RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
The murderer is the new celebrity. He emerges out of nowhere with a rags to mass murder story, and is swiftly accorded all the trappings of fame. Reporters track down anyone who knew him to learn about his childhood and his main influences. Relatives and friends both contribute fuzzy anecdotes, mostly indistinguishable from the ones they would present if he were competing on American Idol or running for president.

The disaffected form fan clubs around him. The experts discuss what his rise to fame means. Books are written about him and then perhaps a movie. And then it ends and begins all over again.

The Tsernaev brothers, the living one and the dead one, are already receiving that treatment. Like most murderers they have already become more famous than their victims. More famous than the rescuers. The original Tamerlane is better known than any of his countless victims. The new one is already eclipsing his victims. Before long one of those Chechen bards whose videos he tagged into his playlist on YouTube will write a ballad about the Boston massacre and the circle will be complete.

That ballad, murderous and vile, will still be more honest than most of the media coverage about the two Chechen Muslims has been. The media’s coverage is weighed down by its old fetish of murder as celebrity. The media covers murderers and celebrities in the same way. It writes exhaustively about them, but rarely meaningfully. The murderer, like the celebrity, is famous for being famous. And fame clips context and suppresses meaning. It becomes its own reference. A thing is famous for being known. It is known for being famous. It enters the common language as a reference. A metaphor.

In the case of the Tsernaevs, the surface coverage, the endless rounds of interviews with friends and relatives, with anyone who ever met them or retweed them, is mandatory because it avoids the more difficult question of why they killed.

The better news outlets answer with convenient terms like “radicalization” or “self-radicalization” and much of the public, primed to react to meaningless political jargon as if it had meaning, will think that they understand. A radical, they know, is a bad person, except for a brief period when surfers and ninja turtles could use it and still be good people. They don’t quite know why that is, but they also don’t know why high debt is good for the economy or why Islam is a religion of peace.

Radical and extremist are convenient terms for dismissing people and subjects without discussing them. Mental shortcuts like that can be convenient. No one really wants to spend every waking moment debating the people who think that the moon landing was faked or that we are ruled over by miniature T-Rex’s who somehow look just like people. But when the body count gets high enough, dismissing it as extremism or radicalism doesn’t hold up. The question must be discussed.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/terrorism-we-encourage

The two Boston bombers were born in Dagestan and despite their alleged grievance over the treatment of Chechens, never lived there. For law enforcement officials and counter-terror experts this radical view that inspired their heinous act is a conundrum. Even President Obama asked plaintively, “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence?”

Their relatives have expressed anguished bafflement. Some have suggested these young men had divided loyalties. Are they Muslim first or American? Others speculate that they came under the spell of an Australian cleric. Still others refer to tribal codes based on revenge for U.S. counter-terrorism strikes. Add feelings of guilt and frustration and there appears to be a combustible mix. But is any of this more than mere speculation?

Both brothers enrolled in college – the elder brother at Bunker Hill Community College, though he dropped out; the younger at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. The elder, Tamerlan, was a Golden Glove boxer and was married with a child. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, was a popular student at a Cambridge school and was given a scholarship to attend college.

By any reasonable standard both were doing well. They had the privileges of American life. Whether they appreciated these privileges is another question. Like the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, who became the leading advocate of jihad against the West, an educational exchange program developed into a revulsion of American life. Similarly, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the 9/11 attacks, spent four years studying in North Carolina.

Is it possible that American educational institutions directly or inadvertently create the seeds of extremist behavior? After all the drumbeat of anti-American sentiment is ubiquitous at campuses across the country. To read the major textbooks on American history, one imbibes the view the U.S. is a colonial nation with an imperial drive to influence the world. Moreover, the government has systematically exploited Indians and minorities and, encouraged class hatred and the concentration of power in the hands of the privileged.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/23/boston-mosque-radicals/2101411/

Terror suspects, fugitives and radical speakers have passed through the Cambridge mosque that the Tsarnaev brothers are known to have visited.

Cambridge mosque was founded in 1982 by students at MIT, Harvard and other Boston-area schools
Affiliated with Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors call an “overt arm” of Muslim Brotherhood

More than half of the $15.5 million used to found the Boston mosque came from Saudi sources

BOSTON — The mosque attended by the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombing has been associated with other terrorist suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism.

Several people who attended the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., have been investigated for Islamic terrorism, including a conviction of the mosque’s first president, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, in connection with an assassination plot against a Saudi prince.

And its sister mosque in Boston, known as the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, has invited guests who have defended terror suspects. A former trustee appears in a series of videos in which he advocates treating gays as criminals, says husbands should sometimes beat their wives and calls on Allah (God) to kill Zionists and Jews, according to Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group that has investigated the mosques.

The head of the group is among critics who say the mosques teach a brand of Islamic thought that encourages grievances against the West, distrust of law enforcement and opposition to Western forms of government, dress and social values.

