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2016

The “Virtuous” New Nazis by Giulio Meotti

Instead of worrying about Islamist terrorism and Molenbeek, Brussels’ nest of jihadists, there are racists in Europe who want to crush Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

They all falsely claim to be a “peaceful”, using “economic means” to correct “wrongs” in the Palestinian territories. However, they never seem to try to correct any of the wrongs of the corrupt, repressive governments of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, or even to advocate there for a free press, for the rule of law or for building a stable economy. Their true, racist motives are unmasked.

The pre- or post-1967 lines are only an alibi for these new Nazis. Many consider Israel in its entirety illegal, immoral, or both — even though Jews have lived on that land for 3,000 years — part of it is even called Judea. Their appetite for accusing Jews of having the audacity to “occupy” their own historical, Biblical land only reveals their collusion the darkest lies of Islamic extremists, who are trying to destroy the indigenous Christian Copts in their native land of Egypt, and the indigenous Assyrian Christians whom we see being slaughtered throughout the Middle East. Should the French be accused of “occupying” Gaul? Just look at any map of “Palestine,” which blankets the entire state of Israel: to many Palestinians, all of Israel is a single giant settlement that has to be dismantled.

Meet the packs of new Nazis, posing as Righteousness and Virtue, pursuing new exterminationist policies against Israel and, right after that, the Jews.

“In Nazi Germany,” noted Brendan O’Neill in the Wall Street Journal, “it was all the rage to make one’s town Judenfrei.”

“Now a new fashion is sweeping Europe: to make one’s town or city what we might call ‘Zionistfrei’ — free of the products and culture of the Jewish state. Across the Continent, cities and towns are declaring themselves ‘Israel-free zones,’ insulating their citizens from Israeli produce and culture. It has ugly echoes of what happened 70 years ago.”

The Nazis said “kauft nicht bei Juden”: do not buy from Jews. The slogan of these new racists is “kauft nicht beim Judenstaat”: do not buy from the Jewish State. The Nazis repeated “Geh nach Palästina, du Jud”: Go to Palestine, you Jew. Racists in Europe shout “Jews out of Palestine!”

Let us take a look at who they are. The city council of Leicester, for one, recently approved banning products “made in Israel.” Think of that: a city without Israeli products. This is not Nazi Germany in 1933; this is a British city under Labour leadership in 2016. Two Welsh councils, Swansea and Gwynedd, blocked commercial partnerships with Israeli companies. In Dublin, a well-known restaurant, Exchequer, decided not to use the Israeli products. The Irish town of Kinvara became “Israel-free”. In Spain, the town of Villanueva de Duero no longer distributes Israeli water in its public buildings. The French city of Lille froze an agreement with the Israeli town of Safed.

PRESUMED TO BE DUMB, BRENNAN NOW PROVES IT

CIA Director: Terrorism a ‘Distorted Interpretation of Various Religious Faiths’ By Bridget Johnson

WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Brennan said this week that terrorist groups “have been unfortunately successful in attracting individuals to their distorted ideology and distorted interpretation of various religious faiths” largely due to lacking political and economic reforms in many countries.

“There are a lot, a lot of opportunities for these terrorist groups to capitalize on those problems and issues. To me, I’d like to think that, you know, the United States has demonstrated, through the course of time, that we take very seriously the obligation and responsibilities that go along with what I refer to as American exceptionalism,” Brennan said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum Wednesday marking the 10th anniversary of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

“My definition of American exceptionalism may be different than others,” he added. “I don’t think that we as people are better than others. I think that we as a country, though, have been tremendously fortunate and blessed to have the resources, the people, we’re the world’s melting pot. We are, without a doubt, the world’s superpower.”

Brennan said he wished the U.S. had “that magic wand” to resolve issues like the Syrian war.

“And despite the challenges that we still face there, good on the United States for trying… Unfortunately, there are individuals who opt for violence and militarism as a way to push forward their agendas and to try to achieve their aims, again, which are perversions of religious faiths.”

The CIA chief said President Obama is an “exceptionally quick study” and “would always want to be asking questions about what it is that we know and with a lawyer’s mind” during presidential briefings.

