RUTHFULLY YOURS

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/12/18/thomas-friedman-and-the-higher-education-bubble/

That Thomas Friedman would spout stupidity and anti-Semitism surprises me no more than the appearance of a gumball after I put a quarter into the machine and turn the knob. But one line in the New York Times‘ calumnist’s (sic) Dec. 13 tantrum against Israel was worth a double-take:

I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin. My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away, not because they are hostile but because they are confused.

Why on earth is the “real test” at the University of Wisconsin? For liberals, the only people who count are the smart people, because it is an article of faith that social engineering can fix all the world’s problems, and a logical conclusion that only smart people qualify as social engineers. It doesn’t matter what the dumb people think. They are the ones who need to be socially engineered. To Friedman, it is irrelevant whether Americans at large support Israel by a 4:1 margin or better, and that support for Israel is growing steadily, as the Gallup Poll consistently shows:

That poll includes dumb people, so it doesn’t count. To Friedman, what matters is what university audiences might think. The insularity of the liberal mind is astonishing. It brings to mind the anecdote about Emperor Ferdinand of Austria (deposed for incompetence in 1848). He went hunting and shot and eagle. The bird fell to his feet, and Ferdinand said, “It’s got to be an eagle — but it’s only got one head!”

Why We Need More Leaders Like Vaclav Havel Posted By Bruce Bawer

http://pjmedia.com/blog/why-we-need-more-leaders-like-vaclav-havel/

Vaclav Havel died today at age 75. As Bruce Bawer wrote below in 2008, the courageous playwright who destroyed Communism in Czechoslovakia could teach us much about the need to defend Western freedoms against totalitarian Islam. Read more from Michael Ledeen at the Tatler [1].

—————————–

In these decadent times when powerful people in the West cannot conceive of any response to totalitarian jihad other than rank appeasement, and when the name of Che Guevara, a bloodthirsty Stalinist and enemy of freedom, is synonymous with heroism, it is vital that free people be familiar with — and honor — the examples of those valiant few who, living under totalitarianism, have stood up to it with a courage that today’s appeasers of Islam could hardly imagine.

Among the greatest of these heroes is Vaclav Havel.

Born in 1936, Havel spent his early years under the two major twentieth-century varieties of totalitarianism — first Nazism, then Communism. When the Communists took over Czechoslovakia after World War II, instituting a system under which, as Havel biographer Edá Kriseová writes, “[e]veryone was afraid of his neighbor” and “[p]eople disappeared without a trace,” they confiscated the Havel family’s money and the theater they owned. In 1949, Havel’s father was imprisoned and interrogated for several weeks; three years later, the Havels’ home and possessions were taken from them as part of a new policy under which class enemies were to be removed from Prague. News of the latter development gave Havel’s maternal grandfather a stroke from which he died; meanwhile Havel’s uncle Miloš, after spending two years in prison and labor camp as punishment for having run a movie studio, escaped to West Germany with the help of American troops — whereupon his name, according to Kriseová, was “erased from the history of Czech film.”

http://bigpeace.com/dreaboi/2011/12/17/full-speed-ahead-for-obama-sanctioned-taliban-embassy-in-qatar/

Qatar: host to the US military, al-Jazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood– and now, the world’s first Taliban embassy– at the behest of the Obama administration.
On his Facebook page, Big Peace contributor Walid Phares brought my attention to a report in the Pakistani website The Nation that Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, the premier of US ally Qatar, is prepared to open an embassy for the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”– otherwise known as the Taliban. He said, “A solution in Afghanistan requires the participation of the Taliban in a way that must be decided by the Afghans.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/hamas_high_school_in_florida.html Why is a representative of a terror-linked organization, a defender of jihad terror groups and an apologist for Islamic supremacism welcome to speak in public schools? Back on December 4, I published at my website AtlasShrugs.com the disturbing news of child abuse in Florida public schools: the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was […]

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

Debunking “Palestinian” History That’s Bunk: The propaganda war à outrance
Seventeen years of fruitless PLO negotiations with Israel have now been virtually abandoned – with the two-state solution envisaged by the Oslo Accords and advocated by President Bush in his Roadmap now in its death throes.
“Made in Palestine”

At left is a 2011 Christmas card from one of those anti-Israel NGOs that (as I mentioned in a post last year) push the notion that Jesus was a Palestinian. The card was pinkish last year; in its current guise it’s green, and well it might be, since it’s the green who are destined to be taken in.

