RUTHFULLY YOURS

Who supports the Islamic State (ISIS) and why do Sunni nations seem to tolerate it?

Patrick Sookhdeo, a Muslim convert to Christianity and scholar of Islamic faith and politics, “suggests a pessimistic prospect; Islamic State is likely to remain a persistent threat, even if it suffers overwhelming defeats.” So reads his recent book Unmasking Islamic State: Revealing Their Motivation, Theology, and End Time Predictions, an insightful primer into the Islamic State (IS) jihadist polity currently ravaging Mesopotamia and beyond.

Islamic State “is the most well organized Sunni jihadi organization in the Middle East and may well have the most sophisticated structure of any terrorist organization currently active,” Sookhdeo writes. Islamic State presents an alliance of convenience between high ranking military officers and officials from Saddam Hussein’s deposed Baathist dictatorship and jihadist organizations that originally fought Iraq’s American-led regime change. The result is a “powerful fusion of Salafi/Jihadi ideology with professional military and counterintelligence strategies and urban warfare tactics, as well as bureaucratic know how needed to run state.”

“With the declaration of the caliphate Islamic State has become the leading jihadi group worldwide, supplanting Al-Qaeda [AQ] as perceived leader of the radical Islamist movements,” assesses Sookhdeo. Kidnapping for extortion, looting of bank gold deposits and other valuables like antiquities, and black market oil sales mean that “Islamic State has become the richest jihadi organization in the world,” worth over $2 billion in some estimates. Having “constructed a viable territorial state,” Islamic State “is constantly opening up new, unexpected fronts and bringing other jihadi groups under its umbrella” globally. The “information strategy now employed by Patrick Sookhdeo, Andrew Harrod, Islamic State, Saudi, ISIS, ISIL makes most of Al-Qaeda’s efforts seem old-fashioned.”

“Education is the movement from darkness to light.

Allen Bloom (1930-1992)

American philosopher, classicist

and author of Closing of the American Mind

In a message to Congress on internal security in August of 1950, Harry Truman said: “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of the opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

President Truman was speaking at a time when Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy was coming to prominence with his attacks on “perceived” Communists in government. (Not all of his accusations were false, but his tone and manner were venal.) While Mr. Truman did not approve of Senator McCarthy’s harangues, he knew the Wisconsin Senator was free to bloviate. Silencing him would prove more dangerous to democracy than letting him spout off. Mr. Truman’s counsel has applicability in the corridors of our politically correct colleges and universities where demands to censor those who are seen as purveyors of “hateful” messages have gained approval of presidents and deans. “Inclusiveness,” with these folks is okay, as long as it does not include those who offer ideas outside accepted norms.

Student disruptions regarding conservative speakers is not the problem. It is the acquiescence to their demands by faculty and administrators that risks upending a free society. Students have always had a juvenile streak. I know I did. But professors, deans and college presidents are expected to act and respond like adults – to be the keepers of Mr. Truman’s precept for freedom.

Those who argue that “hateful” speech should be censored cite Adolph Hitler, a demagogue and master of invective. He spewed venom. It was not his words of hate that made him a monster. It was his shutting up of his critics. Hitler took the extreme measures of imprisoning or murdering those who disagreed or he thought inferior. But it was the silencing of critics, no matter the means, that was wrong. Keep in mind Voltaire’s admonishment: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it.”

One way the young learn is by questioning conventional thinking. Socratic methods abet the self-examined life, critical to a liberal arts education. Inquiring minds seek answers, and most students are in college to learn. But they do not do so when they are pampered, when “safe” places are substituted for difficult lessons. Consider: Would the provision of a “safe” place help students at Bowdoin because they were offended by other students wearing sombreros to a tequila party? Were they truly upset, or were they pushing the administration because they knew they could? Were Cornell students really offended by the word “plantation,” that it evoked images of slavery? If so, where does political correctness end? There are 600,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, many of which are sure to be disparaging to someone somewhere. Should we rely on college administrators or government bureaucrats to determine which words to use? Who will police us and what punishments will be forthcoming? Such control smacks of the “thought police” in George Orwell’s nightmarish novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

“Israel is a water superpower.” So wrote Renaissance man and entrepreneur-commentator Seth M. Siegel in his recent bestselling book “Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World.”

This fascinating volume analyzes the amazing pioneering story of how a once-poor, parched Israel became a prosperous, high-tech startup nation, offering solutions unto the countries of an increasingly water-starved world.

Siegel presented Israel as a laboratory for a growing global population endangered by impending socioeconomic and national security water crises examined by official top-secret American studies. “Sixty percent of Israel is desert, and the rest is semiarid,” he noted, adding that Israel’s “annual rainfall, not generous to begin with, has dropped by more than half.” Nonetheless, this former third-world country at its independence in 1948 “now has one of the world’s most rapidly growing economies. Middle-class life is the norm in Israel.”

Siegel said that “despite its challenging climate and unforgiving landscape, Israel not only doesn’t have a water crisis, it has a water surplus.” Prior to World War II, British economists gloomily predicted that the territory of the British Palestine Mandate on which a Jewish national home was to emerge could sustain no more than 2 million people. By contrast, the “geographic area of Palestine today is home to more than 12 million people” in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and Israel exports annually water-intensive produce worth billions of dollars.

The persistent and unprecedented failure of the Obama administration to conduct foreign policy in ways that promote American interests is baffling to most observers.

The impulse to offer succor to those who would do us harm became almost too absurd to parody when State Department spokesperson Marie Harf suggested in January of 2015 that ISIS could be disarmed with a jobs-for-jihadists program.

A month later, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest answered a question on counterterrorism by claiming that the administration was hard at work developing “some pretty sophisticated social media strategy.”

But it appears now that the administration is contemplating an even less confrontational approach – a widespread effort to “Like” ISIS.

Policymakers must abandon the delusion that our enemies can be swayed or defeated by displays of kindness.

This new low point in foreign policy thinking came in the person of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, an Obama insider who was rumored in 2012 to have been on the short list for a second-term cabinet position. In a January 20, 2016 panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sandberg offered what appears to be a new counterterrorism strategy – the “‘like attack.”

A report launched following allegations of rampant antisemitism within the Oxford University Labour Club and completed 10 days ago revealed that a number of its members condoned attacks on Paris synagogues in 2014 and mocked the mourners of the victims of the Hyper Cacher supermarket massacre, Britain’s Jewish News reported on Sunday, basing its information on evidence obtained by the Sunday Times.

In addition, according to testimony in the report — conducted by members of the British Labour Party and seen by the Times — some members referred to the Auschwitz extermination camp as a “cash cow.”

The report in which these revelations came to the fore was launched following the resignation of the Oxford Labour Club’s co-chairman – who claimed some members had “some kind of problem with Jews” – and additional complaints from members of the school’s Jewish Society, who said they felt “intimidated” by the antisemitic atmosphere.

Oxford Labour Students also launched a probe into the allegations, but the findings of their investigation were not released. Nor, according to the Jewish News, were the results of the Labour Party report in question.

In an op-ed Thursday in the Jewish News, Labour MPs Michael Dugher and Rachel Reeves condemned the phenomenon of antisemitism in Britain in general and bemoaned its existence in a student Labour club in particular, while calling for the immediate release of the report’s findings:

…The Labour movement has always had a strong record of opposing discrimination and racism, including anti-Semitism. That was – and still is – central to what we believe as Labour people. That’s why we were so deeply saddened by the allegations of anti-Semitism at the Oxford University Labour Club.

This special episode of The Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Peter Hammond, the founder of Frontline Fellowship.

Dr. Hammond came on the show to discuss Islam’s Hatred of Dogs and Cruelty to Animals, examining the Islamic theological foundations that inspire a hatred of and sadism toward animals.

Don’t miss it!

A special Glazov Gang with Dr. Hammond also focused on How the Animal Kingdom Exposes Leftist Utopia as a Sham, unveiling the world of animals and its delegitimization of the socialist fairy tale: CLICK HERE.

And make sure to watch the special 2-part series of The Glazov Gang below that focused on Do Animals Have Souls? Joined by Dr. Hammond, the series explored many of the key questions related to the Biblical teachings on animals. Part I deals with Will Animals Be in Heaven? and Part II analyses How The Fall Affected Animals.

Please watch and share!

Part I: Will Animals Be in Heaven?

Part II: How The Fall Affected Animals.

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Louis Lionheart, a Christian preacher and scholar of Islam who came on the show to discuss his experience of Debating Muslims about Mohammed on the Streets of Santa Monica. He unveils the problematic ingredients of Muslims’ arguments about their religion and shares the myriad forms of abuse and threats that have been heaped upon him.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Louis on the other special Glazov Gang episode, Muslim Woman Attacks Christian Preacher, in which he shares the assault he suffered when he dared to tell the truth about Mohammed and Aisha on 3rd. St. Promenade. (Video clip of the assault is played in the program):

Sex education in our schools once consisted of clinical explanations of the mechanical. These days, as the Safe Schools scandal has demonstrated, lessons in what fits where are apt to be immersion courses in the discriminatory nature of oppressive capitalism.
The Commonwealth government’s Safe Schools Coalition program, directed at providing a more positive environment for “same-sex attracted, intersex and gender-diverse students” is being criticised for advocating radical views about gender and sexuality. Senator Cory Bernardi, from South Australia, describes the program as indoctrinating “children into a Marxist agenda of cultural relativism”. Senator Eric Abetz, from Tasmania, argues that it is “a program of social engineering where parents, when they get to understand what it is, rebel against it and in fact vote for their schools not to be involved”.

While there is no doubt that elements of the program involve a genuine attempt to reduce bullying and prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) students, Senators’ Abetz and Bernardi are correct in what they argue. The ideology underpinning the program and associated material reflects a cultural-left bias about gender and sexuality that has existed for many years. As I detailed in Why Our Schools Are Failing, published in 2004, the cultural left has long critiques Western capitalist society as ‘phallocentric’, ‘oppressive’ and ‘misogynist’. A rainbow alliance of cultural-left movements, including neo-Marxism, feminism, gender studies and queer theory argue that traditional views about sexuality and gender enforce a binary, hierarchical code that oppresses women and anyone who does not conform to society’s heterosexist expectations.

Examples quoted in Why Our Schools Are Failing include the University of Melbourne’s History Department’s course ‘The Body: History, Sex and Gender’, where students are introduced to “an understanding of the different readings of the body… of the construction of the slender body, the gay and lesbian body, and the gendered body of the late 20th century”. At a national conference of English teachers an academic, when referring to heterosexuality, argued: “I am proposing that this new form of hierarchical dualism can and should be resisted and challenged (by) using the English classroom as a site for resistance and interventionist strategies.”

At the age of 16, while Amir Goldenthal’s friends were busy with matriculation exams, he was at the end of the first year of undergraduate physics – and starting his doctorate.
The unprecedented decision by the heads of the Department of Physics and the Center for Neuroscience Studies at Bar-Ilan University – to allow the young teenager to begin his doctoral studies – proved very quickly to be successful, when Goldenthal completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees with honors, published articles in international scientific journals, and was selected to attend a convention of Nobel Prize winners in Japan, which was set to bring together past and future world influencers.

Recently, the nearly-20-year-old Goldenthal has been coming to the university every day by taking two buses from Ashdod. His doctoral dissertation work involved breakthroughs in understanding neurological diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In the coming days Goldenthal will travel to a medical research center in Germany alongside his supervisor, Prof. Ido Kanter, Director of the Department of Physics and the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center. They were invited by a senior researcher in neuroscience to apply their findings with patients who suffer from brain injuries.

In video call to Microsoft Israel’s annual big bash, co-founder says he’s ‘very impressed’ with Israel’s R&D

A special guest virtually joined over 2,000 people at the Microsoft Israel R&D Center’s annual Think Next event in Tel Aviv Thursday – the man who started it all, Bill Gates.In a rare public comment on the value of MS Israel’s work in helping make the company what it is, Gates said that Israeli developments tech areas like analytics and security were “improving the world.”

This year marked the eighth Think Next event, where MS shows off its best and brightest new technologies, many developed in Israel. Gates doesn’t call in every year, but with this year being the 25th anniversary of the Microsoft Israel research and development center, he told the Tel Aviv audience in a video call from the US that he was “very happy to wish the R&D center a happy birthday.”

The center, he said, “started in 1991, when some of the Israeli engineers at Microsoft wanted to return home but continue working at Microsoft. We decided to open the center – it was our first one outside the US – and I think the technology they have produced over the years more than justifies our decision.”

Speaking live at the event was current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier Thursday to discuss cyber-security and other matters. In their meeting, Nadella noted Microsoft’s commitment to Israel, “its investments in the local market and its commitment to the continued growth of the high-tech and innovation industry in Israel which finds expression in assistance programs for start-ups, introducing advanced technologies to all sectors of the economy, promoting science and technology, and education in computers and mathematics,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.