RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304200804579163751219827282?mod=Opinion_newsreel_2

The Occupy movement that in 2011 pitched street camps in the U.S. from Wall Street to San Francisco posited a tale of two Americas and class resentment unseen for many decades. The movement faded, but if the opinion polls are right, New York voters are about to elect the Occupy movement to run America’s largest city.

Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee, is leading Republican Joe Lhota by more than 40 points. Conventional wisdom holds that this is happening mainly because New Yorkers are “tired” of Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Losing access to 16-ounce cups of soda is insufficient reason for what is likely to happen to New York. The Big Apple is on the verge of electing a man whose explicit agenda is the repudiation of the conservative reforms achieved by a generation of city leaders from both parties, which transformed New York from a terrifying urban joke into the nation’s municipal crown jewel.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304655104579163412724696396?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The president didn’t know the NSA was spying on world leaders, but he’s found time for at least 146 rounds of golf.

Is there a method to President Obama’s style of leadership, his methods of decision-making, his habits of attention, oversight and follow-through? In recent months I’ve been keeping a file of stories that might suggest an answer. See what you think.
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“President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief him on all of them.

“They added that the president was briefed on and approved of broader intelligence-collection ‘priorities,’ but that those below him make decisions about specific targets.”

—The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 28, 2013

“HealthCare.gov is the highest-profile experiment yet in the Obama administration’s effort to modernize government by using technology, with the site intended to become a user-friendly pathway to new health insurance options for millions of uninsured Americans.

“‘This was the president’s signature project and no one with the right technology experience was in charge,’ said Bob Kocher, a former White House aide who helped draft the law.”

—The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 28, 2013

“Tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have grown sharply in recent months. President Barack Obama authorized the CIA to provide limited arms to carefully vetted Syrian rebels, but it took months for the program to commence. . . .

“One Western diplomat described Saudi Arabia as eager to be a military partner in what was to have been the U.S.-led military strikes on Syria. As part of that, the Saudis asked to be given the list of military targets for the proposed strikes. The Saudis indicated they never got the information, the diplomat said.”

—The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 21, 2013

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4037/malaysia-allah-muslims “It is our judgement that there is no infringement of any constitutional rights.” — Chief Judge Mohammed Apandi Ali “It is a retrograde step in the development of law in relation to the fundamental liberty of religious minorities.” — Reverend Lawrence Andrews Editor, The Herald In possibly the first time ever in the world’s […]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/23/red-flags-company-behind-obamacare-site-has-checkered-past/

While the company behind the dysfunctional HealthCare.gov was virtually unknown to the American public until this month, critics say the Obama administration should have known this multibillion-dollar firm had a checkered history with other government contracts.

In projects stretching from Canada to Hawaii, parent company CGI Group and its subsidiaries ran into complaints about its performance. And this was while, and in some cases before, CGI Federal was paid millions, along with other contractors, to create the ObamaCare website.

“The morning I heard CGI was behind [Healthcare.gov], I said, my God, no wonder that thing doesn’t work,” said James Bagnola, a Texas-based corporate consultant who was hired by the Hawaii Department of Taxation (DOTAX) in 2008.

CGI Technologies and Solutions, Inc., another subsidiary, had been responsible for overhauling the IT systems for the Hawaii tax department, and then, developing its new delinquent tax collection services. Not only was the software and implementation problematic, but the second contract, signed in 2009, paid CGI millions for work it did not complete, according to a state audit completed in 2010 on the matter.

Still, they hold contracts all over the Hawaii government. Hawaii’s Health Connector, the state’s new health exchange for providing insurance options under ObamaCare, hired CGI to build its website. Like HealthCare.gov, the Hawaii portal had immediate problems when it launched on Oct. 1, but those have since been rectified and so far, according to Health Connector officials who spoke with FoxNews.com, they are not blaming CGI.

Bagnola doesn’t buy it, saying when they overhauled DOTAX’s IT, “the system was broken all the time.”

“When Israel attacks Iran — not if — the results of that war will reshape the Middle East in ways we can’t entirely predict. The one certainty will be that China will have far more influence there than it does now, and far more than we ever will have again.”

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/10/28/soured-saudis-sulk-out#commentcontainer

It’s all about Iran, as Riyadh no longer wants to hold hands with Washington.

After a year of campaigning for a seat on the UN Security Council, the Saudi Arabian government was elected to it on October 18. They turned it down, forcefully, the same day.

How could that be? No nation offered a Security Council seat has ever turned one down, not even one of the non-permanent seats the Saudis were offered.

The Saudi action pokes a large pin in the UN balloon. It’s not quite the same as the U.S. rejection of the League of Nations. It’s worse because the League was assumed to be an effective global arbiter of affairs. The U.S. rejected membership in order to preserve national sovereignty. The Saudis’ rejection of the UN was, in part, because they didn’t want to participate in anything so useless and ineffective.

The decision to reject the Security Council seat had to have been made — or at least acquiesced in — by King Abdullah, the 89-year-old head of the Saudi gerontocracy. Saudi foreign policy usually moves at a glacial pace. Given the proximity in time between the election of the Saudis to the seat and their rejection of it (only a few hours), the rejection could not have been a last-minute decision. It had to have been debated for many weeks within the Saudi regime.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-02-281013.html English-language media completely ignored a noteworthy statement that led Der Spiegel’s German-language website October 12, a call for China to “take on responsibility as a world power” in the Middle East. Penned by Bernhard Zand, the German news organization’s Beijing correspondent, it is terse and to the point: now that China imports more oil […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/10/28/ignoring-the-sharia-basis-for-irans-persecution-of-christians/

A confluence of news stories last week, including, prominently, the release of a report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, have highlighted the plight of Iranian Christians.

