RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1491/ambassador_gould_s_comments_on_israel_s_popularity_show_a_lack_of_clear_thinking

OH THE IRONY…THE WAGS WERE WORRIED THAT THIS OAF WOULD HAVE “DUAL LOYALTY’….RSK

Matthew Gould’s comments reveal an institutional catatonia at the FCO. One that will ensure Britain’s role in the Middle East declines in perpetuity.When Matthew Gould was appointed as the British Ambassador to Israel, Labour Member of Parliament Paul Flynn caused quite a stir in questioning Gould’s ‘loyalty’ to the United Kingdom.Because Ambassador Gould is Jewish, it was implied that he would suffer from an affliction known as ‘dual loyalty’ and be therefore unable to carry out the tasks set to him by his paymasters at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Even the usually carping Owen Jones made sense of this issue in the New Statesman at the time.

But Flynn must now be eating his words, as not only has Gould proved the offensive comments to be incorrect, he actually, at times, seems to be batting for the ‘other team’. And you’d expect no less from a British diplomat.

If it is to be believed that Gould is a staunch FCO bod (he is), then his comments this week regarding Israel’s popularity are simply an extension of an ever wrong-headed FCO narrative, effectively propagandising against the Jewish state.Gould remarked that “Support for Israel is starting to erode and that’s not about these people on the fringe who are shouting loudly and calling for boycotts and all the rest of it”.He went on to describe Israel as ‘Goliath’ and the Palestinians as ‘David’ – in an attempt to reflect British public opinion – a claim that rests on little evidence. But when did the FCO ever care about facts, eh?

Sure, Israel has a public relations problem – one that is needlessly inflated by off piste FCO comments such as these. Far from having a ‘dual loyalty’, Gould has recently shown that he is all too delighted to trot out the unnuanced FCO line.

The British Foreign Office is complicit in ensuring that Israel becomes defined by its inability to unilaterally solve the conflict in the Middle East, much to the chagrin of many Israeli leaders who offered the Palestinians better and better deals – only to be rejected in perpetuity.

Britain’s role in the Middle East conflict is becoming less that of an external mediating party who has something positive to bring to the table, and more that of an antagonist. At best, we seem to be the less than subtle cousin at the dinner table. At its worst, the drunken uncle slumped in the corner shouting irrelevant facts in the face of heated discussions.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/rogue-afghan-soldier-gets-heros-welcome-from-taliban-after-he-killed-an-american-soldier-in-cold-blood?f=puball

http://news.yahoo.com/video-taliban-welcomes-rogue-afghan-shot-us-soldiers-122918421–abc-news-topstories.html

HELLO? IS THERE ANYONE STILL STANDING THAT CALLS PETRAEUS A GREAT GENERAL?….RSK

A new online video shows a rogue Afghan soldier receiving a hero’s welcome from Taliban commanders, after returning from a mission where he killed an American soldier in cold blood.

The video, released by the Taliban’s media propaganda wing, shows the soldier returning to a Taliban village in Ghaziabad in Kunar province, with dozens of Taliban men lined up to greet him. The soldier, wearing an Afghan Army uniform, identifies himself as Ghazi Mahmood, or “Warrior Mahmood.”

Men with white Taliban flags, some with their faces covered, others carrying rocket propelled grenade launchers, throng around him, parading him through the village as insurgents shower him with flower garlands and chant “Long Live Mahmood.”

“I opened fire on three Americans who were sitting together,” the man explains calmly in the video. “The reason I killed them is because they have occupied our country. They are enemies of our religion and they kill our innocent people.”

In another scene, the rogue soldier is seated outside a wooden structure, surrounded by armed insurgents, some of whose faces are blurred. Standing in a row in front are dozens of young madrassa students, who pump their fists into the air cheering “Jihad, Jihad” and “Long Live the warrior.”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/panetta-shoots-for-islamic-brownie-points

There is one operative word in Andy McCarthy’s illuminating examination of some of the facts obscured by the weird and racuous apotheosis of Huma Abedin currently enlivening the hysterical demonization of Rep. Michele Bachmann by the media and John McCain, a grotesque and shameful display triggered by a question — one question — Bachmann and four other House Republicans have raised about Abedin’s close family connections to the rapacious Islamic supremacist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

That word is “adults.”

Having outlined these connections, which are not, the former federal prosecutor writes, “contrived or weightless,” McCarthy notes it’s not “a crime to have close relatives who are either members of, or associated with members of such an organization. Again, however,” he patiently explains, “no one is accusing Huma Abedin of a crime.”

He continues:

The five House conservatives instead are asking questions that adults responsible for national security should feel obliged to ask: In light of Ms. Abedin’s family history, is she someone who ought to have a security clearance, particularly one that would give her access to top-secret information about the Brotherhood? Is she, furthermore, someone who may be sympathetic to aspects of the Brotherhood’s agenda, such that Americans ought to be concerned that she is helping shape American foreign policy?

