RUTHFULLY YOURS

In January, I attended the Cybertech conference in Tel Aviv, on a trip sponsored by the America–Israel Friendship League and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Also on the trip was Richard Stiennon who wrote about it here. In his illuminating article, he calculated the number of information security vendors per country.

Predictably the United States came out on top with 827 firms. Surprisingly, Israel was second with 228. What’s astonishing from Stiennon’s research is that Israel has more security companies than the next 5 countries combined. How is it that Israel has more security firms than the UK, Canada, India, Germany and France combined? The question is even more compelling given that Israel has a population of roughly 8 million; while those five countries have roughly 1.5 billion inhabitants.

An excellent resource with detailed listings of Israeli technology startups is the IVC Research Center High-tech Yearbook. It has trend analysis and YOY investor activity, along with detailed profiles of investors, including venture capital funds, private equity funds, incubators, angels and corporate investors investing in Israel.

For a visual listing of firms, the Israel CyberScape map from Bessemer Venture provides a listing across 14 information security domains.

So just how did Israel become a global information security superpower? Here’s a few of reasons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the goal of making Israel one of the world’s five leading global cyber powers. When a government makes something a priority, and backs it up with financials incentives including research and development grants, which Israel has done; that’s a compelling initiative to generate interest.

Both around the world and here at home, free speech is under assault. From the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris to the “unexplained” deaths of critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin, people who express unpopular opinions or report the truth are in danger. Worldwide, more than 110 journalists were killed in 2015, bringing the total to 787 since 2005, according to Reporters without Borders.

The threats to free speech in this country don’t rise to that level, of course. But Hillary Clinton wants to change the First Amendment to limit political speech, and Donald Trump wants to rewrite libel laws so that he can sue media critics. Meanwhile, colleges routinely punish those who take unpopular stands and reject speakers who might challenge student orthodoxy.

That’s one reason why it is significant that the Cato Institute will award the eighth biennial Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty to a true champion of free speech, the Danish journalist and author Flemming Rose.

Rose came to the world’s attention in 2005, when, as an editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, he published a series of twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Rose did so, not because he sought to be offensive, he said, but to challenge the growing wave of “self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam.”

Rose’s decision to publish the cartoons sparked riots in Europe and across the Islamic world. A price was put on Rose’s head, and he has received numerous credible death threats. A plot to assassinate him was disrupted by the FBI in 2009. Still, he firmly rejects the idea, so prevalent these days, that “you have a right not to be insulted or offended.”

While he came to prominence as a result of the Muhammad cartoons, Rose is not a provocateur but a defender of free speech as a matter of principle. In fact, he has recently undertaken a new cause: standing up for Muslims targeted by some of Europe’s new anti-terror laws, and fighting restrictions on religious speech deemed “extreme” by authorities. He has condemned Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s call to ban the Quran.

Forget the Syrian Civil War for a moment. Even without the Sunnis and Shiites competing to give each other machete haircuts every sunny morning, there would still be a permanent Muslim refugee crisis.

The vast majority of civil wars over the last ten years have taken place in Muslim countries. Muslim countries are also some of the poorest in the world. And Muslim countries also have high birth rates.

Combine violence and poverty with a population boom and you get a permanent migration crisis.

No matter what happens in Syria or Libya next year, that permanent migration crisis isn’t going away.

The Muslim world is expanding unsustainably. In the Middle East and Asia, Muslims tend to underperform their non-Muslim neighbors both educationally and economically. Oil is the only asset that gave Muslims any advantage and in the age of fracking, its value is a lot shakier than it used to be.

The Muslim world had lost its old role as the intermediary between Asia and the West. And it has no economic function in the new world except to blackmail it by spreading violence and instability.

Muslim countries with lower literacy rates, especially for women, are never going to be economic winners at any trade that doesn’t come gushing out of the ground. Nor will unstable dictatorships ever be able to provide social mobility or access to the good life. At best they’ll hand out subsidies for bread.

The Muslim world has no prospects for getting any better. The Arab Spring was a Western delusion.

Growing populations divided along tribal and religious lines are competing for a limited amount of land, power and wealth. Countries without a future are set to double in size.

There are only two solutions; war or migration.

Either you fight and take what you want at home. Or you go abroad and take what you want there.

Would you hire a lawyer who couldn’t handle references to violence? If not, then be wary of anyone who graduated from Oxford with a law degree in 2016.

Lecturers at my old university are being told that they should issue ‘trigger warnings’ when discussing ‘potentially distressing’ cases. I suppose it was only a matter of time before this latest madness spread from American to British campuses.

Oxford undergraduates reading English, for example, are now given a “trigger warning” about Robert Lowell’s 1964 poem, “For The Union Dead,” because it contains the following stanza about Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry that he led during the Civil War:

Shaw’s father wanted no monument

Except the ditch,

Where his son’s body was thrown…

Never mind that the poem is about a memorial to the black and white heroes who fought side-by-side against slavery, all in the midst of the civil rights movement of Lowell’s day. Context is never a defense in these cases. A student’s readiness to take offense trumps the literary canon.

In much the same way, an older student and janitor at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis was disciplined in 2008 for racial harassment just because during his break, he had been seen reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan.

The book is a sympathetic history of Notre Dame students’ opposition to a Ku Klux Klan march in South Bend, Ind., in 1924. But one of his co-workers on the school’s janitorial staff took offense at the image of a Klansman on the cover, and that was all that counted.

British students are having to learn the bizarre newspeak with which Americans are familiar: “micro-aggression,” “safe space,” “cultural appropriation.”

European political and media elites have been quick to hail the election of Van der Bellen, who campaigned on a pro-immigration, pro-EU platform. They seem to believe his razor-thin win validates their uninterrupted pursuit of European multiculturalism.

Meanwhile, European elites have expressed relief at Norbert Hofer’s defeat. Their reactions would indicate that they unaware that they are largely responsible for the rise of anti-establishment parties in Austria and other parts of Europe.

“Europe has been polarized for years by misguided policies pursued by the old major parties, not only in Germany but in many European countries. The fact is that it must be our task to preserve freedom, democracy and the rule of law across the continent. And the policy of open borders does exactly the opposite.” — Frauke Petry, Alternative for Germany party.

Norbert Hofer of the anti-immigration Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been narrowly defeated in his bid to become Austria’s next president.

Alexander Van der Bellen, former leader of Austrian Greens party, won 50.3% of the vote, compared to 49.7% for Hofer. The margin of victory was 31,026 out of nearly 4.5 million votes cast.

European political and media elites have been quick to hail the election of Van der Bellen, who campaigned on a pro-immigration, pro-EU platform. They seem to believe his razor-thin win validates their uninterrupted pursuit of European multiculturalism.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders is using his popularity and name recognition to support the VoteLeave campaign, which encourages UK citizens to vote for a British exit from the European Union next month — a “Brexit.”

In a conversation with The Sunday Telegraph, Wilders — known for his euro-skepticism and his criticism of Islam — explains that if Brits seize this chance to take back their sovereignty, they could inspire many other EU members to do the same:

Like in the 1940s, once again Britain could help liberate Europe from another totalitarian monster, this time called “Brussels.” Again, we could be saved by the British. If people see that a country can leave, and the lights do not go out, there is not a war, and a country does not go bankrupt, but even flourishes. If Britain proves that this theory can become a reality, it would have an enormous effect.

Although Wilders has consistently been portrayed as an “extremist” and a “racist xenophobe” by the media, the Party for Freedom leader is becoming less controversial. He has not softened his tone — voters are simply siding with him. He now represents a large segment of the Dutch and even the European electorate:

Not so long ago, Mr. Wilders acknowledges, such dreams of a populist revolution would have remained just that — dreams — but as in America, where Donald Trump has caught the establishment flat-footed with his brash appeal to discontented grassroots, Europe’s populists are suddenly ascendant.

Nationalist populism is taking over in Europe as it appears to be doing in the United States with the rise of Donald Trump.

Ahmet Davutoglu was a typically Islamist prime minister, except that even his secular rivals admitted that he was an honest man — not corrupt at all. In contrast, Binali Yildirim, who is designated to be the next prime minister, has a different story to tell.

There are suspicions about how the Yildirim family has run its business arm.

Yildirim will leave foreign policy to Erdogan and his inner cabinet exclusively. He will devote most of his time to his number one task: putting together a parliamentary majority, either by horse-trading or by snap polls, in order to introduce the executive presidential system his boss so passionately craves.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the choice of Turkish President and would-be Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan for loyal servant in 2014, stepped down with words that were bitter but not resentful: he will always remain loyal to the sultan, party and “dawa” – the Islamist political cause.

