RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Castros already welcome foreign trade and investment. Fat lot of good it’s done for Cubans.

On a trip to Havana in the late 1990s, I toured the restoration of a 17th century convent with a Cuban architect. He told me the project was having trouble getting replacement floor tiles because of the U.S. embargo. I smiled and told him there was no blockade of the island and that the tiles could be sourced in Mexico. He grinned back at me.

“Well, OK,” he said. “The real problem is that we don’t have any money to buy them.”

Cubans are programmed from an early age to complain to anyone who will listen that “el bloqueo” is the cause of the island’s dire poverty. They know it’s a lie. But obediently repeating it is a survival skill. It raises the odds that the demented dictator won’t suspect you of having counterrevolutionary thoughts, boot you from your job, kick your children out of school and haul you off to jail.

President Obama appeared to be trying to prove his own revolutionary bona fides when he announced on Wednesday new diplomatic relations with the military dictatorship and plans to make it easier for Americans to travel to the island and engage in commerce with Cubans. He repeatedly linked the isolation of the Cuban people to U.S. policy, as the regime teaches Cuban children to do. He complained that the embargo strives to keep “Cuba closed off from an interconnected world.” In a reference to the limited access that Cubans have to telecommunications, he said “our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe.”

“WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT As Shakespeare wrote, there is special providence in the fall of a deli. Mr. Weiss and Mr. Happel took measure of the city’s loss. “It’s an amazing place with an amazing interior,” Mr. Happel said, “and once again, it’s incredibly sad to watch these old establishments that are part of New York disappear and just become another slick establishment that has no history and who knows what kind of character.””
Let’s do this quickly and without tears: After clogging arteries in the theater district for 34 years, Cafe Edison on West 47th Street will serve its last bowl of matzo ball soup on Sunday. Landlord, rent, upscale, etc. — you know the story, no need to drag it out. Diners started a petition to save the institution, with its incongruously grand vaulted ceilings and decorated columns, noting its importance to the theater world, not to mention its use as the setting for Neil Simon’s “45 Seconds From Broadway,” but to no avail. Time marches on, at a pace unslowed even by the Edison’s kasha varnishkes, which could slow an army. On Tuesday night, regulars returned for a cheap meal and an elusive sense of home, and left a little heavier. Tears? No, those were just allergies, really. Sniffle.

IN THE SEATS Harvey Weiss, 60, and Marc Happel, 59, have been a couple for 34 years, and regulars at Cafe Edison for about 30. Mr. Weiss is an artist and decorative painter, with an eye for the Edison’s irreplaceable textured walls and ceilings, accented in white and an otherworldly pinkish brown. Mr. Happel is the costume director at the New York City Ballet and has designed costumes for numerous theatrical events over the years. Which has meant a lot of pre-Broadway meals at Edison. “If you’re going to the theater at 8 o’clock, you can walk in here at 7:30 and have a decent bowl of soup and a sandwich and be out of here and walk into that theater at five to eight and be filled and be quite content,” Mr. Happel said. On Tuesday they were seeing “It’s Only a Play.”

The amateur ideologues of the Obama Administration have fallen into another snakepit with their tacit endorsement of the notorious Cuban dictatorship. That’s despite all the nonsense about a blossoming Cuban economy if Washington just relents.

In reality, Washington is buckling in its opposition to one of the world’s most hideous regimes. Now its death throes will be perpetuated for Cuba’s 12 million people with the help of such deep thinkers as Sen. Rand Paul who dreams despite all the evidence in China and Vietnam to the contrary that contagious capitalism will bring down a police state.

Even more shameful is the helping hand – which Pres. Barack Hussein Obama acknowledged – of Canada and the Vatican in this new Obama enterprise. For half a century Canadian nickel interests and the always anti-American wheat lobby have blackened Ottawa’s reputation with its support of the Castros. At the Vatican, whose help Obama also acknowledged, there are echoes of the Church’s tacit support of Franco and other cruel dictatorships, as well as Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s ambiguous relationship with Argentine totalitarians as Jesuit Father Provincial in his native country before mounting the papacy. [Nor is this gesture likely to help stave off the growing influence of Evangelical Christians on the old Roman Catholic monopoly of Christian believers throughout Latin America.]

Despite all the talk of the regime moderating , Raúl Castro holds more than 57,000 political prisoners. And his dungeons have sucked in more new victims in the past year than the five previous years. Conditions are as bad as in the worst days of the Soviet Union and the East Eruopean Communist Bloc, producing hunger strikes in a noble if feeble effort against solitary confinement, beatings, restricted family visits and denial of medical care. There is no redress except for American citizens like the naïve and very lucky Alan Philip Gross who had maximum U.S. support for his release on trumped up charges, but only after five years..

It is that not Israel is being judged by criteria different to those applied to the region’s gory tyrannies, but that it is being judged by standards different to those that the EU judges itself.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4,

Israel should insist that we discriminate [against it], that we apply double standards [to it], this is because you are one of us. – Jesper Vahr, Danish ambassador to Israel, at The Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference on December 12

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. – Albert Einstein

Last Thursday, the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference took place in the capital with an impressive lineup of prominent public figures – including the present and the previous presidents and the US ambassador.

