RUTHFULLY YOURS

“America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe to Asia – from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the Middle East – we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are values that have guided our nation since its founding.Obama wouldn’t know the founding values if they hit him in the head. He is the worst president of the United States in history after all. That is no mean feat, considering the competition.”

French aircraft are in action against ISIS. Britain is flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq. Several other countries – Arab ones included – say they are willing to support the air campaign. None seem interested in pledging any ground troops, however.

“Well, you will hear from Secretary Kerry on this over the coming days. And what he has said is that others have suggested that they’re willing to do that. But we’re not looking for that right now,” Chief of Staff Denis McDonough waffled on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, September 14. “We’re trying to put together the specifics of what we expect from each of the members,” he added, which is one way of saying the United States is finding it hard to persuade other countries to provide ground forces – something the self-designed leader of the “coalition” is unwilling to do. Also on “Meet the Press” James Baker noted that the biggest problem “of course, is who are our, quote, ‘partners on the ground’ that the president referred to in his speech. And I don’t know where they come from.” Let it be noted that Baker put forth an ad-hoc strategic plan that was, in fact, far better than the one outlined by Obama. He suggested joining forces with China, Russia, Iran, Syria and others, following a non-UN-sponsored international conference of genuine international leaders.

There are no “partners on the ground” for now, and those that the Administration wants to groom for the role are worse than none: McDonough conceded that ground troops are needed, “that’s why we want this program to train the [Syrian] opposition that’s currently pending in Congress.” In my curtain-raiser on President Obama’s much-heralded speech of September 10, posted two days before he delivered it (“Obama’s Non-Strategy”), I warned that he – disastrously – still counts on the non-existent “moderate rebels” in Syria to come on board, and still refuses to talk to Bashar al-Assad, whose army is the only viable force capable of confronting the IS now and for many years to come. In short, “he has no plan to systematically degrade the IS capabilities, no means to shrink the territory that they control, and certainly no strategy to defeat them.”

Obama’s address to the nation on September 10 confirmed all of the above, but it also contained numerous non sequiturs, falsehoods, and delusional assertions that need to be addressed one by one. (The President’s words are in italics.)

I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.

Foreign governments and their citizens are forbidden from contributing to U.S. elections. If a foreign government hires a lobbyist to influence the legislative or executive branches of the United States, that lobbyist must disclose his contracts and activities with the Justice Department in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA is so strict that it applies not only to lobbyists but to any American who works within the United States to influence our politics on behalf of a foreign interest. Break the law, and you go to jail.

Yet there is a loophole for foreign contributions to U.S. think tanks. And today that loophole is being exploited to an extent that mocks the very purpose of FARA. Earlier this month, the New York Times published a blockbuster report on foreign influence over D.C. nonprofits. Its conclusion: “Since 2011, at least 64 governments, state-controlled entities, or government officials have contributed to a group of 28 major United States–based research organizations, according to disclosures by the institutions and government documents.”

These institutions, the Times suggests, have received “a minimum of $92 million in contributions or commitments from overseas government interests over the last four years.” But who knows. “The total is certainly more.”

The report generated well-deserved outrage. A rule change has been introduced in the House to require think tanks to disclose sources of foreign funding when they testify before Congress. It’s a solid proposal. But it does not go far enough. Congress should pass a law making contributions to think tanks by foreign governments and foreign nationals subject to FARA. What else could that money be for, if not to influence policy and public opinion to further foreign interests? Here is one area where transparency is vital. Let the money be disclosed. Or let it dry up.

This is not a trivial matter. The Times investigation raised serious questions regarding national security. Among the nations attempting to influence U.S. politics by funding think tanks is China. No doubt Russia, which has been supporting anti-fracking campaigns in Europe and operates a propaganda outfit in the United States, is also involved. We won’t know for sure until the recipients of money from Beijing and the Kremlin complete their FARA forms.

