RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.steynonline.com/4812/paul-the-parochial

“I wish I could like Ron Paul more, really I do. But libertarian narcissism is as banal as any other strain. Ten years of desultory, inconclusive, transnationally constrained warmongering is certainly a problem. But know-nothing parochial delusion is not the solution.”

Uncle Sam has now spent a decade running around the Hindu Kush building grade schools and shoveling taxpayer-funded Viagra to every elderly village headman with one too many child brides. According to the World Bank, the Western military/aid presence accounts for 97 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP. And, within a week of the West’s departure, it will be as if that 97 percent had never been there, and all that remains will be the same old 3 percent tribal dump of mullahs, warlords, poppy barons, and pederasts, all as charmingly unspoiled as if the U.S. and its allies had quit 48 hours after toppling the Taliban in 2001.

It is two-thirds of a century since the alleged hyperpower last unambiguously won a war, and that ought to prompt a little serious consideration of the matter. Instead, we have Ron Paul, who says all would be well if we stopped “endlessly bombing” “these countries.” To which penetrating insight his fans respond with: “Bring them home! Bring them home!” For some reason, I attract a lot of correspondence from Paulites arguing that, if I truly mean what I wrote in the paragraph above, then Ron’s my man. A retired U.S. Army officer writes from South Carolina:

The US Military is a Peace-Making force, not a Peace-keeping Nation Building one. I am sure Dr. Paul would cut out the district military pork of Congress (whom 80% have NEVER served unlike him!), the $600 toilet seats, and $80 hammers, etc ad infinitum, ad nauseam. . . . Quit playing whack a mole and other stupid social games, either utterly vanquish like against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan or DO NOT GO IN! They are for MacArthur: nuke the Chicoms if needed. . . . Send in Seal Team 6 to take out Bin Ladens, etc. None of this PC stuff, otherwise we would not have won WW1 and WW2!

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/09/the-hamas-fatah-reunion/ The cruel farce known as the peace process took another downturn this week as Fatah and Hamas signed a unity agreement in Doha, Qatar. It’s not the first such agreement they’ve signed, and none of the previous instances was a smashing success. Most notably, the two sides’ Mecca Agreement of February 2007 collapsed four […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/09/the-chutzpah-of-omar-barghouti/ The classical definition of the Yiddish word Chutzpah is a man on trial for killing his parents who asks for leniency because he is an orphan. Next to that definition is a picture of Omar Barghouti, a Qatari-born Muslim who moved to Israel and enrolled in Tel Aviv University to obtain a Masters Degree […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11393/pub_detail.asp
Although more attention goes to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) prominent attempts to police speech in Western nations regarding Islam-related topics through the UN and the “Istanbul Process”, Muslim and Islamist desires to restrict critical speech concerning Islam-related topics and promote a positive image of their religion have also played a role in yet another international organization’s efforts to address the debate about Islam and Muslims. On October 28, 2011, a conference, titled: “Confronting Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims in Public Discourse,” was held at the Vienna headquarters of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE is an international grouping encompassing 56 states from North America (Canada and the United States), Europe, and the former Soviet Union. At this conference the Danish-Pakistani general-secretary of the Initiative of European Muslims for Social Cohesion (Die Initiative Europäischer Muslime für Sozialen Zusammenhalt or IEMSZ), Bashy Quraishi, called for “guidelines against Islamophobia in public discourse” and stated that “freedom of speech in Europe entails responsibility, something often forgotten by political leaders and journalists.” Also, General Quraishi as well as numerous other participants at the conference extolled the civilizational contributions of Islam – and Muslims – to humanity. Perhaps not too surprisingly in this politically correct world, in the end the OSCE seemingly acceded to Quraishi’s desire to protect Muslims from insulting speech and promote a positive view of Islam.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11391/pub_detail.asp

Dana Wright, Chief Investigative Reporter – bio | email Kelly Just, Exec. Producer of Special Projects – email DeAnn Smith, Digital Content Manager – email
TOPEKA, KS (KCTV) –
A Kansas board that denied a licensed doctor of osteopathic medicine a license was primarily concerned about the man’s political views.
The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts is a 15-member panel appointed by the governor and decides the fate of doctors in Kansas.
Terrence Lee Lakin rose to the ranks of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. He served on the front lines in Afghanistan and the war zone in Bosnia as well as a medical mission to Honduras. He saved lives around the world and received a Bronze Star for his service.
“I like helping people,” said Lakin. “And I’ve been, since college, wanting to be in medical field and help others.”
But a dispute over whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States led to Lakin being forced from the military and apparently led to the Kansas board in October denying him a medical license to practice in the Sunflower State.
The board repeatedly refused comment on their decision, but a transcript of Lakin’s shows board members didn’t concern themselves with Lakin’s 18-year spotless medical record.
“They hammered me for my political views,” said Lakin.
Nearly two years ago, the then lieutenant colonel asked for proof that Obama was born in the United States. When he didn’t get it, Lakin announced via a video posted on www.safeguardourconstitution.com, “I will disobey my orders to deploy because I believe all servicemen and women and the American people deserve the truth about President Obama, the office of the presidency and the commander in chief.”
In April 2010, citing a possible break in the chain of command, Lakin did refuse a second tour of duty to Afghanistan. In December of that year, he went through a court martial for missing movement and failing to obey a lawful order – both violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. When Lakin was found guilty of breaking military law, the Army gave him a dishonorable discharge, stripped him of his rank and sentenced him to a six-month prison term at Fort Leavenworth.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11390/pub_detail.asp
In a 1983 all-star pirate comedy, Yellowbeard, basically an expensively sewn grab bag of sight gags, one-liners, and pratfalls, there is one scene in which most of the principal characters, in search of Yellowbeard’s treasure, form a kind of conga line on a beach, crawling on their hands and knees, following cryptically written directions on a piece of paper that may lead them to the buried chest. As a yawner, it was a low point in a sequence of low points. We were not amused.

