RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/06/the-new-york-times%e2%80%99-charlie-brown/print/

For decades now too many Western politicians, diplomats, and pundits have played Charlie Brown to the Palestinians’ Lucy. No matter how many times the Arabs have invited Westerners to kick the football of “land for peace,” only to jerk the ball away at the last minute, there remains no end of Westerners eager to line up and take another try no matter how many times they land flat on their backs.

Thomas Friedman might hold the record for falling for this trick. Just recently he endorsed a call by jailed terrorist murderer Marwan Barghouti for a “non-violent” uprising against Israel “with civil disobedience or boycotts of Israel, Israeli settlements or Israeli products.” Friedman does have one condition for his support: that the Palestinians present “a detailed map of the final two-state settlement they are seeking.” In the same column, Friedman also endorsed the view that creating a Palestinian state can create peace and stability by providing an alternative “model” to the Islamist states coming into being as a result of the “Arab Spring” uprisings: “the rise of Islamists in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria, Israelis and Palestinians” create “a greater incentive than ever to create an alternative model in the West Bank — a Singapore — to show that they [Israelis and Arabs], together, can give birth to a Palestinian state where Arab Muslims and Christians, men and women, can thrive in a secular, but religiously respectful, free-market, democratic context, next to a Jewish state.”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11744/pub_detail.asp
Generations of Americans have been raised to venerate science and those who have enhanced and extended our lives through its application. The rise of environmentalism, however, has generated a war on science, first by distorting it, and then by propagandizing the “findings”, “studies” and resulting claims based on them.

Science hoaxes have been around a long time, most famously, the “Piltdown Man”, a paleontological fraud that began in 1912, claiming to be the “missing link” between man and ape when a fake skill was discovered in a gravel pit in England. In 1869, a fake “giant petrified human body” of a ten foot tall man. Carved out of gypsum, it was quickly debunked, but the public loved the story.

In more recent times, in the 1970s, there was the claim of a discovery of a Stone Age tribe in the Philippines. This was followed by “crop circles” and, in 1999, the Archaeorapter, an archaeological fake claimed to be the link between birds and dinosaurs, debunked by 2002.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11738/pub_detail.asp

Call for Investigation over Israeli-Azerbaijan Leak

Off-the-record conversations, stories attributed to agenda-driven anonymous sources and leaks are nothing new. But something exceptionally outrageous happened last week when an article by Mark Perry was published in Foreign Policy, disclosing an alleged secret deal between Israel and Azerbaijan to enable potential airstrikes on Iran.

“The Israelis have bought an airfield and that airfield is called Azerbaijan,” Perry recounts a “senior administration official” as telling him in early February. A total of “four senior diplomats and military officials” confirmed the story to Perry.

One of the major problems facing Israel is that its aircraft would have to fly a long distance to Iran and back. That requires complicated and risky mid-air refueling. If the aircraft can land in Azerbaijan after striking their targets, then this makes an aerial campaign much more feasible.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11745/pub_detail.asp The furor surrounding President Obama’s recent comments about the authority of the United States Supreme Court to overturn enacted legislation brought consternation from many a constitutional scholar as well as at least three federal appeals court judges from the Fifth Circuit, who demanded a clarification from Attorney General Eric Holder. To his credit, Mr. […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=265058

As time goes by and events consistently refute their dogmatic doctrine, “two-staters” are looking more and more like “flat-earthers.”

If a Palestinian state is established, it will be armed to the teeth. Within it there will be bases of the most extreme terrorist forces, who will be equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft shoulder-launched rockets, which will endanger not only random passers-by, but also every airplane and helicopter taking off in the skies of Israel and every vehicle traveling along the major traffic routes in the coastal plain. Even if the Palestinians agree that their state have no army or weapons, who can guarantee that a Palestinian army would not be mustered later to encamp at the gates of Jerusalem and the approaches to the [coastal] lowlands.
– Shimon Peres

My column last week was largely a historical account of the monumental failure of the endeavor to implement a two-state approach following the 1993 Oslo Agreements. This column will focus more on some of the conceptual defects and inconsistencies that made past failure – and will make future failure –inevitable.

