RUTHFULLY YOURS

NOTE FROM YISRAEL MEDAD:” I would add, to fine-tune the piece: just as the indigenous Arabs rejected a partition proposal during World War I in the form of the Sykes-Picot arrangement, and as they did in 1937, in 1939 and again in 1947, they undercut their moral standing being totally uncompromising.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/what-you-call-settlements-solid-moral-ground

What our detractors refer to as ‘settlements’ are no threat to peace. Others must recognise that we are part of the solution

Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, is a vocal critic of the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. Referring to them as “settlements”, she claimed last week that they “threaten to make a two-state solution impossible” and called on Israel “to immediately end all settlement activities beyond the green line, including East Jerusalem”. Obviously, Ashton has never visited a “settlement”, like almost all of her colleagues in the international diplomatic high echelons. Nevertheless they consider themselves experts on the matter.

One notable exception is the former US president Jimmy Carter, who visited Gush Etzion in 2009. Carter is well known for his harsh criticism of Israel, considered by many as sheer hostility towards the Jewish state. So shocked was he by the reality on the ground, he stated: “This particular settlement is not one that I envision ever being abandoned, or changed over into a Palestinian territory.” The contrast between Carter’s statement and Ashton’s reminded me of a recent statement by Israel’s finance minister, Yair Lapid: “I used to have so many opinions before I learned the facts.”

In 2009 I was invited to meet Tony Blair, the special envoy of the quartet (the UN, US, Russia and the EU) for the Middle East. At the end of our conversation I invited him to visit the communities whose future we had just discussed. He declined, saying: “I can see them from my helicopter.” “From the helicopter,” I replied, “you can’t see the faces, look into the eyes and understand their aspirations.” Blair, like many of his peers, continues to fly over our heads.

More than 360,000 Israelis live in almost 200 communities across Judea and Samaria, with 200,000 more in East Jerusalem. That’s more than half a million people. Our endeavour stands on solid moral ground.

http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=2096&c=18938&m=17427&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce Secretary of State John Kerry’s contention that a $4BN grant would revitalize the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the peace process, ignores the Palestinian track record, at least, since the 1993 Oslo Accords. Kerry overlooks the impact of the $400MN in annual US aid which has fueled an all-time-high Palestinian corruption (Mahoud Abbas’ nickname is […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Note 1. Regular readers may have noticed that there was no roundup on Friday. I am dealing with the illness of a close family member and posting will be spotty right now. Some older articles will likely show up on the site.

Hopefully that will change soon, but for the moment I am making multiple trips to the hospital a day and balancing everything isn’t easy.

Note 2. The site is under sustained spam attack. Today I came on to find over 700 comments in moderation, 99 percent of them spam. The volume has gotten so bad that I’m losing legitimate comments in it.

I would like to ask readers to use a name when commenting. You don’t have to make an account. Just choose Name/URL in the dropdown menu, where it says Anonymous now. It makes it a lot easier for me and I would appreciate it. And it makes it a lot less likely that your comment will be lost.

Note 3. A very belated roundup

Looking for a Few Good Men in Syria

McCain is warning of a regional conflict, but it’s already a regional conflict. Helping the Sunni militias beat the Shiites won’t change that. It will just advance the conflict to the next stage in Iraq and Lebanon. Overthrowing Gaddafi did not stabilize Libya, it destabilized Mali and Algeria, and overthrowing Assad will not stabilize Syria. There are no “right people” to arm because there are no good guys in an inter-religious holy war. And there is certainly no one we can trust.

There is as little sense in choosing Sunni Islamists over Shiite Islamists as the other way around. The only reason we have taken the Sunni side is because so many of our allies are Sunni. And yet the term “ally” is a misnomer.

Are the Saudis really our allies? Can the Islamist governments in Turkey or Egypt be trusted despite their ideological hostility to the United States?

By Ed Ziegler-  Columnist Everything I ever heard about slavery is despicable. The West is familiar with the history of slavery in the new world.  However, few people in the West know about Islam and slavery. Muslims were enslaving black Africans long before any slave ships sailed for the New World.        Slavery […]

http://nsroundtable.org/as-we-see-it/oil-disease-and-wahhabism/

NOTE FROM NSR:

“Well, it looks like MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) may be Saudi Arabia’s latest gift to mankind, following in the steps of its other two exports, i.e., oil and Wahhabism (see below). Although little is known at this point about MERS, a new disease which Saudi Arabia is currently battling, it has sparked global concern for its pandemic potential. But Saudi Arabia and affected Arabian Peninsula countries have yet to release information that could help protect the rest of the world [anyone shocked, shocked?].You can read all about the sordid details, below.

Over the next few weeks officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) face a tough and politically charged call. The Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, begins July 9 and could draw as many as two million people from around the globe to the holy sites of Saudi Arabia in a pilgrimage called umrah. But a new disease, called Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, or MERS, could threaten them.”

Infectious disease control at mass gatherings is always a challenge, but this year even more so. Saudi Arabia is currently waging battle with MERS, yet it has released only the barest of details that scientists or public health officials could use to try to prevent its spread within Saudi Arabia or around the globe. In early May Saudi officials startled the world by announcing 13 new cases over the course of a few days. Since the start of May there have been 38 new cases worldwide—31 of them in Saudi Arabia—and 20 of the victims have died. With virtually no clues to draw on about where the virus lives in nature and how people contract it, WHO is trying to figure out what guidance to give those pilgrims, and the countries they will return to, about how to avoid infection and the international dissemination of a devastating new illness.

MERS triggers severe pneumonia and kidney failure in some cases. It is a cousin of SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, which broke out in mainland China in late 2002, spread from there to Hong Kong in 2003, and was then transported in the lungs of international travelers to Singapore, Hanoi, Toronto and other cities. Health officials do not want to pull out the big hammers used during the SARS outbreak, such as WHO travel advisories that urged the world’s citizens to avoid infected hubs such as Hong Kong and Toronto. On the other hand, no one wants umrah and the even larger hajj pilgrimage that will follow in October to trigger a pandemic.

The new virus was first isolated in June 2012. But its existence came to the world’s attention only weeks before last October’s hajj, when an Egyptian infectious diseases specialist who had been working in Saudi Arabia’s second largest city, Jeddah, reported that he had treated a man who died from an infection caused by a new coronavirus. Whether MERS has or can gain the capacity for sustained person-to-person spread is unknown. Kamran Khan, an infectious diseases physician who researches global flight patterns as a means of predicting disease spread, has had a worried eye on the Muslim religious calendar for some time. “We still don’t have a good idea where this (virus) is coming from, so taking measures to mitigate risks are constrained,” says Khan, who works at the Saint Michael’s Hospital Keenan Research Center in Toronto.

http://en.ria.ru/world/20130607/181547342/FDR-Aide-a-Soviet-Spy-Book-Claim-Splits-Reviewers.html

I guess they did not like my review either….. I stand by it…..read the book to decide….rsk

“In this illuminating and painstakingly researched and documented book, Diana West connects the dots to the early 1930s when the Russians and their subversive American minions moved career communists and spies into main government departments including the State Department,” wrote blogger Ruth King on a right-wing media site. “These entrenched and influential agents helped craft policy and military strategy in World War II which benefited the Russians,” King wrote.

WASHINGTON, June 6 (RIA Novosti) – A new book claiming the White House of wartime US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was rife with Soviet spies and sympathizers has American conservatives waxing lyrical as liberals heap scorn on the work as unadulterated fantasy.

More neutral readers of “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on our Nation’s Character,” written by newspaper columnist Diana West, are simply advising caution in accepting the book’s assertions, including that Roosevelt’s right-hand man, Harry Hopkins, was pulling for Moscow.

The book argues that “Americans have been betrayed … by our leaders going back to FDR’s administration in the 1930s because we were penetrated by Soviet agents to such an extent that our policies and… our character as a nation was subverted,” West said in an interview with the Daily Caller.

Right-wing reviewers used words like “illuminating” and “painstakingly researched” to describe “American Betrayal”, while liberals called it a “frustrating mixture” of fact and fiction, and one historian bluntly dismissed it as “crap.”

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/man-behind-palestinian-flag-at-paterson-nj-city-hall-a-convicted-felon/2013/05/21/ The community leader who solicited government proclamations for naming May 19 “Palestinian American Day” in Paterson, NJ had publicly expressed outrage over NYPD surveillance of Muslims. No one even noticed he was a convicted felon. Paterson, NJ City Hall flew the Palestinian flag on Sunday, May 19, which Paterson Mayor Jeffrey Jones named “Palestinian […]

Avoiding the Czechoslovakia syndrome at all cost Democracies, and that includes Israel, tend to ignore and even deny threats to their existence because they are reluctant, actually unwilling, to do what is necessary to cope with those threats. In their pursuit of peace and calm, Western democracies believe – even after making countless concessions that […]

WITH APOLOGIES TO FRANK LOESSER…..

“YOU PROMISED ME THIS YOU PROMISED ME THAT
YOU PROMISED ME EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN

THEN YOU GIVE ME A SPEECH AND YOU’RE GRABBING YOUR CAP

AND YOU’RE OFF TO RAISE MONEY AGAIN

WHEN I THINK OF THE WAY YOU LIE AND I THINK OF THE WAYS YOU SPY

WELL I HAVE TO ASK WHY OH WHY

I GOT CARRIED AWAY AND YOU SOUNDED SO RIGHT

I WAS TOLD YOU WERE GREAT I WAS TOLD YOU WERE BRIGHT

YOU WOULD FIX OUR LAND YOU WOULD LEAD THE WAY

IT TURNS OUT NOW YOU HAVE FEET OF CLAY

WHEN I THINK OF THE WAY YOU LIE AND I THINK OF THE WAYS YOU SPY

YOUR SPIN DOESN’T WORK AND YOUR HYPE WON’T FLY

CAN’T WAIT FOR THE DAY WHEN YOU SAY GOODBYE….

You promise me this, you promise me thatYou promise me anything under the sunThen you give me a kiss and your grabbing your hatAnd your off to the races again

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ MSNBC is to news channels as Ringling Bros’ Clown College is to Harvard University. There’s a certain distant resemblance. Everyone sits behind desks and reads from teleprompters. And that’s where the resemblance ends. The cable news version of Air America only has two topics. 1. How Congressional Republicans are obstructing some bill or measure […]