RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/we-should-be-shocked-at-the-american-tapping-scandal-and-shocked-that-obama-doesnt-seem-to-care

We Should Be Shocked at the American Tapping Scandal, and Shocked that Obama Doesn’t Seem to Care

You know all those bearded survivalist types holed up in places like Idaho with their paranoid anti-government conspiracy theories? Suddenly they’re looking rather less paranoid.

The rest of us, by contrast, are rushing to adjust our world view. The revelation that the U.S. Government systematically taps online communications challenges the way we think about freedom, the way we think about privacy, the way we think about the Internet and, not least, the way we think about America.

What has happened, briefly, is this. In 2007, Congress passed a law that allowed the National Security Agency to intercept foreign data – that is, communications between two non-American parties – without a U.S. Warrant. This power was said to be a necessity in the struggle against terrorism. (‘Necessity,’ said Pitt the Younger, ‘is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves’.) As invariably happens, the authorities gradually enlarged their remit. It now turns out that the NSA has been directly accessing data from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple.

Most of the companies named have denied any knowledge or complicity – though those bearded Idaho types have been quick to point out that some of their denials refer only to not granting ‘direct’ data access to the NSA. Some conservatives mutter darkly about the long-standing cosiness between Google and the Democrats, who are supposed to have made great use of Google’s profiling techniques when targeting voters. Certainly the Obama administration has been unapologetic about the whole business.

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by Becca Keating, author of the new book, “The Secrets of Powerful Communication: Confronting the Bully Within,” Dr. Karen Siegemund, President of “Rage Against the Media” and Dwight Schultz, a Hollywood actor (dwightschultzfansite.nl).

The Gang gathered to discuss The Totalitarianism at the Heart of the Obama Scandals. The discussion occurred in Part II and focused on how the Left’s lust for power and tyrannical control now lies exposed in front of all. The segment also dealt with Obama’s Catastrophes in the Middle East, shedding light on the White House recently giving $1.3 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — while Syrian jihadists await U.S. arms.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/edward-snowden-traitor-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/nonie-darwish/is-illegal-immigration-good-for-mexico/ The debate over immigration reform, illegal aliens and border security presupposes that absorbing a constant flow of illegal immigrants, mainly from Mexico, is a good thing for Mexico and its people. But this presumption has neglected an important question: is the constant influx of poor and unskilled labor out of Mexico good for Mexico […]

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/06/19/iranian-greens-still-thirsty-for-sharia-elected-their-sharia-supremacist-president-rowhani/

Iranian “Greens,” Still Thirsty for Sharia, Elected Their Sharia Supremacist President, Rowhani

During the summer of 2009, much ink was spilled over the “secular” revolution allegedly taking place in Iran. Indeed, President Obama has been excoriated ever since by conservatives for his failure to unabashedly support the so-called “Green revolution,” which I argued at the time (here [1], here [2], here [3], and here [3])—and still maintain—was not a mass movement of true Western freedom aspirants against Sharia totalitarians (i.e., in their Shiite incarnation), but merely a power struggle between rival Sharia supremacist factions.

Iran’s retrograde “revolution” in 1978-1979 simply returned Iranian society to its longstanding status [4] as a Shiite theocracy, (i.e., from 1502 to 1925; interrupted by a period of Afghan invasion and internecine struggle, from 1722-1795), following a relatively brief flirtation with Westernization and secularization under Pahlavi rule from 1925 to 1979. Moreover, as my colleague Alyssa Lappen and I discovered in early July of 2009, upon interviewing [5] the leader of a true Western-oriented, secular (and non-Communist!) Iranian political party, Roozbeh Farahanipour [6], this courageous man and his followers unfortunately represent only a small minority of Iran’s overwhelmingly traditionalist Shiite Muslim masses

Now after three decades of strict re-application of the Sharia in Iran (which has included stoning to death for adultery, execution for homosexuality, abrogation of freedom of conscience and religious minority rights, etc.), and notwithstanding delusive arguments that these phenomena had engendered mass public rejection of Islamic Law, Pew polling data [7] released June 11, 2013 (from face-to-face interviews with 1,522 adults, ages 18 years of age and older), reveal an entirely different reality. When asked [8], “Do you favor or oppose the implementation of Sharia law, or Islamic law in our country?”, 83% favored its application. A largely concordant finding [8] demonstrated that only 28% of Iranians were at all concerned (i.e., 9% “very,” and 19% “somewhat” concerned) about “extremist religious groups” in the nation.

These data provide the sobering context in which the recent Presidential election of Hasan Rowhani [9]—an unabashed Ayatollah Khomeini-supporting Shiite cleric, and long term political apparatchik of the theocratic regime—must be viewed.