Two kinds of ‘two-staters’

In principle there are two categories of “two-staters:” (a) Those who insist that in their version of a two-state solution, “secure/defensible” borders for Israel are an indispensable imperative; and (b) Those for whom “secure/defensible” borders appear to be consideration of minor–if any–significance in their vision of the two-state arrangement.

Arguably one of the most eminent spokesmen for the first category is Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz; while the second category includes figures such as Peter Beinart, and groups such as J-Street and the Geneva initiative, endorsing the Obama-prescription that the frontiers of the Palestinian state be based on the indefensible 1967-lines with “agreed” (read “minor/cosmetic”) land swaps.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2995/oil-supply-prices

“Right now the key thing that is driving higher gas prices is actually the world’s oil markets and uncertainty about what’s going on in Iran and the Middle East, and that’s adding a $20 or $30 premium to oil prices,” President Obama said March 23. It’s complete and utter nonsense. Oil is trading in lockstep with expectations for economic growth, as reflected in stock prices. There’s not a shred of evidence that geopolitical uncertainty has added a penny to the oil price. Obama’s $20 to $30 per barrel risk premium is a number pulled out of a hat, without a shred of empirical support. In effect, the President is blaming Israel for high oil prices.

On April, 3, Vice-President Biden blamed higher oil prices on “talk about war with Iran”; fear that Iran might “take out the Saudi oil fields and Bahraini oil fields”; the Arab Spring movement; “war in Libya”; the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood; and a potential for unforeseen political unrest, such as “chaos in Russia.” It’s all complete and utter nonsense. Oil prices are going up because the world economy is consuming more oil and supply has not increased to meet the demand – in part because the Obama administration discourages North American energy development, most recently by stopping the proposed Keystone pipeline from Canada. It’s easier to blame foreign phantoms for high gas prices at the pump than the administration’s business-killing politics

One might argue that the market should price strategic risk into the oil price, but the fact is that markets are not especially good at assigning prices to possible events whose probability can’t be measured.

http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/blog/2012/04/brotherhood-launches-pr-offensive-in-washington
Brotherhood Launches PR Offensive in Washington by Samara Greenberg

DO YOU REMEMBER THE REAL BROTHERHOOD WEEK LAUNCHED IN 1927 BY THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHRISTIANS AND JEWS? IT WAS ALWAYS HELD IN FEBRUARY….NOW THE WORLD’S LEADING RACISTS CALL THEMSELVES A “BROTHERHOOD”….RSK

A delegation from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) made its first official visit to the United States this week, where it has spent time in New York and Washington, DC talking to think tank experts and White House officials about the Brotherhood’s growing role in Cairo.

“The purpose of the visit is to engage the American people on issues of mutual concern in international relations, reassure [the] business community of the prospects of investments and economic growth in democratic Egypt, and boost American tourism to Egypt,” the Muslim Brotherhood’s English language website reported. In other words, the FJP is trying to assuage American fears regarding its political ambitions and depict itself as a moderate group that has the interest of all Egyptians at heart.

The delegation arrived in the U.S. after ruffling feathers by fielding a candidate for president in Egypt. The FJP previously said it wouldn’t do so. That candidate, Khairat al-Shater, this week declared that introducing sharia law would be his “first and final project and objective” as president, and that he would create a special entity to assist parliament in the process. Walking back from that announcement, at an event this week at Georgetown University FJP lawmaker Abdul Mawgoud Dardery said that the party is dedicated to the objectives of sharia law rather than its specific practice. “The principles are universal: freedom, human rights, justice for all,” he said.

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/04/04/the-l-a-times-should-release-the-khalidi-tape-for-passover/2/

The L.A. Times Should Release the Khalidi Tape for Passover

Passover 2012, which starts at sunset Friday, will not be a particularly auspicious one for the Jewish people.