These are rational questions. The fact that such questions now require a painstaking defense is a measure of how berserk — how subverted — our reasoning powers have become. The fact that such questions are only now being asked by just five House members is a measure of how very few adults hold positions of authority in our government. (NB: It is this same subversion of reasoning powers that led me to write my new book, American Betrayal, which became a “prequel” of sorts to The Death of the Grown-Up.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/colbert-king-irans-anti-semitism-makes-it-the-greatest-threat-to-jews/2012/08/03/75126d28-dcfa-11e1-af1d-753c613ff6d8_story.html “Iran violates national sovereignty in order to kill Jews.The fingerprints of Iran were found in attacks on Jews in Bulgaria, India, Thailand and Georgia. Contending that Iran’s threat is mainly to Israel is to ignore reality, unpleasant and challenging though it may be.If we are to honor the pledge of “never again,” will we […]

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/08/boxing-clever-when-non-jewish-athletes.html
Boxing Clever: When Non-Jewish Athletes Pretended To Be Jews
As a nod towards the Olympics, here’s a snippet from the archives. Entitled “When it Pays to be a Jew: Gentile Athletes Hebraise Their Names” and “From a Correspondent in New York,” it appeared in the Jewish Chronicle (29 March 1929):

‘A good boxer with a proud Jewish name is assured of a great following. A Jewish name in athletics helps one in much the same way as an Italian name used to be in the field of music or a Russian still does in the field of dancing.

This is especially true in America, where in spite of the melting pot legend, national feelings run very high sometimes. The professional promoter who gets hold of a Jewish boxer will, therefore, at once placard the Jewish origin of his champion all over the place. A Jewish boxer is acclaimed and cheered by the crowd, and Jew and Gentile alike will pin faith in him. Such is the firmly established tradition that the Jew is victorious in the ring. So it is that many boxers of pure Arian [sic] or Nordic stock choose to adorn themselves with unmistakeably Jewish sounding names. Only recently the sports pages of the press carried the disclosure that Gus Sonnenberg, the new world’s champion wrestler, is no Jew at all.

The predominance and success of Jewish boxers has naturally already produced a jealousy not undiluted by anti-Semitism, and the assertion that “the Jews have captured the ring”. The only consolation is that the Jewish boxers do not remain long in the profession. After they reach prominence they retire to some quiet but lucrative business. And there again they are accused of “lack of sportsmanship”. Papers announce that hardly a week goes by without the retirement of some Jewish boxer. Thus have retired Bat Levinsky and Joey Kaufman. And now Joey Sangor of Milwaukee, the famous lightweight, quits at twenty, announcing that he is dissatisfied with his 1929 showing in the ring.’

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/4698/features/inventing-pluralist-america/?print

With the United States of 2012 more culturally diverse than ever, it is tempting to think that the country’s social pluralism was foreordained. After all, aren’t we a nation of immigrants?

In fact, however, a tolerant pluralism was not the only possibility for America. It emerged as the dominant view of how our society should be organized only after a bitter debate that began with the wave of Eastern European immigration at the end of the 19th century and finally dissipated only in the crucible of World War II. One of the chief theorists of American pluralism—indeed, the man who coined the term “cultural pluralism”—was a German-born American Jew named Horace Meyer Kallen. This coming Saturday will mark the 130th anniversary of his birth. It is a date worth celebrating.

About a century ago, Kallen was at the height of his fame. He had just edited the last book by his late teacher, the Harvard philosopher William James; he was about to publish an extraordinary comparative study of James and the French philosopher Henri Bergson; and he was at the center of a heated debate about America’s future.

The wave of immigration from Eastern and Central Europe at the beginning of the 20th century was being met by aggressive anti-immigrant sentiment from the WASP elite. Theodore Roosevelt, for one, inveighed against “hyphenated Americans.” Others were less subtle. Sociologist Edward A. Ross warned in his 1914 book, The Old World in the New, that “the blood now injected into the veins of our people is ‘subcommon.’”

Kallen, who had emigrated with his family from Germany at the age of four, felt that those sentiments betrayed the ideals of the United States and needed to be refuted. He was an advocate of James’s philosophical pluralism and undertook to apply this concept to social, political, and religious problems.

In his famous essay, “Democracy vs. the Melting Pot,” Kallen argued that the United States was a commonwealth based on an idea, not on blood or territory. The idea was that people are different, and that this difference was good; the equality postulated in the Declaration of Independence didn’t mean sameness but equal rights for individuals fundamentally different from each other.

Kallen’s pluralism, therefore, was descriptive as well as prescriptive. His starting point was the idea that each individual had a unique perspective on the world, which was influenced by one’s geographical situation and cultural, religious, and political environment. The individual could then contribute this perspective to a more comprehensive understanding of the world. Although for Kallen there was no preferred point of view as such, he did recognize the importance of providing a common ground from which the differences could grow and flourish. That common ground was democracy, which protected the individual’s “right to be different,” as Kallen would come to call it in the 1930s, and enabled a pluralist society.

Relatedly, Kallen was cognizant of the dangers posed to pluralism by totalitarianism and intolerance. Following his travels through Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia at the end of the 1920s, he became a vocal critic of totalitarianism, long before other progressives and liberals did so. The same was true for religions: Though Kallen acknowledged their importance for shaping identities, he was appalled by their history of coercion and violence, and especially opposed those which were obstructing scientific development or which acted intolerantly toward other religious groups.

