RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4346/totalitarianism_is_back_in_fashion

With the terrifying tenacity of a cancer once thought cured that will never go away, totalitarianism is back in fashion. The “crisis of capitalism”, to use the deluded vocabulary of the latest generation of totalitarians, once again makes Marx “relevant”.

For those influenced by Karl Popper’s magnificent tour de force The Open Society and its Enemies, it will be no suprise that a new wave of people and movements against the free society has emerged, and is fired up with a new confidence. Popper’s argument was that, going back to Plato, we are engaged in a world-historic philosophical struggle between the supporters and the opponents of a freedom oriented political society.

The struggle does not end.

This is but a short missive, which will be followed up later. Consider, for now, an offering from Britain’s leading leftist political magazine, the New Statesman, which (online at least) we regard as now superior in its content and influence to the increasingly life-style oriented Guardian’s Comment is free.

The piece in question is about the “radicalisation” — get the vocab? — of Leftists in the United States. Authored by Max Strasser, here are the central points of the piece, with our queries:

1. (via the summary) “Every time I’ve come home to the US from my home abroad over the past four years, I notice a trend among people of my demographic: they have become increasingly politicised – and increasingly radical.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/11/ipcc_s_bogus_evidence_for_global_warming.html

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up by the United Nations in 1988 and has been trying very hard to demonstrate the threat of a dangerous human influence on climate due to the emission of greenhouse gases. This is in line with their Charter, which directs the IPCC to assemble reports in support of the Global Climate Treaty — the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) of Rio de Janeiro.

It is interesting that IPCC “evidence” was based on peer-reviewed publications – but (reluctantly) abandoned only after protracted critiques from outside scientists. E-mails among members of the IPCC team, revealed in the 2009 ‘Climategate’ leak, describe their strenuous efforts to silence such critiques, often using unethical methods.

I will show here that the first three IPCC assessment reports contain erroneous scientific arguments, which have never been retracted or formally corrected, but at least have now been abandoned by the IPCC — while the last two reports, AR4 and AR5, use an argument that seems to be circular and does not support their conclusion. Australian Prof. “Bob” Carter, marine geologist and paleo-climatologist, refers to IPCC as using “hocus-pocus” science. He is a co-author of the latest (2013) NIPCC (Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change) report “Climate Change Reconsidered-II” www.climatechangereconsidereed.org . We also co-authored a critique of the 2013 IPCC-AR5 Summary

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6283

Who would have thought it would come to this — the Frenchinterceding to block a giveaway deal to Iran on its nuclear weapons program, a deal advanced enthusiastically by the United States? On the other hand, the Obama administration’s rapture for a deal that would involve empty Iranian promises in exchange for real hard cash to be released to the mullahs with sanctions relief, is not at all surprising.

As Daniel Pipes argued, a second term for U.S. President Barack Obama was bound to lead to this:

“I wrote before the last presidential election that Israel’s troubles will really begin should Obama win a second term. At Obama’s second inauguration, I predicted that he, freed from re-election constraints, can finally express his early anti-Zionist views after a decade of political positioning. Watch for a markedly worse tone from the second Obama administration toward the third Netanyahu government.”

Obama is now finished with elections, unless he seeks the U.N. secretary-general’s post (for which he is eminently qualified with his anti-Zionism). He is done fundraising from his many liberal Jewish “friends” in Hollywood and Wall Street, who always cared a lot more for his policies on abortion, or for business favors he could deliver, or ambassadorships, than they did about Israel, assuming they cared about Israel at all.

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2013/11/10/who-said-this-about-jews-the-way-they-talk-walk-the-way-they-greet-each-other-there-is-a-vulgarity-of-character-that-is-bone-deep-and-structural-to-the-skeletal-vertebrae-of-its-culture/
“The way they talk, walk, the way they greet each other, there is a vulgarity of character that is bone deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture”
HINT: It wasn’t Adolph Hitler or Osama bin Laden. It is an Iranian-American professor at Columbia University, Hamid Dabashi, Chairman of the Department of Middle East Languages and Cultures.

