RUTHFULLY YOURS

Soon after an open-ended Israel-Hamas ceasefire came into effect at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, some still-living Hamas leaders rose out of the bunkers where they had been hiding out for weeks and led some Gazans in “victory celebrations.”

Here in Israel, we pray that we will never hold such victory celebrations.

Some of the figures from the seven weeks of war—so far, if the ceasefire holds—include:

On the side of Hamas and Gaza: about 2000 dead (about half of them fighters including members of the top Hamas command), a few hundred thousand people displaced or homeless, about 11,000 homes, schools, and mosques destroyed, 32 attack tunnels costing millions of dollars and years of labor destroyed, and about 2500 mostly shorter-range rockets remaining out of what had been 10,000.

On Israel’s side: 70 dead (64 of them soldiers), some mild, passing economic damage, vastly smaller totals of property damage, and vastly smaller numbers of Gaza-area Israelis leaving their homes temporarily or, in some cases, moving to other parts of the country.

Added to all that is the fact that the ceasefire deal [2] reached on Tuesday is the same one Hamas could have had in early July before most of the destruction was wreaked, and that it grants none of Hamas’s major demands: an airport, a seaport, and prisoner releases. Instead Israel agreed to reopen Gaza border crossings—something it would have done in any case, since it does not want to deny Gazans basic goods and cause severe crises—and to a slight expansion of the fishing zone off Gaza’s coast.

A hands-down win for Israel, then?

Not if you ask a lot of Israelis—particularly right-wing cabinet ministers and other right-wing critics of the government, and embittered residents of the Gaza-bordering towns and villages.

There are several news stories making the rounds today expressing great surprise that young Muslim men who reside in Minnesota – particularly those having ties to the state’s substantial Somali community – are fighting for the Islamic State terrorist organization (aka “ISIS” or “ISIL”). Two Minnesota Muslims have reportedly been killed. What surprises me is that anyone is surprised. In my 2010 book on the Muslim Brotherhood, The Grand Jihad, I devoted a chapter to the Islamic supremacist infiltration of Minnesota. Even then, that infiltration was marked by ties to al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as a concerted effort to implement sharia principles in U.S. law and institutions, including the classroom and the economy. The chapter is reproduced below.

The questions came rat-tat-tat at this townhall meeting for Amy Klobuchar. A member of Minnesota’s hard Left Democratic Farm Labor Party, she was campaigning as the Democrats’ nominee for the United States Senate. Her answers sounded like babble, or perhaps clipped laughter: Haa, haa, haa. But she wasn’t laughing. Klobuchar was speaking Somali.

And she was saying “yes”: Yes to “comprehensive immigration reform”; yes to foreign language programs; yes to helping Somali money-service businesses that her constituents used to send the American dollars they learned back “home”; yes to meeting regularly with the Somali community so they could monitor that she was producing on the commitments that, absolutely haa, she was making.

The two hundred Somalis in the audience seemed pleased. They were no doubt happier still when Klobuchar won in a landslide. She rode the same wave that carried Keith Ellison into Congress. Another Farm Labor Party member, Ellison became the first Muslim to sit in the House of Representatives. He credited his victory to the enthusiastic support of Somalis. He took the oath of office, swearing on the Koran, to represent Minnesota’s fifth congressional district. In that district lies the entire City of Minneapolis. It is the Muslim enclave.

The local Somali population that has been estimated at 100,000, representing somewhere between half and two-thirds the the total number of Somalis now living in the United States. There may be many more. The actual population size is unknowable because of rampant illegal immigration, widespread identity and documentation fraud, and what the FBI gingerly describes as “a cultural reluctance to share personal information with census takers [that] has prevented an accurate count of the ethnic Somali population inside the United States.”

Shiraz Maher, a British citizen who lived the experience, describes the allure of the Islamic State for young Westerners and the deadly peril it poses.

On 9/11, Shiraz Maher thought to himself: “Yeah, you Americans deserve this. For meddling in the Arab world. For supporting Israel. You shall reap what you sow, and this is what you’ve sown for a long time.”

Within days the college student would quit alcohol, dump his girlfriend and join Hizbut Tahrir, a radical Islamist group he describes as the “political wing of the global jihad movement.” He quickly climbed the ranks before eventually leaving the U.K. Islamist movement and rededicating his life to countering it.

Mr. Maher is today a senior fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, King’s College London, where he researches Europe’s homegrown Islamist movement and profiles the droves of young Britons who are decamping for Syria and Iraq to wage jihad with ISIS, aka the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

These include Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, a wannabe rapper from a posh west-London neighborhood who recently posted a Twitter selfie of himself holding a severed head. “Chillin’ with my homie,” read the caption, “or what’s left of him.” Abdel Bary is also suspected to be the terrorist who addresses the camera before beheading American journalist James Foley in a widely circulated online video, though Mr. Maher thinks the masked figure is a different British jihadist.

