RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/profile/Hugh-Tomlinson

Iran has increased the number of public executions and amputations it carries out, taking advantage of the international focus on Gaza to reduce prison overcrowding and to issue a warning before elections in June.At least 81 people have been hanged in the past ten days.

There had been a lull during the summer for Ramadan and the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran. Iran often uses periods of unrest elsewhere to accelerate the rate of executions, and the crisis in Gaza has provided such a distraction.

When the Arab Spring broke out last year, the regime cheered on the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt from the sidelines while clamping down on its domestic opposition and putting hundreds of Iranians to death.

Western holidays, particularly the lethargic news period between Christmas and new year, are also busy times for Iranian hangmen.

“We have seen in the past that every time the international community’s attention is elsewhere we see a spike in executions across Iran. Rates are always higher when the West is distracted,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights, the non-government organisation.

Human rights groups have verified almost 500 executions across Iran this year and believe the true figure is higher. The Islamic Republic executes more people each year than any nation except China, and has the highest rate of executions per capita.

Move over, adulterous generals. It might be time to make way for a new sexual rats’nest – at America’s top financial police agency, the SEC.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/sec-rocked-by-lurid-sex-and-corruption-lawsuit-20121119

Move over, adulterous generals. It might be time to make way for a new sexual rats’nest – at America’s top financial police agency, the SEC.

In a salacious 77-page complaint that reads like Penthouse Forum meets The Insider meets the Keystone Kops, one David Weber, the former chief investigator for the SEC Inspector General’s office, accuses the SEC of retaliating against Weber for coming forward as a whistleblower. According to this lawsuit, Weber was made a target of intramural intrigues at the agency (which has a history of such retaliation) after he came forward with concerns that his bosses may have been spending more time copulating than they were investigating the SEC.

Weber vs. the SEC: The Full Complaint

Weber claims that in recent years, while the SEC Inspector General’s office has been attempting to investigate the agency’s seemingly-negligent responses in such matters as the Bernie Madoff case and the less-well-known (but nearly as disturbing) Stanford Financial Ponzi scandal, two of the IG office’s senior officials – former Inspector General David Kotz and his successor, Noelle Maloney – were sleeping together.

Weber also claims that Kotz was also having an affair with a lawyer representing a key group of Stanford victims, a Dr. Gaytri Kachroo. Where the story gets really strange is where Weber claims that Maloney last year refused to meet with Kachroo as part of the Stanford investigation. By then, Kotz had stepped down as SEC IG and Maloney had replaced him as Acting IG. The complaint describes Weber confronting Maloney over the issue, asking why she wouldn’t meet with the lawyer representing a key group of Stanford victims.

Maloney asked Weber to close the door to her office. Maloney told Weber that she would deny the following conversation if Weber were to repeat it.

Maloney then said that, “David [Kotz] was focki**g that lady . . .” Maloney stated that Kachroo had received special treatment. Maloney even questioned whether the OIG would have ever opened an investigation into the SEC’s oversight over the Court-Appointed Receivership in SEC v. Stanford.

Click here: Reporters Without Borders Shields Terrorists – Maggie’s Farm
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/21025-Reporters-Without-Borders-Shields-Terrorists.html
Tuesday, November 20. 2012
Reporters Without Borders Shields Terrorists
Reporters Without Borders accused Israel of a war crime, targeting innocent civilian journalists. The Reporters Without Borders, first, need to better understand the Geneva Conventions. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the authority on the Geneva Conventions.

“Inasmuch as they are civilians, journalists are protected under international humanitarian law against direct attacks unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.”

That does not protect those masquerading as journalists nor does it protect terrorists hiding among journalists. Today, Israel killed five of them. Further, Reporters Without Borders has not protested Hamas directly denying journalists in Gaza their right to leave Gaza.

Reporters Without Borders are without the confining borders of journalistic ethics. Quelle surprise!

Posted by Bruce Kesler at 00:06

Effective Sanctions on Iran – Oxymoron
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought”
“Israel Hayom”, November 18, 2013, http://bit.ly/SWcN0J

Twenty eight years of unilateral and multilateral US-led sanctions, accompanied by diplomatic pressure and cyber sabotage, have failed to deter Iran’s Ayatollahs from approaching nuclear capabilities. Fifty years of proliferated sanctions – since the 1962 military coup in Burma – have been largely unsuccessful in changing policies of rogue regimes.

In fact, the US focus on sanctions and engagement – rather than confrontation – has facilitated Iran’s nuclear drive. It has provided Teheran with more time to develop and acquire critical nuclear capabilities.

Sanctions have effectively eroded Iran’s economy. Sanctions have been ineffective in diverting Iran from its nuclear path.

