RUTHFULLY YOURS

A translation of a Serbian TV report from yesterday (original here), thanks to Nebojsa Malic, president of the Reiss Institute

Blerim Heta of Urosevac is the first Balkans suicide bomber. Heta blew himself up in Baghdad a week ago, killing 52. Before going to Iraq, Heta worked at Camp Bondsteel.

The investigation into the March 25 suicide bombing in Baghdad revealed that the perpetrator was Kosovo Albanian Blerim Heta of Urosevac, who called his family a day earlier and told them he would “meet Allah” soon.

Heta’s death was confirmed by his family. Kosovo authorities have not commented on the case.

The news of Heta’s suicide attack was confirmed by the website of “Islamic State of Iraq and Shem” (ISIS), an organization tied to Al-Qaeda. ISIS refers to Heta as “Abu Habbab al-Kosowi”.

This is the first documented case of someone from the Balkans engaging in a suicide bombing attack. There were several unconfirmed reports of suicide bombers of Bosnian origin during the Iraq War.

Heta’s family believed Blerim was fighting somewhere in Syria.

“After everything that happened, I don’t want to hear about faith.” said Heta’s father, Remzi. “My son was seduced. We are a family that shares European values, not extremists.”

http://washingtonexaminer.com/the-pentagon-is-cutting-key-weapons-without-knowing-what-it-really-needs/article/2546708

The news last week that the Navy was being forced to stop production of two key missiles in its arsenal – the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Hellfire air-to-ground weapon – was a shock. It seemed as if President Obama was about to defang both the Navy and the armed drone program, for which the Hellfire serves as a primary weapon.

The news is somewhat better and somewhat worse than it first appeared.

The Tomahawk has been a mainstay for decades in both the ship-launched role and the Air Force’s air-launched configuration. The program will be greatly reduced this year and eliminated next year. Sources say that the Navy now has about 4,000 Tomahawks in hand and that it plans to maintain its current stock ready for use until they’re expended or replaced.
Fortunately, we’re not in a shooting war because when the Tomahawks go, they go quickly. American and British ships fired about 110 Tomahawks in the first stage of Obama’s Libyan adventure. More than 200 were fired in that operation alone. In Operation Desert Storm in 1991, 288 were fired.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The left has never adapted to the transition from nationalistic wars to ideological wars. It took the left a while to grasp that the Nazis were a fundamentally different foe than the Kaiser and that pretending that World War 2 was another war for the benefit of colonialists and arms dealers was the behavior of deluded lunatics. And yet much of the left insisted on approaching the war in just that fashion, and had Hitler not attacked Stalin, it might have remained stuck there.

The Cold War was even worse. The moderate left never came to terms with Communism. From the Moscow Trials to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left slowly disavowed the USSR, but refused to see it as anything more than a clumsy dictatorship. The only way that the left could reject the USSR was by overlooking its ideology and treating it as another backward Russian tyranny being needlessly provoked and pushed around by Western Europe and the United States.

Having failed the test twice, it is no wonder that the left has been unable to come to terms with Islam, or that it has resorted to insisting that, like Germany and Russia, the Muslim world is just another victim of imperialism and western warmongering in need of support and encouragement from the progressive camp.

The anti-war worldview is generations out of date. It is mired in an outdated analysis of imperial conflicts that ceased being relevant with the downfall of the nation-state and its replacement by international organizations and causes based around ideologies. Nazism could still loosely fit into the jackboots of the nation state. Communism was another creature entirely, a red virus floating around the world, embedding its ideas into organizations and using those organizations to take over nations.

Islamism is even more untethered than Communism, loosely originating from powerful oil nations, but able to spring up anywhere in the Muslim world. Its proponents have even less use for the nation state than the Communists. What they want is a Caliphate ruled under Islamic law; a single unit of human organization extending across nations, regions and eventually the world.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/142381/sec_id/142381
Denmark has banned “ritual slaughter.” Why? Both Muslim and Jewish authorities had already accepted non-penetrating stunning prior to halal or kosher slaughter. There are no kosher slaughterhouses left in Denmark. But that’s not the issue. Agriculture Minister Dan Jørgensen justifies the ban, enacted on February 13th and effective on the 17th, on the grounds that “animal rights come before religious rights.” Similar bans have been imposed in Poland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and the Netherlands. What next?

