RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204720204577128584234925996.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
Arab Democracy Is the Best Bet for a Muslim ReformationWhen the state isn’t hostile to religion, Islam isn’t a bankable political issue.

SAME OLD DRIVEL BUT THIS LAST PARAGRAPH IS OUTRAGEOUS!!
“New Arab leaders will have enough headaches of government to occupy them for years. Islam will be just part, hopefully small, of the story of those who undertake democratic reform. Yet this may also be the best chance for another overdue experiment to reconcile Islam with modern politics. No faith that makes strong demands on its practitioners necessarily dooms itself to tyranny. As the former Polish dissident and writer Adam Michnik rather impishly says, “If Judaism can co-exist with democracy, any religion can.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204632204577130570667022372.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

SHADES OF BOB DOLE AND JOHN McCAIN…..AND ALL THE GARBAGE THEY HAVE THROWN AT EACH OTHER IS BEING LAPPED UP BY THE OBAMATHONS…..RSK
Mr. Good Enough
Mitt Romney lost the nomination in 2008 because of his lack of focus and a reputation for shifting his message. He’s learned something this time around.

Voters aren’t convinced by Mitt Romney. They’re not certain of his convictions; they wonder if he is the leader for these times; they’re not sold on his policies or his personality. Yet voters may be about to make the former Massachusetts governor the Republican nominee for the presidency. Mark this down as the triumph of strategy over inspiration.

As Iowans head to their caucuses Tuesday, Mr. Romney has come from behind to lead in the polls. A victory here—where he was once written off—followed by a coup in New Hampshire could well knit up the nomination. That outcome would be the result of a lot of luck, mistakes by his rivals, and a shrewd—and ruthless—campaign by Mr. Romney himself.

If there has been one threat to the governor, it has been the gaping opening for a candidate to his right. Mr. Romney is hardly an easy fit with the GOP base—from his past flip-flops on issues like abortion, to his weak tax proposals, to his concoction and defense of RomneyCare, the Massachusetts health plan that was the model for ObamaCare. The threat of President Obama and his determination to create an entitlement state, combined with the dismal economy, have voters eager for a bold conservative leader.

http://times247.com/ France introduces citizenship laws to defend culture Los Angeles Times Monday, January 2, 2012 News France has made it harder for foreigners to obtain French citizenship by forcing them to take a tough new language test and swear allegiance to “French values.” Read more… Read more at: http://times247.com/   Woman sues after being hit by […]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8988205/Muslims-clash-with-Chinese-police-who-destroyed-mosque.html
Muslims clash with Chinese police who destroyed mosque
Hundreds of Muslims fought with armed police who demolished a mosque in north China, local police and a human rights group said on Monday, with several people injured in the “riot”.

The violence between local Muslims and roughly 1,000 armed police began after police declared illegal a newly renovated mosque in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and moved to destroy it, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, in Hong Kong, said.

The Hui are one of several Muslim minority groups in China.

Two people were killed and 50 injured after police fired tear gas and used knives and batons to beat back ethnic Hui Muslim protesters in Taoshan village, Hexi township, the rights group said, citing villagers.

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2012/01/is-israeli-society-unraveling.php
On balance, Israeli society is extremely healthy.
Unemployment is at record lows. At a time of global recession, the Israeli economy is growing steadily.

Israeli Jewish women have the highest fertility rate in the Western world with an average of three children per woman. Education levels have risen dramatically across the board over the past decade with dozens of private colleges opening their doors to more and more sectors of the population.

Israel’s diverse Jewish population is becoming more integrated. Sephardic and Ashkenazi intermarriage has long been a norm. Secular Jews are becoming more religious. A new educational trend that received significant media attention in recent months involves secular parents who send their children to national religious schools to ensure that they receive strong educational grounding in Judaism.

And as secular Jews become more religious, both the national religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors are becoming increasingly integrated in nonreligious neighborhoods and institutions. Ultra-Orthodox conscription rates have increased seven-fold in the past four years. In 2010, 50 percent of ultra-Orthodox male high school graduates were conscripted.

The IDF assesses that by 2015, the rate of conscription will rise to 65%.

While this is still below the general conscription rate of 75% among male 18-year-olds, the rapid rise in ultra-Orthodox military service is a revolutionary development for the sector.

With military service comes entrée to the job market. The trail towards employment integration was blazed by ultra-Orthodox women. Over the past decade, ultra-Orthodox women have matriculated en masse in vocational schools that have trained them in hi-tech and other marketable professions and so enabled them to raise their families out of poverty.

