RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/03/10/obama-needs-a-revitalized-nuclear-strategy

Facing a new Cold War with Putin’s Russia, President Obama needs to embrace a new nuclear weapons strategy.

Whether we like it or not, the United States faces the expanding prospect of a new Cold War. To be sure, the Soviet Union no longer exists, but the successor superpower regime in Moscow is not making things any easier for us. Even during the current crisis in the Ukraine, for example, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted upon going ahead with test-firing a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile (referred to by NATO as the SS-25 Sickle).

How shall we best respond to this ominously re-emergent threat? In order to fully maintain American security in such increasingly volatile circumstances, President Barack Obama will, among other things, need to garner the benefits of a newly-refined and potentially more robust national nuclear strategy. These benefits would not be insignificant. They would be indispensable.

On its face, this would seem to be a perfectly obvious and hence unremarkable observation. Nonetheless, from the moment that he first entered the White House, this president has made it clear that he opposes all nuclear weapons, at least in principle. Ignoring post-World War II history, when such weapons likely prevented a third world war between the two resultant superpowers, he steadfastly maintains that they are inherently corrosive and destabilizing. Indeed, for Obama, there still seemingly can be no more high-minded objective than creating “a world free of nuclear weapons.”

http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2014/03/our-sociopathic-political-class_12.html
In his March 10th FrontPage column, “Obama’s Appeasement Leads to War,” about how appeasing tyrants has and will continue to lead to war and more international strife, Daniel Greenfield wrote:
On the shield of the Strategic Air Command a steel mailed fist grips a lightning bolt and an olive branch. The motto of the organization that was the nightmarish obsession of every Cold War leftist was “Peace is our Profession.”
To the moviegoers who sat through Dr. Strangelove, to the earnest leftists who saw the world going up in a puff of atomic smoke because the military industrial complex was obsessed with killing people, to the pseudo-idealists who passed on atomic secrets to Moscow to avoid an American monopoly on the bomb, the SAC’s motto was a demented joke. They knew that the only way to stop war was to disarm.
Coincidentally, I watched “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” the previous evening on Netflix. The last time I saw it in its entirety was the year of its release in1964, on Larson Air Force Base, 462nd Bomb Wing, in Washington State. And I saw it under the most unusual circumstances.
I was in the Air Police, charged with guarding the base and its B52 bombers, KC135 tankers, and U2 spy planes. Larson was also an ICBM base, but the silos had separate security. One evening, after a regular 8-hour shift on the flight line, I was one of about eight other air cops selected to serve on a backup or reserve team. This meant that we could sack out in the reserve team’s quarters, play cards, read a book, or indulge, as a group, armed with our carbines and sidearms, in some other diversion.
On my first night on the team it was decided to go to the base movie theater, to which we were admitted free. “Dr. Strangelove” was playing. As we sat in a back row behind the audience, the movie thoroughly confused me. My colleagues thought it was hilarious, especially when the motto, “Peace is Our Profession” was prominently juxtaposed with the noisy battle scenes between Army troops and Air Force base policemen.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/business/economy/stanley-fischer-fed-nominee-has-long-history-of-policy-leadership.html?emc=edit_ae_20140312&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=9437676&_r=0&referrer=
Stanley Fischer is a former No. 2 at the International Monetary Fund and was the governor of the Bank of Israel until June.
WASHINGTON — Stanley Fischer has worked for much of his professional life to improve economic policy in the developing world. Now he is on the verge of a new role in a country with plenty of economic problems of its own: the United States.

Mr. Fischer, nominated by President Obama to serve as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, is likely to move quickly through a confirmation process that begins with a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday morning.

Assuming Mr. Fischer successfully negotiates that gantlet, he would join Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s new chairwoman, in the difficult work of figuring out how much more the Fed can do to help the economy recover from the Great Recession. Ms. Yellen proposed his selection to the White House.

Mr. Fischer has supported the efforts by the Fed and other central banks to revive economic growth, but he has also described the benefits as limited. “You could do a lot with monetary policy, but you couldn’t get the economy growing fast again,” he said on Bloomberg Television in September. “You needed fiscal policy.”

Genial, courtly, self-effacing, Mr. Fischer is skilled at making sharp points without making enemies.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4213/iran-kurds-tortured-hanged

198 people have been hanged so far in 2014 — a period of only two and a half months.

“The court told me, ‘You are an enemy of God. You must be hanged very soon.’ That was the sum of my entire court process. I don’t have any lawyer to defend me.” — Ms. Zainab Jalalian.

Iran’s grotesque human rights violations, the rise in executions, or the fate of three Americans — Amir Hekmati, Pastor Saeed Abedini and Robert Levinson — held as political prisoners inside Iran, were not even discussed during the historic negotiations between the United States and Iran in late 2013.

The Kurdish people, one of the largest minorities in Iran, have been heavily targeted by the Islamic Republic since its 1979 inception when Ayatollah Khomeini famously declared a “fatwa” [religious decree] against the province of Kurdistan and crushed opposing unrest by sending 110,000 troops complete with heavy artillery, fighter jets and armed helicopters. The fighting was so intense that residents were forced to flee into the harsh mountains. Kurdish men have been executed, dozens at a time.

http://sarahhonig.com/2014/03/12/jordans-bizarre-jurists/

Unfortunately, not many Israelis recall that today is the 17th anniversary of the Naharayim massacre in which a Jordanian soldier cold-bloodedly massacred seven Israeli schoolgirls.

Yet that unspeakable crime is bizarrely, almost obsessively, remembered in Jordan and there it has oddly just made the headlines again – but not in the way Israelis would readily imagine.

