RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Egyptian court’s decision last Saturday to acquit former president Hosni Mubarak, his sons and associates of all remaining charges against them caused most commentators to proclaim that current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi has turned back the clock. Under his leadership, they say, Egypt has restored Mubarak’s authoritarian regime under a new dictator.

While this may be how things appear on the surface, the fact of the matter is that at least as far as Israel is concerned, nothing could be further from the truth.

During his 30-year rule, Mubarak always assessed that threats against Israel were unrelated to threats against Egypt. Due to this view, despite continuous complaints from Jerusalem, Mubarak enabled jihadists to take root in Sinai. He allowed Egypt to be used as the major path for terrorist personnel and armaments to enter Gaza. He took only minor, sporadic action against the smuggling tunnels connecting Gaza to Sinai.

By 2005, it became apparent that forces from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and al-Qaida were operating in the Sinai and cooperating with one another.

Despite warnings from Israel, Mubarak took no effective action to break up the emerging alliance and convergence of forces.

It was due to Mubarak’s refusal to act that the Palestinians in Gaza were able to begin and massively expand their projectile war of mortars, rockets and missiles against Israel. From the first such attacks, carried out 14 years ago, the Palestinian projectile campaigns could never have happened without Egypt’s effective collaboration.

On countless occasions, Palestinian terrorist commanders were able to escape to Sinai and avoid arrest by Israeli forces, only to return to Gaza from Sinai and continue their operations.

Mubarak believed that Israel was his safety valve.

In my recent post, “The Transparency of Obama’s Malignity” (November 24th), I wrote that the man is evil incarnate. He is a nihilist. He revels in the destruction he contemplates and initiates. He disguises his nihilism, not very effectively, behind one or another kind of verbal and behavioral public mask: a jihadist/terrorist wrap-around mask revealing only his eyes, a Venetian carnival mask to express his practiced insouciance, and a bandit’s bandanna over his muzzle the better to render his words unintelligible. But, like Mickey Mouse attempting the same deception, his true intentions and ends have always been obvious to the keen observer. I’m not talking about Mickey’s or Obama’s ears.

Dr. Leonard Peikoff has published a new book, The Cause of Hitler’s Germany, which is a distillation of his 1983 opus, The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America. The Cause focuses on the philosophical roots of Nazism, going all the way back to Plato, up through Augustine, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, and sundry philosophers and intellectuals in the present time. In a copacetic relationship, Nazism benefited mightily from Marxist ideology, and vice versa, vis-à-vis the principles and practice of totalitarian rule. I left this comment on the Amazon listing of The Cause.

If you want to understand the phenomena of Barack Obama and his continual grabs for power, his indifference to Congress, and his hostility to America and to Americans, Dr. Peikoff’s book would be an essential, necessary place to start. Obama, however, is merely the end product of over a century and a half of political and moral thought in the United States. He is merely the practicing heir of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel from the 18th and 19th centuries. His predecessors in office, Republican and Democratic, subscribed to some of his agenda; the Republicans, to preserve the status quo, whatever it happened to be at the moment; the Democrats, to advance the Progressive, collectivist agenda of transforming the nation to a thoroughly regulated one from top to bottom.

The world is changing and becoming even more dangerous — in a way we’ve seen before.

In the decade before World War I, the near-hundred-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted. Yet it abruptly imploded in 1914. Prior little wars in the Balkans had seemed to predict a much larger one on the horizon — and were ignored.

The exhausted Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were spent forces unable to control nationalist movements in their provinces. The British Empire was fading. Imperial Germany was rising. Czarist Russia was beset with revolutionary rebellion. As power shifted, decline for some nations seemed like opportunity for others.

The same was true in 1939. The tragedy of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was not that it had been too harsh. In fact, it was far milder than the terms Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in 1918 or the requirements it had planned for France in 1914.

Instead, Versailles combined the worst of both worlds: harsh language without any means of enforcement.

The subsequent appeasement of Britain and France, the isolationism of the United States, and the collaboration of the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany green-lighted Hitler’s aggression — and another world war.

We are entering a similarly dangerous interlude. Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.

Blames It on a ‘Judge’ The DHS secretary needs to answer some questions.

Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson gave some peculiar testimony in a House hearing Tuesday about two men tied to a designated terrorist organization who, he says, fled to Canada after “they were released by the judge” in an immigration hearing. Representative Jason Chaffetz pressed Secretary Johnson on the matter but appears either to have run out of time or not known what to ask. He and the committee should follow up promptly.

The story begins back in September when the pair, along with two other companions, were caught attempting to enter the United States through Mexico. It was quickly reported that four terrorists had tried to enter the country, igniting concerns that Islamic State cells were taking root here. Johnson quickly moved to ease those concerns by revealing that the four men were, in fact, Kurds associated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The PKK is a delicate subject for the Obama administration at the moment. In Iraq and Syria, the Kurds are fighting our enemy, the Islamic State, and PKK forces are among their most effective fighters. The PKK, however, is itself a designated terrorist organization under American law. The administration thus faces a problem similar to that which hamstrings its support for the so-called moderate Syrian opposition: aiding the enemy of our enemy is material support to terrorism — a serious federal crime. (As I’ve noted time and again, the “moderate” Syrian opposition is rife with anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood elements and its most effective fighters are al-Qaeda affiliates.)

Yup…lawyer them up…the way that the lawyers stopped the rioting in Ferguson…. This dope earns his good rating of a +2 by American Arab Institute, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record. (May 2012) rsk

Congressman Brad Sherman (D., Calif.) said the U.S. State Department has enough lawyers, but needs more experts in Islamic jurisprudence to combat the ideology of the Islamic State.

On Tuesday, Sherman told a congressional hearing that the U.S. should hire Muslim theologians and experts in Shari’a law to help reduce the threat of worldwide terror.

Sherman backed up his statements during an interview with Al Jazeera America’s Antonio Mora on Tuesday night.

“We have the outreach–what we don’t have is the research,” Sherman said. “Keep in mind, the State Department has a thousand lawyers. I think they ought to hire one or two experts in Islamic jurisprudence, whether they be practicing Muslims or others who have the expertise.

“It’s not enough to say, ‘look at what ISIS did, they beheaded somebody, it’s evil.’”

Sherman stressed the need to find Islamic–rather than secular or humanitarian–justifications against the brutality of the Islamic State to appeal to Muslims worldwide, particularly in the West, who are susceptible to recruitment via social media.

The angry rioter is a sacred figure in the progressive pantheon of social justice. The shirtless men in bandanas carting away cell phones are so outraged by injustice that they are willing to take to the streets and do what progressive hipsters taking social justice selfies of themselves in souvenir t-shirts plastered with the face of the latest victim of “white supremacism” can only dream about.

But the saint of the looted convenience store is as mythical a figure as the selfless community organizer. The race riot isn’t a bubbling stew of outrage out of which wounded souls emerge to cry out for justice. It’s a complicated criminal conspiracy in which the perpetrators rarely suffer any consequences.

Here’s how a race riot is actually put together.

3. Riots aren’t fed by outrage, but by opportunism

The rioters aren’t outraged, they’re usually bored young men, frustrated and lacking in empathy. Many of them have gang ties or a criminal record stretching back to kindergarten.

They’re the same people who commit crimes in any other non-outraged context.

The rest are there to get some attention while providing them with protective coloration. 9 out of 10 people screaming frenziedly while holding up “Black Lives Matter” signs would eagerly scream and hold up “Justin Bieber 4 President” or “Ferguson Loves the KKK” signs if it got them positive attention and a shot at being on television.

