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Open Letter to President Obama about Christmas Bells Falling by Silent Mark Durie

Posted By on December 27th, 2015

Mark Durie is a theologian, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and author of The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom.

President Obama was mistaken in his Christmas message: it is not true that church bells have been ringing in the Middle East for centuries.

Dear President Obama,

In your recent statement on persecuted Christians at Christmas you stated: In some areas of the Middle East where church bells have rung for centuries on Christmas Day, this year they will be silent; this silence bears tragic witness to the brutal atrocities committed against these communities by ISIL. When you say that ‘church bells have rung for centuries’ you are not speaking the truth. Bells have rung in Syria and Iraq for not much more than a hundred years, at most.

As determined by Islamic law, church bells did not sound throughout the Middle East for more than a thousand years from the 7th century conquests until modern times (except under the Crusaders). This was due to the conditions set by the Pact of the Caliph Umar, by which Christians of Syria surrendered to Islamic conquest in the 7th century AD. In this pact the Christians agreed that “We will not sound the bells in our churches.” Churches in regions controlled by Muslims used semantrons (also calls nakos) instead of the forbidden church bells. Examples of these are still visible in Jerusalem to this day, e.g. see here.

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Former King wanted England bombed and an Anglo-German alliance, archives reveal Was Edward VIII a Nazi sympathizer? Damning evidence indicates this is true… By: Karina Urbach

Posted By on December 27th, 2015

King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate in 1936, and soon took the title of the Duke of Windsor. He has always been known for his pro-Nazi sympathies. However, the extent of his betrayal could never be fully verified due to the secrecy of the Royal Archives.

The Royal Archives have always ensured that letters from German relatives of the royal family in the run up to World War II remain closed. Naturally, such censorship has led to endless conspiracy theories.

But over the past eight years I have accumulated damning evidence by sifting through 30 archives all over the world that are open. Intelligence reports and German, Spanish and Russian documents show members of the British royal family were indeed far closer to Nazi Germany than has previously been recognised. I present this in full in my new book Go-Betweens for HitlerExternal link .

One key to this Anglo-German network is Charles Edward Duke of Coburg (1884-1954). In a Channel 4 programmeExternal link on him in 2007, I called Coburg “a Nazi who got away with it”, but I had no idea about the magnitude of his crimes at the time.

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on December 27th, 2015

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

New molecule kills cancer cells. (TY Nevet) Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a molecule known as NT157 which targets metastatic human melanoma and colon cancer. The molecule has been licensed to Israeli startup TyrNovo for medical trials.
https://www.afhu.org/internationally-acclaimed-researchers-discover-a-double-anti-cancer-agent/news/

Software to stop that stutter. Israel’s Novotalk is the only app that includes a therapy aspect for stuttering intervention. Novotalk’s fluency shaping therapy has a 90% success rate. Approximately 1% of the world’s adult population stutters – approximately 70 million people. http://novotalk.com/
http://www.janglo.net/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=display&catid=99&tid=377059

Don’t let your blood sugar levels spike. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have published a study showing the danger to health from eating foods that cause the blood sugar level to rise quickly. These foods vary for each individual and Weizmann wants more Israelis to join its Personalized Nutrition Project.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/will-ice-cream-make-you-gain-weight-it-depends-on-your-gut-study-finds/
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2815%2901481-6

Treatment for diabetics in China. Israel’s Oramed has signed a deal worth $50 million that gives China’s Hefei Life Science & Technology (HLST) the rights to Oramed’s oral insulin capsule ORMD-0801 in China, Hong Kong and Macau. ORMD-0801 will help treat the large and growing numbers of diabetics in China.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/oramed-inks-huge-50m-deal-with-chinese-pharma-firm/

Sleep is key to success of bone marrow transplants. A clinical study by Professor Asya Rolls of Israel’s Technion has shown that the donor needs to sleep well in the four hours prior to donating their stem cells. If not, the success of the transplant decreases by 50%.
http://pard.technion.ac.il/2015/11/04/sleep-well-for-stem-cells/

Non-invasive procedure wins $10,000 prize. Three students from Israel’s Technion, won the $10,000 first prize at the BizTEC Entrepreneurship Competition held at Microsoft’s Herzliya R&D center. Their product solves the major problem of collecting urine samples from millions of babies each year.
http://www.technion.ac.il/en/2015/10/peekaboo-group-1st-in-biztec-2015/

Keep your hair. A team of students from Israel’s Technion have developed a treatment for hair loss, without side-effects. It won them “Best New Application” at the 2015 international iGEM synthetic biology competition in Massachusetts.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/203768#.VnLYlFnn-Ug

Tech for first responders. The Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation has granted $12 million over the next 3 years to Israeli-American projects that develop advanced technologies for first responders. The “NextGen” collaboration is expected to produce many lifesaving solutions.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/12/21/us-israel-to-co-develop-technologies-for-first-responders/

