RUTHFULLY YOURS

Democracy strikes back

http://www.carolineglick.com
Last Thursday, in an address before the Association for Public Law’s annual conference at the Dead Sea, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch launched an unhinged attack on the Knesset and the government.
Beinisch accused Israel’s elected officials of “inciting against the judges” through their proposed legislation that would place minimal constraints on judicial power.
In her words, “For the past few years a campaign has been waged that is gaining strength whose goal is to weaken the judicial system and first and foremost the Supreme Court. This is a campaign of delegitimization being led by a number of politicians, members of Knesset and even government ministers. They provide the public with incorrect and misleading information that has deteriorated into incitement directed against the court, its members and its judicial work.”
Beinisch claimed that the attempts by Israel’s elected leaders to curb judicial power places the country on a slippery slope whose ultimate end is to destroy the values that underpin Israeli democracy. After she stepped down from the podium, her associates briefed journalists without attribution that Beinisch believes that the bills being debated are comparable to Nazi legislation barring Jews from the public square.
Since Beinisch’s professional godfather, retired Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, enacted his “judicial revolution” in the 1990s, Israel’s judicial system has been without parallel in the Western world. Under Israel’s judicial selection system, judges effectively appoint themselves. And since Barak’s presidency of the Supreme Court, justices have used this power to ensure ideological uniformity among their ranks. Jurists opposed to judicial activism have been largely blocked from serving on the High Court, as have jurists with non-leftist politics.

Address of the President, Broadcast from the Oval Room of the White House, Nationally and Over a World-Wide Hookup

MY FELLOW AMERICANS:

The sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific provide the climax of a decade of international immorality.

Powerful and resourceful gangsters have banded together to make war upon the whole human race. Their challenge has now been flung at the United States of America. The Japanese have treacherously violated the longstanding peace between us. Many American soldiers and sailors have been killed by enemy action. American ships have been sunk; American airplanes have been destroyed.

The Congress and the people of the United States have accepted that challenge.

Together with other free peoples, we are now fighting to maintain our right to live among our world neighbors in freedom, in common decency, without fear of assault.

http://times247.com/
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Former FBI agent held captive in Iran
AP
Friday, December 9, 2011
Breaking_news
Long after he vanished in Iran, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson reappeared in a video and a series of photographs sent to his family over the past year, transforming a mysterious disappearance into a hostage standoff with an unknown kidnapper, The Associated Press has learned. Read more…

Boehner makes last-ditch effort for payroll tax cut
Politico
Friday, December 9, 2011
News
House Speaker John Boehner has tossed some sweeteners to get Republcans to support an extension of the payroll tax cut. Read more…

Read more at: http://times247.com/

The strange tale of Paul Ernst Fackenheim
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/111208

In the North African desert during the summer of 1942, a pivotal battle of the Second World War took place between the German Afrika Corps under Erwin Rommel and the British and Commonwealth troops under Bernard Montgomery. The site of the battle was an oasis called El Alamein, which lay some 140 miles west of Cairo, Egypt.

The outcome of the battle determined whether the victorious push by Hitler’s vaunted Afrika Corps westwards towards the strategic Suez Canal and the oil fields of the Middle East would succeed or not. If the Afrika Corps won the battle, Britain and the Allies would be dealt a crushing blow from which they would likely not survive and the Third Reich would emerge triumphant. If they were stopped at El Alamein and forced to withdraw westwards, the Hitlerian Empire would begin to unravel.

And so it was that Rommel, starved of supplies, was defeated in late 1942 and forced to begin a long retreat. But before the two armies met on that fateful battlefield, the German High Command was faced with a desperate need to infiltrate British intelligence and learn as much as possible of the military disposition and tactical plans of the Allies.

The German Nazi espionage organization, the Abwehr, thus hatched an incredible and most unlikely plan.

1941 was another catastrophic year for the Jews of German occupied Europe. Death camps, roving killing squads, the einsatzgruppen, gas chambers, ghettos, and every horror invented by mankind was being employed by the Germans and their European allies against the hapless and abandoned Jews. Millions had already been done to death by the German Nazi juggernaut of death.

