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Ruth King

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David Singer: United Nations Must End Hamas and PLO Stranglehold On Power

By on September 11th, 2016

The United Nations’ effort to create a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – has suffered another death blow following the Palestinian Supreme Court ordering the suspension of local elections in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip scheduled for October 8.

No parliamentary elections have been held since the 2006 – which Hamas won – but which the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) refused to accept.

A bitter internecine struggle saw Hamas end up governing the Gaza Strip and the PLO controlling areas “A” and “B” in Judea and Samaria.

No Palestinian presidential election has been held since PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was elected in 2005.

Hamas boycotted the last Palestinian municipal elections in 2012 – but was due to participate this year.

In the absence of a popularly elected Government exercising complete authoritative and legislative control over the Gazan and West Bank Arab populations – any prospects of reaching a binding agreement with Israel in relation to Gaza and Judea and Samaria remains an impossible pipedream.

Both the PLO and Hamas have used the slogan “End the Occupation” to demand that Israel totally withdraw from Area “C” in Judea and Samaria over which Israel exercises complete administrative and security control under the Oslo Accords.

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Peter O’Brien The Creed of the Climate Scientist *****

By on September 11th, 2016

Taxpayer-funded warmists have no need for sacramental confession to expiate the sins of their wild inaccuracies and habitually incorrect prophecies. As a recent spate of amended theories demonstrates, they just make up new ‘facts’ and keep those grants rolling in
Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is the gift that keeps on giving, mainly to its adherents but, yes, also to sceptics for whom it provides an endless source of material upon which we can keep exercising our ‘little grey cells’. For example, I often wonder at what point the CAGW scam will finally expire. There have been two events which, by rights, should have at least given our governments pause in their rush to bankrupt us. The first was Climategate and the second is the warming stasis (better but more unscientifically known as “the pause”). But no, not a bit of it.

CAGW will end either because of a gradual and growing acceptance that the empirical data do not support the proposition of catastrophic warming (i.e. the science, the genuine science, at last triumphs) or, alternatively, there may be some, as yet unpredictable, watershed event (a Berlin Wall if you like) that causes the edifice to come tumbling down.

Regrettably, all the portents (and Graham Woods article Open Letter to an Alarmist Shill only reinforces my fear) are that we will have to rely on the latter. What prompted these thoughts was a series of recent Graham Lloyd reports in the The Australian. Let me say, at the outset, that any observation I make here is no reflection on, or criticism of, Lloyd. He is merely presenting the argument of the ‘climate establishment’.

The first of these articles, published on July 21, reported an interesting find:

The Antarctic Peninsula, regarded as a “global warming hot spot”, has been cooling for almost 20 years.

Natural variability was responsible both for the decades-long warming since the 1950s and more recent cooling, according to research published today in Nature.

Good news for sceptics, right? It seems to support the sceptic view that observed 20th century warming was nothing out of the ordinary.

But wait, as is always the case when observed evidence does not mesh with approved climate narrative, a warmist was quick to dismiss those inconvenient thermometer readings:

The research, led by John Turner from the British Antarctic Survey, said while the start of Antarctic Peninsula cooling in 1998 had coincided with the so-called “global warming hiatus”, the two were not connected.

So in this case ‘correlation’ has no significance. The prevarications and provisos foreshadowed by the above quote commence immediately in the following paragraph and dominate the remainder of Lloyd’s article. Just one example:

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Deepak Lal :Wisdom on the Greater Middle East

By on September 11th, 2016

Deepak Lal is James S. Coleman Professor Emeritus of International Development Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, and Professor Emeritus of Political Economy, University College London. His most recent book is Poverty and Progress: Realities and Myths about Global Poverty.

Unlike other Eurasian civilisations where the growth of a Western-educated elite which had imbibed some of the messages of the Enlightenment allowed modernity and tradition to be reconciled, the prevailing Islamic reaction was that of the oyster: a resolute determination to close and seal.
I came across J. B. Kelly’s magnificent book Arabia, the Gulf and the West (1980), when I was researching my book In Praise of Empires (2004). The essays and reviews collected in these three volumes by his son provide a compendium of his views on the failures of the imperial Western powers—first the British and then the Americans—to understand the Arabs and Islam, and their consequent failure in maintaining order in the Middle East. Today with the region in flames and millions fleeing the disorder in their dysfunctional homelands to the order and safety of Europe, the states system created after the fall of the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War has more than fulfilled Field Marshal Earl Wavell’s prediction: “After ‘the war to end war’ they seem to have been pretty successful in Paris at making a ‘Peace to end Peace’.”[1]

These essays emphasise the influence of Arabophiles like T.E. Lawrence and Philby pere in presenting a romanticised view of the character of the Arab tribes. This created a climate of opinion in England where officials in charge of imperial policy chose to appease rather than deal robustly with the various machinations of Middle Eastern tribal rulers against British interests. The officials of the India Office with a more realistic view of these rulers and Islam were sidelined. After Indian independence they were replaced by Foreign Office officials intent on appeasing the Arabs, and increasingly reluctant to use military force to challenge the depredations of their rulers.

