RUTHFULLY YOURS

“‘Sheikh Google’ is the real threat to young Muslims.” — Hifsa Haroon-Iqbal, British Muslim mother, Daily Telegraph.

These mild legal outcomes indicate that U.S. officials do not appreciate how inflammatory the materials are.

As informed Muslims know, present-day radical Islamists have proven adept at using the internet – far more than have their moderate and Western opponents. “Internet savvy” jihadism appears as evidence of the youthful constituency of the extremists. They have grown up with the internet, video games, and other online diversions. When fanatical ideology takes hold of them, the internet is one of the obvious places for the process to begin.

In an important 2003 article in The Weekly Standard, entitled “The Islamic Terrorism Club,” Stephen Schwartz, wrote about some of the more obnoxious pro-jihad Arabic-language websites then operating from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The jihad-net expanded considerably in the decade that followed.

Even before September 11, 2001, however, many Muslims who opposed the fundamentalists were focusing on Islamist websites in English, as a means to anticipate threats from radicals.

With Britain targeted for recruitment to the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” [IS] and the IS’s brutal campaign in Syria and Iraq, these sites, which remain operating, are still important and accessible to both the Muslim and non-Muslim public. They are exceptionally educational about the aims and methods of Islamist demagogues.

“Islamic state in Palestine in place of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.” — Hamas Charter.

Turkey’s supreme court declared the olive grove to be “under state protection,” after it was totally destroyed.

Some Turks are prepared to hate even olive trees because “they are Jewish.”

Islamists often come in two flavors: Those who would decapitate an infidel, take out his heart and eat it in front of cameras, like the jihadists in Syria; and those who have the same sentiments and goals but pursue smarter means to Islamize the whole universe through “de jure” methods, including the ballot box.

Turkey’s leaders fall into the second category, but some Turks these days feature a third flavor: Non-Violent Idiocy.

Hamas’s infamous charter, proclaimed in 1988, is a must-read for self-declared Western intellectuals who tend to “angelize” the terrorist group in order, often, to reinforce their own intellectual identities. The charter (or the Covenant) calls for the eventual creation of an “Islamic state in Palestine in place of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.”

It goes on by outlining Hamas’s mission as: “The only way to engage in this struggle between the truth and falsehood is through Islam and by means of Jihad until victory or martyrdom.” Here, obviously, “victory is killing the last Jew on earth; and martyrdom is getting killed by Jews [or Muslims of rival sects].”

In what seems to be an escalation of his previous public comments, tenured Kent State University professor Julio Pino is using his personal Facebook page not only to post anti-Semitic epithets and threats, but also to declare his solidarity with the terrorist group ISIS.

In August, we saw the incendiary, anti-Semitic Facebook posts by Pino, the Cuban-born associate history professor who converted to Islam in 2000. Dr. Pino’s posts supported Hamas, made vile, racist comments about Jews and Israelis, and even seemed to support ISIS. Pino, who has a long history of anti-Semitic behavior, also vowed that he wouldn’t work with fellow staff members who supported Israel:“Collaborate with no one who collaborates with Israel, and let her or him know why. I have started with the head of our ‘Religious Studies’ program, who sends student-dupes to Israel every year.” Pino remains employed by the taxpayer-supported university and it seems he has been emboldened by the cover Kent State is providing for him.

In a post this week, he declared, “We will wage jihad from al-Quds to Canada!” Pino posted this comment along with a video from Russia Today (the state-funded news outlet) showing allegedly “uncut” footage of the “bloody caliphate” in Iraq.

In another post with a link to a YouTube video warning of a possible Islamic State attack in New York City, Pino calls a Canadian jihadist his brother: “Canadian Brother from ISIS ‘We love being attacked! We seek martyrdom!’”

On Friday, Pino posted a link to a BBC article warning that the Islamic State is setting its sights on Saudi Arabia, where the Muslim holy site of Mecca is located. “No Sleep Till Mecca!” Pino vowed.

Back in October, Pino scoffed at reports that ISIS is a great military threat. “From the bourgeois media: ‘ISIS is the greatest military threat the U.S. has faced since 1945.’ You mean that whole Cold War, nuclear arms race, Korea, Viet Nam thing was for kids?” he asked.

Last week Pino applauded the Ayatollah Khamenei, calling him his “favorite tweeter.”

Here’s the tweet that got Pino so excited:

Mahammad Kalifa Al-Kalifa More-Kalifas is still not an Islamic scholar and has no desire to be so qualified. Having observed that violence is the response of some Muslims — quite a few, actually — to an invitation to engage in theological debate, hel lacks the courage to publish this article under his real name
Of Guppies, Catfish and the Caliphate

Drop a few predators into the West’s happy little fish tank and multiculturalism’s massive contradiction — the enforced tolerance of everything, especially Islam’s intolerant insularity — is easily recognised. The trick is in making the effort to observe what some would prefer not to see

“You have to congratulate me,” beamed my smiling Jordanian friend as we shook hands for the first time that day at our workplace in Saudi Arabia.Why, I asked?“Because I am getting married” replied Mohammad.And the lucky girl?

“I don’t know,” he replied, “my mother has not yet found a candidate”.

Like most Australians, I had been fully indoctrinated by the ABC and other leftist “education” agencies to believe that multiculturalism is the only fair and reasonable way to go – anything else must be “racist”, even when race is not the issue. Nevertheless, putting myself in Mohammad’s shoes, I still could not accept the idea of my mother finding a stranger for me to marry. But it got worse, with Mohammad explaining that matchmaking mum planned to seek his spouse from her circle of female friends with daughters of about the right age. Because of restrictions on independent travel, and the need to avoid males, her circle of friends extended all the way to second cousins.

I never mentioned my concerns about his situation to Mohammad, and I had a lot of difficulty in sharing his enthusiasm for the impending nuptials. A few weeks later, however, I had a chance meeting with Ozzie Mohammad, my Australian-Jordanian friend, one of groom-to-be Mohammad’s uncles. Ozzie Mohammad had spent over 20 years in Melbourne, where he raised a family, and was in Saudi Arabia to earn some quick money for a bigger house.

I greeted him: “Hi, Mohammad, have you heard Mohammad’s big news?”

Before I could launch into a troubled rant about archaic, barbaric cultural practices and the abuse of women’s rights, Ozzie Mohammad replied, “Yes, it is great! I have just finished arranging with my wife the marriage of my eldest daughter”.

I was gobsmacked: twenty years in Australia, a man with whom I had had many interesting and intelligent conversations, a 16-year-old girl who knows only Melbourne — none of it made any difference. I did not know what to say, particularly when Ozzie Mohammad conceded that his daughter was not happy. He was confident, however, that “she will find love will grow”.

This was the moment when I first started questioning multiculturalism. Some can accommodate massive contradictions, especially leftists, but I never could. It took no time at all to realise that multiculturalism’s massive contradictions — the tolerance of everything, including intolerance — make it a flawed and completely dangerous concept.

The suppression of women is just the tip of the iceberg, as Islam has many other features that are fundamentally incompatible with the modern West. This includes modern Western socialist societies, but we just have not yet seen the end results.

Unlike most other great religions, Islam does not have a worldwide structure. If Catholic extremists were to start killing non-Catholics and kidnapping hundreds of young girls, we can be sure the Pope would speak against them in an instant. The world would be left in no doubt that the militants did not represent mainstream Catholic views, and we could be just as sure that real Catholics would put themselves on the frontlines, denouncing the radicals and battling to defeat them. I don’t think I am extending the benefit of the doubt in being equally certain that all the other main religions would react in much the same manner. Muslims, however, don’t have a pope or equivalent. We hear much of grand muftis, but their views and edicts are theirs and their supporters alone. With different countries and different muftis of different persuasions subscribing to no officially structured and universally recognised doctrine, Islam is whatever its adherents want it to be — the religion of peace to some, the religion of blow-’em-to-pieces on the other.

This is why, when Boko Haram kidnapped 300 schoolgirls we heard no strong and authoritative Islamic voice condemning the abductions.

A quartet of rust-bucket Russian warships in our part of the world would seem a laughing matter, but Vladimir Putin’s motive for sending them is anything but. Beneath the well-cut suit is unreconstructed Soviet Man, as paranoid, ambitious, ruthless and devious as any of Stalin’s children

For those old enough to remember the Soviet Union’s “intervention” in Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, but lucky enough enough not to have witnessed it up close, here is a joke that was very popular with Moscow wits. A newsreader announces, “An important meeting, dedicated to a settlement of the Czechoslovakian crisis has taken place in Prague. T. Dubchek and T. Svoboda represented the Czech side. The Soviet side was represented by T-34.”

The “T” in both Czech leaders’ names is the standard abbreviation for “tovarisch”, the Russian word for comrade. The T-34 is, of course, the model designation for the no-frills Soviet tank of WWII. Today, 46 years later, the presence of Vladimir Putin’s four warships not too far over the horizon from Brisbane demonstrates that, while the weaponry might have changed, the punchline remains grimly unaltered.

By bringing his aged toys along, Mr Putin has done his best to remind the other G20 participants that they must be exquisitely polite to the man from Moscow. And if they are not, well who can tell just what muscle Putin might opt to flex. A naval assault on Australia, you scoff? Well, yes, it is hard to believe, but not that much harder to believe than Putin’s deployment in Crimea of grim men in green uniforms stripped of anything to indicate name, rank serial number and country of origin. Might he even consider using one of his surface-to-air missiles to make a lasting impression? Not right this minute, but who can really be sure after what his friends in Ukraine did to Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. Oh, but that was “a mistake”, or so we have been told, so Qantas jets overflying the flotilla are probably quite safe. Probably.

Putin, an extraordinarily sensitive soul, is very keen on being respected. Some people use ego defense mechanisms to achieve this, but our Vlad prefers the no-nonsense impact of integrated fire control systems, just like those of the four comforters that have trailed him to the G20 summit. It is no surprise that he was the only participant who felt the need to put military hardware on display, as this was a long-standing Soviet tradition during sensitive negotiations and, as a top KGB man, Putin is not one to break with the ways of the past. His ships are obsolete, true. But they make a point, just as his ancient bombers make a point when he sends them all the way across the Atlantic to remind Americans that he is a man who needs and demands respect. Neither ships nor planes would have any chance of surviving a modern conflict, but their battlefield longevity is not the point which Putin wishes to make, which is to enforce his reputation as a leader who must be taken seriously. Let us not marr this Brisbane gathering with ill-advised demands for explanation or apology about that “mishap” with Flight 17 — that is his message.

Twenty-five years after the Velvet Revolution, his warnings about passive foreign policy resonate.

On Nov. 17, a bust of Václav Havel, writer, Communist-era dissident and president of the Czech Republic, will be unveiled in the U.S. Capitol. On that day nearly 25 years ago, students took to the streets of Prague, triggering mass demonstrations that brought down the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, as the Czech Republic was then known.

Havel, who died in December 2011, was a modest man. He might have gotten a laugh out of such a pompous event. When bidding farewell as president in February 2003, he had this to say: “It all happened so suddenly that I did not even have time to properly consider whether or not I was up to the task.” And yet he oversaw epochal events both at home and abroad and in many ways he was an active participant.

No sooner was he sworn in on Dec. 29, 1989, than President Havel had his foreign-policy mettle tested as he coped with the far-reaching repercussions of the Iron Curtain coming down. The former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe were mired in domestic political and economic woes. They also found themselves in a geopolitical void as the Soviet Union fragmented, and simmering ethnic tensions in the Balkans cast another shadow over the future.

Havel was acutely aware of the ills and wrongs of the world. While to some he may have seemed a naive idealist, he was convinced that noble ideals should guide his country’s foreign policy to help it stay on a righteous path.

Drawing on his own experience of living under and relentlessly fighting against a suffocating Communist regime, President Havel had a powerful story with which to capture the world’s imagination. He represented the power of ideas and personal courage to stand for what one believes is right and just despite seemingly insurmountable odds. He went on to demonstrate that such ideals have a proper place in international politics and diplomacy.

Shortly after his election, Havel appeared before a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Feb. 21, 1990, to deliver an analysis of developments in Czechoslovakia and neighboring countries. Despite many challenges and difficulties consuming the governments of states formerly in the Soviet sphere to put their Communist past behind them, Havel stressed that these countries would have to become less inward looking.

Sometimes we wonder if President Obama has even the vaguest idea how a private economy works. The latest reason to doubt came Friday in Burma, where Mr. Obama was asked at a press conference about the Keystone XL pipeline, which has been waiting for approval for the length of his Presidency. The pipeline would allow oil to flow from Canada all the way to the Gulf Coast.

In off-the-cuff remarks, Mr. Obama managed to insult our great northern neighbors while suggesting that the project would be no help to U.S. workers or consumers. “Understand what this project is: It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. It doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.”
Someone should tell the President that oil markets are global and adding to global supply might well reduce U.S. gas prices, other things being equal. A tutor could add that Keystone XL will also carry U.S. light oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale. So even if he thinks that bilateral trade only helps Canada, he’s still wrong about Keystone.

“If my Republican friends really want to focus on what’s good for the American people in terms of job creation and lower energy costs,” the President added, “we should be engaging in a conversation about what are we doing to produce even more homegrown energy.” Mr. Obama routinely entreats Congress to spend taxpayer money on “infrastructure” to create jobs, yet he implies that the 1,179-mile Keystone infrastructure project won’t create jobs. Perhaps (see editorial above) Mr. Obama really does think the American people are stupid.

A well known phenomenon in the animal kingdom is that when taking over a new pride, a lion will sometimes kill all the cubs. We don’t know exactly what kind of feeling drives him in this bloody act, but there’s obviously a lack of attachment. Suffice it to say the problem can be summed up thus: it’s not his family.

America’s pride is falling. And few things illustrate this better than the open-borders mentality that has allowed foreigners to bring diseases — most notably Ebola but also EV-D68 and others — into our country.

There was a time when a threat such as Ebola would have inspired travel bans reflexively. Not today. In this enlightened age, Barack Obama and underlings such as CDC director Tom Frieden tell us, with a straight face, that such measures just wouldn’t work. They also claim that banning commercial flights would frustrate efforts to aid Ebola-affected nations and thus increase the long-term chances of an epidemic in the U.S.

Space constraints preclude me from exploring every detail of their argument, but the bottom line is that it’s fallacious. A travel ban combined with a policy of issuing no visas to citizens from affected nations, a prohibition against entry by any foreign national holding a passport with a stamp from one of them, and a mandatory quarantine for Americans returning from such countries absolutely would work. No, it wouldn’t reduce the chances of more Ebola cases reaching our shores to zero, but such a requirement is unreasonable. We can’t eliminate all murder, but we still see fit to minimize it by having necessary laws, police and a criminal-justice system.

As for aid, it goes without saying that medical professionals and other emergency workers would be granted travel clearance and that charter and military planes could ferry them where they needed to go. Moreover, we’ve isolated Americans who contracted Ebola, and no one claims it prevented us from giving them sufficient treatment.

In fact, the arguments against common sense and the common good are so obviously flawed that it’s clear they are not reasons, but rationalizations. So what really explains our leaders’ common senselessness? National Review’s Mark Krikorian put it well last month:

Why are so many people reluctant to recognize the malignity in Barack Obama’s character and actions?

Opportunities repeatedly have been overlooked by the media and even by many blog news sites to more properly assess the true motivations of President Barack Hussein Obama, based on his character, policies, behavior and public mien. The scandal that has erupted over MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber’s remarks during a panel discussion about the machinations behind getting Obamacare drafted, and then enacted in Congress and signed by Obama, can serve as an important guide to what Obama is “all about.” Judicial Watch focuses on the “transparent” contempt Gruber has for Americans on Family Security Matters:

The esteemed college professor who served as one of Obamacare’s key architects has admitted that a “lack of transparency” helped the administration pass the disastrous healthcare law, which is facing a number of legal challenges.

It’s a scandalous confession for an administration that has repeatedly vowed to be the most transparent in history. The information comes straight from Jonathan Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economist who served as a technical consultant to the Obama administration during the Affordable Care Act’s (Obamacare) design. Gruber was recorded during a panel and the video recently surfaced and has been making the rounds on the internet.

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” Gruber says. “If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass…” (Italics mine)

Gruber’s bragging – and, incidentally baring his decrepit, rotten soul about how he helped to push through the intentionally deceitful ACA – serves as an overture to an assessment of Obama’s own soul. Let us count the ways Obama has been spared – nay, let off the hook – by contemporary assessments of his character, his motives, and his means and ends. He has been called these things, even by his own supporters, by critics hesitant to pass the final judgment on him:

The California Israel International Business summit, held by the
California Israel Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 22. Photo: California
Israel Chamber of Commerce.

JNS.org – The “start-up nation”—a nickname Israel earned due to its
population’s knack for innovation—is increasingly exporting its
culture of entrepreneurship to America.

A 2012 Pew Research Center study showed that as many as 330,000
native-born Israelis were living in the United States, while other
estimates peg the total current population of Israeli
Americans—including the descendants of those born in Israel—at between
500,000 and 800,000. There are a number of reasons why an Israeli
might decide to come to the U.S., but for those who are innovators,
entrepreneurs, or businesspeople, the move is often based on
necessity. The relatively small market of Israel, a country that is
roughly the size of New Jersey, leaves Israeli companies thirsting for
opportunities outside of the Holy Land.