RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

The Obama administration, in its first and second terms, has committed strategic mistakes in the Middle East which will undermine U.S. national and security interests for many years, even under subsequent administrations after 2016.

The damage done is severe, and a remedy seems out of reach unless earth shattering changes are applied to Washington’s foreign policy-either under the incumbent’s administration or the next. The common core of U.S. strategic mistakes has been the perception of partners in the region since day one of the post-Bush presidency. While Bush’s narrative on backing pro-democracy forces was right on track, the bureaucracy’s actions betrayed the White House’s global aim. By the time the Obama administration installed itself on Pennsylvania Avenue in 2009, little had been accomplished by the Bush bureaucrats in regards to identifying these pro-democracy forces and supporting them. When the current administration replaced Bush, however, civil society groups in the Middle East were systematically abandoned-aid to their liberal forces was cut off and engagement with the radicals became priority. The mistakes of the Bush bureaucracy became the official policy of the Obama administration.

Washington’s “new beginnings” in the region moved American Mideast policy in a backward direction on two major tracks. The first derailment was to partner with the Muslim Brotherhood, not the secular NGOs, in an attempt to define the future of Arab Sunni countries. The second was to engage the Iranian regime, not its opposition, in attempt to define future relations with the Shia sphere of the region. These were strategic policy decisions planned years before the Arab Spring, not a pragmatic search for solutions as upheavals began. Choosing the Islamists over the Muslim moderates and reformers has been an academically suggested strategy adapted to potential interests-even though it represents an approach contrary to historically successful pathways. In June 2009, President Obama sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader asking for “engagement.” This move, coupled with Obama’s abandonment of the civil revolt in Iran that same month, sent a comforting message to the ruling Khomeinists: The United States is retreating from containment and will not support regime change in Iran. That undeniably emboldened Tehran to go on the offensive in the region after less than a decade of status quo.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/28/babbin-the-coming-turmoil-in-saudi-arabia/ There are so many trouble spots in the world, it is comforting to know — or at least to believe — that Saudi Arabia isn’t one of them. Until the United States surpassed the kingdom a few months ago, Saudi Arabia was the world’s biggest producer of oil, a country of enormous wealth and […]

Saturday evening, Feb. 22nd, University of Pennsylvania Law School hosted the “Eighth Annual Muslim Law Students Conference,” on the topic of “MUSLIM OBLIGATIONS IN PROMOTING JUSTICE IN AMERICA.” Our interest in Islamic law as American citizens is to learn first-hand exactly what Muslim American law students are being taught.

The fairly innocuous and well-meaning title of the program masked the true intent, which we believe is to lull the audience and our society into a false sense of complacency regarding the real aims and effects of Islamic incursion in our society – which Stephen Coughlin covers in his must-read thesis, ” To Our Great Detriment.”

We were greeted with “As-Salamu ‘ Alaykum” (Peace be upon you), upon entering the conference and by each speaker, prior to presentation. What a comforting greeting. I responded with “Aslim Taslam.”

As is typically the case, conference attendees were highly educated and polite. This is a high-end mix of people who are difficult to fault on any personal level.

The attendees, primarily American and foreign Muslim law students, as well as a few foreign lawyers, presented a mixed canvas racially, yet each person is culturally Islamic and a member of the ummah, the global body of believers. The speakers and each future American lawyer we spoke with advised us that Islam has been misinterpreted for 1,400 years. Isn’t that amazing? As if we had no ability to study the history of Islam from both Muslim and non-Muslim sources on our own.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-Fray-Watershed-event-for-Israel-advocacy-in-US-343830

Notwithstanding accumulated achievement over the past two decades, there are growing signs that a changing of the guard in America’s oldest Zionist organization is called for.

Founded in 1897, the Zionist Organization of America is the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States…. ZOA is dedicated to educating the public, elected officials, media and college/high school students about the truth of the ongoing and relentless Arab war against Israel.
– ZOA website

Elections for the position of ZOA president will be held on March 9. It is difficult to overstate the potential impact the result may have.