Kallen’s hostility toward religious groups also applied to his own. He exchanged harsh words with Reform Rabbis Samuel Schulman and Abba Hillel Silver for their exclusively religious definition of Judaism; he was equally critical of some Orthodox Jews for their religious intolerance; and he was no less outspoken against zealous anti-Zionists from all Jewish camps.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/korol/120806

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Istanbul on June 7 for the Global Counterterrorism Forum, comprised of 29 countries and the European Union, to confront terrorism, the country most terrorized and, indeed, most experienced in dealing with terrorism, Israel, wasn’t invited. Clinton, long recognized as not a friend of Israel, along with co-chair Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu, named the countries most beset by terrorism, and declared their commitment to oppose it, without once naming Israel or her terrorists, Hamas and Hezbollah. Clinton’s defense, too foolish and insufficient to be pondered, could never cover the truth — that our State Department, representing our current administration and the Islamists that have infiltrated, continues to pander to those who have sworn to defeat and conquer our sharia-compliant America. And to my knowledge, protests by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) have gone unanswered.

Now, with the Summer Olympics, the Western nations have again forsaken the honorable resolves of Olympics and yielded to Sharia-compliance. The many principles to which there were dedication, including ethics, good governance, fair play, sport, strengthening unity, acting against discrimination, promoting peace, and opposing any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes, were immediately negated by Muslim athletes who brought with them their bigotry, bullying and coercions of all they might do if Israel’s presence offended them, and the West was quick to comply. Once again, the Islamists were victorious and America and other western nations acquiesced to no public moment of silence for the 11 Israeli athletes who were killed by Palestinian terrorists in the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Although International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, held an appropriate minute’s silence in 2010 in memory of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili who died in a training accident, he refused the minute for the Israeli murder victims, stating we would also have to memorialize the Palestinians (the murderers).

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/03/Obama-administration-paves-the-way-for-sharia-law
The most terrifying danger Americans face from a second Barack Obama term isn’t the economy, which is scary enough.

The most harrowing prospect is the Obama Administration’s passivity in the face of attempts to introduce aspects of sharia law into our legal system. Now there is strong and open evidence of the Obama administration collaborating with Islamist activists to ensure the path toward sharia law is accelerated.

Just last week, Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division, was asked this question by Trent Franks (R-AZ), a member of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution: “Will you tell us here today that this Administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?”

Perez refused to answer. Four times.

And why would Franks target Perez?

http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/06/behind-the-white-houses-secret-syria-plan/

The White House won’t keep its own secrets, never mind those of the SEALs, Pentagon, or Israel — especially if leaking secrets helps President Obama look like a tough guy in his uphill re-election campaign.

The latest leak is a gusher, and reveals the Obama administration is secretly aiding the rebels in Syria. Unfortunately, in a replay of what happened in Egypt last year, the State Department still does not recognize that many Syrian rebel leaders are in the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaida. Nor does the State Department, which seems to rely on rebel propaganda and breathless mainstream media reports for information about Syria, know what is really happening there. But the truth is being revealed.

Reuters reported last Wednesday that President Obama has signed a secret order, an intelligence “finding,” directing the Pentagon, State Department, and other government agencies to support the Syrian rebels. Those agencies are doing so, and they have put the United States firmly on the side of Sunni Muslims who want to crush the Shia Alawites in Damascus. The plotters include: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and, of course, the United States. Bashar al-Assad, the vilified president of Syria, is absolutely correct when he says civil unrest in Syria is being fomented by “outside forces.”

RICHARD COHEN IS A HARSH CRITIC OF ISRAEL…WHICH MAKES THIS COLUMN ALL THE MORE NOTEWORTHY…..RSK

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-for-israelis-and-palestinians-a-difference-beyond-question/2012/08/06/86a374ae-dfe5-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_story.html

Before the Jews of Hungary were emancipated in the 19th century, they were not permitted to own land. By the end of the century, they were on their way to owning fully one-fifth of Hungary’s large estates and were hugely successful in business and the arts. The Jews of Germany had a similar history. In the early 20th century, they comprised many if not most of the country’s lawyers, doctors, composers, playwrights and scientists, and were so astonishingly successful in business that while they were just 1 percent of the population, they were 31 percent of the richest families. What did it? Was it nature (Jews were smarter) or nurture (Jews had a certain culture)? Here’s my answer: I don’t know.

I do know, though, that if you eliminate what would certainly be condemned as a racist explanation — Jews as inherently smarter than non-Jews — then you are left with culture: There was something in the Jewish experience — 1,000 or so years of persecution and being shunted into dishonorable occupations such as money lending — that prepared Europe’s Jews for the onset of capitalism. Countless books have been written to explain this phenomenon, which continues to this day with Israel’s intellectual domination of its region. In his new book, “The Future of the Jews,” Stuart E. Eizenstat provides an example: “Between 1980 and 2000, 7,652 patents were registered by Israelis in the United States.” The figure for the entire Arab world? 367.