RUTHFULLY YOURS

Oh Allah. Take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people…do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.

So said Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in a sermon on Al-Jazeera TV in January 2009. As the Anti-Defamation League notes in a helpful overview of Qaradawi’s life and dubious achievements, he has a “long record of inciting violence against Jews and Israel”—and, one should add, against others as well.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi was born in Egypt in 1926 and joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a student in 1942. He graduated from Al-Azhar University in 1953. From 1949 to 1961 he was arrested several times for his activities in the Brotherhood, and in 1961 he moved to Qatar where he lives to this day.

By now Qaradawi is one of the most influential theologians of the Sunni Muslim world. His weekly sermon on Al-Jazeera, “Sharia and Life,” has a worldwide audience of about 60 million. In 1999 he founded the website IslamOnline, which, as the ADL describes it, “contains articles and religious rulings which support violence against non-Muslims, as well as anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-American content.” And Qaradawi’s more than 40 books have been translated into many languages and disseminated throughout the world.

Qaradawi also has a vast institutional empire. Despite having been banned from the U.S. since 1999, he is chairman—in absentia—of the Michigan-based Islamic American University; founder and president of the Qatar-based International Association of Muslim Scholars; chairman and president of the Dublin-based European Council for Fatwa and Research; and president of the Saudi-based Union of Good, a “charity” organization that funnels money to Hamas and has been on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations since 2008.

The lavish praise over the Iran nuclear deal being heaped on EU foreign policy supremo Catherine Ashton, who failed to back the West during the Cold War, is itself a signal we should be deeply worried

Oh no. This is terrifying. Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief and former vice-chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is being widely praised as chief broker of the Iran nuclear deal. Look who’s praising her, and look what they’re saying.

Guardian Europe Editor Ian Traynor said on Sunday, without irony, “The former Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activist had brokered what looks like the biggest nuclear de-escalation of the era, the diplomatic breakthrough of the decade…”

Yes, that former CND activist who backed the wrong side during the Cold War and has never uttered a word of remorse or regret about it. It is her judgement we are relying on.

As if having the imprimatur of the Guardian wasn’t bad enough, here comes the EU’s very own Laurel and Hardy act.

“I would like to congratulate in particular Catherine Ashton, the high representative/vice-president of the European commission, for this accomplishment, which is a result of her tireless engagement and dedication to the issue over the last four years,” said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.

At some critical point, everyone makes choices based on incentives and his own perception of self-interest. Somehow the Obama administration has forgotten that natural law.

A therapeutic sense of self-sacrifice is fine in the abstract, but in the concrete such magnanimity causes far more harm to the innocent than does a realistic appraisal of self-interest and a tragic acceptance of the flawed nature of man. The theme of the present administration is that it possesses the wisdom and resources to know better what people should do than they do themselves. From that premise arose most of catastrophes that have befallen this administration.

Consider the logic of Obamacare — a protocol that we lesser folk were supposed to learn about only after the bill was passed, in the expectation that eventually we will surely like it, although we are not able to know that yet. If you use medical care infrequently, you supposedly will rush to sign up to pay more for it, so that those who will pay less can use it more. I wish such idealism were innate to the human character, but nothing suggests that it is. Does providing more coverage at less cost to more people somehow lead to lower costs for all participants? If so, the entire history of capitalism would have to be rewritten. Is it true that the more you try to get onto a website and are stymied, the more you will redouble your efforts to log on? If that were true, wouldn’t Amazon rig its website to fail 20 percent of the time?

Would employers hire more full-time employees in order to up their health-insurance costs, or would they keep their work force small enough that the federal guidelines will allow them not to provide coverage? And how would those incentives affect overall job growth? Will employers decide to forgo more of their profits so that the nation’s unemployment rate will stabilize?

Consider the news that the IRS improperly refunded $132 billion to people who falsely claimed earned-income tax credits. Add in the fact that about 45 to 50 percent of all Americans already pay no federal income tax. Then factor in the idea that conservative groups were more likely to be targeted by the IRS’s tax-exempt division than other nonprofit organizations. What natural lessons do many citizens learn from the IRS that might govern their future behavior? Are they likely to feel a greater need to report cash income, or to worry about unauthorized income while on federal assistance?

Did administration explanations about Benghazi and the IRS scandals help reassure the American people that what the president said about Obamacare was likely to be true? Does serial disingenuousness finally ensure remorse and a return to veracity?

Does promising a new transparency and an end to lobbying and to the revolving door between government and the private sector at least display a heartfelt desire to change the system, even if in reality there is no end to any such influence peddling? Is it better to promise great things and then break those promises than to have never promised at all? Do we operate on the T-ball philosophy that effort and happy talk can substitute for achievement? Does continuously blaming a prior president drive home the message of his culpability, or appear tasteless and reveal a sense of inferiority?

NBC News and the Associated Press want you to know there is no such thing as black mob violence. Especially in the hundreds of cases of Knockout Game now receiving so much attention in local and national media across the country.

Ditto the Washington Post, ABC News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. And this weekend, the New York Times.

The rules of the Knockout Game are simple: Gather a group of black people. Find a white person. An Asian will do. Punch them in the face until they are knocked out. Or dead. Or your arms get tired.

If you relied on local and national news accounts, you would not know the violence has a racial component. But the video solves that problem.

Many episodes of black mob violence and mayhem — including the Knockout Game — are recorded on video and posted on YouTube. Or Facebook. Or even bragged about on Twitter

Many are documented in White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore it.

But that does not matter much to NBC and AP. Heck, the New York Times says the Knockout Game is probably just an “urban legend.”

With one difference: This time we have Big Foot on Video. Thousands of them.

Two nuclear options

It was a week for nuclear options for the Obama administration. In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama lobbied Democratic senators to support the so-called “nuclear option,” to kill the ability of the minority party in the Senate (the Republicans) to filibuster and block appointments made by the president for certain high-level administration jobs and lifetime federal court appointments.

Of course, the president and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had argued against exactly such a nuclear option by the Republicans when they were both senators in the minority eight years earlier, and wanted to preserve their ability to block appointments by then President George W. Bush.

Obama has been at war with Republicans since he took office. His rhetoric attacking the opposition party has been one of the constants of his five years in office. He has never sought their counsel for any important legislation, whether the stimulus package or the healthcare reform bill (“Obamacare”) or the new banking and financial regulations (Dodd-Frank). Obama wanted to defeat Republicans, not negotiate with them.

And then there is the other nuclear option in Geneva this week, when the Obama administration, as represented by Secretary of State John Kerry, chose to sign a very bad deal with Iran, to ensure that there was a deal that almost certainly puts the Islamic republic on a path to a nuclear weapon. The deal also commits the United States to a course that will make it much more difficult for Israel to stop Iran’s nuclear effort in the six-month period of the “interim agreement,” and also makes it much harder for opponents of the deal in the U.S. Congress to step up sanctions and force a better deal.

Iranian missile group delegation visited Pyongyang as Geneva nuclear talks were underway

Iranian missile technicians secretly visited North Korea as part of joint development of a new rocket booster for long-range missiles or space launchers at the same time nuclear talks took place in Geneva, according to U.S. officials.

Several groups of technicians from the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG), a unit in charge of building Iran’s liquid-fueled missiles, traveled to Pyongyang during the past several month, including as recently as late October, to work on the new, 80-ton rocket booster being developed by the North Koreans, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.

The booster is believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be intended for a new long-range missile or space launch vehicle that could be used to carry nuclear warheads, and could be exported to Iran in the future.

Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have said that both North Korea and Iran are expected to have missiles capable of hitting the United States with a nuclear warhead in the next two years.

The Iranian cooperation reveals that the nuclear framework agreement concluded Sunday in Geneva has not slowed Tehran’s drive for missiles that can deliver a nuclear warhead to intercontinental range.

One official described the new booster as a thruster for a “super ICBM” or a heavy-lift space launcher.

“It is completely new from what they have done so far,” the official said.

As millions of Americans make last minute preparations for Thanksgiving, Team Obama has given the Iranian people six billion reasons to be thankful today.

U.S. diplomats, joined by representatives from Germany, France, China, Russia, and the U.K. have signed an interim nuclear pact with the Islamic State that gives Iran more than $6 Billion in formerly frozen assets in exchange for a simple promise not to create a nuclear bomb, reports The Washington Post.

Prior to the Obama Administration’s recent negotiations with Iran, no American President has even talked to an Iranian President in over 30 years.

Yet, today, America isn’t just talking with this frequent state sponsor of terrorism – America is now giving Iran billions of dollars over the course of the next six months to “reinvest” as they see fit.

According to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister (PM), Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly denounced this arrangement, calling it, “A very bad deal.”

The practice of beheading dates back to Greek and Roman times. The Roman Empire used it for its own citizens while crucifying others. Beheading has been traditional in Europe since the Middle Ages. In Scandinavia, it was customary to behead a nobleman by sword (a noble weapon of war), but a commoner by axe. Beheading was abolished in Britain (1747), in Denmark (1892), in Sweden (1902), and in Norway (1905). With the exception of the UK, All European countries that previously beheaded have not totally abolished the death penalty.

China also used it widely, until the communist regime replaced it with shooting in the 20th century. Japan beheaded up to the end of the 19th century, then turned to hanging. The Nazis used the guillotine-like Fallbeil in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1949 (E. Germany, 1966) on an estimated 16,500 persons who were considered common criminals and traitors.

Beheading is a “sacred Islamic Jihadi practice.” Endorsed by the Qur’an, and performed by most Islamic rulers, it continues to this day as the most brutal and degrading method of killing infidels – Jews, Christians, Hindus, and anyone considered a polytheist.

Quranic verses dictate beheading Kaffirs. One example is 5:33-“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is:execution(by beheading), or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter.”

The most virulently intolerant Islamic dictatorship in the world is The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that spreads and promotes (fundamentalist) Wahhabism worldwide – incites and encourages Jihadis to hate and behead thousands of non-Muslims and other infidels, freely and without remorse – and does so to this day.

One by one, the commentators have today fallen like dominoes. Presented with the transparent victory by Iran over the rest of the world at Geneva, they have eagerly swallowed the line they have been fed that this is a ‘historic’ step towards peace with Iran whose nuclear wings have now been clipped.

Journalists who would normally ask themselves ‘why is this lying bastard lying to me?’ if a western politician merely said ‘hello, nice day isn’t it’ (apart, of course, from The One) have suspended all independent powers of observation and thought over this risible farce of a deal.

Viewing it through the prism of ‘after-Iraq-don’t-give me-any-more-lies-about-Islamic-terror/anything-that-sounds-like-compromise-and-lets-us-put-our-heads-back-in-the-sand-must-be-good/war-with-Iran-is-sooo-much-more-terrifying-than-a-nuclear-Iran/new-Iranian-President-Rouhani-sounds-charming-and-moderate-so-phew!-we-can-believe-anything-that-he-says/anything-Benjamin-Netanyahu-is-against-I’m-for’, the chattering classes have apparently decided that yup, this really is peace in our time and any comparison with you-know-what in 1938 is well, just hysterical, and anyway we’ve had it up to here with Israel and they can just shut up.

But for your own assistance when facing someone who thinks this deal has saved the world rather than provided the final countdown to genocidal nuclear blackmail and war, here is my cut-out-and-keep guide to why the Geneva deal all but guarantees that the principal source of terrorism in the world today will now develop nuclear weapons for its monstrous purposes.

1) The deal is not designed to stop the Iranian bomb. It is said rather to be an interim agreement designed to boost confidence. President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry promise a subsequent permanent agreement which will disarm Iran of its nuclear and military capabilities. So sanctions are currently being lifted in exchange for… what exactly? Nothing of any significance whatever.

The agreement reached late Saturday night between Iran and the United States — and the rest of the United Nations’ “P5+1” gang — will enhance Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons whenever it decides to do so. It makes war in the Middle East nearly a certainty, rather than protecting us against it.

For Obama — and while he is president, for us — there is no responsibility so great that it cannot be sacrificed to political expediency, no duty so grave that it cannot be ignored.

America has an obligation to itself, and to allies such as Israel, to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear arms. Four American presidents — George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — have recognized this duty by stating firmly an American policy that Iran is not to be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. The first three of those presidents share the distinction of having done nothing to enforce that policy. The fourth has assured his place in history by surrendering the policy to Iran’s ambitions.

The details of the agreement — which we’ll get to in a minute — give Iran major relief from sanctions that were imposed by UN resolution and by American law, including some sanctions that were imposed when Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. To understand how far the agreement goes, it’s important to know the context in which it was made.