RUTHFULLY YOURS

Eric Pickles is Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and is MP for Brentwood.

Seventy years ago this week, Soviet troops stormed a large complex of Nazi prison camps in south-west Poland. They quickly discovered the apparatus for mechanised mass murder. The camps were called Auschwitz-Birkenau: a byword for the darkest depths of human depravity, and a period of unparalleled evil in human history.

Last Sunday, I travelled to Poland to represent the UK at this year’s liberation ceremony. The event was more poignant than ever, as it’s likely to be the last significant anniversary where survivors are present. It was also more sombre, because it takes place in the aftermath of another violent and disgusting attack on European Jews.

Recently I’ve heard people try to distinguish the antisemitism that propelled the Holocaust from the murders in Paris. They argue the former was born from fascism and ancient European prejudices, while the latter was driven by Islamic extremism and Middle Eastern politics.

This distinction is superficially reassuring. After all, we overcame the Third Reich 70 years ago. And as for those Jew-hating jihadists, well, they hate everybody else too. But there’s a problem: there is no distinction. It’s a delusion.

As I have said before, the irrational hatred of Jews is like cancer. It can be defeated, even crushed, but it can come back. Last year, Europe experienced a relapse, and only the most naïve would dismiss the potential risks that lie ahead.

It’s not a lie if you believe it. That’s the defense that the New York Times is going with.

It begins by exonerating Neil DeGrasse Tyson for smearing Bush by backing up his defense that he had confused the president’s tribute to the dead astronauts with a remark about Muslims that he never made. The problem with this defense is that the two remarks “Our God is the God who named the stars” and “the same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today” are different.

Furthermore Tyson’s critics had found a whole list of similar problems with his public statements, including various versions of the same story about jury duty that had supposedly happened to him.

But the absurd cover-up hits new heights when it references Hillary Clinton’s fake sniper incident.

Miriam Weeks, better known as Belle Knox, even better known as “the Duke porn star,” is sophomoric — but then, she is still a sophomore – and, having stockpiled a supply of that most important American commodity – fame – she has announced her intentions to inflict her sophomoric analysis on the world at large as a political activist, being, as she is, a College Republican of a purportedly libertarian bent. Apparently, the sins of the Right have not been sufficiently punished by Meghan McCain (remember Meghan McCain?), and so the Fates have sent us a half-educated prep-school pornographer in pursuit of a women’s-studies degree, one who describes her political preferences with superfluous deployments of the word “like,” e.g., “My dream list would be like Ron Paul, or Rand Paul would be really cool. That’d be pretty awesome.”

Like, awesome.

That the work of Miss Weeks and her colleagues in carnality is perfectly within the usual libertarian/conservative/constitutionalist circle of individual liberty – we prefer a large circle – is not entirely beside the point, but it is at this point a minor question. Miss Weeks says, “I think that my work and being in the porn industry definitely hits on so many libertarian themes like free speech, and censorship, and, you know, choice and autonomy over our bodies,” but, having been born in 1995, Miss Weeks was in diapers (not the sort worn by those of her colleagues serving some of the more exotic tastes) the last time there was a half-serious attempt at regulating pornography in the United States, in the form of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a dopey and ham-fisted gesture in the direction of restricting online pornography that was gutted by Reno v. ACLU.

My friend Barbara Kay recently published a moving column [1] mourning the twelve people killed at Charlie Hebdo. “Historically,” she writes, “the Islamist terror attack on Charlie Hebdo — I already think of it as 1/07 — will be seen as more devastating than 9/11.” The reason is that “those 12 people represented an institution that cannot be replaced with bricks and mortar. Those twelve iconoclasts were not collateral damage. They were the very spirit of freedom of speech, the pillar of democracy and free peoples everywhere. Spirits are not so easily rebuilt.”

It is a stirring piece expressing an unimpeachable sentiment. But the assault on Charlie Hebdo by no means marked a turning point, as she appeared to suggest. Far from a unique event, the Muslim campaign against free speech has been going on for many years now. Freedom, the right to dissent, the satirical genre — all have been dying for some time.

If Boko Haram successfully purges the moderate Muslim elites in the northern states, Nigeria may well split into two separate nation-states, as did the Sudan. There would be a Muslim country in the north under Sharia law — if Boko Haram stopped there, a call that is doubtful. And there would be another country in the south, governed by the existing Federal Constitution.

