RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204630904577055863900368528.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Amid the slaughter, a quiet house was singled out, solely because the residents were Jewish.

Three years ago this weekend, believers of two religions came face to face, with horrific results. It is remembered as the Mumbai Attacks. Over the course of four days, 10 terrorists from the Islamic group Lashkar-e-Taiba perpetrated coordinated attacks on 10 different locations across India’s financial capital. In addition to three hotels, a cinema, and a hospital for women and children, four of the terrorists traveled to the Nariman House, which served as the city’s Chabad Jewish community center.

In all, 164 people were killed in Mumbai and 308 were wounded. What stands out in the horror of those days is the particular viciousness of the attack on the defenseless people inside Nariman House. The Holtzbergs—a young couple, emissaries from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement—along with four other Jewish visitors were all killed. But Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivka were first tortured, the details of which are too gruesome to recount. (Their 2-year-old son was rescued by his Indian nanny, who grabbed the blood-spattered child and ran outside when the attackers weren’t looking.)

Why did the attackers specifically target Chabad and why with such viciousness? Lashkar-e-Taiba, or the Army of the Pure, is South Asia’s largest and most militant terror network. It is based in Pakistan, where it reportedly received planning assistance for the Mumbai operation from Pakistan’s secret service agency. The group’s founding aim was to reclaim the disputed Kashmir region for Muslims, but in recent years Lashkar has expanded to global scope, with particular animus toward India and Israel, declaring Hindus and Jews to be enemies of Islam.

Hence the attack on Nariman House, one of 3,000-plus Chabad Houses around the world that provide assistance, religious services, food, lodging and Torah study to local and visiting Jews. “Chabad,” an acronym for the Hebrew “wisdom, understanding, knowledge,” is another name for the Lubavitcher movement, named after the city in Russia where this particular movement of Orthodox Jewish Hasidism was founded in the 18th century.

Chabad would probably be unknown to the outside world had it not been for Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, its charismatic leader from 1951 until his death in 1994. Known as the “Rebbe” to his followers, he took a small group ravaged in the Holocaust and electrified it with a vision. Based in its new home of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the Jewish movement grew rapidly, and today there are Chabad Houses from Morocco to Cambodia to Santa Fe.

While the Rebbe was a great Talmudic scholar, he was also an electrical engineer who studied at the Sorbonne and did work for the U.S. Navy during World War II. Perhaps because of his varied background, the Rebbe infused the Lubavitchers with entrepreneurialism. “This was not a man who was interested in creating followers,” says Jonathan Sacks, the chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth. “This was a man who was passionate about creating leaders.”

Sending out emissaries was part of the program from the start, in 1951. “These extraordinary people could have achieved enormous personal gain in business or as professionals, but instead dedicated their lives to a higher purpose,” says Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the movement’s educational and social services arms.

Chabad’s model sounds more like that of Christian missionaries than what most people expect of Jews. But Chabad couples are not sent out to proselytize. They are meant to act as role models for other Jews, in order to create a better world. Lubavitchers believe that every mitzvah (commandment) performed—whether it is helping someone in need or lighting the Sabbath candles—brings us all closer to the coming of the Messiah. “Love of God, of Torah and of every Jew—all three are really one and they cannot be separated,” said the Rebbe upon assuming leadership of the movement in 1951…..READ MORE AT SITE

“Civilization and profit go hand in hand.” “Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.” “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.” “Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow.”

Calvin Coolidge

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/284052

IT TAX POLICY WERE THE ONLY THING ABOUT NORQUIST….THIS WOULD SATISFY…BUT KRAUTHAMMER OMITS NORQUIST’S NASTY AND SHADY ASSOCIATIONS WITH RADICAL MOSLEMS BROTHERHOOD. FRANK GAFFNEY IS FAR MORE CREDIBLE…

“Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy has repeatedly called for the conservative movement to purge Grover Norquist from the ranks, and even accused Norquist of “credentialing the perpetrators of this Muslim Brotherhood influence operation” during the controversy over CPAC. Norquist, the head of the highly influential Americans for Tax Reform, was a speaker at The Awakening despite his membership on the board of GOProud, a gay conservative group, and Gaffney’s charges of promoting Sharia law. In fact, Gaffney spoke during “Sharia Law and the Constitution” in the same room of the Thomas Road Baptist Church immediately following Norquist’s talk on “America’s Economic Condition.” During his panel, Gaffney claimed that Norquist, who co-founded the Islamic Free Market Institute, is helping advocates of Sharia law penetrate the right-wing and said it was his “personal burden for the past last twelve years to be trying to warn conservatives that one of their own has been actively involved, both enabling and empowering, Muslim Brotherhood influence operations against our movement and our country.”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10898/pub_detail.asp Looking at the Atlantic Ocean off the Virginia Beach coast, I occasionally see US Navy ships on the horizon, F-18 Hornets flying in formation, the Coast Guard helicopter overhead, and porpoise darting in and out of the waves; it’s just a part of the scenery.  Having lived in Glenview, Illinois, in the years prior […]

Palestinian Refugees vs. the Arabs Posted By David Meir-Levi URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/24/palestinian-refugees-vs-the-arabs/   In 2008, during a presentation at a panel discussion on the Middle East conflict at Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, CA), a young Arab-American lady claiming to be a “Palestinian refugee” posed to the present writer the following question: “Why can […]

‘They Stole Our Land’ vs. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/25/%e2%80%9cthey-stole-our-land%e2%80%9d-vs-the-grand-mufti-of-jerusalem/

The cornerstone argument in the Arab narrative against Israel is that the Zionists in the 19th and early 20th centuries came to the Land of Israel and stole Arab land. This is a very simple assertion, easy to visualize, seemingly logical and amenable to a brief presentation: after all, Zionists did come from Europe to what was then Palestine, and the Arabs were already living there. So obviously when the Jews came they took Arab land.

