RUTHFULLY YOURS

“If this isn’t genocide, I really don’t know why we bother to have international treaties and conventions.”

With this grim statement, Kurdistan Regional Government Representative to the United States Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman opened a Sept. 10 panel at the Washington, D.C.Heritage Foundation to discuss the horror inflicted on Iraq by the Islamic State.

Fellow panelist Hudson Institute religious freedom expert Nina Shea described in detail a “religious genocide directed against the various religious groups that do not conform to ISIS’ vision of Sunni Islam” – factions such as Christians. Heritage national security expertSteve Bucci agreed, saying that his findings during an extensive study of the Islamic State provided the “clearest example of genocide that I have ever read or seen since World War II’s Nazis.” “We should not be afraid of using that word,” Rahman said, of the term “genocide.” While she acknowledged lawmaker concerns regarding the political drawbacks to utilizing such strong wording, she adamantly declared, “We should call a spade a spade.”

Shea spoke about the Islamic State’s rise in the context of Saudi education’s intolerance of the religious other that has created “immeasurable damage throughout the Sunni world with this brainwashing and these directives of hatred.” She referenced Quran 9:29’s traditional three choices for Christians and other monotheists subjugated by Islamic conquest: death, conversion to Islam or payment of the humiliating jizya poll tax, and pointed out that with ISIS, the latter option is a “bogus kind of arrangement, because the tax keeps rising.”

Dear Glenn Kessler,

First of all, how come your “Fact Checker” column of 9/22 awarding Dr. Ben Carson “Four Pinnochios” for his statement regarding “taqiyya” is running for a second time? It first appeared last week, but there it is again in today’s paper, 9/27, on p. A5.

Oh well, I missed it the first time. It’s definitely worth revisiting.

Dr. Carson said the following: “`Taqiyya’ is a component of sharia that allows, and even encourages you to lie to achieve your goals.”

You then write: “In other words, he appeared to be saying that this tenet of Islam offered some kind of loophole that would allow the Muslim to lie about his or her religious beliefs to pursue other objectives. Is this the case?” (Emphasis added.)

For the record, your paraphrase is not what Carson said. He invoked “taqiyya” to describe a concept in sharia, or Islamic law, that, as he put it, “allows and even encourages [a Muslim] to lie to achieve [his] goals.”

I note that you have chosen to frame Dr. Carson’s very broad claim about sharia-approved lying by focusing on a literal definition of “taqiyya,” as if Carson were discussing only whether Muslims were specifically permitted to lie about “religious beliefs.”

President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have conceded that some portion of the money released to Iran through the lifting of sanctions will result in “bad behavior,” a euphemism for terrorism. The supposition of the president’s team is that despite the bad behavior, Iran, unconstrained by sanctions, will in time join the community of responsible nations. In other words our concessions will yield a positive response from the Supreme Leader Khamenei and his acolytes.

What is in evidence in these negotiations is the implicit Western belief in rationalism, a stance that suggests our enemies, with the appropriate incentives, will act just as we would. “Trust but verify” is the qualifier President Reagan used in his negotiations with the Soviets. President Obama, on the other hand, has resorted to trust and have faith in rational expectations. What happens when the adversary is irrational remains unclear. A theological belief system and acceptance of taqiyya or a religious lie to promote the interests of Islam, challenge assumptions of rationality.

One of the Glazov Gang’s most popular episodes was joined by Geert Wilders, the founder and leader of the “Party for Freedom” — which is currently the fourth-largest party in the Dutch parliament. Mr. Wilders is best known for his brave stance against, and truth-telling about, Islam. He is the author of Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me.

Mr. Wilders came on the program to crystallize the only way the West will be able to preserve itself.

Did you miss this BLOCKBUSTER episode?

Here it is below:

Britain should not be party to a body that has Saudi Arabia making crucial appointments.
George Osborne has been taking considerable flak for doing trade deals with China despite its oppressive authoritarian regime. Yet his critics have been silent on the elevation of one of the world’s most barbaric tyrannies to a key role in promoting global human rights. Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the UN Human Rights Council has been chosen to head its five-member appointments panel.

This recommends applicants for more than 77 positions shaping international human rights standards and reporting on violations around the world. How crazy is this? Saudi Arabia tyrannises women, dissidents, Christians and gays. Some argue that this year it has beheaded more people than Isis.

For Obama, it isn’t the man in the arena who counts. It’s the speaker on the stage.

Barack Obama told the U.N.’s General Assembly on Monday he’s concerned that “dangerous currents risk pulling us back into a darker, more disordered world.” It’s nice of the president to notice, just don’t expect him to do much about it.

Recall that it wasn’t long ago that Mr. Obama took a sunnier view of world affairs. The tide of war was receding. Al Qaeda was on a path to defeat. ISIS was “a jayvee team” in “Lakers uniforms.” Iraq was an Obama administration success story. Bashar Assad’s days were numbered. The Arab Spring was a rejoinder to, rather than an opportunity for, Islamist violence. The intervention in Libya was vindication for the “lead from behind” approach to intervention. The reset with Russia was a success, a position he maintained as late as September 2013. In Latin America, the “trend lines are good.”

“Overall,” as he told Tom Friedman in August 2014—shortly after ISIS had seized control of Mosul and as Vladimir Putin was muscling his way into eastern Ukraine—“I think there’s still cause for optimism.”

It’s a remarkable record of prediction. One hundred percent wrong. The professor president who loves to talk about teachable moments is himself unteachable. Why is that?

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0928/ISIS-in-America-how-doomsday-Muslim-cult-is-turning-kids-against-parents?

So far, 58 Americans have been arrested in 2015 for plotting violence or attempting to join the so-called Islamic State in Syria. More than half are under 25, and experts say recruits are getting younger.

Washington — American families are under assault from an Islamic extremist group that is quietly turning young minds against their parents, against their religious faith, and against their country.

The group, the self-proclaimed Islamic State in occupied sections of Syria and Iraq, is using social media and the worldwide reach of the Internet in a sophisticated recruitment campaign that is making families feel helpless to stop a slow-motion kidnapping of their children.

So far this year, 58 Americans – more than half under 25 – have been arrested for attempting to travel to Syria or for plotting violence in the US. That is more than twice the number of similar arrests for the entire year in 2014, and more than twice the number for all of 2013, as well.
ISIS IN AMERICA:A seven-part series

Mohamed Rasul is homeless in New York City. But don’t feel too sorry for him, he’s “homeless by choice.” He’s got a free laptop and free Wi-Fi in Bryant Park.

According to Mohamed, he’s “never been as comfortable as under de Blasio” because no one forces him to leave the park where a miniature carousel spins children around on painted horses and a yoga lesson takes place on the main lawn. These things, the carousel, the yoga lesson and the free Wi-Fi, only exist because the park was restored from its old days as Needle Park.

Back then the stretch of park behind the New York Public Library had more crimes than some towns. Cleaning it up took a lot of hard work.

Now that hard work is being undone by a pro-crime mayor.

When you have enough Mohameds in the park then the kids, the coffee, the Wi-Fi, the yoga mats and the lunch break crowd goes away to be replaced by junkies, needles, drug dealers, muggers and rapists.

I’m in Sweden for a couple of days, threading my way between the “refugees” at the railway station. More on that anon. Nonetheless, a prudent man does not neglect book-plugging duties for long. So I see Lynne Cohen has a review of my new tome:

Michael Mann needs no introduction. He is the Yale-and-Berkley-educated physicist and mathematician, now a climatologist at Penn State University. He is also the inventor/creator/discoverer of the (in)famous hockey stick graph, what Steyn calls “the single most influential graph in climate science. It leapt from the pages of a scientific journal to the posters and slides of the transnational summits, to official government pamphlets selling the Kyoto Protocol, to a starring role on the big screen in an Oscar winning movie [An Inconvenient Truth], to the classrooms of every schoolhouse in the western world.” Also, a version of the hockey stick featured prominently in the influential United Nation’s 2001 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The hockey stick graph purports to demonstrate that, for about 900 years — represented by the long handle lying flat — the world experienced almost no climate variation. Then, the blade of the stick shoots straight up for about 120 years, from the start of the industrial revolution… The only problem is, the hockey stick has been almost completely discredited, which is the fundamental point of Steyn’s book.

To educate readers, Steyn quotes about 150 Ph.D. scientists from every corner of the earth. He even uses the statements of a few liberal scientists who actually believe in MMGW, but who have no trouble denouncing the hockey stick… Several of the hockey stick’s most obvious problems are easy to grasp. The 900-year long handle completely ignores two indisputable eras, the Medieval Warm Period, from about 950 to 1250 A.D. and the later Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. For proxy measures, Mann and his team used only a few trees, including one California bristlecone pine, which is certainly old, but whose rings cannot determine climate. As stated by Dr. Jeffrey Foss, author of the 2009 book Beyond Environmentalism: A philosophy of Nature: “tree rings are not a reliable proxy for temperature.” After more critical analysis, Foss concluded, succinctly: “wrong tree, wrong proxy, wrong location, wrong method.”

You will love the 12 chapter titles, written in Steyn’s proverbial acerbic inflection, among them: “Mann is an island,” “Mann of the hour,” “Mann o’war,” “Mann overboard,” and my personal favorite, “Mann boobs.”

The success of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate has to be getting under the skin of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“He led the largest city in the country as it prospered for a dozen years, and to see this guy who is all talk seize control of the apple cart is galling to him,” a Bloomberg friend told me this week. Maybe that explains why Ian Bremmer, a Time magazine columnist and president of the consulting firm Eurasia Group, issued the following tweet Saturday: “Word from those that know: Mike Bloomberg now seriously considering independent run.” His words have since ricocheted everywhere in retweets and made the Drudge Report.

But how serious is this boomlet? The climate for an independent in the race is favorable. For years, politicos have talked of Bloomberg as a potential White House contender who would resonate with an alienated electorate that wants to end government gridlock. More than 70 percent of voters think the country is on the wrong track, with both the Democratic president and the GOP Congress unpopular. The upcoming election could feature major-party candidates who have negatives of above 40 percent with voters. A dynastic race between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton would leave many voters aching for fresh faces.

Bloomberg has been officially silent about any possible interest in the White House, spending his time managing his media company and a foundation that promotes his mix of socially liberal and fiscally conservative ideas. But he has fans in both parties. Last month, Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who runs Fox News, called on Bloomberg to run, saying “it’s time” for him “to step in the ring.” New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin reported in June that New York Democrats disgruntled with Hillary Clinton were urging him to run.