Everything you need to do know about why the riots fizzled out can be read on a thermometer. On Monday, when the grand jury failed to indict Officer Wilson, the temperature hit a high of 57 degrees. The next day it was still in the forties. Now that the temperature is in the twenties, the riots have fizzled out.

““You can hope all you want, [but] the reality is [Mrs. Clinton] is not likely to stray very far from the path Barack Obama has outlined as far as energy,” said Marita Noon, executive director of the advocacy group Energy Makes America Great. “Unfortunately, energy has become a very partisan issue, which I think is a shame. Democrats are totally going down the path of the fantasy that we can power the world on butterflies, rainbows and pixie dust.”

Hillary Clinton’s refusal to even mention the Keystone XL pipeline — let alone take a public position on the project — during a high-profile speech Monday night underscores the mystery surrounding her energy platform, with both environmentalists and coal advocates believing the former secretary of state could be an ally of theirs if she seeks the White House in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton’s address to the powerful League of Conservation Voters demonstrated her appeal to environmentalists, who hope the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner would stick with President Obama’s ambitious climate change policies if she becomes the next president.

Hillary Clinton’s refusal to even mention the Keystone XL pipeline — let alone take a public position on the project — during a high-profile speech Monday night underscores the mystery surrounding her energy platform, with both environmentalists and coal advocates believing the former secretary of state could be an ally of theirs if she seeks the White House in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton’s address to the powerful League of Conservation Voters demonstrated her appeal to environmentalists, who hope the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner would stick with President Obama’s ambitious climate change policies if she becomes the next president.

She’s explained away her lack of a position by claiming conflict of interest, since the State Department, which Mrs. Clinton led from 2009 to 2012, is overseeing environmental reviews and permitting processes for the pipeline.

During her address, Mrs. Clinton did indicate energy and climate change would be priorities of hers if she ends up in the Oval Office.

As ISIS continues its brutal occupation of large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, effectively blurring the border between those two pseudo nations, a new, if not more menacing threat is emerging in North Africa where the Islamic State is looking to plant its cancerous roots.

In Egypt, the Sinai based Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an Islamist organization responsible for dozens of terror attacks throughout the country announced on its Twitter account that it had forged a union with ISIS and swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed Caliph. ABM has mimicked the Islamic State’s macabre methods and has made use of social media to publicly broadcast grisly beheadings the group videotaped. ABM has also taken responsibility for the murder of America oil worker, William Henderson and was believed to be behind a deadly bombing attack in Sinai that killed over thirty Egyptian soldiers.

In Tunisia, the birthplace of the so-called Arab spring, ISIS has found a virtual recruiting ground for eager volunteers. Tunisia boasts the dubious distinction of being the nation that has contributed the most foreign fighters to Islamic State’s ranks, at least 3,000 according to published reports and many more have been prevented from joining by Tunisian authorities.

Algeria, a nation that experienced 10 years of brutal civil war between Islamists and government forces that claimed the lives of 150,000, is witnessing a resurgence of Islamic militancy. A group calling itself Jund al-Khilafah (“The Caliphate’s Soldiers”) has also recently sworn allegiance to al-Baghdadi. The newly formed group, which splintered from its al-Qaida affiliate, was responsible for beheading a French national in September after ISIS issued a call for the killing of nationals belonging to countries contributing to US led coalition strikes against the Islamic State.

As evidenced by the Iraqi and Syrian experience, ISIS thrives in an environment where lawlessness and chaos prevail and Libya, which saw the overthrow of Kaddafi in 2011, has provided the Islamic State with fertile ground to carry out its objectives and spread its ideology. Libya’s central government is weak and has been unable to exercise any meaningful authority over the country, which has witnessed the rise of a plethora of militia groups with various Jihadist affiliations.

The Libyan town of Darnah, situated on the Mediterranean coastline just south of Crete and east of Benghazi is currently under the complete control of a Jihadist militia that has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State. It is also first town known to be under ISIS rule in North Africa. The allure of ISIS in the Muslim world coupled with the lawlessness that characterizes the current state of affairs in Libya makes it a near certainty that other Libyan enclaves will sooner or later come under Islamic State influence.

