RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Obama administration calls its national security strategy “Countering Violent Extremism.” In the benighted times before January 20, 2009, we used to call it counter-terrorism.

Why does Obama insist on the more fuzzy “extremism”? Because “terror” has its roots in Islamic scripture. This fact ought to be undeniable, but Obama denies it — and in Washington, he’s far from alone in that.

It is not just that the word terror appears several times in the Koran; it is that the word appears in a particular context: The duty of Muslims to act as Allah’s instrument to terrorize non-Muslims is a recurring scriptural theme. In Sura 3:151, to take one of several examples, Muslims are admonished:

Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.

Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” I prosecuted in the mid-’90s after his cell bombed the World Trade Center and planned similar strikes against other New York City landmarks, was a renowned scholar of Islamic jurisprudence. Indeed — and this is worth pausing over — his mastery of our enemy’s ideology was the sole source of his authority to approve jihadist attacks. Think about that: his blindness, and various other maladies, render Abdel Rahman unable to do anything useful for a terrorist network. He can’t build bombs, command forces on the battlefield, execute assassinations, and so on. But his authority is unquestioned because of his scholarship and rhetorical power in the scripture-based doctrine our president pretends is non-Islamic and of marginal importance.

Sheikh Abdel Rahman was adamant that terror is fundamental to Islamic doctrine:

Why do we fear the word terrorist? If the terrorist is the person who defends his right, so we are terrorists. And if the terrorist is the one who struggles for the sake of God, then we are terrorists. We … have been ordered with terrorism because we must prepare what power we can to terrorize the enemy of Allah and your enemy. The Koran [said] “to strike terror.” Therefore, we don’t fear to be described with “terrorism.” … They may say, “He is a terrorist, he uses violence, he uses force.” Let them say that. We are ordered to prepare whatever we can of power to terrorize the enemies of Islam.

On December 2, 2015, two Muslim terrorists massacred fourteen Americans at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California. On December 6, President Obama delivered an Oval Office address. In it, he said, “We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam … It is the responsibility of all Americans to reject discrimination.” Many listeners were disappointed that Obama focused so much passion on lecturing Americans.

Media reported that hostility against Muslims increased after the San Bernardino attack. Public figures including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, filmmaker Michael Moore, and Wheaton college professor Larycia Hawkins insisted that Muslims must be protected against the bigotry, stereotyping, and violence of non-Muslim Americans.

President Obama, Zuckerberg, Moore, and Hawkins are acting on their own bigotry. In hostility and ignorance, they stereotype all Americans (except Muslims, of course) as an inherently ignorant lynch mob. That’s not who we Americans are. If Americans had been hearing from their leaders what they need to hear – a passionate defense of Western Civilization and a ringing condemnation of jihad – average Americans would not feel that they themselves must take on both rhetorical tasks. Americans, as YouTube curmudgeon Pat Condell pointed out, are trying to fill a leadership vacuum and to speak and hear unspoken truths.

It is a demonstrable historical fact that Americans have traditionally not held hatred toward or stereotypes of Muslims. A hundred years ago, if Americans thought of Muslims at all, they associated Muslims with romance. Maud Hull’s 1919 softcore novel The Sheik was a blockbuster bestseller. Superstar Rudolph Valentino made two Sheik films, in 1921 and 1926. They were record-breaking international hits.

It is primarily terrorists and Islam-apologists, people like Obama, Zuckerberg, Moore and Hawkins, who are in fact responsible for the current tension. Politically Correct speech codes suppress and demonize necessary conversations about Islam. Priests and rabbis, presidents and judges, journalists and college professors – the very people whose job it is to wield words to address matters of public import – are complicit. These cultural leaders are all covering their own posteriors, timidly mincing words so that no stray syllable can be used against them. Americans are frustrated and outraged at this absence of frank speech.

https://www.nas.org/

Pushed back on APUSH.
NAS sparked a national controversy in summer 2014 when we challenged the College Board’s new AP U.S. History (APUSH) standards as politically biased and intellectually hollow. This year, we worked with a panel of historians who published on the NAS website an open letter that convinced the College Board to remove from the APUSH standards many of the faults we had pointed out. The fight, however, continues.

