RUTHFULLY YOURS

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”.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/01/12/Former-Sec-Of-State-Albright-I-Think-Sen-Hagel-Voted-For-Israel

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is defending Chuck Hagel against Republicans who think he is anti-Israel.

“I think that’s ridiculous. I think that Senator Hagel has been somebody that has voted for help for Israel over the years, has made very clear his support for Israel, and has talked about the historic bond. And so I think that is just a charge that doesn’t make sense at all.”

SAYETH THE HALF BRIGHT MADELEINE; WHO WAS FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER AND CAMPAIGN SUPPORTER OF DUKAKIS; WHOSE LOBBY FIRM IS ON THE ARAB PAYROLL; WHO RAN AFTER YASSER ARAFAT AT THE WYE PLANTATION BLOCKING HIS WAY WHEN HE THREATENED TO LEAVE IN A SNIT WITH NETANYAHU; AND WHO WAS SHOCKED, SHOCKED TO LEARN THAT SHE WAS ONLY JEWISH ON HER PARENTS SIDE WHEN SHE WAS WELL INTO HER MIDDLE YEARS; WHO FLASHED HER WINNING SMILE AT NORTH KOREA’S THUG KIM DECLARING THAT A NEW ERA HAD OPENED UP BETWEEN THE US AND NORTH KOREA……….RSK

Apparently, Albright missed the fact that CAIR praised Hagel for trying to undermine Israel’s plan to strike Hezbollah in 2006.

Maybe she missed the fact that Hagel was one of only four senators who refused to sign a letter in support of Israel in 2004 or that, in 2005, he was one of 27 senators who refused to ask the Palestinian Authority to bar terrorist groups from participating in national elections.

Or maybe she missed Hagel’s ongoing support for Iran.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

We often talk about a culture war, but we don’t usually talk about what that means beyond protests over movies and art exhibits.

Culture is programming. The culture war is a programming conflict. Ideas are code. They’re viruses. They’re memes.

Our form of code is communication. A man alone isn’t an island, he’s one of those feral wolf children that sometimes turn up in abusive households or backward countries. And those children are never fully human because they are missing something basic. They have never been shaped by talking with another member of their species.

The communication that we engage in, through reading and talking, comes to define who we are. It programs us with concepts and ideas, which we bash up against other concepts and ideas, both very sophisticated and very simple.

Brainwashing is the hostile takeover of a human mind. The most effective way to brainwash someone is to take a lonely individual and embed him into a peer group which bombards him or her with love and acceptance that is conditional on accepting an idea or belief.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Sharp-shooting cancer. Scientists at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv have isolated the cancer stem cells that fuel the growth of Wilms’ tumors – responsible for kidney cancer in children. They then used antibody medication to target specific molecules in those cells and destroy the tumors without harming any other cells.http://eng.sheba.co.il/Sheba_News/342.htm

Israeli treatment helps bone marrow transplants. Israeli biotech Enlivex has developed a treatment called ApoCell that triggers a response from the immune system to reduce adverse reactions during bone marrow transplants. It prevents Graft vs Host Disease (GVHD), which affects around 70% of transplant patients.

http://unitedwithisrael.org/enlivex-innovation-leads-to-effective-new-cancer-treatment/

GPS for the brain. (Thanks to Stuart Palmer and Israel21c.) Israel’s Alpha Omega’s products guide neurosurgeons to the required location in the brain. Alpha Omega is run by Imad and Reem Younis – two Christian Arabs from Nazareth, with their mostly Christian and Muslim staff of Israeli University graduates.

http://israel21c.org/health/gps-for-brain-surgeons/

Treating Epilepsy from the inside. Israel’s BioControl Medical has reduced epileptic episodes by 50% in recent trials of its FitNeS™ implantable vagus nerve stimulation system. And no side effects.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20121203005516/en/BioControl-Medical%E2%80%99s-VNS-Technology-Shown-Effective-Treating

Obama’s step-grandmother treated at Israeli hospital in Guinea. I had to blink hard when I read this. The 3rd wife of the US President’s grandfather has just undergone emergency eye treatment at the “Shalom” La Paz Medical Center in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Israel’s Tel Hashomer hospital runs the state-of-the-art medical center and the local staff includes around 100 Israeli doctors. Just see some of the photos in the third link.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4326184,00.html

http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=17017&alias=a-mezuzah-on-african-hospital

http://lapazmalabo.org/about/ophthalmology/

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

It’s Israeli at any angle. Lenovo’s new range of Ideapad Ultrabooks includes the gesture control features of Israeli startup, eyeSight Mobile Technologies. With simple hand movements, from a distance of up to 70cm you can control media player, photo gallery, Powerpoint and PDF reader.

http://www.embassyofisrael.co.uk/commercial/2013/01/04/lenovo-latest-ultrabooks-integrate-gesture-control-with-israels-eyesight/

Chips with everything. The Israeli-developed XciteR chipset developed by DSP Group will power TECOM’s new MOCET Communicator – the advanced IP phone for Apple’s iPAD. DSP products are being integrated into a number of High Definition (HD) devices and services.

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000811816&fid=1725

A natural herbal pesticide. Israel’s EdenShield has discovered natural Negev herbs that insects cannot tolerate. The herbs are converted into solution and sprayed on the netting surrounding fruit and vegetables. When the bugs smell the aroma of the herb they turn tail and fly away.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-herbal-remedy-for-the-bug-crisis/

http://www.mofet.org.il/Companies.aspx?CatID=1&ProdID=40

See Israeli technology at Arava Open Day. Yair Farm is the site for this year’s two-day agritech show. 250 (mostly Israeli) companies will be demonstrating their products to over 30,000 visitors. It has something for everyone – free entrance, a farmer’s market, kids’ activities, and gala evening concerts from top Israeli stars

http://www.aravaopenday.co.il/en

http://www.timesofisrael.com/website-tells-you-how-much-rain-fell-in-your-town-or-on-your-street/

http://www.jewishjournal.com/cover_story/article/why_i_am_a_zionist

TOM DORAN IS NOT JEWISH AND PRETTY MUCH ALLIED WITH THE LEFT…HERE HE EXPLAINS HIS REJECTION OF KNEE JERK HOSTILITY TO ISRAEL….PLEASE READ…..RSK

There can’t have been more than half a dozen of them. Crowded as usual near the railings of St. John’s church graveyard in the center of town, the Côr Cochion (Reds Choir) were known of old to shoppers in Cardiff, Wales’ capital city, where I still live and work. Every weekend, rain or shine (more commonly rain, this being Wales), this tiny gaggle of diehard Trotskyists would assemble to sing hymns to the death of capitalism and a world ruled by workers. Politics at this level more closely resembles religion than anything else, and so it was with the Côr, who faded into the background like any other street evangelists.

Then, one weekend in my childhood — it was in the late ’90s, so I was about 10 — something about their display caught my eye. Among the torrent of far-left buzzwords on their amateurish placards, one leapt out at me: “Zionist.” I felt like I’d heard this word before. Wasn’t it something to do with Jewish people? But in close proximity to it were other words: “Aggression.” “Apartheid.” “Fascist.” Now I was confused, because what little I’d absorbed of history at that age told me that in the second world war, fascists hated Jews. Didn’t they? I pointed the sign out to my father, walking by my side. “Well,” he said offhandedly, “the ideology of the people who founded Israel was quite close to that of the Nazis.”

I thought little more of it. As a child and teenager, I broadly accepted my parents’ worldview. This chiefly consisted of dogmatic (not extreme) leftism, of which anti-Zionism was but a tiny part. The truth is, the subject just didn’t come up that often.

American and Israeli accounts of anti-Zionism have a tendency to portray modern Europe as slouching towards a Bethlehem of Jew-hatred, with far-left and far-right combining to bring about a return to the 1930s. I wouldn’t go that far. Anti-Zionism is certainly ubiquitous on the hard left, but in my experience is merely one component of a seamless, all-encompassing theory of the world that, if I may be cynical for a moment, revolves around three questions:

1. Which side is the United States on?

2. Which side has all the money/weaponry?

3. Which side, overall, has lighter skin?

Where all three questions generate the same answer, that answer is The Enemy. Where the answers are mixed or unclear, the result is abject confusion, as in the case of Syria. In the manner of a stopped clock, this formula will occasionally yield the correct position, as with South Africa (of which more later). More often, it’s a first-class ticket into the moral abyss. In the interests of balance, I should point out that a nontrivial percentage of right-wingers make use of the same three questions with the results inverted.

