RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-envoy-to-resign-after-blaming-settlements-for-talks-failure/#ixzz30r4Quj3O
‘US envoy to resign after blaming settlements for talks failure’
Martin Indyk cited as member of Kerry team who warned, in anonymous account of negotiations at weekend, that Palestine will rise ‘whether through violence or via int’l organizations’

Martin Indyk, US special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, reportedly will resign from his position following the recent failure of the US-backed talks.

The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported that Indyk is considering resigning in light of President Barack Obama’s intention to suspend US involvement in seeking a negotiated end to the conflict, citing unnamed Israeli officials “who are close to the matter.” Indyk has informed the Brookings Institute that he will soon return to his vice president post, from which he took a leave of absence during the negotiations, Haaretz reported.

It also said Indyk is being identified in Jerusalem as the anonymous source in a report by Yedioth Aharonoth columnist Nahum Barnea on Friday in which unnamed American officials primarily blamed Israel for the failure of the peace talks.

“There are a lot of reasons for the peace effort’s failure, but people in Israel shouldn’t ignore the bitter truth – the primary sabotage came from the settlements,” the official told Barnea. “The Palestinians don’t believe that Israel really intends to let them found a state when, at the same time, it is building settlements on the territory meant for that state. We’re talking about the announcement of 14,000 housing units, no less. Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that this is also about expropriating land on a large scale. That does not reconcile with the agreement.

“At this point, it’s very hard to see how the negotiations could be renewed, let alone lead to an agreement. Towards the end, [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas demanded a three-month freeze on settlement construction. His working assumption was that if an accord is reached, Israel could build along the new border as it pleases. But the Israelis said no.”

The official said the world community pays more attention to Israel’s actions than other countries because “(I)t was founded by a UN resolution. Its prosperity depends on the way it is viewed by the international community.”

Lars Hedegaard, the intrepid Danish historian and journalist, who was nearly assassinated last year by a jihadist (who was just recently apprehended), gave an impassioned speech yesterday (5/4/14), commemorating Denmark’s Day of Liberation from the World War II-era Nazi occupation.

**

[W] e are told that this ideology of conquest is an enrichment and if something is an enrichment, you cannot get enough of it. Consequently our political and spiritual masters see to it that Islam’s influence grows by the day and fall over each other to comply with every demand raised by the prophet’s strongmen. While doing this, our masters accuse everyone who refuses to toe the line of being racists and Fascists. Why don’t we – all of us common people – turn our backs on political parties, politicians, intellectual icons, journalists and priests who endeavor to destroy our country? So far we are not in a situation similar to the one faced by our comrades in the anti-Nazi Resistance. We can still speak our minds. We don’t have to vote for parties that open a door to evil and thus hand over their compatriots to foreign oppressors. We can stop buying newspapers that fill us with lies and propaganda. And if our priest agitates for an ideology he has promised to oppose, we can attend another church. We can refuse to give money to the erection of our enemies’ barracks and command and control centers.

The prophet’s followers certainly do not lack for passion or singleness of purpose. How about the rest of us?

**
Remember our glorious forebears – and reflect

On Denmark’s Day of Liberation, May 4, Dispatch International’s Editor-in-Chief Lars Hedegaard spoke at Copenhagen’s Grove of Commemoration for the patriots who gave their lives as members of the Danish Resistance against the Nazi occupation 1940-1945.

Lars Hedegaard

At Stadsgraven between Christianshavn and Amager there is a monument for 76 men and women from the Copenhagen district of Amager who gave their lives fighting the German occupation during the World War II. The monument carries an inscription by the poet Otto Gelsted:

“You wanderer who stops at this spot
remember those
who gave their lives for freedom and right
and our common home
and when again you hurry to your day’s work
then remember
that you are still standing in a freedom front”
Otto Gelsted was a Communist and it may sound strange that he would talk about our common home.

But there was a time when Danes almost regardless of their political persuasion were certain that we had something in common – something worth protecting and keeping.
It was so important that thousands were willing to risk their lives to defend the inalienable gift that is Denmark and the freedom without which nothing matters. Today hardly anybody talks about Denmark as our common home and even fewer can imagine being part of a freedom front. That is very strange for the enemies of freedom who have entered our country and gained powerful allies among our ruling elites certainly do not lack for determination. They know what they want – which is to replace our man-made laws and democratic order that are the results of a thousand-year history with a law they claim has been handed down by a god and therefore cannot be changed.

