RUTHFULLY YOURS

The treatment meted out to Jewish-American reggae icon Matisyahu by the organizers of Spain’s Rototom Sunsplash music festival, held annually near Valencia, is by now common knowledge. Refusing to sign on to the pro-Palestinian BDS movement making the global rounds, he was disinvited from participating in the event. As Matisyahu posted [1] on his Facebook page:

The festival kept insisting that I clarify my personal views; which felt like clear pressure to agree with the BDS political agenda. Honestly it was appalling and offensive, that as the one publicly Jewish-American artist scheduled for the festival they were trying to coerce me into political statements. Were any of the other artists scheduled to perform asked to make political statements in order to perform? No artist deserves to be put in such a situation simply to perform his or her art. Regardless of race, creed, country, cultural background, etc, my goal is to play music for all people. As musicians that is what we seek. – Blessed Love, Matis

It was only after the Spanish government and various prominent Jewish agencies intervened that Matisyahu was re-invited.

On the micro-level of public opprobrium, I recently experienced something similar. Having been invited, pro forma, with my pianist wife Janice to play a selection of my original songs at the farmers’ market held in the small southeastern Ontario town where we make our home (let’s call it Cataraqui), I lingered six weeks to learn the date of our performance. Finally, I inquired by email. After a few days, I received the following message from the event organizer:

Hi David
I’m sorry, I’ve been somewhat out of the loop and had to step back a bit from market organising, but I thought someone had been in touch. My understanding was that there was some concern that your musical style might not be the best fit for the market but I believe moreso [sic] that the strong political content of your website was not something we were prepared to appear to be endorsing.

How could any member of Congress in good conscience support a deal that so blatantly empowers a brazen enemy of the United States — a regime that has killed thousands of Americans, a regime that daily continues to call for death to America and the annihilation of Israel — to the degree that even the Obama administration openly concedes that the deal materially supports terrorism?

No sooner did Obama lock up the Democratic support he needed in the Senate to ensure his deal cannot be defeated under the farcical Corker review process than did his Iran point-man, Secretary of State John Kerry, send a letter to members of Congress promising that more military aid would be given to Iran’s enemies, Israel and the Sunni Gulf states. Let’s put aside the absurdity of vowing, as Kerry does in the letter, that Obama’s deal will promote regional peace while simultaneously acknowledging that Iran’s enemies will need “increase[d] security assistance.” If the Obama administration were charged with committing material support to terrorism, a serious felony violation of federal law, Kerry’s letter would suffice as a “Guilty” plea.

“Islam has no family resemblance with Christianity and Judaism. The similarities are appropriated, not inherited,” the Anglican priest and theologian Mark Durie starkly stated in his book “ Which God? Jesus, Holy Spirit, God in Christianity & Islam.” This volume is essential reading for Christians who wish to counter the “Abrahamic fallacy” of Islamic kinship with Judeo-Christian faith.
In his book, Durie noted the oft-touted idea of Western Abrahamic civilization in a world that once esteemed its Judeo-Christian civilization. Many assume that Islam joins Judaism and Christianity in possessing a theological lineage from the Old Testament’s Father Abraham. “This is new thinking which reflects the growing influence of Islam,” Durie said, adding that “one expression of the Islamicization of Christian thought serves the supersessionist program of Islam.”

In the chapter entitled “The Arts of Selling” from 1958’s Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley wrote that “[t]he survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information. A dictatorship, on the other hand, maintains itself by censoring or distorting the facts, and by appealing, not to reason, not to enlightened self-interest, but to passion and prejudice [.]” Which is why under the soft dictatorship of Barack Hussein Obama, the American people may be hard pressed to make realistic choices since they are far too susceptible to the distortions of language.

Logical fallacies are really “weaponized irrationality” gussied up to catch people unaware. Ad hominem attacks against an individual instead of the merit of an idea have been a hallmark of this administration. In 2014 when attempting to persuade the country on his immigration policy, Obama utilized the ergo decedo fallacy by attacking Republicans for their party position rather than for their argument.

Logical fallacies have long been the lifeblood of dishonest politicians and in Obama, we find an abundance of them. A favorite fallacy is the strawman, which is an attack on a position that is not even held by the other side. Obama’s strawmen have been those never-named naysayers Obama claims are “urging him to sit on his hands at the White House and do nothing to address any of the economic or national security problems facing the country.” Some telltale indicators that the straw man tactic is being used are the words “there are those who say” or “some say” as in Obama’s “[s]ome people say that maybe I’m being too idealistic.” Then there is the false choice embedded inside another straw man as in his “You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience”– yet no one ever asked for 100 percent of these things in the first place.

In Germany, posters saying “Refugees welcome” and “Nobody is illegal” have been appearing at bus stops and demonstrations. At a rally in Oxford last weekend, demonstrators held up home-made placards saying “We welcome refugees (given the chance)” and “We are all human”.

These people are merely telling us about themselves. Public expressions of compassion signify that a person is good. Their absence demonstrates heartlessness. This has been called “virtue signalling”, or mandatory emoting, and it has now reached its crazy apotheosis in the great migration crisis.

What remains unknown is why President Obama and most of his party want a nuclear Iran.

The goals of the diplomatic process have changed tremendously from the beginning, when President Obama regularly claimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable,” and that only his unique brand of personal diplomacy could prevent it. Rather than “prevent” or “block” Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, as the president and Secretary of State Kerry falsely claim, the deal assures Iran of legally acquiring one.

By weaponizing its nuclear program, Iran has violated every agreement it has signed. Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons program is being cleansed and validated at the behest of the Obama administration. These terms make the JCPOA deal unknowable. Signing it is not an act of diplomacy; it is surrender.

