RUTHFULLY YOURS

A court in Pakistan upheld the death penalty for Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of four. She is accused of having made derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbors objected to her drinking water from their glass, because she was not a Muslim and therefore “unclean.”

A successful Christian school in the United Kingdom was warned that it would be downgraded by inspectors and might even face closure after failing to invite a leader from another religion, such as a Muslim imam, to lead assemblies. “A Government consultation paper… makes clear that even taking children on trips to different places of worship would not be enough to be judged compliant.”

“They then told me that since I refused to [convert to Islam] they would kill me…. They pinned me down and told me they will make death painful and slow, as they are not prepared to waste bullets on me. They said, ‘Be warned that if any of you Muslims dares to assist him, he is also an infidel and we shall make sure that he too is killed.'” — Adamu, a Christian; Nigeria.

They are searching [for me] to cut my throat. When I go to mass, I say I am going to English classes because I plan to travel.” — “Tarek,” a convert to Christianity in Lebanon.

The police, far from interfering, actually incited the Muslim man.

“With no one on hand to know what is going on, it’s easier to mistreat them.” — Jason Demars, President, Present Truth Ministries.

About 100,000 Christians die every year because of their religious beliefs. — The Center for the Studies of Global Christianity in the United States.

In just two months, from August to October, nearly 200 Christian churches were destroyed in Nigeria by the Islamic organization Boko Haram and its Muslim allies, after their capture of towns and villages in the north-eastern states of Borno and Adamawa. In the words of Reverend Gideon Obasogie, the director of Catholic Social Communication of Maiduguri Diocese in Borno State: “The group’s seizure of territory in both states has seen 185 churches torched and over 190,000 people displaced by their insurgency.”

Many people were shocked when they first heard of the Islamic State (IS), a small terrorist group that took over large parts of Iraq and Syria and declared itself a new caliphate in June 2014. The rise of IS-inspired terrorist activity in France, Canada and Australia has only enhanced this shock.

However, those who heard the constant warnings coming from Israel about the dangers of the Middle East have anticipated such an event for a long time.

In this article, I want to look at the various lessons that the rise of IS can teach us about the Middle East. One can quickly discern that these are exactly the things Israel has been talking about for the past few decades, shattering many Western myths.

1. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the central conflict in the Middle East.

For the past few decades, the Western world has acted as if the root of all problems in the Middle East is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If only we could solve this one problem, they thought, we could bring about peace in the Middle East.

The events of the past few years prove that the problems in the Middle East are much deeper than the one conflict between the Jewish state and the Arab world.

The struggle between Sunnis and Shi’ites far predates the struggle between the Arab world and Israel. It is specifically this struggle that is at the heart of the battle between IS and the government forces in Iraq. The struggle between secular and religious forces lies at the heart of many of the conflicts in the region, including the conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian government, and the internal conflict in Syria. There is also an age-old battle with various groups in the region trying to gain some form of autonomy, or at least some equal rights: the Kurds, the Alawites, the Yazidis, the Druse and the Christians.

These historical conflicts, some dating back over 1,000 years, are much deeper than the Jewish-Arab one. These conflicts were silenced by strong dictatorships in the region that did not allow for any opposition. However, with the Arab Spring and the weakening of these dictatorships, these conflicts are now coming back to life.

In just the past few years, hundreds of thousands have died in these conflicts – many more deaths than resulted from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Let us make what is already clear even more blunt: The building of Jewish houses in the Jewish historical homeland of Judea and Samaria, in Israel, has absolutely nothing to do with these conflicts, and no peace deal between Palestinians and Jews could ever help solve them.

Parenting guide on how to brainwash infants into killers, raise the next generation of terrorists, uploaded to internet.

A guide for jihadi mothers on how to raise children to become terrorists has surfaced online, the US-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported.

The handbook titled “Sister’s Role in Jihad” recommends showing children jihadi websites, reading jihad tales before bed, practicing sports that require good hand-eye coordination, like darts, and going on camping trips to teach the children how to survive outdoors.

Women are expected to start training children “while they are babies” as waiting longer than that “may be too late.” The guide adds: ‘Don’t underestimate the lasting effect of what those little ears and eyes take in during the first few years of life!’