The misunderstanding of the Arabs and Islam began when Lord Kitchener of Khartoum (who became Secretary of War in Asquith’s government at the start of the First World War) changed Britain’s traditional aim in the Middle East of ensuring that their regional rivals, the French and the Russians, did not change the balance of power in the region, apart from a few territorial adjustments. Kitchener, by contrast, sought to seize the Arabic-speaking part of the Ottoman empire for the British, thereby creating a Middle Eastern empire to link and rival the one in India.

Recognising the importance but misunderstanding the nature of Islam, he sought to use it as a bulwark for the new Arabic empire by offering the religious leadership of the caliphate to the Hashemite Sheriff of Mecca. But, misunderstanding that in Islam the spiritual and temporal authority could not be split, this meant he was offering the kingdom of the Arabs to the Hashemite. This led Ibn Saud, the leader of the fierce, puritanical Wahhabi sect, to conquer the Hejaz with its holy cities of Mecca and Medina in 1924, driving Hussein ibn Ali into exile. As a consolation prize the British put Hussein’s sons Feisal and Abdullah on the thrones of the newly created states of Iraq and Trans-Jordan.[2] This whole edifice, including the French dependencies in Syria and Lebanon created by the Sykes–Picot agreement, is now in flames.

In reviewing Kelly’s voluminous output of essays and reviews in this article, I will concentrate on three themes of contemporary relevance, instead of the chronological sequence in which they are arranged in three volumes by the editor. These are: The British Empire and tribal societies; the US engagement with the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan and Pakistan); and Islam as a threat to global order.

Britain and tribal societies

Kelly’s essays on the British retreat from Aden are a particularly damning indictment of Britain’s pusillanimity in fulfilling its treaty obligations to the Gulf sheikdoms. This led to the Marxist takeover of Yemen, and the regional turmoil which continues. Yemen is particularly important, as the tribes inhabiting the bleak, inaccessible mountainous areas in the region are at the centre of the insurgencies currently tormenting the Middle East.

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Who’s ‘Irredeemable’? The Dangers of a Clinton Presidency Just Got Worse By Roger L Simon

By on September 11th, 2016

It wasn’t enough that Hillary Clinton, if elected president, would inevitably be under a non-stop deluge of subpoenas for her and her minions over the myriad (and still growing) unresolved issues surrounding her private email server and the Clinton Foundation. Should she really be in the White House or behind bars?

On top of this, we now know for certain that, whatever half-baked apology she has given, Hillary thinks roughly a quarter of the population she would be governing are misogynists, racists, homophobes, Islamophobes (whatever that means) and the like — aka, in her now immortal words, a “basket of deplorables.” How she expects to bring the country together remains to be explained.

In the real (non-Hillary) world, these “deplorables” would be called the American middle class, those folks who are supposed to be suffering at the hands of the one percent — you know, the victims of the endlessly trumpeted (by the Democrats) “income inequality.”

Hillary deemed these people “irredeemable” at a fundraiser while introducing Barbra Streisand to a giddy audience, some of whom undoubtedly have net worths upwards of fifty million — like Hillary, Barbra, and just about every Democrat I know.
Well, not every, but many. Admittedly I live in Hollywood, a wildly skewed demographic, but unlike most denizens of Tinseltown, I have spent a considerable amount of time recently among these so-called “deplorables,” aka, in movie parlance, “flyover people.” I can report observing absolutely no misogyny, racism, homophobia, or even Islamophobia — unless you count the occasional poster condemning radical Islam, not very phobic in my book, especially on the anniversary of 9/11.

I can also report — and this is the interesting, although perhaps not surprising, part — that these “deplorables” were almost always a helluva lot nicer than the people I have run into over the years in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, including, one can safely say, most of Hillary’s fundraiser audience Friday night.

Folks in the South and the Middle West are just a lot easier to be around, “deplorable” though they may be. They also make you feel welcome, even those of us from Tinseltown who may not deserve it.

Which leads me to a touching story, at least I think it’s touching. One time during my peregrinations following the Trump campaign–I’m not going to say where to protect the privacy of the individuals involved–my wife and I were straining up against the rope of the press section, trying to hear what the actual people were saying. (The press is segregated off for most of these events.) CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Bumpy Ride of Our Flight 93 By Roger Kimball

By on September 11th, 2016

“I know there will be some who object, “But how do you know he will do all things things.” The answer is, I don’t. But I do know what Hillary would do: Obama on steroids. She’s a known-known. She would, as Publius warns, complete the “fundamental transformation” of this country into a third-world, politically correct socialist redoubt.”