What can explain this seemingly endless wave of hostility against Jews, Judaism, and Zionism either singled out or, as in this case, lumped together with Islam? Confused do-gooders, adding animals to their exquisite concern for the welfare of living creatures, are tearing at the body of Western civilization. The gullible multitude swallows the hype. What is the future of Jews in such a world?

Intense debate has been underway since the dawn of the 21st century, nowhere more fertile than in France, at the European epicenter of the international storm. Our survival depends on our capacity to think! To think clearly, precisely, profoundly, and coherently. High on the list of the Jewish thinkers who have risen to the challenge, Shmuel Trigano gives us keys to understanding our predicament and, hopefully, averting catastrophe. Sociologist, philosopher, academic, prolific writer, he sheds light on the perverse process that leads to the lumping together of Jews and Muslims (as foreign bodies), the damning of “ritual slaughter” (the term is a horror in itself), and the smug conclusion: “animal rights come before religious rights.”

http://sarahhonig.com/2014/04/04/another-tack-the-postulate-of-illegitimacy/

Something strikingly dramatic happened in this country exactly on this day 94 years ago. Cries of Itbach el-Yahud(slaughter the Jews) filled the air. It was the first coordinated mass-murder offensive launched by infamous Jerusalem Mufti Haj-Amin el-Husseini (who would in time become an avid Nazi collaborator, Hitler’s personal guest in Berlin during WWII and a wanted war-criminal).

Ever since, this land shook fitfully as rounds of massacres and wars followed each other in breathless succession. The past mustn’t be consigned to irrelevance. Unbroken historical continuities contextualize current events. Nothing springs forth from a vacuum. What now transpires began back then.

The pivotal murder-drive of 1920 and its aftermath are vital for understanding why John Kerry’s peace pageant is a flop and why Israel so profoundly displeases him, his boss Barack Obama and their pet-Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas. It established the prototype whereby Jews are punished for Arab crimes against Jews. It highlights the pattern of appeasing Arab wrath and of Jews paying – as if Jewish existence is in and of itself a casus belli.

The bias maddeningly came into play already in 1920. It’s the bias that has today burgeoned into the escalating extortion and shameless expectation that Israel release convicted murderers as a matter of course and injure its own interests to keep its enemies sweet. It’s as if Israel has no valid interests, no rights. This is the postulate of illegitimacy.

Western antipathy to Jewish self-preservation was already gallingly evident in 1920, as was indulgent acquiescence to Arab aggression. It’s scary to realize how little has actually changed.

Those deadly landmark rampages were kick started on April 4, 1920, exploiting Muslim celebrations to rally thousands of raiders at Nebi Musa in the Judean Desert. Serially inflamed by Husseini’s vitriolic harangues, they poured into Jerusalem, descended upon the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and began butchering, raping, pillaging and burning – all in the name of their God.

The premeditated atrocity lasted four days. Even passing reflections on its overlooked anniversary (it’s so uncool to recall crimes against Jews), can contribute considerably to our present-day perspectives.

This unprovoked killing-spree was launched before any of the excuses for Arab bloodlust – now so conveniently and commonly cited – had existed. There was no Jewish state to fulminate against and no Israeli occupation with which to justify any outrage against Jews in the Jewish homeland.

There was no hint of what the Palestinians market so effectively as their nakba – catastrophe. There wasn’t a single Arab refugee. There was no war, no displacement, no reason to rage.
Jewish victims of the 1920 Nebi Musa Massacre- Jerusalem’s ancient community was deemed fair game

Jewish victims of the 1920 Nebi Musa Massacre- Jerusalem’s ancient community was deemed fair game

The 1920 victims were largely members of the old-time, traditional, pre-Zionist Jewish community that had long before then constituted Jerusalem’s outright majority. Yet this ancient community was deemed fair game. The subtext was that Jews have no rights – not even indigenous non-Zionists.

Considering their penchant for distorting history, Israel’s detractors are doubtless tempted to describe 1920’s predators as oppressed Palestinian peasants protesting against usurper Jews. It must, therefore, be a whopping downer to discover that none of this homicidal fury was unleashed on behalf of Palestine. The Arabs loathed the very name introduced to this country by its new British overlords.

Ironically, it was the Jews who became known throughout the first half of the 20th century as Palestinians and it was the Arabs who scornfully rejected the moniker.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4248/abbas-kerry-beg

Abbas is convinced that it is only a matter of time before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry rushes back to the region in yet anther desperate effort to “salvage the peace process.”