Think tanks can be the vehicles for revolutions in foreign policy. The Gulf state of Qatar, for example, is one of the most generous donors to U.S. nonprofits. It “agreed last year to make a $14.8 million, four-year donation” to the Brookings Institution, the Times reports. And Brookings, in turn, “has helped fund a Brookings affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States relations with the Islamic world.”

The beheadings over the last several weeks were intended to terrorize, to intimidate, to coerce obedience, and to enforce a construction of sharia law that, being scripturally rooted, is draconian and repressive.

And let’s not kid ourselves: We know there will be more beheadings in the coming weeks, and on into the future. Apostates from Islam, homosexuals, and perceived blasphemers will face brutal persecution and death. Women will be treated as chattel and face institutionalized abuse. Islamic-supremacist ideology, with its incitements to jihad and conquest, with its virulent hostility toward the West, will spew from the mosques onto the streets. We will continue to be confronted by a country-sized breeding ground for anti-American terrorists.

The Islamic State? Sorry, no. I was talking about . . . our “moderate Islamist” ally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

But the confusion is understandable.

Islamic State terrorists have infamously decapitated three of their prisoners in recent weeks. That is five fewer than the Saudi government decapitated in August alone. Indeed, it is three fewer beheadings than were carried out in September by the Free Syrian Army — the “moderate Islamists” that congressional Republicans have now joined Obama Democrats in supporting with arms and training underwritten by American taxpayer dollars.

The Obama administration regards the Saudi government as America’s key partner in the fight against Islamic State jihadists. The increasingly delusional Secretary of State John Kerry reasons that this is because the fight is more ideological than military. Get it? The world’s leading propagators of the ideology that breeds violent jihad are our best asset in an ideological struggle against violent jihadists.

Aloof as ever from irony, Mr. Kerry gave this assessment while visiting King Abdullah in Riyadh on, of all days, September 11 — the thirteenth anniversary of the day when 15 Saudis joined four other terrorists in mass-murdering nearly 3,000 Americans in furtherance of the Islamic-supremacist ideology on which they were reared. The 19 were, of course, members of al-Qaeda, the jihadist network sprung from Saudi Arabia and its fundamentalist “Wahhabi” Islam.

Secretary Kerry and President Obama, like British prime minister David Cameron, insist that the Islamic State, an al-Qaeda-launched jihadist faction, is not Islamic. Evidently, this is owing to the terrorists’ savage tactics. In essence, however, they are the same tactics practiced by our “moderate Islamist” allies.

Saudi Arabia is the cradle of Islam: the birthplace of Mohammed, the site of the Hijra by which Islam marks time — the migration from Mecca to Medina under siege by Mohammed and his followers. The Saudi king is formally known as the “Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques” (in Mecca and Medina); he is the guardian host of the Haj pilgrimage that Islam makes mandatory for able-bodied believers. The despotic Saudi kingdom is governed by Islamic law — sharia. No other law is deemed necessary and no contrary law is permissible.

Hillary: I Forgave Bill Just Like Blacks Forgave South Africa http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillary-i-forgave-bill-just-like-blacks-forgave-south-africa/

REALPOLITIK

Poland wasn’t sending troops to Iraq because it was worried about Saddam Hussein. It made the commitment because it wanted to be part of a partnership with the United States that would also provide security in its own backyard.

These days Poland won’t be sending 2,500 men to Iraq. It needs its soldiers back home now that Putin is on the rampage and Obama has shown that he can’t and won’t stop him. The same goes for most of the Eastern European countries that were eager to show that they could contribute to the Pax Americana.

The very insults that the left tossed at Bush, warmonger and cowboy, were the reason he could bring together unlikely countries and get them to contribute boots on the ground. Meanwhile the very attributes that won Obama the Nobel Peace Prize are why the spearhead of his coalition is France.

ISLAM BEGS TO DIFFER

“There’s nothing in Islam that condones or suggests people should go out and rape women and sell off young girls or give them as gifts to jihadists and cut people’s heads off and tie people’s hands behind their backs and put them on their knees and shoot them in their backs,” Kerry said.

