RUTHFULLY YOURS

U.S. and European intelligence agencies now believe that the Russian airliner downed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on the weekend was probably taken out by a bomb planted onboard by an Islamic State-affiliated terrorist group, according to media reports.

The Russian airplane may have been attacked by Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) because Russia is waging war against it.

British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Philip Hammond said yesterday it appears a bomb ripped apart the Airbus A321M on Saturday, Oct. 31, killing all 224 souls onboard. It is reportedly Russia’s worst air disaster on record. The Russian-operated plane that was registered in Ireland had taken off earlier from the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh bound for St. Petersburg, Russia.

“We have concluded that there is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft,” Hammond said as his government gears up for a British visit today by Egypt’s anti-Islamist president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The Secretary of State of the United States traveled to the Muslim country of Jordan to assure its Foreign Minister that Jews would not be praying any more at the holiest site in Judaism.

As Kerry put it, “It is Muslims who pray on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and non-Muslims who visit.”

Israel is often accused of apartheid and segregation, but here was the Secretary of State championing both, as long as it was Muslim segregation aimed at Jews. The Temple Mount “Status Quo” worriedly talked about by Kerry and the media as the answer to the recent Muslim stabbing spree is no different than the Muslim ban on Jews entering the Cave of the Patriarchs, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried, past the seventh step. It rewards Muslim violence by upholding Muslim segregationist racism.

There’s no word on whether segregated drinking fountains will be put in for Muslims and non-Muslims. Jews visiting the former site of their Temple have been attacked for drinking from an “Islamic” water fountain.

Indian-born Harjit Singh Sajjan, 44, a former police officer and veteran of three military deployments to Afghanistan, was named Canada’s new minister of defense Wednesday, bringing first-hand expertise to one of the country’s top cabinet positions, agencies report.

Sajjan will oversee an anticipated change in Canada’s military involvement in the battle against militants in Syria and Iraq.

“He has a taste for the reality of war and that’s very, very important,” David Bercuson, director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, told National Post.

“He will have seen the aftermath of the effect of war on some of our men and women, which is a major issue with veteran’s affairs,” said Bercuson.

Newly sworn-in Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already said he wants to end Canada’s air strikes in the region in favour of providing humanitarian help.

Elected to Parliament for the first time in last month’s election, Sajjan is illustrative of the younger, more diverse cabinet Trudeau had aimed to create.

Outgoing Conservative defence minister Jason Kenney had taken a hardline stance on security, saying Canada needed to be fighting against Islamic State militants to prevent them from becoming a threat to Canada.

Thank you David Goldman for puncturing the love affair with a huckster by the same folks who thought the “Arab Spring” was the birth of democracy…..rsk
Meredith Wilson’s sappy 1962 Broadway show “The Music Man” illuminates an inscrutable side of American foreign policy: Why do Americans persist in believing that they can remake the world in their own image, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? We Ameicans love crooks and swindlers who appeal to our national narcissism, even when we know that they are crooks and swindlers. Wilson’s hero is a turn-of-the-twentieth-century rogue who styles himself a professor of music, and sells marching band equipment to midwestern towns with the promise that he will teach the local kids to play–but disappears before keeping his end of the bargain. In one Iowa town, the “music man” is caught red-handed, but pardoned by the townsfolk who bask in the warmth of his flattery. He has a long list of antecedents, such as Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry.

The Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, whose death last week revived the controversy about the 2003 Iraq war, lives on in the hearts of the neoconservatives for the same reason that the burghers of River City, Iowa embraced Wilson’s swindler. It reveals the better side of the American character: We’re too dumb to lie about other countries’ politics, which we understand about as well as Sanskrit, and we have no natural defense against sociopaths who lie whenever their lips are moving. There are very few uniquely American jokes: one queries what Snow White said to Pinocchio (“Lie to me, Baby”). We Americans love it when the Pinocchios of foreign policy lie to us. Those who view American democracy as an export industry still haven’t managed to fall out of love with Chalabi.

The likely cause of Friday’s crash of a Russian Metrojet over the Sinai Peninsula turned to terrorism as sources indicated a bomb may have been placed on board the aircraft before takeoff.

The flight was carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members; there were no survivors. The plane had departed from the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, headed toward St. Petersburg, when it came down over the Sinai — a desert now teeming with restive Islamist terrorists.

PJM reported this spring on an April call from ISIS to jihadists in Egypt to activate, noting that “wolves” are “one of the first jihad work stages” and simply indicates “individual small cells” who have a greater chance of taking the enemy by surprise.