RUTHFULLY YOURS

Modern human accomplishments seldom outstrip miracles of the past, but those who light the candles for Hanukkah beginning Sunday night are involved in an even greater struggle for political and religious freedom than the Maccabees in their time.

The festival commemorates the recapture and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem almost 22 centuries ago, initiating eight decades of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. Today’s defenders of Israel fight not only for their own restored political and religious freedom but for the right of all nations to freedom from increasingly violent and maddened enemies.

Jewish political history is well represented by the emblematic legend of the oil that was required to consecrate the Temple after its defilement at the hands of the Hellenistic Seleucid rulers. Thought to be enough to last only a single day, the oil burned for the eight days needed to obtain a new supply.

The new movie Youth is a feast for the eyes, but it’s far more than that. It’s about two old men, a famous composer (played by Michael Caine) and a famous film director (Harvey Keitel) on summer vacation at a gorgeous resort in the Swiss Alps — during which they confront truths about their lives and about people and things they have lost. Yes, I am well aware that with that last sentence I have made the movie sound unspeakably boring to most readers — but stick with me for a minute: It is, in fact, the exact opposite of boring, because, for the film’s two hours, the screen is always full of life, incident, emotion, and color. One scene was notable for me because it was a solitary exception to this rule: Rachel Weisz, as Caine’s daughter, gives a speech about how Caine was an absentee father and didn’t show an interest in his family even when he was home. I can’t fault Weisz’s performance — she delivers the monologue quite convincingly – but it’s a scene that really belongs in another movie, a much talkier melodrama.

With mathematically predictable precision, President Barack Hussein Obama declared that last Wednesday’s slaughter of 17 American attendees of a Christmas party by two Muslims in a community center in California, and the wounding of two-dozen others, was a mystery (“We don’t know the motives)—and that the U.S. needed stricter gun laws. It was a jihadist attack by devout Muslims against Americans, as it happens. It was an eminently jihadist act of murderous aggression by self-starting, home-grown Muslim terrorists.
Enough already of Obama and his ilk. The war against sudden jihad self-generated by Muslim immigrants and their offspring, threatening literally every American, is by now both real and present. It can and must be won, in spite of Obama and his ilk. From now on every Muslim is a legitimate suspect and every non-Muslim is a potential victim, with self-defense strategies understood and applied.

I confess to watching some pretty cretinous TV shows. Whenever they include any politics the conservative is always shown as a lout- an oaf who offends and blusters and lies under the false umbrella of “patriotism.”

He/she will insult the courage of prominent war heroes, mock another person’s looks, incite with trumped up statistics, offend a disabled reporter with wild hand gestures and, as The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler probably summed it up become “a fact checker’s dream…and nightmare. He spouts off so many ‘facts,’ often twisted or wrong, that it takes a lot of time to hack through the weeds.”

Sometimes he/she stumbles on some truth, but is so wrong on foreign policy- dealing with terrorism, North Korea, the Middle East with simplistic solutions.

I never would have thought that a candidate like that could emerge, and more incredible- I never thought that some of my friends- intelligent and politically savvy people could support a mountebank ( : a boastful unscrupulous pretender : charlatan)for the highest office…rsk

Americans used to laugh at the bereted Iraqi Information Minister screaming, “I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad”, even while they could be seen moving into the city.

Now Baghdad Bob’s rhetoric has been transplanted over from Baghdad to Washington D.C.

Last year, Obama said, “I want to be clear: the American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission.” A good way to get stinking drunk is to drink a shot every time Obama precedes a blatant lie with an “I want to be clear.” And this time was no different.

The year before that he told the American people, “I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.”

No word on whether soldiers in the “Specialized Expeditionary Targeting Force” will be wearing sandals or slippers as they carry out raids into Syria to free hostages and capture ISIS terrorists.

Obama had assured Americans that the mission “will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.” Did he annex Syria and Iraq as new states while Congress was in recess?

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Cynthia E. Ayers is currently Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. Prior to accepting the Task Force position, she served as Vice President of EMPact Amercia, having retired from the National Security Agency after over 38 years of federal service.

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a meeting held by the local chapter leaders of three rather prominent organizations of security professionals (mostly cyber-security). These organizations are generally known for keeping their membership up-to-date with current threats to national security; thus, I was utterly shocked when one of them told me that his members didn’t care about foreign policy. When pressed, he assured me that nobody outside the Washington DC beltway cared about foreign policy.

Having worked national security issues my entire life, I see foreign policy and our country’s national security as inextricably linked. With acts of terrorism from foreign and domestic sources making the news on a daily basis, reports of massive numbers of increasingly successful cyberattacks, acknowledgment of an ever-expanding nuclear threat as well as attacks (physical and cyber) on critical infrastructure, can anyone convincingly argue otherwise? Especially after Paris and San Bernardino?

A January 2015 announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists proclaimed that it is now “3 Minutes to Midnight” on the Doomsday Clock, a change — as they noted — that is reflective of an international leadership problem. As indicated, practically every threat we now face (and they are legion) is of international concern. Our foreign policy is driven by what goes on internationally.

According to a sensitive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report leaked to the press today on possible past nuclear-weapons-related work by Iran (click here to read), the agency found that Iran engaged in “coordinated” nuclear weapons activities until 2003, and some nuclear-weapons work continued until 2009. This contradicts a widely cited intelligence estimate declaring that Iran had given up nuclear-weapons work completely in 2003.

The IAEA said there were no “credible indications” of nuclear-weapons-related activities in Iran after 2009, though this is not the same as having positive evidence that they stopped. The IAEA also said that Iran’s nuclear-weapons work was limited to feasibility and scientific studies and to acquiring nuclear-weapons-related capabilities.

This IAEA report follows an investigation of the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program, an issue that the IAEA has been struggling to resolve for several years. Although this investigation was agreed to in the nuclear talks that produced the July 2015 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it was formally separated from the nuclear accord at Iran’s insistence. For this reason, sanctions against Iran can be lifted regardless of the PMD investigation’s outcome.

It is unfortunate that Charles Mackay is no longer alive to add yet another chapter or two to his insightful book of human follies, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. First published in 1841, his book chronicles in sixteen examples of crowd psychology with some of the notable economic and social foibles of the past. The preface includes his observation that “[w]e find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds on one object, and go mad in its pursuit: that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and run after it, til their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

Chapter headings include The Mississippi Scheme, The South-Sea Bubble, The Tulipomania, Fortune-Telling, The Magnetisers, The Crusades, and The Witch Mania. These and the other chapters were chosen by Mackay to illustrate recurring but transient moral and economic epidemics, and to “show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes.” The foreword by Bernard Baruch in the 1932 edition references Schiller’s dictum: “Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd he at once becomes a blockhead.”

Despite Iran’s repeated claims to the contrary, a report just issued by the nuclear watchdog agency concluded that Iran had pursued a nuclear weapons program.

The Obama administration welcomed the report issued Wednesday, Dec. 2, by the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying it would likely pave the way for the removal of economic sanctions on Tehran as early as January. The report is titled “Final Assessment of Past and Present Outstanding Issues Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme.”

What did the Administration find reassuring in the report? That the IAEA was unable to find evidence that Tehran’s efforts to pursue a nuclear bomb extended beyond 2009. What is the administration prepared to ignore? That Iran has been lying all along when its leaders said its nation had never pursued creating nuclear weapons.