Islam begs to differ.

“We conquered Khaibar, took the captives, and the booty was collected. Dihya came and said, ‘O Allah’s Prophet! Give me a slave girl from the captives.’ The Prophet said, ‘Go and take any slave girl.’ He took Safiya bint Huyai. Bukhari: 1:8:367

“The women of Khaybar were distributed among the Muslims.” Ishaq:511

MASTER RELIGION

A victim of Rotherham’s child sex abuse scandal confronted a man she says groomed her – but was left shocked when she was the one arrested.

A police van came and six male officers piled out. ‘Two of them dragged her away, handcuffed her, put her against a wall and then shoved her into the back of the van.’

A spokesman said: ‘The woman was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences.’

I highly doubt that a police van with six officers is dispatched everyone time someone in South Yorkshire is suspected of being drunk. The key there is “Racially”. A Muslim complained and the hounds were released.

The same police who wouldn’t step in when young girls were being raped, are on the go whenever a Muslim’s feelings are hurt.

Rotherham Child-sex Victim Confronts Muslim Abuser, Gets Arrested for Racism

What if the Global Warming “Pause” was “Fast Forward” Instead? by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
I’d like to take you through a little thought experiment.

We all know that global warming has been on hiatus – set on pause – however you like to characterize the lack of significant warming, for over 15 years. Depending on how you do the statistics, the vast majority of the climate models used to guide our energy policy have over-predicted the surface warming trend since the satellite record began way back in 1979.

Oh, and those aren’t just failed forecasts…they are failed hindcasts. Even knowing the answer, the climate modelers can’t explain why the Earth hasn’t warmed as fast as it was supposed to.

The most cited potential reason for this unexpected inconvenience is that the oceans have been taking up the extra heat and replacing it with cooler water from the ocean depths. In that scenario, the natural ocean surface-cooling mechanism now in progress (if it exists) will eventually go back to normal, and surface warming will return with a vengeance. Just you wait and see.

But what if this supposed natural ocean fluctuation, which is supposedly cooling the surface, was reversed?

What if warming was set on fast forward, rather than pause? What if surface warming was progressing faster than 95% of the climate models had predicted, rather than slower than 95% of the models? How would the global warming establishment be playing it?

After watching the IPCC crowd for the last 25+ years, I feel pretty confident they would be falling all over themselves declaring “it’s worse than we thought!” They would be adjusting the sensitivity of their models to produce even more warming.

Yet, they would never substantially reduce the climate sensitivity of their models to produce less warming, as seen in nature. In other words, if warming hasn’t materialized, then we must have faith that it will eventually appear – because the climate system must be really sensitive…

So that the climate researchers’ lives have meaning.

But…if there happens to be *faster* warming than expected, well, the experts would be all too willing to adjust their models to have even greater climate sensitivity.

There is no meaningful equivalence to be found between prevailing Islamic and Christian belief systems, no matter how fervently our Prime Minister might wish it otherwise. Muddled or wishful thinking in appraising the Islamist threat makes the jihadis’ task that much easier.

How do we put the current threat to Western civilisation from Islam into an undistorted perspective? The Koran has numbers of violent passages directed at unbelievers and ‘sinners’, and literally many thousands of Muslims believe in acting them out. But people whose views I otherwise respect tell me — I believe to ease their minds and mine — that the Bible has many violent passages and that it is only a relatively short time in the history of mankind since Christians, along with those of other faiths, exhibited marked intolerance to those not toeing the received theological line.

These people are factually right. Look at Deuteronomy Chapter 22 for example. Stoning and death is instructed to be meted out to ‘damsels’ who prove not to be virgins on their wedding nights and also to adulterers, both men and women. And as Geoffrey Blainey (A Short History of Christianity) points out: “A high level of religious tolerance is almost a modern invention. A few centuries ago it was almost unthinkable.”

OK, so do violent biblical passages and evidence of historical intolerance among Christians ease my mind or, and more to the point, should they? Well they don’t and I don’t think they should, although they seem to have an anaesthetic effect on many people who are otherwise level-headed. So far as I can tell, their thinking is that Islam is going through a phase with its version of the Enlightenment over the horizon. Its adherents will then become just like us, with God put in His proper place.

To combat the threat of homegrown Islamic terror, the first step must be the wholesale rejection of multiculturalism’s core principles of indiscriminate tolerance and cultural relativism. With Labor selling its soul for votes in heavily Muslim seats, that won’t be easy

Last August, after Tony Abbott appealed to a cross-section of Australian Muslims to meet him to discuss a range of counter-terrorism proposals — mainly changes to passport and welfare regulations that would inhibit Australians from joining Middle Eastern jihadi — a number declined the invitation, including the Islamic Council of Victoria, representing 150,000 Muslims.

Instead, a petition was sent to the media from Muslim organisations and individuals deriding the Prime Minister’s overture and his patriotic appeal to join “Team Australia” in this conflict. The petitioners argued that, rather than being on their side, Australia was part of their problem: “We are not fooled by those who speak against violence and terrorism but are its proponents at an institutional level through military and foreign policies.”

The petition’s signatories included Muslim community, welfare and legal organisations but the biggest single grouping was that of university student associations, which comprised eleven of the fifty-one names on the list. They included the University of Sydney Muslim Students Association, University of Melbourne Islamic Society, Monash University Islamic Society, La Trobe University Islamic Society, Swinburne University Islamic Society, RMIT University Islamic Society, University of Technology Sydney Muslim Students, and the University of Western Sydney Muslim Students Association. Signatures also came from postgraduate students at the University of Western Sydney, University of South Australia and University of Melbourne.

It should be no surprise to find the latest manifestation of radical politics, militant Islam, well represented within Australian universities. Their campuses have long proven fertile recruiting grounds for political movements, mostly of the Left persuasion. Universities also employ many academic staff who see their vocation not as the preservation and advancement of traditional scholarship, but the propagation of theories that provide aid and comfort to radical politics.

Since June, when Islamic State troops captured the cities of Mosul and Tikrit and IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the appeal of radical Islam to young Muslims living in the West has been transformed. Political violence is no longer confined to random acts against the decadent West, like the Boston Marathon bombing. Instead, they can join a revolution in the Middle East that could make history and change the world. The excitement must be akin to that generated among communists when Lenin stormed the Winter Palace in October 1917. Like the communists, some Muslims now believe their time has come to take over the world.

Until now, the major issue in this conflict for Australian authorities has been about young Muslims going abroad and receiving training in arms and explosives, which on their return they could use to commit acts of terror. While that still remains likely, the bigger problem now is that Australians will probably help swell the sizeable number of jihadists from Western countries already fighting in the Middle East.

The Commander in Chief of the USA has been dithering and having endless fun on the golf course while a Sunni horde of jihadists and savages in the Middle East has been allowed to swell its numbers to 35,000.

At the same time, and in direct consequence to the deeply suspicious procrastination of President Obama, the Muslim head choppers who comprise the so-called Islamic State (IS) have seized a massive 144,000 square kilometers of Middle Eastern land from Raqqa in the north of Syria as far as north west of Baghdad in Iraq.

Who, then, is leading the world into the greatest danger it has faced since the German Nazi juggernaut brought death and destruction upon it some 70 plus years ago because small men in high places did not stop the genocidal and territorial ambitions of Adolf Hitler?

Is it Abu Bakr al-Baghadi, the self-declared leader of Islamic State? Or might it well be the man in charge of the still most powerful nation in the world, Barak Hussein Obama?

Because President Obama delayed and delayed any necessary and forceful action against the horrors IS were perpetrating, the Islamo-Nazis were able to capture all the U.S. supplied military hardware and weapons the fleeing Iraqi army left behind. Now it has become a formidable force, slaughtering everyone and anyone who stands in its path.

