RUTHFULLY YOURS

Columbus may have outfoxed the Spanish court and his rivals, but he is falling victim to the court of political correctness. The explorer who discovered America has become controversial because the very idea of America has become controversial.
There are counter-historical claims put forward by Muslim and Chinese scholars claiming that they discovered America first. And there are mobs of fake indigenous activists on every campus to whom the old Italian is as much of a villain as the bearded Uncle Sam.

Columbus Day parades are met with protests and some have been minimized or eliminated.

In Seattle, Columbus Day became Indigenous People’s Day, which sounds like a Marxist terrorist group’s holiday.

The shift from celebrating Columbus’ arrival in America to commemorating it as an American Nakba by focusing on the Indians, rather than the Americans, is a profound form of historical revisionism that hacks away at the origins of this country.

No American state has followed Venezuela’s lead in renaming it Día de la Resistencia Indígena, or Day of Indigenous Resistance, which actually is a Marxist terrorist group’s holiday, the whole notion of celebrating the discovery of America has come to be seen as somehow shameful and worst of all, politically incorrect.

Anti-Columbus Day protests are mounted by La Raza, whose members, despite their indigenous posturing, are actually mostly descended from Spanish colonists, but who know that most American liberals are too confused to rationally frame an objection to a protest by any minority group.

About the only thing sillier than a group of people emphasizing their collective identity as a Spanish speaking people, and denouncing Columbus as an imperialist exploiter is Ward Churchill, a fake Indian, who compared Columbus to Heinrich Himmler. Ward Churchill’s scholarship consists of comparing Americans in past history and current events to random Nazis. If he hasn’t yet compared Amerigo Vespucci or Daniel Boone to Ernst Röhm; it’s only a matter of time.

ISIS is about to conquer Baghdad while the Kurds are begging for arms and American airpower to prevent the massacre of the people in Kobane. Joey Biden accidentally told the truth about Turkey’s placid approach to ISIS but apologized quickly. Ukraine has gone quiet for the moment but Kim Jong-un remains missing and — given his five weeks’ absence — intelligence analysts are trying to figure out if the North Koreans are about to go off the rails again. And TSA’s experts are screening passengers at some airports, including JFK, to ensure our borders remain open to anyone who will not die of Ebola before they go through customs inspection. The rest of the world is in about the same shape.

In short, President Obama’s foreign policy has so consistently failed that it’s no longer news. The media just report what’s going on mostly without reference to Obama or the United States. And while all of this is going on, the people who helped Obama develop these failed policies are — one by one — throwing him under the bus in one highly-publicized memoir after another. Inspiring loyalty in those who follow you is a primary trait of a leader. Judging by the raft of memoirs by his most trusted advisors, Obama isn’t much of one.

It all began with Duty, former defense secretary Bob Gates’s memoir published early this year. Gates was a holdover from the Bush administration and, as he recounts in the book, he interviewed with Obama for only about 45 minutes to determine whether Obama would keep him on. And in that time he never once asked Obama a substantive policy question. Gates, the bureaucrat’s bureaucrat, only wanted to know that he’d not be ignored, whether he could keep his deputy and such.

Then Gates was surprised to discover that he had no real power. All of the decisions on defense policy were made in the White House. When he told Obama that if Obama fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal he’d lose the Afghanistan war, Obama fired the general an hour later. And then Gates recounts that he was shocked that in deciding on the Afghanistan surge, Obama didn’t trust his generals, didn’t believe in his own strategy and — I’m interpolating here — really didn’t give a damn about anything other than the domestic political effects of his action.

Then came Hillary. It’s tougher for Mizz Clinton to duck responsibility for Obama’s policy decisions because she helped formulate most of them, but she takes her best shot in her book Hard Choices. Clinton was Obama’s chief foreign policy adviser as Secretary of State, but she writes of her disagreement with Obama on supporting Syrian rebels. Obama is brilliant, she says. A great prophet on foreign relations and if he’d only listened to her, the world would be a better place.

Now another Obama defense secretary, Leon Panetta, has come out with a memoir bashing Obama for all manner of failures. I haven’t read it, and may not, because we know his motivation.

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.co.il/2014/10/defeating-forces-of-darkness.html

Israel – everyone’s best hope for a bright future.

