RUTHFULLY YOURS

The admission by the Taliban on July 30 that its leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had died was widely seen as good news for the Islamic State (ISIS) against its jihadist competitors. But while ISIS’s growing power in Afghanistan over the last year has garnered significant attention, the rise of Iran’s influence in the country has been less noted. Worse, in the light of the nuclear agreement with the U.S., Iran’s expanded influence is held by some observers to be a stability-promoting development. This is a dangerous fantasy that has already been falsified in the Fertile Crescent, where the synergetic growth of Iran and ISIS promotes chaos and radicalism — to the advantage of both and the disadvantage of the forces of moderation and order.

Several leaders of the Pakistani Taliban and the al-Qaeda–linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have defected to ISIS in the Afghanistan–Pakistan theater, but ISIS’s presence in the area remains small. This has not prevented an outrageous attempt by Tehran to sell its recent increase in support to the Taliban as an anti-ISIS measure. Tehran’s argument does not fit the timeline — which shows consistent Iranian support for anti-Western Sunni jihadist forces in Afghanistan from the beginning of the Western intervention in 2001.

A plague is sweeping the land, gathering victims of all shapes and sizes and turning them into fools. Its name — for now — is Trumpism.

The Trump virus’s primary effect is twofold: First, it implants in its hosts the unshakable conviction that one of the most execrable clowns in the history of these United States is a hero who deserves to be elevated to the White House; then, having inculcated the conceit, it removes the faculties that are necessary for its removal. The results are ruinous. As might the partisans of a deliberately unfalsifiable conspiracy theory, those who have been stricken soon come to believe in earnest that there is no such thing as a fair-minded or legitimate criticism of their swashbuckling charge, and that all embarrassments, mistakes, and inadequacies are in fact signs of imminent victory. To converse at length with a committed Trumpite is, in consequence, akin in nature to conversing at length with a moon-landing denier: Every protestation is taken as a clear indication of complicity in the cover-up; distinctions between matters of minor and major import are disintegrated at will; run-of-the-mill inquiries are received as telltale signs of “fear” or of “hatred”; and bluster and the turning of rhetorical tables (“so who do you like: Jeb?”) substitute for patience and for forthrightness. There is a certain irony in this. By their own insistence, Trump’s devotees consider themselves to be the rebels at the gates; by their dull, unreflective, often ovine behavior, they resemble binary and nuancless drones, as might be found in a novel by Aldous Huxley or Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Walter Annenberg, son of a very successful gangster and newspaper distributor who made his bones back in the day when those two occupations were synonymous, inherited the Daily Racing Form and the Philadelphia Inquirer when his father went away on tax charges. He built his publishing interests into a phenomenally successful enterprise — he had the foresight to launch TV Guide at just the moment it was needed — and ended up so wealthy that he gave away not millions but billions of dollars to good causes. He was, for a while, my neighbor in Lower Merion, Pa., though in spite of our both being newspapermen, our paths never crossed; strangely, I had hardly any nonagenarian billionaire Nixon cronies in my social circle at all.

I have always admired Annenberg, and to some extent his father, Moe, as well: Walter was a devil-may-care young man who quit Wharton to chase skirts (one of which was draped upon the person of Ginger Rogers), while Moe was an immigrant and self-made man who settled disputes with baseball bats and read Spinoza in his spare time. (Christopher Ogden relates many amusing anecdotes about the two.) The newspaper racket will, alas, never see their likes again. The disappointing thing about Walter Annenberg was that he spent so much of his time and energy trying to buy his way in to an attenuated social caste whose good opinion wasn’t worth his time. (If you own a major newspaper and still feel the need to rent status, you don’t know what to do with a daily broadsheet.) He could afford to live among the Biddles and Dorrances and Penns — indeed, he could have bought and sold all those old Main Line clans many times over — but he was always the felon’s son, the Jew, the arriviste whose money came from TV Guide. They never forgot, and he never forgave. Eventually, he leased himself an embassy and was installed as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. He was not obviously well qualified to occupy that diplomatic aerie, but he thrived in the position, and added a KBE to the slightly dented name his father bequeathed him.

The modern mainstreaming of Jew hatred reaches a new level in Spain.

Europeans, at least the folks on the Western side of the continent, like to think of themselves as enlightened, freethinking and humanistic but events at last week’s Rototom Sunsplash music festival near Barcelona demonstrate that the situation is quite the opposite. Organizers of the event caved into pressure from BDS activists and disinvited Jewish reggae sensation, Matisyahu, under the pretext that he was too supportive of Israel and unsupportive of “Palestine.” Matisyahu refused to release a statement, as demanded by the event’s organizers, critical of Israel’s policies. He was the only performer targeted for special treatment.