A global Islamic Caliphate is its declared intention and the USA and the West are clearly in its sights as has been demonstrated by the public beheadings of American journalists ‎James Foley, Steven Sotloff and British aid worker David Haines along with the slaughter of thousands of Christians, Yazidis, and fellow Muslims.

But let us not forget the earlier beheadings by Muslim fanatics of Americans, Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, which should have been a wake up call.

“If Hamas does not like you for any reason all they have to do now is say you are a Mossad agent and kill you.” — A., a Fatah member in Gaza.

“Hamas wanted us butchered so it could win the media war against Israel showing our dead children on TV and then get money from Qatar.” — T., former Hamas Ministry officer.

“They would fire rockets and then run away quickly, leaving us to face Israeli bombs for what they did.” — D., Gazan journalist.

“Hamas imposed a curfew: anyone walking out in the street was shot. That way people had to stay in their homes, even if they were about to get bombed. Hamas held the whole Gazan population as a human shield.” — K., graduate student

“The Israeli army allows supplies to come in and Hamas steals them. It seems even the Israelis care for us more than Hamas.” — E., first-aid volunteer.

“We are under Hamas occupation, and if you ask most of us, we would rather be under Israeli occupation… We miss the days when we were able to work inside Israel and make good money. We miss the security and calm Israel provided when it was here.” — S., graduate of an American university, former Hamas sympathizer.

While the world’s media has been blaming Israel for the death of Gazan civilians during Operation Protective Edge, this correspondent decided to speak with Gazans themselves to hear what they had to say.

They spoke of Hamas atrocities and war crimes implicating Hamas in the civilian deaths of its own people.

Although Gazans, fearful of Hamas’s revenge against them, were afraid to speak to the media, friends in the West Bank offered introductions to relatives in Gaza. One, a renowned Gazan academic, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that as soon as someone talked to a Western journalist, he was immediately questioned by Hamas and accused of “communicating with the Mossad”. “Hamas makes sure that the average Gazan will not talk to Western journalists — or actually any journalists at all,” he said, continuing:

“Hamas does not want the truth about Gaza to come out. Hamas terrorizes and kills us just like Daesh [ISIS] terrorizes kills Iraqis. Hamas is a dictatorship that kills us. The Gazans you see praising Hamas on TV are either Hamas members or too afraid to speak against Hamas. Few foreign [Western] journalists were probably able to report what Gazans think of Hamas.”

Daniel Finkelstein, associate editor at Times of London, provided an extremely lucid, measured, yet penetrating look into antisemitism in the UK, in a column published in August. It’s behind a pay wall, and
we thought it was valuable enough to provide excerpts.

He begins by providing some important context, stressing the fact that”in the long history of the Jews, there are very few better places ortimes to live than right here, right now”.

So there we were, a handful of Jews, sitting on either side of theHouse of Lords in our ermine, waiting for the Queen to get robed up and open parliament. And across the chamber, one of my co-religionists
calls out the question that Jews have asked each other since the most ancient of days: “Where shall we go for lunch?” I wanted to tell you that story before I got going with this piece so that you understand,
before you read the rest of it, that I know what this country is.

Finkelstein then sets up the larger narrative.

Last weekend, the guy in charge of chopped fish in Sainsbury’s in Holborn, central London, panicked. He moved the gefilte fish balls andthe rollmop herring to a different refrigerator in a well-meaning, if
misconceived, attempt to keep the New Green cucumbers from being entangled in a political row with some demonstrators. It was a bad moment and one I will come back to.

He then writes evocatively about his family’s history, and his love for his country.

When I took the oath to the Queen in the House of Lords, my mother, a refugee from the Nazi death camps, was sitting just a few feet from me.

Every Jew I know comes from a family that at some point, not all that long ago, was driven out from somewhere else. Almost all have a story of a family member who was killed, a large portion of them within
living memory. To be able to become an actuary and settle in Radlett, occasionally striking out on an intrepid adventure to eat at the Delisserie in Stanmore, marks a high point in Jewish civilisation, in
my opinion.