Effective sanctions require full multilateral cooperation, which is axiomatically unattainable. China and Russia are inherent geo-strategic adversaries of the US that aim at weakening US power projection in the Persian Gulf and throughout the globe. Therefore, they cushion Iran in its struggle against sanctions. They oppose US policy on Iran, maintain security ties with the Ayatollahs and sustain their trade relations with Teheran, as do India, Japan, Turkey and some European countries, irrespective of their supposed support of UN sanction-resolutions.

Furthermore, the US has not fully implemented its own sanction bills and executive orders – e.g., May 1995, June 2010, November 2011, February 2012, and July 2012 – which are replete with commerce-driven waivers and exemptions, rendering them ineffective and counter-productive.

Europe has fizzled more miserably and cynically, ignoring its own sanctions. Europe has sacrificed the long-term battle against a nuclear Iran on the altar of the short-term commercial interests of individual countries and companies.

Thus, the notion of “effective and biting sanctions” constitutes a classic oxymoron, as should have been concluded from the track record of multilateral sanctions against rogue regimes.

For instance, for 60 years, the US has assumed that sanctions on North Korea will convince Pyongyang to refrain from developing nuclear capabilities and moderate its aggressive policy. However, North Korea has offset the loss of the South Korean and Japanese markets by increasing trade with China, irrespective of the latter’s vote for UN Security Council resolutions 1718 and 1874 against North Korea. Just like other ruthless regimes and centrally-planned economies, North Korea has been less influenced by the global economy. It is the “Juche” ideology of national self-sufficiency and non-reliance on imports and economic aid which have made sanctions less effective. Unlike Iran, North Korea is inwardly inclined, devoid of religiously-driven megalomaniac aspirations.

The Death of a Palestinian Nazi — on The Glazov Gang
by Jamie Glazov
The meaning of Israel’s successful assassination of Ahmed al-Ja’abari, the head of Hamas’ military wing.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/why-arent-conservatives-cool-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1112/prager112012.php3?printer_friendly

The way in which the New York Times reports good vs. evil is one of the most important stories of our time.

Take the war between Israel and Hamas that is taking place right now.

This war is as morally clear as wars get. Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty and no freedom of speech or press. In a nutshell, Hamas is a violent, fascist organization.

Israel, meanwhile, is one the world’s most humane states, not to mention a democracy that is so tolerant that Arab members of its parliament are free to express admiration for Hamas.

Over the past decade, Hamas had launched thousands of rockets into Israel with one aim: to kill and maim as many Israeli citizens as possible — Israelis at work, at play, asleep in their homes, in their cars. Finally, Israel responded by killing Ahmed al-Jabari, the chief organizer of Hamas violence, the Hamas “military commander” as he was known among Palestinians.

The next day, three more Israelis were killed by rockets.

Then Hamas targeted Tel Aviv, Israel’s most densely populated region, and Israel shelled Hamas rocket launching sites.

In other words, an evil entity made war on a peaceful, decent entity, and the latter responded.

How has the New York Times reported this?

On Friday, on its front page, the Times featured two three-column wide photos. The top one was of Gaza Muslim mourners alongside the dead body of al-Jabari. The photo below was of Israeli Jews mourning alongside the dead body of Mira Scharf, a 27-year-old mother of three.

What possible reason could there be for the New York Times to give identical space to these two pictures? One of the dead, after all, was a murderer, and the other was one of his victims.

The most plausible reason is that the Times wanted to depict through pictures a sort of moral equivalence: Look, sophisticated Times readers, virtually identical scenes of death and mourning on both sides of the conflict. How tragic.

If one had no idea what had triggered this war, one would read and see the Times coverage and conclude that two sides killing each other were both equally at fault.

From: Jerusalem Diaries: A visit to Ashkelon and Ashdod and the surrounding areas brought home the price being paid by Israelis living in southern Israel who are under the continuing Hamas bombardment. The level of preparedness and ability to withstand the terror onslaught is impressive. The physical, economic and psychological damage is palpable and in […]

HAT TIP: MY E-PAL NURIT GREENGER BROGHT THIS COLUMN TO MY ATTENTION….RSK

http://www.kr8.co.il/BRPortal/br/P102.jsp?arc=317453

You Cannot Speak With Allah

In light of what is happening in our world today, here is an article written in 1955, which is a photograph of reality and prophecy. Then there was no PLO, no Al Qaeda or “radical Islam” …there was and there is Islam, which has not changed since and will never change. Attaching names and attempts to divide the Moslems to moderates and extremists simply humorizing the Muslims! And that Dr. Azriel Carlebach analyzed with clarity and sharpness and incredible insight of the reality and what the future holds in store. No further word is necessary.

Dr. Azriel Carlebach (7 November 1909-12 February 1956) was a journalist and publicist in the time of the Yishuv, prior to the establishment of Israel, and in the early days of the state of Israel and served as the editor of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot and later founder and was the first editor of the newspaper Ma’ariv.

