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December 2017

Islamist Regimes Take Over UNESCO by Giulio Meotti

The UN agency is currently dominated by the most oppressive regimes on education and culture. There is China, which recently let writer, poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo die an agonizing death in prison, where he was serving an 11-year jail sentence for his support of human rights and democracy. Then there is Iran, where a dean of journalism, Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide to avoid more persecution by the regime.

“UNESCO has been hijacked and abused as a tool for the persecution of Israel and the Jewish people, while concocting fake facts and fake history, meant to… rewrite global history.” — Carmel Shama Hacohen, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO.

If UNESCO is really serious about reforming itself, it should immediately issue a statement against the Islamization of Turkey’s Hagia Sophia Cathedral, a UN World Heritage Site.

Hit by the departure of the United States and Israel, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recently welcomed its new Director-General, former French Minister of Culture Audrey Azoulay. Those who care about cultural diversity and Western civilization hailed her election, because the representative of Qatar’s Islamist regime had come close to winning UNESCO’s leadership race. But the real problem is that UNESCO has been abandoned to Islamist dictatorships. A battle to save the organization has begun.

Among the critics of UNESCO there is a tendency to dismiss this agency as “irrelevant”. Yet, so long as UNESCO exists, the West cannot allow repressive regimes to dominate the world’s highest body supposedly in charge of culture, science and education. Richard Hoggart, the British scholar who served as UNESCO’s assistant director general from 1970 to 1977, once asked: “Should Unesco Survive?”.

The UN agency is currently dominated by the most oppressive regimes in regard to education and culture. There is China, which in July let writer, poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo die an agonizing death in prison, where he was serving an 11-year jail sentence for his support of human rights and democracy. Then there is Iran, where a dean of journalism, Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide to avoid more persecution by the regime. Last week, the assistant director for Education of UNESCO, Qian Tang, was in Iran to advance “cultural cooperation” with the Islamic Republic, but the issue of cultural freedom in the Iran was not even raised by the envoy of the UN agency. There is also Pakistan, a country that has sentenced to death essentially for being a Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, whose condition has never even been questioned by UNESCO. There is Qatar, where a poet, Rashid at Ajami, was sentenced to three years in prison for a poem critical of the emir Hamad bin Khalifa at Thani.

ISIS Zeroes in on ‘Catastrophic’ New Year’s Eve Plot ‘Where Christians Meet’ By Bridget Johnson

The Islamic State notably highlighted an Australian New Year’s Eve terror plot in their weekly newsletter, noting that the would-be attacker would have caused “catastrophic” casualties in “one of the most important centers where Christians meet” to ring in the holiday.

The focus on New Year’s by an official ISIS publication follows several Christmas threats circulated by ISIS supporters.

Ali Khalif Shire Ali, 20, of Werribee was arrested Nov. 27 in southwest Melbourne and charged with preparing to commit a terrorist attack and gathering documents to facilitate a terrorist act.

According to police, the Australian citizen and computer company employee started planning an attack back in March and was arrested when he moved to the stage of face-to-face meetings about acquiring a gun. His intended target was reportedly Melbourne’s Federation Square when it would be packed with New Year’s Eve revelers.

Police said he was using attack instructional guides produced by al-Qaeda. He had been under scrutiny by counter-terrorism officials for at least two years, though did not attend a specific mosque.

“This is a person who would become particularly energized, for a lack of a better word, when overseas events occurred and would express a great deal of interest in committing an attack himself,” Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said. “…This is a person who’s expressed an intention to try and kill as many people as he could through shooting them in the Federation Square area on New Year’s Eve. Horrendous.”

Just a few days after his arrest, in ISIS’ weekly al-Naba newsletter, the Aussie arrest was included in the terror group’s news briefs — a section where they’ve previously updated ISIS followers on the Las Vegas mass shooting and California wildfires.

The ISIS article noted that “the young man” was planning “to carry out a major attack on a gathering of Christian communities to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Melbourne.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Polar bears all over the place now, Native Alaskans say By Monica Showalter

To climate change fanatics, polar bears are the eye candy for the worldwide call for action on global warming. There have been news reports about the sad shape they are in, with their coats going brown, their food supplies drying up, and their ice floes melting. Conclusion: The bears are set to starve.

Welp, turns out there are too many of them now.