Abdel Bary is one of 500 to 600 British citizens who have joined the Islamic State, and Mr. Maher’s center estimates about 2,200 foreign fighters from Europe are operating in the region. “Globally we believe the number to be somewhere in excess of 12,000. We’ve counted 74 different nationalities that are represented on the ground.”

American physicians are increasingly unhappy with their once-vaunted profession, and that malaise is bad for their patients

All too often these days, I find myself fidgeting by the doorway to my exam room, trying to conclude an office visit with one of my patients. When I look at my career at midlife, I realize that in many ways I have become the kind of doctor I never thought I’d be: impatient, occasionally indifferent, at times dismissive or paternalistic. Many of my colleagues are similarly struggling with the loss of their professional ideals.

It could be just a midlife crisis, but it occurs to me that my profession is in a sort of midlife crisis of its own. In the past four decades, American doctors have lost the status they used to enjoy. In the mid-20th century, physicians were the pillars of any community. If you were smart and sincere and ambitious, at the top of your class, there was nothing nobler or more rewarding that you could aspire to become.

Today medicine is just another profession, and doctors have become like everybody else: insecure, discontented and anxious about the future. In surveys, a majority of doctors express diminished enthusiasm for medicine and say they would discourage a friend or family member from entering the profession. In a 2008 survey of 12,000 physicians, only 6% described their morale as positive. Eighty-four percent said that their incomes were constant or decreasing. Most said they didn’t have enough time to spend with patients because of paperwork, and nearly half said they planned to reduce the number of patients they would see in the next three years or stop practicing altogether.

American doctors are suffering from a collective malaise. We strove, made sacrifices—and for what? For many of us, the job has become only that—a job.

Jack Moore reports for International Business Times, Aug. 26, 2014, that a new poll by ICM Research found that almost a sixth (16%) of the French population (16%) have a favorable disposition towards the jihadist group ISIS or ISIL (now known as the Islamic State).

The younger the respondent, the more likely they were to have a favorable view of IS, with the youngest age group, the 18-24 year-olds being most favorable.

Worse still, France has witnessed a growing threat of terrorism in recent years as hundreds of young French Muslims are believed to have flocked abroad to fight for jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, with the potential to return home as radicalized members of society.

ISIL’s territorial ambitions are evident in its name — Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Levant today consists of the island of Cyprus, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and part of southern Turkey. (See “ISIS: the savage jihadists laying waste to Iraq”)

http://online.wsj.com/articles/henry-kissinger-on-the-assembly-of-a-new-world-order-1409328075?KEYWORDS=KISSINGER

The “con”-cept that has underpinned the modern geopolitical era is in crisis

What a remarkable feat…First: Kissinger has just undergone heart surgery and seems mighty indomitable. Second: He has been dead wrong on virtually everything….China, “detente” the Middle East, Vietnam…and out of the halls of power since he was Sec. of State for the parenthesis President Gerald Ford. Ronald Reagan in 1976 exposed all the faux strategies laid out by Kissinger. Furthermore, his terrible treatment of Israel during and after the 1973 war is a stain on his legacy. His crude threat of “a reassessment of relations” if Israel did not bow to the post war (a war that Egypt waged in a surprise attack meant to destroy Israel) demands by Egypt was outrageous…..Furthermore, he understood nothing of the threat of Islam to the west or civilization.Nothing shines in his resume as National Security Adviser to Nixon of as Secretary of State…He is a major fraud…..rsk

Libya is in civil war, fundamentalist armies are building a self-declared caliphate across Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan’s young democracy is on the verge of paralysis. To these troubles are added a resurgence of tensions with Russia and a relationship with China divided between pledges of cooperation and public recrimination. The concept of order that has underpinned the modern era is in crisis.

The search for world order has long been defined almost exclusively by the concepts of Western societies. In the decades following World War II, the U.S.—strengthened in its economy and national confidence—began to take up the torch of international leadership and added a new dimension. A nation founded explicitly on an idea of free and representative governance, the U.S. identified its own rise with the spread of liberty and democracy and credited these forces with an ability to achieve just and lasting peace. The traditional European approach to order had viewed peoples and states as inherently competitive; to constrain the effects of their clashing ambitions, it relied on a balance of power and a concert of enlightened statesmen. The prevalent American view considered people inherently reasonable and inclined toward peaceful compromise and common sense; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals, enrich societies and substitute economic interdependence for traditional international rivalries.

1. Do you think your book “Hard Choices” bombed due to a vast right wing conspiracy?

2.When you left the White House flat broke, did you apply for government assistance in purchasing your mansion in Washington, D.C. and your mini estate in Chappaqua?

3. At the beginning of Syria’s civil war you said “”There is a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” How would you appraise him now?

4. You once called the Russia “reset” a “brilliant” event. What do you think now?

5. You explained in July that Hamas hides their military weapons among civilians due mainly to geography and size, not religious extremism or hatred of the state of Israel. When asked about Hamas use of schools to fire rockets at Israel, thereby endangering children, you had this to say: “Hamas puts its missiles, its rockets in civilian areas; part of it is because Gaza is pretty small and it’s densely populated.” Is that an example of doing stupid stuff?

