RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11159/pub_detail.asp

THE MSM AND THE LIBERACI ROUNDLY CONDEMNED ISRAEL AND LIBELED GENERAL ARIEL SHARON. HE WENT TO COURT AND WON HIS CASE AGAINST TIME MAGAZINE….THE LEBANON WAS AND THAT EVENT AND THE ENSUING CANARDS MARKED A SHARP TURNING POINT IN THE MEDIA’S TREATMENT OF ISRAEL….RSK

This past September marked the twenty-ninth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanon’s president-elect Bashir Gemayel. Like its most recent clone, the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, memories of the 1982 crime continue to haunt many Lebanese, some of whom are still persuaded its perpetrators to have been Syrian operatives bent on scuttling end-of-conflict prospects for Lebanon. Today, as Syria’s “Alawite era” teeters on the edge of its twilight, and as the international community prepares to indict it for ongoing crimes against its own people, the regime’s shady gruesome past is coming back to assail its tattered present days.

Although few Westerners today might remember Bashir Gemayel (or his assassination), and fewer still might be tempted to consider the motivations of those who commissioned his murder, rare are those who would not readily recall the massacres at Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, and rarer still are those who would not attribute those crimes to “right-wing” Lebanese-Christian militiamen—ostensibly bent on avenging their fallen leader. Never mind that Gemayel’s elimination and the ensuing massacres of Palestinian civilians hardly served the cause of Lebanon’s Christians. Indeed, the events in question plunged Lebanon into another eight years of bloodshed, tightened Syria’s grip over the country, turned it into a Syrian “satellite state” wholly bound to the whims and will of Damascus, and reduced the status of Lebanon’s Christians to a state of subservience and political insignificance. Yet, the narrative that attributes Gemayel’s killing to Israeli agents, and the Sabra and Shatila massacres to Israel’s Lebanese Christian allies—getting Syria off scot free—still has its defenders, and still defines a significant chapter in Lebanon’s modern history.

Today, as Syria veers toward civil war, as its military occupation of Lebanon seems to be a thing of the past, and as the international “Special Tribunal for Lebanon” readies to finger Syrian officials (beginning with the recent indictment of their Hezbollah foot-soldiers) for a string of political assassinations that have shook Lebanon since 2005, a revision of the pleasing narrative of an Israeli and (a “right-wing”)Lebanese Christian involvement in Sabra and Shatila seems fitting.

Besides the Kahan Commission’s mention of armed elements dressed in Lebanese Forces uniforms entering Sabra and Shatila between September 16 and the morning of September 18, 1982, there is no hard usable evidence to support the scenario of murderous Lebanese Christians itching to mete out revenge on Palestinian refugees for the assassination of President-elect Bashir Gemayel; that is to say there is no concrete usable evidence besides eyewitness reports of “men dressed in LF uniforms”—knowing full well that “uniforms” of every stripe were a dime a dozen in civil-war-era Lebanon.

Of course a scenario such as this remains tempting, and in the context of Lebanon’s war—and its cycles of tit-for-tat massacres and counter massacres—it would have made plenty of sense for Christian militias to exact revenge on Palestinians for the killing of their leader. However, there is no evidence to bear this out beyond the circumstantial. Of course, an argument could be made—and indeed one was made—that rogue elements of the Lebanese Forces, without knowledge or express directives from the LF’s leadership, entered the camps with the intent of killing Palestinian civilians. The question that begs being asked in this case would be, “why would LF members commit these crimes, flaunting easily identifiable insignia and uniforms, incriminating themselves and their community, at a time when Lebanon’s Christians had been hard at work for reconciliation with other constitutive elements of Lebanese society?”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11161/pub_detail.asp

The nation’s largest, most sophisticated law enforcement agency, the New York City Police Department, announced its acquisition of new, high-tech equipment to help police officers keep the city safe from terrorists: the NYPD’s Harbor Unit now possesses six unmanned underwater drones to help bomb technicians and emergency services unit officers to detect suspected underwater explosives.

The NYPD now possesses six underwater drones, with each costing between $75,000 and $120,000 depending on the drones’ capabilities.

These drones help to sweep the city’s waterways and bridges searching for possible bombs and IEDs (improvised explosive devices). In a recent drone demonstration, NYPD officers easily tossed the lightweight — sixteen pound – submersible equipped with lights and sonar into the harbour and sailed it beneath the hull of a large commercial tanker docked close to the Kings County (Brooklyn) Army Terminal.

The police officers showed that they were able to guide the drone via remote control in order to utilize its underwater camera to search below the ship. The drone operators, all of whom are veteran detectives, have been trained to identify what biological or radiological weapons look like and where underwater explosives or narcotics are most likely to be hidden.

Under Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and later his replacement Ray Kelly, the Harbor Unit is used more in performing counterterrorism operations than the unit is used to conduct rescue and recovery operations.

On most days the unit receives several security alerts from the police department’s Intelligence Division each day. This situation demands that the unit inspects suspicious boats below bridges, sweep an incoming cargo ship’s hull, or respond to a report of a “suspicious floating package.”

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URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/04/all-american-muslims-very-special-tribute-to-911/ Empathy is the essence of tragedy. To be able to mourn for others we have to feel their loss and make it our own. Most Americans never lost anyone on September 11. Most never knew anyone who died that day in the planes above or the buildings below. And yet we […]

http://news.yahoo.com/former-israel-pm-indicted-graft-property-scandal-084515731.html

THIS IS ABOUT GREED AND MONEY BUT HE IS MORALLY INDICTED FOR HIS SO CALLED “PEACE PLAN” WHEN HE WAS THE ACCIDENTAL PRIME MINISTER AFTER THE STILL SOMNOLENT ARIEL SHARON SUCCUMBED TO A STROKE. RSK

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was on Thursday indicted alongside a number of other people for allegedly taking bribes in a massive property scandal, judicial sources said.

