RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last week here at PJ Media, I reported on the ongoing relations between the U.S.-backed “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army and ISIS. I also noted that, at this time last year, the received wisdom of the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment was that the Syrian rebels were largely moderate.

Now, a report in this past Sunday’s L.A. Times from the frontlines in Syria finds that another “vetted moderate” rebel group, Harakat Hazm – which has received anti-tank missiles from the U.S. — has been working with al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra: a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. (HT: Tim Furnish and Tom Joscelyn.)

As Al-Akhbar reported back in May, in addition to having U.S. backing, Harakat Hazm is also backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, and Qatar.

As the L.A. Times reporter rides with two U.S.-backed and armed Harakat Hazm fighters, the topic of conversation turns to Jabhat al-Nusra:

Harakat Hazm, for example, has struggled with being regarded as a U.S. pawn and labeled as secular in the midst of an opposition movement that has grown increasingly Islamist.

“Inside Syria we became labeled as secularists and feared Nusra Front was going to battle us,” Zeidan said, referring to an Al Qaeda-linked rebel group that has been designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. Then he smiled and added, “But Nusra doesn’t fight us, we actually fight alongside them. We like Nusra.”

But the L.A. Times reporter then immediately adds:

In July, eight West-backed rebel brigades — all recipients of military aid — released a statement of “rejection of all forms of cooperation and coordination” with Al Nusra Front.

But at the same time Harakat Hazm was supposedly releasing a statement of “rejection of all forms of cooperation and coordination” with Nusra, it signed a statement of alliance with Nusra to prevent the Assad regime from advancing into Aleppo. The alliance statement was published on Twitter:

Shame of fake EU climate change “aid” to Third World

It is quite staggering that the EU is “helping” poverty stricken countries in Africa by pumping taxpayers’ money into, wait for it, “green energy”. The figures have to be seen to be believed

Last week the European Union announced it was giving €499 million in aid to one of Africa’s poorest countries, the Republic of Benin. With 40 percent of the population living below the poverty line, 65 percent lacking access to clean drinking water, and one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, there are few countries more deserving of our help.

Unfortunately for Benin, the EU is ignoring these issues completely and spending the overwhelming majority of the grant on green energy.

Of the €499 million, €450 million will be spent on “promoting renewable energies and energy efficiency” over the next seven years. Despite the staggeringly short supply of clean drinking water in Benin, a mere €19 million is being spent on improving drinking water. Clearly the bureaucrats of Brussels are more concerned with fighting climate change than they are ending poverty.

This is by no means the only example of the EU wasting foreign aid. In July Get Britain Out exposed the Eurocrats’ pocketing £340 million from the European Development fund. Only a week ago the EU pledged to spend €339 million on 21 developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Again a stunning €129 million is earmarked for promoting sustainable and renewable energy and dealing with climate change.

This brings the total amount of money pledged for foreign aid last week to €838 million – with €579 million being spent on energy and climate change. As Britain contributes 13 percent to EU funds, 87.5 million punds (€109 million) of the €838 million will come directly from the British taxpayer.

With the EU lavishing such a colossal sum on promoting renewable energy, whilst dressing it up as foreign aid, it is becoming increasingly clear Brussels cannot be trusted with member states’ aid budgets.

The EU would rather the poverty-stricken of the Third World die of thirst than well-off citizens use the ‘wrong’ light bulb. If we want to ensure the funds levied off the backs of the British taxpayer is going to the people who need it most, we must Get Britain Out of the EU.

We are told by government-funded climate alarmists that their forecasts of dangerous man-made global warming rely on “settled science”.

Their “settled science” represents a mare’s nest of computer models, resting on a few match-sticks of science, surrounded by tall forests of uncertainty.

It is indeed settled science that all gases in the atmosphere can affect the exchange of heat between the sun, the Earth and outer space, and this can affect global temperatures. It is also agreed that certain gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide can absorb and redirect radiant energy passing through the atmosphere.

It is also settled science (but seldom mentioned) that the warming potential of each additional unit of carbon dioxide is progressively less, and is trivial at and above current levels. It is also agreed that water vapour has a far greater “greenhouse effect”, because it is fifty times more abundant, and it affects more radiation wavelengths.

However, it is not settled science that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main controller of global temperatures. Nor is it proven or agreed that man’s production of carbon dioxide is harmful to life on Earth, or that it will cause catastrophic global warming.

The official climate models are based on a theory that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere drives surface temperature changes. However, not one of the dozens of computerized climate models relied on by the IPCC predicted flat-lining temperatures over the last 17 years. This indicates that their carbon-centric assumption is wrong. At last count, there were 53 different explanations for these failures. This is hardly “settled science”.

The Invasion of Enterovirus EV-D68 By Jeannie DeAngelis

Unfortunately for the rest of America, liberals are not going to realize the damage they have wrought on all of us until they personally experience the ramifications of supporting Barack Obama.

At this juncture, maybe an illegal-immigrant-caused mini pandemic will rouse liberals out of the fevered delusion that this president somehow has the best interests of the nation’s children at heart.

What is obvious is that Barack Obama does have the best interests of children at heart: illegal immigrant children harboring viruses and communicable diseases. American children who are defenseless against the onslaught, not so much.

Maybe liberals haven’t noticed yet, but it hasn’t taken all that long for the infective consequences of President Obama’s refusal to put Americans first to befall the most innocent among us. For starters, Ohio, California, and Kansas are just a few of the states already struggling to contain measles outbreaks.

Now, in addition to measles, more than 1,000 children in 10 states — Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Georgia — have suddenly become infected with a rare respiratory virus, not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s, called human Enterovirus EV-D68. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that the rare strain is related to the same rhinovirus responsible for causing the common cold.

The dire prediction is that in the coming weeks and months, Enterovirus EV-D68, origin unknown, is due to spread to all 50 states and afflict great numbers of otherwise healthy children.

Referring to borders between states, ABC News Chief Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser said a mouthful when he pointed out that “Viruses don’t tend to respect borders.” The problem for America is that if international borders are not respected, viruses native to other countries migrate as well, and to date are being scattered around the nation, rather than deported.

What more potent a formula for disaster than “unaccompanied minors” with all sorts of contagious diseases coming across the border into our communities, and more specifically into our schools, where American children are now falling ill.

That’s why the obvious question is this: Where did Enterovirus EV-D68 originate and did it ‘entero’ the U.S. via illegal children?

Obamacare, as its advocates increasingly point out, has succeeded in expanding the number of Americans with insurance. Even though this achievement came at enormous cost, still leaves millions of Americans uninsured, and dumped millions more into Medicaid, this is still one of the few “successes” that the health-care law can claim.

However, health insurance and access to health care are not the same thing. And evidence is growing that Obamacare is likely to make it harder for us to see a doctor or otherwise obtain care.

Of course, we already know that the limited network of physicians available through most Obamacare exchange-based insurance plans is making it more difficult to see the doctor of your choice. Despite efforts by state regulators to mandate that insurers include more doctors and hospitals in their networks, most Obamacare plans, especially the comparatively low-cost bronze and silver plans, continue to have restricted networks. Nationwide, roughly 70 percent of Obamacare plans offer fewer doctors and hospitals than typical pre-Obamacare plans.

But there is an even bigger issue lurking below the surface.

Even without Obamacare, the Association of American Medical Colleges warns us that we face a shortfall of at least 130,000 doctors by 2025. While both enrollment in medical schools and graduation are up slightly, the increase is nowhere near enough to offset expected retirements. Roughly 40 percent of current doctors are age 55 or over. Moreover, the United States already trails many other countries in the number of physicians per capita, at just 2.5 per 1,000 people. This is compared to nearly 4 per 1,000 in Germany and Switzerland.

Medicine is simply no longer the profession that it once was. In 1970, the average income of general practitioners was $185,000 (in 2014 dollars). Today, even though doctors now see nearly twice as many patients as they did back then, average physician income has fallen to just $161,000. At the same time, the average medical-school graduate now begins his career with more than $170,000 in debt.

Obamacare will squeeze physician incomes still further.

Countries don’t act only in a narrow, largely financial definition of self-interest.

‘I should have anticipated the optics,” President Obama said by way of acknowledging that golfing right after making a statement about the beheading of James Foley looked bad. “Part of this job is also the theater of it,” he said. “It’s not something that always comes naturally to me. But it matters.”

For those who remember that this is the same guy with the Greek pillars, the campaign stop in Berlin, the newly minted “seal” of the president-elect, it was an odd confession. Obama likes theater just fine; he just doesn’t like having to read from a script not of his choosing.

That is probably why it took him so many tries to come up with the right words for what we will do about the Islamic State. One wonders whether he looked at the prepared remarks, turned to Valerie Jarrett and asked, “What’s my motivation?”

Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) has a similar problem. Much like Obama in 2007–08, he has been enjoying swimming with the current on foreign policy. War-weary, fed up with Arab countries hating us for trying to help, and convinced that our priorities are closer to home, Paul’s noninterventionism was sounding just right to many Americans.

Then some jihadi punks beheaded two Americans and taunted the U.S. in the process. The same jihadis conquered and enslaved territories that Americans fought, bled, and died to liberate. They boasted that they beat us in a war and vowed — ridiculously — that their flag would fly over our White House. Lo and behold, it turns out that Americans don’t like that sort of thing.

Attitudes, particularly among the very patriotic and pro-military tea-party crowd, suddenly and predictably shifted. This time last year only 18 percent of Republicans told pollsters for the Pew Research Center that the U.S. does “too little” abroad. That number had more than doubled according to a similar poll last week. And a new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows 71 percent of Americans favor strikes in Iraq and 65 percent favor them in Syria.

Suddenly, Paul, who just weeks ago was calling Hillary Clinton a warmonger, is doing some mongering himself.

President Obama says he intends to shrink the al-Qaeda-spawned Islamic State into a “manageable problem.” Perhaps we’ll learn more about how when he speaks to the nation on Wednesday evening. Still, the question presses: Is he the manager for the job?

In answering that question, past performance is more a guarantee of future results than is any statement of newfound purpose from a president whose innate dishonesty has turned his signature phrase “Let me be clear” into notorious self-parody.

In late September 2012, Mr. Obama’s administration quietly approved the transfer of 55 jihadist prisoners out of the Guantanamo Bay detention center. As Tom Joscelyn explained at the time, most of the detainees had previously been categorized as “high risk” because they were deemed “likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies” if released. Almost all of the rest had been assessed “medium risk” — still posing a threat, albeit one less certain than the “high risk” jihadists.

But Obama officials overruled those judgments. Rife with members of the Lawyer Left vanguard who had stampeded to volunteer their services to al-Qaeda detainees during the Bush years, who had smeared Gitmo as a gulag, and who had fought bitterly against the Bush/Cheney paradigm that regarded al-Qaeda’s jihad as a war rather than a crime wave, the administration determined that the anti-American terrorists were fit to be sprung from American custody.

Wait a second . . . two years ago in September . . . what was going on then? Why yes, the Benghazi massacre — whose second anniversary we mark this Thursday.

The Obama administration would like us to forget that bit of old news since “dude, this was like two years ago.” You may nonetheless recall it as an act of war in which al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists attacked a sovereign American government compound. The terrorists murdered our ambassador to Libya, killed three other Americans, and wounded many more in an eight-hour siege during which President Obama declined to take any meaningful responsive action. Indeed, agents of the U.S. security team in Benghazi say they were prevented from trying to save Ambassador Stevens.

Among those carrying out the attack were operatives of Ansar al-Sharia. That’s the al-Qaeda affiliate with cells in Eastern Libya’s jihadist hotbeds, Benghazi and Derna. Ansar is led by Sufian Ben Qumu, a former Gitmo detainee who, inexorably, went right back to the jihad.

http://zionism101.org/NewestVideoVimeo.aspx

A new video has gone up.

“Theodor Herzl Part 2: The Dreyfus Affair” is now available. You can see it directly via the following link:

http://zionism101.org/NewestVideoVimeo.aspx

Or log in at www.zionism101.org

“Theodor Herzl Part 2: The Dreyfus Affair” explains how the infamous trial of a French-Jewish captain influenced Herzl’s thinking. It is the second of a 4-part series on Herzl. As part of our ongoing work to present a first-rate educational resource on Zionism, we are going back over our “Founding Fathers” course in order to raise the quality to the level of our subsequent films.

We are now a 501(c)3 charitable organization. All donations are tax-deductible. Help us reach our goals by donating to Zionism 101. Please visit: http://zionism101.org/donate.aspx

We encourage you to share information about “Zionism 101” with your friends, family, and co-workers, plus anyone else who is interested in learning about the most important development in modern Jewish history.

If you haven’t already, please watch our completed video courses.

We welcome questions and comments.

Sincerely,

David Isaac
Executive Director
Zionism101.org

There are always lunatics lurking in the crevices of Muslim politics prepared to proclaim a new caliphate; there isn’t always a recruiting pool in the form of nearly 14 million displaced people (11 million Syrians, or half the country’s population, and 2.8 million Iraqis, or a tenth of the country’s population). When I wrote about the region’s refugee disaster at Tablet in July (“Between the Settlers and Unsettlers, the One State Solution is On Our Doorstep“) the going estimate was only 10 million. A new UN study, though, claims that half of Syrians are displaced. Many of them will have nothing to go back to. When people have nothing to lose, they fight to the death and inflict horrors on others.

