RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/blog/declining-fortunes/

A feeling of cultural homelessness, of accelerating decline and imminent ruin, appears to have overtaken many people today. Some do their utmost to cover over a deep intuition of anxiety. Others are prone to a spirit of gloomy resignation. Perhaps a majority are content to live in the short term, relying on the quarterly return, as it were, putting long-term viability out of mind. Some work to hasten the debacle. A committed minority are engaged in the Sisyphean labor of political and intellectual restitution. But “the sense of an ending” is unmistakable, when time, to quote Julian Barnes in his novel of that title, “really does go missing, never to return.”

As I wrote in The Big Lie, we seem to be facing the irrevocable and destructive assault of historical forces which thinkers and historians like Polybius, Ibn Khaldun, Giambattista Vico, Edward Gibbon, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, and Arnold Toynbee spelled out for us. Each in his own way elaborated the idea that all civilizations go through predictable and identifiable phases of development, flourishing, decline and collapse. In particular, Spengler’s notion in The Decline of the West of historical “contemporaneity” as involving “corresponding phases” and “chronological parallels” may be appropriate here. In this sense we would be contemporary with late fourth century-early fifth century Rome, a civilization, as Spengler wrote, “los[ing] its desire to be, and… wish[ing] itself out of the overlong daylight and back into the darkness.…”

Even modern cosmology seems to concur. In Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe, Charles Seife points out that since life and consciousness run on energy, and the supply of energy in any finite system is constantly decreasing, “civilization slows down more and more, thinking less and less, until it ceases entirely.…Some would say the process has already started.” Seife does not indicate whether cosmologists mean civilization in general or a given civilization in the course of its particular trajectory, or both — but if each civilization is considered as a finite system containing a discrete amount of “thought energy,” we might argue that what we call “Western civilization” is fast approaching a state of entropic dispersion. It certainly appears to be “thinking less and less.”

Does 1979 newspaper column shed light on 2008 campaign story? – Daily Inter Lake: Frank

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/opinion/columns/frank/article_7924e4f0-0468-11e2-8da2-0019bb2963f4.html?

Does 1979 newspaper column shed light on 2008 campaign story?
Frank Miele, DailyInterlake.com

Searching old newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have tried to use them many times to shed light on current events — or to inform readers about how the past is prologue to our very interesting present-day quandaries.

Recently, I came across a syndicated column from November 1979 that seemed to point 30 years into the future toward an obscure campaign issue that arose briefly in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Though by no means definitive, it provides an interesting insight, at least, into how Chicago politics intersected with the black power movement and Middle Eastern money at a certain point in time. Whether it has any greater relevance to the 2012 presidential campaign, I will allow the reader to decide. In order to accomplish that, I will also take the unusual step of providing footnotes and the end of this column so that each of you can do the investigative work for yourself.

The column itself had appeared in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Evening Independent of Nov. 6, but it was the work of a veteran newspaperman who at the time was working for the prestigious Chicago Tribune and whose work was syndicated nationally. (1)

So far as I know, this 1979 column has not previously been brought to light, but it certainly should be because it broke some very interesting news about the “rumored billions of dollars the oil-rich Arab nations are supposed to unload on American black leaders and minority institutions.” The columnist quoted a black San Francisco lawyer who said, “It’s not just a rumor. Aid will come from some of the Arab states.”

Well, if anyone would know, it would have been this lawyer — Donald Warden, who had helped defend OPEC in an antitrust suit that year and had developed significant ties with the Saudi royal family since becoming a Muslim and taking the name Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-calls-recent-middle-east-violence-bumps-road_652971.html

This evening on CBS’s 60 Minutes, President Barack Obama called the recent violence in the Middle East “bumps in the road.”

CBS’s Steve Kroft asked, “Have the events that took place in the Middle East, the recent events in the Middle East given you any pause about your support for the governments that have come to power following the Arab Spring?”

President Obama answered, “Well, I’d said even at the time that this is going to be a rocky path. The question presumes that somehow we could have stopped this wave of change. I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights– a notion that– people have- to be able to– participate– in– their own governance. But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because– you know, in a lot of these places– the one organizing principle– has been Islam. The one part of society that hasn’t been controlled completely by the government. There are strains of extremism, and anti-Americanism, and anti-Western sentiment. And you know can be tapped into by demagogues. There will probably be some times where we bump up against some of these countries and have strong disagreements, but I do think that over the long term, we are more likely to get a Middle East and North Africa that is more peaceful, more prosperous and more aligned with our interests.”

Of course, the recent violence in the Middle East resulted in the death of an American ambassador and three other Americans working with the State Department. Additionally, widespread mobs have gathered outside American targets across the Muslim world, including from Egypt to Pakistan.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-refers-israel-concern-over-iran-noise_652967.html

In an interview to air tonight on CBS’s 60 Minutes, President Barack Obama will refer to Israel’s concern over Iran’s march toward a nuclear program as “noise.”