At the moderator’s urging, Brennan reflected on “Underwear Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to down a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Leon Panetta was in charge of the agency at the time; Brennan was Obama’s homeland security advisor.

“I can vividly recall getting the call at home at about, I forget what it was, maybe noon or 11:00 on Christmas Day when I was preparing the Christmas dinner for my family,” Brennan said. “And all of a sudden we found out that somebody — somebody’s underwear was on fire on a plane in Detroit and there may be something to this.”

Israel Suffers Four Attacks in 24 Hours Palestinian shot dead after stabbing Israeli soldier in Hebron By Rory Jones

TEL AVIV—A knife-wielding Palestinian assailant stabbed an Israeli soldier before being shot dead by security forces in the West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday, the military said, the fourth attack against Israelis in less than 24 hours.

The soldier was taken to the hospital.

Two Palestinians and a Jordanian were also killed on Friday by Israeli forces after launching separate knife and car-ramming attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers, the country’s police and army said.
The bevy of attacks revived a wave of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed that began last September but had tapered off in recent months as Israel heightened security and Palestinian leaders called for their youth to shun violence.

A Palestinian assailant stabbed an Israeli soldier on Friday afternoon at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron before being killed, Israel’s military said. The soldier was evacuated to the hospital, it added.

Hours earlier in the nearby Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, two Palestinians rammed their car into a bus stop full of Israeli settlers, injuring three people, the army said.

Israeli soldiers then fired on the car, killing one assailant and wounding the other, it said.

A knife-wielding Jordanian citizen also on Friday attacked Israeli police near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City before being killed, a police spokeswoman said. It wasn’t clear why the man was in Israel and an investigation had been launched, police said.

Over the past year, Palestinians have launched more than 300 attacks against Israelis, killing 40 people and wounding more than 500, according to Israeli officials.

Some 200 Palestinians have also been killed by Israeli forces, most after attacks against Israelis, according to Palestinian officials.

The violence had slowed since July, when Israel imposed military and financial restrictions on the Palestinian West Bank after a series of bloody attacks on Jewish settlers in the territory.

Trump and the Translators A chance to prove his policy is not anti-Muslim but anti-jihad.

At the recent commander-in-chief forum, a woman asked Donald Trump whether he would let an undocumented worker who wanted to serve in the armed forces stay in the U.S. His answer probably wasn’t what people expected. “I think that when you serve in the armed forces, that’s a very special situation,” Mr. Trump said, “and I could see myself working that out, absolutely.”

Thanks to the Obama Administration and Congressional Republicans, the GOP candidate now also has a chance to show common sense on the matter of Muslims. At issue is a special visa program that expires Oct. 1 for foreign translators who served honorably with U.S. troops, the State Department or agencies such as the FBI—and whose lives are now in danger because of that service.

These visas are meant for folks such as Janis Shinwari, who in April 2008 was attached to a U.S. Army unit in Ghazni province when it was ambushed and Lieutenant Matt Zeller was blown into a ditch by an enemy mortar. Two Taliban were about to kill him, Mr. Zeller says, when his interpreter, Mr. Shinwari, shot them dead. Mr. Zeller says he knows at least four other Americans whose lives Mr. Shinwari saved.

The danger these former translators face is real. Last year Sakhidad Afghan, an interpreter for the U.S. military, was hunted down by the Taliban, tortured and executed. He had been waiting years for a special visa.

Congress should have extended the program for a year this spring, but it got caught in domestic politics. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said the visas are an immigration measure under his jurisdiction. He says he supports the program but also says we need “reasonable limits.” The final House language allocated no new visas and narrowed the criteria for eligibility.

Utah’s Mike Lee held up the bill in the Senate to make an unrelated point, so the provision never got a vote. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has come out publicly for letting the program expire. That means these visas are in limbo as Congress tries to complete a defense bill before Members head home for the election.

The leaders who should be loudly calling on Congress to keep this program going—President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—have been silent. Meanwhile, Messrs. Goodlatte and Sessions are effectively strangling the measure.