The salient findings from Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed’s report (issued online Tuesday 10/22/13), were as follows:

Sources communicate that at least 20 Christians were in custody in July 2013. In addition, violations of the rights of Christians, particularly those belonging to evangelical Protestant groups, many of whom are converts, who proselytize to and serve Iranian Christians of Muslim background, continue to be reported. Authorities continue to compel licensed Protestant churches to restrict Persian-speaking and Muslim-born Iranians from participating in services, and raids and forced closures of house churches are ongoing. According to sources, more than 300 Christians have been arrested since 2010, and dozens of church leaders and active community members have reportedly been convicted of national security crimes in connection with church activities, such as organizing prayer groups, proselytizing and attending Christian seminars abroad.

His report further noted allegations of additional abuses, including “various forms of legal discrimination…in employment and education,” as well as frequent cases of “arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment.”

Monday, 10/21/13, a day before the Special Rapporteur’s report was issued, Eddie Romero, a retired California pastor, who managed to enter Iran surreptitiously, staged a protest before Iran’s infamous Evin prison. Repeatedly proclaiming, “Let my people go,” in Farsi, Romero attempted to draw attention to the predicament of at least four Iranians, incarcerated for converting from Islam to Christianity—Farshid Fathi, Saeed Abedini, Mostafa Bordbar, and Alireza Seyyedian. (Detained for 24-hours in Iran, Romero was released and returned safely to the U.S. by mid-week.)

http://www.federaltimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013310280011Chuck Brooks is vice president/client executive for the Department of Homeland Security at Xerox and a former legislative affairs director for DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate.

Recently, there have been exciting announcements about innovative breakthrough technologies, including 3-D printing, wearable smart watches and “nano” drug delivery capabilities. These and other cutting-edge technologies hold great promise. Enhancing the base of their development through collaboration, investment in the next generation of scientists, and “technology foraging” will fuel the manufacturing engines that transform our economic future and quality of life.
Collaboration

With the downturn in the economy and sequestration, spending on reasearch and development has suffered. But there are pathways that can help rectify the shortcomings in R&D investment, lessen redundancy and accelerate success.

One step is to establish greater collaboration among the three pillars of industry, academia and government.

The cornerstone of collaboration should be based on knowledge transfer; sharing of research tools, methodologies and findings; and combining mutual funding resources to meet shortfalls. This can be accomplished by combined public/private-sector policy and working group initiatives that will eventually lead to formal strategies and implementation.

The federal government is the largest funder of R&D. There is no better resource than the government’s national labs for employing cooperative partnering and smart technology foraging. The nation’s 40 federally funded R&D centers spent over $18 billion on research and development last year. Those labs are composed of the best and brightest scientific minds.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4291/the_devil_and_the_jews_from_the_palestinian_authority

EQUATING JEWS WITH THE DEVIL HAS BEEN PREVALENT AMONG MOSLEMS SINCE THE ADVENT OF THE PROPHET….RSK

Amid the ongoing (secret) negotiations over a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, this, according to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), is the very latest on what the Palestinian Authority is pushing to its viewers: men, women and children alike. PMW reported:

“During Ramadan, Palestinian Authority TV broadcast an Egyptian cartoon series for children called The Raids of Prophet Muhammad.

“One episode taught children that the Devil and the Jews were on the same side, both desiring the defeat of Muhammad. The cartoon shows the Devil ecstatic because he saw that the Jews who were filled with “hate and loathing” for Muhammad schemed to unite the Arab-pagan tribes to fight Muhammad.”

The full story, with the video is represented here.

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/10/27/a-model-of-interfaith-dialogue-a-southern-baptist-at-brigham-young-university/?print=1
“I do not believe that we are going to heaven together, but I do believe we may go to jail together.”

These days, interfaith dialogue is often reduced to a slogan — a Coexist bumper sticker, perhaps, or a vow to embrace diversity. The words “brutal honesty” are perhaps not the first that come to mind when we think of interfaith dialogue because our culture has trained us to avoid offending people at all costs. Disagreeing with others or speaking too forthrightly — particularly about religion — is not considered to be virtuous. Americans in the 21st century are so sensitive and so fragile that they must be shielded from uncomfortable truths, we are told.

And then there is Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who demonstrates how intellectual and spiritual honesty can be noble and even preferable to false unity.

Dr. Mohler recently gave an address at Brigham Young University, showing how we can share an interfaith dialogue that is both respectful and honest. Oftentimes those with substantive theological differences will seek to find common ground while truth is sacrificed in the process. Mohler managed to accomplish both in his address to almost 400 students and faculty at the nearly packed auditorium at BYU.

Mohler expressed that he respected his audience enough to acknowledge their differences:

I come as a Christian theologian to speak explicitly and respectfully as a Christian—a Christian who defines Christianity only within the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian church and who comes as one committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the ancient and eternal Trinitarian faith of the Christian church. I have not come as less, and you know whom you have invited. I come knowing who you are—to an institution that stands as the most powerful intellectual center of the Latter-Day Saints, the most visible academic institution of Mormonism. You know who I am and what I believe. I know who you are and what you believe.

In a world where conflict and disagreement are often seen as the enemies of the common good, Mohler walked to the podium and gave truth its rightful place of honor in his dialogue with those in attendance. While it might have been tempting in that situation to exude a more conciliatory tone, emphasizing only areas of agreement, Mohler made it clear from the start that he recognized the differences and wanted to begin a dialogue coming from a place of truth.