RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578529030063800200.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Psychiatry’s diagnostic bible has broadened the definition of mental illness to absurdity.

The American Psychiatric Association released a revision of its diagnostic bible in May, the first major rewrite in two decades. “The Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” or DSM-5, is the official guidebook for diagnosing every conceivable psychiatric ailment. This new edition loosens the rules in a disturbing way.

In previous editions, you the patient had to meet certain specified criteria in order to be diagnosed for any particular condition. For example, if I were going to diagnose you as having schizophrenia, then you had to have specific symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations. If you didn’t have those symptoms, then I couldn’t make the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Not anymore. Last month, DSM-5 introduced a new diagnosis, “Unspecified Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder.” The only required criterion is that you have some distress from unspecified symptoms, but you “do not meet the full criteria for any of the disorders in the schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders diagnostic class.” You don’t have to have delusions. You don’t have to have hallucinations. In fact if you do have delusions and hallucinations, then you probably don’t qualify for unspecified schizophrenia. (You will find the new diagnosis in one short paragraph at the bottom of page 122 of DSM-5.)

Likewise for every other diagnostic category, including, for example, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Let’s suppose that you occasionally don’t pay attention to your wife. You don’t meet the old-fashioned criteria for ADHD, which included impairment in multiple settings, like on the job or while driving. You are inattentive only when your wife is talking. You pay attention to everybody else. Hey, no problem. You now qualify for “Unspecified Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.”

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=3033

A sort of follow-up to the related story of Syrian “rebels” learning from the “former” KLA that we put in charge of Kosovo — and put in touch with the Syrians. And so one supposes that to U.S. officialdom, the below developments are nothing alarming. Wonderful news, in fact. After all, we organized the Syrian-Albanian note-sharing on how to win an insurgency and have an unfree “liberated” country afterwards.

Comment from American Council for Kosovo director Jim Jatras, who circulated the item below:

“Albanian Islamists”?? What? There’s no such thing!

Shouldn’t that be, “Secular, Democratic, Pro-American Kosovo Albanians Paradoxically Join Jihadists in Syria”?

Funny how US support for political and military empowerment of secular, democratic, pro-American (etc., etc.) Muslims always seems to morph into more jihadists.

Albanian Islamists Join Syrian War

Ethnic Albanians are getting more and more involved in the Syrian war as they join Syrian Islamist groups, writes Mohammad al-Arnaout. (Al-Hayat, Apr. 29)

In recent months, the “Albanian world,” which consists of five contiguous states (Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro), has been increasingly interested in what is happening in Syria and the controversy over whether Albanians should go fight there.

This coincided with the growth of political Islam, which in the past few weeks expressed itself in an unprecedented way with the emergence of Kosovo’s first officially registered Islamist political party: the Islamic Movement to Unite (LISBA). [Didn’t see that coming!] It is headed by Arsim Krasniqi and supported by Sheikh Shaukat Krasniqi and a former Yugoslavian army officer, Fuad Ramiqi [who is al Qaeda-connected]. The latter made no secret of his goal to change Kosovo’s secular constitution in order to “defend the Islamic identity of Kosovo’s Albanians, who make up 95% of the population.”

[Digital Journal on March 6th reported that the party — Levizja Islamike Bashkohu — is actually “the first fundamentalist Islamist political party in the Balkans.” That is, the American-sponsored, “secular”, “nominally Muslim” Kosovo which we’re still feverishly trying to prop up as a fully-fledged state that is Muslim and pro-U.S., has the distinction — a decade-and-a-half after our “help” — of housing the region’s first official Islamist party. Digital Journal quoted a Weekly Standard article by Stephen “Suleyman” Schwartz — Muslim Kosovo’s biggest advocate and war proponent — now “warning” that “‘exponents of Saudi-financed Wahhabism and of the Muslim Brotherhood have penetrated the highest levels of the official Kosovo Islamic apparatus,’ though they are not readily welcomed by the secular population…Kosovans struggling in poverty have been paid (by Gulf-sponsored charities) to the wear the hijab or grow beards…” What was expected to happen after NATO handed Kosovo to ‘Kosovans’?]

There has long been behind-the-scenes talk that young Albanians, influenced by political Islam’s rise in Syria, are participating in the fighting there among the ranks of Islamist groups (Jabhat al-Nusra and others). [Hmm, young, Albanians. Surely they don’t see parallels in Syria to their own “no religious component” struggle in 1998-99 Kosovo?] When news emerged in November 2012 that the first Albanian martyr, Naaman Damoli, had fallen in Syria, the Kosovar newspaper Koha Ditore brought that issue to light in its Nov. 12, 2012, issue.

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/yet-another-enemy-of-israel-poised-to-join-us-foreign-policy-team/2013/06/26/

Whether Robert Malley will be the most anti-Israel person on Secretary of State John Kerry’s foreign policy team may be a tough call, but he sure will fit right in

For people who pay close attention to what is happening in the world of U.S. government diplomacy and the players not just on the field, but those on deck, Robert Malley is a name that rings a bell. For those who care deeply about the security of Israel, the bell that is rung has an ominous, if familiar, tone.

Rumors have been circulating for about a week that Robert Malley will soon be named by Secretary of State John Kerry for a senior advisory role with a portfolio that focuses either on Syria or on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

According to various sources Malley is “under serious consideration” or the decision to appoint him is already “a done deal,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

So what’s wrong with Malley? He couldn’t possibly be as bad as Samantha Power, or John Kerry or Chuck Hagel, could he?

Well, that depends who you ask.

Robert Malley is so offensive, he was actually kicked off (despite the lipstick smear called “resignation”) the Obama election committee in 2008 for meeting with the terrorist organization Hamas, although he had been one of Obama’s closest advisors for Middle East issues until his affinity for Hamas became public.

Malley is a Harvard-trained lawyer who currently works at the George Soros-affiliated International Crisis Group. There are those Israel supporters who see Malley as an international crisis all on his own – his father, Simon Malley, was a virulently anti-Israel member of the Egyptian Communist Party and a close confidante of Yassir Arafat. (Malley’s mother, who raised him, is named Barbara Silverstein – we’re not going there.)

http://nsroundtable.org/

“We will approve the meeting on condition there are no Jews.” So say officials in the Palestinian Authority when someone requests a meeting with a senior Palestinian Authority official in the West Bank.

To which we would respond: No problem. Let the Palestinian Authority negotiate with itself!

“The next time U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visits Ramallah, will he actually violate U.S. law to make sure there are no Jews among his entourage, lest he upset his Palestinian hosts?” asks Khaled abu Toameh below.

Well, Mr. Toameh, we all look forward to seeing if Mr. Kerry partakes in this very familiar Kabuki dance…

Palestinians: “No Jews Allowed!”

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3785/us-intervention-jihad Libya has now become the main [North African] base for Al Qaeda. Shi’a and Sunni find common cause in hating the infidel with an even greater intensity than they hate one another. As Angelo Codevilla wrote, “They are not our friends and are unlikely to become such.” With the June 13, 2013 confirmation by […]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/26/britain-anti-islam-bloger-pamela-geller-robert-spencer-banned/2460011/

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/06/britian-bans-geller-and-spencer-sanctions-ied-jihadist-squads.html
Pamela Geller,Robert Spencer had planned to speak at far-right march honoring slain soldier.
Story Highlights

Geller called the ban a ‘blow against freedom’
The pair had mounted an anti-jihad poster campaign in NYC subway
British government says it opposes ‘extremism in any form’

The British government has banned two prominent U.S. anti-Islam bloggers who had planned to enter the United Kingdom to speak at a far-right rally, the Home Office said Wednesday.

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, co-founders of Stop Islamization of America, were planning to appear at a march by the far-right English Defence League in Woolwich, the site in southeast London of the hacking death of a British solider in May.

On their blogs, Geller and Spencer posted copies of a letter from the British Home Office issuing the ban.

A government spokesman said individuals whose presence “is not conducive to the public good” could be excluded by the home secretary, the BBC reported.

“We condemn all those whose behaviors and views run counter to our shared values and will not stand for extremism in any form,” he added.

The soldier, Lee Rigby, was killed in a gruesome knife attack near an army barracks. The attacker, whose hands were covered in blood, then walked up to a bystander with a video camera and said he killed Rigby because “Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers.”

Geller, who writes the Atlas Shrugs blog, and Spencer, who blogs at Jihad Watch, are also co-founders of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which mounted a controversial pro-Israel “Defeat Jihad” poster campaign on the New York subway with signs that read: ‘In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2013/06/25/demographic-trends-are-working-israel-favor/wgP8J0AQmX3Wv1RsjOlCIK/story.html

Israel is “running out of time,” Secretary of State John Kerry told the American Jewish Committee in Washington this month. A two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict must be reached soon or “the insidious campaign to de-legitimize Israel will only gain steam,” he warned. “Israel will be left to choose between being a Jewish state or a democratic state, but it will not be able to fulfill the founders’ visions of being both at once.”