Professor Hamid Dabashi is a Columbia department chairman, who calls supporters of Israel “Gestapo apparatchiks” and wanted to sue CNN for biased coverage of 9/11. Hamid Dabashi, the head of Middle East Languages and Cultures, was accused of, among other things, canceling classes to attend, and to permit his students to attend, a pro-Palestinian rally on campus that featured a call for Israel’s destruction. In his own public statements and writings, however, Dabashi has concocted a scenario of the Middle East in which Israel not only has no legitimate place but can hardly be said to exist, except as an unnamed Dark Force.

Among Dabashi’s notorious opinions: From NY Daily News (h/t Gary)
” The Jewish homeland is “nothing more than a military base for the rising predatory empire of the United States.
” It’s a capital of “thuggery” – a “ghastly state of racism and apartheid” – and it “must be dismantled.

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=87b74a936c723115dfa298cf3&id=3005ff3b85&e=552053f981

As delegates were flying in from all over the world to attend COP 19, the years most important UN climate summit in Warsaw, CFACT delivered the keynote addresses at a European climate conference with a different twist.

Co-hosted by the Polish Globalization Institute, Solidarity and other Polish NGOs and joined by groups from several other countries, the conference took aim at the UN’s version of global warming science, economics and politics.

The UN made a mistake when it chose Poland for COP 19. I’ve now had the chance to speak intimately about this issue with scores of concerned Poles and to address hundreds more at the conference. The majority of Polish citizens feel that a UN climate treaty threatens their hard-won independence and economic future.

Poles have a great deal to teach about the kind of common sense UN members should apply to global warming. The Poles have lived under repressive socialist control and never want to go back. When they hear citizens from rich western nations extolling the virtues of redistribution and government control, the laugh, sigh and remind them that “nobody really understands good sense, unless they were occupied by the Soviets.”

After numerous presentations on climate science and politics, the highlight of the conference was the signing of the Warsaw Declaration by representatives of Poland, Italy, France, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, the U.K., the U.S. and others. After numerous recitations of the facts, the Declaration states clearly that the UN should not adopt any climate treaty considering the many failures of climate models and the IPCC’s highly politicized science.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/print/obamas-iranian-deal-is-a-new-disaster

The headline of the lead, page one article in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, November 8 was “U.S., Iran Close In on Nuclear Deal” with a sub-headline “West Set to Ease Some Financial Sanctions in Exchange for Tehran Freezing Most Advance Work.’ Secretary of State John Kerry cut short a visit to Middle East states, including Israel, returning to Geneva where the deal was reportedly close to being signed.

We now know that Obama began to ease financial sanctions before the latest negotiations began. He did so secretly.

Shades of “Munich” and the infamous 1938 deal with the Nazi regime that a British Prime Minister promised would bring “peace in our time.” That level of naiveté resulted in World War Two which began a year later when Germany invaded Poland after negotiating a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union that was itself later invaded.

You don’t make deals with rogue nations. They never keep their word. One example is North Korea, a nuclear nation. Another is Iran that intends to be a nuclear nation.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/us-iran-deal-on-nuclear-weapons?f=puball

A presumptive deal between the United States and Iran to curb the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions is regarded in the White House as a breakthrough, cutting the Gordian knot between intractability and persistence. Yet before the acclamation begins a cautionary note is warranted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said, “I believe that adopting them [the deal proposals] is a mistake of historic proportions.” There is much to suggest that he is right.

For one thing, perhaps most notably, Iran retains the capability of making nuclear weapons. The deal – described as unfolding – merely freezes the most advanced aspects of its nuclear program, including the production of near-weapons-grade fuel. With uranium enriched at the twenty-percent level as is presently the case, Iran can probably produce six Hiroshima like atom bombs today. Moreover, it possesses the missiles to deliver them over a 1000 kilometer distance.

Second, Iranian leaders have been known to lie. The assurances offered in the past have disappeared like soap bubbles. After all, negotiations of one kind or another have been going on for decades. Prime Minister Rouhani, in his previous role, was the chief Iranian negotiator at a diplomatic table with American and European representatives. Despite his pleasant smile and moderate demeanor, he is a jihadist who is eager to promote Iran’s imperial agenda and that political position is enhanced by the possession of nuclear weapons.

Third, although this deal is the first phase in what is presumed to be a step-by-step process, verification procedures are obscure. It has been established from Intelligence sources that Iran has several projects deeply hidden underground on heavy-water nuclear production and centrifuges. Even if one or two are “frozen” to satisfy IAEA inspectors, how can one be sure other facilities aren’t operating at full tilt?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-great-purge?f=must_reads

During the years 1934-1939, Soviet dictator and Communist Party General Chairman Josef Stalin ordered what later became known to history as the “Great Purge” – a period of brutal political repression, torture, imprisonment and mass murder in the Soviet Union.

