RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/09/21/res-ipsa-loquitur/?print=1

Do you want to know what is really wrong with higher education in this country? Leave aside, for a moment, the financial aspects of The Bubble [1]. Those are important, and will be decisive, as will the advent of new avenues of learning brought to you by the internet, not to mention the revitalization of old avenues of learning such as home schooling. But what is going to make the imminent collapse of the higher education establishment pass without much public sorrow is the rottenness at the core of the system. Evidence of this rot is patent at almost all colleges and universities, wherever terms like “post colonial,” “gender studies,” and kindred lures to menacing unintelligibility litter the public square. As a mild but still minatory instance, I reproduce in its entirety this syllabus, sent to me by a friend doing missionary work among the barbarians, from Cornell University. How much had to go wrong in how many institutions to make this festival of minatory garbage possible?

Radical Thought on the Margins II

Cornell Theory Reading Group Conference

Organized in collaboration with the Princeton Theory Reading Group

October 4-5, 2013

*All panels will be held in 258 Goldwin Smith Hall*

FRIDAY, Oct. 4

I don’t really comment much on the Catholic religion or its strong beliefs and tenets. I am, however, so impressed by the dignity, the insight, and the careful considerations of multicultural and political trends of both Popes- Benedict and Francis. As religious leaders they are admirable….rsk
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359142/popes-news-carl-andersonCarl A. Anderson

In an interview this week, Pope Francis noted that the Church should focus on mercy and salvation through Jesus Christ rather than “rules.” The headlines that followed suggested that the Church was suddenly charting a new course.

One might think this is the first time a pope said something like this. It isn’t.

Though it garnered little media attention, Pope Benedict XVI made a similar statement in 2006. Asked why he hadn’t spoken about same-sex marriage, abortion, or contraception in a speech, he noted that “Catholicism isn’t a collection of prohibitions; it’s a positive option.”

With neither pope has the full story been told. Furthermore, as Francis went to great lengths to point out in his encyclical Lumen Fidei, continuity is a hallmark of the papacy.

The first setting in which faith enlightens the human city is the family. I think first and foremost of the stable union of man and woman in marriage. This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s own love, and of the acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness of sexual differentiation.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/359145/print Bonn, Germany — Even though Germany is the economic powerhouse of Europe, the issue of how much it should surrender its sovereignty and wealth to Europe has been pretty much a non-issue in its elections this coming Sunday. But a new protest party challenging the wisdom of the euro and the bailouts Germany keeps […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359106/no-material-support-terrorists-andrew-c-mccarthy Tuesday, on the Corner, I decried Republican assent to the Obama policy of arming the opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. As I’ve previously observed, these so-called rebels are more accurately described as mujahideen — meaning jihad warriors, which is what many of them proclaim themselves to be. Throughout its ranks and in key […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/359034/print The IPCC’s fifth assessment report is another politico-scientific document. For the first time, an assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be widely judged more for what it says about the IPCC than for what it says about the climate. Its 2007 predecessor bombed during the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference […]

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4163/islam_britain_multi_culturalism_and_the_veil_roundup

Bad week. These items capture something about modern Britain and how it is all it sixes and sevens over what to do about extreme expressions of Islam

All there is to do is read, share and comment. It’s been an interesting week and this is not an issue to miss:

1) Bizarre landmark ruling on Muslim veil by English court: Now you see her, now you don’t

2) Muslim veil ruling? Nonsense upon stilts

3) Top British Conservatives grovel to Islamist agenda over veils

4) Why truth wears a veil

If next week is as bad as this one, we’re doomed…

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4164/immigration_and_the_future_of_britain Britain is losing its traditional cultural identity, and with that loss goes a loss of authority over many cultural values Birmingham Metropolitan College surrendered to well organised Muslim and Left-wing activists and reversed its eight year ban on wearing niqabs and burkas on its campuses. Why the change of policy? Was Birmingham Met intellectually […]

http://nationalreview.com/node/359148/print

This is the United States of America,” declared President Obama to the burghers of Liberty, Mo., on Friday. “We’re not some banana republic.”

He was talking about the Annual Raising of the Debt Ceiling, which glorious American tradition seems to come round earlier every year. “This is not a deadbeat nation,” President Obama continued. “We don’t run out on our tab.” True. But we don’t pay it off either. We just keep running it up, ever higher. And every time the bartender says, “Mebbe you’ve had enough, pal,” we protest, “Jush another couple trillion for the road. Set ’em up, Joe.” And he gives you that look that kinda says he wishes you’d run out on your tab back when it was $23.68.

Still, Obama is right. We’re not a banana republic, if only because the debt of banana republics is denominated in a currency other than their own — i.e., the U.S. dollar. When you’re the guys who print the global currency, you can run up debts undreamt of by your average generalissimo. As Obama explained in another of his recent speeches, “Raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” I won’t even pretend to know what he and his speechwriters meant by that one, but the fact that raising the debt ceiling “has been done over a hundred times” does suggest that spending more than it takes in is now a permanent feature of American government. And no one has plans to do anything about it. Which is certainly banana republic-esque.

Is all this spending necessary? Every day, the foot-of-page-37 news stories reveal government programs it would never occur to your dimestore caudillo to blow money on. On Thursday, it was the Food and Drug Administration blowing just shy of $200 grand to find out whether its Twitter and Facebook presence is “well-received.” A fifth of a million dollars isn’t even a rounding error in most departmental budgets, so nobody cares. But the FDA is one of those sclerotic American institutions that has near to entirely seized up. In October 1920, it occurred to an Ontario doctor called Frederick Banting that insulin might be isolated and purified and used to treat diabetes; by January 1923, Eli Lilly & Co were selling insulin to American pharmacies: A little over two years from concept to market. Now the FDA adds at least half-a-decade to the process, and your chances of making it through are far slimmer: As recently as the late Nineties, they were approving 157 new drugs per half-decade. Today it’s less than half that.

But they’ve got $182,000 to splash around on finding out whether people really like them on Facebook, or they’re just saying that. So they’ve given the dough to a company run by Dan Beckmann, a former “new media aide” to President Obama. That has the whiff of the banana republic about it, too.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/israels_bright_future.html Israel is undoubtedly one of the most hated countries on Earth.  Hatred against Israel is deeply rooted in the Arab world and in the Muslim world at large.  It has also progressed quickly in Europe over the last decades.  Although less common in North America, it is gaining ground, especially in universities, and “anti-Zionist” […]

FROM JANET LEVY:
The Islamists of the Al Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabaab, that stormed an upscale Israeli-owned shopping mall today armed with grenades and AK-47s are still in a standoff with security personnel. So far, they’ve killed 59 people and injured a couple of hundred.
The jihadists reportedly told Muslims to leave the facility and said that non-Muslims would be targeted. Shoppers were asked their religion and some were asked to name Mohammed’s mother.
(It may not be relevent for the next attack but memorize this: Aminah Bint Wahb is Mohammed’s mother).
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/horror-in-kenya-alshabaab-claim-responsibility-as-nonmuslims-targeted-in-terror-attack-on-nairobi-shopping-centre-8831413.html
Nairobi attack: Death toll rises to 59 as shots are fired on troops preparing hostage rescue operation

Kenyan minister says ‘we have access to CCTV and are in complete control’, adding more than 1,000 people have been rescued from the Westgate shopping centre since the terrorists started shooting

The Kenyan military are preparing to storm the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi where terrorists are holding an unknown number of hostages, following an attack yesterday which the Interior Ministry now says killed at least 59 people.

Gunmen armed with grenades, AK-47s and ammunition belts opened fire inside the affluent mall during a children’s cooking competition, with witnesses saying the terrorists numbered up to 10 men – some of whom looked as young as 18.

Reinforcements arrived this morning, according to the ministry, with armoured vehicles bringing more soldiers to join in the rescue operation. At approximately 11am (9am BST), fresh barrages of gunfire were heard from within the shopping centre, reportedly as security forces ran in a line and crouched along the front of the building.

Speaking to reporters today, Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said the police and army were in complete control of the situation, and that they now had remote control of the shopping centre’s CCTV systems.

Mr Lenku said the official number of injured had increased to 175, but he added that he was thankful for the fact that they had been able to get more than 1,000 people out of the mall safely.