Get Your Children Good and Dirty Researchers are discovering how crucial microbes are to our health and to avoiding a range of newly common diseases. So it’s time to get dirty, eat better and stop overusing antibiotics By B. Brett Finlay and Marie-Claire Arrieta

Dr. Finlay is a microbiologist specializing in bacterial infections and the Peter Wall Distinguished Professor at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Arrieta is an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Calgary. This essay is adapted from their new book, “Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child From an Oversanitized World,” published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Our friend Julia moved to a small free-range pig and poultry farm when her first child, Jedd, was a preschooler. When her second baby was born, she would strap him on her back every morning so that she could go to the chicken coop to pick up eggs. Jedd would chase and ride the chickens—and sometimes taste their feed and touch the fresh eggs. A couple of times, she even caught him chewing on something he had picked up from the ground.

At first, all of this caused Julia to freak out. But once she realized that Jedd wasn’t getting sick from these encounters with the chickens, she relaxed a bit. Her second child, Jacob, soon followed suit and never hesitated to get dirty on the farm. She once found him knee-deep in a cesspool of pig waste. Her early worries that her children were going to contract diseases from all this messiness dissipated, and she was pleased to see that they remained healthy.

Was Julia being an irresponsible parent—or might we all have something to learn from her example?

For most of the past century, we have considered microbes bad news, and for good reason: They cause disease, pandemics and death. Most human communities have experienced the benefits of medical advances like antibiotics, vaccines and sterilization, which have radically reduced the number and severity of infections that we suffer throughout life. Dying from a microbial infection is now a very rare event in the Western world, and, in the U.S., lifespans have increased by some 30 years since 1915—in large part because of success against infectious diseases.

Unfortunately, this progress has come with a price, as news reports have been telling us for some years now. Our anti-microbe mission has been accompanied, in industrialized countries, by an explosion in the prevalence of chronic noninfectious diseases and disorders. Diabetes, allergies, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases, autoimmune diseases, autism, obesity and certain types of cancer are at an all-time high. The incidence of some of these disorders is doubling every 10 years, and they are starting to appear sooner in life, often in childhood.

All of these diseases have a genetic component, but their alarming growth cannot be explained by genetics alone. Recent studies find a direct link between the presence and absence of certain bacteria and all of the chronic diseases mentioned above. It turns out that the microbes within us are much more than quiet residents; they are an inherent part of our physiology, and altering them leads to disease.

Our own 2015 study (published in the journal Science Translational Medicine) found, for example, that 3-month-olds who had four particular microbes in their feces were much less likely to get asthma later in life. When those four microbes were introduced into mice, they protected against experimentally induced asthma, showing for the first time that alterations in gut microbes can drive the development of the disease. Lab experiments also have found that obese mice lose weight when they get a transfer of gut microbes from lean mice (and the reverse holds true as well, with lean mice growing fat after a transfer from obese mice).

The practical upshot of all this research is clear: Our health depends to a large degree on maintaining a robust and diverse community of microorganisms in our bodies—and establishing good gut-health as children is especially important.
During the first few months of life, the microbe community in our bodies is considerably less established and stable than later in life. Any drastic changes to it have a much higher chance of permanently altering our microbiota (as specialists call this world of tiny organisms within us) and our long-term health.

From the moment we are born, we begin getting colonized by bacteria, which kick-start a series of fundamental biological processes, including the development of our immune system. Before birth, the lining of our gut is full of immature immune cells. When bacteria move in, the immune cells react to them, changing and multiplying. They even move to other parts of the body to train other cells with the information they have acquired from these intruders. If deprived of this interaction, the immune system remains sloppy and immature, unable to fight off diseases properly.
Never before in human history have babies and children grown up so cleanly.

Scientists haven’t figured out exactly how microbes do this at the molecular level, but we do know that most bacteria will teach these immune cells to tolerate them, whereas some bacteria—the pathogens that cause diseases—prompt strong resistance. The result is to make the intestine a relatively controlled and harmonious place.

Another fundamental function of microbes is to aid in the regulation of our metabolism. Like other animals, humans obtain energy from food that is digested and absorbed in the intestines. Besides helping us digest certain foods that the intestines can’t handle on their own, bacteria produce compounds that help to define how we use or store energy in our bodies. New research also shows that our microbiota plays an important role in neurological development and even in the health of our blood vessels.