Death camps dotted the European continent and were the sites where endless transports of Jewish men, women, children and babies daily arrived by cattle trains from all over the European hell. Many of these camps, such as Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz lay outside of villages and towns in which the civilian populations went about their daily lives, while thousands of hapless Jews were being systematically slaughtered.

One of these camps lay outside the pretty Bavarian village of Dachau and it is to this hell on earth that one Paul Ernst Fackenheim was brought to be worked to death or arbitrarily murdered by any one of the German guards who infested those places of unparalleled horror.

Michael Bar-Zohar’s book about Fackenheim titled, ARROWS OF THE ALMIGHTY — The Most Extraordinary True Spy Story of World War II, included this following and chilling account of the living hell that was the German Nazi death camp of Dachau:

“It is a morning in April 1941. In Dachau 500 prisoners in blue-striped uniforms — the inmates of the ”Jewish block” of Camp Number Three — tensely await the new day’s horrors. Some will be beaten to death, some shot.

“Others will be taken to the Bunker (”the sinister cave used for solitary confinement, where the tortures inflicted . . . were so cruel that they were kept secret even from the regular SS guards”) or sent to a torture table called the Bock (on which one would be bound and then struck with a bullwhip that had been soaked in water).

“The crematorium will receive its share. Groups of others will listlessly head off to do the camp’s soul-destroying, physically punishing work, in the stone quarry or the swamp.”

Fackenheim, like so many other German Jewish men, had been a highly decorated officer who had fought valiantly for the Fatherland in World War One. But his patriotism was to no avail in the insanity that now gripped Germany under its leader; Corporal Adolf Hitler.

But Fackenheim was to be saved by the Abwehr , the German military intelligence service, over the strenuous objections of the Gestapo and SS. What was the reason for his salvation and escape from certain death?

The German High Command’s great fear was what the outcome of the North African campaign would be. Having already launched Operation Barbarossa by invading Russia, the now desperate need by Nazi Germany to succeed in the drive to Egypt and beyond was paramount.

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2011/12/09/qaradawi-sharia-%E2%80%9Cgradualism%E2%80%9D-for-egypt%E2%80%94and-beyond/

HAT TIP: DAVID REABOI

[1]

Yusuf al-Qaradawi (1926—) is a modern Muslim scholar and preacher best known for his popular Al Jazeera program “ash-Sharia wal-Hayat” (Sharia and Life), and his website Islam Online (now On Islam). He has also published some fifty books, including The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam and Islam: The Future Civilization. Al-Qaradawi was born in Egypt, and attended Al Azhar University. Qaradawi was a follower of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna during his youth, and was imprisoned first under the monarchy in 1949, then three times after the release of his Tyrant and the Scholar, poetic Islamic plays expressing political messages. He has also worked in the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments, has been the Dean of the Islamic Department at the Faculties of Sharia and Education in Qatar, and has been chairman of the Islamic Scientific Councils of Algerian Universities and Institutions. Qaradawi is the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and is considered the “Spiritual Guide” of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Friday February 18, 2011 marked Qaradawi’s triumphal return [2] to Cairo, which was sanctioned by the nation’s provisional military rulers, and punctuated the so-called “Arab Spring.” Just before the overwhelming electoral victory [3] for the Muslim Brotherhood and other mainstream Sharia-advocating [4] political parties in Egypt, Qaradawi issued a fatwa [5] (on November 24, 2011) revealing his traditional Islamic Weltanschauung about how Islam’s totalitarian religio-political legal code [6] should be fully re-applied, gradually—in Egypt, and beyond.

