RUTHFULLY YOURS

I wonder: is Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu getting piqued? Is Jordan’s behavior beginning to annoy him? Is the pressure Jordan is applying vis a vis the Temple Mount starting to bother even him? First, despite promises to seek ways to permit Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, he succumbed to the so-called “status quo” (so-called because it is only static as regards Jews).

Second, when it was absolutely clear who was initiating violence and provocations (the Jordanian Waqf by allowing youths to infiltrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and stay there overnight with firebombs, etc. as well as Sheikh Raad Salah’s Islamic Movement), he only spoke in a general fashion without blaming Jordan.

Third, he didn’t call out Jordan on the violation of Article Nine of the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty.

Fourth, he traveled to Amman (and Berlin) to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry and King Abdallah II and bowed to the pressure of installing cameras.

Fifth, he stood idly by for some five months while nothing happens with the camera surveillance scheme.

Sixth, he demurred when the Waqf and Jordan announced that the cameras will not be placed inside the mosque or the Dome of the Rock thus completely undermining Israel’s case to prove Muslim-instigated violence.

And now we read that Jordan is protesting a rabbi storming of Jerusalem mosque :

Jordan Tuesday strongly protested a raid into Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound, led by ultranationalist rabbi Yehuda Glick of the ruling Likud party, and urged Israel, as the occupation power, to stop such provocations.

Given the post-grad worth of degrees in gender studies, queer studies and journalism, to name but a few of the modern academy’s taxpayer-subsidised growth areas, it is a monumental injustice to make others underwrite the ongoing exaltation of credentialed irrelevance.
That Australia’s current system of higher education is unsustainable is a fact most are willing to concede. The latest evidence, revealed by the ABC, is of a $13.5 billion debt accrued over four years. This news adds another nail to the coffin of Entitlement Era higher ed and must surely accelerate a large-scale overhaul of the present—pun intended—arrangement.

As a graduate of two-and-a-bit university degrees, I am aware of the doors my tertiary education has opened, and am grateful for the subsidies and deferred payment system through HECS/HELP. That being said, it seems ludicrous my higher education should be paid for by the government taxpayers, including many who did not receive higher education themselves. Despite what our society leads me and fellow Gen Y-ers to believe, we do not have a right to go to university, nor are we entitled to see those studies heavily subsidised.

Speaking for myself, I would have attended university even if required to pay the full fees for my courses—albeit under a deferred-payment scheme— because my interests and professional ambitions lie in academia. On the other hand, I can safely assume that many of my co-students chose to go to university precisely because of the current arrangements. They chose uni because it was the easy option: no upfront fees, Youth Allowance, low-cost courses that might be repaid (or not paid at all, should they go overseas) in the distant future, and — or so they believe — because of better job prospects.

Encouraging this mindset was the uncapping of university places under Labor, as it carried us one step closer to socialist Nirvana: a bachelor’s certificate on every mantelpiece, a gown and mortar board in every wardrobe! All that achieved was to lower the bar. Many university degrees, and here one thinks especially of arts grads, might more appropriately be hung in the garden shed than occupy pride of place in the recent graduate’s hallway. (editor’s note: the declining gradient of Australian journalism matches to a T the rise of “journalism” as a tertiary subject. If you doubt that, note the work-experience children delivering their oracular preconceptions in the guise of “news coverage” via the Fairfax press. )

What I’m getting at is not inspired by elitism; a university graduate is as likely to make a fool of himself as any other person. No, my gripe is twofold and it’s not based on a white-male, CIS-privileged, capitalist conspiracy, despite what you may hear. Firstly, there’s the issue of entitlement, which is raging unchecked among us Gen Y-ers. And secondly, there’s the frustrating notion that suggests: ‘a truly just society must provide—for free if possible—a university degree to everyone.’

The Obama administration released a new report this week that paints a stark picture of how climate change will affect human health. Higher temperatures, we’re told, will be deadly—killing “thousands to tens of thousands” of Americans. The report is subtitled “A Scientific Assessment,” presumably to underscore its reliability. But the report reads as a political sledgehammer that hypes the bad and skips over the good. It also ignores inconvenient evidence—like the fact that cold kills many more people than heat.