Such discoveries have led scientists to call our microbiota a “new organ,” perhaps the last human organ to be discovered by modern medicine. Most of this knowledge is still relatively new and many pieces of the puzzle remain unsolved, but protecting the initial developmental stages of our microbiota clearly has a significant impact on our health.

Inflammatory diseases (such as asthma, allergies and inflammatory bowel disease) and metabolic diseases (such as obesity and diabetes) are characterized by alterations in our immune system and our metabolic regulation. Knowing what we do now about the role of the microbiota, it is not surprising that these diseases are being diagnosed in more children. They are, to a great extent, a consequence of relatively recent changes in our lifestyle—modern diet, oversanitization, excessive use of antibiotics—that have altered the specific microbes that affect our metabolism early on. We urgently need to find ways to modify our behavior so that our microbes can function properly.

Never before in human history have babies and children grown up so cleanly, and our diets have lost many of the elements most crucial to the health of our guts. We have become very bad hosts to our microbes.

Cultural Appropriation: What Is It? How Activists Use It in Identity Politics By Charles Lipson

“Cultural Appropriation” is a common term among intellectuals–and a political strategy used by ethnic- and racial-identity groups on the left. It deserves to be understood so it can be called-out as a political strategy that undermines the essential commonality and cross-borrowings of American culture. Ours is a culture that, at its best, incorporates, borrows, and transforms from the multiple groups within it. That’s why tacos and pizzas are now regular features of American food.

In ZipDialog’s Daily Roundup of News Beyond the Headlines, I featured a fiction writer Lionel Shriver, who shreds the academic conceit of “cultural appropriation” and the “clamorous world of identity politics” which gave birth to it. Shriver’s essay ends with her declaration, “The last thing we fiction writers need is restrictions on what belongs to us.”

The issue is so central to identity politics, though, it deserves a separate post to explain what “cultural appropriation” is and how it works.standard-shaming-strategy-for-cultural-appropriation

You are classified as a member of a group, say, transgender, Mexican-American, or fat. Your group membership should then dominate your self-conception, at least politically.
Your group deems itself oppressed, or rather its most vocal, politicized members say the group and all of its members are. They use this group identity and its oppressed status as tools for political mobilization. The key is for most members of the group to accept this putative group identity and its oppressed status as dominant (indeed, unquestioned) characteristics of their personal identity.
Having organized and mobilized the oppressed group, you identify the oppressors who are responsible for all the group’s misfortunes and attack them. Oppressors can only attain absolution (the secular equivalent of salvation) by supporting the goals and actions of the oppressed group. Those goals and actions should never be questioned by the oppressor group or reshaped by them.west-side-story
A key element of your attack: Only your own group has the moral right to depict its own experiences, to write about them, paint them, or use their music. All others are shamed if they try to do so, especially anyone deemed to be from the “oppressor class.” Those people are “appropriating your culture.” Shame on them.

It takes a Judas to know one :Ruthie Blum

On Tuesday night, the person touted as “Israel’s most famous living author” appeared on the BBC to promote his latest book. In the course of his interview with “Newsnight” host Kirsty Wark, Amos Oz engaged in his second favorite activity (after receiving international awards and having his novels turned into movies starring the likes of Natalie Portman): He slammed the nation of his birth, which turned him into a cultural icon.

To be fair to Oz, bashing the Jewish state that he represents with such panache is key to his success abroad. Talent is a factor, of course, but it is neither sufficient nor a prerequisite to inspiring adoration among the literati and political elites.

Indeed, had he not been the darling of the Left, the odds are slim that Oz would have been invited by the U.K. network to discuss “Judas,” his take on the famous traitor whose story constituted the “Chernobyl of Western anti-Semitism for 2,000 years,” and the basis for “pogroms, inquisitions, persecutions and the Holocaust.”

From the BBC’s point of view, having Israel’s crowned jewel provide a stamp of approval for its own dim view of the Jewish state is an opportunity not to be missed or squandered. Nor does any topic segue better into what Wark was really after than “persecution.”

With virtuosity born of brilliance, Oz managed to go above and beyond the call of duty — “defending” his homeland by likening it to the worst of evil regimes.

