RUTHFULLY YOURS

My compatriots Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have inflicted more damage on the reputation of Michael E Mann’s global-warming hockey stick than anybody else on the planet. So, when one finds oneself being sued by the litigious Dr Mann, a prudent person pays close attention to anything the Messrs Mac have to say about the case. Steve McIntyre listened to the oral arguments in the DC Court of Appeals a month ago, and was not happy with what he heard. He has now written an extensive post on the subject, which I highly recommend, except for the first sentence:

I have an audio copy of the oral argument in Mann v Steyn…

Not to be pedantic but in fact it was Mann vs Everybody But Steyn. A year ago, my co-defendants National Review, Rand Simberg and the Competitive Enterprise Institute decided to appeal Judge Weisberg’s me-too of the previous judge Combs Greene’s denial of their anti-SLAPP order. I declined to join them on the grounds that, as the previous impenetrable sentence suggests, the DC court system had made such a procedural train wreck of the case that we might as well get on with the trial the fraudulent Mann claimed to want, and be done with it. The District of Columbia’s new anti-SLAPP law had clearly failed on its first significant outing, but, given that once this case is over I intend never again to set foot in that hellish metropolis, that’s hardly my problem.

So my three co-defendants went ahead without me, and at the end of November the troika of DC judges finally got around to hearing oral arguments on the matter. Steve McIntyre was not impressed:

One of the things often under-estimated by those readers (especially at WUWT) who are bloodthirsty for litigation as a means of settling scores is that it’s not easy for litigation lawyers to fully assimilate a complicated history. In the oral argument of the anti-SLAPP motion, both the lawyers and judges seem too often to be playing blind man’s bluff with the facts, making a decision both unpredictable and probably somewhat random.

Despite the persistent campaign to paint them as their faith’s renegades, the ISIS fighters could not be more Islamic if they tried A rogue, rapist and murderer, Man Haron Monis was mad by any mainstream definition, but he was one with his comrades Iraq and Syria in doing the Prophet’s bidding.

I have lost count of the times we have been assured Man Haron Monis’ actions were un-Islamic, an outrage perpetrated by a lone wolf of dubious sanity. Mad or not, the Lindt hostage-taker insisted he was acting in support of ISIS in Syria, and he requested an ISIS flag to demonstrate that commitment to a national and international audience. This was the propaganda moment ISIS had demanded. The clear motive was to intimidate Australia and other Western nations into butting out of Syria, and since the political and religious motives of Islam are identical, the religious aspects cannot be ignored.

While we have heard much about the supposedly un-Islamic nature of ISIS, surely it cannot be a coincidence that every action, strategy and tactic followed by ISIS is modeled almost exactly on the same tactics, strategy and actions employed by Mohammad in his seventh-century campaigns of conquest. The forced conversions, the beheadings, the rapes, the executions, the selling women into slavery were Mohammad’s stock in trade. The Agenda of the Caliphate is Mohammad’s agenda. ISIS appears to be strictly following Islamic precedents, as set out by the Prophet himself. Since Mohammad is regarded as the “perfect man”, nothing could be more Islamic than following his example, both in daily life and war.

Further, no less an authority than Allah Himself, writing in the Qur’an, addresses the duty of the good Muslim to take up the sword.

The scene around midtown Manhattan during the holidays is something of a madhouse—in a good way. Tens of thousands of tourists, including families, descend on Rockefeller Center to see the tree, Radio City to see the shows, and Fifth Avenue to see the department store windows, culminating in the New Year’s Eve balldrop in Times Square.
It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when the scenes were different. There were tourists, but fewer and far fewer families. Times Square was the squalid home of sex shops and random robberies, not hotels and chain restaurants. Bryant Park on 42nd Street was a drug market, and criminals stalked the subways.

We recalled that era, as recent as the early 1990s, when we read Monday’s headline in the New York Post: “Police Give Arrests a Rest: Wary officers letting minor crooks slide.” The story reported that more of New York’s Finest are refusing to pursue routine violations, or even to take risks to pursue major violators, for fear that they won’t be supported if they run into trouble.

“My guys are writing almost no summonses, and probably only making arrests when they have to—like when a store catches a shoplifter,” one NYPD supervisor told the Post. For those who want to understand the rancorous divide between the police and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio , this is the heart of the matter. And it is ominous for social order in America’s largest city.