According to Marc Morano’s Climate Depot:

2 New Papers: 92% Of Polar Bear Subpopulations Stable, Increasing – Inuit Observe ‘Too Many Polar Bears Now’

…and…

Inuit observations of polar bear ecology: “Last year he said that there’s more bears that are more fat … they rarely see unhealthy bears… back in early 80s, and mid 90s, there were hardly any bears … there’s too many polar bears now.”

So, instead of furtive bears withering away on ice floes and starving due to loss of habitat, rising sea levels or whatever the global warmers claim, what we actually have here is a bear explosion, with bears so well fed that they’ve gotten fat.

It’s more than just anecdotal – the bear populations are exploding everywhere.

In Russia, near its Chukotka peninsula, AFP reports:

MOSCOW: A boatload of tourists in the far eastern Russian Arctic thought they were seeing clumps of ice on the shore, before the jaw-dropping realisation that some 200 polar bears were roaming on the mountain slope.

“It was a completely unique situation,” said Alexander Gruzdev, director of the Wrangel Island nature reserve where the encounter in September happened. “We were all gobsmacked, to be honest.”

Several years ago, we were warned that bears were starving due to global warming and would be irretrievably lost.

I recall the first interview I did with Alaska’s then-governor, Sarah Palin, about the polar bear situation in 2008, before she got famous. I asked her if the news reports were right that polar bears were starving. I only have a reference to the link, unfortunately, but I vividly recall her most memorable quote: “Our bears are healthy bears!”

She added that maybe that could be the situation in Canada, but it certainly wasn’t in Alaska.

The Arc of History Bends Toward . . . What, Exactly? By Michael Walsh

One of the most dishonest and pernicious phrases in the cultural-Marxist lexicon—much favored by Barack Hussein Obama during his eight years in office—goes like this: “The arc of history bends toward justice.” The former president borrowed the phrase from Martin Luther King, Jr., who lifted it from the abolitionist Theodore Parker; attached to the moral struggle of the civil-rights movement, it has become a club with which to beat troglodyte conservatives into submission.https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/07/the-arc-of-history-bends-toward-what-exactly/

But this is arrant nonsense. As I observe in my forthcoming book, The Fiery Angel:

This fantastic notion derives from the Hegelian-Marxist belief in history as an abstract, almost sentient, force akin to the old notion of Destiny, but with a bastardized Christian teleological impulse. Indeed, the entire Leftist notion of “progress” and its political expression, “progressivism,” stems from it. An “arc of history” that “bends toward justice” is the next best thing to God.

The obvious derivation of this concept, from both the spirituality of Christianity and the rationalism of the Enlightenment—a Deity as the great Watchmaker in the sky, overseeing the orderly ticking of the universe—should be at once obvious. Given the Leftist fondness for Darwin’s theory of natural selection and of the origin of species, this is an odd, contradictory theory for atheists to hold. But, to quote the Emperor in Amadeus, there it is.

The problem, of course, is that they don’t believe in God—the “invisible man in the sky,” to use one of their choice terms of derision. They consider almost any form of religious belief—except Islam!—to be little better than prehistoric superstition, as outmoded as Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, and Wotan. That the concept of a Deity established itself at the origins of humanity and is found in every culture and civilization is to them simply proof of how widespread this confederacy of dunces really is.

But they do believe in something very like God, which they call by various names, including “justice” and its political corollary, “independence.”

Which brings us to the FBI.

Promise Keeper Column: Why President Trump is right to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

Not only is President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy there one of the boldest moves of his presidency. It is one of the boldest moves any U.S. president has made since the beginning of the Oslo “peace process” in 1993. That process collapsed at Camp David in 2000 when Yasir Arafat rejected President Clinton’s offer of a Palestinian state. And the process has been moribund ever since, despite multiple attempts to restart it.

That is why the warnings from Trump critics that his decision may wreck the peace process ring hollow. There is no peace process to wreck. The conflict is frozen. And the largest barriers to the resumption of negotiations are found not in U.S. or Israeli policy but in Palestinian autocracy, corruption, and incitement. Have the former Obama administration officials decrying Trump’s announcement read a newspaper lately? From listening to them, you’d think it would be all roses and ponies in the Middle East but for Trump. In fact, the region is engulfed in war, terrorism, poverty, and despotism; Israel faces threats in the north and south; its sworn enemy, Iran, is growing in influence and reach; and the delegitimization of the Jewish State proceeds apace in international organizations and on college campuses. I forget how the Obama administration advanced the cause of peace by pressuring Israel while rewarding the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Maybe someone will remind me.