There is a scene in the first episode of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie’s Jeeves and Wooster series that bears on the current presidential election. Bertie Wooster, at the direction of his Aunt Agatha, has motored down to Ditteredge Hall, seat of Sir Roderick and Lady Glossop, to cozy up to their hearty daughter Honoria. The former head-girl at Girton is not keen on the match: “He doesn’t shoot, he doesn’t hunt, . . . he doesn’t work even.” But Lady Glossop points out that Honoria will be twenty-four the following week. “He is not all your father and I would have hoped for you, I agree, but . . .”

But consider the alternative.

Regular readers know that I have not been part of the Donald Trump Cheerleading Cavalcade. I first wrote about him a year ago July. After saying that I didn’t think he would be the candidate, I concluded with this advisory:

He has raised some issues that the high and mighty dispensers of conventional wisdom would do well to ponder. Moreover, he has done it in a way that, though terribly, terribly vulgar, is catapulting Trump to first place in the polls. What does that tell us? That the people are stupid and need to be guided by the suits in Washington? If you believe that, I submit, you are going to be profoundly disappointed come November 2016.

Well, as Samuel Goldwyn remarked in another context, we’ve passed a lot of water under the bridge since then.

Back in June, Donald Rumsfeld summed up the position that, in subsequent weeks, many (not all) anti-Trump conservatives have come to adopt. Reprising his famous epistemological mot that distinguished between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns,” Rumsfeld said that, of course he was voting for Trump. Trump was an “unknown known,” perhaps dubious in some ways, but all the world knew exactly what Hillary Clinton represented.

This was the essential point made in a more colorful way in the most remarkable essay I have read in some time, “The Flight 93 Election,” which appeared a few days back in that indispensable journal, the Claremont Review of Books. I have no idea who “Publius Decius Mus”—the putative author—really is, though I speculate on stylistic and philological grounds that he is not unacquainted with the works of Leo Strauss. The historical Decius Mus was a Roman consul during the first Samnite and Latin wars. In 340BC, he sacrificed himself at the Battle of Vesuvius in order to secure a great victory for the Romans. That story, for those who are interested in such things, is told in Book 8 of Livy’s The History of Rome.

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Western Publishers Submit to Islam by Giulio Meotti

By on September 11th, 2016

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8907/islam-publishers-censorship

For criticizing Islam, Hamed Abdel-Samad lives under police protection in Germany and, as with Rushdie, a fatwa hangs over him. After the fatwa come the insults: being censored by a free publishing house. This is what the Soviets did to destroy writers: destroy their books.

At a time when dozens of novelists, journalists and scholars are facing Islamists’ threats, it is unforgivable that Western publishers not only agree to bow down, but are often the first to capitulate.

A Paris court convicted Renaud Camus for “Islamophobia” (a fine of 4,000 euros) for a speech he gave in 2010, in which he spoke of the replacement of the French people under the Trojan horse of multiculturalism. Another writer, Richard Millet, was fired last March by Gallimard publishing house for his ideas on multiculturalism.

Not only did Rushdie’s publishers capitulate; other publishers also decided to break rank and return to do business with Tehran. Oxford University Press decided to take part in the Tehran Book Fair along with two American publishers, McGraw-Hill and John Wiley. Those publishers chose to respond to murderous censorship with surrender.

It is as if at the time of the Nazis’ book-burnings, Western publishers had not only stood silent, but had also invited a German delegation to Paris and New York.

When Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses came out in 1989, Viking Penguin, the British and American publisher of the novel, was subjected to daily Islamist harassment. As Daniel Pipes wrote, the London office resembled “an armed camp,” with police protection, metal detectors and escorts for visitors. In Viking’s New York offices, dogs sniffed packages and the place was designated a “sensitive location”. Many bookshops were attacked and many even refused to sell the book. Viking spent about $3 million on security measures in 1989, the fatal year for Western freedom of expression.

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Hillary calls ‘half’ of Trump supporters ‘basket of deplorables’ By Carol Brown see note please

By on September 11th, 2016

I support Donald Trump because I am part of a basket of serious Hillaryphobics…..rsk

If you support Donald Trump, you are “irredeemable,” part of a “basket of deplorables.” A “kind” who should never be allowed to rise again. You are a “radical fringe” made up of “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” “Islamophobic,” “anti-Semitic,” “misogynist,” “xenophobic,” “you name it” types. Hillary Clinton paints you as hopeless moral lepers who should be banished to a remote island to live your final days.

We are so bad, so evil, that we are no better than “terrorists.”

We are “not America.”

We are all of these things (and more), according to Hillary Clinton. And anyone who thinks the language she uses to describe us is merely words spewed to inspire her base is fooling himself.