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/ Syria and Egypt are dying. They were dying before the Syrian civil war broke out and before the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Cairo. Syria has an insoluble civil war and Egypt has an insoluble crisis because they are dying. They are dying because they chose not to do what China did: move the […]

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/06/19/living-in-fear-welcome-to-fascist-america/?print=1

Back in the ’80s when, on a couple of occasions, I visited the Soviet Union, I always wondered what was it really like to live in that godforsaken place. But it didn’t much matter. For all the creepy spying that was going on, I realized I’d be out of there in a week or two.

Now I know what it was like. It’s come home.

I live in fear.

I don’t want to admit it, but it’s true. Every phone call I make, every email I send, every text I message, every article I write including this one, I imagine being bugged or recorded.

1984 is here and it’s not pretty.

It infects everything we do.

For example, I want to criticize the IRS with every breath I take, but in the back of my head I worry — what if they come after me? What if I’m audited and have to spend the next few years and untold dollars on accountants and attorneys? Is this fair to my family? Is this how I want to spend my life?

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/jun/18/putin-right-syria-obama-wrong/#.UcBw4XW_iLE.twitter

WASHINGTON, June 18, 2013 ― Russian President Vladimir Putin advises us to keep our hands off Syria, but our own president is moving ahead anyway.

Fools keep rushing in. Apparently, President Obama has learned nothing from our folly in Egypt, where we traded in Hosni Mubarak for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Suppose we do help topple Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad with small arms and ammunition for the rebels, as Obama proposes to do?

One guess as to who is ready to replace him.

We seem to have a habit in this country to root for the underdog, even if the underdog is Al Capone.

Putin has his own selfish reasons for wanting the West to stay out (he is a supporter of Assad), but given Russia’s own misadventures against looming radical Islam in such places as Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Chechnya, Putin may have our best interests at heart after all. A Russian who cherishes an American Super bowl ring as much as he does can’t be all bad.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/why_not_zimbabwe.html

When I heard about President Barack Obama’s plans for a $100 million trip to Africa with his family and entourage, I was surprised that Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) is not on the itinerary.

I would think that Zimbabwe would be a place that President Obama would especially like to visit, because Zimbabwe is a country where almost all of Obama’s redistributionist dreams have come true. And Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe (an avowed Marxist) is surely among Obama’s pantheon of heroes and role models (along with Marx, Stalin, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Saul Alinsky and Rev. Jeremiah Wright).

Robert Mugabe has presided over the “fundamental transformation” of a thriving Rhodesia, once “the breadbasket of Africa” (and a nation with significant heavy industry including mining, iron, and steel) into a Zimbabwe dependent on imports of food and emergency relief supplies to fend off starvation of its population.

Mugabe favored a one-party state, total black rule, and a monopoly on land. He presided over the driving off (and sometimes the slaughter) of productive white farmers, and then gave the farms to unskilled blacks as rewards for military service or political loyalty. Agricultural productivity dropped by more than half, as did employment associated with running a successful agricultural enterprise.

Mugabe also presided over a treasury that printed more and more money to cover government debts, which resulted in such out-of-control inflation that Zimbabwe had to abandon its own currency and use foreign currencies such as the Euro, British pound, U.S. dollar, South African rand, and Botswanan pula.

A Disciplined Sentiment
Against the berserk certitude of idealists, Burke urged a deference to tradition and to the wisdom of felt attachments.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323949904578536270967604416.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

The great revolutions of history typically produce written works celebrating their achievement. The French Revolution, however, was immortalized by a denunciation. Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France” appeared in 1790, when Britons were still welcoming the Revolution as a blow to Bourbon tyranny. Burke’s dissent has resounded through the ages. No reactionary diatribe, the “Reflections” promoted a “manly, moral, regulated liberty” and a cautious reform of the decadent French monarchy. But it lividly denounced the “short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy” seeking to remake France as a radical utopia, as if the “constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.” Armed with a doctrinaire logic of rights, these revolutionaries were indifferent to history and hostile to tradition. “The age of chivalry is gone,” wrote Burke. “That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”

The “Reflections” foretold, with a prescience that is freshly incredible on every rereading, the grisly mechanisms of the Terror, the execution of Louis XVI and the despotism of Napoleon. The book was faintly embarrassing when it first appeared. The British prime minister, William Pitt, derided it as “rhapsodies in which there is much to admire, and nothing to agree with.” Time would rebuke this judgment. The “Reflections on the Revolution in France” became the most famous statement of conservatism ever written.

Edmund Burke: The First Conservative

By Jesse Norman

(Basic, 325 pages, $27.99)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324021104578551291160259734.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop Tocqueville saw a nation of individuals who were defiant of authority. Today? Welcome to Planet Government. In “Democracy in America,” published in 1833, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the way Americans preferred voluntary association to government regulation. “The inhabitant of the United States,” he wrote, “has only a defiant and restive regard for social […]