One of the reasons the Middle East persists in its decrepit condition is that it has been, for decades, a playground of magical thinking. Whether it is believing that poverty is the cause of terrorism or that the Ayatollah Khamenei is a good-faith partner, whether it is imagining that Assad will go just because we tell him to or that ISIS is akin to a terrorist “JV team,” liberal internationalists have all too eagerly accepted an alternative picture of the Middle East that is much more flattering than the actuality. A similar form of doublethink is present in our discussions over Jerusalem. Every Israeli knows Jerusalem was, is, and will remain his capital. Every recent president has agreed with him. And the U.S. consensus has been bipartisan. The last four Democratic platforms have said the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. The Senate voted 90-0 only six months ago urging the embassy be moved to the ancient city. Were we to take seriously neither these platforms nor that vote? Was it all virtue-signaling, a bunch of empty gestures in the kabuki theater of U.S. diplomacy?

Keystone XL Approval Is Vital to U.S. Energy Dominance By James Marks

This month, Nebraska regulators approved the Keystone XL Pipeline after years of legal and partisan back-and-forth. And it comes at a critical juncture – not only for America’s ability to transport energy resources but also for the country’s opportunity to bolster international relationships around the world by helping key allies meet their energy needs.

Once a point of weakness, energy has quickly become one of the United States’ strongest assets. Only a decade ago America relied on foreign suppliers to meet nearly two-thirds of oil demand. It now produces almost 80 percent of consumption here at home. Just within the last year, the country has become a net exporter of liquefied natural gas and crude oil. Nearly 35 percent of U.S. electricity is generated by natural gas-fired plants, offsetting coal more and more, which is helping to reduce carbon emissions.

This remarkable domestic energy turnaround is equipping U.S. officials with a powerful diplomatic lever, and the Keystone XL’s approval adds an important arrow to the quiver. Greater energy independence has already begun to undo the stronghold on markets once held by OPEC and other oil cartels. Increasingly, consumer habits have started to dictate production schedules, which has and likely will continue to alleviate prices.

Jerusalem, Now and Eternal President Trump’s recognition of Israel’s capital is at once prosaic and revolutionary. Judith Miller

Why now? That’s the question being asked in Arab capitals, at the Vatican, at the United Nations, and even in Washington, after President Donald Trump declared that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Calling it “long overdue,” Trump described his decision as the fulfillment of a campaign pledge and “nothing more or less than a recognition of reality.” Thanking him, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu agreed: “Jerusalem,” he tweeted, “has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years.” Israel’s Knesset, its parliament, is in West Jerusalem. So are its Supreme Court, its key ministries, and most key official institutions. Trump maintained that the dramatic step, endorsed by Congress in 1995 but consistently avoided by his White House predecessors, would not damage the search for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or change the status of Jerusalem’s geographic and political borders. Those issues would still have to be agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinians, the White House said.

Initial responses were angry and swift, albeit predictable. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, calling for three “days of rage” to protest the move, said that the U.S. had disqualified itself as a neutral broker between the Palestinians and Israelis. So did militant Islamic leaders of Hamas, which rules Gaza and which the State Department has designated as a terrorist group. Eighteen countries also denounced the change, including some of America’s usually more dependable allies. British prime minister Theresa May called Trump’s decision “unhelpful in the pursuit of peace.” Saying he “cannot remain silent,” Pope Francis worried that the move would spark new tension and violence in the city revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres also expressed alarm.

Perhaps of greater concern was the reaction from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, all key players in the search for what Trump has called the “ultimate deal”—a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict—and vital allies in the United States’ war on ISIS and Islamic extremism. All three, but particularly Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, have worked closely with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and prime Middle East envoy. Administration officials recently promised that Trump would unveil Middle East peace plans soon. G

Obstruction of Congress Mueller, the Justice Department and the FBI aren’t helping the lawmakers’ probe.By Kimberley A. Strassel

The media echo chamber spent the week speculating about whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller can or will nab President Trump on obstruction-of-justice charges. All the while it continues to ignore Washington’s most obvious obstruction—the coordinated effort to thwart congressional probes of the role law enforcement played in the 2016 election.

The news that senior FBI agent Peter Strzok exchanged anti-Trump, pro-Hillary text messages with another FBI official matters—though we’ve yet to see the content. The bigger scandal is that the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Mr. Mueller have known about those texts for months and deliberately kept their existence from Congress. The House Intelligence Committee sent document subpoenas and demanded an interview with Mr. Strzok. The Justice Department dodged, and then leaked.

