RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/world/middleeast/us-loses-leverage-in-iraq-now-that-troops-are-out.html?_r=1

U.S. Embraces Low-Key Plan as Turmoil in Iraq Deepens

WASHINGTON — As Iraq erupted in recent days, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in constant phone contact with the leaders of the country’s dueling sects. He called the Shiite prime minister and the Sunni speaker of the Parliament on Tuesday, and the Kurdish leader on Thursday, urging them to try to resolve the political crisis.
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Sabah Arar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Iraq tightened security measures on Saturday at the entrance to a Christian church in Baghdad.

And for the United States, that is where the American intervention in Iraq officially stops.

Sectarian violence and political turmoil in Iraq escalated within days of the United States military’s withdrawal, but officials said in interviews that President Obama had no intention of sending troops back into the country, even if it devolved into civil war.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1069

Abu Mazen’s December 20, 2011 public embrace of Amna Muna – a ruthless Palestinian terrorist –exposes Abu Mazen’s authentic ideology. Notwithstanding Abu Mazen’s moderate demeanor, the televised session with Amna Muna, and other Palestinian terrorists, was consistent with Abu Mazen’s own K-12 hate-education system, which heralds terrorism, in general, and suicide bombing, in particular. It is compatible with the monthly allowances paid by Abu Mazen’s administration to families of suicide bombers and imprisoned terrorists; with his naming of streets, squares and sport tournaments after terrorists; with his 50 years track record as Arafat’s top confidant and deputy; with his holocaust denial Ph.D. thesis at Moscow University; with his involvement in the 1972 Munich Massacre of eleven Israeli Olympians; with his active support of the 1990 Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait; with his betrayal of Syria’s Hafiz Assad, Jordan’s King Hussein, Lebanon’s government and Kuwait’s Sheikh Sabah; with his stewardship of PLO-Communist Bloc ties and his KGB training.

While Western policy-makers and public opinion molders assume that Abu Mazen has renounced terrorism and violence, the “Good Cop” accords enhances the legitimacy of Amna Muna, whom fellow female terrorists named “the Ramallah Satan” for her sadistic virulence, biting and pouring boiling wax and oil on the face of those who dared challenge her.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=250612

Into The Fray: Some will consider this article provocative – especially if they deem “resettling” as more heinous than “recurrence of war.”

Consideration should be given even to the heroic remedy of transfer of populations… the hardship of moving is great, but it is less than the constant suffering of minorities and the constant recurrence of war.

– Former US president Herbert Hoover, five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee

With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries.

– Andrei Sakharov, 1975 Nobel Peace laureate

The collapse of the Oslo process demonstrate[s] that certain long-held “truths” about the conflict need to be turned on their head…. The US should launch an international initiative that would provide economic support for refugees in neighboring states… [and] incentive packages for patriation to non-neighboring states, including in the West.

– Scott Lasensky, 1999, recipient of the Yitzhak Rabin-Shimon Peres Peace Award, Tel Aviv University

As expected, US presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s characterization of Palestinians as an “invented people” unleashed a maelstrom of responses – some commending his daring, others condemning his temerity to challenge the precepts of conventional wisdom.

Ireland funds cultural boycott of Israel Dozens of Irish artists who have signed petition urging boycott against Jewish state are financed by government bodies, Foreign Ministry report reveals

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4165549,00.html

This is particularly painful because the Irish have a significant history in supporting Israel. Here, in the US Irish -American politicians – Hugh Carey, Paul O’Dwyer, Patrick Moynihan to name only a handful were Israel’s staunch defenders. Chaim Herzog, Israel’s late ambassador to the UN and then president was born in Ireland. Dublin had a Jewish mayor…..rsk
The Irish government has been funding 34 local artists who signed a petition calling for a cultural boycott against Israel, a classified Foreign Ministry report reveals.

These artists make up one-fifth of all performers receiving public funding in Ireland.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/23/the-latest-joint-cbs-castro-production/

Last week’s 60 Minutes featured another in its long line of joint CBS-Castro productions. This time Anderson Cooper and his production crew partnered with the Stalinist regime’s Centro de Investigaciones Marinas for a propaganda piece on the marvels of Cuban coral reef conservation. The co-host of the CBS show and conduit for this fruitful Communist infomercial was Dr. David Guggenheim, senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation in Washington, D.C. who chairs its Cuba Marine Research and Conservation Program. Dr. Guggenheim toasts himself as a “Cubaphile” and toasts Castro’s fiefdom (which he has visited over 40 times in recent years) as a “magical place.”