GO TO THEIR WEBSITE AND SEE THE AMAZING WORK THEY DO….RSK
This story of spending malfeasance and Board complicity at the second largest public higher education institution in Illinois continues to develop. And what we continue to discover is not pretty. But on the positive side, our efforts are having some impact….to the unhappy detriment of a bloated bureaucracy. Even the Tribune is weighing in and NOT in favor of the status quo. Refreshing.

-Matt

http://www.openthebooks.com/

CASE STUDY: “EVERY DIME. ONLINE”
AGGRESSIVE FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY & REFORM

Illinois Junior College Goes Wild

Wine Cellar, French Restaurant, Shooting Club, corrupted
$20 million state grant, a President’s $500,000 Comp Package,
$600 Million in Construction Projects, & much more…
Read our summary, click here

Rather than institute reform, the college targeted the reformer

Today, from the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board…

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/wyoming-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=puball

Primary: August 19, 2014

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).

U.S. Senate

John Barrasso (R) Next Election in 2018.
Mike Enzi (R) Incumbent 2014

http://www.enziforwyoming.com/ http://www.enzi.senate.gov/public/

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Michael_Enzi.htm**

Rated -1 by AAI, indicating a mixed Arab/Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

IMMIGRATION An important part of securing our nation is securing our borders. Illegal immigration is just that – illegal and should be treated as such. Federal law provides enforcement authority to address the illegal population within our borders, but these laws have not been enforced properly. Better enforcement of our laws is the first step. I oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. Congress should continue to examine our immigration policy and determine what legislation is needed and in what areas, but for me – amnesty is off the table. Amnesty rewards people for breaking the law. It puts illegal immigrants at the head of the line in front of those who are following the rules in order to gain United States citizenship. Below are my principles on how the Senate can address immigration reform. This six-step proposal reflects ideas and concepts from a host of proposals already discussed. We could enact any one of these sensible proposals today and produce results tomorrow. Amnesty for illegal immigrants is not a part of this proposal and I will not support amnesty.

HEALTHCARE – Fight to Dismantle Obamacare:

Mike has worked against Obamacare at every opportunity. Fox News called him the “Paul Revere” of the Anti-Obamacare movement. Before the law passed, Mike took to the Senate floor to denounce several possible bad effects which proved true.
Mike Enzi has been a steadfast opponent of Obamacare from the beginning. As early as 2010, he was proposing market-based healthcare solutions directly counter to monstrosity of the Obamacare legislation.
He voted against Obamacare in committee and on the floor of the Senate. He co-sponsored legislation to fully repeal Obamacare and another to fully defund it. Mike has supported 17 bills that would dismantle the worst parts of the law.
Mike also led an effort to overturn the HHS “grandfathering” regulations that has resulted in millions of Americans, including 2,600 Wyoming residents to date, being forced off their insurance coverage.

The Democratic Party and its leader, U.S. President Barack Obama, have spent several years ‎developing election themes around supposed “wars” directed by Republicans ‎against particular segments of society.

The war talk has served to fire up the base ‎among the groups supposedly under attack, and boost turnout for “progressive” ‎candidates. The most repeated and ridiculous of the war themes is the alleged “war ‎on women,” supposedly manifested most recently by challenges to the new ‎contraceptive coverage mandate under Obamacare by owners of businesses ‎opposed to the new mandate on religious grounds.

Other battles in this “war” ‎include Republicans refusing to support “equal pay for equal work” for women ‎workers, though virtually all of the alleged pay gap can be explained as having ‎nothing to do with discrimination: ‎”The [American Association of University Women] has now joined ranks with serious economists who ‎find that when you control for relevant differences between ‎men and women (occupations, college majors, length of time in ‎workplace) the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.”‎

There are other wars the Obama administration is fighting at ‎home, now that it has withdrawn from pretty much all the real ‎global conflicts, many of which have become uglier in light of ‎the vacuum created by the increasing absence of an American ‎presence in the Middle East. The recent flare-up in Ferguson, ‎Missouri, after an 18-year-old black man was shot by a white ‎police officer, was used to argue that there is a war in America ‎by white cops against black men. Although blacks comprise ‎only 13 percent of the population, they ‎commit or are the victims in about half of all murders in ‎America, almost all of which are black-on-black murders. Yet blacks represent barely 30 percent of those ‎killed by police. In addition, more than half of the shootings ‎and killings of black suspects were by black police. If anything, one might argue there is a war ‎on white suspects in America, since they are disproportionately ‎killed compared to the number of murders whites commit.

The fake wars dominate media coverage of campaigns, not a ‎surprise, since well over 90 percent of Washington journalists support ‎Democrats according to several surveys, and see their job as a ‎way to advance the causes and candidates they believe in. ‎Nonetheless, there are actual campaigns, if not wars, against ‎groups in America that never see the light of day, and whose ‎various fronts are never connected. One of these, and in some ‎ways, an ominous, and dangerous new development, has been ‎the beginnings of what might be called a war on Jews in ‎America. ‎