RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2683/energy-politics

American energy policy has always been messed up. It was most messy when the main source of energy was animal muscle and the streets were full of animal by-products. When fossil fuels gradually replaced animal-based energy and the streets got cleaner, public health improved. For the hundred years or so when coal was king, the price in ruined lives and environmental degradation was heavy, but on balance, the changeover to fossil fuels was not a bad thing.

Over the last century and a half, the average standard of living of people throughout the Western world has improved immensely. Even in places such as Asia and Africa, the trickle-down effects, in terms of less hunger and better overall health, were considerable. In some parts of Asia, such as South Korea and Japan, the fossil fuel revolution has given the vast majority of people a lifestyle indistinguishable from that of Western countries.

Today, however, America’s vulnerability to the international oil market is playing havoc with both its foreign policy and its balance of trade. President Barack Obama’s decision to delay the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would deliver oil derived from the tar sands of Canada’s Province of Alberta to US refineries, is seen as a blow to the North American energy industry. It is hard to understand why the President, apart from appeasing a small group of public union workers who he is hoping will vote for him in next year’s election, wants the US to import more oil from the Middle East or other unfriendly places and less from Canada.

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2671/betraying-ben-gurion

It is ironic that Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), Israel’s only university bearing the name of the Jewish state’s founding father, and established in the ancient desert he dreamt of reviving, has become a hotbed of anti-Israel propaganda at the expense of proper scholarly endeavor.

So much so that an international committee of scholars, appointed by Israel’s Council for Higher Education to evaluate political science and international relations programs in Israeli universities, recently recommended that BGU “consider closing the Department of Politics and Government” unless it abandoned its “strong emphasis on political activism,” improved its research performance, and redressed the endemic weakness “in its core discipline of political science.” In other words, they asked that the Department return to accurate scholarship rather than indoctrinate the students with libel.

http://www.hudson- ny.org/2692/islamic-television-spain Two radical Islamic television stations will begin 24-hour broadcasting to Spanish-speaking audiences in Spain and Latin America from new studios in Madrid. The first channel, sponsored by the government of Iran, will focus on spreading Shiite Islam, the dominant religion in Iran. It began broadcasting on December 21. The second channel, sponsored by […]

http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=2096&c=5657&m=4307&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce Apple Corporation Highlights Israel Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought” Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #158 December 21, 2011 1.  Apple made its first Israeli acquisition, Anobit, for $400MN (Globes business daily, December 21, 2011).  Apple will establish, in Israel, its first R&D outside the USA (Globes, Dec. 15). 2.  The American CHS consortium […]

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/12/21/main-feature/1/the-first-war-of-national-liberation/e

This is the 2,179th anniversary of the world’s first war of national liberation. There have been many since. To a surprising extent, such wars have followed the pattern first established by the Maccabees. They, like later heads of independence movements, were leaders of a people conquered and occupied by a great empire. They fought to claim the right of national self-determination.
Resentment of foreign rule may simmer for a long time, but war is often remembered as beginning in a dramatic incident. In Switzerland, this memory belongs to William Tell. He was the national hero who in 1307 refused to bow to a hat belonging to the Hapsburg governor, which was set on a tall pole in the center of Altdorf for the sole purpose of forcing Swiss freemen to genuflect to it. Tell’s defiance sparked the fight for Swiss independence.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ML22Dj01.html

Angels and inquisitors
A Point in Time by David Horowitz Reviewed by David Goldman

One popular comedian argues that it must be dreadful to spend eternity in heaven. No matter how wonderful it might be at first, eventually you’re bound to get used to it and end up bored to death. By the same reasoning, one would shrug off the torments of hell over time, and the experience would be the same as heaven. Truth told, Dante’s account of the saints contemplating the Godhead in the “Paradiso” section of Dante’s Divine Comedy always bored me, without having to wait for too much of eternity to tick by.