Indeed, these elections could well prove to be a watershed event in pro-Israel advocacy in America, with far reaching implications for right-wing activism within the US – and for the interfacing with like-minded organizations within Israel. But whatever the result it seems highly probable that what was in the past, will not be in the future – at least not for long.

Why these elections are important

Why are the upcoming ZOA elections so pivotal, with implications far beyond the intra-organizational question of who will inherit, or retain, the mantle of leadership? As readers will recall, in several recent columns, I have leveled severe criticism at the performance of the Israeli Right for failing to generate any effective impact on Israel’s policy- making regarding what is arguably the most vital issue on the national agenda: The promotion/prevention of Palestinian statehood, and its necessary derivatives – the territorial dimensions of the State of Israel and the question of its delegitimization as the nationstate of the Jews.

Back to ZOA elections and their broader significance There exists – for better or for worse – a symbiotic relationship between Israel-advocacy organizations in the Diaspora, notably the US, and like-minded entities in Israel, be they political parties, ideological movements or policy-oriented institutions. Vapidity or vitality in one will inevitably induce similar qualities in the other.

Perhaps one of the most effective – albeit regrettable – examples of this mutual invigoration of co-ideologists, is that which prevails between left-wing organizations in Israel and abroad. The mutual exchange of financial resources to sustain dovish advocacy operations, on the one hand, and intellectual inputs to support the promotion of dovish ideology, on the other, have resulted in the virtual dominance of left-wing perspectives over Israeli policy making – despite their manifest failure.

Mutual nourishment on Left; mutual deprivation on Right

By contrast there is virtually no such parallel process of mutual nourishment on the Right. On the contrary, there has been, to a large measure, a condition of mutual deprivation, in which hard-line hawkish entities in Israel have been starved of financial resources and, hence, have been unable to provide powerful and persuasive intellectual inputs for ideologically compatible organizations abroad to help them garner public support overseas.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com  http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS   Type 1 diabetes treatment success.  Clinical trials of Alpha 1 Antitrypsin (AAT), developed by Dr Eli Lewis of Ben Gurion University, reduced insulin dependence in Type 1 diabetes sufferers and cured several of the disease.  Some physicians are now prescribing AAT as an off-label treatment ahead of FDA approval. […]

The Price of Progress – The Poor Will Always Be With Us   http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ “If the poor didn’t exist, we would have to invent them,” Pogue said, spooning kneaded balls of raw spinach into his mouth. Pogue was Anson’s superior though the term no longer existed in the workplaces of the Community. Pogue was the […]

That is the name that Quadrant magazine, Australia’s leading conservative journal (http://quadrant.org.au/) gives to the climate change, global warming, man made impending planetary doom groupies.

Read this spoof by Wilbur York
Revealed! North Korea’s Warmist Plot

Catastropharians love to believe that “deniers” are in the pay of Big Carbon and that is why the planet is almost certainly doomed. Well here’s a conspiracy theory so outlandish, so baroque in the details of its intrigue, it might just be enough to win some coverts to the sceptic cause

pyongyangIn a sensational discovery, found in a floating filing cabinet off the coast of Tuvalu, there is now an indication that the agents of the government of North Korea were responsible for the absence of any significant rise in global temperature since the late 1990s.

The document discovered in the filing cabinet was an unpublished paper by a little known Professor Wilbur York, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Calamities. Little is known about this institute. It was originally endowed by Sir Wayward Brainstorm, a distinguished British psychologist who is thought to have made his fortune while working at the University of Western Australia. There is no trace of the buildings that housed the institute and it is believed rising sea levels have washed the buildings away.

