RUTHFULLY YOURS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Nader Modanlo was facing five more years in federal prison when he got an extraordinary offer: U.S. President Barack Obama was ready to commute his sentence as part of this month’s historic and then still-secret prisoner swap with Iran. He said no.
To sweeten the deal, the U.S. administration then dropped a claim against the Iran-born aerospace engineer for $10 million that a Maryland jury found he had taken as an illegal payment from Iran, according to interviews with Modanlo, lawyers involved and U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.
The surrender of the U.S. claim, which has not previously been reported, could add to scrutiny of how the Obama administration clinched a prisoner deal that has drawn criticism from Republican presidential candidates and lawmakers.

A Washington-based spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on discussions over the $10 million, which the jury found that Modanlo was paid to help Iran launch its first satellite in 2005. Modanlo says the money was a loan from a Swiss company for a telecoms deal.
In the prisoner swap, five Americans held in Iran were released at the same time as seven Iranians charged or imprisoned in the United States were granted pardons or had their sentences commuted. The deal accompanied the Jan. 16 implementation of a landmark agreement that curbs Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Analogizing Palestinians to the Jewish victims of the Nazis: that’s how the UN is marking this week’s “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.” The epicenter of modern antisemitism on a global scale is not somewhere over there, but in the middle of Turtle Bay.

For public tour groups, and their busloads of impressionable American students from around the country, the UN ‘s permanent “Palestine” exhibit has now been arranged to be within a few feet of the UN’s permanent Holocaust exhibit.

This week’s activities follow suit.

On January 25, 2016, a temporary exhibit called “Holocaust by Bullets” was opened in the UN visitors’ lobby. The painstaking research of the French organization Yahad-In Unum substantiates how two million Jews were shot to death in the presence of normal folks all over Europe.

But “Holocaust by Bullets” follows the UN’s December exhibition, which is titled “Palestinian Children: Overcoming Tragedies with Hope, Dreams, Resilience and Dignity.” That month-long display in the visitors’ lobby consisted of scenes of Palestinian children suffering from “devastating” wanton, unprovoked Israeli “operations.”

Father Patrick Desbois opened Yahad-In Unum’s exhibit by explaining that his team locates the bodies of Nazi victims and then honors the dead. He is driven to ensure that Europe does not bury “all its values” by building its future on unacknowledged and unvalued human beings in mass graves.

Reprinted from Il Foglio.

Of course it is our fault if there is an Islamist who blows himself up in Mosul, a terrorist who kills cartoonists, a fundamentalist who stabs Israelis, a couple of integralists who carry out a massacre in a center for people with disabilities, a man who in the name of ISIS fires thirteen gunshots against a Philadelphia police officer. The responsibility lies always with the West, the scoundrel who, with its language, its words, its wars and its bombs keeps provoking, in every corner of the world, the reaction of Jihadism and Islamist integralism. We are the ones who provoke; of course, it is not them who act. And maybe, who knows, the best way to stop provoking this reaction is to step aside, to hide, and to do all that is possible to prevent a possible counter action. And so it is better not to speak of Islam, say the “mainstream progressives”, better avoid the nonsense, better not to call things by their name. It is better, far better, to take care to cover the roots of evil and violence under a veil of hypocrisy. It is better, far better, to launch heartfelt calls against the rampant global emergency of Islamophobia. Better to refrain from speaking of the real problems, of the connection between the use of violence and the interpretation of Islam. And in the end, it is better to step aside and avoid problems altogether. The West’s cultural retreat is an issue that unfortunately is quite present in news reports around the world. However, when the retreat turns into surrender, it is high time to stop whistling, stop pretending nothing is happening, and start looking at reality with different eyes.

“Christian children are massacred, and everything is done in plain sight. Islamists proclaim on a daily basis that they will not stop until Christianity is wiped off the face of the earth. So are the world Christian bodies denouncing the Islamic forces for the ethnic cleansing, genocide and historic demographic-religious revolution their brethren are suffering? No. Christians these days are busy targeting the Israeli Jews.” — Giulio Meotti, Italian journalist.