That is what civilizational decline looks like in real time. The roots of the crisis were visible four years ago before the so-called Arab Spring beguiled the foreign policy wonks. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrian farmers already were living in tent camps around Syrian cities before the Syrian civil war began in April 2011. Israeli analysts knew this. In March 2011 Paul Rivlin of Tel Aviv University released a study of the collapse of Syrian agriculture, widely cited in Arab media but unmentioned in the English language press (except my essay on the topic). Most of what passes for political science treats peoples and politicians as if they were so many pieces on a fixed game board. This time the game board is shrinking and the pieces are falling off.

The Arab states are failed states, except for the few with enough hydrocarbons to subsidize every facet of economic life. Egypt lives on a$15 billion annual subsidy from the Gulf states and, if that persists, will remain stable if not quite prosperous. Syria is a ruin, along with large parts of Iraq. The lives of tens of millions of people were fragile before the fighting broke out (30% of Syrians lived on less than $1.60 a day), and now they are utterly ruined. The hordes of combatants displace more people, and these join the hordes, in a snowball effect. That’s what drove the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648, and that’s what’s driving the war in the Levant.

When I wrote in 2011 that Islam was dying, this was precisely what I forecast. You can’t unscramble this egg. The international organizations, Bill Clinton, George Soros and other people of that ilk will draw up plans, propose funding, hold conferences and publish studies, to no avail. The raw despair of millions of people ripped out of the cocoon of traditional society, bereft of ties of kinship and custom, will feed the meatgrinder. Terrorist organizations that were hitherto less flamboyant (“moderate” is a misdesignation), e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood (and its Palestine branch Hamas), will compete with the caliphate for the loyalties of enraged young people. The delusion about Muslim democracy that afflicted utopians of both parties is now inoperative. War will end when the pool of prospective fighters has been exhausted.

Arne Duncan blinked. After being hammered for much of the summer by the two main teacher’s unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), the Education Secretary said states could delay the use of test results in teacher performance evaluations by another year. It was disappointing, but understandable, as he and his Party have been financially reliant on Teachers’ unions. Let us hope he only blinked and not shut his eyes, as did so many of his predecessors. Teachers’ unions (and, in fact, all public sector unions) have Democrats in a chokehold. (Collectively, unions are the largest contributors to political campaigns.) Over the past twenty-five years the NEA and the AFT have given about $100 million to political campaigns, with 97% of that going to Democrats. The relationship has been symbiotic, as elected Democrats have ensured that the demands of union leaders are met.

Nevertheless, I have always thought Mr. Duncan a good Education Secretary. And positive developments are altering the public school landscape. Two of those were highlighted over the past weekend. In the Sunday magazine section of the New York Times, Daniel Bergner wrote of Eva Moskowitz’s battle with Mayor Bill de Blasio regarding Success Academy Charter Schools, which Ms. Moskowitz runs. In the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, Allysia Finley interviewed Kevin Chavous. Mr. Chavous is a founding board member and executive counsel for the nonprofit American Federation for Children (AFC). Both Ms. Moskowitz and Mr. Chavous are Democrats.

No one denies the success Ms. Moskowitz has had. There are roughly five applications for every seat available in her charter schools. Her students are among the top performers in the City and the State. She has achieved those results while operating in New York’s most challenging neighborhoods. However, Mayor de Blasio argues that all one million public school children must be “saved,” not simply the few thousand who attend charter schools – that money’s spent on charters is money that cannot be spent on other public schools. That argument is disingenuous, in that students in charter schools are public school students. And the success they have brought to minority students speaks for itself. The difference is that charter schools are non-unionized. Ms. Moskowitz can fire underperforming teachers and reward good ones. She can require dress and behavioral codes. She can demand longer hours on the part of students and teachers. Her standards are more exacting than what is permitted in traditional public schools. Diane Ravitch, a New York University professor and education historian fears that charters, with their wealthy Wall Street backers, are pulling the City and the Country toward the privatization of education. That may be the goal of some, but I believe most support charters simply because Traditional public schools are failing, in part because of a lack of competition, but more importantly due to union rules – tenure after eighteen months in some places, and the difficulty administrators have in firing bad teachers. Mayor de Blasio, while claiming to be supportive of children, acts as a front for the unions that helped put him in office.