RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://news.yahoo.com/us-pushes-china-tiananmen-anniversary-030344355.html

Chinese authorities have rounded up hundreds of activists in the capital Beijing, rights campaigners said on Monday, as they marked the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.The detentions came as Washington urged Beijing to free all those still jailed over the demonstrations on June 4, 1989, when hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful protesters were shot and killed by soldiers.

The anniversary of the brutal army action in the heart of Beijing is always hugely sensitive, but particularly so this year ahead of a once-a-decade handover of power marred by fierce in-fighting in the ruling Communist Party.

“They brought in a lot of buses and were rounding up petitioners at the Beijing South rail station on Saturday night,” Zhou Jinxia, a petitioner from northeast China’s Liaoning province told AFP.

“There were between 600 to 1,000 petitioners from all over China. We were processed, we had to register and then they started sending people back to their home towns.”

Police made it clear that the round up of petitioners — people who gather at central government offices in Beijing to seek redress for rights violations in their localities — was to prevent them from protesting on June 4, she said.

China still considers the June 4 demonstrations a “counter-revolutionary rebellion” and has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing or consider compensation for those killed, more than two decades later.

Israel Is the New Sudetenland. And Obama? URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/04/israel-is-the-new-sudetenland-and-obama/ Not only is it the case that President Barack Obama will never attack Iran or support an Israeli attack, but his policy of acquiescence is giving the Iranian Ayatollahs exactly what they are looking for: time to complete a nuclear process and build an […]

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/04/obama-threatens-florida-over-purging-non-citizen-voters/

Last Thursday, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) reached a new low in its efforts to prevent individual states from combating vote fraud. The state of Florida was ordered to halt its efforts to identify and purge its voter rolls of non-citizens. “Our records do not reflect that these changes affecting voting have been submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for judicial review or to the Attorney General for administrative review as required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” wrote T. Christian Herren Jr., the DOJ’s lead civil rights lawyer. “Accordingly, it is necessary that they either be brought before that court or submitted to the Attorney General for a determination that they neither have the purpose nor will have the effect of discriminating on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group under Section 5.”

Florida is not backing down. Despite being given until Wednesday to decide whether or not to comply with the DOJ’s order, it took state officials only one day to reach a decision. “We have an obligation to make sure the voter rolls are accurate and we are going to continue forward and do everything that we can legally do to make sure than ineligible voters cannot vote,” said Chris Cate, a spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner on Friday. “We are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot. We are not going to give up our efforts to make sure the voter rolls are accurate.”

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires the DOJ or or a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to “preclear” changes in “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964,” in order to prevent “denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.” Florida is one of a handful of states, predominantly in the South, covered by Section 5, due to its historical efforts to suppress minority voting. Critics contend Section 5 continues to stigmatize states that have long abandoned tactics such as requiring non-white voters to pay a poll tax or pass a literacy test. The Act contains a bailout provision for states that can demonstrate a record of good behavior, yet many counties within those states consider the cost of doing so prohibitive.

Earlier this year Secretary Detzner worked with the Florida’s Department of Motor Vehicles to identify more than 2,600 people who were registered to vote despite being non-citizens at the time they applied for a driver’s license. Critics of the effort claim that many of those drivers become citizens between scheduled license renewals. They further contend that many of the warning letters sent out by state notifying these individuals that they would be purged from voter rolls unless they provided proof of citizenship within 30 days, were sent to people who were citizens.

Detzner, who contended that earlier efforts by his agency had identified 182,000 voters who were non-citizens by comparing voter rolls and driver’s license databases, revealed that he and his staff were refused access by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the federal database containing more up-to-date immigration and citizenship information. Thus, it would appear that the federal government is working at cross-purposes with itself: the DHS won’t assist Florida in its effort to be as non-discriminatory as possible, even as the DOJ insists that Florida is engaging in discrimination. And not just with respect to Section 5. The DOJ also contends Florida is violating the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires states to maintain “accurate and current” voter registration lists “in a uniform and non-discriminatory manner.”

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/04/university-of-illinois-professor-quotes-holocaust-denier-in-class/
Professor Farhad Malekafzali teaches political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Or, at least, that’s what he’s supposed to teach. If you read his final, according to students, he actually teaches anti-Israel canards for a living.

Posing as a moderate on the Israel-Arab issue, Malekafzali instead associates with the radical anti-Israel group “Students for Justice in Palestine.” He has told students at rallies that Zionist Jews only began moving to Israel in the 20th century, ignoring centuries of historic Jewish connection to Israel. He has also said that before any negotiations take place, Israel must withdraw from all territories won in the 1967 Six Day War. And yes, he’s a member of Change.org.

But it’s what Malekafzali teaches in the classroom that’s truly disturbing.

According to one of his students, a recent final exam asked students to explain, “why, in reality, Israel has never faced an existential threat from its neighbors.” He asked students to “discuss Israel’s policies toward Gaza since 2005.” And he told students to “Compare and contrast in depth the arguments advanced in Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and Plitnick and Toensing, The “Israel Lobby” in Perspective.”

This isn’t just anti-Israel. It’s anti-Semitic.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NF05Dj04.html Dear Federal Chancellor: Friedrich Schiller wrote of the Thirty Years War that history had brought forth a great moment, but the moment encountered a mediocre people. The world today finds itself by contrast in a mediocre moment, but it still may find adept leadership. No-one would have expected that Germany would decide the fate […]

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/6/4/main-feature/1/on-the-eve-of-the-six-day-war/e

This week, Jewish Ideas Daily commemorates the forty-fifth anniversary of the Six-Day War with a day-by-day synopsis. Below, the first of a seven-part series.

Forty-five years ago today, on June 4, 1967, Israel and the Jewish world were in suspense. Today, we recall the Six-Day War as a stunning martial victory by the Jewish state; but on the war’s eve, this outcome was wholly unforeseeable. Indeed, the odds appeared firmly stacked against Israel; that is why its victory became such an inspiration to Jews worldwide—an experience as formative, to the generation that watched it, as the Holocaust and Israel’s founding were to the preceding one.

But how did war break out? Michael Oren, historian of the war and current Israeli ambassador to the United States notes, “Even a discussion of a context must have a starting point,” even if this point represents a somewhat “arbitrary choice.” One starting point is Soviet-backed Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. He came to power in 1954 and by 1956 had already fought a war with Israel in the Sinai. Israel routed the Egyptians in that conflict but withdrew from Sinai after promises that it would have freedom of navigation through the vital Straits of Tiran, off the Sinai coast. As insurance, the United Nations put a peacekeeping force on the armistice line.

Nasser was also president of the United Arab Republic, a union between Egypt and Syria, and made the UAR position on Israel clear. “I announce on behalf of the United Arab Republic people,” he declared in 1959, that “we will exterminate Israel.” Egyptian Fedayeen guerrillas mounted cross-border attacks. There were occasional Israeli reprisals.

Another starting point is Yasser Arafat, who in 1964 led an abortive attempt by al-Fatah terrorists to infiltrate Israel. In that year the Arab League, meeting in Cairo, founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which Arafat would later lead. The PLO’s announced goal was to liberate the “usurped part” of the “Palestinian Arab people’s homeland”—not from Egypt, which held Gaza, or from Jordan, which held the West Bank, but from Israel.

Lady Gaga, Islamic Violence and Double Standards — on The Glazov Gang
by Jamie Glazov
Dwight Schultz, Rob Nelson and Tommi Trudeau battle it out on Frontpage’s television show.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/04/lady-gaga-islamic-violence-and-double-standards-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/06/03/france-three-jews-beaten-with-hammers-iron-bars-by-islamic-youths/  It is unacceptable that this culture of racism and antisemitism is being tolerated by a significant number of the Muslim community, this culture must stop,” he concluded.  France: Three Jews Beaten With Hammers, Iron Bars by Islamic Youths antisemitic attack Arab attack on Jews France Jews attack Islamic attack Jews israel Israel News Jewish […]

Leftist music/film producer Tommi Trudeau makes stunning announcement on The New Glazov Gang:

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljlX9_IaGDU

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ6uKv5Q2pg

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4kqN8l8Jsc

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2012/06/twenty-years-of-illusion-about-islamism The broad lines of U.S. government, other government, and generally establishment policy toward Islamism were laid down on June 2, 1992, when Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Edward P. Djerejian delivered a major speech, “The U.S. and the Middle East In a Changing World,” at Meridian House International, […]