It is this dogmatic form of anti-imperialism, in my view, that most accounts for leftist hostility to the Jewish state. In Israel’s troubled early years, and in the long years of struggle before its foundation, Zionism was chiefly associated with the political left, to the extent that George Orwell could write in 1945 that “it was de rigueur among enlightened people to accept the Jewish case as proved and avoid examining the claims of the Arabs.” Only with Israel’s emergence as a regional superpower and staunch American ally did the worm turn; a sequence of events that also miraculously coincided with conservatives discovering their deep-seated affinity for the Jewish people.

http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=2096&c=15310&m=13810&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce Chuck Hagel established himself as a Palestine Firster on October 27, 2009, speaking at “J Street’s” 1st national conference: “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central, not peripheral, to US vital security interests in combating terrorism, preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, stability in the Middle East and US and global energy security.” Really?! In contrast with […]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/moor-strategy_695215.html?nopager=1
Mauritania’s President Mohamed Abdel Aziz on Islamists and underdevelopment in the Sahel

Of all the security threats Americans did not expect in 2013, a military breakthrough by Islamists into the heart of West Africa is the most urgent. At this writing, Malians are fleeing the Niger River hub of Mopti, and elements of a French airborne brigade are deployed nearby to reinforce Malian infantrymen, as Islamist fighters advance. Last month, the U.N. Security Council authorized the use of force to rescue northern Mali, which fell under the control of several al Qaeda affiliates in March 2012.

The French-sponsored plan, for which the United States has expressed lukewarm support, is being jump-started by the terrorists’ preemptive use of force. They have had a year to strengthen their position. An individual with a keen interest in the alarming strategic situation is the Islamists’ arch-foe and Mali’s neighbor, Mohamed Abdel Aziz, president of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. While acknowledging that the crisis calls for an immediate reaction on the part of Mali and its friends to keep the Islamists north of the Niger River, he stresses that there is no longer any excuse for not taking a hard look at the whole Sahel region and its persistent problems.

So little known is Mauritania that few Western news outlets bothered to report the wounding of its president last October. Victim of a reportedly accidental shooting while passing an army guard post on a desert road outside this capital, Abdel Aziz required surgery and weeks of convalescence in France, during which neither the White House nor the State Department called him directly. He does not bring this up during a conversation in his office at year’s end, but goes straight to the point he wants to get across: The terrorist groups and criminal gangs in northern Mali must be eradicated.

Having watched jihadists establish sanctuaries in the Sahara for over a decade, Abdel Aziz is wary of quick fixes. He fought them alone early last year, vainly urging his neighbors to join him in coordinated action at a time when, he still believes, the problem could have been dealt with by a terrible swift and well-aimed sword. “There were only a few hundred armed men back then,” he says, adding, “Even during the Tuareg war, we could have intervened and solved the problem.” Last year, a secessionist movement among Tuareg nomads routed the U.S.-trained Malian Army and was in turn chased out of the north by better-equipped jihadists who entered the fray.

In the first three months of 2012, the Mauritanian Army entered Mali on at least two occasions, using ground troops and airpower to dissuade the rebels from any idea of moving toward their frontier. This was in keeping with a policy adopted after Abdel Aziz came to power in 2008. Its main components include modernization of his forces and a willingness to engage in hot pursuit of the troublemakers by crossing the 500-mile border his country shares with Mali.

http://times247.com/
State of the Union to come on Lincoln’s birthday

MAYBE DANIEL DAY LEWIS SHOULD DELIVER THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS?….RSK
The Washington Times
Friday, January 11, 2013
News
President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 12, House Speaker John Boehner said. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2HlbPOWZa
Judge lets Taliban terrorist pray with prisonmates
Associated Press
Friday, January 11, 2013
News
A federal judge has ruled that a convicted Taliban fighter should be allowed to pray daily in a group with other Muslim inmates at their high-security prison in Indiana. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2HlcP09RK

Iran threatens to kidnap Western diplomats
The Washington Free Beacon
Friday, January 11, 2013
News
The United States government is concerned about new threats of Iranian-backed terrorism against diplomats and high-profile religious leaders in the Middle East from operations by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2HlcAiFPS
Perry pokes Cuomo on state economies
Politico
Friday, January 11, 2013
News
Texas Gov. Rick Perry singled out New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Thursday while arguing that other governors should be envious of the Lone Star State’s economic record. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2HlbnV1sl