On Tuesday, Jordanian jurists had taken to the street and raucously protested the killing a day earlier of one of their colleagues, Raed Zeiter, at the Allenby Bridge crossing. Israel had officially expressed regret, shared its initial probe findings with the Jordanians and acceded to Jordanian demands to jointly investigate the matter. So far it all sounds cooperative and well-intentioned enough.

The reaction inside Jordan, however, took none of this into account and, if anything, exploited the incident to fan the flames against Israel and once more agitate for the release of the Naharayim slayer, which has incomprehensibly become a cause célèbre for all too many in Jordan, and, most disconcertingly of all, for its legal community.

Members of Jordan’s Bar Association didn’t rally after Zeiter’s shooting as outraged but hitherto impartial observers. Before having even had the chance to examine and ascertain any of the facts, they demanded the extradition of “the Israeli murderers.” The Jordanian jurists, having a priori formulated their verdict, vowed to mete out their brand of justice. Its nature isn’t difficult to surmise.

They congregated at Amman’s Palace of Justice and burned an Israeli flag there to the sound of hoarse shouts calling for the expulsion of Israeli diplomats and the immediate release of Ahmed Daqamseh, who on March 13, 1997, callously shot to death seven young Israeli girls out on a school excursion.

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/11583

Sweden is the seventh richest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita and its high standard of living. It is famous for supporting the Norwegian resistance during World War II; for helping to rescue Danish Jews from deportation to concentration camps; and for its native son, Raoul Wallenberg, who rescued up to 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.

We recognize Sweden as the country that gave us the incomparable Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo, writers Ingmar Bergman and August Strindberg, IKEA furniture, high-quality steel production, the Volvo, the pop group ABBA, and Pippi Longstocking.

But Sweden’s latest source of prominence, its third largest city, Malmo, founded c. 1275, is now known as the City to Leave. Its Jewish population is fleeing, as Malmo has become home to Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitism and violence, which has earned for Sweden the dubious distinction ofRape Capital of the World. How is it possible for the Muslims to comprise a mere 6% of Sweden’s population, yet be responsible for 77% of the rapes committed? According to the Counter Jihad report, one in four Swedish women will be raped, some killed, as sexual assaults increase by 500%.

Now, since President Obama invited 80,000 Muslims into the United States, with a promise of 100,000 per year over the next five years, and studies show that Islamic immigration brings a rise in rates of rape and molestation, there can be no doubt that we will see a corresponding increase in rape crime in America accordingly.

http://bit.ly/1iDspbm

1. Purim’s Scroll of Esther represents fundamental tenets of Judaism:
*Faith in God, in contrast to idolatry and cynicism;
*Value/principle-driven realism (right vs. wrong and civil liberties), in contrast to opportunism and wishful-thinking;
*Attachment to roots (religious, cultural, historical), in contrast to detachment;
*Optimism confidence and courage, in contrast to fatalism, despair and fear;
*Tenacious defiance of enormous adversity, in contrast to defeatism, submission and accommodation;
*Community-driven responsibility, in contrast to selfishness/recklessness.

2. According to Jewish sages (as indicated by Yoram Hazony’s, The Dawn.), the Torah was initially bestowed upon the Jewish people in Sinai, and then – symbolically – during the time of Queen Esther. Hazony explores the political sophistication of (the eventual vizier) Mordechai and Queen Esther, who snatched – against all odds – victory out of the jaws of a Haman-conspired holocaust. Mordechai’s political savory was preceded by that of Joseph, who, a thousand year earlier, ascended to be the vizier for Pharaoh, and Daniel, who had risen to a similar position in the court of Persia’s Darius a few decades earlier. Hazony contends that the Mordechai-Haman confrontation was also a clash of civilizations between faith in God and idolatry, as was the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh and Abraham and pagan worshippers. Mordechai introduced civil disobedience, insisting that absolute right and wrong are superior to state decrees. In addition, Mordechai, Moses and Abraham, as well as Gideon, the Judge and Samuel, the Prophet, ushered in the concepts of limited government, civil liberties and the centrality of the constituents.

3. Purim’s Clash of Civilizations constitutes an early edition of the war between right and wrong, liberty and tyranny, justice and evil, truth and lies, as were/are Adam/Eve and the snake, Abel and Cain, Abraham and Sodom and Gomorrah, Jacob and Esau (grandfather of Amalek), the Maccabees and the Assyrians, the Allies and the Nazis, the West and the Communist Bloc and Western democracies versus Islamic rogue and terrorist regimes.

4. Purim’s historical background according to Prof. Israel Eldad:

*Xerxes the Great, King Ahasuerus, succeeded Darius the Great. He ruled the Persian Empire (from India to Ethiopia) during 465-486BC, 150 years before the rise of Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persian Empire.

*Greece was Persia’s key opponent in its expansion towards the Mediterranean and Europe, hence the alliance between Persia and the Phoenician-related Carthage, a rival of Greece.

*Greece supported Egypt’s revolt against Persian rule, which was subdued by Persia with the help of the Jewish warriors of Yeb (in Egypt) and Carthage, which had a significant Jewish population and a Jewish-Hebrew connection dating back to King Solomon’s alliance with the Phoenician kingdom (e.g., the names of Carthage’s heroes, Hannibal and Barca, derived from the Hebrew names, Hananyah and Barak).

*Xerxes was defeated by Greece at the battle of Salamis (480 BC), but challenged Greece again in 470 BC.

*According to a Greek translation of the Scroll of Esther, Haman (the Agagi) was Macedonian by orientation or by birth. Agagi could refer to Agag, the Amalekite King (who intended to annihilate the Jews) or to the Greek Aegean Islands. Haman aspired to decimate the Jews of Persia and opposed improved relations between Xerxes and the Jews of Yeb. He led the pro-Greek and anti-Carthage faction in Persia, while Mordechai was a chief advocate for the pro-Carthage orientation.