RUTHFULLY YOURS

Two nuclear options

It was a week for nuclear options for the Obama administration. In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama lobbied Democratic senators to support the so-called “nuclear option,” to kill the ability of the minority party in the Senate (the Republicans) to filibuster and block appointments made by the president for certain high-level administration jobs and lifetime federal court appointments.

Of course, the president and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had argued against exactly such a nuclear option by the Republicans when they were both senators in the minority eight years earlier, and wanted to preserve their ability to block appointments by then President George W. Bush.

Obama has been at war with Republicans since he took office. His rhetoric attacking the opposition party has been one of the constants of his five years in office. He has never sought their counsel for any important legislation, whether the stimulus package or the healthcare reform bill (“Obamacare”) or the new banking and financial regulations (Dodd-Frank). Obama wanted to defeat Republicans, not negotiate with them.

And then there is the other nuclear option in Geneva this week, when the Obama administration, as represented by Secretary of State John Kerry, chose to sign a very bad deal with Iran, to ensure that there was a deal that almost certainly puts the Islamic republic on a path to a nuclear weapon. The deal also commits the United States to a course that will make it much more difficult for Israel to stop Iran’s nuclear effort in the six-month period of the “interim agreement,” and also makes it much harder for opponents of the deal in the U.S. Congress to step up sanctions and force a better deal.

Iranian missile group delegation visited Pyongyang as Geneva nuclear talks were underway

Iranian missile technicians secretly visited North Korea as part of joint development of a new rocket booster for long-range missiles or space launchers at the same time nuclear talks took place in Geneva, according to U.S. officials.

Several groups of technicians from the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG), a unit in charge of building Iran’s liquid-fueled missiles, traveled to Pyongyang during the past several month, including as recently as late October, to work on the new, 80-ton rocket booster being developed by the North Koreans, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.

The booster is believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be intended for a new long-range missile or space launch vehicle that could be used to carry nuclear warheads, and could be exported to Iran in the future.

Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have said that both North Korea and Iran are expected to have missiles capable of hitting the United States with a nuclear warhead in the next two years.

The Iranian cooperation reveals that the nuclear framework agreement concluded Sunday in Geneva has not slowed Tehran’s drive for missiles that can deliver a nuclear warhead to intercontinental range.

One official described the new booster as a thruster for a “super ICBM” or a heavy-lift space launcher.

“It is completely new from what they have done so far,” the official said.

As millions of Americans make last minute preparations for Thanksgiving, Team Obama has given the Iranian people six billion reasons to be thankful today.

U.S. diplomats, joined by representatives from Germany, France, China, Russia, and the U.K. have signed an interim nuclear pact with the Islamic State that gives Iran more than $6 Billion in formerly frozen assets in exchange for a simple promise not to create a nuclear bomb, reports The Washington Post.

Prior to the Obama Administration’s recent negotiations with Iran, no American President has even talked to an Iranian President in over 30 years.

Yet, today, America isn’t just talking with this frequent state sponsor of terrorism – America is now giving Iran billions of dollars over the course of the next six months to “reinvest” as they see fit.

According to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister (PM), Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly denounced this arrangement, calling it, “A very bad deal.”

The practice of beheading dates back to Greek and Roman times. The Roman Empire used it for its own citizens while crucifying others. Beheading has been traditional in Europe since the Middle Ages. In Scandinavia, it was customary to behead a nobleman by sword (a noble weapon of war), but a commoner by axe. Beheading was abolished in Britain (1747), in Denmark (1892), in Sweden (1902), and in Norway (1905). With the exception of the UK, All European countries that previously beheaded have not totally abolished the death penalty.

China also used it widely, until the communist regime replaced it with shooting in the 20th century. Japan beheaded up to the end of the 19th century, then turned to hanging. The Nazis used the guillotine-like Fallbeil in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1949 (E. Germany, 1966) on an estimated 16,500 persons who were considered common criminals and traitors.

Beheading is a “sacred Islamic Jihadi practice.” Endorsed by the Qur’an, and performed by most Islamic rulers, it continues to this day as the most brutal and degrading method of killing infidels – Jews, Christians, Hindus, and anyone considered a polytheist.

Quranic verses dictate beheading Kaffirs. One example is 5:33-“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is:execution(by beheading), or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter.”

The most virulently intolerant Islamic dictatorship in the world is The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that spreads and promotes (fundamentalist) Wahhabism worldwide – incites and encourages Jihadis to hate and behead thousands of non-Muslims and other infidels, freely and without remorse – and does so to this day.

One by one, the commentators have today fallen like dominoes. Presented with the transparent victory by Iran over the rest of the world at Geneva, they have eagerly swallowed the line they have been fed that this is a ‘historic’ step towards peace with Iran whose nuclear wings have now been clipped.

Journalists who would normally ask themselves ‘why is this lying bastard lying to me?’ if a western politician merely said ‘hello, nice day isn’t it’ (apart, of course, from The One) have suspended all independent powers of observation and thought over this risible farce of a deal.

Viewing it through the prism of ‘after-Iraq-don’t-give me-any-more-lies-about-Islamic-terror/anything-that-sounds-like-compromise-and-lets-us-put-our-heads-back-in-the-sand-must-be-good/war-with-Iran-is-sooo-much-more-terrifying-than-a-nuclear-Iran/new-Iranian-President-Rouhani-sounds-charming-and-moderate-so-phew!-we-can-believe-anything-that-he-says/anything-Benjamin-Netanyahu-is-against-I’m-for’, the chattering classes have apparently decided that yup, this really is peace in our time and any comparison with you-know-what in 1938 is well, just hysterical, and anyway we’ve had it up to here with Israel and they can just shut up.

But for your own assistance when facing someone who thinks this deal has saved the world rather than provided the final countdown to genocidal nuclear blackmail and war, here is my cut-out-and-keep guide to why the Geneva deal all but guarantees that the principal source of terrorism in the world today will now develop nuclear weapons for its monstrous purposes.

1) The deal is not designed to stop the Iranian bomb. It is said rather to be an interim agreement designed to boost confidence. President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry promise a subsequent permanent agreement which will disarm Iran of its nuclear and military capabilities. So sanctions are currently being lifted in exchange for… what exactly? Nothing of any significance whatever.

The agreement reached late Saturday night between Iran and the United States — and the rest of the United Nations’ “P5+1” gang — will enhance Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons whenever it decides to do so. It makes war in the Middle East nearly a certainty, rather than protecting us against it.

For Obama — and while he is president, for us — there is no responsibility so great that it cannot be sacrificed to political expediency, no duty so grave that it cannot be ignored.

America has an obligation to itself, and to allies such as Israel, to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear arms. Four American presidents — George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — have recognized this duty by stating firmly an American policy that Iran is not to be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. The first three of those presidents share the distinction of having done nothing to enforce that policy. The fourth has assured his place in history by surrendering the policy to Iran’s ambitions.

The details of the agreement — which we’ll get to in a minute — give Iran major relief from sanctions that were imposed by UN resolution and by American law, including some sanctions that were imposed when Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. To understand how far the agreement goes, it’s important to know the context in which it was made.

They did it again. While we watched President Obama dodge the Syrian red line with Putin taking the lead, while we held our collective breaths as Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and France’s President Hollande stalled negotiations over the Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Islamists were at it again. This time they cunningly swooped in and placed their wildest dreams into the massive immigration reform bill recently passed by the United States Senate.

Most Americans believe the bill is about amnesty, or a way to grant general pardon for political offenses such as disobedience to immigration laws. For example, most think it will give millions of Hispanic illegal aliens living in the U.S. amnesty. The bill goes far beyond obedience to law. Even pro-immigration Christian evangelicals say the bill is not amnesty. Then what is it?

The sweeping immigration reform bill, called the “Amnesty Bill” has Islamic inferences buried deep inside that should give Americans the shudders, and indeed, the entire world, especially United States allies. The bill reportedly includes a fast track to citizenship for immigrants from Muslim countries. U.S. President Obama hailed the passage of the bill as a critical step towards fixing America’s broken immigration system. While the “Gang of Eight” senators crafted the bill, an outsider, who just happens to be a Muslim Brotherhood associate, provided “treasured input,” according to a close associate of the Obama administration.

Obama never explained how allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium decreases the likelihood of war.t isn’t surprising that the US and the other five powers signed a deal with Iran on Saturday. Over the past few weeks, US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry made it clear that they were committed to signing a deal with Iran as quickly as possible.

And it isn’t surprising that the deal these overeager leaders signed with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism makes the world a much more dangerous place than it was before the agreement was concluded.

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That music can bring happiness is obvious. But is it also the key to a long life?

Pianist Artur Rubinstein retired from the concert stage after his 89th birthday. Mieczyslaw Horsowski played his final concert at age 99 and taught a lesson the week before he died in 2003, just one month before his 101st birthday. But the world’s oldest living Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer, trumps both of these legendary artists.

On Tuesday, she turns 110. Ms. Herz-Sommer no longer plays Bach and Schubert at concert level. Some days, her arthritic fingers fail to cooperate. And she must rely on her prodigious musical memory, as she can no longer see to read a score. But the woman who made her debut as a soloist with the Czech Philharmonic before her 21st birthday in 1924 still plays.

Ms. Herz-Sommer was well on her way to an international career when the Nazis invaded Prague, the city of her birth, on March 15, 1939. Forbidden as a Jew from playing public concerts, she continued to practice long hours in her apartment until the day in July 1943 when she, her husband, Leopold Sommer, and Rafi, their 6-year-old son, were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Having heard rumors of concerts in the camp from Leopold, who worked for the Prague Jewish Community Organization, she faced the imprisonment with cautious optimism. “How bad can it be if we can make music?” she remembers thinking.

To adapt Churchill : Never in the field of global diplomacy has so much been given away by so many for so little.

Britain and France’s capitulation to Nazi Germany at Munich has long been a byword for ignominy, moral and diplomatic. Yet neither Neville Chamberlain nor Édouard Daladier had the public support or military wherewithal to stand up to Hitler in September 1938. Britain had just 384,000 men in its regular army; the first Spitfire aircraft only entered RAF service that summer. “Peace for our time” it was not, but at least appeasement bought the West a year to rearm.

The signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 was a betrayal of an embattled U.S. ally and the abandonment of an effort for which 58,000 American troops gave their lives. Yet it did end America’s participation in a peripheral war, which neither Congress nor the public could indefinitely support. “Peace with honor” it was not, as the victims of Cambodia’s Killing Fields or Vietnam’s re-education camps can attest. But, for American purposes at least, it was peace.