RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/putins-ruthless-power-an-ex-kgb-agent-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined Mudar Zahran, the leader of Palestinians in Jordan who now resides in the U.K. as a political refugee. He discusses The Palestinian Homeland in Jordan. He also explains his support of Israel, denounces the Islamists and calls out the western media for being Israel haters and not caring about the Palestinians:

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/many-things-rotten-in-denmark/print/ A Danish appeals court recently upheld the conviction under a Danish hate speech law of an Iranian-Danish woman for her remarks condemnatory of Islam.  Coming amidst the controversial statements by another Dane of Muslim background, this conviction raises troubling questions about who may say what about Islam. The artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan ran afoul of […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/whitewashing-amsterdams-islamization/print/

I love Amsterdam. I’ve loved it ever since I first visited it in 1997, and when I moved there from New York a year later, after three more visits, I was still bewitched. Not until I’d lived there for several months did I grasp that this beautiful city, which had played such a pivotal role in the development of the modern concept of individual liberty, faced a serious threat from a certain pre-modern, liberty-hating religion to which I realized I’d been paying insufficient attention. I haven’t lived in Amsterdam for fourteen years, but I’ve returned to it many times, and I’ve witnessed the dire consequences of its steady, and increasingly manifest, Islamization. I still love it, but I tread more carefully now on those cobbled streets; and precisely because I do love it, I worry about what’s happening to it.

Russell Shorto also professes to love Amsterdam. A longtime New York Times Magazine contributor, he’s lived there since 2008, serving (until recently) as director of the city’s John Adams Institute, which, according to its website, seeks to reinforce Dutch-American cultural ties by hosting talks by “interesting American thinkers and writers…such as Al Gore, Toni Morrison, Jesse Jackson, Jonathan Franzen, Madeleine Albright, Spike Lee, Paul Auster and Francis Fukuyama.” (Don’t worry: as its website is careful to underscore, it’s not the kind of “’patriotic’ organization” that “waves a little American flag and tries to promote America.”)

A few years back, Shorto wrote a book about the Dutch influence on New York City – and, by extension, on the entire U.S. Now he’s written a book called Amsterdam: The History of the World’s Most Liberal City. It’s receiving the kind of adoring reviews in the usual places that strong suggest that, whatever its other merits or demerits, it doesn’t vigorously challenge any mainstream-media orthodoxies about the current state of affairs in Europe. When I read Janet Maslin’s review in Monday’s Times, one sentence, in particular, jumped out at me. Shorto, Maslin wrote, “cites two contrasting approaches to tensions between Islam and the West: the radical position of the outspoken Somali-Dutch feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and a two-man Muslim-Jewish team of leaders who tilt toward conciliation.” “Radical”? “Outspoken”? These are the two adjectives Maslin chooses to describe the courageous, principled Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Also, I knew which “two-man Muslim-Jewish team” Maslin was referring to: the Jewish half of the team, Job Cohen, is the man who, while mayor of Amsterdam (2001-2010), urged “accommodation with the Muslims,” up to and including toleration “of orthodox Muslims who consciously discriminate against their women. (As I asked in my book Surrender:“Where would he draw the line? At forced marriage? Wife-beating? Rape? Honor killing?”) Plainly, I needed to take a look at Shorto’s book, and pronto.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-myth-of-islamic-extremism/print/ The question of Islamic extremism has more relevance to Muslims than to non-Muslims. It’s mainly Muslims who are obsessed with Islamic extremism. And with good reason. As they so often point out; they tend to be its leading victims. It’s not that Islamic extremism doesn’t exist. Islam, like every ideology, has its gradations. It’s […]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/11/12/coming-betrayal-israel/

In Geneva, Switzerland, The United States and other major powers appeared close to a deal with Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for lifting some economic sanctions against the terrorist-sponsoring state.

Negotiations, however, fell apart at the last minute when France and Iran balked at the final wording on the interim draft. Talks are expected to resume within a few weeks, but it is worth pausing to consider what was nearly agreed to and what the outcome could likely be.

President Obama has pledged to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that America has Israel’s “back.” Who knew he had a knife? An agreement that trusts Iran’s promises and allows it to surreptitiously complete development of nuclear missiles would stab Israel in the back.

North Korea promised former President Jimmy Carter during his 1994 visit to Pyongyang it would close a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in exchange for food and humanitarian aid. The reactor was subsequently re-opened. Memo to the Obama administration: tyrants lie.

Unlike North Korea, an officially atheist state, Iranian mullahs have repeatedly said they have a religious duty to annihilate Israel, not to mention America. How do secular diplomats negotiate with people who, in their minds, would be violating “Allah’s will” by making deals with the “great Satan”?

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4051/uk-interfaith Leading interfaith activists such as Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg have defended working with extremist institutions by claiming, “We have to take risks to engage with each other. The Jewish community will be far weaker if we all shelter within a comfort zone labeled ‘They all hate us out there’.” As the British Islamist preacher Haitham […]

http://freebeacon.com/brandeis-university-school-for-scandal/ Brandeis University is facing criticism from students and faculty members after refusing to distance itself from an event recently held on the campus of its Palestinian partner school that critics decried as a “Nazi-style” rally. Brandeis, the nation’s most well known Jewish university, partners with the Palestinian Al Quds University, where students held a military rally on […]

  http://www.investigativeproject.org/4209/the-orient-express-from-mecca-to-the-vatican On November 3, 2013, Christian figures from around the Middle East gathered in Beirut to hold an emergency meeting. Most of them came from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq, seeking to create a dynamic to improve and reinforce the defenses of Arab Christians, who are currently being persecuted by radical Islamists in their […]

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6313

Move over, Bill Gates. There’s somebody out there stealing your title as the richest man in the world. Unlike you, however, he has been keeping his fortune close to his chest. Or so he thought, until it was revealed by Reuters on Monday.

Yes, your net worth of $76.2 billion pales in comparison to the wealth of your newly discovered competitor, whose assets are estimated at in excess of $95 billion. And this guy didn’t even have to earn it by the sweat of his brow. All he had to do was pray to Allah. Oh, and rob thousands upon thousands of people of their property.

Nor did he get sent to jail, like the folks at Enron or Bernie Madoff, in case you’re wondering. Of course not. But that’s because in his country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, he’s the one who determines all matters of crime and punishment. In fact, he has the last word on just about everything. But then, he’s the turbaned head honcho, the mullah who controls everything in Iran, from women’s fashion to uranium enrichment.

That Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has a stranglehold on the government is not exactly news. Even the ostriches in the United States and Europe have come to acknowledge his immense power. This is why they took heart in the green light he gave to President Hasan Rouhani to engage in negotiations with the West about Iran’s nuclear program. And though it is true that Khamenei and Rouhani are on the same page where these talks are concerned, it is not a page from the book that the fantasists are reading.

What was not known about Khamenei, however, was his grip on more than mere governmental and godly issues. Thanks to an in-depth, six-month investigation by Reuters, we are now aware of the chief mullah’s money-grubbing.

“On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it a “monumental act.” He said Lincoln was mistaken that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” Rather, the Bostonian remarked, “The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech.”

Alas, Lincoln was right and Sumner was wrong. More young Americans today know the vulgar lyrics of popular rap trash, than the stirring words of the Gettysburg address delivered by Republican President Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago on November 19, 1863.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”