“Made in Palestine”

‘1. Not one settlement in the Land of Israel has a name that is of Arabic origin…. In fact, till today, except to Ramlah, not one Arabic settlement has an original Arabic name. Till today, most of the settlements names are of Hebrew or Greek origin, the names distorted to senseless Arabic names. There is no meaning in Arabic to names such as Acco (Acre), Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza, or Jenin and towns named Ramallah, El Halil and El-Kuds (Jerusalem) lack historical roots or Arabic philology. In 1696, the year Relandi toured the land, Ramallah, for instance, was called Bet’allah (From the Hebrew name Beit El) and Hebron was called Hebron (Hevron) and the Arabs called Mearat HaMachpelah El Chalil, their name for the Forefather Abraham.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/19/iraq-in-the-rearview-mirror#

“America’s definable enemies — the nations that sponsor Islamic terrorism — have been fortunate that we have sunk in the self-imposed quagmire of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. By choosing to fight their proxies instead of them, we have not moved closer to victory but away from it. As we leave Iraq, the picture in our rearview mirror is dimly lit with fleeting images of purple-thumbed voters, victims of street bombings, and the smiling visage of Moqtada al-Sadr.Our enemies have learned much about us in the decade since 9/11. It is not clear that we have learned much, if anything, about them. Or about ourselves. ”

So now that we’re out, what did we accomplish?

Historians may someday conclude that the most curious incident of Barack Obama’s presidency occurred in October 2011. When Obama announced that the last of our troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by year’s end, the news was almost lost amid the tsunami of economic news and metronomic campaign debates. There were no great outpourings of emotion, ringing speeches, or UN hyperbole. The moment was, like Sherlock Holmes’ observation of the dog in the night-time, curious because of the silence that surrounded it.

Why would the most controversial war since Vietnam end without as much controversy as when it began? The reason is that that America tuned out the Iraq war years ago. The horrific Sunni vs. Shia violence that overwhelmed Iraq after the Samarra mosque bombing in February 2006 was quelled by General Petraeus’s troop surge. When the violence subsided to Iraq’s new normal, so did the controversy. From late 2008, America has been interested in almost nothing but economic news. And, from 2009, we’ve had a president who kept the willing media focused on everything other than the war.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1037

The issue of the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria has become an American presidential campaign issue of sorts. Just recently, Wolf Blitzer, former Al HaMishmar correspondent, pressed Rick Perry in a CNN interview, asking him: “Since ’67, every U.S. president, Democrat and Republican, has called Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories, in the West Bank, illegal under international law. Would you continue that activity?”

Perry responded, “No I wouldn’t. I consider the Israeli settlements to be legal, from my perspective, and I support them … where the Israelis are clearly on Israel’s land that they have hard fought to win and to keep, absolutely.” In November, Rick Santorum, another Republican contender, was asked if Israel should dismantle its settlements, and insisted the territory was “part of Israel.” He compared it to the status of New Mexico and Texas as part of the U.S. and asked his questioner, “Should we give Texas back to Mexico?” The interviewer countered, “Well, I don’t think you should recognize recent annexations,” to which Santorum retorted, “Oh, so it depends whether it’s recent or not? … The bottom line is that is legitimately Israeli country. And they have a right to do within their country just like we have a right to do within our country … all the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. There is no Palestinian, this is Israeli land.”

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Islam is peaceful. At least that is the likely defense of Rafiqi Islam, a loving husband, who told his wife that he had a present for her, blindfolded her to make it a surprise and then cut off her fingers. Then the rest of the Islam family mopped up the blood, while Mr. Islam […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11069/pub_detail.asp The unceasing drumbeat of Israel-bashing on the pages of the New York Times is not exactly a secret. But in mid-December, the limit on the NYT’s image of promoting “objective journalism” was reached. When it comes to Israel, it means a page in which Israel’s friends are unwelcome while its critics and enemies enjoy […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1685/pub_detail.asp North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il Has Died [FOX] House GOP threatens to kill bipartisan payroll tax deal in vote set for Monday [THE HILL] French credit downgrade could come ‘within days’ – Standard & Poor’s expected downgrade could create panic in the financial markets and make eurozone crisis even worse [GUARDIAN] China villagers […]