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2016

Authentic Rebellion By Eileen F. Toplansky

In almost every venue today, we find that “new slogans, political and social [are] used often with calculated ambiguity. Extreme positions, on the right and on the left, are becoming more and more uncompromising. Moderation is taken for apathy, and patience is looked upon as a pretext for inaction. There is mounting unrest and violence not only among university students but in society at large. The product is a weakening of confidence between young and old, between racial groups, between partisan political factions, between students and administrators, between citizens and government. An individualism of suspicion and distrust is replacing an individualism of opportunity and hope.”

Written almost 50 years ago, the above aptly describes what is assailing America today. In 1968, Philip H. Rhinelander, then a professor of philosophy and humanities at Stanford University, wrote a piece entitled “Education and Society” for The Key Reporter which was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Stanford on June 15, 1968. Rhinelander reminded his audience that they were “dealing with a failure of education” leading to “an increasing doubt in the minds of students as to whether intellectual discipline and rational analysis have any relevance to the solution of the pressing problems of the day.”

One cannot enter a classroom of higher learning today without walking into pitched battles and extreme positioning. University students deride the idea of consensus-building and seek to run administrators out of town. Any student daring to express an opinion different from the politically correct one of the day is frightened into mental subservience, so much so that logical argumentation is in tatters. Aristotle’s classifications of ethos, pathos, and logos rarely make their way into classroom discussions as shouting matches become the rule of the day.

The Key to Combating Radicalization by Michael Armanious

“Young people in the Middle East are less sectarian” than the radicals who currently dominate the news. The way to defeat radical jihadists is to invest in young people and families, so they can choose a “hopeful life over a glorious death.” — U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham.

Given what the perpetrators of violence have been encouraged to believe by leading radical voices in the Muslim community, attacks carried out in the name of Islam should not come as a surprise.

Despite how badly Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi wants to revolutionize the practice of Islam and the country he governs, his government simply lacks the resources necessary to overhaul the country’s educational system to counter the message of hate broadcast by radical imams.

At breakfast recently in Alexandria, Egypt, I struck up a conversation with my waiter, Sherif. He was 25-years-old, about the same age I was when I left Egypt. He had recently graduated from a tourism and hospitality school, just completed his military service and his whole life was in front of him. He said his dream was to become a chef so he could save enough money to marry and start a family. He was willing to work hard for a good life.

Today, the restaurant where Sherif works pays him around 500 Egyptian pounds (less than $64) a month. He spends most of his wages on bus fare commuting back and forth to work from one of the poorest sections of Alexandria. Tips keep him slightly ahead, but during slow times Sherif is forced to borrow money to cover his bus fare.

To make matters worse, the neighborhood in which he lives is a stronghold of the Salafists (also know as Wahhabis), an ultra-conservative Sunni Islam religious movement.

The tsunami of radicalization and the Islamization of Egypt began a few years before I left Egypt in 1979. By the early 1970s, Wahhabism had reached the country, brought there by Egyptians who had been living and working in Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf states.

World Council of Churches Demonizes Israel – Again Does the German Protestant Church Know What It Is Doing? by Thomas Smith

Usually, in regular Lenten services, for seven weeks until Easter, solemn memories of divine mercy on the sinners of the world take center stage for Christians. But not in this liturgy. Center stage was instead given to committing a sin of evil speech: launching a lie about an Israeli-made water shortage suffered by Palestinians. The lie is a sin in which all the member churches of the WCC are invited to participate.

Those leaders of Protestant churches, turned into political propagandists, used the pulpit of Jerusalem unjustly to call upon the Protestant faithful worldwide to listen to Palestinian water libels against the State of Israel.

This liturgy abused the biblical readings as a means of invigorating the equally false Kairos Palestine message, that Israel takes the Land of Palestine and has no right to be where it is.

A close look shows no scientific analysis, neither of water distribution nor of water politics for the territories of Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The Palestinians certainly are experiencing a water crisis; the question is to what extent are they themselves are responsible for it, and to what extent are their own leaders responsible for keeping them as victims for effective international “marketing.”

Obama Administration Plans to Expand Malaria Effort by $200 Million New funding would increase the initiative’s budget to $874 million in fiscal 2017 By Betsy McKay…Please see note

“We’ve come closer than ever to banishing the scourge of malaria from the planet,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice said in a speech Monday outlining the spending plan.”

This statement by Susan Rica is as false as blaming a video for Benghazi. Malaria was largely eliminated in Africa with the use of DDT…the false and destructive muse of false environmentalism, Rachel Carson damned the use of DDT with misleading and poorly researched information in her book “Silent Spring” and doomed three generations of Africans to the agony and devastation of malaria. Read “DDT Should Not Be Banned-This insecticide is critical for controlling a dangerous upsurge in malaria “By John Dyson of Harvard Center for International Development” http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidinthenews/articles/SA_Readers_Digest_1200.html

The Obama administration plans to use an additional $200 million to expand its fight against malaria, expanding services to 70 million more people in Africa and accelerating a global effort to eradicate the disease.

The boost in funding for the President’s Malaria Initiative—which must be approved by Congress for fiscal 2017—would expand malaria prevention and control services to 332 million people in West and Central Africa, or 92% of those at risk there, officials said. The money would also be used to help two countries eliminate malaria: Zambia, where the national government and multiple international organizations have developed a strong program, and Cambodia, an epicenter of emerging resistance by malaria-carrying parasites to antimalarial drugs.

The new funding—$129 million of which the administration said would come from unspent Ebola emergency-response funds—would increase the initiative’s budget to $874 million in fiscal 2017. The initiative would use the funds to bring its services to three new countries—Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Cameroon—and to expand existing services in Burkina Faso, said a senior U.S. Agency for International Development official. READ MORE AT SITE

In Defense of Snooping -Critics charged that Stellarwind was nearly worthless as an intelligence tool. Hayden has no doubts about the program’s effectiveness. Gabriel Schoenfeld

http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-defense-of-snooping-1456184621 EXCERPTS FOR FULL REVIEW GO TO SITE

“Playing to the Edge” offers a full excursion through the contemporary challenges facing American intelligence, including cyber warfare, Russian aggression, and armed conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it also presents an intimate personal portrait—an account of how its author came to be the man he is, someone who entered the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps while in college in the late 1960s, who reveres his hometown of Pittsburgh (and its Steelers), and who prays weekly in church for the souls of his twin sisters, who died at birth when he was a boy of 10.

The lesson that Gen. Hayden takes from the Syrian affair is sobering. “We chalked this one up as intelligence success, after a fashion,” he writes. But he strongly intimates that it was really Israel’s success—and America’s failure. More broadly, he says, Syrian behavior “went beyond our understanding.” Extrapolating from this mixed record, Gen Hayden is pessimistic that American intelligence will fare well in tracking covert Iranian nuclear activity. If his pessimism is well-founded—and there are few people more qualified to judge—the surprise we experienced on 9/11 may be a prelude to a catastrophe of far greater dimensions.

The Trumpkins’ Lament Where was Mark Levin when Trump was still a big bubble waiting to be popped? Bret Stephens

“It’s a lucky thing for conservatives that the likeliest alternative to Mr. Trump for the nomination is the very “establishment Republican” Marco Rubio, the non-jerk of the season who could actually win in November. Too bad his task will be that much harder thanks to the ideological drunks who, when they knew better, cheered the Donald on.”

I thought of Mr. Murphy’s make-believe drunks while listening to Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin inveigh against Donald Trump following the Republican debate in South Carolina. The Donald had yet again noted that 9/11 had happened on George W. Bush’s watch, adding for good measure that the 43rd president had lied America into war with Iraq.

Donald Trump “sounded like any average host on MSNBC,” marveled Mr. Limbaugh, who was equally aghast that Mr. Trump had defended “Planned Parenthood in language used by the left.”

Mr. Levin was even blunter: “He sounds like a radical kook,” the radio host thundered to his seven million listeners. “To have the leading Republican nominee for president of the United States to make these kinds of statements—and he’s been praised by Code Pink. He should be praised by Code Pink and every left-wing kook organization that hates America. To have him praised for what he said? Terrible. Absolutely terrible.”

It is terrible. So where were Messrs. Limbaugh and Levin last summer, when the Trump candidacy was still a big soap bubble, waiting to be popped by the likes of them? READ ENTIRE COLUMN AT SITE

Syria: Increasing Danger of EscalationBy:Srdja Trifkovic

In the days and weeks ahead President Obama will face an important decision: whether to allow the conflict in Syria to escalate by approving Turkey’s and Saudi Arabia’s direct intervention, or to come to terms with the continued survival and expanding area of control of the government of Bashar al-Assad. Informed commentators note that this may be the most significant foreign policy decision the President will have to make after seven years in office:

With the Russian-backed Syrian army encircling Aleppo, cutting off Turkish supplies to rebels and advancing on the Islamic State’s capital of Raqqa, a panicked Saudi Arabia and Turkey have set up a joint headquarters to direct an invasion of Syria that could lead to a vast escalation of the war. And there’s only one man who could stop them: President Barack Obama.
The stakes are high: a Turkish-Saudi invasion would risk direct confrontation not only between their own ground forces and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) of the government in Damascus, but also—more significantly—between Russia and NATO, since Turkey is a member of the alliance. The known unknown is whether Washington has the clout to stop its “allies” in Ankara and Riyadh from presenting the U.S. with a fait accompli.

Anti-Israel Protester Threatens Palestinian Activist During College Lecture

Anti-Israel protesters confronted and threatened a Palestinian human rights activist who was critical of the Palestinian Authority while lecturing at the University of Chicago, reports Algemeiner.

Bassem Eid, founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, was confronted by hostile protesters last week. They challenged him for speaking of PA human rights abuses without referencing Israel’s “occupation,” according to a post Eid shared on his Facebook page.

A former student at Chicago’s Columbia College who claimed he was from Gaza threatened Eid physically.

A video shows the man yelling threats in Arabic including: “I’m going to destroy this place!”, “I’m going to kill this mother****!” and “Wait until you go to your car!”

