RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-16/some-lessons-in-effective-scapegoating.html/

“Is it a coincidence that these academics are singling out the world’s only Jewish-majority country for boycott? Only to those who know nothing of the history of anti-Semitic scapegoating….

The American Studies Association is an unimportant American group; larger academic organizations have come out … against the idea of academic boycotts. The ASA is also facing an unlikely opponent in its anti-Israel campaign: Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, supports the boycott of settlement-made goods, but he has come out against broad anti-Israel boycotts. The ASA is more Palestinian, in other words, than the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Still, this vote by the ASA marks something of a turning point — this is the second time this year that a U.S. academic organization has called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. I assume the ASA won’t be the last group to do so. And I believe that we will one day see groups such as the ASA call for the boycott of American institutions and individuals who support Israel. Such a campaign would represent a logical extension of the boycott ratified this weekend. Yes, a boycott of businesses owned by pro-Israel American Jews would have a special odor about it, but really, doesn’t the ASA boycott have something of the same smell?” [Emphasis added]

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

This makes it the third academic organisation in the United States to award pariah status to the world’s only Jewish State.
Here’s its statement:

“The council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) declares its support for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

A broad coalition of Palestinian non-governmental organizations, acting in concert to represent the Palestinian people, formed the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Their call was taken up in the United States by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. A NAISA member-initiated petition brought this issue to NAISA Council. After extensive deliberation on the merits of the petition, the NAISA Council decided by unanimous vote to encourage members of NAISA and all who support its mission to honor the boycott.

NAISA is dedicated to free academic inquiry about, with, and by Indigenous communities. The NAISA Council protests the infringement of the academic freedom of Indigenous Palestinian academics and intellectuals in the Occupied Territories and Israel who are denied fundamental freedoms of movement, expression, and assembly, which we uphold.

As the elected council of an international community of Indigenous and allied non-Indigenous scholars, students, and public intellectuals who have studied and resisted the colonization and domination of Indigenous lands via settler state structures throughout the world, we strongly protest the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the legal structures of the Israeli state that systematically discriminate against Palestinians and other Indigenous peoples.

NAISA is committed to the robust intellectual and ethical engagement of difficult and often highly charged issues of land, identity, and belonging. Our members will have varying opinions on the issue of the boycott, and we encourage generous dialogue that affirms respectful disagreement as a vital scholarly principle. We reject shaming or personal attacks as counter to humane understanding and the greater goals of justice, peace, and decolonization.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/us-government-purges-of-law-enforcement-training-material-deemed-offensive-to-muslims#ixzz2npB08Q3i

“Documentation and Analysis of Islamist Active Measures and Influence Operations Targeting Anti-terrorism Training” includes detailed chronology, identifies specific propaganda organizations, names top Obama administration “Islamist influence operators”

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released a “Special Report: U.S. Government Purges of Law Enforcement Training Material Deemed ‘Offensive’ to Muslims: Documentation and Analysis of Islamist Active Measures and Influence Operations Targeting Anti-terrorism Training.”

The 26-page Special Report includes a detailed chronology, identifies specific Islamic propaganda organizations, and identifies five top “Islamist influence operators” associated with the Obama administration. More than 12 years of Judicial Watch work on national security issues is featured in the Special Report, highlighting information from government documents exclusively obtained by the organization.
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The heavily footnoted Report centers on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) purge of anti-terrorism training material and curricula deemed “offensive” to Muslims. The curricula purge – documented through a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in June 2013 – occurred following a February 8, 2012, meeting between FBI Director Robert Mueller and various Islamic organizations. According to the Report, the purge was part of a “broader Islamist influence operation” designed to “influence the opinions and actions of persons, institutions, governments and the public at-large.” The Report also documents incidents of “Islamic influence operations” at the Departments of Justice and State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Obama White House.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4466/the_roots_of_our_western_angst There is nothing so paralysing as a fear borne of fatalism. When our power, as at all our greatest moments, is generated primarily by a confidence in our values, then the failure any longer to believe in those values is capable of shutting us down Do we know what we want? Can we get […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/366569/obamacares-silent-insurers-jonah-goldberg When will the insurers revolt? It’s a question that’s popping up more and more. On the surface, the question answers itself. We’re talking about pinstriped insurance-company executives, not Hells Angels. One doesn’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but if you were going to guess which vocations lend themselves least to revolutionary […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/366599/inequality-does-not-matter-kevin-d-williamson

The poor and the middle class are falling behind, and it has nothing to do with the 1 percent.

President Barack Obama gave a very silly speech in which he affirmed that economic inequality is to be the centerpiece of his remaining time in office. He has made similar suggestions about other issues — global warming and gun control, notably — and, President Obama being President Obama, it is very likely the case that his laser-like focus will consist of a series of speeches and very little else. The politics of the moment will determine which issue actually gets his attention, though he could go with his admirers at Washington Monthly, who contend that some of them are the same issue: Mass shootings, Daniel Luzer argues in a particularly batty piece of connect-the-imaginary-dots, has “everything to do with the distribution of wealth in America.”

