RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=87b74a936c723115dfa298cf3&id=3005ff3b85&e=552053f981

As delegates were flying in from all over the world to attend COP 19, the years most important UN climate summit in Warsaw, CFACT delivered the keynote addresses at a European climate conference with a different twist.

Co-hosted by the Polish Globalization Institute, Solidarity and other Polish NGOs and joined by groups from several other countries, the conference took aim at the UN’s version of global warming science, economics and politics.

The UN made a mistake when it chose Poland for COP 19. I’ve now had the chance to speak intimately about this issue with scores of concerned Poles and to address hundreds more at the conference. The majority of Polish citizens feel that a UN climate treaty threatens their hard-won independence and economic future.

Poles have a great deal to teach about the kind of common sense UN members should apply to global warming. The Poles have lived under repressive socialist control and never want to go back. When they hear citizens from rich western nations extolling the virtues of redistribution and government control, the laugh, sigh and remind them that “nobody really understands good sense, unless they were occupied by the Soviets.”

After numerous presentations on climate science and politics, the highlight of the conference was the signing of the Warsaw Declaration by representatives of Poland, Italy, France, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, the U.K., the U.S. and others. After numerous recitations of the facts, the Declaration states clearly that the UN should not adopt any climate treaty considering the many failures of climate models and the IPCC’s highly politicized science.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/print/obamas-iranian-deal-is-a-new-disaster

The headline of the lead, page one article in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, November 8 was “U.S., Iran Close In on Nuclear Deal” with a sub-headline “West Set to Ease Some Financial Sanctions in Exchange for Tehran Freezing Most Advance Work.’ Secretary of State John Kerry cut short a visit to Middle East states, including Israel, returning to Geneva where the deal was reportedly close to being signed.

We now know that Obama began to ease financial sanctions before the latest negotiations began. He did so secretly.

Shades of “Munich” and the infamous 1938 deal with the Nazi regime that a British Prime Minister promised would bring “peace in our time.” That level of naiveté resulted in World War Two which began a year later when Germany invaded Poland after negotiating a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union that was itself later invaded.

You don’t make deals with rogue nations. They never keep their word. One example is North Korea, a nuclear nation. Another is Iran that intends to be a nuclear nation.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/us-iran-deal-on-nuclear-weapons?f=puball

A presumptive deal between the United States and Iran to curb the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions is regarded in the White House as a breakthrough, cutting the Gordian knot between intractability and persistence. Yet before the acclamation begins a cautionary note is warranted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said, “I believe that adopting them [the deal proposals] is a mistake of historic proportions.” There is much to suggest that he is right.

For one thing, perhaps most notably, Iran retains the capability of making nuclear weapons. The deal – described as unfolding – merely freezes the most advanced aspects of its nuclear program, including the production of near-weapons-grade fuel. With uranium enriched at the twenty-percent level as is presently the case, Iran can probably produce six Hiroshima like atom bombs today. Moreover, it possesses the missiles to deliver them over a 1000 kilometer distance.

Second, Iranian leaders have been known to lie. The assurances offered in the past have disappeared like soap bubbles. After all, negotiations of one kind or another have been going on for decades. Prime Minister Rouhani, in his previous role, was the chief Iranian negotiator at a diplomatic table with American and European representatives. Despite his pleasant smile and moderate demeanor, he is a jihadist who is eager to promote Iran’s imperial agenda and that political position is enhanced by the possession of nuclear weapons.

Third, although this deal is the first phase in what is presumed to be a step-by-step process, verification procedures are obscure. It has been established from Intelligence sources that Iran has several projects deeply hidden underground on heavy-water nuclear production and centrifuges. Even if one or two are “frozen” to satisfy IAEA inspectors, how can one be sure other facilities aren’t operating at full tilt?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-great-purge?f=must_reads

During the years 1934-1939, Soviet dictator and Communist Party General Chairman Josef Stalin ordered what later became known to history as the “Great Purge” – a period of brutal political repression, torture, imprisonment and mass murder in the Soviet Union.

Launched under the auspices of purifying the Communist Party of ideologically-unreliable elements and rooting out fifth columnists within its ranks, the purges focused initially on party leadership. However – fueled by Stalin’s paranoia – they soon expanded into the military, government bureaucracy and wider Soviet society.

Members of the intelligentsia, senior government bureaucrats (nomenklatura), professionals, land-owning farmers (kulaks), members of the military and anyone else suspected of being an enemy of the state were swept up in the wave of suspicion and mutual distrust. Suspects were typically charged with espionage, anti-Soviet agitation, counter-revolutionary activity, or the like; if no “evidence” of wrong-doing could be found, it was manufactured by the secret police – the dreaded NKVD – or obtained via “confessions” extracted under torture. Following a perfunctory hearing or trial with a pre-determined outcome, most of those charged were imprisoned in the vast Soviet system of gulags (concentration camps) or executed. At the height of the purges, in 1937-1938, an estimated 1.2 million people lost their lives.