The allegations stem from Olmert’s tenure as Jerusalem mayor and will add to the woes of the former premier, who is already on trial on three unrelated counts of fraud and bribery.

Olmert is accused of allegedly accepting bribes to smooth the way for the construction of the huge Holyland residential complex in Jerusalem during his tenure as mayor in the 1990s.

“An indictment has been served on Olmert and others,” a spokeswoman for the courts administration told AFP.

The indictment named Olmert, his former aide Shula Zaken and his successor as mayor, Uri Lupolianski, along with several senior city hall officials, prominent businessmen and property developers.

Last March, the justice ministry said Israeli prosecutors were poised to file charges against 18 people, including Olmert, for allegedly taking bribes during the time when he was mayor of Jerusalem.

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Decline-or-acquiesence–7248

An introduction to our symposium “Is America in Decline?,” held jointly with England’s Social Affairs Unit.

Burke was right!
We are only five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

—Barack Obama, October 2008

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
—Barack Obama, April 2009

Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.
—Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History

Decline is once again in vogue.1 When we began contemplating a symposium on the question “Is America in Decline” last spring, little did we think that our finger would be so firmly on the pulse of the Zeitgeist. Look around: kindred symposia, essays, and special sections have sprouted up like mushrooms. Some have employed the same title we chose—“Is America in Decline?”—but I’ve noticed a gradual ratcheting up of the rhetorical volume. The current issue of Foreign Affairs, for example, screams in seventy-two-point type: “Is America Over?”

English is not as formal as Latin in distinguishing between questions that are genuine questions and those that expect a certain answer, Yes or No as the case may be. This gives writers and editors a little epistemological wiggle room. “Is America in Decline?” “Is America Over?” Are those genuine questions or covert declarations? You have to read on to find out. Let me say straightaway, then, that we intend our question mark to be a neutral interrogative. There are plenty of sobering observations and depressing statistics in the essays that follow. But the (generally gleeful) certitude that the answer to such questions must be Yes is hasty if not misplaced. The rejoinders “That depends” and “Compared to what?” never seem to receive the attention they deserve.

http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/louis-rene-beres/israels-survival/2012/01/04/

Credo quia absurdum. “I believe because it is absurd.” It is a mantra I have used often here in The Jewish Press in reference to Israel’s persistent security dilemma.At this latest time of testing for Israel, this mantra – an ancient Latin adage – may once again become the Jewish state’s most “reasonable” exclamation.

Ironic, perhaps, but why not? When, after all, have Israel’s critical victories ever been explicable in ordinary military or political terms? When have we ever been asked to believe, convincingly, that an utterly beleaguered country, half the size of Lake Michigan, would somehow be able to survive by combining advanced technologies, coherent military planning, and manifestly clever strategic operations?

At its core, Israel’s “being” is really about the incontestable meanings of “aliveness.” We Jews, both in our prayers, and in our sacred rituals, have always understood the difference between life and death, between the “blessing” and the “curse.” Now, in essence, all Jewish survival, individually and collectively, recognizably or obscured, is inextricably bound up with survival of the Jewish state. Reciprocally, the macro concern of Israel’s physical survival is now always a question about the individual Jew writ large.

The U.S. and Biblical Israel
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/287090

By now, most Americans know that the “two-state solution” is no solution to the war that supremacist Muslims have been waging against the state of Israel since its rebirth in 1948. Most Americans in public life know it too, but in public, nearly all of them pay lip service to the idea of a Palestinian state. To do that plausibly, they have to studiously avoid any public mention of facts about the Palestinians that make it glaringly obvious that a Palestinian state is not in America’s national interest; and glaringly clear that empowering the Palestinians and the forces and ideas they represent is a self-destructive policy — a threat to our national security and a defeat for our values.

In the last Republican primary debate of 2011, Newt Gingrich broke the rules, giving voice to three undeniable facts about the Palestinians. He said: “These people are terrorists,” with an “invented identity,” and they teach their children that hating and killing Jews is their highest purpose in life. Michele Bachmann quickly backed him up with a factual account of the ubiquitous Saudi-financed textbooks that teach precisely that, from pre-school through university. Proper foreign-policy types, on and off the stage, reacted as if all this truth-telling were somehow akin to profaning a sacred script, but the Iowa audience was with the truth-tellers. They applauded wildly.

NO URL HERE…..THE AUTHOR IS AN E-PAL….RSK

I pray you are like me and adamantly refuse to give up your freedom of speech.

If we lose our freedom of speech what will we lose next? Freedom of religion? Freedom of opinion? Freedom of choice? etc?

Our enemies, the fanatic Islamists, want to restrict us from exercising our constitutional right of free speech. Below are instances where they have in one way or another, attempted to, and or succeeded in, limiting our freedom of speech.

One effective non-violent tool the Islamists use is threat. There have been a number of hotels, noted below, that have been threatened, and subsequently caved in, canceling already booked anti-Jihadist events that displeased Muslims.

Meet the Taliban leader Obama wants to release from Guantanamo

http://blog.american.com/2012/01/meet-the-taliban-leader-obama-wants-to-release-from-guantanamo/

As Michael notes, the Obama administration wants to open peace talks with the Taliban and reward them before they even come to the table by releasing senior Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay. Fox News reports that a senior U.S. official has confirmed that “Mullah Mohammed Fazl is among the prisoners being considered for release.”