RUTHFULLY YOURS

Australia was introduced to a high school chaplain and Muslim community leader Sheikh Wesam Charkawi on one of Australia’s most widely viewed TV shows – Q and A – last Monday evening. [Videos here if that page won’t load: D.A.]

Australians were still trying to come to terms with the shooting murder of a 58-years-old police department accountant by a 15-year-old Muslim youth dressed in black robes shouting “Allahu Akbar” outside New South Wales Police Headquarters in Parramatta some 10 days earlier.Indeed the Parramatta murder was the third such instance involving Muslims in Australia in the last year – culminating in the loss of three innocent lives and the deaths of the three perpetrators.

Yet Sheikh Charkawi told his audience:
“Our faith teaches to withhold our hands from the breaking the branch of a tree, let alone taking the life of a human being, which equates to taking the life of humanity and saving the life of one amounts to saving the life of all. These are bedrock principles.” The Sheikh’s viewpoint was a revelation – considering the widely held belief that Islam with its Koranic concepts of jihad, martyrdom and forced conversion of non-Muslims was anything but the sanctity-of-life faith portrayed by him.

Palestinian terrorists are not driven by poverty and deprivation, as many have long argued. Instead, they are driven by hatred for Jews — because of what their leaders, media and mosques are telling them.

These young people took advantage of their status as permanent residents of Israel to set out and murder Jews. Their Israeli ID cards allow them to travel freely inside Israel. They were also entitled to the social welfare benefits and free healthcare granted to all Israeli citizens.

Muhannad Halabi wanted to murder Jews because he had been brainwashed by our leaders and media, and was driven by hatred — he was not living in misery and deprivation. The family’s house in the village of Surda, on the outskirts of Ramallah, looks as if it came out of a movie filmed in San Diego.

This conflict is not about Islamic holy sites or Jerusalem. Murdering a Jewish couple in front of their four children has nothing to do with the Aqsa Mosque or “occupation.”

For the terrorists, all Jews are “settlers” and Israel is one big settlement. This is not an intifada — it is just another killing-spree aimed at terrorizing the Jews and forcing them out of this part of the world. It already succeeded in the rest of the Middle East and is now being done there to the Christians as well.

The current wave of terrorism is just another phase in our dream to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. The terrorists and their supporters are not struggling against a checkpoint or a wall. They want to see Israel destroyed, Jews slaughtered, and the streets of Israel running with Jewish blood.

Much of the widespread European anti-Semitism manifests itself as anti-Israelism.Earlier this month, the Fundamental Rights Agency – an official European body – published a review of anti-Semitism in Europe over the period 2004-2014. Perhaps the most significant observation on studying the document is that no data was supplied by several member countries, and that the quality of data collected differs greatly from country to country.

Many Jews do not even think it worthwhile to report anti-Semitic incidents to the police. When data for problems which were known 10 years ago is allowed to remain insufficient, not much more is required to prove that the EU does not make serious efforts to fight anti-Semitism. The establishment of a solid database is an essential first step for the development of a broad plan to fight anti-Semitism.

Multiple individuals suspected in the terror attacks over the past week in Turkey and Israel appear to be additional examples of the phenomenon I have termed “known wolf” terrorism. The attacks were committed in part by people already known to law enforcement and national security authorities as being dangers.

Saturday’s horrific suicide bombing of a Kurdish peace rally in Ankara killed more than one hundred people and injured more. According to Reuters, the suspects are thought to be members of a previously identified terror network – the “Adiyaman cell”:

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Monday Islamic State was the prime suspect. Officials in Ankara said they were focusing on the so-called “Adiyaman cell” — a group of Turks, some of whom had traveled to Syria, and who were thought also to have been behind a suicide bombing in July in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border, which killed 34 people.

The cell is also believed to have been involved in the bombing of a pro-Kurdish opposition rally in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on the eve of Turkey’s last election in June.

The Obama administration has given America’s closest ally in the Middle East a fair number of cheap shots in recent days as Israel confronts a rapidly escalating terror situation.

One of the things the administration can’t get straight is its accusations that Israel violated the status quo on the Temple Mount.

Earlier today, State Department Spokesperson John Kirby falsely claimed that that the status quo had been violated, and tonight he substantially misrepresented his statement in an effort to walk back his comments.