The department also withheld from Congress that another top official, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, was in contact with ex-spook Christopher Steele and the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS. It has refused to say what role the Steele dossier—Clinton-commissioned oppo research—played in its Trump investigation. It won’t turn over files about its wiretapping.

And Mr. Mueller—who is well aware the House is probing all this, and considered the Strzok texts relevant enough to earn the agent a demotion—nonetheless did not inform Congress about the matter. Why? Perhaps Mr. Mueller feels he’s above being bothered with any other investigation. Or perhaps his team is covering for the FBI and the Justice Department.

Trump Recognizes That Humiliating Israel Didn’t Bring Peace The president withstands the howling dismay of the world’s nations to abandon a failed 70-year-old policy. By Yoram Hazony

For nearly seven decades, the state of Israel has endured an unusual humiliation: Alone among the nations of the world, it has been denied the sovereign right to determine its own capital. Israel has regarded Jerusalem as its capital since its War of Independence in 1948. It is the seat of Israel’s president, prime minister, Knesset (parliament), Supreme Court and most government ministries. Yet for the better part of a century, the U.S. has led what is effectively an international boycott of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, keeping its embassy in Tel Aviv as part of a fiction that the status of Jerusalem remains undetermined.

The roots of this policy go back to the first half of the 20th century, when European diplomats set their sights on making Jerusalem an “international city”—a kind of second Vatican, controlled by responsible Europeans rather than by Jews or Arabs. When Jewish forces took the western half of the city in 1948, and especially after Jerusalem was united under Israeli rule in 1967, this fantasy of a Euro-Jerusalem disappeared forever. But rather than recognizing Israeli sovereignty, the international community decided to leave Jerusalem’s status for “future negotiations.”

Yet now half a century has passed, and still there is nothing but Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem anywhere in sight. In a dramatic address Wednesday, President Trump brought to an end the fiction that something else is going to happen. “Today we finally acknowledge the obvious,” he said. “Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do.”

Mr. Trump is right about this. But he also understands that there is more to it. The dream of rebuilding Jerusalem, destroyed in Roman times, is the linchpin that holds Jewish faith and nationhood together. Three times each day, Jews bless God as Boneh Yerushalaim, “the Builder of Jerusalem.” When Jews read, at every wedding, “If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its strength” (Psalm 137:5), we are teaching a subtle truth: We Jews cannot give up on restoring our ancient capital without giving up the source of our strength.

Would we really be giving up on restoring Jerusalem if Israel negotiated a “deal” to share sovereignty in the city? Consider the options: Israel will never agree for Jerusalem to be divided as Berlin was, with mutually hostile police forces on either side of a security barrier. Jerusalem was divided in this way from 1948 to 1967, and anyone who lived through that time of snipers on the city walls knows that such a scheme amounts to destroying Jerusalem, not rebuilding it. The other choice is to govern the city by committee—which would mean that every construction project, excavation, restoration or economic initiative favored by Israel would be subject to an Arab veto (and probably also to a European one). This is a formula for reducing Jerusalem to wretchedness.

The Humanitarian Hoax of Relativism: Killing America With Kindness by Linda Goudsmit

The humanitarian hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Relativism is defined as the belief that there is no absolute truth, only truths that a particular individual or culture happen to believe. People who believe in relativism accept that different people can have different views about what is moral and immoral. So far so good – society can tolerate multiple opinions on the relative merits of a thing or an idea. Here is the problem – civilized society requires consensus on the existence of that thing or idea – it requires agreement on what is real.

Objective reality is the foundation for the laws and rules that regulate public behavior in society.

In a previous article I introduced the problem of multiple realities inherent in Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory with the example of a man walking down the street.

Let’s review. A man is walking down the street. There are four people nearby. The first person says there is a man walking down the street. The second person says there is a person walking down the street. The third person says I’m not sure who is walking down the street. The fourth person says there is a woman walking down the street.

The objective reality is that there is a man walking down the street regardless of what the observers perceptions are. Objective reality is rooted in facts and exists independent of the perceptions of those facts. Subjective reality tolerates conflicting multiple realities because it is rooted in perceptions and informed by opinions. So, in subjective reality the fourth person’s observation that it is a woman walking down the street is accepted. The consequence, of course, is that societal acceptance of multiple realities ultimately creates chaos because there is no agreement on what is real.