It’s an old refrain, erroneous but popular: Israel must make peace with the Palestinians — “peace” being defined as the creation of a 22nd Arab state — before high Arab birthrates turn the Jews into a minority in their own land.

In Jerusalem a few months ago, President Obama echoed the same claim.

“Given the demographics west of the Jordan River,” he said, “the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine.”

This so-called “demographic argument” may sound compelling, even ominous. But it rests on an obsolete stereotype of Arab women as baby mills, outbreeding their Jewish sisters at such a pace that it is only a matter of time before Jews are numerically overwhelmed on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

http://unitedpatriotsworldwide.com/vinienco/2013/06/26/shh-sharia-law-clear-passage-kentucky/
Shh! Sharia Law Gets a Clear Passage in Kentucky

Shh! Sharia Law Gets a Clear Passage in Kentucky:

More than a hundred new state laws take effect Tuesday in Kentucky. The General Assembly approved 129 bills during the 2013 session, which concluded on March 26. Most of the laws take effect 90 days after the conclusion of the session.

Under House Bill 279, the controversial religious-freedom bill, someone with “sincerely held” religious beliefs can disregard state laws “unless the government proves by clear and convincing evidence that it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing” the person’s religious freedom.

Opponents of the bill fear it will allow the use of religious beliefs to justify discrimination, particularly against same-sex couples. Gov. Steve Beshear, citing concerns about potential lawsuits, vetoed the bill earlier this year, but the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted to override Beshear’s veto.

Backers of the law said it was needed in light of a Kentucky Supreme Court ruling last year that …

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http://unitedpatriotsworldwide.com/vinienco/ U.S Ambassador to Egypt Asks Christians not to Oppose Morsi, by Raymond Ibrahim U.S Ambassador to Egypt Asks Christians not to Oppose Morsi, by Raymond Ibrahim: As Egyptians of all factions prepare to demonstrate in mass against the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi’s rule on June 30, the latter has been trying to reduce […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/352075/shelby-and-lefts-false-narrative-andrew-c-mccarthy

For anyone other than a “social justice” demagogue, the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision, striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), is cause for celebration. In real life, this is a success story: A society that overcomes ingrained, systematic racial discrimination — and does it during a 40-year span while, in parts of the world the Left somehow prefers to America, discrimination endures and becomes even more lethal. But the Left does not live in a real nation; it lives in a false narrative: The United States is the villain that can never be redeemed, and racism is not just its original but its indelible sin.

In our real nation, the VRA was always of dubious constitutionality. The Supreme Court expressly recognized that in originally upholding it, just as Congress recognized it in originally limiting its duration to five years. It was a distortion of the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty among the states — absent which there would have been no union. The distortion was tolerated because of the gravity of the evil it addressed, just as surgery must traumatize the body in order to cure it. But the VRA was a remedy, not a new order of things. It was supposed to vanish once the disease — the denial of a core privilege of citizenship through systematic, pervasive racial discrimination — was cured.

The disease was long ago eradicated. That does not mean racism is over. There are vestiges of racism in our society. Because we are dealing with human nature, some of them are to be expected. But many are a direct result of the Left’s race-obsessed narrative, dominant on the campus and in the media for over a generation. It tirelessly promotes — it needs — the destructive canard that racial animus is the cause of every effect, and thus that systematic reverse discrimination, far from a temporary remedy, must be a lasting framework and a thriving industry.

Racism would otherwise die its natural death. It is a violation of the self-evident truth that we are all created equal. That government and our society failed, for a very long time, to keep faith with this truth is incontestable. But the truth is self-evident because it does not come from any government or society. It is part of our nature, a gift from our Creator, and an immutable tenet of our Judeo-Christian heritage. If we hold to what makes us Americans, all racism — including the purportedly benign kind — will be seen as immoral. For now, racism of the sort that drove the VRA to passage in 1965 is aberrational.

Significantly, and quite contrary to the Left’s hysterical rants against the Shelby ruling, the VRA was not intended to end racism. It specifically targeted the denial of voting rights by state governments (and their subdivisions) that practiced systematic racial discrimination. Once that denial ended, the VRA and its (at best) barely constitutional methods were to end.