The ban sparked immediate worldwide outrage from Jewish leaders as well as the Spanish government and press. Matisyahu is not an Israeli citizen and was targeted merely for being Jewish and for ostensibly having pro-Israel views. Others were indignant over the fact that the Sunsplash organizers were attempting to control political thought by making pro-Palestinian views a condition precedent for performing. After facing a torrent of negative publicity, the festival organizers quite shamefacedly reversed their initial odious decision to ban Matisyahu and re-invited him. Matisyahu accepted and despite the presence of anti-Semitic protestors waving Palestinian flags, defiantly sang his hit song “Jerusalem,” which is peppered with references supportive of Israel.

Across Europe, thousands of churches have closed and many of them have become mosques. The St. Mark’s Cathedral in London survived Nazi bombers in WW2, but fell to a new invasion and became the New Peckham Mosque. In France, where there are now more Muslims than practicing Catholics, the Islamic colonists demanded that thousands of empty churches be turned into mosques. The Capernaum Church in Germany has become the Al-Nour Islamic Center. In Amsterdam, the St. Ignatius Church was transformed into the Fatih Camii Mosque. Its name means ‘The Conqueror’s Mosque’.

The original Fatih Camii Mosque had been built by the Turkish invaders in Constantinople on the site of the Church of the Holy Apostles. Like their ISIS descendants, the Turks drove out the Greek Christians, destroyed the church and replaced it with a mosque named after the monster Mehmed II, who inaugurated Islamic rule over the fallen city with slavery, rape and beheadings in the ISIS style.

Today ‘Conqueror’s Mosques’ have sprung up not only in Istanbul and Amsterdam, but in Paris, Toronto, Melbourne and Brooklyn, where within sight of the Statue of Liberty extending her torch of freedom to the oppressed of the world, stands the grim squalid outpost of the oppressor of the world.

Jeffrey Lewis argues that, whatever China’s motives are for deploying such weapons, “there is no arguing that China’s nuclear force is small.” Unless, of course, you happen to live in Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Nepal, Tibet, the Philippines, Indonesia, or Malaysia — all of which collectively have zero nuclear weapons.

Lewis also assures us China has no interest in a “large” number of missiles. He argues that China’s nuclear posture has been driven “by an enthusiasm for reaching technological milestones” — as if China is simply engaging in a high school science project.

In the nuclear deterrent business, U.S. commanders both civilian and military are paid to take things seriously.

Getting the nuclear deterrent business wrong would, after all, be bad for America, bad for civilization and bad for the world.

Recently, China tested a missile with multiple warheads. Up to that time, all of China’s nuclear-armed missiles were assumed to have only single warheads. Many of those were liquid-fueled and required considerable time to load and launch.

Beneath a vexing tangle of funding operations — most hiding under a pretense of “good works,” “humanitarian aid,” and “public interest” — there is at work a sophisticated, multi-faceted, well-oiled propaganda machine against Israel.

A chief concern in the Knesset is how to curb the influx of millions of foreign dollars used to fund anti-Israel hate-groups operating as NGOs. These organizations are accused of using their “human rights” designation to mask a deceptive advocacy agenda to undermine, and even to destroy, Israel.

When Israel works to build “bridges for peace,” such as SodaStream, where Arabs and Jews worked peacefully together, these organizations then knock them down.

Apparently, no one at World Vision asks the obvious question: Why are there even refugee camps in territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, such as Gaza, Jenin and Ramallah? Not only have those areas been under exclusive PA or Hamas civilian administration since 1994, but Israel totally evacuated the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Cain Vaults to Lead in Poll – Wall Street Journal

www.wsj.com/…/SB100014240529702047746045…

The Wall Street Journal Oct 13, 2011 – Former corporate executive Herman Cain has catapulted to the lead in the race … Mitt Romney, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

CONCORD, N.H.—Former restaurant-industry executive Herman Cain has catapulted to the lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, as GOP voters grow disenchanted with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and remain wary of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

Drawn by Mr. Cain’s blunt, folksy style in recent debates, 27% of Republican primary voters picked him as their first choice for the nomination, a jump of 22 percentage points from six weeks ago.

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Dec. 22 /PRNewswire/ — Howard Dean has established a
strong national lead over all other candidates for the Democratic candidates.
While the selection of the Democratic candidate will depend on the Iowa
caucuses and primary elections in New Hampshire and many other states, the
former Vermont governor has pulled ahead of all other candidates among
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents nationwide.
The Harris Poll(R) finds that Dean is now the preferred candidate of 21%
of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, with a strong lead over
Senator Joe Lieberman (10%), who is in second place, and all the other
candidates.

A new poll out of New Hampshire shows a commanding lead for Donald Trump and two candidates making big surges.

The Public Policy Polling survey shows Trump at 35 percent in the first-in-the-nation primary state, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich is second with 11 percent and Carly Fiorina has 10 percent.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have seen big slips since their post-announcement peaks: from 14 percent to 4 percent for Cruz, and 12 percent to 4 percent for Paul. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has dropped from 7 percent to less than 1 percent.

Holding the middle at 7 percent in the new polls are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Ben Carson has 6 percent.