It is difficult to take President Obama seriously on these issues, but it is difficult to not take seriously Josh Barro and Paul Krugman, both of whom have offered what seem to me to be inconclusive arguments, Mr. Barro under the headline “Sorry, Libertarians, Inequality Does Matter,” Professor Krugman under “Why Inequality Matters.” Strangely, neither of these erudite gentlemen quite manages to establish that inequality matters.

Mr. Barro writes: “Economic growth is not the same thing as well-being. The point of economic growth is that it leads to improvements in standards of living. If the gains from economic growth are not broadly shared, but instead accrue disproportionately to people already at the top of the income distribution, then a lot of economic growth will only generate a little improvement in living standards for most people. For this reason, rising inequality is a problem even if it does not hold back GDP.” This is true in a sense, but it reverses cause and effect: Incomes among the bottom half of earners are not stagnating because of increasing inequality; inequality is increasing because incomes among the bottom half of earners is stagnating. It could have been the case that incomes among the bottom half of earners were stagnating while incomes for the top half were absolutely crashing, in which case you would have a situation in which there was less inequality but everybody was worse off, or at least no better off. Conversely, we could have an economy in which the poor and the middle class see strong gains in their income and their wealth, but the very well off experience twice those gains, which would mean a society of increasing inequality in which everybody is better off. I have encountered progressives who state their preference for the outcome in which we are all poorer but more equal over the outcome in which we are all richer but less equal, which puzzles me.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/12/kangaroo-boycott/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=f924263a6f-Mosaic_2013_12_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-f924263a6f-41165129

By a two-thirds margin of the third of its 5,000 members who cast ballots, the American Studies Association (ASA) has passed a “Resolution on Academic Boycott of Israel,” joining the Association for Asian American Studies as the second U.S. academic professional association to boycott Israeli academic institutions for their complicity in the “Israeli occupation of Palestine” and various injustices related to it. Next up the Modern Language Association. The ASA has made its decision, to paraphrase that great perpetrator of American-settler colonialism, Andrew Jackson, and now Israeli universities need to figure out what just what exactly they can do so that the ASA might one day rescind its enforcement.

Unfortunately, the ASA provides little clue. Though its members would presumably object to a system of crime and punishment that delineates neither the terms of the crime, nor the length of the punishment, nor the means to achieve restitution for it—indeed, presumably that’s one of the many features of the “occupation” the ASA finds objectionable, as well it should—they have nevertheless enacted a measure that does just that.

“What is required for an Israeli university to no longer be subject to the boycott?” Well that, the ASA’s response begins, is a “difficult question to answer.” More difficulty ensues. “The boycott is designed to put real and symbolic pressure on universities to take an active role in ending the Israeli occupation and in extending equal rights to Palestinians. The international boycott, divestment, and sanctions [BDS] movement has called for a boycottto be in effect until these conditions are met.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/muslim-men-beat-wives-human-rights-groups-blame-israel/print/

They can’t blame the Muslim men. Obviously. That would be passing judgement on their culture. Blaming Israel though is always the right answer.

Frequent Israeli military attacks have left a large number of women in Gaza on their own to raise their families. Pal-Think for Strategic Studies estimates that in just the aftermath of the 23-day Israeli military operation called “Cast Lead” in 2008-2009, more than 800 new widows were created. These widows suffer from insecure incomes and constant feelings of threat and insecurity, high levels of anxiety and concern about lack of access to education and other services for them and their children.

Wait… but why did the evil Zionist war machine kill men rather than women? Is it possible that these tragic victims were really terrorists .And even when the terrorists survive, they start divorcing their wives. Because Israel.

A result of these growing tensions is a rise in the divorce rate (perceived as increasing by 24.6 per cent of the interviewees)

“Aisha, I am divorcing you.” “But why, Mohammed?” “Because of Zionism.”

…and violence against women and girls. More than half (58.9 per cent) of the women in the study said they believe domestic violence is a growing problem in Gaza, and an even larger proportion (61.3 per cent) think their children are more at risk.

Gaza is run by Hamas, which hews to a more “traditional” Islamic view of the female sex. That may have something to do with it. But no, it’s obviously Israel.

It’s unknown why Muslim men in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia beat their wives. But it’s also probably Israel’s fault.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/the-progressive-reality-is-here/print/ The Republicans are feeling confident these days. The slow-motion debacle of Obamacare promises to keep that albatross around the necks of the Democrats at least through next year’s midterm elections. The IRS, NSA, and Benghazi scandals are still simmering, and any day new information may emerge that puts them back on the front page. […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/mandela-and-double-standards-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Ann-Marie Murrell, Monty Morton and Dwight Schultz. The Gang gathered to discuss The Direction of Health Care if ObamaCare Persists. The dialogue occurred in Part II and examined the damage that is in store to Americans’ healthcare if Obama gets his way. The segment also shed light on: Does a $17 Trillion Debt Really Matter? In Part I, the Gang shed light on Mandela and Double Standards (see Daniel Greenfield’s article The Mandela Myth). The episode also focused on “Elian Gonzalez Leaves Cuba For First Time,” “Obama’s Handshake with Raul Castro,” and much, much more. See both parts of the two-part series below: