RUTHFULLY YOURS

America sets the bar high in defining traitorous acts. But ‘adhering’ to the enemy in times of war? Watch out.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324688404578543410828226862.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

The case of the runaway spy Edward Snowden is igniting talk of treason. No less a figure than the speaker of the House, John Boehner, has gone on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and called Mr. Snowden a “traitor,” while the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, deemed his revelation of U.S. surveillance methods an “act of treason.”

This is a teachable moment in respect of a heinous crime. It reminds us of why the Founders made it so difficult to bring charges of treason. But it’s also a moment to reflect on a warning sounded by an early chief justice. The constitutional protections against abuses of treason charges remain strong, but once war is levied—that is, waged—citizens will want to take care about how they behave.

For treason turns out to be unique in American law. It is the only crime that the Constitution forbids Congress from defining. It is the only crime to which a court may never accept a confession given to the police. It is the only crime for which restrictions are laid down on how much evidence juries must hear. The Constitution itself underscores that the Founders feared treason law.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324188604578545233232040760.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Obama isn’t defending the war powers he has used so robustly.

President Obama’s admirers—who include most of the press corps, the Nobel committee and President Obama—believe above all in the power of his oratory: A “major speech,” in Philadelphia, Tucson or Cairo, can always calm troubled political waters. Which makes the silence of this wordiest of Presidents all the more unusual and dangerous amid the political uproar over National Security Agency antiterror surveillance.

In the 11 days since the story broke, Mr. Obama has offered only one brief and elliptical defense of the NSA programs. “I welcome this debate,” he said, adding that “We’ll have a chance to talk further during the course of the next couple days.”

Mr. Obama went on to spend the next couple days avoiding the debate he said he welcomed. Between fund-raising appearances in Miami Beach and Santa Monica, he squeezed in an event welcoming the women’s professional basketball championship team to the White House, an Ed Markey for Senate rally in Boston, and a celebration for gay pride month. The core national-security obligations of the Presidency? Nada.

  http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3765/prominent-british-charity-linked-to-hamas The British charity, Human Appeal International, seems more than happy to use democratic means, such as the courts, to silence its critics. Britain’s leading Jewish newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, issued an apology recently to Human Appeal International, a British charity with a number of worldwide affiliated branches, all particularly active in the Palestinian […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3769/iran-rouhani-moderate The bad news is that Rouhani has little influence on the three major power centers in Iran. Rouhani, who knows for whom he works (and it is not the Iranian people), will try to use his negotiating skills to effect changes in American behavior toward Iran. The 686 men who expressed their desire to […]

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/06/15/president-elect-hasan-rohwani-on-the-sublimity-of-khomeinis-model/

Shiite cleric Hasan Rohwani has been elected as Iran’s next President, from amongst a slate of ruling Ayatollah “guardian council”-approved candidates.

Hassan Rowhani has a lengthy history in Iranian politics, having served as the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council for more than 16 years. He was also a former deputy speaker of the parliament. During the Mohammad Khatami’s Presidency, in 2003, Rowhani became Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator. Rowhani maintained the post for two years before being replaced by Ali Larijani when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assumed the presidency in 2005. He is also a member of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as the Assembly of Experts, a body vested with the power to elect and remove the Supreme Leader. Rowhani is reputed to be close to both Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Chairman of Expediency Discernment Council.

Right until his election to the presidency, Hassan Rowhani headed the Tehran-based think tank, the Center for Strategic Research. Rowhani, in a 2009 monograph published by the Center for Strategic Research, “Islamic Political Thought, Volume I: Theory,” extolled Iranian theocrat Ayatollah Khomeini’s alleged enlightened “vision” for Islamic governance, as follows (translation kindly provided by Amil Imani):

It appears distancing from any fundamental ideals of the Islamic Revolution, would only mean to be held in the prison of western politics, “politics without ethics” or a medieval European dungeon, “backward religious thoughts”…And we all have witnessed and taken notes of the warning of great architect of the Islamic government, Ayatollah Khomeini, that we avoid falling over that cliff…[T]he Islamic Revolution and its theorists, and above all, Imam Khomeini, were exemplary leaders who were the first projected, defined and implemented a superb divine Islamic model for all humans and all times.

….FROM AND E-PAL BUD B. One wonders if all of those people and countries who are advocating a boycott of Israeli companies and products are willing to fly in aircraft not outfitted with this system
The company is based in Haifa. No gimmick, it’s the real thing.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/uVlERTFVSpo?rel=0

http://trib.com/opinion/columns/the-epa-join-in-the-power-abuse-targets-wyoming-farms/article_3a598ea2-0ff3-5f24-b966-83b40b74cd54.html The EPA join in the power abuse, targets Wyoming farms This week, we learned the Environmental Protection Agency illegally released personal names, phone numbers, emails and addresses of 80,000 farmers and ranchers in 30 states to activist environmental groups interested in prosecutions under the EPA’s Clean Water Act. Family farmers with fewer than 1,000 […]

After Firebombing of Third Montreal Jewish Business, Community Group Demands Answers from Police Following the latest in a string of firebombing attacks on Jewish targets in Montreal, Canada, a Jewish community group is demanding answers from the police. The B’nai Brith Canada is “calling on the Montreal Police to get to the bottom of the […]

Last fall, a young man who is a student in Dartmouth was at a family lunch. Among the thousand conversations and interjections of three generations of family, the young man told me that his grandfather served in World War 11. The remark was lost in the chatter and laughter and bickering that attends such gatherings. […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
We utilize systems to achieve goals whether it’s defending the country or fighting poverty or making the trains run in time or achieving political change.
Modem systems are systematic creatures that aim to achieve goals by maximizing control over all the subsidiary elements of the problem.
So if you set out to solve poverty, you need control over all the social and economic elements that either cause poverty or could be used to ameliorate poverty. Those elements include the sum amount of national wealth for the purposes of wealth redistribution, the rate of unwed teen pregnancies and any forms of racial discrimination… and that’s just for starters. Even poverty, which would seem like a rather simple phenomenon becomes a system which takes into account tools like abortion, progressive taxation and discrimination laws.
The scope of each social problem becomes so limitless that all social problems must merge into a Holistic Socialism of piano wire in which every string touched spreads vibrations everywhere. Solving even the most minor problem requires solving all the problems and the only solution is the absolute power of the system.
Socialism relies on systems as means to achieve social ends. The systems develop policies that control as a means to achieve those ends.