RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘Humanitarian Wars Are Also Wars’

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-pundits-weigh-pros-and-cons-of-syria-intervention-a-918849-druck.html

The US, the UK and France have laid the rhetorical groundwork for a military strike against Syria. Germany too looks as though it will not remain on the sidelines this time. But will it happen? German commentators warn that escalation may only make things worse.

Preparations for a possible US strike on Syria are underway. According to a report in the Greek daily Kathimerini on Tuesday, Washington has made a formal request to Athens for permission to use two military bases in the country, one on the island of Crete and another on the Peloponnese Peninsula. Citing sources in the Greek Defense Ministry, the paper also reports that increased activity in the country’s airspace has been registered. The US has four destroyers in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean according to separate media reports.

The news comes just one day after US Secretary of State John Kerry delivered an impassioned statement in Washington condemning the apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria last week, saying it was a “moral obscenity” and that it “is undeniable.” White House spokesman Jay Carney said over the weekend that “there is very little doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime is culpable.”

The rhetoric would seem to indicate that a military strike on Syrian forces is imminent. US President Barack Obama has spent days consulting with military leaders in Washington and allies overseas on just such a strike.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5507 After last Wednesday’s poison gas attacks in Syria that caused an estimated 1,300 civilians to die in excruciating pain, the United States finally decided to appear as if it was about to take action. Though “assessing” whether it is Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces or his opponents who are responsible for the dastardly deed, […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/mideast-nuclear-holocaust/ After constant exposure to critically important news, it begins to lose all meaning and sense of urgency.  Hearing the same warnings over and over again—especially when the status quo seems static—can cause a certain desensitization, a resigned apathy that ignores the warnings in the wishful hope that they won’t materialize.  This hope becomes more […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/climate-reductio-ad-absurdum?f=puball Recently, three researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, had a study published that claimed that a “substantial” correlation between violence and climate change could be made. They cited sixty studies from around the world that, according to a BBC World Service article, demonstrated that “even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with […]

http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/the-brave-and-the-blow-hards-rita-kramer.html

What does it mean to be brave? In what does courage consist? These are questions that come to mind thinking about men and women who have stood up against tyranny, put their freedom and even their lives at risk by taking a stand and comparing them with activists and protestors in our country today. Movie stars, film makers, and other celebrities famous for being famous preen and pose and pretend that they are standing up against powerful forces when they make political statements in public. The only real threat they face is exposing their ignorance of complicated issues.

The left-leading media loves them and headlines the names and faces and pronouncements of such as Michael Moore and Oliver Stone, Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda, Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon and Harry Belafonte–directors, actors, entertainers all drawn from the world of Hollywood where fantasy substitutes for knowledge and the uneducated pass as gurus, hailed for their presumed willingness to stand up against threatening conspiratorial powers.

How little these Hollywood celebrities risk, how little they stand to lose becomes glaringly clear when they are compared with men and women of undeniable courage whose words–and actions–put them at real risk of losing their freedom and finally their lives. From time to time we are reminded of such figures and of what it means to take a stand against real tyranny, to enter the fight against undeniable evil.

A recent book tells the story of one such man, a Capuchin priest who repeatedly risked his life to help rescue thousands of Jews in France and Italy during the dark days of Nazi occupation. His story is told by Susan Zuccotti in Pere Marie-Benoit and Jewish Rescue. Zuccotti is the author of earlier books on France and Italy during the Holocaust and brings impressive background knowledge and practiced research skills to this latest account.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/356718/print The Los Angeles Times recently published a devastating case study in the malign effects of academic racial preferences. The University of California, Berkeley, followed the diversocrat playbook to the letter in admitting Kashawn Campbell, a South Central Los Angeles high-school senior, in 2012: It disregarded his level of academic preparation, parked him in the […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ One of the biggest differences between conservatives and liberals is that while conservatives believe that history is an expression of human nature, liberals don’t believe in history, they believe in historical processes. The shortage of conservatives explains why so many politicians and pundits glowingly endorsed the Arab Spring as the “end of history” because […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/08/26/where-is-the-outrage-over-obamanation-flag/ While thousands gathered at the Lincoln Memorial this past weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, an American flag was waved with President Obama’s image in place of the 50 stars. Photos of the “Obama flag” were included in the galleries of numerous prominent web sites such as […]

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/08/26/the-truth-about-syria/?print=1 “It is my pleasure to meet with you in the new Middle East,” said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Syrian Journalists’ Union on August 15, 2006. But Bashar’s new Middle East was neither the one hoped for by many since Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s 1991 defeat in Kuwait, nor the one expected when […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324619504579028691595414868.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

I HAVE A REALLY SOFT SPOT FOR JUAN WILLIAMS….HE WAS THE ONE TO EXPOSE JESSE JACKSON’S INFAMOUS “HYMIETOWN” PHRASE ABOUT NEW YORK; HE WAS FIRED FROM NPR FOR STATING THAT IF HE GETS ON A PLANE WITH MUSLEMS HE GETS NERVOUS; HE WAS OUTSPOKEN AGAINST THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD; AND NOW HE TAKES ON BLACK LEADERS AND PERFORMERS, THE FATHERLESS HOMES OF FOURTH GENERATION TEENAGE MOTHERS, BLACK ON BLACK CRIME….IT MORE THAN BALANCES SOME OF HIS LIBERAL CANT…..RSK

Rap songs celebrating tattooed thugs make a sad contrast with the sweet music of the March on Washington.

Fifty years after the March on Washington, mystical memories of that seminal moment in the civil-rights era are less likely to focus on movement politics than on the great poetry and great music.

The emotional uplift of the monumental march is a universe of time away from today’s degrading rap music—filled with the n-word, bitches and “hoes”—that confuses and depresses race relations in America now.

The poetry of Aug. 28, 1963, is best on view when Martin Luther King Jr. went off his speech script and started using a musical, chanting reprise—”I have a dream.” The transforming insight born of the power of the interracial gathering at that time of turmoil, combined with the power of the spoken word, created an emotional message that still grips the American mind.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” King said, in verse that somehow spanned a history of slavery and the Founding Fathers’ uniquely American promise of equality.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injust