RUTHFULLY YOURS

The West should be proud of what the Islamists call “decadence.” For the West, “decadence” is synonymous with freedom. The problem is that we, postmodern Westerners, have sacrificed the very values that ensure our survival, and have exchanged them for “decadence.”

The problem is that the West does not desire life. The West is ready to surrender its love of life to those who want to take it away from them.

“Islam manifests what Nietzsche called ‘great health’: there are young soldiers ready to die for it. What are the values of our civilization? Supermarket and e-commerce, trivial consumerism and egotistical narcissism, vulgar hedonism or scooters for adults?” — Michel Onfray, French philosopher,

In the Netherlands, the minister of education decided to impose the teaching of LGBT courses in migrant centers. Germany has published guidelines, leaflets and cartoons to communicate to immigrants the new sexual norms to follow. Is that all we have to offer to these people?

Omar Mateen did not choose the Pulse gay nightclub because it had few security guards or because it was an easy target. He could have targeted a supermarket or a school. No, Mateen chose Pulse because it is a nightclub, where he slaughtered 49 “infidels” and wounded 53 more.

Before murdering 2,977 people, the leader of the 9/11 terrorists, Mohammed Atta, along with four of the other hijackers, made several trips to Las Vegas during the summer before the attack, where they were entertained by dancers in nightclubs.

Fifteen years later, there was another country, another jihadist cell, another nightclub. Salah Abdeslam was dancing in a nightclub in Brussels with his brother, Brahim, and flirting with a blonde woman. A few months later, Brahim blew himself up in Paris at a concert in the Bataclan Theater. Nightclubs haunt the Islamist imagination with their mix of alcohol, sexual promiscuity, drugs and music. ISIS labelled Paris “the capital of prostitution and obscenity.”

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has warned the United States of the “gravest consequences” if Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or any other Muslim prisoner is executed.

Tsarnaev, named in a new online video message from Zawahri, was sentenced last year to death by lethal injection for the 2013 bomb attack, which killed three people and injured more than 260.

“If the U.S. administration kills our brother the hero Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or any Muslim, it … will bring America’s nationals the gravest consequences,” Zawahri said.

Zawahri, who became al Qaeda’s leader after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, urged Muslims to take captive as many Westerners as possible, especially those whose countries had joined the “Crusaders’ Campaign led by the United States”.

The veteran Egyptian-born Islamist, shown wearing white robes and sitting in front of green velvet drapes, said the Western captives could then be exchanged for Muslim prisoners.

Western powers “are criminals and they only understand the language of force”, he added.

This is how assorted nuts and tyrants spend their time….see no Islam or Jihad, see no terror, see no forced famine and massacres in African , see no nuke buildup in North Korea and Iran, see no Russian threats to Eastern European nations….see nothing but Israel bashing….rsk

Report released at the U.N. identifies threats for reaching a two-state solution in the Middle East

UNITED NATIONS —A highly anticipated report on the Middle East peace process, released here Friday, criticized both Israelis and Palestinians for policies that fuel war and not peace.

The report identified three main threats for reaching a deal to create two separate Israeli and Palestinian states: the glorification of violence and terrorism; Israel’s settlement expansions in the West Bank; and the Palestinian Authority’s lack of control in Gaza.

The report was issued by the international diplomatic group known as the “Quartet”— composed of the U.N., U.S., Russia and the European Union—which holds a mandate to find a road map for peace in the Middle East.

Diplomats and U.N. officials said the report was significant in that it lays out concrete steps and suggestions on how to revive peace talks.

Just when you thought this week couldn’t get any stranger, it did.

Boris Johnson, an architect of the Leave campaign, has long been considered one of the frontrunners for the leadership of the Tory party, even before Prime Minister David Cameron announced his eventual resignation last week. Johnson is the most popular politician in the country, a goofy and accessible man of the people, well placed to continue the Tories’ domination of the United Kingdom’s politics.

Until this morning, that is. When Johnson stood behind a podium, journalists viewed it as a speech to declare his entry into the leadership race against home secretary and Remain campaigner Theresa May. But it wasn’t. Instead, after ten minutes spent discussing the necessary policies of the next prime minister, and how and why Cameron’s successor must extricate the U.K. from the clutches of the European Union, Johnson announced that he would not stand – that he would not mount a challenge for the leadership.

The shock was palpable. After Johnson uttered the decisive line — “I have concluded that person cannot be me” — the cameramen in the room went into overdrive, clicking rapid-fire to document the moment of defeat in the face of the man once destined for 10 Downing Street. Johnson stumbled over his next line. For the following minute, he vowed to support a “moderate, conservative, one-nation approach” for his party and his country; it sounded more like an affirmation of David Cameron than anything else. Soon after, Johnson exited the stage, to applause and general clamor. The Guardian’s liveblog of the speech had begun with the headline “Boris Johnson launches his leadership bid.” Ten minutes later: “Johnson pulls out of Tory leadership contest.”

