RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5351

On Friday, I published a column in these pages about my trials and tribulations over my repeated suspensions from Facebook.

It took two months of experiencing intermittent bans from the social network — due to ostensibly “inappropriate material” on my page — before I finally took any measures to extricate myself from the situation.

Each time I received a warning and a temporary ban, I would wait impatiently for my punishment to pass, and enlist the help of friends and family members to share my pieces in my stead.

But then it got to be an annoyance. Facebook is a key tool for writers, present company included. As someone once admonished me prior to my entry into the world of social media, “If you’re not on Facebook, you don’t exist.”

This was not a philosophical statement, but the advice of a well-wisher who was looking out for my career. He was right, of course, a fact I have come grudgingly to acknowledge. I had been hesitant about taking the plunge; but once I did, I understood why I should have swallowed my pride and done so years earlier.

So when I began to be barred, it was not personal rejection, I felt, but rather a form of ill ease, as though I was being watched. This is a pretty ironic, if not an almost irrational sensation, considering it was I who opted to put my views and thoughts on display for the world to see in the first place.

Nor did I automatically chalk up the nuisance of being prevented every so often from “joining the club” to discrimination. Indeed, if there’s one thing I can’t stand as a political conservative, it is right-wing conspiracy theories born out of paranoia — a symptom of megalomania.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/355723/print The White House plans to delay yet another provision of Obamacare, the New York Times revealed on Monday, in what was described as “another setback for President Obama’s health-care initiative.” Indeed, it seems that every week the administration offers up a new example of the implementation “train wreck” of which Obamacare architect Max Baucus […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355715/obamas-gay-rights-hypocrisy-andrew-c-mccarthy ‘What,” Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was asked, “is [Islam’s] judgment on sodomy and lesbianism?” “Forbidden,” he curtly pronounced. “Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible.” So what does Barack Obama have to say about that? Cynically mounting his high horse last week in […]

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/08/loving-the-stranger/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=7aa478ebca-Mosaic_2013_8_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-7aa478ebca-41165129

lbert Camus’ Algerian Chronicles have never been presented, until now, in a full English translation, and this is a pity. The Chronicles contain his articles on Algerian themes for the French and Algerian press beginning in 1939 and continuing until he brought out the book in 1958, at a moment when the Algerian War had reached its halfway point. He made a number of arguments in the course of the collected articles, and some of those arguments are well known in English even without having benefited from a complete translation. These are his positions on torture (he was opposed), terrorism (likewise), and the duty of intellectuals (they ought to keep their cool). One of his arguments has been pretty much forgotten, though—and this additional argument ought to strike us as curious and thought-provoking and, given the circumstances of our own moment, more than a little insightful.

His own evaluation of Algerian Chronicles was modest. In his preface in 1958, he explained that a principal reason to collect the articles was merely to defend his reputation against his detractors. “If you write a hundred articles, all that remains of them is the distorted interpretation imposed by your adversaries. A book may not avoid every possible misinterpretation, but at least it makes certain kinds of misunderstandings impossible.” Nor did he gaze back on his Algerian journalism with any kind of satisfaction. Whatever he had hoped to achieve had not been achieved. “This book is among other things the history of a failure.” Only, what exactly had been the failure? His dashed hopes—what did they add up to? This is what hardly anyone remembers today, or, more precisely, what everyone remembers only in the distorted versions imposed by his adversaries.

Algeria in the mid-twentieth century consisted, in Camus’ sometimes variable figures, of some nine million people, of whom eight million were conventionally described as Arabs—meaning, a mixture of Arabs and Kabyles, who are Berbers. The other million or million-plus were people denoted as French, which tended to include a number of Spaniards, too, together with a scattering of other Europeans. There were Turks and also Jews, who were caught, as he explained, between the old-fashioned French anti-Semitism and Arab mistrust. In Camus’ interpretation, all of these people counted as indigenous Algerians, the million-plus French Algerians no less than the eight million Arabs. It is true that, here and there in his journalism, his language lapses into a more conventional terminology, with the Arabs labeled as “indigenous” or “natives,” and the French as “settlers,” not to mention as “colonists,” by which he meant settlers who were also exploiters. Mostly he insisted on his own vocabulary, though, which decreed that French Algerians and Arab Algerians were, in both cases, “indigenous” populations—separate communities uneasily inhabiting together the same Algeria.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/08/murderers-for-peace/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=7aa478ebca-Mosaic_2013_8_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-7aa478ebca-41165129 Today Israel will free 26 murderers, a price exacted by the PLO before it would return to peace negotiations. Israel has entered into such deals before, for example freeing over 1,000 prisoners in exchange for the captured corporal Gilad Shalit. But in that case the decision was Israel’s own, and the United States rightly […]

I like and often post from American Thinker…but these past few days have set me to thinking…They have joined the jeremiad against Diana West. Two efforts are actually risible- by authors who have not read the book!!!!

Exhibit A:
CLARICE FELDMAN WEIGHS IN ON DIANA WEST WITHOUT HAVING READ THE BOOK!!!! SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/demagogic_writers_and_the_people_who_love_them.html

All Feldman does is repeat the screeds of Radosh and Herf…..hhmmmmm……

“This week I’m making an exception in highlighting the imbroglio between Ron Radosh, an historian whose knowledge of the American Communist party and the McCarthy era is unmatched, and Diana West, author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on our Nation’s Character. I’m doing so, not to attack West whose work I have not read, but to point out the dangers of demagogic writers — everywhere on the political spectrum and the emotional bonds their fans form with them. ”
ANOTHER “REVIEW” OF DIANA WEST BY RON CAPSHAW-SOMEONE WHO HAS NOT READ THE BOOK !!!!

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/the_beginning_of_wisdom.html

“I haven’t read West (I do intend to), but from the scuttlebutt and reviews circulating the internet, it is fairly apparent that she is a reckless historian of the McCarthy school of history. This, Ron Radosh is not. Unlike the conspiratorial school, populated on the left by Oliver Stone, and onthe right by West, Radosh dares to take a complex view of history. He is grown up enough to realize that both Hiss was guilty and McCarthy was a reckless demagogue; that the blacklist was wrong and that the Hollywood Ten were selective civil libertarians.”

More egregious, however is the following by raging Ron Radosh where it is obvious that he got an advance copy of Diana West’s submitted rebuttal. That’s really unsavory.
RON RADOSH: HISTORY AS IDEOLOGY…..ANOTHER OSESSIVE ATTACK ON DIANA WEST…..SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/history_as_ideology_further_thoughts_on_american_betrayal.html

Diana West submitted a rebuttal of false claims against her by Radosh to American Thinker, but instead of publishing them AT ran this by Ron Radosh which shows in his words that he saw her column:

“Now let me turn to some of Diana West’s key assertions regarding World War II, which she argues in the new piece she is writing for this site I do not really effectively challenge.”

And by the way…..AT has not posted West’s rebuttal……rsk

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/europe-has-an-ostrich-problem-denial-of-immigrant-violence?f=puball Despite the howls of some reactionaries against American immigration reform, it is clear that most people come here to better their lives. They are decent, hard working, and ready to become real Americans, (with the exception of the radicalized few, such as the Somali youths bamboozled into becoming suicide bombers). With exceptions (in Michigan […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/a-middle-east-without-christians/ “Because Israel is the only non-Muslim state in all of the Middle East and North Africa, it represents a small victory for religious minorities in the region, and serves as the last protector of freedom and security for Jews, Christians, Bahai, Druze, and others. Without Israel, how much more vulnerable would Christians in the […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/irans-new-defense-minister-an-anti-american-terrorist/ The job description for Iran’s president, or for that matter, defense minister, seems to include “strong yen for mass murder, if not involvement in it.” It’s a requirement that continues to be upheld. It was certainly honored by previous president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose frequent calls for Israel’s annihilation were a direct violation of international […]

http://www.breitbart.com/ The man once accused of inciting 2012’s terror attack in Libya fears that once his prison sentence for a probation violation ends, authorities may continue to detain him for his own “protection.” Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the 55-year-old whose online short film “Innocence of Muslims” was falsely blamed by the Obama administration for setting off […]