This gets to the debate over “broken windows” policing, in which cops don’t ignore small offenses like subway turnstile jumping or “squeegee men” who extort drivers for cash in return for washing their windshields at traffic lights with a dirty cloth. As New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and criminologist George Kelling recently explained on these pages, the point is that prosecuting small offenses rids the streets of those most likely to commit larger crimes. It also makes the streets more livable.

Tumbling oil prices have sent repressive regimes around the world reeling. Liberals should rejoice.

Christmas came early for the world’s liberal democracies this year, with news in mid-December that repressive regimes from Russia to Venezuela and from Iran to Belarus are tumbling down an economic spiral. Who or what should we thank for this geopolitical yuletide? The neocons? Pro-democracy protesters? George W. Bush and Tony Blair ?

No. Thank instead American shale producers. The shale-gas and hydraulic-fracking revolution is lighting a figurative bonfire under the world’s petrocracies. Dictatorships that for years blackmailed the West in the knowledge that we would come crawling back for the black stuff are now catching a glimpse of a bleak future.

As the American people and companies shift more of their consumption to cheaply produced domestic energy, the geopolitical leverage of oil-rich autocrats diminishes. A barrel of crude on Monday sold for less than $60, down nearly 50% since June when it went for $115. Take that, ayatollah.

This is a price drop made in the shale-rich heartlands of the U.S. Between 2007 and 2012, shale production in America jumped by more than 50% a year. In that time the shale share of total U.S. gas production rose to 39% from 5%. Last year the U.S. overtook Russia as the world’s leading energy producer; next year America is projected to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer of crude oil.

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001503.html

CONTENTS

1. Syria: Government News Agency features Israeli containers at port
2. Turkey: As Arabs shun Hamas, Meshaal and Erdogan cozy up
3. Iran: Hamas leader Meshaal to visit Tehran
4. Egypt prepares to destroy Palestinian 1,200 homes next to Gaza
5. “Israelis ask Egyptians to redraw border a bit”
6. Sinai: Militant attacks continue
7. Gaza: Explosion hits beauty salon

Moshe Arens (born 1925) was an aeronautical engineer who became a leading Israeli statesman, serving as ambassador, minister without portfolio, and defense minister.He graduated from high school in New York City and served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. He secured a B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but went to Israel at the outbreak of its 1948 war of independence and served in the Irgun Zvai Leumi. He returned to the United States in 1951 to study at the California Institute of Technology where he received an M.A. degree in aeronautical engineering in 1953. He then worked for a number of years on jet engine development in the aviation industry in the United States before his return to Israel.He was involved in the design of airplanes and the development of missiles and won the Israel Defense Prize in 1971. He was active in Herut Party politics from the outset and was elected to the Knesset (parliament) in 1974. After the Likud election victory of 1977 he became chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He voted against the Camp David Accords in 1978, but subsequently supported the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979 as an established fact.He regarded the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) as an integral part of Israel in keeping with the views of Vladimir Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin: these territories are historically part of Israel, and they serve a security purpose.
Abbas does not want to sign an agreement with Israel, nor is he capable of implementing it if he were to sign one, and he knows it. He prefers to be a phantom at the UN.

The recurring attempts by western European states to recognize and define the borders of a nonexistent Palestinian state, and the maneuvers by Mahmoud Abbas to obtain a seat for this putative state at various UN forums and to have the Security Council determine the deadline for and outcome of negotiations between him and Israel to create such a state, are unprecedented in the annals of nation-states and in the UN’s history.
In some ways they are reminiscent of Charles De Gaulle’s vain call, “Vive le Quebec libre,” during his visit to Montreal in July 1967, which did not change Quebec’s status at all. That’s not how nation-states are created.
All this is surely clear to the sundry statesmen and parliamentarians engaged in these maneuvers. Why are they doing this?
Presumably it is because they sincerely believe in the right of self-determination and would like to ram a Palestinian state down Israel’s throat.
They have fallen under the spell of the catchy slogan “two states for two peoples.” How can you object to that? Not only Europeans and Americans have fallen for it, but many Israelis as well.
There is only one catch here, which they insist on ignoring: The Palestinians already have a state of their own. That’s Jordan, where 70% of the population is Palestinian. If Jordan is not an expression of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, then what is?

The negotiations in Vienna to restrict or prevent Iran from enriching sufficient fissile material to build nuclear weapons, raises the specter of yet a new round in what some have described as “the second nuclear age.” For the uninitiated, the first nuclear age was the period in the Cold War when the U.S. and allies confronted the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal. The second nuclear age is defined by the multiplicity of nuclear powers linked together by varying levels of cooperation and conflict.

Although the Soviet Union and the United States had tense and hostile moments, they did reach some accord for maintaining strategic stability. However, in the second nuclear age, deterrence involving threats from two or more potential adversaries is complicated. Actions of self-defense by nation one against nation two, may be threatening to nation three. Furthermore, non-nuclear technologies such as missile defense, cyber-attacks and precision weapons could challenge strategic balance.

Hence, there is a need to carve out a unique and unalterable restraint mechanism among nuclear powers to avoid endangering stability; what I have described as “a safe zone” to reduce the risk of deliberate, accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.

At the moment five nuclear powers, the U.S., China, Russia, France and England, maintain an uneasy, but recognized regimen under the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty with India and Pakistan included in the forum. Clearly North Korea is an outlier and Israel is an ambiguous supporter. But despite tensions on the foreign policy front among the Big Seven, equilibrium, however shaky at times, has held. Surely this fragile system needs buttressing with transparency and confidence boosting measures.

“Britain remains the world’s leading recruiting ground for al-Qaeda.” — Con Coughlin, Daily Telegraph.

When she sought help from the police and a lawyer, “the family of the defendants were insulted that she had gone to the law. They wanted her back within the family fold… Therefore, it was decided that she should be forced to comply or be killed.” — Prosecutor of Ahmed A-Khatib, who murdered his wife for becoming “too westernized.”

British school teachers are afraid to teach their students about Christianity out of fear of offending Muslims. — Roger Bolton, BBC Radio 4’s Feedback program.

Rather than taking steps to protect British children, police, social workers, teachers… and the media deliberately played down the severity of the crimes [of Muslim sexual grooming gangs] in order to avoid being accused of “Islamophobia” or racism. — From the report “Easy Meat: Multiculturalism, Islam and Child Sex Slavery.”

A group of British lawyers launched a website, Sharia Watch UK. The group called Sharia law “Britain’s Blind Spot.”

After Adebolajo, who murdered and tried to behead British soldier Lee Rigby with a meat cleaver, was given a “whole-life” prison term, his brother said his sibling was the victim of “Islamophobia.”

“The problem of honor-based violence and forced marriages in England is “worse than people think.” — Claire Phillipson, Wearside Women in Need

Cap tax-deductible CEO remuneration at a maximum of 30 times the salary of that public company’s lowest paid worker. Thereabove, salaries will not be tax deductible as an operating expense for an employer. In addition, no bonuses (in cash or shares) for top management of a public company will be tax deductible if the company suffered losses by the end of the relevant year.
Limit the amount of airtime (on both public television and radio) eligible for advertiser tax deductions, to about 90 percent of the current level. Any advertising time above this level will not be tax deductible, reducing the cost-effectiveness of additional advertisements and helping to stem our country’s advertising epidemic.

By way of both suggestions 1 and 2, companies can allocate resources exactly as they wish. However, the government will cease to incentivize obviously counterproductive decisions.

Erdogan was happy. At least until a few days ago….

Erdogan probably did not know the Emir of Qatar’s next move on the Middle Eastern chessboard.

Turkey aspires to be a regional leader with no, little or problematic dialogue with about a dozen countries in its region.

Back in 2011, everything ostensibly was coming up roses between Turkey and Egypt. In a speech that year, then-Turkish President Abdullah Gul mentioned “…an axis of democracy of the two biggest nations in our region [Turkey and Egypt], from the north to the south, from the Black Sea down to the Nile Valley…”

In September 2011, then-Prime Minister [now President] Recep Tayyip Erdogan found an emotional hero’s welcome at Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Tens of thousands of Egyptians had flocked to the Cairo airport to welcome him. Streets were decorated with posters of Erdogan.

In early 2012, a survey by TESEV, a Turkish think-tank, found that Turkey was the most popular country for the residents of seven Arab countries, including Egypt.

But against that glittering backdrop, this author wrote in June 2011: “For Ankara, Cairo can be the new Damascus until another capital becomes the new Cairo. At that time, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan’s one-time best regional ally, had already become his worst regional nemesis.

The Turkish-Egyptian love affair would, in fact, be quite short-lived.