Professor York, while studying the nuclear activities of the North Koreans, was handed a document by a defector indicating that, as a trial run at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Centre, a program of enriching mercury with its heaviest isotopes had been conducted before starting uranium enrichment. This program was the result of an inspired insight by the Korean Dear Leader that heavier mercury would have a lower thermal expansion coefficient than the mercury then used in thermometers. Thus thermometers calibrated to read temperatures with ordinary mercury would report lower temperatures when filled with heavy mercury. When the mercury enrichment programme was complete, a second phase commenced producing thermometers identical to those used in all the major meteorological stations but loaded with heavy mercury. Meanwhile, a team of special agents was schooled to play the parts of “climate scientists”, subsequently dispatched to all corners of the globe to replace thermometers with the heavy mercury thermometer.

It is clear, looking at the reported global temperatures, that it took some three or four years for their complete replacement. However, it is now widely acknowledged that the temperature appears to have stabilised, with a statistically insignificant rise.

The big question: Why did the North Koreans go to so much trouble?

One can only speculate that it may have been a desire to provoke political uncertainty amongst its enemies, thus distracting them from following too closely North Korean nuclear ambitions.

On the other hand, it may have been a desire to show the foolish actions of the US government and its President over climate change. After all, the increasing level of atmospheric CO2 with stable global temperature, showed that US climate scientists were as bad at making predictions as the Quants of Wall Street and might even create an even bigger financial mess.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/02/revealed-north-korea-warmist-plot/

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/peter-smith/2014/02/statistics-dummies-warmists/
These breathless reports about the planet never being hotter, take them with a truckload of salt. How can anyone place the slightest credence in claims being advanced by people who fail to grasp, or refuse to grasp, the simple truth about trend lines and temperature.

“Read all about it! Read all about it! It’s the hottest year on record — except for another five hotter years!” A new twist can be put on the aphorism attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. It is now clear that there are lies, damn lies, and the interpretation of climate statistics.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that last year (2013) tied with 2007 for the sixth-hottest year on record – i.e. since 1850. “This is confirmation of the trend of global warming of the planet,” according to WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. In case you missed the import, Mr Jarraud added that thirteen of the fourteen warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st Century.

The latest version of the Hadley Centre’s global surface temperature series HadCRUT 4 shows a trend rise of about 0.8 degrees Celsius between 1850 and 2013. This upward trend steepened between around 1910 and 1940 and, following a period of becoming negative between 1940 and 1975, steepened somewhat more acutely between around 1975 and 2000 before leveling.

It seems clear, based on both the surface and satellite records, that since around 2000/’01 — that is, for the last 12 or 13 years — temperatures have plateaued. I don’t really buy the 17-year cessation being bandied about. I think there is too much noise created by the sharp rise in temperature in 1998 to draw firm conclusions until just after the beginning of this century. But form your own conclusions. Data can be sourced from the excellent and universally well-regarded web site woodfortrees.org.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2014/02/swiss-solution/
What the Swiss rejected at the ballot box was not immigration as such. What they voted against is the notion that their government must bow before Brussels and surrender the right to determine who takes up residence in Switzerland, for how long and under what circumstances.

It wasn’t a racist mob pulling down the shutters. The Swiss referendum on February 9, 2014, was not a vote against immigration. It was a referendum against the outsourcing of immigration. Just as Australians rejected the outsourcing of immigration by the Rudd and Gillard governments to people-smugglers in Indonesia, so the Swiss have decided that they will no longer leave the outsourcing of immigration to bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels.

They were giving voise, in effect, to what John Howard said on 28 October, 2001: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”

What the Swiss rejected — albeit narrowly, at 50.03% – is not immigration as such. What they voted against is the freedom for any citizen from the European Union, or members of the immediate family of any citizen (whether or not he or she is a citizen) to settle in Switzerland.

Note that Switzerland has refused to become a member of the European Union. It is fair to say that if the Swiss people did not have the right to make laws themselves by petitioning for a referendum, Switzerland would now be a member of the European Union.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ BILL CLINTON TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE Has Bill really thought this analogy through? Ukraine was technically a case of a legislature tossing out a president after popular protests. If America worked that way, Obama would have been out in 2010. Clinton focuses a lot on the idea of the Ukranian president privatizing […]