RUTHFULLY YOURS

When Did Honesty Become Optional? By Frank Salvato

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/4590

Throughout time politicians and their handlers have been prone to omitting unpleasant facts or manipulating them so as to mold issues to their advantage. This is the concept behind “spin”; a form of propagandizing that crafts an “alternative” interpretation of an issue, organization, person, event or campaign in order to sway the public’s opinion “for” or “against” said issue, organization, person, event or campaign. In fact, the “art of spin” has created an entirely separate category of political animal; the “spin doctor,” many of whom are regularly featured on the many mainstream media news outlets disguised as “political strategists.” But somewhere along the line, the art of employing wit, reason, personality and persuasive rhetoric in order to achieve a political ends gave way to the blatant lie, and never before has it been as evident as it is today.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/the_coming_end_to_endless_talk Crunch time is coming in Iran, but President Obama and his men act as if they’re at the senior prom, trying to dance the minuet without anyone to dance with. The White House is trying desperately to rewrite Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s interview with David Ignatius of The Washington Post, where Panetta was said […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/17/eric-allen-bell-nonie-darwish-and-mark-tapson-join-the-glazov-gang-1-1-1-1/
Breaking Ranks — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Eric Alan Bell, Nonie Darwish and Mark Tapson discuss their journeys out of their political faiths.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/17/symposium-putin-forever/

Jim Woolsey, Evgeny Legedin, Yuri Yarim-Agaev, Igor Melcuk, Gregory Glazov, Theodore Dalrymple, Mike Pacepa, Jay Bergman and David Satter, thank you for joining this special edition of Frontpage Symposium.

An All-Star panel, including two ex-spy chiefs from opposite sides of the Cold War, gathers to discuss the KGB’s power and the new freedom movement in the streets of Russia.

Symposium: Putin Forever?

In this special Frontpage Symposium, we have gathered an All-Star panel to discuss the power of the KGB and the meaning of the new freedom movement in the streets of Russia. Our distinguished guests are:

Jim Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence 1993-95.

Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking official to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. Romania’s Communist president Nicolae Ceausescu was executed at the end of a trial whose accusations came almost word for word out of Pacepa’s book Red Horizons, subsequently republished in 27 countries.

Evgeny Legedin, a street-art painter and political activist from Yekaterinburg. As a coordinator of the youth anti-Putin movement “Oborona” and participant in the democratic movement “Solidarity,” he has organized countless rallies and demonstrations of protest, including the all-Russian campaign for freedom of rallies “Strategy-31.” He is the author of the mock prize “Golden Evsyuk,” the “award” given every year to the worst policemen in Yekaterinburg. In fear for being imprisoned on fabricated criminal charges, he fled Russia on August 16 and reached the UK, where he is seeking political asylum.

Dr. Igor Melcuk, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Montreal and Member of the Royal Society of Canada. He left the Soviet Union in 1977 after being expelled from the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences because he defended Andrei Sakharov​ in a letter published in The New York Times​.

Dr. Gregory Glazov, a Rhodes scholar who is now Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Immaculate Conception School of Theology, Seton Hall University, USA and Program Coordinator of the Institute for Christian Spirituality’s Great Spiritual Books program which frequently focuses on spiritual writings in Soviet and Nazi prison camps. He is currently completing several manuscripts that include commentaries on The Lord’s Prayer and on The Book of Job, as well as an introduction to Jewish-Catholic relationships, entitled, Brothers in Hope: Models of Judaism in Catholic Perspective (NDU Press), and a translation and commentary on Vladimir Solovyov’s writings on Judaism and Christianity, an interest that bespeaks his spiritual legacy as the son of Russian dissidents, Yuri and Marina Glazov.

http://sarahhonig.com/2012/02/17/another-tack-adib-shishakli-and-shukri-al-quwatli/

“There’s no getting away from the fact that paying off dictators to secure a semblance of accommodation is a losing proposition, because eventually dictators disappear. With them vanishes the peace we’re required to fork out for. There’s no Better Business Bureau or Customer Service to refund Israel’s hefty, tangible and eminently risky investment in land-for-peace fantasies.”

