RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.meforum.org/3134/turkey-economic-miracle

Turkey’s high-flying economy, which expanded at a 10 percent annual rate of gross domestic product growth during the first half of 2011,[1] will crash-land in 2012. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “economic miracle,” to use the Daily Telegraph’s admiring words,[2] depended on a 40 percent annual rate of bank credit expansion, which in turn produced a balance of payments deficit as wide as that of southern Europe’s crisis countries. Markets have already anticipated a sudden turnaround in the Turkish economy. The Turkish lira (TRY) fell by a quarter between November 2010 and September 2011, making it the world’s worst performing emerging market currency.[3] The stock market has fallen in dollar terms by 40 percent, making Turkey the worst performer after Egypt among all the markets in the MSCI Tradable Index during 2011. (See Graph 1 for Turkey vs. emerging markets.) And most analysts now expect that the cyclical slowdown will uncover deep deficiencies in Turkey’s labor force and infrastructure, leading to a prolonged structural slump rather than a passing recession.

The suddenness and size of this economic setback will in most likelihood erode the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) capacity to govern on the strength of pragmatic success rather than Islamist ideology; will undercut its ability to use economic incentives to defuse Kurdish separatism and contain domestic opposition; and will weaken Ankara’s claim to a leading regional role.

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=251763

JUST IMAGINE WHAT THEY COULD DO IF THEY CONTROLLED THE ELEVATIONS OF JUDEA AND SAMARIA….RSK
2 mortar shells from Gaza contained phosphorousThe chemical is designed to ignite a fire around the impact zone and is banned by international law for use near civilians.

Two mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip into the rural Eshkol Regional Council on Sunday morning contained phosphorous, security forces confirmed. The shells landed in open fields, causing no injuries or damage.

Mortars containing phosphorous fired from Gaza have landed in Israeli territory in the past. Phosphorous is designed to ignite a fire around the impact zone. The chemical is banned by international law for use near civilians.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=2343 Newsletter Friday December 23, 2011 ‘Radical Islamic elements are on the ascent’ Professor Moshe Sharon does not share in the excitement generated by the Arab Spring, nor does he leave much room for optimism: Not much is happening in the Middle East. Certainly not an Arab Spring. What was is what will be, only […]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/adam-bellow-hopes-to-give-voice-to-the-tea-party-with-new-conservative-imprint-at-harpercollins/2011/11/04/gIQA33NfQP_story.html

ENCOUNTER LAUNCHED “BROADSIDES” A WONDERFUL CONCISE GROUP OF BOOKS…..http://www.encounterbooks.com/broadsides/
Adam Bellow hopes to give voice to the tea party with new conservative imprint at HarperCollins

NEW YORK — Attention, conservatives: Adam Bellow says this is your moment.

The intellectual left, he contends, is in a vacuum. The right is where there are ideas, variety, excitement. And Bellow, a former liberal who has made a career of pushing conservative writers and controversial issues to the forefront of American publishing, wants to hear from you.
As an editor at the Free Press and then Doubleday, Bellow, son of the late novelist Saul Bellow, guided such provocative voices as Dinesh D’Souza (“Illiberal Education”), David Brock (“The Real Anita Hill”), Jonah Goldberg (“Liberal Fascism”), and Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein (“The Bell Curve”) to the top of the bestseller lists.

Now he thinks he can do the same with representatives from the tea party, the decentralized protest movement that has energized conservatives, dismayed liberals and spooked presidential candidates with its focus on free markets, limited government, fewer taxes and balanced budgets.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/response_to_robert_small.html Robert Small’s latest essay didn’t address any of the (irrefragable) arguments from my two prior evidence-based rebuttals (here, and here) — as per relevant Western, not Islamic, Sharia-compliant standards —  about the Nadhlatul Ulema’s (NU’s) faux “moderation”, and the ugly, living jihadist legacy wrought by the NU, as well other examples of “moderate” Indonesian […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

About the only people having a Happy New Year in the Muslim world aren’t the Christians who are huddling and waiting out the storm, but the Islamists who use a different calendar but are having the best time of their lives since the last Caliphate.

The news that the Obama Administration has brought in genocidal Muslim Brotherhood honcho Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to discuss terms of surrender for the transfer of Afghanistan to the Taliban caps a year in which the Brotherhood and the Salafists are looking up carve up Egypt, the Islamists won Tunisia’s elections, Turkey’s Islamist AKP Party purged the last bastions of the secular opposition and Libya’s future as an Islamist state was secured by American, British and French jets and special forces.