Article by Dr. Azriel Carlebach. Published in the newspaper “Ma’ariv” on 7 October 1955

“It is not the matter of borders the source of the conflict between us and the Arabs, rather the Islamic psychology. The Arabs are the sons of Islam, and with it, along the concept of the worldview, you cannot talk. With Islam you do not live next door in peace.”

Clear and simple truth is that between the Moslem world and the culture of the Western world there is not one common word, and there was not and could not be any understanding. This does not aim at religion, that any religion can be good or bad, according to what its believers will fulfill or overlook its moral principles. It means the influence of Islam on the society life, the sense of the world and the relationships with all other people.

… Fifty – sixty generations one after another were educated in Islam to rape the human nature – not to use the power of thinking, no tot want individual rights, not to lust, not to demand, not to stand tall. In the Moslem world the dim will rules, the dark, the unexplained of Allah. A pedantic and capricious ruler, hidden and sickening …this is the core of the Islam religion – not to ask. A person undertakes this faith in what he says: Allah el Allah”, not in what he is convinced from an idea, but in what he accepts for himself as a tyrant.

Such faith by its very nature cannot be spread through intellectual persuasion or supreme moral, this is the work of the mind and body – and can only be distributed by physical force. And therefore they need to wage a constant holy war against the “non-believers” and bring them into the fold of the right faith with the force of the sword of el-Islam-Allah that loves blood … Never there is greater danger in itself, but the finger on the trigger. And a small bomb in the hands of one madman can destroy an entire philosophers’ Community.

The danger for the West that is buried in Islam is vastly greater than that of Communism. Because within the Communist religion there are multiple educated nucleus than within the Muslim religion. With Communism one can talk about the basics of give and take, because of its materialism it considers also reality, measuring forces, formulating requirements, considers proposals according to feasibility.

All these data do not exist in Islam. Muslims had never agreed on anything, whatever it is, even among themselves … and they cannot materialize anything – not only in the matters concerning Israel; the entire mighty Muslim world could not make an agreement on one common postage stamp. Their reactions – on anything – have no relevance to common sense. They are all emotional lacking calculation, transient, baseless … with all you can talk “business”, even with the devil, but not with Allah …

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2320/Why-Did-Petraeus-Lie-Again.aspx

As CIA Director, David Petraeus testified before the House Intel Committee in a closed hearing on Benghazi on September 14.

(Mistake #1: These hearings should have been open.)

A recap from a post of October 20 titled “What Did the CIA Know and When Did It Stop Knowing It”:

On September 14, ABC established that a bifurcated narrative was emerging from different wings of the administration. On the one hand, CIA Director David Petraeus was putting out the (non-existent) protest story; on the other hand, the Pentagon was already talking terrorist attack.

(Worth tucking away as background from an earlier Ignatius column is that the CIA Director “is also said to have pushed hard in Libya, rushing case officers there to work with the opposition” — a.k.a. al Qaeda.)

ABC reported:

The attack that killed four Americans in the Libyan consulate began as a spontaneous protest against the film “The Innocence of Muslims,” but Islamic militants who may have links to Al Qaeda used the opportunity to launch an attack, CIA Director David Petreaus told the House Intelligence Committee today according to one lawmaker who attended a closed-door briefing.

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intel committee, said Petraeus laid out “a chronological order exactly what we felt happened, how it happened, and where we’re going in the future.”

“In the Benghazi area, in the beginning we feel that it was spontaneous – the protest- because it went on for two or three hours, which is very relevant because if it was something that was planned, then they could have come and attacked right away,” Ruppersberger, D-Md., said following the hour-long briefing by Petraeus. “At this point it looks as if there was a spontaneous situation that occurred and that as a result of that, the extreme groups that were probably connected to al Qaeda took advantage of that situation and then the attack started.”

This is damningly concrete information to hang onto like an anchor now that Petraeus and his Democratic allies are trying to slip away on an oily re-interpretation of the September briefing.

Based on Ruppersberger’s on-the-record impressions of the closed-door Petraeus briefing on September 14 we know:

1) In a one-hour-briefing, Petraeus laid out for members in chronological order the what-happened, how-it-happened and where-we’re-going story.

2) The first thing that happened in this Petraeus chronology was a “spontaneous” protest in Benghazi that lasted “two to three hours.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/11/18/israel-hamas-fight-more-risky-in-a-changed-middle-east/1713345/ 11:15AM EST November 19. 2012 – CAIRO — When Israel launched retaliatory air and ground attacks against Palestinians in 2008, Egypt’s president at the time showed no sympathy for the Palestinian cause. He closed the border with the Gaza Strip and harassed aid workers and activists who backed Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls […]