RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s official: the European Union will be sending out guidelines [1] to all 28 of its member states on how to label settlement products from Israel.

The move has been in the works for a while. In September the European Parliament voted 525-70 in favor of it. Israeli settlement products have been excluded from EU trade preferences since 2004.

This latest move, though, is something new.

Once it comes into effect, shoppers in any EU supermarket will see certain products labeled “Made in the West Bank” (Israeli settlement) or “Made in the Golan” (Israeli settlement).

They won’t see such labels on products from any other of the world’s 200 territories that are under dispute. Not, for example, Turkish products from Northern Cyprus. Not Chinese products from Tibet.

In some strange way, in a continent that has a long, unlovely history of subjecting Jews to boycotts and badges, it is only products from the Jewish state that are going to be specially marked.

Israel and some American allies have been urging the EU not to go through with the labeling. Their seemingly irrefutable arguments fall on deaf European ears.

A bipartisan letter signed by 36 senators [2], led by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), stated:

As allies, elected representatives of the American people, and strong supporters of Israel, we urge you not to implement this labeling policy, which appears intended to discourage Europeans from purchasing these products and promote a de facto boycott of Israel, a key ally and the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Very soon, Malcolm Turnbull will jet off to Paris with the taxpayers’ chequebook and a store of telegenic sound bytes hailing Australia’s generosity in ameliorating the injustice of climate change’s impact on the Third World. Thieves, rorters, scam artists and assorted corruptocrats will cheer lustily
Ever used a dodgy builder? Then thank your lucky stars you’re not a granny cyclone victim in Bangladesh, with people from the government arriving to help. The money to build her a new house is provided by a climate-adaptation fund, but all she gets is a roof and floor but no walls. The structure then begins collapsing within two months.

The Paris climate talks next month are partly about creating a $US100b-a-year climate fund to help the Third World adjust to hypothesized global warming. In a bit of political theatre (we taxpayers bought her tickets), Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop last December pledged $200m to this fund, rhapsodizing about “investment, infrastructure, energy, forestry and emissions reductions.” [i] The Climate Fund is now taking heat for corruption and non-transparency. Newsweek, although a fervently warmist journal, ran a piece to that effect a few days ago.

An inkling of how such money actually gets spent comes from our Bangladesh example. Transparency International Bangladesh audited a $A4.5m project financed by a climate-change trust fund administered by the Bangladeshi government. It also tried to audit a sister-fund provided by aid donors, but couldn’t find enough documentation to even start the audit! One of its trenchant recommendations was to “mete out exemplary punishments to corrupt individuals.”

On November 5, 2015 the United States Department of Justice issued a press release, “Four Men Charged with Providing Material Support to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” The Indictment that charged these individuals with their crimes was filed on September 30, 2015 and unsealed on November 5, 2015.

While most people reading the headline would think of this as purely a disturbing story about terrorism, in reality it is at least as much a story about immigration — not illegal immigration, but the legal side of the immigration system. Serious failures are endemic to the immigration system, but are seldom, if ever, reported on in the media or discussed by our political leaders. They were, however, reported in detail by the 9/11 Commission.

Taqiyya is an Islamic doctrine that allows Muslims to deceive non-Muslims. As in lie to them. Dr. Sami Mukaram, author of Taqiyya in Islam, writes: “Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it… Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.” (Specific references to taqiyya in the Quran, the Hadith, and in Islamic law, can be found here.)

One of the most common and persistent forms of taqiyya we are witnessing today is noted at Islam-Watch:

When placed under scrutiny or criminal investigation, (even when there is overwhelming, irrefutable evidence of guilt or complicity), the taqiyya-tactician will quickly attempt to counter the allegation by resorting to the claim that it is, in fact, the accused who are the ‘the victims’. Victims of Islamophobia, racism, religious discrimination and intolerance. Currently, this is the most commonly encountered form of distraction and ‘outwitting’….

We’ve been wondering all week what happened to the grown-ups on American university campuses, and it appears we have a sighting. Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University, spoke up Wednesday about the children’s revolt at Yale and Missouri in a letter “to the Purdue community.”
It deserves to be quoted at length: “Events this week at the University of Missouri and Yale University should remind us all of the importance of absolute fidelity to our shared values. First, that we strive constantly to be, without exception, a welcoming, inclusive and discrimination-free community, where each person is respected and treated with dignity. Second, to be steadfast in preserving academic freedom and individual liberty.

“Two years ago, a student-led initiative created the ‘We Are Purdue Statement of Values,’ which was subsequently endorsed by the University Senate. Last year, both our undergraduate and graduate student governments led an effort that produced a strengthened statement of policies protecting free speech. What a proud contrast to the environments that appear to prevail at places like Missouri and Yale. Today and every day, we should remember the tenets of those statements and do our best to live up to them fully.”

On the most important foreign policy vote in a decade, on an issue with enormous consequence for Israel, Republican members of Congress were 100% opposed to the Iran nuclear agreement.
On the other hand, almost all of AIPAC’s supposed great Democratic friends in Congress did not have the guts to oppose their fellow party member, President Barack Obama, and the ministrations of his “whips,” Sen. Dick Durbin and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In the Senate, only four of 46 Democrats voted against the nuclear agreement, and only one, New Jersey’s Robert Menendez, risked the wrath and vindictiveness of the administration by also speaking out in opposition.
This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the United States for the Jewish Federations General Assembly in Washington. It was also his first visit with Obama following the Iran nuclear deal and his controversial appearance before a joint session of Congress, which was boycotted by about a quarter of all Democratic House and Senate members. Netanyahu has a sophisticated understanding of American politics, and is aware that damage has been done to the historic bipartisan support for Israel.

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/11/12/the-unknown-islam-and-the-real-assault-on-women/

On this new edition of The Unknown, Anni Cyrus focuses on Islam and The Real Assault on Women. And she asks: Where are the feminists?

Don’t miss it!

The Missouri crybullies got their way, purging administrations for not taking their whininess seriously fast enough (thereby making them feel unsafe). And then they turned on the media which had been churning out their propaganda with more bullying and crying.

The Yale crybullies are still whinging on because the administrators who suggested that maybe they should grow up instead of whining about other people’s Halloween costumes still haven’t been fired.

Why haven’t they been fired yet? The Yale crybullies feel so unsafe. They need kitten pictures. They can’t even sleep now.

Jencey Paz, whinged that, “I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns.”

Another student howled at an administrator,

“In your position as master,” one student says, “it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?!”

“No,” he said, “I don’t agree with that.”

It seems like every week there’s a new horror story of political correctness run amok at some college campus.

A warning not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes sparked an imbroglio at Yale, which went viral over the weekend. A lecturer asked in an e-mail, “Is there no room anymore for a child to be a little bit obnoxious . . . a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?”

Students went ballistic. When an administrator (who is the lecturer’s spouse) defended free speech, some students wanted his head. One student wrote in a Yale Herald op-ed (now taken down): “He doesn’t get it. And I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain.”

Washington Post columnist (and Tufts professor) Daniel Drezner was initially horrified by the spectacle but ultimately backtracked. Invoking Friedrich Hayek’s insights from “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” Drezner cautions outside observers that “there is an awful lot of knowledge that is local in character, that cannot be culled from abstract principles or detached observers.”

As a Hayek fanboy and champion of localism, I should be quite sympathetic. But this time, I think Drezner’s initial reaction was closer to the mark. The notion that the Yale incident is an isolated one defies all the evidence.

During his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House yesterday, President Obama stated that the “security of Israel is one of my top foreign-policy priorities.” Of course, this sentiment might have been slightly more believable had President Obama a) said those words in something other than a lethargic tone, or b) not listened to Netanyahu’s statement with the humor of a human death star

Although Netanyahu claims that the meeting was productive, major problems continue to corrode U.S.-Israeli relations.

Front and center is President Obama’s flawed approach to dealing with Israel. On crucial issues, the White House continues to treat Netanyahu’s government disdainfully and as irrelevant to its Middle Eastern policy. The Obama administration has long acted grumpily toward Israel. Consider former Middle East adviser Dennis Ross’s perspective on the idiotic accusation of racism Susan Rice lobbed against Netanyahu. According to Ross, Rice believed that “the Israeli leader did everything but ‘use the N-word in describing the president.”

While Mr. Netanyahu’s conduct has not been perfect — he deserves criticism for his spokesman’s anti-Obama rant — Israel’s emotion at the American president’s perceived lack of interest is understandable. After all, facing an international plague of anti-Israel boycotts, Western delusions about Gaza, and an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, Israel worries that its American support is perishing and that it will soon stand alone. And while Israel’s worries reflect a broader dysfunction of President Obama’s diplomacy (one that is also indirectly fueling sectarian paranoia in the Middle East), Israel’s concern has an obvious historical foundation — the Holocaust. Sadly, however, President Obama believes he can paper over this widening chasm with the false elixir of increased aid and the inexcusable prisoner release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.