Time Magazine declared that 2011 was the Year of the Protester, they might have more honestly called it the Year of the Islamist. In 2010 the Taliban were still hiding in caves. In 2012 they are set to be in power from Tunisia to Afghanistan and from Egypt to Yemen. They won’t go by that name of course. Most of them will have elaborate names with the words “Justice” or “Community” in them, but they will for the most part be minor variations on the Muslim Brotherhood theme.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Whether or not Ron Paul actually said that he would not intervene to stop the Holocaust, there is nothing particularly extraordinary about this position. The United States has never intervened to stop a genocide. Not in WW2 and not since when several genocides have taken place, most notably in Africa, without any military intervention.
The United States did participate in two NATO wars justified with phony claims of genocide, but the only ethnic cleansings that have taken place have been of Serbs from Kosovo and of Africans from Libya. Which is to say the closest thing to a genocide in either case was perpetrated by our allies against the people we were bombing on their behalf in two civil wars. And neither of those rise anywhere near the level of genocide.

Obama’s Political Blitzkrieg Posted By Roger Kimball

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/12/31/obamas-political-blitzkrieg/

The thing you have to admire about the Obama administration is its ability to fight furiously on several fronts at once. The economy. Individual liberty. The rule of law. National security. In his pursuit of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” (as he promised [1] his followers in October 2008), Barack Obama has managed to undermine them all. It’s been an impressive, if also a depressing, performance.

Just a few reminders: On the hustings, Obama lambasted George Bush [2] for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over the course of eight years. That was, I readily acknowledge, profligate behavior. But Obama has vastly outstripped George Bush, adding more than $6 trillion to the national debt in just under 3 years. $4 trillion, $6 trillion: if only there were some means of making it as gargantuan a task to write or read those words as it is to comprehend what such numbers portend. There is no way, so I hesitate to remind you that Obama is set to ask for another $1.2 trillion in spending money. When that happens, the federal debt will clock in at more than $16 trillion. Thanks for the hope, Barack!

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com

Ring out the new, ring in the old.
No, hang on, that should be the other way around, shouldn’t it? Not as far as 2011 was concerned. The year began with a tea-powered Republican caucus taking control of the House of Representatives and pledging to rein in spendaholic government. It ended with President Obama making a pro forma request for a mere $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. This will raise government debt to $16.4 trillion — a new world record! If only until he demands the next debt-ceiling increase in three months’ time.
At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke — broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur — and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece’s. That’s true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.
#ad#Public debt has increased by 67 percent over the last three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, “$16.4 trillion” has no real meaning, any more than “$17.9 trillion” or “$28.3 trillion” or “$147.8 bazillion.” It doesn’t even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough: Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realize that, even as they’re borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That’s to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the 16.4 trillion is reduced to 13.7 trillion, and then 7.9 trillion, and eventually 173 dollars and 48 cents. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done.

Obama’s National Security ‘Not Top 10′ of 2011….Makes jimmy Carter look brilliant

http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamas-national-security-not-top-10-of-2011/

Here you go, in chronological order:

1) President Obama claims Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood lacks major support (February 6)

During Obama’s Super Bowl interview [2] with Bill O’Reilly, Egypt was in the midst of a revolution that eventually led to the ouster of longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Obama was asked about whether the Muslim Brotherhood was a threat. He responded [3]:

I think they’re one faction in Egypt. They don’t have majority support in Egypt. But they’re well organized. There are strains of their ideology that are anti-U.S. There’s no doubt about it.

He went on to claim [4] that there are many secularists and liberals in Egypt that wanted representative government. The rest of the administration followed suit, with Daniel Shapiro of the National Security Council assuring Jewish groups on a conference call [5] that the Muslim Brotherhood would “be a minor player in Egyptian politics.” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof also pointed to [6] questionable polls claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood only received 15 percent support.

As we’ve seen in recent weeks, the president was completely wrong in his assessment (as were the administration flacks and media lapdogs who parroted the president’s claims). In the first two rounds of elections, the Muslim Brotherhood has come out on top, and with their Salafist Al-Nour allies, they aim to control the Egyptian parliament with a significant legislative majority — possibly enough to rewrite the country’s constitution. In the first round, they secured [7] 37 percent of the seats; in the second round, they won [8] 47 percent of the seats up for grabs.

Now, the Obama administration’s think-tank allies are spinning the Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral success [9] by assuring the Beltway’s “smart set” that the group is savvy and politically flexible, meaning there’s nothing for us to fear.

How did Obama miscalculate so poorly on the Muslim Brotherhood’s support in Egypt? Well, that brings us to …