Sparked debate on sustainability and fossil fuel divestment.
We published two major studies this year. In March we released our book-length study, Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism. Launched at an event at the Millennium Hotel, across the street from the UN with Arthur Brooks as the keynote speaker, Sustainability quickly grabbed attention from the Wall Street Journal and from columnist George Will, to become the first widely publicized critique of the way colleges inject the idea of “sustainability” into their curricula and student life. Our sequel, Inside Divestment: The Illiberal Movement to Turn a Generation Against Fossil Fuels, released in November, portrays the growing national campaign to get colleges and universities to sell off investments in coal, oil, and gas companies.
Dug deep into the Common Core.
NAS president Peter Wood edited and wrote the introduction for a new book, Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core Is Bad for America. The book provides essays from nationally-recognized scholars who critique the Common Core K-12 State Standards.
Resisted racial preferences.
The case of Fisher v. University of Texas, which challenges the use of racial preferences in college admissions, came before the Supreme Court for the second time. NAS signed an amicus brief on behalf of Fisher, and NAS board member Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, authored a major study that finds racial preferences often hurt the students they were intended to help. NAS mailed copies of Professor Heriot’s study to all our members.
Defended due process.

www.nas.org

NAS president Peter Wood edited and wrote the introduction for a new book, Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core Is Bad for America. The book provides essays from nationally-recognized scholars who critique the Common Core K-12 State Standards.

Drilling through the Core analyzes Common Core from the standpoint of its deleterious effects on curriculum-language arts, mathematics, history, and more-as well as its questionable legality, its roots in the aggressive spending of a few wealthy donors, its often-underestimated costs, and the untold damage it will wreak on American higher education.

At a time when more and more people are questioning the wisdom of federally-mandated one-size-fits-all solutions, Drilling through the Core offers well-considered arguments for stopping Common Core in its tracks.

Now in one volume, get the research on Common Core’s quality, legality and cost that laid the groundwork for the ongoing national debate about how best to achieve higher academic standards.

With polls showing declining public support for Common Core, with its presence on the presidential campaign trail, and with more states backing out of PARCC and SBAC, Pioneer Institute is pleased to announce publication of a timely new book, Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core is Bad for American Education, edited and with an introduction by Peter W. Wood, and contributions by some of the country’s top education scholars, including Sandra Stotsky, R. James Milgram, Williamson Evers, Ze’ev Wurman, and more…

Amid the media’s elation over the United Nations climate deal reached in Paris on Dec. 12, one significant outcome has been overlooked. The European Union failed to achieve its main objective, namely that the agreement adopt carbon-dioxide mitigation commitments that are “legally binding on all parties.”

While this may appear to be a major setback, it liberates Europe from the restrictions of the Kyoto Protocol—which runs out in 2020—and opens the way for more flexible and less damaging policies.

During the Paris negotiations, European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete warned that the EU “cannot make the mistake we made in Kyoto” where “all the big emitters were outside the legally binding agreement.” For Europe, the Kyoto Protocol has forced EU states to adopt unilateral, and disastrously costly, decarbonization policies. With their manufacturers rapidly losing ground to international competition, governments are increasingly concerned about the threat high energy prices pose to Europe’s industrial base.

The economic damage of unilateral climate policy is now widely acknowledged. In September 2014, then-EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger warned that “If there is no binding commitment from countries such as India, Russia, Brazil, the U.S., China, Japan and South Korea, whose governments are responsible for some 70% of global emissions,” it would be a mistake for EU states to bind only themselves. “If we are too ambitious and others do not follow us, we will have an export of production and more emissions outside the EU.”

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Success in trials of arthritis treatment. Israeli biotech Kitov has announced that its KIT-302 treatment for osteoarthritis successfully reduced arthritic pain in UK trials on 152 patients, without risk of heart problems. In fact KIT-302 is the only treatment for both osteoarthritis and hypertension (high blood pressure).
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/12/16/kitov-pharmas-arthritis-drug-meets-main-goal-in-late-stage-study/

Functional human liver cells grown in the Lab. More news of the work of Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Yaakov Nahmias (see here, here, here and here). Now he has been able to use the chemical Oncostatin to double the speed of liver cell production outside the body. http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/28143

Japan turns to Israeli tech to treat radiation disease. Japan’s Fukushima Medical University and Israel’s Pluristem Therapeutics are to develop Pluristem’s PLX-R18 cells to treat acute radiation syndrome (ARS). Radiation continues to spread following the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/japan-turns-to-israeli-tech-to-treat-radiation-disease/

Prize-winning voice technology. Israel’s VoiceITT (see Mar 2014 newsletter) won the 2015 Medica medical app competition in Dusseldorf with its Talkitt platform that translates the speech of people with communication disabilities. Medica is the world’s largest medical trade fair, attracting nearly 5,000 exhibitors from 70 nations.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/12/10/4-israeli-startups-sweep-international-medical-app-contest/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwHYKmxwN4w

First implantation of groundbreaking heart device. Israel’s Enopace (see Mar 2013 newsletter) has seen the first operation to implant its new catheter-based neuro-stimulator to treat patients with congestive heart failure. The procedure was performed by Professor Davor Milicic, head of Cardiology at Zagreb Medical University.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worlds-first-endovascular-neuromodulation-device-implanted-in-man-for-the-treatment-of-congestive-heart-failure-540696751.html

Breakthrough status for Tardive Dyskinesia treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) The US FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation status to Israel’s Teva for its SD-809 (deutetrabenazine) treatment of patients with tardive dyskinesia, a hyperkinetic movement disorder affecting about 500,000 people in the USA.
http://www.tevapharm.com/news/teva_announces_breakthrough_therapy_designation_for_sd_809_granted_by_fda_for_the_treatment_of_tardive_dyskinesia_11_15.aspx

Weizmann in joint research for brain therapies. Israel’s Weizmann Institute has entered into a research agreement with India’s Sun Pharma and Spain’s Health Research Institute of Santiago to develop products for treating neurological diseases such as brain stroke and brain cancer. (See also Apr 2015 newsletter)
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/sun-pharma-inks-pact-for-brain-therapies/article7971997.ece

Micro-pancreas can cure diabetes. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Betalin has significantly increased the lifetime of pancreatic beta cells transplanted into diabetics in order to produce insulin. This has been achieved by simultaneously transplanting an Engineered Micro Pancreas (EMP) to sustain the cells.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-startup-aims-to-end-insulin-injections-1001086686
http://www.betalintherapeutics.com/

Gustavus Swift once said about his meat-packing operations that they used “everything but the squeal.”

We have just seen the world’s politicians meet in Paris to sign a worthless piece of paper aimed at reducing global emissions of carbon dioxide in a questionable belief that man-made global warming threatens our existence. There was endless promotion of wind and solar renewable power, and there were promises to end the use of fossil fuels.

What if the global nemesis, carbon dioxide, can play a role in providing clean, reliable, efficient electric power? A consortium of companies is currently building a 50-MWt (megawatt thermal) demonstration power plant in Texas to find out.

The plant is due to begin operations in 2016. Here is the gist from Power Engineering:

CB&I (NYSE: CBI), Exelon Generation (NYSE: EXC) and 8 Rivers Capital have teamed to build a $140 million demonstration power plant that produces zero emissions from natural gas.

The plant will be built in Texas using a supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) turbine from Toshiba. The plant will demonstrate NET Power’s Allam Cycle technology, which uses CO2 as a working fluid to drive a combustion turbine and produces pipeline-quality CO2 that can be sequestered or used in various industrial processes such as enhanced oil recovery.

The project includes technology development, plant design and construction, and a full testing and operations program. CB&I will provide engineering, procurement and construction services, 8 Rivers, which invented the Allam Cycle, will provide the technology development and intellectual property for the cycle, and Exelon will operate and maintain the plant. Design activities have been ongoing since 2010, and commissioning is expected by 2016.

A Lebanese militant who led one of the most infamous attacks in Israel’s history was killed in a strike on a Damascus suburb that the Lebanese group Hezbollah blamed on Israel.

The attack on Saturday night, which Hezbollah said was an airstrike, killed Samir Kantar who led fighters from Lebanon into Israel in a 1979 attack that resulted in the deaths of two young children, their father and two policemen. After almost three decades in an Israeli prison, he was freed in 2008 as part of an exchange with Hezbollah and went on to lead an offshoot of the Shiite militant and political group.

The strike raised tensions along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon on Sunday. Unifil, the United Nations peacekeeping force along the border, said three rockets from southern Lebanon were fired at northern Israel on Sunday night. Two struck land while a third fell in the sea and Israel responded with mortar fire at Lebanon.

Shortly after that, Lebanon’s state-controlled news agency reported that Israeli warplanes had entered the country’s airspace and could be heard in Beirut. But there were no reports of further airstrikes. Israel said it held the Lebanese Army responsible for attacks from its territory.

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/12/20/daniel-greenfield-moment-muslims-are-not-the-new-jews/

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

Daniel discussed Muslims Are Not the New Jews, pointing out how Chanukah is not about Islamophobia.

Don’t miss it!

West Lafayette, Ind. — Although he is just 22, Andrew Zeller is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in mathematics at Purdue University. He is one reason the school is a rare exception to the rule of unreason on American campuses, where freedom of speech is under siege. He and Purdue are evidence that freedom of speech, by which truth is winnowed from error, is most reliably defended by those in whose intellectual pursuits the truth is most rigorously tested by reality.

While in high school in Bowling Green, Ohio, Zeller completed three years of college undergraduate courses. He arrived at Purdue when its incoming president, Indiana’s former governor Mitch Daniels, wanted the university to receive the top “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which combats campus restrictions on speech and rates institutions on their adherence to constitutional principles.