Needless to remind (or perhaps not given that the Cold War supposedly ended over 20 years ago), such a gold-plated visa is not handed-out haphazardly by Stalinist regimes. And such a welcome mat and red carpet are not rolled out randomly. To wit:

“Cultural exchanges with foreign countries are our most effective propaganda,” reads a declassified KGB document from May, 20, 1981.

“We cannot for a second abandon propaganda,” wrote Fidel Castro in a letter to revolutionary colleague Melba Hernandez in 1954. “Propaganda is vital — propaganda is the heart of our struggle.”

“Foreign reporters, preferably American, were much more valuable to us than any military victory. Much more valuable than rural recruits for our guerrilla force, were American media recruits to export our propaganda” wrote Che Guevara in his diaries.

It’s a long shot of speculation here, but just maybe the sentiments mentioned above had something to do with Cooper and Guggenheim’s instant Cuban visas and VIP pampering?

Dr. Guggenheim’s “magical place,” by the way, just decreed three days of mourning for Kim Jong Il. When Fidel Castro visited North Korea in 1986 his paeans to his hosts sounded much like Cooper and Guggenheim’s paeans to theirs last week. “I was astounded by the magnificent achievements of the heroic Korean people,” wrote Castro. “There wasn’t a single topic I could not discuss with my illustrious host [Kim Il Sung].”

Distorting Reality to Justify Jihad Posted By Raymond Ibrahim
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/23/distorting-reality-to-justify-jihad/

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum recently declared the legitimacy of offensive jihad for the world to hear:

When we declare Jihad against Germany, for instance, it is declared against the German state, for refusing to allow Islam to spread to the people of Germany. We give them a choice: Either to convert to Islam, or to pay the jizya and submit to the laws of Islam.

Otherwise, war is the third choice.

All well and good; the Sheikh is merely quoting standard jihadi doctrine.

But he did say something that revealed how utterly deluded he is, how he cannot comprehend the full significance of what he himself is preaching. After agreeing that there is a “clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam, he said:

If not for Jihad, Islam would not have reached us and all the other places. Within a quarter of a century, Islam reached most of the ancient world by means of Jihad. The common people want Islam. Anyone who doesn’t can stick to his own religion. Here in the Levant, most of our forefathers were not Muslims, but they converted to Islam because of its goodness and justice.

Iraq Under Seige Posted By Arnold Ahlert URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/23/iraq-under-seige/ ANOTHER SHOCKING EXAMPLE OF OUR ILL FOUGHT WAR……RSK A coordinated wave of bomb attacks has rocked the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. At least 69 people have been killed and more than 185 injured in a series of 14 explosions, consisting of four car-bombs and 10 improvised explosive […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/harvard_fires_critic_of_jihad.html

In a crushing blow to academic freedom, Harvard University has censored and fired a prominent professor because university administrators didn’t like what he said about Islam. The tenured professors at Harvard, who cannot be fired in order to protect their freedom to express themselves, have failed to rally to the cause of the fired professor — and worse, the expulsion was occasioned in part by a faculty vote:

At a meeting of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, faculty members voted with an “overwhelming majority” to remove two economics courses – ‘Quantitative Methods in Economics and Business’ and ‘Economic Development in India and East Asia’ – that Mr Swamy teaches at the three-month Harvard Summer School session.

Harvard has dropped economics courses taught by a Hindu professor, Subramanian Swamy, president of the Janata Party of India and a former Union Cabinet minister, because of something that had nothing to do with economics: he wrote an editorial that Muslims find offensive. And now the Harvard Crimson has added insult to injury by applauding this decision and declaring a barbarian’s war on the founding principle of this great nation — our unalienable individual rights.

Read more at: http://times247.com/articles/mitt-dodges-newt-over-one-on-one-debate-challenge

In an interview with the AP while campaigning in New Hampshire today, Mitt Romney said he would not meet Newt Gingrich in a one on one debate “out of respect” for the other candidates in the GOP race.

What a copout.

Were Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman being disrespectful to Romney when they agreed to one on one debates with Gingrich?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/22/us-korea-north-un-idUSTRE7BL1LJ20111222?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

(Reuters) – The U.N. General Assembly granted a request from North Korea and held a few moments of silence on Thursday for Kim Jong-il, the country’s former leader who died on Saturday, though Western delegations boycotted it.

Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, president of the 193-nation assembly, called for a “minute of silence” before the start of a routine meeting at 3:00 p.m. EST in the half-empty U.N. General Assembly hall.

“It is my sad duty to pay tribute to the memory of the late Kim Jong-il, Secretary-General of the Workers Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, who passed away on Saturday, December 17,” he said.

The minute of silence lasted for 25 seconds before Nasser proceeded with the scheduled meeting. The United States, European Union member states and Japan were among the countries that boycotted the tribute to Kim Jong-il.