In recent weeks, according to Palestinian officials, Kerry has literally been “begging” Abbas to agree to an extension of the peace talks after the end of April.

Abbas and the Palestinian Authority leadership have concluded that the Obama Administration is prepared to do almost anything to show some kind of “victory” in the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinian demands therefore have continued to increase almost every day.

Palestinian Authority [PA] leader Mahmoud Abbas is now waiting to see what the U.S. Administration will offer him in return for refraining from pursuing his bid to join various international treaties and institutions.

In recent weeks, according to Palestinian officials, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has literally been “begging” Abbas to agree to the extension of the peace talks after the end of April.

Hours after Abbas signed the applications for joining a number of international bodies and treaties, he received an urgent phone call from Kerry asking him to refrain from further moves that could “derail” the peace process.

Abbas is convinced that it is only a matter of time before Kerry rushes back to the region in yet another desperate effort to “salvage the peace process.”

On Wednesday night, Abbas and the PA leadership received the first sign that the U.S. Administration was nervous and confused following the PA’s surprise decision to join 15 international organizations and treaties.

Kerry’s envoy, Martin Indyk, invited Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat and Israeli Justice Minister Tsipi Livni to an emergency meeting in Jerusalem to find ways of preventing the “collapse” of the peace talks in the wake of Abbas’s decision to apply for the memberships.

http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Hidden-agenda-Palestinian-plans-to-free-Barghouti-347388?prmusr=JeGWAfSusoKd0FDJQi0mWFFI3vvIklNyejLwz3JeUDFDUAS6mfdNaIZdzQ6R4XBa
This Palestinian terrorist leader, is unrepentant, still a sworn enemy of the United States, irremediable, and utterly refractory.

In 2004, an Israeli court sentenced Fatah terrorist Marwan Barghouti to five life sentences, plus forty years in jail. This sentence was imposed after the court had found him guilty of orchestrating multiple suicide attacks against Israeli civilians during the then-raging intifada. Although Palestinians still generally regard him as a Nelson Mandela type of “freedom-fighter,” Barghouti is anything but heroic. Rather, as a leader of the insidiously murderous Tanzim, he was, at the time of his capture by Israeli Special Forces on April 15, 2002, one of the world’s most wanted criminals.

Now, as the next negotiated deadline for additional Israeli terrorist releases comes due, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has reportedly asked the Obama Administration to mediate with Jerusalem. The objective of any such inquiry is to include Barghouti among those other prisoners soon to be freed. Last year, under great pressure from Mr. Obama, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to free 104 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture of “good will,” but he had also explicitly excluded Barghouti from this already-unwarranted deal.

Significantly, should Netanyahu decide to soften his position on Barghouti’s release going forward, it would represent not only another conspicuous act of national defilement, but also a palpable infringement of international law. At a minimum, any Barghouti release would elicit further terror attacks upon Israelis, carefully choreographed assaults that would be in prima facie violation of the law of armed conflict.

“No crime without a punishment.” Codified in multiple sources after the Nuremberg Trials, this universal legal principle is so rudimentary, as part of “peremptory” or “jus cogens” law, that it must never be disregarded. Apart from any such formal legal considerations, however, even simple human decency and common principles of morality dictate that a state must never agree to trade away justice and security in exchange for any presumed diplomatic advantage.

Why, exactly, does Barghouti remain so popular among his fellow Palestinians? The answer is revealing. It lies in incontestably widespread respect for his “operational specialty.” This area of “professional” concentration remains the willful maiming and murder of Jewish children.

So much for the Mandela analogy.

When the victorious allied powers first established a special military tribunal at Nuremberg, on August 8, 1945, they reaffirmed an ancient principle of law, Nullum crimen, sine poena. It was that criminals, especially those who had committed crimes of war, crimes against peace, or crimes against humanity, must always be punished.

In 1946, this reaffirmation was further incorporated as Principle I of the authoritative Nuremberg Principles: “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore, and liable to punishment.” These principles, additionally formulated by the United Nations International Law Commission in 1950, stipulate: “Offenses against the peace and security of mankind…are crimes under international law, for which all responsible individuals shall be punished.”

I have always been very proud of my participation in AFSI. Last night our wonderful Chairman Mark Langfan, whose maps clearly illustrate the existential danger to Israel from any territorial concessions, hosted an evening and lecture by Israel’s finest diplomat…my friend….Yoram Ettinger. His talk included some staggering statistics about the burgeoning birthrate among Israelis and the decline in Arab births within Israel including Judea and Samaria. All these statistics puncture holes in the myth of a “demographic time bomb” that is used to intimidate proper discussion of Israel’s legitimate rights in what sissies still call “The West Bank.”