It’s been a busy week for the oppression of women under Islam.

A day or two before Americans sat down to turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan – President Obama’s best friend in the Middle East, a man who has made it abundantly clear how he feels about moderate Islam and who has warned that women shouldn’t laugh in public – further endeared himself to feminists everywhere at a summit hosted by an Istanbul-based women’s group when he declared that a woman cannot do every job that a man can do because “it is against her delicate nature.” He dug the hole deeper for himself by claiming that Islam dictated motherhood to be the primary role of women. However, he insisted that his government has always supported equal rights for women and always would.

If that’s true, then perhaps his government could turn its attention to the epidemic of honor murders being committed against Turkish women, many of whom were murdered for seeking to divorce their husbands. Last month in Istanbul, a young mother in the middle of divorce proceedings was stabbed to death by her husband in front of their child. Her murder is the latest of 287 cases documented by a Turkish human rights and advocacy group known as “We Will Stop Women Murders.”

As reported by Huffington Post, the numbers are up from 238 last year, including the slaying of a 30-year old mother of two seeking a divorce. Her abusive husband simply walked into the hair salon where she worked and stabbed her to death without a word. This was after having abused her, forcing a miscarriage, and holding her hostage in their home.

Despite its modern reputation, Turkey has some of the highest levels of violence against women in Europe (as well as some of the lowest levels of female participation in politics and education). Rights activists claim that violence against women has skyrocketed since 2003 when the Islamist AKP party came into power. According to the Turkish Ministry of Justice, from 2003 until 2010, there was a 1,400 percent increase in the number of murders of women.

“The AKP government came under harsh criticism after the release of this information,” says Pinar Tremblay, a Turkish journalist. “So in a last-ditch effort to save its reputation, [after 2010] it started altering the numbers.” The government simply did not report on thousands of women who were murdered, Tremblay says.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article is adapted from one that appeared in the November 3, 2014, issue of National Review.

Minneapolis — “Are you a spy?”

Yusuf laughs as he says it, but the question is not unthinkable. I am, after all, likely the only person of pallor within a square half mile, and definitely the only one perusing the goods on offer in the Somali market at the corner of E. 24th St. and 10th Ave. S. — prayer rugs, pastel hijabs, and discount travel packages to Mecca, on sale to Minneapolis’s approximately 30,000 Somalis. The proprietors who eye me quizzically agree: I am not their target market.

When exactly their target market might arrive, though, is a mystery. Dozens of people are milling about, but none are shopping. The very few women, all older, are clerking the shop counters. There are many more men, of all ages, most of them seated idly around café tables. As the afternoon wears on, the crowd grows younger. One sees less traditional garb, more college sweatshirts and snapback caps.

Which is what Yusuf is wearing, as he leans against a counter and asks whether I am a spy. “There have been more white people around,” he remarks. “Especially with what’s been going on.”

What’s been going on is an exodus of Minnesotans to the Middle East to join up with the Islamic State — at least 15 Somali men and three women from Minneapolis, according to an ongoing FBI investigation. Twenty-nine-year-old Abdirahmaan Muhumed, for example, left nine children in Minneapolis to fight in Syria. In August, he became the second American to die fighting for the terrorist group, following the lead of the serendipitously named Douglas McArthur McCain, not a Somali but a fellow Minneapolitan. That same month, a 19-year-old Minneapolis girl told her parents she was going to a bridal shower. She called them weeks later from Syria, where she was nursing wounded Islamic State fighters.

Somewhere nearby is 20-year-old Abdi Nur, who boarded a one-way flight for Turkey last spring, and is now believed to be in Syria. Abdullahi Yusuf, 18, hoped to follow him, but was apprehended at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport in May. Both were charged in November with conspiring to provide support to the Islamic State.