RUTHFULLY YOURS

Time and space: A decade after fatal mission, film covers Israeli astronaut’s legacy
Maxine Dovere/JNS.org
DR. ALEX GROBMAN IS THE HISTORICAL CONSULTANT FOR THE FILM…..
Caption: The late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. Credit: NASA. Dan Cohen describes Ilan Ramon, the first and only Israeli astronaut, as “a man used to rising to the occasion.”

On Jan. 31 at 9 p.m., Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope—a documentary directed by Cohen—will air on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Ramon’s death.

Israel sent one of its best on NASA’s fatal Columbia mission: Israel Air Force (IAF) Colonel Ramon was 46, an engineer (electronics and computers), a pilot, married and the father of four. As a combat pilot, he was rumored to have been involved in the 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. He trained for Columbia at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Officially designated as a payload specialist, Ramon was described by Commander Mike Anderson as “fully integrated with the crew.”

Ramon, one of the mission’s seven casualties, is the only non-American to receive the United States Congressional Space Medal of Honor (awarded posthumously). He was chosen to be a NASA astronaut in 1997. By 1998, he had begun a rigorous, five-year training program.

“From the moment he arrived in Houston until he lifted off, Ramon went through a transformational change. He came to understand who he was and what he represented,” Cohen told JNS.org.

Ramon considered himself a representative of all Jews and all Israelis. Although a secular Jew, as the first Israeli astronaut he recognized the importance of maintaining Jewish identity and unity.

“I am the son of a Holocaust survivor,” he once told Israel Radio. “I carry on the suffering of the Holocaust generation, proof that despite all the horror they went through, we’re going forward.” Ramon asked Mission Commander Rick Husband to provide kosher meals on board Columbia and received rabbinical guidance for Shabbat observance in space.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/21/130121fa_fact_remnick#ixzz2Hvb4hvQq At a makeshift theatre in the port of Tel Aviv, hundreds of young immigrants from Melbourne, the Five Towns, and other points in the Anglophone diaspora gathered recently to hear from the newest phenomenon in Israeli politics, Naftali Bennett. A forty-year-old settlement leader, software entrepreneur, and ex-Army commando, Bennett promises to build a sturdy […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3539/cyprus-russia Cypriot banks cater almost exclusively to Russian oligarchs; as a consequence, tiny Cyprus is Russia’s largest foreign investor. The impending fall of the Assad regime in Syria is forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to look for an alternative to Tartus [for Russia’s naval base] – leaving him with only one option: Cyprus. Cyprus’s banks […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3538/european-anti-semites Many even have good consciences and feel they are on the side of The Good. If they would begin began to read some books on history, they will see that anti-Semites have always thought they were on the side of The Good. A few days ago, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, one of the leading […]

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/hypocrisy-run-amok-gore-has-al-jazeera-murdoch-has-al-risala/

Al Risala Award for Excellence. Source: Diana West

Last week, TheBlaze published a series of articles detailing the sale of Al Gore’s Current TV to the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network. Established was also the fact that Gore and company made a point of claiming that the reasons for choosing to sell to Al Jazeera stemmed from their aligned ideologies. Since Al Jazeera was first to provide a forum to Osama bin Laden immediately following the 9/11 attacks, has consistently propagated blood libel and hosts a rabidly anti-Semitic, anti-Western Islamic televangelist as its star-talent, the idea of such “shared goals and visions” is unsettling to say the least.

Which brings us to what really compelled Gore and his partners at Current TV to sell their network to Al Jazeera. Money.

Indeed, it is not so far fetched to think that perhaps Current executives were simply acting in the name of capitalism. After all, it would be difficult for Gore to turn down $100 million of the $500 million total offer Al Jazeera placed on the table. Not to mention, while we don’t have access to all of the offers the network received, it stands to reason al Jazeera’s was likely the highest offer Current had received.