Although there exists voluminous evidence to the contrary in Arab and Turkish and British sources indicating the exact opposite, it is difficult to present this contrary evidence and explain its importance in as brief and simple a manner as is done with the Arab assertion. There are too many variables: Arab demographics, Jewish demographics, Zionist agrarian reclamation technology, land purchases, crown land vs. privately owned land, absentee landlords, etc. This imbalance puts the advocate on behalf of Zionism and Israel at a disadvantage, even though the evidence supporting the Israeli narrative and contradicting the Arab narrative is vast and thoroughly vetted. For an excellent compilation and analysis of this evidence, see Kenneth Stein, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939 (University of North Carolina Press, 1984, reviewed here and here).

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/25/old-middle-east-resurfacing-in-cairo/

‘Old’ Middle East Resurfacing in Cairo Posted By P. David Hornik

As of Friday morning, it was expected in Cairo that, later in the day, up to a million people would be confronting the Egyptian army in the Tahrir Square area. It had earlier been reported that the target of such a gathering would be the “Judaization” of Jerusalem. By now, though, it appears clear that if the event occurs, the fury will be directed mainly at Egypt’s own military regime that has tried to hold things together since President Hosni Mubarak was thrown out of office last winter.

Tens of thousands of anti-regime protesters have been swarming in the Tahrir Square area for about a week. Police have killed about 40 and wounded hundreds. A ceasefire was attempted on Thursday morning, with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi’s regime going so far as to apologize for the deaths and promising to prosecute the perpetrators. But by Thursday afternoon it had already broken down with fresh outbreaks of violence.

Unlike those of Qaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria, the regime is not bent on staying in power at any price and indeed appears desperate to try and appease the protesters. Parliamentary elections are set for Monday, and the regime moved presidential elections up from 2013 to next spring. But the protesters out in the streets—some of them—appear driven by a blind fury and keep demanding that the regime step down immediately.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/666/denial_continues_amid_latest_evidence_on_britain_s_abysmal_national_health_service
Denial continues amid latest evidence on Britain’s abysmal National Health Service

The OECD’s report provides shocking new data on Britain’s socialised health system but even the Conservative-led government wouldn’t have it any other way.

The more you drill down into the latest report from the 34 nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on health care performance the worse it looks for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

In 2009, for the first time, the proportion of gross domestic product spent on health in Britain exceeded the OECD average. So, given that it is a received wisdom bordering on religious doctrine that Britain has “the best health system in the world” that inevitably means performance for patients is nothing short of outstanding. Or not.

In fact, in some areas the NHS is being outperformed by the formerly communist countries of central and eastern Europe none of which chose to emulate the British model when deciding which kind of health care system to adopt in the transition from communism.

As the report shows, 84 percent of health care spending in the UK comes from the state. The OECD average is 72 percent. Put another way, in the average OECD country the private sector is almost twice as big a player in health provision as in the UK.

And that, the evidence suggests, makes all the difference.

Try this, taken straight from the report’s key findings on Britain:

“The 5-year relative survival rate for breast cancer during 2004-2009 was 81%, up from 75% during 1997-2002, but still lower than the OECD average of 84%. For cervical cancer, it was 59%, also lower than the OECD average of 66%.

“And for colorectal cancer, the 5-year relative survival rate in the UK during 2004-2009 was 54% for females and 53% for males, compared with an OECD average of 62% for females and 60% for males.”

Cancer survival rates are now better in the Czech Republic and Slovenia than in Britain.

One might have thought that these appalling figures would give British politicians pause for thought. If an insurance based system of the kind adopted by many countries in Europe is providing better outcomes than the bureaucratic, state-dominated NHS surely it must have crossed somebody’s mind that it might be worth considering a radical change of course.

Not a bit of it.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/669/the_obstinacy_of_a_crumbling_castroism
The obstinacy of a crumbling Castroism

Meaningless economic “readjustments” will be remembered, not as the initiators of the rejuvenation of the Cuban economy, but rather, as the final rattles of one of the few remaining relics of communism

During the life of a dictatorship, there are times at which the instinct of survival pushes its leaders to carry out a profound reform of the manner in which it operates. This often happens when the despot who set it up passes away or, by the force of health or age, is about to do so.

The reform process is not free of uncertainties since nothing and no one can possibly guarantee the ruling clique that the people will not seize the occasion to push for a full-fledged regime change and for the instauration of a democratic system. This is the reason why dictatorships avoid carrying out such an exercise until the circumstances (economic malaise, people’s mobilization and/or international pressure) make it impossible to continue to procrastinate.

China is a conspicuous example of a dictatorship that managed to survive to the demise of its founder. It did so by undertaking a radical change in the economic domain, putting in place a centralized, State capitalism (labelled “market socialism”) under the un-Marxian slogan “To get rich is glorious”, while keeping at the same time the political rigidity typical of totalitarian systems.