“When it comes to our national security decisions — any pressure that I feel is simply to do what’s right for the American people. And I am going to block out — any noise that’s out there,” Obama says, according to AFP.

STEVE KROFT: “How much pressure have you been getting from Prime Minister Netanyahu to make up your mind to use military force in Iran?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Well—look, I have conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu all the time. And I understand and share Prime Minister Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran should not obtain a nuclear weapon, because it would threaten us, it would threaten Israel, and it would threaten the world and kick off a nuclear arms race.”

STEVE KROFT: “You’re saying, you don’t feel any pressure from Prime Minister Netanyahu in the middle of a campaign to try and get you to change your policy and draw a line in the sand? You don’t feel any pressure?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “When it comes to our national security decisions—any pressure that I feel is simply to do what’s right for the American people. And I am going to block out—any noise that’s out there. Now I feel an obligation, not pressure but obligation, to make sure that we’re in close consultation with the Israelis—on these issues. Because it affects them deeply. They’re one of our closest allies in the region. And we’ve got an Iranian regime that has said horrible things that directly threaten Israel’s existence.”

***

UPDATE II: Romney press secretary Andrea Saul responds:

“Tonight on 60 Minutes, President Obama called Israel’s legitimate concern about the impact of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons ‘noise’ and referred to Israel as merely ‘one of our closest allies in the region.’ This is just the latest evidence of his chronic disregard for the security of our closest ally in the Middle East. Governor Romney’s views stand in sharp contrast to the President’s. Governor Romney strongly believes that Israel is our most important ally in the Middle East and that support for Israel is essential to extending freedom, peace and democracy throughout the region. As president, Governor Romney will restore and protect the close alliance between our nation and the state of Israel.”

http://sarahhonig.com/2012/09/23/rekindling-rushdie/

As the world braces for more outbreaks of Muslim vengeance for perceived religious insults, there are new twists in author Salman Rushdie’s saga, which in 1989 brought fanatic Islamism’s intolerance to the Free World’s attention.

Iran’s ayatollahs seized upon Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses to launch a global campaign to silence freedom of expression and to have whatever is put out in the public domain effectively submit to Islamic censorship.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini published a fatwa, a death sentence, against Rushdie, who was forced to live in hiding for almost a decade at a great price to his family and his personal well-being.

The harrowing episode also cost the lives of the book’s Japanese translator and of a Muslim dissident in Belgium who dared take issue with the ayatollahs’ threats against Rushdie.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/09/22/the-aarps-2-8-billion-reasons-for-supporting-obamacares-cuts-to-medicare/
Avik Roy Contributor
UNKNOWING SENIORS ARE NOW BEING HERDED INTO AARP’S GROUP PLANS THAT CUT SERVICES, LIMIT CHOICE AND ACCESS TO LAB TESTS….AND THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING….RSK
As you know if you’ve been reading this blog, Obamacare cuts $716 billion from Medicare in order to pay for its $1.9 trillion expansion of coverage to low-income Americans. It’s one of the reasons why seniors are more opposed to the new health law than any other age group. So why is it that the group that purports to speak for seniors, the American Association of Retired Persons, so strongly supports a law that most seniors oppose? According to an explosive new reportfrom Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), it’s because those very same Medicare cuts will give the AARP a windfall of $1 billion in insurance profits, and preserve another $1.8 billion that AARP already generates from its business interests.
Here’s how it works. AARP isn’t your every-day citizens’ advocacy group. The AARP is also one of the largest private health insurers in America. In 2011, the AARP generated $458 million in royalty fees from so-called “Medigap” plans, nearly twice the $266 million the lobby receives in membership dues.

Medigap plans are private insurance plans that seniors buy to cover the things that traditional, government-run Medicare doesn’t, like catastrophic coverage. Medigap plans also help seniors eliminate the co-pays and deductibles that are designed to restrain wasteful Medicare spending.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3360/kosovo-peace-tv

Here we go again desperately looking for moderates in the Moslem world. The creation and independence of Kosovo is another foothold for jihadists….Kosovo is historically a part of Serbia…..rsk

A moderate interpretation of Islam and a respect for people who believe in other religions – for which Kosovo Muslims are known – may have persuaded agitators that Kosovo was in need of an “Islamic revival” of the kind Wahhabis, Deobandis and other extremists apparently deem necessary for the global Muslim community. The “Rahma (Mercy)” charity, operating out of Bolton and Leicester in the UK, and following the radical Deobandi sect that inspired the Taliban, wires funds there.

Peace TV, an enterprise directed from India, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai by a fu­­ndamentalist Islamist preacher, Zakir Naik, has established a 12-hour daily program in Kosovo, a country 90% Muslim.

The entry into Kosovo of Naik’s Peace TV, broadcasting each day in Albanian from 9:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., appears to be an element in a novel campaign by South Asian Islamists to establish a foothold among Europe’s indigenous Balkan Muslims. Peace TV’s message is hard-line Wahhabism, which insults, in aggressive terms, spiritual Sufis, Shia Muslims, non-fundamentalist Sunnis, Jews, Christians, and Hindus, among others. Radical Islamist interlopers and their financiers, mainly from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, have also been relocating to Macedonia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia.