Climate change is a genuine problem that will eventually be a net detriment to society. Gradually rising temperatures across decades will increase the number of hot days and heat waves. If humans make no attempts whatsoever to adapt—a curious assumption that the report inexplicably relies on almost throughout—the total number of heat-related deaths will rise. But correspondingly, climate change will also reduce the number of cold days and cold spells. That will cut the total number of cold-related deaths.
Consider a rigorous study published last year in the journal Lancet that examined temperature-related mortality around the globe. The researchers looked at data on more than 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 areas: cold countries like Canada and Sweden, temperate nations like Spain, South Korea and Australia, and subtropical and tropical ones like Brazil and Thailand.The Lancet researchers found that about 0.5%—half a percent—of all deaths are associated with heat, not only from acute problems like heat stroke, but also increased mortality from cardiac events and dehydration. But more than 7% of deaths are related to cold—counting hypothermia, as well as increased blood pressure and risk of heart attack that results when the body restricts blood flow in response to frigid temperatures. In the U.S. about 9,000 people die from heat each year but 144,000 die from cold. CONTINUE AT SITE

Horrible attacks like those we saw in Belgium last month are likely to multiply, not just in Belgium, but throughout Europe.

ISIS is a determined monstrosity. The more they lose territory in Iraq and Syria, the more likely are they going to try to commit terrorist acts in Europe in order to inflict more pain and recruit more jihadists.

ISIS’ terrorists are not soldiers or conventional fighters in uniform. Nor are they terrorists that need to cross borders illegally in order to target their victims. Terrorists are mainly European citizens or residents moving in open borders, with easy access to their targets.

Furthermore, most terrorists hide among mass Muslim populations concentrated in specific neighborhoods. Muslim mass concentrations serve as shields and as convenient incubators for terrorist activities.

To a certain extent, this situation is similar to the one Israel has been facing for a long time. The Palestinian territories are where the terrorists come from and they find refuge among the population in order to have proximity to their target.

Most importantly in Europe, as in Israel, these are not freedom fighters seeking a specific objective, but nihilistic Islamist ideologues whose ultimate end goal is pain, destruction -and ideally, genocide.

In Europe there is no occupation and no ethnic conflict, but the continent is still trapped in a similar situation; Europe has been “Israelized.”

Now, Europe will have to take the bitter step of having to ask the Israelis how to establish a system of surveillance and a network of informers in order to prevent and dismantle the terrorist acts in the early planning stages.

Worse, they will have to admit that they were wrong when they judged Israel’s treatment of terrorism or exaggerated the responsibility of Israeli policies for such terrorism.

Europeans have never been able to understand the fanatic and irrational magnitude of Palestinian or Islamic terrorism.

Also Obama lying to Congress about the nuclear deal violates the “spirit” of the Constitution. But why dwell on the obvious. The deal was sold as ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Iran making it obvious that it’s still pursuing such a program violates more than just the “spirit” of the deal. In this case the lack of “spirit” shows that there is no actual deal in place. And Iran has said as much.

“Iran so far has followed the letter of the agreement, but the spirit of the agreement involves Iran also sending signals to the world community and businesses that it is not going to be engaging in a range of provocative actions that are going to scare businesses off,” Obama said at a press conference.

“When they launch ballistic missiles with slogans calling for the destruction of Israel, that makes businesses nervous.”

“Iran has to understand what every country in the world understands, which is businesses want to go where they feel safe, where they don’t see massive controversy, where they can be confident that transactions are going to operate normally,” he added. “And that’s an adjustment that Iran’s going to have to make as well.”

This sounds like Obama expressing a halfway concern about Iran’s violations. Except it’s just the opposite.

Obama is actually making the case for the next phase of his Iran bailout by giving the Shiite Islamic State access to the American economy. Thus he’s actually arguing that the more we do business with Iran, the less likely Iran is to set off a nuke.

Never mind that business ties have never interfered with Iran’s terror agenda before because terrorism is its top priority and business is just a means to that end. Iran is an Islamic State, not a capitalist one.