The real fireworks, however, took place in the panel discussion dealing with relations between the EU and Israel.

At least 11 people were wounded Sunday when a motorist rammed his car into a number of crowds in the city of Dijon in eastern France.

The driver was arrested by police after targeting passersby at five different locations in the city, a police source said.

The driver, who authorities believe to be mentally unstable, was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) and “that he was acting for the children of Palestine,” a source close to the investigation said.

“The man, born in 1974, is apparently imbalanced and had been in a psychiatric hospital,” the source told AFP, adding that “for now his motives are still unclear.”

The source said nine people were lightly injured while two more were severely wounded.

The incident was reminiscent of a series of vehicular attacks by Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank over November that left several dead and over a dozen injured.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron responded to the terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia, in which two of more than 17 hostages were killed by an Islamic extremist. Referring to “lone wolf terrorists,” he said this was a reminder of danger that Britain faces. It would seem to me that we have had enough Lone Wolves to constitute a substantial wolf pack, and enough “extremists” to consider them “conventional.” How many people must die before heads of state concede that the crimes worldwide are not extreme, not unusual, and not lone wolf? This is Islamic-style warfare against the West, without the sophisticated weaponry, khaki uniforms or tanks. It is time to connect the voluminous dots between the burnings and beheadings in 624 AD and those executed today.

We so naively call them self-starters or lone wolves when daily thousands of individuals are inspired and encouraged by an imam in a mosque to be a Soldier of Allah, eagerly awaiting his turn to immerse himself in the blood of infidels. Perhaps the designation helps the West cope with the 1.3 billion Muslims who have unleashed their millions into the world. Perhaps the singular terminology keeps the West from considering war against the multitudes, or courageously declaring the Qur’an and Sharia antithetical to Western beliefs, or fear of inciting the so-called moderates to reach their full barbarous potential.

THIS IS WELCOME NEWS SINCE INDIA CURRIED FAVOR WITH ARAB TYRANTS IN THE PAST….RSK
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-may-end-support-to-palestine-at-un/article6713364.ece?homepage=true

In what could amount to a tectonic shift in the country’s foreign policy, the Modi government is looking at altering India’s supporting vote for the Palestinian cause at the United Nations to one of abstention.
Two sources within the government confirmed to The Hindu that the change, which will be a fundamental departure from India’s support to the cause of a Palestinian state, was under consideration.
“Like other foreign policy issues, the Modi government is looking at India’s voting record at the United Nations on the Palestinian issue,” a government source told The Hindu. The change only needs an administrative nod, the second source said.
Despite the growing defence and diplomatic ties with Israel, the UPA government, which junked traditional ally Iran to vote with the United States at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005, had baulked at making any change in India’s support to the Palestinians.
Even former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s government, which invited Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to India in 2003, did not amend India’s voting record at the U.N.
India’s stance at the U.N. has been an irritant in Indo-Israeli relations, with Tel Aviv frustrated that close bonds had not resulted in any change in the stance on Palestine.
A senior Israeli interlocutor told a visiting Indian External Affairs Minister some time ago that New Delhi treated Tel Aviv like a “mistress” – by keeping the bilateral relationship away from the public gaze. This re-examination of India’s voting stance will come as sweet music to Israeli ears just as it will raise concerns in West Asian capitals about the future course of Indian foreign policy.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/india-may-change-pro-palestinian-stance-at-un/

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. By any measurement, Western policy towards United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the internationally funded agency for Palestinian “refugees,” meets that definition. One example is the newly released 2015 State Department Framework for Cooperation Between UNRWA and the U.S.

This exercise in repetition occurred in the wake of a war that again exposed UNRWA’s unsavory and illegal activities, from being “shocked” that its schools were used to store Hamas’ rockets and rote condemnations of Israel, to its employees cheering the murder of Israelis. The framework nevertheless represents the American commitment to prolong the existence of UNRWA, established almost exactly 65 years ago.

The bulk of the document deals with UNRWA management. For example, there are the “15 objectives of the Medium Term Strategy” and the “Development of Strategic Response Plans for each of UNRWA’s five fields of operation through a consultative process.” The document also speaks of the “Continued implementation of ongoing management reforms, particularly in the areas of results-based management, resource mobilization, human resources, transition to and management of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) data management system, and internal communications.”

Islamic Human Sex-Trafficking — on The Glazov Gang
Dr. Mark Durie explains why ISIS’s new sex-slave pamphlet references Islamic texts.
http://jamieglazov.com/2014/12/21/islamic-human-sex-trafficking-on-the-glazov-gang/

The so-called new Cuba policy has put Senator Rubio on front stage. He has become the face of the opposition to President Obama’s decision to change our approach to Cuba.

On the other side, there is Senator Paul, who supports President Obama’s decision.

Phillip Rucker of The Washington Post sees it as an early sign of 2016 GOP divisions:

The feud is the loudest public dispute so far between potential GOP 2016 candidates and lays bare the divergent world views of traditional hawks — including Rubio and past Republican presidents and nominees — and the emerging, younger libertarian wing represented by Paul.

For decades, Rubio’s position has been the GOP’s natural default. But Paul is testing that convention.