Clinton will act on her words. And her actions will be as harsh and as anti-American as it gets. The boom will come down so hard that our lives will be impacted in ways that are almost impossible to fathom.

The stakes could not be higher.

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Remembering 9/11 Fifteen Year on: Sydney Williams

By on September 11th, 2016

September 11 has long meant a lot to my wife and me. It marked the birth of our first child, a son Sydney, born fifty years ago this Sunday. Their first child, Alex, was born March 13, 2001, six months before the attack on 9/11.

Sunday marks fifteen years since we were attacked without warning by a small group of Islamic terrorists acting under the authority of al Qaeda. Fifteen years later we are still involved in a war against Islamic extremists. It has been a long time, and there is no end in sight. Thinking about this returns me to my own youth. Like Alex, I was born ten months before Pearl Harbor. Fifteen years after that attack the War was a distant memory. I was in boarding school. Japan and Germany, our former enemies, were now allies and on their way to becoming major economies. General Eisenhower had been President for four years. The economy was booming and, apart from periodically being told to duck under our school desks during simulated atomic bomb attacks, life for a fifteen-year-old, was peaceful and happy. How long will it be before such idyllic conditions return?

The horrific facts of what happened on 9/11 should never be forgotten. More people were killed that day than died at Pearl Harbor, or Americans killed on D-Day…and those killed on 9/11 were all civilians! Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly on November 10th, 2001, President George W. Bush said: “Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America there will be no forgetting September 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.”

Take a moment to think of what happened. Remember those who were lost. And recognize that the evil that perpetrated those attacks still lives. It must be eradicated if my grandson is to live with the hope and optimism that was mine sixty years ago.

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FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS: REFLECTIONS ON 9/11

By on September 11th, 2016

To honor and to keep alive the memory of the victims of 9/11, at each year’s anniversary, FSM’s contributing editors share their thoughts about that day. This year, one of our favorite quotes from those remembrances is from Dr. Robin McFee who said,

“9/11, fifteen years later…To those we lost, may their memory be a blessing. And may God comfort those who mourn, and bless this great nation, and all who defend her.”

To that we say…Amen.
Reflections on 9/11 Fifteen Years Later by Ruth King

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/reflections-on-911-fifteen-years-later?f=must_reads#ixzz4JwXq2GaD

9 – 11 Fifteen Years Later: Don’t Let Future Generations Learn the Wrong Lesson by Robin McFee
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/9-11-fifteen-years-later-dont-let-future-generations-learn-the-wrong-lesson?f=must_reads
Fifteen Years On I Wonder What the Falling Man Would Think by Frank Salvato

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/fifteen-years-on-i-wonder-what-the-falling-man-would-think
The Lessons of 9-11–We Were–And Still Are–Unserious by Peter Huessey

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-lessons-of-9-11-we-were-and-still-are-unserious?f=commentary#ixzz4JwWeXoPp

Why I Fight, Why I Write by Edward Cline

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/why-i-fight-why-i-write?f=must_reads#ixzz4JwXEZyHG

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What the Benghazi attack taught me about Hillary Clinton By Gregory N. Hicks

By on September 11th, 2016

FoxNews.com

Last month, I retired from the State Department after 25 years of public service as a Foreign Service officer. As the Deputy Chief of Mission for Libya, I was the last person in Tripoli to speak with Ambassador Chris Stevens before he was murdered in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on our Benghazi post. On this, the fourth anniversary of the Benghazi tragedy, I would like to offer a different explanation for Benghazi’s relevance to the presidential election than is usually found in the press.

Just as the Constitution makes national security the President’s highest priority, U.S. law mandates the secretary of state to develop and implement policies and programs “to provide for the security … of all United States personnel on official duty abroad.”

This includes not only the State Department employees, but also the CIA officers in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. And the Benghazi record is clear: Secretary Clinton failed to provide adequate security for U.S. government personnel assigned to Benghazi and Tripoli.

The Benghazi Committee’s report graphically illustrates the magnitude of her failure. It states that during August 2012, the State Department reduced the number of U.S. security personnel assigned to the Embassy in Tripoli from 34 (1.5 security officers per diplomat) to 6 (1 security officer per 4.5 diplomats), despite a rapidly deteriorating security situation in both Tripoli and Benghazi. Thus, according to the Report, “there were no surplus security agents” to travel to Benghazi with Amb. Stevens “without leaving the Embassy in Tripoli at severe risk.”

Had Ambassador Stevens’ July 2012 request for 13 additional American security personnel (either military or State Department) been approved rather than rejected by Clinton appointee Under Secretary of State for Management Pat Kennedy, they would have traveled to Benghazi with the ambassador, and the Sept. 11 attack might have been thwarted.

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