There is only one flaw in the JCPOA laundering scheme. In a true money-laundering scheme that involves an outlaw and a legitimate party, the money launderer receives a fee for the service provided; in this trade, the U.S. gets nothing from the JCPOA. The U.S. does not even get back one of the Americans held hostage by Iran.

Let’s come clean. Let’s finally recognize the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for what it is — a laundering project designed to legitimize Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

One migrant was asked why he doesn’t want to stay in Hungary. He replied: “[Hungary is] not giving us like in Germany… a house, money…”

“It’s not 150,000 migrants coming that some want to divide according to quotas, it’s not 500,000, a figure that I heard in Brussels, it’s millions, then tens of millions, because the supply of immigrants is endless.” — Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary.

Only 20 of the 12,000 people who crossed the border during the weekend of September 5-6 applied for asylum in Austria. The rest have already moved on to the more generous Germany.

In Germany, the number of asylum seekers entering the country in a single month surpassed the 100,000 mark for the first time ever. Germany expects to receive a total of 800,000 refugees and migrants this year, a four-fold increase over 2014.

Germany and Sweden are the final destinations of choice for most migrants, lured by the generous benefits they can claim, and the governments’ message that refugees are welcome in unlimited numbers. The open-door immigration policies could draw millions of Muslims into Europe from the Middle East and North Africa.

Hundreds of Muslim refugees are converting to Christianity, apparently in an effort to improve their chances of having their asylum applications approved. Under Islam, Muslims who convert to Christianity are guilty of apostasy, a crime punishable by death. The “converts” apparently believe that German officials will allow them to stay if they can be persuaded that they will be killed if they are sent back to their countries of origin.

Oh puleez! The Palarabs violated the Oslo sham within minutes of Rabin’s infamous handshake with Arafat on the White House lawn. The event was followed by the longest and most horrific spree of terrorism and more Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks after the accords than before.In fact, there were over twice as many Israeli terror fatalities in the year from Sep. 1994 – Sep. 1995 as in Sep. 1991 – Sep. 1992. Overall, Israel suffered 73% more terror fatalities in the two years after the 1993 deal than in the two years before it. rsk

Palestinian breach of legally binding accord puts to rest an agreement that was DOA. September 9, 2015

Reports are emerging that the Palestinian Authority’s unelected “president” Mahmoud Abbas will soon announce the nullification of all past agreements with Israel, including the infamous 1993 Oslo Accords. Abbas will then declare “Palestine” to be a state under “occupation.”

The architect of this new approach is none other than Saeb Erekat, a senior figure in Abbas’s inner circle and one of the PA’s primary rejectionist figures. It was Erekat who was the driving force behind Abbas’s September 2014 decision to seek admission into various UN and international bodies including the International Criminal Court.

Erekat has long been a behind-the-scenes troublemaker for Israel. He is also an unrepentant liar and fabricator. During last summer’s Operation Defensive Edge, Erekat outrageously claimed that 12,000 Palestinians (nearly all civilians of course) were killed. The actual figure is more like 2,000, at least half of whom were combatants. Shortly thereafter, he charged the Jewish State with burning mosques and churches and compared Israel’s prime minister to ISIS. In 2002, he accused Israel of committing a “massacre” in Jenin even though the allegation was soundly debunked by a UN fact-finding commission that was actually hostile to Israel.

The Syrian refugee crisis that the media bleats about is not a crisis. And the Syrian refugees it champions are often neither Syrians nor refugees. Fake Syrian passports are cheaper than an EU politician’s virtue and easier to come by. Just about anyone who speaks enough Arabic to pass the scrutiny of a European bureaucrat can come with his two wives in tow and take a turn on the carousel of their welfare state.

Or on our welfare state which pays Christian and Jewish groups to bring the Muslim terrorists of tomorrow to our towns and cities. And their gratitude will be as short-lived as our budgets.

The head of a UNHCR camp called Syrian refugees “The most difficult refugees I’ve ever seen. In Bulgaria, they complained that there were no jobs. In Sweden, they took off their clothes to protest that it was too cold.

In Italy, Muslim African “refugees” rejected pasta and demanded food from their own countries. But the cruel Europeans who “mistreat” migrants set up a kitchen in Calais with imported spices cooked by a Michelin chef determined to give them the stir-fried rabbit and lamb meatballs they’re used to. There are also mobile phone charging stations so the destitute refugees can check on their Facebook accounts.

It had to be done because the refugees in Italy were throwing rocks at police while demanding free wifi.

Terrorist-linked CAIR calls on the administration to “bring them here.”

The Obama administration is reportedly considering exacerbating a crisis largely of its own making. Following the immigration onslaught in Europe that has generated graphic images, including a 3-year-old Syrian boy washing up dead on a Turkish beach, thousands of migrants trapped in a Budapest train station, and 71 dead discovered in a truck abandoned on an Austrian roadway, Obama administration officials are considering the possibility of allowing more Syrian immigrants into the United States. “The administration is actively considering a range of approaches to be more responsive to the global refugee crisis, including with regard to refugee resettlement,” said Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council. “We are also in regular contact with countries in the Middle East and Europe who have been greatly impacted by the increased refugee flows.”

A video campaign entitled “Bring Them Here” has been launched by the St. Louis branch of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case that garnered several convictions for providing support to the terrorist group Hamas. CAIR spokesman Faizan Syed likens the effort to St. Louis’s acceptance of refugees from Bosnia back in the 90s and insists that Syrian refugees would provide the same economic uplift to the city their Bosnian counterparts did.