This paradox came to mind reading David Horowitz’s new book, A Point In Time. For a quarter of a century, Horowitz has told unpleasant truths about the political left where he spent the firsthalf of his career before turning conservative some 30 years ago. Horowitz surpasses himself in this new essay, though, by telling unpleasant truths about the human condition. What begins as a personal meditation on mortality on the model of Marcus Aurelius shifts into a rough-and-tumble confrontation with faith.

Horowitz has been wrestling with human adversaries all his life, and now, like Jacob, he has wrestled with angels. Jacob bested the divine being (Esau’s guardian angel, in rabbinic commentary) but got a dislocated hip for his trouble. Horowitz does not quite pin the matter down, but he does give Fyodor Dostoevsky’s guardian angel a black eye.

This undertaking took courage, for the Russian novelist’s “Grand Inquisitor” parable is a favorite of good people who agree with Horowitz on most of the practical issues. Dostoevsky’s discursion at the end of The Brothers Karamazov is everywhere cited as an exemplary defense of faith against materialism, by reduction ad absurdum. (I count more than 100 references over the years to this parable in articles published in the religious monthly First Things.) The Inquisitor famously denounces the returning Christ for refusing Satan’s dare to make bread from stones, admonishing him that the religion of bread – communism – will displace the religion of eternal life.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1769/pub_detail.asp 1. VIDEO: Watch Gaza Terrorist React to Video of Her Failed Suicide Bombing Attempt to Kill Israelis 2. VIDEO: Christmas Lights – Amazing Grace 3. VIDEO: Franklin Graham: Islamists ‘Lining Up’ Against Israel – The Christians in the Middle East are afraid. 4. VIDEO: Irish ‘John Galt’ Blasts Politicians, Bureaucrats & Crony Capitalists At […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11085/pub_detail.asp

Iran’s mullahs have repeatedly indicated their willingness and ability to help restore order in Iraq, on the condition that the United States packs up and leaves the region. And now that US forces have left Iraq, the Islamic regime clearly is one of the strategic winners in this deadly game. The mullahs have also pledged on their Boy Scout’s honor, although they have never been Boy Scouts, their nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes. As a further gesture of goodwill, these self-appointed custodians of Allah’s Earth are volunteering to serve as unpaid policemen of the entire Persian Gulf region, protecting vital U.S. interests, just like the Shah did before them. Sounds like a great gift package from the kind-hearted do-gooders of Allah.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11087/pub_detail.asp

While the current administration has a stake in referring to the Muslim Brotherhood as “moderate” and largely secular, there is a reality very different from the view at Foggy Bottom.

The Brotherhood is a popular movement of Islam founded in 1928 by Hasan al Banna, the most prominent representative of what is sometimes referred to as Islamism. For al Banna whatever ails the Muslim world – the umma – can be addressed by the simple sentence, “Islam is the solution.” Religious law – shariah – is to be restored to its central place as an organizing principle for every sphere of life.

From the Brotherhood point of view, whatever ails the world can be traced to the West’s pernicious influence. It stole scientific secrets, deprived Muslims of their religious faith and converted them into docile subjects. While resentment is the main current of Islamism, it is curiously united with modern mass media to spread the faith. Similarly, while the West is deplored, the technical achievements of the West are often welcomed and even aspects of democracy – such as the civil code – which can be exploited to advance Islam is admired. The Brotherhood openly calls for free elections, but only as a way to legitimate its authority. This duality is what confuses the detractors of Islamism. Hoping for the best, some critics rely on the assertions of Western preference to conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood is secular or moderate.

Hillel’s Betrayal of Israel Posted By Daniel Greenfield URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/21/hillel%e2%80%99s-betrayal-of-israel/ The University of California, Berkeley is ground zero for the campus war against Israel. Students for Justice in Palestine emerged on the Berkeley campus and its annual Israel Apartheid Week is a festival of hate with chilling overtones. But it’s also a campus […]