent to the bases that form the bulk of the strategic deterrent force support network today.

Let me just say to all of you, thank you for what you do. The young men and women who serve our country, wearing the country’s uniform, directly sense the support of the American people through you. So thank you for what you do, especially around bases like this. I know, I talked to some of you last night. You make a great investment in your own time and energy to make sure that in this case the United States Navy feels welcome in Georgia and I can tell you, it works. Because, we see that direct support translates into a young sailor being able to go into the community here and feel comfortable and feel like they’re welcome and appreciated. So thank you for all of that.

I also have to say, Peter mentioned when we started to work together and I’ll say something a little bit more about that era here as I go on. If all of you listened carefully to General Welsh last evening and to Frank Miller this morning, you’ve heard the bulk of my speech. All I can do is stand here right now and say what they said. [Laughter]. However, that would leave us 29.5 minutes for questions and answers and I have Captain Pam Kunze who is my new public affairs officer sitting over here, it’s her job to explain later what the general meant to say. [Laughter]. So I’m not going to burden her with that. I’m going to go ahead and give a speech anyway. Then I’ll go ahead and take some questions.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65556The Left sees it as a disease; the Right sees it as a symptom.

Democrats are revving up for a huge national “conversation” on income inequality. This is in no small part because the Obama administration and congressional Democrats would rather talk about anything other than Obamacare.

But it would be unfair to say this is all a cynical effort to gain partisan advantage. For instance, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio is certainly sincere in his desire to take “dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities” in the Big Apple. He and his team want to fix the distribution of income in New York by distributing it differently.

This in itself points to the different perspectives on the left and right when it comes to income inequality, perspectives worth keeping in mind if you’re going to try to follow the conversation to come.

As a broad generalization, liberals see income as a public good that is distributed, like crayons in a kindergarten class. If so-and-so didn’t get his or her fair share of income, it’s because someone or something — government, the system — didn’t distribute income properly. To the extent conservatives see income inequality as a problem, it is as an indication of more concrete problems. If the poor and middle class are falling behind the wealthy, it might be a sign of declining or stagnating wages or lackluster job creation. In other words, liberals tend to see income inequality as the disease, and conservatives tend to see it as a symptom.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65550Around 2007, I gave a lecture at the Defense Department. One of the attendees presented a scenario suggesting that the “problem of Islam” was not political but a problem of verbiage.

There was a secret debate happening in the Defense Department and the CIA in which some people thought that all Muslims were a problem, some believed that only al-Qaeida was a problem, and still others thought the Muslim Brotherhood was a problem.

The main problem, however, was that all Islamism was a political threat, but it was the second position that eventually won over the Obama administration. Take note of this; since 2009, if you wanted to build your career and win policy debates, only al-Qaeda was a problem. The Muslim Brotherhood was not a threat; after all, it did not participate in September 11. This view was well-known in policy circles, but it was easy to mistake this growing hegemony as temporary.

Actually, it only got worse.

A Muslim Foreign Service officer recounted how some U.S. officials were trying to persuade the powers that be that al-Qaeda was split from the Muslim Brotherhood. Imagine how horrified he was. Still other officials told me that there was heavy pressure and there were well-financed lobbyists trying to force officials into the idea that al-Qaeda was the only problem. Some high-ranking Defense Department officials — for example, one on the secretary of Defense’s level — were pressured to fire anti-Muslim Brotherhood people. I know of at least five such incidences.