“If people call Israel ‘nasty,’ I to some degree agree,” he said. “If people call Israel the ‘devil incarnate,’ I think they are obsessed; they are mad. But this is still legitimate. But if they carry on saying that therefore there should be no Israel, that’s where anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism, because none of them ever said after Hitler that Germany should cease to exist, or after Stalin that there should be no Russia.”

Oz pulled a similar stunt when explaining his opposition to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. It is wrong, he said, “because it hardens the Israeli resistance, and deepens the Israeli paranoia that the whole world is [and] always has been against us [as if to say]: ‘They [the boycotters] don’t even discriminate between one Israeli and the next; they boycott all of us, and whatever we do, they are going to hate us, so let’s be bad guys for a change.'”

Furthermore, he added, just because boycotts were effective in the case of South Africa, “you have to be very stupid to think the prescription — the medicine — that worked very well against cholera will also kill the plague. This is a kind of mental laziness.”

DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS COLLIS OF ARABIA

BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO SAUDI ARABIA COMPLETES HAJJ PILGRIMAGE AFTER CONVERTING TO ISLAM

British ambassador to Saudi Arabia completes Hajj pilgrimage after converting to Islam
By Raf Sanchez
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/15/british-ambassador-to-saudi-arabia-completes-hajj-pilgrimage-aft/

Britain’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia has been inundated with congratulations from across the Islamic world after it emerged that he converted to Islam and carried out the first Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca ever performed by a senior UK diplomat.

The conversion of Simon Collis, the UK envoy to Riyadh, became public after pictures posted on Twitter showed him and his wife Huda wearing the traditional white garments of Muslim pilgrims in front of the British consulate in Mecca.

The 60-year-old diplomat, who speaks fluent Arabic, confirmed the news in response to messages on Twitter.

“God bless you. In brief: I converted to Islam after 30 years of living in Muslim societies and before marrying Huda,” he wrote.

The news led to a wave of online congratulations from Saudi Arabia and across the Islamic world, with many Muslims saluting Mr Collis as “Haji Simon” using the title reserved for those who make the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Mr Collis converted in 2011 shortly before marrying his wife, who is Syrian. While his conversion was known to some fellow diplomats it was not public knowledge in Riyadh.

The Foreign Office declined to comment, saying Mr Collis’s religion was a personal matter.

While Mr Collis acknowledged many of the congratulatory messages coming in on Twitter, he declined interviews about his faith.

Military aid deal fits Obama’s pattern by Richard Baehr

The United States and Israel have signed a deal that will provide $38 billion in foreign aid for Israel, all of it for defense spending, over a 10-year period beginning in 2017.

This averages out to $3.8 billion per year, which is about $700 million more annually than the $3.1 billion per year Israel received before the deal was signed.

The new agreement includes foreign aid appropriation for the first time, funds for missile defense, which in recent years was an additional appropriation of approximately $500 million, made by Congress on an annual basis. In total, the agreement seems to provide Israel with $200 million more per year, $3.8 billion versus $3.6 billion. It turns out that as the discussions between Israel and the U.S. were taking place, Congress had decided to appropriate $3.4 billion of regular foreign aid, plus an additional $600 million for missile defense in 2017, or $4 billion in total, $200 million higher than the level for 2017 and later years within the framework of the new memorandum of understanding.

The new deal contains a few provisions that are unique and certainly new in the history of U.S. military aid to Israel. One provision the Americans fought hard for was that all of the money allocated to Israel must be spent in the United States. The shift to 100% spending in the U.S. will be gradual: Under the current understanding, Israel was able to convert some 26% of the funds into shekels, to be used for procurement in Israel. Starting in the sixth year, however, that percentage will gradually decline, until by the 10th year Israel will have to spend all the funds in the U.S.

Israel’s chief negotiator, Jacob Nagel, said that if under the current memorandum of understanding some $7.8 billion could be spent in Israel, under the new understanding that number will drop to $5.6 billion. He stressed, however, that this will occur gradually, and that the defense establishment will continue to receive roughly the same amount of money from the U.S. that it has received up to now until 2026, which will give it plenty of time to prepare for the new reality.