Nigeria’s former dictator and perennial coup plotter, Mohammadou Buhari[1], may well defeat incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in the country’s upcoming presidential elections, scheduled for February 14 . Buhari, a northerner and a Muslim, has vowed to end Boko Haram’s reign of terror in the northeast of the country. Boko Haram has been responsible for the deaths of at least 10,000 Nigerians in 2014, mostly Christian and Muslim civilians, as well as many Nigerian soldiers and police.[2]

According to Boko Haram documents, the terrorist group wants to purge the ruling political and religious elites in Nigeria’s 12 northern states, which are already governed by Islamic Sharia law.[3]

“They chopped children in half. They chopped all heads off. How do you respond to that? That is what we have been going through. That is what we are going through.” — The Reverend Canon Andrew White, “Vicar of Baghdad”.

“At dawn on Christmas Day, the barbaric regime of Iran hanged 7 people in mass execution in Shiraz.” — NCR-Iran.

There are always more and more frequent cases where the blasphemy law is used to target religious minorities or to settle cases of disputes or private rivalries, or simply as an instrument of blackmail.” — Shardar Mushtaq Gill, Pakistani Christian lawyer.

Sudan’s security agents and police have “broad powers to arrest Christians and other lowly-regarded people without cause, for creating public disturbance. The Christians were released after paying a fine of $250 each.” — Morning Star News.

Islamic law holds that new churches are never to be built in Muslim lands and existing ones never repaired. Even so, many of these partially wrecked churches continue to be used, and are even packed, during church services.

Once again, the month of Christmas witnessed some of the most barbaric attacks on Christians throughout the Islamic world.

Paul Weston is a British-based writer who focuses on the damage done to Western Civilisation by the hard left’s ongoing cultural revolution, which seeks to destroy the Christian, capitalist and racial base of the West. He is the leader of Liberty GB, his website may be found here, and his political Facebook page here. For links to his previous essays, see the Paul Weston Archives.

When a country is slowly dying (or being slowly murdered) it makes for depressing reading when one charts its death throes. This is precisely why I don’t write articles such as this on a regular basis. I really don’t want to foreshorten the time we have left by depressing people to such an extent they break out the accumulated sleeping pills, or reach for a tumbler of whisky and the trusty old service revolver in the study.

But sometimes it has to be done. The contents of this article are nothing new. They are not an exceptional set of events in an exceptional time. They are simply one week’s worth of news stories representing what goes on day-in day-out, week-in week-out, year-in year-out, within a country that dies a little death every day from the left-wing knife intent on making a thousand cuts.

It is hard to know where to begin, but the ongoing population replacement of the native British is always a good start. The foreign-born population of London is set to outnumber the native-born within the next fifteen years. What should be noted here is that the English are already a minority in London and that the majority of “native” London-born are not actually English at all. This ongoing catastrophe means our virtual extinction even before one factors in the booming foreign-born. In other words, the capitol city of England is already lost to the English and it will become exponentially worse very quickly.

The demographic decline of the English due to below replacement-level birth rates, coupled with the demographic explosion of Islam via mass immigration and high birth rates, is leading toward another totally predictable catastrophe in terms of democracy. For the first time in the history of Britain, foreign-born voters are set to decide the electoral outcome of several parliamentary constituencies.

As the years and decades pass, the ever-decreasing native British will find themselves increasingly unrepresented in national politics, something which even the liberal/left might find irksome in the extreme as reality finally dawns on their cranially challenged multiculti world view. At the moment, though, they are all for it. The English living in the London area of Brent are a minority, but local Labour MP Barry Gardiner thinks this a jolly good thing, and said:

“The great thing is that we

Ruth Lynn Deech, Baroness Deech, DBE is a British academic, lawyer and bioethicist, most noted for chairing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, from 1994 to 2002, and as the former Principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford

Transcript:

Baroness Deech (CB): My Lords, with unfortunate timing, this debate is taking place two days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, despite the millions spent on Holocaust education and remembrance, the museums and memorials and the school visits to concentration camps, there is a gap in memory and education that needs to be bridged. The desire and opportunity to murder 6 million people of a different religion whose presence on his territory the murderer resents must not arise again. The message Jews took from the Holocaust was that their nationalism was necessary. It has been a success. Israel is not Saudi Arabia; it is not North Korea, Iran or Pakistan. It is a flourishing and democratic outpost in the desert with an astonishing record. It is a safe haven, an imperative for existence that can be applied to no other country in the world.

Yasser Arafat declared an independent state of Palestine in 1988 and recognition followed from 100 states. The subsequent failure to change anything on the ground demonstrates the truth of the international law on recognition: namely, that statehood has to be founded in fact, not in numbers of recognitions.