Now if Current executives had been forthright in their motivations for selling to Al Jazeera, while some would still not have liked their choice, it would have gone a long way in fostering at least a modicum of respect for the sheer honesty alone. What most critics are likely upset about is the hypocrisy involved — and that hypocrisy spans an extensive gamut including but not limited to:

An “environmentalist-pioneer” (Al Gore) selling out to a network funded by Middle East big oil.
A proudly liberal Current claiming it shares core values with a network that consistently perpetuates anti-Semitism, anti-Western sentiment and whose “talent” openly supports the whipping if not outright execution of gays and lesbians, the subjugation of women, and a host of other ills anathema to human rights and true progressivism.
A man who, some might claim favors the “fair share” meme, trying with all his might to push through the Al Jazeera deal prior to January 2013 in order to avoid the increased capital gains taxes that would be incurred following the enactment of the Fiscal Cliff bill. He failed in his efforts, however, making Gore, in the words of Blaze finance writer Becket Adams, “the world’s lousiest tax-dodger.”

I know the Germans have a word for this…

http://times247.com/
Reid linked to $600,000 bribery scandal
The Salt Lake Tribune
Saturday, January 12, 2013
News
Reid linked to $600,000 bribery scandal
An embattled Utah businessman, Jeremy Johnson, says the state’s Attorney General John Swallow helped broker a deal in 2010 in which Johnson believed he was to pay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid $600,000 to make a federal investigation into Johnson’s company go away. The FBI would not comment. Read more…

ALSO PLEASE READ: A SMALL MAN IN A BIG JOB: THE PETTY REIGN OF HARRY REID BY MICHAEL WARREN

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/small-man-big-job_695214.html

In February 2010, a massive snowstorm blanketed the nation’s capital and closed the federal government. Harry Reid was holed up in his condominium at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington’s swanky West End neighborhood, reading the news in his pajamas. He came across an Associated Press story on the Democrats’ jobs package, a mixture of spending provisions and tax credits. The story referred to the jobs bill as “light on new initiatives on boosting hiring and heavy with provisions sought by lobbyists for business.” Montana’s Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and the Republican ranking member, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, had reached a deal extending several tax credits that benefited business, keeping the staffs of Reid and Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, informed of the negotiations.

When word of the deal had leaked a day earlier, liberals were incensed. Baucus, a red-state Democrat, was viewed by the left wing of the party as a patsy for conservatives. Despite increased pressure from progressives to abandon the deal, Reid appeared to be moving forward on it. “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he hopes to pass the measure this week,” reported the AP.

At the Ritz-Carlton, Reid read his own words in print and made a snap decision. The next day, at a noon press conference in the Capitol, he dropped the bomb. The jobs bill, including the carefully crafted tax deal, was being scrapped, he told reporters. Reid would instead introduce a new “pared-back” bill, without the tax proposals that had enraged the left. This was the first time Baucus had heard his hard-fought agreement was being thrown away. To the finance committee senators and staff, it was weeks of hard work down the drain. To Reid, it was business as usual.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

Weekly Jihad Report
Jan. 05 – Jan. 11
Jihad Attacks:

37
Allahu Akbars*:

5
Dead Bodies:

209
Critically Injured:

358
*Suicide Attacks

Monthly Jihad Report
December, 2012
Jihad Attacks:

203
Countries:

22
Religions:

5
Dead Bodies:

680
Critically Injured:

1160

http://abcnews.go.com/US/saudi-arabias-beheading-nanny-strict-procedures/story?id=18182757

Rizana Nafeek, a young nanny from Sri Lanka, was beheaded by sword this week in Saudi Arabia, punishment for allegedly killing a baby in 2007 when she was believed to be just 17.

The execution has spurred international outcry, given Nafeek’s age at the time of the incident and her limited access to a defense attorney. The beheading has also shined a light on the Arab kingdom’s medieval system of punishment, which includes cutting the hands off thieves, executing women accused of adultery, and flogging men accused of being gay.

Few details of Nafeek’s execution have leaked from the country’s tightly controlled media, but the interior ministry said her head was severed from her body in public in Dawadmy, a dusty suburb of the capital Riyadh.

In modern times, women in saudi Arabia condemned to death were traditionally executed by gunfire, but in recent years they have routinely been beheaded, an historic form of execution ordered under sharia, or the Muslim religious law that governs the country.

The death penalty is routinely allowed for criminals convicted of murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking or drug use, and apostasy or the renunciation of the Islamic faith, according to human rights group Amnesty International.
Some 82 executions were carried out in Saudi Arabia last year, according to Amnesty. It is unknown how many of them were women or carried out by sword, but the majority of the condemned were foreigners, like Nafeek.

Beheadings in Saudi Arabia are governed by certain rules.

They are conducted in public, typically in town squares or near prisons. The condemned, as well as the executioner, typically wear white. The convict is blindfolded, handcuffed and often given a sedative. A plastic tarp, several feet wide, is sometimes spread out around the convict to make cleaning up the blood and recovering her head easier.

The heads of the condemned can sometimes roll several feet from the body, said Saudi Arabia’s leading executioner in a rare 2003 interview with Saudi newspaper Arab News.

“The criminal was tied and blindfolded. With one stroke of the sword I severed his head. It rolled meters away,” said executioner Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, recalling his first beheading.

Al-Beshi said he has executed as many as 10 people in one day, by sword and by bullet.

“It depends what they ask me to use. Sometimes they ask me to use a sword and sometimes a gun. But most of the time I use the sword,” he said.

He said he keeps his sword razor sharp, and allows his children to help clean it.

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/4738/full

Not a word was uttered about climate change during the three US presidential debates, but President Barack Obama got back on the global warming bandwagon as soon as the polls closed. In his victory speech, he announced: “We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”

The President’s words were carefully chosen to resonate with people still traumatised by Hurricane Sandy. In the days before the election, global warming alarmists jumped on Sandy as evidence that global warming is already here, is bad, and is going to get worse. New York’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, cited Sandy as the reason for his last-minute endorsement of the president on the grounds that he was more likely to care about the issue than Mitt Romney.

The facts are exactly the opposite of the claims. We are currently in the middle of the low phase of the Atlantic hurricane cycle. There have been far fewer major hurricanes in the past few years than the long-term average. Even though Sandy did a lot of damage, it had been downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm by the time it hit New York City. Scientists calculated that it was the 17th most damaging hurricane in the past century. To make just one comparison, three much stronger hurricanes hit the US in less than two years in the early 1950s. Why didn’t the public back then demand action to stop climate change?

Leaders of environmental pressure groups, who had complained bitterly about the president’s failure to make climate change an issue in the campaign against Romney, quickly claimed that this brief nod to their holy of holies was in fact a major commitment to the energy-rationing agenda for Obama’s second term.

We shall see. One of Obama’s trademark policies, cap-and-trade legislation to reduce progressively greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas (which combined provide the cheaper 80 per cent of America’s energy), failed in the Senate in 2010. A number of Democratic members of the House of Representatives who had narrowly voted to pass cap-and-trade in 2009 were defeated in the 2010 congressional elections, which contributed to the Republicans winning a majority in the House. They maintained that majority in last month’s election, despite Romney’s loss and a gain of two Democrats in the Senate, suggesting that the electorate has not changed its mind on cap-and-trade since 2010.

http://standpointmag.co.uk/books-january-february-13-a-pithy-retelling-of-europes-darkest-days-andrew-roberts-norman-stone-second-world-war

ANDREW ROBERTS’ BOOK IS ONE OF THE BEST NARRATIVES OF WORLD WAR 11 THAT I HAVE EVER READ….NOW COMES A HISTORY IN 200 PAGES….A NIGHT’S READING….PRAISE FROM ROBERTS IS VERY WELCOME AND CREDIBLE…..RSK

“……none will doubt that Norman Stone has proved yet again that he is one of the most original, witty and powerful British historians writing today.”

Professor Norman Stone has achieved the impossible; he has somehow written a comprehensive history of the Second World War in just under 200 pages, summarising the entire conflict while leaving out nothing of importance and bringing his lifetime of study of the subject to bear in a witty, incisive and immensely readable way. Having struggled to write a history of the same war in fewer than 700 pages myself a couple of years ago, I am still being taught lessons by Stone a full three decades after he was my history supervisor at Cambridge.

The Second World War matters to the author in a more visceral way than to most historians of the subject, of whom there has certainly been no dearth in recent years. His father read law at Glasgow University before joining the RAF and taking part in the Battle of Britain, serving in the City of Glasgow 602 squadron. The battle won, as soon as he could be spared he was taken out of the front line for the vitally important task of training pilots, and it was while doing this that he was killed in a plane crash in Wales in February 1942. Stone still has his father’s compass. This book is dedicated to his father’s brother-officers, who raised the money to pay for his education. “It was,” as Norman writes, “a good world”.