I was reminded of that scene while reading another low point of political enquiry, the British Home Affairs Committee report, The Roots of Violent Radicalisation. In search of the reasons why British-born Muslims and immigrant Muslims turn to terrorism, this lengthy report asks many questions but answers none, tip-toeing as it does around the central ideological content of Islam that is at radical (and violent) variance with Western values, and could be characterized as a conga line of magnifying class-equipped twits examining every little grain of sand and pebble and tide-swept debris in search of those answers. The committee was chaired by a Muslim, Member for Leicester, Keith Vaz, a scandal-soaked politician who, among his many other offenses, in 1989 lead thousands of Muslims in a demonstration to demand the banning of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

Two Decades Too Late
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/290450

For months, former senator Rick Santorum has been talking about working-class woes and promoting a working-class-friendly economic agenda, and in late January President Obama’s State of the Union speech placed working-class concerns at the center of the election debate. Nevertheless, Santorum remains in third place in the GOP race. Does this suggest that Republican efforts to address working-class angst are politically ineffective?

No, it doesn’t. The problem is twofold: Santorum has not emphasized this aspect of his campaign enough, and the agenda he has presented seems designed to resurrect an idealized past rather than to lead worried workers into a new future.

Santorum is trying to resurrect the Reagan general-election strategy of 1980 — first and foremost, to win over the conservative base on fiscal and social issues by portraying himself as a man of principle, the only candidate who will not waver. This means that for most Republican-primary voters, Santorum is a strong conservative first and an advocate of the working class a distant second, if at all.

But Santorum’s greater problem is that he is out of touch with today’s blue-collar reality. His message presumes that white-working-class voters are essentially the same as they were in 1980. Reagan Democrats in the Midwest — the Santorum target — were characterized in 1980 by their religion and their occupations. They were disproportionally Catholic, serious about their faith, and likely to work in manufacturing or live in manufacturing-dependent neighborhoods and towns.

‘It’s Your Fault’: U.S. Gets the Israel Treatment Over Iran Posted By Shoshana Bryen http://pjmedia.com/blog/its-your-fault-u-s-gets-the-israel-treatment-over-iran/ Israel is often in this position. Its enemies threaten it in unacceptable ways or commit acts of violence just under some unspoken-but-very-real threshold of tolerance (not Israel’s threshold, mind you, but that of the U.S., the UN or the EU). […]

‘Iran must attack Israel by 2014’

http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=257112

Khamenei strategist releases document providing legal, religious justification for annihilation of Jewish people.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s strategist provided the legal and religious justification for the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people, in a document published on conservative Farsi website Alef. Reports of the document began to circulate the internet this week.

The document, written by strategy specialist Alireza Forghani, outlined the reasons why, “In the name of Allah, Iran must attack Israel by 2014.”

Claiming to only represent the personal opinion of its author, and not the Iranian government, the doctrine was published on a website believed to have close ties with the Ayatollah.

Forghani called the Jewish state a ‘cancerous tumor for the Middle East” and reminded his readers that “All our troubles are due to Israel!”

“Every Muslim is obliged to equip himself against Israel,” he urged, reasoning that if the Muslim world does not attack Israel in the near future, “the opportunity could be lost and it may not be possible to stop them.”

The document explained that the war against Israel must be carried out in the name of “defensive jihad” – or the protecting of Islam against aggressors “who want to gain domination over the Muslims and kill them.”

It also clarified that although Israel had yet to strike Iran, their occupation of Palestinian lands already justifies an attack as Islam dictates that “the political borders [of the world] cannot divide Muslims and the earth is divided into two parts – Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries.”

Army Chaplains Stopped From Reading Bishop’s Letter
http://news.investors.com/Article/600583/201202081901/catholic-chaplains-barred-from-reading-letter.htm

Constitution: The Air Force removes a reference to God from its logo as the Army forbids Catholic chaplains from reading an archbishop’s letter to those in uniform. What’s next, the crosses at Arlington National Cemetery?

‘It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle,” read the letter from Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services to the Catholic chaplains in the U.S. military.

The letter that the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains kept from being read to Catholic soldiers concerned the recent Health and Human Services mandate requiring Catholic institutions to provide contraceptive services.