Aware of a resurgent Germany on his western flank, and a militarized and powerful Japan on his eastern frontier, Stalin – fearful of infiltrators and fifth-columnists within the ranks – ordered Commissar of State Security Nikolai Yezhov to purge the Soviet senior officer corps. Acting under orders from Premier Stalin, who sought a pretext to move against the officer corps, the NKVD instructed agent Nikolai Skoblin to pass incriminating misinformation implicating Red Army Field MarshallMikhail Tukhachevsky, to Reinhardt Heydrich, the head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) – the intelligence arm of the German SS-Gestapo. Heydrich arranged for the information to be planted in such a way as to implicate Tukhachevsky and a number of other top Soviet general officers.

So began the purge of the senior officer corps of the Soviet army and navy. By the time the process ended in 1939 – with war on the horizon – the military had been decimated. Three of the five Marshalls of the Soviet Army – including Tukhachevsky himself – were executed; 13 of 18 army commanders, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps commanders, and 154 out of 186 division commanders were removed; some were executed, while others were imprisoned or forced into retirement and exile. Some of the survivors were later ideologically-rehabilitated and brought back into uniform, but by then, the damage had been done.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/11/11/brooklyn-college-to-play-host-to-another-anti-israel-event/#

The City University of New York’s (CUNY) Brooklyn College is again provoking passions, playing host this week to an anti-Israel activist who many, citing his published writings, believe to be anti-Semitic.

Ben White, who describes himself as a writer, freelance journalist and researcher on his Twitter page, will give a talk Thursday, November 14th called “Israel: Apartheid not Democracy,” as part of a mini-tour of college campuses that will also include a stop at John Jay College in Manhattan. The event is to be hosted by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

White has in the past compared Israel’s policies to those of Nazi Germany – classified as anti-Semitic by the U.S. State Department; once declared he can “understand” why some people are anti-Semitic; and has served as an apologist for previous Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s Holocaust denial.

The event comes on the heels of a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) talk in February that many members of both Brooklyn College and the New York community objected to. The controversy reached a crescendo when four Jewish students were forcefully removed from the event because of what organizers said was a disruptive presence. The school later conducted an inquiry into the incident and determined “there was no justification for the removal of the four students.”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/questions-they-won-t-answer_765692.html

When South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham threatened last week to place a hold in the Senate on all Obama administration nominations until the president and his advisers cooperate fully with investigations into the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, White House press secretary Jay Carney responded with a familiar accusation.

“Let’s be clear that some Republicans are choosing to play politics with this for partisan purposes, and we find that unfortunate,” he said at a White House press briefing on October 28. Carney, in a we’ve-been-over-this-before tone of annoyance, ticked off numbers meant to show administration cooperation: 13 congressional hearings, 40 staff briefings, and “providing over 25,000 pages of documents.”

It’s been more than a year since four Americans were killed in Libya and more than six months since Carney dismissively declared that Benghazi “happened a long time ago.” Is he simply doing his job or does he really believe that Benghazi is a “phony scandal” trumped up by Republicans? Whatever the answer, Benghazi is not going away.

France, Israel and Saudi Arabia confront an administration conducting a make-believe foreign policy. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304644104579190024212147260?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop When the history of the Obama administration’s foreign policy is written 20 or so years from now, the career of Wendy Sherman, our chief nuclear negotiator with Iran, will be instructive. In 1988, the former social worker ran the Washington office […]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324432404579051123500813210?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

For 20 years the world has tried subsidizing green technology instead of focusing on making it more efficient. Today Spain spends about 1% of GDP throwing money at green energy such as solar and wind power. The $11 billion a year is more than Spain spends on higher education.

At the end of the century, with current commitments, these Spanish efforts will have delayed the impact of global warming by roughly 61 hours, according to the estimates of Yale University’s well-regarded Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model. Hundreds of billions of dollars for 61 additional hours? That’s a bad deal.

Yet when such inefficient green subsidies are criticized, their defenders can be relied on to point out that the world subsidizes fossil fuels even more heavily. We shouldn’t subsidize either. But the misinformation surrounding energy subsidies is considerable, and it helps keep the world from enacting sensible policy.

Three myths about fossil-fuel subsidies are worth debunking. The first is the claim, put forth by organizations such as the Environmental Law Institute, that the U.S. subsidizes fossil fuels more heavily than green energy. Not so.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated in 2010 that fossil-fuel subsidies amounted to $4 billion a year. These include $240 million in credit for investment in Clean Coal Facilities; a tax deferral worth $980 million called excess of percentage over cost depletion; and an expense deduction on amortization of pollution-control equipment. Renewable sources received more than triple that figure, roughly $14 billion. That doesn’t include $2.5 billion for nuclear energy.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4050/christians-middle-east-august “After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the street ‘like prisoners of war,’ before a Muslim woman offered them refuge.” — Associated Press While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching pandemic proportions. The attacks on […]