As far as this Motion goes, almost every word of it is dubious. There can be no contribution towards a two-state solution because recognition of Palestine, falsely based, will only make the situation more dangerous. There can be no two-state solution unless Palestine recognises Israel, which she has steadfastly refused to do. There is no statehood attaching to Palestine in international law because it does not meet the criteria. A sovereign state of a Muslim Palestine has never existed—not before 1948, and not before 1967. It was Egyptian and Jordanian territory. Ehud Olmert’s offer of a state was rejected in 2009. The intention of many of the players in the region has always been the elimination of a Jewish presence in the area, not the establishment of yet one more Muslim state. The problem with Israel is not that it has displaced anyone; according to its neighbours, the problem is that its population is largely Jewish.

The practical result of a premature state of Palestine would simply be to free up the import of arms into the new state. The aim underlying this move is the takeover of Israel. Why is there no preparation by the Palestinians for statehood? There is no governance structure, no independent administration, no industrialisation and no negotiation of trade agreements with its neighbour, Israel. The state would not be a state in any recognisable form. Its leaders have declared that the current residents, whose status as refugees defies all logic, would remain defined as refugees. They would not be granted citizenship, nor would the state of Palestine open its doors to the Palestinian diaspora—those Palestinians whose miserable lives in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region are worse than the lives of those in Gaza and the West Bank. It has also declared that it would be a Judenrein state, unlike the 1.8 million Arab residents of Israel who have chosen to stay there.

So if a state has no citizens, and will not grant them citizenship in defiance of international law, what would it be for? It would be for a closer jumping-off point for the demolition of the State of Israel in pursuance of the alleged right of return. As other noble Lords have said, Fatah and Hamas want a one-state solution. Why should Israel recognise Palestine if there is no reciprocity but only a step towards elimination in return?

In the climate of extremism that is sweeping Europe, why should a country want to take a step that risks feeding it more? The only purpose is manipulative—to allow Palestinians to pursue claims against Israel at the UN and other international bodies. In the face of what is happening in Europe, what agenda do the proponents serve? Would it not be a good idea to examine the excesses of this position and turn to state building on the ground as an alternative?

Israel’s antagonists often accuse her of apartheid. In the worst times of genuine apartheid in South Africa, Mandela was planning his future independent country’s constitution, educating its leaders, preaching peace, not vengeance, and acting as a statesman. In the early days of Zionism, before statehood, the Jewish residents of what was to be Israel prepared their governance structure, set up the organs of a state, created universities, made the desert bloom, prepared a legal system and a free press, trade unions, hospitals and charities. None of this is present in the Palestinian leadership; nothing is readied. It is not a state under international law, but I have no time to describe that.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

There are good and bad white blood cells. Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have discovered that neutrophils (a form of white blood cell) contain many different subtypes. Some of these prevent cancer and others promote it. It opens avenues for therapies that increase anti-tumor neutrophils and limit pro-tumor ones.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/25078

Graft-vs-Host disease treatment gets boost. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has granted Israeli biotech Enlivex “orphan” status for its ApoCell treatment to prevent Graft-vs-Host Disease. It will speed up development of the Israeli innovation that stops rejection of transplanted cells and bone marrow.
http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/enlivex-granted-eu-orphan-drug-designation-for-lead-product-apocell-for-graftversushost-disease-20150126-00574

Researching Autism with Japan. A team of Israeli and Japanese researchers has embarked on a project to discover how autistic spectrum disorder develops in the brain. It follows the conference “Advances in Brain Sciences”, jointly hosted by the Weizmann Institute of Science and Japan’s RIKEN Brain Science Institute.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/israel-japan-researchers-teaming-on-autism-and-brain-research/2015/01/21/

Norwegian charity prize for Israeli cancer expert. (Thanks to Israel21c) Norway’s largest charitable organization, the Olav Thon Foundation has chosen Tel Aviv University cancer geneticist Professor Yosef Shiloh as one of the two recipients of its very first international medical research award.
http://www.israel21c.org/news/israeli-cancer-geneticist-wins-first-olav-thon-foundation-prize/

350,000 people to benefit from new medicines. Israel’s Health Council has added an additional 73 medicines and technologies into the Government’s subsidized “Health Basket”. The changes will benefit 350,000 Israelis at a cost of NIS 324 million.
http://www.health.gov.il/English/News_and_Events/Spokespersons_Messages/Pages/01012015_1.aspx