Peace TV is coordinated in Kosovo by a local “Center for Islamic Studies,” which appears to exist only online and via television – and, in addition to Naik’s propaganda, offers academic studies and fatwas [religious opinions]. The “Center” also does not identify its officials or financing – except for its link to Naik.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3362/why-do-they-hate-us Conflicts begin with the hope of political, territorial and economic gains. Muslims are encouraged by their leaders to hate us for the same reason that Nazi leaders encouraged Germans to hate the Jews whose wealth and property they had their eyes on. The appeaser consensus obstinately refuses to understand that Muslim violence is not […]

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2882

“Every U.S. election year sees the next decisive nail in the coffin of the Serbs’ birthplace, where they fended off the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarian Empire that gave us Hitler. In 2004 we had the deadly pogroms by Albanians which spurred our bureaucrats in Congress to reward the violence by putting Kosovo on the fast-track to independence, defying our own signature on international agreements. In 2008, we sealed the deal by encouraging the Albanians to avoid legality — and declare independence unilaterally. We recognized statehood immediately, of course, thereby giving Serbia the stick even after it went for the carrot (they had voted in an obedient ‘pro-Western’ regime).

This election year, while everyone is distracted, we will militarily force the Serbs to submit to Muslim Albanian mafia rule. If Americans think the fate of Kosovo’s Serbs doesn’t foreshadow their own future, they are manifestly mistaken.”

Ex-NATO Press Officer Suing U.S.-Sponsored Kosovo Police; Black U.S. Troops to Serbs in Kosovo: Yes, You Are the White Niggers

“The slow and systematic ethnic cleansing of Serbs and other minorities takes place in Kosovo every day.” – Kristian Kahrs, former NATO press officer in Kosovo

“[From] what I was taught in school in Communist Albania, Serbs have a genetic tendency to be submissive….They are natural slaves.”

– dissident Albanian-American professor Ilia Toli

“Those few reporters who dare to risk their lives in Kosovo have had a hard time being heard by a bored public…Now, faced with the horrors of the New Kosovo, we excuse ourselves from the consequences of our actions, pleading that ‘we didn’t know.’ And where have we heard that before?”

– Ronald Kim, UPenn Ph.D. candidate, The Daily Pennsylvanian, May 4, 2000

I recently heard from Kristian Kahrs, who in 2001 was a press officer for KFOR, NATO’s Kosovo force — and in 2011 publicly apologized to Serbia. He is closing his site http://serbtrade.no, and is now using Sorry Serbia.

So I went to “Sorry Serbia,” and learned that it was the 1999 gang bang of Serbia that saw Norway GOING TO WAR FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1788, and also saw the following stunning developments in the life of Kahrs, who is fast turning heroic in my eyes. He describes his ordeal as he accompanied a few thousand Serbs to Kosovo on June 28th to attend the annual St. Vitus Day (or Vidovdan) ceremonies commemorating the battle the Serbs lost bloodily to the Ottomans in 1389. His abridged blog posts follow later, but first is a breathtaking interview with Kahrs and Canadian journalist John Bosnitch, who is riveting. They were taken by International Antiserbism Monitoring (I-AM), a newly formed, first-ever body to counter the 20-year, worldwide, government and media free-for-all on the Serbs. Kahrs talks about his eureka moment on the Kosovo war, and there are outtakes from the scene of Albanian Muslims providing “security” at a Christian Serb commemoration. Note the way international monitors look on without interference or objection to the brutish discrimination by Kosovo police. Indeed, Kosovo’s supervision by the International Steering Group was removed this month, its “authorities” deemed worthy to be fully in charge of their own (still not recognized) state.

For those who haven’t been following the developments in Kosovo since our intervention there, what is said in the video may sound unbelievable, and at least two sentences by Mr. Bosnitch may come across superficially as “anti-U.S.” But his assessment is deadly accurate. What appears below describes perfectly everything I myself observed and concluded from articles, commentaries, sound bites, and conversations I either had or overheard — all filled with the most wounding attitudes toward a nation, about whom none of the usual rules applied. It fascinated me. In a region I had no knowledge, interest, or ties to, I’d stumbled onto a people without worth. I had found a true Lower People ( “untermenschen” ). Their suffering was dismissed or scoffed at, and the more violence visited upon them, the more they deserved it. For those who prefer reading to viewing, I’ve transcribed the interviews, which flash between Kahrs and Bosnitch. Any links in the text have been added by me, and rather than italicize emphasized words, I’ve bolded them.

To Release a Blind Sheik — on The Glazov Gang
Josh Brewster, Leon Weinstein and Dwight Schultz analyze the troubling indications that Obama might release a mass murderer.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/to-release-a-blind-sheik-on-the-glazov-gang/