RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/375041/print

Russian president Vladimir Putin has completed his Anschluss of Crimea to the sound of muted global grumbling. He now is watching America and the West for signals on what he can get away with next. Putin surely is calculating whether to keep 80,000 Red Army troops on Russia’s side of its border with Ukraine or deploy them across that red line — to the greater glory of Mother Russia.

In that context, Obama exhibited breathtaking weakness on March 28 when he ordered the EPA to study the methane generated by oil and gas production. This research, part of Obama’s obsession with so-called “global warming,” is scheduled to continue through late 2014. After that, the EPA will decide whether or not to regulate oil and gas development even further. This paralysis of analysis most likely will push decisions on the Keystone XL pipeline and new federal fracking permits well past November’s midterm elections.

“We’re studying it,” Team Obama can say when asked about Keystone and fracking. “We’ll make up our minds later.”

Kicking this gas canister down the road keeps the Left hoping that Obama will kill Keystone and new fracking plans come 2015. Meanwhile, since Obama now can scrutinize projects rather than block them, the Right will be unable to pound him as hard as they would if he actually had nixed Keystone and fracking initiatives. Obama also can assuage the pro-energy labor unions with assurances that “we’ll take a look after November.” That should keep them calm, and their coffers open.

So Obama likely will get what he wants, all the way through the November 4 vote, as Capitol Hill dangles in the balance.

At the same time, Obama has shown Putin that he need not worry about the one weapon that Moscow fears most: America’s ability to drive oil and gas prices into the floor.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/syria-is-what-happens-when-islam-wins/print/

Saudi Arabia and Qatar aren’t talking to each other. Syria and Turkey are shooting at each other. Not only are the Shiites and Sunnis killing each other in Syria, but the Sunni groups have been killing each other for some time now. There are even two or three Al Qaedas fighting each other over which of them is the real Al Qaeda.

There’s something about Syria that splits down everything and everyone. Even Hamas had to split between its political and military wings when choosing between Iran’s weapons and Qatar’s money. Doing the logical thing, the military wing took the weapons and the political wing took the money so that the military wing of Hamas supported Assad and its political wing supported the Sunni opposition.

It’s not however money and weapons that splits Muslims over Syria. Money and weapons are only the symbols. What they represent is Islam. And what Islam represents is the intersection between identity and power.

A modern state derives its power from its identity. The Japanese and the Russians were willing to die in large numbers for their homeland during WW2. Both countries had undergone rapid de-feudalization turning peasants into citizens. Japan and Russia however had historic identities to draw on. The rapid de-feudalization in the Arab world had messier results because countries such as Jordan and Syria were Frankenstein’s monsters made out of bits and pieces of assembled parts of history stuck together with crazy glue.

The Middle East is full of flags, but most are minor variations on the same red, green, black and white theme. The difference between the Palestinian flag and the Jordanian flag is a tiny asterisk on the chevron representing the unity of the Arab peoples. The Iraqi flag was originally the same as the Jordanian and Palestinian flags. So are most of the flags in the region which are based on the Arab Revolt flag which was in turn based on the colors of the Caliphates.

Every time you see the Al Qaeda “black flag” of Jihad, it’s already represented in the black stripes on the flags of every Arab nation. What Al Qaeda has done is strip out the other colors representing the various succeeding caliphates and gone back all the way to the black of Mohammed’s war flag.

What is Syria? The civil war answered that question. Like the USSR, it’s a prison of nations. It exists only by virtue of men pointing guns at other men. As long as all the men with the guns agreed on what Syria was, the country existed. Once they no longer did, there was no longer a Syria. The same is true of much of the Middle East.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/obama-epas-monstrous-human-experiments/print/

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has been subjecting unknowing human guinea pigs to high levels of carcinogens and potentially lethal pollutants in order to justify tough new air quality standards.

To make matters worse, EPA has been carrying out these egregiously immoral and unethical human experiments in which subjects are made to inhale freshly pumped-in diesel truck exhaust fumes without advising them of the risk to their health.

Such EPA-funded studies have reportedly been carried out at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Rochester (N.Y.), University of Southern California, University of Michigan, and elsewhere.

It is social engineering of the worst sort carried out by left-wing bureaucrats who view people as objects or playthings, not as individuals. It is also consistent with the profoundly misanthropic ethos of environmentalism, a movement that was already radical 25 years ago but has become outright totalitarian in its goals since it was taken over by neo-Marxists around the world following the collapse of their ideal state, the Soviet Union.

The news, which has largely been ignored by the mainstream media, comes amidst the EPA’s draconian crackdown on wood-burning stoves (that will probably lead to a crackdown on fireplaces too eventually).

