RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://jcpa.org/two-years-of-the-arab-spring-reflections-about-democracy-in-the-arab-world/
During a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and several American senators, Rabin was asked how he could envisage signing a peace agreement with Arab regimes that did not profess democracy, but rather acted as oppressors of their own people. Rabin responded: “If we have to wait till democracy prevails in the Arab countries, then Israel will have to wait for a hundred years at least.”

Since its very first days, Israel has been surrounded by authoritarian regimes where there is no freedom of speech, no personal freedom, or freedom of any kind. The citizens of the surrounding countries live in a world where many things are forbidden, where they must guess what is acceptable and suitable in order to survive. Instead of speaking their mind, they let their rulers hear what they want to hear and kept the truth to themselves, deep inside.

In the years following the end of Western colonialism, the Arab world was divided into monarchies and dictatorial regimes based on sectarian divisions, with the sole exception of Lebanon as a sectarian republic. In a later phase, the Arab world lost some of its monarchies to military juntas and dictatorships that further deepened the sense of lack of individual freedoms. This process did not spare other Arab regimes where military rebellions alternated with civilian regimes.

In any case, the result was the same: the core of the Arab world was ruled by the military, whereas the rest were ruled by hereditary monarchies supposedly chosen by Allah. In either option, the concept of Western democracy was never implemented since it could never be accepted by Arab rulers and was a concept foreign to Islamic tradition. The closest concept to Western democracy in Islam is the Shura institution, which is a sort of advisory board with no real powers, since authority is vested in the ruler himself. The adoption of Western institutions such as parliaments only mimicked the West, while in fact the authority and power to decide remained in the hands of the ruling junta.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/islamist-spring-christian-winter?f=puball Nina Shea and Samuel Tadros of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom spoke at Washington, DC’s Institute of World Politics on January 28 at “The Rise of Islamists: Challenges to Egypt’s Copts.” The pair described a bleak future for Christians in Tadros’ native Egypt and the wider Middle East under an aggressive and […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-economy-is-a-lot-worse-than-you-think Most Americans know the economy is in bad shape even if a majority voted to reelect the man most responsible for making a bad economy worse. And, no, it was not George W. Bush who is responsible for the 2008 financial crash. It was the government with its housing programs that encouraged giving mortgage […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578260023200841756.html?mod=hp_opinion

JFK’s dream of replacing state mental hospitals with community mental-health centers is now a hugely expensive nightmare.

On Feb. 5, 1963, 50 years ago this week, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress on “Mental Illness and Mental Retardation.” He proposed a new program under which the federal government would fund community mental-health centers, or CMHCs, to take the place of state mental hospitals. As Kennedy envisioned it, “reliance on the cold mercy of custodial isolations will be supplanted by the open warmth of community concern and capability.”

President Kennedy’s proposal was historic because the public care of mentally ill individuals had been exclusively a state responsibility for more than a century. The federal initiative encouraged the closing of state hospitals and aborted the development of state-funded outpatient clinics in process at that time.

Over the following 17 years, the feds funded 789 CMHCs with a total of $2.7 billion ($20.3 billion in today’s dollars). During those same years, the number of patients in state mental hospitals fell by three quarters—to 132,164 from 504,604—and those beds were closed down.

From the beginning, it was clear that CMHCs were not interested in taking care of the patients being discharged from the state hospitals. Instead, they focused on individuals with less severe problems sometimes called “the worried well.” Federal studies reported individuals discharged from state hospitals initially made up between 4% and 7% of the CMHCs patient load, and the longer the CMHC was in existence the lower this percentage became.

It has now become politically correct to claim that this federal program failed because not enough centers were funded and not enough money was spent. In fact, it failed because it did not provide care for the sickest patients released from the state hospitals. When President Ronald Reagan finally block-granted federal CMHC funds to the states in 1981, he was not killing the program. He was disposing of the corpse.

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/israel-isnt-isolated-7989

“While there is no doubt that Europe, the Obama Administration, and the mainstream media have an ingrained indisposition towards Israeli settlement construction, Israel’s international diplomatic, military, and economic standing in the world have only been strengthened over the past two decades. Perhaps this conundrum is best exemplified by the July 2012 visit to Israel of José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, who, in the same speech in which he expressed concern over continued settlement building, said it best [23]: “a continent such as Europe, that invests heavily in innovation, needs to have close links with a ‘start-up nation’, like Israel.”

Following the reaction to Israel’s bevy of construction announcements late last year, one would assume that Israel’s right-wing, settlement-crazed government had, once more, managed to thumb its nose at the world and deepen Israel’s already-perilous pariah position. It had just received international support during Operation Pillar of Defense and the Obama administration’s backing in opposing the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN. Yet Israel not only announced construction in East Jerusalem and the large settlement blocks, but also advanced zoning plans in E-1, a barren, 4.6 square mile area that connects Jerusalem to Maale Adumim.

