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Ruth King

Living in Pakistan – A Hell for Non-Muslims by Rahat John Austin

In Pakistan, Muslims burn the homes of non-Muslims, burn their places of worship, burn their holy books, even burn their women and children alive — and there is no law or punishment to prevent this criminal behaviour or to make non-Muslims safe.

Non-Muslim women and children are raped and forcibly converted; this is considered a religious obligation to please “Allah,” the god of Islam. These taskmasters see themselves as “Soldiers of Allah”. Even if a case of “blasphemy” is not proven against Christians, they still can be killed by an angry mob or while in police custody. Non-Muslims can also easily be sentenced to death by a court: even a single claim by Muslim against a non-Muslim is enough to “prove” him guilty.

Christian leaders and organizations, especially the Pope, have failed to give any hope to persecuted Christians. Providing a press release or sending a note is not enough. The Pope truly needs to come to help his flock, to establish policies to safeguard these persecuted people from the Islamic world.

According to the official results of Pakistan’s 2017 census, as of August 25, 2017, the population of Islamic Republic of Pakistan is 207.74 million.

The country is divided into an overwhelmingly Muslim majority of 96.28%; and the remaining 3.72% are Christian, Bahais, Buddhists, Hindus, Ahmadis, Jains, Kalasha, Parsis and Sikhs, who are identified as non-Muslim minority Pakistanis.

Religious minorities in the territory of present-day Pakistan, at the time of the partition of India in 1947, were almost 23% of Pakistan’s population. But instead of their numbers increasing, they have decreased to the current 3.72%. If the Muslim population has grown, why have non-Muslim minorities not grown also?

This 23% represents millions of people; how have they vanished?

According to the same census, from 1998 to 2017, Pakistan’s overall population grew by 57%. Presumably, non-Muslim minorities should have increased at the same rate. Instead, their numbers have dangerously fallen.

The Hindu population, for example, which, according to the 1951 census, was 12.9%, is now only 1.6%.

These numbers begin to reveal the situation of minorities in Pakistan.

David Archibald The Problem with Norwegians

President Trump had best be careful what he wishes for. Some of those Nordic types he reportedly opined would make better immigrants to the US are quite likely to bring with them a leftist culture every bit as problematic as the mores of the lavatorial hell holes he derided.

The overwhelmingly left wing US foreign policy Establishment would not normally let slip that all is not peaches and cream in Africa, that the Dark Continent is a bottomless pit which will absorb aid funds without trace of improvement for all eternity. So what gave Foreign Policy cover to report that the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, a man of African ancestry, continues to be vilified in racial terms by the Zimbabwean government? It is likely the abuse was prompted by President Trump’s reported comment in which he is said to have used a pithy aphorism to describe some of the countries from which recent waves of immigrants have come.

The President, as you might recall, expressed a preference for migrants from Norway. Perhaps he was thinking of the likes of Ann-Margret, who migrated to the United States in 1946. Other Norwegians have been less pleasant — and there is a tie to Zimbabwe. Norway in the 1980s had a prime minister by the name of Gro Harlem Brundtland who secretly financed the establishment of communist regimes in southern Africa through the Norwegian Development Agency. That is one reason why the Brundtland commission on climate, forerunner to the UN climate commission, chose to convene its conferences in Harare over 1986-87.

Not to be outdone, Norway’s neighbour, Sweden, also was up to no good in Africa. Sweden pursued and fostered a secret military cooperation with Robert Mugabe and his then-head of state security, Comrade Mnangagwa, who recently replaced Mugabe as the country’s dictator. Funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), this cooperation, starting in 1969, was top secret, even from the Swedish parliament, which authorised SIDA budgets. Similar efforts were made by Swedish socialist governments to encourage and establish communist regimes in South Africa, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and Zambia.

The Islamization of Oslo In Groruddalen, a large neighborhood of the Norwegian capital, heavy Muslim immigration is testing multiculturalism’s limits. Bruce Bawer

With a population exceeding 600,000, Oslo is divided into two parts by Akerselva, a modest brook that runs from the mountains in the north down into the Oslo Fjord. West Oslo is the upscale side of town, with fancy townhouses near the city center and, farther out, elegant neighborhoods full of large, handsome houses and wide, well-tended lawns. East Oslo is grungier: on the downtown end, you’ll find East Village–type districts with cool bars and clubs and plenty of graffiti, plus a couple of largely Muslim areas, Tøyen and Grønland; farther east lies Groruddalen.

A broad, flat, relatively nondescript valley (dal means “valley” in Norwegian), Groruddalen is home to more than a quarter of Oslo’s population. Think San Fernando Valley, and you won’t be far off. For a few decades now, the valley has been associated in the Norwegian mind with Islam. On August 28, 2017, Rita Karlsen of Human Rights Service (HRS), an Oslo-based think tank, noted that it had been 16 years to the day since Labour Party politician Thorbjørn Berntsen had declared: “There’s a limit to how many immigrants Groruddalen can accept. That limit is beginning to be reached. I know of people who want to move because the city of Oslo is filling entire apartment buildings with asylum seekers and refugees. . . . We must simply admit that cultural conflicts are beginning to be noticeable.” Other politicians rejected Berntsen’s concerns. The Labour Party’s then-head in Oslo, Bjørgulv Froyn, insisted that Groruddalen’s problems had “nothing to do with immigrants.” The leader of Oslo’s Conservatives, Per-Kristian Foss, agreed, accusing Berntsen of “stigmatizing a neighborhood and a population group.” Foss, who is openly gay, chose not to address the fact that it was already becoming uncomfortable for homosexuals to live in certain parts of Groruddalen.

Berntsen’s warning, issued in 2001, has proved prescient. From 2008 to 2010, more than 6,000 ethnic Norwegians moved out of Groruddalen, while almost twice that number of immigrants—mostly Muslims—moved in. In 2009, fully 67 percent of the children born in Stovner, a borough at the far eastern end of the valley, had non-Western mothers. In 2010, immigrants made up more than 40 percent of Groruddalen’s population, and Lars Østby, chief demographer at Statistics Norway (SSB), the nation’s official statistics agency, predicted that, before long, a majority of the valley’s population would consist of immigrants and their children. Yet Østby did not see this as a problem—notwithstanding the grim reality of certain urban areas in next-door Sweden, such as Rinkeby in Stockholm and Rosengård in Malmö, that had become Muslim enclaves: parallel societies where sharia trumped Swedish law and where community leaders, imams, and gangs had largely displaced the authority of the Swedish government, police, and courts.

Israel Tries Arabic Outreach, Gets Mixed Response Military deploys social media to spread anti-Iran message Link copied… By Rory Jones in Tel Aviv and Nazih Osseiran in Beirut

As Saudi Arabia and Iran spar for influence across the Middle East, Israel is using the Arabic language to seek common ground with Tehran’s enemies and sway its sympathizers.

The efforts have been met at times with hostility and ridicule—in part because Maj. Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army spokesman leading the outreach, doesn’t shy away from provocation.

Maj. Adraee’s recent output includes a Facebook post of image of Iran’s flag superimposed over the Gaza Strip and a Twitter video simulating an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, home of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah.
Text messaging

A tweet from the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Maj. Avichay Adraee accuses Iran for dragging down Gaza, including the message that Iran “will not care about the peoples it attempts to exert its influence over.”

With 1.2 million followers on his Arabic Facebook page and more than 181,000 on Twitter, Maj. Adraee is the face of the Israeli messaging campaign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued videos with Arabic subtitles denouncing Iran, and the foreign ministry routinely posts rosy images of Israeli-Arab coexistence for its own million-plus Arabic-language Facebook followers.

For Israel, which doesn’t have diplomatic relations with most of its neighbors, social media has become a way to engage with Arabs and reinforce a growing alignment with Sunni Muslim Arab states.

