RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama met with musician Emilio Estefan and other Cuban-Americans invited to the White House in advance of his trip to the communist island next week.

Congress has still not lifted the embargo on Cuba, but the Obama administration on Tuesday relaxed travel and currency restrictions as he prepares for the visit.

Others at the White House meeting included Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Export-Import Bank General Counsel Angela Freyre, and Father Fernando Heriao of St. Brendan Catholic Church in Miami. There were also leaders of groups that have supported Obama’s calls to lift the embargo, such as #CubaNow and the Cuba Study Group.

“The president met today with Cuban-American leaders at the White House, including civil society advocates, faith leaders, and representatives from the private sector, in advance of his trip to Cuba,” press secretary Josh Earnest said in a readout of the meeting. “From the beginning of his administration, President Obama has consulted closely with the Cuban-American community about his Cuba policy, and wanted to hear directly from community leaders about his upcoming trip to Cuba.”

“The president reviewed our ongoing efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. The president highlighted the recent regulatory changes made by the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce, and the impact those changes would have on the ability of Americans to travel to Cuba and engage directly with the Cuban people,” Earnest continued.

More than a year after its publication, the worth of novelist Michel Houellebecq’s “Submission” shines ever brighter, its synthesis of cynicism, seriousness and sadness a jaded reminder that fiction remains stranger than fact, but only just
In 2014, Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas almost lived up to its name. The speaking schedule featured the fearsomely hirsute Uthman Badar, media representative of the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. The title of his lecture: Honour Killings Are Morally Justified. Twitter outrage ensued, the festival organisers bleated and cancelled the lecture, and Uthman Badar’s mouth remained uncharacteristically closed.

His silence disappointed me. I’ve been unable to decide whether Badar’s topic and those who see merit in it are best described as risible or contemptible. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. His speech could have been a clarifying moment, perhaps even a useful one. If one wished to make an easy case for women’s rights and liberal democracy, one could simply call attention to the theocratic-minded alternatives put forward by the likes of Badar and Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The cancellation provided an easy task for columnists. Their safe chatter prompted a reprise of well-worn thoughts about ardent Islam, our murky conception of free speech, and the relative tameness of The Festival of Dangerous Ideas. All sides claimed victory, the next topic trended, and everyone moved on.

One aspect of the affair escaped notice, though, and this was the lecture Badar had initially proposed: The West Needs Saving By Islam. A rather dangerous idea, yes, as well as a fascinating, frightening and thought-provoking one. It finds expression in myriad ways, but we rarely encounter it in such direct language. Rather, it is a sentiment that lurks quietly behind other ideas. Islam, as its most confident adherents claim, is the solution, not merely to philosophical problems but to all human inquiry. And so, the Islamist movement’s fantastical and totalitarian goal of world domination offers a form of salvation for the West, even if salvation looks more like destruction. Here, the certainty and vibrancy of Islam compare favourably to a soulless and etiolated West, where Christianity scarcely seems sure of itself, nihilism reigns, and the promise of even minimal economic stability is continually and casually broken.

WILL HE BOW THIS TIME????RSK
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will travel to Saudi Arabia next month for a summit with Gulf Arab leaders, the White House said Wednesday, offering them a chance to repair relations strained by last year’s nuclear deal with Iran.

The summit with the Gulf Cooperation Council follows one Mr. Obama hosted last year at Camp David in an attempt to ease concerns among U.S. allies over the Iran deal. This year’s summit will take place on April 21.

Mr. Obama will also visit Germany and the U.K. in April. While in London, Mr. Obama will meet with Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister David Cameron. In Germany, he is scheduled to attend the Hannover industrial-technology trade show and meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The White House said the summit in Saudi Arabia “will be an opportunity for leaders to review progress in strengthening U.S.-GCC security cooperation” in the year since the gathering at Camp David.

“It will also provide an opportunity for leaders to discuss additional steps to intensify pressure on [Islamic State], address regional conflicts, and de-escalate regional and sectarian tensions,” the statement said.

GCC countries include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The U.S. and other global powers reached the nuclear agreement with Iran last summer, triggering the lifting of economic sanctions that had been imposed on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. CONTINUE AT SITE

The very act of converting the Shoah into a story on film is a violation of its meaning, its force, and its evil.http://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2016/03/why-i-dont-watch-holocaust-movies/

I have not seen Son of Saul, and I will not see it. As a general rule I do not see Holocaust movies, even though I have been a working film critic for 37 years. It is not because they do not affect me but because they do—and I do not trust the way they affect me. I did see Schindler’s List, and I wept at its conclusion, when Steven Spielberg has the Schindler survivors walk toward the camera as the film’s black- and-white blooms suddenly into color. But what was I weeping at?

The director Stanley Kubrick spent years trying to figure out how to make a movie about the Holocaust and never succeeded. When the writer Frederic Raphael talked to Kubrick about Schindler’s List, the universally praised work of Kubrick’s acolyte Spielberg, Kubrick issued an off-the-cuff criticism as great as any considered analysis by Erich Auerbach or Lionel Trilling: “Think that’s about the Holocaust? That was about success, wasn’t it? The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. Schindler’s List is about 600 who don’t.” I was weeping because Schindler’s List is the Holocaust with a happy ending. The Shoah did not have a happy ending. It ended. And the tragedy of it will be with us until the end of time. It’s no wonder people seek to mitigate the horror by turning it into fable, but it is an impulse that should be resisted.

In his brilliant and scorchingessay on Son of Saul, Dan Kagan-Kans quietly and systematically exposes the contrivances of this self-consciously “new” kind of film about the Holocaust. The very fact that I just used the words “contrivance” and Holocaust in the same sentence is an example of the insurmountable aesthetic and moral problems faced by this and every other movie about the Shoah.

Now, all films are contrivances, whether they are about Auschwitz or about a couple meeting cute in a department store in Philadelphia. What we are seeing is not happening. The people we are watching are not the characters they are playing. The characters they are playing do not exist and never have existed. The words they are speaking were put into their mouths by someone else, which is not how actual people converse. As these simulacra move and speak those words, dozens of real people are a few feet away watching them, recording them, moving pieces of furniture in and out of their way, sending other people and cars and even rolling debris through the viewer’s line of sight to mimic the passing flow of life.

The problem is that, more than any other art form before it, the cinema is designed to trick you into forgetting that what you are seeing isn’t real. It’s the ultimate in stylization—it hides its stylization behind a veneer of reality. For what you are seeing looks real. Maybe even more real than reality itself. Bodies are walking back and forth before you. People are speaking words. Cars are moving in the background. It’s just that what they are actually doing and what you are seeing are two different things. They are making a movie. You are watching a story.

And the act of converting the Shoah into a story is itself a violation of its meaning, its force, and its evil. The imposition of a plot makes the inexplicably and unimaginably awful falsely explicable and, since it is at the same time literally being made imaginable, not quite so awful.

Whatever Barack Obama aimed to achieve in Syria with half measures and rhetoric, allowing he had any firm notion to begin with, must be deemed far from fruition. The contrast with Putin’s willingness to place military muscle at the service of strategy could not be more clear — or more damning
The announcement by Russia’s truculent leader, Vladimir Putin, that his nation’s forces are to withdraw from Syria confirms what we all suspected: propping up the Assad regime was, and is, Russia’s key priority in the region. Its mission ‘fulfilled,’ only months after entering the fray, the Putin model of pursuing goals is, in its own way, impressive. Granted, the methods chosen by the Russian military have given only slightly more concern for civilian casualties than the Assad regime, however the dogged determination to get things done, and quickly, has shown, along with the war in the Ukraine, the ease with which Putins turns bellicose rhetoric into action. Russia is not alone in its efforts to seek an outcome to the Syrian conflict favourable to its aims, as Turkey also is heavily invested.

Despite the current reprieve in Syria as a shaky ceasefire holds, violence is increasing in neighbouring Turkey, a NATO member and alleged bastion of moderate Islam. The most recent terrorist attack in Ankara, which killed over 30 people, has not yet been claimed by any group, however it is likely to be the work of either a Kurdish separatist movement or the Islamic State. Fighting his own war against the Kurds within his country, as well as against various enemies over the border in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has sought to expand the culpable parties in terrorist attacks. There is no difference, he insists, between ‘a terrorist holding a gun or a bomb and those who use their position or pen to serve those aims.’

The irony of this comment cannot go unnoticed: while an ally quickly claimed by the US, Turkey has not only become increasingly Islamist in recent years, and apparently allows the passage of foreign fighters into Syria, but explicitly supports—along with Saudi Arabia—a coalition of hard-line Islamist factions in Syria fighting the Assad regime. One of the member groups included in this sponsored alliance is the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda spin-off responsible for attacks throughout Syria, and a ‘terrorist’ designated group according to the UN.

This past Sunday on the Fox News Channel, the host Chris Wallace challenged Il Donald on the his claim that “Islam hates us.”

I don’t have the exact transcript but Wallace displayed appalling ignorance when he claimed….more or less….” There are a billion Muslims in the world and only about 100,000 are radical….” Il Donald gamely answered but did not dispute the number.

Now, what is the population of Somalia one of the most hostile anti-American Muslim nations in Africa? 10.5 million. And Pakistan? 181.2 million. Yemen? 24.4 million. And let’s pretend that only 10% of that population- a deflated number- hates America….evidenced by their frequent flag burning tantrums and shrieks for jihad….that number from only three nations is quite a bit more than the 100,000 that Wallace mentioned.

Is Wallace that ignorant or does he just shy from appearing “Islamophobic?” rsk
p.s. Il Donald also promised to make trains run on time…..or else …..

Defining President Obama’s legacy isn’t hard. All you need to do is define the world’s situation before and after his presidency. One of the best examples is what used to be the nation of Libya, which Obama has reportedly called a “sh*t show.”

Before Obama’s military intervention, Libya was governed by Muammar Qaddafi, a dedicated terrorist. Ronald Reagan ordered a night attack by U.S. Air Force F-111s that nearly killed Qaddafi in response to a Berlin nightclub attack in 1986, but that didn’t stop Qaddafi. Qaddafi ordered the bombing of a U.S. airliner over Scotland in 1988 that killed 270.

Qaddafi was vulnerable and he was smart enough to know it. After President George W. Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative led to the interception by U.S. and British forces of two ships in an Italian port carrying nuclear materials to Libya, and fearing the same fate as Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi surrendered his nuclear weapons development program.

All was relatively quiet in Libya. Qaddafi posed no danger to U.S. national security after that. And then came President Obama’s military intervention in Libya at the behest of France and other NATO allies that overthrew Qaddafi and led to his death in 2011.

The reason for the military action, Obama then claimed, was the danger of a humanitarian catastrophe caused by Qaddafi’s forces attacking civilians. The real reason was that France’s access to Libyan sweet crude was blocked by Qaddafi. Neither France nor England had the ability to undertake the airstrikes necessary to overthrow Qaddafi’s government, so U.S. forces were necessary despite the fact that no U.S. national security interest was at stake.

In whatever form it takes, authoritarianism is often identified by the unrelenting desire on the part of a leader to eliminate his or her adversaries. And while Iran and Obama purport to have two very different worldviews, both are religious in fervor when dealing with those who deviate from the faith.

In Iran there are mullahs who safeguard Islam’s sacred law, in America there is a president who thinks he is a law unto himself. Iran wants to nuke Israel and the U.S., and Obama is nuking the Constitution.

That’s why the news that Attorney General Loretta Lynch reviewed the possibility of pursuing civil action against climate change skeptics (“deniers”) was as disturbing as the report that Iran recently tested two ballistic missiles.

Most would agree that it is easy to identify what motivates the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran.

For starters, Iran is zealous in its hatred for America, the country led by a Muslim-sympathizing president that agreed to help the genocidal terrorist state acquire an atomic bomb. The $150 billion check Obama dropped in the mail to Tehran ensures that, in the future, our mortal enemy will possess the means to repay our generosity by turning a third of the earth’s water into Wormwood.

In the meantime, because of the Islamic belief that, on the delicate wings of a mushroom cloud, chaos will usher in the 12th Imām, Mohamed al- Mahdī, Iranian leaders remain primarily fixated on how to annihilate their ancient enemy Israel.

Until that great and terrible day arrives, the Islamic theocracy continues to deal harshly with capital offenders who Iran’s leaders believe “spread corruption.”

The type of depravity that the Iranian government views as a threat to social and political wellbeing include criticism of the regime, offending the Prophet and defying Islamic standards with speech or printed material.

Funny, some of those violations sound similar to the American sin of critiquing prescient Obama, and exercising the right to free speech.

Sometimes, at first, Iranian government goon squads called “religious police” monitor suspected blasphemers. Other times, offenders immediately endure persecution and/or spend extended time in a jail cell. But, more often than not, those who “spread corruption” are tortured and executed.

Put simply, if a citizen dares to disagree with the theocratic ruler of Iran, the punishment that follows is severe and unforgiving.

With the clock ticking on two terms that incalculably damaged the cause of peace in the Middle East, President Obama is reportedly planning to dictate terms of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement through the United Nations. He must not go further down this path of ego, hubris and vengeance. He will not validate the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him in 2009 and never earned. Undercutting the Jewish state, he will only make negotiations more impossible than they already are.Plainly, the President blames Israel in the person of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the failure of Obama’s attempts to broker a peace deal.

While Netanyahu can be tough to get along with, Obama persistently failed to accept that the Palestinians lack leaders with the courage to end a state of war by accepting Israel’s right to exist.

Obama hit a wall largely because he placed demands on Israel without requiring the West Bank’s Fatah-led government, much less the Hamas rulers of Gaza, even to respect basic Israeli security needs.

The President’s destructive asymmetry dismembered decades of American policy in the Middle East.