RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/2011/12/us-taliban-talks-said-to-be-at-critical.html

Today, Stratfor reported that secret talks between US officials and the Taliban, which have purportedly been underway for sometime have now reached a critical juncture. According to the story, tentative agreements about the disposition of EPW Taliban at the Guantanamo Bay facility are being ironed out. If this passes muster with the Taliban, the US would release an untold number of known Taliban operatives back to the Afghan government and then, presumably, back to Afghan society. The report also stated the US official would expect some kind of token act from the Taliban in kind; to show “good faith”.

There are so many facets of this story that are wrong-headed that it is difficult to know where to begin. First of all, these alleged talks have proceeded for a significant period of time without direct participation by Kabul or Karzai. Apparently, US officials have felt “progress reports” to Kabul would suffice. While I am no fan of Hamid Karzai or his administration, it strikes me as presumptuous that any agreement between US officials and the so-called insurgency, the Taliban would be acceptable on it’s face to the “legitimate” government in Kabul. If these talks have any chance of acceptance by the parties who will have to live with them, it is hard to imagine that happening without both parties sitting directly across the table from one another.

When Shariah trumps free expression: Team Obama condones opprobrium for critics of Islamic extremism

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | After all, at that shrine to our most fundamental civil rights, the delegates would have found an exhibit about freedom of speech that declares: “For better or worse, the First Amendment helps shelter the varied results of free expression even when they are considered by some to be offensive or distasteful.”

Unfortunately, such shelter is precisely what the Organization of Islamic Cooperation wishes to eliminate when it comes to expression about its faith that the group’s 57 member nations and other Islamists find “offensive or distasteful.”

Advancing that agenda is the OIC’s purpose in the “Istanbul Process” that it launched with Mrs. Clinton in July in Turkey. As the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea pointed out in a withering indictment of this diplomatic exercise published last week in the New York Post, “the gathering was folly.”

Ms. Shea provides several reasons for that conclusion. Reduced to their essence, it is folly for America to be legitimating – let alone engaging in – a search for ways to “bridge” the gap between our First Amendment rights on the one hand and the Islamists’ belief that any expression that “offends” their religion is a capital offense on the other. To do so is to affront the Constitution and threaten the free and tolerant society it has made possible in this country.

http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3083,00.html

WHY THE SURPRISE? MY FRIEND GISELE BAT YE’OR PREDICTED THIS LONG AGO WHILE THE “ORIENTALISTS” SCOFFED…..RSK
Product Details
Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’Or (Paperback – Feb 1, 2005)

Europe’s Islamic future
Op-ed: If current demographic trends persist, Europe to be Muslim by century’s end
Giulio Meotti

Islam is on its way to become the most practiced religion in Europe. In a new book published by the University of Leuven, “The Iris and the Crescent,” sociologist Felice Dassetto says that Muslims will comprise the majority of the population of Brussels by 2030. The title of the book refers to the yellow flower symbol of Brussels’ region and to the Islamic emblem: While the first is decaying, the second is growing.

Muslims now make up one-quarter of the population of the capital of the enlightened Europe and they are asking to use the empty churches for Islamic prayers. Since 2008, the top seven baby boys’ names in Brussels were Mohammed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza. Mohammed is also the most popular name for baby boys in Belgium’s second-largest city, Antwerp, where an estimated 40% of elementary school children are Muslim.

http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=ea6242156af3ff7578dc491fd&id=3e719cffd2&e=5583b01122

To view The Daily Beast, please click here.

In the latest affront to women’s rights, the U.S. ally has announced that it has the right to cover women’s eyes “especially the tempting ones.” David Keyes on how they’re defending the outrage.

“I love the looks of you, the lure of you
The sweet of you, and the pure of you
The eyes, the arms, and the mouth of you
The east, west, north, and the south of you”

– Cole Porter

It’s a safe bet that Sheikh Motlab al Nabet, spokesman of Saudi Arabia’s religious police, isn’t a fan of Cole Porter. “The lure of you” is precisely why Nabet announced yesterday that the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice will cover any women’s eyes that are deemed “tempting.”“The men of the committee will interfere to force women to cover their eyes, especially the tempting ones” he said. “[We] have the right to do so.”

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=250150
Technion, Cornell chosen to launch NYC grad school By JORDANA HOR
Bloomberg: “Thanks to them, city’s goal of becoming the global leader in technological innovation is now within sight.”
NEW YORK – A partnership between Cornell University and the Technion won a first-time competition to launch an applied sciences graduate school on Roosevelt Island off Manhattan, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Monday.