Sadly, Kirby is not the first to do so. Just the other day, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called for a restoration of the status quo:

The Obama administration condemned escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians and called for a full return to the status quo at the Temple Mount.

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday.

Climate is always changing, but luckily, we live in an era with a stable, benign, warm climate and a healthy, abundant biosphere.

Alarmists who claim that today’s climate changes are unprecedented have not checked climate history written in the rocks, the ice cores, the satellite registers and the tide gauges.

Ice core records show that current temperatures and sea levels are not extreme – they are more stable than they were as the last ice age ended just 12,000 years ago. At that time, global temperature increased quickly, the great ice sheets melted, sea levels rose rapidly (130 meters), and the warming seas expelled much of their dissolved carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As a result of this natural global warming and the additional moisture and carbon dioxide plant food in the atmosphere, plant life recovered, and the great forests and grasslands were re-established.

Check the Ice Core Records:
http://carbon-sense.com/index.php?s=ice+cores&Submit=Go
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/10/03/taxing-ambulances/

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spent over $15 million on outside public relations consultants despite employing nearly 200 full-time in house PR workers.

A new report on EPA spending released by Open the Books, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transparency, found numerous examples of questionable expenditures within the agency.

Among them, the EPA spent over $15.1 million on outside public relations consultants between 2000 and 2014. The funding was on top of the $141.496 million in salaries and $1.5 million in bonuses on full-time public affairs officers the EPA has spent since 2007. As of 2012, the EPA employed 198 public affairs employees. The average EPA employee salary is $111,165.

“Everyone is under the impression that the EPA is spending money to ‘clean the environment.’ But, it turns out EPA is running a $160 million PR Machine, $715 million police agency, a near $1 billion employment agency for seniors, and a $1.2 billion in-house law firm,” said Adam Andrzejewski, the founder of Open the Books.

EPA’S $160 MILLION SPIN MACHINE
Last night, Special Report with Bret Baier showcased our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – U.S. Environmental Agency. Why does a major federal agency have nearly 200 PR staff employees?

Recently, the New York Times exposed the EPA for PR excess which was covered last night on Special Report…

Using a Thunderclap social media product to generate nearly one million online “grassroots comments” on new regulations regarding the Clean Water Act. 90% of the comments were positive. But, the Anti-Lobbying Act prohibits the use of tax dollars to advocate for a public position.

Our story first broke on Monday at Washington Free Beacon by reporter Elizabeth Harrington – click here to read the article.

“The EPA wasting $160 million on public relations dwarfs our recent exposure of their high-end furniture purchases ($92 million), Nothing is emblematic of government excess like an army of highly compensated PR agents sitting in their easy chairs. It’s simply waste.” OpenTheBooks

The Obama Administration’s crusade against carbon returned to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as the Justices heard an important federalism challenge to an energy scheme that usurps state powers to promote the green agenda. The oral arguments suggested they may be queueing up another judicial rebuke.

The culprit this time is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which regulates most of the electric grid. In 2011 FERC ordered transmission operators to pay retail energy users to reduce their power consumption during peak periods, a program known as “demand response.” The idea is to send a price signal to encourage large consumers to use power when the most capacity is available—instead of, say, on a hot summer afternoon when everybody’s air conditioners are running.

In FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association, the problem is that Congress explicitly limited the commission’s mandate to the interstate power markets—i.e., to the wholesale power supply. Under a 2005 law, the “exclusive jurisdiction” of retail pricing and patterns of energy consumption belongs to the states.

How does Islam understand the concept of non-Muslims or “different” Muslims? Do Sunnis believe non-Sunni Muslims have rights equal to Sunnis? Is there one central authority that can decide today who speaks for all Muslims?

Sadly, the Muslim world is in total turmoil. We could discuss the traditional Muslim legal code regarding non-Muslims, but, given the political upheaval now going on in the Muslim world, none of the historic answers seem relevant.

Why is this so? Though we in the West tend to view Islam as a religion and understand it in that context, Islam has always had another side—the political side—that throughout Islamic history has often been the dominant factor in Islamic politics. This is true both when the Muslim world is stable, and most definitely so when that Muslim world is filled with instability, as it is today.

Those who know their place