RUTHFULLY YOURS

The World Bank has a reputation for integrity and objective professional analysis which it’s new report calls into question.

When Israel vacated Gaza American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for $14 million dollars and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up $500,000 of his own cash. To show their gratitude and their commitment to peace, the Arabs looted, ransacked and destroyed evey single farm including seeds, tents, state of the art agricultural equipment and dwellings….rsk

A newly-released report issued by the World Bank’s office for the “occupied Palestinian territories” charges that “Israel’s occupation costs the Palestinian economy $3.4 billion each year.” That claim has certain logic. The more the PA gets, the greater their wealth; one side’s gain is the other’s loss. Tel Aviv would be better, but that also doesn’t belong to them.

The purpose of this report seems to be to raise economic and financial claims against Israel which imply deceit and theft, thereby shifting blame for the PA ’s problems to Israel.

To understand why the new report was issued, one must compare it with a more comprehensive World Bank report issued in 2012 which described the PA ’s economy as a failure, “unsustainable” – not so much because of Israeli security restrictions, but due to inherent flaws and rampant corruption within the PA itself.

The 2012 report, Towards Economic Sustainability of a Future Palestinian State: Promoting Private Sector-Led Growth, analyzed the PA economy critically, upsetting Palestinians and their supporters, and challenging their portrayal as victims of Israeli policies.

Who is Fethullah Gulen, and why does he want to teach San Diego’s kids? That’s a question some in the wake of a recently submitted application by Gulen’s followers to open their second public charter school in San Diego.

“Think of a combination of the Scientologists, the Moonies, and the Mafia. That’s what the Gulenists are like,” says Sharon Higgins. “They’re shady, nebulous, and very secretive. Very few Americans know that they’re behind all of these taxpayer-funded charter schools.”

Higgins, a former public school parent and self-described “parent activist” who lives in Oakland, has crafted a quasi-career tracking and chronicling the domestic activities of this Turkey-based group. She lays out the details: Over the past few years, the Gulen movement, an Islamic group that melds religion and politics, has succeeded in a stealth campaign to infiltrate the American educational system via the portal of the charter school. Among their goals, according to Higgins and other Gulen watchers, is fundraising for the Gulen movement in Turkey and the recruitment of future members.

Critics allege that Gulen public charter schools reject qualified American teachers, instead importing Turkish men via H-1B visas, which allow Americans to employ foreigners in “specialty” occupations. These non-union teachers are then paid salaries characterized as “inflated,” and are expected, in turn, to donate a substantial portion to the Gulen movement via a network of “charitable” foundations. There are also charges of sweetheart deals with local Gulen-owned businesses. Gulen U.S.A., say some, is no less than an intricately woven Turkish rug of deceit.

Operating under all-American monikers like “Magnolia Public Schools” and structured as tax-exempt not-for-profit entities, there are nearly 150 Gulen charter schools operating now in America, with around a dozen in California, including one in San Diego: Momentum Middle School in San Carlos. If the Gulenists have their way, San Diego Unified School District will host another Turk-centric schoolhouse when the Fall 2014 semester opens.

http://www.jta.org/2013/11/19/news-opinion/united-states/makovsky-joins-states-peace-team

David Makovsky, a scholar at a think tank with close ties
to the U.S. and Israeli governments, was named to the U.S. State Department’s
burgeoning Israeli-Palestinian peace-brokering team.

The news of Makovsky’s appointment was broken Monday by Al-Monitor, a Middle
East news website, and then confirmed by his employer, the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, and a State Department official.

Makovsky will be a senior adviser to Martin Indyk, who leads the team.

He will be on leave from the Washington Institute, an influential outfit
that employs as experts top officials from past Republican and Democratic
administrations. The institute also has hosted an array of top Israelis as
guest scholars, as well as some from other Middle Eastern countries.

Indyk has expanded his team from two, when he assumed the post of top Middle
East negotiator in July, to eight.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/the-kennedy-doctrine-vs-the-obama-doctrine/ When November comes around, it is hard not to remember the days of the John F. Kennedy administration, especially this year, the 50th anniversary of the assassination. But there now is an even more important reason why it behooves us to think back to those days. It is in order to understand the differences […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4059/athens-mosque

Opponents of the mosque argue that Greek taxpayers should not be footing the bill for this project at a time when their massively indebted country is dependent upon foreign aid just to stay afloat. The Greek government appears to be worried about thinly veiled threats of violence by thousands of residents in Athens who have been pressuring government ministers to meet their demands to build a mosque or face an uprising.

