RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/342913

Sometime in the first years of the new millennium, “global warming” evolved into “climate change.” Amid growing controversies over the planet’s past temperatures, Al Gore and other activists understood that human-induced “climate change” could explain almost any weather extremity — droughts or floods, temperatures too hot or too cold, hurricanes and tornadoes — better than “global warming” could.

Similar verbal gymnastics have gradually turned “affirmative action” into “diversity” — a word ambiguous enough to avoid the innate contradictions of a liberal society affirming the illiberal granting of racial preferences.

In an increasingly multiracial society, it has grown hard to determine the racial ancestry of millions of Americans. Is someone who is ostensibly one-half Native American or African-American classified as a minority eligible for special consideration in hiring or college admissions, while someone one-quarter or one-eighth is not? How exactly does affirmative action adjudicate our precise ethnic identities these days? These are not illiberal questions — given, for example, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren’s past claims of being Native American to gain advantage in her academic career.

Aside from the increasing difficulty of determining the ancestry of multiracial, multiethnic, and intermarried Americans, what exactly is the justification for affirmative action’s ethnic preferences in hiring or admissions — historical grievance, current underrepresentation due to discrimination, or both?

Are the children of President Barack Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder more in need of help than the offspring of immigrants from the Punjab or Cambodia? If non-white ancestry is no longer an accurate indicator of ongoing discrimination, can affirmative action be justified by a legacy of historical bias or current ethnic underrepresentation?

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/jewish-state-makes-perfect-sense
The Jewish State makes Perfect Sense

The images that the international media portrays of Israel are so distorted that it seems that the reporters and editors must have closed their eyes, ears and minds to common sense. Well welcome to the blog that blows away those false smokescreens and gives a true sense of what this amazing country is achieving.
The brain controls our senses and the nerve center of Israeli research is Neuroscience. A groundbreaking ceremony took place at the site of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The new building will be home to the largest neuroscience center in Israel and one of the most ambitious in the world. One Hebrew University Professor, Hagai Berman, is to receive he Rappaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Research as overdue recognition for his work on Deep Brain Stimulation. Over 100,000 Parkinson’s sufferers have been treated with DBS, one of the most effective treatments for the ailment.

Researchers over at Israel’s Technion are working at the forefront of a new Neuroscience category called Optogenetics where they have discovered a substitute for damaged retinas. A light-sensitive protein can turn the ganglion cells in the eye into photoreceptors. Visual images projected onto these cells stimulate neurons and recreate the image in the brain. Watch this space! Meanwhile Bloomberg TV highlighted Israel’s huge advances in brain science. The reporter even put on an Israeli Brain Machine Interface. But it took common sense to recognize that Alzheimer’s sufferers would benefit simply from wearing “MediTags” – bracelets that contain medical and contact details in Hebrew and English in case they get lost.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Every day another one of the stories comes in. A teacher panicked by a plastic gun, an army man on a cupcake, a t-shirt, a pop tart chewed into the shape of a gun or a finger gun hits the panic button. Supensions and lectures quickly follow as the latest threat to the gun-free zone, usually in the form of a little boy, is tackled to the ground and lectured to within an inch of his life.
Tellingly these incidents rarely take place in the inner city schools where teenage gang members walk through metal detectors at the start of the day. The safety officers in those schools, big weary men with eyes that look everywhere at once, don’t waste their time on toys. Not unless those toys are full-size, painted black and filed down to look like real guns.

It’s usually the schools where a shooting is wholly unlikely; where gun violence is not a daily reality, but an unlikely convergence of horror, that institutional vigilance hits an irrational peak as every school imagines that it could be the next Columbine or the next Sandy Hook.

The NRA’s initial proposal of armed school guards was met with an irrational chorus of protests. More guns aren’t the answer, was the cry. And the leading crier was the White House’s expert skeet shooter. In a country where law enforcement is heavily armed and gunmen are stopped by gunmen in uniforms, a strange Swedenization had set in. The problem was not the man, it was the gun. Get rid of the guns and you stop the killing. Schools across the country are banning not the gun, but the idea of the gun. It is a conceptual prohibition that is meant to push away the threat of gun violence by eliminating any mention of the G word. Gun-free zones mean places where guns cannot be mentioned, depicted or even symbolized as if the refusal to concede the existence of a firearm will eliminate the threat of it being used on the premises.

