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Ruth King

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Peter Smith Shutting the Door on Islam

By on October 13th, 2015

How much Islamic mayhem before politicians link the dots? And do note that I say ‘Islam’ and not ‘Muslims’. Taught that the Koran is the ultimate authority in all matters, the faith’s adherents have no chance to evolve the tolerance our leaders demand of those not raised in the shadow of the minaret
Recently, The Australian, in one of its irritating two-bob-each-way editorials, described those objecting to the building of a mosque in Bendigo as a ‘mob’ and ‘bigoted’. Apparently, according to reports, the mosque will cost $3 million for the three hundred Muslims in Bendigo. That is $10,000 per person. I think there is an expectation that more will come.

I wrote to The Australian pointing out that that those objecting to the building were not necessarily bigoted if they believed that the mosque would propagate values inimical to Australian values. To his credit, the Prime Minister said more or less the same thing last week, though in a different context. “It’s not compulsory to live in Australia,” Mr Turnbull intoned. “If you find Australian values are unpalatable then there’s a big wide world out there and people have got freedom of movement.” Well said, Malcolm.

He said this when talking at the NSW Liberal Party State Council meeting in Sydney. “We acknowledge the right of each individual to observe his or her faith, to be true to their own conscience, to express freely their own beliefs provided they do no harm to others and provided that they do not preach hatred against others.”

It is hard to disagree with either of these two statements. Yet gnawing away is the premise of the second. Is it possible to observe the Islamic faith and do no harm to others? Mr Turnbull might profitably try to find Muslim spokespersons, even of the most moderate kind, willing to stand up and say that Australian law trumps sharia law. Good luck with that one. There will, however, be plenty of empty platitudes on display, as required.

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Why So Many of Europe’s Migrants Are Men By Jillian Kay Melchior

By on October 13th, 2015

Šid, Serbia — Mohammad Jamal al-Mousa would say his home was in Aleppo, but bombs from Bashar al-Assad’s planes razed the house. So now, just his family remains there, he says nervously. He thinks the place he left them is relatively safe. He still calls often.

Standing under the shelter of a tent where migrants can stop to charge their phones, he shows me their pictures. His two daughters, the eldest 10, pose grinning in matching white tights, black skirts, and red shirts. One has red bows in her pigtails. His son, a little younger, sits between them. The five-month-old baby boy isn’t pictured.

Al-Mousa worries most for his daughters, growing up not only under Assad’s repressive regime but also as the Islamic State seizes large portions of Syria.

“Can you imagine a child seven years old, who has to be fully covered in a hijab?” he asks me. “They took away her childhood. I want my daughters to be educated and happy. Now, my children are so small, but they’ve learned what a bomb is, and they can recognize warplanes.”

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Report: ISIS To Execute 180 Christians By Joel Gehrke

By on October 13th, 2015

ISIS is expected to execute 180 Assyrian Christians kidnapped as a part of an ethnic-cleansing campaign, international monitors report.

The terrorist group “has specifically targeted Assyrians, looking to drive them out of their millennia-old communities,” according to the Christian Post. Reuters reports that the captives were taken from northeastern Syria in February, and that three of them were executed last month in conjunction with an Islamic holiday. Negotiations intended to secure their release for a ransom have been “suspended due to [ISIS’s] unbearable demands,” Assyrian Human Rights Network executive director Osama Edward said.

The news comes about two weeks after Russia began bombing actions in Syria to assist Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime. Though the Kremlin claims the campaign is intended to fight terrorism in the country, Russian jets appear to be targeting the U.S.-backed anti-Assad rebels instead of ISIS. For months, the Obama administration has been bombing ISIS while calling for Assad’s departure from power, so Russia’s actions put the two nations at cross-purposes in Syria.

On Sunday, Russian president Vladimir Putin mocked President Obama’s efforts to bolster the Free Syrian Army (FSA). “It would have been better to give us $500 million,” Putin said. “At least we would have used it more effectively from the point of view of fighting international terrorism.”

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Hung Up on Israel An explanation for the sincere By Jay Nordlinger

By on October 13th, 2015

Friends, I have a piece about Israel in the current issue of National Review. I thought I’d “blow it out” here in Impromptus. By that I mean, do an expanded version, in bulleted sections. See what you think.