“We don’t know where these boys were radicalized,” says the head of the group, Charles Jacobs. “But this mosque has a curriculum that radicalizes people. Other people have been radicalized there.”

Yusufi Vali, executive director at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, insists his mosque does not spread radical ideology and cannot be blamed for the acts of a few worshipers.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-muslims-with-no-name-islamists-cover-up-their-existence-in-the-media?f=puball

As reported by U.S. News & World Report on April 4, 2013, the Associated Press (AP) has revised its definition of “Islamist” in the latest edition of the AP stylebook after the AP announced that it would likewise no longer approve of “illegal immigrant.” This move, advocated precisely by a troubling Muslim group justifiably called Islamist in the past, shows once again how difficult it is for modern free societies even to identify their Islamist foes in the face of politically correct pressures.

Added to the AP stylebook in 2012, Islamist initially had the following entry: “Supporter of government in accord with the laws of Islam. Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.” The updated entry reads:

An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam. Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists.

Where possible, be specific and use the name of militant affiliations: al-Qaida-linked, Hezbollah, Taliban, etc. Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.

Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), praised “this revision” as a “step in the right direction” that “will result in fewer negative generalizations in coverage of issues related to Islam and Muslims.” Hooper considered the “key issue with the term ‘Islamist'” to be “not its continued use,” but rather “its use almost exclusively as an ill-defined pejorative.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346424/lessons-history

Our enemies take notice when we scale back our military.

We should study history not just to memorize dates and places but to analyze trends. I see our country once again following a particular disturbing trend at a critical time when we should be more prudent.

Now, I will be one of the first to say that we can find savings of taxpayer dollars in the Department of Defense budget. Before I was sworn in as a member of Congress, I stated on Meet the Press in the waning months of 2010 that we could find fraud, waste, and abuse in that budget.

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I backed up that assertion in April 2011 when my first piece of legislation, which identified and eliminated funding for several wasteful programs in the DOD budget, made it to the House floor. It passed 393–0, and the savings to the American taxpayer was $35 million per year.

However, what I see occurring now is not judicious cost-cutting but the degradation of our military capability. We are once again forgetting that the preeminent responsibility of the federal government is to “provide for the common defense.” Some people have confused this with providing welfare and guaranteeing happiness on the notion of limitless rights.

Since World War I, we as a nation have viewed any end of major combat operations as an opportunity to achieve fiscal responsibility through cutting the military budget. When World War II ended, we ramped down, and then we had to ramp back up for the Korean War. After the Vietnam War and the Cold War, we once again gutted our military capability.

I was commissioned as a second lieutenant on July 31, 1982, and the following year, after graduating from the University of Tennessee, I went on active duty. I witnessed the transformation of the U.S. military in my early years: Humvees, Bradleys, Abrams tanks, Apache attack helicopters, Blackhawk transport helicopters, and Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) artillery, the A-10 close-air support platform — all this new technology and equipment was instrumental in my first combat tour, Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346448/boston-massacre The Boston Massacre While new facts about the Boston Marathon bombing may yet emerge, what we already know is enough to qualify it definitively as a terrorist act perpetrated by people motivated by a radical interpretation of Islam. To most people, this is sufficient proof that American soil has yet again become the target […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346464/what-boston-means-immigration-policy

The Boston Marathon bombing has intensified objections to the Gang of Eight’s so-called comprehensive-immigration-reform bill, and rightly so: The terrorist attack in Boston underlines several failures in our immigration system — failures that the bill under consideration would do little or nothing to rectify and would in some cases make considerably worse.

From a domestic-policy point of view, the most critical of these failures is the failure to maintain an immigration system oriented toward assimilation — the unapologetic expectation that immigrants will be fully immersed in American life. Assimilation has important cultural and economic benefits. It also makes immigrants less likely to become Islamist terrorists. The case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev — a non-citizen, charged in 2009 with a violent crime, flagged by a foreign intelligence service as a likely Islamic radical and terror threat, who traveled abroad to jihadist hot spots before returning to the United States to carry out his attack — suggests very strongly that our screening-and-evaluations system is broken. The case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev suggests very strongly that our ability and willingness to fully assimilate immigrants is damaged, much as the London bombings pointed toward the United Kingdom’s inability or unwillingness to assimilate its immigrants.
Assimilation was never part of the agenda for the Tsarnaev family. The bombers’ parents claimed refugee status at a time when their place of residence was Kazakhstan, where there are many ethnic Chechens and little in the way of persecution that would justify refugee status. In fact, Tsarnaev père apparently had little reason to fear persecution in Russia, either: He returned there to live, and his son Tamerlan spent an extended period of time with him there, with side trips to the Islamist hot spot of Chechnya. Tamerlan never became a U.S. citizen (his flagging by the Russian intelligence service as a likely Islamic radical prevented that), his parents had returned to Russia, and he himself was in and out of the country a great deal: not exactly a candidate for what our forebears used to quaintly describe as our national melting pot.