The most influential of those states is Saudi Arabia. In a sign of that emphasis, the Israeli military chose a newspaper owned by a Saudi publisher when it offered the first Arab-media interview with its chief of staff in more than 10 years.

Iran is the “biggest threat to the region,” chief-of-staff Lt. Gen Gadi Eisenkot told the publication, Elaph, which is based in London, in November. “In this matter, there is complete agreement between us and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

An official at Iran’s United Nations mission didn’t respond to a request for comment on Israel’s media outreach.
CONTINUE AT SITE

At #MeToo U, the Faculty Loses Its Ideological Immunity A ‘down’ Marxist prof is accused of harassing ‘young women and gender nonconforming people.’ By Allen C. Guelzo

The Pennsylvania Gazette, my alma mater’s glossy alumni magazine, doesn’t stray far from institutional self-admiration. Or it didn’t, until this month’s issue.

The letters column featured the frank narrative of a class of 1973 undergraduate who says she was sexually harassed by a long-affiliated, greatly honored (and deceased) chairman of the Graduate School of Fine Art. Women in the program called him “the Silver Fox,” the correspondent reports.

She managed to evade an invitation to his island retreat to “model” for him: “Somehow I knew I would avoid him sleeping with me, and I was successful at that,” she writes. But one-on-one sessions to discuss her work were 90 minutes of navigating sexual advances and innuendo.

Sexual harassment has been the official term for this since before Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas in 1991. But in the 1990s, that decade of third-wave feminism, it was assumed that sexual harassment was something conservatives visited upon women to punish them for straying from traditional roles. When Bill Clinton was caught in the act, progressives from Gloria Steinem to Susan Faludi and Ms. Hill herself rushed to confer ideological immunity upon him.

That immunity ended with Hillary Clinton’s political career, as Harvey Weinstein and a host of figures in entertainment, the news media, politics and the arts have learned. The Gazette letter is a sign that progressive immunity is disappearing from an even more politicized zone: higher education.

Not that colleges and universities haven’t come under scrutiny for sexual harassment before. The Obama Education Department’s notorious 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter insisted that Title IX, which prohibits schools receiving federal money from engaging in sex discrimination, required them to abandon due process in adjudicating accusations of sexual misconduct. CONTINUE AT SITE

Dreamers in Beltwayland By Pedro Gonzalez

Senate Democrats led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) shut down the government last weekend, ostensibly in defense of “Dreamers”—illegal aliens who arrived in the United States as minors. The Democrats, in effect, placed the progressive political project “above our national security, military families, vulnerable children, and our country’s ability to serve all Americans,” as a White House press release put it.

This new and virtuous Schumer of 2018 stands in stark contrast with the Schumer of 2013, who vehemently denounced those who would “risk default for the nation” by shutting down the government over immigration. He called such obstinance the “politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.” But that was before Trump and #TheResistance.

Just who are these “Dreamers” the Democrats are using as political props? The name comes from the proposed 2001 Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which has failed to pass repeatedly over the years. By most estimates, some 3.6 million illegal immigrants came to this country as children. Of that number, around 800,000 registered under the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Americans have been fed a line that Dreamers are among our “best and brightest,” but the reality is much different. While DACA and Dreamer are used interchangeably, the distinction makes a difference. DACA recipients are a subset of the Dreamers, and the soldiers and scholars among the DACA class are an even smaller subset. More importantly, even though the shutdown fight was reportedly about DACA, the Democrats aren’t simply seeking amnesty for those 800,000 program participants. They want all 3.6 million Dreamers included in the deal. A look at the bigger picture of what this might mean is sobering.

In Arizona, DACA recipient Francisco Rios-Covarrubias, 30, was arrested after offering a 3-year-old girl for sex to a man who notified authorities, the child was discovered bound with duct tape and showed signs of repeated sexual abuse.