The key extracts from Qaradawi’s fatwa [5] (hat tip Dave Reaboi), are provided just below, followed by a brief elaboration of the views of Caliph Umar b. Al-Aziz (r. 717-720 AD), whom Qaradawi cites so approvingly as a timeless example for Islamic governance, according to the Sharia:

Gradualism in applying the Shariah is a wise requirement to follow. In doing so, we will be following Allah’s Laws with regard to physical nature and teachings of Islam. Gradualism was observed in enjoining the obligations of Islam such as Prayer, fasting, et cetera, and in forbidding the prohibitions as well… Being a divine law, gradualism is to be followed on the political level nowadays. That is to say, gradualism is to be observed when it comes to applying the rulings of the Shariah in today’s life when Muslims have been socially, legislatively, and culturally invaded. If we want to establish a real Muslim society, we should not imagine that such an end can be achieved by a mere decision issued to that effect by a king or a president or a council of leaders or a parliament. Gradualism is the means through which such an end can be fulfilled. Gradualism here refers to preparing people ideologically, psychologically, morally, and socially to accept and adopt the application of the Shariah in all aspects of life, and to finding lawful alternatives for the forbidden principles upon which many associations have been founded for so long. Gradualism in that sense does not mean we are to procrastinate and put off applying the Shariah. It is not to be taken as a pretext for discouraging people and foiling their pressing demands to establish Allah’s Laws. It, rather, should spur us to spotlight our aims, set our plans, and decide, sincerely and wisely, on the gradual stages to be taken in that respect. In that way, step by step, and through wise planning, organizing and determination, we can reach the last and long-awaited stage of applying all the teachings of Islam heart and soul. This was the same approach that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) adopted so that he (peace and blessings be upon him) could change the pre-Islamic life of degeneration and ignorance into the enlightened life of Islam. There is an example in that respect which is related concerning Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz* [r. 717-720], whom the Muslim scholars regard as the fifth rightly-guided caliph and a true follower of his great-grandfather, Umar ibn Al-Khattab [r. 634-644]. Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz’s son, Abdul-Malik, who was a firm pious young man, said to his father one day, ‘O father! Why you do not implement the rulings firmly and immediately? By Allah, I would not care if all the world would furiously oppose us so long as we seek to establish the right [that Allah Almighty has enjoined].’ These words show how zealous that young man was to destroy all signs of corruption and deterioration immediately and without delay whatever the consequences. But the wise father said to his son, ‘Do not deal with matters hastily, son. Allah Almighty [Himself] despised drinking alcohol twice in the Qur’an and did not declare it forbidden but in the third time. I am afraid that if I enjoined the right on people at one stroke, they would give it up all at once, which might lead to sedition.’ That attitude of Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz shows that he saw it wise to tackle matters gradually. He was guided in that respect by Allah’s dealing with prohibiting alcohol. Umar wanted to lead people step-by-step towards establishing the right and this, in fact, is the wise juristic approach to handle matters.

Germany, Wavering AllyPosted By Kenneth R. Timmerman

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/09/germany-wavering-ally/

As German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy do their best to put on a public face of cooperation in resolving Europe’s escalating sovereign debt crisis, behind the scenes both leaders are seething.

They are angry with each other, angry with each other’s policy choices, angry with each other’s friends and allies.

It’s well-known that German taxpayers are fed up with footing the bill for Greeks who take longer vacations than they do and retire on full government pensions many years earlier than they can. Less known is that the German government is actively considering allowing Greece – and possibly Portugal and even Italy and Ireland – to drop out of the Euro-zone.

“If the Euro fails, it will be Merkel’s fault,” a senior advisor to French president Sarkozy told me recently. “Germany has been resisting efforts to prop up the Euro. If the Euro collapses, it will be as much Germany’s fault as it will be that of the over-indebted Euro-zone members.”

Europeans are used to duplicity. That’s why they weren’t surprised to hear President Obama sharing derogatory personal remarks about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to French president Sarkozy when both leaders apparently thought the microphones were off.

But the duplicity of German Chancellor Merkel – smiling at Sarkozy in public, while throwing daggers at him in private – takes the cake.

The European media often talks of the Paris-Berlin axis, a code phrase meant to signify a marriage of reason between Europe’s two biggest economies.