Eid previously worked as an investigator for B’Tselem, a human rights organization which often is critical of the Israeli military. His turn to criticizing Palestinian rejectionism and human rights abuses angered anti-Israel activists.

Europe’s Civil War By Herbert London

Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research

The civil war has begun. This is not a war recognized by European leaders. In fact, they deny it exists. But the evidence is now overwhelming. Europeans want to take their countries back from foreign invaders who are often criminals.

After reports circulated that Muslim gangs had taken over Stockholm Central Station, two hundred Swedish patriots wearing masks descended on the area using force to remove Muslim terrorists. They have decided that men of good faith should fight to take their country back. The police have been instructed to remain silent in the face of evil, handcuffed by politically correct local and national leaders.

The silence is deafening. As one of the vigilantes put it, “enough is enough.” Each day Swedes awaken to reports of murder, robberies and abuse. Sweden is now known as the rape capital of the world. The country has been forced to endure countless crimes in which perpetrators escape punishment through a fear of being labelled Islamophobic or assailants who claim to be underage with no papers to demonstrate otherwise.

There is even the charge that in Mölndal the national chief of police chooses to show greater sympathy for the criminals than the victims. There is an ingrained spinelessness that has affected politicians and the judiciary system and a media that is complicit. When the streets are not safe, it is understandable that a portion of the population will react.

Sweden is not alone. Germans of Russian descent attacked Muslims over the alleged rape of a 13 year old girl which turned out to be a fabricated story. Using baseball bats, they battered Muslim gangs who were thought to be involved in this crime. The Russian Foreign Minister seemingly gave his approval to the vigilantes. But the German police services continued to keep its head in the sand, pretending that these incidents hadn’t occurred.

Two years ago the British Daily Mail reported hundreds of white girls used as prostitutes, rape victims and sex slaves by Muslim men, who government authorities refer to as “Asians.” What has not been reported is the blow-back with home grown British men taking the law into their own hands. A culture of silence and acquiescence may have allowed the criminality, but a large part of the public is in active rebellion, a rebellion across the continent.

Amit Halevy A great god and small knives

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=15325
A great god and small knives

The “lone-wolf terrorist” phenomenon should not come as a surprise to the defense apparatus. It’s an exact implementation of the obligation of Muslim believers in an age when political Islam is reawakening.

A decade ago, Abu Moussab a-Suri — who would become the strategist for the Islamic State group — wrote “The Call for Global Islamic Resistance,” a 1,600-page document that called on all believers to upgrade their jihad tools to G3.

According to a-Suri, the first generation was resistance organized in specific territory, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, which despite its partial successes, turned out to be untenable when facing the armies of the West. Even the second generation — organization without territory, like al-Qaida — has had difficulty ever since its cross-border success on 9/11 in combating the technological intelligence methods activated against it. The alternative is a war fought by crowds of individuals motivated solely by commandments and faith. This is G3: Nizam la Tanzim (“The School of Individual Jihad”). Non-organized, and with no territory. Anyone, using any method, at any time.

This is not only a new tactic, it’s the fulfillment of the Islamic dream. The G3 jihad has no organization and no hierarchy, no funds and no international training camps.

But they’re not necessary. The only thing that sets the act in motion is a divine command, which contains three main principles: The first is loyalty to the Islamic nation, rather than to the family or a tribe. This turns every individual into a soldier in the service of the nation. The second principle is universality: the only border recognized in Islam is that between Dar al-Islam (“the House of Islam,” the lands where Islam rules) and Dar al-Harb (“the House of War,” where Islam does not rule). This jihad brings the globe back to its original Muslim definition, “a House of War,” which is destined to continue until Shariah law is applied to all of it. The third principle is an update from the Muslim Brotherhood school — that murderous jihad is not just the obligation of the public as a whole but also of every individual.

In the Muslim world, there is a debate about timing, about the good of the nation. And there is a battle between Sunni and Shiite, between the different groups fighting for local rule or rule of the entire caliphate.

But this religious ideology is a common denominator and what motivates them all, so it’s the enemy we find ourselves facing.

That conclusion makes us uncomfortable. We hoped that we had left ideological wars behind in the last century. We trusted the prophecy of Fukuyama in “The End of History,” but the religiosity of the G3 Muslims is not satisfied with the modern conveniences and individual freedom that prophecy ushered in, and we should acknowledge that. We should treat these aspects of Muslim ideology as we treated other ideologies that threatened the free world not so long ago. We must remove it from the concept of freedom of religion and invalidate all activity related to it and its dissemination — certainly that which condemns the principles of humanism or national sovereignty.

Victory is conditional upon knowing the enemy. When they stop searching for “inciters” in Western terms and reject the ideology itself, we can do it. The public discussion of Balad MKs meeting with the families of “mujahedeen” (“jihadis”) and the fuss about broadcaster Razi Barkai’s sensitivity toward their mothers are the result of the mistaken conception of Islam. A moral society must take action, not out of blood lust or an explosion of nerves, but rather as a justified, vital war against parts of an ideology that threaten all of humanity.

Amit Halevi is the executive director of the Jewish Statesmanship Center in Jerusalem.