Between the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 and the presidential election on November 6, there were only fifty-six days. What followed in those fifty-six days was a calculated effort by the president, his administration, and the media to conceal what happened in Benghazi before, during, and after the attacks. That effort was motivated with one goal: to manipulate the news before the election to protect the Obama campaign.

Bob Tyrrell and I outlined the events that surrounded the Benghazi attacks — and the administration’s unbounded efforts to conceal the facts and control the flow of information — in our article in the March issue of TAS. Thanks to the January 2014 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigative report, we know that from March to August 2012, Western targets — people and facilities — suffered twenty terrorist attacks. We know that beginning in March, State Department security officials in Benghazi made repeated requests for reinforcements (the requests later joined in by Amb. Christopher Stevens) that the State Department ignored.

Our article also showed that there were ten terrorist camps in Benghazi itself operating at the time of the attacks. We showed that there were no protests before the terrorist attacks and that the attacks were known to be just that from the time they began according to the reports flowing from Benghazi to the State Department and the CIA. And we showed that no American forces were put on alert to come to the rescue in Benghazi or any of the other likely terrorist targets on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11.

Last week, more White House emails were released showing how the facts were twisted over the five days between the attacks and the Sunday morning television appearances by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in which she falsely blamed the attacks on an obscure anti-Muslim video. How that assertion got into the infamous talking points shows how desperate the White House was to manipulate the news before the election.

The talking points were drafted in the days between the attacks and the Friday before Rice’s television appearances. Previously released redacted copies of the emails in which the talking points were drafted show one thing very clearly: there was absolutely no mention of the anti-Muslim video. Throughout the drafting process, the attacks were (also falsely) linked only to the previous protests at the Cairo embassy. The draft talking points first showed that the attacks were believed to have been perpetrated by Ansar al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya. Those facts were expunged.

Until today, the world in which the Israeli economy operated was driven by Europe and America; in 2014 Israeli sales to Asia, at just over a quarter of overall exports, will for the first time exceed exports to the US.
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They laughed hard in Turkey this week, as Syria announced it would set up an office dedicated to boycotting its northern neighbor’s economy.

Set aside the Syrian allegations, laughable in their own right, that Turkish firms were sabotaging the Syrian economy and also helped loot Aleppo; an economic basket-case like Syria threatening an economic giant like Turkey is a mouse roaring at a lion.

It wasn’t always this way. A similar threat leveled from Damascus at the newly founded Jewish state was actually quite potent, and cast a dark cloud on the already challenging childhood that awaited the embryonic Israeli economy.

The Israeli economy has since matured and learned to survive by joining the global economy and ignoring its region’s hostility. As it turns 66, however, the global economy itself is transforming, in ways that may hold promise for the Jewish state.

The Arab boycott’s threats were initially effective.

French automaker Renault, which was assembling cars in Israel, surrendered in the mid-’50s and left Israel; Ford canceled a plan to manufacture cars here; and all Japanese car makers except Subaru avoided Israel until the 1980s. The list of surrendering companies ran much longer.

Yet even more daunting than the boycott was the young economy’s burden of war. Lacking peace with any of its neighbors, the new state was predestined to spend much of its meager income on defense.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the United States needs to invest $3.6 trillion to return our roads, airports, bridges, schools and parks to good repair by 2020. $3.6 trillion is only slightly less than the annual budget of the federal government. How did the Country that won World War II and the Cold War, the biggest economy in the world, the Country that still embodies the hopes and dreams of all mankind reach a point where 20% of its bridges are structurally deficient, and airports and city streets resemble those in third-world countries?

The answer lies in the fact that we have diverted funds increasingly toward entitlements and away from projects designed to improve our highways, bridges, airports and mass transit facilities, what the government calls “discretionary” projects, no matter the urgency. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, other healthcare programs, welfare and other entitlements comprised 60% of 2013 federal spending. Interest expense took another 6%. Were interest rates at their post-World War II average, interest expense would have been closer to 15%. That would place mandatory spending at 75% of federal government spending. Sometime between 2030 and 2040 it is expected that mandatory spending will exceed federal revenues. When the highway program was instituted in the 1950s, mandatory spending was about 30% of total spending. That difference – 36% to 45% of our annual budget – represents about $1.5 trillion.

This is not an argument suggesting we forego all public assistance. We should not. But today government gives money not just to the needy, but to many who would be better off with less assistance, those who can work and care for themselves. Why should a resident of Connecticut, for example, take a minimum-wage job when state and federal aid pays twice what they would earn?

Two decades after the end of World War II, the United States was feeling flush. As a nation, we were rich. The Eisenhower highway program had made us connected as never before. We had the largest economy in the world and the highest standard of living among all nations. Lyndon Johnson inherited the Presidency following the assassination of President Kennedy. While he vigorously pursued the Vietnam War, his real interest lay in his vision for a “Great Society.” He wanted the state to assume a bigger role in the caring for those less able to care for themselves. The concept of a safety net had been devised earlier, with Social Security in 1933. The “Great Society” expanded government’s role, with the additions of Medicare, Medicaid and other social welfare programs. In an era of “guns and butter,” too little attention was paid to the long-tail costs of such programs; too little attention was paid to the inhibiting nature of a government that has since become an even bigger part of GDP, and too little attention was paid to the deleterious effect of such programs on the able-bodied.

It has been widely known for years that we would be facing a cash crunch in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Attempts at reform never got off the ground – they are referred to as the “third rail” of politics. However, the precarious nature of our nation’s financial condition can no longer be ignored. Cash deficits are expected to grow dramatically. Ratings on U.S. Treasuries were lowered one notch by S&P in August 2011. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), both Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security will be in deficit by fiscal 2019. The Highway and Mass Transit Trust Funds, which are already operating at deficits, have only survived because of transfers from general funds.

As the Country moved increasingly leftward, generous contractual agreements for healthcare and pensions were offered municipal and state workers. With the Affordable Care Act, we have moved further in the direction of Western Europe. These were noble gestures, supposedly made with the best of intentions. (Though I suspect politics played a not insignificant role.) Besides allowing our infrastructure to deteriorate to Third-World levels, the unintended consequences have been manifested in two distinct ways. We made promises without providing the means to honor them and we have created a class of citizens overly reliant on the state. The former has forced some cities into bankruptcies and threatens the financial health of some states. The latter has been detrimental to the recipients in terms of diminished self-respect and abandoned aspirations. Mayor de Blasio’s settlement with (or payoff to) the New York City’s teacher’s unions is a case in point. It is structured so that tax payers in 2019 and 2020 will be paying for work done in 2009 and 2010. By then, de Blasio will be gone and the burden of finding the funds will fall on the shoulders of a new Mayor.

As Israelis spend the 24 hours leading up to Independence Day mourning each of the 23,169 victims of war and terrorism, a shared pall envelops the country. It is both bitter and sweet. For the loved ones of the fallen, it is just another day of pain they have to overcome — albeit one with pomp, circumstance and public figures paying tribute to their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers.

For the very few who do not have some personal connection to the casualties of the Arab assault on the Jewish state, it serves as an admonition that any one of us could become members of the unwitting “club” of the bereaved. It is also a reminder of the price we are forced to pay for the privilege of being a beacon of freedom, democracy and modernity in a neighborhood that remains in willful darkness.

It is thus that we willingly forgo frequenting our trendy cafes and entertainment venues — as well as forfeit watching regular programming on our wealth of satellite and cable TV channels — to express our deep gratitude to all those who died defending our right and ability to enjoy such frivolities.

But popular culture is not the only, or even the main, realm of success for which we owe our thanks to those who are no longer with us and to their families.

Without them, could we have become and sustained the “start-up nation”? Would we have had the luxury to innovate, invent, inspire and create? Could we have had the energy to come to the aid of other peoples afflicted with famine and natural disasters?

Could we have had the wherewithal to do the above, while dealing with the usual domestic issues of housing, healthcare, education, employment, transportation, welfare and immigration? Would we have had the faith to strive for social justice at home and seek partners for peace abroad?

Britain is in denial. There is no real public debate on a historic event that is transforming the country. Mention of it occasionally surfaces in the media, but the mainstream political class never openly discuss it.

What is that historic event? By the year 2050, in a mere 37 years, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation.

This projection is based on reasonably good data. Between 2004 and 2008, the Muslim population of the UK grew at an annual rate of 6.7 percent, making Muslims 4 percent of the population in 2008. Extrapolating from those figures would mean that the Muslim population in 2020 would be 8 percent, 15 percent in 2030, 28 percent in 2040 and finally, in 2050, the Muslim population of the UK would exceed 50 percent of the total population.