Various theories have circulated around the journosphere in the week following Britain’s vote to leave the E.U. The triggering of Article 50 is considered a “poisoned chalice,” political quicksand destined to doom the career of whichever politician is foolish — or hubristic — enough to tread down that path. The process of actually leaving the E.U. would be so destructive, would embroil the country in so much turmoil, that only a political ignoramus would do it. Johnson knows this, the theory goes, as encapsulated in this well-circulated but analytically flawed Guardian comment. Johnson, valuing himself above all else and (it is thought) only tenuously committed to the Brexit cause in the first place, sought to wash his hands of the mess he had created. Johnson appears as a cynical, unethical mastermind, always looking out for himself and ignoring any obligation to the situation he had done so much to engender.

That’s a compelling read of the situation. It plays to what so many already suspect about Johnson: that he cares only for himself and is willing to ruin the economy and his friends’ careers for the sake of advancing his own. For many in the press corps who already detest the man, it fits nicely with the image they hold of Johnson in their preconceptions.

As Noah Daponte-Smith has explained over on the home page, Boris Johnson has, as The Sun put it, been ‘Brexecuted’, his bid for the Conservative leadership destroyed just before lift-off by the announcement that Justice Minister Michael Gove, his ally in the battle of Brexit, had, well, decided to put in for the job for himself.

Anyone who enjoys House of Cards will enjoy the instant take by Iain Martin, writing for the splendidly named Reaction.

Here’s an extract:

At 9am this morning, Boris Johnson was pretty sure that he was going to become Prime Minister, or at least make the final two in the leadership contest and be in with a 50-50 chance. Then, at 9.02am an email landed that signalled he was done for, ruined. Johnson and his team had no warning – no call, no text – from Michael Gove that he was about to declare Boris unfit to be Prime Minister and run himself. The explosive email went to reporters direct….

Almost instantly around forty Tory MPs switched straight to Gove. It was almost as though it had been planned…

Almost. As you will see if you read the rest of the article, Martin is good with the stiletto.

And so Johnson abandoned his bid for the leadership, a mistake: Going down with all flags flying would, over the longer term, have been seen as a more dignified exit, but there we are.

We could discuss how Johnson had left himself so vulnerable. Part of the problem was that, never the most organized of characters (although less chaotic than he pretends), Johnson had, in the confused aftermath of the unexpected win for the Brexit team, forgotten that in politics, like real estate, it’s necessary to always be closing.

Amongst Johnson’s errors was his decision to use his column in the Daily Telegraph as the venue for his first considered (too kind an adjective) comment on the referendum triumph he clearly had not expected, a column that was widely seen as a disaster. Gove, a journalist himself, apparently added a few editing touches to help his pal out. How kind.

The favorite to become the next Tory leader (and thus prime minister) now becomes Theresa May, the Home Secretary (interior minister). The Guardian’s Martin Kettle (no fan of Johnson, as you can see if you read the full piece) approves:

Johnson’s eclipse makes a May versus Gove contest in the final round likely. In the past, May’s chances tended to be dismissed because, in Westminster terms, she is like Kipling’s cat that walks by itself. She rarely works the room or the studios. She frequently does her own thing, which made Cameron suspicious. Though her leadership ambitions have never really been in doubt, she does not have much of a machine. The result is that she had relatively few committed supporters until now.

Expect the Labour Party under a new leader to oppose Brexit, despite the popular vote. At question is whether the new leader of the Conservative Party will manage to unite Conservative MPs into ratifying the popular vote. Now that Boris Johnson is out of the race.
I see markets rebounded from their funk at the temerity of the British people to vote for Brexit. There is no deep explanation required. The people and institutions involved in swinging markets on a daily basis are complete know-nothings, like the rest of us. They had overbought on an expectation of a market bounce once the UK had voted to stay in the EU. They then had to square their positions by selling once reality hit. And, as is the way with markets, selling begets selling. Overshooting on both the up and downsides is commonplace. It can be explained by human psychology or be the setting of computer trading programs. Take your pick; both are right.

What I find interesting is the way reactions to irrelevant market perturbations or the pronouncement of self-interested corporate leaders are taken to be instructive commentaries on world affairs. The decision taken by the British people is about the character of the life of a nation as it evolves. What happens in the next five minutes or the next few years is largely by the way.

Netanyahu put it well when speaking at the UN about the nuclear deal with Iran, in which most restrictions on Iran are lifted after ten years. “A decade may seem like a long time in political life, but it’s the blink of an eye in the life of a nation.” It would be unfortunate if the worst happened and the UK experienced a recession because of Brexit, but exactly what effect would that have on life in the UK in 2030? None is the answer.

I like to think that those who voted to leave the EU had in their mind what kind of country they wanted to their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live in. Certainly, as someone who was English-born, my support for Brexit was about the very long run. I do not hold any lower expectations for the mindsets of the vast majority of those who voted to leave. I don’t think it was about a migrant taking their particular job or taking their particular place in a hospital queue. I think it was borne of patriotism. Patriotism is essentially about the long run; not what is good for the next five minutes.