Despite being superficially strong in many ways, Israel — the sole Jewish state — and Jews in general face more determined opposition than they have at any time since World War II. From terrorists in the South of France to professors at Boston’s Northeastern University, anti-Semitism is rife. Meanwhile, Iran, which repeatedly calls for the extermination of Israel, draws ever closer to nuclear weapons capability. And the once vaunted “Arab Spring” has turned into the darkest of winters with Egypt morphing into its own Sunni version of a Khomeinist Islamist autocracy with women in veils, Christians attacked, homosexuals jailed, and the peace treaty forged at Camp David fragile as a potato chip.

But have no fear. Our president “has Israel’s back.” Or so he says.

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com

FRANKLY…THEY ALL MISS THE POINT….FIRST: LEARN FROM HISTORY AND SCUTTLE THE TWO STATE (DIS)SOLUTION. SECOND: IT IS NOT JUST ABOUT IRAN…IT IS ABOUT JIHAD AND ISRAEL IS A STEPPING STONE TO THE INTERNATIONAL CALIPHATE…THIRD: IT IS INSANE TO PROMOTE ANY POLICY IN THE MIDEAST WITHOUT REAL ENERGY INDEPENDENCE AND WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO NAME THE ENEMY….RSK

With Washington, D.C., talking Israeli politics, National Review Online asked experts: “Going into a presidential-election year, what’s a sane, responsible Israel policy?”

ELLIOTT ABRAMS
A sane, responsible Israel policy would reflect reality in the region today. Israel’s cold peace with Egypt may unravel as Islamists grow in power there, and the long-safe border between Israel and the Egyptian Sinai is already unsafe. Jordan’s stability is not certain, and Syria is awash in blood. The Palestinian leadership flirts with Hamas and invites it to join the PLO. And of course Iran’s nuclear-weapons program moves forward relentlessly.

The only firm ally we have in the region is Israel. Accordingly we should (1) maintain our military aid and our diplomatic support for Israel; (2) seek to improve life in the West Bank, with as much self-government for Palestinians and as few Israeli intrusions as security permits, while acknowledging that any final peace agreement is far away; and (3) state clearly the U.S. policy that Iran will never be permitted to acquire nuclear-weapons capability, and that we would support Israel in the aftermath of a military strike (Israel’s or ours) at that program.

Put in the negative, we should stop Obama-style pressures on Israel for negotiations with the Palestinians that cannot at this juncture possibly succeed, and stop undermining Israel’s military credibility against Iran with what the president called “loose talk.” The key concept is simple: Support your friend against your enemy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303302504577323691134926300.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.

Two tragedies are apparent in the Trayvon Martin case. The first is obvious: A teenager—unarmed and committing no crime—was shot dead. Dressed in a “hoodie,” a costume of menace, he crossed paths with a man on the hunt for precisely such clichés of menace. Added to this—and here is the rub—was the fact of his dark skin.

Maybe it was more the hood than the dark skin, but who could argue that the skin did not enhance the menace of the hood at night and in the eyes of someone watching for crime. (Fifty-five percent of all federal prisoners are black though we are only 12% of the population.) Would Trayvon be alive today had he been walking home—Skittles and ice tea in hand—wearing a polo shirt with an alligator logo? Possibly. And does this make the ugly point that dark skin late at night needs to have its menace softened by some show of Waspy Americana? Possibly.

What is fundamentally tragic here is that these two young males first encountered each other as provocations. Males are males, and threat often evokes a narcissistic anger that skips right past reason and into a will to annihilate: “I will take you out!” There was a terrible fight. Trayvon apparently got the drop on George Zimmerman, but ultimately the man with the gun prevailed. Annihilation was achieved.

If this was all there was to it, the Trayvon/Zimmerman story would be no more than a cautionary tale, yet another admonition against the hair-trigger male ego. But this story brought reaction from the White House: “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon,” said the president. The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ubiquitous icons of black protest, virtually battled each other to stand at the bereaved family’s side—Mr. Jackson, in a moment of inadvertent honesty, saying, “There is power in blood . . . we must turn a moment into a movement.” And then there was the spectacle of black Democrats in Congress holding hearings on racial profiling with Trayvon’s parents featured as celebrities.

In fact Trayvon’s sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America’s civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the “poetic truth” that these establishments live by. Poetic truth is like poetic license where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic truth lies just a little; it bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important truth.