Highest birthrate, lowest C-section rate. The childbirth rate of Israeli women is the highest among the 34 OECD countries, while its rate of cesarean sections is the lowest. The Israeli birthrate of 3.0 compares to the OECD average of 1.7. The Israeli cesarean rate is 154.3 per 1,000 births whilst the OECD figure is 258.7.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Israel-has-lowest-C-section-rate-in-OECD-436014

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The Islamic Candidate? :: Posted by Edward Cline

Posted By on December 26th, 2015

I commented on a Daniel Greenfield FrontPage column of December 24th, “Muslim Immigration is Exactly What ISIS Wants.” In it, Greenfield argues that ISIS wants to send thousands of its “fighters” to Europe and especially to the U.S., for the purpose of establishing operational bases for terrorism.

Agreeing with everything said by Mr. Greenfield concerning ISIS’s tactics and overall strategy, a crucial question is: Because Obama wants to bring in tens of thousands of Muslim “refugees,” and knows damned well there will be scores of ISIS agents among them, is this what he wants? Is he acting as an agent for ISIS? …I can posit an answer, but this is a question which would naturally occur to anyone observing Obama’s actions and statements.

And that has been over the years, at least seven of them. In June 2008 I penned a five-part commentary on the rise of Barack Obama, “The Year of the Long Knives,” which is accessible here. (That series does not mention Islam or Muslims even once. It dwells chiefly on the mooning crush on Obama our decrepit “aristocracy of money” has exhibited.) In this column I am positing an answer. It is purely speculative.

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‘Hamilton’ Biographer Is Making History on Broadway Ron Chernow says 2015 brought ‘a biographer’s wish-fulfillment fantasy’ By Pia Catton

Posted By on December 26th, 2015

Ron Chernow is a superb biographer. I read his book on Washington as well as his biography of Hamilton. I saw “Hamilton” on Broadway and loved every second….rsk

Author Ron Chernow is seasoned at the art of signing books, from his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of George Washington to his best-selling, legacy-reviving portrait of Alexander Hamilton.

But in 2015, he scribbled his signature on something new.

“I never dreamed that I would be autographing Playbills,” he said.

Mr. Chernow, 66 years old, has been signing theater programs in his capacity as historical adviser to “Hamilton,” the Broadway musical about America’s first Treasury Secretary. The show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, read Mr. Chernow’s book and found inspiration, interpreting the founding father’s rags-to-riches story as a hip-hop narrative: An ambitious talent writes his way out of poverty but dies young, at the hands of a rival.

In 2008, Mr. Miranda invited Mr. Chernow to be a consultant, as a way to maintain historical accuracy while telling the story with contemporary music and stage technique.

The gig took Mr. Chernow out of his art-filled Brooklyn Heights home-office, where he is meticulously arranging his next book on about 25,000 4-by-6 index cards, and thrust him into the collaborative, sweaty process of creating a musical.

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Christmas in Space Fifty years ago, Geminis 6 and 7 made the first-ever space rendezvous. By Josh Gelernter

Posted By on December 26th, 2015

’Twas two months before Christmas, October 25, 1965. Astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford sat in Gemini 6, their chic new two-man space capsule, which sat atop a Titan rocket, which sat atop a launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

One launch pad over, an Atlas rocket blasted off carrying an Agena “target vehicle.” If men were going to land on the moon and come home safely, they would have to rendezvous their lunar lander with an orbiting command module that would fly them home. Proving that a space rendezvous was possible was one of the principal objectives of the Gemini program. And a successful rendezvous would be no mean feat. Getting two spaceships together in orbit would be like hitting one bullet with another — except that your average bullet travels one-tenth the speed of an orbiting Gemini.

Gemini 6 would attempt the first-ever space rendezvous with the Agena, which was an unmanned spaceship. As Schirra and Stafford waited, the Agena was launched — and promptly exploded. Gemini 6 was canceled. The exploded Agena was the only one NASA had.

As 1965 drew to a close, there were just four years left till JFK’s end-of-the-decade moon-landing deadline. NASA knew it was falling behind schedule. Without a successful rendezvous under its belt by the end of the year, meeting JFK’s deadline would be impossible. And without an Agena, it looked as if that might be that — till one Agena engineer was struck by inspiration: What if, instead of rendezvousing with an unmanned target, Gemini 6 were to rendezvous with Gemini 7?

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War, Refugees, and the Christian Imagination How the refugees of the Great War informed the works of two great Christian writers. By Joseph Loconte

Posted By on December 26th, 2015

Thomas Hardy, in “Poems of War and Patriotism,” described an appalling refugee crisis in the heart of Europe a century ago. They were “pale and full of fear,” and came by the thousands to England’s shores: “From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend, / No carillons in their train. Foes of mad mood / Had shattered these to shards amid the gear / Of ravaged roof, and smouldering gable-end.” They were families, mostly from Belgium, caught up in the German advance during the First World War.

As with the Syrian refugee crisis today, their plight touched the conscience of the West. Two of the 20th century’s greatest Christian authors, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, encountered firsthand the human suffering of the Great War and enlisted their literary imagination to confront it. Their epic works — tales of valor and sacrifice in a great conflict between Good and Evil — do not evade society’s moral obligations to the victims of war.

In October 1914, the German army entered the Belgian port of Ostend, bringing most of Belgium under German occupation. Soon tens of thousands of refugees were fleeing for Great Britain, which had entered the war to defend Belgian neutrality. Many arrived in the village of Great Bookham, where Lewis was being tutored in the classics before being sent to France to fight for king and country. He wrote to his father: “Everyone at Bookham is engaged in a conspiracy for ‘getting up’ a cottage for Belgian refugees.”

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Just Asking about Islam and Terrorism By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on December 26th, 2015

Let me ask you a question.

Let’s say you are an authentically moderate Muslim. Perhaps you were born into Islam but have become secularist. Or perhaps you consider yourself a devout Muslim but interpret Islam in a way that rejects violent jihad, rejects the concept that religious and civic life are indivisible, and rejects the principle that sharia’s totalitarian societal framework and legal code must be imposed on the state. Let’s just take that as a given: You are no more inclined toward terrorism than any truly peaceful, moderate, pro-democratic non-Muslim.

So let me pop the question: Is there any insulting thing I could say, no matter how provocative, or any demeaning video I could show you, no matter how lurid, that could convince you to join ISIS?

Mind you, I am not asking whether, upon my insulting and provoking you, you would ever want to have anything to do with me again. I am asking whether there is anything that could be said or done by me, or, say, Donald Trump, or Nakoula Basseley Nakoula — the video producer (Innocence of Muslims) whom Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tried to blame for the Benghazi massacre — that could persuade you to throw up your hands and join the jihad? Is there anything so profoundly offensive to Islam that we could conjure up that would make a truly moderate, peaceful Muslim sign up for mass murder? Torching and beheading? Killing children? Participating in systematic rape as a weapon of war?

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Trying to Hide the Rise of Violent Crime Progressives and their media allies have launched a campaign to deny the ‘Ferguson effect’—but it’s real, and it’s increasingly deadly for inner cities. By Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on December 26th, 2015

Murders and shootings have spiked in many American cities—and so have efforts to ignore or deny the crime increase. The see-no-evil campaign eagerly embraced a report last month by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis.” Many progressives and their media allies hailed the report as a refutation of what I and others have dubbed the “Ferguson effect”— cops backing off from proactive policing, demoralized by the ugly vitriol directed at them since a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year. Americans are being asked to disbelieve both the Ferguson effect and its result: violent crime flourishing in the ensuing vacuum.

In fact, the Brennan Center’s report confirms the Ferguson effect, while also showing how clueless the media are about crime and policing.

The Brennan researchers gathered homicide data from 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities for the period Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2015. (Not included were San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, El Paso and Nashville.) The researchers then tried to estimate what 2015’s full-year homicide numbers for those 25 cities would be, based on the extent to which homicides were up from January to October this year compared with the similar period in 2014.

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French Children Add to ISIS Ranks Some young men and women leave France to start families in Syria, according to those who study the radicalization of French residents By Noemie Bisserbe and Stacy Meichtry

Posted By on December 26th, 2015

NICE, France—Valérie Aubry-Dumont got the news in a WhatsApp message from deep inside Islamic State territory. “Mom, you’re going to be a grandmother,” wrote her teenage daughter, Cléa.

When Ms. Aubry-Dumont last saw her daughter, Cléa was a 16-year-old girl attending Catholic school in a Paris suburb. After a breakup, Cléa met a young man online and within months the couple fled France to live in a stretch of northern Syria ruled by Islamic State.

“I wish Cléa never had children,” Ms. Aubry-Dumont, a child-care worker, says now that her grandson has been born. Her daughter talks some days of returning to France, Ms. Aubry-Dumont said, but is afraid of losing her baby if she tries to leave. “She is trapped.”

In France, the West’s biggest supplier of foreign fighters in Syria, the loss of sons, daughters and grandchildren to Islamic State has been a slow-motion tragedy. For some French families, the Paris attacks, while deepening the wedge between militants and the West, were a painful reminder of their ties to the enemy.

The French wife of Foued Mohamed-Aggad—who along with two others killed 90 people in Paris’s Bataclan concert hall on Nov. 13—is living in Islamic State territory and ready to give birth “any day now,” said Françoise Cotta, a lawyer Mr. Mohamed-Aggad’s mother approached in an attempt to bring the child back to France.