“It is a very big tragedy for us Muslims that there is no mosque here. Greece produced democracy and civilization and the respect of religion, but they don’t respect our Muslims to provide us with a regular, legal mosque.” — Syed Mohammed Jamil of the Pakistan-Hellenic Society

The Greek government has awarded a tender to build the first taxpayer-funded mosque in Athens, one of the few remaining capitals in the European Union that lacks a state-funded mosque.

The Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks said on November 14 that it had finally chosen a consortium of four construction companies to build the mosque. Four previous tenders had failed due to a lack of interest amid mounting public opposition to the mosque.

Construction of the 600 square meter (6,50…..

Opponents of the mosque argue that Greek taxpayers should not be footing the bill for this project at a time when their massively indebted country is dependent upon foreign aid just to stay afloat. The Greek government appears to be worried about thinly veiled threats of violence by thousands of residents in Athens who have been pressuring government ministers to meet their demands to build a mosque or face an uprising.

“It is a very big tragedy for us Muslims that there is no mosque here. Greece produced democracy and civilization and the respect of religion, but they don’t respect our Muslims to provide us with a regular, legal mosque.” — Syed Mohammed Jamil of the Pakistan-Hellenic Society

The Greek government has awarded a tender to build the first taxpayer-funded mosque in Athens, one of the few remaining capitals in the European Union that lacks a state-funded mosque.

The Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks said on November 14 that it had finally chosen a consortium of four construction companies to build the mosque. Four previous tenders had failed due to a lack of interest amid mounting public opposition to the mosque.

Stop worrying whether the president’s statements conform to ossified standards of truth.

What is the common denominator of the Obama administration’s serial scandals — the Justice Department’s spying on AP, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, the NSA surveillance, the lies about Benghazi and the ACA — and much of the White House damage-control rhetoric? In a word: the advancement of postmodern notions of justice at the expense of traditional truth.

By the 1980s, in law schools, university social-science departments, and the humanities in general, the old relativist idea of Plato’s noble lies was given a new French facelift. Traditional morality and ethics were dismissed as arbitrary constructs, predicated on privileged notions of race, class, and gender. The new moral architecture did not rely on archaic abidance by the niceties of “truth,” which simply reinforced traditional oppressive hierarchies.

Instead, social justice by definition transcended the sham of traditional ideas of truth and falsity. The true became the advocacy of fairness, while the real lie was the reactionary adherence to a set of oppressive norms. All this was faculty-lounge fluff, but soon it filtered out into the larger culture.

In this regard, it was understandable that the New York Times characterized the president’s not telling the truth on over 20 occasions as cases of “misspeaking.” Translated, that means he lied but his lies were really true: Misspeaking means that Obama was not sensitive enough to those of us still mired in calcified definitions of true and false. The privileged still cross t’s and dot i’s; their victims have no such luxury.

Earlier, Obama himself had falsely claimed that he had never stated that Americans would not lose either their health insurance or their doctors, and would not pay more for their new coverage (e.g., “If you had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed” [emphasis added]). But so what?

What does it matter whether Obama had never once added the qualifier “if it hasn’t changed since the law passed,” so long as he (or rather “we”?) had wanted to say it, and if saying it now enhances a progressive program? What difference does it make whether the president of the United States has lied about his earlier lies — given his consistently noble intent?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/27-democratic-senators-who-promised-you-could-keep-your-health-coverage http://washingtonexaminer.com/27-democratic-senators-who-promised-you-could-keep-your-health-coverage/article/2539245 President Obama has taken a lot of heat for promising that if Americans liked the health coverage that they had before Obamacare, they would be able to keep it under the new law. But the president wasn’t the only Democrat in Washington who made that false promise. Many, many other Democratic officeholders said […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/class-warfare

For the new class of self-proclaimed progressives there is a tale of two cities, one privileged and one underprivileged. This dichotomous model comes right out of the Marxist playbook. However, despite its simplicity and repudiation of human nature, it continues to have appeal as President Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio can attest.

The tale of two cities appeals on several levels. It plays into the psychology of guilt-riddled individuals who feel they may have been responsible for the condition of the downtrodden. It also appeals to those who are indeed downtrodden by suggesting their condition will improve if you can redistribute resources from the rich and give it to them.

Of course history demonstrates that you cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor. But most people ignore empirical evidence. It is the narrative that counts. Hence Marxism’s appeal, even if it is now progressivism or another euphemism. Taking from Peter to give to Paul always satisfies Paul.

The tale of two cities is a tale of tails for the actual distribution of the wealthy, those earning over $300,000 annually, is about five percent and the poor, those earning or living on $20,000 for a family of four or more, is about 15 percent. In other words, this tale is one of extremes that leaves 80 percent out of the equation.

One might assume that any theory or narrative that ignores the bulk of the population would be rendered useless. But this narrative has vitality because it is what many choose to believe. Nuance hasn’t any standing. In fact, a progressive tax of the kind the U.S. has, does take disproportionately from the rich (nationwide one percent of the population pays 40 percent of the taxes) and has yielded trillions over the last four decades to the poor in welfare payments, public housing, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. However, the percentage of the poor remains largely unchanged.

Last week, people in the U.K. got to take a break from worrying about the Islamization of their country. Instead they were offered a fresh chance to ponder the massive influx into the scept’red isle of Eastern European gypsies – or, to use the politically correct term of the moment, Roma. First, Labour Party MP and former Home Secretary David Blunkett, in a rare departure from the usual see-no-evil establishment rhetoric, acknowledged the “frictions” between gypsies and natives and worried aloud that it would eventually kindle riots. “We have got to change the behaviour and the culture of the incoming community, the Roma community, because there’s going to be an explosion otherwise,” Blunkett said. “We all know that.” The next day fellow Labourite Jack Straw, also a former Home Secretary, agreed, admitting that he and his colleagues in government had made a “spectacular mistake” in 2004 when they permitted unrestricted labor immigration from new EU member states in Eastern Europe. (The only other countries to do the same were Sweden and Ireland.) Straw & co. thought that only 13,000 people would come; the number turned out to be more than a million, with a quarter million immigrants arriving in 2010 alone. Alas, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czechs, and others who moved to Britain in sincere search of work, there was a small army of gypsies who came to beg, steal, and freeload.

Until recently, to be sure, things didn’t seem as dicey in Britain as in France, where gypsies have established sprawling encampments in and around major cities, all of which have turned, in no time at all, into ordure-suffused, rat- and lice-infested trash heaps. And whenever officials, if only out of concern for the public health, have tried to get the situation in hand, the media have served up sob stories like one put out by the Associated Press last year: “The camps weren’t much to begin with….Rats ran rampant and fleas gnawed on young and old alike….But they were home – and they were better than the new reality for thousands of Gypsies who have been forced into hiding after France launched its latest campaign this week to drive them from their camps.” Rarely, it seems, do the journalists responsible for this sort of drivel ever ask the gypsies questions like: “Um, if you’re going to live in this place, why can’t you at least try to keep it sanitary?” No, it’s almost always either implied or stated outright that, if the gypsies live in such filth, it’s because they’re poor and oppressed; virtually never is it acknowledged that this way of life is a fundamental element of gypsy culture.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/when-obama-said-hes-sorry/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by an All-Star Cast: Ann-Marie Murrell, National Director of PolitiChicks.tv, Basil Hoffman, a Hollywood Actor (“The Artist”) and Monty Morton, a Conservative Entrepreneur.

The Gang gathered to discuss Hassan Rouhani: Obama’s BFF? The discussion occurred in Part II (starting at the 14:30 mark) and focused on the administration’s the Radical-in-Chief’s search for “Peace In Our Time” with the Mullahs. The discussion was preceded by a dialogue on the disastrous ObamaCare meltdown.

Don’t miss Part I, which shed light on When Presidents Lie and weighed Nixon’s, Clinton’s and Obama’s falsehoods — on the scales of damage to the American people. The segment also dealt with When Obama Said He’s “Sorry”, the myriad ingredients and consequences of the ObamaCare nightmare, the president’s true morbid objectives in implementing it, and much, much more: