RUTHFULLY YOURS

Apparently what Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal understands of democracy is totally different than what the term means in more civilized parts of the world.

If Prince Al-Waleed so passionately defends democracy, he should spend less of his office time in showing solidarity with undemocratic leaders, and more in giving at least a bit of democratic breathing space to his own people.

In the Saudi Kingdom, the primary source of law is the Islamic sharia, based on the principles of a school of jurisprudence (Hanbali) found in pre-modern texts. Ultra-puritanical judges and lawyers form part of the country’s Islamic scholars.

But there is another main source of law: royal decrees. Simple death penalty along with beheading, stoning to death, amputation, crucifixion and lashing are common legal punishments. In the three years to 2010, there were 345 beheadings. But the legal system is usually too lenient for cases of rape and domestic violence.

The common punishment for offenses against religion and public morality such as drinking alcohol and neglect of prayer is usually lashings. Retaliatory punishments are also part of the legal system, such as, literally, an eye for an eye. Saudis can also grant clemency, in return for money, to someone who has unlawfully killed their relatives.

It is not surprising to anyone that Saudi Arabia is widely accused of having one of the worst human rights records in the world — the Kingdom is one of the few countries in the world not to accept the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is capital punishment for homosexuality. Women are not allowed in public places to be in the presence of someone outside the kinship. They are not allowed to drive.

North Korea reportedly conducted its fifth — and largest to date — nuclear test just hours after President Obama wrapped up a meeting with Asian allies in Laos.

Obama was due to arrive back at the White House from the ASEAN summit shortly after midnight Friday — which is North Korea’s National Day.

The U.S. Geological Survey detected a blast as powerful as a moderate earthquake at 9 a.m. Pyongyang time.

“Possible explosion, located near the location where North Korea has detonated nuclear explosions in the past,” the USGS said of the magnitude 5.3 event. “If this is indeed an explosion, the USGS National Earthquake Information Center cannot determine what type of explosion it may be, whether nuclear or any other possible type.”

North Korea said it conducted a “nuclear warhead explosion” in response to perceived U.S. hostility. “We sent out a message that if the enemies attack us, we can counterattack.”

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff called it “an artificial quake” that was detected near North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

Pyongyang previously held nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2011 and this past January, which was followed by a UN Security Council resolution in March. “We estimate the North has carried out the biggest-ever test,” the South Korea statement said.

“We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site,” National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said. “We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners.”

Yonhap news agency reported that South Korean lawmakers will convene for an emergency session today. “It would be a crucial violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution if it turns out to be an actual nuclear test,” Rep. Yeom Dong-yeol of South Korea’s ruling Saenuri Party said.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye condemned the test and called for “much stronger sanctions” along with utilizing “all possible means” to stop Kim Jong-un’s nuclear program. Without elaborating, Park’s office said she spoke with Obama about the test.

Last month, Japan’s Kyodo News reported that North Korea has openly restarted plutonium production and is on pace to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons “as scheduled.”

“We have reprocessed spent nuclear fuel rods removed from a graphite-moderated reactor,” North Korea’s Atomic Energy Institute said, a move in response to what Kim views as threats from Washington. Pyongyang hinted at the time of an upcoming nuclear test.

“US Sends Iran Two More Loads of Cash.” So blared the headline on the front page of the September 7 issue of The Wall Street Journal about the latest transfer of enormous amounts of money ($1.3 billion in this latest installment) by President Barack Obama from the US Treasury to the government of Iran.

This is the very same genocidal regime whose leaders proclaim at every opportunity their intention to destroy the state of Israel, and whose (treaty-violating) nuclear-capable ballistic missiles are marked, in Farsi, with the motto “Israel must be erased from history,” as well as the declaration, in Hebrew no less, “Israel must be erased from the earth.”

President Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry had already agreed to “return” $130 billion to the mullahs as a kind of signing bonus for their consent to the scandalous JCPOA nuclear “deal,” a vast addition to Iran’s ability to make war — which it has in fact already done, directly in Syria and Iraq, and indirectly against Israel via Hezbollah and Hamas. Earlier news had been of a mere $400 million — paid secretly, and in Mafia-style cash bundles — as ransom for some, though by no means all, Americans held hostage by Iran.

The mind reels, the heart sinks: can anyone, even his harshest critics, imagine President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, after Adolf Hitler had made clear, in the Nuremberg laws (1935), in Kristallnacht (1938), and in countless speeches, his intention to destroy European Jewry, lavishing billions of American dollars in courtship of the Nazi regime?

Just a week earlier, on August 30, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a written response to a pro-Israel German parliamentarian named Volker Beck, declared (not for the first time) that Germany will not “normalize” relations with Iran until Tehran recognizes the state of Israel and its “right to exist.” Merkel is unusual among European heads of state in assigning importance to moral considerations, especially where Jews (dead or living) are concerned. Despite her party’s recent electoral setbacks, she still stands at the head of a country that, in the years 1933-45, destroyed European Jewish civilization. That was (to use one of President Obama’s favorite locutions) “the verdict of history” pronounced by Europe upon its Jewish minority, which it is now replacing with a rather different (and much more quarrelsome) Muslim minority. European Christendom, over the course of centuries, had, in Raul Hilberg’s famous formulation, progressed from the historical verdict, “You [Jews] have no right to live among us as Jews,” to “You have no right to live among us,” to “You have no right to live.”

Michael David Danby is an Australian politician who has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives since October 1998, representing the Division of Melbourne Ports, Victoria.

Nearly half a million people have been killed in Syria in the last four years.300,000 civilians are trapped in Aleppo – surrounded by Iranians and Hezbollah and being carpet bombed by the Russian and Syrian governments – yet hypocritical far-Left unionists like Paul Elliot remain completely silent on the slaughter in Syria.
Michael Danby

Michael Danby

Displaying their entrenched hypocrisy, Elliot’s far-Left unionists show there are no limits to their attacks on the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, by adopting a ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ (BDS) policy against Israel.

The medical scientists, pharmacists and phycologists who pay their union subscriptions to the ultra-left HSU No 4 branch will need to ask whether the union’s discriminatory BDS policy instructions mean they will have to rip out the Israeli-made computer chips from their computers and cease prescribing medications which were developed or produced in Israel.

Member for Melbourne Ports – Michael Danby MP – lambasted Paul Elliott and other participating members of the HSU saying; “they (the union) should be more concerned with the fact that the general public think they are a union of crooks, rather than taking up the insignia position of the Nazis and boycotting Israeli and Jewish businesses.”

Mr Danby said that the motivations of the people who run the international BDS campaigns are very clear; what they are on about is the elimination of Israel, not some critiquing of its internal politics. [1]

“I call on those responsible to reconsider and immediately withdraw this discriminatory policy” Mr Danby said.

The Victorian branch of the Health Services Union (HSU) were singled out for praise however, having distinguished themselves from their extremist colleagues.

The internal pushback within the union has been led by Dianna Asmar who represents hundreds of aged-care workers who work in Jewish aged-care services in Melbourne Ports.

Ms Asmar has expressed her outright opposition to the anti-Israel boycott.

A new ISIS magazine released by its propaganda wing in charge of foreign-language outreach advises jihadists to target teens playing sports after school or even flower sellers hawking blooms on the street.

The first edition of the new magazine — Rumiyah, meaning Rome — was published in English, Turkish, German, French, Indonesian, Russian, Pashto and Uyghur. The name, of course, is symbolic of ISIS’ apocalyptic goal of the conquest of Rome.

The design of the magazine is more simple than English-language Dabiq. It’s also much shorter: 38 pages compared to the 82 pages in the last issue of Dabiq.

The new effort by ISIS’ Al-Hayat Media Center is likely an effort to reach broader audiences on a more frequent basis. The articles are similar to other ISIS material: heavily on Quranic verse yet not so much in a Western tone, like al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine.

