RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/20/the-global-warming-cult-and-the-death-of-science/

At the end of last year, the media widely trumpeted the “recantation” by Richard Muller, a physics professor at Berkeley. Muller’s confession of faith was met with the unreserved glee of fanatics who believe that conversion equals validation of the True Faith. Now Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a prominent German chemistry professor and green activist, announced that he is coming out with a book breaking with the Warmist view. Naturally, this recantation wouldn’t receive nearly the same prominence, except when the inevitable stories kick in about Vahrenholt being a tool of the oil companies.

But set aside the partisan bickering, and one professor accepting a view he had formerly rejected, while another rejects a view he had formerly accepted, is all part of the normal scientific debate. The journey from hypothesis to rock solid consensus is a long one, and it doesn’t end just because Al Gore makes a documentary or a few ads show crying polar bears. Positions are argued, minds change and then a century later the graduate students have fun mocking the ignorance of both sides. That’s science.

The People of Blood and Jihad Posted By Bruce Thornton

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/20/the-people-of-blood-and-jihad/

Thirty years ago, after Jimmy Carter’s disastrous attempt to rescue the embassy hostages in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini warned, “Carter still has not comprehended what kind of people he is facing and what school of thought he is playing with. Our people is the people of blood and our school is the school of Jihad.” Despite the graphic proof of Khomeini’s words in the carnage of 9/11, many in the media, politics, and foreign policy establishment still refuse to comprehend the enemy we are facing.

Even as Islamists have come to power in the countries hastily celebrated last year as cradles of democracy, “Arab Spring” fever continues to addle the thinking of many. New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid (who died suddenly of an asthma attack last week in Syria) had his final article published last Saturday. It is a puff-piece on Tunisian Islamist Said Ferjani, who has returned to Tunisia from exile to “build a democracy, led by Islamists.” Said’s mentor is Rachid al-Ghannouchi, whose Ennahda party won over a third of the seats in Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly. “His own thoughts evolving in exile,” Shahid writes, “Gannouchi became an early proponent of a more inclusive and tolerant Islamism, arguing a generation ago that notions of elections and majority rule were universal and did not contradict Islam.”

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2854/china-mandate-of-heaven

China’s water problems can affect the rest of the world as well.

A large and multifaceted crisis is unfolding in China. The world’s most important rapidly-developing economy is running out of clean fresh water. As things get worse, this crisis will lead to an increase in global food prices, to a slowdown in China’s rate of GDP growth and possibly to a new set of tensions with its neighbors, especially Russia, which, in Siberia, controls the only large supply of fresh water near enough to meet China’s needs.

China is home to about 20% of the world’s population and about 7% of the world’s water, Traditionally, the correct management of water for transportation, irrigation and flood control was one of the ways the Chinese people could determine if the Emperor and his dynasty had the “Mandate of Heaven” or not. With the “Mandate of Heaven,” the leadership had the legitimacy and the authority to rule; without it, the people assumed that political trouble and a change of rulers was on its way.

http://www.jidaily.com/rScv

“It has always been more socially acceptable to blame the Jews for anti-Semitism than those really responsible. Jacqueline Rose would rather exonerate Israel’s enemies than admit that their hatred has nothing to do with Israel’s actions, but everything to do with its existence.”

According to The Jacqueline Rose Reader (Duke University Press, £16.99), “Jacqueline Rose is a major public intellectual of and for our times.” Her mentor, the late Frank Kermode, describes her in his memoirs as “an academic celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic”. Is an academic celebrity the same as a public intellectual? Jacqueline Rose certainly attracts public attention. A fellow of the British Academy, she holds a chair at Queen Mary, University of London, and has made a TV documentary, Dangerous Liaison, attacking America’s relationship with Israel. Indeed, whenever Israel is on trial, she is one of the public prosecutors. A darling of the Guardian and the London Review of Books, she co-founded the lobby group Independent Jewish Voices, which claims to be more representative of British Jews than the Board of Deputies. Jewish she is, but in her distaste for Israel she is anything but independent: hers is the voice of the Left-liberal establishment. She and her partner, the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, are among Britain’s (or at any rate North London’s) most fashionable intellectual couples.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/2/20/main-feature/1/rose-colored-glasses/e

Jacqueline Rose, a noted professor of English in the United Kingdom and the author of many works of literary criticism, has stepped beyond the academic precincts where she first made her name to produce, over the past decade or so, a substantial opus dealing with Zionism and Israel. Her books on these subjects possess the veneer of expertise and have been published by prestigious university presses. Princeton brought out The Question of Zion in 2005 and now Chicago has published her Proust among the Nations: From Dreyfus to the Middle East. Jacqueline Rose has consequently acquired the status of an authority.
This is unfortunate, since she often doesn’t know what she is talking about. The thinness of her learning is most apparent when she writes in venues where she is not subject to any serious fact-checking.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-19/israel-safest-as-stock-investors-discount-threat-of-war.html
Israel Safest for Investors in Past Decade

Israel, under threat of war from its neighbors since being founded in 1948, produced better risk- adjusted returns than all other developed stock markets in the past decade as the technology-driven economy attracted global investors.

The BLOOMBERG RISKLESS RETURN RANKING shows the Tel Aviv TA-25 Index (TA-25) returned 7.6 percent in the 10 years ended yesterday, after adjusting for volatility, the highest among 24 developed-nation benchmark indexes. Israel beat Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (HSI), the next-best market with a risk-adjusted gain of 6.7 percent, and Norway, which had the highest total return.

Israel outperformed as it fought a monthlong battle against Hezbollah in 2006, was involved in a similar conflict with Hamas two years later and is now threatened by Iran’s nuclear program. International investors including Warren Buffett bought local companies and the economy, steered by Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, grew more than twice as fast as the U.S. last year. Israel’s stocks may extend gains as Apple Inc. (AAPL) and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) acquire the country’s technology startups.

“Israel is an exciting place to invest,” Michael Steinhardt, the former hedge fund manager who produced returns averaging 24 percent a year over almost three decades until he retired in 1995, said in a telephone interview from Fisher Island, Florida. “The country is surrounded by enemies, it’s always on the edge of extinction, but it expands and prospers.”

To Build or Not to Build a Mosque in America — on The Glazov Gang
by Jamie Glazov
Ben Shapiro, Eric Allen Bell and Doris Montrose discuss finding a balance between religious freedom and national security.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/20/to-build-or-not-to-build-a-mosque-in-america-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The architects of the Libyan disaster in France, the UK, the United States and Qatar have decided that Syria is the next step in replacing dictators with Muslim Brotherhood allied “democratic” parties. But no matter how eager they are to roll the Arab Spring forward with a month of bombing raids, this won’t be a relative cakewalk like Syria.
Gaddafi isolated Libya through his own craziness and then his alliance with the West, which left him with no friends when Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama turned on him in the name of Arab Democracy. Assad is often described as isolated because the Arab League has taken a firm stand against him, but he has a firm ally in Iran, which has few options and is likely to do whatever it takes to keep him in power.

Next up is Russia, which has lost most of its Middle Eastern allies and doesn’t have that many options besides Syria, where it has a naval base and any number of secret and not so secret outposts. That will provide a pipeline of advanced technology, including the kind that can endanger NATO planes. While that isn’t likely to lead to any serious casualties, an attack on Syria will allow Russia to test out some of its latest technology against our aircraft. Just as Iraq provided a testing ground for some advanced Russian technology.

And there’s one more catch. The wildly unpopular Russian government might just be itching for a small scale conflict, especially one with the United States. A few planes lost on both sides and the Russians can claim victory. It wouldn’t be a particularly smart move by Moscow from our point of view, but from the point of view of a government that only rules due to massive fraud and force, a heavy dose of patriotism for the motherland might be just what the spin doctor ordered. A direct confrontation between Russian and NATO planes would be a milestone for Russia’s recovery and a way to wash away the shame of Yugoslavia and Pristina Airport.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/sir-isaacs-jewish-writings-enter-the-21st-century/

By ARON HELLER

JERUSALEM (AP) — He’s considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time. But Sir Isaac Newton was also an influential theologian who applied a scientific approach to the study of scripture, Hebrew and Jewish mysticism.

Now Israel’s national library, an unlikely owner of a vast trove of Newton’s writings, has digitized his theological collection — some 7,500 pages in Newton’s own handwriting — and put it online. Among the yellowed texts are Newton’s famous prediction of the apocalypse in 2060.

Newton revolutionized physics, mathematics and astronomy in the 17th and 18th century, laying the foundations for most of classical mechanics — with the principal of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion bearing his name.

An engraving of Isaac Newton based on a 1726 painting by John Vanderbank. (photo credit: AP/NY Public Library, File)

However, the curator of Israel’s national library’s humanities collection said Newton was also a devout Christian who dealt far more in theology than he did in physics and believed that scripture provided a “code” to the natural world.

“Today, we tend to make a distinction between science and faith, but to Newton it was all part of the same world,” said Milka Levy-Rubin. “He believed that careful study of holy texts was a type of science, that if analyzed correctly could predict what was to come.”

1. While on my weekends back home, I wrote two articles for Israel Hayom.
On Iran: http://tinyurl.com/7qyx4ca
On the GOP race: http://tinyurl.com/6wetzbe

2. Andrew Ferguson alone makes the Weekly Standard worth reading. With a Bill Clinton revival in full swing, Ferguson reminds us of the parts of the story left untold in the new “documentar”y on Clinton on PBS and some new hagiographies in various magazines, such as Esquire:
The Big Creep: http://tinyurl.com/6quw4rv

3. Jay Cost on the two faces of the Democratic Party- the social justice side and the payoffs side.
http://tinyurl.com/6tgha77

4. Warren Buffet talks the fairness talk all the way to the bank. As the oracle of Omaha’s returns in recent years have gravitated towards the S & P mean, he has relied to an increasing extent on favorable policy from Washington to boost returns.
http://tinyurl.com/6tgha77

5. Opponents of military action against Iran’s nuclear program, have agued that such an effort would require a many weeks air campaign to have any real effect, and would create grave strategic risks.
That may not be the case:
Spengler: http://tinyurl.com/78wk5b9
Luttwak: http://tinyurl.com/7tejkzh

6.The duplicity of Professor Jon Gruber at MIT is one reason why I do not give any money to this school I attended. Of course given the size of their endowment, they do not need my money. I wonder why any sane alum would give to any of the Ivy League schools, or other well endowed elite institutions, unless it is to win favor among the admissions committees for future legacies. Gruber is one of the architects and author of the two thousand plus pages of Obamacare, as a well paid consultant to HHS. Now he tells some states that private insurance premiums will skyrocket after the bill is fully in force in 2014, by 30% or more. . But Gruber assured us while the bill was being debated, that this was not the case. But now he has some new paying clients and the story has changed. .
http://tinyurl.com/7h94on8