The guide’s original authors remain unknown, as the text is usually posted on file-sharing sites anonymously. However, the handbook is believed to be used regularly by Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

Other advice includes encouraging children to play and practice target-shooting with toy guns and making the training “fun” for youths, though the text stresses, “fun does not mean music and dancing, as is portrayed by Western children’s TV.”

Parents are also expected to ensure their children know how to differentiate between “who their target should be, and who their target should not be.”

Compugen teams with Johns Hopkins University on immune checkpoints

Tel Aviv’s Compugen has announced the initiation of a multi-year
research collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, School of
Medicine, on immune checkpoint candidates for the potential treatment
of cancer.

This collaborative research will expand Compugen’s ongoing assessment
of the biology and mechanism of actions of its novel B7/CD28-like
immune checkpoint proteins, and provide access to the world-class
immuno-oncology research tools and expertise at Johns Hopkins
University.

The project will be under the direction of Prof. Drew Pardoll and Dr.
Charles Drake, members of Compugen’s Scientific Advisory Board, and
well known pioneers in the field of immuno-oncology.

“We are very enthusiastic to be collaborating with them and with Johns
Hopkins University in this comprehensive research program to further
characterize and differentiate our novel cancer immunotherapy
B7/CD28-like candidates. We anticipate that this research will provide
important insights for the continuing development by us and our
potential future partners of our therapeutic candidates in the
exceptionally promising field of cancer immunotherapy,” said Dr. Anat
Cohen-Dayag, President and CEO of Compugen, a leading drug discovery
company focused on therapeutic proteins and monoclonal antibodies to
address important unmet needs in the fields of oncology and
immunology.

Capitalism is the key to overcoming poverty and, as a by-product, to controlling population growth. As history confirms, it is not just the best route to rising and sustainable prosperity, it is the only one

“Capitalism combined with sensible controls of social costs is the route to rising and sustainable prosperity. And it is not just the best route; it is the only one. All else will eventually produce impoverishment. Closing up economies by imposing limits on growth or a range of other onerous restrictions will cement patterns of resource usage and lead inevitably to shortages, collapses and chaos; in other words, to entropy. We have stumbled, via Enlightenment thinking and industrialisation, onto an economic system that can overcome shortages by developing new materials and new technologies. There is no conceivable limit. Can this be proved? It can’t be proved. However, so far, history is well onside.”
Living systems maintain a steady state of negentropy [negative entropy].

— James Grier Miller
(The relevance of this quote from the author of the defining treatment of “living systems” will become clear as I argue that capitalism is the only economic system capable of resisting the second law of thermodynamics and sustaining economic prosperity in a finite world.)

Is it possible to have endless economic growth in a finite world? Dick Smith thinks it is absurd, as he explained in August to the National Press Club. He largely blamed economists for propagating and nourishing this self-evident absurdity.

Mr Smith is not alone. Environmentalists would concur, as would a number of other successful business tycoons who have turned to Gaia in their reflective years. The Club of Rome might have over-egged the imminent depletion of key resources in the 1970s but to the faithful it is simply a matter of time. And, really, within fairly expansive limits, wrong timing is a minor fault in the scheme of things.

On its face, the case seems to be unanswerable. If you keep taking bite-size chunks, and increasingly bigger ones at that, out of an apple it will dwindle and vanish or at least only the unappetising core will remain. Liken the Earth to a large apple. Ergo, the enjoyment of the fruits of the Earth is eventually bound to result in a depleted wasteland. Isn’t it? Well, no, actually, it isn’t.

What seems like a no-brainer to environmentalists is a myth—a brainless no-brainer no less. It is as ill-founded as was Malthus’s dismal theory that “population is always pressing against food”. But it has nevertheless flourished in the hands of those who despise capitalism and the economic abundance it brings and who, given half a chance, would put industrial development on hold or into reverse.

From the Keystone Pipeline in the United States to nuclear power in Germany to fracking in Australia, hampering economic development in the name of sustainability is de rigueur. I doubt there is now any major company which does not pay homage to sustainability in its mission statement. Global warming alarmism has added an extra twist but, make no mistake, just as the sustainability movement began before the planet began its recent short period of warming, it will not miss a beat if the planet starts cooling.

To be sure, environmental zealots don’t want to drive us back to the seventh century, as do the clownish Islamists; too many open fires, I suppose. They do however want us in the West to stand still. Mr Smith put it succinctly. If you already have five flat-screen televisions, he said, do you really need seven? I will return to this implied admonishment. It is instructive.

The pronouncement:

The real face of Islam is a peaceful religion based on the dignity of all human beings. It’s one where Muslim communities are leading the fight against poverty. It’s one where Muslim communities are providing basic healthcare and emergency assistance on the front lines of some of our most devastating humanitarian crises. And it is one where Muslim communities are advocating for universal human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the most basic freedom to practice one’s faith openly and freely.

If the likes of ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, the Taliban, and Hamas are not following real Islam then what are they following? Unreal Islam?

And passages like the following from the Koran, how are they to be explained away?

Sura 2:193: “fight against them until Allah’s religion reigns supreme.”

Sura 8:39: “make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme.”

Sura 3:151: “We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve [or “infidels”] for what they have associated with Allah [reference to Christian Trinity] of which He had not sent down [any] authority. And their refuge will be the Fire, and wretched is the residence of the wrongdoers.”

Sura 8:12: “When the Lord inspired the angels [saying to them], ‘I am with you; so make those who believe stand firm. I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite their necks and smite of them each finger’.”

It comes as no surprise to hear those who have long bemoaned Pax Americana celebrating the superpower’s shrinking presence on the world stage. There is grave cause of concern, certainly, but the real problem is Washington’s neo-isolationist refusal to lead
America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder

by Bret Stephens
Sentinel, 2014, 263 pages, $29.99

Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, there have been numerous books and articles on the purported decline of the United States as the world’s superpower. However, by defining the issue as America’s retreat rather than its decline, Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens has shifted the debate in an important direction. Stephens titles his new book America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.

The concept of national decline implies historical inevitability, something so deeply embedded in the scheme of things that, despite our best efforts, it is bound to happen. This version of Greek tragedy has strong appeal in the book sales market but Stephens makes a powerful case that retreat is the right word for the real world. Retreats are manmade. Sometimes they signal defeat and surrender but they can also permit regrouping and resurgence. Stephens writes:

America is not in decline. It is in retreat. Nations in retreat, as the United States was after World War I, can still be on the rise. Nations in decline, as Russia is today, can still be on the march. Decline is the product of broad civilizational forces—demography, culture, ideologies, attitudes towards authority, attitudes towards work—that are often beyond the grasp of ordinary political action. Retreat, by contrast, is often nothing more than a political choice. One president can make it; another president could reverse it. It is still within America’s reach to make different choices.

This is not to say Stephens regards the global disorder of his subtitle as an easy fix. Indeed, the problems are now more difficult than at any time since the Cold War. The inventory is daunting: the Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine; the aggressive maritime claims of China against Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines; the unravelling of political order in the Arab world and the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; the revival of theocratic Islam in Iran and Turkey; the progress to nuclear weapons by Iran and their international marketing by North Korea, prompting more Middle East states to consider their own nuclear options.

With the world descending into chaos driven in no small measure by the incoherent, contradictory and frequently non-existent foreign policy of the Obama administration, it was difficult this year to narrow the field for this year’s biggest national security blunders. The task seemed so formidable, I nearly abandoned the endeavor.

But undaunted, I present to you the National Security “Not Top 10” of 2014, in no particular order.

1) Befriending “moderate Al-Qaeda” in Syria:

There are some ideas so at war with reason and reality they can only exist in the fetid Potomac fever swamps of DC think tanks and the foreign policy community. Such was the case in January when three of the best and brightest from those ranks published an article in Foreign Affairs (the same publication that in 2007 brought us the “Moderate Muslim Brotherhood”) contending that the US needed to “befriend” the Syrian jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham as some kind of counter to more extreme jihadist groups, like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. The precedent they cited was the US failure to designate the Taliban (!!!) after 9/11.

Mind you, at the time they wrote this, one of Ahrar al-Sham’s top leaders was a lieutenant for Al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri who openly declared himself a member of Al-Qaeda. After most of their leadership was wiped out in a bombing in September, they gravitated closer to the jihadist groups they were supposed to counter and their positions have been bombed by the US – much to the consternation of other “vetted moderate” rebel groups. So ridiculous was their proposition that the original subtitle of their article, “An Al-Qaeda Affiliate Worth Befriending,” was changed online to “An Al-Qaeda-Linked Group Worth Befriending” in the hopes of minimizing the absurdity of their case.

2) Obama administration deploys three hashtag divisions in response to Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As Ukrainians made their bid to free themselves from Russia’s interference, Putin responded by deploying tanks and troops into Ukraine in violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Obama’s rejoinder was to give a speech and to deploy three divisions of State Department employees all armed with a #UnitedForUkraine hashtag. Hilarity ensued as the Russian Foreign Ministry counterattacked by hijacking the hashtag, prompting State Department spox Jen Psaki to decry, “Let’s hope the Kremlin will live by the promise of hashtag,” leaving many asking: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

When television showed police turning their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio recently, many viewers instinctively rotated in their chairs along with the police.

After all, Mayor de Blasio’s pandering to race-oriented special-interest groups has appalled many voters. More than half of New Yorkers recently told Quinnipiac pollsters that they disapprove of the way the mayor handles the police department. The next move, a strike by the policemen, may already be underway informally: Summonses and arrests have dropped dramatically since the murder of two patrolmen by a man who had said he would “put wings on pigs.” And if the police formalize and escalate their strike to make their point that de Blasio is anti-police, many New Yorkers will likely back them up.

But they shouldn’t. That’s the takeaway from a similar labor action, the Boston police strike of 1919.

The stories of New York today and Boston after World War I have some similarities. In Boston in 1919, the policemen also had compelling reason to complain: Inflation had climbed wildly after World War I, but police pay was not keeping up. Strapped after the war, the authorities neglected upkeep of police-station houses, which were becoming unbearably filthy. In at least one house, vermin actually chewed on officers’ helmets. Back then, as now, authorities agreed to serious negotiations with the police. The man at the top of the chain of command, Governor Calvin Coolidge, was famous for his ability to get along with just about any ethnicity, including the mostly Irish Catholic patrolmen. One of the few differences between Boston then and New York now was that in Boston the police commissioner reported to the governor, not the mayor.

When the policemen walked out in Boston, riots ran wild, with looting and fighting all across the city. In response, Coolidge called out the National Guard. The guard did not approach the troublemakers gingerly: In a famously controversial move, soldiers rounded up gamblers on Boston Common. Coolidge was a Republican, and Mayor Andrew James Peters, a Democrat, was furious. Yet Coolidge delved into the law books and quoted chapter and verse to make clear that he, not the mayor, was in charge. Coolidge backed up Police Commissioner Edwin Curtis’s decision to fire the striking policemen.

Hollywood film producer Oliver Stone has said he wants to make a four-hour documentary telling the “dirty story” of the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in what he believes was a “coup” organized with the help of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency.

“A dirty story through and through, but in the tragic aftermath of this coup, the West has maintained the dominant narrative of ‘Russia in Crimea,’ whereas the true narrative is ‘USA in Ukraine.’ The truth is not being aired in the West,” Stone wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

Stone said he had already spent four hours interviewing Yanukovych in Moscow for the project, in addition to several “police officials,” all of whom believe “foreign elements” were responsible for the violent Maidan protests in Kiev that culminated in February with the overthrow of the Russia-backed president.

“Details to follow in the documentary, but it seems clear that the so-called ‘shooters’ who killed 14 policemen, wounded some 85, and killed 45 protesting civilians, were outside third party agitators,” Stone wrote.

The Hollywood director’s interpretation of events echoes the Russian government’s suggestions that the regime change was a “color revolution” funded by foreign governments.

President Vladimir Putin in a security council meeting earlier this year said that the situation in Ukraine was partly the work of “outside forces” and warned that Russia must do all it can to prevent a similar uprising on its own turf.