RUTHFULLY YOURS

In Michael Oren’s new book, Ally, (which I like quite a lot), he expresses a sentiment that is often heard in Israeli discourse:

If the First Intifada was not sufficiently convincing, the Second thoroughly persuaded me that Israel had to change the status quo in the territories. Yes, these were our tribal lands. The Bible speaks of the West Bank cities Bethlehem, Shiloh, and Hebron, not of Tel Aviv or Haifa. And many of the settlements helped thicken our pre-1967 lines, which were as narrow as nine miles across. But Israel had to weigh its historic rights and security needs against [a] the moral and political costs of dominating another people. It had to reconcile its real fears of the West Bank becoming a terrorist haven similar to South Lebanon, with [b] its need to preserve its right to defend itself and its international legitimacy as a sovereign Jewish state. [p. 36, my emphasis]

I don’t reproduce this to criticize Oren in particular. It is a view that many Israelis share, and Oren has earned his right to think and say what he wants about his country, both as a public servant and as a combat soldier. But I think if we look at precisely what this statement means, we can see that it is wrong, even self-contradictory.

What he says is that Judea and Samaria are our historic homeland, we have a right under international law to be there, and withdrawal would seriously impact our security. But he adds that a) the continued conflict with the Arabs there damages us morally, and b) the international community will take away our sovereign rights if we don’t make them happy.

This article originally appeared in Public Discourse: Ethics, Law, and the Common Good, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, NJ. Reprinted with permission.

“The prophets and saints of sustainability seem certain that they know what lies ahead. They know how much carbon dioxide—350 parts per million—the Earth’s atmosphere can hold before catastrophic global warming overtakes us. They know which resources should remain in the ground: four-fifths of all fossil fuels. They know what technologies the future will depend on: solar and wind generation.None of these views rests on a secure scientific footing, though they are often paraded as backed by solid science. But they have astonishing currency—enough to undermine the ideals of academic and intellectual freedom on campus.”

“Sustainability” is like a religion. Or, sustainability is a religion.

Both claims come up often among critical observers of this powerful and popular social movement. Though secular, sustainability is like a religion in that it offers a view of the Earth as once pristine and pure but now fallen. It recognizes the sinfulness of humanity, offers forms of expiation and absolution, and puts these elements together in a master narrative of an impending catastrophe that will punish mankind for its iniquity.

The stronger claim, that sustainability is a religion, takes its warrant from the adherents to the movement who personify Earth as a deity. This claim also emphasizes the cult-like zealotry of sustainability advocates, who imagine they possess an accurate knowledge of the future that goes beyond what is actually knowable, and who regard any dissent from this orthodoxy as intolerable.

It’s easy to find examples of sustainability advocates who make clear that their doctrine is, in their own eyes, religious. The former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, has said, “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.” When tens of thousands joined in the September 2014 “People’s Climate March,” the festivities included votaries of Mother Earth (presented as a giant grandmotherly puppet) and other neo-pagan worshippers offering obeisance to their gods.

Sustainability as Ideology

“Obama’s vindictive energy agenda has become a rear-guard assault on neutralizing, if not reversing, one of the great industrial achievements of our time.”

The clock is ticking on the Obama Administration. With only 18 months remaining in his final term, federal energy planners and agency regulators are working as quickly as possible to impose new rules on the oil and natural gas industry.

As one industry lobbyist told the Houston Chronicle, “The agencies are all in hyperdrive to get the rules across the finish line or have them well-positioned in the regulatory queue so that their path forward past Jan. 20, 2017, is clearly established.”

The rush to increase regulations on oil and natural gas is nothing but bad news for an industry that has already contracted because of a large drop in wellhead revenues. Ditto for consumers who need infrastructure investments today for affordable, plentiful energy tomorrow.

Twenty-nine states, more than half the stars on the American flag, have filed lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for redefining the “Waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, erasing “navigable” and usurping states’ rights by including local seasonal streams, farm irrigation ponds, roadside ditches, and even “connective” dry lands placed under authority of the Clean Water Act.

The WOTUS rule, published the morning of June 29, potentially subjects every food, energy, transportation and manufacturing industry in the nation to high-handed regulation by one of the most reviled and least trusted federal agencies, dreaded for its cadre of “revolving door” officials hired from anti-industry green groups.

Sen. Chuck Schumer is famous for his ability to locate the nearest TV camera and plant himself squarely in front of the lens.

And yet, as about 8,000 rallied in Manhattan Wednesday night on an issue near and dear to Schumer’s heart — Israel’s security — the senator was a no-show.

The rally was in opposition to the Iranian nuclear deal. Schumer was absent because he hasn’t yet decided whether to do the right thing and oppose President Obama’s disastrous deal, or do the opposite of the right thing and shepherd it through Congress.

Israel’s supporters in the United States have many reasons to hope the deal goes down in Congress.

When you’re a Muslim, you’re a Muslim all the way, from your first shahada to your last dying day?

Not necessarily. Islam hasn’t such a strong death grip on the minds of most Muslims that it can’t be broken, provided one exercises a little thought and courage. There are numerous ex-Muslims – unfortunately, only a comparative handful out of the reported 1.3 billion – who have renounced Islam, repudiated it, abandoned it, and left the beard-and-burqa fold as apostates for other faiths and even to become atheists. These are individuals whose faculty of reason was never completely crushed or voluntarily surrendered by them to the toxic mare’s nest of Islamic theology and ethics. They have independent minds that have freed them to live life unburdened by fear of a vengeful ghost and the hard looks of neighboring Muslims.

It is the premise of this writer that Islam is evil – evil in its beginnings, evil in practice, evil in its epistemology and metaphysics, evil in its ethics. Islam is a nihilist, anti-life system, heads and tails, obverse or reverse, its politics and its religion. I’ve discussed this numerous times, for example, here, here, and here.

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/07/24/muslim-activist-isa-hodge-vs-ex-imam-mark-christian-on-jihad-in-chattanooga-on-the-glazov-gang/

On this special edition of The Glazov Gang, Muslim American Activist Isa Hodge went toe-to-toe with Dr. Mark Christian, a former Islamic Imam who converted to Christianity, an act for which he now lives under the perpetual threat of death.

They debated the causes of the Jihadist attack in Chattanooga, what needs to be done to protect American lives from Jihad, why each of them left their religions, and much, much more.

Don’t miss the fireworks!

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spent more than four hours trying to defend the nuclear deal before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Grilled by Republicans furious at the Obama administration’s total surrender to Iran, Kerry remained true to character: He doubled down on meaningless platitudes with self-righteous indignation.

In fairness to America’s top diplomat, whose stupidity is only matched by President Barack Obama’s evil, how else could he respond to rational concerns but to get on his high horse? Indeed, all he had at his disposal in the face of the emerging details of the agreement, each more shocking than the next, was a feeble attempt to invert reality and ridicule his critics in the process.

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/07/24/justice-department-asked-to-probe-hillary-clintons-email-use-n/21213484/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl2%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D107114074

The U.S. Justice Department is weighing a request by two government inspectors general to open a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account for her work as secretary of state, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

The inspectors general, who were not clearly identified in the Times’s report, have asked the Justice Department to decide whether Clinton, the leading Democratic contender for the 2016 presidential election, mishandled classified information while she was the nation’s most senior diplomat.

The Justice Department has not decided whether it will pursue a criminal inquiry, the Times said in its report published online late Thursday night, which cited unnamed government officials.
Clinton has repeatedly said she broke no laws or rules by eschewing a standard government email account for her State Department work in favor of a private account linked to a computer server in her New York home. She has also said she sent no classified information through email.

Her exclusive use of a private email account first came to public attention in March, opening her to a volley of criticism from political opponents as she began her presidential campaign that she was sidestepping transparency and record-keeping laws.
She says she last year gave the State Department all the work-related emails she had, amounting to some 55,000 printed pages covering her four-year tenure beginning in 2009, although her staff have recently acknowledged there are gaps in the records she retained.
The State Department is now obliging her request to make public as many of the emails public as disclosure laws allow, and is regularly releasing them in batches through to next January.
Some of the emails have been retroactively marked as classified or containing some sort of sensitive information, according to the State Department, although the department says this does not mean the information was classified at the time an email was sent.
The inspectors general behind the complaint sent a memorandum to the State Department last week saying that at least one email already made public contains classified information that was apparently not properly redacted, the Times reported. Which email they had in mind is unclear.

The Justice Department and spokesmen for Clinton did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday night.
While Clinton is the clear frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s nomination, several recent polls have found a majority of voters find her untrustworthy, a feeling likely to be exacerbated by a criminal investigation by the federal government.
(This version of the story corrects paragraph 9 to show memo was sent last week, not last month, and was sent to State, not Justice, Department)

Stop Donating to Jewish Establishment Organizations

After the Iran deal, American Jews turned to the “Establishment” of liberal Jewish organizations to whom they had written out so many checks over the years expecting them to do something about it.

And the organizations did what they do best. They expressed concern.

The ADL was “deeply concerned” about the Iran nuclear deal two years ago. It announced that it now has “cause for concern”. It’s unknown whether the next ADL boss, Obama crony Jonathan Greenblatt, is also concerned, but it doesn’t matter since the ADL’s concern and five bucks can get you an Iced Cinnamon Dolce Latte at Starbucks.

AIPAC is also “deeply concerned” about the deal. So is John Boehner. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “deeply concerned” about Iran’s nuclear program eight years ago. The IAEA was “deeply concerned” about it four years ago. And Obama is now “deeply concerned” about the Americans in Iran he didn’t bother rescuing. The last time he was “deeply concerned” about the subject was two years ago.

Expressing concern, deep or otherwise, is a meaningless formula that reassures the people actually upset about an issue that they are being taken seriously, by the organizations otherwise ignoring them.