RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2014/02/swiss-solution/
What the Swiss rejected at the ballot box was not immigration as such. What they voted against is the notion that their government must bow before Brussels and surrender the right to determine who takes up residence in Switzerland, for how long and under what circumstances.

It wasn’t a racist mob pulling down the shutters. The Swiss referendum on February 9, 2014, was not a vote against immigration. It was a referendum against the outsourcing of immigration. Just as Australians rejected the outsourcing of immigration by the Rudd and Gillard governments to people-smugglers in Indonesia, so the Swiss have decided that they will no longer leave the outsourcing of immigration to bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels.

They were giving voise, in effect, to what John Howard said on 28 October, 2001: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”

What the Swiss rejected — albeit narrowly, at 50.03% – is not immigration as such. What they voted against is the freedom for any citizen from the European Union, or members of the immediate family of any citizen (whether or not he or she is a citizen) to settle in Switzerland.

Note that Switzerland has refused to become a member of the European Union. It is fair to say that if the Swiss people did not have the right to make laws themselves by petitioning for a referendum, Switzerland would now be a member of the European Union.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ BILL CLINTON TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE Has Bill really thought this analogy through? Ukraine was technically a case of a legislature tossing out a president after popular protests. If America worked that way, Obama would have been out in 2010. Clinton focuses a lot on the idea of the Ukranian president privatizing […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ THE HEARTLAND OF ISLAM Kafa’ah, equality in marriage, is used to establish that both sides are free from the “taint” of slave blood. The blood of Takruni, West African slaves, or Mawalid, slaves who gained their freedom by converting to Islam, is kept out of the Saudi master race through genealogical records that can […]

http://www.steynonline.com/6129/any-way-you-slice-it

UPDATE! Below, the Israeli cabinet minister, invited to surrender more land to the Palestinians, asks his BBC interviewer, “Would you hand over half of Britain to someone who keeps on killing you?”

Keep that question in mind as you consider the scenes at the Old Bailey, England’s central criminal court, at the sentencing of the two Sarf London jihadists who hacked to death a British soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, on the streets of Woolwich in broad daylight:

Violence broke out in the Old Bailey dock today after Lee Rigby’s murderers began hurling abuse at the judge and fighting with prison guards during their sentencing.

Michael Adebolajo, 29, was given a whole-life term, while Michael Adebowale, 22, was jailed for life with a minimum of 45 years – meaning he could be back on the streets by the age of 67.

In extraordinary scenes, the two Muslim extremists yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘You (Britain) and America will never be safe’ during their sentencing at the court in Central London…

The killers had to be pinned to the ground by nine security guards and Rigby’s family began sobbing as they watched the incident in horror, being handed tissues by court staff.

The relatives were forced to get up from their seats, cowering away from the violence which was happening just feet away, according to reporters in court.

As Laura Rosen Cohen comments:

No remorse from the murders, no respect for the court or for the law, and yet the possibility for the jihadist murders of a free life, once again, as “extremist” senior citizens in jolly old London town.

What’s interesting is the point at which Messrs Adebolajo and Adebowale decided they’d had enough:

The struggle in the dock was triggered when the killers, both wearing Islamic robes, reacted angrily to comments that Mr Justice Sweeney made about their extremist beliefs.

He told them: ‘You each converted to Islam some years ago. Thereafter you were radicalised and each became an extremist, espousing views which, as has been said elsewhere, are a betrayal of Islam.’

At which point the two murderers yelled, “That’s a lie!” and “It’s not a betrayal of Islam!”

http://www.steynonline.com/6130/east-of-suez

Ship me somewheres east of Suez where the best is like the worst
Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst…
Rudyard Kipling, “Mandalay”

Two days ago, I wrote about Chuck Hagel’s sleepy announcement of the downsizing of the US military, and compared it to Washington’s predecessor as dominant power:

First comes reorientation, and the shrinking of the horizon. After empire, Britain turned inward…

The symbolic moment came 46 years ago, in January 1968. Hugh Hewitt sprang it on me quite out of the blue in one of our weekly radio chats back in October 2011:

HUGH HEWITT: Now I described it as sort of America’s East of Suez moment, and very few people knew what I was talking about. You do, but do you think it’s that order of a retreat for America?

MARK STEYN: No, I wouldn’t put it on that scale. That’s still to come. By East of Suez, you’re referring to the Labour government’s…

HH: Yes.

MS: …review in the late 1960s…

HH: Yup.

MS: …when in effect, they decided to shrink Britain’s presence in the world very considerably. And Denis Healey, I believe, was, if memory serves…

HH: …Healey was the foreign minister.

MS: He was, Denis Healey was the defence minister.

HH: Defence, that’s it.