The disturbing finding that Americans have been subjected to dangerous toxins for political gain is contained in a new investigative report by The Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch.

The article comes on the heels of a new report by the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) that says the EPA’s experiments exposed individuals, including those with asthma and cardiac problems, to pollutants such as diesel fumes in quantities up to 50 times greater than the levels the agency deems safe for humans.

None of the $12-an-hour test subjects has died (yet) but some of them have experienced significant health problems.

After being exposed to “ambient air pollution particles” in 2010, an obese 58-year-old woman with medical problems and a family history of heart disease had to go to the hospital. One volunteer patient was exposed to ozone for 15 minutes and developed a nasty cough while two other experienced “cardiac arrhythmias” during testing.

The dangerous taxpayer-funded experiments were unearthed in 2012 by pseudoscience debunker Steve Milloy. Using the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA), his website, JunkScience.com, got its hands on the results of tests EPA quacks conducted on people who were exposed to high levels of airborne fine particulate matter – soot and dust that scientists refer to PM2.5.

In congressional testimony in late 2011, then-EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson told a congressional committee in effect that her agency was putting at risk the lives of study subjects.

“Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should,” said Jackson who is infamous for using secret pseudonymous email accounts in to conceal her official activities from FoIA inquiries and Congress. EPA claims that PM2.5 can kill those who inhale it within two days of exposure.

“If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country,” Jackson added.

“Got that?” Milloy wrote. “Airborne dust and soot don’t make you sick, they just kill you – virtually upon exposure.”

So is it true? Is particulate matter dangerous or not?

http://www.jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain/item/the_quaker_exchange_part_1_on_the_early_beginnings_of_palestine_refugee_rel

Asaf Romirowsky is a Middle East historian. He holds a PhD in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King’s College London, UK and has published widely on various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and American foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as on Israeli and Zionist history. He lives in Philadelphia.

Alexander H. Joffe is an archaeologist and historian. He holds a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona, USA and has published widely on topics in archaeology, ancient and modern history, and contemporary politics. He lives in New York.

The following exchange will focus on their new book, ‘Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief’.

Dear Dr. Romirowsky and Dr. Joffe,

Your interesting book examines in detail the role played by one NGO, the Quaker American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), in the very first days (1948-50) of the UN’s Palestinian refugee relief program. The first question in this case almost writes itself: so much water has gone under the bridge since then, and there are so many aspects (both current and historic) to the Palestinian refugee question. Why the Quakers? What can this seemingly esoteric episode about the formation of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teach us about the conflict in 2014?

http://www.renewamerica.com/analysis/swirsky/140403

Just last week, on March 24, 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (CDC) released its latest data on autism. After surveying medical and school records from 11 states, the CDC found that autism has more than doubled since the new century began only 14 years ago. Today the condition affects one out of 68 children – five times as many boys as girls. Alarmingly, there was a 30 percent climb in its incidence between 2008 and 2010.

Maybe you missed the story, since the day it broke, and the following day, the media – TV, radio, print – devoted about 30 seconds and just a few articles to this horrific report, significantly less time than is still spent endlessly speculating on Flight 370 or debating the use of the word “bossy,” both of which pale in comparison to the marathon of unendurable daily ads for Cialis and Viagra! Exhibit Number One in America’s priority system!

The powers-that-be at the CDC once again trotted out the age-old rationales to explain this bizarre finding:

Greater awareness and therefore earlier and more accurate diagnoses

The role that being an older parent plays not only in the incidence of autism but also Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities

Genes

“Something” in the environment

The study found that the incidence of autism in blacks “continues to lag behind whites and Hispanics,” which some experts attributed to racial bias (i.e., blacks lack equal access to medical care), but other experts said that blacks may simply be less vulnerable to autism for some unknown reason.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/04/02/twelve-questions-about-the-peace-process/

In today’s New York Times, a letter from Dov Bruce Krulwich in Beit Shemesh, Israel, asks two questions about the possible release of Jonathan Pollard to encourage Israel to release Palestinian murderers to convince the Palestinians to discuss a Palestinian state, even though the Palestinians “refuse even to agree that the end game involves two states for two peoples”:

Shouldn’t a people who have never had a state be the ones making goodwill gestures to continue a process that will benefit them the most?

Why weren’t the previous good-will gestures, not to mention all the good-will gestures in the past 20 years, enough to expect the Palestinians to take a step themselves?

Those questions lead to some of my own:

Why do people have to be paid–in the form of cash, prisoners, freezes, etc.–to convince them to show up to negotiate a state for themselves?

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/dartmouths-chickens-come-home-to-roost-in-the-presidents-office.php

The Dartmouth students known as “Concerned Asian, Black, Latin@, Native, Undocumented, Queer, and Differently-Abled students” have followed through on their threat to take “physical action” if the College’s administrators don’t reply to their demands. Their physical action consists of occupying the office of Phil Hanlon, Dartmouth’s president.

The demands of these activists are so absurd that when I first reported on them some very intelligent people told me that this was a hoax. Here are some of the demands:

Incorporate into each department at least one queer studies class.

Commit multi-millions of dollars to increase faculty and staff of color in all departments, and create a “professor of color” lecture series.

Require ALL professors to be trained in “cultural competency” and the “importance of social justice in their day to day work.”

Ask faculty to use preferred gender pronouns. Allow body and gender self-determination.

A translation of a Serbian TV report from yesterday (original here), thanks to Nebojsa Malic, president of the Reiss Institute

Blerim Heta of Urosevac is the first Balkans suicide bomber. Heta blew himself up in Baghdad a week ago, killing 52. Before going to Iraq, Heta worked at Camp Bondsteel.

The investigation into the March 25 suicide bombing in Baghdad revealed that the perpetrator was Kosovo Albanian Blerim Heta of Urosevac, who called his family a day earlier and told them he would “meet Allah” soon.

Heta’s death was confirmed by his family. Kosovo authorities have not commented on the case.

The news of Heta’s suicide attack was confirmed by the website of “Islamic State of Iraq and Shem” (ISIS), an organization tied to Al-Qaeda. ISIS refers to Heta as “Abu Habbab al-Kosowi”.

This is the first documented case of someone from the Balkans engaging in a suicide bombing attack. There were several unconfirmed reports of suicide bombers of Bosnian origin during the Iraq War.

Heta’s family believed Blerim was fighting somewhere in Syria.

“After everything that happened, I don’t want to hear about faith.” said Heta’s father, Remzi. “My son was seduced. We are a family that shares European values, not extremists.”

http://washingtonexaminer.com/the-pentagon-is-cutting-key-weapons-without-knowing-what-it-really-needs/article/2546708

The news last week that the Navy was being forced to stop production of two key missiles in its arsenal – the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Hellfire air-to-ground weapon – was a shock. It seemed as if President Obama was about to defang both the Navy and the armed drone program, for which the Hellfire serves as a primary weapon.

The news is somewhat better and somewhat worse than it first appeared.

The Tomahawk has been a mainstay for decades in both the ship-launched role and the Air Force’s air-launched configuration. The program will be greatly reduced this year and eliminated next year. Sources say that the Navy now has about 4,000 Tomahawks in hand and that it plans to maintain its current stock ready for use until they’re expended or replaced.
Fortunately, we’re not in a shooting war because when the Tomahawks go, they go quickly. American and British ships fired about 110 Tomahawks in the first stage of Obama’s Libyan adventure. More than 200 were fired in that operation alone. In Operation Desert Storm in 1991, 288 were fired.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The left has never adapted to the transition from nationalistic wars to ideological wars. It took the left a while to grasp that the Nazis were a fundamentally different foe than the Kaiser and that pretending that World War 2 was another war for the benefit of colonialists and arms dealers was the behavior of deluded lunatics. And yet much of the left insisted on approaching the war in just that fashion, and had Hitler not attacked Stalin, it might have remained stuck there.

The Cold War was even worse. The moderate left never came to terms with Communism. From the Moscow Trials to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left slowly disavowed the USSR, but refused to see it as anything more than a clumsy dictatorship. The only way that the left could reject the USSR was by overlooking its ideology and treating it as another backward Russian tyranny being needlessly provoked and pushed around by Western Europe and the United States.

Having failed the test twice, it is no wonder that the left has been unable to come to terms with Islam, or that it has resorted to insisting that, like Germany and Russia, the Muslim world is just another victim of imperialism and western warmongering in need of support and encouragement from the progressive camp.

The anti-war worldview is generations out of date. It is mired in an outdated analysis of imperial conflicts that ceased being relevant with the downfall of the nation-state and its replacement by international organizations and causes based around ideologies. Nazism could still loosely fit into the jackboots of the nation state. Communism was another creature entirely, a red virus floating around the world, embedding its ideas into organizations and using those organizations to take over nations.

Islamism is even more untethered than Communism, loosely originating from powerful oil nations, but able to spring up anywhere in the Muslim world. Its proponents have even less use for the nation state than the Communists. What they want is a Caliphate ruled under Islamic law; a single unit of human organization extending across nations, regions and eventually the world.