RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Guardian hyperventilates today, with a story headlined: “Climate experts urge leading scientists’ association: reject Exxon sponsorship.”

Well, those “experts” should be having that discussion with their own employers first.

The Guardian article reports on a petition just issued by prominent climate hysterics like James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Naomi Oreskes, who are using the petition to ask the American Geophysical Union (AGU) to end its sponsorship deal with oil giant ExxonMobil. The AGU is a membership organization for Earth and space scientists known for its scientific journal and its conferences.

The signatories write:

We, the undersigned members of AGU (and other concerned geoscientists), write to ask you to please reconsider ExxonMobil’s sponsorship of the AGU Fall Meetings.

As Earth scientists, we are deeply troubled by the well-documented complicity of ExxonMobil in climate denial and misinformation. For example, recent investigative journalism has shed light on the fact that Exxon, informed by their in-house scientists, has known about the devastating global warming effects of fossil fuel burning since the late 1970s, but spent the next decades funding misinformation campaigns to confuse the public, slander scientists, and sabotage science — the very science conducted by thousands of AGU members.

We won’t litigate Exxon’s alleged “complicity” in “climate denial and misinformation” now. (You may read the silly allegations here and Exxon’s detailed defense here.) But for the sake of argument, let’s assume the hysterics are making their claims in good faith.

In almost every venue today, we find that “new slogans, political and social [are] used often with calculated ambiguity. Extreme positions, on the right and on the left, are becoming more and more uncompromising. Moderation is taken for apathy, and patience is looked upon as a pretext for inaction. There is mounting unrest and violence not only among university students but in society at large. The product is a weakening of confidence between young and old, between racial groups, between partisan political factions, between students and administrators, between citizens and government. An individualism of suspicion and distrust is replacing an individualism of opportunity and hope.”

Written almost 50 years ago, the above aptly describes what is assailing America today. In 1968, Philip H. Rhinelander, then a professor of philosophy and humanities at Stanford University, wrote a piece entitled “Education and Society” for The Key Reporter which was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Stanford on June 15, 1968. Rhinelander reminded his audience that they were “dealing with a failure of education” leading to “an increasing doubt in the minds of students as to whether intellectual discipline and rational analysis have any relevance to the solution of the pressing problems of the day.”

One cannot enter a classroom of higher learning today without walking into pitched battles and extreme positioning. University students deride the idea of consensus-building and seek to run administrators out of town. Any student daring to express an opinion different from the politically correct one of the day is frightened into mental subservience, so much so that logical argumentation is in tatters. Aristotle’s classifications of ethos, pathos, and logos rarely make their way into classroom discussions as shouting matches become the rule of the day.

Anti-Israel protesters confronted and threatened a Palestinian human rights activist who was critical of the Palestinian Authority while lecturing at the University of Chicago, reports Algemeiner.

Bassem Eid, founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, was confronted by hostile protesters last week. They challenged him for speaking of PA human rights abuses without referencing Israel’s “occupation,” according to a post Eid shared on his Facebook page.

A former student at Chicago’s Columbia College who claimed he was from Gaza threatened Eid physically.

A video shows the man yelling threats in Arabic including: “I’m going to destroy this place!”, “I’m going to kill this mother****!” and “Wait until you go to your car!”

Eid previously worked as an investigator for B’Tselem, a human rights organization which often is critical of the Israeli military. His turn to criticizing Palestinian rejectionism and human rights abuses angered anti-Israel activists.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=15325
A great god and small knives

The “lone-wolf terrorist” phenomenon should not come as a surprise to the defense apparatus. It’s an exact implementation of the obligation of Muslim believers in an age when political Islam is reawakening.

A decade ago, Abu Moussab a-Suri — who would become the strategist for the Islamic State group — wrote “The Call for Global Islamic Resistance,” a 1,600-page document that called on all believers to upgrade their jihad tools to G3.

According to a-Suri, the first generation was resistance organized in specific territory, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, which despite its partial successes, turned out to be untenable when facing the armies of the West. Even the second generation — organization without territory, like al-Qaida — has had difficulty ever since its cross-border success on 9/11 in combating the technological intelligence methods activated against it. The alternative is a war fought by crowds of individuals motivated solely by commandments and faith. This is G3: Nizam la Tanzim (“The School of Individual Jihad”). Non-organized, and with no territory. Anyone, using any method, at any time.

This is not only a new tactic, it’s the fulfillment of the Islamic dream. The G3 jihad has no organization and no hierarchy, no funds and no international training camps.

But they’re not necessary. The only thing that sets the act in motion is a divine command, which contains three main principles: The first is loyalty to the Islamic nation, rather than to the family or a tribe. This turns every individual into a soldier in the service of the nation. The second principle is universality: the only border recognized in Islam is that between Dar al-Islam (“the House of Islam,” the lands where Islam rules) and Dar al-Harb (“the House of War,” where Islam does not rule). This jihad brings the globe back to its original Muslim definition, “a House of War,” which is destined to continue until Shariah law is applied to all of it. The third principle is an update from the Muslim Brotherhood school — that murderous jihad is not just the obligation of the public as a whole but also of every individual.

In the Muslim world, there is a debate about timing, about the good of the nation. And there is a battle between Sunni and Shiite, between the different groups fighting for local rule or rule of the entire caliphate.

But this religious ideology is a common denominator and what motivates them all, so it’s the enemy we find ourselves facing.

That conclusion makes us uncomfortable. We hoped that we had left ideological wars behind in the last century. We trusted the prophecy of Fukuyama in “The End of History,” but the religiosity of the G3 Muslims is not satisfied with the modern conveniences and individual freedom that prophecy ushered in, and we should acknowledge that. We should treat these aspects of Muslim ideology as we treated other ideologies that threatened the free world not so long ago. We must remove it from the concept of freedom of religion and invalidate all activity related to it and its dissemination — certainly that which condemns the principles of humanism or national sovereignty.

Victory is conditional upon knowing the enemy. When they stop searching for “inciters” in Western terms and reject the ideology itself, we can do it. The public discussion of Balad MKs meeting with the families of “mujahedeen” (“jihadis”) and the fuss about broadcaster Razi Barkai’s sensitivity toward their mothers are the result of the mistaken conception of Islam. A moral society must take action, not out of blood lust or an explosion of nerves, but rather as a justified, vital war against parts of an ideology that threaten all of humanity.

Amit Halevi is the executive director of the Jewish Statesmanship Center in Jerusalem.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/02/23/reports-showing-obamas-failed-war-against-isis-deleted-on-the-glazov-gang/

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center who writes the blog The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discussed Reports Showing Obama’s Failed War Against ISIS Deleted, exposing yet another cover-up of a cover-up.

Don’t miss it!

Alex Grobman, a Hebrew University-trained historian, has written three new books on Israel: BDS: The Movement to Destroy Israel; Erosion: Undermining Israel through Lies and Deception; and Cultivating Canaan: Who Owns the Holy Land?

Having failed to destroy Israel on the battlefield, the Palestinian Arabs are determined to use Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) to delegitimize and dehumanize the Jewish state. By positioning Israel as racist and apartheid state, Israel can be denounced as an illegitimate entity that has neither a moral right to exist nor a raison d’être. This is the primary and unifying belief of the BDS movement.

The only solution is to abolish Israel and replace her with an Arab Palestinian state under a Muslim majority. There is no pretense of resolving the Arab/Israeli conflict through compromise or a two state-solution. Destroying Israel has been a primary objective of the Palestinian Liberation Movement (PLO) from the outset.

In a Radio PLO broadcast in Hebrew on October 31, 1967, Ahmad Al-Shuqayri, who founded the PLO in May 1964, announced “Filastin is the homeland of the Palestinian people.” They and the Arab nation will never relinquish their patrimony. “We will fight until Israel is destroyed …One hundred thousand Arabs surround you; they will not leave Israel alone and allow it [to] exist.” He urged Jews to leave Israel to other countries so they will enjoy peace, prosperity and stability. The Balfour Declaration precipitated the calamity and only Jewish emigration from Palestine will end the catastrophe. [1]

Article 15 of the Hamas Covenant of August 1988, explains why the destruction of Israel is not negotiable; it is a religious imperative: “The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”

Patrick Deneen puts his finger on the biggest problem facing the American future: a generation of students who know nothing about anything:

My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.

It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.

But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/02/21/isiss-islamic-inspirations-on-the-glazov-gang/

As the dire threat of ISIS to the West continues to escalate, with recent reports now indicating that 5 thousand ISIS jihadists are at large in the EU, we continue to witness mass denial within the West’s leadership, media and culture about the Islamic nature of the Islamic State.

Nonetheless, the Islamic nature of the Islamic State is clear for all to see. Just recently, for instance, a Syrian Christian, John, testified about life for Christians in the Islamic State’s controlled city of Raqqa, where he revealed that Christians are paying the jizya, the “tax” that conquered non-Muslims must pay to their Islamic rulers to spare their lives — and that is mandated by the Qur’an (9:29).

In response to John’s testimony, and to shed light on the Islamic nature of the Islamic State and the huge price the West is paying in denying it, we are running The Glazov Gang’s feature interview with Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim on ISIS’s Islamic Inspirations, in which Raymond unveils the Islamic roots of ISIS and the hazardous danger of the West deceiving itself about it.

Don’t miss it!

It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

Yet again a campus speaker is slammed and silenced by a crowd of students and alumni for failing to understand the “horrors” of “the Occupation,” and for failing to hold Israel sufficiently accountable.

But this time, at this campus, with this speaker, it is hard to imagine a more absurd scenario.

Bassem Eid, a Palestinian Arab who is a human rights activist and who not only worked for the United Nations and the far leftist NGO Btselem, he also founded the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, was the speaker at the University of Chicago on Thursday, Feb. 18.

The topic of Eid’s speech was “A Palestinian Point of View.” His talk was sponsored by the University of Chicago Hillel, the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, J Street U Chicago (which later apologized for the sponsorship) and several international groups, plus the Israel Education Center.

But although Eid spoke about his own first hand experiences, having lived in and around Jerusalem all of his life, several of the students were outraged that he dared to criticize the Arabs, and was insufficiently harsh – in their view – on the Israelis.

One speaker after the next, during the Question and Answer session following Eid’s talk, demanded to know how dare Eid not speak about the horrors of “the Occupation,” and why he spent any time at all criticizing the Palestinian Arabs for their violence.

The questioners all made demands of Eid, all were livid that he failed them by not attacking the true and primary wrongdoer – in their opinion – Israel. It did not matter whether it was someone who identified himself as a “Palestinian,” “someone from Gaza,” or a “Jewish alumna of the University of Chicago,” all were infuriated by Eid’s talk.

Backing the French initiative to convene an international conference in the near future on the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” a group of eleven prominent French ambassadors published an appeal in Le Monde on February 3, 2016, urging Paris and Brussels to “save the Palestinian state.”

Their 900-word opus can be summarized as follows:

The ongoing “knife-intifada” is an expression of the “frustration and humiliation” of the Palestinians “after nearly 50 years of occupation,” and the “spontaneous violence” it produced has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism as practiced by the Islamic State (ISIS). Besides, “Israel’s repression” has produced “a far greater number of victims” than Israeli casualties.

Since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1996, “all peace initiatives have failed,” thus preventing the Palestinians from “being granted a portion of Palestine since 1967.” In theory, negotiations should conform to the “principle of two-states, recognized by the United Nations since 1947” but the policies of Prime Minister Netanyahu – which aim at “establishing a Greater Israel from the sea to the Jordan River” — have reduced the potential area of the future Palestinian state. The unresolved Palestinian question fuels the animosity of the “Arab/Muslim world against the West.”

While the U.S. will continue to pledge their allegiance to Israel, Europe remains “inhibited by the specter of the Shoah and the power of the [pro-Israel] lobbies.” But the “power of the law” should address the “sense of injustice that is spreading in public opinion.” To that effect, the French Government will introduce a Security Council resolution to “resume negotiations under international control” and, “should these negotiations fail, France would recognize the Palestinian State.” As the international community confronts ISIS, why wouldn’t it deploy “an equivalent effort” toward peace, which would “at last grant the Palestinian people their rights”?

But we should not wait. Without delay, “France should immediately recognize the Palestinian State.” As long as Israeli “colonization” continues, “the association treaty between Israel and the European Union should be suspended” as well as “the special economic and scientific cooperation from which Israel benefits.” These measures are necessary to prevent Israel from “losing its soul” in the pursuit of its “apartheid policies.” What is at stake in this conflict are the “values of the Western world” and it behooves everyone to contribute to its solution “in terms of civilization.”