RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Guardian has published, before this, praise for several North Korean films, including A Flower Girl. But North Korea is one of the world’s most repressive and dangerous states, governed by a regime that might even make the Ayatollahs of Iran hesitate. So why no letters in The Guardian boycotting their films? Oh, I forgot, nobody ever calls for a boycott of North Korea or any really repressive state.

The activists never march against Saudi Arabia, which has just confirmed the sentence of a blogger, Raif Badawi, to a flogging of 1000 lashes, “very harshly” as the flogging order read, as a punishment for writing thoughts such as, “My commitment is… to reject any oppression in the name of religion… a goal we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way.” They never march against Qatar, Iran, North Korea, China, Russia or Sudan.

To uphold human rights by supporting a murderous terrorist state, while condemning a democracy forced to defend itself against outside forces bent on its destruction — do any of these writers know what free speech or human rights are about, what democracy means or what international law consists of? One suspects not.

They came in the early eighth century across the Straits of Gibraltar, unleashing terror and carnage across Iberia “like a desolating storm.” They were stopped deep inside today’s France, at Tours, by Charles Martel in 732. They kept attacking Europe throughout the Middle Ages, but their next sustained assault was at her vulnerable southeastern flank, taking advantage of Byzantium’s weakened state after the infamous Fourth Crusade. They conquered Constantinople and destroyed the Christian nations of Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary. They were finally stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683.
Europe seemed safe over the ensuing 250 years of unprecedented demographic, scientific, technological, and geopolitical advance. The “sick man on the Bosphorus” was reduced to a mere object of European imperial ambitions, while “Arabia,” irrelevant to the civilized world, remained stuck in its primitive ways.

On Thursday and Friday, June 11-12, there will be a gathering of some of the nation’s and the world’s leading climate change “skeptics” in Washington, D.C. and joining them will be members of Congress and their staffs. The Tenth International Conference on Climate Change will occur and the odds are that the mainstream media, as it has done for all the previous conferences, will do its best to ignore it.

In attendance as well will be scores of scientists, economists, and policy experts for a conference being held just two blocks from a White House in which the President of the United States resides while lying about “climate change” as the greatest threat to the planet.

In March, the Gallup Poll revealed that “Although climate scientists have been in the news describing this winter as a strong signal that global warming is producing more extreme weather, Americans are no more likely today (55%) than in the past two years to believe the effects of global warming are occurring.”

On Monday evening, after two and a half days of back-to-back lectures, panels, workshops and children’s activities, Limmud Oz 2015 came to a close. Though the major Jewish conference was founded in Britain in 1980, its model is now used by communities around the world. Each has its own flavor, depending on the location, but the idea behind the endeavor is basically the same: to gather Jews from all walks of life, levels of religious observance and political orientation and learn from one another.

I had the good fortune to be invited to this year’s event in Sydney, Australia — hosted by the Shalom Institute at the University of New South Wales — to present my perspective on the Israeli elections, the framework for the Iranian nuclear deal, Zionism, anti-Semitism and aliyah. This gave me the opportunity, in between my own sessions, to attend those of other lecturers and panelists.

The president of the Space and Science Research Corporation, John Casey, is also the author of “Cold Sun: A Dangerous ‘Hibernation’ of the Sun Has Begun!” and has called attention to a meteorological cycle that until the global warming hoax occurred, was largely unknown to many people and, to a large degree still is.

Nature has not cooperated with the charlatans who made claims about a dramatic warming of the Earth. Since 1998 the planet along with the Sun has been in a solar cycle distinguished by very few, if any, sun spots—evidence of solar storms—and a cooling of the Earth that has some predicting a forthcoming new Little Ice Age.

This past weekend, more than 50 leaders of Jewish organizations and pro-Israel groups from several countries met to plan a more systematic response to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Many journalists found the most interesting aspect of the meeting the fact that Sheldon Adelson, a supporter of Republicans, and Haim Saban, a supporter of Democrats, were joined at the hip in this new effort.

A goal of $50 million was reported to have been set to support efforts on campuses to fight the BDS campaigns — generally led by Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association.

Adelson described three components of his Campus Maccabees concept: donors who will fund the operation; activists on the ground willing to take the fight to the campus; and researchers who will supply information about the anti-Israel groups and recommend possible legal avenues to block their activities.

We don’t know how much damage to national security Rand Paul created by grandstanding his attempt to blockade the NSA’s program that obtained telephone records and analyzed them to spot terrorist connections.

In intelligence, what you know you don’t know – the “known unknowns” – and the what you don’t know that you don’t know – the “unknown unknowns” – are equally dangerous. That’s why our intelligence agencies are always trying to devise new methods of getting the former and identifying and discovering the latter.

The iconic photograph of Israeli soldiers gazing at the Western Wall, in Jerusalem, for the first time in their lives, after entering the city as Israel beat the invading Arab armies in 1967. Photo: Israel Knesset. June 10, 1967, marked the end of the Six Day War and the beginning of the radical left’s hate […]

Last week’s rancid pro-BDS statements to an approving Cairo audience by Orange CEO Stéphane Richard, indicating his desire to immediately sever his company’s links to Israel, should come as no surprise to those who follow French politics. Orange, which maintains a licensing agreement with the Israeli cellphone company Partner Communications, is partly owned by the French government, making France at least indirectly complicit with Richard’s anti-Semitic, pro-BDS statement.

Since spewing those ugly sentiments, Richard has performed a complete about-face [2], claiming that he “loves Israel,” “invests in Israel,” “radically opposes” any form of boycott against the Jewish State and has announced plans for an immediate trip to Israel to meet with business leaders and political officials. Of course, these new adoring sentiments fly in the face of what he said in Cairo, but Richard, ever the businessman, likely realized that his comments were counterproductive for the bottom line and had to adjust his remarks accordingly. Moreover, technology companies are keenly aware that the road to innovation goes through Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and not through Cairo or Baghdad. In other words, morality played no part in Richard’s miraculous transformation. It was strictly a matter of dollars and euros.

It’s fashionable for the media to mock the “clown car” of the Republican presidential primary field. And it’s true that the Republican Party is burdened with a surplus of overqualified candidates with name recognition; successful governors, smart young senators and even a celebrated surgeon and CEO.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party’s “inevitable” candidate is inevitably generating financial scandals faster than her husband generated his inevitable sex scandals.

Competing against her is Senator Bernie Sanders who is currently discussing 90 percent tax rates and why he believes women want to be raped. His winning campaign slogan is “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants when children are hungry in this country.”

You also don’t need a choice of 23 highly qualified conservative free market candidates when you can choose between Hillary Clinton and a senile Socialist from Vermont visiting late night talk shows to discuss his rape fantasies. Either Hillary Clinton will take all your money or Bernie Sanders will take all your money and then take away your underarm spray deodorants for the sake of all the hungry children.

And you’re lucky if that’s all he does.