Mapping the brains of the blind. Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are studying brain activity of blind people in order to shed new light on how our brains can adapt to the rapid cultural and technological changes of the 21st Century. Already they have found that reading Braille utilizes “visual” areas of the brain.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/25101
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Send video messages from your wristwatch. Israeli start-up Glide has developed video texting that is so fast, you be watching the video the other side of the world before your friend has finished recording it! And now, Glide is putting that technology onto smart watches. Remember Dick Tracey’s watch? It’s been superceded.
http://www.jpost.com/Business/Business-Features/For-Glide-video-is-the-new-text-389136

Ecological makeover for Tel Aviv bus station. The Onya Collective is turning Tel Aviv’s massive concrete bus station into a blossoming center for urban ecology. This includes hydroponics, growing plants without soil, under special LED lights. Gardens grow lettuce and strawberries using drip irrigation from the air-con system.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-tel-aviv-a-concrete-elephant-goes-from-blight-to-bloom-2/

China-Israel innovation cooperation. (Thanks to Michelle) Beijing hosted the first meeting of the China-Israel government innovative cooperation joint committee. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both sent their congratulations.
http://english.gov.cn/premier/news/2015/01/29/content_281475046958053.htm

Micro-irrigation for India. Israeli water company Netafim has been selected to partake in a $60 million micro-irrigation project in the Indian state of Karnataka. The project will span 12,000 hectares, help 6,700 farmers in 22 villages, increase crop production and save 50 percent of their water consumption.
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Netafim-joining-60m-Indian-irrigation-project-389166

A Digital Upgrade at the Tower of David Museum. (Thanks to Michelle) Jerusalem’s Tower of David Museum is introducing a new digital initiative. Position any mobile device over the view and an audiovisual guide, using IDF mapping technology, will identify and explain landmarks within the frame.
http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/a-digital-upgrade-at-the-tower-of-david-museum/?_r=1

You won’t need this in Israel. Israeli Shalom Koresh has invented a new invisible kippa (skull cap) made from artificial hair called “Magic Kippa.” It is for Orthodox Jews in Europe where recent terrorist attacks against the Jewish communities have left many afraid to go out in public wearing a kippa.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/01/25/a-new-invisible-magic-kippa-helps-jewish-men-who-fear-attacks/

How is that the Middle East’s sole democracy prompts so much angst, loathing, and condemnation? As a veteran news service correspondent explains, when an IDF soldier’s offensive T-shirt is deemed newsworthy and neo-Nazi rallies at Palestinian universities are not, there’s your answer.

The speech below was delivered by reporter Matti Friedman before the Britain Israel Communication & Research Centre in London on January 26:

One night several years ago, I came out of Bethlehem after a reporting assignment and crossed through the Israeli military checkpoint between that city and its neighbor, Jerusalem, where I live. With me were perhaps a dozen Palestinian men, mostly in their thirties – my age. No soldiers were visible at the entrance to the checkpoint, a precaution against suicide bombers. We saw only steel and concrete. I followed the other men through a metal detector into a stark corridor and followed instructions barked from a loudspeaker – Remove your belt! Lift up your shirt! The voice belonged to a soldier watching us on a closed-circuit camera. Exiting the checkpoint, adjusting my belt and clothing with the others, I felt like a being less than entirely human and understood, not for the first time, how a feeling like that would provoke someone to violence.

Consumers of news will recognize this scene as belonging to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which keeps the 2.5 million Palestinians in that territory under military rule, and has since 1967. The facts of this situation aren’t much in question. This should be an issue of concern to Israelis, whose democracy, military, and society are corroded by the inequality in the West Bank. This, too, isn’t much in question.

The question we must ask, as observers of the world, is why this conflict has come over time to draw more attention than any other, and why it is presented as it is. How have the doings in a country that constitutes 0.01 percent of the world’s surface become the focus of angst, loathing, and condemnation more than any other? We must ask how Israelis and Palestinians have become the stylized symbol of conflict, of strong and weak, the parallel bars upon which the intellectual Olympians of the West perform their tricks – not Turks and Kurds, not Han Chinese and Tibetans, not British soldiers and Iraqi Muslims, not Iraqi Muslims and Iraqi Christians, not Saudi sheikhs and Saudi women, not Indians and Kashmiris, not drug cartel thugs and Mexican villagers. Questioning why this is the case is in no way an attempt to evade or obscure reality, which is why I opened with the checkpoint leading from Bethlehem. On the contrary – anyone seeking a full understanding of reality can’t avoid this question. My experiences as a journalist provide part of the answer, and also raise pressing questions that go beyond the practice of journalism.