RUTHFULLY YOURS

Wrapped in the arrogance of their youthful ignorance, student crusades seldom produce more than the bedlam of spoilt children demanding to have their whims immediately indulged. But the push for universities to divest carbon stocks, that is both different and dangerous
The growing calls by certain students and environmental groups for Australian universities to divest themselves of fossil fuel-related enterprises is typical of the feel-good grandstanding university students have long enjoyed. At a glance, the demands of these undergraduate eco-fascists appear sensible enough: universities have a privileged status in society as places of progress and innovation. They have a responsibility to embrace their as vanguards of social change and lead the fight against climate change. It is only right that they sever ties with companies that reap their profits by plundering the loins of Mother Earth.

Tempting, as it may be to accept this heartfelt concern for the planet’s wellbeing at face value, there are good reasons why the blossoming of this new species of eco-authoritarianism should be cut down at the roots.

The alleged killing on Friday of a former henchman of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein by Shiite militiamen loyal to Iran could have far reaching consequences for the United States.

Ibrahim Ezzat-al-din ad-Douri was one of a handful of survivors from Saddam’s inner circle. Labelled the King of Clubs in the famous deck of cards that guided U.S. capture efforts after the 2003 liberation of Iraq, ad-Douri evaded traps a sand fly.

Three times he was pronounced dead. Three times he returned to give video-taped speeches and make public appearances, leading an insurgency against the United States and, more recently, against the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

Ad-Duri supporters tell me that he has done so again – although pro-Iranian militiamen claim to have conducted DNA sampling on the beard of the man they killed in a raid on Friday and proclaimed it [2] to be ad-Duri.

[1]Immigration has become the third rail of American politics.

At a time when the labor force participation rate has fallen to 62 percent and the employment growth for the last 15 years [2] has gone to immigrants, opposing the Super-Amnesty of 12 million illegal aliens is still considered an extreme position… in the Republican Party.

So when Scott Walker merely suggested that Congress should make immigration decisions based on “protecting American workers and American wages,” he was denounced for it [3] by… Republicans.

Walker’s belief that immigration should be based on “our economic situation,” rather than an ideological mandate for open borders, has become an “extreme right” [4] position. And yet this scary “extreme” position that foreign workers shouldn’t be brought in to displace American workers is part of our immigration law. It’s just one of those “extreme” parts that, like the illegality of crossing the border, is being ignored. It’s not just being ignored by Obama. It’s also being ignored by the Republican Party.

Scott Walker’s common sense immigration populism was met with two sets of attacks. The first set came from senators like McCain and Portman playing the old song about all those “jobs Americans won’t do.” (Not that they’re given the chance to do them.) Senator Hatch claimed that, “We know that when we graduate PhDs and master’s degrees and engineers, we don’t have enough of any of those.”

A generation of students is growing up learning to tolerate — and consider normal — bias, falsehood, prejudice, and the runaway politicization of teachers and student thugs permitting only one-sided arguments.

America’s President Barack Obama has declared war on Israel. The animosity between Obama and his administration toward Israel and its newly re-elected leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been growing for years; it reached crisis point after Netanyahu’s address to the U.S. Congress and news of his resounding victory in the March elections.

This does not mean that the United States, as a whole, shares this animosity or is bent on abandoning a vulnerable and beleaguered democracy to its host of violent and uncompromising predators. Polls show it does not.

But wars against Israel are nothing new. In 1947, months before the country was even declared independent, Arabs launched a war that led uninterruptedly to a full-scale conflict in 1948. Since then, physical violence — wars and individual terrorist attacks — against the State of Israel has been a feature of everyday life for Israelis, with Jews as the principal targets. No legally established, democratic country has ever been faced with so great a lust for its destruction and so many assaults on its people. It is singled out by a United Nations dominated by Muslim states and their allies; and now, bewilderingly, by the president of the one country on whom Israelis have always depended for moral and material support.

Dan Malloy’s truculence helped him get elected but now makes him unbearable in office. Aggression has its advantages. Ulysses Grant, for example, proved how well relentless attack works when the odds are with you. I could cite scientists, entrepreneurs, running backs — politicians, too — who demonstrate the effectiveness of sheer determined push.

That trait can get a man into office, but it won’t much help him govern.

Aggression elevated Dan Malloy, a strutting mayor of little achievement and less charm, to the governorship of Connecticut, but his truculence now works against him. Those in his own party who felt his wrath (often over minutiae) will not bail him out now without payback. In fact, Connecticut Democrats are likely to distance themselves from Malloy as quickly as they can, for they will face the voters next year, while he (I’d guess) never will again.

Meanwhile, driven wrong-headedly by Malloy, our state nears a terminal phase. We have the nation’s heaviest total tax burden, the highest per capita state debt, and the slowest economic growth. How do you escape such a hole? Not by imposing the biggest tax increase in state history — as Malloy did four years ago — and not by raising taxes again, as I expect legislative Democrats will do this year. Instead of direction, Malloy offers misdirection, picking quarrels to distract us from his disastrous stewardship. Craving attention and adrenaline, he taunts Chris Christie and insults Bobby Jindal. The most recent target was Indiana, which he declared off limits for a couple of days. Malloy knew that by pouncing on Governor Mike Pence loudly and immediately, he could make news for himself that didn’t involve the state he actually governs. Attack dog Malloy strikes in all directions, at any target, to get attention on himself and off his lousy record and the dismal mess he’s made of the Constitution State. “We have to expose Republicans for the frauds that they are,” he said recently, incessant in his disdain for those who disagree with him. I read that pleasantry while awaiting a legislative hearing on the human-services budget. Deep into the evening, the very people Democrats claim to defend – the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the workers who serve them — came before the Appropriations Committee to describe the impact of Malloy’s cuts to hospitals, nursing homes, private social-service providers, non-profit agencies.

The Senate must vote no. Although Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Republicans who control the Senate are under no obligation to do so, they have agreed to grant a confirmation vote to Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s nominee to replace Eric Holder as United States Attorney General. Ms. Lynch has testified that she supports and would implement President Obama’s executive action providing de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants. This edict, which blatantly violates Obama’s oath to execute the laws faithfully, also unconstitutionally confers positive legal benefits on illegal aliens, something only Congress has the authority to do.

Yet, five Republican senators have announced that they will vote to confirm Ms. Lynch. Three have already supported her in the Judiciary Committee: Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), and Jeff Flake (Ariz). The two others are Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Susan Collins (Maine). If they follow through in the vote now scheduled for Thursday, Ms. Lynch would almost certainly have the 51 votes needed to be confirmed. There are six points to be made about this.

67 years ago, upon Israel’s declaration of independence, Life Magazine noted (May 31, 1948, pp. 21-28) the odds facing the 600,000 Jews of the newly-born economy-starved and militarily-embargoed Jewish State: “King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan sent his Arab Legion against Jerusalem…. Egypt’s planes repeatedly bombed Tel Aviv. Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia pitched in…. The Arabs cut off Jerusalem from the coast by blocking the road to Tel Aviv…. The old walled city came under artillery fire…. A three-pronged attack was compressing the [Jewish] defenders into the Jewish Quarter of the Old City…. While King Abdullah’s Arab legion was spearheading the Arabs’ land offensive…. The Jews had little but light anti-aircraft to fight off these attacks…. A country the size of Connecticut is ringed by hostile neighbors…. Time and geography favor the Arabs, and England, which does not recognize Israel, is sending the Arab states arms, [while] Israel’s friends in the US aim to lift our embargo on arms…. Can Israel survive?”

With subtlety influenced by millennia of Persian statecraft, Tehran has been steadily expanding its regional influence through a combination of diplomacy and a continual expansion of Shiite non-state actors, predominantly militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and now Yemen. As to the US, the mullahs aren’t losing sleep
To honour Saddam Hussein’s sixty-fifth birthday, a colossal effigy of the butcher was erected in Baghdad’s Firdaus Square, just opposite the Palestine Hotel. Just over a year later, in 2003, American forces toppled the statue, symbolising the fall of the Hussein government, with the man himself sharing the same fate a few years later, courtesy of the hangman’s noose. Today, the abstract sculpture that took its place is obscured by a billboard of Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Tehran, with subtlety influenced by millennia of Persian statecraft, has been steadily expanding its regional influence through a combination of diplomacy and a continual expansion of Shiite non-state actors, predominantly taking the form of militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and more recently in Yemen. Iran now, in effect, controls three Arab capitals: Damascus in Syria, Beirut in Lebanon through Hezbollah, and the freshly conquered capital of Yemen, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels now control Sanaa. We are seeing the restoration of a new Persian empire, this time under a revolutionary Islamic (more specifically, Shia) label. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it in his address to Congress:

Iran’s goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror. Backed by Iran, Assad is slaughtering Syrians. Back by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Backed by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke-point on the world’s oil supply.

Iran is doing so despite Washington’s attempts at conta

Only migrants willing to uphold liberal-democratic values should be admitted. Those who subsequently fail to support them should be deported. The application of religious law to secular matters must be proscribed. Women’s right to absolute equality should be vigorously prosecuted.

For all the wrong reasons, Islamists hog the headlines. Numbers of this hateful crew recently drowned their fellow Christian asylum seekers. How low can you get? What’s behind their barbarity, their terrorism, their intolerance, their hateful preaching? Is it post-colonial resentment, alienation, disadvantage, unemployment? Be not confused; it comes straight from their holy scriptural playbook.

Those living in liberal democracies have different levels of concern. Some are mostly concerned about ‘Islamophobia’. And they have evidence. Recall Tony Abbott suggesting that we should back Team Australia. The hide of the man!

As ignoble as it seems, others are mostly concerned about people being beheaded or burnt alive or being forced into obeisance to a bunch of religious nut jobs. Regrettably, sometimes this does lead to ill-mannered behaviour. I want to try to put this into perspective without at all excusing it.

As the world’s population grows, governments around the world are questioning how the billions of new mouths will be fed. The answer, according to Israeli inventor Rafi Mehudar, is right under their feet – in the drip irrigation technology he perfected for water tech firm Netafim.

Now found in farms around the world, Netafim’s irrigation and watering technology is already helping feed hundreds of millions, and, according to Mehudar, “it’s the only technology that has been proven to significantly increase the supply of food. We are already saving large parts of humanity from starving, and this is just the beginning.”

Over forty years after Netafim acquired the rights to the pressure regulator, his first drip irrigation invention, Mehudar is being feted for his accomplishments with one of the greatest honors bestowed by the state – the lighting of one of the twelve ceremonial torches that inaugurate Independence Day in Israel on Wednesday night. The torches are usually lit by individuals who have made a significant contribution to Israeli life, with the theme this year focusing on individuals who have made “breakthrough innovations” in science, technology, business, and culture.