Forgotten is our peculiar urban folklore, yesteryear’s spontaneous fun of small Israeli kids rapidly rolling off their tongues the names of assorted Syrian tyrants. This singsong accompanied sidewalk games and was a staple of silly summertime tongue-twister contests.

Nobody then remotely believed that riots and havoc in neighboring autocracies could betoken the rise of democracy in the Arab-speaking sphere.

But for too long we’ve lost touch with our not-so-distant past, a time when recurrent “Arab Springs” were once announced with dizzying frequency. In Syria especially they followed in furious succession until, in 1970, one Hafez Assad proclaimed the longest-lasting self-styled spring and actually managed to pass on control of the abundant Damascene sunshine and blossoms to his son, Bashar.

http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/2012/02/gordon-lies-propagated-out-of-ignorance.html?

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/02/15/lies-propagated-by-ignorance/#more-783921

Michael Rubin offered a shocking example yesterday of the kind of warped analysis that results when a journalist “goes native” by adopting the biases of the country in which he is stationed. I agree this can be a serious problem when diplomats, journalists and other international officials spend too long in a given country, but I’m no less concerned by the opposite problem: Frequent rotations mean journalists and diplomats have no incentive to develop real expertise in any foreign country. The result is they are often parachuted in with no knowledge of the local languages, history or other information needed to actually understand what’s going on, leaving them dependent on local “fixers” – who may well be pursuing their own agendas.

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16170080   Sam Kiley, defence and security editor Iran and al Qaeda’s core leadership under Ayman al Zawahiri have established an “operational relationship” amid fears the terror group is planning a spectacular attack against the West. There are concerns such an attack, possibly targeting Europe, would be in revenge for the killing of Osama bin […]

http://www.cjnews.com/british/british-muslim-zionist-pulls-no-punches

WINNIPEG — Kasim Hafeez has seen the truth and, in an address to a largely Jewish audience at the Asper Jewish Community Campus on Feb. 6, he pulled no punches.

Wahhabism, the Saudi Arabian version of Islam, is little different than Nazism, Hafeez said. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should be facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, he said.
Anti-Zionism is code for antisemitism, he said.The Islamic concern for Jerusalem is purely political, he said. Until the creation of Israel, Jerusalem was unimportant to most Muslims.

And often, he noted, those who claim to be pro-Palestinian are just anti-Israel.

Hafeez, 29, a British-born Muslim of Pakistani origin, knows of what he speaks.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/republican-senator-obama-administration-lawless-administration IS THERE SOMETHING IN THE AIR IN WISCONSIN THAT PRODUCES SUCH SMART, GUTSY LEGISLATORS LIKE GOV. SCOTT WALKER, REP. PAUL RYAN AND SENATOR RON JOHNSON? Senator Ron Johnson: Obama Administration Is ‘a Lawless Administration.’ Elizabeth Harrington, CNSNews.com Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on Tuesday that he believes the Obama administration “has become a lawless […]

http://nsroundtable.org/
As We See It
N. Korea Orders People Home
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N. Korea-N. Koreans cheer during unveiling of new statue of late leader #1(b).jpg

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Big Mullah Is Watching…
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Iran-Control room of Internet provider in Iran #1(c).jpg

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Somalia-al Shabab fighters perform military exercises #1(c).jpg

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“Kissing Assad’s Ass”
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Syria-Bashar al Assad #2(b).jpg

We should not be surprised to see the likes of former Ambassador Martin Indyk cozying up to the Damascus regime’s equivalent of Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad Bob…

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The Groveling Continues
February 13, 2012
N. Korea-Kim Jong Il & Sec of State Madeline Albright #2(c).jpg

A US envoy will meet with North Korean officials next week to “test” N. Korea’s willingness to abandon its nuclear program. Who can forget the last US administration that believed in ‘testing’…