RUTHFULLY YOURS

Thomas Hardy, in “Poems of War and Patriotism,” described an appalling refugee crisis in the heart of Europe a century ago. They were “pale and full of fear,” and came by the thousands to England’s shores: “From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend, / No carillons in their train. Foes of mad mood / Had shattered these to shards amid the gear / Of ravaged roof, and smouldering gable-end.” They were families, mostly from Belgium, caught up in the German advance during the First World War.

As with the Syrian refugee crisis today, their plight touched the conscience of the West. Two of the 20th century’s greatest Christian authors, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, encountered firsthand the human suffering of the Great War and enlisted their literary imagination to confront it. Their epic works — tales of valor and sacrifice in a great conflict between Good and Evil — do not evade society’s moral obligations to the victims of war.

In October 1914, the German army entered the Belgian port of Ostend, bringing most of Belgium under German occupation. Soon tens of thousands of refugees were fleeing for Great Britain, which had entered the war to defend Belgian neutrality. Many arrived in the village of Great Bookham, where Lewis was being tutored in the classics before being sent to France to fight for king and country. He wrote to his father: “Everyone at Bookham is engaged in a conspiracy for ‘getting up’ a cottage for Belgian refugees.”

Currently, the United States has military personnel deployed in about 150 Countries… This song was written in 1943 by the lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent. Walter Kent was a Jewish American composer who also wrote the music for the wartime hit ” The White Cliffs of Dover.”

I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light beams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

Notes from Old Lyme by Sydney Williams

This book is coming in February 2016. The author is an e-pal and friend and a wonderful essayist whose many columns have been posted in ruthfully yours. They appear on his own blog

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/, the latest is a lovely essay on “Christmas and Christianity.”

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win Hardcover –byJocko Willink (Author), Leif Babin (Author)

I plan to read this book and post a review in January. It is the story of two combat proven U.S Navy SEAL officers, who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. The book was sent to me by one of the authors Leif Babin with a lovely inscription. This will be a holiday treat for me….rsk

Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming is Bankrupting the Western World (New, Revised…Nov 25, 2013 by Rael Jean Isaac

I have long suspected that that common sense conservation has been coopted by the climate changelings whose entire agenda is an assault on industry and capitalism.
Many good writers have exposed this duplicity, but none as concisely as Rael Jean Isaac. In this book all the corruption, the hypocrisy and the faux science of the cult of global warming are laid bare. It is essential reading and should be distributed widely in the academies. rsk

The Road to Serfdom: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition by F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman

The Road to Serfdom is an astonishing book. I had to remind myself that it was not written yesterday as it details the incompatibility of democracy and central government rule, as well as the ineluctable path from socialism to totalitarianism. planning. rsk

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin

This is absolutely the very best book I have read on the subject of history and the Middle East. The alliances and deceptions and betrayals of history’s major players in the Middle East- Turkey, France, Great Britain, Germans, Arabs, Zionists are brilliantly cataloged. I could not put this book down- all 600 pages are a must read…. rsk

Churchill: A LifeOct 15, 1992 by Martin Gilbert

The late, and greatly lamented historian Martin Gilbert wrote a three volume biography of Churchill, and this book packs much into one volume on the life of one of history’s greatest statesmen-who for all his warts with respect to Palestine and the White Papers, was the greatest leader of World War II and the last century.Elegantly written and full of detail…rsk

Garibaldi: Hero of Italian Unification by Christopher Hibbert and Ross King

I once heard the late Menachem Begin state that his favorite statesman was Garibaldi-a fact that intrigued me enough to read this biography of Italy’s hero. Giuseppe Garibaldi was praised for his military genius, his courage, and his charisma. Known as the “Hero of Two Worlds,” Garibaldi’s military prowess extended to the Americas, where he played a major role in the Brazilian struggle for independence. During his fight for Italian unification Garibaldi personally led an army of local untrained rebels to victory in Palermo, Naples, and Sicily. If this bio is a tad too lavish in praise, the history of the unification of Italy is amazing. rsk

Jews Against Themselves by Edward Alexander

Who could have imagined that in the heady and optimistic days following Israel’s victory in 1967, the “progressive” and radical Jewish anti-war groupies would turn their attention and venom towards the state of Israel?Israel became the target of libels, bias, calumny, and its unrelenting enemies and oppressors became victims. What were marginal organizations and individuals are now “mainstream” while those who proudly defend Israel citing its pluralist, advanced and civilized society are pushed to the margins. How this came about is described in meticulous detail by Edward Alexander in this essential and eloquent narrative.

Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide by Michael B. Oren

The President Against the Historian Michael Oren’s candid account of Obama’s Mideast policy has won him the right enemies.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB11486026120286184909004581077992565304976

Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947Feb 24, 2015 by Bruce Hoffman

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2015/08/02/david-isaac-a-review-of-anonymous-soldiers-by-bruce-hoffman/
By David Isaac a Review

Bruce Hoffman’s Anonymous Soldiers is a deftly written account of the Jewish revolt against the British in 1940s Palestine. Despite its scholarship—it draws heavily on recently declassified British documents—and its significant bulk, it is a page-turner that leaves the reader feeling sorry once the book is finished.

Unlike most accounts of the Jewish underground, this one tells the story from the British point of view, though without taking Britain’s side. It leaves the reader with no doubt that it was the Irgun, and to a lesser extent the much smaller Lehi, that drove the British from Palestine, and not, as the longtime mythology of Israel’s Laborites would have it, David Ben-Gurion’s skillful politicking.

The Four-Front War: From the Holocaust to the Promised Land Hardcover –by William R. Perl (Author), Menachem Begin (Foreword)

William Perl is more than a historian, more than a simple eyewitness. He stands among a few key figures before the war who organized and directed The Action who played a vital role in its highest levels of operation. Using the texts of secret official memoranda, most never before published, his personal diary of the period, as well as notes and dozens of taped interviews, he presents an astounding chronicle of this unknowing aspect of the war.

T’was the night before Christmas, when in the Senate and House
Not a legislator was stirring not even Ryan the mouse.

Incumbents were home but hardly slept
Knowing the anger for promises not kept

The budget, and energy, immigration and Obamacare,
The Constitution defiled and the terror scare.

Were enough to fill their stocking with coals
Especially when parsing the latest polls.

Then I suddenly heard such a clatter,
I ran to the window to see what was the matter.

I peered through the window and put on my glasses
It was a miniature sleigh with eight tiny jackasses.

With a spry old driver, so lively and chipper
I knew in a flash twas the ghost of the Gipper

“Debbie, Nancy, Durbin, and Sanders the jerk!”
He shouted with glee as he gave them their work.

“Schumer, Reid, Pingry, and Jackson Lee!”
Sweep the House and make it clean for the GOP!

With a smile and knowing and friendly look
He gave every pol Barry Goldwater’s book.

Another election may we all live to fight.
Merry Christmas to All and to all a good night!!

Eight years ago, the late James Schlesinger, who served as CIA Director, Secretary of Energy, and Secretary of Defense, denounced in a Wall Street Journal editorial one of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s most controversial intelligence assessments on Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as “stupid intelligence.”

In addition to calling this assessment stupid intelligence, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz referred to it in a December 6, 2007 Huffington Post op-ed as “one of the most dangerous, misguided and counterproductive intelligence assessments in history.”

A December 2 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was formally released on December 15, proved Schlesinger and Dershowitz were right.

The Iran intelligence assessment was a national intelligence estimate (NIE) which is supposed to be the U.S. Intelligence Community’s most authoritative analysis of a national security issue. Issued in November 2007, this NIE found that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The IAEA’s new report found that Iran continued its nuclear weapons research at least until 2009.

A December 5, 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial cited an intelligence source who said the NIE’s main authors included three former State Department officials with previous reputations as “hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials:” Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA.