RUTHFULLY YOURS

What sheer hypocrisy at Princeton. Woodrow Wilson bad…but boycott and divest from Israel is just dandy. And the Center for African American Studies says nothing about the Jihads in Africa against innocent civilians…..rsk

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2015/04/cornel_west_urges_princeton_university_to_divest_f.html

PRINCETON — Princeton University has a moral obligation to divest from Israel and its systematic injustices, activist Cornel West told an audience on campus Wednesday, comparing the current divestment movement on campus to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s.

“The Israeli occupation of my Palestinian brothers and sisters is a crime against humanity,” West said. “They are killing hundreds daily — but where are the voices?”

West, professor emeritus in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton, spoke alongside a panel of other divestment activists including Max Blumenthal, Larry Hamm, Molly Greene and Robert Tignor.

The Princeton Divests Student Coalition, made up of Princeton students and faculty who seek to bring divestment referendum before undergraduate students, organized the event in McCosh Hall.

“There will be no security for our Jewish and brothers and sisters — who have a right to security after 2,000 years of vicious hatred — as there can be no security predicated on violence,” West said.

I haven’t checked lately to see if the oceans are still rising, due to human sinfulness and love of big cars, or whether the waters are finally receding, as per Obama’s instructions seven years ago.

Peace is breaking out all over. In Syria 200,000-300,000 people are dead in a civil war, where Obama supported terrorist gangs like Al Nusra and the “Free Syrian Army.” The U.S. created the “moderate” FSA, and gave it TOW anti-tank missiles, which it used to shoot down that Russian rescue helicopter last week, as it was trying to pick up the downed jet pilot.

The Free Syrian Army now turns out to be a front for the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama’s close ally in all his Middle East adventures. Meanwhile, Yemen and Libya have fallen apart. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has actually killed more people than ISIS. BH is still raiding towns to steal African children for the slave markets, without a word of protest from Jesse Jackson or Jeremiah Wright.

Apparently All Black Lives don’t really matter. Not if they are in Africa.

The territory controlled by ISIS now covers the most strategic points in all of Iraq and half of Syria, making up the single biggest would-be state in that region.

The peak of lunacy in the American fight against ISIS may have been reached.

Remember that in October 2013, with ISIS bearing down on a Yazidi city in Syria, Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby told reporters U.S. air power wouldn’t save Kobane, but that there was a “larger strategy” in place. “The primary goal of the campaign is not to save Syrian cities and towns,” U.S. Central Command officials echoed, “but to go after ISIS senior leadership, oil refineries, and other infrastructure that would curb the group’s ability to operate.” Individuals caught in the maelstrom were just unfortunate.

Last week, U.S. forces took out 116 of about 300 ISIS oil tanker trucks headed for Turkey. Not bad? Oh, yes it was – and it explains a lot about the ineffectual “war” we fighting.

Asked by The Washington Examiner why it took 14 months of air warfare to make the first strike on oil tanker trucks, Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren replied that American officials were deeply worried about harming the truck drivers, who were working for the Islamic State but might not be ISIS themselves. U.S. officials settled on a plan to drop leaflets on the trucks about 45 minutes before the raid, warning the drivers that an attack was coming, while U.S. pilots flew low passes over the area. Planning all that took time.

Paris may not have burned, but it came under attack again by ruthless, Godless Islamic radicals. One hundred and thirty – mostly young – people were murdered in six incidents on Friday, the 13th of November. This was only the latest in a series of killings by terrorists invoking Islam as reason and cause. Earlier they had downed a Russian airliner and a few days later 41 Shiite Muslims were killed by two suicide Islamic terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon. Religion is a great comfort for those in need of spiritual uplift. It does far more good than harm. But religion, throughout the centuries, has also been a cause of wars, something we should not forget. The horror the world is now experiencing will not end until peace-loving Muslims assert leadership. And it will not end as long as the West fails to connect Islam with the terror and the desire for a caliphate that some of its members’ advocate.

After the Charlie Hebdo massacres, Western leaders traveled to Paris to march in solidarity. Millions of people wore signs, “I am Charlie.” In April, 2014, 200 school girls in Nigeria were kidnapped by Boko Haram. Like the “I am Charlie” signs, millions of people, including Michelle Obama, posted the hashtag, “save our girls.” That was the extent of the West’s involvement – feel-good symbols that made the wearer feel sanctimonious, but did nothing for the victims. This time there have been neither marches nor signs

Equally disturbing, though less deadly, have been the obsequious Uriah Heep’s that pass for college administrators and professors in many of our colleges and universities. Protests have risen supporting the concept of “safe places,” places where students can be assured of never hearing words that make them uncomfortable or feeling vulnerable. Yale president Peter Salovey sent an e-mail to his university’s community, which captured today’s campuses fawning, liberal orthodoxy. In the e-mail he apologized for the university, and said the he is committed “to a campus where hatred and discrimination are never tolerated.” In fact, he was yielding to a subtler, but equally insidious form of intolerance – toward those whose ideas do not conform with the liberal perspective that dominates his university. He wants a place where the prejudices of “victims” are never challenged – an institution that prefers the comfort of a student’s psyche to the confrontation of ideas. In doing so, he encourages fragility among his students. Whatever happened to the nursery rhyme my mother used to recite: “sticks and stones will break my bones…” Is Yale preparing its young women and men for the world outside its college gates?

New US ISIS Czar was Bumped From Obama Election Team as too Pro-Terrorist

While President Obama was in Paris for the past few days cavorting with other world leaders on the dire global threat of climate change (never a junior varsity issue in his book), his spokesperson made the announcement that Obama’s new ISIS czar will be none other than Robert Malley.

For a president who thinks that world leaders meeting in Paris to discuss climate change is the equivalent of a body blow to ISIS after the Nov. 13 Paris Terror Attacks, the appointment of Malley makes perfect sense.

Malley is the kind of new-age negotiator who thinks there is no tyrant too awful to shun – unless, of course, you are talking about Israel – and is always eager to play up the “positive” aspects of genocidal terrorist regimes as the justification for allowing them right there in the tent, seated next to you.

An early wet noodle in Malley’s public career was a 2001 New York Times op-ed in which he blamed Israel for the Camp David Peace Talks. Malley’s recollection squarely conflicted with every other major player present at the talks, including President Bill Clinton and Clinton’s Middle East Envoy, Dennis Ross.

Should private companies that provide users with encryption technology be required to assist law-enforcement and intelligence services to defeat that technology? This question is a more pressing one in the wake of November’s Paris terrorist attacks. But it is a very tough question that has vexed both the government and providers of communications services for years.

Part of what makes it so difficult is the new facts of life. As I noted during the debate over the NSA’s bulk-collection of telephone metadata, we are operating in a political environment that is night-and-day different from the aftermath of 9/11. Back then, a frightened public was demanding that the government do a better job of collecting intelligence and thwarting terrorist plots. Of course that sentiment was driven by the mass-murder of nearly 3,000 Americans, coupled with the destruction of the World Trade Center and a strike against the Pentagon. But it also owed in no small measure to the fact that government had done such an incompetent job gathering and “connecting the dots” prior to the attacks. There was a strong public sense that intelligence agencies needed an injection of muscle.

Today, the public’s sense tends in the other direction. There have been spectacular abuses of government power (e.g., IRS scandal), and intrusive security precautions infused by political correctness (e.g., airport searches). Americans understandably suspect that government cannot be trusted with enhanced authorities and that many of its tactics are more about the appearance of security than real security.

Every member of the military has a personal duty to report the facts they encounter truthfully to their superiors. That goes for everyone from the lowliest private to the four-star generals who report directly to the president.

But what happens when the colonels and generals disagree with the facts their junior officers and civilians report to them, not because they think the facts are wrong but because they want to satisfy their civilian bosses’ political agenda?

That’s exactly what is going on at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), according to the allegations made against CENTCOM senior officers by about 50 intelligence analysts. Several reports say CENTCOM analysts have taken these allegations to the Defense Department Office of the Inspector General, which has determined that there is enough substance to the allegations to compel a major investigation into how CENTCOM’s commanders handle intelligence that doesn’t comply with President Obama’s agenda.

CENTCOM, like other joint commands, has responsibility for an area of the world. CENTCOM’s responsibility includes 20 countries encompassing the entire Middle East and much of western Asia. It is responsible for defending America from whatever emanates from the most dangerous part of the world.

It’s been more than two weeks since the terrible attacks in Paris. And what has been the response? French President Francois Hollande has tried to bring the U.S. and Russia into a wider anti-ISIS coalition. That effort, predictably, has gone nowhere because of the stark differences between the U.S. (which sees Assad as part of the problem in Syria) and Russia (which sees Assad as the solution). The fracas over Turkey’s shoot down of a Russian fighter has further splintered any attempt to create international solidarity against the Islamic State.

So where does that leave us? With a slightly intensified air campaign against ISIS that has now been joined by French aircraft and possibly soon by the British, too, assuming that Prime Minister Cameron wins parliamentary approval, as appears likely. In retaliation for the bombing of a Russian civilian airliner, the Russians have already dropped some bombs and missiles on Raqqa, the ISIS capital, although they are saving most of their firepower for more moderate Syrian rebels. And the U.S. has slightly increased the tempo of its air strikes — it is now willing to target ISIS oil tankers (after warning the drivers to leave their trucks) but still not ISIS oil wells, apparently for fear of causing environmental damage!

Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that air strikes alone will defeat ISIS any more than they have ever defeated any other determined foe in the past century.

Yet President Obama, having considered his options, has apparently decided to continue with the present strategy of relying on air strikes and limited advisory assistance to Iraqi and Syrian forces. Instead of confronting the growing ISIS threat, he insists on denigrating it. The onetime “JV team,” which supposedly wasn’t ready for the big leagues of terrorism, is now labeled by the president as “a bunch of killers with good social media,” which is about as accurate a description as calling Barack Obama “a community organizer with a nice airplane.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelledeen/2015/11/30/the-iran-deals-slow-death/

Back when the negotiations were still under way for The Deal between Iran and the P5+1, I accurately forecast the outcome would be a “No Deal Deal.” I described it this way:

Obama/Kerry/Rhodes won’t take “no” for a definitive answer, so we’re probably going to see a new form of creative appeasement. Short version: It will be a “no deal deal.” Iran promises to try really really hard to be nice and we pay for it. Everyone agrees to commit to a “real” agreement by the end of the year. Iran gets money–the continuation of the monthly payoff, and under-the-table arrangements like the gold shipment the South Africans delivered to Khamenei–and we get smiles.

There is no deal, per se–nobody signs anything–but we get the worst of it any how. If John Kerry thinks that’s enough for a Nobel Peace Prize, he’s got an even lower opinion of the judgment of the Oslo crowd than I do. And he may be right. Chamberlain was widely praised as a great peacemaker for a while, and Carter was greatly admired when he proclaimed we had given up our “inordinate fear of Communism.” And we’ll keep talking, won’t we? And Obama just reiterated–at the Pentagon no less–that guns don’t defeat ideologies, only good ideas do.

The hot air spewing at the Global Climate Summit is settled and irrefutable evidence of man-made global warming. rsk