The Kairos document seems to be so egregiously discriminatory that in 2010, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) declared it “supersessionist” and “anti-Semitic.”

We must ask why a presentation of the work of Kairos in an Anglican church made no reference whatever to the many associations with extremism and denial of a more rational Christian approach to the problems faced by Palestinian Christians.

Last September, during the World Week for Peace in Palestine Israel — an initiative of the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF) of the World Council of Churches, St. Thomas’ Church in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, hosted an event titled “Wall Will Fall”.

For anyone unfamiliar with the history, legal issues, and distortions of the Israeli-Arab and Jewish-Muslim conflicts, the deeply one-sided presentations and literature of the event may seem reasonable in the lack of such a context, and this report will, therefore, attempt to rebalance the narrative.

There are, broadly speaking, two clashing narratives about historical and current events in the region. By presenting only one side of the conflict, Wall Will Fall served only to exacerbate the root cause for the failure of peace negotiations: Palestinian rejection of the two state solution. Although Israel was repeatedly condemned — often very harshly — for its treatment of Palestinians, not once in the presentations or in the literature available were the Arabs ever censured for their series of aggressive wars against Israel, or the Palestinians criticized for their decades of terrorist attacks on Israelis, their preaching of anti-Semitic hatred in school textbooks, mosque sermons, summer camps, government-controlled media, and elsewhere. During the event, guilt was placed on one party only: Israel. As we shall argue, Israel is the least likely candidate for censure at such a high level.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/01/27/ottawa-hijab-day-the-glazov-gang/

A group called “City for All Women Initiative“ is planning an “Ottawa Hijab Day” on Feb. 25, 2016. The group states that it is aiming for “better awareness”, “greater understanding,” and a “peaceful world.” The Hijab Day will be a day, the group announces, “When non-Muslim women will wear a hijab for all or part of the day to be in solidarity with Muslim women. We walk with our sisters.”

In response to this group’s planned event, we are running Jamie Glazov’s Video: What a Woman in Hijab is Really Saying to You, in which he unveils the terrifying truth about what the hijab really signifies.

Perhaps the organizers of the event will share this video with all of their event’s participants in order to help achieve “better awareness” and “greater understanding”.

Don’t miss this special Jamie Glazov Video:

A criminal indictment was filed against Sedat Ergin, editor-in-chief of the country’s most influential newspaper, Hurriyet. Prosecutors demanded up to five years in prison for Ergin, for allegedly insulting President Erdogan. The indictment claims that Hurriyet insulted the president by paraphrasing what the president had said.

“[T]his is a ‘democracy’ with a growingly diminishing freedom of speech. It is ‘democracy’ where the ‘voice of the nation,’ which practically is the voice of the political majority and its glorified leader, intimidates and silences dissenting voices.” — Mustafa Akyol, columnist, Hurriyet.

According to a report by the Turkish Journalists Association, 500 journalists were fired in Turkey in 2015, while 70 others were subjected to physical violence. Thirty journalists remain in prison, mostly on terrorism charges. Needless to say, the unfortunate journalists invariably are known to be critical of Erdogan.

Europe, cherishing its “transactional” relations with Turkey, prefers to look the other way and whistle. All the EU could say about the prosecution of academics was that it is “extremely worrying.” Brussels cannot see that Turkish affairs passed the threshold of “extremely worrying” a long time ago.

Defending his quest for an executive presidential system Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited Hitler’s Germany as an effective form of government. Yes, he said, you can have the presidential system in a unitary state as in Hitler’s Germany. His office later claimed that the president’s “Hitler’s Germany” metaphor had been “distorted” by the media. Erdogan’s words on Hitler’s Germany may or may not have been distorted, but the way he rules Turkey reminds one powerfully of how Hitler ruled the Third Reich.

The question is not whether a Jew wears a kippah [Jewish skullcap]. It is whether others — Jews and non-Jews — insist that Jews have a RIGHT to wear a kippah — and Christians a cross — and whether non-Jews join Jews in wearing a kippah as a test of tolerance.

“A Jew who hides in fear of being recognized as a Jew is the perfect symbol of a world that forces the West to hide for fear of provoking a reaction among those who want to stab the West.” — Il Foglio, Italian newspaper.

Please wear a kippah on Wednesday, January 27, 2016. Do it for freedom of religion — for all of us. And send Il Foglio — kippah@ilfoglio.it — your selfie!

The defining value of Western politics is tolerance — not that anyone is always tolerant, and not that other people are not also tolerant, but in order to have the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal justice under law and multiple political parties. The demand that we be tolerant of that which we do not observe and do not believe and even/especially with which we do not agree is paramount. “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” require tolerance. “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The First Amendment’s protection of a free press and freedom from prior government censorship is the definition of tolerance.

Think Nazis in Skokie or “Piss Christ.”

Mostly the media gets it wrong, and increasingly, American institutions — particularly university campuses — get it even more wrong, elevating the protection of people’s “feelings” over the need be open at least to hearing ideas that might be deeply repellent to you.

Great news! Anglican bishops are moving toward the same position on facial hair as Mullah Omar:

Vicars should grow BEARDS to reach out to Muslims in their areas, says Bishop of London

Yes, the Taliban comes to the Angliban Communion:

One of the priests praised by the Bishop of London, the Rev. Atkinson told The Telegraph he found having a beard had helped provide a connection with many people in his parish, around 85 per cent of whom are Muslim…

The heart of the Cockney East End: 85 per cent Muslim. As they sing in Oliver!, “Consider yourself at ‘ome!” So one must adapt as one can:

He said he had forged new links with people after growing his facial hair.

He explained: ‘It is an icebreaker – St Paul said “I become all things to all men that by all possible means I might save some”…

Really? The C of E is back in the conversion game?

Professor Nir Barzilai, director and founder of the Institute for Aging Research at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, has more reason than most to believe that this is not far from the truth.

These days, Barzilai is working on an ambitious new project that is making waves globally. If it succeeds, it could start a total revolution in how we treat illness and aging.

Barzilai is overseeing a clinical trial titled “Targeting Aging with Metformin”, or TAME, which seeks to discover whether Metformin, a medication prescribed for diabetes, may also delay the onset of aging-related illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, and cognitive impairment.

The trial is currently in the final stages of planning and is searching for further sources of funding. The planned trial is to involve administering Metformin to thousands of elderly people, some of whom suffer from the aforementioned illnesses, and some of whom have the potential to develop the illnesses. Another group of subjects, identical in makeup to the first, is to be given a placebo as a control.

Comparison between the groups (while taking into consideration variables like diet and smoking habits) could prove whether Metformin can slow the progress of diseases, prevent them, and even increase life expectancy.

Why not cover them with burkas? rsk

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani paid a visit to Rome’s famous Capitoline Museums, which features some of the most beautiful works of art in the western world.

There was only one problem, however. Mr. Rouhani is a Muslim. And given the Islamic strictures against displaying the human form in all its glorious nakedness, Italian authorities were presented with something of a dilemma.

They solved the problem by placing white panels around the statues that displayed boy and girl bits, thus sparing Rouhani his offended cultural sensitivities.

IBT:

Rouhani toured the Musei Capitolini (Capitoline Museums) – which hosts a huge collection of artefacts from the ancient, medieval and renaissance periods – accompanied by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on 25 January.

However, the Iranian leader could not admire some of the museum’s masterpieces, as all marbles depicting naked scenes had been carefully hid behind large white panels.

The vast censorship effort was reportedly implemented as a show of respect to the reformist president, out of fears that the exposed private parts of ancient Roman gods could offend Iranian sensitivity. Wine was also banned from official receptions.