In one article on the Muslim’s responsibility to shed the blood of the kafir [disbelievers], the writers stress that “Allah did not only command the ‘fighting’ of disbelievers, as if to say He only wants us to conduct frontline operations against them. Rather, He has also ordered that they be slain wherever they may be – on or off the battlefield.”

“…All of this becomes all the more apparent for those who have realized that the blood of a kafir is cheap, filthy, and permissible to shed.”

The article heavily quotes scholars citing the Quran to justify targeting civilians. “None of this should be surprising to any Muslim who has studied his religion, as this matter of a kafir’s blood being halal to shed is something upon which scholars have recorded consensus,” the author concludes.

“Muslims currently living in Dar al-Kufr [land of the disbelievers] must be reminded that the blood of the disbelievers is halal, and killing them is a form of worship to Allah, the Lord, King, and God of mankind,” readers are told. “This includes the businessman riding to work in a taxicab, the young adults (post-pubescent ‘children’) engaged in sports activities in the park, and the old man waiting in line to buy a sandwich.” CONTINUE AT SITE

PARIS—French police detained a second couple as part of terror investigation after a car loaded with cooking gas canisters was found near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Sunday morning, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor said.

The man and a woman detained Wednesday evening in the Loiret area, 100 miles south of Paris, are being questioned by the police, a spokeswoman for the antiterror prosecutor said Thursday. She didn’t provide further information on their identity.

The police on Tuesday arrested the couple who own the car on a highway near Orange, a French city hundreds of miles south of Paris. One of the car’s owners is on a national-security watch list.

Police discovered the car with its hazard lights blinking and no license plate, according to a police officer familiar with the matter. One gas canister was found on the front seat while six others were recovered from the car’s trunk, the officer said, adding that no detonator was found.

The spokeswoman said three bottles of petrol were also found in the trunk.

A Russian jet fighter conducted what the Pentagon described as an “unsafe,” close-range intercept of a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft in international airspace over the Black Sea Wednesday, at one point closing to within 10 feet, U.S. officials said.

The maneuver came amid growing Washington-Moscow tensions over talks in Syria, a cease-fire in Ukraine and mountingU.S. concern that Russian hackers are targeting U.S. electoral systems.

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the intercept lasted about 19 minutes and described it as a potentially dangerous maneuver.

“These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions, and could result in a miscalculation or accident,” Capt. Davis said.

A U.S. defense official said the Russian Su-27 maintained a 30-foot distance from the U.S. P-8A Poseidon aircraft before closing to within 10 feet, a perilously close brush.

‘Never forget” is the commitment the American people made after Sept. 11, 2001. Yet sometimes our leaders seem to have forgotten Iran’s role in that worst terror attack on American soil, and Iran’s continuing assistance to terror organizations and operations around the world.
In the last 15 years, aggressive U.S.-led military and intelligence operations have killed many of al Qaeda’s leaders and damaged the group’s ability to plan and execute a similar attack. But a key al Qaeda partner, Iran, has never been held responsible for its enabling role—even though the 9/11 Commission found that “there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.”

The State Department says Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. What is not adequately understood, however, is the regime’s willingness to work with extremists of the Sunni sect in the Arab world and elsewhere—even though it views itself as the vanguard of the world’s Shiite community. Iran is aiding both Sunni and Shiite terror organizations—including Sunni Hamas and Sunni Islamic Jihad, and Shiite Hezbollah and Shiite Iraqi militias.

Iran’s link to al Qaeda goes back to Sudan in the early 1990s, when Osama bin Laden lived in the nation’s capital, Khartoum. The Sudanese religious scholar Ahmed Abdel Rahman Hamadabi brought Sheikh Nomani, an emissary of Iran, to meet bin Laden and the nascent al Qaeda leadership. According to an account by scholar Rohan Gunaratna, Sheikh Nomani “had access to the highest echelons of power in Tehran.”

As a result of these consultations, the Washington Institute’s Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson concluded, “Iran and al-Qaeda reached an informal agreement to cooperate, with Iran providing critical explosives, intelligence, and security training to bin Laden’s organization.” Because Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) already supported Hezbollah operationally and financially, a vehicle was in place through which they could support and influence al Qaeda.