The most remarkable provision in the new agreement concerns the limitations on Congress to appropriate any more money for Israel. Congress has the power of the purse, and the president can not send money to any country for foreign aid that Congress does not provide. The new agreement, however, requires Israel to refuse any additional funds that Congress might choose to appropriate for Israel in 2017 and 2018, beyond the memorandum of understanding limit of $3.8 billion per year.

Bloomberg columnist Josh Rogin argues that the limitation is unprecedented: “In an unprecedented arrangement, the White House and the Israeli government have found a way to prevent Congress from increasing U.S. aid for 2017 and 2018. The Israeli government has pledged to return any money given by Congress above the memorandum of understanding levels for those two years.”

The agreement does not provide such “reimbursement of the excess” language for the following eight years, but such a concept for even two years is not sitting well with some members of Congress, who see it as an attempt to shift power from Congress to the White House. If, for instance, Israel were to be drawn into another war with Hezbollah or Hamas in the next two years, Congress would almost certainly seek to provide the assistance Israel might require, beyond the current commitment, particularly for missile defense. The memorandum of understanding allows Israel to ask for more in the event of war, but the definition of a war could become an issue.

In general, there is more bipartisanship in Congress on spending money to help Israel than almost anything else on its table these days. Other issues concerning Israel have, by and large, also been historically bipartisan. Meanwhile, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was unanimously rejected by Republicans and endorsed by 85% of Democrats, a quarter of whom boycotted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress, including Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s current running mate. It is unclear whether opposition to the two-year give-back provision will be one that members of both parties fight, or just the Republicans. One might think that a president pressuring an Israeli prime minister to refuse to accept financial support for his country’s military from Congress, which historically has been more consistently supportive of the U.S.-Israel relationship than the White House), would draw a sharp rebuke from members from both parties.

Strategic Lessons of Clinton’s Health Crisis By: Srdja Trifkovic |

According to Hillary Clinton’s campaign talking points, she wanted to “power through” her pneumonia; but after that “overheating episode” on September 11 it “seemed like the smart thing to do” to take some downtime. According to Politico.com, which obtained the document, “those phrases, projecting strength, prudence, and vigor, were among the six bullet-pointed talking points about Clinton’s health the campaign distributed to its army of outside surrogates Tuesday morning.” They were part of the “Daily Message Guidance” from her Brooklyn headquarters:

To anyone who knows Hillary, it does not come as much of a surprise that even when she’s under the weather, she would want to power through her normal schedule . . . This is the Hillary Clinton America saw as secretary of state: someone who traveled the world at a breakneck pace, tirelessly representing America abroad . . . [She] has more than met the standard set four years ago by President Obama and Mitt Romney in terms of disclosing details about her health.

The implications of this episode for the potential commander-in-chief are dire. When faced with a sudden challenge (in this case pneumonia diagnosed on September 9, assuming that was indeed the real problem), an able strategist will make an assessment that will consider likely costs and benefits of any given course of action. To “power through” was an irrational decision discretely made by Mrs. Clinton, without prior consultation with her advisors (who were apparently kept in the dark) and contrary to expert advice (her doctor had advised immediate rest). It was a high-risk course which reflected Mrs. Clinton’s preference for the possibility of strategically perilous outcome (her Sunday collapse and the ensuing legitimization of questions about her health) rather than the acceptance of tactical defeat which would have entailed payment of limited price (full disclosure of the facts of the case, taking a few days off right away).

There are numerous parallels in history, mostly alarming or outright disastrous. Two will suffice to illustrate the problem. “Powering through” is the secular, New Age-motivational equivalent of “God will provide,” which was Philip II’s standard response to the warnings that Spain was overextended in its military-political commitments—against England, France, the Netherlands, the Ottomans. Towards the end of his reign, to pleas from the Cortes of Castille that the burden was no longer bearable, he replied that “they should and must put their trust in me… [T]hey are never, on any pretext, to come to me with such a suggestion again.” But in the end it turned out that God was not Spanish, and therefore Spain was doomed to failure. His messianic imperialism prompted him to power through against reason and prudence, and after 1588, for all the money and men deployed, “and for all the prayers and devotions offered, the strategic miracles ceased.”