These ultra-Orthodox women, who are now being followed by their IDF veteran husbands, are part of a general trend that has seen women fully integrated in almost every sector of society and the economy. The fact that women make up the senior leadership echelons in both business and government is not a fluke. Rather it is a product of the largely egalitarian nature of Israeli society.

The Coming Collapse of the European Union

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2722/european-union-collapse

How could so many clever people get it so wrong? The question was recently asked by the British politician Daniel Hannan in an article on the collapse of the euro; in the coming months, the same question will be asked more and more often about Europe itself.

Europe as it has been built may appear at best a huge error, and at worst a crime against the spirit of liberty that was supposed to be the initial source of inspiration for the whole edifice.

The idea that it is possible to build a society based on abstract principles — without considering historical, social and economic realities, as if its members were infinitely malleable – has often led to disaster; this time is no different.

The formation of this error began in the aftermath of World War II. Looking at the ruins left by Nazism and Fascism, politicians from various European countries fabricated a project meant to erase all past mistakes committed on the continent. They only repeated the mistakes.

OBAMA’S PAEAN TO HIMSELF (WITH APOLOGIES TO COLE PORTER’ BRILLIANT LYRICS) http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/de-lovely/yourethetop.htm At words poetic, I’m so pathetic That I always have found it best, Instead of getting ’em off my chest, To let ’em rest unexpressed, I hate parading my serenading As I’ll probably miss a bar, But if this ditty is not so […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/02/staten-island-jihadist-rats-out-big-roster-of-jihad-plotters/

Staten Island Jihadist Blows Lid Off Plotter Network Posted By Robert Spencer

Abdel Hameed Shehadeh wanted to join the U.S. Army so that he could turn and kill American soldiers. Instead, he has exposed a jihad network of impressive proportions that, if his assertions are true, should end the rush toward politically correct self-deception in the way law enforcement officials approach the problem of jihad terrorism in the United States.

The criminal complaint against him says that he “and several other individuals” were being charged “in connection with a plot to travel overseas and wage violent jihad against the United States and other coalition military forces.” Shehadeh had planned to wage this jihad from within the U.S. military: in 2008, he went to a recruiting station in Times Square and attempted to join the Army, so that he could, according to law enforcement officials, get training that he could use “to fight beside fellow Muslims against their enemies, including United States military forces.”

But things didn’t work out that way. Shehadeh got caught, and quickly began cooperating with authorities. He gave FBI agents a lengthy interview that fills a 22-page report that his lawyers are now trying to deep-six: although Shehadeh gave the interview in an attempt to get a better deal for himself, he quickly started worrying about “how much I incriminated myself,” and so now wants the report suppressed.

Postcard From Islamic London Posted By Ben Shapiro

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/02/postcard-from-islamic-london/

I’ve been spending my Christmas vacation with my wife in Rome and London. We arrived in London on Christmas Eve. It’s truly an amazing city – everywhere you look, there’s history, from the Tower of London to the Churchill Museum. But everywhere you look, there is a more ominous presence: Islam.

Now, no less a personage than Prime Minister David Cameron has already admitted that the integration of Muslims into British society has failed dramatically. In February 2011, Cameron stated,

Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values.

That failure of integration is clear from the get-go. There are official signs translated into Arabic for those who do not wish to speak or read English. The chatter of Islamic languages is as prevalent as the mother tongue. The hijab is omnipresent.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/02/is-the-west-doomed/print/

At the beginning of a new year, it’s hard to avoid the question: where are we going? What will our future be like? Does America, does freedom, does Western civilization even have a future?

I date my career as a professional writer to an op-ed I published in the Los Angeles Times in the early 1980s. I was a graduate student in English and was also teaching undergraduate composition courses. One of the challenges I faced in the classroom was this: when, in a search for possible topics for my students to write about, I brought up things that I thought of as falling under the category of general knowledge, I found over and over again that most of my students didn’t know what I was talking about. They didn’t know history. Their knowledge of politics, geography, art, and literature was, at best, extremely spotty.

Yes, a few of them were very well informed about some sport or other, or about this or that singer or rock group or actor or TV show, but there was not much overlap between one kid’s knowledge and another’s. There was, in fact, hardly any knowledge that they all shared – and these were students at what was considered a pretty decent college. So I wrote a piece about it.