The Gang of Eight bill would move us away from the traditional American ideal of assimilation rather than toward it. It would grant amnesty to many illegal immigrants with a tenuous connection to the United States, and to some who are not even currently living here. At the same time it would do a great deal to increase unskilled immigration, particularly by Hispanics. And it would create a new class of “temporary” workers and their families who would be expected to be in this country but not of it, until those standards are relaxed. Combine these features of the bill and what you have is not a recipe for welcoming new Americans but for encouraging cultural and linguistic separatism.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/04/23/foreign-press-providing-the-gosnell-coverage-we-cant-get-here/

Here’s the headline:

Obama will address a Planned Parenthood gala. This is the group that knew about the Gosnell abortion horror and didn’t go to the police

According to his schedule, President Obama will take time out this week to address a gala thrown by Planned Parenthood – the abortion industry’s favourite lobby.
It’s an extraordinary move, not just because the issue is so controversial but because Planned Parenthood has recently disgraced itself over the Gosnell trial. To recap, Kermit Gosnell is the “doctor” is accused of killing hundreds of babies during late-term abortions by removing them screaming from the womb and then severing their heads from their bodies with a pair of scissors. He also operated a filthy clinic covered in cat feces and used untrained employees to carry out medical procedures. A question that has repeatedly been asked is “Who knew about this?” and “What did they do about it?” Last week, Planned Parenthood answered with “We did” and “As little as possible.”

Interesting, once one exits the progressive American media bubble, this is seen as “controversial”. Sadly, for this president and his supporters it is nothing more than business as usual. In fact, the press and abortion lobbyists go out of their way to portray Planned Parenthood as having nothing to do with abortion whatsoever.

One can only wonder if any of the charges against this modern day Dr. Mengele would have been dropped had there been any semblance of real coverage from the MSM.
Stephen Kruiser is a professional comedian and writer who has also been a conservative political activist for over two decades. A co-founder of the first Los Angeles Tea Party, Kruiser often speaks to grassroots groups around America and has had the great honor of traveling around the world entertaining U.S. troops.

Judge Drops Three Charges Against Gosnell; Five Still Stand Bryan Preston

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/04/23/judge-drops-three-charges-against-gosnell-five-still-stand/

Dr. Kermit Gosnell faced eight charges of murder in his ongoing trial. As of today, he only faces five. The judge in the case dropped three of them, citing a lack of evidence.

The move has stunned trial watchers. LifeNews looked into which charges have been dropped, and found that one of them involved a baby boy born and breathing before his neck was snipped.

One of the three charges the judge dropped includes a 28-week unborn baby who was killed in an abortion-infanticide and eventually discovered in a freezer at Gosnell’s clinic.

LifeNews has identified that another charge involved “Baby B,” about whom a Gosnell staffer testified was a newborn child who survived a failed abortion and was still breathing into a shoe box.

Kareema Cross told the jury she saw at least 10 children who were breathing after botched abortions but killed afterwards. What happened shocked her so badly she took photographs to document what happened. Cross took pictures to document filth in the abortion clinic and a picture of a huge baby boy tossed in shoe box breathing, moving, and too big for the box. Cross testified of large babies birthed, moving, and moaning some for 20 min before their necks were snipped.

The defense started yesterday. Today, three of the charges are gone.

Planned Parenthood has dubbed President Obama the most pro-abortion president ever, ahead of his keynoting their gala this Thursday.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/potential-clues-in-fort-hood-report-on-fbis-treatment-of-tsarnaev-lead/
Did politically correct “sensitivities” damn another probe into extremism with deadly results? PLUS: Napolitano says system “ping” caught Tsarnaev departure, but not return

Lawmakers questioning the FBI’s treatment of a tip about the radicalization of Tamerlan Tsarnaev may begin to find some answers in last year’s review of another case in which known extremism was downplayed with fatal results.

That was the case of Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused of shooting 13 people to death and wounding 42 on Nov. 5, 2009, at the Fort Hood deployment center after jumping on a desk and shouting “Allahu Akbar!”

The Final Report of the William H. Webster Commission on the FBI, Counterterrorism Intelligence, and the Events at Fort Hood, Texas was released last July without much attention as the suspect sat in perennial pretrial motions. It detailed a Bureau that brushed aside warning signs of a known extremist as he grew more radical and communicated with Yemeni cleric and al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki.

The 173-page report containing sporadic redactions relayed conversations of agents just months before the Fort Hood attack arguing that they don’t “go out and interview every Muslim guy who visits extremist websites,” with the Washington, D.C., field office also advising the San Diego field office that the subject of probing someone like Hasan is “politically sensitive.”

One email determined that “Hasan was conducting US Army sponsored research that was online with the questions he sent Aulaqi.”