After having been chosen by the Sultan as his first Grand Vizier, not knowing he would have to quit barely 20 months later, Davutoglu read out his government’s program in parliament on Sept. 1, 2014:

“One of the most important prerequisites to sustainable stability in the Middle East is to find a just, comprehensive and viable solution to the Palestinian dispute…. Turkey’s efforts for an end to the human tragedy in Palestine, achievement of sustainable peace in the region and support for the unity government in Palestine will continue on…. Any progress in the process of normalization of ties with Israel, which began after Israel apologized in 2013 for the Mavi Marmara attack, will not be possible unless Israel stopped its military strikes on Gaza and removed restrictions [on Gaza].”

As is almost always the case in Turkish political Islam’s inner roads of intrigue and power struggles, Davutoglu’s fierce pro-Palestinian, anti-Semitic, pro-ummah, neo-Ottomanist dreams failed to keep him afloat in a sea of sharks: his own comrades. On May 5 he announced his decision to take the party leadership to an extraordinary general convention where “he would not run for party chairman and prime minister.”

“Why,” I said to the woman next to me, “is this flag there? Is that not the ISIS flag?”

The half-full banquet hall, divided into the men’s side and the women’s side, admitted about 100 attendees. A black flag with white script was on display, on both the screen and on the podium. “Why,” I said to the woman next to me, “is this flag there? Is that not the ISIS flag?” The woman, later identified as Naeema, said it was not, and called her son, one of the organizers, to address the question. It seemed difficult for him, too; he went off to look for someone else more knowledgeable to the help with the problem. Naeema explained that the writing was different. “I can read Arabic,” I said. No one could be found to answer the question.

As the event started late, Naeema began a conversation. We talked about our origins and how long we had been in Canada. She said she had been here 40 years, so I asked about the disconnect between enjoying 40 years of democracy, yet trying to end it. I mentioned a book published by Hizb-ut-Tahrir:

“Democracy is Infidelity: its use, application and promotion are prohibited.”

“الديمقراطية نظام كفر، يحرم أخذها أو تطبيقها أو الدعوة إليها”

Naeema said she was not qualified to debate the topic, but that democracy had done nothing good for people, so she and other believers would follow the rule of Allah. Reflecting on the Muslim Brotherhood’s year in power in Egypt, I asked if she were prepared to have a dictator claim to be Allah’s spokesman even if he abused the power. She said she had never thought about it like that, but, again, that she was not qualified to debate the topic. As the conference began, the conversation stopped.

The culture of entitlement is so well entrenched that handouts, which see the minority that pays taxes subsidising those who do not, have morphed into “rights” impossible to wind back. Given that the battle is lost, fiscal conservatives should focus instead on reducing impediments to growth
As intractable budget deficit after budget deficit forebodes national ruin and frames the forthcoming election, there is no shortage of fiscal conservatives complaining that the Government has failed to cut spending. Maybe I have missed it but I can’t recall one that has actually set out and quantified exactly where material expenditure cuts should be made and can feasibly be made. When it comes to specifics there is empty space. Why? The answer is simple. It is just too darn hard.

In 2013 the Centre for Independent Studies established its TARGET30 campaign with the objective of fashioning a public debate that would lead to a reduction in general government spending (federal, state and local) from around 35% of GDP to 30% in ten years. This is a laudable objective. But, predictably, no progress has been made or is remotely in sight.

The bulk of the growing expenditure burden is in the areas of health, welfare, pensions and education, which account for an estimated 60% of federal government spending in 2015-16. It is all electorally inviolable. Certainly new promises (of the reckless Gillard kind on Gonski, hospital funding and the NDIS) should be resisted. But once a program is in place it is all but impossible to make cuts.

Too many people are now getting some benefit or other. Added to this, the culture of entitlement is so well entrenched that handouts, which involve a minority of the population (predominantly the despised ‘rich’) subsidising the maintenance and lifestyle of the rest, have morphed into rights. Short of some cataclysmic overturning of the existing order this will not change. In fact, it will become akin to a law of nature.

Ask yourself, if Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher failed to stem the growth in entitlement spending, as they did in a less far-gone age of dependency, what chance has anybody now?

The question then becomes what to do, if you believe – unlike left-green politicians living in their own delusional world – that growing debt will eventually lead to national ruin. The only feasible answer is to boost economic growth to pay the bills. Sure keep on fighting the good fight to contain spending but understand that this is largely whistling in the wind and that any solution will predominantly lie on the supply side of the economy.