MPAC Hosts Terror-Supporting Islamist From Tunisia Posted By Ryan Mauro

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/09/mpac-hosts-terror-supporting-islamist-from-tunisia/

The Muslim Public Affairs Council says it condemns Hamas and “all terrorism, including suicide bombing.” Yet, it is praising the Tunisian Islamist leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, who supports almost everything that MPAC claims to be against. MPAC even arranged two speaking engagements for the Muslim Brotherhood member on November 29, with one taking place inside Capitol Hill’s Canon Office Building.

In its announcement of the events, MPAC complimented Ghannouchi “One of the most important figures in modern Islamic political thought and theory.” As the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports, the director of MPAC’s office in Washington D.C. said he is a “modern intellectual giant on Islam and governance.”

MPAC asserts that Ghannouchi has “long been an advocate of the Islamic principles of pluralism, freedom and democracy,” leaving its supporters completely unaware of the extremism he has long advocated. This includes Sharia-based governance, Hamas, suicide bombings, terrorism, anti-Westernism, the destruction of Israel and even the murdering of Israeli children.

Reuters’ Apparent Pro-Palestinian Bias

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

A big hat tip to Paul in Oz for sending me the following article by Henry I. Silverman from Roosevelt University in the USA.

The abstract of the article (in the current issue of The Journal of Applied Business Research, and entitled ‘Reuters: Principles Of Trust Or Propaganda?’) runs as follows:

‘This paper examines a sample of fifty news-oriented articles related to the Middle East conflict published on the Reuters proprietary websites across a three month study window. A combination of Ethnographic Content Analysis and primary survey data are employed to identify, code and validate reporting/ethical failures in the articles, i.e., propaganda, logical fallacies, and violations of the Reuters Handbook. Tests are run to measure for 1) shifts in audience attitudes and support for the primary belligerent parties in the Middle East conflict following readings of the sample and, 2) associations between the reporting/ethical failures and audience attitudes/support. Over 1,100 occurrences of reporting/ethical failures across forty-one subcategories are identified and a significant shift in audience attitudes and support following article readings is observed. Significant associations are found between 1) the use of atrocity propaganda and audience favorability/sympathy toward the Arabs/Palestinians; 2) the use of the appeal to pity fallacy and audience favorability/sympathy toward the Arabs/Palestinians; and 3) the use of atrocity propaganda, appeal to pity and appeal to poverty fallacies, and audience motivation to take supportive action on behalf of the Arabs/Palestinians. It is inferred from the evidence that Reuters engages in systematically biased storytelling in favor of the Arabs/Palestinians and is able to influence audience affective behavior and motivate direct action along the same trajectory. This reflects a fundamental failure to uphold the Reuters corporate governance charter and ethical guiding principles.’

Iran Shows Off Captured U.S. Drone [TELEGRAPH] Would-be U.S.A. Terrorist Walli Mujahidh Avoids Life Sentence with Guilty Plea Regarding Plans to Attack a Seattle Military Installation [SEATTLE PI] Obama’s Dream for Iran Becoming a Nuclear Nightmare [AT] Senate defeats Democrats’ latest payroll tax cut plan [WT] Wall Street Walloped as European Optimism Fades [FOX BUSINESS] […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11003/pub_detail.asp
The totalitarian nature of Sharia law can only be grasped when one appreciates how thoroughly it permeates and dictates everything in a believer’s life—including when and to whom a Muslim may smile.

Popular Islamic TV preacher Sheikh Muhammad Hassan appears in this video clip asserting that, according to Sharia, it is “not at all permissible” for Muslims to smile at non-Muslims, “except in cases of da’wa.”

Often translated as “missionary work,” the word da’wa means to “call” or “summon” non-Muslims to Islam. Because it shares the same goals of jihad—empowering and spreading Islam—da’wa is often seen as jihad’s nonviolent counterpart.

In fact, Sheikh Hassan himself asserts that “da’wa mode differs from jihad mode. Jihad mode requires power, zeal, manliness—basically, a stern face and such. But when in da’wa mode, you must smile, you must be gentle.”

As proof, he pointed out that when Allah ordered Musa and Harun (the biblical “Moses” and “Aaron”) to go and persuade that great infidel, pharaoh, to submit, Allah commanded them “to speak to him gently” (Quran 20:44).