Bloomberg joined Cornell President David Skorton and Technion President Peretz Lavie at Cornell’s Weill Cornell Medical College Monday to announce the new applied sciences campus, to be called the NYCTech Campus.

“Thanks to this outstanding partnership and groundbreaking proposal from Cornell and the Technion, New York City’s goal of becoming the global leader in technological innovation is now within sight,” said Bloomberg. “By adding a new state-of-the-art institution to our landscape, we will educate tomorrow’s entrepreneurs and create the jobs of the future. This partnership has so much promise because we share the same goal: to make New York City home to the world’s most talented workforce.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204879004577108353959148734.html?mod=opinion_newsreel Tyranny and Indifference What it means to heed Václav Havel’s prescription to ‘live in truth.’ As cosmic coincidences go, the deaths of Václav Havel and Kim Jong Il in the same week the U.S. pulled the last of its troops out of Iraq is hard to ignore. Havel made the exposure of tyranny the […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204879004577108552536673724.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
By JOHN BOLTON

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s death opens a period of intense danger and risk, but also potentially enormous opportunity for America and its allies. Kim’s health had obviously been poor for some time, and his regime has worked to ensure an orderly transition to his son, Kim Jong Eun. The Kim family and its supporters, with everything obviously at stake, will work strenuously to convey stability and control. Indeed, the official North Korea news agency has already referred to Jong Eun as “the great successor to the revolutionary cause.”

But the loathsome Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is not a constitutional monarchy like Britain. While DPRK founder Kim Il Sung was powerful enough to impose his son, no guarantees exist that the North’s military, the real power, will meekly accept rule by his utterly inexperienced grandson.

Under the surface in Pyongyang, the maneuvering has almost certainly already begun. There is no reason whatever to

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577108580642914996.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond

When Jews begin their Hanukkah celebrations this week, they will commemorate a 2,200-year old revolt led by Judah Maccabee against a Greek empire attempting to crush the Jewish faith. For some, the holiday holds an added resonance, linking their military service to one of the greatest Jewish warriors of all time.

These are the Jews of the United States Marine Corps.

In the popular mind, a Jewish Marine may sound exotic. In fact, Jews have their own chapters in the history of the Corps. In his book “Semper Chai!” Howard J. Leavitt explains the compatibility with a refreshing lack of nuance: “[M]any Jews were—and are—Marines, and the basic and lofty precepts and spiritual underpinnings of the United States, the U.S. Marine Corps and Judaism are one and the same, without any differences or conflict.”

In my life, Jews and Marines just go together. Maybe it started with my sister’s father-in-law, Harold Green. Having grown up in a family whose first song was “The Marines’ Hymn,” none of my brothers were surprised that when our sister gave her heart to a nice Jewish boy, he would be one whose dad—like hers—had been a Marine.

There are also the children of friends. When Bill Kristol’s son was graduated from Harvard two years ago, many of his classmates went on to law school or hedge funds. Lt. Joseph Kristol deployed to Afghanistan, where he led Marines in the fabled 3/5 (3rd Battalion, 5th Marines) during combat in Helmand province. Another Ivy Leaguer who also exchanged Harvard Crimson for Marine Crimson is Lt. Matthew Blumenthal, son of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.).

Then there’s the Ledeen family. Among my most memorable evenings was a farewell for Marine Lt. Gabriel Ledeen, who was shipping off to pre-surge Iraq. That night we brought our three young daughters to his mom and dad’s house, so they might remember the pride and anxiety of families whose sacrifices enable ours to sleep safely at night. Gabriel Ledeen is no longer on active duty but has been followed into the Corps by a brother who is: Lt. Daniel Ledeen.

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/19/center-for-american-progress-anti-semitism-exposed-in-mainstream-media/ Center For American Progress’ Anti-Semitism Exposed in Mainstream Media “The Center for American Progress, (once called Hillary’s think tank”) and its far-left bloggers are an essential part of this stealth strategy to silence robust debate about the Islamist threat to the freedoms we take for granted – starting with chilling free […]

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/sharing_a_grave_with_evil_aplenty History loves irony, as Prof. Gingrich could (and no doubt will) tell us. Two men renowned for their deeds die more or less on the same day on opposite sides of the world. The bad guy gets the big headline, the good guy makes the front page one last time as a footnote to […]