RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7655

Netanyahu must heed his own warnings

Flanked by Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon and Navy Vice Admiral Ram Rothberg, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a press conference on Monday in the southern Israeli port city of Eilat. This was where the Israel Defense Forces unloaded the cargo of the Panamanian-flagged Klos C ship, intercepted by commandos last Wednesday, which originated in Iran and was bound for Gaza.

The “show and tell” presentation, which took place alongside rows of long-range missiles, mortar shells and hundreds of thousands of AK-47 bullets, was to illustrate to the international community that the Islamic Republic is on the war path.

It is not exactly a hot news flash that Iran is going full speed ahead with its nuclear program. Nor have statements emanating out of Tehran done anything to assuage Western fears. On the contrary, Iran’s defense minister has been boldly flexing his muscles and boasting about newer and deadlier weapons in his army’s arsenal.

Nevertheless, the United States and Europe continue to harbor hope that negotiations with the mullah-led regime of Hassan Rouhani will bear fruit. What this means in U.N. lingo is that the P5+1 countries (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) have no intention of launching a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, and that they want to be persuaded to stop imposing economic sanctions, as well.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/anti-zionism-at-northeastern?f=puball

he flame of anti-Zionism burns brightly at Northeastern University in Boston. On the first day of Israel Apartheid Week, Students for Justice in Palestine, a group currently on probation for violating campus policies for acts of anti-Semitism and vandalism, dispersed “evacuation” notices to students residing in the dormitories.

This was a crude attempt to reenact the history of 1948 when Arab residents in the territories were urged to vacate their homes in anticipation of the Arab war against the infant state of Israel. In its most recent form NAKBA or catastrophe (the Arab story of this period) is the justification for “the right of return” and for the attribution of Israel as a colonial state. Never mind that the narrative engages in revisionist history or that even great grandchildren now living in the West are considered Arab refugees or that Jews forced to leave Iran, Syria, Iraq, Yemen. Syria are not considered refugees. The flame burns.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) sent an eviction notice which said, “If you do not vacate the premise by 26 Feb. 6pm, we reserve the right to destroy all remaining belongings under Code 211.3B. We hereby release any liability for damage to any persons or effects including gross negligence. You will receive an invoice for the charges of demolition and waste removal soon.”

This faux eviction notice was employed as a reminder of the past. Needless to remind the SJP herd, the one line history about Israeli occupation “for no reason other than their ethnic background” neglects to point out a war was declared in which thousands of civilians were killed and maimed. Moreover, most of “the forced evictions” were promoted by Arab military leaders who assumed residents could return when the war was won.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/oliver-stone-does-venezuela/print/

Famous foe of imperialism Oliver Stone just premiered his documentary “Mi Amigo Hugo” (“My Friend Hugo”) in the Cuban colony of Venezuela. As the title suggests, the film honors Hugo Chavez, Cuba’s late Venezuelan viceroy. The film was released amidst lavish celebrations on the first anniversary of Chavez’s death and broadcast on the Cuba-run TV channel of the Cuban viceroyalty of Venezuela. For the occasion, Raul Castro himself graced his South American dominion with a visit.

“Venezuela today is a country that is practically occupied by the henchmen of two international criminals, Cuba’s Castro brothers,” recently declared Luis Miquilena who served as Hugo Chavez’ Minister of Justice for three years before finally resigning in disgust. “They (the Cubans) have introduced in Venezuela a true army of occupation. The Cubans run the maritime ports, airports, communications, the most essential issues in Venezuela. We are in the hands of a foreign country. This is the darkest period in our history.”

The Chavez documentary comes twelve years after the premiere at the Sundance Film Festival of Oliver Stone’s documentary “Comandante,” which honored Venezuela’s foreign emperor himself: Fidel Castro.

”I am like a prisoner,” Castro laments to Stone near the beginning of “Comandante.” The Stalinist dictator was referring to the travails that accompany his selfless vocation of running Cuba. “This is my cell,” he sighs while pointing around. At this declaration from the jailer of more political prisoner per-capita than Stalin, the famously “edgy” Oliver Stone reveals no hint of a smirk. And no snarkiness tinged his follow-up questions, most of which hovered right over home plate. When a few questions strayed from the banal talking points and Castro answered evasively, Stone twinkled that, “his elusiveness is always charming.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/the-foundational-incoherence-of-western-foreign-policy/print/

The crisis in Ukraine is just the latest in a long series of foreign policy failures brought about by the incoherence in our thinking about foreign relations. On the one hand, we have championed ethnic-national self-determination as the highest international good, while on the other we have assumed that all these various nations and peoples share the same ideals, principles, and goods, and so can comprise a transnational order that will eliminate war and conflict and create peace and prosperity. Over a hundred years of history reveal these ideals not just to be incompatible, but also to foment and worsen inter-state violence.

To mean anything, ethnic-nationalist particularism must embody profound differences among nations, including languages, customs, mores, religions, ideals, and values. The identity of a people is defined by these differences, and that identity in turn creates interests and aims that necessarily clash with those of other peoples. To take one particularly important example, different countries have different attitudes about the legitimacy of using violence to achieve their goals. Russia under Vladimir Putin obviously sees no problem with using force or the threat of force to protect its interests in Moldova, Georgia, and now Crimea and Ukraine. The Muslim Middle East is rich with examples of the acceptability of violence, whether against external or internal enemies, in protecting a nation’s or a regime’s power and privilege. The brutal civil war in Syria is the obvious current example. Complaints about this brutality, moreover, on the part of victims usually are based on who is using violence, not the universal principle that violence is wrong. The same clerical revolutionaries in Iran who decried the brutality of the Shah’s secret police have had no problem using even worse brutality once they were in power, killing more Iranians in one year than the Savak did in 20. Violence, brutality, and torture are all fine depending on who the perpetrators are, and who the victims.

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/03/09/kim-jong-un-orders-massacre-of-33-christians/

They’re being charged with attempting to overthrow the regime, but their real crime is that they were working with jailed South Korean Christian missionary Kim Jung-wook to set up 500 underground churches in North Korea.

They are not being “executed.” Using that word would lend some legality and moral framework to Kim’s action. This is nothing less than a massacre of innocent human beings — a slaughter that should raise an outcry in every civilized nation of the world.

The Daily Mail reports:

Thirty-three North Koreans face execution after being charged with attempting to overthrow the repressive regime of Kim Jong-un.

The Koreans have landed themselves in hot water after it emerged they had worked with South Korean Baptist missionary Kim Jung-wook and received money to set up 500 underground churches. It is understood they will be put to death in a cell at the State Security Department.

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/putin-is-everything-and-more-but-not-stupid/?print=1 We keep hearing that Vladimir Putin is stupid. Does he not get that this is now the 21st century? No, he doesn’t. The fool seems mired either in the 19th of the czars, or the 20th of Bolsheviks. He certainly does. Didn’t Putin have to act to shore up falling domestic opinion? Maybe. Does […]

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2014/03/10/an-outrageous-abuse-of-executive-power/?print=1 So, Obama once again “delays” the law of the land on Obamacare. Why?  Because there is an election coming up, silly, and he wants to do what he can to protect vulnerable Democrats.  I pick this bit from the [1] Detroit News [1] more or less at random: “In announcing the latest postponement this […]

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/03/09/near-death-experiences-a-new-take-on-life-part-4-brian-millers-case-challenges-the-skeptics/?print=1

Skepticism is the right attitude if it means you insist on real, strong proof before being persuaded of something. It is not a good attitude if it means you’re set to deny and belittle proof of something no matter what.

Skeptics about whether near-death experiences are real tend to be in the second category. Millions of people have undergone them since the 1960s; a good summary of the confirmative evidence that arises from this vast trove of experience is here.

Just last month an NDE case in Ohio was reported (here, here, and here, for instance) that should give the skeptics a particularly hard time.

As The Blaze told it:

Brian Miller, 41, was hospitalized after suffering a major heart attack. While he was doing well at first, his heart eventually went into a deadly arrhythmia called Ventricular fibrillation, described by the Mayo Clinic as “a … rhythm problem that occurs when the heart beats with rapid, erratic electrical impulses.”

From that point, Miller was out cold. As a nurse affirmed, “He had no heart rate, he had no blood pressure, he had no pulse…. His brain had no oxygen for 45 minutes….”

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/373025/print

Sorry but I don’t share this admiration for Ike….He undertook the largest demilitarization in American history; ended the Korean War ceding to the terms of the brutal Kim dynasty of the North; babbled about “the military-industrial complex”

and routed Israel, France and America in the Suez war forcing a total retreat. His Sec. of State John Foster Dulles was perhaps the most anti-Israel of all….setting the bar even higher than Kerry. Of course he ran against a pompous blowhard named Adlai Stevenson so it was better that he won…rsk

Obama admirers have created a complete distortion of “the Eisenhower era.”

In critique of the George W. Bush administration, and in praise of the perceived foreign-policy restraint of Obama’s first five years in the White House, a persistent myth has arisen that Obama is reminiscent of Eisenhower — in the sense of being a president who kept America out of other nations’ affairs and did not waste blood and treasure chasing imaginary enemies.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Andrew Bacevich, Fareed Zakaria (“Why Barack Is like Ike”), and a host of others have made such romantic, but quite misleading, arguments about the good old days under the man they consider the last good Republican president.

http://americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/03/obamas_surgeon_corporal.html You’d think that the Obama administration would, in a crucial election year, be a smidgen less confrontational when it comes to appointees requiring congressional approval.  Immediately on the heels of a failed Justice Department nomination of another liberal radical minority candidate, the tone-deaf but determined apparatchiks surrounding our part-time president have forwarded another dubious […]