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=aabae2e175f3579408b9ef9ad&id=af652827df&e=c3c6d0eb75

Attending the Herzliya Conference’s panel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is like following Woody Allen’s therapy through his movies: you know that the patient is hopeless and that the new movie is going to be a mere repetition of the previous one, and yet you maintain the ritual out of snobbism. This year’s panel, however, was more like a flashback. I felt like I was watching the ending scene of Mighty Aphrodite, when the Greek tragedy turns into a Broadway show.

The panel included seven speakers: Tzipi Livni (chairperson of the “Hatnuah” party), Shlomo Avineri (a Hebrew-U emeritus professor), Robert Danin (from the US Council on Foreign Relations), Michael Herzog (from the Washington Institute for Near East Policies), Yoaz Hendel (chairman of the Institute for Zionist Strategy), Nati Sharoni (chairman of the Council for Peace and Security), and Dani Dayan (former chairman of the Judea and Samaria Council). The moderator was Barak Ravid, the diplomatic correspondent of Haaretz.

Supposedly, the purpose of a panel is to present different opinions and to have a debate. In this panel, however, all but one member expressed support for the “two-state solution” (the only minor differences between the speakers were about technicalities). Even the moderator clearly stated his opinion and sided with the six panelists who expressed their support for the “two-state solution.” The only dissident was Dani Dayan, who was added at the last minute (his name was not on the original program, and an extra seat was squeezed-in for him right before the session started). In the end, seven speakers (including the “moderator”) said that a Palestinian state must be established in Judea and Samaria, and one speaker begged to differ. It was a 7-1 ratio, or an 86% majority –an impressive display of pluralism and balance.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/03/13/yes-justice-scalia-section-5-is-a-racial-entitlement-doj-says-so/ Truth and revolution can appear suddenly, and darken the brightest of times. Consider yesterday’s Department of Justice inspector general’s report documenting the rancid racialist attitudes of the Voting Section staff. (See: “Inspector General Report of Racialist Dysfunction Inside DOJ.”) The Justice Department should hope that Justice Antonin Scalia — or his clerks — don’t […]

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/north-koreas-real-best-friend/?print=1 Basketball eccentric Dennis Rodman is reportedly planning an August idyll with North Korea’s young tyrant [1], Kim Jong Un — a replay of his February excursion to Pyongyang, from which Rodman returned to report that his new best friend, Kim, does not want war. He just wants a phone call from the president of […]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9929154/Labour-peer-Lord-Ahmed-suspended-over-claims-he-blamed-imprisonment-on-Jewish-conspiracy.html

Labour peer Lord Ahmed suspended over claims he blamed imprisonment on ‘Jewish conspiracy’
Labour has suspended a peer who is alleged to have blamed a Jewish conspiracy for the imprisonment he received over a fatal motorway crash.

The Times has reported that Lord Ahmed, a Labour life peer, claimed that he received his prison sentenced because of pressure on the courts from Jews “who own newspapers and TV channels”.

Lord Ahmed, who in 1998 became the first Muslim life peer, is said to have claimed that the conspiracy was a result of his support for the Palestinians in Gaza.

He is said to have made the comments in a TV interview in April last year while on a visit to Pakistan.

Labour today suspended the peer “pending an investigation”.

Lord Ahmed, who was born in Pakistan, became Baron Ahmed of Rotherham at the age of 40.

In 2007 he was highly critical of the awarding of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie, claiming the author had “blood on his hands.”

In 2009 he was jailed for dangerous driving after sending and receiving text messages minutes before being involved in a fatal motorway crash. The Court of Appeal later suspended his 12-week jail sentence.

He was freed after serving 16 days in jail after Martyn Gombar, a 28-year-old Slovakian was killed on Christmas Day in 2007 after his stationary car was hit by Lord Ahmed’s Jaguar.

In the TV broadcast it is alleged Lord Ahmed said of his jail sentence: “My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians. My Jewish friends who own newspapers and TV channels opposed this.”

A criminal law expert told the Times that if Lord Ahmed had made the claims in the UK, he could have faced prosecution for a hate crime.

A spokesman for the Labour Party said they will be “seeking to clarify” the remarks.

http://www.jidaily.com/c48e4?utm_source=Jewish+Ideas+Daily+Insider&utm_campaign=ae2559882d-Insider&utm_medium=email

“……. that turns Schindler into a feel-good movie about the handful of Jews who survived thanks to our hero. It doesn’t minimize the real Schindler’s achievement to point out that the Holocaust was about the doomed many, not the relatively lucky few. Pity the poor Jews who didn’t know him.”

Universal has just brought out a 20th-anniversary Blu-ray edition of Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust movie, Schindler’s List. Don’t blame whoever got stuck writing the box copy—”Experience one of the most historically significant films of all time like never before,” and so on—for a certain awkwardness about how best to strike the celebratory note. The package is also notably stingy with the undignified extras that usually tempt consumers to repurchase a beloved classic, but what were you expecting, a blooper reel?

That crack isn’t meant to be gratuitous, believe me. Call it a reminder that Schindler’s List is every bit as much a Hollywood product as Groundhog Day, which came out the same year. Unlike Groundhog Day, it’s got the Academy Awards—seven of them—to prove it. In my book, nothing that wins that many Oscars can be altogether holy.

However ennobled by its topic, the movie was nonetheless conceived as entertainment—of a very somber sort, to be sure—by one of the most gifted of all crowd-pleasing directors. That is, it was meant to be accessible and popular as well as impressive. Still, my fellow oldsters may recall how some African American high-school students in Oakland who got sent to see the thing a month or so after its premiere—on MLK Day, no less—stirred up nationwide consternation by laughing at some scenes. They’d committed what was already the sin of treating Schindler as just another afternoon at the multiplex.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2911/western_funded_palestinian_tv_insists_land_occupied_in_1948_will_return_to_us_one_day

ONLY FOOLS CAN CONTINUE TO HARBOR THE TWO-STATE DISSOLUTION BLATHER…..OR MORE TERRITORIAL CONCESSIONS BY ISRAEL….IT IS AS VIABLE AS RETURNING TEXAS TO MEXICO OR FLORIDA TO SPAIN….RSK

In yet another revelatory video, Palestinian Media Watch shows how despite consistent calls for a two-state solution, Palestinian television is still teaching its children to await the destruction of Israel

n previous occasions, The Commentator has reported on the wide variety of Western taxpayer-funded incitement emanating from the Palestinian territories.

This continuous onslaught against the existence of the State of Israel comes not from Hamas, but rather, from the Western-funded ‘peace partner’, the Palestinian Authority.

It has been discussed [PODCAST] how US, UK and European taxpayer money is funding radio, television and print media that disseminate ‘hate education’ – another such example reaches us today from Palestinian Media Watch.

As can be viewed below, the latest video shows a Palestinian Authority TV (PATV) show, wherein the host declares to a room of children, “land occupied in 1948 [the founding of the State of Israel] will return to us one day.”

PA TV host: “And of course we will never forget that we have land that was occupied in 1948, which will return to us one day. Remember well, children. Also [remember] to safeguard our folklore, our national games, the folklore in all its forms, our dress and our food and our games and anything that forms the Palestinian folklore – we have to safeguard it. If we don’t safeguard it, then the occupation might steal it as well, as it stole our land. Right? Do you agree with me? Bravo!”

Persistently, calls are made by the United Nations and other Western organisations for a two-state solution peace process to re-emerge. These calls are of course nullified in the face of such hateful and inciteful statements such as these.

Until recently, Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Department for International Development have signalled that no measures would be taken regarding Palestinian incitement, although various members of the British Parliament have declared their intent to halt the funding process for those with nefarious intent.

Around 80 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s budget came from Western aid in 2010, with the United States providing around $500m a year on average, and Britain sending £80m a year.

The Show Trial of Sergei Magnitsky Russia puts a dead man in the dock.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578358132019896910.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopBucket

It sounds like something out of a Nikolai Gogol story, but it’s true: Sergei Magnitsky, killed by abuse and neglect in a Russian prison at the age of 37, is now on trial more than three years after his death.

On Tuesday a Russian court held the second hearing of a sham trial to convict him posthumously of tax evasion. That hearing was postponed at the request of Magnitsky’s state-appointed defense attorney, who pleaded for more time to prepare a defense.

Assuming this gesture was not part of the charade, he needn’t have bothered. As in the show trials of the 1930s, the outcome is assured. The whole point of putting this dead man on trial is to secure a conviction and rob the victim of his status as an international martyr. Last year the U.S. passed the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions and bans from travel to the U.S. Russians implicated in his murder. Some countries in Europe may do the same.

The Putin government has no interest in seeing Magnitsky’s name cleared. Yet it is revealing that Moscow feels bound to produce a verdict. Even Vladimir Putin’s Russia seeks to adopt the trappings if not the substance of criminal justice.