During last month’s presidential debate, many of the candidates mentioned Israel. Jeb Bush, for example, said that we need to reestablish “our commitment to Israel, which has been altered by this administration.” Carly Fiorina said that the first phone call she would make, from the Oval Office, would be to “my good friend Bibi Netanyahu.” Its purpose would be “to reassure him we will stand with the State of Israel.”

Ted Cruz said, “If I’m elected president, our friends and allies across the globe will know that we stand with them. The bust of Winston Churchill will be back in the Oval Office. And the American embassy in Israel will be in Jerusalem.”

From time immemorial, American presidential candidates have pledged to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Then, when they become president, they find it inconvenient. Ted, however, is serious.

(I’d better append my disclosure: here. He is a friend, and I back him.)

After the debate, some observers wondered, “Why so much attention to Israel? Are these people running for president of the United States or president of Israel?”

I myself have received similar questions over the years. People ask, sometimes with scorn, sometimes with sincere curiosity, “Why do you write so much about Israel? Why are you hung up on Israel?” I would think the answer were obvious. But if it were, people would not ask these questions. And honest questions deserve honest answers.

Israel is the only state whose very right to exist is called into question. (Ukraine, however, is beset with problems of its own. And Taiwan has well-founded anxieties.) Ever since it was born in 1948, people have tried to kill Israel. It is a tiny country amid enemies.

Four wars of annihilation have been waged against Israel. There have been smaller conflicts as well, though still serious. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel. The first came in 1979, the second in 1994. Israel is still waiting for the third treaty.

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Pseudo-Historians Erase Scientists’ Early Caution on Global Warming Rupert Darwall ****

By on October 13th, 2015

Was ExxonMobil better at climate science than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? This is the bizarre position now being adopted by climate activists such as Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes and 350.org’s Bill McKibben. As early as 1977, Exxon researchers “knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously,” McKibben claimed in the New Yorker last month. “Present thinking,” an Exxon researcher wrote in a 1978 summary, “holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

Ten years later, in 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly established the IPCC and, according to a U.N. General Assembly Resolution, tasked it with preparing “a comprehensive review” of the state of knowledge of the science of climate change. Two years later, the IPCC produced its first assessment report. By the late 1980s, the threat of human-driven climate change had, Oreskes wrote in the New York Times last week, “become an observed fact.”

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The Road to Middle East Perdition From reset to the Iran deal, Obama’s mistakes are so comprehensive they almost look deliberate. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 13th, 2015

How did Vladimir Putin — with his country reeling from falling oil prices, possessing only a second-rate military, in demographic free-fall, and suffering from an array of international sanctions — find himself the new play-maker of the Middle East?

Putin’s ascendency was not foreordained. It followed a series of major U.S. miscalculations and blunders of such magnitude that it almost seems they must have been deliberate.

What exactly was our road to perdition in the Middle East?

1. Reset with Putin

When Barack Obama came into office, the outgoing Bush administration had crafted a moderate response to Putin’s aggression in Ossetia. The U.S. had made missile-defense agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland. Some Georgian forces were airlifted by the U.S. from Afghanistan back home. Indeed, at the time, many liberals complained that America was too soft on Putin. Perhaps. But the Obama administration entered office claiming the exact opposite, suggesting that the Bush pushback was part of a needless American-caused estrangement from Russia.

Pushing the plastic reset button was Hillary Clinton’s sad gesture signaling Putin and his team that Bush was gone, that a new, more receptive administration was in power — and thus that relations must naturally improve. Putin was somewhat perplexed, given that he knew Russia was to blame for the new estrangement. Naturally, then, he saw the Obama–Clinton reset grandstanding as more critical of America’s past behavior than of Russia’s present aggression — a fact that fueled Putin’s further calculations that he could safely move into Crimea and Ukraine.

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Palestinian parents celebrate terrorist children’s Martyrdom-death by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

By on October 13th, 2015

Father of stabber:”It is not a loss when you are talking about Palestine…My son is an offering to the Al-Aqsa [Mosque]”
Mother of killer of 2:”O mother of Martyr, let out cries of joy”
Father of killer of 2:”He avenged [the women of Al-Aqsa]… against the impure enemies…He made everyone lift his head up high.May he find favor in the eyes of Allah”

Uncle of stabber:”This is a wedding, it is a celebration.We consider him [a Martyr] with Allah”

PA promotes Martyrdom-death

Fatah official about Fatah youth:
“Potential Martyrs for the beloved Palestine”

Fatah official posts music video:
“My blood will be shed for Al-Aqsa”

Children express desire to die for Allah and Al-Aqsa

“Mom, I want to die as a Martyr.
I want to carry out a Martyrdom operation (i.e., terror attack)
in order to kill some Israeli soldiers”

Amid the current Palestinian riots and wave of terror attacks, Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials continue to praise terrorist murderers as “Martyrs” and “heroes.” Some also encourage Shahada – seeking death as Martyrs for Allah. Becoming a Martyr (Shahid) represents the highest religious achievement that can be attained by a Muslim.

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Khamenei’s New Book Preaches Hatred and Annihilation of America By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

By on October 13th, 2015

The chilling rhetoric from Iran Obama doesn’t want you to know about.

Ironically, as the financial rewards and the improved legitimacy that have resulted from Obama’s nuclear deal continue to benefit the Iranian ruling clerics, the Iranian political establishment’s hatred towards the United States is reaching its peak.

This week, the highest authority in the Islamic Republic, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned and forbade any further talks and negotiations between his country and the United States: “Negotiation with US is forbidden.”

In addition, he recently made his new e-book available for download in English. The Ayatollah points out: “The regional nations truly hate America and its European branch, England. This hatred is not limited to our people: all regional nations hate them … Why do they complain about being hated? Yes, we hate you.” The book advocates for annihilating America and Israel. It rants about how the Muslim world hates the US and Israel.

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BDS Bashes ‘Jewish Trees’ for Blocking Peace with Terrorists The horticultural cleansing of Israel in the name of peace. Daniel Greenfield

By on October 13th, 2015

You might think that the obstacles to peace are the rockets from Gaza, the brutal murders of Jews and the recent suicide bombing. You might think that it was the Muslims who taunted and beat Adelle Banita-Bennett, suddenly widowed at 22, trying to escape the Muslim terrorist who had murdered her husband. You might think that it’s the fact that a majority of Muslims in ’67 Israel spit on the Two-State Solution and that PLO boss Abbas rejected the Oslo Accords in a speech at the United Nations.

And you would be wrong.

None of those things are obstacles to peace. If they were, surely the media would have told us so.

The real threats are the fig, palm and carrot trees around a hiking path near Jerusalem. The true threat to peace comes from the pine trees that shade the kids playing in the water in a Ma’ale Adumim park.

The pine tree, you see, is a Jewish tree.

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Obama’s Schizophrenic Foreign Policy An analysis of a recipe for serial disasters. Bruce Thornton

By on October 13th, 2015

What are the roots of Barack Obama’s foreign policy? Some focus on the man and his flaws of character, particularly his inability to learn from his mistakes and to adjust his ideas to changing facts on the ground. Others see more sinister motives, an animus against the United States that drives policies diminishing America’s power and influence. Old bad ideas like one-world internationalism and the power of diplomacy to resolve conflicts have played a major role. And of course, domestic political considerations enter into his foreign policy calculations.

Whatever the origins, the end result of Obama’s foreign policy has been a weakening of America’s global clout and respect, one unseen since the Carter administration. One way to make sense of these serial disasters is to see them as the predictable result of a schizophrenic foreign policy that has indulged simultaneously stealth isolationism and “moralizing internationalism,” as historian Corelli Barnett called it.

Isolationism is the default attitude of Americans toward relations with other nations. From the beginning, protected by two oceans, our citizens assumed they could keep their distance from the dynastic power-struggles rending Europe. These sentiments are frequently expressed in the speeches of early presidents. In his First Inaugural Address Jefferson noted that the U.S. was “Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe.” Given that advantage, he counseled “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” John Quincy Adams in 1821similarly declared the U.S. a “well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all,” but it “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

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