RUTHFULLY YOURS

REILLY: Dangerous illusions about Islamism

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/30/wanted-a-competent-commander-in-chief/

Ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver famously wrote. If one misconstrues the ideas of the Islamists who are coming to power in the Middle East, one inevitably will misjudge the consequences. Take Reuel Marc Gerecht’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Islamist Road to Democracy.” In it, Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA hand now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says the Islamists are winning but we shouldn’t worry. The West went through worse and came out democratic. In fact, he says, the Middle East has suffered from Western communist and socialist ideologies, which left Islam as the last refuge. So what did we expect? They will work it out on their own terms. This transition may not be pretty to watch, but in the long run, it will “evolve” organically to real democracy. In fact, Mr. Gerecht says, “[The Islamists] are the key to more democratic, liberal politics in the region.”

Come again? Mr. Gerecht admits his thinking is “counterintuitive,” but it comes closer to missing reality altogether. How do you miss a target this big? Mr. Gerecht’s misplaced optimism is based on two things: misconceptions about the West – particularly the historically unjustified view that upheaval ultimately and necessarily leads to improvement – and a profound misunderstanding of the Islamist Shariah agenda.

Mr. Gerecht thinks we in the West got so tired of killing one another in religious wars that we secularized ourselves and became democratic. The same can happen in Islam, even though “Islam hasn’t seen the sustained barbarism that plagued” Europe. This construction of history is faulty in two ways. This is not the way democracy developed in the West, and the history of Islam is not as sanitary as he implies.

As the outcome of religious wars in other civilizations has shown, alternative pathways to democracy were and are available. Secularism did not, as he suggests, bring forth liberal values – rather, liberal values produced secularism. The idea of freedom of conscience preceded secularism and was based on the very Christianity that he holds accountable for the killing. Also, the conception of a secular state is uniquely Christian.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2111/Karzai-Do-What-I-Say-or-Ill-Have-a-Fit.aspx

More on the outrageous story about Hamid Karzai “banning” Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) from entering Afghanistan last week from Wolf Blitzer at CNN. It wasn’t just SecState Hillary who acted as Client Karzai’s agent. SecDef Panetta was a willing party, too. Of course, in this iteration of events, Karzai’s role isn’t spelled out. In the original Guardian story, Hillary received a call from Karzai and pressed his wishes on to Rohrbacher.

An “obviously I’m upset” Wolf Blitzer got more outrageous details of the story in an interview with Rohrbacher on CNN a few days ago. It seems that once the congressional delegation of six members headed by Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) arrived in Dubai where a US military plane was supposed to fly them to Kabul, Gohmert received a phone call from SecDef Panetta who told him the military plane wouldn’t take off if Rohrbacher was aboard.

The mind reels. Not only does Rohrbacher as a US Representative have every right and responsibility to undertake such a tour of the Afghan battlespace in which the American taxpayer is spending $2 billion every week, he is also a senior of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. He needs to go.

Not to worry, though. With Panetta’s instructions in mind, Rohrbacher decided he would fly commercial to Kabul.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1805

Iran, The New York Times and Yuval Diskin

Leave it to The New York Times to get in a grand “two-fer” and call it news.

Reporting yesterday on assessments by “officials and outside analysts” that the likelihood of a military conflict with Iran is waning, the newspaper made sure to assert that “a growing divide in Israel between political leaders and military and intelligence officials over the wisdom of attacking Iran has begun to surface.”

According to the nameless sources expressing the good news, “The threat of tighter economic sanctions has prompted the Iranians to try more flexible tactics in their dealings with the United States and other powers, while the revival of direct negotiations has tempered the most inflammatory talk on all sides.”

The “flexible tactics” referred to here involve Iran’s having sent a delegation to the 5+1 summit in Istanbul a couple of weeks ago to “talk” about uranium enrichment, and its willingness to return to the round table in Baghdad this month for further diplo-dialogue.

Indeed, such a loud sigh of relief was heaved in Washington after the summit in Turkey that it could be heard throughout the mosques and the Majlis (Parliament) in Tehran.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been in a bind these days. On the one hand, he cannot afford to alienate Jewish donors, some of whom are concerned that he is a bit too soft on Iran and a tad too tough on Israel. And while in Europe, figures like Gunther Grass are able to get away with saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a greater global danger than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, American-Jewish liberals haven’t gone quite that far yet.

On the other hand, the last thing in the world that Obama wants or intends to do is take actual steps against Iran; nor does he want or intend for Israel to do the dirty work. From the outset of his presidency, Obama has made it clear that his main goal as commander-in-chief is to make Muslims feel good about themselves — and realize what a great friend they have in the White House.

He said as much in Cairo a few months after his inauguration, when he spoke before a Muslim Brotherhood-heavy audience, and used an Arabic form of address used in the Islamic world exclusively between Muslims.

He spelled it out for the head of NASA, whom he instructed to make it the space agency’s key mission to help Muslims feel good about their accomplishments in science and math. Most importantly, he has shown this to be his objective by consistently abandoning allies in the Middle East in favor of radical Islamists.

This is not to say that the U.S. president necessarily wants Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. But this possibility seems less daunting to him in an election year than arousing the ire of the people who determine the price of oil or those who have to pay for it at gas stations. And no ridiculous “energy-saving” schemes he keeps trying to cook up alter that fact.

http://times247.com/.
Ex-CIA official defends enhanced interrogations
The Washington Free Beacon
Monday, April 30, 2012
News
Ex-CIA official defends enhanced interrogations
The former head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service defended the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on top al-Qaeda terrorists in an interview with CBS’s Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” Sunday. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1tcKJykXI
Obama’s youth loses its hope in change
The Washington Examiner
Monday, April 30, 2012
News
Obama’s youth loses its hope in change
They lapped up President Obama’s 2008 promise of “hope” and “change,” but his inability to deliver has turned younger voters cynical and disillusioned, according to a new analysis of 18-29-year-olds who backed the president but are now skeptical of him. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1tcKSuYMN
Olympics site lists Jerusalem as capital of ‘Palestine’
The Jerusalem Post
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
News
Organizers of the 2012 London Olympic Games have apologized after its official website left Israel without a capital while naming Jerusalem as the capital city of a country that does not yet exist, blaming “incorrect data input.” Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1tcKhXu00

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/blog/

Stuart Varney: Why should we continue to subsidize student loans?

CNN: Muslims caught in UK plotting numerous massive and small attacks

Jose Rodriguez, Ex-CIA counterterror chief says Pelosi ‘reinventing the truth’ about waterboarding

Officials Watch for Terrorists With Body Bombs on US-Bound Planes

Scientists. It is horrible what wind mill energy turbines are doing to the environment. Contributing to Global Warming!

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/blog/#ixzz1tcILUrYJ
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-devil-you-say-if-i-wanted-america-to-fail?f=must_reads On April 9th, FreeMarketAmerica.org, a project of Americans for Limited Government, released a Doberman of a video that goes straight for the jugular of stealth socialism and totalitarian government, “If I Wanted America to Fail.” Little more than four and a half minutes long, it is powerful, it is unique, it is effective. As […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-world-trade-center-site-fiasco

For as long as I can recall the Port Authority has been a mystical institution with enormous responsibility and with an overhang of patronage and soft money allegations. In a recent audit the Port Authority was described as dysfunctional and running up billons in cost overruns. Most significantly, the audit spoke to “insufficient cost controls” and “a lack of transparent and effective oversight.”

None of this should be a surprise. For more than a decade the World Trade Center site has been a hole in the ground lending support to the claim of a radical Muslim victory after 9/11. Pataki, Patterson and Corzine couldn’t agree on a direction and when they did, the funding plan was inadequate and lacking any serious perspective. In fact, every politician in New York and New Jersey got caught in the centrifugal force of economic conditions they didn’t understand or were too naïve to face directly.

This 50 page audit report by Navigant also outlines the role of comptrollers, like Carl McCall, who were seemingly incapable of coming to grips with the financial demands of rebuilding the WTC site. Even now there are insufficient funds to complete the Freedom Tower, the presumptive linchpin of the project that stands two-thirds complete and one-third exposed, a testament to the failure of Port Authority planning.

Obama Funds Terrorists Posted By Daniel Greenfield

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/01/obama-funds-terrorists/print/

NEVER AGAIN SHOULD THIS MAN BE ELECTED…..RSK

On April 23rd, Obama stopped by the Holocaust Memorial Museum where he mouthed the words, “Never Again” and two days later he issued a memorandum waiving restrictions on funding to the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority, which routinely calls for the murder of Jews, and for its president who has described the Holocaust as a “fantastic lie.”

It took Obama a day to disavow his commitment to a united Jerusalem. It took him a little longer to disavow his commitment to “Never Again.”

In his memorandum, Obama certified the 192 million dollar aid package as “important to the national security interests of the United States” and White House spokesman Tommy Vietor claimed that it would ensure “the continued viability of the moderate PA government.” That same moderate government which has tried to form a pact with Hamas and whose high ranking officials have repeatedly engaged in terrorism.

The Palestinian Accountability Act, which Obama waived with a flourish of the pen, was one in a series of attempts to stem the flow of taxpayer money to the terrorist corruptocracy in Ramallah. The Act mandated that no funds may be made available to the Palestinian Authority until it ends its terrorist activities and an independent audit is conducted of its finances. Rather than complying with the bill, Obama dismissed it by resorting to the transparently fraudulent claim of national security.

So where is that money really going?

According to the Palestinian Authority, its budget crisis was caused by the funding that it provides to Hamas run Gaza at a rate of 120 million dollars a month. If we take these figures as actual, then its 1.3 billion dollar budget deficit is almost entirely composed of Gaza expenditures.

Another 60 million dollars a year is paid out to convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons. Obama’s generous waiver would cover a month’s worth of expenses for Hamas run Gaza and a year’s worth of salaries for the imprisoned murderers and bombers. Including members of Hamas. Then there are the infrastructure projects, like homes for released terrorists built by the Palestinian Investment Fund.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“Israel is not an accident, it exists because of those who fought and strived for it, who built and labored for a Jewish State, who sang the Hatikvah because it represented their mission. A mission that is at odds with the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Israel” agenda of the left to hollow out the country, destroy its sense of purpose, its heritage and its identity, and leave it with a flag, an anthem and a state that no longer stands for anything at all.”

In times past the Forward newspaper celebrated the fast of Yom Kippur with a feast and in keeping with that tradition it celebrated Israel’s Independence Day by rewriting its anthem to remove the word “Jew” from it. The linguistic purge from the notoriously anti-Israel paper was meant as a way to help Muslims feel better about singing the Israeli national anthem.

The yearning of the Jewish soul becomes the yearning of the Israeli soul and the eyes turned east no longer long for Zion, but the generic “our country”. The proposal made by a self-proclaimed linguist seems rather devoid of understanding when it comes to the origin and meaning of words. Purging Jewish souls from the anthem and replacing them with Israeli souls doesn’t actually solve anything.

Jews are Judeans, dating back to the Kingdom of Judah, contrasted with the breakaway Kingdom of Israel and its tribes. The Jews are also Israelites, being sons of the patriarch Israel, a category that still does not encompass Muslims. Rewriting Jewish soul as Israeli soul still leaves one with Jews, and as the Forward has discovered, Jews are rather hard to get rid of. Shoot them, gas them and write them out of their own anthem and they still pop back up.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297322/chris-christie-s-islam-problem-daniel-pipes

A Quinnipiac poll in April showed Chris Christie as the most popular potential Republican vice-presidential candidate, thanks to his budget cuts and standing up to government employees’ unions. But the governor of New Jersey has a problem, specifically an Islam problem, that can and should get in the way of his possible ascent to higher office. Time and again he has sided with Islamist forces against those who worry about safeguarding American security and civilization.

Some examples:

2008: When serving as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Christie embraced and kissed Mohammed Qatanani, imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, and praised him as “a man of great goodwill.” He did this after Qatanani had publicly ranted against Jews and in support of funding Hamas, a U.S. government–designated terror organization, and on the eve of his deportation hearing for not hiding an Israeli conviction for membership in Hamas. In addition, Christie designated a top aide, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, to testify as a character witness for Qatanani.

2010: After Derek Fenton burned three pages of a Koran at a 9/11 memorial ceremony, his employer, New Jersey Transit, got Christie’s approval to fire him. Protecting Islam at the expense of the constitutional right to free speech, Christie endorsed Fenton’s termination: “That kind of intolerance is something I think is unacceptable. So I don’t have any problem with him being fired.” The American Civil Liberties Union successfully represented Fenton to get his job back.

2011: Christie appointed an Islamist, Sohail Mohammed, to the New Jersey state superior court. Mohammed’s record includes serving as general counsel to the American Muslim Union (which has stated that a “Zionist Commando Orchestrated The 9-11 Terrorist Attacks”), acting as spokesman for Muslim prisoners who went on a hunger strike after being jailed during Ramadan, defending Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian (his indictment, Mohammed said, was “nothing but a witch-hunt”), and helping Qatanani’s legal defense. Mohammed established himself not just as the Islamists’ lawyer but as one of them.