George Soros: Trump Presidency Will ‘Disappear’ in 2020—or ‘Even Sooner’ By Debra Heine

At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week, liberal billionaire investor George Soros declared that the Trump presidency is a “danger to the world” which will “disappear” in 2020 or sooner.

“Clearly, I consider the Trump administration a danger to the world,” Soros said. “But I regard it as a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020, or even sooner. I give President Trump credit for motivating his core supporters brilliantly, but for every core supporter, he has created a greater number of core opponents who are equally strongly motivated. That is why I expect a Democratic landslide in 2018.”

Soros, a major left-wing donor, also said that his “goal” is to “reestablish a functioning two-party system” in the United States.

“My personal goal in the United States is to help reestablish a functioning two-party system. This will require not only a landslide in 2018 but also a Democratic Party that will aim at non-partisan redistricting, the appointment of well-qualified judges, a properly conducted census and other measures that a functioning two-party system requires,” he said.

“In the United States, President Trump would like to establish a mafia state but he can’t, because the Constitution, other institutions, and a vibrant civil society won’t allow it,” he argued, amping up his hyperbole. “Not only the survival of open society but the survival of our entire civilization is at stake. The rise of leaders such as Kim Jong Un in North Korea and Donald Trump in the United States have much to do with this.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The Wreck of Hillary Clinton By Michael Walsh

Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life:

Hillary Clinton is sending a message of thanks to “activist bitches supporting bitches.” The former secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee made the comments in a video posted to Twitter on Friday by Huffington Post commentator Alex Mohajer.

“Hey everyone, I just wanted to say thanks,” Clinton says in the video. “Thanks for your feminism, for your activism, and all I can hope is you keep up the really important, good work.” Off-screen, someone can be heard saying, “activist bitches supporting bitches,” which Clinton then repeats, laughing.

“And let me just say, this is directed to the activist bitches supporting bitches, so let’s go,” she says.

And the Left complains about Trump… Meanwhile, this little flapola seems to have some legs:

While most of her supporters can’t think of anyone who’s a bigger and better champion for women than Clinton, here comes the bucket of salt to pour in that 2016 wound that never really healed. According to the New York Times, Clinton shielded one of her advisers, Burns Strider, from being fired for repeatedly sexually harassing a younger staffer during her 2008 presidential campaign.

Surely, this is just a mistake, and Clinton had no say in the matter, her base might add. “Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager at the time recommended that she fire the adviser, Burns Strider. But Mrs. Clinton did not. Instead, Mr. Strider was docked several weeks of pay and ordered to undergo counseling, and the young woman was moved to a new job,” reads the New York Times. CONTINUE AT SITE

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL BY MICHAEL ORDMAN

Following the rains, Israel is awash with news of more successes in medical research, international trade and global recognition. Very appropriately we are about to celebrate the Jewish festival of Tu B’Shvat – The New Year for Trees and the time for the almond blossom.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Good results in pancreatic cancer treatment trials. Israel’s BioLineRx has announced encouraging initial results from its Phase 2a trials of its BL-8040 treatment on patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. After only five days of treatment the treatment substantially increased the numbers of T-cells fighting the tumors.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/biolinerx-announces-partial-monotherapy-results-from-phase-2a-combat-study-in-pancreatic-cancer-300583808.html

Melanoma treatment shows promise. When Israel’s BioLineRx bought UK’s Agalimmune, it also acquired its AGI-134 treatment for solid tumors. BioLineRX has just demonstrated successful results of AGI-134 in two pre-clinical melanoma studies. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/biolinerx-reports-data-at-asco-sitc-conference-showing-complete-tumor-regression-by-agi-134-in-pre-clinical-studies-670669553.html

Predicting and preventing PIE. Post Injury Epilepsy (PIE) occurs several months after a stroke in at least 10% of patients. Scientists at Ben Gurion University have been able to detect likely PIE sufferers using EEG (electroencephalographic) recordings of theta brain waves. Early treatment with medication can prevent attacks.
https://aabgu.org/discovered-biomarker-predicts-post-injury-epilepsy/

