RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324532004578358142463632614.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Tottenham Hotspur fans must be wary when they follow the London team across the Channel.
By TOBY YOUNG

For Tottenham Hotspur’s corps of traveling fans, Thursday’s soccer game in Italy against Internazionale Milano holds many dangers—and not just to their team. When Tottenham played Lyon in a Europa League game last month, 150 visiting fans were set upon by a group of neo-Nazis, with three Spurs supporters ending up in the hospital. It was the second time in recent months that the team’s fans have been attacked by a fascist mob in Europe—in November, several Spurs fans were injured when they traveled to Rome to see Tottenham take on Lazio. Their assailants screamed “Jews” before attacking them with knives and clubs.

Tottenham’s supporters are no strangers to anti-Semitism. The North London team has been known as the “Jewish club” since the beginning of the early 1900s, when it regularly attracted over 11,000 Yiddisher supporters to home games. In 1986, it was the first big team (and the last) to hire a British Jew, David Pleat, as a coach, and a Happy Yom Kippur message has made an annual appearance in the club’s official program since 1973.

The story of how Tottenham came to be adopted by Britain’s Jews as “God’s chosen football club” is a curious one. The conventional wisdom is that it’s because the team’s White Hart Lane stadium is next to one of England’s largest communities of Orthodox Jews, but that’s not the reason. Indeed, it’s doubtful Tottenham draws more than a handful of supporters from this neighborhood, given the traditional indifference of Orthodox Jews to soccer.

The true explanation has more to do with London’s public transportation system and the fact that soccer games in England are normally played on a Saturday afternoon. Jewish immigrants from Europe at the beginning of the 20th century tended to settle in London’s East End, an area associated with West Ham, one of Tottenham’s London rivals. However, the reason Spurs became the “Jewish club” is because White Hart Lane was easier to get to using London’s now defunct network of electric trams. That meant East End Jews could go to synagogue on Saturday morning, wolf down a bowl of lokshen soup and travel to “the Lane” in the afternoon without breaking the Sabbath rule against using a vehicle powered by a combustion engine. Or that’s the team lore, anyway.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324532004578358773509307346.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

In choosing Pope Francis as his new name, Jorge Mario Bergoglio conjures Francis of Assisi, emphasizing the church’s humility, poverty and charity.

The election of Pope Francis may prove to be not only a turning point for the Catholic Church, but for all humanity. For the first time in a millennium, the most venerable institution on earth will be led by a man from outside Europe, the Argentine son of an Italian.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio told the multitudes after the announcement of his elevation on Wednesday that he would lead them on “the path of love”—a reference, surely, to Francis of Assisi, the great 13th-century saint from whom he has borrowed his pontifical name. The daring novelty and profound symbolism of the new pope’s name cannot be overstated. Just as Benedict XVI named himself after the great founder of Western monasticism and preserver of Western civilization during the Dark Ages, so Francis has named himself after the founder of the Franciscans in order to signal the church’s humility, poverty and charity.

As a Jesuit, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires has set his sights on a simpler, humbler, more missionary style than the intellectual grandeur of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, now pope emeritus.

Jesuits are of course famously intellectuals too, but Pope Francis is the son of a railroad worker and poor Italian immigrant. He has always stayed true to his roots, and his election signifies the longing of the cardinals to return the church to its roots, too—as an unworldly, dedicated band of pilgrims.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2447/A-Bronze-Star-for-Submission.aspx

Heard about the chaplain from Ohio whom Uncle Sam has recognized with a Bronze Star for a PowerPoint presentation? Must have been some PowerPoint presentation — and so it was.

The Dayton Daily News reports:

Trainer, who’s now in the running to be named Chaplain of the Year for the entire Air Guard, was in the third month of his voluntary deployment to Afghanistan last February when U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield mistakenly burned copies of the Muslim holy book.

The ensuing outrage claimed more than 30 lives, including two U.S. troops and two U.S. military advisers.

Within 48 hours, Trainer developed a PowerPoint presentation on the proper handling and disposal of Islamic religious material that was seen by every American — military and civilian alike — in Afghanistan. The presentation then was distributed to the U.S. for use in all pre-deployment training.

“This entire mission,” Trainer said from his office at the Springfield Air National Guard Base, “could be undermined by an action like that.

“All that good work. You realize how quickly that work can be undermined.”

I think it was this one.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-nation-of-tyranny-lovers/print/ In 1951, Chinese and North Korean forces had captured a charred Seoul, the atom bomb spies were sentenced to death and Clement Greenberg was the leading art critic in America. As The Nation’s art editor, Greenberg had helped put American art on the map. And as the war with Nazi Germany gave way to […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/why-obama-needs-another-dictator-to-replace-chavez-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by Bob Zeidman, award-winning novelist, Larry Greenfield, Senior Fellow at the American Freedom Alliance and Howard Hyde, author of the new pamphlet, Pull the Plug on Obamacare. The Gang members discussed Hyde’s pamphlet and whether it is too late to resist Obama’s health care plan. The dialogue occurred in Part II and also included an analysis of Obama’s Billion-Dollar Giveaway to the Muslim Brotherhood. Part I, meanwhile, focused on Why Hollywood Cried When Hugo Died and highlighted the Left’s love affair with enemy tyrants. To watch both parts of the two part series, see below:

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/israeli-chief-of-staff-syria-could-blow-up-at-any-moment/print/ One doesn’t know what to make of murky reports this week about the U.S., Britain, and France training a small force of purportedly moderate Syrian rebels in Jordan—especially with the Obama administration taking the official line that it does not directly aid the Syrian opposition. If there was ever a time to build a […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/paul-gottfried/lawless-left-targets-pennsylvania-voter-id-laws/print/ Readers of Pennsylvania newspapers have been told (by now repeatedly) that the state attorney general, Kathleen Kane, cannot bring herself to enforce the state voter identification law that the legislature passed last year. This PA law is nothing out of the ordinary. Similar laws have already been approved and enforced in fifteen other states. […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/euro-islam-and-its-problems-playing-two-different-pianos?f=puball Benjamin Idriz, an imam who leads the Islamic Community Penzberg (Islamische Gemeinde Penzberg or IGP) in a town south of Munich, has achieved prominence in Germany as an exponent of a rational, modern understanding of Islam. Yet aspects of Idriz’s biography and public positions call into question his enlightened image with unsettling links to […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/arlington-museum-showcases-military-womens-contributions?f=puball A living legacy to women who served in all branches of the U.S. military honors their service and sacrifice inside the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The museum in the memorial depicts the “duty, honor and pride” of the 2 million women who served to defend the United States, from the beginning of […]