However, it was something else that Ambassador Yoram Ettinger said that resonated with me. By “normative” statistical standards- given the centuries of oppression, dislocation, expulsion, torture, murder, and genocide- Jews should be extinct. One in every three Jews in the entire world was exterminated during the Holocaust. But, as Yoram Ettinger stated we seem to defy the word and definition of “normative.” Not only have we survived, but Israel is now a powerhouse- in economy, technology, science, medicine, culture, standard of living, education and social institutions- all in the land where it all started.

Now that is something to ponder as we approach Passover. Thank you Yoram Ettinger and thank you Mark Langfan.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/north-koreanot-your-fathers-battlefield-anymore

As North Korea attempted to trigger an international incident by firing 500 artillery rounds into the Yellow Sea-of which about 100 crossed over into South Korean territorial waters-the South responded with about 300 rounds of its own. This incident comes on the heels of Pyongyang’s warning it will soon conduct another nuclear test.

Incidents such as this support the U.S. effort to supply the South with some very advanced weapons armament.

During its late 1951/early 1952 deployment off the coast of North Korea during the Korean war, the battleship USS WISCONSIN (BB-64)-representing the Navy’s longest range gunfire support ship-received fire from an enemy artillery battery hidden in defilade atop a hill.

The North Koreans had made use of the far side of the hill to afford them protection from the ship’s 16-inch guns. While the enemy was well within the battleship’s twenty-four mile range, WISCONSIN was unable to elevate its massive gun barrels to achieve the proper trajectory to hit the battery in its defilade position.

But, determined to silence the enemy battery, the ship shifted to Plan B. It continuously fired its 2000-plus pound rounds at the hilltop until it was leveled. Eventually denied its topographical protection, the battery was left exposed to WISCONSIN’s final fatal fire.

Long gone now are those huge explosive shells and the battlewagons that could fire them.

North Korea’s topography is 80% mountainous. Taking advantage of such terrain, should war erupt again, would be an obvious part of Pyongyang’s battle plan. Whenever possible, it would seek to use the terrain to its tactical advantage.

There is also a level of stubbornness, or ignorance, among North Korean military leaders to rely on past battlefield tactics, even when they have become outdated by new technology.

This was evident when-unknown to Americans at the time-the North Koreans pressed the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war to allow Pyongyang to send a squadron of pilots to study U.S. air combat tactics by engaging American pilots. Initially, the Vietnamese were reluctant to do so but after mounting pressure, Hanoi finally acquiesced.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/374856/print

No place on the planet is as beautiful and as naturally rich as California. And few places have become as absurd.

Currently, three California state senators are either under felony indictment or already have been convicted.

State senator Leland Yee (D., San Francisco) made a political career out of demanding harsher state gun-control laws. Now he is facing several felony charges for attempting to facilitate gun-running. One count alleges that Lee sought to provide banned heavy automatic weapons to Philippines-based Islamic terrorist groups.

State senator Ron Calderon (D., Montebello), who had succeeded one brother, Thomas, in the state assembly and was succeeded by another, Charles, now faces felony charges of wire fraud, bribery, money laundering, and falsification of tax returns.

State senator Roderick Wright (D., Inglewood) originally entered politics as a champion of social justice. Not long ago, the Democratic leaders of the California senate in secretive fashion paid $120,000 in taxpayer funds to settle a sexual-harassment suit against Wright. This time around, not even his fellow senators could save Wright, who was convicted earlier this year on eight felony counts of perjury and voter fraud.

What is the common denominator between all three California senators — aside from the fact that they are still receiving their salaries?

One, they are abject hypocrites who campaigned against old-boy insider-influence peddling so they could get elected to indulge in it.

Two, they assumed that their progressive politics shielded them from the sort of public scrutiny and consequences that usually deter such deplorable behavior.

Criminal activity is the extreme manifestation of California’s institutionalized progressive hypocrisy. Milder expressions of double standards explain why California has become such a bizarre place.

The state suffers from the highest combined taxes in the nation and nearly the worst roads and schools. It is home to more American billionaires than any other state, but also more impoverished residents. California is more naturally endowed with a combination of gas, oil, timber, and minerals than any other state — with the highest electricity prices and gas taxes in the nation.