Operating through Hezbollah gave Iran immense freedom to funnel money and weaponry and to train al Qaeda operatives in deadly tactics that would be employed around the world, including against the U.S. The coordinated 1998 truck bombings targeting the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were a direct result of the Iranian terror training, according to a finding by Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the 2011 case of James Owens et al. v. Republic of Sudan et al.

After 9/11, Iran became a more important haven for al Qaeda fighters who fled from Afghanistan as the Taliban collapsed. Iran claimed that these terrorists were under “house arrest.” In reality, Iran regularly granted the terrorists freedom to move within Iran and to cross into Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out attacks. From their safe base in Iran, al Qaeda members planned terrorist operations, including the 2003 attack in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia that killed 26 people, including eight Americans, and the 2008 attack on the American Embassy in Yemen that claimed 16 lives, including six terrorists. CONTINUE AT SITE

The offensive references to women, who are depicted as witches and demons in Palestinian school textbooks, should not come as a surprise. Recently, it was revealed here that several Palestinian lists contesting the October 8 local elections have replaced the names and photos of their female candidates with images of roses and pigeons.

“This is completely unacceptable because it presents women as the cause for all disputes and evil in Palestinian society.” — Lubna Al-Ashkar of the Women’s Technical Affairs Committee.

“This will create a negative image of women in the midst of our children — one that will be difficult to change in the future.” — Amal Khraisheh, chairwoman of the Palestinian Working Woman Society.

It is true that women as witches is a novel defamation for President Mahmoud Abbas and his crew. Yet Palestinian Authority defamation of others, including Israel, is far from new. This is stuff fed to Palestinian schoolchildren: lies about history, lies about geography, and now lies about Palestinian women.

Palestinian schoolchildren who returned to their schools last week are being taught that women are witches and Tel Aviv is an Arab city. They are also being exposed to maps that ignore Israel’s existence.

Despite all Palestinian Authority (PA) claims to the contrary, then, the new textbooks hardly promote peace and coexistence between Palestinians and Israel.

A new school curriculum published by the PA last week has drawn sharp criticism from many Palestinians, who say the textbooks demonize women and contain “factual and historical” errors.

The controversial version of the curriculum for grades 1-4 was launched by PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah during a ceremony in Ramallah, on the eve of beginning of the new school year.

Within hours, Palestinians, particularly female activists, voiced resentment over the new curriculum and called on the PA leadership to remove it immediately. Some Palestinians denounced the curriculum, which was drafted by a team of Palestinian educational experts, as a “scandal” and a “distortion of facts.” They said that a curriculum full of errors and “distortions of facts” was a guaranteed recipe for raising a new generation of illiterate and misinformed Palestinians.

Incitement to murder Jews was described by the French press as “mild mannered”.

In 2014, supposed anti-Israel protesters attacked a Paris synagogue and trapped the congregants inside. The attackers’ chants apparently included “Death to the Jews,” “Murderous Israel,” and “One Jew, Some Jews, All Jews are Terrorists.”

The terrorist attacks on Jews in France are the culmination of years of Jew-hatred tolerated with little official criticism.

With ISIS and Hamas banners and flags flying, groups in Paris pledged the genocide of the Jews with impunity. When chants of “Death to the Jews,” ring out publicly, is it surprising that people might actually begin to think that killing Jews is just fine?

During the past 15 years, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Jews have fled France.

Of these, approximately 40,000 have fled to Israel, according to Israeli figures. Many thousands of others have fled to Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. France is increasingly becoming a nation in which it is no longer safe to be openly Jewish.

To explain why so many Jews are leaving Europe, it helps to understand the increasingly toxic context developing in France for Jews.

Synagogues and Jewish schools across France are regularly guarded by police officers and soldiers. Jews in Europe see their holy sites and places of worship under threat.

In December 2015, 14 Jews were poisoned by a toxic substance which had been smeared on to the keypad to access a Paris synagogue. No one was killed by the poison, but “25 firemen rushed to the synagogue, where they treated congregants and traced their condition to the daubed lock.”