On the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah (Rejoicing of the Law) we read how the universe was created – starting with the four words “Let there be light”. Today, Israeli solar energy projects light up countless homes. However, the Jewish State also has found another way to illuminate millions of lives – by removing the darkness itself.

It is sad to see the shadowy effects of aging on previously brilliant minds. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute may therefore have opened up the promise of a brighter tomorrow. They have discovered that the protein interferon beta impairs the cognitive ability of the brain – common in old age. New treatments that block or remove this protein may one day prevent or reverse cognitive decline and rejuvenate the brain. Israeli biotech Compugen has discovered another “murky” protein, codenamed CGEN-15049 that prevents the immune system from destroying tumors. Attacking CGEN-15049 could prevent cancers of the lung, ovaries, breast, colon, stomach, prostate and liver. A new treatment may already be underway thanks to FutuRx – a new Government-funded incubator for Israeli bio-techs.

Watching someone being treated successfully for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) is like seeing a dark cloud lifted. So we hope for only blue skies from now on, now that the US FDA has fast-tracked the NurOwn ALS treatment developed by Israel’s Brainstorm. On the other hand, those suffering from the dry form of age-related macular degeneration (dry-AMD) may develop dark areas on the retina of the eye, causing progressive blindness. OpRegen, developed by Israel’s CellCure NeuroSciences is hoping to become the first approved therapy for dry-AMD.

Rebuilding or repairing infrastructure in the Gaza Strip is the best thing that could have happened to Hamas. Hamas knows that every dollar invested in the Gaza Strip will serve the interests of the Islamist movement. The promised funds absolve Hamas of all responsibility for the catastrophe it brought upon the Palestinians during the confrontation with Israel.

Hamas will now use its own resources to smuggle in additional weapons and prepare for the next war with Israel. Hamas can now go back to digging new tunnels and obtaining new weapons instead of assisting the Palestinians whose homes were destroyed as a result of its actions.

The biggest mistake the donor states made was failing to demand the disarmament of Hamas as a precondition for funneling aid to the Gaza Strip. Hopes that the catastrophic results of the confrontation would increase pressure on Hamas, or perhaps trigger a revolt against it, have faded.

It would be naïve to think that Hamas would not benefit from the billions of dollars that have just been promised to help with the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, during a donor conference in Cairo.

The Palestinians were hoping for $4 billion, but the donor states pledged $5.4 billion, half of which will be “dedicated” to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, according to Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende.

It is not yet clear how the second half will be spent.

Qatar, a longtime supporter and funder of Hamas, promised $1 billion, while US Secretary of State John Kerry announced immediate American aid of $212 million. The European Union, for its part, pledged $568 million.

Caught in their crossfire
Soon to vote on a resolution to boycott Israeli academics, the Doctoral Students Council at the City University of New York is showing itself to be as closed-minded and intellectually bankrupt as so many of its counterparts in institutions of higher learning across the world. This is but one example of the moral turpitude that has infected Western campuses with a disease far more deadly than Ebola.

There are, however, two literary silver linings in this otherwise black cloud: irony and poetic justice.

The irony is that the majority of Israeli academics (particularly those in the humanities and social sciences) not only share the outlook of their colleagues in universities abroad, but impart it to their students at home. Nor is the lectern their sole soap box. On the contrary, their academic credentials also give them access to the op-ed pages of all Israeli newspapers. And the greater their critiques of their own country, the more exposure they receive in Europe and the United States.

This is where the poetic justice comes in.

Whenever an academic community boycotts Israeli professors, it automatically loses a host of highly articulate useful idiots for its cause. And there is no Israel-bashing quite as effective as that which emanates from the Jewish state itself.

It is thus that members of Israeli academia feel unfairly treated by such boycotts. Aside from having to kiss goodbye their coveted junkets, lecture tours and book deals, they are shocked that they — the “good Jews” with impeccable left-wing politics — should become ivory tower cast-outs.

Take Dr. Anat Rimon-Or, for instance. A lecturer on education, culture and ethics at various academic institutions in Israel, Rimon-Or is a radical ideologue whose positions on Israel would make any anti-Semite proud; and her dim view of the West would warrant her being hired to do public relations for the Iranian regime.

Last month, Rimon-Or posted a lengthy defense of ISIS on her Facebook page. Rather than being discredited on the spot, she was invited to participate in a prime-time TV panel on Monday evening. This coincided with reports of ISIS holding its ground in Kobani in Syria, after successfully taking over a military base in Iraq.

In 1996, the late, great New York Times columnist William Safire published a column, “Blizzard of lies,” in which he laid out a series of falsehoods by Hillary Rodham Clinton and declared “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.”

Today, Americans of all political stripes are coming to a similar, sad realization about our president. A recent Fox News poll asked Americans “How often does Barack Obama lie to the country on important matters?” Thirty-seven percent said “most of the time,” 24 percent said “some of the time,” and 20 percent said “only now and then.” Just 15% said “never.”

Think about that: 81 percent of Americans believe that Obama lies to them at least “now and then” on “important matters.”

That is simply stunning.

These Americans are right. The latest evidence came when The Post revealed that on Friday, April 20, 2012, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan came to White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler with a specific, credible allegation of misconduct by a member of the White House advance team in Cartegena, Colombia.

According to The Post, he informed Ruemmler that there was evidence that Jonathan Dach registered a prostitute into his room at the Hilton Cartagena Hotel shortly after midnight on April 4. That is specific. And he told Ruemmler that Secret Service agents on the ground had information suggesting the same. That is credible.

Yet three days later, on Monday, April 24, then-presidential press secretary Jay Carney told the American people from the White House podium: “There have been no specific, credible allegations of misconduct by anyone on the White House advance team.”

Carney’s statement was flat untrue.

Kurds are valiantly defending themselves from annihilation in Kobani while America and Turkey busy themselves declaring what the other party should do. Ultimately, America must understand Turkish motives in order to implement a clear policy. America must stop “following from behind” and start leading the free world against the burgeoning threat of Islamo-Nazis.

As the Islamic State (IS) continues to launch barbaric attacks in Kobani — and elsewhere — Turkish tanks remain idle, just over the horizon. Turkey, a member of NATO, has the world’s sixth-largest military, but it hasn’t stirred to stop the carnage because the Islamic State has not yet desecrated the tomb of Suleyman Shah, located in Syria. In August 2013, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, singled out the tomb’s site for special commendation, declaring that it — along with surrounding land — was Turkish territory. Thus, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kurds are a lesser priority than protecting a monument to a man who drowned while trying to cross the Euphrates River in 1236; Erdogan cited article 9 of an agreement signed with France on October 20, 1921, to honor the memory of the grandfather of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire.

Some observers fear that Erdogan reached a compromise with the Islamic State on September 20 this year when he swapped 180 jihadists in return for the release of 49 Turkish consulate staff captured in Turkey’s consulate in Mosul, Iraq. Yet he delayed implementation of a motion passed by Turkey’s parliament that authorized deployment of Turkish armed forces into Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State, and that allowed foreign forces to conduct anti-IS operations from Turkey. Why? Because he equated the Islamic State with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with which he had supposedly reached a rapprochement.

Much of the conflict between Washington and Ankara has focused on whether to establish a buffer zone between Turkey and Syria and, if so, how it might be policed; Erdogan wants the Unites States to establish a no-fly zone, claiming that the two nations have a shared interest in defeating the Baathist regime led by Bashar al-Assad; Obama, however, wants to minimize direct American involvement. Much of the territory that would be in the buffer zone now is home to Kurds. Allowing Turkey to assert hegemony over this region would jump-start a radical demographic shift, eliminating the spirit of Kurdish nationalism in western Kurdistan and undermining efforts to ensure non-Islamist influence within any future Syrian government. Creating a “Turkish belt” above the “Iranian belt” (linking Tehran to Lebanon) would essentially supplant Kurds from land they’ve inhabited for millennia. Kurds would justifiably oppose establishment of settlements by Turkish Turkmen that, along with those built by Arab Baathists, would infiltrate this region with peoples who predictably would harbor fealty to Ankara or Damascus.

‘We’re in a very dangerous period,” former vice president Dick Cheney said in a recent interview, “and I think it’s more threatening than the period before 9/11.” Islamic State terrorists beheading Americans, Iranian mullahs charging up centrifuges, Putin rattling his shasqua — dangerous times, indeed. So naturally the Department of Defense thought Monday an appropriate time to release its “Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap,” which outlines the U.S. military’s plan to fortify itself against the ravages of oncoming climate change.

The “Roadmap” points to climate change’s many potential threats to military operations: Coastal installations could face flooding from rising sea levels; wildfires and increased temperatures could hinder training activities; topographical changes might obstruct supply chains; more intense drought and famine could increase the need for humanitarian assistance; more severe weather might alter battlefield tactics. To confront those challenges, the department will “identity and assess the effects of climate change on the Department,” “integrate climate change considerations across the Department and manage associated risks,” and “collaborate with internal and external stakeholders on climate change challenges.” Whatever any of that means.

The New York Times write-up does its best to prop up the DOD plan by quoting George Washington University professor Marcus King, who claims that climate change might already be wreaking geopolitical havoc. According to King, climate change could be at least partly responsible for the rise of the Islamic State: “Climate change and water shortages may have triggered the drought that caused farmers to relocate to Syrian cities and triggered situations where youth were more susceptible to joining extremist groups.”

Environmental factors certainly influence geopolitics, but it seems fairly apparent that the remedy to the jihadist threat is weapons investment, not hardier seeds.

But the Department of Defense is simply tailoring its mission to mirror that of the president. Even the Times is frank on this point:

Obama’s unfortunate Middle East legacy was predicated on six flawed assumptions:

(1) a special relationship with Turkey;

(2) distancing the U.S. from Israel;

(3) empathy for Islamist governments as exemplified by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt;

(4) a sort of non-aggression agreement with Iran;

(5) expecting his own multicultural fides to resonate in the region;

(6) pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let us examine what has followed.

Obama’s special relationship with Recep Erdogan proved disastrous from the get-go, as Erdogan immediately began to provoke Israel and promote Islamist revolutionaries. Turkey today not only dislikes the U.S., but also poses an existential problem for the West. It is a NATO member that is antithetical to everything NATO stands for: the protection of human rights and constitutional government against the onslaught of aggressive totalitarian regimes. Turkey is now operating like the old Soviet Union in using murderous proxies to enhance its own stature; for example, it finds ISIS useful in whittling down the Kurds. As a rule of thumb, any enemy of Erdogan’s Turkey — Israel, the Kurds, Greek Cyprus, Greece, Egypt — is likely to be far more friendly to the U.S. and NATO than are other nations in the region. If Turkey were attacked by ISIS, Syria, Iran, or the Kurds, would Belgium or Greece send in its youth under NATO’s Article V?

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced a new Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap at the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas in Peru today, saying the Pentagon has “nearly completed a baseline survey to assess the vulnerability” due to global warming of more than 7,000 bases, installations, and other facilities.

The 20-page document details three “broad adaptation goals”: “Identify and assess the effects of climate change on the Deparment,” “integrate climate change considerations across the Department and manage associated risks,” and “collaborate with internal and external stakeholders on climate change challenges.”

“Initial analysis indicates that four primary climate change phenomena are likely to affect the Department’s activities: Rising global temperature, changing precipitation pattern, increasing frequency or intensity of extreme weather events, rising sea levels and associated storm surge,” the report states. “…The changing climate will affect operating environments and may aggravate existing or trigger new risks to U.S. interests.”

The report complies with a 2013 executive order in which President Obama ordered agencies to prepare the U.S. “for the impacts of climate change.”

“Climate change is a ‘threat multiplier’…because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we already confront today from infectious disease to armed insurgencies and to produce new challenges in the future,” Hagel said in his remarks, which touched on organized crime and the illegal migration of minors yet focused on global warming.

“The loss of glaciers will strain water supplies in several areas of our hemisphere. Destruction and devastation from hurricanes can sow the seeds for instability. Droughts and crop failures can leave millions of people without any lifeline, and trigger waves of mass migration,” he said. “We have already seen these events unfold in other regions of the world, and there are worrying signs that climate change will create serious risks to stability in our own hemisphere. Two of the worst droughts in the Americas have occurred in the past ten years…droughts that used to occur once a century.”