MS: And the reality here, the reality here is that moment, the East of Suez moment, is still to come for the United States. The U.S. currently accounts for 43% of global military expenditure, more than most other major powers combined – Britain, China, Russia, whoever, all wrapped up. The American presence abroad will shrink. It will shrink because we have taken on domestic entitlements that combined with our overseas commitments, are unsustainable. And we will discover, as the British government discovered in 1968, that if it’s the choice between unsustainable domestic spending, or retreating from global power, it’s always easiest in a democratic society to retreat from global power. So I believe the real East of Suez moments will be hitting us in mid-decade, and certainly by 2020.

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2014/02/27/democrats-defeat-cruzs-effort-to-protect-americans-from-irs-abuses/?print=1

As an enthusiastic fan of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), I am sorry that an ongoing project prevented me from participating in PJM’s Cruz symposium. But this relevant news just came over the transom, so I thought I’d at least pass it along.

As I’ve previously noted, Obama administration officials have been working the codify in federal law the IRS harassment and obstruction of conservative organizations that President Obama and Attorney General Holder claimed to find “intolerable,” “inexcusable,” “outrageous,” and “unacceptable” back when the scandal first came to light. As usual, it has been Senator Cruz leading the charge to try to stop them.

In the Senate today, Cruz offered two amendments that would have safeguarded the First Amendment rights of Americans against being profiled and targeted for IRS harassment. Specifically, it would have made it unlawful for IRS employees to:

[W]illfully act with the intent to injure, oppress, threaten, intimidate, or single out and subject to undue scrutiny any person or organization in any state.

One might think that discriminating against groups based solely on their political beliefs is something so manifestly wrong and un-American that everyone could agree it should be prohibited – especially after all the Obama administration’s bloviating about how terrible it is. Instead, Democrats unanimously opposed the Cruz amendment. Their majority assured the measure’s defeat.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2014/02/28/criminal-background-checks-thats-racist/?print=1 Stop underestimating the crackpot ideas the race-left will cook up.  The latest in-fashion example of America’s structural racism is the criminal background check. The complaint goes like this. Racists who are looking for ways to engage in employment discrimination against blacks can use criminal background checks in hiring. Since blacks have been convicted of […]

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/if-you-like-crimea/?print=1

Garry Kasparov sums it up, in a tweet posted by PJM’s Bryan Preston [1]: “Dictators like Putin don’t ask why use power. They ask why not.”

That’s the bottom line for understanding what is happening as gunmen take over the airports and set up check points in Crimea. Reportedly these are well-armed soldiers without military insignia, but there’s little doubt that they are there in service of the Kremlin. This is an ethnic-Russian-majority region of Ukraine, a place long primed for trouble. In 1783, Catherine the Great wrested Crimea from the Turks. In 1954, during the Soviet era, the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic gave Crimea as a Potemkin fraternal gift to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the borders suddenly mattered, and newly liberated Ukraine was in possession of Crimea, complete with the seaside resort of Yalta, the regional capital of Simferopol [2], and the port of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

A Return to Hidden Law http://www.nationalreview.com/node/372282/print   Longtime readers of the G-File might think about taking a speed-reading course. They also may remember that, about 14 years ago, I used to write about “hidden law” a lot. I returned to it in today’s column on the Arizona brouhaha.   Hidden law was a term coined […]

http://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/executive-insights-and-innovation/why-you-should-be-excited-about-future-tech/d/d-id/1114036

ure, robotics, the Internet of Things, data analytics, and other disruptive trends are intimidating, but they will improve our lives.

What will the next decades bring?

It’s no exaggeration to say we’re on the cusp of scientific and technological advancements that will change how we live.

Renowned futurist Dr. Michio Kaku characterizes this technological shift as moving from the “age of discovery” to the “age of mastery,” a new period in our history where we’ll be able to harness our technologies and control our destinies.

Last May, The McKinsey Global Institute published an informative analysis that examined the economic impact of global technology trends. The study, called “Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy,” identified the technologies that matter most to the global economy, sustainability, and improving the human condition.

[If we don’t control the technology we depend on, someone else will — and we might not like the consequences. Read Technology Automation: Who’s The Boss?]

The McKinsey study, along with Google’s recent acquisitions of artificial intelligence and robotic companies, and my own company Xerox’s special history of innovation (at PARC), inspired me to compile a list of three areas where technological transformation will shape our lives.

The digital age and The Internet of Things
We’ve come a long way from the cumbersome, slow PCs of the 70s to Google Glass and paper-thin mobile devices. We are now at the footstep of quantum computing in the cloud with flexible and wearable electronics. Cisco, which termed the “The Internet of Everything,” predicts that 50 billion devices, including our smartphones, appliances, and office equipment, will be wirelessly connected via a network of sensors to the Internet by 2020.