The gene that causes colon cancer. Israel’s NRGene has confirmed the identity of a genetic mutation that causes colon cancer in 60% of its hosts. NRGene was contacted by scientists at Stanford University and used its GenoMagic software to genetically screen the DNA of inherited colon cancer sufferers.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-nrgene-successfully-identifies-colon-cancer-mutation/

European approval for stroke analysis system. (TY Atid-EDI) Viz.ai has received the CE Mark for its Israeli-developed Direct-to-Intervention system, ContaCT, a novel approach to stroke care that automatically analyzes brain CT-scans and notifies a specialist that a suspected large vessel occlusion has been identified.
https://interventionalnews.com/viz-ai-announces-ce-mark-first-artificial-intelligence-powered-direct-intervention-system/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/_721LqeON3U?rel=0

Personalized cancer treatment. (TY UWI and TIP) This video shows that Israeli doctors are saving lives of cancer patients by testing different treatments on samples of the tumors outside of the patient’s body. They can then determine the best cancer treatments to offer patients based on the success of the treatment.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/QK_4kO1VgPI?rel=0

Gene cancer therapy prepares to launch. Israel’s VBL Therapeutics has opened its new gene therapy production facility to manufacture VBL’s lead cancer therapy ofranergene obadenovec (VB-111), when finally approved. The Modiin gene therapy plant is one of the largest in the world, and the first in Israel.
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/10/23/1151526/0/en/VBL-Therapeutics-Celebrates-Opening-of-its-New-Gene-Therapy-Manufacturing-Plant-and-Company-Headquarters.html
https://www.youtube.com/embed/4HeISdYw7d8?rel=0

An app to monitor the brain. Israel-based startup Montfort Brain Monitor won Israel’s Henry Ford Health System’s artificial intelligence challenge. Montfort’s “master app” uses a smartphone’s sensors to track a patient’s motor, cognitive, and affective activity. It can be tailored for the specific neurological disorder.
http://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3730184,00.html

NIS 1 billion digital health project. In Davos, Israeli PM Netanyahu met with William McDermott, the CEO of SAP who agreed to partner with Israel on a new five-year NIS 1 billion digital healthcare project. The project aims to develop personalized and preventative medicine – regarded as a revolution in the health sector.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-netanyahu-sap-ceo-launch-nis-1b-healthcare-project-1001221143

ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL

How campus politics hijacked American politics By Cathy Young

The defense of free speech has always been a bedrock bipartisan principle. So it’s unusual to hear a veteran liberal politician excuse campus outrage squads that shout down dissent. But that’s exactly what former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean did in a recent appearance — and his embrace of the campus left reveals a lot about the nation’s current cultural moment.

On a panel at Kenyon College last month, Dean brought up a notorious incident at Yale two years before. In 2015, lecturer and residence hall co-supervisor Erika Christakis had set off protests with an e-mail defending students’ freedom to wear Halloween costumes — such as ones based on the Chinese-inspired cartoon character Mulan — that some may find culturally insensitive. A viral video showed protesters mobbing and berating her husband, professor Nicholas Christakis. The couple later resigned their leadership posts, and Erika Christakis stopped teaching.

Dean’s take on this was that there are “consequences to free speech.” He caricatured Erika Christakis’s thoughtful, sensitive letter as an ugly screed mocking “snowflake” students and defending racist costumes. He also described the protesters as well-behaved, despite their screaming and bullying. That an academic became a target of red-hot rage for challenging progressive dogma on cultural appropriation did not seem to bother him in the least.

Dean is hardly alone in pooh-poohing worries about the illiberal academic left. With Republicans in control of the government and Donald Trump in the White House, many say that it’s crazy, maybe downright perverse, to worry about college students as a threat to liberal society. But not every form of power involves government authority. And what happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus.