RUTHFULLY YOURS

Western diplomats gloss over the repression and persecution that mark the Iranian regime.

Will the real Hassan Rouhani please stand up? Since his election last summer — and especially since the start of nuclear negotiations with the West last fall — Iran’s new president has become a darling of the U.S. and European diplomatic set. The soft-spoken leader who now serves as Iran’s political face is widely viewed as a “moderate” counterpoint to his firebrand predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as a guarantor of a much-sought-after nuclear deal with the West.

On the latter point, the jury is still out. Nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 powers (the U.S., the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany) are continuing apace. But it’s far from clear that a durable nuclear settlement, especially one that will be acceptable to both Tehran and the West, is actually in the offing.

Regarding Rouhani’s reputation for being a moderate, however, it is already clear that he has not delivered on his promises. To the contrary, despite campaign rhetoric about the need to promote greater human rights and democracy within the Islamic Republic, Rouhani has presided over a deepening wave of state repression during his time in office.

The most conspicuous indicator has been a surge in executions. In 2013, the Iranian regime executed, it is estimated, a staggering 660 people, with two-thirds of those killings occurring after Rouhani took office in August. In the first quarter of this year alone, the Iranian regime killed nearly 200 individuals — the highest pace of state executions in more than a decade and a half. Iranian officials, moreover, aren’t shying away from this grim tally; to the contrary, according to Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head of the Iranian judiciary’s perversely named Human Rights Council, the international community should “be grateful for this great service to humanity.”

Internet repression has also widened. Two years ago, in his Nowruz address to the Iranian people, President Obama warned that an “electronic curtain” had descended on the Islamic Republic, thanks to the Iranian regime’s systematic efforts to isolate its citizens from the World Wide Web. Today, those efforts are more frenetic than ever; in the past year, Iran has launched a new Internet filtering program, blacked out a number of social-media platforms, including Twitter and WhatsApp, and convened a new “Supreme Council for Cyberspace” to oversee and regulate online access by its citizens. For these efforts, Iran has been named an “enemy of the Internet” by journalism watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

The American Embassy in Prague is financing a new project aimed at promoting Islam in public elementary and secondary schools across the Czech Republic.

The new law removes the requirement that there must be a special reason to sue for defamation or insult. Swedish thought police will be able to prosecute anyone who expresses an opinion about Muslim immigration and much else if that opinion is deemed to be defamation or slander. The Swedish government is also spending 60 million krona ($9 million) to boost voter turnout in Muslim neighborhoods.

“The influx of immigrants is reaching biblical proportions. Italy is fighting a losing battle.” — Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi, Head of the Italian Navy

In Austria, police say they believe that two teenage girls who vanished from their homes in the capital of Vienna on April 10 may be in Turkey, and that whoever helped them get there is using them as pin-up girls to boost recruitment efforts for the “holy war” in Syria.

Friends of Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, said the girls had become radicalized after attending a local mosque run by a Salafist preacher, Ebu Tejma, and learning about the duty of every Muslim to participate in jihad. The girls were expelled from school after inscribing “I Love Al-Qaeda” on tables and walls.

But the girls’ parents—originally Bosnian refugees who settled in Austria after the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s—say that messages and photographs posted on social media networks which claim that the girls are on the front line and fighting with their new husbands are fake.

In a possible break in the case, Austrian police say they traced a phone call Samra made to her sister in late April to a landline based in Turkey. The search for the girls continues.

At least 100 Austrian citizens or residents have participated in the fighting in Syria, according to Austrian media. Approximately 40 of them are currently on the front lines, 44 have already returned to Austria and 19 have been killed in action.

Also in April, the most senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood living in exile in Britain, Ibrahim Munir, denied claims that the group was moving its international headquarters from London to the Austrian city of Graz. The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, reported on April 12 that the Muslim Brotherhood was preparing to move its headquarters to Austria in an “apparent attempt to avoid an inquiry into its activities set up by the Prime Minister.”

The group was expelled from Egypt after a counter-revolution there in July 2013, and recently opened a new headquarters above a kebab shop in London. On April 1, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced an investigation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in Britain.

Students who demand emotional pampering deserve intellectual derision.

Dear Class of 2014:

Allow me to be the first to offend you, baldly and unapologetically. Here you are, 22 or so years on planet Earth, and your entire lives have been one long episode of offense-avoidance. This spotless record has now culminated in your refusals to listen to commencement speakers whose mature convictions and experiences might offend your convictions and experiences, or what passes for them.

Modern education has done its work well: In you, Class of 2014, the coward soul has filled the void left by the blank mind.

When I last delivered a commencement address via column to the Class of 2012, I complained about the dismaying inverse relationship between that class’s self-regard and its command of basic facts. This led to one cascade of angry letters, blog posts and college newspaper columns from the under-25 set—and another cascade of appreciative letters from their parents, professors and employers.

Of the former, my favorite came from a 2012 graduate of an elite Virginia college, who wrote me to say that “America has a hefty appetite for BS, and I’m ready and willing to deliver on that demand.” I gave him points for boldness and cheekily wrote back asking if we might consider his letter for publication. The bravado vanished; he demurred.

Well, Class of 2012, I did you a (small) injustice. At least the pretense of knowledgeability was important to you. For the Class of 2014, it seems that inviolable ignorance is the only true bliss.

To compel the switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar power is to consign billions of people to a life of poverty and darkness.

At the heart of the computer revolution is Moore’s law, named after Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore, who predicted that the number of transistors on integrated circuits would double every two years. As the Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce notes in “Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper,” Moore’s law explains why the average smartphone today carries a quarter-million times the data-storage capacity of the computer onboard the Apollo 11 spaceship that went to the moon in 1969.

Mr. Bryce argues that a similar dynamic, making less do more, drives virtually every technological change that has created the modern world, from cars and airplanes to advanced medicine, strategic metals and the iCloud. Technological innovation, in short, has a particular character—a dynamic of improvement that accelerates and amplifies (“faster”) while requiring, by any consistent unit of measure, less space and material (“smaller,” “denser”) at a lower cost (“cheaper”).

Mr. Bryce’s engrossing survey has two purposes. The first is to refute pessimists who claim that technology-driven economic growth will burn through the planet’s resources and lead to catastrophe. “We are living in a world equipped with physical-science capabilities that stagger the imagination,” he writes. “If we want to bring more people out of poverty, we must embrace [technological innovation], not reject it.” The book’s other purpose is to persuade climate-change fundamentalists that they are standing on the wrong side of history. Instead of saving the planet by going backward to Don Quixote’s windmills, they need to take a progressive approach to technology itself, he says, striving to make nuclear power safer, for instance, and using the hydrocarbon revolution sparked by fracking and deep-offshore exploration to bridge the way to the future.

“Smaller Faster” starts with historical examples of how technology does more with less, like the printing press in the 16th century and, not least, the automobile in the 20th, which combined the power of a technological leap (the internal combustion engine) with the efficiency of mass production. Mr. Bryce focuses in particular on the vacuum tube, designed in 1906 by Lee de Forest, the man also credited with inventing the radio.

The media’s latest political line is that the Republican establishment has finally crushed the tea party. The truth, as usual, is more interesting. The tea party has already changed the GOP on policy, and mostly for the better, but it is suffering this year because the candidates and operatives acting in its name have been motivated more by personal than policy agendas. That’s a shame because the GOP needs the tea party to prevent it from lapsing back into the do-little caucus of the George W. Bush-Tom DeLay years.

Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.)—those are three Senators elected with tea party support in 2010. Yet they are now part of the Senate GOP mainstream, tugging the conference in a more reform direction. So is Rand Paul on domestic policy. And don’t forget New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, who breaks with Mr. Paul on foreign policy but is making her mark as one of the Senate’s smarter young conservatives.

These Senators won with the help of the tea party wave in 2010, but they also won because they were men and women of accomplishment. The tea party rode these candidates as much as they rode the tea party.

Now consider Matt Bevin, Greg Brannon and Steve Stockman. They are among the tea party champions this year who have lost by large margins in GOP Senate primaries. They didn’t lose because the GOP primary electorate has suddenly been captured by “moderates,” or some mythical establishment in the Burning Tree locker room.

They lost because they were inferior candidates who differed little from their GOP opponents on policy but seemed less capable of winning in November. GOP voters sensibly opted for the conservatives with the better chance to retake the Senate from Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.

Far more than 2010, the tea party this year has also been hijacked by Washington-based groups that have personal axes to grind. That’s especially true in Kentucky, where a cabal of former aides to former Senator Jim DeMint force-fed Mr. Bevin’s challenge to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

When I’m operating on a child, I shouldn’t have to wonder if Medicaid will OK a change in the surgical plan.

Dr. Pollard, a pediatric ophthalmologist with 40 years of experience, is director of the James Hall Fellowship in Pediatric Ophthalmology at Scottish Rite Children’s Medical Center in Atlanta.

The bond of trust between patient and physician has always been the essential ingredient in medicine, assuring that the patient receives individual attention and the best possible medical care. Yet often lost in the seemingly endless debate over the Affordable Care Act is how the health-care bureaucracy, with its rigid procedures and regulations, undermines trust and degrades care. In my pediatric ophthalmology practice, I have experienced firsthand how government limits a doctor’s options and threatens the traditional doctor-patient bond.

I recently operated on a child with strabismus (crossed eyes). This child was covered by Medicaid. I was required to obtain surgical pre-authorization using a Current Procedural Terminology, or CPT, 2475.TW +1.12% code for medical identification and billing purposes. The CPT code identified the particular procedure to be performed. Medicaid approved my surgical plan, and the surgery was scheduled.

During the surgery, I discovered the need to change my plan to accommodate findings resulting from a previous surgery by another physician. Armed with new information, I chose to operate on different muscles from the ones noted on the pre-approved plan. The revised surgery was successful, and the patient obtained straight eyes.

However, because I filed for payment using the different CPT code for the surgery I actually performed, Medicaid was not willing to adjust its protocol. The government denied all payment. Ironically, the code-listed payment for the procedure I ultimately performed was an amount 40% less than the amount approved for the initially authorized surgery. For over a year, I challenged Medicaid about its decision to deny payment. I wrote numerous letters and spoke to many Medicaid employees explaining the predicament. Eventually I gave up fighting what had obviously become a losing battle.

Mark Steyn is no stranger to apocalyptic doom, having written two best-selling books on societal dissipation and collapse, America Alone and After America.

But in addition to doom on a macro level, as the Washington Post has dubbed him, Mark is also the “world’s wittiest obit writer,” as exemplified by his anthology of obituaries, Mark Steyn’s Passing Parade, newly updated and available on dead tree format (appropriately enough), and finally for the Kindle as well.

Featuring obituaries of figures ranging from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, all the way to show business personalities as diverse as Bob Hope, Tupac Shakur, Evel Knievel, James Doohan, and Michael Jackson, the Passing Parade is a brilliant time capsule of popular and political culture at the dawn of the 21st century.

During our 35 minute long interview, Mark will discuss:

● How his career as an obituarist began.
● The secret Tupac Shakur, Evel Knievel, Wayne Newton connection — revealed!
● How England’s decline in the 1970s was a preview of America in the Obama years.
● How Margaret Thatcher returned foreign policy respectability to England — even without hashtags.
● How did a four-decade old Bob Hope joke lead to Mark’s parting of the ways with National Review?
● What’s the status of the legal imbroglio involving Mark and Michael Mann?

China and Russia evidently have concluded a 30-year gas deal which shifts the balance of Russian hydrocarbon exports eastwards, but that’s not the thing to focus on. Pravda reports:

The central themes of the talks between the two leaders will be two projects in the field of aviation – the creation of a joint wide-body long-haul aircraft and the production of Mi-26 heavy helicopter in China, the Kommersant reports.

Russia, entering into such cooperation with China, indicates that it is ready to open access to Russian aircraft technologies, despite the fact that China previously resorted to building unlicensed copies of well-known Russian aircraft.

Energy is important, but military and aerospace technology may be even more important. As the Russian newspaper observes, Russia had restricted exports of its best equipment to China because of intellectual property violations. Two weeks ago Putin approved sale of Russia’s new S400 air defense system to China; this reportedly will give China air cover over the whole of Taiwan, among other things.

Russia always has had first-rate designers, but its production capacities never matched the ideas. Merge Russian designs with Chinese engineering, and the likelihood that the Sino-Russian combination might challenge US technological superiority is high. It’s not surprising that Russia responded to US sanctions by cutting off exports of the rocket engines on which the US depends to launch spy satellites. Bloomberg reports that it will take the US six years to build replacement capacity.

Meanwhile, reports the South China Morning Post,

China and Russia started a week-long naval exercise in the politically sensitive East China Sea yesterday.

If an evangelical group that brings Christians to Israel wishes to advance peace, it should stop engaging “experts” who demonize both Jews and the Jewish state.

Tricia Aven works as a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. She has a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, and a Masters in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

The Telos Group works to offer a voice that is “genuinely pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, pro-American, and pro-peace, all at the same time.” These are admirable goals, and it is the Telos Group’s self-defined mission to strengthen the capacity of American Evangelicals “to help positively transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” To this end, Telos provides many services, such as all-expenses paid pilgrimages to Israel, where they select speakers to address tour participants.

We can all agree that this is a conflict crying out for positive transformation. But the Telos Group can better achieve such a transformation if it pays more attention to the speakers they invite to speak on these pilgrimages. Telos should not get so caught up in the obvious need for work on this issue that it neglects to check the credentials of the people with whom they work.

For instance, Telos pilgrimage participants meet Rev. Mitri Raheb, the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Speaking at the “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference in Bethlehem in 2010, Raheb offered a racial theory to support his belief that Jews have no connection to the land of Israel:

Israel represents Rome of the Bible, not the people of the land. And this is not only because I’m a Palestinian. I’m sure if we were to do a DNA test between David, who was a Bethlehemite, and Jesus, born in Bethlehem, and Mitri, born just across the street from where Jesus was born, I’m sure the DNA will show that there is a trace. While, if you put King David, Jesus and Netanyahu, you will get nothing, because Netanyahu comes from an East European tribe who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15035#.U31cA165fwI

Op-Ed: Israel, the Cornerstone of the Western World

Is Israel the cause of instability in the Middle East? Is Israel not worth the $3 billion that the US gives it every year? Or, is Israel the cause of stability in the Middle East, and the West’s first, and last, line of defense against an Iranian/Islamic tidal wave which would smash into Southern Europe?

Look at any simple country/population map of the Middle East. In the upper-left-hand corner is my personal dividing line between the West/Greek versus the East/Islamic: The Blue-Seam-Line

Greece is just to the left of, or west of, the Blue-Seam-Line. Greece has a total of 11 Million Christians. East of, or right of, the Blue Seam-Line there are 370 million Muslims. This excludes the 660 million Muslims in the countries of Pakistan-180m, Nigeria-75m, Indonesia-205m, India-180m.

Israel- is the only non-Muslim Western Bulwark country in between, 11m Christian Greeks in Greece, to the west and 370m Muslims who control 65% of the world’s oil reserves. That does not include Cyprus, with 1 Million Christians, an enclave without an army or navy to speak of. And, to boot, Cyprus isn’t a NATO country. (As if being a NATO country means anything anymore.)

People who claim “Israel is the cause of Middle East instability” don’t just claim that Israel is the “core of instability since 1967;” they say “Israel has been
Would you rather have 7 million resourceful Israelis deal with the 1.6m Palestinian Arabs in the ‘West Bank’ as best as the Israelis reasonably see fit?
the cause of instability since 1948.” Which is just “polite,” Jew-hating, Israel-hating code for No-Israel-at-all!

Now, we are not talking about an Israel with, or without Judea and Samaria, more commonly known as ‘The West Bank.’ No, understand this, they are talking about No-Israel-at-all!!