Condemnation was instant and global. Israeli ambassadors were upbraided across Europe. The Swedish Foreign Minister went so far as to say that [3] “what the Israelis did on E1 has shifted opinions in Europe,” while the Obama administration said the construction would be “damaging” to a two-state solution and that it shared the same sentiment as its European allies, which had condemned Israel vociferously. Meanwhile, Time magazine dubbed [4] 2012 “The Year of the Israeli Settlement” and the New York Times called [5] Netanyahu’s plans “disturbing,” saying that it furthered Israel’s isolation.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2650/success_in_politics_a_view_from_the_right

What should be obvious is that, leading up to the elections for Israel’s 19th Knesset, the majority of the public identified with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to present Israel’s legitimate case before the world. They supported his moves in Jerusalem and tolerated, to a large extent, Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria.

In poll after poll over the last two decades, we see a dichotomy: Israelis desire peace very much and are willing to offer much to obtain it, but they do not believe that a peace agreement is achievable and they believe even less that the Arabs would preserve that peace.

Confident in Netanyahu’s handling of Israel’s external threats, Israeli voters felt able to vote based on their lack of confidence in their day-to-day lives. Thinking Netanyahu was already confirmed as Prime Minister, some voters presumed they had a virtual ‘double-ticket’ and sought out someone else.

The voters were dissatisfied with his domestic social programs, or lack thereof, not his foreign and security policies. They were convinced by promises of cheaper housing, less expensive utilities and a fair share of the burden of military service, and, drawn by their desire to be ‘the middle class’, some abandoned the Likud.

Israel’s voters have a history of searching for a secular saviour outside the usual party groupings. In 1977, the Dash Movement for Change obtained 15 seats. In 1999, there was the Center Party with six. In 2003, Yair Lapid’s father, Tommy, broke out with 15 seats for Shinui. In the end, they all dissipated, either disappearing or merging into other frameworks.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

There was a time in the 80s when standup comedians were required by law to wear loud blazers and louder ties and to demand answers to life’s unanswerable questions about senseless products, airline regulations and the other inconveniences of modern life. “Who were the geniuses who came up with that one?” was their demand.

The Republican Party, which has been a joke for almost as long as it has been a party, is in the hands of those same geniuses. Fresh off two defeats in presidential elections, they have come up with the plan of all plans to get back on top.

First, they will nuke their own grassroots by raising money to attack deviant Tea Party candidates and protect true conservatives who support amnesty, tax shelters and tax hikes. Considering that the Tea Party was responsible for the first Republican victories since 2004, spending money going after it is bound to attract voters and improve prospects for more victories in 2014.

Second, they will add 11 million Democratic voters to the rolls through amnesty for illegal aliens as part of a brilliant plan to stop being a national party and settle down to fighting pitched battles for local council seats. Even the geniuses behind the election polling and ORCA should be able to win a few those. And if they can’t, then it’ll be time to raise more money to keep down some of those pesky Tea Party types trying to run for school boards while saying politically incorrect things.

Fortunately there is a clear path to victory. All we have to do is convince the Party of Consultants that all is lost and that they should come out as Democrats now. If they do that, then the Democratic Party will be a useless ruin within a decade. If they don’t do that, the Republican Party will have the same policies as the Democratic Party, except for the part where it wins elections.

Muslims Plan to March on White House September 11, 2013  http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01/31/286487/million-muslim-march-on-white-house/ By Dr. Kevin Barrett The attack on American Muslims’ free speech actually appears to have begun a few days before 9/11, when the FBI raided key Muslim organizations and shut down their computer servers. The FBI’s raids preemptively prevented Muslims from freely expressing and […]

NO URL: P.S. IS AN E-PAL

Kerry, Hagel and Brennan, the fiddlers three, nominated by our Surrenderer-in-Chief will preside over a deliberate weakening and subsequent lack of readiness of the U.S. military together with a reduction of U.S. influence abroad. That will be their primary function as Obama proceeds with imposing a suffocating cultural Marxism upon America.

Kerry has all the confidence of his inability as well as the kind of arrogance which accompanies undeserved success and as he dons his peacemaker’s clothes and anxiously strides around the Middle East, a region where he thinks he will be able to add luster to his reputation most easily, we will have it confirmed to us that when willfully ignorant, weak, frightened and misguided men address themselves to an intractable problem it is usually the reputation of the problem that remains intact.

Kerry is an obnoxious, condescending and tiresome windbag clinging to the fallacy of the “two-state solution”, like some security blanket, unwilling to challenge his assumptions let alone demand that Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO repudiate the parts of their respective charters calling for genocide against the Jewish people BEFORE statehood can even be contemplated. If Hagel, a man who has risen almost without a trace, is appointed as our Secretary of Defense it will be the most cynical political act since Caligula made his horse a senator and Brennan, well Brennan is just clueless. Any conversation with them about our foreign policy and national security interests would be bound to subtract from the entire store of knowledge on those subjects.

These ridiculous men were chosen not in spite of their inadequacies but because of them. Our enemies must be laughing their caftans off and dancing in the streets.

Best regards,
as always,

Paul Schnee

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/46069 World Net Daily (WND) was tagged “a CIA mouthpiece” by IRNA, the Islamic Regime’s official news agency. IRNA’s accusations aside, the government news agency reported verbatim the essence of various WND articles by Reza Kahlili about the mysterious explosions at the Fordow enrichment facility deep in a mountain near Qom. Reza Kahlili is an […]