This brings me to the young and old. The young predominantly voted to stay, the old to leave. I have noticed something about the young now that I am in the older category. They tend to put greater emphasis on the present than on the past or future. I suppose this is because the present is the key to their future. As you get older and have less and less personal future to worry about you develop, I think, a broader perspective on time both backwards and forwards.

Some young people who voted to stay have accused older people of being selfish in voting to leave. This seems to me to be the kind of naïve reaction that the old expect the young to come up with. They didn’t disappoint. In fact, the only evident selfishness on display was on the part of those people who were prepared to put their country’s interests behind their own personal aspirations, which they felt would be adversely affected by the UK’s exit from the EU. I am not delegitimizing this rationale for voting to stay, but nor should it be lauded. At the same time, laudable or not, perceived self-interest should never be underestimated.

They certainly are a smart bunch at the Australian Academy of Science, where great minds can hold two contradictory opinions at the same time. Two years ago the goal was an end to planet-wrecking growth. Now they want more taxpayer dollars to promote it
The federal electoral urgings of the Australian Academy of Science are pretty much what you’d expect. It wants more funding for science, technology and engineering. This will ‘drive innovation and growth into the future’, it says.

The Academy is oh-so-keen on economic growth. It says, “More than three decades of exponential growth in Australia’s per-capita GDP is tapering, and if nothing changes Australia will fall out of the G20 within 15 years.”

But wait! Wasn’t this same Academy sponsoring a Green anti-growth agenda as it cranked up its Fenner Conference on the Environment less than two years ago? The conference, at the University of NSW, was titled, “Addicted to Growth? How to move to a Steady State Economy in Australia.” The Academy approves, brands and seed-funds these annual Fenner gigs at up to $10,000 a time.

The conference flier reads: “Novelist Edward Abbey once noted that ‘Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell’. Our economy is meant to be a ‘servant of society’, not its master, yet is this true today? On a finite planet nothing physical can keep on growing forever – yet that is the ideology of the ‘endless growth’ neoclassical economics that now dominates the thinking of most governments and business. This has led to a rapidly worsening environmental crisis that degrades the nature on which we all depend. We cannot keep avoiding talking about this issue – hence the need for such a conference…”

The Academy has no economics expertise. But it promotes the eco-catastrophism of the global warming religion, having failed to notice that there has been negligible warming for two decades,[i], contrary to all the scary stuff from the IPCC computer modelling.

When common-sense flew out the Academy windows, the leadership became suckers for any variety of green ideology, such as divestment last year of its fossil fuel shares (but continued unprincipled use of fossil-fuel-powered electricity).

Following Tuesday’s multiple suicide bombing at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the world — the West in particular — to view the event as a “milestone for the joint fight against terrorist organizations, a turning point.”

He also said the attacks, “which took place during the holy month of Ramadan, show that terrorism strikes with no regard for faith and values.”

If 42 innocent people had not been brutally killed, along with hundreds of others seriously wounded, his words would be cause for a global guffaw on the part of friend and foe alike.

In the first place, as an authoritarian leader of a previously modern and democratic Muslim country, which he has spent the 14 years since his election turning into an Islamic state where critics in the press and political system are thrown in jail for any hint of opposition, he has more nerve than sense to pretend that he is in the same boat as the United States and Europe.

Secondly, as someone who is strongly tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, he has shown that it is only certain terrorists he wants eradicated; the others are his allies, who do the dirty work he welcomes and supports.

It was thus ironic that, on the morning after the airport attack, the Israeli security cabinet approved the reconciliation agreement it had reached with Turkey the day before. As is typical of any deal Islamist leaders ultimately sign with the Jewish state, this one is much more advantageous to the undeserving party.

According to the agreement, which has been negotiated since 2010 — when Turkey sponsored and dispatched a flotilla of armed, pro-Hamas activists to provoke an international incident by violating Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip — Israel will hand over $20 million to the families of the perpetrators killed and injured on the Mavi Marmara ship by IDF commandos who shot at their assailants in self-defense. In exchange, Turkey will cease its legal proceedings against Israeli forces connected in any way to what happened on that ship six years ago.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5542.htm
Egyptian author Sayyid Al-Qemany, speaking at the first convention of the
Adhoc organization, a London-based “secularist, modernist, pluralist”
international NGO, warned about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism,
saying: “Any Muslim who believes that his religion is suited to all times
and places is a terrorist by definition.” Al-Qemany said that “all scorpions
sting” and that the only difference is that some have not yet had the chance
to perform “the best act that brings you close to Allah” by carrying out the
duty of Jihad. The convention, titled “The Roots and Causes of Islamic
Violence,” was held in Brussels on May 22, and Al-Qemany’s address was
posted on the YouTube account of the “I Think” Magazine.