Contrast those Muslim birth rates with the non-replacement birth rates of native Europeans, the so called deathbed demography of Europe. For a society to remain the same size, the average female has to have 2.1 children (total fertility rate). For some time now, all European countries, including Britain, have been well below that rate. The exception is Muslim Albania. For native Europeans, it seems, the consumer culture has replaced having children as life’s main goal.

These startling demographic facts have been available for some time (see ‘Muslim Population “Rising 10 Times Faster than Rest of Society”’, The Times, 30 January 2009. Also the work of the Oxford demographer David Coleman). But on this historic transformation of the country there is silence from the political establishment.

Not everyone agrees with these demographic figures. Population projection, some say, is not an exact science. Perhaps the Muslim birth rate will drop to European levels.

But this seems to be wishful thinking. For years it was believed that Muslims would enter what is known as “demographic transition”, with European Muslim birth rates falling to native European levels. But that demographic transition has not happened. In Britain, for example, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities continue to have significantly higher birth rates than the national average, even after more than 50 years in the country.

Over the short term (a few generations) demographic forecasting is as scientific as any social science can be. Britain and the rest of Europe are in native population decline and European Muslim birth rates are up. If that trend continues, then the projection of a majority Muslim population in Britain is sound. Even the highly respected economist and historian Niall Ferguson accepts the figures.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/300-christian-nigerian-girls-forced-into-slavery-by-islamic-jihadis?f=puball

CBS news reports today the number of Nigerian Christian girls kidnapped by followers of Islam at gunpoint, on April 14, 2014, may total more than 300. The kidnapped girls are reported to range in age from 15-18.

News reports speculate the girls have been moved by force into the adjacent countries of Cameron and Chad. Many of the Christian girls were sold off to their kidnappers for approximately $12.45 US and forced to ‘revert’ to Islam. The remainder of the girls will likely be sold off as sex slaves to the highest bidder as booty by supposedly their Boko Haram kidnappers.

NAACP, NOW, ACLU, CAIR

A quick look at the National Association For The Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) website makes no mention of these 300 black Nigerian Christian girls being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Since April 14, Lorraine Miller, Interim President & CEO of the NAACP has been silent on this modern day slavery of black girls.

The recent May 2 home page of the NAACP website is obviously more concerned with the LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s offensive remarks and Wisconsin’s voter ID Laws. The NAACP says they are also concerned about Human Rights issues by sending a 13 member group to Geneva, Switzerland to address the UN Human Rights Commission. The problems the NAACP were addressing in Geneva was voter suppression, stand your ground laws, and felon voter disenfranchisement.

Let’s move on to NOW the National Organization For Women. The May 2 NOW website front page was silent on these Nigerian girls forced slavery. The ‘NOW Read This’ current events does not mention these 300 Nigerian Christian girls being kidnapped, sold into slavery, and many of their forced conversions to Islam.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) website on May 2 had no mention of these 300 Nigerian schoolgirls ultimate violation of their civil liberties. The ACLU has a long history of speaking out on Civil Liberty issues outside the United States, which makes this groups silence on these Nigerian schoolgirls so problematic.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/was-the-benghazi-video-story-the-brainchild-of-hillary-clinton

Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had a vested interest in lying about Benghazi and permanently concealing the truth, Obama to ensure his reelection prospects in 2012 and Hillary to protect hers for 2016.

It is noteworthy, however, that Hillary Clinton was the first administration official to associate the video with the Benghazi attack, she was clearly its most aggressive and persistent advocate and, later, the most defensive (“what difference does it make”) when doubts were raised in Congressional hearings.

All of the following denote the time in Washington, DC.

September 11, 2012 2:00pm, Terrorists begin to set up checkpoints around US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

September 11, 2012 2:30pm, US Ambassador Chris Stevens ends a meeting with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin at the Benghazi Consulate, likely involving the movement of weapons from Libya through Turkey to the rebels in Syria.

September 11, 2012 3:40pm, Stevens informs Gregory Hicks, the Deputy Chief of Mission in Tripoli, Libya that the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya is under attack.

September 11, 2012 4:00pm Hillary claims she was informed of the attack.

September 11, 2012 4:32pm, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are informed of attack.

September 11, 2012 5:00pm, Obama, Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey meet at the White House at which time Panetta informs Obama of the Benghazi attack. After the meeting was over, they did not hear from Obama again or anybody else at the White House for the remainder of the evening.

Why Negotiations Collapsed – American Perceptions and Future Indications

Effective foreign policy requires a balance between the predictable and the unpredictable. Alliances require careful maintenance and no surprises while adversarial relationships sometimes require unpredictable responses. It is the unique gift of the Obama administration to have reversed this equation.

The collapse of peace negotiations was wholly predictable and has finally taken place. Efforts are now being made to assign blame and exert pressure on the parties. In a series of off the record interviews with Israeli newspapers, unnamed American officials involved in the negotiations have quite predictably put most of the blame on Israel. Careful reading, however, reveals more about America than it does Israelis or Palestinians.

In a wide-ranging interview with veteran Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, blame was systematically assigned to Netanyahu and his government and a single, overarching cause: “people in Israel shouldn’t ignore the bitter truth – the primary sabotage came from the settlements.”

“Settlements” are indeed a primary issue, both for peace negotiations and for Israeli politics. But “settlements” have become a kind of deus ex machina for both domestic and international critics of Israel, the first and last explanation for why bad things happen.

One of the more remarkable statements from Barnea’s interlocutor shows just how little understanding there is regarding “settlements” as an Israeli political issue. “We didn’t realize continuing construction allowed ministers in his government to very effectively sabotage the success of the talks.”

Since the 1980s there has been a predictable manner in which low and mid level Israeli committees embarrass prime ministers engaged in peace negotiations with announcements of construction tenders, some for projects far in the future. This is a major Israeli political problem, but reasonably informed American observers should at least be aware of it.

Amazingly, the Americans appear not to have been. Instead, they reacted with outrage, which is more foolish than simply being surprised and disappointed, since it rewards the Israeli right wing. It also betrays just how ill-informed American diplomats appear to be about the convoluted, if not demented, nature of Israeli politics and bureaucracy. Allowing Abbas to collapse the talks because of housing tenders issued for Gilo – a Jerusalem neighborhood that no reasonable observer could possibly expect to be evacuated – is doubly so.

The outsized and deeply personal nature of the negotiations agenda in American foreign policy is reflected elsewhere. Moshe Ya’alon’s overly blunt outburst against Kerry, in which he said the Secretary of State was only interested in winning a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering an Israeli-Palestinian agreement at a time when American allies were under threat around the world, is thus characterized as deeply hurtful; “the insult was great.”

At the time American officials reacted with even more pique: ““We were shocked by Moshe Ya’alon’s comments, which seriously call into question his commitment to Israel’s relationship with the United States.”

Ya’alon’s remarks were accurate but ill-considered, and were in keeping with many being made by nervous American allies. But the American response then and now seems to be that Israelis should simply shut up.

Barnea reports that the US perceives the hero of the recent negotiations to be Tzipi Livni, who “fought for all her might to promote the agreement.” This may be so, but characterizing Livni as the righteous woman of the hour simply amplifies the longstanding perception that she is the Obama administration’s favored successor to Netanyahu. This will not do her any good politically.

Despite it all, and to Kerry’s credit, progress was made and an agreement was outlined. But one obstacle remained, Abbas’ refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Here too the American official betrays something bordering on criminal ignorance:

“We couldn’t understand why it bothered him [Abbas] so much. For us, the Americans, the Jewish identity of Israel is obvious. We wanted to believe that for the Palestinians this was a tactical move – they wanted to get something (in return) and that’s why they were saying ‘no.’

Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is, for Abbas and the Palestinian leadership, if not the majority of Palestinians, a declaration that Jews have historic rights as a nation and a people, not simply a religion. Such a declaration would end the conflict once and for all by mandating that a Jewish nation-state may stand alongside a Palestinian state. And for those reasons it was out of the question.

The American habit of seeing Israel as a Jewish state is comforting, but the inability to understand that Palestinians refuse to do so out of religious convictions that Jews are a religion, not a people entitled to sovereignty in their historic homeland, is absurd. If the Arab-Israeli conflict has a “root cause,” this is it. But American blindness is not surprising, since the religious context of international affairs has never been well-understood by American policymakers, and has, since 9/11, been deliberately obfuscated, denied, and pushed far to the background.