Launched under the auspices of purifying the Communist Party of ideologically-unreliable elements and rooting out fifth columnists within its ranks, the purges focused initially on party leadership. However – fueled by Stalin’s paranoia – they soon expanded into the military, government bureaucracy and wider Soviet society.

Members of the intelligentsia, senior government bureaucrats (nomenklatura), professionals, land-owning farmers (kulaks), members of the military and anyone else suspected of being an enemy of the state were swept up in the wave of suspicion and mutual distrust. Suspects were typically charged with espionage, anti-Soviet agitation, counter-revolutionary activity, or the like; if no “evidence” of wrong-doing could be found, it was manufactured by the secret police – the dreaded NKVD – or obtained via “confessions” extracted under torture. Following a perfunctory hearing or trial with a pre-determined outcome, most of those charged were imprisoned in the vast Soviet system of gulags (concentration camps) or executed. At the height of the purges, in 1937-1938, an estimated 1.2 million people lost their lives.

Aware of a resurgent Germany on his western flank, and a militarized and powerful Japan on his eastern frontier, Stalin – fearful of infiltrators and fifth-columnists within the ranks – ordered Commissar of State Security Nikolai Yezhov to purge the Soviet senior officer corps. Acting under orders from Premier Stalin, who sought a pretext to move against the officer corps, the NKVD instructed agent Nikolai Skoblin to pass incriminating misinformation implicating Red Army Field MarshallMikhail Tukhachevsky, to Reinhardt Heydrich, the head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) – the intelligence arm of the German SS-Gestapo. Heydrich arranged for the information to be planted in such a way as to implicate Tukhachevsky and a number of other top Soviet general officers.

So began the purge of the senior officer corps of the Soviet army and navy. By the time the process ended in 1939 – with war on the horizon – the military had been decimated. Three of the five Marshalls of the Soviet Army – including Tukhachevsky himself – were executed; 13 of 18 army commanders, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps commanders, and 154 out of 186 division commanders were removed; some were executed, while others were imprisoned or forced into retirement and exile. Some of the survivors were later ideologically-rehabilitated and brought back into uniform, but by then, the damage had been done.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/11/11/brooklyn-college-to-play-host-to-another-anti-israel-event/#

The City University of New York’s (CUNY) Brooklyn College is again provoking passions, playing host this week to an anti-Israel activist who many, citing his published writings, believe to be anti-Semitic.

Ben White, who describes himself as a writer, freelance journalist and researcher on his Twitter page, will give a talk Thursday, November 14th called “Israel: Apartheid not Democracy,” as part of a mini-tour of college campuses that will also include a stop at John Jay College in Manhattan. The event is to be hosted by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

White has in the past compared Israel’s policies to those of Nazi Germany – classified as anti-Semitic by the U.S. State Department; once declared he can “understand” why some people are anti-Semitic; and has served as an apologist for previous Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s Holocaust denial.

The event comes on the heels of a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) talk in February that many members of both Brooklyn College and the New York community objected to. The controversy reached a crescendo when four Jewish students were forcefully removed from the event because of what organizers said was a disruptive presence. The school later conducted an inquiry into the incident and determined “there was no justification for the removal of the four students.”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/questions-they-won-t-answer_765692.html

When South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham threatened last week to place a hold in the Senate on all Obama administration nominations until the president and his advisers cooperate fully with investigations into the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, White House press secretary Jay Carney responded with a familiar accusation.

“Let’s be clear that some Republicans are choosing to play politics with this for partisan purposes, and we find that unfortunate,” he said at a White House press briefing on October 28. Carney, in a we’ve-been-over-this-before tone of annoyance, ticked off numbers meant to show administration cooperation: 13 congressional hearings, 40 staff briefings, and “providing over 25,000 pages of documents.”

It’s been more than a year since four Americans were killed in Libya and more than six months since Carney dismissively declared that Benghazi “happened a long time ago.” Is he simply doing his job or does he really believe that Benghazi is a “phony scandal” trumped up by Republicans? Whatever the answer, Benghazi is not going away.